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Introduction: Cardiovascular and respiratory causes account for the major chunks in sudden death cases in various Western studies. Overall, a very limited number of studies have been conducted on respiratory system changes in cases investigated as sudden and unknown death in India. Pathological respiratory findings are said to be common in the autopsy population; however, their nature and prevalence are not well documented. Aim: To document the morphologic changes in lungs (both gross and microscopic) in cases of sudden death. Materials and Methods: The present study was a cross-sectional, prospective, and observational study conducted over a period of 12 months from 1st April 2010 to 31st March 2011. It was conducted on autopsy lung specimens received in the Department of Pathology, RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. For the purpose of present study, sudden death was defined as death occurring within 24 hours of the onset of the terminal symptoms. Unidentified subjects who were declared “Brought Dead” at the emergency room were also included in the study. The lungs were fixed in 10% formalin, weighed, and dimensions measured. Grossly, the lungs were examined for colour, volume, consistency, presence of any pathological changes, the status of bronchi and pleura, and findings were recorded. After routine processing and paraffin embedding, histological sections were stained with Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stain and special stains as and when necessary. All the histological sections were examined microscopically, and findings were recorded. The obtained data were subjected to appropriate statistical analysis by entering the data in Microsoft (MS) excel 2010. Results: There were 46 males (88.46%) and 6 females (11.54%). The age range was 26-86 years, with a mean age of 51.02 years. Among the 52 cases, significant pulmonary pathology was found in 26 cases (50%), excluding postmortem changes. Extensive fibrocaseous pulmonary Tuberculosis (TB) 15 (28.85%) was the most common pulmonary lesion found, present in all age groups. The other major pathological lesions encountered were lobar pneumonia 4 (7.69%), emphysema 3 (5.77%), bronchopneumonia 2 (3.85%), etc. Conclusion: A significant number of cases with pathological lesions in the lung were detected during the histopathological examination of sudden death cases. All the lesions may or may not have contributed to death in a direct or indirect way. The undetected lung pathologies emphasise the importance of autopsy in cases of sudden death.

Introduction: Benign Hyperplasia of the Prostate (BHP) and prostate cancer comprise about 90% of all diseases of the prostate gland. An increase in serum Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) is an indicator of underlying hyperplasia, inflammation, or cancer. Mast cells are found in both inflamed and tumour tissue. Aim: To find the correlation of mast cell count with age, weight of prostate, and serum PSA level, and thereby distinguishing between the benign or inflammatory prostatic enlargement against prostatic carcinoma. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional observational study was conducted over a period of 18 months from November 2013 to April 2015 in a tertiary care hospital in West Bengal, India. Patients coming for treatment of enlarged prostate were included in this study as a convenience sample. Their age in years, weight of the gland by ultrasonography, serum PSA level, and mast cell count were recorded for analysis. The data between benign and malignant lesions were compared by the Mann-Whitney U test and the Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated to find correlation among the continuous variables. Chi-square test was done to compare categorical data. Microsoft Excel 2010 (Microsoft Inc, USA) and International Business Machines (IBM) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics 20.0 (IBM, New York, USA) software were used for conducting the statistical tests. Results: A total of 48 males with a median age of 63.5 years were studied. The weight of the prostate gland, serum PSA, and mast cell count were significantly higher in carcinoma of the gland. The weight of prostate gland (rs = 0.34, p-value= 0.02) and serum PSA (rs = 0.61, p-value

Summary: Type I interferon (IFN-I) response is the first line of host defense against invading viruses. In the absence of definite mouse models, the role of IFN-I in SARS-CoV-2 infection remains perplexing. Here, we develop two mouse models, one with constitutively high IFN-I response (hACE2; Irgm1−/−) and the other with dampened IFN-I response (hACE2; Ifnar1−/−), to comprehend the role of IFN-I response. We report that hACE2; Irgm1−/− mice are resistant to lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection. In contrast, a severe SARS-CoV-2 infection along with immune cell infiltration, cytokine storm, and enhanced pathology is observed in the lungs and brain of hACE2; Ifnar1−/− mice. The hACE2; Irgm1−/−Ifnar1−/− double-knockout mice display loss of the protective phenotype observed in hACE2; Irgm1−/− mice, suggesting that heightened IFN-I response accounts for the observed immunity. Taking the results together, we demonstrate that IFN-I protects from lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection, and Irgm1 (IRGM) could be an excellent therapeutic target against SARS-CoV-2.

High-throughput materials discovery can reduce the time taken to identify high-performing materials. Here, compositionally-graded films are fabricated in a binary halide perovskite system, of interest for solar cells, and their stability investigated during artificial aging.

Continuous monitoring of the spatio-temporal dynamic behavior of critical infrastructure networks, such as the power systems, is a challenging but important task. In particular, accurate and timely prediction of the (electro-mechanical) transient dynamic trajectories of the power grid is necessary for early detection of any instability and prevention of catastrophic failures. Existing approaches for prediction of dynamic trajectories either rely on the availability of accurate physical models of the system, use computationally expensive time-domain simulations, or are applicable only at local prediction problems (e.g., a single generator). In this paper, we report the application of two broad classes of data-driven learning models – along with their algorithmic implementation and performance evaluation – in predicting transient trajectories in power networks using only streaming measurements and the network topology as input. One class of models is based on the Koopman operator theory which allows for capturing the nonlinear dynamic behavior via an infinite-dimensional linear operator. The other class of models is based on the graph convolutional neural networks which are adept at capturing the inherent spatio-temporal correlations within the power network. Transient dynamic datasets for training and testing the models are synthesized by simulating a wide variety of load change events in the IEEE 68-bus system, categorized by the load change magnitudes, as well as by the degree of connectivity and the distance to nearest generator nodes. The results confirm that the proposed predictive models can successfully predict the post-disturbance transient evolution of the system with a high level of accuracy.

Coronaviruses have emerged as alarming pathogens owing to their inherent ability of genetic variation and cross-species transmission. Coronavirus infection burdens the endoplasmic reticulum (ER.), causes reactive oxygen species production and induces host stress responses, including unfolded protein response (UPR) and antioxidant system. In this study, we have employed a neurotropic murine β-coronavirus (M-CoV) infection in the Central Nervous System (CNS) of experimental mice model to study the role of host stress responses mediated by interplay of DJ-1 and XBP1. DJ-1 is an antioxidant molecule with established functions in neurodegeneration. However, its regulation in virus-induced cellular stress response is less explored. Our study showed that M-CoV infection activated the glial cells and induced antioxidant and UPR genes during the acute stage when the viral titer peaks. As the virus particles decreased and acute neuroinflammation diminished at day ten p.i., a significant up-regulation in UPR responsive XBP1, antioxidant DJ-1, and downstream signaling molecules, including Nrf2, was recorded in the brain tissues. Additionally, preliminary in silico analysis of the binding between the DJ-1 promoter and a positively charged groove of XBP1 is also investigated, thus hinting at a mechanism behind the upregulation of DJ-1 during MHV-infection. The current study thus attempts to elucidate a novel interplay between the antioxidant system and UPR in the outcome of coronavirus infection.

The interferon-induced tetratricopeptide repeat protein (Ifit2) protects mice from lethal neurotropic viruses. Neurotropic coronavirus MHV-RSA59 infection of Ifit2-/- mice caused pronounced morbidity and mortality accompanied by rampant virus replication and spread throughout the brain. In spite of the higher virus load, induction of many cytokines and chemokines in the brains of infected Ifit2-/- mice were similar to that in wild-type mice. In contrast, infected Ifit2-/- mice revealed significantly impaired microglial activation as well as reduced recruitment of NK1.1 T cells and CD4 T cells to the brain, possibly contributing to the lack of viral clearance. These two deficiencies were associated with a lower level of microglial expression of CX3CR1, the receptor of the CX3CL1 (Fractalkine) chemokine, which plays a critical role in both microglial activation and leukocyte recruitment. The above results uncovered a new potential role of an interferon-induced protein in immune protection.

Abstract The last decade has seen an extraordinary rise in the performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). State‐of‐the‐art devices now have efficiencies of over 25%, putting them on par with the best silicon solar cells. Yet despite their impressive performance, their longevity lags behind that of conventional silicon technology. Environmental factors like moisture, heat, and light can all adversely affect PSC performance and limit device lifetime. Systematically elucidating and eliminating PSC degradation pathways will be critical to the success of this technology. In situ techniques provide powerful tools to this end, as they allow structural, compositional, morphological, and optoelectronic changes to be tracked in real‐time. Because they follow a single film or device over the course of the degradation process, they can help eliminate the statistical variation that negatively affects many studies. Here we provide an overview of perovskite degradation processes, with an emphasis on in situ studies.

Abstract Background Duplication-Transfer-Loss (DTL) reconciliation is a powerful and increasingly popular technique for studying the evolution of microbial gene families. DTL reconciliation requires the use of rooted gene trees to perform the reconciliation with the species tree, and the standard technique for rooting gene trees is to assign a root that results in the minimum reconciliation cost across all rootings of that gene tree. However, even though it is well understood that many gene trees have multiple optimal roots, only a single optimal root is randomly chosen to create the rooted gene tree and perform the reconciliation. This remains an important overlooked and unaddressed problem in DTL reconciliation, leading to incorrect evolutionary inferences. In this work, we perform an in-depth analysis of the impact of uncertain gene tree rooting on the computed DTL reconciliation and provide the first computational tools to quantify and negate the impact of gene tree rooting uncertainty on DTL reconciliation. Results Our analysis of a large data set of over 4500 gene families from 100 species shows that a large fraction of gene trees have multiple optimal rootings, that these multiple roots often, but not always, appear closely clustered together in the same region of the gene tree, that many aspects of the reconciliation remain conserved across the multiple rootings, that gene tree error has a profound impact on the prevalence and structure of multiple optimal rootings, and that there are specific interesting patterns in the reconciliation of those gene trees that have multiple optimal roots. Conclusions Our results show that unrooted gene trees can be meaningfully reconciled and high-quality evolutionary information can be obtained from them even after accounting for multiple optimal rootings. In addition, the techniques and tools introduced in this paper make it possible to systematically avoid incorrect evolutionary inferences caused by incorrect or uncertain gene tree rooting. These tools have been implemented in the phylogenetic reconciliation software package RANGER-DTL 2.0, freely available from http://compbio.engr.uconn.edu/software/RANGER-DTL/.

Almost all standard phylogenetic methods for reconstructing gene trees result in unrooted trees; yet, many of the most useful applications of gene trees require that the gene trees be correctly rooted. As a result, several computational methods have been developed for inferring the root of unrooted gene trees. However, the accuracy of such methods has never been systematically evaluated on prokaryotic gene families, where horizontal gene transfer is often one of the dominant evolutionary events driving gene family evolution. In this work, we address this gap by conducting a thorough comparative evaluation of five different rooting methods using large collections of both simulated and empirical prokaryotic gene trees. Our simulation study is based on 6000 true and reconstructed gene trees on 100 species and characterizes the rooting accuracy of the four methods under 36 different evolutionary conditions and 3 levels of gene tree reconstruction error. The empirical study is based on a large, carefully designed data set of 3098 gene trees from 504 bacterial species (406 Alphaproteobacteria and 98 Cyanobacteria) and reveals insights that supplement those gleaned from the simulation study. Overall, this work provides several valuable insights into the accuracy of the considered methods that will help inform the choice of rooting methods to use when studying microbial gene family evolution. Among other findings, this study identifies parsimonious Duplication-Transfer-Loss (DTL) rooting and Minimal Ancestor Deviation (MAD) rooting as two of the most accurate gene tree rooting methods for prokaryotes and specifies the evolutionary conditions under which these methods are most accurate, demonstrates that DTL rooting is highly sensitive to high evolutionary rates and gene tree error, and that rooting methods based on branch-lengths are generally robust to gene tree reconstruction error.

Renewable portfolio standards are targeting high levels of variable solar photovoltaics (PV) in electric distribution systems, which makes reliability more challenging to maintain for distribution system operators (DSOs). Distributed energy resources (DERs), including smart, connected appliances and PV inverters, represent responsive grid resources that can provide flexibility to support the DSO in actively managing their networks to facilitate reliability under extreme levels of solar PV. This flexibility can also be used to optimize system operations with respect to economic signals from wholesale energy and ancillary service markets. Here, we present a novel hierarchical scheme that actively controls behind-the-meter DERs to reliably manage each unbalanced distribution feeder and exploits the available flexibility to ensure reliable operation and economically optimizes the entire distribution network. Each layer of the scheme employs advanced optimization methods at different timescales to ensure that the system operates within both grid and device limits. The hierarchy is validated in a large-scale realistic simulation based on data from the industry. Simulation results show that coordination of flexibility improves both system reliability and economics, and enables greater penetration of solar PV. Discussion is also provided on the practical viability of the required communications and controls to implement the presented scheme within a large DSO.

Aspergilloma or mycetoma is a saprophytic fungal infection that colonizes pre-existing excavated lung lesion. However, its association with systemic sclerosis related interstitial lung disease is unusual and scarcely found in literature. We report a middle aged female with long standing systemic sclerosis, who was on immunosuppressive therapy for many years, presented with repeated haemoptysis. Although provisionally pulmonary tuberculosis was suspected, imaging investigations showed presence of bilateral masses inside bullous air spaces along with air-crescent sign suggestive of fungal ball. Subsequent Computed tomography guided needle aspiration from lung mass confirmed Aspergillus fumigatus as aetiologic agent on fungal culture. Patient was treated conservatively for haemoptysis and with oral antifungal drug as surgical removal of fungal ball was not an option due to poor pulmonary reserve. Although she had been treated with itraconazole for more than three years, she had recurrent haemoptysis during this period without any significant regression of size of the aspergilloma. Management of aspergilloma in a background of extensive interstitial lung disease remains poorly defined and complicated. Thereby, overall prognosis is unfavourable and depends on evolution of both underlying scleroderma as well as aspergilloma.