Ovarian Steroid Cell Tumour: Correlation of Histopathology with Clinicopathologic Features

Ovarian steroid cell tumours (not otherwise specified) are rare neoplasms of the ovary and are classified under lipid cell tumours. Their diagnosis can be considered as one of exclusion. Histopathologically, the tumour should carefully be evaluated for microscopic features of malignancy, but it is essential for the clinician and the pathologist to remember that in these tumours, pathologically benign histomorphology does not exclude the possibility of clinically malignant behaviour. Our case study focuses on the comparative findings in a postmenopausal female diagnosed with an ovarian steroid tumour (not otherwise specified). A careful correlation between clinical and surgical evaluation and microscopic analysis is necessary, as is a regular followup

Organizational Commitment: Status Quo in Qatar

Qatar is a fast growing economy which is largely dependent on expatriate labour. This creates a unique situation that affects organizational commitment. This research focusses on understanding the relationship between the job characteristics and organizational commitment. The first of its kind of study in Qatar, it presents the relationships among various job characteristics and the dimensions of organizational commitment. The study provides good support for the predictive effect of job characteristics on organizational commitment, indicating that enriching jobs through changing the four core job dimensions would have a positive effect on employees' organizational commitment

COMPARATIVE ADSORPTION STUDY ON RICE HUSK AND RICE HUSK ASH BY USING AMARANTHUS GANGETICUS PIGMENTS AS DYE

Low cost adsorbents such as Rice Husk (RH) and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) were used for removing dyes from aqueous medium and later Linear, Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms have been verified by using adsorption data. RH was activated by treating with nitric acid and RHA was prepared from RH by dolomite process. Natural dyes were extracted from the vegetable Amaranthus gangeticus by using a standard method. The removal efficiency of adsorbents was measured for the variation of parameters pH, contact time and adsorbents concentration. It has been noted that after changing time for same amount of adsorbent (1g/100ml) and dyes (10 ml) RH gave no efficiency trend but increased to 43.91% whereas for RHA efficiency was gradually increased to 59.62%. A reverse trend was noted when adsorption amounts were changed and others were put constant where RHA efficiency gradually increased to 99.30% but RH gave no trend with highest efficiency was close to 61.85%. The RH removal efficiency was good for pH 11 close to 62.86% and it was continuous from 3.95% at pH 2. Alternately, RHA gave 80.21% at pH 2 and later was decreased to 1.5% at pH 9 and again increased from pH 11. It is noted that RHA removal efficiency is better than RH and adsorptions are well fitted with isotherms

COMPARATIVE ADSORPTION STUDY ON RICE HUSK AND RICE HUSK ASH BY USING AMARANTHUS GANGETICUS PIGMENTS AS DYE

Low cost adsorbents such as Rice Husk (RH) and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) were used for removing dyes from aqueous medium and later Linear, Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms have been verified by using adsorption data. RH was activated by treating with nitric acid and RHA was prepared from RH by dolomite process. Natural dyes were extracted from the vegetable Amaranthus gangeticus by using a standard method. The removal efficiency of adsorbents was measured for the variation of parameters pH, contact time and adsorbents concentration. It has been noted that after changing time for same amount of adsorbent (1g/100ml) and dyes (10 ml) RH gave no efficiency trend but increased to 43.91% whereas for RHA efficiency was gradually increased to 59.62%. A reverse trend was noted when adsorption amounts were changed and others were put constant where RHA efficiency gradually increased to 99.30% but RH gave no trend with highest efficiency was close to 61.85%. The RH removal efficiency was good for pH 11 close to 62.86% and it was continuous from 3.95% at pH 2. Alternately, RHA gave 80.21% at pH 2 and later was decreased to 1.5% at pH 9 and again increased from pH 11. It is noted that RHA removal efficiency is better than RH and adsorptions are well fitted with isotherms

Implementation of Parallel K-Means Algorithm to Estimate Adhesion Failure in Warm Mix Asphalt

Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) and Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) are prepared at lower temperatures, making it more susceptible to moisture damage, which eventually leads to stripping due to the adhesion failure. Moreover, the assessment of the adhesion failure depends on the expertise of the investigator’s subjective visual assessment skills. Nowadays, image processing has gained popularity to address the inaccuracy of visual assessment. To attain high accuracy from image processing algorithms, the loss of pixels plays an essential role. In high-quality image samples, processing takes more execution time due to the greater resolution of the image. Therefore, the execution time of the image processing algorithm is also an essential aspect of quality. This manuscript proposes a parallel k means for image processing (PKIP) algorithm using multiprocessing and distributed computing to assess the adhesion failure in WMA and HMA samples subjected to three different moisture sensitivity tests (dry, one, and three freeze-thaw cycles) and fractured by indirect tensile test. For the proposed experiment, the number of clusters was chosen as ten (k = 10) based on k value and cost of k means function was computed to analyse the adhesion failure. The results showed that the PKIP algorithm decreases the execution time up to 30% to 46% if compared with the sequential k means algorithm when implemented using multiprocessing and distributed computing. In terms of results concerning adhesion failure, the WMA specimens subjected to a higher degree of moisture effect showed relatively lower adhesion failure compared to the Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) samples when subjected to different levels of moisture sensitivity

Effects of autologous stem cell therapy for fertility enhancement among women with premature ovarian insufficiency

Background: Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a condition where the ovary loses its normal reproductive potential earlier than 40 years, compromising fertility. There is no treatment for POI, only ovum or embryo donation. Autologous stem cell ovarian transplant (ASCOT) may be a procedure that creates new eggs in the ovaries of women with POI. The aim of the study was to find out the efficacy of ASCOT in patients suffering from POI. Methods: A total of 50 patients were included according to inclusion and exclusion criteria in this prospective observational study. POI was confirmed with low levels of anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) (<0.5 ng/dl), high level of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) >25 ng/ml, and or a low number of antral follicle count (AFC) (<3 in each ovary). Results: Results showed that after stem cell therapy, mean AMH values increased by 0.48±0.306 and mean FSH values increased by 2.73±3.98 but the difference was not statistically significant. AFC values significantly decreased by 1.33±0.625 at 1st post-stem-cell cycle. During the second cycle, AMH and AFC increased by 0.110±0.051 and 4.63±1.49, respectively, and FSH decreased by 7.4±2.78. In third cycle, AMH & FSH was significantly increased by 0.820±0.44 & 4.120±0.470 and FSH has been decreased by 2.150±3.625. The increase in AMH & AFC was statistically significant, and the decrease in FSH was not statistically significant compared to baseline values. Conclusions: The study showed that autologous stem cell therapy can have a significant effect on women’s ovarian function and fertility. It showed that ASCOT can increase AMH and AFC, and decrease FSH in patients with POI, with a total pregnancy rate of 4% after the third cycle follow-up

Indoor air quality and health outcomes in employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic : a pilot study

Indoor air quality (IAQ) has a significant impact on human health. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, more employees have worked remotely from home to reduce in-person contacts. This pilot study aims to measure the difference in workplace IAQ before and during the pandemic and its impact on employees’ health. The levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and total volatile organic chemicals (tVOC) were measured in the employees’ offices before the COVID-19 pandemic and at homes while working from home during the pandemic using Foobot air monitors. The frequencies of six Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) symptoms were evaluated at each period of monitoring. The result showed PM2.5 levels in households while working from home were significantly higher than in offices while working at the office in all participants (

Find Thy Neighbourhood: Privacy-Preserving Local Clustering

Identifying a cluster around a seed node in a graph, termed local clustering, finds use in several applications, including fraud detection, targeted advertising, community detection, etc. However, performing local clustering is challenging when the graph is distributed among multiple data owners, which is further aggravated by the privacy concerns that arise in disclosing their view of the graph. This necessitates designing solutions for privacy-preserving local clustering and is addressed for the first time in the literature. We propose using the technique of secure multiparty computation (MPC) to achieve the same. Our local clustering algorithm is based on the heat kernel PageRank (HKPR) metric, which produces the best-known cluster quality. En route to our final solution, we have two important steps: (i) designing data-oblivious equivalent of the state-of-the-art algorithms for computing local clustering and HKPR values, and (ii) compiling the data-oblivious algorithms into its secure realisation via an MPC framework that supports operations over fixed-point arithmetic representation such as multiplication and division. Keeping efficiency in mind for large graphs, we choose the best-known honest-majority 3-party framework of SWIFT (Koti et al., USENIX\u2721) and enhance it with some of the necessary yet missing primitives, before using it for our purpose. We benchmark the performance of our secure protocols, and the reported run time showcases the practicality of the same. Further, we perform extensive experiments to evaluate the accuracy loss of our protocols. Compared to their cleartext counterparts, we observe that the results are comparable and thus showcase the practicality of the designed protocols