Quantification of nonlinear absorption in ternary As-Sb-Se chalcogenide glasses

In this article, we studied intensity dependent third order nonlinear optical response in ternary As40Sb7Se53 and As40Sb10Se50 chalcogenide glasses by employing nanosecond Z-scan technique. At low intensity, we observed saturable absorption in As40Sb7Se53 which makes a remarkable transition to reverse saturable absorption at higher intensities. On the other hand, when the Sb concentration increased in As40Sb10Se50, saturable absorption disappears and the sample exhibits only two-photon absorption. Experimental results further indicate that the strong two-photon absorption in our samples can be exploited to fabricate high performance solid state optical limiting devices for next generation all-optical network.Comment: 16 pahes, 4 figure

Method of Deriving Companion Identities Associating q-Series

In this paper, we have established two theorems by making use of Euler’s q-derivative and qshifted operators for a function of one variable and also for function of two variables. We derived several companion identities by applying these theorems on some known q-series identities. We deduced several special cases which are also the companion identities in the last section of the paper

Hypothesizing the Mechanism of Action of Virechana in Neurological Diseases with Respect to the Gut-Brain Microbiota Axis

Panchakarma is an efficient and popular Ayurvedic treatment modality that helps eliminate various Doshic imbalances in the body to prevent and treat diseases. Its efficacy is being proven through multiple studies conducted across the globe; still, the mode of action of these therapies is to be understood far and wide. Virechana is one of the Panchakarmas that have an impact on the whole body to remove the Doshas that spread across the entire system. Due to this reason, it is considered best in the management of many disorders affecting different systems of the body, including the nervous system. The present review aimed at understanding the mechanism of action of Virechana with respect to the microbiota-gut-brain axis in neurological diseases. Virechana using Mridu and Snigdha medicines is mentioned for the management of Vatarogas. As Virechana is considered the primary treatment of pitta, its effect may be related to hormones and enzymes having neuroregulatory properties also. The microbiota-gut-brain axis plays an active role in the pathogenesis, management, and prevention of neurological diseases. Gastrointestinal complications like constipation are common in diseases affecting the nervous system, and they have shown a negative correlation with neurological recovery. Here comes the importance of Snigdha virechana or Mridu virechana mentioned in Vatavyadhi. Virechana can remove unfavorable bacterial colonization and is effective in correcting gut flora dysbiosis. Thus, the mechanism of action of Virechana in modifying the gut-brain axis and thereby facilitating neurologic recovery is understood.  The present review sheds light on the Mechanism of action of Virechana with respect to the microbiota gut-brain axis in neurological disorders, which may be helpful for further research

Efficacy of cartridge based nucleic acid amplification test to diagnose tubercular pleural effusion

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major health concern worldwide. Extra pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) in India accounts up to 20% of all tuberculosis cases. EPTB often remains undetected and untreated due to variable clinical presentation and lack of diagnostic means. Early detection of TB and drug resistance is important in the management of TB. The aim of present study was to assess the role of cartridge based nucleic acid amplification test in rapid diagnosis of tubercular pleural effusion.Methods: The study screened 211 symptomatic patients. The patients with clinical and radiological presentations suggestive of pleural effusion were analyzed using light’s criteria to make a diagnosis of tubercular pleural effusion; these patients submitted pleural fluid sample for smear microscopy after concentration for presence of acid fast bacilli under light emitting diode based fluorescent microscopy (LED-FM), and for cartridge based nucleic acid amplification test (CBNAAT) using GX4 GeneXpert MTB/Rif test system. The results were statistically analyzed.Results: Out of patients who had pleural effusion without any pulmonary tuberculosis, pleural fluid biochemistry analyses using light’s criteria detected 20 tubercular pleural effusions (11 male and 9 female). Seven patients had history of extrapulmonary tuberculosis in past, all of them received treatment with effective treatment compliance in past. Pleural fluid microscopic examination for detection of acid-fast bacilli was not able to detect acid-fast bacilli in any of these 20 patients diagnosed with tubercular pleural effusion. CBNAAT could authentically detect M. tuberculosis in 5/20 patients diagnosed with tubercular pleural effusion. There was no impact of gender, previous history of tuberculosis, history of anti-tuberculosis treatment (ATT) intake, or compliance to ATT on CBNAAT status in this study.Conclusions: CBNAAT has the potential to significantly authenticate tubercular etiology in some of smear-negative pleural fluid specimens with rapid test results. It has an added advantage to assess the rifampicin drug sensitivity. All this contribute hugely in diagnosis and management of tubercular pleural effusion

Deformity Removal from Handwritten Text Documents using Variable CycleGAN

Text recognition systems typically work well for printed documents but struggle with handwritten documents due to different writing styles, background complexities, added noise of image acquisition methods, and deformed text images such as strikeoffs and underlines. These deformities change the structural information, making it difficult to restore the deformed images while maintaining the structural information and preserving the semantic dependencies of the local pixels. Current adversarial networks are unable to preserve the structural and semantic dependencies as they focus on individual pixel-to-pixel variation and encourage non-meaningful aspects of the images. To address this, we propose a Variable Cycle Generative Adversarial Network (VCGAN) that considers the perceptual quality of the images. By using a variable Content Loss (Top-k Variable Loss (TVk) ), VCGAN preserves the inter-dependence of spatially close pixels while removing the strike-off strokes. The similarity of the images is computed with TVk considering the intensity variations that do not interfere with the semantic structures of the image. Our results show that VCGAN can remove most deformities with an elevated F1 score of 97.40% and outperforms current state-of-the-art algorithms with a character error rate of 7.64% and word accuracy of 81.53% when tested on the handwritten text recognition system.TRUEpu

Non-Linear Effects of Information Systems Innovation

This study investigates the impact of innovation on users of an evolving Information Systems (IS) product. Building on two different streams of research, Levitts (198) Total Product Concept and the Three Factor theory (Kano. 1984) this study identifies three types of innovation: Basic, Expected and Augmented. The impact of introducing these innovations on user satisfaction was found to be dependent on the level of user satisfaction (performance) before the innovations were introduced and the type of innovation. Basic innovations impacted user satisfaction positively when the current level of performance of the IS product was low but not when the current level of performance was high. Expected and Augmented innovations impacted user satisfaction when the current level of performance was high but not when the current level of performance was low. This finding has interesting implications for practice and future research