Fungi: an indoor air contaminant

A survey of airborne fungal spores of indoor environment was made from September 2001 to March 2002. In all 20 species of fungi were recorded. Aspergi//11swas the most predominant genus detected followed by C/adosporittn1, Alternaria and Penici/li11m spores

Scope of Non-estrogenic Steroidal Congeners against Breast Cancer

Various novel non-estrogenic steroidal D-ring substituted analogs were synthesized and evaluated for their breast cancer activity against human breast cancer cell lines. The good cytotoxic results obtained against the breast cancer cell lines throws new insights into the field as the analogs are non 17β –Hydroxy estrogenic derivatives which are considered to be pivotal for the potent estrogenic activity. The synthesized steroidal analogs provide a very good platform for mechanistic studies of the interaction between non-esterogenic steroids and estrogen receptors

Genetic algorithm based feature selection combined with dual classification for the automated detection of proliferative diabetic retinopathy

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) is a condition that carries a high risk of severe visual impairment. The hallmark of PDR is the growth of abnormal new vessels. In this paper, an automated method for the detection of new vessels from retinal images is presented. This method is based on a dual classification approach. Two vessel segmentation approaches are applied to create two separate binary vessel map which each hold vital information. Local morphology features are measured from each binary vessel map to produce two separate 4-D feature vectors. Independent classification is performed for each feature vector using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The system then combines these individual outcomes to produce a final decision. This is followed by the creation of additional features to generate 21-D feature vectors, which feed into a genetic algorithm based feature selection approach with the objective of finding feature subsets that improve the performance of the classification. Sensitivity and specificity results using a dataset of 60 images are 0.9138 and 0.9600, respectively, on a per patch basis and 1.000 and 0.975, respectively, on a per image basis

Erratum: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Interpretation: By quantifying levels and trends in exposures to risk factors and the resulting disease burden, this assessment offers insight into where past policy and programme efforts might have been successful and highlights current priorities for public health action. Decreases in behavioural, environmental, and occupational risks have largely offset the effects of population growth and ageing, in relation to trends in absolute burden. Conversely, the combination of increasing metabolic risks and population ageing will probably continue to drive the increasing trends in non-communicable diseases at the global level, which presents both a public health challenge and opportunity. We see considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in levels of risk exposure and risk-attributable burden. Although levels of development underlie some of this heterogeneity, O/E ratios show risks for which countries are overperforming or underperforming relative to their level of development. As such, these ratios provide a benchmarking tool to help to focus local decision making. Our findings reinforce the importance of both risk exposure monitoring and epidemiological research to assess causal connections between risks and health outcomes, and they highlight the usefulness of the GBD study in synthesising data to draw comprehensive and robust conclusions that help to inform good policy and strategic health planning

Evaluation of some management practices for the suppression of cucurbit fruit fly in bitter gourd

The experiment was conducted at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University farm, Dhaka, Bangladesh during the period from March to June 2007 with seven treatments viz; T1: Hand picking of infested fruits of bitter gourd at 7 days interval; T2: Neem seed kernel at 5 gm/l of water at 5 days interval +T1; T3: Spray of shobicron 425EC @ 2ml/l of water at 7 days interval + T1; T4: Micronutrient-Zn @ 6.72kg/ha; T5: Micronutrient-B @ 1.96kg/ha; T6: Micronutrient Zn + B and T7: Untreated control.. The lowest fruit infestation (13.78%) by weight was recorded from the treatment T2, while the highest (46.09%) fruit infestation by weight was recorded from T7 untreated control. The highest (85.00) number of fruits per plot was recorded for T2 treated plots while the lowest (61.00) number of fruits per plot was recorded from the untreated control T7. The application of neem seed kernel at 5 days interval + hand picking of infested fruits in T2 treated plots gave the highest yield (12.88 t/ha) while it was lowest (10.02 t/ha) in T7 untreated control plots. The combined application of micronutrients was more effective in T6 than the single application of micronutrients in T4 and T5 respectively. The results of economic analysis of bitter gourd showed that the highest benefit cost ratio (9.44) was estimated for T6 treatment and the lowest (1.06) benefit cost ration for T3 treatment. Among the different treatments neem seed kernel at 5 days interval + hand picking of infested fruits in T2 treated plots was more effective than the insecticide Shobicron 425 EC at 7 days interval + hand picking of infested fruits followed by the T6 treated plots in combination of micronutrients Zn +B

Computational Model for Stereoscopic Image Quality Prediction

In the modern era of Internet along with 3D imaging and communication system, many user-end applications require the estimation of quality of 3D images directly from the bit streams, as the original image may not be available. Though several metrics have been proposed in literature to assess the full reference perceptual quality of 3D images, however no reference quality assessment is still undeveloped which is a challenging issue. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a no reference stereoscopic image quality evaluation model based on image artifacts and disparity measure with the incorporation of Human visual system (HVS) characteristics. Based on HVS, we believe that perceptual artifacts of any image are strongly dependent on local features, such as plane and non-plane areas. For this reason, plane and non-plane area based blockiness and blur artifacts and also disparity are measured in this model. The experimental results show that the proposed model gives high correlation with subjective Mean Opinion Score (MOS)

Measuring Older Driver Behaviours with Prior and Post Exposure to Collision Locations

A retrospective big data analysis of data from a longitudinal study of older drivers is reported for multiyear (up to 7 years) driving data from an in-vehicle sensor system capturing engine computer and GPS data to measure and understand the behaviors of older driver with differing health related to collisions while driving. Specifically, the data were analyzed against the Ministry of Transport collision reports for each of the drivers to measure the exposure of the driver to the collision location prior to the collision and the ongoing exposure to the location after the collision as a measure of driving behaviour. In this report, a convenience sample of 6 older drivers from Ottawa, Canada that had differing physical and cognitive health status and had a total of 9 collisions is reported. The collisions were split between atfault and not at-fault for the study participants. The measurement of exposure to the collision location results showed that with the exception of 1 collision, the drivers all had regular and in many cases frequent exposure to the collision location prior to the collision, indicating that lack of familiarity was not a factor in most of the collisions. The measurement of the exposure information after the collisions also showed that none of the drivers avoided the collision location with statistical significance. In fact, in many cases, the drivers' exposure increased with statistical significance. Hence, there is no indication of avoidance behaviour regardless of health status associated with the collision location, something that was unexpected