Absence of bones at birth - A diagnostic dilemma

We present a male stillborn baby, born with disproportionate body and omphalocele. The infantogram revealed the absence of mineralization of all the bones, except for a minimal ossification of the ribs and spine. The possibilities that can be considered in such a case of absent mineralization at birth are very few. A definite diagnosis can be made on detailed clinical examination and the specific pattern of bone mineralization. The classical phenotypic features, associated anomalies, and the pattern of mineralization facilitated in diagnosing the rare entity, boomerang syndrome. Although the diagnosis should be confirmed by genetic studies, it is important to know the classical phenotypic and radiological features of boomerang dysplasia as it is often mistaken as achondrogenesis

Fuzzy Delphi and hybrid AH-MATEL integration for monitoring of paint utilization

This study investigates the unattended aspects of paint utilization selection criteria in industries. In today competitive business environment almost all companies focus towards sustainable manufacturing. The utilization evaluation and selection criteria for paint and its consumption reduction is the top priority for industry. Especially in automotive industries, paint shop stands as a centre for hazardous waste due to wastage of paint and thinner during the painting process. This research work focuses on optimizing consumption of paint by finding most important criteria affecting paint consumption and optimizing the same to achieve maximum paint yield. The study uses the routes of Delphi technique in a fuzzy environment to find out the most important criteria for paint utilization selection, so that maximize utilization and minimize consump-tion reduction of paint has been achieved. An integrated approach of AHP and DEMATEL methods has been implemented to prioritize the criteria and to familiarize the relationship within criteria. The outcomes of the study substantiate and proves that this study is the best way to select a particular paint utilization selection criteria for the paint shop and also to anticipate the optimal level of paint utilization.N/

Physics of Absorption and Generation of Electromagnetic Radiation

The chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, the chapter discusses the theory of propagation of electromagnetic waves in different media with the help of Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetic fields. The electromagnetic waves with low frequency are suitable for the communication in sea water and are illustrated with numerical examples. The underwater communication have been used for the oil (gas) field monitoring, underwater vehicles, coastline protection, oceanographic data collection, etc. The mathematical expression of penetration depth of electromagnetic waves is derived. The significance of penetration depth (skin depth) and loss angle are clarified with numerical examples. The interaction of electromagnetic waves with human tissue is also discussed. When an electric field is applied to a dielectric, the material takes a finite amount of time to polarize. The imaginary part of the permittivity is corresponds to the absorption length of radiation inside biological tissue. In the second part of the chapter, it has been shown that a high frequency wave can be generated through plasma under the presence of electron beam. The electron beam affects the oscillations of plasma and triggers the instability called as electron beam instability. In this section, we use magnetohydrodynamics theory to obtain the modified dispersion relation under the presence of electron beam with the help of the Poisson’s equation. The high frequency instability in plasma grow with the magnetic field, wave length, collision frequency and the beam density. The growth rate linearly increases with collision frequency of electrons but it is decreases with the drift velocity of electrons. The real frequency of the instability increases with magnetic field, azimuthal wave number and beam density. The real frequency is almost independent with the collision frequency of the electrons

Numerical Investigations of Electromagnetic Oscillations and Turbulences in Hall Thrusters Using Two Fluid Approach

The first part of the contributed chapter discuss the overview of electric propulsion technology and its requirement in different space missions. The technical terms specific impulse and thrust are explained with their relation to exhaust velocity. The shortcoming of the Hall thrusters and its erosion problems of the channel walls are also conveyed. The second part of the chapter discuss the various waves and electromagnetic instabilities propagating in a Hall thruster magnetized plasma. The dispersion relation for the azimuthal growing waves is derived analytically with the help of magnetohydrodynamics theory. It is depicted that the growth rate of the instability increases with magnetic field, electron drift velocity and collisional frequency, whereas it is decreases with the initial drift of the ions

CompA: Addressing the Gap in Compositional Reasoning in Audio-Language Models

A fundamental characteristic of audio is its compositional nature. Audio-language models (ALMs) trained using a contrastive approach (e.g., CLAP) that learns a shared representation between audio and language modalities have improved performance in many downstream applications, including zero-shot audio classification, audio retrieval, etc. However, the ability of these models to effectively perform compositional reasoning remains largely unexplored and necessitates additional research. In this paper, we propose CompA, a collection of two expert-annotated benchmarks with a majority of real-world audio samples, to evaluate compositional reasoning in ALMs. Our proposed CompA-order evaluates how well an ALM understands the order or occurrence of acoustic events in audio, and CompA-attribute evaluates attribute binding of acoustic events. An instance from either benchmark consists of two audio-caption pairs, where both audios have the same acoustic events but with different compositions. An ALM is evaluated on how well it matches the right audio to the right caption. Using this benchmark, we first show that current ALMs perform only marginally better than random chance, thereby struggling with compositional reasoning. Next, we propose CompA-CLAP, where we fine-tune CLAP using a novel learning method to improve its compositional reasoning abilities. To train CompA-CLAP, we first propose improvements to contrastive training with composition-aware hard negatives, allowing for more focused training. Next, we propose a novel modular contrastive loss that helps the model learn fine-grained compositional understanding and overcomes the acute scarcity of openly available compositional audios. CompA-CLAP significantly improves over all our baseline models on the CompA benchmark, indicating its superior compositional reasoning capabilities.Comment: Pre-print under revie

Targeted Oral Delivery of Paclitaxel Using Colostrum-Derived Exosomes

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type accounting for 84% of all lung cancers. Paclitaxel (PAC) is a widely used drug in the treatment of a broad spectrum of human cancers, including lung. While efficacious, PAC generally is not well tolerated and its limitations include low aqueous solubility, and significant toxicity. To overcome the dose-related toxicity of solvent-based PAC, we utilized bovine colostrum-derived exosomes as a delivery vehicle for PAC for the treatment of lung cancer. Colostrum provided higher yield of exosomes and could be loaded with higher amount of PAC compared to mature milk. Exosomal formulation of PAC (ExoPAC) showed higher antiproliferative activity and inhibition of colony formation against A549 cells compared with PAC alone, and also showed antiproliferative activity against a drug-resistant variant of A549. To further enhance its efficacy, exosomes were attached with a tumor-targeting ligand, folic acid (FA). FA-ExoPAC given orally showed significant inhibition (\u3e50%) of subcutaneous tumor xenograft while similar doses of PAC showed insignificant inhibition. In the orthotopic lung cancer model, oral dosing of FA-ExoPAC achieved greater efficacy (55% growth inhibition) than traditional i.v. PAC (24–32% growth inhibition) and similar efficacy as i.v. Abraxane (59% growth inhibition). The FA-ExoPAC given i.v. exceeded the therapeutic efficacy of Abraxane (76% growth inhibition). Finally, wild-type animals treated with p.o. ExoPAC did not show gross, systemic or immunotoxicity. Solvent-based PAC caused immunotoxicity which was either reduced or completely mitigated by its exosomal formulations. These studies show that a tumor-targeted oral formulation of PAC (FA-ExoPAC) significantly improved the overall efficacy and safety profile while providing a user-friendly, cost-effective alternative to bolus i.v. PAC and i.v. Abraxane

Plasma Waves and Rayleigh–Taylor Instability: Theory and Application

The presence of plasma density gradient is one of the main sources of Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI). The Rayleigh–Taylor instability has application in meteorology to explain cloud formations and in astrophysics to explain finger formation. It has wide applications in the inertial confinement fusion to determine the yield of the reaction. The aim of the chapter is to discuss the current status of the research related to RTI. The current research related to RTI has been reviewed, and general dispersion relation has been derived under the thermal motion of electron. The perturbed densities of ions and electrons are determined using two fluid approach under the small amplitude of oscillations. The dispersion equation is derived with the help of Poisson’s equation and solved numerically to investigate the effect of various parameters on the growth rate and real frequency. It has been shown that the real frequency increases with plasma density gradient, electron temperature and the wavenumber, but magnetic field has opposite effect on it. On the other hand, the growth rate of instability increases with magnetic field and density gradient, but it decreases with electron temperature and wave number

Antimycotic activity of green tea phytocompounds against Candida glabrata

One of the medically important opportunistic fungal pathogen for humans is Candida glabrata that causes various types of candidiasis. Its environmental adaptations and antimicrobial resistance is now a great concern for public health. In the present study, the green tea phytocompounds; EGCg, Chlorogenic acid, Coumaroyl quinic acid and Rutin trihydrate along with a known antimycotic Fluconazole were studied for their antimycotic activity against Candida glabrata. The MIC90 for C. glabrata was observed at 125µg/ml for EGC g, 250 µg/mlf or Chlorogenic acid, 500µg/ml for Coumaroyl quinic acid and Rutin trihydrate while 12.5µg/ml for Fluconazole in macro dilution assay while the MFC values were 1000 µg/ml for EGC g, 500 µg/ml for Chlorogenic acid, Coumaroyl quinic acid, Rutin trihydrate and 50 µg/ml for Fluconazole. In microdilution assay, the MIC90 for C. glabrata was observed 125µg/ml for EGC g and chlorogenic acid, 500µg/ml for Coumaroyl quinic acid, Rutin trihydrate and 12.5µg/ml for Fluconazole while the MFC values were 31.25 µg/ml for Fluconazole, 250 µg/ml for chlorogenic acid and 500 µg/ml for EGC g, Coumaroyl quinic acid and Rutin trihydrate. EGCg and Chlorogenic acid was found to be more effective against C. glabrata and therefore these two were used for synergistic study along with Fluconazole. The viability of HeLa cells (in per cent) was observed ≥100% green tea phyto compounds. The viability of treated cells (in per cent) with a combination of Green tea, phytocompounds and fluconazole was observed between ≥98± 0.79 to ≥ 98± 0.87. Green tea phytocompounds mainly EGC g and chlorogenic acid can be used as synergistic molecules having antimycotic activity against C. glabrata.

Corrigendum: A small molecule inhibitor of Notch1 modulates stemness and suppresses breast cancer cell growth

Although breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) are well characterized, molecularly targeting and eradicating this sub-population remains a challenge in the clinic. Recent studies have explored several signaling pathways that govern stem cell activation: We and others established that the Notch1 signaling plays a significant role in the proliferation, survival, and differentiation of BCSCs. Earlier, we reported that a newly developed small molecule, ASR490, binds to the negative regulatory region (NRR: The activation switch of the Notch receptor) of Notch1. In vitro results demonstrated that ASR490 significantly inhibited BCSCs (ALDH+ and CD44+/CD24–) and breast cancer (BC) growth at nM concentrations, and subsequently inhibited the colony- and mammosphere-forming abilities of BCSCs and BCs. ASR490 downregulated the expressions of Notch1 intracellular domain (NICD: The active form of Notch1) and its downstream effectors Hey1 and HES1. Inhibition of Notch1-NICD facilitated autophagy-mediated growth inhibition by triggering the fusion of autophagosome and autolysosome in BCSCs. ASR490 was found to be non-toxic to healthy cells as compared to existing Notch1 inhibitors. Moreover, oral administration of ASR490 abrogated BCSC and BC tumor growth in the in vivo xenograft models. Together our results indicate that ASR490 is a potential therapeutic agent that inhibits BC tumor growth by targeting and abolishing Notch1 signaling in BCSCs and BC cells.</p