A study of thyroid profile in cases of primary infertility attending a tertiary care hospital of south India

Background: Infertility is a rising major problem affecting more than 50 million couples globally every year. Endocrine as well as immune system abnormalities can impair the fertility. Most of the studies globally indicated association of infertility with multiple factors like stress, luteal phase defects, structural and functional reproductive disturbances. Many infertile women with thyroid dysfunction had associated hyperprolactinemia with increases TSH in ovulatory dysfunction. The aim of the present study was to determine the association of hypo and hyperthyroidism with infertility among cases of primary infertility in women.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among the patients attending the infertility clinic for the first time. The study was approved by the institutional ethical committee and the study was carried as per the guidelines of the ethical committee. The serum levels of T3, T4 and TSH were estimated and Prolactin in cases where necessary by Chemiluminiscence immunoassay. The data was analyzed by using the unpaired “t” test. A ‘p’ value <0.05 was considered significant.Results: 285 cases were enrolled and majority (38.6%) was in 31-34 age groups with mean age of 24.2± 1.6 years. 30.53% were found with thyroid dysfunction. Majority (16.49%) were found with subclinical hypothyroid, followed in order by primary hypothyroid (9.82%), subclinical hyperthyroid (2.11%), primary hyperthyroid (1.05%), secondary hypothyroid (0.70%) and secondary hyperthyroid (0.35%).Conclusions: To conclude, thyroid dysfunction is a common cause of infertility and can be easily managed by correcting the levels of thyroid hormones. Present study suggests that thyroid replacement therapy in subclinical hypothyroidism at an early stage is justified in infertile women. Borderline variations in TSH levels should not be ignored in infertile women who are otherwise asymptomatic for subclinical hypothyroidism. Hence for better management of cases of primary infertility studies with large sample size and long term follow up are required to validate and justify the variation in TSH and prolactin levels

Ethnomedicinal Plants Used by the Kanikkars of Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu, India to Treat Skin Diseases

This study has been carried out in Chinnamayilaru, Periyamyilaru, region of Agasthiyamalai biosphere, Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu. The dominant tribal group of this region is Kanikkar. The area is famous for its well protected Tiger Reserve (Kalakad- Mundandurai Tiger Reserve). The wild plants found in this region that are used especially for treating skin diseases are enumerated in the present paper. The full results of this study are organized in table form and include the species botanical name, followed by the family and local (Kanikkar) name and a brief note on the plant parts used, method of administration, dosages etc

Indoor Scene Recognition for Micro Aerial Vehicles Navigation using Enhanced-GIST Descriptors

An indoor scene recognition algorithm combining histogram of horizontal and vertical directional morphological gradient features and GIST features is proposed in this paper. New visual descriptor is called enhanced-GIST. Three different classifiers, k-nearest neighbour classifier, Naïve Bayes classifier and support vector machine, are employed for the classification of indoor scenes into corridor, staircase or room. The evaluation was performed on two indoor scene datasets. The scene recognition algorithm consists of training phase and a testing phase. In the training phase, GIST, CENTRIST, LBP, HODMG and enhanced-GIST feature vectors are extracted for all the training images in the datasets and classifiers are trained for these image feature vectors and image labels (corridor-1, staircase-2 and room-3). In the test phase, GIST, CENTRIST, LBP, HODMG and enhanced-GIST feature vectors are extracted for each unknown test image sample and classification is performed using a trained scene recognition model. The experimental results show that indoor scene recognition algorithm employing SVM with enhanced GIST descriptors produces very high recognition rates of 97.22 per cent and 99.33 per cent for dataset-1 and dataset-2, compared to kNN and Naïve Bayes classifiers. In addition to its accuracy and robustness, the algorithm is suitable for real-time operations

Role of School Libraries in sharpening 21st century skills of students

Students as the human capital need to be empowered for the socio- economic development of our country. The pace with which the world is moving accelerates the need for a proactive outlay to evolve a strong, energetic and buoyant kind of learners who can meet the challenges in life and work. The skills required for the future workforce are totally different from what our students are acquiring now. Libraries, as an integral part of our educational system, can contribute much towards skill development, especially in schools. School libraries are centres where students can develop their skills through self- paced learning with the help of reference, research and intellectual recreation. Apart from developing reading and information skills, school libraries can impart training e- learning skills, digital literacy, technology skills and professional skills to work in library. Leadership and social skills of students also can be honed in libraries

Stimulation of reserpine biosynthesis in the callus of Rauvolfia tetraphylla L. by precursor feeding

Reserpine is an important indole alkaloid that is used to treat hypertension and various psychiatric diseases by acting as a tranquilizing agent. In pharmaceutical industries, reserpine is in great demand. Chemical synthesis of reserpine is costlier than extracting it from natural resources. So enhancing this alkaloid in the already available system is a beneficial approach. Tryptophan is the starting material in the biosynthesis of reserpine. Callus was induced from leaf explants of Rauvolfia tetraphylla L. on MS medium supplemented with the combination of 9 μM 2,4-D and 25, 50, 75 and 100 mg/l tryptophan. An increase in the reserpine content was observed at 50 mg/l tryptophan than in other concentrations.Key words: Callus, MS medium, Rauvolfia tetraphylla L., reserpine, tryptophan

3D- Discrete Cosine Transform For Image Compression

Image compression addresses the problem of reducing the amount of data required to represent a digital image called the redundant data. The underlying basis of the reduction process is the removal of redundant data. The redundancy used here is pschychovisual redundancy. 3D-DCT video compression algorithm takes a full-motion digital video stream and divides it into groups of 8 frames. Each group of 8 frames is considered as a three-dimensional image, which includes 2 spatial components and one temporal component. Each frame in the image is divided into 8x8 blocks (like JPEG), forming 8x8x8 cubes. Each 8x8x8 cube is then independently encoded using the 3D-DCT algorithm: 3D-DCT, Quantizer, and Entropy encoder. A 3D DCT is made up of a set of 8 frames at a time. Image compression is one of the processes in image processing which minimizes the size in bytes of a graphics file without degrading the quality of the image to an unacceptable level. The reduction in file size allows more images to be stored in a given amount of disk or memory space. Keywords: 2D DCT, 3D DCT, JPEG, GIF, C

ON PSEUDO COMPATIBLE P-FUZZY SOFT RELATIONS

We introduce the notion of pseudo compatible P-fuzzy soft relations of a sub group, cossets of a group, strongest fuzzy soft relations and how they are related with fuzzy soft normal subgroups

Instrumental delivery: a comparative study in a tertiary care hospital

Background: To compare maternal and neonatal outcomes of vacuum versus forceps application in assisted vaginal delivery.Methods: Women in labor with vertex presentation were delivered by indicated/propylactic vacuum or forceps. A total of 500 cases were included in this retrospective study. Maternal and neonatal morbidity were compared in terms of perineal lacerations, episiotomy extension, post-partum hemorrhage, Apgar score, neonatal jaundice, perinatal mortality, NICU admissions etc. Chi square test was used to analyze the data.Results: Maternal morbidity was significant in the forceps group. With regards to neonatal morbidity, in NICU admissions, statistically significant difference was noted.Conclusions: Vacuum and forceps should remain appropriate tools in the modern obstetrics. However, ventouse may be chosen first (if there is no fetal distress) as it is significantly less likely to injure the mother and decrease NICU admissions

EVALUATION OF IN VITRO ANTIOXIDANT AND α-AMYLASE INHIBITORY ACTIVITY OF PHYLLANTHUS INDOFISCHERI BENNET

Objective: The present study evaluates the antioxidant and α-amylase inhibitory activity of leaf and bark extracts of Phyllanthus indofischeri with methanol and water as solvents. In addition to this, the total phenolic content and total flavonoid content was determined.Methods: The total phenolic and total flavonoid content of the extracts was determined by folin ciocaletus reagent method and aluminium chloride colorimetric method respectively. The antioxidant and α-amylase inhibitory activity were measured by various assays, including α, α-diphenyl-ẞ-dipicryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging, 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonicacid) (ABTS) radical scavenging, superoxide radical scavenging, total antioxidant capacity by phosphomolybdate method and porcine pancreatic α-amylase inhibitory assay. The IC50 values were calculated and compared with standards such as gallic acid, ascorbic acid and α-acarbose.Results: The results illustrated that all the extracts of Phyllanthus indofischeri exhibit significant antioxidant and α-amylase inhibitory activity. Among the extracts, methanolic leaf extract showed high levels of activity followed by bark water extract.Conclusion: Phyllanthus indofischeri extracts had shown antioxidant and α-amylase inhibitory activity. On the basis of these results, Phyllanthus indofischeri can be used as a natural antioxidant and hypoglycemic agent against various disorders related to oxidative stress; and the isolation of bioactive compounds was warranted.Â

Quality Assessment of Resultant Images after Processing

Image quality is a characteristic of an image that measures the perceived image degradation, typically, compared to an ideal or perfect image. Imaging systems may introduce some amounts of distortion or artifacts in the signal, so the quality assessment is an important problem.  Processing of images involves complicated steps. The aim of any processing result is to get a processed image which is very much same as the original. It includes image restoration, enhancement, compression and many more. To find if the reconstructed image after compression has lost the originality is found by assessing the quality of the image. Traditional perceptual image quality assessment approaches are based on measuring the errors (signal differences between the distorted and the reference images and attempt to quantify the errors in a way that simulates human visual error sensitivity features. A discussion is proposed here in order to assess the quality of the compressed image and the relevant information of the processed image is found. Keywords: Reference methods, Quality Assessment, Lateral chromatic aberration, Root Mean Squared Error, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Signal to Noise Ratio, Human Visual System