A mixed finite element method for fourth order elliptic equations with variable coefficients

AbstractA new mixed finite element method for the Dirichlet problem of fourth order elliptic equations with variable coefficients on convex polygonal domain has been developed in this paper, the biharmonic problem and bending problems of elastic plates being particular cases of the general problem considered in the paper. For bending problems, this method gives a simultaneous approximation to the displacement u and the ‘actual’ bending and twisting moment (ψij (i,j = 1, 2). Error estimate for the mixed finite element solution has been given

Political Obstacles to Justice and Reconciliation Mechanisms in Sri Lanka

After more than three decades of armed conflict, Sri Lanka continues to struggle to meet internal and external demands, which call for independent, transparent and accountable mechanisms to address human rights abuses and past mass atrocities. When authoritarian President Mahinda Rajapaksa was ousted in the January 2015 Presidential election by an unexpected rival, optimism for a more cooperative approach surged. However, this paper argues that the current government has outlined political distinctions between Sirisena and Rajapaksa, but their positions on key reconciliation mechanisms are comparative. It demonstrates this through a review of political documents and policy positions, and provides an analysis of statements, commitments, and engagements made internally and at the international level, presented in contrast with contradictory remarks made by Sri Lankan authorities

Pigmented villonodular synovitis of the knee in a patient on oral anticoagulation therapy: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Pigmented villonodular synovitis is a disease which affects the synovial joints and tendon sheaths. Although the exact aetiological factors are not known, we believe that recurrent haemarthrosis has a role in the aetiology of this condition.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 62-year-old Caucasian man presented with gradually worsening pain and stiffness in his right knee. The patient was on anticoagulation therapy and had been treated for recurrent episodes of spontaneous haemarthrosis of the knee. The International Normalized Ratio on each occasion suggested poor control of the anticoagulation therapy. A diagnosis of pigmented villonodular synovitis was made based on intra-operative findings and was further confirmed by a histopathological examination.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This report is presented to highlight the unusual association of haemarthrosis and pigmented villonodular synovitis.</p

Deep Learning and Computer Vision based Model for Detection of Diseased Mango Leaves

Mangifera Indica, commonly known as mangoes, is the most commercialized export fruit crop in India, accounting for about 40% of the total global production. Due to its widespread production, it is vulnerable to a variety of diseases that affect its yield and resulting in loss. These diseases like Anthracnose, Powdery Mildew, Leaf blights, etc., occur primarily on leaves. As a result, there is a great need for a system that helps in the detection of diseased mango leaves. In this paper, we propose a system that makes use of pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network architecture, the ResNet-50 for the detection of infected mango leaves. The dataset contains 435 images of mango leaves with binary classification as healthy and diseased. These images are pre-processed by resizing them and applying CLAHE. After applying in-place data augmentation on the dataset, the features are extracted using the ResNet-50 model. For the classification process, we make use of fine-tuned head and Machine Learning classifiers such as Support Vector Machine, Gradient Boosting, Logistic Regression, XGBoost, Decision Tree, and K Nearest Neighbour. Among them, the fine-tuned head classifier achieved an accuracy of 97.7%, and Machine Learning classifiers such as SVM, Logistic Regression obtained an accuracy of 100%. The experimental results obtained validate that the system is efficient in its performance of detecting the two classes of mango leaves

Influence of SLC22A1 gene polymorphisms on gastrointestinal adverse effects with metformin therapy in South Indian type 2 diabetes mellitus patients

Background: Metformin, a first-line agent in Type 2 diabetes mellitus, causes gastrointestinal adverse effects in 20-30% of patients, leading to discontinuation in 5-10% of them. Organic cation transporter 1 (OCT1) encoded by SLC22A1, transports metformin from the enterocytes into the bloodstream. Reduced function OCT1 variants could lead to increased luminal concentration of metformin leading to gastrointestinal adverse effects. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms in the SLC22A1 gene were studied in this cross-sectional study with cases and controls. Objective was to determine the association between genetic polymorphisms rs628031 (1222A&gt;G) and rs622342 (1386C&gt;A) in SLC22A1 gene and gastrointestinal adverse effects to metformin therapy in South Indian type 2 diabetes mellitus patients. Methods: The study was conducted in JIPMER, Puducherry, India in T2DM patients (n=300) of South Indian origin, who were categorized into case (N=100) and control (N=200) groups, based on their gastrointestinal tolerance to metformin. DNA was extracted from the patients using whole blood by phenol-chloroform method and genotyping was done using real-time PCR. Results: Minor allele frequency of rs628031 (A allele) and rs622342 (C allele) were 33.8% and 26.5% respectively. Genotype frequencies did not differ significantly between the case and control groups (rs628031, p=0.45, rs622342, p=0.28). Female gender (AOR 3.77; 95% CI 2.07, 6.85; p&lt;0.001) and proton pump inhibitor usage (AOR 7.66; 95% CI 3.01, 19.47; p&lt;0.001) had higher association with metformin intolerance. Conclusions: No significant association was found between the genotypes of single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs628031 and rs622342) in the SLC22A1 gene and gastrointestinal adverse effects to metformin therapy in South Indian type 2 diabetes mellitus patients

Diffuse optical spectroscopy and imaging to detect and quantify adipose tissue browning

Adipose (fat) tissue is a complex metabolic organ that is highly active and essential. In contrast to white adipose tissue (WAT), brown adipose tissue (BAT) is deemed metabolically beneficial because of its ability to burn calories through heat production. The conversion of WAT-resident adipocytes to “beige” or “brown-like” adipocytes has recently attracted attention. However, it typically takes a few days to analyze and confirm this browning of WAT through conventional molecular, biochemical, or histological methods. Moreover, accurate quantification of the overall browning process is not possible by any of these methods. In this context, we report the novel application of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and multispectral imaging (MSI) to detect and quantify the browning process in mice. We successfully demonstrated the time-dependent increase in browning of WAT, following its induction through β-adrenergic agonist injections. The results from these optical techniques were confirmed with those of standard molecular and biochemical assays, which measure gene and protein expression levels of UCP1 and PGC-1α, as well as with histological examinations. We envision that the reported optical methods can be developed into a fast, real time, cost effective and easy to implement imaging approach for quantification of the browning process in adipose tissue

EFFECT OF pH ON THE GROWTH AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GLYCINE SODIUM CHLORIDE (GSC) SINGLE CRYSTAL

ABSTRACT Single crystals of semi-organic non-linear optical Glycine Sodium Chloride (GSC) have been successfully grown from three different pH (1.1, 6.0, and 10.8

Use of Genetic Algorithm for Cohesive Summary Extraction to Assist Reading Difficulties

Learners with reading difficulties normally face significant challenges in understanding the text-based learning materials. In this regard, there is a need for an assistive summary to help such learners to approach the learning documents with minimal difficulty. An important issue in extractive summarization is to extract cohesive summary from the text. Existing summarization approaches focus mostly on informative sentences rather than cohesive sentences. We considered several existing features, including sentence location, cardinality, title similarity, and keywords to extract important sentences. Moreover, learner-dependent readability-related features such as average sentence length, percentage of trigger words, percentage of polysyllabic words, and percentage of noun entity occurrences are considered for the summarization purpose. The objective of this work is to extract the optimal combination of sentences that increase readability through sentence cohesion using genetic algorithm. The results show that the summary extraction using our proposed approach performs better in -measure, readability, and cohesion than the baseline approach (lead) and the corpus-based approach. The task-based evaluation shows the effect of summary assistive reading in enhancing readability on reading difficulties

Evaluation of the Dietary Effect of Hallabong Peel Oil on Growth, Hematological, and Immune Gene Expression in Rock Bream, Oplegnathus fasciatus Challenged with Edwardsiella tarda

In the present study we evaluated the dietary effect of Hallabong peel oil (HPO) on growth, disease resistance, and immune gene expression of rock bream, Oplegnathus fasciatus challenged with Edwardsiella tarda after a 4 week feeding trial with 5 treatments: control-C, probiotic–P, HPO (0.1%), HPO (0.5%), and P+HPO, diets. All fish groups were assessed for growth performance, innate immune parameters, serum biochemical profile, and immune gene expression in head kidney on 2nd, and 4th week, and 1st, 3rd and 7th day post infection with Edwardsiella tarda. Fish fed the HPO enriched diets showed increased growth performance with significantly decreased (P>0.05) mortality compared with the control and probiotic diet groups. The positive effects of HPO enriched diet were also found in all assessed innate immune and biochemical parameters which included increased respiratory burst and lysozyme activity, with significantly increased erythrocyte and leukocytes counts, increased serum protein, decreased glucose, triglycerides, cholesterol level in serum compared with control diet fed fish. Moreover, the probiotic bacterial count in the intestine of fish was enhanced with the HPO diet and the P+HPO diet compared to fish fed the probiotic diet. The head kidney of HPO enriched diet fed fish showed up-regulated expression of inflammatory cytokines genes such as TNFα, IL-1β, and FST, after 4th week of feeding trial which was increased ~2 to 3 times on 1dpi and 3 dpi. These results indicate that limonene rich (91.26%), HPO enriched diets enhance growth and immunity and enhance disease resistance of Oplegnathus fasciatus challenged against E. tarda

Remarks on the Formulation of Quantum Mechanics on Noncommutative Phase Spaces

We consider the probabilistic description of nonrelativistic, spinless one-particle classical mechanics, and immerse the particle in a deformed noncommutative phase space in which position coordinates do not commute among themselves and also with canonically conjugate momenta. With a postulated normalized distribution function in the quantum domain, the square of the Dirac delta density distribution in the classical case is properly realised in noncommutative phase space and it serves as the quantum condition. With only these inputs, we pull out the entire formalisms of noncommutative quantum mechanics in phase space and in Hilbert space, and elegantly establish the link between classical and quantum formalisms and between Hilbert space and phase space formalisms of noncommutative quantum mechanics. Also, we show that the distribution function in this case possesses 'twisted' Galilean symmetry.Comment: 25 pages, JHEP3 style; minor changes; Published in JHE