Efficacy and safety of triple drug fixed-dose combination of telmisartan, amlodipine and hydrochlorothiazide in the management of hypertension

Background: High blood pressure (BP) is the most prevalent chronic disease in India and its prevalence is rapidly increasing among urban and rural populations. This study was conducted to assess the efficacy and safety of triple drug fixed dose combination of Telmisartan 40 mg, Amlodipine 5 mg and Hydrochlorothiazide 12.5mg. Methods: 30 hypertensive patients having systolic blood pressure ≥ 160 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure ≥ 100 mmHg who were uncontrolled on dual drug therapy with Telmisartan-Amlodipine or Telmisartan-Hydrochlorothiazide combinations were enrolled in this study. The treatment period was of 120 days and patients were administered once daily fixed dose combination of Telmisartan 40 mg, Amlodipine 5 mg and Hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg. Patients were evaluated on 30th, 60th and 120th days of treatment. Results: There was statistically significant (p<0.0001) decrease in systolic blood pressure from baseline to 30th, 60th and 120th day of treatment mean±SD (157.0±8.68 mmHg vs 148.7±8.19, 137.3±7.84, and 127.0±7.02 mmHg) respectively. Similarly the diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was significantly (p<0.0001) reduced from the baseline to the 30th, 60th and 120th day of treatment (100.0±6.43 mmHg vs. 96.0±6.21, 86.6±6.06 and 80.6±2.53 mmHg respectively). Conclusion: Thus triple drug fixed dose combination of Telmisartan, Amlodipine and hydrochlorothiazide was found to be effective and safe option for the optimal management of hypertension.

Systematics of alpha decay hindrance factors in doubly-even nuclei

304-307In present work, we have calculated the hindrance factors of 182 even-even alpha emitters using Preston&rsquo;s formulation of alpha decay probabilities and presented HFs systematics of 1- and 3- states in reflection asymmetric even-even quadruple-octupole deformed nuclides (A~216-230). The calculated HFs of both 1- and 3- states decrease with reduction in neutron number and this decrease is attributed to onset of intrinsic reflection asymmetry. There is a trend reversal for 1- states at N=132 (218Ra) and N=134 (220Rn), which might be a possible indication of departure from static octupole deformation. Similarly, HFs systematics is discussed for 224-230Th and 232-236U isotopic chains along with 2+ states observed in daughter nuclei in N=132-146 isotonic chains

Cortical idiosyncrasies predict the perception of object size

Perception is subjective. Even basic judgments, like those of visual object size, vary substantially between observers and also across the visual field within the same observer. The way in which the visual system determines the size of objects remains unclear, however. We hypothesize that object size is inferred from neuronal population activity in V1 and predict that idiosyncrasies in cortical functional architecture should therefore explain individual differences in size judgments. Here we show results from novel behavioural methods and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) demonstrating that biases in size perception are correlated with the spatial tuning of neuronal populations in healthy volunteers. To explain this relationship, we formulate a population read-out model that directly links the spatial distribution of V1 representations to our perceptual experience of visual size. Taken together, our results suggest that the individual perception of simple stimuli is warped by idiosyncrasies in visual cortical organization

Systematics of alpha decay hindrance factors in doubly-even nuclei

In present work, we have calculated the hindrance factors of 182 even-even alpha emitters using Preston’s formulation of alpha decay probabilities and presented HFs systematics of 1- and 3- states in reflection asymmetric even-even quadruple-octupole deformed nuclides (A~216-230). The calculated HFs of both 1- and 3- states decrease with reduction in neutron number and this decrease is attributed to onset of intrinsic reflection asymmetry. There is a trend reversal for 1- states at N=132 (218Ra) and N=134 (220Rn), which might be a possible indication of departure from static octupole deformation. Similarly, HFs systematics is discussed for 224-230Th and 232-236U isotopic chains along with 2+ states observed in daughter nuclei in N=132-146 isotonic chains

New features of collective motion of intrinsic degrees of freedom. Toward a possible way to classify the intrinsic states

Three exactly solvable Hamiltonians of complex structure are studied in the framework of a semi-classical approach. The quantized trajectories for intrinsic coordinates correspond to energies which may be classified in collective bands. For two of the chosen Hamiltonians the symmetry SU2xSU2 is the appropriate one to classify the eigenvalues in the laboratory frame. Connections of results presented here with the molecular spectrum and Moszkowski model are pointed out. The present approach suggests that the intrinsic states, which in standard formalisms are heading rotational bands, are forming themselves "rotational" bands, the rotations being performed in a fictious boson space.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figure

Emulating opportunistic networks with KauNet Triggers

In opportunistic networks the availability of an end-to-end path is no longer required. Instead opportunistic networks may take advantage of temporary connectivity opportunities. Opportunistic networks present a demanding environment for network emulation as the traditional emulation setup, where application/transport endpoints only send and receive packets from the network following a black box approach, is no longer applicable. Opportunistic networking protocols and applications additionally need to react to the dynamics of the underlying network beyond what is conveyed through the exchange of packets. In order to support IP-level emulation evaluations of applications and protocols that react to lower layer events, we have proposed the use of emulation triggers. Emulation triggers can emulate arbitrary cross-layer feedback and can be synchronized with other emulation effects. After introducing the design and implementation of triggers in the KauNet emulator, we describe the integration of triggers with the DTN2 reference implementation and illustrate how the functionality can be used to emulate a classical DTN data-mule scenario

Dense Refinement Residual Network for Road Extraction From Aerial Imagery Data

Extraction of roads from high-resolution aerial images with a high degree of accuracy is a prerequisite in various applications. In aerial images, road pixels and background pixels are generally in the ratio of ones-to-tens, which implies a class imbalance problem. Existing semantic segmentation architectures generally do well in road-dominated cases but fail in background-dominated scenarios. This paper proposes a dense refinement residual network (DRR Net) for semantic segmentation of aerial imagery data. The proposed semantic segmentation architecture is composed of multiple DRR modules for the extraction of diversified roads alleviating the class imbalance problem. Each module of the proposed architecture utilizes dense convolutions at various scales only in the encoder for feature learning. Residual connections in each module of the proposed architecture provide the guided learning path by propagating the combined features to subsequent DRR modules. Segmentation maps undergo various levels of refinement based on the number of DRR modules utilized in the architecture. To emphasize more on small object instances, the proposed architecture has been trained with a composite loss function. The qualitative and quantitative results are reported by utilizing the Massachusetts roads dataset. The experimental results report that the proposed architecture provides better results as compared to other recent architectures

The optimal experimental design for multiple alternatives perceptual search

Perceptual bias is inherent to all our senses, particularly in the form of visual illusions and aftereffects. However, many experiments measuring perceptual biases may be susceptible to nonperceptual factors, such as response bias and decision criteria. Here, we quantify how robust multiple alternative perceptual search (MAPS) is for disentangling estimates of perceptual biases from these confounding factors. First, our results show that while there are considerable response biases in our four-alternative forced-choice design, these are unrelated to perceptual biases estimates, and these response biases are not produced by the response modality (keyboard vs. mouse). We also show that perceptual bias estimates are reduced when feedback is given on each trial, likely due to feedback enabling observers to partially (and actively) correct for perceptual biases. However, this does not impact the reliability with which MAPS detects the presence of perceptual biases. Finally, our results show that MAPS can detect actual perceptual biases and is not a decisional bias towards choosing the target in the middle of the candidate stimulus distribution. In summary, researchers conducting a MAPS experiment should use a constant reference stimulus, but consider varying the mean of the candidate distribution. Ideally, they should not employ trial-wise feedback if the magnitude of perceptual biases is of interest

Mutation analysis of the BRCA1 gene in Malaysian breast cancer patients

Thirty patients with early onset breast cancer or familial breast cancer from Malaysia were analysed for germline mutation in the early onset breast cancer I gene (BRCA1). Direct sequencing of the entire coding region of BRCA1 identified a frameshift mutation, c.5447-5448insC (insC5447) (codon 1776 of exon 21) in a patient aged 32 of the Malay ethnic origin, who had no family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer. Eight polymorphisms (2201C > T, 2430T > C, P871L, E1038G, K1183R, 4427T > C, S1613G and IVS8-57delT) were identified in the samples tested