Ovarian damage from chemotherapy and current approaches to its protection

BACKGROUND: Anti-cancer therapy is often a cause of premature ovarian insufficiency and infertility since the ovarian follicle reserve is extremely sensitive to the effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. While oocyte, embryo and ovarian cortex cryopreservation can help some women with cancer-induced infertility achieve pregnancy, the development of effective methods to protect ovarian function during chemotherapy would be a significant advantage.OBJECTIVE AND RATIONALE: This paper critically discusses the different damaging effects of the most common chemotherapeutic compounds on the ovary, in particular, the ovarian follicles and the molecular pathways that lead to that damage. The mechanisms through which fertility-protective agents might prevent chemotherapy drug-induced follicle loss are then reviewed.SEARCH METHODS: Articles published in English were searched on PubMed up to March 2019 using the following terms: ovary, fertility preservation, chemotherapy, follicle death, adjuvant therapy, cyclophosphamide, cisplatin, doxorubicin. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to the analysis of the protective agents.OUTCOMES: Recent studies reveal how chemotherapeutic drugs can affect the different cellular components of the ovary, causing rapid depletion of the ovarian follicular reserve. The three most commonly used drugs, cyclophosphamide, cisplatin and doxorubicin, cause premature ovarian insufficiency by inducing death and/or accelerated activation of primordial follicles and increased atresia of growing follicles. They also cause an increase in damage to blood vessels and the stromal compartment and increment inflammation. In the past 20 years, many compounds have been investigated as potential protective agents to counteract these adverse effects. The interactions of recently described fertility-protective agents with these damage pathways are discussed.WIDER IMPLICATIONS: Understanding the mechanisms underlying the action of chemotherapy compounds on the various components of the ovary is essential for the development of efficient and targeted pharmacological therapies that could protect and prolong female fertility. While there are increasing preclinical investigations of potential fertility preserving adjuvants, there remains a lack of approaches that are being developed and tested clinically

Soil information system: use and potentials in humid and semi-arid tropics

The articles presented in this special section emanated from the researches of consortium members of the National Agricultural Innovative Project (NAIP, Component 4) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi. These researches have helped develop a soil information system (SIS). In view of the changing scenario all over the world, the need of the hour is to get assistance from a host of researchers specialized in soils, crops, geology, geography and information technology to make proper use of the datasets. Equipped with the essential knowledge of data storage and retrieval for management recommendations, these experts should be able to address the issues of land degradation, biodiversity, food security, climate change and ultimately arrive at an appropriate agricultural land-use planning. Moreover, as the natural resource information is an essential prerequisite for monitoring and predicting global environmental change with special reference to climate and land use options, the SIS needs to be a dynamic exercise to accommodate temporal datasets, so that subsequently it should result in the evolution of the soil information technology. The database developed through this NAIP would serve as an example of the usefulness of the Consortium and the research initiative of ICAR involving experts from different fields to find out the potentials of the soils of humid and semi-arid bioclimatic systems of the country

Georeferenced soil information system: assessment of database

Land-use planning is a decision-making process that facilitates the allocation of land to different uses that provide optimal and sustainable benefit. As land-use is shaped by society–nature interaction, in land-use planning different components/facets play a significant role involving soil, water, climate, animal (ruminant/ non-ruminant) and others, including forestry and the environment needed for survival of mankind. At times these components are moderated by human interference. Thus land-use planning being a dynamic phenomenon is not guided by a single factor, but by a complex system working simultaneously,which largely affects the sustainability. To address such issues a National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) on ‘Georeferenced soil information system for land-use planning and monitoring soil and land quality for agriculture’ was undertaken to develop threshold values of land quality parameters for land-use planning through quantitative land evaluation and crop modelling for dominant cropping systems in major agro-ecological sub-regions (AESRs) representing rice–wheat cropping system in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) and deep-rooted crops in the black soil regions (BSR). To assess the impact of landuse change, threshold land quality indicator values are used. A modified AESR map for agricultural landuse planning is generated for effective land-use planning

Semiautomatic endocardial contour estimation in contrast Echocardiography sequences using guided local search

We present a Guided Local Search (GLS) in multi-frame environment for detection of endocardial contours in short axis (SAX) contrast echo cardiographic image sequences. The proposed method requires minimal user intervention at the first frame of the image sequence for specifying the candidate points of the contour. The initial contour is approximated by fitting an ellipse in the region defined by the points specified. First level of regularization on the contour is made by radial gradient search with magnitude and direction. The second level of regularization makes use of GLS algorithm. The GLS with features and constraints for solution space and penalty terms overcome the optimization being trapped in local minima. The proposed method also incorporates the temporal information from the adjacent frames during the regularization process. The subsequent frames in sequence are initialized by the final contour of the previous frame. The algorithm developed was applied to 10 data sets over full cardiac cycle and the results were validated by comparing computer generated boundaries to those manually outlined by one expert. The maximum error in the contours detected was +/- 2.9mm. The application of guided local search algorithm proposed in this paper offers a fast and efficient method for semiautomatic segmentation of heart chambers in 2D contrast echocardiography sequences

Endocardial segmentation in contrast echocardiography video with density based spatio-temporal clustering

We present a spatio-temporal clustering algorithm for detection of endocardial contours in short axis (SAX) contrast echocardiographic image sequences. A semiautomatic method for segmentation of left ventricle in SAX videos is proposed which uses this algorithm and at the same time requires minimal expert intervention. Expert is required to specify a few candidate points belonging to the contour, only in the first frame of the sequence. The initial contour is approximated by fitting an ellipse in the region defined by the points specified. This region is identified as the principal cluster corresponding to the left ventriclular cavity. Later the density based clustering was applied for regularization on the inital contour. We have extended the DBSCAN algorithm for identification of the principal cluster corresponding to the left ventricle from the image. The algorithm also incorporates the temporal information from the adjacent frames during the segmentation process. The algorithm developed was applied to 10 data sets over full cardiac cycle and the results were validated by comparing computer generated boundaries to those manually outlined by one expert. The maximum error in the contours detected was +/- 2.9mm. The spatio-temporal clustering algorithm proposed in this paper offers an efficient semiautomatic segmentation of heart chambers in 2D contrast echocardiography sequences

Seasonal variability in mean sea level pressure extremes over the Indian region

The extreme values of maximum and minimum daily atmospheric mean sea level pressure (MSLP) and its seasonal variability over the 11 zones of India, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and all-India as a whole during the period 1951-2007 using daily-averaged NCEP/NCAR reanalysis dataset have been analyzed. Trends in the frequencies of low MSLP days are found to be decreasing and for high MSLP days are increasing during winter, pre-monsoon, summer monsoon and post-monsoon seasons. Decrease in the extreme low MSLP days observed in the study may affect the seasonal rainfall distribution and its characteristics across India. High MSLP days are found to be negatively correlated with the All-India Summer Monsoon Rainfall (AISMR). Both the extreme frequencies of the MSLP days show a different nature in the recent decades. The high MSLP days shows a sharp increasing tendency after 1975 with a large variability whereas least variability was observed in case of the low MSLP days. Low/high MSLP days are found to be negatively/positively correlated with Nino4 SSTs for all the seasons. The possible causes for the large-scale changes in the characteristics and its seasonal variabilities of extreme low/high MSLP days might be the increased frequency of strong El Niño events during the period 1975-2007. This might have triggered the Indian summer monsoon circulation causing the reduction in the low MSLP days that resulted in decreasing tendency of the rainfall activities across India

Segmentation of left ventricle in short-axis echocardiographic sequences by weighted radial edge filtering and adaptive recovery of dropout regions

In this paper, we present a weighted radial edge filtering algorithm with adaptive recovery of dropout regions for the semiautomatic delineation of endocardial contours in short-axis echocardiographic image sequences. The proposed algorithm requires minimal user intervention at the end diastolic frame of the image sequence for specifying the candidate points of the contour. The region of interest is identified by fitting an ellipse in the region defined by the specified points. Subsequently, the ellipse centre is used for originating the radial lines for filtering. A weighted radial edge filter is employed for the detection of edge points. The outliers are corrected by global as well as local statistics. Dropout regions are recovered by incorporating the important temporal information from the previous frame by means of recursive least squares adaptive filter. This ensures fairly accurate segmentation of the cardiac structures for further determination of the functional cardiac parameters. The proposed algorithm was applied to 10 data-sets over a full cardiac cycle and the results were validated by comparing computer-generated boundaries to those manually outlined by two experts using Hausdorff distance (HD) measure, radial mean square error (rmse) and contour similarity index. The rmse was 1.83 mm with a HD of 5.12 ± 1.21 mm. We have also compared our results with two existing approaches, level set and optical flow. The results indicate an improvement when compared with ground truth due to incorporation of temporal clues. The weighted radial edge filtering algorithm in conjunction with adaptive dropout recovery offers semi-automatic segmentation of heart chambers in 2D echocardiography sequences for accurate assessment of global left ventricular function to guide therapy and staging of the cardiovascular diseases

Trends in extreme mean sea level pressure and their characteristics during the summer monsoon season over the Indian region

Using daily National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) (1948-2009) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ReAnalyses (ERA)-40 (1958-2001) reanalysis mean sea level pressure (MSLP) data, the frequencies in the extremes of low/high MSLP days were computed with the 10th and 90th percentiles during the summer monsoon season (June-September) over 11 zones of India, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and all-India as a whole. We observed that the trends in the frequencies of high (low) MSLP days are increasing (decreasing), indicating a increase/decrease in anticyclonic/cyclonic activities, respectively, which affect the monsoon performance over the Indian region. The decreasing (increasing) tendency of the frequency of the low (high) MSLP days suggests a consistency between the extreme MSLP and its associated rainfall activities. The frequency of the high MSLP days over India is highly correlated negatively with the Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR). The linear trends in the frequencies of the extreme low/high MSLP days for different zones and all-India are found to be highly significant (at the 0.1 level and above). After 1978, the trends in the series of low/high MSLP days are found to be more towards decreasing/increasing tendencies, respectively, whereas the frequencies of low MSLP days are much higher than those of high MSLP days during the late 1970s. The same characteristics were also evidenced from the analysis based on ECMWF ERA-40 data for the period 1958-2001. The possible causes of this may be El Niño events, greenhouse gases (GHGs), unprecedented surface warming and also tropospheric cooling trends during recent decades over the northern hemisphere as well as over the Indian region and major volcanic eruptions that occurred during the period 1978-2009

Novolac epoxy resin based inhibition system for composite propellants

34-39<span style="font-size:11.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:" calibri","sans-serif";mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:="" "times="" new="" roman";mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;mso-hansi-theme-font:="" minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:arial;mso-ansi-language:en-us;mso-fareast-language:="" en-us;mso-bidi-language:ar-sa"="">Thirty one compositions based on commercially available Dobeckot E4, polyamide hardener EH411, polyamine hardener 758, reactive diluent, Dobeckot C and antimony trioxide filler have been made and studied in terms of characteristics such as gel time, exotherm peak temperature, tensile strength, elongation, burning rate, loss in weight, water absorption and bond strength with composite propellants. Based on important characteristics, composition 28 has been selected for inhibition of composite propellants (booster and sustainer mode) and statically evaluated after conditioning at ambient temperature (+27o C for 24 h), cold (- 40o C for 20 h) and hot (+ 50o C for 16 h). The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">P-t profiles show that the composition 28 is a potential inhibition system for composite propellants from -40 to + 50o C.</span