Case Study on Landslide Investigations in Himalayas

The great Himalayan mountains are a majestic cluster of several, more or less parallel, hill ranges intervened by numerous vallies and extended plateaus. At the two ends of Himalayan ranges, other mountain ranges converge. Burmese ranges are in the Eastern and Karakoram-Hidkush mountain ranges in the North-Wester end. The individual hill ranges generally present a steep slope towards the plains of India and are more gently inclined towards the north. There are large variations in the geological features of different areas, however, the common phenomena in the landslides occurrence is that they are generally induced by rainfall. In this paper the case history of landslide in limestones at Uttar Pradesh Hill areas and sandstone in Arunachal Pradesh have been presented

Simulation Study of an Autonomous Ground Vehicle Model

The focus of the paper is to understand what an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) is, and realising a simulation model of intended vehicle for coarse testing of autonomous guidance navigation and control (AGNC) algorithm. MATLAB and SIMULINK are used as platform for development of this model. The model is developed to calculate the next position and direction of the vehicle based on the steering angle as commanded by the AGNC algorithm. This would lead towards the design of an scaled down model of AV using a modified radio control car chassis. The AV would then be equipped with a GPS and ultrasonic or infrared sensors to navigate it to a predetermined geographical location with obstacle avoidance. Keywords: Autonomous, Control, GPS, Model, Simulink, Vehicl

Understanding the Session Durability in Peer-to-Peer Storage System

This paper emphasizes that instead of long-term availability and reliability, the short-term session durability analysis will greatly impact the design of the real large-scale Peer-to-Peer storage system. In this paper, we use a Markov chain to model the session durability, and then derive the session durability probability distribution. Subsequently, we show the difference between our analysis and the traditional Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) analysis, from which we conclude that the misuse of MTTF analysis will greatly mislead our understanding of the session durability. We further show the impact of session durability analysis on the real system design. To our best knowledge, this is the first time ever to discuss the effects of session durability in large-scale Peer-to-Peer storage system.Computer Science, Theory & MethodsSCI(E)EICPCI-S(ISTP)

A Useful Metaheuristic for Dynamic Channel Assignment in Mobile Cellular Systems

The prime objective of a Channel Assignment Problem (CAP) is to assign appropriate number of required channels to each cell in a way to achieve both efficient frequency spectrum utilization and minimization of interference effects (by satisfying a number of channel reuse constraints). Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA) assigns the channels to the cells dynamically according to traffic demand, and hence, can provide higher capacity (or lower call blocking probability), fidelity and quality of service than the fixed assignment schemes. Channel assignment algorithms are formulated as combinatorial optimization problems and are NP-hard. Devising a DCA, that is practical, efficient, and which can generate high quality assignments, is challenging. Though Metaheuristic Search techniques like Evolutionary Algorithms, Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimization prove effective in the solution of Fixed Channel Assignment (FCA) problems but they still require high computational time and therefore may be inefficient for DCA. A number of approaches have been proposed for the solution of DCA problem but the high complexity of these proposed approaches makes them unsuitable/less efficient for practical use. Therefore, this paper presents an effective and efficient Hybrid Discrete Binary Differential Evolution Algorithm (HDB-DE) for the solution of DCA Proble

Gender preferences among antenatal women: a cross-sectional study from coastal South India

Background: A balanced sex ratio is essential for a stable society.Objective: The main objective of the present research was to study the perceptions of women attending the antenatal care (ANC) facility regarding their gender preferences and family composition.Method: In this cross-sectional study 132 antenatal women were interviewed in their preferred language using a predesigned semi-structured questionnaire. The collected information was analyzed using SPSS version 11.5.Results: The mean age of the study participants was 27.2 ± 4.1 years. The majority of the antenatal women (60.6%, n=80) did not have any gender preferences. Among those who had a gender preference (39.4%, n=52), male and female preference was reported by 55.7% (n=29) and 44.3% (n=23) of the participants respectively. The overall son preference index was observed to be 1.3. No consistent relationship could be established between the socio-demographic factors and the preference for gender. The mean preferred family size in our study was 1.85±0.531 and more than half of the participants had a balanced gender preference. The majority of the participants were aware that the adverse sex ratio can lead to fall in the number of brides and that it would bring about a social imbalance.Conclusion: As a developed society we need to ensure that both the genders get equal respect and are free from any sort of preferences and prejudices. To achieve this, more and more people need to be made aware of the consequences of gender imbalance and adverse sex ratio in a society.Keywords: Gender preferences; family composition; antenatal women; coastal South Indi

Severe hydrops in the infant of a Rhesus D-positive mother due to anti-c antibodies diagnosed antenatally: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn is a prototype of maternal isoimmunisation and fetal haemolytic disease. There are other rare blood group antigens capable of causing alloimmunisation and haemolytic disease such as c, C, E, Kell and Duffy. In India, after the confirmation of a newborn's blood group, antibodies are screened only if the mother is Rehsus D-negative negative and the father is Rhesus D-positive. Hydrops in Rhesus positive women are investigated along the lines of non-immune hydrops.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report the case of a patient from India where irregular antibodies were requested for an O-positive 26-year-old mother in order to investigate fetal hydrops. Anti-c antibody was revealed and the fetus was treated successfully with compatible O negative and c negative intrauterine blood transfusions. The baby was treated postnatally with double volume exchange transfusion with the same compatible blood, and was discharged 30 days after birth.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We highlight the importance of conducting irregular antibody screening for women with significant obstetric history and fetal hydrops. This could assist in diagnosing and successfully treating the fetus with appropriate antigen negative cross-matched compatible blood. We note, however, that anti-c immunoglobulin is not yet readily available.</p

Comprehensive Drug Testing of Patient-derived Conditionally Reprogrammed Cells from Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer

Background Technology development to enable the culture of human prostate cancer (PCa) progenitor cells is required for the identification of new, potentially curative therapies for PCa. Objective We established and characterized patient-derived conditionally reprogrammed cells (CRCs) to assess their biological properties and to apply these to test the efficacies of drugs. Design, setting, and participants CRCs were established from seven patient samples with disease ranging from primary PCa to advanced castration-resistant PCa (CRPC). The CRCs were characterized by genomic, transcriptomic, protein expression, and drug profiling. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis The phenotypic quantification of the CRCs was done based on immunostaining followed by image analysis with Advanced Cell Classifier using Random Forest supervised machine learning. Copy number aberrations (CNAs) were called from whole-exome sequencing and transcriptomics using in-house pipelines. Dose-response measurements were used to generate multiparameter drug sensitivity scores using R-statistical language. Results and limitations We generated six benign CRC cultures which all had an androgen receptor-negative, basal/transit-amplifying phenotype with few CNAs. In three-dimensional cell culture, these cells could re-express the androgen receptor. The CRCs from a CRPC patient (HUB.5) displayed multiple CNAs, many of which were shared with the parental tumor. We carried out high-throughput drug-response studies with 306 emerging and clinical cancer drugs. Using the benign CRCs as controls, we identified the Bcl-2 family inhibitor navitoclax as the most potent cancer-specific drug for the CRCs from a CRPC patient. Other drug efficacies included taxanes, mepacrine, and retinoids. Conclusions Comprehensive cancer pharmacopeia-wide drug testing of CRCs from a CRPC patient highlighted both known and novel drug sensitivities in PCa, including navitoclax, which is currently being tested in clinical trials of CRPC. Patient summary We describe an approach to generate patient-derived cancer cells from advanced prostate cancer and apply such cells to discover drugs that could be applied in clinical trials for castration-resistant prostate cancer.Peer reviewe

First insights into the phylogenetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Nepal

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in Nepal. Strain variation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis may influence the outcome of TB infection and disease. To date, the phylogenetic diversity of M. tuberculosis in Nepal is unknown. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We analyzed 261 M. tuberculosis isolates recovered from pulmonary TB patients recruited between August 2009 and August 2010 in Nepal. M. tuberculosis lineages were determined by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) typing and spoligotyping. Drug resistance was determined by sequencing the hot spot regions of the relevant target genes. Overall, 164 (62.8%) TB patients were new, and 97 (37.2%) were previously treated. Any drug resistance was detected in 50 (19.2%) isolates, and 16 (6.1%) were multidrug-resistant. The most frequent M. tuberculosis lineage was Lineage 3 (CAS/Delhi) with 106 isolates (40.6%), followed by Lineage 2 (East-Asian lineage, includes Beijing genotype) with 84 isolates (32.2%), Lineage 4 (Euro-American lineage) with 41 (15.7%) isolates, and Lineage 1 (Indo-Oceanic lineage) with 30 isolates (11.5%). Based on spoligotyping, we found 45 different spoligotyping patterns that were previously described. The Beijing (83 isolates, 31.8%) and CAS spoligotype (52, 19.9%) were the dominant spoligotypes. A total of 36 (13.8%) isolates could not be assigned to any known spoligotyping pattern. Lineage 2 was associated with female sex (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.58, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.42-4.67, p = 0.002), and any drug resistance (aOR 2.79; 95% CI 1.43-5.45; p = 0.002). We found no evidence for an association of Lineage 2 with age or BCG vaccination status. CONCLUSIONS: We found a large genetic diversity of M. tuberculosis in Nepal with representation of all four major lineages. Lineages 3 and 2 were dominating. Lineage 2 was associated with clinical characteristics. This study fills an important gap on the map of the M. tuberculosis genetic diversity in the Asian reg