A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS (YANTRAS & SHASTRAS) USED IN STREE ROGA & PRASUTI TANTRA IN AYURVEDA vis-à-vis MODERN OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY

Wide description is available in Ayurvedic classics regarding various surgical instruments (Yantra, Shastra) used in different branches of Ayurveda for carrying out clinical examination; medical and operative procedures. Hasta (Hand) is considered as the Pradhantamam yantra because surgical instruments are in many ways simply extension of human hand. Surgical instruments such as forceps, dilators, speculums, needles, lancets etc are similar to the 101Yantras and 20 Shastras mentioned in Ayurveda e.g., Samdansha Yantra, Naadi Yantra, Shalaka Yantra, Mandalagra Shastra, Vetasapatra Shastra, Suchi, Shararimukha Shastra etc. To perform various procedures in Stree Roga and Prasuti Tantra , use of blunt and sharp instruments are described in detail. Most of the modern surgical instruments are only slight modifications of the instruments used by ancient Hindu surgeons. In this article we have discussed about those Yantras (Blunt instruments) and Shastras (Sharp instruments) which are mentioned in Stree Roga and Prasuti Tantra and their counterparts in modern Obstetrics and Gynecology

Combinatorics Problems: a Constructive Resource for Finding Volumes of Fractional Dimension?

Fractions and volume are two challenging domains, which initially come together in the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS-M) in the 7th grade where students learn about volumes of rectangular prisms with fractional dimensions. However, relatively little research has been conducted on how students’ reason about these volumes. To address this dearth of research, we designed a teaching experiment based on a central conjecture that combinatorics problems could be a constructive resource in the development of volumes with fractional dimension. In this paper, we demonstrate the central conjecture by providing two cases of how pre-service secondary teachers (PSSTs) reasoned with volumes of fractional dimension. A contribution of this study is that it offers an expansion and novel combination of a number of empirically grounded theoretical constructs

FML: Face Model Learning from Videos

Monocular image-based 3D reconstruction of faces is a long-standing problem in computer vision. Since image data is a 2D projection of a 3D face, the resulting depth ambiguity makes the problem ill-posed. Most existing methods rely on data-driven priors that are built from limited 3D face scans. In contrast, we propose multi-frame video-based self-supervised training of a deep network that (i) learns a face identity model both in shape and appearance while (ii) jointly learning to reconstruct 3D faces. Our face model is learned using only corpora of in-the-wild video clips collected from the Internet. This virtually endless source of training data enables learning of a highly general 3D face model. In order to achieve this, we propose a novel multi-frame consistency loss that ensures consistent shape and appearance across multiple frames of a subject's face, thus minimizing depth ambiguity. At test time we can use an arbitrary number of frames, so that we can perform both monocular as well as multi-frame reconstruction.Comment: CVPR 2019 (Oral). Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG2BwxCw0lQ, Project Page: https://gvv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/FML19

Implicit Neural Head Synthesis via Controllable Local Deformation Fields

High-quality reconstruction of controllable 3D head avatars from 2D videos is highly desirable for virtual human applications in movies, games, and telepresence. Neural implicit fields provide a powerful representation to model 3D head avatars with personalized shape, expressions, and facial parts, e.g., hair and mouth interior, that go beyond the linear 3D morphable model (3DMM). However, existing methods do not model faces with fine-scale facial features, or local control of facial parts that extrapolate asymmetric expressions from monocular videos. Further, most condition only on 3DMM parameters with poor(er) locality, and resolve local features with a global neural field. We build on part-based implicit shape models that decompose a global deformation field into local ones. Our novel formulation models multiple implicit deformation fields with local semantic rig-like control via 3DMM-based parameters, and representative facial landmarks. Further, we propose a local control loss and attention mask mechanism that promote sparsity of each learned deformation field. Our formulation renders sharper locally controllable nonlinear deformations than previous implicit monocular approaches, especially mouth interior, asymmetric expressions, and facial details.Comment: Accepted at CVPR 202

Codon 89 polymorphism in the human 5 α -reductase gene in primary breast cancer

The enzyme human steroid 5-α reductase type II (SRD5A2) and androgen receptor (AR) are critical mediators of androgen action, suggesting a potential role in hormonally related cancers. The SRD5A2 gene harbours two frequent polymorphic sites, one in the coding region, at codon 89 of exon 1, where valine is substituted by leucine (V89L) and the other in the 3′ untranslated region (3′ UTR) where a variable number of dinucleotide TA repeat lengths exists. The V89L polymorphism is known to alter the activity of this enzyme. In the present study we examined 144 sporadic breast tumours from Italian patients for the V89L and TA polymorphisms by sequence and fragment analysis, respectively. Tumour extract prostate specific antigen (PSA) concentration as well as a number of well-established clinical and pathological parameters were evaluated. The results show that 53% of the tumours were homozygous for VV alleles, 37% were heterozygous for VL alleles and 10% were homozygous for LL alleles. TA(0) repeats were found in tumours with VV, LL and VL genotypes. TA(9) repeats were only found in VV homozygotes and were totally absent from either LL homozygotes or VL heterozygotes. PSA expression was significantly elevated in tumours with VV genotype. The presence of LL alleles in breast tumours is associated with earlier onset and shorter disease-free (RR = 2.65;P = 0.013) and overall survival (RR = 3.06;P = 0.014) rates. The VV genotype is associated with a more favourable prognosis. Our study suggests that the polymorphism in codon 89 of exon 1 of the human 5α-reductase gene is related with TA repeat genotypes, PSA expression and breast cancer prognosis. More specifically, we found that the LL genotype is also associated with earlier onset and more aggressive forms of breast cancer. Long-term-outcome studies are needed to investigate the relevance of this polymorphism to breast cancer susceptibility. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co