Binary isotonic regression procedures, with application to cancer biomarkers

There is a lot of interest in the development and characterization of new biomarkers for screening large populations for disease. In much of the literature on diagnostic testing, increased levels of a biomarker correlate with increased disease risk. However, parametric forms are typically used to associate these quantities. In this article, we specify a monotonic relationship between biomarker levels with disease risk. This leads to consideration of a nonparametric regression model for a single biomarker. Estimation results using isotonic regression-type estimators and asymptotic results are given. We also discuss confidence set estimation in this setting and propose three procedures for computing confidence intervals. Methods for estimating the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve are also described. The finite-sample properties of the proposed methods are assessed using simulation studies and applied to data from a pancreatic cancer biomarker study

A study of port site infections in patients underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy and its prevention and management

Background: Rapid growths in health care technology have given the surgeon the power of not only treating diseases surgically but also limiting surgical invasiveness. Methods: It is an institution based non-randomized, prospective, analytical study at Burdwan Medical College and Hospital. Results: As far as our study is concerned all the hospitals from where patients came were using “activated di-aldehyde” solution for sterilization of laparoscopic instruments; it may be a strong possibility that there might have been a growth of atypical mycobacteria in this solution, as four out of the five cases reported here found to be seropositive for tuberculosis. Conclusions: Port site infection (PSI), although infrequent, can be a frustrating complication in minimal access surgery (MAS), both for the patient as well as the operating surgeon. After the surgery, all the instruments should be dismantled completely. Cleaning and washing the instruments should be done under running water.

Semiparametric binary regression under monotonicity constraints

Summary: We study a binary regression model where the response variable $\Delta$ is the indicator of an event of interest (for example, the incidence of cancer) and the set of covariates can be partitioned as $(X,Z)$ where $Z$ (real valued) is the covariate of primary interest and $X$ (vector valued) denotes a set of control variables. For any fixed $X$, the conditional probability of the event of interest is assumed to be a monotonic function of $Z$. The effect of the control variables is captured by a regression parameter $\beta$. We show that the baseline conditional probability function (corresponding to $X=0$) can be estimated by isotonic regression procedures and develop a likelihood ratio based method for constructing confidence intervals for this function that obviates the need to estimate nuisance parameters from the data. We also show how confidence intervals for the regression parameter can be constructed using asymptotically $\chi^2$ likelihood ratio statistics. The confidence sets for the regression parameter and those for the conditional probability function are combined using Bonferroni\u27s inequality to construct conservative confidence intervals for the conditional probability of the event of interest at different fixed values of $X$ and $Z$. We present simulation results to illustrate the theory and apply our results to a prostate cancer data set

An observational descriptive study on the incidence, severity and outcome of different etiological varieties of acute pancreatitis in a rural based teaching hospital

Background: According to the 1992 Atlanta Symposium, acute pancreatitis (AP) is defined as an acute inflammatory process of the pancreas that may also involve peripancreatic tissues and remote organ systems. Methods: It was an observational descriptive study. The study was from May 2012 to April 2013. The study was undertaken in the department of General Surgery of Burdwan Medical College and Hospital. Results: In this study, we found that alcohol was the most common etiological factor present in 48.57% of patients, whereas gallstones come second being present in 31.42% cases. Among Indian studies, one found 60% cases being gallstone induced, while another found alcoholism as the most common cause. The study that found alcoholism as the most common cause of acute pancreatitis was also from Eastern India (West Bengal, to be precise). In our study, 17.14% cases of acute pancreatitis had to be classified as idiopathic pancreatitis, as no readily identifiable cause was found. In most series, 10-25% cases are found to be idiopathic. From results, it is seen that most cases of acute pancreatitis tend to occur in the age group 41-50 yrs (40%) followed by 31-40 yrs (34.28%). Conclusions: This study was done to estimate the incidence of different etiological varieties of acute pancreatitis, to estimate the incidence of mild and severe acute pancreatitis and accordingly necessity for CT scan, to estimate the outcome in terms of cure, recurrence, morbidity and mortality. 35 patients of acute pancreatitis were enrolled for the study

Transmission Map and Atmospheric Light Guided Iterative Updater Network for Single Image Dehazing

Hazy images obscure content visibility and hinder several subsequent computer vision tasks. For dehazing in a wide variety of hazy conditions, an end-to-end deep network jointly estimating the dehazed image along with suitable transmission map and atmospheric light for guidance could prove effective. To this end, we propose an Iterative Prior Updated Dehazing Network (IPUDN) based on a novel iterative update framework. We present a novel convolutional architecture to estimate channel-wise atmospheric light, which along with an estimated transmission map are used as priors for the dehazing network. Use of channel-wise atmospheric light allows our network to handle color casts in hazy images. In our IPUDN, the transmission map and atmospheric light estimates are updated iteratively using corresponding novel updater networks. The iterative mechanism is leveraged to gradually modify the estimates toward those appropriately representing the hazy condition. These updates occur jointly with the iterative estimation of the dehazed image using a convolutional neural network with LSTM driven recurrence, which introduces inter-iteration dependencies. Our approach is qualitatively and quantitatively found effective for synthetic and real-world hazy images depicting varied hazy conditions, and it outperforms the state-of-the-art. Thorough analyses of IPUDN through additional experiments and detailed ablation studies are also presented.Comment: First two authors contributed equally. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible. Project Website: https://aupendu.github.io/iterative-dehaz

Efecto de una combinación indígena de AM y PGPR sobre el crecimiento y la productividad de chiles en suelos lateríticos

Infertile lateritic soil is particularly deficient in phosphorus (P) and Nitrogen (N). Arbuscular Mycorrhiza (AM) has a key role to uptake bound P from the soil and provide to the plants growing under P-poor conditions and improve water and nutrient uptake. Azotobacter fixes free nitrogen and phosphate solubilizing bacteria (PSB) release bound phosphate, are the important groups of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), sometimes they may act as mycorrhiza helper and applied with AM as biofertilizer. This pot experiment was conducted to determine the primary impact of singly and combined application of native bio-inoculants, the AM, Acaulospora, and the PGPR, Azotobacter and Pseudomonas sp. (PSB) on growth and yield of chilli (Capsicum frutescens L.), growing in acid lateritic soil. Inoculated treatments were compared for growth and productivity of chilli in terms of height, leaf number, leaf area, root collar diameter, number of flowers and number of fruits, final fresh and dry yield. The productivity of chilli showed a maximum in combined treatment of Acaulospora, Azotobacter, and PSB. Also the AM spore count and root colonization found maximum in that treatment. Hence the application of indigenous AM inoculation along with native PGPR, Azotobacter and PSB may present better productivity in low fertile lateritic soil.El suelo laterítico infértil es particularmente deficiente en fósforo (P) y nitrógeno (N). Las micorrizas arbusculares (AM) tiene un papel clave para absorber el P unido del suelo y proporcionar a las plantas que crecen en condiciones de P pobre y mejorar la absorción de agua y nutrientes. Azotobacter que fija el nitrógeno libre y las bacterias solubilizadoras de fosfato (PSB), son grupos importantes de rizobacterias que promueven el crecimiento de las plantas (PGPR). A veces pueden actuar de conjunto con micorrizas y aplicarse con AM como biofertilizante. Este experimento en maceta se realizó para determinar el impacto primario de la aplicación individual y combinada de bio-inoculantes nativos, AM Acaulospora y PGPR Azotobacter y Pseudomonas sp. (PSB) sobre el crecimiento y el rendimiento del chile (Capsicum frutescens L.), que crece en suelo ácido laterítico. Los tratamientos inoculados se compararon para el crecimiento y la productividad del chile en términos de altura, número de hojas, área foliar, diámetro de raíz, número de flores, número de frutos, rendimiento final fresco y seco. La productividad de los chiles mostró un máximo en el tratamiento combinado de Acaulospora, Azotobacter y PSB. También el recuento de esporas de AM y la colonización de raíces encontraron el máximo en ese tratamiento. De ahí la aplicación de la inoculación de AM indígena junto con PGPR nativo, Azotobacter y PSB pueden presentar una mejor productividad en suelos lateríticos de baja fertilidad

Histopathological Image Analysis with Style-Augmented Feature Domain Mixing for Improved Generalization

Histopathological images are essential for medical diagnosis and treatment planning, but interpreting them accurately using machine learning can be challenging due to variations in tissue preparation, staining and imaging protocols. Domain generalization aims to address such limitations by enabling the learning models to generalize to new datasets or populations. Style transfer-based data augmentation is an emerging technique that can be used to improve the generalizability of machine learning models for histopathological images. However, existing style transfer-based methods can be computationally expensive, and they rely on artistic styles, which can negatively impact model accuracy. In this study, we propose a feature domain style mixing technique that uses adaptive instance normalization to generate style-augmented versions of images. We compare our proposed method with existing style transfer-based data augmentation methods and found that it performs similarly or better, despite requiring less computation and time. Our results demonstrate the potential of feature domain statistics mixing in the generalization of learning models for histopathological image analysis.Comment: Paper is published in MedAGI 2023 (MICCAI 2023 1st International Workshop on Foundation Models for General Medical AI) Code link: https://github.com/Vaibhav-Khamankar/FuseStyle Paper link: https://nbviewer.org/github/MedAGI/medagi.github.io/blob/main/src/assets/papers/P17.pd

Zinc(II) complexes of 3,10-C-meso-2,5,5,7,9,12,12,14- octamethyl-1,8-diaza-4,11-diazoniacyclotetradecane as its bis(acetate) trihydrate, [LBH2][CH3COO]2.3H2O: Synthesis, Characterization and antimicrobial studies

One isomeric ligand, LB among three isomers (LA, LB and LC) of 2,9- C-meso-2,5,5,7,9,12,12,14-octamethyl-1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecanes, differing in the orientation of methyl groups on the chiral carbon atoms) on interaction with vinyl acetate produces 2,9-C-meso-2,5,5,7,9,12,12,14- octamethyl-1,8-diaza-4,11-diazoniacyclotetradecane as its bis(acetate) trihydrate, [LBH2][OOCCH3]2.3H2O. This ligand salt trihydrate reacts with Zn(CH3COO)2.2H2O to produce square pyramidal monoacetatozinc(II) acetate complex [ZnLB(CH3COO)](CH3COO), which undergoes anion exchange reaction with NaClO4.6H2O to produce monoacetatozinc(II) perchlorate complex, [ZnLB(CH3COO)](ClO4). The complex, [ZnLB(CH3COO)](ClO4) undergoes axial substitution reactions with KSCN, NaNO2 and KNO3 to form the substitution products, [ZnLB(NCS)](NCS), [ZnLB(NO2)](ClO4) and [ZnLB(NO3)](ClO4) respectively where CH3COOis replaced by NCS- , NO3 - and NO2 - . All these complexes have been characterized on the basis of analytical, spectroscopic, conductometric and magnetochemical data. The antifungal and antibacterial activities of these compounds have been studied against some phytopathogenic fungi and bacteria

Effect of an indigenous AM and PGPR combination on chilli growth and productivity in lateritic soil

Infertile lateritic soil is particularly deficient in phosphorus (P) and Nitrogen (N). Arbuscular Mycorrhiza (AM) has a key role to uptake bound P from the soil and provide to the plants growing under P-poor conditions and improve water and nutrient uptake. Azotobacter fixes free nitrogen and phosphate solubilizing bacteria (PSB) release bound phosphate, are the important groups of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), sometimes they may act as mycorrhiza helper and applied with AM as biofertilizer. This pot experiment was conducted to determine the primary impact of singly and combined application of native bio-inoculants, the AM, Acaulospora, and the PGPR, Azotobacter and Pseudomonas sp. (PSB) on growth and yield of chilli (Capsicum frutescens L.), growing in acid lateritic soil. Inoculated treatments were compared for growth and productivity of chilli in terms of height, leaf number, leaf area, root collar diameter, number of flowers and number of fruits, final fresh and dry yield. The productivity of chilli showed a maximum in combined treatment of Acaulospora, Azotobacter, and PSB. Also the AM spore count and root colonization found maximum in that treatment. Hence the application of indigenous AM inoculation along with native PGPR, Azotobacter and PSB may present better productivity in low fertile lateritic soil