A rare case of retroperitoneal leiomyosarcoma

Leiomyosarcoma, a rare malignancy of smooth muscle may arise from the retroperitoneum. They often reach a large size before diagnosis is made. Patient presents with vague symptoms, as such retroperitoneal malignancies are related to displacement of organs and obstructive phenomenon. The present paper is one of the very few case reports of retroperitoneal leiomyosarcoma which illustrates the presenting symptoms, gross and microscopic findings, treatment modalities and prognostic indicators of a 70 years old male seen at Government medical college, New Civil Hospital, Surat

PREPARATION, CHARACTERIZATION, AND OPTIMIZATION OF MEBENDAZOLE SPHERICAL AGGLOMERATES USING MODIFIED EVAPORATIVE PRECIPITATION IN AQUEOUS SOLUTION (EPAS)

Objective: Mebendazole is a popular benzimidazole class anthelmintic drug useful in the treatment of main infections of threadworms as well as other less common worm infections like whipworm, roundworm, and hookworm in adults and children over 2 y of age. It is poorly soluble in water resulting in poor absorption from the intestinal tract leading to a decrease in bioavailability. Moreover, Mebendazole has poor flowability due to the needle-shaped crystals. This work was carried out with the aim of increasing the flowability and solubility of Mebendazole. Methods: A 32 full factorial design was used to investigate the effect of the concentration of Mebendazole and the quantity of water as an external phase using evaporative precipitation into an aqueous solution. The prepared agglomerates were characterized for particle size distribution, shape, Hausner ratio, Carr’s index and % dissolved in 60 min (C60).   Results: The prepared agglomerates were found to be monodispersed. They also showed a decrease in the Hausner ration and Carr’s index, indicating improved flowability. Increase in C60 indicated that the agglomerates were found to have increased water solubility. Conclusion: Scanning Electron Microscopy showed that the agglomerates were spherical in shape. Fourier Transformed Infra-Red studies showed no chemical change in the prepared spherical agglomerates. Differential Scanning Calorimetry and X-ray diffraction studies showed an increase in amorphous characteristics of prepared spherical agglomerates. This method may be used for drugs with similar characteristics as Mebendazole

Statistical Mechanics of DNA Rupture: Theory and Simulations

We study the effects of the shear force on the rupture mechanism on a double stranded DNA. Motivated by recent experiments, we perform the atomistic simulations with explicit solvent to obtain the distributions of extension in hydrogen and covalent bonds below the rupture force. We obtain a significant difference between the atomistic simulations and the existing results in the iterature based on the coarse-grained models (theory and simulations). We discuss the possible reasons and improve the coarse-grained model by incorporating the consequences of semi-microscopic details of the nucleotides in its description. The distributions obtained by the modified model (simulations and theoretical) are qualitatively similar to the one obtained using atomistic simulations.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures. Accepted in J. Chem. Phys. (2013). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1104.305

Collaborative IDS Framework for Cloud

Cloud computing is used extensively to deliver utility computing over the Internet. Defending network acces- sible Cloud resources and services from various threats and attacks is of great concern. Intrusion Detection Sys- tem (IDS) has become popular as an important network security technology to detect cyber-attacks. In this paper, we propose a novel Collaborative IDS (CIDS) Framework for cloud. We use Snort to detect the known stealthy attacks using signature matching. To detect unknown at- tacks, anomaly detection system (ADS) is built using De- cision Tree Classi�er and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Alert Correlation and automatic signature generation re- duce the impact of Denial of Service (DoS) /Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks and increase the performance and accuracy of IDS

Operational interpretations of quantum discord

Quantum discord quantifies non-classical correlations going beyond the standard classification of quantum states into entangled and unentangled ones. Although it has received considerable attention, it still lacks any precise interpretation in terms of some protocol in which quantum features are relevant. Here we give quantum discord its first operational meaning in terms of entanglement consumption in an extended quantum state merging protocol. We further relate the asymmetry of quantum discord with the performance imbalance in quantum state merging and dense coding.Comment: v4: 5 pages, 1 fig. Refs added, text improved. Main results unchanged. See arXiv:1008.4135v2 for a related work. v5: close to the published versio

Drug utilization pattern evaluation and cost variation analysis of anti-fungal agents in tinea infected patients in dermatology department of a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Tinea infections are chronic superficial fungal infections, highly prevalent in tropical countries like India. Therefore, long-term therapy is needed and this can inflict a financial burden on the patients. Aim of the study was to assess drug utilization patterns in patients diagnosed with tinea infection and to evaluate the cost variability of anti-fungal agents. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted in patients for 3 months after taking permission from IEC. All adult patients already diagnosed with tinea infection were enrolled. Evaluation of drug utilization pattern was carried out using WHO core drug prescribing indicators and percentage of cost variability was calculated between different brands of anti-fungal agents. Results: A total of 252 patients were enrolled. Tinea corporis and cruris were the most commonly diagnosed tinea infection. Pruritus was the most common presenting symptom. Past history of similar illness was seen in 74 (29.4%) patients mean of 3.83±0.87 drugs were prescribed per patient. Drugs prescribed from NLEM was only 42.1%. Most commonly prescribed drugs were oral itraconazole and topical miconazole. Percentage of cost variability was seen maximum with capsule itraconazole 200 mg (237.5%) by oral route and luliconazole 30 gm (175.6%) by topical route. Conclusions: Prescribing practices of drugs can be improved by promoting generic drug and prescribing drugs from NLEM. Wide range of cost variation can lead to high economic burden in tinea infected patients

Demonstration of non-Markovian process characterisation and control on a quantum processor

In the scale-up of quantum computers, the framework underpinning fault-tolerance generally relies on the strong assumption that environmental noise affecting qubit logic is uncorrelated (Markovian). However, as physical devices progress well into the complex multi-qubit regime, attention is turning to understanding the appearance and mitigation of correlated -- or non-Markovian -- noise, which poses a serious challenge to the progression of quantum technology. This error type has previously remained elusive to characterisation techniques. Here, we develop a framework for characterising non-Markovian dynamics in quantum systems and experimentally test it on multi-qubit superconducting quantum devices. Where noisy processes cannot be accounted for using standard Markovian techniques, our reconstruction predicts the behaviour of the devices with an infidelity of $10^{-3}$. Our results show this characterisation technique leads to superior quantum control and extension of coherence time by effective decoupling from the non-Markovian environment. This framework, validated by our results, is applicable to any controlled quantum device and offers a significant step towards optimal device operation and noise reduction

Interaction of thiocyanate with horseradish peroxidase. <SUP>1</SUP>H and <SUP>15</SUP>N nuclear magnetic resonance studies

Interaction of thiocyanate with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was investigated by relaxation rate measurements (at 50.68 MHz) of the 15N resonance of thiocyanate nitrogen and by following the hyperfine shifted ring methyl proton resonances (at 500 MHz) of the heme group of SCN-.HRP solutions. At pH 4.0, the apparent dissociation constant (KD) for thiocyanate binding to HRP was deduced to be 158 mM from the relaxation rate measurements. Chemical shift changes of 1- and 8-ring methyl proton resonances in the presence of various amounts of thiocyanate at pH 4.0 yielded KD values of 166 and 136 mM, respectively. From the pH dependence of KD and the 15N resonance line width, it was observed that thiocyanate binds to HRP only under acidic conditions (pH &lt; 6). The binding was found to be facilitated by protonation of an acid group on the enzyme with pKa 4.0. The pH dependence of the 15N line width as well as the apparent dissociation constant were quantitatively analyzed on the basis of a reaction scheme in which thiocyanate in deprotonated ionic form binds to the enzyme in protonated acidic form. The KD for thiocyanate binding to HRP was also evaluated in the presence of an excess of exogenous substrates such as resorcinol, cyanide, and iodide ions. It was found that the presence of cyanide (which binds to heme iron at the sixth coordination position) and resorcinol did not have any effect on the binding of thiocyanate, indicating that the binding site of the thiocyanate ion is located away from the ferric center as well as from the aromatic donor binding site. The KD in the presence of iodide, however, showed that iodide competes with thiocyanate for binding at the same site. The distance of the bound thiocyanate ion from the ferric center was deduced from the 15N relaxation time measurements and was found to be a 6.8 &#197;. From the distance as well as the change in the chemical shifts and line width of 1- and 8-methyl proton resonances, it is suggested that the binding site of thiocyanate may be located near heme, placed symmetrically with respect to 1- and 8-methyl groups of the heme of HRP. Similarity in the modes of binding of iodide and thiocyanate suggests that the oxidation of thiocyanate ion by H2O2 may also proceed via the two-electron transfer pathway under acidic conditions, as is the case for iodide