Effect of smoking on vitamin C and MDA: a cross sectional comparative study

Background: Plasma gets exposed to the gases present in the smoke of the cigarette which leads to peroxidation. The ascorbic acid present in the body gets oxidized there is danger of derangement of lipid profile. The measure of malondialdehyde which is formed in lipid peroxidation reaction is indicative of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress seen among the smokers has been attributed to high MDA levels. Objective was to study the effect of smoking on vitamin C and MDA.Methods: Present study was cross sectional study. Two groups of subjects were compared. Out of 100 study subjects, 25 were non smokers and were kept in one group. Remaining 75 were smokers. These two groups were compared to find out how the smoking habit affects the MDA as well as vitamin C levels among them.Results: The levels of MDA were more in smokers compared to those who did not smoke and this difference was significant. The levels of vitamin C were less in smokers compared to those who did not smoke and this difference was significant (p<0.05). It was found that the MDA levels were significantly more among all degrees of smokers. It was less in smokers with mild degree compared to smokers with heavy or moderate degree. Level of vitamin C was more in non smokers compared to smokers. Mild degree of smokers had better levels of vitamin C compared to moderate degree of smokers.Conclusions: Smoking affects the vitamin C levels and MDA levels in the human body

A study of serum lipid profile in smokers and non-smokers: evaluation of role of smoking on lipid profile

Background: Several studies have reported elevated blood cholesterol levels among persons who regularly smoke cigarettes and lowered blood cholesterol levels among persons quitting smoking. Other studies have also shown that smoking lowers high density lipoprotein level, resulting in an increased risk of coronary heart disease. Smoking also leads to increase in LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels. The objective was to study serum lipid profile in smokers and non-smokers.Methods: A cross sectional comparative study was carried in 100 subjects. The subjects were divided into two groups. First group consisted of 25 nonsmokers and second group of 75 smokers. The group of 75 smokers was again divided into three equal sub groups of 25 each depending upon the duration and intensity of smoking. Concentration of serum total cholesterol and HDL was determined by Zak’s method. Concentration of serum LDL and VLDL cholesterol was determined by Friedwald’s formula. Concentration of serum triglyceride level was determined by enzymatic end point peroxidase coupled method.Results: All the values of lipid profile i.e., total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL, VLDL were found to be significantly higher among the smokers compared to the non-smokers. HDL value was significantly lower among smokers. As the degree of smoking increased from mild to heavy smokers, the values of total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL and VLDL increased. The degree of smoking was inversely proportional to HDL values i.e., the HDL value decreased as the smoking degree increased.Conclusions: Thus, it can be said based on the present study that smoking affects and deranges the lipid profile of the person

A comparative study of lipid profile in patients with and without infective hepatitis

Background: Liver plays a central role in lipid metabolism. Liver carries out some important functions in lipid metabolism like liver facilitates the digestion and absorption of lipids by the production of bile, which contains cholesterol and bile salts synthesized within the liver de novo or from uptake of lipoprotein cholesterol, the liver has active enzyme system for synthesizing and oxidizing fatty acids and for synthesizing triacylglycerols and phospholipids, synthesis of the ketone bodies, it plays an integral part in the synthesis and metabolism of plasma lipoproteins. The objective was to compare lipid profile in patients with and without infective hepatitis.Methods: Hospital based cross sectional comparative study was carried out among 112 cases. The patients were divided as having infective hepatitis (69) called cases and not having infective hepatitis (43) called controls. Concentration of serum total cholesterol was determined by Carr and Drekter method. Concentration of serum HDL cholesterol was determined by Carr and Drekter method. Concentration of serum triglyceride level was determined by enzymatic end point peroxidase coupled method.Results: Total cholesterol, VLDL, LDL and triglycerides have been found to be significantly higher in cases of infective hepatitis compared to control. The HDL value was also significantly deranged i.e. significantly lower in cases compared to controls (p <0.05). Thus, it was clear that infective hepatitis deranges the lipid profile of the patients.Conclusions: Lipid profile can be used as sensitive indicators of hepatic function and may have diagnostic and prognostic importance in infective hepatitis

Secure quantum channels with correlated twin laser beams

This work is the development and analysis of the recently proposed quantum cryptographic protocol, based on the use of the two-mode coherently correlated states. The protocol is supplied with the cryptographic control procedures. The quantum noise influence on the channel error properties is examined. State detection features are proposed

EVALUATION OF NUTRITIONAL AND COOKING QUALITY OF RICE GRAINS

The rice grains of six genotypes differing in genetic background were evaluated for physical characteristics, proximate composition and cooking quality characteristics. The seed index varied from 10.48 to 20.77g per 1000 grains. Grain: Husk ratio varied from 3.36 to 4.12. and Length: breadth ratio ranged from 2.99 to 3.59. The nutritional composition of genotypes in percent was moisture, 12.63 to 14.03; crude protein, 6.83 to 7.3; crude fat, 0.85 to 1.48; crude fiber, 0.61 to 0.96; ash, 0.65 to 0.92 and carbohydrates, 76.12 to 78.58. The iron and zinc content varied between 9.7 to 20 ppm and 21.8 to 29.8 ppm respectively. The grains of genotype Bhogavati were found to be high in protein content of 7.30 per cent, whereas minimum crude fiber content was observed in genotype Phule Samrudhi. The genotypes Bhogavati and Phule maval recorded the lysine content of 3.84 to 5.06g 16-1 g N respectively. The grain starch content varied from 71.14 to 76.75 per cent. The genotypes Bhogavati and Phule Samrudhi exhibited the highest amylose content of 26.76 and 24.03 per cent, respectively, while the genotype Phule Maval exhibited highest amylopectin content of 85.36 per cent. The grain swelling ratio varied from 1.64 to 2.34 and the cooking time ranged from 15 to 21.6 minutes. The genotype Phule Maval exhibited highest grain swelling. The rice requiring higher grain cooking time were found to be very sticky as stickiness was found to be significantly and positively correlated with crude protein, crude fat, crude fibre, grain swelling, cooking time and amylopectin, and negatively correlated with starch and amylose. This study revealed that genotype Bhogavati and Phule Maval to be revealed nutritionally better with good cooking quality.Â

Enhanced Forensic Speaker Verification Using a Combination of DWT and MFCC Feature Warping in the Presence of Noise and Reverberation Conditions

© 2013 IEEE. Environmental noise and reverberation conditions severely degrade the performance of forensic speaker verification. Robust feature extraction plays an important role in improving forensic speaker verification performance. This paper investigates the effectiveness of combining features, mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), and MFCC extracted from the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) of the speech, with and without feature warping for improving modern identity-vector (i-vector)-based speaker verification performance in the presence of noise and reverberation. The performance of i-vector speaker verification was evaluated using different feature extraction techniques: MFCC, feature-warped MFCC, DWT-MFCC, feature-warped DWT-MFCC, a fusion of DWT-MFCC and MFCC features, and fusion feature-warped DWT-MFCC and feature-warped MFCC features. We evaluated the performance of i-vector speaker verification using the Australian Forensic Voice Comparison and QUT-NOISE databases in the presence of noise, reverberation, and noisy and reverberation conditions. Our results indicate that the fusion of feature-warped DWT-MFCC and feature-warped MFCC is superior to other feature extraction techniques in the presence of environmental noise under the majority of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), reverberation, and noisy and reverberation conditions. At 0-dB SNR, the performance of the fusion of feature-warped DWT-MFCC and feature-warped MFCC approach achieves a reduction in average equal error rate of 21.33%, 20.00%, and 13.28% over feature-warped MFCC, respectively, in the presence of various types of environmental noises only, reverberation, and noisy and reverberation environments. The approach can be used for improving the performance of forensic speaker verification and it may be utilized for preparing legal evidence in court

Do technical skills correlate with non-technical skills in crisis resource management: a simulation study

Background Both technical skills (TS) and non-technical skills (NTS) are key to ensuring patient safety in acute care practice and effective crisis management. These skills are often taught and assessed separately. We hypothesized that TS and NTS are not independent of each other, and we aimed to evaluate the relationship between TS and NTS during a simulated intraoperative crisis scenario. Methods This study was a retrospective analysis of performances from a previously published work. After institutional ethics approval, 50 anaesthesiology residents managed a simulated crisis scenario of an intraoperative cardiac arrest secondary to a malignant arrhythmia. We used a modified Delphi approach to design a TS checklist, specific for the management of a malignant arrhythmia requiring defibrillation. All scenarios were recorded. Each performance was analysed by four independent experts. For each performance, two experts independently rated the technical performance using the TS checklist, and two other experts independently rated NTS using the Anaesthetists' Non-Technical Skills score. Results TS and NTS were significantly correlated to each other (r=0.45, P<0.05). Conclusions During a simulated 5 min resuscitation requiring crisis resource management, our results indicate that TS and NTS are related to one another. This research provides the basis for future studies evaluating the nature of this relationship, the influence of NTS training on the performance of TS, and to determine whether NTS are generic and transferrable between crises that require different T

Prediction of Shot Start Pressure for Rifled Gun System

Determination of short start pressure (SSP) for gun system has always been of paramount interest for gun designers. In this paper, a generalised model has been developed for theoretical prediction of SSP for rifled gun system using dimensional analysis approach. For this, parameters affecting the SSP of the gun like rifling dimensions, driving band dimensions, material properties of driving band, projectile mass and diameter are taken into consideration. For a particular case of large caliber rifled gun system, the model is established using linear relations among dimensionless groups of parameters. The model has been validated by data available from the open literature

Efficient absolute aspect determination of a balloon borne far infrared telescope using a solid state optical photometer

The observational and operational efficiency of the TIFR 1 meter balloon borne far infrared telescope has been improved by incorporating a multielement solid state optical photometer (SSOP) at the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. The SSOP is based on a 1-D linear photo diode array (PDA). The online and offline processing schemes of the PDA signals which have been developed, lead to improvement in the determination of absolute telescope aspect ($\sim$ 0\farcm8), which is very crucial for carrying out the observations as well as offline analysis. The SSOP and its performance during a recent balloon flight are presented here.Comment: To appear in the February 2000 issue of the PAS