First report of Lividin and Spinulosain peptides from the skin secretion of an Indian frog

Here, we report two novel peptides identified from the skin secretion, having homologies to Lividin and Spinulosain, of an endemic frog, Hydrophylax bahuvistara, of Western Ghats. This is the first report of these peptides from Indian frogs and first identification of Lividin from the Hydrophylax genus. Both peptides exhibited weak antimicrobial activity but very low haemolytic activity. The problems of naming amphibian host defense peptides (HDPs) are also discussed

Identification of genetic variants of bGH, GHR and IGF1 gene and their association with lactation persistency in Tharparkar cattle

Persistency can be explained as number of days during which the high level of milk production is maintained after the peak milk yield. The aim of this study was to identify genetic variants of bovine-Growth Hormone (bGH), Growth Hormone Receptor (GHR) and Insulin like Growth Factor1 (IGF1) gene and their association with lactation persistency in Tharparkar cattle. Study was carried out using data of daily milk yield, monthly test days, total milk yield and peak yield of 372 lactation records of 190 Tharparkar cattle maintained at Livestock Research Centre of ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute from 1996-2019. Lactation persistency was estimated using Woods and Wilminks method and its least squares means were 2.37±0.08 and -5.4±0.56, respectively. Investigations on polymorphism were performed using seven reported primers for amplifying targeted regions of bGH, GHR and IGF1 gene. In PCR-RFLP, bGH-MspI RFLP had shown polymorphism in intron 3 and its genotypic frequencies were TT 0.49, CT 0.39 and CC 0.12. The allelic frequency of C and T were 0.31 and 0.69, respectively. The bGH-AluI RFLP had shown monomorphism in exon 5. GHR-AluI had shown polymorphism in exon 10 with only two genotypes AA and AG with frequency of 0.92 and 0.08, respectively. The frequency of A and G allele was 0.96 and 0.04, respectively. In GHR-StuI and IGF1-TasI in promoter region, RsaI in exon 3 and SnaB I in exon 1 had shown monomorphism. No significant association was found between genetic variants of bGH and GHR with lactation persistency in Tharparkar cattle

Critical analysis of the utility of initial pleural aspiration in the diagnosis and management of suspected malignant pleural effusion

INTRODUCTION:Current guidelines recommend an initial pleural aspiration in the investigation and management of suspected malignant pleural effusions (MPEs) with the aim of establishing a diagnosis, identifying non-expansile lung (NEL) and, at times, providing a therapeutic procedure. A wealth of research has been published since the guidelines suggesting that results and outcomes from an aspiration may not always provide sufficient information to guide management. It is important to establish the validity of these findings in a 'real world' population. METHODS:A retrospective analysis was conducted of all patients who underwent pleural fluid (PF) sampling, in a single centre, over 3 years to determine the utility of the initial aspiration. RESULTS:A diagnosis of MPE was confirmed in 230/998 (23%) cases, a further 95/998 (9.5%) were presumed to represent MPE. Transudative biochemistry was found in 3% of cases of confirmed MPE. Positive PF cytology was only sufficient to guide management in 45/140 (32%) cases. Evidence of pleural thickening on CT was associated with both negative cytology (χ2 1df=26.27, p<0.001) and insufficient samples (χ2 1df=10.39, p=0.001). In NEL 44.4% of patients did not require further procedures after pleurodesis compared with 72.7% of those with expansile lung (χ2 1df=5.49, p=0.019). In patients who required a combined diagnostic and therapeutic aspiration 106/113 (93.8%) required further pleural procedures. CONCLUSIONS:An initial pleural aspiration does not achieve either definitive diagnosis or therapy in the majority of patients. A new pathway prioritising symptom management while reducing procedures should be considered

Technology Pipeline for Large Scale Cross-Lingual Dubbing of Lecture Videos into Multiple Indian Languages

Cross-lingual dubbing of lecture videos requires the transcription of the original audio, correction and removal of disfluencies, domain term discovery, text-to-text translation into the target language, chunking of text using target language rhythm, text-to-speech synthesis followed by isochronous lipsyncing to the original video. This task becomes challenging when the source and target languages belong to different language families, resulting in differences in generated audio duration. This is further compounded by the original speaker's rhythm, especially for extempore speech. This paper describes the challenges in regenerating English lecture videos in Indian languages semi-automatically. A prototype is developed for dubbing lectures into 9 Indian languages. A mean-opinion-score (MOS) is obtained for two languages, Hindi and Tamil, on two different courses. The output video is compared with the original video in terms of MOS (1-5) and lip synchronisation with scores of 4.09 and 3.74, respectively. The human effort also reduces by 75%

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Performance Analysis Using Random Forest Algorithm

Abstract—Performance Analysis of contractor in a labor management system is the key idea in this paper. It involves a series of steps like collecting and formatting survey data into a form compatible for analytics. Based on the performance of each contractor, their position can be ranked and top three of the result set is returned as candidates deserving a certificate of appreciation from admin in the system. The user survey is the main trigger for this analysis, through which admin can have an efficient resource planning and future plan management by finding most smart-working contractors among all who is registered. Inherently HR management and decision support can be provisioned effectively with the application of random forest algorithm used in this work

Host Defense Peptides from Asian Frogs as Potential Clinical Therapies

Host defense peptides (HDPs) are currently major focal points of medical research as infectious microbes are gaining resistance to existing drugs. They are effective against multi-drug resistant pathogens due to their unique primary target, biological membranes, and their peculiar mode of action. Even though HDPs from 60 Asian frog species belonging to 15 genera have been characterized, research into these peptides is at a very early stage. The purpose of this review is to showcase the status of peptide research in Asia. Here we provide a summary of HDPs from Asian frogs

Thoracoscopic evaluation of the effect of tumour burden on the outcome of pleurodesis in malignant pleural effusion

Background: It has been postulated that when the intrapleural tumour burden is high, the resultant obliteration of normal mesothelial cell surface of the pleura results in reduction in pleurodesis success rate. Aims: to assess the hypothesis that tumour burden is associated with higher pleurodesis failure, and that tumour type can affect pleurodesis outcomes Methods: Review of recorded video footage of local anaesthetic thoracoscopy (LAT) procedures of 45 patients with proven MPE was conducted by 2 independent assessors blinded to the patient medical records. Abnormalities were assessed according to the presence or absence of; nodules, lymphangitis, inflammation, and adhesions on each of the parietal, visceral and diaphragmatic surfaces. A macroscopic score was developed by adding the number of abnormalities in each pleural surface to produce a total score for tumour burden which was correlated with tumour type and pleurodesis outcome Results: In both mesothelioma (n=21) and non-mesothelioma (n=24), there were no significant differences between the tumour burden score and the outcome of pleurodesis (p=0.188 and 0.173 respectively). The rate of pleurodesis success was higher in the non-mesothelioma group (n=16; 66.7%) compared to the mesothelioma group (n= 9; 42.9%) with no significant difference between both groups (p=0.11) Conclusion: We found no relationship between tumor burden and pleurodesis outcome. Further prospective evaluation in a larger cohort is underway. Consistent with the reported literature, we found that mesothelioma has a high failure rate of pleurodesis compared to non-mesothelioma patient