Recurrent Postmyocardial Infarction Ventricular Tachycardia: An Unusual Culprit

Although temporary transvenous pacing is life-saving in patients with myocardial infarction who develop bradyarrhythmias, the electrical complications resulting from it can be fatal and are rarely reported. We report here a patient with acute inferior wall myocardial infarction who required temporary transvenous pacing due to second-degree atrioventricular block accompanied with hypotension. Following coronary angiography and successful revascularisation, the patient developed multiple episodes of monomorphic and polymorphic ventricular tachycardia as well as ventricular fibrillation which on careful inspection were found to be initiated by fusion of the intrinsic and paced complexes. The problem of malignant ventricular tachycardia was solved by simple removal of the pacing lead. To the best of our knowledge, malignant ventricular tachycardia of both monomorphic and polymorphic types initiated by fusion complexes in a paced patient has not been reported in literature

Keyformer: KV Cache Reduction through Key Tokens Selection for Efficient Generative Inference

Transformers have emerged as the underpinning architecture for Large Language Models (LLMs). In generative language models, the inference process involves two primary phases: prompt processing and token generation. Token generation, which constitutes the majority of the computational workload, primarily entails vector-matrix multiplications and interactions with the Key-Value (KV) Cache. This phase is constrained by memory bandwidth due to the overhead of transferring weights and KV cache values from the memory system to the computing units. This memory bottleneck becomes particularly pronounced in applications that require long-context and extensive text generation, both of which are increasingly crucial for LLMs. This paper introduces "Keyformer", an innovative inference-time approach, to mitigate the challenges associated with KV cache size and memory bandwidth utilization. Keyformer leverages the observation that approximately 90% of the attention weight in generative inference focuses on a specific subset of tokens, referred to as "key" tokens. Keyformer retains only the key tokens in the KV cache by identifying these crucial tokens using a novel score function. This approach effectively reduces both the KV cache size and memory bandwidth usage without compromising model accuracy. We evaluate Keyformer's performance across three foundational models: GPT-J, Cerebras-GPT, and MPT, which employ various positional embedding algorithms. Our assessment encompasses a variety of tasks, with a particular emphasis on summarization and conversation tasks involving extended contexts. Keyformer's reduction of KV cache reduces inference latency by 2.1x and improves token generation throughput by 2.4x, while preserving the model's accuracy

Milk-borne diseases through the lens of one health

Reviewing “zoonotic diseases” classically brings to mind human infections contracted in close association with animals, where outdoor occupations and afforested lands usually play a key role in the epidemiological triad. However, there is a very common, yet overlooked route of infection where humans may not come in direct contact with animals or implicated environments. Milk-borne diseases are a unique set of infections affecting all age groups and occupational categories of humans, causing 4% of all the foodborne diseases in the world. The infection reservoir may lie with milch animals and associated enzootic cycles, and the infectious agent is freely secreted into the animal’s milk. Commercial pooling and processing of milk create unique environmental challenges, where lapses in quality control could introduce infective agents during downstream processing and distribution. The infectious agent is finally brought to the doorstep of both rural and urban households through such animal products. The domestic hygiene of the household finally determines human infections. One health approach can target preventive measures like immunization in animals, pasteurization and stringent quality control during the commercial processing of milk, and finally, hygienic practices at the level of the consumer, to reduce the burden of milk-borne diseases. This review hopes to draw the attention of policymakers to this unique route of infection, because it can be easily regulated with cost-effective interventions, to ensure the safety of this precious food product, permeating the life and livelihood of humans from all walks of life

Mammalian cell-driven polymerisation of pyrrole

A model cancer cell line was used to initiate polymerisation of pyrrole to form the conducting material polypyrrole. The polymerisation was shown to occur via cytosolic exudates rather than via membrane redox sites which normally control the oxidation state of iron as ferricyanide or ferrocyanide.. The data demonstrate for the first time that mammalian cells can be used to initiate synthesis of conducting polymers, and suggest a possible route to detection of cell damage and/or transcellular processes via an in‐situ and amplifiable signal generation

Electrochemical analysis of gold nanoparticles multifunctionalised withCytochrome c and a zinc Porphyrin

Cytochrome c (Cyt c), known for its functional redox capabilities, plays a pivotal role in biologicalprocesses such as the electron transport chain and apoptosis. However, understanding how differentconjugation strategies impact its structural and redox characteristics is limited. To fill this gap, weinvestigated the effects of conjugating Cyt c and a zinc(II) porphyrin (Zn Porph) to gold nanoparticles(AuNPs). We used circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy to detect structural conformational changesin Cyt c upon conjugation and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) toidentify protein orientation. Cyt c was predicted to have different orientations depending on the sizeof AuNPs and methods used to conjugate the protein, it was hypothesised that the orientation of Cythttps://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-rsrwv ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4872-8928 Content not peer-reviewed by ChemRxiv. License: CC BY 4.02c may influence the redox properties of the protein. The electrochemical properties of Cyt c wereassessed using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). We used DPVbasedto determine the heterogeneous rate constant (k0). The results show a lower k0 for conjugatedCyt c than free Cyt c, likely due to structural changes in the protein. The spatial orientation of Cyt chad minimal influence on k0, while ligand density and AuNP size had an effect. The k0 value of ZnPorph did not decrease on conjugation. Despite these changes, Cyt c and Zn Porph maintained theirelectrochemical capabilities after conjugation.</p

DEVELOPMENT OF TEST ENVIRONMENTS FOR REVERSE ASSIST FUNCTIONS AS APPLIED TO AN A-DOUBLE VEHICLE COMBINATION

High-capacity transport vehicles reduce costs and improve efficiency. Long vehicle combinations such as an A-double combination vehicle (Tractor + semitrailer + dolly + semitrailer) improve transportation efficiency but they are extremely difficult to manoeuvre in tight spaces and in the reverse direction. This document summarizes developing environments to test reverse assist functions as applied to the A-double combination vehicle. These environments create a rapid prototyping platform consisting of a virtual and a scaled environment to test and validate controller concepts. The behaviour of the plant model in the virtual environment, the scaled vehicle model and the plant model in VTM (Volvo Truck Model) are studied and compared. A proportional controller is developed to test the environments and evaluate the process of concept development using the rapid prototype platform. The controller performance is evaluated and a possibility of incorporating integral controller is discussed

Parallel Programming with Migratable Objects: Charm++ in Practice

The advent of petascale computing has introduced new challenges (e.g. Heterogeneity, system failure) for programming scalable parallel applications. Increased complexity and dynamism in science and engineering applications of today have further exacerbated the situation. Addressing these challenges requires more emphasis on concepts that were previously of secondary importance, including migratability, adaptivity, and runtime system introspection. In this paper, we leverage our experience with these concepts to demonstrate their applicability and efficacy for real world applications. Using the CHARM++ parallel programming framework, we present details on how these concepts can lead to development of applications that scale irrespective of the rough landscape of supercomputing technology. Empirical evaluation presented in this paper spans many miniapplications and real applications executed on modern supercomputers including Blue Gene/Q, Cray XE6, and Stampede

Engineering bacteria to control electron transport altering the synthesis of non-native polymer

The use of bacteria as catalysts for radical polymerisations of synthetic monomers has recently been established. However, the role of trans Plasma Membrane Electron Transport (tPMET) in modulating these processes is not well understood. We sort to study this by genetic engineering a part of the tPMET system NapC in E. coli. We show that this engineering altered the rate of extracellular electron transfer coincided with an effect on cell-mediated polymerisation using a model monomer. A plasmid with arabinose inducible PBAD promoters were shown to upregulate NapC protein upon induction at total arabinose concentrations of 0.0018% and 0.18%. These clones (E. coli(IP_0.0018%) and E. coli(IP_0.18%), respectively) were used in iron-mediated atom transfer radical polymerisation (Fe ATRP), affecting the nature of the polymerisation, than cultures containing suppressed or empty plasmids (E. coli(IP_S) and E. coli(E), respectively). These results lead to the hypothesis that EET (Extracellular Electron Transfer) in part modulates cell instructed polymerisations

Impedimetric Characterization of Bipolar Nanoelectrodes with Cancer Cells

Merging of electronics with biology, defined as bioelectronics, at the nanoscale holds considerable promise for sensing and modulating cellular behavior. Advancing our understanding of nanobioelectronics will facilitate development and enable applications in biosensing, tissue engineering, and bioelectronic medicine. However, studies investigating the electrical effects when merging wireless conductive nanoelectrodes with biology are lacking. Consequently, a tool is required to develop a greater understanding of merging conductive nanoparticles with cells. Herein, this challenge is addressed by developing an impedimetric method to evaluate bipolar electrode (BPE) systems that could report on electrical input. A theoretical framework is provided, using impedance to determine if conductive nanoparticles can be polarized and used to drive current. It is then demonstrated that 125 nm of gold nanoparticle (AuNP) bipolar electrodes (BPEs) could be sensed in the presence of cells when incorporated intracellularly at 500 μg/mL using water and phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) as electrolytes. These results highlight how nanoscale BPEs act within biological systems. This research will impact the rational design of using BPE systems in cells for both sensing and actuating applications

Emerging and re-emerging viral infections in India

The number of outbreaks have &nbsp;progressively increased since many years in India. In this era of globalization and rapid international travel, any infectious disease in one country can become a potential threat to the entire globe. Outbreaks of Nipah, Zika, Crimean- Congo Haemorrhagic Fever and Kyasanur Forest Disease and have been reported since a decade and now we are facing COVID 19 pandemic. One of the challenges in the prevention of these outbreaks is that as the cases decrease, the felt need declines, the public demand decreases and the mitigation responses get overshadowed by the need of emergency responses elsewhere. The One Health approach is a movement to promote alliance between medicine field, veterinary medicine and environmental sciences to upgrade the health of humans, animals, and ecosystem. The data in this article is compiled from different websites and publications of World Health Organization (WHO), Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), grey literature and media. There is an urgent need for better surveillance and disease burden assessments in the country and to gain detailed insights into vector biology, factors of environment influencing the diseases, mapping of endemic areas, strengthen intersectoral coordination, infection control practices, and ensure use of Personal Protective Equipment’s (PPE) and availability of drugs and vaccines to handle the outbreaks in a better way