Outcome of substitutional urethroplasty by using dorsal onlay buccal mucosal graft: our experience of 10 years

Background: The term urethral stricture is anterior urethral disease, or a scarring process involving the spongy erectile tissue of the corpus spongiosum. Methods: Total 127 patients were included in the study. Patient selection criteria for urethroplasty by using buccal mucosal graft was length of stricture more than 2 cm, deep spongiofibrosis, failed optical urethrotomy for 3 times, adequate oral hygiene and proper buccal mucosa. Results: Length of stricture varied from 3.2 to 14 cm. In first postoperative week, 20.47% (n=26) patients developed minor wound infection culture negative seroma formation in stitch line in the skin. Donor site complications like eating and drinking difficulty, dysguesia, pain, sensitivity, speaking disorders were not found in any patient while oral tightness was noted in 43.30% (n=55) of patients. On postoperative follow-up mean peak urinary flow rate (Qmax) was 28.0 ml/sec (range 20.0-30.6 ml/sec). After a mean follow-up of 8.8 months range (1 month to 33 months) overall success rate was 90.55% (n=115). Conclusions: Buccal mucosa is an excellent graft material for substitution free graft urethroplasty in case of long anterior urethral stricture with excellent success rate. Success rate of dorsal onlay substitution free buccal mucosal graft urethroplasty is affected by length of stricture and aetiology of strictures. Lichen sclerosus having moderate success rate of urethroplasty and higher rate of complication and failure rate in 1-stage buccal mucosal urethroplasty and can be considered for two stage urethroplasty in case of very long stricture of anterior urethra of lichen sclerosus origin

Positive and Negative Regulation of Gli Activity by Kif7 in the Zebrafish Embryo

Loss of function mutations of Kif7, the vertebrate orthologue of the Drosophila Hh pathway component Costal2, cause defects in the limbs and neural tubes of mice, attributable to ectopic expression of Hh target genes. While this implies a functional conservation of Cos2 and Kif7 between flies and vertebrates, the association of Kif7 with the primary cilium, an organelle absent from most Drosophila cells, suggests their mechanisms of action may have diverged. Here, using mutant alleles induced by Zinc Finger Nuclease-mediated targeted mutagenesis, we show that in zebrafish, Kif7 acts principally to suppress the activity of the Gli1 transcription factor. Notably, we find that endogenous Kif7 protein accumulates not only in the primary cilium, as previously observed in mammalian cells, but also in cytoplasmic puncta that disperse in response to Hh pathway activation. Moreover, we show that Drosophila Costal2 can substitute for Kif7, suggesting a conserved mode of action of the two proteins. We show that Kif7 interacts with both Gli1 and Gli2a and suggest that it functions to sequester Gli proteins in the cytoplasm, in a manner analogous to the regulation of Ci by Cos2 in Drosophila. We also show that zebrafish Kif7 potentiates Gli2a activity by promoting its dissociation from the Suppressor of Fused (Sufu) protein and present evidence that it mediates a Smo dependent modification of the full length form of Gli2a. Surprisingly, the function of Kif7 in the zebrafish embryo appears restricted principally to mesodermal derivatives, its inactivation having little effect on neural tube patterning, even when Sufu protein levels are depleted. Remarkably, zebrafish lacking all Kif7 function are viable, in contrast to the peri-natal lethality of mouse kif7 mutants but similar to some Acrocallosal or Joubert syndrome patients who are homozygous for loss of function KIF7 alleles

Measurement of the Higgs boson production rate in association with top quarks in final states with electrons, muons, and hadronically decaying tau leptons at s√=13TeV

The rate for Higgs (H) bosons production in association with either one (tH) or two (tt¯H) top quarks is measured in final states containing multiple electrons, muons, or tau leptons decaying to hadrons and a neutrino, using proton–proton collisions recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV by the CMS experiment. The analyzed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 137fb−1. The analysis is aimed at events that contain H→WW, H→ττ, or H→ZZ decays and each of the top quark(s) decays either to lepton+jets or all-jet channels. Sensitivity to signal is maximized by including ten signatures in the analysis, depending on the lepton multiplicity. The separation among tH, tt¯H, and the backgrounds is enhanced through machine-learning techniques and matrix-element methods. The measured production rates for the tt¯H and tH signals correspond to 0.92±0.19(stat)+0.17−0.13(syst) and 5.7±2.7(stat)±3.0(syst) of their respective standard model (SM) expectations. The corresponding observed (expected) significance amounts to 4.7 (5.2) standard deviations for tt¯H, and to 1.4 (0.3) for tH production. Assuming that the Higgs boson coupling to the tau lepton is equal in strength to its expectation in the SM, the coupling yt of the Higgs boson to the top quark divided by its SM expectation, κt=yt/ySMt, is constrained to be within −0.9<κt<−0.7 or 0.7<κt<1.1, at 95% confidence level. This result is the most sensitive measurement of the tt¯H production rate to date.SCOAP

Median Predictor based Data Compression Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed self-organizing, low-powered sensing devices with limited computational and communication resources to cooperatively monitor conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure and humidity over a specific area for some specific purposes like target tracking, area monitoring, industrial monitoring, health monitoring, surveillance, environmental monitoring etc and report the collected data of all sensors to the user for analysis. Energy is a primary constraint in the design of sensor networks. This fundamental energy constraint further limits everything from data sensing rates and link bandwidth, to node size and weight. In most cases, the radio is the main energy consumer of the system; lifetime of sensor node may extended by reducing transmissions/receptions of data. It is useful to apply data compression to reduce the volume of data, and the associated energy consumption of transmission. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient data compression algorithm which is lossless and particularly suited to the reduced memory and computational resources of a WSN node. The proposed data compression algorithm gives good compression ratio for highly correlated data as well as low correlated data

Reconfigurable intelligent surface with 6G for industrial revolution: Potential applications and research challenges

With proper tuning in the phase shift of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) or intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs), which consist of huge number of passive reflecting elements, are the most promising and transforming technology to reconfigure the wireless propagation ecosystems to improve the “spectral-and energy-efficiency” for the future generation wireless communication system. This article presents a systematic review of RIS/IRS technology and conceptualizes the prospective requirement, operations, and application. Further, we have presented its capability for execution in a forthcoming smart industrial ecosystem to assist the development of Industry 5.0 with a series of emerging applications. Finally, we discuss the potential, open research challenges, and prospects of RIS technology in the emerging intelligent manufacturing industry to encourage future research in this area

Comparative metabolic profiling of <i>Costus speciosus</i> leaves and rhizomes using NMR, GC-MS and UPLC/ESI-MS/MS

<p><i>Costus speciosus</i> had been used in oriental systems of medicines, to treat diverse ailments. The present study was focused on NMR, GC-MS and UPLC/ESI-MS/MS-based metabolic profiling of <i>C. speciosus</i>. This metabolic study resulted in the identification of 91 and quantification of 69 metabolites. Caffeic acid derivatives previously unreported in <i>C. speciosus</i> were also identified. High quantity of steroidal saponins namely methyl protogracillin (297.97 ± 0.07 mg/g dried wt.) and dioscin (158.72 ± 0.27 mg/g dried wt.) were observed in butanol fraction of rhizomes. Health care metabolites including caffeic acid (37.88 ± 0.04 mg/g dried wt.) and trehalose (75.12 ± 0.08 mg/g dried wt.) were also detected in ethyl acetate and aqueous fractions of rhizomes, respectively. Metabolites of nutraceutical and biological significance including eremanthine (5.14 ± 0.68%, peak area), tocopherols (~22%), sterols (~25%) were also identified from hexane fractions of rhizomes and leaves using GC-MS. The analytical techniques used had successfully differentiated metabolites composition among leaves and rhizomes.</p

An unusual cause of recurrent tonsillitis

Primary tuberculosis of the oral cavity and oropharynx is quite uncommon, and primary isolated tuberculosis of the tonsils is extremely rare. We report a case of primary tonsillar tuberculosis, in an otherwise healthy man, mimicking chronic non-specific tonsillitis

Structural and band alignment properties of Al2O3 on epitaxial Ge grown on (100), (110), and (111)A GaAs substrates by molecular beam epitaxy

Structural and band alignment properties of atomic layer Al2O3 oxide film deposited on crystallographically oriented epitaxial Ge grown in-situ on (100), (110), and (111)A GaAs substrates using two separate molecular beam epitaxy chambers were investigated using cross-sectional transmission microscopy (TEM) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). High-resolution triple axis x-ray measurement demonstrated pseudomorphic and high-quality Ge epitaxial layer on crystallographically oriented GaAs substrates. The cross-sectional TEM exhibited a sharp interface between the Ge epilayer and each orientation of the GaAs substrate as well as the Al2O3 film and the Ge epilayer. The extracted valence band offset, ΔEv, values of Al2O3 relative to (100), (110), and (111) Ge orientations using XPS measurement were 3.17 eV, 3.34 eV, and 3.10 eV, respectively. Using XPS data, variations in ΔEv related to the crystallographic orientation were ΔEV(110)Ge\u3eΔEV(100)Ge≥ΔEV(111)Ge and the conduction band offset, ΔEc, related to the crystallographic orientation was ΔEc(111)Ge\u3eΔEc(110)Ge\u3eΔEc(100)Ge using the measured ΔEv, bandgap of Al2O3 in each orientation, and well-known Ge bandgap of 0.67 eV. These band offset parameters are important for future application of Ge-based p- and n-channel metal-oxide field-effect transistor design