Smegma in diabetes mellitus

A 37-year-old male patient presented with 1-month history of pain over the bulb of penis during retraction of foreskin. Patient suffered from type 1 diabetes mellitus on poor glycemic control. On examination multiple white patches of 1 mm x 3 mm dimension were observed with pain during retraction of prepuce. Smegma deposition over the glans penis and erythematous areas were revealed while scraping the lesions. The patient, screened for urinary tract infection (UTI) and sexually transmitted disease (STD) including hepatitis B, syphilis and HIV which were negative and complete blood count was normal. Since smegma can be a precursor for genital infections, physicians must scrupulously examine diabetic patients presenting as timely diagnosis and treatment would improve patient´s quality of life. The patient, put on long acting insulin and advised personal hygiene and showed significant improvement during his follow-up visit, 1 month later

A thermodynamical framework for the solidification of molten polymers and its application to fiber extrusion

A thermodynamical framework is presented that describes the solidification of molten polymers to an amorphous as well as to a semicrystalline solid-like state. This framework fits into a general structure developed for materials undergoing a large class of entropy producing processes. The molten polymers are usually isotropic in nature and certain polymers crystallize, with the exception of largely atactic polymers, which solidify to an amorphous solid, to an anisotropic solid. The symmetry of the crystalline structures in the semicrystalline polymers is dependent upon the thermomechanical process to which the polymer is subjected to. The framework presented takes into account that the natural configurations associated with the polymer melt (associated with the breaking and reforming of the polymer network) and the solid evolve in addition to the evolving material symmetry associated with these natural configurations. The functional form of the various primitives such as how the material stores, dissipates energy and produces entropy are prescribed. Entropy may be produced by a variety of mechanisms such as conduction, dissipation, solidification, rearragement of crystalline structures due to annealing and so forth. The manner in which the natural configurations evolve is dictated by the maximization of the rate of dissipation. Similarly, the crystallization and glass transition kinetics may be obtained by maximization of their corresponding entropy productions. The restrictions placed by the second law of thermodynamics, frame indiference, material symmetry and incompressibility allows for a class of constitutive equations and the maximization of the rate of entropy production is invoked to select a constitutive equation from an allowable class of constitutive equations. Using such an unified thermodynamic approach, the popular crystallization equations such as Avrami equation and its various modifications such as Nakamura and Hillier and Price equations are obtained. The predictions of the model obtained using this framework are compared with the spinline data for amorphous and semicrystalline polymers

Optimization of laser welding of tri – metal joint via response surface methodology

 Laser welding input parameters play a major role in determining the quality of a weld joint. In the nuclear power plants, hybrid structures of nickel and steel alloys offer an advantage in comparison to conventional materials, e.g. in heat exchanger tube areas. Due to demand in the nuclear industry for new material combinations based on commercially available and qualified materials, research into thermal joining of dissimilar materials has been initiated. The use of laser for joining mild steel / nickel with 316L austenitic stainless steel filler material and structures offers some advantages compared with usual thermal joining processes. The main aim is the control of phase formation, which occurs during thermal joining of mild steel to nickel. In this research work microstructure study and optimization of laser welding of mild steel / nickel sheets with wire feeding was done using Central Composite Design(CCD) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) are used to build the mathematical model. By means of the laser power, welding speed and pulse width on the tensile strength model was developed and tested by analysis of variance method (ANOVA), the relationship between process parameters and output response and interaction among the process parameters are analyzed and discussed in detail. The scanning electron microscopes (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) technique were used for microstructure study of the bi-metal and tri-metal joints of the weld

Selective Protein Synthesis by Ribosomes with a Drug-Obstructed Exit Tunnel

SummaryThe polypeptide exit tunnel is an important functional compartment of the ribosome where the newly synthesized proteins are surveyed. The tunnel is the target of clinically important macrolide antibiotics. Macrolides plug the tunnel and are believed to stop production of all proteins. Contrary to this view, we show that drug-bound ribosomes can synthesize a distinct subset of cellular polypeptides. The structure of a protein defines its ability to thread through the antibiotic-obstructed tunnel. Synthesis of certain polypeptides that initially bypass translational arrest can be stopped at later stages of elongation while translation of some proteins goes to completion. Our findings reveal that small-molecule effectors can accentuate the discriminatory properties of the ribosomal exit tunnel and that macrolide antibiotics reshape the cellular proteome rather than block global protein synthesis

Ethyl 6-amino-5-cyano-2,4-bis­(4-methyl­phen­yl)-4H-pyran-3-carboxyl­ate

In the title compound, C23H22N2O3, the pyran ring adopts a twisted boat conformation. The tolyl rings and carboxyl­ate group are attached to the pyran ring with torsion angles of −77.1 (2), 59.5 (3) and 17.8 (3)°, respectively. The ethyl group is disordered over two orientations with a site-occupancy ratio of 0.508 (5):0.492 (5). In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by N—H⋯N and N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, generating a chain running the a axis. Weak C—H⋯O, C—H⋯N and C—H⋯π inter­actions are also observed

Bis(μ-phenyl­tellurido-κ2 Te:Te)bis­[tetra­carbonyl­rhenium(I)]

The title compound, [Re2(C6H5Te)2(CO)8], crystallizes with two mol­ecules in the asymmetric unit, in which two Re atoms are coordinated in a slightly distorted octa­hedral environment and are bridged by two Te atoms, which show a distorted trigonal-pyramidal geometry. The torsion angles for the Te—Re—Te—Re sequence of atoms are 19.29 (18) and 16.54 (16)° in the two mol­ecules. Thus, the Re—Te four-membered rings in the two mol­ecules deviate significantly from planarity. Two intra­molecular C—H⋯O inter­actions occur in one of the mol­ecules. Te—Te [4.0551 (10) Å] inter­actions between the two mol­ecules and weak inter­molecular C—H⋯O inter­actions stabilize the crystal packing

6-Amino-3,4-dimethyl-4-phenyl-2H,4H-pyrano[2,3-c]pyrazole-5-carbonitrile

In the title compound, C15H14N4O, the pyrazole ring is aligned at 88.23 (4)° with respect to the aromatic ring and at 3.75 (4)° with respect to the pyran ring. In the crystal, N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds link adjacent mol­ecules into a linear chain motif. C—H⋯N inter­actions are also observed

UPPLIED: UAV Path Planning for Inspection through Demonstration

In this paper, a new demonstration-based path-planning framework for the visual inspection of large structures using UAVs is proposed. We introduce UPPLIED: UAV Path PLanning for InspEction through Demonstration, which utilizes a demonstrated trajectory to generate a new trajectory to inspect other structures of the same kind. The demonstrated trajectory can inspect specific regions of the structure and the new trajectory generated by UPPLIED inspects similar regions in the other structure. The proposed method generates inspection points from the demonstrated trajectory and uses standardization to translate those inspection points to inspect the new structure. Finally, the position of these inspection points is optimized to refine their view. Numerous experiments were conducted with various structures and the proposed framework was able to generate inspection trajectories of various kinds for different structures based on the demonstration. The trajectories generated match with the demonstrated trajectory in geometry and at the same time inspect the regions inspected by the demonstration trajectory with minimum deviation. The experimental video of the work can be found at https://youtu.be/YqPx-cLkv04.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023), Detroit, Michigan, US