Unraveling a 146 Years Old Taxonomic Puzzle: Validation of Malabar Snakehead, Species-Status and Its Relevance for Channid Systematics and Evolution

The current distribution of C. diplogramma and C. micropeltes is best explained by vicariance. The significant variation in the key taxonomic characters and the results of the molecular marker analysis points towards an allopatric speciation event or vicariant divergence from a common ancestor, which molecular data suggests to have occurred as early as 21.76 million years ago. The resurrection of C. diplogramma from the synonymy of C. micropeltes has hence been confirmed 146 years after its initial description and 134 years after it was synonymised, establishing it is an endemic species of peninsular India and prioritizing its conservation value

Randomized Clinical Trial of High-Dose Rifampicin With or Without Levofloxacin Versus Standard of Care for Pediatric Tuberculous Meningitis: The TBM-KIDS Trial

Background. Pediatric tuberculous meningitis (TBM) commonly causes death or disability. In adults, high-dose rifampicin may reduce mortality. The role of fluoroquinolones remains unclear. There have been no antimicrobial treatment trials for pediatric TBM. Methods. TBM-KIDS was a phase 2 open-label randomized trial among children with TBM in India and Malawi. Participants received isoniazid and pyrazinamide plus: (i) high-dose rifampicin (30 mg/kg) and ethambutol (R30HZE, arm 1); (ii) high-dose rifampicin and levofloxacin (R30HZL, arm 2); or (iii) standard-dose rifampicin and ethambutol (R15HZE, arm 3) for 8 weeks, followed by 10 months of standard treatment. Functional and neurocognitive outcomes were measured longitudinally using Modified Rankin Scale (MRS) and Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). Results. Of 2487 children prescreened, 79 were screened and 37 enrolled. Median age was 72 months; 49%, 43%, and 8% had stage I, II, and III disease, respectively. Grade 3 or higher adverse events occurred in 58%, 55%, and 36% of children in arms 1, 2, and 3, with 1 death (arm 1) and 6 early treatment discontinuations (4 in arm 1, 1 each in arms 2 and 3). By week 8, all children recovered to MRS score of 0 or 1. Average MSEL scores were significantly better in arm 1 than arm 3 in fine motor, receptive language, and expressive language domains (P < .01). Conclusions. In a pediatric TBM trial, functional outcomes were excellent overall. The trend toward higher frequency of adverse events but better neurocognitive outcomes in children receiving high-dose rifampicin requires confirmation in a larger trial. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT02958709

eXtreme Software Development (XSoft)

ABSTRACT-The management of software cost, development effort and project planning are the key aspects of software development. Throughout the sixty-odd years of software development, the industry has gone at least four generations of programming languages and three major development paradigms. Still the total ability to move consistently from idea to product is yet to be achieved. In fact, recent studies document that the failure rate for software development has risen almost to 50 percent. There is no magic in managing software development successfully, but a number of issues related to software development make it unique. The basic problem of software development is risky. Some example of risk is error in estimation, schedule slips, project cancelled after numerous slips, high defect rate, system goes sour, business misunderstanding, false feature rich, staff turnover. XSoft addresses the risks mentioned above.. XSoft is a new methodology to manage software development successfully has been evolved and it is derived from Extreme Programming and COSMIC-Full Function Point and named as EXtreme Software Development (XSoft). XSoft covers the reasoning behind the XP process. Based on the experience gained on the original XP project, this paper describes what makes XSoft work, day to day and month to month from estimation to release. Successful software development is a team effort – not just the development team but the larger team consisting of customers, management and developers. XSoft is a simple process that brings these people together and helps them to succeed together. XSoft facilitates the needs of customers with the abilities of programmers and steering (managing the project to success). A complete case study gives the idea of developing software by XSoft methodology. A XSoft tool is developed to manage the XSoft projects

Improved Transient Performance of a Fuzzy Modified Model Reference Adaptive Controller for an Interacting Coupled Tank System Using Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm

The main objective of the paper is to design a model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) with improved transient performance. A modification to the standard direct MRAC called fuzzy modified MRAC (FMRAC) is used in the paper. The FMRAC uses a proportional control based Mamdani-type fuzzy logic controller (MFLC) to improve the transient performance of a direct MRAC. The paper proposes the application of real-coded genetic algorithm (RGA) to tune the membership function parameters of the proposed FMRAC offline so that the transient performance of the FMRAC is improved further. In this study, a GA based modified MRAC (GAMMRAC), an FMRAC, and a GA based FMRAC (GAFMRAC) are designed for a coupled tank setup in a hybrid tank process and their transient performances are compared. The results show that the proposed GAFMRAC gives a better transient performance than the GAMMRAC or the FMRAC. It is concluded that the proposed controller can be used to obtain very good transient performance for the control of nonlinear processes

nfluence of solvent choice and operating conditions on Chlorzoxazone crystal shape and size

Solubility of pharmaceutical drugs in organic solvents is one of the important parameters to understand the equilibrium concentration of solute-solvent, which helps optimize and design crystallization conditions to obtain the desired product crystals. In the present study, Chlorzoxazone (CHZ) is used as a model pharmaceutical compound to investigate the equilibrium solubility, the influence of solvent and the operating conditions on the shape, and the size distribution. The solubility of CHZ is determined in organic solvents like Isopropanol, Ethanol, and 2-Ethoxyethylacetate, Ethylacetate and Ethyllactate using shake flask method from -5ºC to 60ºC. The solubility of CHZ in these solvents shows an increasing trend as the temperature increases in the following order: ethyllactate + water (0.5+0.5) &lt; ethylacetate &lt; isopropanol &lt; ethanol &lt; 2-ethoxyethylacetate &lt; ethyllactate + water (0.75+0.25). The solvents, isopropanol, ethanol, and ethyl lactate, produce needle-shaped crystals, while 2-ethoxyethylacetate and ethyl acetate tend to produce plate shaped crystals. CHZ crystals obtained from 2-ethoxyethylacetate tend to have plate shaped crystals with a lower aspect ratio and are selected for batch cooling crystallization experiments performed at different cooling rates, and agitation. It is found that the agitation at 300 rpm and the cooling rate 0.2ºC/min produce more uniform crystal size distribution