Augmented Reality in Kidney Cancer

Augmented reality(AR) is the concept of a digitally created perception that enhances components of the real-world to allow better engagement with it. Within healthcare, there has been a recent expansion of AR solutions, especially in the field of surgery. Traditional renal cancer surgery has been largely replaced by minimally invasive laparoscopic (or robotic) partial nephrectomies. This has meant loss of certain intra-operative experiences such as haptic feedback and AR can aid this replacement with enhanced visual and patient-specific feedback. The kidney is a dynamic organ and current AR development has revolved around specific surgical stages such as safe arterial clamping and perfecting tumour margins. This chapter discusses the current state of AR technology in these areas with key attention to the aspects of image registration, organ tracking, tissue deformation and live imaging. The chapter then discusses limitations of AR, such as intentional blindness and depth perception and provides potential future ideas and solutions. These include inventions such as AR headsets and 3D-printed renal models (with the possibility of remote surgical intervention). AR provides a very positive outcome for the future of truly minimally invasive renal surgery. However, current AR needs validation, cost evaluation and thorough planning before being safely integrated into everyday surgical practice

Entanglement of weighted graphs uncovers transitions in variable-range interacting models

The cluster state acquired by evolving the nearest-neighbor (NN) Ising model from a completely separable state is the resource for measurement-based quantum computation. Instead of an NN system, a variable-range power law interacting Ising model can generate a genuine multipartite entangled (GME) weighted graph state (WGS) that may reveal intrinsic characteristics of the evolving Hamiltonian. We establish that the pattern of generalized geometric measure (GGM) in the evolved state with an arbitrary number of qubits is sensitive to fall-off rates and the range of interactions of the evolving Hamiltonian. We report that the time-derivative and time-averaged GGM at a particular time can detect the transition points present in the fall-off rates of the interaction strength, separating different regions, namely long-range, quasi-local and local ones in one- and two-dimensional lattices with deformation. Moreover, we illustrate that in the quasi-local and local regimes, there exists a minimum coordination number in the evolving Ising model for a fixed total number of qubits which can mimic the GGM of the long-range model. In order to achieve a finite-size subsystem from the entire system, we design a local measurement strategy that allows a WGS of an arbitrary number of qubits to be reduced to a local unitarily equivalent WGS having fewer qubits with modified weights.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Revealing Transition in Fall-off Rates of spin-s Ising Model through Multiqudit Graph states

A variable-range interacting Ising model with spin-1/2 particles exhibits distinct behavior depending on the fall-off rates in the range of interactions, notably non-local (NL), quasi-local (QL), and local. It is unknown if such a transition occurs in this model with an arbitrary spin quantum number. We establish its existence by analyzing the profiles of entanglement entropy, mutual information, and genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) of the weighted graph state (WGS), which is prepared when the multi-level maximally coherent state at each site evolves according to the spin-s Ising Hamiltonian. Specifically, we demonstrate that the scaling of time-averaged mutual information and the divergence in the first derivative of GME with respect to the fall-off rate in the WGS can indicate the transition point from NL to QL, which scales logarithmically with individual spin dimension. Additionally, we suggest that the existence of a saturation value of a finite number of qudits capable of mimicking the GME pattern of an arbitrarily large system-size can reveal the second transition point between quasi-local and local regions.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figure

Correction: Hunt, R.W. et al. Electromagnetic Biostimulation of Living Cultures for Biotechnology, Biofuel and Bioenergy Applications. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2009, 10, 4515–4558

We found some errors in the paper published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences [1]. [...

IRT-SD-SLE:an improved real-time step detection and step length estimation using smartphone accelerometer

Smartphone sensor-based pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) systems provide a viable solution to the problem of localization in an infrastructure-less area. Step detection (SD) and step length estimation (SLE), being two fundamental operations of the PDR-based localization technique, have drawn many researchers’ attention in the recent time. Most of the existing SD and SLE methods proposed over the years, however, provide either server-or cloud-based solution that consume additional network bandwidth and suffer from increased transmission delay. Moreover, nonavailability of the inertial sensors like gyroscope, magnetometers, etc., at every smartphone makes majority of the existing SLE methods less applicable to such devices. To address the above-said issues, in this article, we focus on devising an improved SLE method that would detect the pedestrian’s steps and subsequently estimate the step length in real-time by processing the accelerometer data at the device itself. Our proposed method transforms the measured acceleration values along the Earth coordinate system (ECS) and also applies sliding window meaning (SWM) to mitigate the negative effects of the smartphone’s orientation and gravitational bias on the accuracy of SD and SLE. The performances of our proposed method are evaluated in terms of accuracy for ten different users by taking the device in two different postures (handheld and trouser pocket) under two different walking modes (normal and fast) to demonstrate its efficacy. Moreover, our proposed method obtains more than 80% average accuracy for SD and also obtains more than 75% accuracy (median) for SLE for all participants under four different scenarios considered here

Effect of Brachionus rubens on the growth characteristics of various species of microalgae

Background: Cultivation of algae for conversion to biofuels has gained global interest. Outdoor raceway cultivation is preferred because of its lower capital and operating costs. A major disadvantage of outdoor cultivation is susceptibility of algal crops to attack by predatory rotifers. In order to quantify the impact of rotifer attack on different species of algae, we evaluated the growth of eleven microalgal species over a 21-d period after being infected by the predatory rotifer Brachionus rubens. Results: Of the eleven species, Chlorella sorokiniana was the most susceptible with rapid decline in algal growth concomitant with increase in rotifer population growth (3.82/d). In contrast, Synechococcus elongatus and Scenedesmus dimorphus were both resistant to the rotifer and suppressed rotifer growth (-0.06/d). An index of algal species susceptibility to be consumed by the rotifer was generated with C. sorokiniana as the baseline (index = 1.000) indicating most susceptible among species tested. Other species' susceptibilities are indicated in parenthesis as follows: Monoraphidium spp. (0.997), Chlamydomonas globosa (0.827), Botryococcus braunii (0.740), Chlorella minutissima (0.570), Chlamydomonas augustae (0.530), Chlamydomonas yellowstonensis (0.500), Scenedesmus bijuga (0.420), and Haematococcus pluvialis (0.360). Two species, namely, S. dimorphus and S. elongatus were unique in that they exhibited an ability to suppress the growth of the rotifer as indicated by the decline in rotifer populations in their presence. Conclusions: Variations in susceptibility of algal species to rotifer predation could be a result of their individual morphology, cell walls structure, or the biochemical composition of individual species

Biomass Production Potential of a Wastewater Alga Chlorella vulgaris ARC 1 under Elevated Levels of CO2 and Temperature

The growth response of Chlorella vulgaris was studied under varying concentrations of carbon dioxide (ranging from 0.036 to 20%) and temperature (30, 40 and 50°C). The highest chlorophyll concentration (11 μg mL–1) and biomass (210 μg mL–1), which were 60 and 20 times more than that of C. vulgaris at ambient CO2 (0.036%), were recorded at 6% CO2 level. At 16% CO2 level, the concentrations of chlorophyll and biomass values were comparable to those at ambient CO2 but further increases in the CO2 level decreased both of them. Results showed that the optimum temperature for biomass production was 30°C under elevated CO2 (6%). Although increases in temperature above 30°C resulted in concomitant decrease in growth response, their adverse effects were significantly subdued at elevated CO2. There were also differential responses of the alga, assessed in terms of NaH14CO3 uptake and carbonic anhydrase activity, to increases in temperature at elevated CO2. The results indicated that Chlorella vulgaris grew better at elevated CO2 level at 30°C, albeit with lesser efficiencies at higher temperatures

A multicentric evaluation of dipstick test for serodiagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ethiopia and Spain

Author Correction: A multicentric evaluation of dipstick test for serodiagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ethiopia and Spain PMID: 33574485Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is one of the leading infectious diseases affecting developing countries. Colloidal gold-based diagnostic tests are rapid tools to detect blood/serum antibodies for VL diagnosis. Lack of uniformity in the performance of these tests in different endemic regions is a hurdle in early disease diagnosis. This study is designed to validate a serum-based dipstick test in eight centres of six countries, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ethiopia and Spain with archived and fresh sera from 1003 subjects. The dipstick detects antibodies against Leishmania donovani membrane antigens (LAg). The overall sensitivity and specificity of the test with 95% confidence intervals were found to be 97.10% and 93.44%, respectively. The test showed good sensitivity and specificity in the Indian subcontinent (>95%). In Brazil, Ethiopia, and Spain the sensitivity and specificity of the dipstick test (83.78-100% and 79.06-100%) were better as compared to the earlier reports of the performance of rK39 rapid test in these regions. Interestingly, less cross-reactivity was found with the cutaneous form of the disease in Spain, Brazil, and Sri Lanka demonstrating 91.58% specificity. This dipstick test can therefore be a useful tool for diagnosing VL from other symptomatically similar diseases and against cutaneous form of leishmaniasis.S

A Multi-Country, Single-Blinded, Phase 2 Study to Evaluate a Point-of-Need System for Rapid Detection of Leishmaniasis and Its Implementation in Endemic Settings

With the advancement of isothermal nucleic acid amplification techniques, detection of the pathogenic DNA in clinical samples at point-of-need is no longer a dream. The newly developed recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay incorporated in a suitcase laboratory has shown promising diagnostic efficacy over real-time PCR in detection of leishmania DNA from clinical samples. For broader application of this point-of-need system, we undertook a current multi-country diagnostic evaluation study towards establishing this technique in different endemic settings which would be beneficial for the ongoing elimination programs for leishmaniasis. For this study purpose, clinical samples from confirmed visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL) patients were subjected to both real-time PCR and RPA assay in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Further skin samples from confirmed cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) patients were also included from Sri Lanka. A total of 450 clinical samples from VL patients, 429 from PKDL patients, 47 from CL patients, and 322 from endemic healthy/healthy controls were under investigation to determine the diagnostic efficacy of RPA assay in comparison to real-time PCR. A comparative sensitivity of both methods was found where real-time PCR and RPA assay showed 96.86% (95% CI: 94.45–98.42) and 88.85% (95% CI: 85.08–91.96) sensitivity respectively in the diagnosis of VL cases. This new isothermal method also exhibited promising diagnostic sensitivity (93.50%) for PKDL cases, when a skin sample was used. Due to variation in the sequence of target amplicons, RPA assay showed comparatively lower sensitivity (55.32%) than that of real-time PCR in Sri Lanka for the diagnosis of CL cases. Except for India, the assay presented absolute specificity in the rest of the sites. Excellent concordance between the two molecular methods towards detection of leishmania DNA in clinical samples substantiates the application of RPA assay incorporated in a suitcase laboratory for point-of-need diagnosis of VL and PKDL in low resource endemic settings. However, further improvisation of the method is necessary for diagnosis of CL