Grain growth in metals

Imperial Users onl

KAYROTYPE OF SOL (CHANNA MARULIUS) FROM INDUS RIVER, PAKISTAN

ABSTRACT Sol (Channa marulius, family: Channidae, order: Perciformes) is an important fish species indigenous to Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, and has a commercial value, adapted to survive in low dissolved oxygen. Three populations (Indus, Indian and Thailand) appear isolated and significant difference between Indus and Indian population has appeared in mansural characters. Karyological studies on Channa marulius suggest a diploid number of 44 for the species but the Indian population and Thailand population are different in number of metacentric and telocentric chromosomes. Sol samples (n =7, 15-20 cm) were collected from Head Tounsa (river Indus) and their gill tissues were removed, torn apart and left in hypotonic solution, fixed and spread over a glass slide, stained with aceto-orcein and studied under microscope (100 X). Study of 45 well spread metaphase suggested a diploid number of 44, 8 metacentric having arm ratio of around 2 and 36 telocentric. Present population shares 2n number of 44 with the stocks of the species present in India and Thailand, yet is different from two other stocks in respect of chromosome morphology (Indian: 40 metacentric + 4 telocentric; Thailand: 4 metacentric + 4 submetacentric + 36 telocentric), suggesting intraspecific differences probably caused by isolation

Feasibility of Serverless Cloud Services for Disaster Management Information Systems

Serverless is the new generation of cloud services that supports the pay-per-use policy in true spirit by charging only for the execution time of the hosted code. Amazon introduced serverless service of Lambda in 2014 and it is consider as the most popular serverless cloud service till date. This paper focuses on the serverless cloud services of Lambda and elaborates the importance of Lambda based serverless cloud services for hosting the disaster management information systems (DMIS). We have identified two repeatedly occurring phases of the life cycle of a DMIS viz. low activity phase and high activity phase. Our findings state that serverless cloud services are well-suited for both of these phases of a DMIS. Serverless reduces the operational cost during the low activity phase by detaching the code from running containers and it improves the scalability during the high activity phase by quickly assigning the already available containers from the container pool. However, this all comes with the price of reduced QoS (Quality of Service) for initial requests after specific idle duration and our experimental results report the QoS degradation with respect to idle time for Lambda service

Intracranial Pressure Modulates Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emissions: A Proof-of-Principle Study

BACKGROUND: There is an important need to develop a noninvasive method for assessing intracranial pressure (ICP). We report a novel approach for monitoring ICP using cochlear-derived distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), which are affected by ICP. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that changes in ICP may be reflected by altered DPOAE responses via an associated change in perilymphatic pressure. METHODS: We measured the ICP and DPOAEs (magnitude and phase angle) during opening and closing in 20 patients undergoing lumbar puncture. RESULTS: We collected data on 18 patients and grouped them based on small (Hg), medium (5-11 mm Hg), or large (≥15 mm Hg) ICP changes. A permutation test was applied in each group to determine whether changes in DPOAEs differed from zero when ICP changed. We report significant changes in the DPOAE magnitudes and angles, respectively, for the group with the largest ICP changes and no changes for the group with the smallest changes; the group with medium changes had variable DPOAE changes. CONCLUSION: We report, for the first time, systematic changes in DPOAE magnitudes and phase in response to acute ICP changes. Future studies are warranted to further develop this new approach

Transforming ophthalmic education into virtual learning during COVID-19 pandemic : a global perspective

Objective: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has imposed measures of social distancing and barriers in delivery of "in person" education. Institutions, involved in training the next generation of ophthalmologists, are using alternative teaching methods to maintain the standard of education. Methods: We conducted a worldwide survey among physicians, who are actively involved in Ophthalmology-related education, between 3 and 14 April 2020. The expert survey, developed on the basis of literature search and focus group discussions, comprised 23 questions addressing the use of e-learning in Ophthalmology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: A total of 321 participants from both academic and non-academic institutions worldwide, with variable practice experience and expertise, completed the survey. Before the pandemic, the majority of participants used traditional training modalities, including lectures, grand rounds and journal clubs, and 48% did not use any e-learning. There was a statistically significant increase in the use of all e-learning alternatives during the pandemic (p < 0.001), associated mainly with the availability of e-learning facilities (p < 0.001) and the academic character of institutions (p < 0.001). Zoom\uae was recognized as the mostly used platform for virtual teaching. Although theoretical teaching may take place, the surgical training of residents/fellows was dramatically reduced. The latter was significantly associated with participants' perspectives about teaching practices (p < 0.001). Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic imposed great challenges in the educational field of Ophthalmology. The experience related to virtual training in Ophthalmology, gained during the pandemic, may change the traditional teaching practices in the world and provide new educational opportunities

The inflammatory microenvironment in colorectal neoplasia

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hot Property in New Zealand: Empirical Evidence of Housing Bubbles in the Metropolitan

Using recently developed statistical methods for testing and dating exhuberant behavior in asset prices we document evidence of episodic bubbles in the New Zealand property market over the past two decades. The results show clear evidence of a broad-based New Zealand housing bubble that began in 2003 and collapsed over mid 2007 to early 2008 with the onset of the worldwide recession and the financial crisis. New methods of analyzing market contagion are also developed and are used to examine spillovers from the Auckland property market to the other metropolitan centres. Evidence from the latest data reveals that the greater Auckland metropolitan area is currently experiencing a new property bubble that began in 2013. But there is no evidence yet of any contagion effect of this bubble on the other centres, in contrast to the earlier bubble over 2003-2008 for which there is evidence of transmission of the housing bubble from Auckland to the other centres. One of our primary conclusions is that the expensive nature of New Zealand real estate relative to potential earnings in rents is partly due to the sustained market exuberance that produced the broad based bubble in house prices during the last decade and that has continued through the most recent bubble experienced in the Auckland region since 2013