Semi Quantitative Expression Analysis of Potential Cancer Biomarkers

A cancer biomarker refers to a substance or process that is indicative of the presence of cancer it may be a molecule secreted by a tumor or a specific response of the body to the presence of cancer. Background: The aim of the present study is to investigate the feasibility and potential of the molecules Cytokeratin 20, Cytokeratin 17, Cytokeratin 10 and Anillin as tumor specific markers to rapidly detect cancer. Materials and Methods: The expression of biomarkers was analyzed by preparing RNA and synthesized cDNA. Specific primers were synthesized for the biomarkers Cytokeratin 10, Cytokeratin 20 Cytokeratin 17 and Anillin and semi quantitative gene expression was carried out using mMLuv reverse transcriptase. Results: All the three biomarkers showed an enhanced expression compared with normal fibroblasts while the expression of cytokeratin 10 did not show much expression in HCT116 while Cytokeratin 20 and Anillin showed better expression in both cell lines. Conclusion: All the biomarkers showed comparatively good expression indicating the use of these genes as potential makers for detection of cancer

Husband's Alcohol Use, Intimate Partner Violence, and Family Maltreatment of Low-Income Postpartum Women in Mumbai, India.

Husbands' alcohol use has been associated with family-level stress and intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in India. Joint family systems are common in India and IPV often co-occurs with non-violent family maltreatment of wives (e.g., nutritional deprivation, deprivation of sleep, blocking access to health care). Alcohol use increases for some parents following the birth of a child. This study examined 1,038 postpartum women's reports of their husbands' alcohol use and their own experiences of IPV (by husband) and non-violent maltreatment from husbands and/or in-laws. We analyzed cross-sectional, quantitative data collected in 2008, from women (ages 15-35) seeking immunizations for their infants <6 months at three large urban health centers in Mumbai, India. Crude and adjusted logistic regression models estimated associations between the independent variable (husbands' past month use of alcohol) and two dependent variables (postpartum IPV and maltreatment). Overall, 15% of husbands used alcohol, ranging from daily drinkers (10%) to those who drank one to two times per week (54%). Prevalence of postpartum IPV and family maltreatment was 18% and 42%, respectively. Prevalence of IPV among women married to alcohol users was 27%. Most abused women's husbands always (27%) or sometimes (37%) drank during violent episodes. Risk for IPV increased with a man's increasing frequency of consumption. Women who lived with a husband who drank alcohol, relative to non-drinkers, were more likely to report postpartum IPV, aOR = 2.0, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [1.3, 3.1]. Husbands' drinking was marginally associated with increased risk for family maltreatment, aOR = 1.4, 95% CI = [1.0, 2.1]. Our findings suggest that men's alcohol use is an important risk factor for postpartum IPV and maltreatment. Targeted services for Indian women contending with these issues are implicated. Postpartum care offers an ideal opportunity to screen for IPV, household maltreatment, and other health risks, such as husband's use of alcohol. There is need to scale up proven successful interventions for reducing men's alcohol use and design strategies that provide at-risk women protection from alcohol-related IPV

Methane Emission Assessment from Indian Livestock and Its Role in Climate Change Using Climate Metrics

Indian livestock farming is one of the significant anthropogenic sources of methane (CH4) in the world. Here, CH4 emission from Indian livestock and climate change impact in terms of two climate metrics, global surface temperature change potential (GTP) and absolute GTP (AGTP), to assess the surface temperature changes for 20 and 100 year time frame have been studied. CH4 emission from Indian livestock was 15.3 Tg in 2012. GTP20 and GTP100 for livestock-related CH4 emission in India in 2012 were 1030 and 62 Tg CO2e, respectively. The study also illustrates that CH4 emissions can cause a surface temperature increase of up to 0.7–0.036 mK over the 20 and 100 year time periods, respectively. Thus, the negative climate change impact is global in nature, not only restricted to India. GTP and AGTP can be used in climate change impact study and as a more policy relevant tool

Maternal morbidity associated with violence and maltreatment from husbands and in-laws: findings from Indian slum communities.

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is linked to a broad range of negative maternal health outcomes. However, it is unclear whether IPV is directly related to poor maternal outcomes or whether IPV is a marker for other forms of chronic, mundane maltreatment of women that stem from the culture of gender inequity that also gives rise to IPV. To determine the prevalence of non-violent forms of gender-based household maltreatment by husbands and in-laws (GBHM), and violence from in-laws (ILV) and husbands (IPV) against women during the peripregnancy period (during and in the year prior to pregnancy); to assess relative associations of GBHM, ILV and IPV with maternal health.MethodsCross-sectional data were collected from women <6 months postpartum (n = 1,039, ages 15-35 years) seeking child immunization in Mumbai, India. Associations of IPV, ILV and GBHM during the peripregnancy period with maternal health (prenatal care in first trimester, no weight gain, pain during intercourse, high blood pressure, vaginal bleeding, premature rupture of membranes, premature birth) were evaluated.ResultsOne in three women (34.0 %) reported IPV, 4.8 % reported ILV, and 48.5 % reported GBHM during the peripregnancy period. After adjusting for other forms of abuse, IPV related to pain during intercourse (AOR = 1.79); ILV related to not receiving first trimester antenatal care (AOR = 0.49), and GBHM remained associated with premature rupture of membranes (AOR = 2.28), pain during intercourse (AOR = 1.60), and vaginal bleeding (AOR = 1.80).ConclusionAfter adjusting for ILV and IPV, peripregnancy GBHM remained significantly associated with multiple forms of maternal morbidity, suggesting that GBHM is a prevalent and reliable indicator of maternal health risk

A customized VGG19 network with concatenation of deep and handcrafted features for brain tumor detection

Brain tumor (BT) is one of the brain abnormalities which arises due to various reasons. The unrecognized and untreated BT will increase the morbidity and mortality rates. The clinical level assessment of BT is normally performed using the bio-imaging technique, and MRI-assisted brain screening is one of the universal techniques. The proposed work aims to develop a deep learning architecture (DLA) to support the automated detection of BT using two-dimensional MRI slices. This work proposes the following DLAs to detect the BT: (i) implementing the pre-trained DLAs, such as AlexNet, VGG16, VGG19, ResNet50 and ResNet101 with the deep-features-based SoftMax classifier; (ii) pre-trained DLAs with deep-features-based classification using decision tree (DT), k nearest neighbor (KNN), SVM-linear and SVM-RBF; and (iii) a customized VGG19 network with serially-fused deep-features and handcrafted-features to improve the BT detection accuracy. The experimental investigation was separately executed using Flair, T2 and T1C modality MRI slices, and a ten-fold cross validation was implemented to substantiate the performance of proposed DLA. The results of this work confirm that the VGG19 with SVM-RBF helped to attain better classification accuracy with Flair (>99%), T2 (>98%), T1C (>97%) and clinical images (>98%)

Autonomous Navigation with Collision Avoidance using ROS

 Simultaneous navigation and mapping is a modern mapping technique. The aim of SLAM is to develop 2D environment of a location while tracking the robot’s position. This paper aims to develop ROS enabled robot with SLAM features in order to avoid collisions and navigate autonomously. A world is simulated using Gazebo and visualized using a tool called Rviz. Autonomous navigation is achieved by mapping the environment and plotting the odometry. Particle filtering is the algorithm on which SLAM works. This helps in using the odometry values to find the probable path for the robot to move whilst avoiding collision

A supervised blood vessel segmentation technique for digital Fundus images using Zernike Moment based features

This paper proposes a new supervised method for blood vessel segmentation using Zernike moment-based shape descriptors. The method implements a pixel wise classification by computing a 11-D feature vector comprising of both statistical (gray-level) features and shape-based (Zernike moment) features. Also the feature set contains optimal coefficients of the Zernike Moments which were derived based on the maximum differentiability between the blood vessel and background pixels. A manually selected training points obtained from the training set of the DRIVE dataset, covering all possible manifestations were used for training the ANN-based binary classifier. The method was evaluated on unknown test samples of DRIVE and STARE databases and returned accuracies of 0.945 and 0.9486 respectively, outperforming other existing supervised learning methods. Further, the segmented outputs were able to cover thinner blood vessels better than previous methods, aiding in early detection of pathologies

Suzaku observation of IGR J16318-4848

We report on the first Suzaku observation of IGR J16318-4848, the most extreme example of a new group of highly absorbed X-ray binaries that have recently been discovered by the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory INTEGRAL. The Suzaku observation was carried out between 2006 August 14 and 17, with a net exposure time of 97 ks. The average X-ray spectrum of the source can be well described with a continuum model typical for neutron stars i.e., a strongly absorbed power law continuum with a photon index of 0.676(42) and an exponential cutoff at 20.5(6) keV. The absorbing column is 1.95(3)x10e24 cm-2. Consistent with earlier work, strong fluorescent emission lines of Fe Kalpha, Fe Kbeta, and Ni Kalpha are observed. Despite the large absorbing column, no Compton shoulder is seen in the lines, arguing for a non-spherical and inhomogeneous absorber. Seen at an average 5-60 keV absorbed flux of 3.4x10e-10 erg cm-2 s-1, the source exhibits significant variability on timescales of hours.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in A&

European Society of Gynaecological Oncology quality indicators for surgical treatment of cervical cancer

Background: optimizing and ensuring the quality of surgical care is essential to improve the management and outcome of patients with cervical cancer.To develop a list of quality indicators for surgical treatment of cervical cancer that can be used to audit and improve clinical practice. Methods: quality indicators were developed using a four-step evaluation process that included a systematic literature search to identify potential quality indicators, in-person meetings of an ad hoc group of international experts, an internal validation process, and external review by a large panel of European clinicians and patient representatives. Results: fifteen structural, process, and outcome indicators were selected. Using a structured format, each quality indicator has a description specifying what the indicator is measuring. Measurability specifications are also detailed to define how the indicator will be measured in practice. Each indicator has a target which gives practitioners and health administrators a quantitative basis for improving care and organizational processes. Discussion: implementation of institutional quality assurance programs can improve quality of care, even in high-volume centers. This set of quality indicators from the European Society of Gynaecological Cancer may be a major instrument to improve the quality of surgical treatment of cervical cancer

Impact of residual disease as a prognostic factor for survival in women with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer after primary surgery

BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer is the seventh most common cancer among women and a leading cause of death from gynaecological malignancies. Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most common type, accounting for around 90% of all ovarian cancers. This specific type of ovarian cancer starts in the surface layer covering the ovary or lining of the fallopian tube. Surgery is performed either before chemotherapy (upfront or primary debulking surgery (PDS)) or in the middle of a course of treatment with chemotherapy (neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) and interval debulking surgery (IDS)), with the aim of removing all visible tumour and achieving no macroscopic residual disease (NMRD). The aim of this review is to investigate the prognostic impact of size of residual disease nodules (RD) in women who received upfront or interval cytoreductive surgery for advanced (stage III and IV) epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). OBJECTIVES: To assess the prognostic impact of residual disease after primary surgery on survival outcomes for advanced (stage III and IV) epithelial ovarian cancer. In separate analyses, primary surgery included both upfront primary debulking surgery (PDS) followed by adjuvant chemotherapy and neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery (IDS). Each residual disease threshold is considered as a separate prognostic factor. SEARCH METHODS: We searched CENTRAL (2021, Issue 8), MEDLINE via Ovid (to 30 August 2021) and Embase via Ovid (to 30 August 2021). SELECTION CRITERIA: We included survival data from studies of at least 100 women with advanced EOC after primary surgery. Residual disease was assessed as a prognostic factor in multivariate prognostic models. We excluded studies that reported fewer than 100 women, women with concurrent malignancies or studies that only reported unadjusted results. Women were included into two distinct groups: those who received PDS followed by platinum-based chemotherapy and those who received IDS, analysed separately. We included studies that reported all RD thresholds after surgery, but the main thresholds of interest were microscopic RD (labelled NMRD), RD 0.1 cm to 1 cm (small-volume residual disease (SVRD)) and RD > 1 cm (large-volume residual disease (LVRD)). DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors independently abstracted data and assessed risk of bias. Where possible, we synthesised the data in meta-analysis. To assess the adequacy of adjustment factors used in multivariate Cox models, we used the 'adjustment for other prognostic factors' and 'statistical analysis and reporting' domains of the quality in prognosis studies (QUIPS) tool. We also made judgements about the certainty of the evidence for each outcome in the main comparisons, using GRADE. We examined differences between FIGO stages III and IV for different thresholds of RD after primary surgery. We considered factors such as age, grade, length of follow-up, type and experience of surgeon, and type of surgery in the interpretation of any heterogeneity. We also performed sensitivity analyses that distinguished between studies that included NMRD in RD categories of 0 cm) and NMRD was also important. SVRD versus NMRD in a PDS setting In PDS studies, most showed an increased risk of death in all RD groups when those with macroscopic RD (MRD) were compared to NMRD. Women who had SVRD after PDS had more than twice the risk of death compared to women with NMRD (hazard ratio (HR) 2.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.80 to 2.29; I2 = 50%; 17 studies; 9404 participants; moderate-certainty). The analysis of progression-free survival found that women who had SVRD after PDS had nearly twice the risk of death compared to women with NMRD (HR 1.88, 95% CI 1.63 to 2.16; I2 = 63%; 10 studies; 6596 participants; moderate-certainty). LVRD versus SVRD in a PDS setting When we compared LVRD versus SVRD following surgery, the estimates were attenuated compared to NMRD comparisons. All analyses showed an overall survival benefit in women who had RD < 1 cm after surgery (HR 1.22, 95% CI 1.13 to 1.32; I2 = 0%; 5 studies; 6000 participants; moderate-certainty). The results were robust to analyses of progression-free survival. SVRD and LVRD versus NMRD in an IDS setting The one study that defined the categories as NMRD, SVRD and LVRD showed that women who had SVRD and LVRD after IDS had more than twice the risk of death compared to women who had NMRD (HR 2.09, 95% CI 1.20 to 3.66; 310 participants; I2 = 56%, and HR 2.23, 95% CI 1.49 to 3.34; 343 participants; I2 = 35%; very low-certainty, for SVRD versus NMRD and LVRD versus NMRD, respectively). LVRD versus SVRD + NMRD in an IDS setting Meta-analysis found that women who had LVRD had a greater risk of death and disease progression compared to women who had either SVRD or NMRD (HR 1.60, 95% CI 1.21 to 2.11; 6 studies; 1572 participants; I2 = 58% for overall survival and HR 1.76, 95% CI 1.23 to 2.52; 1145 participants; I2 = 60% for progression-free survival; very low-certainty). However, this result is biased as in all but one study it was not possible to distinguish NMRD within the < 1 cm thresholds. Only one study separated NMRD from SVRD; all others included NMRD in the SVRD group, which may create bias when comparing with LVRD, making interpretation challenging. MRD versus NMRD in an IDS setting Women who had any amount of MRD after IDS had more than twice the risk of death compared to women with NMRD (HR 2.11, 95% CI 1.35 to 3.29, I2 = 81%; 906 participants; very low-certainty). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: In a PDS setting, there is moderate-certainty evidence that the amount of RD after primary surgery is a prognostic factor for overall and progression-free survival in women with advanced ovarian cancer. We separated our analysis into three distinct categories for the survival outcome including NMRD, SVRD and LVRD. After IDS, there may be only two categories required, although this is based on very low-certainty evidence, as all but one study included NMRD in the SVRD category. The one study that separated NMRD from SVRD showed no improved survival outcome in the SVRD category, compared to LVRD. Further low-certainty evidence also supported restricting to two categories, where women who had any amount of MRD after IDS had a significantly greater risk of death compared to women with NMRD. Therefore, the evidence presented in this review cannot conclude that using three categories applies in an IDS setting (very low-certainty evidence), as was supported for PDS (which has convincing moderate-certainty evidence)