Pharmacogenetics of Efavirenz and Neuropsychiatric Side Effects in Asian Populations

Efavirenz (EFV), a common antiretroviral drug, was the recommended first-line therapy for the treatment for human immunodeficiency virus infection until 2018. Though many high- income countries have transitioned to newer drugs due to their improved efficacy and low toxicity, EFV is still common in many low- and middle-income countries due to the high cost of alternatives. EFV is believed to cause central nervous system (CNS) toxicity and has been linked with neuropsychiatric side effects such as insomnia, hallucinations, headache, depression, and suicidality, though the causal relationship for depression and suicidality is controversial. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in CYP2B6— the gene that encodes the enzyme that metabolizes EFV— have been linked with elevated plasma EFV levels that may lead to neurotoxicity and subsequent side effects. This suggests a great inter-individual genetic variability that may put patients with certain variations at a greater risk of these side effects. Two prominent polymorphisms CYP2B6*6 (516 G\u3eT and 785 A\u3eG) and CYP2B6*9 (516 G\u3eT) are more common in Asians and Africans than in Europeans. The minor allele frequencies for CYP2B6*6 and CYP2B6*9 and genotype frequencies for CYP2B6*6 were analyzed to identify countries in Asia and surrounding regions with high prevalence of these genetic variations. The use of EFV, transition to alternative drugs, and the prevalence of CNS side effects in these countries were characterized. Countries with large occurrence of these SNPs were hypothesized to report frequent CNS adverse effects. These SNPs were the most prevalent in Papua New Guinea, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, though EFV-induced CNS effects in those with these SNPs were found only in Papua New Guinea and India. Studies that incorporate both genetic and external factors may shed light on the pharmacological outcomes of EFV

Fishing Industry Waste Water Treatment by Polyelectrolytes

The fishing industries consume huge amount of water and also produce tonnes of waste water from fish preservation and fish tanks. The fishing industry wastewater treatment can be done by sequence of treatment processes such as sedimentation, coagulation. Characteristics of fishing industry wastewater are the color is light brown, pH is 8, COD is 576.0mg/l, BOD3 is 185.0mg/l, VSS is 0.56mg/L, TSS is 110.5mg/l, conductivity is 39300.0µs/cm, oil and grease is 2.1mg/l, fecal coliform is >2400MPN, total phosphorous is 22.6mg/l, total nitrogen is 60.0mg/l, ammonical nitrogen i

Sensing Movement in Endotracheal Tubes

The objective of this project was to develop a device that would better secure endotracheal tubes (ETT), measure unwanted displacement, and notify caretakers when a dangerous amount of displacement has occurred. The project deliverables were as follows: a detailed design, a prototype, and a final demonstration of the prototype which shows successful ability to carry out the objectives stated above. The device needs to be small in size, expensive, flexible to allow for regular cleaning, yet strong enough to withstand stress. The final design consists of a small bite block holder and head straps to secure the device. The device also contains a sensor that detects voltage changes, which correlates to displacement, and sets off an auditory alarm when the ETT moves out of a pre-determined safety range. The prototype developed includes these attributes and provides an auditory and visual alarm in the event of unwanted ETT displacement. It is made of a flexible, durable, and non-toxic polyurethane material. Testing in the simulation laboratory revealed that the device was able to measure displacement accurately within a range of 2 mm and able to output an alarm when the ETT was moved out of the pre-determined safety range of 20 mm. In conclusion, the final prototype meets the objectives that were meant to be addressed in this project. Future plans include creating a wireless solution to increase portability, adding an exterior antimicrobial coating to decrease bacteria accumulation, and incorporating wall port electrical safety measures to ensure patient safety.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1072/thumbnail.jp

NeuralClothSim: Neural Deformation Fields Meet the Kirchhoff-Love Thin Shell Theory

Cloth simulation is an extensively studied problem, with a plethora of solutions available in computer graphics literature. Existing cloth simulators produce realistic cloth deformations that obey different types of boundary conditions. Nevertheless, their operational principle remains limited in several ways: They operate on explicit surface representations with a fixed spatial resolution, perform a series of discretised updates (which bounds their temporal resolution), and require comparably large amounts of storage. Moreover, back-propagating gradients through the existing solvers is often not straightforward, which poses additional challenges when integrating them into modern neural architectures. In response to the limitations mentioned above, this paper takes a fundamentally different perspective on physically-plausible cloth simulation and re-thinks this long-standing problem: We propose NeuralClothSim, i.e., a new cloth simulation approach using thin shells, in which surface evolution is encoded in neural network weights. Our memory-efficient and differentiable solver operates on a new continuous coordinate-based representation of dynamic surfaces, i.e., neural deformation fields (NDFs); it supervises NDF evolution with the rules of the non-linear Kirchhoff-Love shell theory. NDFs are adaptive in the sense that they 1) allocate their capacity to the deformation details as the latter arise during the cloth evolution and 2) allow surface state queries at arbitrary spatial and temporal resolutions without retraining. We show how to train our NeuralClothSim solver while imposing hard boundary conditions and demonstrate multiple applications, such as material interpolation and simulation editing. The experimental results highlight the effectiveness of our formulation and its potential impact.Comment: 27 pages, 22 figures and 3 tables; project page: https://4dqv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/NeuralClothSim

State of the Art in Dense Monocular Non-Rigid 3D Reconstruction

3D reconstruction of deformable (or non-rigid) scenes from a set of monocular 2D image observations is a long-standing and actively researched area of computer vision and graphics. It is an ill-posed inverse problem, since--without additional prior assumptions--it permits infinitely many solutions leading to accurate projection to the input 2D images. Non-rigid reconstruction is a foundational building block for downstream applications like robotics, AR/VR, or visual content creation. The key advantage of using monocular cameras is their omnipresence and availability to the end users as well as their ease of use compared to more sophisticated camera set-ups such as stereo or multi-view systems. This survey focuses on state-of-the-art methods for dense non-rigid 3D reconstruction of various deformable objects and composite scenes from monocular videos or sets of monocular views. It reviews the fundamentals of 3D reconstruction and deformation modeling from 2D image observations. We then start from general methods--that handle arbitrary scenes and make only a few prior assumptions--and proceed towards techniques making stronger assumptions about the observed objects and types of deformations (e.g. human faces, bodies, hands, and animals). A significant part of this STAR is also devoted to classification and a high-level comparison of the methods, as well as an overview of the datasets for training and evaluation of the discussed techniques. We conclude by discussing open challenges in the field and the social aspects associated with the usage of the reviewed methods.Comment: 25 page

Advances in Nanotechnology for Cancer Immunoprevention and Immunotherapy: A Review

One of the most effective cancer therapies, cancer immunotherapy has produced outstanding outcomes in the field of cancer treatment. However, the cost is excessive, which limits its applicability. A smart way to address this issue would be to apply the knowledge gained through immunotherapy to develop strategies for the immunoprevention of cancer. The use of cancer vaccines is one of the most popular methods of immunoprevention. This paper reviews the technologies and processes that support the advantages of cancer immunoprevention over traditional cancer immunotherapies. Nanoparticle drug delivery systems and nanoparticle-based nano-vaccines have been employed in the past for cancer immunotherapy. This paper outlines numerous immunoprevention strategies and how nanotechnology can be applied in immunoprevention. To comprehend the non-clinical and clinical evaluation of these cancer vaccines through clinical studies is essential for acceptance of the vaccines. © 2022 by the authors

Antiviral perspectives of economically important Indian medicinal plants and spices

Human respiratory diseases caused by viral infections leads to morbidity. Among infectious diseases, viral infections associated with the respiratory tract remain the primary reason for global deaths due to their transmissibility. Since immemorial, traditional Indian medicinal plants, their extracts, and several phytochemicals can treat various diseases. Sources for this review paper are data derived from a peer-reviewed journal that emphasizes the economic importance of medicinal plants. Several plant-based medicines have been reported to be effective against multiple viral infections, including the Human Adenovirus, Enterovirus, Influenza virus, Hepatitis virus, etc. This review emphasizes use of the Indian medicinal plants like as Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha, Winter Cherry), Moringa oleifera (Drumstick), Ocimum tenuiflorum (Tulsi), Azadirachta indica (Neem), Curcuma longa (Turmeric), Terminalia chebula (Chebulic Myrobalan), Punica granatum (Pomegranate) and the Indian household spices (ginger, garlic and black pepper). It further describes their secondary phytoconstituents extraction procedure, mode of action and the potential application to improve clinical outcomes of neutraceuticals against various viral infections. © 2022, Indian National Science Academy

Report from a symposium on catalyzing primary and secondary prevention of cancer in India

PurposeOral, breast, and cervical cancers are amenable to early detection and account for a third of India’s cancer burden. We convened a symposium of diverse stakeholders to identify gaps in evidence, policy, and advocacy for the primary and secondary prevention of these cancers and recommendations to accelerate these efforts. MethodsIndian and global experts from government, academia, private sector (health care, media), donor organizations, and civil society (including cancer survivors and patient advocates) presented and discussed challenges and solutions related to strategic communication and implementation of prevention, early detection, and treatment linkages.ResultsInnovative approaches to implementing and scaling up primary and secondary prevention were discussed using examples from India and elsewhere in the world. Participants also reflected on existing global guidelines and national cancer prevention policies and experiences.ConclusionsSymposium participants proposed implementation-focused research, advocacy, and policy/program priorities to strengthen primary and secondary prevention efforts in India to address the burden of oral, breast, and cervical cancers and improve survival

Navami Murali S's Quick Files

The Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity

The Tooth Betwixt: An Aesthetic Impediment – A Case of Mesiodens

The word ‘supernumerary’ means something which is present in excess of the normal or requisite number. Mesiodens are supernumerary teeth with a common prevalence in the maxillary midline. Given their high frequency, dentists should be aware of the signs and symptoms of mesiodens and the appropriate treatment indicated. The following case highlights the presence of a mesiodens in a 36-year-old male