A Tribute to Franklin Shuler, M.D., Ph.D., C.I.M.E. (1967-2021)

Dr. Franklin Shuler was a well-known Orthopaedic Surgeon amongst Marshall Health. He made breakthroughs in research, was a phenomenal mentor, and took care of his community and family. For 4 years, Dr. Shuler fought HLH, a rare autoimmune disorder, that eventually took his life on January 5, 2020. He made his mark at the West Virginia School of Medicine being the first student to graduate with an M.D. and Ph. D with honors. Additionally, he was prestigious in research with accepted publications for 11 consecutive years. Dr. Shuler took pride in his community as well as medical student education as he gave time to the local news station, did journal reviews, and mentored medical students. He left a prominent mark on the lives of others, medicine, and research, and will be dearly missed

Treatment of dorsal wrist ganglia by transfixation technique

Background: Ganglion is one of the common lesions seen in minor surgical practice. Treatment of dorsal wrist ganglia varies from simple reassurance to excision and advanced endoscopic excision. Irrespective of the treatment modality, recurrence is a common problem.Materials and Methods: This study evaluates results of 40 wrist ganglia treated by using the transfixation technique.Results: Out of 40 cases included in this study 38 were completely cured of the symptoms giving a success rate of 95 percent, recurrence was seen in one patient and skin necrosis secondary to tight gauze piece was seen in one patient.Discussion: Comparing with other modalities this method is cost-effective, less time consuming, minimally invasive, low rate of recurrence, and can be carried out under local anesthesia, and does not require any special instrument and an easy-to-learn technique

Human Detection in Video Surveillance System

Object detection is a crucial part in today’s video surveillance systems. Many methods have evolved over the years that include Background Subtraction at the pinnacle. Background subtraction is a technique in which the video is segmented in multiple frames. A base frame called as “Background” is used to subtract another frame from it to detect “Foreground”. Motion–based and shape-based algorithms boost the Background subtraction method. The multiple objects detection technique used in surveillance system uses Support Vector Machine (SVM) to detect and classify the different objects. In this project, study proposes a novel object detection and its classification using Support Vector Machine (SVM) which is used to differentiate objects according to the set of points on the objects. The algorithm then aims at the classification of these key-points, namely at discriminating between the points which belongs to objects and all the others, by means of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. At the end of the procedure, the objects present inside the scene are identified by analyzing at the key-points previously classified as specific object points. It begins with a feature extraction process from which a set of consistent key-points is identified. Being able to identify specific objects or a particular class of objects in an image can provide several advantages and can open the door to the development of various interesting applications. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.16048

Stapedotomy and its effect on hearing – our experience with 54 cases

Introduction: This study reviews the cases of stapedotomy and evaluates its effectiveness at improving hearing loss in patients with otosclerosis.Materials and methods: Retrospective review of patients’ records who had clinical and audiometric diagnosis of otosclerosis from January to December 2012Results: A total of 54 stapedotomy surgeries (52 unilateral and 1 bilateral surgeries) were received. Average post-operative ABG for 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 KHz showed that 61.1% had complete closure of ABG ( ABG < 10 dB) compared with 1.6% preoperatively and 85.2% had closure of ABG to within 20dB compared with 4.7% preoperatively (t – 13.89, p = 0.000). More than 94% had hearing improvement and 81.5% had ABG closure greater than 10 dB postoperatively (mean gain 23.38 ± 12.37, t = 13.89, p = 0.000). A total of 13% complications were recorded with TM perforation (5.6%) being the commonest complication.Conclusion: Stapedotomy is an effective surgical procedure for the treatment of otosclerosis which leads to improvement in patients’ quality of life. A favorable hearing outcome can be obtained by the combination of experienced hands with minimal surgical trauma and appropriate surgical technique.Keywords: Otosclerosis, Stapedotomy, conductive hearing loss, air-bone ga

Bilateral acute Ocular Ischemic Syndrome following head and neck radiation

Previous literature has established a clear correlation between radiation therapy (RT) to the head and neck leading to aggressive atherosclerosis of the carotid arteries and subsequent increased risk for ischemic stroke. Stenosis of carotid arteries can lead to Ocular Ischemic syndrome (OIS). We present a case of acute bilateral OIS following head and neck RT for left tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in a 64 year-old Caucasian male. Routine large vessel cerebrovascular screening following head and neck radiotherapy should be considered as a means of potentially mitigating future stroke risk through initiation of medical therapy and interventional modalities as a means of primary prevention. In addition to large vessel screening by carotid duplex ultrasound, it may also be pertinent to consider further evaluation with more detailed medium and small vessel imaging through CT angiography in select cases

Direct torque control scheme for a six-phase induction motor with reduced torque ripple

This paper presents an improved direct torque control (DTC) method for an asymmetrical six-phase induction motor using a two-level six-phase inverter. As is well-known, a simple extension of three-phase direct torque control technique to an asymmetrical six-phase motor, using large vectors only, introduces significant current harmonics of the order 6n±1 (n = 1,3,5,…), which are mapped into the non-flux/torque producing (xy) plane. These harmonics cause only losses in the motor winding as they do not take part in torque production. Hence a number of different improved DTC techniques have been developed in the past for multiphase motor drives. The paper takes one such DTC method as the starting point and improves it further by using the concept of virtual voltage vectors. Developed vector selection algorithm, based on two virtual voltage vectors, requires the information on position of the flux in the auxiliary (xy) subspace and provides stator current quality commensurate with the currently available best DTC algorithm for six-phase drives. However, use of two virtual voltage vectors enables a substantial reduction of the torque ripple, which is achieved by means of a five-level torque comparator. Extensive experimentation is performed and it is shown that the reduction of the current harmonics is in essence almost the same as in another recently developed DTC scheme, based on the use of a single virtual voltage vector. However, the achieved torque ripple reduction, which is verified experimentally, makes the scheme superior when compared to the existing approaches. At the same time, developed scheme retains qualities of conventional DTC schemes, such as simple structure and fast response. Its additional beneficial feature is the easiness of implementation

Analysis and Design of Methods for Condition Monitoring of Capacitors in Multilevel Converters

Multi-level converters are an important class of power electronics based systems that enable seamless conversion of electrical power from one form to another. Due to its distinct merits, it finds a vast scope of application in the fields such as renewable energy, electrical power transmission, adjustable speed drives, uninterrupted power supplies and custom power devices. These merits often come at a cost of increased complexity, higher number of power semiconductor devices and higher number of energy storage elements. Multi-level converters generates staircase waveform by use of high density capacitor banks. These capacitor banks are often subject to failure due to vaporization of electrolyte forming weakest link in reliability context. This thesis addresses reliability issue by proposing an online condition monitoring method for a three-level neutral point clamped multi-level converter which can be easily integrated with existing control methods. The proposed method provides an online estimate of existing capacitance in DC-link and helps increase in reliability in terms of preventive maintenance. The validity of proposed technique is obtained by verification of the method on a 3KVA laboratory developed experimental prototype. It also addresses reliability by developing tool in terms of analytical expressions which can be used as a ready reckoner for proper design of capacitor bank employed in five-level active neutral point clamped multi-level converter. Results from this developed tool are quantitatively verified with the results obtained from converter models developed over MATLAB Simulink environment confirming their accuracy

A Review Paper on Improving Security of ATM System

Automated Teller Machine (ATM) is an expedient way to access a bank account from anywhere and at any time to perform transactions like cash withdrawal, make deposits & transfer of funds. The ATM has become insecure due to tremendous increase in the number of criminals and their activities. ATM systems today use an access card and Personal Identification Number (PIN) for identity verification. In this paper, security of ATM has been improved by using an embedded system with three levels of securities. First level is access card with PIN; second level is biometric technique and third is One Time Password (OTP). The biometric that we have used is fingerprint. A tilt sensor is also used to alert about the robbery of cash from the ATM. The main motive of these techniques is to diminish and stop the attacks on ATM. The development of such an ATM system would protect consumers and financial institutions from intruders and thieves. In addition to these, the system allows only one nominee user to access the account instead of the main user in case of emergency

Implementing Quality by Design-A methodical approach in the RP-HPLC method development process

The concept of quality by design (QbD) has recently been adopted for the development of pharmaceutical processes to ensure a predefined product quality. Focus on applying the QbD concept to analytical methods has increased as it is fully integrated within pharmaceutical processes and especially in the process control strategy. Quality by design (QbD) refers to the achievement of certain predictable quality with desired and predetermined specifications. The QbD based method development helps in generating a design space and operating space with knowledge of all method performance characteristics and limitations and successful method robustness within the operating space. A very useful component of QbD is the understanding of factors and their interaction effects by a desired set of experiments. For the purpose of QbD for HPLC methods, robustness and ruggedness should be verified early in the method development stage to ensure method performance over the lifetime of the product. Quality-by-Design principles are applied to build in a more scientific and risk-based multi-factorial approach to the development and validation of analytical methods using HPL