Evaluation of the haematinic activity of Opuntia elatior Mill. fruit

Opuntia elatior, known as Nagaphani or Hathalo-thore belongs to the family Cactaceae. It is one of the Opuntia species used as medicine for various ailments due to its beneficial health-promoting properties. Fruits of Opuntia elatior have been advocated in anaemia, asthma, cough, inflammation, and gonorrhoea in Gujarat. The present study was planned to evaluate the hematinic effect of Opuntia elatior Mill. fruit on mercuric chloride (HgCl2) induced anaemia in rats. Opuntia elatior fruit Swarasa was administered to Charle’s foster albino rats for 30 consecutive days at the doses of 1.8 mL/kg and 3.6 mL/kg. The effects of both drugs were assessed on ponderal changes, haematological, serum biochemical, and histopathology of various organs. The fruit Swarasa showed significant increase in the haemoglobin content, serum ferritin level and serum TIBC level. The test drug at both dose levels produced adverse changes of mild intensity in liver, kidney and heart and reverted the disturbance in the cytoarchitecture of the spleen, thymus and lymph node. Test drug Opuntia elatior fruit Swarasa reversed anaemia induced by HgCl2 in a dose-dependent manner. The results support the traditional use of fruits in the treatment of anaemia

Enhanced project management tool

A system for managing a project that includes multiple tasks and a plurality of workers. Input information includes characterizations based upon a human model, a team model and a product model. Periodic reports, such as one or more of a monthly report, a task plan report, a schedule report, a budget report and a risk management report, are generated and made available for display or further analysis or collection into a customized report template. An extensible database allows searching for information based upon context and upon content. Seven different types of project risks are addressed, including non-availability of required skill mix of workers. The system can be configured to exchange data and results with corresponding portions of similar project analyses, and to provide user-specific access to specified information

System for Secure Integration of Aviation Data

The Aviation Data Integration System (ADIS) of Ames Research Center has been established to promote analysis of aviation data by airlines and other interested users for purposes of enhancing the quality (especially safety) of flight operations. The ADIS is a system of computer hardware and software for collecting, integrating, and disseminating aviation data pertaining to flights and specified flight events that involve one or more airline(s). The ADIS is secure in the sense that care is taken to ensure the integrity of sources of collected data and to verify the authorizations of requesters to receive data. Most importantly, the ADIS removes a disincentive to collection and exchange of useful data by providing for automatic removal of information that could be used to identify specific flights and crewmembers. Such information, denoted sensitive information, includes flight data (here signifying data collected by sensors aboard an aircraft during flight), weather data for a specified route on a specified date, date and time, and any other information traceable to a specific flight. The removal of information that could be used to perform such tracing is called "deidentification." Airlines are often reluctant to keep flight data in identifiable form because of concerns about loss of anonymity. Hence, one of the things needed to promote retention and analysis of aviation data is an automated means of de-identification of archived flight data to enable integration of flight data with non-flight aviation data while preserving anonymity. Preferably, such an automated means would enable end users of the data to continue to use pre-existing data-analysis software to identify anomalies in flight data without identifying a specific anomalous flight. It would then also be possible to perform statistical analyses of integrated data. These needs are satisfied by the ADIS, which enables an end user to request aviation data associated with de-identified flight data. The ADIS includes client software integrated with other software running on flight-operations quality-assurance (FOQA) computers for purposes of analyzing data to study specified types of events or exceedences (departures of flight parameters from normal ranges). In addition to ADIS client software, ADIS includes server hardware and software that provide services to the ADIS clients via the Internet (see figure). The ADIS server receives and integrates flight and non-flight data pertaining to flights from multiple sources. The server accepts data updates from authorized sources only and responds to requests from authorized users only. In order to satisfy security requirements established by the airlines, (1) an ADIS client must not be accessible from the Internet by an unauthorized user and (2) non-flight data as airport terminal information system (ATIS) and weather data must be displayed without any identifying flight information. ADIS hardware and software architecture as well as encryption and data display scheme are designed to meet these requirements. When a user requests one or more selected aviation data characteristics associated with an event (e.g., a collision, near miss, equipment malfunction, or exceedence), the ADIS client augments the request with date and time information from encrypted files and submits the augmented request to the server. Once the user s authorization has been verified, the server returns the requested information in de-identified form

Program Management Tool

The Program Management Tool (PMT) is a comprehensive, Web-enabled business intelligence software tool for assisting program and project managers within NASA enterprises in gathering, comprehending, and disseminating information on the progress of their programs and projects. The PMT provides planning and management support for implementing NASA programmatic and project management processes and requirements. It provides an online environment for program and line management to develop, communicate, and manage their programs, projects, and tasks in a comprehensive tool suite. The information managed by use of the PMT can include monthly reports as well as data on goals, deliverables, milestones, business processes, personnel, task plans, monthly reports, and budgetary allocations. The PMT provides an intuitive and enhanced Web interface to automate the tedious process of gathering and sharing monthly progress reports, task plans, financial data, and other information on project resources based on technical, schedule, budget, and management criteria and merits. The PMT is consistent with the latest Web standards and software practices, including the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) for exchanging data and the WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol for collaborative management of documents. The PMT provides graphical displays of resource allocations in the form of bar and pie charts using Microsoft Excel Visual Basic for Application (VBA) libraries. The PMT has an extensible architecture that enables integration of PMT with other strategic-information software systems, including, for example, the Erasmus reporting system, now part of the NASA Integrated Enterprise Management Program (IEMP) tool suite, at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The PMT data architecture provides automated and extensive software interfaces and reports to various strategic information systems to eliminate duplicative human entries and minimize data integrity issues among various NASA systems that impact schedules and planning

Compressing Aviation Data in XML Format

Design, operations and maintenance activities in aviation involve analysis of variety of aviation data. This data is typically in disparate formats making it difficult to use with different software packages. Use of a self-describing and extensible standard called XML provides a solution to this interoperability problem. XML provides a standardized language for describing the contents of an information stream, performing the same kind of definitional role for Web content as a database schema performs for relational databases. XML data can be easily customized for display using Extensible Style Sheets (XSL). While self-describing nature of XML makes it easy to reuse, it also increases the size of data significantly. Therefore, transfemng a dataset in XML form can decrease throughput and increase data transfer time significantly. It also increases storage requirements significantly. A natural solution to the problem is to compress the data using suitable algorithm and transfer it in the compressed form. We found that XML-specific compressors such as Xmill and XMLPPM generally outperform traditional compressors. However, optimal use of Xmill requires of discovery of optimal options to use while running Xmill. This, in turn, depends on the nature of data used. Manual disc0ver.y of optimal setting can require an engineer to experiment for weeks. We have devised an XML compression advisory tool that can analyze sample data files and recommend what compression tool would work the best for this data and what are the optimal settings to be used with a XML compression tool

A preliminary phyto-pharmacognostical evaluation of Opuntia elatior Mill. (Nagaphani or Hathalo-thore) fruit

In Gujarat, Opuntia elatior Mill., a member of Cactaceae family known as Nagaphani or Hathlo-thore has been reported for its traditional uses as a medicinal plant. It is used as remedy in different disease conditions like anaemia, asthma etc. by tribal of Gujarat state. A detailed pharmacognostical character and pharmaceutical analysis of its fruit is not reported still yet. An attempt has been made to study the macroscopic, microscopic, physicochemical parameters and HPTLC profile of its fruit following standard procedures. Results show in Transverse section of unripe fruit, presence of outer exocarp layer with rosette crystals, followed by mesocarp and inner endocarp. Transverse section of ripen fruits, shows presence of same characters as fresh unripe fruit except the presence of betacyanins in its mesocarp layer. Powder microscopy of mature fruit shows diagnostic characters like multicellular tri chomes, rosette crystals of calcium oxalate, coloring matter and starch grains. The ash value of O. elatior fruit   is 3.59 % w/w, pH - 5.27, total solid content - 10.83 %, viscosity - 5.11 and Specific gravity is 1.042. HPTLC study showed the presence of four and two spots in short and long UV respectively, among them, 0.04 and 0.97 are the common Rf value. These observed pharmacognostical, physicochemical parameters and HPTLC profile may be useful to establish the botanical standards for identification and standardization of O. elatior frui

Evaluation of the haematinic activity of <em>Opuntia elatior</em> Mill. fruit

39-46Opuntia elatior, known as Nagaphani or Hathalo-thore belongs to the family Cactaceae. It is one of the Opuntia species used as medicine for various ailments due to its beneficial health-promoting properties. Fruits of Opuntia elatior have been advocated in anaemia, asthma, cough, inflammation, and gonorrhoea in Gujarat. The present study was planned to evaluate the hematinic effect of Opuntia elatior Mill. fruit on mercuric chloride (HgCl2) induced anaemia in rats. Opuntia elatior fruit Swarasa was administered to Charle&rsquo;s foster albino rats for 30 consecutive days at the doses of 1.8 mL/kg and 3.6 mL/kg. The effects of both drugs were assessed on ponderal changes, haematological, serum biochemical, and histopathology of various organs. The fruit Swarasa showed significant increase in the haemoglobin content, serum ferritin level and serum TIBC level. The test drug at both dose levels produced adverse changes of mild intensity in liver, kidney and heart and reverted the disturbance in the cytoarchitecture of the spleen, thymus and lymph node. Test drug Opuntia elatior fruit Swarasa reversed anaemia induced by HgCl2 in a dose-dependent manner. The results support the traditional use of fruits in the treatment of anaemia

Agent Architecture for Aviation Data Integration System

This paper describes the proposed agent-based architecture of the Aviation Data Integration System (ADIS). ADIS is a software system that provides integrated heterogeneous data to support aviation problem-solving activities. Examples of aviation problem-solving activities include engineering troubleshooting, incident and accident investigation, routine flight operations monitoring, safety assessment, maintenance procedure debugging, and training assessment. A wide variety of information is typically referenced when engaging in these activities. Some of this information includes flight recorder data, Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS) reports, Jeppesen charts, weather data, air traffic control information, safety reports, and runway visual range data. Such wide-ranging information cannot be found in any single unified information source. Therefore, this information must be actively collected, assembled, and presented in a manner that supports the users problem-solving activities. This information integration task is non-trivial and presents a variety of technical challenges. ADIS has been developed to do this task and it permits integration of weather, RVR, radar data, and Jeppesen charts with flight data. ADIS has been implemented and used by several airlines FOQA teams. The initial feedback from airlines is that such a system is very useful in FOQA analysis. Based on the feedback from the initial deployment, we are developing a new version of the system that would make further progress in achieving following goals of our project

Aviation Data Integration System

During the analysis of flight data and safety reports done in ASAP and FOQA programs, airline personnel are not able to access relevant aviation data for a variety of reasons. We have developed the Aviation Data Integration System (ADIS), a software system that provides integrated heterogeneous data to support safety analysis. Types of data available in ADIS include weather, D-ATIS, RVR, radar data, and Jeppesen charts, and flight data. We developed three versions of ADIS to support airlines. The first version has been developed to support ASAP teams. A second version supports FOQA teams, and it integrates aviation data with flight data while keeping identification information inaccessible. Finally, we developed a prototype that demonstrates the integration of aviation data into flight data analysis programs. The initial feedback from airlines is that ADIS is very useful in FOQA and ASAP analysis

Predictive value of plasma N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide for early major adverse cardiac event following elective vascular interventions

Objective: Vascular interventions are associated with a substantial risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) in perioperative period. We aimed to analyze the predictive value of plasma N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) for early MACE following elective vascular intervention. Materials and Methods: We conducted a single-center, prospective, observational study at Jain Institute of Vascular Sciences, Bengaluru. One hundred and two patients undergoing elective vascular intervention were enrolled in the study. Results: A total of nine patients had MACE comprising seven acute coronary syndromes, one atrial fibrillation, and one congestive cardiac failure in perioperative period. Three patients had MACE preoperatively. Mean age was higher in MACE group (68 years vs. 62 years, P = 0.21). Receiver operator curve analysis demonstrated NT-ProBNP threshold cutoff> 1580 ng/ml and> 2020 ng/ml, pre- and post-operatively. In patients with MACE, mean plasma concentration of pre- and post-operative NT-proBNP was 13,293.34 ng/L and 5628.84 ng/L compared to non-MACE group of 664.60 ng/L and 818.75 ng/L, respectively. Positive and negative predictive values for pre- and post-operative NT-proBNP were 24%, 98.5% and 33%, 98.8%, respectively. Conclusion: Presence of hypertension and elevated pre- and post-operative NT-proBNP values is significantly associated with higher incidence of early MACE (30 days) and is not influenced by age, gender, and previous coronary artery disease. NT-proBNP can be considered for the quantification of perioperative cardiac risk in vascular surgery patients