A comparative analytic study of knowledge, attitude and practice of breast feeding in primi and multipara women at a tertiary care centre in Gujarat, India

Background: Mother’s milk undoubtedly represents the best nourishment for the child during first months of life. The benefits of breastfeeding (BF) specially, exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), are well established. No artificial feed can replace breast milk, its specific nutrients and protection against diseases. All women should be encouraged to exclusively breastfeed their infants up to 6 months of age and thereafter to continue along with appropriate and adequate complementary foods, for up to 2 years of age.Methods: In the present study, we aimed to study and to compare knowledge, attitude and the feeding practices in a primi and multi para at tertiary care centre. The descriptive study was conducted in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of Government Medical College and Hospital, Rajkot, Gujarat, India. Women were interviewed personally with the help of a fixed questionnaire regarding their knowledge attitude and feeding practices.Results: In the present study, we aimed to study and to compare knowledge, attitude and the feeding practices in a primi and multi para at tertiary care centre. The descriptive study was conducted in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of Government Medical College and Hospital, Rajkot, Gujarat, India. Women were interviewed personally with the help of a fixed questionnaire regarding their knowledge attitude and feeding practices.Conclusions: Efforts need to be made to help mother to initiate feeding early specially in caesarean section. Women need to be made aware of benefits of breast feeding and proper techniques. Health care providers and nursing staff should be encouraged to actively participate in proper counselling and training of mothers.

A retrospective study of 100 cases of ectopic pregnancy: clinical presentation, site of ectopic and diagnosis evaluation

Background: Over the last few decades, the incidence of ectopic pregnancy has increased almost to the extent of an epidemic disease. Ectopic pregnancy is one of the commonest acute abdominal emergencies. Ectopic pregnancy remains the leading cause of maternal deaths in early pregnancy. The aim of the study was the clinical presentations, ultra sound features and diagnostic difficulties of all cases of ectopic pregnancy.Methods: This is a retrospective study conducted at Government Medical College and Hospital, Rajkot from January 2013 to June 2016, in the three and half year study period, there were a total of 100 ectopic pregnancies.Results: Most common symptom in our study was lower abdominal pain, in 90% cases. Amenorrhea was present in 100 cases, whereas vaginal bleeding in 48 cases. Nausea, vomiting observed in 26% of patients, cervical tenderness in 48%, and adnexal tenderness in 40% while shock was observed in 10% of patients.Conclusions: Ampullary part of the fallopian tube is the most common site of ectopic pregnancy observed during our study. Complex adnexal mass was the most common finding on ultrasound. Surgical management by laparotomy and salpingectomy continues to be the preferred mode of management of ectopic pregnancy in our institution

Collaborative Mapping of Archaeological Sites using multiple UAVs

UAVs have found an important application in archaeological mapping. Majority of the existing methods employ an offline method to process the data collected from an archaeological site. They are time-consuming and computationally expensive. In this paper, we present a multi-UAV approach for faster mapping of archaeological sites. Employing a team of UAVs not only reduces the mapping time by distribution of coverage area, but also improves the map accuracy by exchange of information. Through extensive experiments in a realistic simulation (AirSim), we demonstrate the advantages of using a collaborative mapping approach. We then create the first 3D map of the Sadra Fort, a 15th Century Fort located in Gujarat, India using our proposed method. Additionally, we present two novel archaeological datasets recorded in both simulation and real-world to facilitate research on collaborative archaeological mapping. For the benefit of the community, we make the AirSim simulation environment, as well as the datasets publicly available

A study on active management of third stage of labour as per WHO guidelines: efficacy and complications

Background: the objective of the study was to evaluate efficacy and complications of AMTSL as per WHO guidelines.Methods: A total of 100 low risk patients assigned randomly at obstetrics department, P.D.U. medical college, Rajkot. Hundred women received i.m. oxytocin 10 IU at the delivery of anterior shoulder of the baby, received uterine massage and delivery of placenta by controlled cord traction and blood loss is measured.Results: Mean blood loss is 119 ml. One case had blood loss >500 ml. Mean duration of third stage of labour is 5.16 minutes. Mean time taken by uterus to contract was 3.8 minutes.Conclusions: AMTSL must be employed for prevention of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) as advised by W.H.O. AMTSL as a routine protocol significantly brings down incidence of PPH

CGGBP1-dependent CTCF-binding sites restrict ectopic transcription

Binding sites of the chromatin regulator protein CTCF function as important landmarks in the human genome. The recently characterized CTCF-binding sites at LINE-1 repeats depend on another repeat-regulatory protein CGGBP1. These CGGBP1-dependent CTCF-binding sites serve as potential barrier elements for epigenetic marks such as H3K9me3. Such CTCF-binding sites are associated with asymmetric H3K9me3 levels as well as RNA levels in their flanks. The functions of these CGGBP1-dependent CTCF-binding sites remain unknown. By performing targeted studies on candidate CGGBP1-dependent CTCF-binding sites cloned in an SV40 promoter-enhancer episomal system we show that these regions act as inhibitors of ectopic transcription from the SV40 promoter. CGGBP1-dependent CTCF-binding sites that recapitulate their genomic function of loss of CTCF binding upon CGGBP1 depletion and H3K9me3 asymmetry in immediate flanks are also the ones that show the strongest inhibition of ectopic transcription. By performing a series of strand-specific reverse transcription PCRs we demonstrate that this ectopic transcription results in the synthesis of RNA from the SV40 promoter in a direction opposite to the downstream reporter gene in a strand-specific manner. The unleashing of the bidirectionality of the SV40 promoter activity and a breach of the transcription barrier seems to depend on depletion of CGGBP1 and loss of CTCF binding proximal to the SV40 promoter. RNA-sequencing reveals that CGGBP1-regulated CTCF-binding sites act as barriers to transcription at multiple locations genome-wide. These findings suggest a role of CGGBP1-dependent binding sites in restricting ectopic transcription.Peer reviewe

A five years retrospective analytic study of maternal deaths at tertiary care centre, Gujarat, India

Background: Maternal mortality is one of the major challenges which face the developing countries throughout the world. The aim of the study is to assess the causes of maternal mortality at P.D.U. Medical College, and to identify the avoidable ones.Methods: Data were collected from records of patients who presented to and/or delivered at P.D.U. Medical College between 2011 and 2015. Only cases of maternal mortality were included in this study. In our study, we found 120 maternal deaths at our hospital between 2011 and 2015.Results: We found that the indirect causes of maternal mortality accounted for 29.3% of all mortalities. The leading cause of death in the 5 years was uncontrollable postpartum haemorrhage (23.3%), preeclampsia with its complications (15.8%), Anemia (14.1%), Abruption placentae 12.5% and Septicaemia 5% .Direct maternal deaths accounted for 70.7%.Conclusions: Preeclampsia and PPH, as well as their complications are the leading causes of death in one of the biggest tertiary care university hospitals in Egypt. However, there are other important avoidable predisposing factors that should be dealt with including lack of patient education, delayed transfer from other hospitals, and substandard practice

Chimeric chromosome landscapes of human somatic cell cultures show dependence on stress and regulation of genomic repeats by CGGBP1

Peer reviewe

A retrospective study of 100 cases of Eclampsia: perinatal outcomes

Background: Eclampsia is associated with devastating maternal and foetal complications. Eclampsia is a major cause of maternal morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Evaluation of factors contributing to occurrence of eclampsia and death of eclamptic mother is of paramount importance. The aim of the study was to determine the perinatal mortality rate in eclamptic women. To assess the perinatal outcome with respect to time between first convulsion and delivery, time of treatment and delivery .To assess the perinatal outcome and mode of delivery. In this study we have tried to know the relationship between maternal blood group and eclampsia. Methods: A retrospective study of 100 cases of eclampsia was done in P.D.U. Medical College, Rajkot. Pregnant woman diagnosed as eclampsia during this period were included. The events and outcome of mother and fetus were recorded and analyzed.Results: Around 60% of patients were primipara and 70% patients were from rural area. On evaluation of background characteristics, 65 patients were not booked, 48% patients were hypertensive and 40% were normotensive. Out of 14 maternal deaths, five had cerebral haemorrhage, 3 had pulmonary edema, 3 had renal failure and 2 developed PPH.Conclusions: Majority of the patients were unbooked and young and primigravida. Fifteen percent of eclamptic women required cesarean delivery. Most common cause for neonatal death was prematurity and its attendant complications

LiDAR-guided object search and detection in Subterranean Environments

Detecting objects of interest, such as human survivors, safety equipment, and structure access points, is critical to any search-and-rescue operation. Robots deployed for such time-sensitive efforts rely on their onboard sensors to perform their designated tasks. However, as disaster response operations are predominantly conducted under perceptually degraded conditions, commonly utilized sensors such as visual cameras and LiDARs suffer in terms of performance degradation. In response, this work presents a method that utilizes the complementary nature of vision and depth sensors to leverage multi-modal information to aid object detection at longer distances. In particular, depth and intensity values from sparse LiDAR returns are used to generate proposals for objects present in the environment. These proposals are then utilized by a Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera system to perform a directed search by adjusting its pose and zoom level for performing object detection and classification in difficult environments. The proposed work has been thoroughly verified using an ANYmal quadruped robot in underground settings and on datasets collected during the DARPA Subterranean Challenge finals.Comment: 6 pages, 5 Figures, 2 Tables, conference: IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR-2022), Seville, Spai