Pharmacognostical and Preliminary Phytochemical Studies of Leaves of \u3cem\u3eTridax procumbens\u3c/em\u3e L.

Pharmacognostical parameters for the leaves of Tridax procumbens L. were studied with the aim of drawing the pharmacopoeial standards for this species. Macroscopical and microscopical characters, physico-chemical constants, extractive values, fluorescence analysis of dry powder and its reaction after treatment with chemical reagents under visible light and UV light at 254 nm and 366 nm were studied. The determination of these characters will aid future investigators in their Pharmacological analyses of this species

SIMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ELLIPTICAL MICRO STRIP ANTENNA AT 750MHZ

In telecommunication industry, several types of antennas are used. The most common of which are the micro strip patch antennas (also known as printed antennas) or patch antenna. Patch antennas can be used in many types of communications links that may have varied requirements. A single patch antenna provides a maximum directive gain of around 6-9 dBi. We can design it to work at multiple frequencies. It is available in various shapes and configuration, most common of which is a rectangular micro strip antenna (RMSA).In this project we are designing single fed annular ring micro strip ntenna. The software used to model and simulate the micro strip patch antenna is ZeelandInc’s IE3D software. IE3D is a full-wave electromagnetic simulator based on the method of moments. It analyzes 3D and multilayer structures of general shapes. It has been widely used in the design of MICs, RFICs, patch antennas, wire antennas, and other RF/wireless antennas. An evaluation version of the software will be used to obtain the results

SRTGAN: Triplet Loss based Generative Adversarial Network for Real-World Super-Resolution

Many applications such as forensics, surveillance, satellite imaging, medical imaging, etc., demand High-Resolution (HR) images. However, obtaining an HR image is not always possible due to the limitations of optical sensors and their costs. An alternative solution called Single Image Super-Resolution (SISR) is a software-driven approach that aims to take a Low-Resolution (LR) image and obtain the HR image. Most supervised SISR solutions use ground truth HR image as a target and do not include the information provided in the LR image, which could be valuable. In this work, we introduce Triplet Loss-based Generative Adversarial Network hereafter referred as SRTGAN for Image Super-Resolution problem on real-world degradation. We introduce a new triplet-based adversarial loss function that exploits the information provided in the LR image by using it as a negative sample. Allowing the patch-based discriminator with access to both HR and LR images optimizes to better differentiate between HR and LR images; hence, improving the adversary. Further, we propose to fuse the adversarial loss, content loss, perceptual loss, and quality loss to obtain Super-Resolution (SR) image with high perceptual fidelity. We validate the superior performance of the proposed method over the other existing methods on the RealSR dataset in terms of quantitative and qualitative metrics.Comment: Affiliated with the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT), India and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. Presented at the 7th International Conference on Computer Vision and Image Processing (CVIP) 202

Electronics design and development of Near-Infrared Imager, Spectrometer and Polarimeter

NISP, a multifaceted near-infrared instrument for the upcoming 2.5m IR telescope at MIRO Gurushikhar, Mount Abu, Rajasthan, India is being developed at PRL, Ahmedabad. NISP will have wide (FOV = 10' x 10') field imaging, moderate (R=3000) spectroscopy and imaging polarimetry operating modes. It is designed based on 0.8 to 2.5 micron sensitive, 2048 X 2048 HgCdTe (MCT) array detector from Teledyne. Optical, Mechanical and Electronics subsystems are being designed and developed in-house at PRL. HAWAII-2RG (H2RG) detector will be mounted along with controlling SIDECAR ASIC inside LN2 filled cryogenic cooled Dewar. FPGA based controller for H2RG and ASIC will be mounted outside the Dewar at room temperature. Smart stepper motors will facilitate motion of filter wheels and optical components to realize different operating modes. Detector and ASIC temperatures are servo controlled using Lakeshore's Temperature Controller (TC) 336. Also, several cryogenic temperatures will be monitored by TC for health checking of the instrument. Detector, Motion and Temperature controllers onboard telescope will be interfaced to USB Hub and fiber-optic trans-receiver. Remote Host computer interface to remote end trans-receiver will be equipped with in-house developed GUI software to control all functionalities of NISP. Design and development aspects of NISP Electronics will be presented in this conference.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to SPIE Conference Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 202

Global age-sex-specific mortality, life expectancy, and population estimates in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1950–2021, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background: Estimates of demographic metrics are crucial to assess levels and trends of population health outcomes. The profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on populations worldwide has underscored the need for timely estimates to understand this unprecedented event within the context of long-term population health trends. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 provides new demographic estimates for 204 countries and territories and 811 additional subnational locations from 1950 to 2021, with a particular emphasis on changes in mortality and life expectancy that occurred during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic period. Methods: 22 223 data sources from vital registration, sample registration, surveys, censuses, and other sources were used to estimate mortality, with a subset of these sources used exclusively to estimate excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2026 data sources were used for population estimation. Additional sources were used to estimate migration; the effects of the HIV epidemic; and demographic discontinuities due to conflicts, famines, natural disasters, and pandemics, which are used as inputs for estimating mortality and population. Spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression (ST-GPR) was used to generate under-5 mortality rates, which synthesised 30 763 location-years of vital registration and sample registration data, 1365 surveys and censuses, and 80 other sources. ST-GPR was also used to estimate adult mortality (between ages 15 and 59 years) based on information from 31 642 location-years of vital registration and sample registration data, 355 surveys and censuses, and 24 other sources. Estimates of child and adult mortality rates were then used to generate life tables with a relational model life table system. For countries with large HIV epidemics, life tables were adjusted using independent estimates of HIV-specific mortality generated via an epidemiological analysis of HIV prevalence surveys, antenatal clinic serosurveillance, and other data sources. Excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 was determined by subtracting observed all-cause mortality (adjusted for late registration and mortality anomalies) from the mortality expected in the absence of the pandemic. Expected mortality was calculated based on historical trends using an ensemble of models. In location-years where all-cause mortality data were unavailable, we estimated excess mortality rates using a regression model with covariates pertaining to the pandemic. Population size was computed using a Bayesian hierarchical cohort component model. Life expectancy was calculated using age-specific mortality rates and standard demographic methods. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were calculated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered values from a 1000-draw posterior distribution. Findings: Global all-cause mortality followed two distinct patterns over the study period: age-standardised mortality rates declined between 1950 and 2019 (a 62·8% [95% UI 60·5–65·1] decline), and increased during the COVID-19 pandemic period (2020–21; 5·1% [0·9–9·6] increase). In contrast with the overall reverse in mortality trends during the pandemic period, child mortality continued to decline, with 4·66 million (3·98–5·50) global deaths in children younger than 5 years in 2021 compared with 5·21 million (4·50–6·01) in 2019. An estimated 131 million (126–137) people died globally from all causes in 2020 and 2021 combined, of which 15·9 million (14·7–17·2) were due to the COVID-19 pandemic (measured by excess mortality, which includes deaths directly due to SARS-CoV-2 infection and those indirectly due to other social, economic, or behavioural changes associated with the pandemic). Excess mortality rates exceeded 150 deaths per 100 000 population during at least one year of the pandemic in 80 countries and territories, whereas 20 nations had a negative excess mortality rate in 2020 or 2021, indicating that all-cause mortality in these countries was lower during the pandemic than expected based on historical trends. Between 1950 and 2021, global life expectancy at birth increased by 22·7 years (20·8–24·8), from 49·0 years (46·7–51·3) to 71·7 years (70·9–72·5). Global life expectancy at birth declined by 1·6 years (1·0–2·2) between 2019 and 2021, reversing historical trends. An increase in life expectancy was only observed in 32 (15·7%) of 204 countries and territories between 2019 and 2021. The global population reached 7·89 billion (7·67–8·13) people in 2021, by which time 56 of 204 countries and territories had peaked and subsequently populations have declined. The largest proportion of population growth between 2020 and 2021 was in sub-Saharan Africa (39·5% [28·4–52·7]) and south Asia (26·3% [9·0–44·7]). From 2000 to 2021, the ratio of the population aged 65 years and older to the population aged younger than 15 years increased in 188 (92·2%) of 204 nations. Interpretation: Global adult mortality rates markedly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, reversing past decreasing trends, while child mortality rates continued to decline, albeit more slowly than in earlier years. Although COVID-19 had a substantial impact on many demographic indicators during the first 2 years of the pandemic, overall global health progress over the 72 years evaluated has been profound, with considerable improvements in mortality and life expectancy. Additionally, we observed a deceleration of global population growth since 2017, despite steady or increasing growth in lower-income countries, combined with a continued global shift of population age structures towards older ages. These demographic changes will likely present future challenges to health systems, economies, and societies. The comprehensive demographic estimates reported here will enable researchers, policy makers, health practitioners, and other key stakeholders to better understand and address the profound changes that have occurred in the global health landscape following the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and longer-term trends beyond the pandemic

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Comparative study of efficacy of standard kshar sutra and udumber ksheer sutra in the management of Naadi Vrana (pilonidal sinus)

Background: The term Naadi Vrana is meaning sinus. Its classification and management including various local and systemic measures are the main objectives of the classical text. Sinus is a granulation tissue-lined blind channel that extends from an epithelial surface into the surrounding tissues. Sinus means “Hollow” or  “A bay”(Latin). There are 8 types of Naadi Vrana like Vaatik naadi, Paitik naadi, Kaphaj naai, Vaat-Pitaj naadi, Pit-Kaphaj naadi, Vaat-Kaphaj  naadi, Sannipatik naadi and Aagantuja naadi. The prevalence of pilonidal illness is estimated to be around 26 per 100,000 people. The incidence rate of pilonidal disease is approximately 0.7%. Objective: To study the efficacy of Standard Kshar Sutra & Udumber ksheer sutra in the management of Naadi Vrana (Pilonidal Sinus). Material & Method: The present study is designed as a Randomized clinical trial  in which 36 patients will be enrolled. Sutra will be applied in Naadi Vrana (Pilonidal Sinus). Assessment will be done 0th, 7th day, 14thday, 21st day and 28th day. Result:- The changes are expected to be observed in subjective parameters with objective parameters in the Healing of Naadi Vrana (Pilonidal Sinus)

Studies on equilibrium and kinetics of ACRY Red 4G removal from aqueous solutions using low cost adsorbents

425-429Applications of low cost adsorbents have been investigated as a replacement for the current expensive methods of reducing COD and colours from dyes/intermediate industrial wastewaters. Presently, PAC (powdered activated charcoal) is widely used in the industries. However, it is costly. Hence, other options have been explored which are low in cost. Effective adsorbents have been developed from bagasse fly ash, thermal fly ash, rice husk, jute thread and sawdust and successfully employed for the removal of dye, ACRY red 4G from aqueous solutions. Factors influencing the adsorption process, e.g., pH, contact time, adsorbent doses and adsorbent particle size are investigated. The experimental data fits well to the second-order kinetic model, which indicates that the chemical sorption is the rate-limiting step. A continuous method for removal of ACRY red 4G from industrial wastewater without prior treatment using all solid adsorbents such as bagasse fly ash, thermal fly ash, rice husk, jute thread and sawdust has also been proposed. An important aspect of the proposed method is that the removal is performed at a pH range in which the dye ACRY red 4G undergo an adsorption process, making the method useful for wastewater treatment