Congenital unilateral hydrocele: a sonographic finding

Foetal hydrocoele is a condition diagnosed in utero in male foetus. It is characterised by a half-moon fluid image around the testis. We describe a case of ultrasound diagnosis of hydrocele in a woman at 35 weeks of gestation. Diagnosis was confirmed at birth, distinguishing this from the transient cases usually encountered. This finding during a routine obstetrics scan further highlights the relevance of ultrasound to obstetricians and neonatologists.Keywords: Foetus, congenital, hydrocoele, testis, ultrasoun

Dovetailing of Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management: An Integrative Framework

The rapid advancement in Information and Communication Technology is driving a revolutionary change in the way organizations do business. The fast growing capabilities of both generating and collecting data has generated an imperative need for new techniques and tools that can intelligently and automatically transform the processed data into valuable information and knowledge for effective decision making. Business intelligence (BI) plays an important role extracting valuable information and discovering the hidden patterns in internal as well as external sources of data. The main purpose of the BI is to improve the knowledge with information that allows managers to make effective decisions to achieve organizational objectives. However majority of organizational knowledge is in unstructured form or in the minds of its employees. On the other hand, Knowledge Management (KM) encompasses both tacit and explicit knowledge to enhance s the organizations performance by providing collaborative tools to learn, create and share the knowledge within the organization. Therefore, it is imperative for the organizations to integrate BI with KM. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of integration of BI with KM and provide a framework to integrate BI and KM. Keywords: Business Intelligence (BI), Knowledge Management (KM), Scorecard, Dashboard, ETL, Data Mining, OLAP, Tacit Knowledge, Explicit Knowledg

A Quick Review of On-Disk Layout of Some Popular Disk File Systems

Disk file systems are being researched since the inception of first magnetic disk in 1956 by IBM. As such, many good disk file system designs have been drafted and implemented. Every file system design addressed a problem at the time of its development and efficiently mitigated it. The augmented or new designs rectified the flaws in previous designs or provided a new concept in file system design. As such, there are many file systems that have been successfully d in operating systems. Among these designs, some file systems have made an influential impact on the file system design because of their capability to cope up with change in hardware technology and/or user requirements or because of their innovation in file system ign or because time favored them which allowed them to find space in popular operating systems. In this paper, we vide a quick review of on-disk layout of some popular disk file systems across many popular platforms like Windows, Linu

IO Bound Property: A System Perspective Evaluation

File systems have been mostly benchmarked as per the application perspective. This approach hides all the underlying complexities of the system including the actual I/O being done with the secondary storage device like magnetic disk. The IO bound property of a file system is necessarily to be evaluated because the most dominant performance limiting factor of a file system is its I/O operation with secondary storage device. This IO bound property of file system dictates the quantity and frequency of IO that a file system does with secondary storage device. In this paper, we argue system perspective of file system benchmarks and develop a benchmark to evaluate some common disk file systems for IO bound property. The goal of this paper is to better understand the behavior of file systems and unveil the low level complexities faced by file systems

Vaccines for preventing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) diarrhoea (Review)

Background Infection with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) bacteria is a common cause of diarrhoea in adults and children in developing countries and is a major cause of 'travellers' diarrhoea' in people visiting or returning from endemic regions. A killed whole cell vaccine (Dukoral®), primarily designed and licensed to prevent cholera, has been recommended by some groups to prevent travellers' diarrhoea in people visiting endemic regions. This vaccine contains a recombinant B subunit of the cholera toxin that is antigenically similar to the heat labile toxin of ETEC. This review aims to evaluate the clinical efficacy of this vaccine and other vaccines designed specifically to protect people against diarrhoea caused by ETEC infection. Objectives To evaluate the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of vaccines for preventing ETEC diarrhoea. Search methods We searched the Cochrane Infectious Disease Group Specialized Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, and http://clinicaltrials.gov up to December 2012. Selection criteria Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs comparing use of vaccines to prevent ETEC with use of no intervention, a control vaccine (either an inert vaccine or a vaccine normally given to prevent an unrelated infection), an alternative ETEC vaccine, or a different dose or schedule of the same ETEC vaccine in healthy adults and children living in endemic regions, intending to travel to endemic regions, or volunteering to receive an artificial challenge of ETEC bacteria. Data collection and analysis Two authors independently assessed each trial for eligibility and risk of bias. Two independent reviewers extracted data from the included studies and analyzed the data using Review Manager (RevMan) software. We reported outcomes as risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). We assessed the quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach. Main results Twenty-four RCTs, including 53,247 participants, met the inclusion criteria. Four studies assessed the protective efficacy of oral cholera vaccines when used to prevent diarrhoea due to ETEC and seven studies assessed the protective efficacy of ETEC-specific vaccines. Of these 11 studies, seven studies presented efficacy data from field trials and four studies presented efficacy data from artificial challenge studies. An additional 13 trials contributed safety and immunological data only. Cholera vaccines The currently available, oral cholera killed whole cell vaccine (Dukoral®) was evaluated for protection of people against 'travellers' diarrhoea' in a single RCT in people arriving in Mexico from the USA. We did not identify any statistically significant effects on ETEC diarrhoea or all-cause diarrhoea (one trial, 502 participants, low quality evidence). Two earlier trials, one undertaken in an endemic population in Bangladesh and one undertaken in people travelling from Finland to Morocco, evaluated a precursor of this vaccine containing purified cholera toxin B subunit rather than the recombinant subunit in Dukoral®. Short term protective efficacy against ETEC diarrhoea was demonstrated, lasting for around three months (RR 0.43, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.71; two trials, 50,227 participants). This vaccine is no longer available. ETEC vaccines An ETEC-specific, killed whole cell vaccine, which also contains the recombinant cholera toxin B-subunit, was evaluated in people travelling from the USA to Mexico or Guatemala, and from Austria to Latin America, Africa, or Asia. We did not identify any statistically significant differences in ETEC-specific diarrhoea or all-cause diarrhoea (two trials, 799 participants), and the vaccine was associated with increased vomiting (RR 2.0, 95% CI 1.16 to 3.45; nine trials, 1528 participants). The other ETEC-specific vaccines in development have not yet demonstrated clinically important benefits. Authors' conclusions There is currently insufficient evidence from RCTs to support the use of the oral cholera vaccine Dukoral® for protecting travellers against ETEC diarrhoea. Further research is needed to develop safe and effective vaccines to provide both short and long-term protection against ETEC diarrhoea

A novel hepatitis C virus (HCV) subtype from Somalia and its classification into HCV clade 3.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) sequences from throughout the world have been grouped into six clades, based on recently proposed criteria. Here, the partial sequences and clade assignment are reported for three HCV isolates from chronic hepatitis C patients from Somalia, for whom conventional assays failed to identify the genotype. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences of the core, envelope 1 and part of the non- structural 5b regions suggests that all three isolates belong to a distinct HCV genetic group, tentatively classified as subtype 3h. This novel HCV subtype shows the highest sequence similarity with HCV isolates from Indonesia. Despite the fact that these patients were infected with HCV clade 3, none of them responded to standard interferon treatment

Disease and pest management in apple: Farmers' perception and adoption in J&K state

Diseases and pests are one of the limiting factors for low productivity of the fruit crops in Kashmir valley, India. A study on management of resources with respect to disease and pest management of apple and extent of adoption of recommended plant protection technology was undertaken for increasing apple production in Kashmir valley of J and K State. District Baramulla was selected purposively on the basis of maximum area and production under apple crop. A sample size of 200 apple growers 50 each from 4 villages were selected randomly. The study revealed that the perception index regarding attributes of technology recommended in two diseases viz. San Jose Scale and Apple Scab was 68.88% and 80.76% in respect of profitability (83.97%), simplicity-complexity each 63.57% and 54.27 % for practicability attributes of technology. The data further showed that the farmers adoption level under Chemical control was high at silver tip to green tip stage (80%) and fruit let pea size stage (78%) and medium adoption was observed at pink bloom (bud) stage (74%), petal fall stage (74%) walnut size apple stage (70%) on Apple Scab similarly, the extent of adoption was low (45%) for mechanical and no chemical control measures under clean cultivation. In case of San Jose Scale the farmers adoption level regarding name of chemical, its dose, quantity of water required per acre for preparing spray solution and time of spray at late dormant spray, (feb, March) was high (80%). The findings will help to improve the level of farmers’ knowledge to increase apple production in Kashmir valley

Investigating Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma in vitro and in vivo: Novel 3D Tools and Animal Models

Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma (cSCC) represents the second most common type of skin cancer, which incidence is continuously increasing worldwide. Given its high frequency, cSCC represents a major public health problem. Therefore, to provide the best patients' care, it is necessary having a detailed understanding of the molecular processes underlying cSCC development, progression, and invasion. Extensive efforts have been made in developing new models allowing to study the molecular pathogenesis of solid tumors, including cSCC tumors. Traditionally, in vitro studies were performed with cells grown in a two-dimensional context, which, however, does not represent the complexity of tumor in vivo. In the recent years, new in vitro models have been developed aiming to mimic the three-dimensionality (3D) of the tumor, allowing the evaluation of tumor cell-cell and tumor-microenvironment interaction in an in vivo-like setting. These models include spheroids, organotypic cultures, skin reconstructs and organoids. Although 3D models demonstrate high potential to enhance the overall knowledge in cancer research, they lack systemic components which may be solved only by using animal models. Zebrafish is emerging as an alternative xenotransplant model in cancer research, offering a high-throughput approach for drug screening and real-time in vivo imaging to study cell invasion. Moreover, several categories of mouse models were developed for pre-clinical purpose, including xeno- and syngeneic transplantation models, autochthonous models of chemically or UV-induced skin squamous carcinogenesis, and genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) of cSCC. These models have been instrumental in examining the molecular mechanisms of cSCC and drug response in an in vivo setting. The present review proposes an overview of in vitro, particularly 3D, and in vivo models and their application in cutaneous SCC research