Ocular Side Effects of Hydroxychloroquine used in the treatment of Autoimmune Disease

Hydroxychloroquine is a widely used antimalarial drug, used in the treatment of autoimmune disease. Even though toxicity due to this is rare, it is widely studied because of the irreversible vision loss it causes. This study was done to assess the ocular effects of hydroxychloroquine used in the treatment of autoimmune disease and to assess the dosage and duration at which the side effects occur and to find the resolution status of ocular lesion. 200 eyes of 100 patients, who were diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis/systemic lupus erythematosus, on HCQ treatment for a duration of more than 7 years, referred from dermatology and rheumatology department were included in the study. The study was done in Stanley Medical College. Our study found out that 13% of patients out of 100 developed ocular manifestations which increased in incidence after prolonged duration of treatment. The incidence of bull’s eye maculopathy was found to be 2.4% (in 7-10year duration) and 5.5% (more than 10year duration). The incidence of side effects increased when the dose is taken as a higher daily dose, more duration and presence of kidney disease was found to be a significant risk factor. Out of the 13 patients, on cessation of treatment 10 patients showed stable course where 2 patients showed worsening and one needed to be followed up

Sanctity and Exclusion of Sanctified Women and Exempted Women

The people of the Sangam period, who lived within a multi-professional social structure such as hunting, agriculture, and war, developed some spells and rituals whenever they had disruptions in those occupations. It is the function of anticipating material needs through nature. The mantras and rituals of ancient society are mostly based on prosperity. In that aspect, the woman who is the core nucleus of human opulence is seen as a symbol of prosperity in various events. The woman is entitled to high respect in the stages of puberty, marriage, and maternity. Especially for the sake of puberty and maternity, the woman is sanctified and forbidden. This article sets out to illustrate how mantra is transformed into religion when the consecrated woman is elevated to the status of a deity

Probabilistic analysis of time to recruit and recruitment time in manpower system with two groups,

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the Manpower System of an organization with two groups. Breakdown occurs in the two groups of the Manpower System due to attrition process. Group A consists of employees other than top management level executives; group B consists of top management level executives. Two models are studied in this paper. In Model-1, group A is exposed to Cumulative Shortage Process (CSP) due to attrition and group B has an exponential life distribution. In Model-2, both the groups A and B are exposed to CSP and have exponential thresholds. Inter occurrence time of shortages to them have exponential distribution. In each model, two cases are discussed. In one case, after the threshold, recruitment policy to compensate the shortages one by one is followed. Joint Laplace transforms of Time to Recruit and Recruitment time have been found. In the second case, recruitment policy of filling vacancies simultaneously is followed. Here, marginal Recruitment time distributions have been obtained

A comparative study on postmastectomy patients in reducing lymphedema - with & without physiotherapy

BACKGROUND: Lymphedema following breast cancer treatment is one of the most morbid conditions affecting breast cancer survivors. Currently no therapy completely cures this condition. Physiotherapeutic method offers promising results in managing of this condition. This therapy is being widely used. METHODS: The therapeutic responses of 50 postmastectomy patients were analyzed prospectively in this study. Among 50 patients, 25 patients – for experimental group & 25 patients – for control group. The control group did not receive any physiotherapy. The study group were advised to do home based exercise from 10thPOD thrice daily. Lymphedema Measurement using circumferential measurements : Patients using compression sleeves were advised to remove them 3 to 4 hours before the following measurements were taken Upper-limb circumference was taken using cloth measuring tape on bilateral upper-limbs at four levels, i.e., at the metacarpophalangeal joints, wrist joint, 15 cm distal to the lateral epicondyle, and 10 cm proximal to the lateral epicondyle. RESULTS: 50 female patients affected by upper extremity secondary lymphedema after breast cancer treatments were divided into two control group (n=25) and experimental group (n=25) with introduction of cancer and surgery specialists based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The experimental group took part in an 8 week exercise program. Findings of the present research revealed that the experimental group participants lymphedema had a significant difference with the control group after 8 weeks of aerobic exercise (p<0.01). CONCLUSION: Early physiotherapy could be an effective intervention in the prevention of secondary lymphoedema in women for at least one year after surgery for breast cancer involving dissection of axillary lymph nodes

A study on median nerve conduction velocity in different age groups

Background: Nerve Conduction Velocity (NCS) is a test to measure the speed and electrical activity in a nerve. Physiological factors like age, temperature, height, gender affect the nerve conduction velocity. There is paucity on the data regarding the age group at which these changes become significant. Therefore, the aim of the study was to determine the specific age group at which changes in nerve conduction velocity occurs.Methods: 103 individuals in the age group of 15-65 years participated in the study. They were grouped into, Group I in the age group of 15-30 (n=40) years, Group II 31-45 years (n=31), Group III 46-60 years (n=32). Median motor and sensory conduction velocity were determined.Results: There was a significant correlation between age and median motor (p=0) and sensory (p=0) conduction velocities. There was a significant decreasing trend observed in Group III.Conclusions: Age has definite correlation with the NCS in median motor and sensory nerves. It is essential to have reference values with relation to age

Quorum sensing - a promising tool for degradation of industrial waste containing persistent organic pollutants

Restoring an environment contaminated with persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is highly challenging. Biodegradation by biofilm-forming bacteria through quorum sensing (QS) is a promising treatment process to remove these pollutants and promotes eco-restoration. QS plays an important role in biofilm formation, solubilization, and biotransformation of pollutants. QS is a density-based communication between microbial cells via signalling molecules, which coordinates specific characters and helps bacteria to acclimatize against stress conditions. Genetic diversification of a biofilm offers excellent opportunities for horizontal gene transfer, improves resistance against stress, and provides a suitable environment for the metabolism of POPs. To develop this technology in industrial scale, it is important to understand the fundamentals and ubiquitous nature of QS bacteria and appreciate the role of QS in the degradation of POPs. Currently, there are knowledge gaps regarding the environmental niche, abundance, and population of QS bacteria in wastewater treatment systems. This review aims to present up-to-date and state-of-the-art information on the roles of QS and QS-mediated strategies in industrial waste treatment including biological treatments (such as activated sludge), highlighting their potentials using examples from the pulp and paper mill industry, hydrocarbon remediation and phytoremediation. The information will help to provide a throughout understanding of the potential of QS to degrade POPs and advance the use of this technology. Current knowledge of QS strategies is limited to laboratory studies, full-scale applications remain challenging and more research is need to explore QS gene expression and test in full-scale reactors for wastewater treatment

Pilot scale microbial production and optimization of Serratia peptidase from Serratia marcescens

Serratia peptidase is active proteolytic enzyme which has the potential of cleaving peptide bond.  Present investigation deals about the Microbial production of serratia peptidase using Serratia marcescens in small scale fermentor. Batch fermentor has been run continuously throughout the night to analyze the production of protein as well as kinetics. Culture broth was maintained at 150rpm for 72 hrs. Protein sample was isolated by centrifuging at 3000rpm for 10mints. The result revealed that Serratia marcescens showed the enormous production of protein in fed batch fermentor compared to the small scale level.  Different substrates were been used for the production of enzyme. Among all cysteine showed the better activity as 2 units/ml of enzyme. Enzymatic assay of Serratia peptidase was done at different time interval of crude broth. Enzyme activity showed that maximum at 40ºC for 72hrs. It was observed that 0.65 units/ml of enzyme. Fed batch pilot scale production of Serratia peptidase was done at 0.5%cystein and 700rpm for 48hrs of run time.Â

Security Threats in Software Defined Mobile Clouds (SDMC)

Future Internet comprises of emerging ICT mega-trends (e.g., mobile, social, cloud, and big data) commands new challenges like ubiquitous accessibility, high bandwidth, and dynamic management to meet the data tsunami requirements. In the recent years, the rapid growth of smartphone business is highly evidenced due to its versatile usage irrespective of location, personality or context. Despite of increased smartphone usage, exploiting its full potential becomes very difficult owing to its typical issues such as resource scarcity, mobility and more prominently the security. Software Defined Networking (SDN), an emerging wireless network paradigm can make use of rich mobile cloud functionalities such as traffic management, load balancing, routing, and firewall configuration over physical abstraction of control planes from data planes. Hence SDN leads to a clear roadmap to Software Security control in Mobile Clouds (SDMC). Further it can be extended to a level of Security prevention. To address in this direction, this paper surveys the relevant backgrounds of the existing state-of-art works to come up with all possible SDMC threats and its countermeasures

IMPROVED FINGERPRINT COMPRESSION TECHNIQUE WITH DECIMATED MULTI-WAVELET COEFFICIENTS FOR LOW BIT RATES

In this paper, a multi-wavelet transform with decimated frequency bands is proposed to be used in the Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) algorithm to improve fingerprint image compression. Either shuffled or unshuffled multi-wavelets can be used for SPIHT algorithm. In both the cases, the quality of the compressed images at lower bit rates either remained the same or slightly improved compared to wavelets. To improve the performance at lower bit rates, a method which utilizes the decimated version of multi-wavelet for the initialization of lists in SPIHT algorithm is used. The multi-wavelet used for the proposed work is SA4 (Symmetric-Antisymmetric). The algorithm was tested and verified using NIST, Shivang Patel, NITGEN and other databases. An overall improvement in performance particularly at lower bit rates (0.01 to 0.09) compared to a multi-wavelet without decimation was obtained using this method. The improvement was 0.798dB, 0.857dB and 0.859dB for the images in NITGEN database for a multi-wavelet decimated by 2, 4 and 8 respectively. Similar performances were observed for other databases. It was further observed that the PSNR was highest when the multi-wavelet was decimated by a factor of 4

Strain Pattern Analysis of Mylonites From Sitampundi-Kanjamalai Shear Zone, Thiruchengode, South India

This study aims to investigate the petrography and strain pattern of mylonites from parts of N-S trending Sitampundi-Kanjamalai Shear Zone (SKSZ) around Thiruchengode. The petrographic study indicates the presence of recrystallized quartz, K-feldspar, plagioclase, biotite and some hornblende. The kinematic analysis of Mylonites was done with the help of shear sense indicators such as recrystallized type quartz (quartz ribbon) around the cluster of feldspar, S-C fabric shows dextral shear sense and some sinisterly shear sense in some parts of SASZ which can be considered as a product of partitioning of both strain and vorticity between domains. These all indicates the simple shear extension along E-W direction and the mylonitic foliation shows the pure shear compression along N-S direction. Further the study of bulk strain analysis by Flinn plot method using L and T section of mylonite shows k&lt;1 which lies in the field of flattening zone of finite strain. The kinematic vorticity number is calculated by Rxz/β method which gives the value of 0.36 indicating the general shear. The rigid grain graph shows that the pure shear component is more ­­­­dominant than the simple shear component. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the mylonite has experienced a high temperature shearing of above 700°cat deep crustal level