Biological Posts: Natural Alternatives in Restoring Smile

Traumatic injuries leading to severely mutilated anterior teeth are common in dentistry. These injuries may leave a severe impact when they affect  ndodontically treated teeth as strength of such teeth is compromised. Proper functional and esthetic rehabilitation of such badly broken teeth is a challenge. Dealing with the patient’s mental suffering and their impatience to regain the natural smile back makes the treatment even more challenging. An effective treatment plan including a suitable and cost-effective choice of post is very much necessary in such conditions. Biological posts obtained through extracted teeth from another individual represent an economic option and alternative technique for the functional recovery of extensively damaged teeth. All-ceramic crowns further add to enhanced esthetics. This paper presents a case where biological posts with composite core build up followed by all-ceramic crown adaptation have been used with successful outcom

Design and Realization of Data Transmitter for Video Streaming of On-board Deployments in Geostationary Spacecrafts

Recent geostationary spacecrafts are configured with video streaming feature during deployment of critical onboard mechanisms such as Solar Array Drive Assembly and Unfolding of Parabolic Antennae. To accomplish this, frames captured by the on board camera are to be transmitted to ground station through adata transmitter. This data transmitter has to share a narrow bandwidth of 20 MHz in C-Band with mission critical telemetry transmitters of the host spacecraft and other co-located spacecrafts without causing any interference.Since reliability and simplicity are the most important criteria in the design of a mainframe system for a satellite, an architecture based on Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation is chosen. RF carrier is generated through a compact X12 frequency multiplier that gets stable reference input signal from a Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator (TCXO).  The design also involves RF alignment and packaging strategies to ensure the operation as per specifications through specified ranges of temperature and vibration levels.  The performance of the transmitter is found to meet all specifications post launch

Stress-induced lipocalin-2 controls dendritic spine formation and neuronal activity in the amygdala.

This is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this record.Behavioural adaptation to psychological stress is dependent on neuronal plasticity and dysfunction at this cellular level may underlie the pathogenesis of affective disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Taking advantage of genome-wide microarray assay, we performed detailed studies of stress-affected transcripts in the amygdala - an area which forms part of the innate fear circuit in mammals. Having previously demonstrated the role of lipocalin-2 (Lcn-2) in promoting stress-induced changes in dendritic spine morphology/function and neuronal excitability in the mouse hippocampus, we show here that the Lcn-2 gene is one of the most highly upregulated transcripts detected by microarray analysis in the amygdala after acute restraint-induced psychological stress. This is associated with increased Lcn-2 protein synthesis, which is found on immunohistochemistry to be predominantly localised to neurons. Stress-naïve Lcn-2(-/-) mice show a higher spine density in the basolateral amygdala and a 2-fold higher rate of neuronal firing rate compared to wild-type mice. Unlike their wild-type counterparts, Lcn-2(-/-) mice did not show an increase in dendritic spine density in response to stress but did show a distinct pattern of spine morphology. Thus, amygdala-specific neuronal responses to Lcn-2 may represent a mechanism for behavioural adaptation to psychological stress.Marie Curie Excellence Grant from the European Commission.Medical Research Council Project GrantCOST Action ECMNe

The Complex Spatio-Temporal Regulation of the Drosophila Myoblast Attractant Gene duf/kirre

A key early player in the regulation of myoblast fusion is the gene dumbfounded (duf, also known as kirre). Duf must be expressed, and function, in founder cells (FCs). A fixed number of FCs are chosen from a pool of equivalent myoblasts and serve to attract fusion-competent myoblasts (FCMs) to fuse with them to form a multinucleate muscle-fibre. The spatial and temporal regulation of duf expression and function are important and play a deciding role in choice of fibre number, location and perhaps size. We have used a combination of bioinformatics and functional enhancer deletion approaches to understand the regulation of duf. By transgenic enhancer-reporter deletion analysis of the duf regulatory region, we found that several distinct enhancer modules regulate duf expression in specific muscle founders of the embryo and the adult. In addition to existing bioinformatics tools, we used a new program for analysis of regulatory sequence, PhyloGibbs-MP, whose development was largely motivated by the requirements of this work. The results complement our deletion analysis by identifying transcription factors whose predicted binding regions match with our deletion constructs. Experimental evidence for the relevance of some of these TF binding sites comes from available ChIP-on-chip from the literature, and from our analysis of localization of myogenic transcription factors with duf enhancer reporter gene expression. Our results demonstrate the complex regulation in each founder cell of a gene that is expressed in all founder cells. They provide evidence for transcriptional control—both activation and repression—as an important player in the regulation of myoblast fusion. The set of enhancer constructs generated will be valuable in identifying novel trans-acting factor-binding sites and chromatin regulation during myoblast fusion in Drosophila. Our results and the bioinformatics tools developed provide a basis for the study of the transcriptional regulation of other complex genes

All-sky, all-frequency directional search for persistent gravitational waves from Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s first three observing runs

We present the first results from an all-sky all-frequency (ASAF) search for an anisotropic stochastic gravitational-wave background using the data from the first three observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Upper limit maps on broadband anisotropies of a persistent stochastic background were published for all observing runs of the LIGO-Virgo detectors. However, a broadband analysis is likely to miss narrowband signals as the signal-to-noise ratio of a narrowband signal can be significantly reduced when combined with detector output from other frequencies. Data folding and the computationally efficient analysis pipeline, {\tt PyStoch}, enable us to perform the radiometer map-making at every frequency bin. We perform the search at 3072 {\tt{HEALPix}} equal area pixels uniformly tiling the sky and in every frequency bin of width $1/32$~Hz in the range $20-1726$~Hz, except for bins that are likely to contain instrumental artefacts and hence are notched. We do not find any statistically significant evidence for the existence of narrowband gravitational-wave signals in the analyzed frequency bins. Therefore, we place $95\%$ confidence upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain for each pixel-frequency pair, the limits are in the range $(0.030 - 9.6) \times10^{-24}$. In addition, we outline a method to identify candidate pixel-frequency pairs that could be followed up by a more sensitive (and potentially computationally expensive) search, e.g., a matched-filtering-based analysis, to look for fainter nearly monochromatic coherent signals. The ASAF analysis is inherently independent of models describing any spectral or spatial distribution of power. We demonstrate that the ASAF results can be appropriately combined over frequencies and sky directions to successfully recover the broadband directional and isotropic results

Acute portal vein thrombosis in a 59-year-old male with JAK2 V617F mutation

Portal vein thrombosis is an uncommon finding that typically arises in the context of cirrhosis. In the acute setting, it may present with abdominal pain, portal hypertension, ascites, gastrointestinal bleeding, or mesenteric ischemia. Local risk factors that predispose its formation include: cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, pancreatitis, and intraabdominal infection. Systemic factors, including hypercoagulable states and sepsis, also pose an increased risk. JAK2 V617F positive myeloproliferative disorders are associated with systemic prothrombotic states and are a less frequently identified cause of portal vein thrombosis. We present a case of acute unprovoked portal vein thrombosis diagnosed in a 59-year-old male without local disease factors. Computed tomography, magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography, and ultrasound demonstrated the presence of portal vein thrombosis with neighboring periportal and pancreatic head edema. Peripheral blood testing detected the presence of JAK2 V617F mutation. The patient was discharged on 6-month anticoagulation therapy and outpatient follow-up. Keywords: Portal vein thrombosis, JAK2 V617

Emergency department utilization after elbow arthroscopy

Background: Elbow arthroscopy has defined indications for which technical pearls and outcomes have been described. However, other aspects of the postoperative course, such as postprocedural emergency department (ED) visits, have received less attention. The current study defined the incidence and factors associated with ED visits in the 90 days following elbow arthroscopy by leveraging a large, national, multiinsurance, administrative database. Methods: Adult patients who underwent elective elbow arthroscopy were identified in the 2010 to Q1 2022 PearlDiver Mariner161 national administrative database. Those who visited the ED in the 90 days following surgery were identified and compared to those who did not based on age, sex, Elixhauser Comorbidity Index, geographic region of the United States, and insurance type by multivariate analyses. The timing (weeks following surgery), reasons for ED visit (elbow-related or not), and ED-to-hospital admission (presence or absence) were also assessed. Finally, the rate of those who were admitted during an ED visit was described. Results: A total of 16,310 elbow arthroscopy patients were identified, of which ED visits in the 90 days following surgery were noted for 1086 (6.7%). ED visits were independently associated with younger age (odds ratio [OR, 95% confidence interval (CI)]: 1.23 [1.17, 1.29] per decade decrease), higher Elixhauser Comorbidity Index (OR [95% CI]: 1.21 [1.19, 1.23] per 1-point increase), different geographic region (OR [95% CI]: 1.42 [1.19, 1.71] for Midwest relative to West), and insurance (OR [95% CI]: 1.88 [1.48, 2.39] for Medicaid relative to Commercial) (P < .001 for each). The incidence of all-cause ED visits was highest during the first two postoperative weeks and gradually decreased over the following weeks. The reason for ED visits related to the elbow decreased from 65% in month one, to 37.7% in month two, to 26.6% in month three. Of those visiting the ED, 12.4% went on to be admitted (for any reason). Conclusion: A significant proportion of patients from a large cohort of elbow arthroscopy patients visited the ED at least once in the 90 days following surgery. The defined associated factors and timing of these ED visits can help optimize postoperative care pathways