Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): challenges and management of aerosol-generating procedures in dentistry

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Design of time delayed chaotic circuit with threshold controller

A novel time delayed chaotic oscillator exhibiting mono- and double scroll complex chaotic attractors is designed. This circuit consists of only a few operational amplifiers and diodes and employs a threshold controller for flexibility. It efficiently implements a piecewise linear function. The control of piecewise linear function facilitates controlling the shape of the attractors. This is demonstrated by constructing the phase portraits of the attractors through numerical simulations and hardware experiments. Based on these studies, we find that this circuit can produce multi-scroll chaotic attractors by just introducing more number of threshold values.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures; Submitted to IJB

Long Term use of Cell Phone in Business Community causing Hearing Loss

INTRODUCTION: As civilization has progressed, the noise in man‘s environment has increased. The adverse effect of noise is widespread with respect to human physiology and produce changes in many bio systems other than ear. It is however the ear which concerns us here. Noise has been shown to have many effects on people such as, decrease in working efficiency, annoyance, physiological changes in blood pressure and heart rate and psychological distress. The direct auditory effects are interference with speech communication, produced due to the masking background noise, and the primary auditory effect, the capacity of noise to produce hearing loss. AIM OF THE STUDY: Noise induced hearing loss is a preventable hearing disorder. It affects people of all ages and demographic. When increased intensity is transmitted into and through the auditory system noise induced hearing loss results. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY: Cross sectional study. N=90, Age group: 18-50 years. Year of study: 2010-2012. Inclusion criteria: 1. 18 – 50 years of age, 2. Healthy male vegetable traders, 3. Any type of mobile phones, 4. Normal intact tympanic membrane. Exclusion criteria: 1. Any history of any other co morbid illness like hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiac illness. 2. Any ear disease which have hearing loss 3. Any surgery to the ear with no improvement of hearing after surgery. 4. Any intake of ototoxic medications. SUMMARY: The cross sectional study was conducted from a period of November 2010 to October 2012, to study the effects of cellphone usage over the human auditory system. Total number of subjects – 90 healthy males. All the subjects were in the age group of 18 to 50 years. 37.78% (34 / 90) of subjects had ear warmth. 34.44% (31 / 90) of subjects had ear fullness. 8.88% (8 / 90) of subjects had tinnitus. Pure tone audiometry done periodically at the interval of one year from the baseline audiogram showing threshold changes in one or two frequencies in the follow up audiogram in 10% of the subjects. These candidates must be followed up regularly, for a long term to derive a final conclusion. CONCLUSION: In this study, on following up of 90 candidates for 3 years with pure tone audiometry, no significant hearing loss was observed, except some threshold changes in one or two frequencies in the final follow up audiogram. It is also observed, that the ear symptoms like ear warmth and ear fullness was observed in approximately 30% of subjects and there was no relation between the ear symptoms and threshold changes. Mild cochlear changes can be revealed in Distortion product otoacoustic emissions and auditory brainstem response. However this is a small cross sectional study, a large sample and long term follow up will be required to derive definite conclusions

Phishing: message appraisal and the exploration of fear and self-confidence

Phishing attacks have threatened the security of both home users and organizations in recent years. Phishing uses social engineering to fraudulently obtain information that is confidential or sensitive. Individuals are targeted to take action by clicking on a link and providing information. This research explores fear arousal and self-confidence in subjects confronted by phishing attacks. The study collected data from multiple sources (including an attempted phishing attack). The survey results indicated that when individuals had a high level of fear arousal related to providing login credentials they had a decreased intention to respond to a phishing attack. Self-confidence did not significantly moderate the relationship between fear arousal and intention to respond to a phishing attack but it did have a significant direct positive influence on intention. The results from the experiment indicated that 18% of individuals overall clicked on the link. The combined data indicated that higher level of fear arousal resulted in a decreased intention to respond to a phishing attack and a decreased actual click behaviour. The research explores how fear of providing login credentials influences both intention to respond and actual response to a phishing attack. When fear arousal is high, individuals are less likely to respond

Short term analysis of the functional outcome in complex primary hip arthroplasty

Background: Total hip arthroplasty is the most commonly performed reconstructive procedure that replaces the femoral head, neck and acetabular articular surface. THA is a highly successful procedure that has made numerous patients return to excellent function without pain and provides a stable, pain-free mobile joint. The purpose of this study is short term analysis (retrospective and prospective study) of the functional outcome in 30 patients who underwent complex primary hip arthroplasty.Methods: A retrospective and prospective study was done to evaluate the functional outcome in 30 patients who underwent complex primary total hip replacement and to analyze the results. A detailed clinical examination and radiological assessment was done to assess the nature of deformity, bone stock, functional impairment and component sizes. Pre-operative templating is routinely done in all cases. Pre-operative clinical evaluation was done using modified Harris hip scoring.Results: Most of the patient was operated by Hardinge lateral approach (22 Patients). 8 patients were operated by Posterior Southern-Moore approach. In our study the average surgical time delay was 6 days ranging from 5 to 17 days. The average surgical time was 120 minutes ranging from 60 minutes to 3 hours.Conclusions: The surgical technique employed is unique to each complex case. Surgeon expertise is also a must to deal with complex hips. Complex primary THA is an emerging trend with better clinical and functional outcome with the presently available modular implants and improved surgical techniques.

Evaluation of functional outcome of lumbar spondylolisthesis treated with posterior lumbar interbody fusion with instrumentation

Background: Spondylolisthesis with or without spondylolysis occurs in 5% to 8% of the adult population. It is commonly believed that spondylolysis does not exist at birth. The incidence is 4.4% to 5% at the age of 6 years, increasing to 6% at the age of 18 years, which is quite similar to that observed in adulthood.To analyze the functional outcome of posterior stabilization by pedicle screws with decompression and interbody fusion by PLIF (Posterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion) technique in adult single level spondylolisthesis. In this study our aim is to analyze the correlation between the degrees of fusion with functional outcomes.Methods: This is a prospective study of 20 patients carried out in the Department of Orthopaedics, Govt. Dharmapuri Medical College Hospital, Dharmapuri from January 2016 to December 2017. All patients were evaluated with anteroposterior, lateral and oblique radiographs of the lumbosacral spine. Dynamic plain radiographs of all our patients showed instability. CT/MRI evaluation of all patients was done.Results: In our study four patients (20%) had a complete reduction of the preoperative slip, fourteen patients (70%) showed a reduction of slip by one grade, while in two patients (10%) there was no change from the preoperative slip percentage.Conclusions: Further, three dimensional multislice thin section CT scans with multiplanar reconstruction are ideal to study the incorporation of the bone graft within the disc space

FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF STABILIZED EPROSARTAN NANOSUSPENSION

Objective: The objective of the current study is to enhance the solubility of Eprosartan mesylate a BCS Class II drug by employing the nanoprecipitation technique. Methods: Polymeric nanoparticles of Eprosartan mesylate were prepared by precipitation technique with various polymers like PVP K30, HPMC K15M, and Eudragit L100 in various ratios. The incompatibility issues which may arise between the drug and polymers were tested by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The formed nanosuspensions were evaluated for various parameters like particle size, zeta potential, drug content, and dissolution testing. Results: Among all the nanosuspension formulations, E12 formulation prepared with Eudragit L 100 showed better evaluation characteristics. SEM and DSC analysis showed no major interactions with the excipients. The maximum drug release was showed at 12h. The formulation E12 showed the particle size of 81.5±5.5 nm and zeta potential of-55.1mv. Conclusion: The nano-precipitation method improved the dissolution as well as the bioavailability of Eprosartan mesylate nanosuspension