Distribution of total petroleum hydrocarbons in water, sediment and its impact on six commercially important fishes of Kundalika estuary, west coast of India

787-794Kundalika estuary, which opens into the Arabian Sea along the west coast of India, receives effluents from industries situated on its bank. The Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPHs) were studied using fluorescence spectrophotometer in water, sediments and fishes along the Kundalika estuary. The values of TPHs varied in water (2.0-19.1μgL-1) and surface sediments (2.1-16.8μgg-1, dry wt) with maximum concentrations recorded in the upstream region. The concentration of TPHs (dry wt) in the sediment cores collected at mouth, middle and upper parts of the estuary ranged 1.4–4.4 μgg-1, 4.5–27.5 μgg-1 and 6.9–29.1μgg-1, respectively. Sediments with higher mud (silt+clay) content showed higher TPHs enrichment due to the larger specific surface area and showed significant positive correlation between mud and TPHs concentrations. The accumulated TPHs values of fin fishes (0.5-2.2μgg-1; wet wt) were lower than hazardous levels, although there was no statistical significance between TPHs and total length and weight of fish

Speech To Semantics: Improve ASR and NLU Jointly via All-Neural Interfaces

We consider the problem of spoken language understanding (SLU) of extracting natural language intents and associated slot arguments or named entities from speech that is primarily directed at voice assistants. Such a system subsumes both automatic speech recognition (ASR) as well as natural language understanding (NLU). An end-to-end joint SLU model can be built to a required specification opening up the opportunity to deploy on hardware constrained scenarios like devices enabling voice assistants to work offline, in a privacy preserving manner, whilst also reducing server costs. We first present models that extract utterance intent directly from speech without intermediate text output. We then present a compositional model, which generates the transcript using the Listen Attend Spell ASR system and then extracts interpretation using a neural NLU model. Finally, we contrast these methods to a jointly trained end-to-end joint SLU model, consisting of ASR and NLU subsystems which are connected by a neural network based interface instead of text, that produces transcripts as well as NLU interpretation. We show that the jointly trained model shows improvements to ASR incorporating semantic information from NLU and also improves NLU by exposing it to ASR confusion encoded in the hidden layer.Comment: Proceedings of INTERSPEEC

PARTIALLY-AVERAGED NAVIER- STOKES SIMULATIONS IN ENGINEERING FLOWS

This paper presents the most recent applications of the Partially-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations for engineering flows together with the review of the previous work in the field. Partially-Averaged Navier\ua0Stokes (PANS) simulation has been successfully used for several different applications of flows around\ua0ground vehicles. Examples of flows studied using PANS are that of the flow around square-back Ahmed body, flow around simplified passenger vehicle influenced by crosswinds, flow around simplified intercity trains, to the influence of passive and active flow control on the reduction of the aerodynamic drag on simplified vehicles. The idea of the application of hybrid methods such as PANS is to decrease the resolution requirements that are needed in turbulence resolving simulations such as LES. The resolution requirements of LES are normally very high in the near-wall regions, and this is where the PANS method is expected to activate more turbulence modelling, and thereby decrease the computational effort. The PANS method used by the authors is based on the variable switching coefficient that regulates the amount of the turbulence\ua0 modelling in the simulation. Previous studies have shown that such implementation of PANS is in line with the requirements that PANS should adapt to the computational grid. The most recent predictions range from simplified ground vehicle flow, flow around a freight train locomotive to the investigation of active flow control for trucks and ships. The new predictions show good agreement with the experimental observations

Extension of the crRNA enhances Cpf1 gene editing in vitro and in vivo.

Engineering of the Cpf1 crRNA has the potential to enhance its gene editing efficiency and non-viral delivery to cells. Here, we demonstrate that extending the length of its crRNA at the 5 end can enhance the gene editing efficiency of Cpf1 both in cells and in vivo. Extending the 5 end of the crRNA enhances the gene editing efficiency of the Cpf1 RNP to induce non-homologous end-joining and homology-directed repair using electroporation in cells. Additionally, chemical modifications on the extended 5 end of the crRNA result in enhanced serum stability. Also, extending the 5 end of the crRNA by 59 nucleotides increases the delivery efficiency of Cpf1 RNP in cells and in vivo cationic delivery vehicles including polymer nanoparticle. Thus, 5 extension and chemical modification of the Cpf1 crRNA is an effective method for enhancing the gene editing efficiency of Cpf1 and its delivery in vivo

Efficacy and safety of SilverNovaTM skin cream in post-aesthetic skin procedures

Background: The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of SilverNovaTM skin cream composed of SilverSol® (a patented colloidal nano silver technology from American Biotech Labs, USA) with other skin rejuvenators (coconut oil, vitamin E, and hyaluronic acid), in post-aesthetic skin procedure subjects. Methods: In this prospective, interventional, open-label, multicentric study, subjects who undergone post aesthetic procedures were enrolled to receive the application of SilverNovaTM skin cream twice daily. The subjects received the topical application for seven days, after which they were followed up for the next seven days.  Endpoints were assessed at baseline and the end of the treatment (EOT). Primary endpoints were the investigator-assessed erythema, edema, dryness/scaling score, and the subject-assessed product tolerability in terms of burning, stinging, itching, and dryness/tightness. Results: A total of 60 subjects completed the study. There was a significant improvement in erythema, edema, and dryness/scaling score (p<0.0001). There was also significant improvement in burning, itching, and dryness/tightness scores. The physician global improvement assessment scale score was reduced from 3.3 to 1.38 (p<0.0001), showing the resolution of the symptom severity post-treatment with SilverNovaTM skin cream. Colorimetric characterization showed significant improvement in values at the end of the study, reflecting the improvement in skin color and erythema reduction. No adverse events were reported during the study. Conclusions: The application of SilverNovaTM cream in the immediate post procedure period significantly reduced the downtime of the treatment and improved patient acceptance of the treatment. This indicates that SilverNovaTM skin cream is a promising therapeutic option for managing the complications associated with aesthetic skin procedures without any safety concerns