Primary mediastinal choriocarcinoma masquerading as lung metastasis: a rare disease with a fatal outcome

Background: Most germ cell tumors eg. choriocarcinomas are located in the gonads, however about 2–5% arise from extragonadal regions, such as the mediastinum, retroperitoneum, and central nervous system. Non-gestational choriocarcinoma in mediastinum without a detectable primary in the gonads is termed primary mediastinal choriocarcinoma. Materials and method: Contrast-enhanced whole body computed tomography scan and correlated with tumour markers such as beta human chorionic gonadotropin are used to assess the mediastinal mass. Confirmation of diagnosis was made with image guided biopsy, histopathological examination and special staining. Results: Primary mediastinal choriocarcinoma was confirmed by lack of testicular lesion on ultrasound examination and presence of mediastinal mass with multiple metastatic lesions. Confirmation by CKAE1/AE3 (immunohistochemical study) positive which showed presence of multinucleated epithelial cells. Conclusion: Contrast-enhanced computed tomography is useful tool to diagnose this condition as also provide image guided access for biopsy. In correlation with tumour markers investigation and special immunohistochemical studies can help to clinch the diagnosis

Assessing safety level of UTM campus based on safe city concepts

Safety is an important aspect in today's living, in urban city, residential area, and also in campus area. Several initiatives were introduced to increase the safety level, and to prevent crime from happening in the campus area, known as Safe City Concept. These initiatives included the Safe City Index, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), behavioural model, safe city urban area, safe city of smart city, and resident safety assessment. Some of this initiative focus on urban city area, or residential, besides only focus on crime prevention and not focus on the assessment of safety level for campus area. This study aims to assess the safety level for campus area, with case study of UTM Campus. To assess the safety level, a set 4 indicators, which is crime, environment, public health and emergency response, with 9 sub-indicators was identified in this study. These indicators and sub-indicators used to determine the safety level of campus area based on the Safe City Concept. The analysis used is spatial analysis on the indicator, and using weighted criteria matrix to evaluate safety level for each building in UTM campus. The results show that most the buildings in UTM are in good and high safety level, with 65% of buildings score more than 70%. For buildings was detected with highest score of 95% of safety level, while 3 buildings score lowest percentage of 53.7%.These results indicated that UTM campus area is a safe area, based on the Safe City Concept. These results can help authorities to use these indicators of Safe City Concept to assess the education campus area safety level

Bacterial Adhesion on the Titanium and Stainless-Steel Surfaces Undergone Two Different Treatment Methods: Polishing and Ultrafast Laser Treatment

Bacterial adhesion has become a significant problem in many industries causing billions of dollars for its complicated removal treatment and maintenance. In this study, metal surfaces undergone treatment with ultrafast laser with varies power. The microstructure produced on its original surfaces were expected to prevent the adhesion of Escherichia coli (E. coli) ATCC 8739 and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) ATCC 6838. The laser treatment was performed at 380 fs pulse duration, 515 µm central wavelength and a repetition rate of 200 kHz. Stainless steel AISI 316L was treated with an average laser power of 0.04 W (SS-0.04) and 0.11 W (SS-0.11), while Grade 5 titanium alloy was tested with high laser power 0.11 W (T-0.11). The adhesion was observed after 16 hours and the number of adhering bacteria was counted per cm2. The result achieved shows that, increasing the average laser power is leading to an enhanced S. aureus adhesion while E. coli adhesion is reduced which is due to the hydrophobicity interaction and difference in surface texture. Meanwhile, the laser treatment showed significant reduction of the bacterial adhesion on its surface compared to the polished surfaces. Thus, ultrafast laser texturing can be suggested as a promising method to reduce the bacterial adhesion, which reduced the adhesion of >80% for E. coli and >20% for S. aureus

Individual identification via electrocardiogram analysis

Background: During last decade the use of ECG recordings in biometric recognition studies has increased. ECG characteristics made it suitable for subject identification: it is unique, present in all living individuals, and hard to forge. However, in spite of the great number of approaches found in literature, no agreement exists on the most appropriate methodology. This study aimed at providing a survey of the techniques used so far in ECG-based human identification. Specifically, a pattern recognition perspective is here proposed providing a unifying framework to appreciate previous studies and, hopefully, guide future research. Methods: We searched for papers on the subject from the earliest available date using relevant electronic databases (Medline, IEEEXplore, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge). The following terms were used in different combinations: electrocardiogram, ECG, human identification, biometric, authentication and individual variability. The electronic sources were last searched on 1st March 2015. In our selection we included published research on peer-reviewed journals, books chapters and conferences proceedings. The search was performed for English language documents. Results: 100 pertinent papers were found. Number of subjects involved in the journal studies ranges from 10 to 502, age from 16 to 86, male and female subjects are generally present. Number of analysed leads varies as well as the recording conditions. Identification performance differs widely as well as verification rate. Many studies refer to publicly available databases (Physionet ECG databases repository) while others rely on proprietary recordings making difficult them to compare. As a measure of overall accuracy we computed a weighted average of the identification rate and equal error rate in authentication scenarios. Identification rate resulted equal to 94.95 % while the equal error rate equal to 0.92 %. Conclusions: Biometric recognition is a mature field of research. Nevertheless, the use of physiological signals features, such as the ECG traits, needs further improvements. ECG features have the potential to be used in daily activities such as access control and patient handling as well as in wearable electronics applications. However, some barriers still limit its growth. Further analysis should be addressed on the use of single lead recordings and the study of features which are not dependent on the recording sites (e.g. fingers, hand palms). Moreover, it is expected that new techniques will be developed using fiducials and non-fiducial based features in order to catch the best of both approaches. ECG recognition in pathological subjects is also worth of additional investigations

The impact of surgical delay on resectability of colorectal cancer: An international prospective cohort study

AIM: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to explore the impact of surgical delays on cancer resectability. This study aimed to compare resectability for colorectal cancer patients undergoing delayed versus non-delayed surgery. METHODS: This was an international prospective cohort study of consecutive colorectal cancer patients with a decision for curative surgery (January-April 2020). Surgical delay was defined as an operation taking place more than 4 weeks after treatment decision, in a patient who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy. A subgroup analysis explored the effects of delay in elective patients only. The impact of longer delays was explored in a sensitivity analysis. The primary outcome was complete resection, defined as curative resection with an R0 margin. RESULTS: Overall, 5453 patients from 304 hospitals in 47 countries were included, of whom 6.6% (358/5453) did not receive their planned operation. Of the 4304 operated patients without neoadjuvant therapy, 40.5% (1744/4304) were delayed beyond 4 weeks. Delayed patients were more likely to be older, men, more comorbid, have higher body mass index and have rectal cancer and early stage disease. Delayed patients had higher unadjusted rates of complete resection (93.7% vs. 91.9%, P = 0.032) and lower rates of emergency surgery (4.5% vs. 22.5%, P < 0.001). After adjustment, delay was not associated with a lower rate of complete resection (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.90-1.55, P = 0.224), which was consistent in elective patients only (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.69-1.27, P = 0.672). Longer delays were not associated with poorer outcomes. CONCLUSION: One in 15 colorectal cancer patients did not receive their planned operation during the first wave of COVID-19. Surgical delay did not appear to compromise resectability, raising the hypothesis that any reduction in long-term survival attributable to delays is likely to be due to micro-metastatic disease

EEG Based Biometric Identification Using Correlation and MLPNN Models

This study investigates the capability of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to be used for biometric identification. In the context of biometric, recently, researchers have been focusing more on biomedical signals to substitute the biometric modalities that are being used nowadays as the signals obtained from our bodies is considered more secure and privacy-compliant. The EEG signals of 6 subjects were collected where the subjects were required to undergo two baseline experiments which are, eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC). The signals were processed using a 2nd order Butterworth filter to eliminate the unwanted noise in the signals. Then, Daubechies (db8) wavelet was applied to the signals in the feature extraction stage and from there, Power Spectral Density (PSD) of alpha and beta waves was computed. Finally, the correlation model and Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLPNN) was applied to classify the EEG signals of each subject.  Correlation model has yielded great significant difference of coefficient between autocorrelation and cross-correlation where it gives the coefficient value of 1 for autocorrelation and the coefficient value of less than 0.35 for cross-correlation. On the other hand, the MLPNN model gives an accuracy of 75.8% and 71.5% for classification during EO and EC baseline condition respectively. Therefore, these results support the usability of EEG signals in biometric recognition

Inventory data on commercial broiler chicken production system using life cycle assessment approach: A case study

An inventory analysis of the life cycle of broiler chicken production from cradle-to-gate perspective was carried out with the aim to identify possible input and output parameters involved in the system. To do so, broiler chicken production in Myra Chicken Farm and Services was investigated in detail. Result shows the inventory data on feed consumption, transportation, physical performance parameter and other utilities that affect the product which is broilers. Broilers production in fact shows escalation year by year because of high demand from consumer. A cradle-to-gate assessment was conducted based on ISO 14040/14044 guidelines. Inventory data was gathered from farmers and available literature. Improving all the input and output system will increase the level of productivity and the cost of the production. Thus, at the end of the research, it will able to make industry player to understand and take into consideration the solutions in order to promote a green broiler chicken productio

Assistive-as-needed strategy for upper-limb robotic systems: an initial survey

Stroke is amongst the leading causes of deprivation of one's ability in carrying out activities of daily living. It has been reported from literature that, the functional recovery of stroke patients are rather poor, unless frequent rehabilitative therapy is assumed on the affected limb. Recent trends of rehabilitation therapy have also shifted towards allowing more participation of the patient in the therapy session rather than simple passive treatments as it has been demonstrated to be non-trivial in promoting neural plasticity to expedite motor recovery process. Therefore, the employment of rehabilitation robotics is seen as a means of mitigating the limitations of conventional rehabilitation therapy. It enables unique methods for promoting patient engagement by providing patients assistance only as needed basis. This paper attempts on reviewing assist-as-needed control strategy applied on upper-limb robotic rehabilitation devices

Haptic glove for tactile graphics reader

Tactile graphics are commonly used reading materials by blind and visually impaired (BVI) students to access graphical information in STEM subjects. However, reading graphical information using haptic senses is far more difficult compared to reading visual-based information. It is a cognitive overload task due to the complexity of graphical information represented in a tactile format. Without any guidance or assistance from a sighted person, the BVI reader could not read and comprehend the information on the tactile graphics independently. This current study aims to design an assistive device that uses a haptic feedback method to provide artificial directional cues provided by four vibrating mini motor discs. An exploratory test with 10 blindfolded (BF) participants has been conducted to investigate several design factors and configurations of the haptic glove of the assistive device. The results showed that the most effective configuration for the current design is when the four mini motor discs are placed at the hand palm and are set to high-intensity vibration for the cues