To evaluate the role of sputum in the diagnosis of lung cancer in south Indian population

Background:The main advantage of sputum cytology is its simplicity, non-invasiveness and minimal discomfort to the patient. Though, the sputum is evaluated in the diagnosis of lung cancer, the report on the same in the South Indian population was lacking. Therefore, the present study has been undertaken to evaluate the role of sputum in the diagnosis of lung cancer in South Indian population.Methods:The material consisted of sputum samples from 133 patients and was collected in clean wide mouthed disposable plastic containers. Patients were asked to collect sputum the next morning after washing the mouth properly. The sputum was immediately brought to the laboratory and poured into a watch glass. Four smears were prepared from each sample, out of which two smears were immediately fixed in methanol and the other two were air-dried. The methanol fixed smears were stained with Papanicolaou stain. Out of the two air dried smears, one was stained with May Grunwald Giemsa and the other with Gabbot's method for AFB. The smears were screened for malignant cells and a cytological diagnosis was made. The cytological diagnosis was correlated with the histopathological diagnosis. The data obtained were represented as mean percentages.Results:The observation of sputum smears showed numerous pleiomorphic keratinized squamous cells, keratinized squamous cell with hyper chromatic nucleus in well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma, pleiomorphic cells having vacuolated cytoplasm and vesicular nucleus with prominent nucleoli as in adenocarcinoma of the lung, cells arranged in small clusters and having scanty cytoplasm in small cell carcinoma and cells are slightly larger than lymphocyte with scanty cytoplasm and hyper chromatic, grooved nuclei in small cell carcinoma.Conclusion:Cytology of sputum is extremely useful and highly sensitive. The diagnostic accuracy is directly proportional to the number of samples. Sputum cytology is highly sensitive for the centrally located squamous cell carcinoma rather than the peripherally located adenocarcinoma. Properly collected, simple sputum examination alone can give results similar to other highly expensive methods like bronchoscopic material for the diagnosis of lung cancer.

An Audit of the Clinicopathological Spectrum of Benign Vascular Tumors of Female Genital Tract; with a Mini Narrative Review

Background: Vascular tumors of the female genital tract (FGT) are very rare. The aim of this study was to analyze the spectrum of vascular tumors in FGT and to correlate their clinicopathological features. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study of 15years, including clinical features, imaging studies, gross and microscopic features of 24 cases of benign vascular tumors of FGT were reviewed. The age range was 20–95 years. Presenting complaints were abdominal pain/mass, postcoital bleeding, and vaginal and vulval mass. The duration of symptoms varied from 3months to 10years. A diagnosis of vascular tumor was not considered in any of these on clinical grounds. Results: The most common benign vascular tumor was hemangioma (7cases), followed by chorangioma (5cases). The most common sites of occurrence of these benign tumors were ovary and vulva (8cases each), the rarest site was cervix (1case). The clinical symptom of ovarian vascular tumors was abdominal pain and lump. Among the vascular tumors of ovary, the most common was lymphangioma (4cases) followed by hemangioma (3cases). The least common tumor was angiomyolipoma. The most common vulval tumors were hemangioma and lymphangioma circumscriptum. An unusual case of multiplicity and complexity was observed with 3 neoplasms, one malignant and two benign with additional caseating tuberculous lymphadenitis. Conclusion: Benign vascular tumors in the FGT can present with symptoms similar to gynecological tumors and epithelial malignancies leading to unwarranted radical surgery. The pathological examination is necessary in all such cases to exclude the possibility of malignancy. Angiomyofibroblastoma and aggressive angiomyxoma of the vulva are very rare and both share similar clinical and histopathologic features causing diagnostic problems.KEY WORDS: Angimyolipoma, angiomyofibroblastoma, female genital tract, hemangioma, lymphangioma cisrcumscriptum, vascular tumor

Sterol 3β-glucosyltransferase biocatalysts with a range of selectivities, including selectivity for testosterone

The main objectives of this work were to characterise a range of purified recombinant sterol 3β-glucosyltransferases and show that rational sampling of the diversity that exists within sterol 3β-glucosyltransferase sequence space can result in a range of enzyme selectivities. In our study the catalytically active domain of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae 3β-glucosyltransferase was used to mine putative sterol 3β-glucosyltransferases from the databases. Selected diverse sequences were expressed in and purified from Escherichia coli and shown to have different selectivities for the 3β-hydroxysteroids ergosterol and cholesterol. Surprisingly, three enzymes were also selective for testosterone, a 17β-hydroxysteroid. This study therefore reports for the first time sterol 3β-glucosyltransferases with selectivity for both 3β- and 17β-hydroxysteroids and is also the first report of recombinant 3β-glucosyltransferases with selectivity for steroids with a hydroxyl group at positions other than C-3. These enzymes could therefore find utility in the pharmaceutical industry for the green synthesis of a range of glycosylated compounds of medicinal interest

Principled and automated system of systems composition using an ontological architecture

A distributed system’s functionality must continuously evolve, especially when environmental context changes. Such required evolution imposes unbearable complexity on system development. An alternative is to make systems able to self-adapt by opportunistically composing at runtime to generate systems of systems (SoSs) that offer value-added functionality. The success of such an approach calls for abstracting the heterogeneity of systems and enabling the programmatic construction of SoSs with minimal developer intervention. We propose a general ontology-based approach to describe distributed systems, seeking to achieve abstraction and enable runtime reasoning between systems. We also propose an architecture for systems that utilizes such ontologies to enable systems to discover and ‘understand’ each other, and potentially compose, all at runtime. We detail features of the ontology and the architecture through three contrasting case studies: one on controlling multiple systems in smart home environment, another on the management of dynamic computing clusters, and a third on autonomic connection of rescue teams. We also quantitatively evaluate the scalability and validity of our approach through experiments and simulations. Our approach enables system developers to focus on high-level SoS composition without being constrained by deployment-specific implementation details. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach to raise the level of abstraction of SoS construction through reasoned composition at runtime. Our architecture presents a strong foundation for further work due to its generality and extensibility

The Role of Ontologies in Emergent Middleware: Supporting Interoperability in Complex Distributed Systems

Part 8: Run-Time (Re)configuration and InspectionInternational audienceInteroperability is a fundamental problem in distributed systems, and an increasingly difficult problem given the level of heterogeneity and dynamism exhibited by contemporary systems. While progress has been made, we argue that complexity is now at a level such that existing approaches are inadequate and that a major re-think is required to identify principles and associated techniques to achieve this central property of distributed systems. In this paper, we postulate that emergent middleware is the right way forward; emergent middleware is a dynamically generated distributed system infrastructure for the current operating environment and context. In particular, we focus on the key role of ontologies in supporting this process and in providing underlying meaning and associated reasoning capabilities to allow the right run-time choices to be made. The paper presents the CONNECT middleware architecture as an example of emergent middleware and highlights the role of ontologies as a cross-cutting concern throughout this architecture. Two experiments are described as initial evidence of the potential role of ontologies in middleware. Important remaining challenges are also documented

Alteration of DNA supercoiling serves as a trigger of short-term cold shock repressed genes of E. coli

publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Models of everywhere revisited: a technological perspective

The concept ‘models of everywhere’ was first introduced in the mid 2000s as a means of reasoning about the environmental science of a place, changing the nature of the underlying modelling process, from one in which general model structures are used to one in which modelling becomes a learning process about specific places, in particular capturing the idiosyncrasies of that place. At one level, this is a straightforward concept, but at another it is a rich multi-dimensional conceptual framework involving the following key dimensions: models of everywhere, models of everything and models at all times, being constantly re-evaluated against the most current evidence. This is a compelling approach with the potential to deal with epistemic uncertainties and nonlinearities. However, the approach has, as yet, not been fully utilised or explored. This paper examines the concept of models of everywhere in the light of recent advances in technology. The paper argues that, when first proposed, technology was a limiting factor but now, with advances in areas such as Internet of Things, cloud computing and data analytics, many of the barriers have been alleviated. Consequently, it is timely to look again at the concept of models of everywhere in practical conditions as part of a trans-disciplinary effort to tackle the remaining research questions. The paper concludes by identifying the key elements of a research agenda that should underpin such experimentation and deployment

Intermediate CONNECT Architecture

Interoperability remains a fundamental challenge when connecting heterogeneous systems which encounter and spontaneously communicate with one another in pervasive computing environments. This challenge is exasperated by the highly heterogeneous technologies employed by each of the interacting parties, i.e., in terms of hardware, operating system, middleware protocols, and application protocols. The key aim of the CONNECT project is to drop this heterogeneity barrier and achieve universal interoperability. Here we report on the activities of WP1 into developing the CONNECT architecture that will underpin this solution. In this respect, we present the following key contributions from the second year. Firstly, the intermediary CONNECT architecture that presents a more concrete view of the technologies and principles employed to enable interoperability between heterogeneous networked systems. Secondly, the design and implementation of the discovery enabler with emphasis on the approaches taken to match compatible networked systems. Thirdly, the realisation of CONNECTors that can be deployed in the environment; we provide domain specific language solutions to generate and translate between middleware protocols. Fourthly, we highlight the role of ontologies within CONNECT and demonstrate how ontologies crosscut all functionality within the CONNECT architecture

The design and deployment of an end-to-end IoT infrastructure for the natural environment

Internet of Things (IoT) systems have seen recent growth in popularity for city and home environments. We report on the design, deployment, and use of the IoT infrastructure for environmental monitoring and management. Working closely with hydrologists, soil scientists, and animal behaviour scientists, we successfully deployed and utilised a system to deliver integrated information across these two fields in the first such example of real-time multidimensional environmental science. We describe the design of this system; its requirements and operational effectiveness for hydrological, soil, and ethological scientists; and our experiences from building, maintaining, and using the deployment at a remote site in difficult conditions. Based on this experience, we discuss key future work for the IoT community when working in these kinds of environmental deployments

Revised CONNECT Architecture

Interoperability remains a fundamental challenge when connecting heterogeneous systems which encounter and spontaneously communicate with one another in pervasive computing environments. This challenge is exasperated by the highly heterogeneous technologies employed by each of the interacting parties, i.e., in terms of hardware, operating system, middleware protocols, and application protocols. The key aim of the CONNECT project is to drop this heterogeneity barrier and achieve universal interoperability. Here we report on the revised CONNECT architecture, highlighting the integration of the work carried out to integrate the CONNECT enablers developed by the different partners; in particular, we present the progress of this work towards a finalised concrete architecture. In the third year this architecture has been enhanced to: i) produce concrete CONNECTors, ii) match networked systems based upon their goals and intent, and iii) use learning technologies to find the affordance of a system. We also report on the application of the CONNECT approach to streaming based systems, further considering exploitation of CONNECT in the mobile environment