Impact of Demonetization on Indian Citizens

A paper currency i.e. currency note is basically a promissory note that simply recommends that the payee has \u27promised\u27 to pay that amount to the payer. The same is written on every currency paper as well. This is authenticated in India by the RBI Governor. This currency notes people can you for the exchange of goods and services. It is considered as a legal tender for performing transactions. Demonetization means the \u27scrapping\u27 of old currency notes and canceling their legal status of tender. Shri Narendra Modi, The Indian Prime Minister, in his speech to the nation on 8th November 2016 declared the demonetization of the Indian currency notes Rs. 1000 and Rs. 500 with effect midnight of 8th November 2016. This move sent the whole country in a wobbly. The Hon\u27ble Prime Minister specified this decision is a decisive attack against the black money being stored by the citizens of the country as well as a step to counter terrorism which was being funded by counterfeit money

An Analytical Perspective on Determination of Free Base Nicotine in E-Liquids

In electronic cigarette users, nicotine delivery to lungs depends on various factors. One of the important factors is e-liquid nicotine concentration. Nicotine concentration in e-liquids ranges from 0 to \u3e50 mg/mL. Furthermore, nicotine exists in protonated and unprotonated (“free base”) forms. The two forms are believed to affect the nicotine absorption in body. Therefore, in addition to total nicotine concentration, e-liquids should be characterized for their free base nicotine yield. Two approaches are being used for the determination of free base nicotine in e-liquids. The first is applying a dilution to e-liquids followed by two methods: Henderson–Hasselbalch theory application or a Liquid-Liquid Extraction. The second is the without-dilution approach followed by 1H NMR method. Here, we carried out controlled experiments using five e-liquids of different flavors using these two approaches. In the dilution approach, the Henderson–Hasselbalch method was tested using potentiometric titration. The accuracy was found to be \u3e98% for all five e-liquid samples (n = 3). A Liquid-Liquid Extraction was carried out using toluene or hexane as extraction solvent. The Liquid-Liquid Extraction technique was found to be limited by solvent interactions with flavors. Solvent extractions resulted in flavor dependent inaccuracies in free base nicotine determination (5 to 277% of calculated values). The without-dilution approach was carried out using 1H NMR as described by Duell et al. This approach is proposed to offer an independent and alternative scale. None of the methods have established a strong correlation between pre- and postvaporization free base nicotine yield. Here we present comparative results of two approaches using analytical techniques. Such a comparison would be helpful in establishing a standardized method for free base nicotine determination of e-liquids

Erythropoetin receptor expression in the human diabetic retina

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent evidence suggests erythropoietin (<it>EPO</it>) and the erythropoietin receptor (<it>EPOR</it>) may play a direct role in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. Better characterization of the <it>EPO-EPOR </it>signaling system in the ischemic retina may offer a new therapeutic modality for ischemic ophthalmic diseases. This study was performed to identify <it>EPOR </it>mRNA expression in the human diabetic eye.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p><it>EPOR </it>antisense RNA probes were validated on human pancreas tissue. In the normal eye, <it>EPOR </it>was expressed in the retinal ganglion cell layer. Minimal expression was observed in the inner and outer nuclear layer. Under conditions of diabetic retinopathy, <it>EPOR </it>expression shifted to photoreceptor cells. Increased expression was also observed in the peripheral retina.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p><it>EPOR </it>expression may be a biomarker or contribute to disease mechanisms in diabetic retinopathy.</p

Improving RNN-Transducers with Acoustic LookAhead

RNN-Transducers (RNN-Ts) have gained widespread acceptance as an end-to-end model for speech to text conversion because of their high accuracy and streaming capabilities. A typical RNN-T independently encodes the input audio and the text context, and combines the two encodings by a thin joint network. While this architecture provides SOTA streaming accuracy, it also makes the model vulnerable to strong LM biasing which manifests as multi-step hallucination of text without acoustic evidence. In this paper we propose LookAhead that makes text representations more acoustically grounded by looking ahead into the future within the audio input. This technique yields a significant 5%-20% relative reduction in word error rate on both in-domain and out-of-domain evaluation sets.Comment: 5 pages, 1 fig, 7 tables, Proceedings of Interspeech 202

Retain womb in retained placenta: hysterotomy for retained bilobed placenta in a preterm angular pregnancy

Angular pregnancy is a unique condition, which may be associated with both foetal and placental abnormalities, as well as preterm labour and retained placenta. Ultrasound is a useful tool in deciding feasibility of manual removal placenta by ruling out adherent placenta. A twenty five years primipara, five hours following preterm vaginal delivery, at 31 weeks of gestation presented with retained placenta. Uterus was well retracted with minimal bleeding, on trans-abdominal ultrasonography placenta accreta was ruled out. After stabilising, she had hysterotomy and placenta was removed which was bilobed. Neonate had cardiac and renal anomaly and succumbed at the end of one month of life. In young women prime priority is to preserve the uterus, by conservative approach as in our case

Evaluation of anti-inflammatory potential of ayurvedic formulation Rheumacure in animal model of rheumatoid arthritis

Background: Rheumacure (RC) is a herbomineral preparation recommended by Ayurvedic medical practitioners for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of oral treatment with the herbomineral formulation in animal model of Freund's adjuvant induced arthritis to develop scientific evidence to the efficacious claim of the use of ayurvedic proprietary medicine in the management of rheumatoid arthritis in folklore medicine.Methods: Arthritis was induced by sub plantar injection of 0.1ml of complete Freund’s adjuvant. Treatment with RC 100 mg/kg and dexamethasone 2 mg/kg was given to rats orally once a day from day 1 to day 21 and after which estimation of physical, biochemical, and haematological parameters were carried out.Results: Treatment of RC to arthritic animal showed statistically significant (p<0.05) improvement in physical parameters like arthritic index, paw edema, paw thickness, splenomegaly and thymus index of the animal. The treatment also showed significantly (p <0.05) reduction in inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, serum rheumatoid factor, erythrocyte sedimentation rate and increase in % haemoglobin. The histopathological examination showed protective effect against hyperplasia of synovium, pannus formation and destruction of the joint space.Conclusions: The results obtained in experiments indicated significant anti-inflammatory effect comparable to dexamethasone and without significant side effect. Thus the RC may be a potential preventive or therapeutic candidate for the treatment of chronic inflammation and arthritis

Listeria monocytogenes brain abscess in an immunocompromised patient: a case report

Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular gram-positive bacillus which usually infects immunocompromised patients, though it can infrequently infect immunocompetent individuals, neonates and pregnant women as well. Neurological manifestations include meningitis and cerebritis. Brain Abscess is an extremely rare presentation with approximately 80 reported cases. Authors report a patient with a brain abscess identified on an MRI scan with positive blood culture for Listeria monocytogenes. Patient was managed conservatively with intravenous followed by oral antibiotics with resolution of the abscess.

A study of thrombocytopenia in malaria and its prognostic significance

Background:Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases of tropics, affecting 300-500 million people and causing over 1 million deaths each year in the world. Malaria is a multisystem infection and can be associated with many complications. Thrombocytopenia is the most common hematological complication of malaria, but association of thrombocytopenia with different types of malaria and its prognostic implications in context with severity of low platelet count has not been evaluated in many of previous studies. Objectives of the study was to study the incidence, correlation of severity and prognostic significance of thrombocytopenia in malaria.Methods: A total of 100 cases were included in the study and identified positive for malaria parasites on peripheral smear examination with conventional microscopy and /or by rapid diagnostic test.Results: Present study includes 100 patient with malaria from which 78% were males and 22% were females. Most of the patients were suffering from P. vivax malaria (65%), and rest suffered from P. falciparum malaria (32%) and mixed infection (03%). Incidence of thrombocytopenia was 79%, of which mild, moderate and severe thrombocytopenia was 35.44%, 41.77% and 22.78% respectively. Complicated and uncomplicated malaria cases were 22.79% and 77.21% respectively.Conclusion: Clinical bleeding in severe malaria is not a common feature and occurred in 5.5% of individuals with severe disease. Unnecessary platelet transfusion is not required for mild to moderate degree of thrombocytopenia in malaria patients which further avoids an unnecessary cost burden in the poor group of patients.

Comparison between chloral hydrate and propofol-ketamine as sedation regimens for pediatric auditory brainstem response testing

Introduction The use of diagnostic auditory brainstem response testing under sedation is currently the “gold standard” in infants and young children who are not developmentally capable of completing the test. Objective The aim of the study is to compare a propofol-ketamine regimen to an oral chloral hydrate regimen for sedating children undergoing auditory brainstem response testing. Methods Patients between 4 months and 6 years who required sedation for auditory brainstem response testing were included in this retrospective study. Drugs doses, adverse effects, sedation times, and the effectiveness of the sedative regimens were reviewed. Results 73 patients underwent oral chloral hydrate sedation, while 117 received propofol-ketamine sedation. 12% of the patients in the chloral hydrate group failed to achieve desired sedation level. The average procedure, recovery and total nursing times were significantly lower in the propofol-ketamine group. Propofol-ketamine group experienced higher incidence of transient hypoxemia. Conclusion Both sedation regimens can be successfully used for sedating children undergoing auditory brainstem response testing. While deep sedation using propofol-ketamine regimen offers more efficiency than moderate sedation using chloral hydrate, it does carry a higher incidence of transient hypoxemia, which warrants the use of a highly skilled team trained in pediatric cardio-respiratory monitoring and airway management

Free-electron lasers

Free-electron lasers (FELs) are lasers that use an electron beam from an accelerator to produce widely tunable, high power, ultrafast pulses of coherent radiation. FELs are today important sources of infrared and far-infrared radiation the world. Quasi-CW high-power FELs are also operational. FELs that operate on the self-amplified spontaneous emission principle are leading candidates for X-ray lasers and fourth-generation light sources. We discuss the physics, technology, advantages and applications of FELs, and explore the frontiers of X-ray and high-power FELs. We also present details of plans for a compact, ultrafast, terahertz free-electron laser in India