9,830 research outputs found
Transition in pharmacology: From theoretical knowledge of medicines to practice-oriented approach. Do role-plays help?
Background: Pharmacology, a subject criticized by medicos as ‘dry and volatile’ is in a stage of constant reformation. Traditional teaching-learning in pharmacology has focused more on theoretical knowledge of medicines with little emphasis on the art and science of communicating the same to patients in actual practice. Role-play is one novel method which attracts learners to gain knowledge through concrete experience, there-by bringing in a behavioural change that persists eventually. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of role-play as an educational tool in teaching patient education and counseling skills regarding medications prescription for ischemic heart disease (IHD).Methods: A quantitative, randomized, interventional study with pre & post-OSPE using a pre-validated checklist (modified-Calgary-Cambridge) was conducted in 84, II-MBBS students. The scores obtained in intervention group (Lecture-IHD counseling + Role-play) were compared with the control group (Lecture) using Wilcoxon test for paired-data and Mann-Whitney test for inter-group comparisons.Results: Paired-data analysis showed an increase in post-test mean scores in both control and intervention groups following training. However, inter-group comparisons revealed statistically significant improvement in 8 of the 13 parameters in intervention group. Students in intervention group stressed more on pharmacological aspects of medications, along with emergency measures and need for follow-up. Hence it can be said that role-plays played a significant role in improving communication skills regarding medications prescription.Conclusions: Medical communication skills course for II-MBBS students may enable them to demonstrate better patient-doctor interactions. Role-plays are an effective tool to acquire technical and behavioural skills to deal with real-life situations through simulation
Slim U-Net: Efficient Anatomical Feature Preserving U-net Architecture for Ultrasound Image Segmentation
We investigate the applicability of U-Net based models for segmenting Urinary
Bladder (UB) in male pelvic view UltraSound (US) images. The segmentation of UB
in the US image aids radiologists in diagnosing the UB. However, UB in US
images has arbitrary shapes, indistinct boundaries and considerably large
inter- and intra-subject variability, making segmentation a quite challenging
task. Our study of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) segmentation network, U-Net, for
the problem reveals that it often fails to capture the salient characteristics
of UB due to the varying shape and scales of anatomy in the noisy US image.
Also, U-net has an excessive number of trainable parameters, reporting poor
computational efficiency during training. We propose a Slim U-Net to address
the challenges of UB segmentation. Slim U-Net proposes to efficiently preserve
the salient features of UB by reshaping the structure of U-Net using a less
number of 2D convolution layers in the contracting path, in order to preserve
and impose them on expanding path. To effectively distinguish the blurred
boundaries, we propose a novel annotation methodology, which includes the
background area of the image at the boundary of a marked region of interest
(RoI), thereby steering the model's attention towards boundaries. In addition,
we suggested a combination of loss functions for network training in the
complex segmentation of UB. The experimental results demonstrate that Slim
U-net is statistically superior to U-net for UB segmentation. The Slim U-net
further decreases the number of trainable parameters and training time by 54%
and 57.7%, respectively, compared to the standard U-Net, without compromising
the segmentation accuracy.Comment: Accepted in 9th ACM International Conference on Biomedical and
Bioinformatics Engineering (ICBBE) 2022 http://www.icbbe.com
Template-Stripped Multifunctional Wedge and Pyramid Arrays for Magnetic Nanofocusing and Optical Sensing
We present large-scale reproducible
fabrication of multifunctional ultrasharp metallic structures on planar
substrates with capabilities including magnetic field nanofocusing
and plasmonic sensing. Objects with sharp tips such as wedges and
pyramids made with noble metals have been extensively used for enhancing
local electric fields via the lightning-rod effect or plasmonic nanofocusing.
However, analogous nanofocusing of magnetic fields using sharp tips
made with magnetic materials has not been widely realized. Reproducible
fabrication of sharp tips with magnetic as well as noble metal layers
on planar substrates can enable straightforward application of their
material and shape-derived functionalities. We use a template-stripping
method to produce plasmonic-shell-coated nickel wedge and pyramid
arrays at the wafer-scale with tip radius of curvature close to 10
nm. We further explore the magnetic nanofocusing capabilities of these
ultrasharp substrates, deriving analytical formulas and comparing
the results with computer simulations. These structures exhibit nanoscale
spatial control over the trapping of magnetic microbeads and nanoparticles
in solution. Additionally, enhanced optical sensing of analytes by
these plasmonic-shell-coated substrates is demonstrated using surface-enhanced
Raman spectroscopy. These methods can guide the design and fabrication
of novel devices with applications including nanoparticle manipulation,
biosensing, and magnetoplasmonics
Impact of emission mitigation on ozone-induced wheat and rice damage in India
In this study, we evaluate the potential impact of ground level ozone (O3) on rice and wheat yield in top 10 states in India during 2005. This study is based on simulated hourly O3 concentration from the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), district-wise seasonal crop production datasets and accumulated daytime hourly O3 concentration over a threshold of 40 ppbv (AOT40)
indices to estimate crop yield damage resulting from
ambient O3 exposure. The response of nitrogen oxides
(NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) mitigation
action is evaluated based on ground level O3 simulations with individual reduction in anthropogenic NOx and VOC emissions over the Indian domain. The total loss of wheat and rice from top 10 producing states in India is estimated to be 2.2 million tonnes (3.3%) and 2.05 million tonnes (2.5%) respectively. Sensitivity model study reveals relatively 93% decrease in O3-induced crop yield losses in response to anthropogenic NOx emission mitigation. The response of VOC mitigation action results in relatively small changes of about 24% decrease in O3-induced crop
yield losses, suggesting NOx as a key pollutant for
mitigation. VOC also contribute to crop yield reduction
but their effects are a distant second compared to
NOx effects
Fatal Dog Bite Injury – A Case Report
Background: Dog bite is one of the most common childhood accidents causing significant morbidity and mortality in pediatrics age group (1). The exposed position compounded by the short stature of children makes the face very vulnerable to dog bite or animal bite injuries. Unlike wounds inflicted by assaults and accidents, animal bite wounds are distinctive as they are puncture type deep wounds which are injected by the bite force, with inoculums of pathogenic bacteria from the saliva of the attacking dog.Case Report: A case of a 2 month-old child who had succumbed to multiple facial and head bite injuries is presented. At autopsy, multiple bite wounds were noted on the upper part of body like face, head, chest and abdomen. Distinctive bite marks diagnostic of canine dentition were present, most prominently on the head, face and chest. Death was due to cranio-cerebral damage.Conclusion: Public health notification should occur for all dog bites. This would facilitate the development of regional dog bite registries with information on incidence and dogs at risk, which in turn could guide policies such as leash laws and licensing
Effect of screening on shot noise in diffusive mesoscopic conductors
Shot noise in diffusive mesoscopic conductors, at finite observation
frequencies (comparable to the reciprocal Thouless time
), is analyzed with an account of screening. At low frequencies,
the well-known result is recovered. This result is valid at
arbitrary for wide conductors longer than the screening length.
However, at least for two very different systems, namely, wide and short
conductors, and thin conductors over a close ground plane, noise approaches a
different fundamental level, , at .Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Published version. Also available in the
journal's format at
http://hana.physics.sunysb.edu/~yehuda/cv/papers/shotnoise.pd
Mapping 6D N = 1 supergravities to F-theory
We develop a systematic framework for realizing general anomaly-free chiral
6D supergravity theories in F-theory. We focus on 6D (1, 0) models with one
tensor multiplet whose gauge group is a product of simple factors (modulo a
finite abelian group) with matter in arbitrary representations. Such theories
can be decomposed into blocks associated with the simple factors in the gauge
group; each block depends only on the group factor and the matter charged under
it. All 6D chiral supergravity models can be constructed by gluing such blocks
together in accordance with constraints from anomalies. Associating a geometric
structure to each block gives a dictionary for translating a supergravity model
into a set of topological data for an F-theory construction. We construct the
dictionary of F-theory divisors explicitly for some simple gauge group factors
and associated matter representations. Using these building blocks we analyze a
variety of models. We identify some 6D supergravity models which do not map to
integral F-theory divisors, possibly indicating quantum inconsistency of these
6D theories.Comment: 37 pages, no figures; v2: references added, minor typos corrected;
v3: minor corrections to DOF counting in section
Expert-Agnostic Ultrasound Image Quality Assessment using Deep Variational Clustering
Ultrasound imaging is a commonly used modality for several diagnostic and
therapeutic procedures. However, the diagnosis by ultrasound relies heavily on
the quality of images assessed manually by sonographers, which diminishes the
objectivity of the diagnosis and makes it operator-dependent. The supervised
learning-based methods for automated quality assessment require manually
annotated datasets, which are highly labour-intensive to acquire. These
ultrasound images are low in quality and suffer from noisy annotations caused
by inter-observer perceptual variations, which hampers learning efficiency. We
propose an UnSupervised UltraSound image Quality assessment Network, US2QNet,
that eliminates the burden and uncertainty of manual annotations. US2QNet uses
the variational autoencoder embedded with the three modules, pre-processing,
clustering and post-processing, to jointly enhance, extract, cluster and
visualize the quality feature representation of ultrasound images. The
pre-processing module uses filtering of images to point the network's attention
towards salient quality features, rather than getting distracted by noise.
Post-processing is proposed for visualizing the clusters of feature
representations in 2D space. We validated the proposed framework for quality
assessment of the urinary bladder ultrasound images. The proposed framework
achieved 78% accuracy and superior performance to state-of-the-art clustering
methods.Comment: Accepted in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA) 202
Enhancement strategies for hydrogen production from wastewater: A review
© 2016 Bentham Science Publishers. This mini review focuses on the current developments in the field of dark fermentation technologies using wastewater as carbon and nutrient source in batch reactors. Besides, the major microbiota (pure, enriched mixed, co and mixed cultures) involved in the process have been emphasized. Additionally, problems associated with the lower production performances and the overcoming strategies applied to enhance the production rate (HPR) and yield (HY) bybio-augmentation, immobilization, enrichment technique and nano particles (NP) addition were also discussed. This mini review provides more insights about the recent developments in the dark fermentative hydrogen production (DHFP) process and their advantages in a brief manner. The perspective towards the development of sustainable society by using bioH2 technology is enlightened
- …