Diagnostic value of saline infusion sonohysterography for detecting endometrial lesion and comparing it with hysteroscopy and histopathology in postmenopausal bleeding

Background: Different diagnostic tools are available to evaluate endometrial lesion such as hysteroscopy, sonohysterography and transvaginal ultrasound. The present study aimed to determine the diagnostic value of saline infusion sonohystrography (SIS) in diagnosis of intrauterine lesions in women with postmenopausal bleeding (PMB).Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 100 married women with chief complain of PMB referred to gynecologic clinics at the Zenana hospital, Jaipur from March 2019 to February 2020. All participants were in the post-menopausal period that showed abnormal endometrial thickness (>4 mm) or endometrial focal lesions through transvaginal ultrasound. Participants underwent SIS, hysteroscopy plus endometrial biopsy in order. The gold standard was the histopathology of endometrial specimen reported by pathologist.Results: Mean age of women was 57.14 years. It is evident that sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of SIS for the diagnosis of endometrial atrophy was 79.16%, 100%, 100% and 83.87% respectively which is higher than that of hysteroscopy and equivalent to histopathology. SIS and hysteroscopy are equally efficient in diagnosing endometrial polyp and submucous fibroid. And are better than histopathology. Histopathology is better than SIS and hysteroscopy for the diagnosis of endometrial proliferation.Conclusions: Findings show that, SIS probably is a proper method for detecting endometrial focal lesion including polyps and myomas. Future studies may help to define further advantages of this procedure

Transverse sectioning of Arabidopsis thaliana leaves using resin embedding

The leaf is the major functional part of the shoot performing the bulk of photosynthetic activity. Its development is relatively plastic allowing the plant to adapt to environmental changes by modifying leaf size and anatomy. Moreover, a leaf is made up of various distinct cell layers, each having specialized functions. To understand functional adaptation and the development of the leaf it is essential to obtain cross sections throughout leaf development and at maturity (Kalve et al., 2014). Here, we describe a protocol for transverse sectioning of Arabidopsis thaliana leaves using resin embedding. This protocol provides a reliable platform to yield high quality images of cross sections allowing study of development of various tissue layers across the transversal axis of the leaf. As this method is an adaptation of the protocol developed for the Arabidopsis root tip by Beeckman and Viane (1999) and De Smet et al. (2004), it can easily be modified to accommodate other organs and species

PASSWORD-LESS TRUST BASED ACCESS AUTHORIZATION FOR REMOTE INTERNET-OF-THINGS (IOT) DEVICES

The industry is moving away from password-based authorizations as they are often difficult to manage and are associated with various risks. Techniques herein solve an important issue with regard to remote Internet of Things (IoT) gateway access by utilizing a password-less trust-based authentication mechanism through which dynamic trust-based authorizations can be provided for devices utilizing a combination of a user trust score and a device risk profile in a unique manner. Such an approach will improve IoT security and will also help to solve an important security issue within the IoT/industrial world

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF SEX-SPECIFIC MICROSATELLITE VARIANTS ON PHENOMICS OF INBRED SWISS ALBINO MICE

An inbred strain limits the segregating variance and provides more power and requires fewer experimental animals to produce good reproducibility. This study was undertaken with the aim to assess the impact of sex of offsprings and sex specific microsatellite variants on performance and fitness traits in F4 inbred Swiss albino mice. The phenomics of different performance and fitness traits were estimated on 506 F4 inbred mice population. Two ‘X’ chromosome specific microsatellite loci (DXMit187 and DxMit172) were used for PCR-Microsatellite genotyping of 102 F4 inbred population. PIC estimates showed that both the loci were informative for the population. In the current population, with the increasing level of “F” a declining trend was observed for Body weight at birth (BWB), Body weight at weaning (BWW), Litter size at weaning (LSW) and Litter weight at weaning (LWW). In F4 inbred population, BWW and ABW for males (17.32±0.32g and 30.81±0.31g) were significantly (p<0.05) higher than females (16.39±0.30g and 27.83±0.28g). The significant (p<0.05) impact of sex of offspring on performance traits revealed that less magnitude of inbreeding depression was observed in male as compared to female. There were 3 alleles and 5 genotypes at the DXMit172 locus, and 3 alleles and 4 genotypes at the DXMit187 locus. The highest and lowest allelic frequencies were found at DXMit172 locus for 142 (0.422) and 154 (0.226) alleles, respectively, and at DXMit187 locus for 126 (0.588) and 146 (0.093) alleles, respectively. Genotype 142/142 (0.382) and 154/148 (0.059) had the highest and lowest genotypic frequency at the DXMit172 locus, respectively, and at DXMit187 locus for 126/126 (0.588) and 146/146 (0.039) genotypes, respectively. In the current study, only the DXMit172 loci had significant genotypic associations with fitness traits (p<0.05). The average FIS based on X- specific microsatellite markers was 0.790 in the F4 inbred population. These results indicate that rate of inbreeding depression is more in females than in males

Longitudinal in vivo assessment of host-microbe interactions in a murine model of pulmonary aspergillosis

The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus is ubiquitous in nature and the most common cause of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) in patients with a compromised immune system. The development of IPA in patients under immunosuppressive treatment or in patients with primary immunodeficiency demonstrates the importance of the host immune response in controlling aspergillosis. However, study of the host-microbe interaction has been hampered by the lack of tools for their non-invasive assessment. We developed a methodology to study the response of the host's immune system against IPA longitudinally in vivo by using fluorine-19 magnetic resonance imaging (F-19 MRI). We showed the advantage of a perfluorocarbon-based contrast agent for the in vivo labeling of macrophages and dendritic cells, permitting quantification of pulmonary inflammation in different murine IPA models. Our findings reveal the potential of F-19 MRI for the assessment of rapid kinetics of innate immune response against IPA and the permissive niche generated through immunosuppression

A novel fine-tuned deep-learning-based multi-class classifier for severity of paddy leaf diseases

IntroductionPaddy leaf diseases have a catastrophic influence on the quality and quantity of paddy grain production. The detection and identification of the intensity of various paddy infections are critical for high-quality crop production.MethodsIn this paper, infections in paddy leaves are considered for the identification of illness severity. The dataset contains both primary and secondary data. The four online repositories used for secondary data resources are Mendeley, GitHub, Kaggle and UCI. The size of the dataset is 4,068 images. The dataset is first pre-processed using ImageDataGenerator. Then, a generative adversarial network (GAN) is used to increase the dataset size exponentially. The disease severity calculation for the infected leaf is performed using a number of segmentation methods. To determine paddy infection, a deep learning-based hybrid approach is proposed that combines the capabilities of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and support vector machine (SVM). The severity levels are determined with the assistance of a domain expert. Four degrees of disease severity (mild, moderate, severe, and profound) are considered.ResultsThree infections are considered in the categorization of paddy leaf diseases: bacterial blight, blast, and leaf smut. The model predicted the paddy disease type and intensity with a 98.43% correctness rate. The loss rate is 41.25%.DiscussionThe findings show that the proposed method is reliable and effective for identifying the four levels of severity of bacterial blight, blast, and leaf smut infections in paddy crops. The proposed model performed better than the existing CNN and SVM classification models

Longitudinal In Vivo Assessment of Host-Microbe Interactions in a Murine Model of Pulmonary Aspergillosis.

The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus is ubiquitous in nature and the most common cause of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) in patients with a compromised immune system. The development of IPA in patients under immunosuppressive treatment or in patients with primary immunodeficiency demonstrates the importance of the host immune response in controlling aspergillosis. However, study of the host-microbe interaction has been hampered by the lack of tools for their non-invasive assessment. We developed a methodology to study the response of the host's immune system against IPA longitudinally in vivo by using fluorine-19 magnetic resonance imaging (19F MRI). We showed the advantage of a perfluorocarbon-based contrast agent for the in vivo labeling of macrophages and dendritic cells, permitting quantification of pulmonary inflammation in different murine IPA models. Our findings reveal the potential of 19F MRI for the assessment of rapid kinetics of innate immune response against IPA and the permissive niche generated through immunosuppression.We are grateful for the financial support by the following funding agencies: the European Commission Marie Curie (ITN) BetaTrain (289932), the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO, G.0A75.14, G.0B28.14, and G.069115N), the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie for the SBO NanoCoMIT (IWT SBO 140061), the European ERA-NET project “CryptoView” (third call of the FP7 programme Infect-ERA), and KU Leuven for PF 10/017 (IMIR)

Impact of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium multidimensional approach on central line-associated bloodstream infection rates in adult intensive care units in eight cities in India

SummaryObjectiveTo evaluate the impact of the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) multidimensional infection control approach on central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) rates in eight cities of India.MethodsThis was a prospective, before-and-after cohort study of 35650 patients hospitalized in 16 adult intensive care units of 11 hospitals. During the baseline period, outcome surveillance of CLABSI was performed, applying the definitions of the CDC/NHSN (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Healthcare Safety Network). During the intervention, the INICC approach was implemented, which included a bundle of interventions, education, outcome surveillance, process surveillance, feedback on CLABSI rates and consequences, and performance feedback. Random effects Poisson regression was used for clustering of CLABSI rates across time periods.ResultsDuring the baseline period, 9472 central line (CL)-days and 61 CLABSIs were recorded; during the intervention period, 80898 CL-days and 404 CLABSIs were recorded. The baseline rate was 6.4 CLABSIs per 1000 CL-days, which was reduced to 3.9 CLABSIs per 1000 CL-days in the second year and maintained for 36 months of follow-up, accounting for a 53% CLABSI rate reduction (incidence rate ratio 0.47, 95% confidence interval 0.31–0.70; p=0.0001).ConclusionsImplementing the six components of the INICC approach simultaneously was associated with a significant reduction in the CLABSI rate in India, which remained stable during 36 months of follow-up

India's Political Economy Responses to Global Food Price Shock of 2007-08: Learning Some Lessons

India's policy responses were strong to the food price crisis. Exports of basic staples were banned, domestic support prices of wheat and rice were raised substantially, urea price increases in global markets were absorbed through enhanced fertilizer subsidy, and a National Food Security Mission was launched to raise grain production by 20 MMT over the next five years. The results: India contained food inflation below 7 percent in 2007-08; grain production increased by 42 MMT; and grains stocks touched 82 MMT. With freeing of exports in September 2011, India became a world leader in rice exports. The cost of this policy was rising subsidies on food and fertilizers, rising fiscal deficit, leading to double digit food inflation after 2009-10. Had India quickly reviewed its export ban policy, and opened exports earlier, it could avoid excessive grain stocks, reduced fiscal deficit, and benefited global markets, leading to a win-win situation