Guillain-Barre Syndrome Following a Snakebite: A Case Report and Review of Literature

Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) is preceded by a respiratory or gastrointestinal illness in more than 50% of the patients. A rare association of GBS with a preceding snakebite is reported in the literature in only four previous cases. We present a case report of a patient diagnosed with GBS following the bite of a yellow-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis platurus) and a brief review of the available literature

Quaternionic Channel-based Modulation For Dual-polarized Antennas

Space time block codes (STBCs) have been studied to exploit the spatial and temporal diversities in wireless systems. Orthogonal space time polarization block codes (OSTPBCs) designed using the quaternion algebra promise gains in terms of higher data rates, diversity and spectral efficiency. In this context, quaternion modulation has been proposed using the dual-polarized antennas to generate efficient selection of the polarization and optimal decoding at the receiver end. In this paper, the quaternion modulation technique has been evaluated considering the quaternionic channel using the dual-polarized antennas. The results show promising diversity gains with benefits in terms of spectral efficiency and data rates. An extension of this scheme for higher number of symbols and higher dual-polarized antenna dimensions has also been presented. The proposal includes linear decoupled decoding of the quaternion orthogonal codes (QODs) at the receiver end where the complexity stays independent of the number of transmitted symbols. The design of the quaternion modulation using the quaternionic channel fully exploits the polarization diversity in addition to unfolding its applicability for future massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems

Hair dye poisoning and rhabdomyolysis.

Hair dye ingestion is a rare cause of toxicity in Pakistan. We are presenting the case report of a 55 year old male who presented with accidental hair dye ingestion and developed laryngeal oedema requiring emergent tracheostomy. He had also developed aspiration pneumonitis and chemical oesophagitis. However, the most alarming manifestation was rhabdomyolysis. Hair dye toxicity can be fatal if not recognized early. There is no antidote available. Rhabdomyolysis is a complication and needs to be managed aggressively in order to prevent long term morbidity

Research Article Software Component Selection Based on Quality Criteria Using the Analytic Network Process

Component based software development (CBSD) endeavors to deliver cost-effective and quality software systems through the selection and integration of commercially available software components. CBSD emphasizes the design and development of software systems using preexisting components. Software component reusability is an indispensable part of component based software development life cycle (CBSDLC),which consumes a significant amount of organization’s resources, that is, time and effort. It is convenient in component based software system (CBSS) to select the most suitable and appropriate software components that provide all the required functionalities. Selecting the most appropriate components is crucial for the success of the entire system. However, decisions regarding software component reusability are often made in an ad hoc manner, which ultimately results in schedule delay and lowers the entire quality system. In this paper, we have discussed the analytic network process (ANP) method for software component selection. The methodology is explained and assessed using a real life case study

Ocular manifestation, complications and aetiological factors in Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis

Abstract OBJECTIVE: To describe the ocular manifestations of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome/Toxic Epidermal Necrosis among inpatients at a tertiary care hospital. METHODS: The retrospective observational descriptive study was carried out at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and comprised data on age, gender, aetiology and ocular findings related to patients diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome/ToxicEpidermal Necrosis between January 2000 and December 2011. SPSS 19 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: There were 87 patients; 48(55.2%) of them being males.The overall mean age was 33.2±22.2 years, ranging from 1 month to 84 years. The most common aetiology was idiopathic 20(23%) followed by non-steroidal inflammatory drugs and anti-epileptics 11(12.6%) each. Besides, 84(96.6%) patients had oral mucosal involvement whereas 45(51.7%) had ocular and 27(31.0%) had genital-mucosal involvement. Glassroding was performed in 16(18.4%) patients due to minor conjunctival adhesions. CONCLUSION: Ocular manifestations of varying severity were frequent, with drugs being the most common aetiolog

Effects of Iron Oxide Nanoparticle Supplementation on the Growth Performance, Serum Metabolites, Meat Quality, and Jejunal Basal Morphology in Broilers

Simple Summary: Iron is a necessary micronutrient in animal feed. Iron is an important component of hemoglobin, myoglobin, and the enzymes participating in redox reactions. The aim of the current study was to assess the effects of iron oxide nanoparticle supplementation on production performance, organ development, blood biochemistry, redox status, meat quality, and jejunal histology in broilers. The results indicated that iron oxide nanoparticle supplementation improved the feed conversion ratio, pectoral muscle, and jejunal histology. However, iron oxide nanoparticle supplementation showed no effects on visceral organ development, blood metabolites, redox status, and carcass traits. Abstract: The current research aimed to evaluate the supplemental effects of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) on production performance, viscera development, blood metabolites, redox status, meat quality, and jejunal histology in broilers. A total of 300 day-old broilers were randomly divided into six groups with five replicates per group. Birds were fed on a corn soybean-based diet supplemented with 0, 20, 40, 60, or 80 mg/kg IONPs or 80 mg/kg of FeSO4 for 35 days. The feed conversion ratio (FCR) was improved in birds supplemented with 60 mg/kg IONPs. The pH24h was lower in birds supplemented with 40 mg/kg IONPs compared to that of the bulk group. Pectoral muscle fascicle diameter and fiber density were significantly increased in 20 mg/kg IONP-supplemented birds compared to those of the bulk group, respectively. The muscle fiber diameter was higher in 40 mg/kg IONP-supplemented birds compared with the bulk group. The jejunal villus height, crypt depth, and villus surface area were significantly increased with 60 mg/kg IONP supplementation, whereas villus width was decreased in birds supplemented with 40 mg/kg IONPs. The villus-height-to-crypt-depth ratio was lower in IONP-supplemented birds compared to the bulk group. IONP supplementation improved the FCR, jejunal, and pectoral muscle morphology without affecting the carcass characteristics and redox status of broilers

An Experimental Trial: Multi-Robot Therapy for Categorization of Autism Level Using Hidden Markov Model

Several robot-mediated therapies have been implemented for diagnosis and improvement of communication skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The proposed research uses an existing model i.e., Multi-robot-mediated Intervention System (MRIS) in combination with Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to develop an infrastructure for categorizing the severity of autism in children. The observable states are joint attention type (low, delayed, and immediate) and imitation type (partial, moderate, and full) whereas the non-observable states are (level of autism i.e., (minimal, and mild). The research has been conducted on 12 subjects in which 8 children were in the training session with 72 experiments over 9 weeks, and the remaining 4 subjects were in the prediction test with 25 experiments for 6 weeks. The predicted category was compared with the actual category of autism assessed by the therapist using Childhood Autism Rating Scale. The accuracy of the proposed model is 76%. Further, a statistically significantly moderate Kappa measure of agreement between Childhood Autism Rating Scale and our proposed model has been performed in which n = 25, k = 0.52, and p = 0.009. This research contributes towards the usefulness of Hidden Markov Model integrated with joint attention and imitation modules for categorizing the level of autism using multi-robot therapies

Effectiveness of 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine against vaccine-type invasive pneumococcal disease in Pakistan

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV10) against invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) due to vaccine serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae post introduction of the vaccine into the routine immunization program in Pakistan.Methods: A matched case-control study was conducted at 16 hospitals in Sindh Province, Pakistan. Children aged (eligible to receive PCV10) who presented with radiographically confirmed pneumonia and/or meningitis were enrolled as cases. PCR for the lytA gene was conducted on blood (for radiographic pneumonia) and cerebrospinal fluid (for meningitis) samples to detect S. pneumoniae. The proportion of IPD due to vaccine serotypes (including vaccine-related serogroups) was determined through serial multiplex PCR. For each case, at least five controls were enrolled from children hospitalized at the same institution, matched for age, district, and season.Results: Of 92 IPD patients enrolled during July 2013 to March 2017, 24 (26.0%) had disease caused by vaccine serotypes. Most case (87.5% of 24) and control (66.4% of 134) children had not received any PCV10 doses. The estimated effectiveness of PCV10 against vaccine-type IPD was 72.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) -7.2% to 92.6%) with at least one dose, 78.8% (95% CI -11.9% to 96.0%) for at least two doses, and 81.9% (95% CI -55.7% to 97.9%) for all three doses of vaccine.Conclusion: The vaccine effectiveness point estimates for PCV10 were high and increased with increasing number of doses. However, vaccine effectiveness estimates did not reach statistical significance, possibly due to low power. The findings indicate the likely impact of vaccine in reducing the burden of vaccine-type IPD if vaccine uptake can be improved

EFaR 2023: Efficient Face Recognition Competition

This paper presents the summary of the Efficient Face Recognition Competition (EFaR) held at the 2023 International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB 2023). The competition received 17 submissions from 6 different teams. To drive further development of efficient face recognition models, the submitted solutions are ranked based on a weighted score of the achieved verification accuracies on a diverse set of benchmarks, as well as the deployability given by the number of floating-point operations and model size. The evaluation of submissions is extended to bias, cross-quality, and large-scale recognition benchmarks. Overall, the paper gives an overview of the achieved performance values of the submitted solutions as well as a diverse set of baselines. The submitted solutions use small, efficient network architectures to reduce the computational cost, some solutions apply model quantization. An outlook on possible techniques that are underrepresented in current solutions is given as well.Comment: Accepted at IJCB 202