Prediction of preterm labour by cervical length

Background: Preterm birth is one of the commonest causes of perinatal mortality. Cervical length is one of the major determinants of preterm delivery.Methods: This prospective observational study of 100 pregnant women attending ANC OPD was carried out at D.Y. Patil Hospital, Kolhapur. The pregnant women were scanned for cervical length between 11-14 weeks and 20-22 weeks of gestation, using USG machine with TVS probe (mindray DC-7).Results: The mean value of cervical length in pregnant women at 11-14 weeks was 3.94 cm and at 20-22 weeks of gestation it was 3.38 cm. There was shortening in the pregnant cervix from first to second trimester. In the study 12% of patients delivered prematurely who had reduction in cervical length from first trimester to second trimester. The inverse relation between the cervical length during pregnancy and frequency of preterm delivery was confirmed. The decrease in cervical length at 11-14 weeks of gestation and 20-22 weeks of gestation was useful for identifying patients at increased risk for pre-trerm.Conclusions: Our findings confirm those of previous studies that have found an inverse relation between the length of the cervix, as measured by transvaginal ultrasonography during pregnancy, and the frequency of preterm delivery. We found that the cervical length measured at 11-14 weeks and 20-22 weeks gestation was decreased in asymptomatic women with single to n pregnancies was useful for identifying patients at increased risk for preterm delivery

Eight Weeks of Zumba Fitness Training Improves Balance Ability in Women

Zumba fitness (Zumba) is a Latin-inspired dance-fitness program that blends Latin music and repetitive steps/dance moves that form a fitness-party”. There is very little evidence to the effectiveness of Zumba as a mode of exercise despite its widespread popularity with more than 14 million people of both genders and all ages. The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of 8 weeks of Zumba fitness training on balance ability and body composition in sedentary women. Fourteen sedentary women, aged 24.6±5.7 years, were assigned into two groups: Zumba fitness training group (ZT; n=6) and aerobic exercise training group (AT; n=8). Subjects in ZT performed the Zumba fitness at 60-80% of maximal heart rate, 60 min/session, and 3 sessions/week for 8 weeks, whereas subjects in AT performed aerobic exercises including walking and/or jogging on treadmill or elliptical machine as well as cycling on cycle ergometer at the same exercise intensity, frequency and duration as the ZT. Height (cm), body mass (kg), waist circumference (cm), hip circumference (cm), percent body fat (%), blood pressure (mmHg), resting heart rate (b·min.-1), blood glucose (mg ·dL-1), blood lipids (mg ·dL-1), maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max, ml·kg-1·min-1), muscular strength (kg), and balance ability (sec) were measured pre- and post-exercise training, and the results were analyzed utilizing a repeated measures two-way ANOVA. Balance ability in the dominant limb was significantly increased only in ZT (12.2±3.5 to 20.8±8.6 sec, p\u3c.05). In the non-dominant limb, increased tendency of the time was shown in ZT (8.8±6.2 to 17.7±15.4 sec, p=.084). VO2max increased significantly in AT (30.1±5.1 to 33.3±5.6 ml·kg-1·min-1, p\u3c.05). Systolic blood pressure (p=.013) and diastolic blood pressure (p=.032) decreased significantly in both groups. There was no significant difference in other variables after 8 weeks of training. The results indicate that Zumba fitness is an effective exercise regimen to improve balance ability in sedentary women

Systematic screening to integrate reproductive health services in India

This study, conducted in large public clinics and small health posts in the city of Vadodara, India, tested the effectiveness of a systematic screening technique in integrating reproductive health services at the provider level. The objective was to determine if women screened during clinic visits received more services, appointments, and referrals per visit than women who were not screened. Results show that in experimental group clinics the number of services per visit increased while control clinics experienced a slight decrease; the effect of systematic screening was smaller in health posts than in clinics. In experimental posts, services per visit increased by nine percent compared to a decrease of 16 percent among controls. The municipality of Vadodara will begin systematic screening in all clinics. Gujarat state, where Vadodara is located, also plans to adopt the intervention

DBGC:Dimension-Based Generic Convolution Block for Object Recognition

The object recognition concept is being widely used a result of increasing CCTV surveillance and the need for automatic object or activity detection from images or video. Increases in the use of various sensor networks have also raised the need of lightweight process frameworks. Much research has been carried out in this area, but the research scope is colossal as it deals with open-ended problems such as being able to achieve high accuracy in little time using lightweight process frameworks. Convolution Neural Networks and their variants are widely used in various computer vision activities, but most of the architectures of CNN are application-specific. There is always a need for generic architectures with better performance. This paper introduces the Dimension-Based Generic Convolution Block (DBGC), which can be used with any CNN to make the architecture generic and provide a dimension-wise selection of various height, width, and depth kernels. This single unit which uses the separable convolution concept provides multiple combinations using various dimension-based kernels. This single unit can be used for height-based, width-based, or depth-based dimensions; the same unit can even be used for height and width, width and depth, and depth and height dimensions. It can also be used for combinations involving all three dimensions of height, width, and depth. The main novelty of DBGC lies in the dimension selector block included in the proposed architecture. Proposed unoptimized kernel dimensions reduce FLOPs by around one third and also reduce the accuracy by around one half; semi-optimized kernel dimensions yield almost the same or higher accuracy with half the FLOPs of the original architecture, while optimized kernel dimensions provide 5 to 6% higher accuracy with around a 10 M reduction in FLOPs

Diabetes mellitus and risk of plasma cell and lymphoproliferative disorders in 94,579 cases and 368,348 matched controls

this research was funded in part through the NIH/NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA008748 (UAS) and supported by grants from Swedish Cancer Society (MB), Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy Career Development Award (YD, UAS), International Myeloma Society Career Development Award, Paula and Rodger Riney Foundation, American Society of Hematology Clinical Research Training Institute Award and TREC Training Workshop R25CA203650 (PI: Melinda Irwin) (UAS). Copyright & Usage Copyright (c) 2022 Ferrata Storti Foundation Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Peer reviewe