Biodegradation of Sugarcane Trash with Agro-Industrial and Farm Wastes for Value Added Organic Byproduct

Arable land degradation, agro-waste management coupled with irrational use of chemicals has led to concern about soil and environmental health. The sugarcane crop generates lot of vegetative biomass after harvesting, which is burnt in field creating environmental implications. A research trail was conducted at green house premises department of soil and environment SAU Tandojam. The waste byproducts of the sugarcane trash was blended with pressmud, poultry and goat manure to have decomposed nutrient rich product subjected to 130 days decomposition/composting. Results revealed that the pH had significant relationship with organic substrate decomposition used for the compost preparation blended with sugarcane trash. The organic carbon loss or mineralization showed great variability and had relationship with the substrate used and decomposition time for a finished product. The more organic carbon (31.80%) was recorded for Cspm and (31.80%) C was found for Cpm. Compost product was rich in carbon potassium values corresponding (4.6%) for Cspm and (2.7%) K for Cgm. It was concluded that sugarcane trash can best be blended with sugarcane press mud of agro-industrial waste. Further it could be recycled with agro-industrial waste for waste management, reduce pollution, chemical fertilizers and used as organic soil amendment

How growing tumour impacts intracranial pressure and deformation mechanics of brain

Brain is an actuator for control and coordination. When a pathology arises in cranium, it may leave a degenerative, disfiguring and destabilizing impact on brain physiology. However, the leading consequences of the same may vary from case to case. Tumour, in this context, is a special type of pathology which deforms brain parenchyma permanently. From translational perspective, deformation mechanics and pressures, specifically the intracranial cerebral pressure (ICP) in a tumour-housed brain, have not been addressed holistically in literature. This is an important area to investigate in neuropathy prognosis. To address this, we aim to solve the pressure mystery in a tumour-based brain in this study and present a fairly workable methodology. Using image-based finite-element modelling, we reconstruct a tumour-based brain and probe resulting deformations and pressures (ICP). Tumour is grown by dilating the voxel region by 16 and 30 mm uniformly. Cumulatively three cases are studied including an existing stage of the tumour. Pressures of cerebrospinal fluid due to its flow inside the ventricle region are also provided to make the model anatomically realistic. Comparison of obtained results unequivocally shows that as the tumour region increases its area and size, deformation pattern changes extensively and spreads throughout the brain volume with a greater concentration in tumour vicinity. Second, we conclude that ICP pressures inside the cranium do increase substantially; however, they still remain under the normal values (15 mmHg). In the end, a correlation relationship of ICP mechanics and tumour is addressed. From a diagnostic purpose, this result also explains why generally a tumour in its initial stage does not show symptoms because the required ICP threshold has not been crossed. We finally conclude that even at low ICP values, substantial deformation progression inside the cranium is possible. This may result in plastic deformation, midline shift etc. in the brain

Frequency of color blindness in pre-employment screening in a tertiary health care center in Pakistan

Abstract OBJECTIVE: To describe the frequency of color vision deficiency among Pakistani adults presenting for pre-employment health screening in a tertiary care hospital. METHODS: The cross-sectional study was carried out at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and the data was collected for color vision deficiency, age, gender, and job applied for from pre-employment examination during 2013-2014. IBM SPSS 20 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Three thousand four hundred and thirty seven persons underwent pre-employment screening during 2013 and 2014; 1837 (53.44%) were males and 1600 (46.65%) females. The mean age was 29.01 (±6.53) years. A total of 0.9% (32/3437) persons had color vision deficiency with male being 1.4% and female 0.4%. CONCLUSION: Color vision deficiency was observed in 0.9% of candidates screened for pre-employment health check up in a tertiary care hospital. The color vision deficiency was predominantly present in male individuals

Multi-Sensor Fusion for Underwater Vehicle Localization by Augmentation of RBF Neural Network and Error-State Kalman Filter

The Kalman filter variants extended Kalman filter (EKF) and error-state Kalman filter (ESKF) are widely used in underwater multi-sensor fusion applications for localization and navigation. Since these filters are designed by employing first-order Taylor series approximation in the error covariance matrix, they result in a decrease in estimation accuracy under high nonlinearity. In order to address this problem, we proposed a novel multi-sensor fusion algorithm for underwater vehicle localization that improves state estimation by augmentation of the radial basis function (RBF) neural network with ESKF. In the proposed algorithm, the RBF neural network is utilized to compensate the lack of ESKF performance by improving the innovation error term. The weights and centers of the RBF neural network are designed by minimizing the estimation mean square error (MSE) using the steepest descent optimization approach. To test the performance, the proposed RBF-augmented ESKF multi-sensor fusion was compared with the conventional ESKF under three different realistic scenarios using Monte Carlo simulations. We found that our proposed method provides better navigation and localization results despite high nonlinearity, modeling uncertainty, and external disturbances.This research was partially funded by the Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucia Tech, University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain. Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málag

Determinants of occupational hazards knowledge and safety practices among textile workers in Karachi, Pakistan: A cross sectional study

Objective: To determine the factors associated with good knowledge and safe practices regarding occupational hazards among textile workers.Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted in Karachi from September 2015 to February 2016, and comprised male workers from seven textile mills. A 45-item structured questionnaire was developed and pretested in Urdu, the local language. One part of the questionnaire comprised 31 items related to good knowledge, and the other part comprised 14 items related to safe practices. Data was analysed using SPSS 19.Results: Of the 300 subjects, 123(41%) were aged 18-27 years, 183(63%) were educated, 184(61.3%) worked more than eight hours daily, 170(57%) were employed in the weaving section and 164(55%) as machine operators. Besides, 231(77%) had good knowledge, and 62(21%) reported safe practices. Educated workers were more likely (p\u3c0.05), and machine operators were less likely (p\u3c0.05) to have good knowledge, while educated workers, those in the spinning section and those working less than 8-hours daily (p\u3c0.05) were more likely to report safe practices.Conclusions: There was a high knowledge level, but a wide gap in adopting safety practices, which indicates need for focused interventions targeting high-risk workers and regulation of working hours

Incidental renal cell carcinoma in pelvic malignancies

Simultaneous diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma with pelvic malignancies is rare but a well-documented phenomenon. It is not uncommon to have incidental renal masses on imaging done for investigating other tumors. There are no established guidelines for the treatment of patients with dual malignancies. The management of such patients is challenging and requires a multidisciplinary approach. We present a series of three cases with a diagnosed pelvic malignancy but further workup revealed a kidney tumor. Both the malignancies were evaluated individually and diagnosed as two different primary neoplastic lesions. This case series examines each distinct patient\u27s presentation, discusses the diagnosis, and compares and contrasts the findings while discussing the literature on this topic

Analysis of Growing Tumor on the Flow Velocity of Cerebrospinal Fluid in Human Brain Using Computational Modeling and Fluid-Structure Interaction

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) plays a pivotal role in normal functioning of Brain. Intracranial compartments such as blood, brain and CSF are incompressible in nature. Therefore, if a volume imbalance in one of the aforenoted compartments is observed, the other reaches out to maintain net change to zero. Whereas, CSF has higher compliance over long term. However, if the CSF flow is obstructed in the ventricles, this compliance may get exhausted early. Brain tumor on the other hand poses a similar challenge towards destabilization of CSF flow by compressing any section of ventricles thereby ensuing obstruction. To avoid invasive procedures to study effects of tumor on CSF flow, numerical-based methods such as Finite element modeling (FEM) are used which provide excellent description of underlying pathological interaction. A 3D fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model is developed to study the effect of tumor growth on the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in ventricle system. The FSI model encapsulates all the physiological parameters which may be necessary in analyzing intraventricular CSF flow behavior. Findings of the model show that brain tumor affects CSF flow parameters by deforming the walls of ventricles in this case accompanied by a mean rise of 74.23% in CSF flow velocity and considerable deformation on the walls of ventricles