Clinical Correlates of High Cervical Fractional Anisotropy in Acute Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Objective: Fractional anisotropy (FA) of the high cervical cord (C1-C2), rostral to the injury site, correlates with upper limb function in patients with chronic cervical spinal cord injury (SCI). In acute cervical SCI, this relationship has not been investigated. The objective of this study was to identify functional correlates of FA of the high cervical cord in a series of patients with acute cervical SCI. Methods: Traumatic cervical SCI patients who underwent presurgical cervical spine diffusion tensor imaging at our institution were reviewed for this study. FA of the whole cord as well as the lateralcorticospinal tracts (CSTs) was calculated on axial images from C1-C2. Upper limb motor (C5-T1) and sensory (C2-T1) function scores were extracted from the admission American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) examinations. Correlation analysis for FA with ASIA examinations was performed using a Pearson correlation. Results: Twelve subjects (9 men, 3 women; mean age 54.7 ± 4.0 years) underwent cervical spine diffusion tensor imaging at a mean duration of 3.6 ± 0.9 days postinjury. No patient had cord compression or intramedullary T2-weighted hyperintensities within the C1-C2 segments. FA correlated with upper limb motor score (whole cord: r = 0.59, P = .04; CST: 0.67, P = .01) and the ASIA grade (whole cord: r = 0.61, P = .03; CST: r = 0.71, P = .009). No correlation was found between FA and sensory scores. Conclusions: FA of the whole cervical cord as well as the CST, rostral to the injury site, is associated with preserved upper limb motor function as well as superior ASIA grades after acute cervical SCI. FA of the high cervical cord is a potential biomarker of neural injury after acute cervical SCI

Spatial variation of coda wave attenuation in the Southern Indian Shield and its implications

During the recent past the Indian peninsular shield has experienced six damaging earthquakes of M 5.4-7.7 and compelled to readdress our understanding of the seismic attenuation characteristics for better evaluation of the seismic hazards in the so-called stable shield. We have performed the seismic attenuation study using coda waves of the broadband network from 1995 to 2009 for the shield region. About 400 local earthquakes M 2.5-4.0 within an epicentral distance of 250km are used in this study. The broadband seismic stations established are in different geological provinces, such as the Archaean Dharwar craton, the southern granulite terrain, the Proterozoic Cuddapah basin, the Godavari graben, the Cretaceous-Eocene Deccan volcanic province and in the Cambay basin. This allows us to understand the fluctuation of Q0 in terms of spatial variations in the geologic and tectonic provinces. The results reflect a ubiquitous observation of frequency dependence of Qc in the different geologic provinces. The rift basins exhibit lower Q0, which suggests higher attenuation due to a more heterogeneous structure. Higher Q0 in the western Dharwar craton infers lower attenuation. Similarly the Deccan volcanic province is characterized by significantly higher Q0. The results show a good correlation with the observed heat flow. The study fills an important gap in knowledge about the Q factor as well as of crustal attenuation conditions in the whole southern peninsular shield of India

Diffusion Tensor Imaging Correlates with Short-Term Myelopathy Outcome in Patients with Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy

Objective To determine if spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging indexes correlate with short-term clinical outcome in patients undergoing elective cervical spine surgery for cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM). Methods A prospective consecutive cohort study was performed in patients undergoing elective cervical spine surgery for CSM. After obtaining informed consent, patients with CSM underwent preoperative T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging of the cervical spine. Fractional anisotropy (FA) values at the level of maximum cord compression and at the noncompressed C1-2 level were calculated on axial images. We recorded the modified Japanese Orthopaedic Association (mJOA) scale, Neck Disability Index, and Short Form-36 physical functioning subscale scores for all patients preoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. Statistical analysis was performed to identify correlations between FA and clinical outcome scores. Results The study included 27 patients (mean age 54.5 years ± 1.9, 12 men). The mean postoperative changes in mJOA scale, Neck Disability Index, and Short Form-36 physical functioning subscale scores were 0.9 ± 0.3, −6.0 ± 1.9, and 3.4 ± 1.9. The mean FA at the level of maximum compression was significantly lower than the mean FA at the C1-2 level (0.5 vs. 0.55, P = 0.01). FA was significantly correlated with change in mJOA scale score (Pearson r = −0.42, P = 0.02). FA was significantly correlated with the preoperative mJOA scale score (Pearson r = 0.65, P \u3c 0.001). Conclusions Preoperative FA at the level of maximum cord compression significantly correlates with the 3-month change in mJOA scale score among patients with CSM. FA was also significantly associated with preoperative mJOA scale score and is a potential biomarker for spinal cord dysfunction in CSM

Diffusion Tensor Imaging in a Large Longitudinal Series of Patients With Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy Correlated With Long-Term Functional Outcome

BACKGROUND Fractional anisotropy (FA) of the high cervical cord correlates with upper limb function in acute cervical cord injury. We investigated the correlation between preoperative FA at the level of maximal compression and functional recovery in a group of patients after decompressive surgery for cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM). OBJECTIVE To determine the usefulness of FA as a biomarker for severity of CSM and as a prognostic biomarker for improvement after surgery. METHODS Patients received diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans preoperatively. FA values of the whole cord cross-section at the level of maximal compression and upper cervical cord (C1-2) were calculated. Functional status was measured using the modified Japanese Orthopedic Association (mJOA) scale preoperatively and at follow-up up to 2 yr. Regression analysis between FA and mJOA was performed. DTI at C4-7 was obtained in controls. RESULTS Forty-four CSM patients enrolled prior to decompression were compared with 24 controls. FA at the level of maximal compression correlated positively with preoperative mJOA score. Preoperative FA correlated inversely with recovery throughout the postoperative period. This was statistically significant at 12 mo postoperation and nearly so at 6 and 24 mo. Patients with preoperative FA0.55. CONCLUSION In the largest longitudinal study of this kind, FA promises a valid biomarker for severity of CSM and postoperative improvement. FA is an objective measure of function and could provide a basis for prognosis. FA is particularly useful if preoperative values are less than 0.55

A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW ON COMPARISON OF GDOCP IN PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING UNIT AS PER EUROPEAN AND WHO GUIDELINES

To review the good documentation practices in the pharmaceutical industry as per the guidelines provided in the European Commission and WHO (World Health Organisation). GDocP is a systematic method of planning, evaluating, approving, issuing, documenting, preserving, and archiving records. GDocP is a must when operating in an atmosphere of existing GMP. To provide an overview of good documentation practices for those employed in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. The GDocP stands for good documentation practice which can be described as an integral part of quality assurance (QA) and thus related to all aspects of GMP. There are very few articles related to the comparison of GDocP in the pharmaceutical manufacturing unit as per European and WHO guidelines hence we are trying to develop a study on the comparison of GDocP guidelines. Public and private organizations, institutions, and regulatory authorities working and cooperating and with the pharmaceutical industry are involved at the international and national level to reach a consensus on the guidelines and laws for the production of medicinal products for human. This article explains how these participants work and cooperate and set out current regulations along the lines of the European community and WHO referencing, where appropriate, the practiced guidelines, outside space regulatory action referred to above. In this way, the goal is to achieve exceptional standards of quality, protection, and efficacy in the manufacture of health products

Breakthrough Studies of Methyl Salicylate and DMMP Mixed in Methyl Salicylate with Pressure Swing Adsorption Composed of 13X Molecular Sieves

A test procedure for pressure swing adsorption (PSA) was established and elucidated for the air purification using methyl salicylate (MeS) and 5% (v/v) dimethyl methyl phosphonate (DMMP) in MeS containing air stream as feed. The effect of feed flow rate was studied by varying the flow from 5 lpm to 20 lpm, for both the molecules at 25 oC and 4 kg/cm2. The results revealed that the flow rate had a significant influence on the breakthrough time. A method was developed for the determination of feed, purge, and dry air composition, by the solvent extraction method using the XAD-2 and the average concentrations reported. The 13X molecular sieves were characterised for its structural and textural properties such as BET- SA, XRD, and FT-IR. The temperature programmed desorption of DMMP and MeS on 13X clearly demonstrated that it was easily regenerated at ~320 °C after prolonged field operation of PSA. The PSA results obtained with PSA composed molecular sieves appeared to give promising technology for air purification and specifically to the chemical warfare agents simulants

Filterbank Learning for Small-Footprint Keyword Spotting Robust to Noise

In the context of keyword spotting (KWS), the replacement of handcrafted speech features by learnable features has not yielded superior KWS performance. In this study, we demonstrate that filterbank learning outperforms handcrafted speech features for KWS whenever the number of filterbank channels is severely decreased. Reducing the number of channels might yield certain KWS performance drop, but also a substantial energy consumption reduction, which is key when deploying common always-on KWS on low-resource devices. Experimental results on a noisy version of the Google Speech Commands Dataset show that filterbank learning adapts to noise characteristics to provide a higher degree of robustness to noise, especially when dropout is integrated. Thus, switching from typically used 40-channel log-Mel features to 8-channel learned features leads to a relative KWS accuracy loss of only 3.5% while simultaneously achieving a 6.3x energy consumption reduction