Pediatric forearm fractures with tens: freedom of movements

Background: A prospective analysis of a case series of diaphyseal forearm fractures in children treated with titanium elastic nails is presented.  Methods: Between 2012 and 2014, 30 children aged 5-15 years with displaced diaphyseal forearm fractures underwent titanium elastic nailing. Both bones were fractured in 25 patients, four fractured only the radius, and one experienced ulna fracture. Eleven candidates had unstable irreducible fractures, 13 had loss of reduction, and six had open fractures. Titanium elastic nails were used to stabilize the fractures. All fractures were immobilized postoperatively with an above-elbow plaster slab for 2 weeks till the swelling is completely resolved followed by encouraging range of motion exercises.Results: Closed reduction and TENS was successful in 20 cases, including 15 double-bone fractures and five single-bone fractures. Open reduction was completed in four fractures of both bones, and in six single-bone open fractures. Bone union was achieved in all patients at an average of 7 weeks. The ROM of the forearms was evaluated using the Daruwalla grading criteria. Excellent results were reported in 96% without significant complications after a mean follow-up of 20 months.Conclusions: Titanium elastic nails fixation of pediatric forearm fractures revealed several advantages, a small incision for insertion, a low rate of complications, unhindered bone healing, and good clinical and radiological results thus achieving maximum range of motion at the earliest

Comparative study of management of olecranon fractures using tension band wiring technique with cancellous screw and K wires

Background: Olecranon fractures are commonly seen injuries in the emergency room. The surgical management of displaced fractures is open reduction and internal fixation with k-wires and figure of eight tension band wiring. It can also be fixed with intramedullary cancellous screw with tension band wiring. The present study is to compare the results of both the surgical procedures and to assess the merits and demerits.Methods: This prospective comparative study was carried out from August 2012 to November 2013 in Bapuji Hospital and Chigateri General Hospital attached to J.J.M Medical College, Davangere, India, where among 20 olecranon fractures, ten were treated with Tension band wiring with Kirshner wire and another ten treated with intramedullary cacellous screw with tension band wiring and the results were evaluated and compared.Results: In our study, most of the cases were type II B fractures according to Colton’s classification. According to Mayo elbow performance score, Excellent  results found  in 8  patients (80%), good in1patient (10%)  and fair in 1 patient (10%) in cancellous screw group and in K wire group, 5 patient (50%) had excellent, 3 patient (30%) had good  and 2 patients (20%) had fair results. No poor result was seen in both groups.Conclusions: From this study it is concluded that using cancellous screw with tension band wiring for displaced transverse and oblique olecranon fractures gives better clinical results when compared to tension band wiring with K-wire fixation avoiding cost, work time loss and possible complications from hard ware removal

How Many Pairwise Preferences Do We Need to Rank A Graph Consistently?

We consider the problem of optimal recovery of true ranking of $n$ items from a randomly chosen subset of their pairwise preferences. It is well known that without any further assumption, one requires a sample size of $\Omega(n^2)$ for the purpose. We analyze the problem with an additional structure of relational graph $G([n],E)$ over the $n$ items added with an assumption of \emph{locality}: Neighboring items are similar in their rankings. Noting the preferential nature of the data, we choose to embed not the graph, but, its \emph{strong product} to capture the pairwise node relationships. Furthermore, unlike existing literature that uses Laplacian embedding for graph based learning problems, we use a richer class of graph embeddings---\emph{orthonormal representations}---that includes (normalized) Laplacian as its special case. Our proposed algorithm, {\it Pref-Rank}, predicts the underlying ranking using an SVM based approach over the chosen embedding of the product graph, and is the first to provide \emph{statistical consistency} on two ranking losses: \emph{Kendall's tau} and \emph{Spearman's footrule}, with a required sample complexity of $O(n^2 \chi(\bar{G}))^{\frac{2}{3}}$ pairs, $\chi(\bar{G})$ being the \emph{chromatic number} of the complement graph $\bar{G}$. Clearly, our sample complexity is smaller for dense graphs, with $\chi(\bar G)$ characterizing the degree of node connectivity, which is also intuitive due to the locality assumption e.g. $O(n^\frac{4}{3})$ for union of $k$-cliques, or $O(n^\frac{5}{3})$ for random and power law graphs etc.---a quantity much smaller than the fundamental limit of $\Omega(n^2)$ for large $n$. This, for the first time, relates ranking complexity to structural properties of the graph. We also report experimental evaluations on different synthetic and real datasets, where our algorithm is shown to outperform the state-of-the-art methods.Comment: In Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 201

Pollination biology, breeding system and reproductive success of Adhatoda vasica,an important medicinal plant

Adhatoda vasica Nees.(Acanthaceae) is an important and widely used medicinal plant. The flowers last for 3–5 days, they are protandrous and pass through three distinct phases: male, bisexual and female. Two species of carpenter bees, Xylocopa verticalis and Xylocopa sp. are the effective pollinators. Pollen grains are deposited on the dorsal surface of the thorax during Xylocopa visit to the flowers in the male phase, and the stigma rubs the pollen-coated thorax and is pollinated when the bees visit the flowers in bisexual and female phases. There is a high level of geitonogamy. Pollination efficiency under field conditions is high (95%). However, fruit set is poor (6%). The species is self-incompatible. None of the self-pollinated flowers sets fruits, but over 50% of the cross-pollinated flowers sets fruits. The results indicate that protandry does not prevent self pollination, but reduces interference in export and import of pollen. Although the flowers have adapted well to achieve a high level of pollination, reproductive success in terms of fruit set is low, largely due to the limitation of compatible pollen

Reproductive assurance through autogamous self-pollination across diverse sexual and breeding systems

Pollination becomes a constraint when conspecific plants and/or their pollinators become scarce. Many plant species have evolved autogamous self-pollination as a means of reproductive assurance (RA) under pollination-uncertain environments. So far RA has been studied and discussed largely with reference to self-compatible species producing bisexual flowers. RA seems to have evolved across all other sexual and breeding systems - monoecy, dioecy and self-incompatibility (SI). Both monoecy and dioecy produce bisexual flowers (andro/gyno-monoecy, andro/gynodioecy and polygamous conditions) which may provide RA. Similarly, most of the SI species are leaky and do set some seeds upon self-pollination. This phenomenon termed 'partial self-compatibility' is quite common and does provide RA in SI species. Although dioecy and SI have evolved as obligate outbreeding systems, they seem to have reached an evolutionary dead end because of the constraints for outcross pollination. In the light of habitat destruction leading to a reduction in the diversity and density of native pollinators, it is likely that many of the obligate outbreeders tend to shift to mixed mating system in the coming decades. Similarly, obligate mutualism in which each plant species is dependent on one animal species for pollination also seems to have reached a dead end and the trend is to abandon such obligate mutualism as a survival strategy. In the absence of such a change, obligate out breeders and those with highly specialized pollination system are likely to become endangered or even extinct

Fertilization in Flowering Plants 2. Selection of the Male Partner is the Prerogative of the Maternal Parent

After the pollen grain reaches the stigma through outsourced agents (pollinators), the next step before fertilization is to select the right type of pollen. Similar to a marriage in human beings, flowering plants also have evolved elaborate screening process to select the right pollen grains and to reject the wrong ones. Even after initial screening for the right pollen, the pistil imposes a tough competition amongst them, comparable to a swayamvara of Indian mythology, to select the best available pollen. Flowering plants have evolved into a matriarchal society. The selection of the male partner is totally the prerogative of the mother (pistil); the boy (pollen grain) and the girl (ovule) has no say in this selection

Automation and orchestration of hardware and firmware data mining using a smart data analytics platform

Effective data mining is going to be important for differentiating and succeeding in the digital economy especially with increased commoditization and reduced barrier to entry for infrastructure devices like servers, storage and networking systems. There is lot of telemetry data from manufacturing facilities and customers that can be used to drive improved supportability experience, unmatched product quality and reliability of infrastructure devices like servers and storage devices. Currently data mining of hardware, firmware and platform logs is a challenging task as the domain knowledge is complex with expertise for large multinational organization distributed across the world. With increasing complexity and data mining continuing to be a very time consuming task that requires math/statistics skills, diverse programming & machine learning skills and cross domain knowledge, it is important to look at next generation analytics solution tailored to infrastructure vendors to improve supportability, quality, reliability, performance and security. In this publication we propose a smart, automated and generic data analytics platform that enables a 24/7 data mining solution using an built in platform domain modeler, an expert system for analyzing hardware and firmware logs and a policy manager that allows user defined hypothesis to be verified round the clock based on policies and configurable triggers. This smart data analytics platform will help democratize data mining of hardware and firmware logs and help improve troubleshooting complex issues, improve supportability experience, reliability and quality and reduce warranty costs

A FAST IMPLEMENTATION FOR CORRECTING ERRORS IN HIGH THROUGHPUT SEQUENCING DATA

ABSTRACT The impact of the next generation DNA sequencing technologies (NGS) produced a revolu­tion in biological research. New computational tools are needed to deal with the huge amounts of data they output. Significantly shorter length of the reads and higher per-base error rate compared with Sanger technology make things more difficult and still critical problems, such as genome assembly, are not satisfactorily solved. Significant efforts have been spent recently on software programs aimed at increasing the quality of the NGS data by correcting errors. The most accurate program to date is HiTEC and our contribution is providing a completely new implementation, HiTEC2. The new program is many times faster and uses much less space, while correcting more errors in the same number of iterations. We have eliminated the need of the suffix array data structure and the need of installing complicating statistical libraries as well, thus making HiTEC2 not only more efficient but also friendlier

An Intervention of Microfinance in Tourism Sector: An Emerging Country Perspective

India has a tremendous potential for development in the tourism sector with huge heritage attractions. India is regarded as the 2nd fastest growing tourist market globally. To meet its potential, it needs a variety of funding in the form of unique set of financial products, services such as long-term and short-term credit, investment subsidies, supporting tax policies, lease financing & insurance products which could be taken care by commercial banks and Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs). They play a crucial role in providing innovative financial products and services in promoting livelihood in tourism destinations. Micro-Finance Institutions have an ability to create a positive impact on the development of tourism industry, particularly in emerging countries. Over the years, micro-finance as well as tourism sectors have been promoted independently, which have contributed towards poverty reduction worldwide. Thus, there is a high positive association between opening up of economies and poverty alleviation through financial inclusion achieved largely with contributions from micro-finance institutions. Microfinance operations being raised within the tourism sector to lend services to the micro business owners of tourism industry is an innovative approach. The tourism sector would get a further boost in terms of access to commercial capital to deliver the goods & services through the creation of better tourism infrastructure. This would attract greater no of tourists, for the sustainable growth creating a win-win situation for microfinance institutions and tourism-oriented businesses including other stakeholders

Pollination biology of large cardamom (Amomum subulatum)

Amomum subulatum Roxb. (family Zingiberaceae) is the large cardamom of commerce cultivated in tropical wet evergreen forests of the Eastern Himalayas of India, Nepal and Bhutan. This study seeks to identify floral visitors and pollinators, examine floral adaptations for pollination and evaluate pollination efficiency. Studies were carried out in two flowering seasons (2005, 2006) in a 6-ha plantation located adjacent to a degraded reserve forest in the Sikkim part of the Himalayas. Only two flower visitor species, a bumble-bee (Bombus haemorrhoidalis Smith) and a honey bee species (Apis cerana F.) were recorded. The bumble-bee was the effective and only pollinator, but A. ceranawas the pollen robber. Major flower adaptations for pollination by the bumble-bee are the length of the nectar tube, which is not accessible to short-tongued bees and a narrow passage in the fresh flower between the anther–stigma column and the labellum. The narrow passage forces the bumble-bee to push the anther–stigma column to enter the flower, which brings the body of the bumble-bee in contact with the anther and the stigma, and effects pollination. A. cerana does not come in contact with the stigma during pollen foraging and hence is unable to bring about pollination. Thus, structural features of the flower of A. subulatum differentiate the pollinator and the pollen robber. Pollination efficiency in the plantation was low due to the low population density of wild native pollinator, B. haemorrhoidalis