Should a clinical rotation in haematology be mandatory for undergraduate medical students?

Clinical rotations form the foundation of medical education. Medical students in the UK are offered conventional rotations such as cardiology, surgery and psychiatry as part of their curriculum, but a rotation of haematology is not currently compulsory. This article explores the benefits of a compulsory haematology rotation, and suggests recommendations for its implementation into UK medical school curricula

Effect of Seed Disinfectants on in vitro Seed Germination and Seedling Development in Eggplant

The present investigation reports effects of disinfectants on culture contamination, seed germination and seedling growth in eggplant. Mercuric chloride hampers seed germination when seeds are treated with 0.1% solution above 2 min duration and lesser durations are not helpful in controlling in vitro contamination. The highest seed germination (89.97%) was recorded with 50% commercial bleach for 20 min in the genotype BL-3, followed by BR-16 (88.53%), BR-14 (86.19%), BL-5 (86.16%) and BSR-23 (85.57%). However, least number of seeds germinated in BR-18 (10.94%), BSR-25 (13.27%) and BL-7 (18.62%) when disinfected with 75% commercial bleach for 25min. Overall results revealed that 50% commercial bleach concentration (73.76%) was better than 75% (36.85%), and 20 min duration (60.82%) was better than 25 min (49.80%) for seed disinfection. Among the varieties, BL-3 was at the top (68.85%) and BR-18 at the lowest (34.16%) edge for per cent seed germination. Seedling growth (cm) with use of commercial bleach was quite satisfactory compared to disinfection with HgCl2, where, 50% commercial bleach favored a good stand of plant lets even after 10 days, showing a healthy root (3cm), hypocotyl (5cm) and cotyledons (1.5cm)

Heterosis for Fruit Yield and its Components in Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

An experiment was conducted with 14 parents and 40 F1s to study heterosis in brinjal. Crosses showing significant heterosis over the better parent were: HE12 X Aruna for first fruit set; BR-112 X Aruna for fruit length and diameter; Pant Samrat X Punjab Neelam for number of fruits per plant; H-7 X Aruna for fruit weight; H-9 X S-16 for total yield per plant; Negative heterosis were recorded in KT-4 X Aruna for borer and Pant in Rituraj X Punjab Neelam for nematode infestation

Numerical Modelling of High Speed Blanking Considering Thermoviscoplastic Effects

To achieve the required specifications of the cut-edge profile of a blank, a time consuming trial and error procedures based on empirical information are utilized. However, the modern industry demands high quality product specifications in the shortest possible production time. Therefore, in order to predict the cut-edge profile and speed up the production process, it is essential to develop a reliable numerical model of the high speed blanking process which can predict the cut-edge profile of the blanks. In this study, the Lagrangian based finite element (FE) approach was used to model large strain deformation that takes place in the shearzone during blanking. However, the large deformation is difficult to model using Lagrangian approach as it leads to a severe distortion of the FE mesh. Therefore, in order to overcome a premature termination of the analysis due to the mesh distortion, an adaptive remeshing and rezoning technique was developed. Furthermore, to model the ductile fracture, the discrete crack propagation method was implemented in the MSC.Marc® Due to high speed of the cutting stamp, thermoviscoplastic material behaviour has to be taken into account. The Johnson-Cook plasticity model was used to model viscoplasticity. The results obtained from the FE analysis are presented in this paper

Semantic representation of monogenean haptoral Bar image annotation

Background Digitised monogenean images are usually stored in file system directories in an unstructured manner. In this paper we propose a semantic representation of these images in the form of a Monogenean Haptoral Bar Image (MHBI) ontology, which are annotated with taxonomic classification, diagnostic hard part and image properties. The data we used are basically of the monogenean species found in fish, thus we built a simple Fish ontology to demonstrate how the host (fish) ontology can be linked to the MHBI ontology. This will enable linking of information from the monogenean ontology to the host species found in the fish ontology without changing the underlying schema for either of the ontologies. Results In this paper, we utilized the Taxonomic Data Working Group Life Sciences Identifier (TDWG LSID) vocabulary to represent our data and defined a new vocabulary which is specific for annotating monogenean haptoral bar images to develop the MHBI ontology and a merged MHBI-Fish ontologies. These ontologies are successfully evaluated using five criteria which are clarity, coherence, extendibility, ontology commitment and encoding bias Conclusions In this paper, we show that unstructured data can be represented in a structured form using semantics. In the process, we have come up with a new vocabulary for annotating the monogenean images with textual information. The proposed monogenean image ontology will form the basis of a monogenean knowledge base to assist researchers in retrieving information for their analysis

Reduced influence of perceptual context in mild traumatic brain injury is not an illusion

Perceptual grouping is impaired following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). This may affect visual size perception, a process influenced by perceptual grouping abilities. We conducted two experiments to evaluate visual size perception in people with self-reported history of mTBI, using two different size-contrast illusions: the Ebbinghaus Illusion (Experiment 1) and the Müller-Lyer illusion (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, individuals with mTBI and healthy controls were asked to compare the size of two target circles that were either the same size or different sizes. The target circles appeared by themselves (no-context condition), or were surrounded by smaller or larger circles (context condition). Similar levels of accuracy were evident between the groups in the no-context condition. However, size judgements by mTBI participants were more accurate in the context condition, suggesting that they processed the target circles separately from the surrounding circles. In Experiment 2, individuals with mTBI and healthy controls judged the length of parallel lines that appeared with arrowheads (context condition) or without arrowheads (no context condition). Consistent with Experiment 1, size judgements by mTBI participants were more accurate than size judgements by control participants in the context condition. These findings suggest that mTBI influences size perception by impairing perceptual grouping of visual stimuli in near proximity