Correlation of SARS-Cov2 viral load with severity of COVID-19 disease in pregnant women at term: an observational study

Background: COVID-19 disease raised global health concerns especially for the pregnant women who are more susceptible to respiratory viral illnesses due to their bodily immunological and physiological changes to accommodate the foetus. The aim of the study is to evaluate the relationship between the SARS-CoV 2 specific RdRp gene Ct values ​​and the severity of the COVID-19 disease in SARS-CoV2 positive pregnant women at term. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in the Department of Microbiology, Government Medical College, Amritsar on a subset of 46 COVID-19 positive, ante natal mothers, who presented in the labour room for delivery from August 2020 to January 2022. Results: A cohort of 4.8% (46/949) women tested positive in the RT-PCR test for viral RNA. Average age of the group was 25.5years and 89.1% were asymptomatic. 10.9% women reported mild symptoms and 95% had no pre-existing co morbidities. Obstetric complications like premature rupture of membranes were 4.3%, pre-term births 17.33%. Miscarriage and IUD was recorded in 4.34% and 2.17% patients respectively. When compared to values seen in symptomatic women with fever (Ct 25.8), dyspnoea (Ct 28.7), and respiratory distress (Ct 29.1), the mean Ct value reported in asymptomatic women (27.49 SD+5.4) was identical. SARS-CoV2 was not present in any newborns. Despite 24% having low birth weights for their gestational ages, 93% of babies were asymptomatic. Conclusions: The severity of the COVID-19 illness did not correspond with the SARS CoV2 virus RdRp gene Ct levels. The presence of SARS-CoV2 did not appear to independently cause poor maternal and new-born outcomes

Optimising QoE for Scalable Video multicast over WLAN

International audienceQuality of Experience (QoE) is the key to success for multimedia applications and perceptual video quality is one of the important component of QoE. A recent video encoding scheme called Scalable Video Coding (SVC) provides the flexibility and the capability to adapt the video quality to varying network conditions and heterogeneous users. In this paper, we focus on SVC multicast over IEEE 802.11 networks. Traditionally, multicast uses the lowest modulation resulting in a video with only base quality even for users with good channel conditions. To optimize QoE, we propose to use multiple multicast sessions with different transmission rates for different SVC layers. The goal is to provide at least the multicast session with acceptable quality to users with bad channel conditions and to provide additional multicast sessions having SVC enhancement layers to users with better channel conditions. The selection of modulation rate for each SVC layer and for each multicast session is achieved with binary integer linear programming depending on network conditions with a goal to maximize global QoE. Results show that our algorithm maximizes global QoE by providing highest quality videos to users with good channel conditions and by guaranteeing at least acceptable QoE for all users

Exploring the potential of enhanced organic formulations for boosting crop productivity, nutrient utilization efficiency, and profitability in baby corn-Kabuli gram-vegetable cowpea cropping system

The preparation of enriched formulation by integrating of agricultural wastes such as paddy husk ash (PHA) and potato peel with organic fertilizer such as farmyard manure (FYM), compost can enrich the soil with essential plant nutrients, leading to higher yields in subsequent crops and potentially reducing the dependence on farmyard manure/compost alone. However, there is lack of adequate research findings regarding the impact of different formulations generated from agricultural waste on productivity, nutrient utilization efficiency and profitability of baby corn-kabuli gram-vegetable cowpea cropping system. Therefore, a two-year field experiment (2020–2022) was conducted ICAR-IARI, New Delhi with baby corn-kabuli gram-vegetable cowpea cropping system. Seven nutrient sources were tested in Randomized Block Design and replicate thrice.The results showed that treatment T4 (100% recommended dose of nitrogen (RDN) through PHA based formulation) had significant effect on crop yield grown in rotation, followed by treatment T6 (100% RDN through potato peel compost (PPC) based formulation) and T2 (100% RDN through FYM). The increase in yield was 75.0, 44.3 and 33.1% during first year and 72.6, 45.9 and 31.0% during second year, respectively, over control. Treatment T4 also significantly enhanced system uptake of N, P and K as well as system gross returns and net returns, resulting in 65.6, 84.9, 69.5, 50.7 and 55.2% higher returns during first year and 68.6, 80.5, 73.9, 50.0 and 54.2% higher returns during second year, respectively, over control. Furthermore, treatment T4 significantly improved agronomic nitrogen use efficiency and apparent recovery by 151.6 and 2.0% in baby corn, 74.2 and 1.5% in kabuli gram, 55.7 and 13.9% in veg cowpea over T7, respectively, averaged across two years of study. Based on these results, it is recommended to adopt (T4) 100% RDN through PHA based formulation, and (T6) 100% RDN through PPC based formulation in the area with a shortage of FYM but with the availability of rice husk ash or pototo peels for sustainable utilization of the agricultural wastes and improving the agricultural sustainability

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Inventory System with Time and Price Dependent Demand Ratio for Decreasing Items

An inventory model for decaying items with time and price dependent demand for horizon is developed. In this model deterioration rate is taken as quadratic as well as shortages are not permitted. Cost minimization technique is used to get the approximate expressions for total cost and other parameters. we developed a model under consider demand as price and time dependent rate. Special cases of model are discussed for different values of change in constant of proportional and inflation rate.

Amélioration de la qualité de service et de l'utilisation des ressources pour la transmission multimédia sur les réseaux mobiles de troisième génération (3G)

The third generation mobile networks are designed to further enhance the communication by providing higher data rates and varied services, like voice, data and multimedia streaming services. The trend is towards an "All IP Network'' that will bring efficiency and cost reduction for the network equipments. Nevertheless, there are some new design problems such as the large IP overhead and high packet loss rates found in the radio links. Moreover, the existing IP network, the current Internet, cannot satisfy the requirements of real time applications in terms of delay, loss, jitter, etc. The first part of this document focuses on the IP header compression scheme to reduce the IP overhead. The next part proposes novel QoS differentiation strategies using packet scheduling that aim to satisfy the requirements of services such as video streaming. The last part studies congestion control for applications such as video streaming and QoS is further improved with the help of a wireless loss estimation and selective retransmission scheme.Les réseaux mobiles de troisième génération ont été conçus pour offrir des services avancés de communication tels que la voix sur IP et le video-streaming, et des débits relativement élevés. On assiste aujourd'hui à une évolution vers des réseaux tout IP , plus efficaces et moins coûteux pour les opérateurs. De nouveaux problèmes se posent comme par exemple le surcoût dû aux en-têtes IP ou des taux de pertes de paquets élevés sur des liens radio. De plus, la plupart des réseaux IP existants ne peuvent satisfaire les contraintes de ces applications en termes de délai, gigue ou pertes. La première partie de cette thèse porte sur un schéma de compression permettant de réduire le surcoût induit par les en-têtes IP. Ensuite, nous introduisons de nouvelles stratégies pour le support de la qualité de service, basées sur l'ordonnancement des paquets. Enfin, nous étudions le contrôle de congestion pour la vidéo, et nous proposons des mécanismes d'estimation des pertes dues à la radio et de retransmission sélective, visant à améliorer la qualité des flux vidéo.RENNES1-BU Sciences Philo (352382102) / SudocRENNES-INRIA Rennes Irisa (352382340) / SudocSudocFranceF

From QoS to QoE through perceptual quality

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Quality of experience measurement tool for SVC video coding

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