SLOT LOADED SHORTED GAP COUPLED BROADBAND MICROSTRIP ANTENNA

In this paper the bandwidth of a conventional rectangular microstrip antenna has been enhanced by locating capacitively excited λm/4 short circuit parasitic elements at its radiating and non-radiating edges along with the circular polarization and loading the parasitic elements with the rectangular slots. An impedance bandwidth of 1.53513 GHz to 1.843438 GHz (308.3MHz). It has three resonances at 1.56GHz, 1.67GHz and 1.8 GHz. The result are simulated by MOM based IE3D software

Inner Tapered Tree-Shaped Ultra-Wideband Fractal Antenna with Polarization Diversity

A coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed third iteration inner tapered tree-shaped ultra-wideband (UWB) fractal antenna for polarization diversity applications is presented. The antenna comprises of two orthogonal fractal antenna structures to achieve polarization diversity performance across the frequency spectrum of 4.7–19.4 GHz. An isolation of more than 15 dB is accomplished. The designed antenna has a nearly omnidirectional radiation pattern with an average gain of 2.45 dB, very low values of envelope correlation coefficient and capacity loss, nearly constant diversity gain (DG) and mean effective gain (MEG) values. The time domain analysis results illustrated the low dispersion in the radiated pulse. The designed antenna has advantages of wider bandwidth and miniaturized dimensions along with good diversity performance. These advantages make the designed antenna a promising candidate for future wireless communication systems having multipath fading as a major concern

A RARE CAUSE OF SEPTIC ARTHRITIS WITH PLEURAL EFFUSION: BURKHOLDERIA PSEUDOMALLEI

Melioidosis is a fatal disease, most prevalent in South-East Asia, Northern Australia, and the Indian subcontinent is caused by Gram-negative saprophyte Burkholderia pseudomallei. Septic arthritis due to melioidosis is very rare and should be a differential diagnosis in patient presenting with septic arthritis in endemic areas. It results in severe morbidity. Hence, we report a case of septic arthritis of left knee and hip in a young patient who later developed pleural effusion caused by B. pseudomallei.Keywords: Septic arthritis, Pleural effusion, Vietnamese bomb.Â

PREVALENCE OF DIABETIC RETINOPATHY IN TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS: AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY IN SOUTHERN INDIA

  Objectives: In India, 69.1 million are diabetics as of 2015 compared to 18 million in 1995. Pan India prevalence study in diabetics carried out at 194 centers by All India Ophthalmological Society reported the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR) among diabetics as 21.8%. DR is of two types, non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). The severity of NPDR depends on microaneurysms, hemorrhages, cotton wool spots, and beading of veins and can progress to PDR. Inherit characteristic of PDR is neovascularization. The aim of this observational prevalence study is to study the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in Type 2 diabetic patients attending diabetic clinic and to study the distribution of diabetic retinopathy with respect to age, sex, and duration of disease in a tertiary care hospital in southern India.Methods: This is a retrospective observational study. Age above 20 years and patients diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and examined by the ophthalmologist were included and others excluded. Data documented were analyzed using statistical software SPSS version 16.Results: About 52.07% of patients with Type 2 DM for more than 10 years had diabetic retinopathy and 13.07 % of patients with Type 2 DM for more than 5 years have diabetic retinopathy.Conclusion: India being the diabetic capital of the world and DR being the most common cause for visual impairment and blindness and it becomes empirical to assess the factors for its rising prevalence, which will significantly contribute in reducing the progression of DR

Improving long term myoelectric decoding, using an adaptive classifier with label correction

This study presents a novel adaptive myoelectric decoding algorithm for control of upper limb prosthesis. Myoelectric decoding algorithms are inherently subject to decay in decoding accuracy over time, which is caused by the changes occurring in the muscle signals. The proposed algorithm relies on an unsupervised and on demand update of the training set, and has been designed to adapt to both the slow and fast changes that occur in myoelectric signals. An update in the training data is used to counter the slow changes, whereas an update with label correction addresses the fast changes in the signals. We collected myoelectric data from an able bodied user for over four and a half hours, while the user performed repetitions of eight wrist movements. The major benefit of the proposed algorithm is the lower rate of decay in accuracy; it has a decay rate of 0.2 per hour as opposed to 3.3 for the non adaptive classifier. The results show that, long term decoding accuracy in EMG signals can be maintained over time, improving the performance and reliability of myoelectric prosthesis.by Sarthak Jain and Girish Singha

Neurotensin receptor 1-biased ligand attenuates neurotensin-mediated excitation of ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons and dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens.

Strong expression of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) neurotensin receptor 1 (NTR1) in ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons and terminals makes it an attractive target to modulate DA neuron activity and normalize DA-related pathologies. Recent studies have identified a novel class of NTR1 ligand that shows promising effects in preclinical models of addiction. A lead molecule, SBI-0654553 (SBI-553), can act as a positive allosteric modulator of NTR1 β-arrestin recruitment while simultaneously antagonizing NTR1 Gq protein signaling. Using cell-attached recordings from mouse VTA DA neurons we discovered that, unlike neurotensin (NT), SBI-553 did not independently increase spontaneous firing. Instead, SBI-553 blocked the NT-mediated increase in firing. SBI-553 also antagonized the effects of NT on dopamine D2 auto-receptor signaling, potentially through its inhibitory effects on G-protein signaling. We also measured DA release directly, using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry in the nucleus accumbens and observed antagonist effects of SBI-553 on an NT-induced increase in DA release. Further, in vivo administration of SBI-553 did not notably change basal or cocaine-evoked DA release measured in NAc using fiber photometry. Overall, these results indicate that SBI-553 blunts NT's effects on spontaneous DA neuron firing, D2 auto-receptor function, and DA release, without independently affecting these measures. In the presence of NT, SBI-553 has an inhibitory effect on mesolimbic DA activity, which could contribute to its efficacy in animal models of psychostimulant use