An anatomical variation of Superficial Palmar Arch and its clinical significance: A Case Report

The familiarity of variations in vascular architecture of hand is helpful to surgeons, in microsurgical procedures precipitated by crush injuries of hand and in amputations. The efficiency of collateral circulation in hand is essential in certain peripheral vascular diseases like Raynaud’s disease and in harvesting of the radial artery for coronary bypass graft. Variation in the formation of superficial palmar arch is common. We report a rare variation of equitable distribution of superficial palmar arch. Variations of the superficial palmar arterial arch are not uncommon. Allen’s test, doppler ultra sound, arterial angiography pulse oximetry should therefore be used to assess the efficiency of collateral circulation before surgical interventions.Keywords: Vascular anatomy; superficial palmar arc

Multiscale Modelling of Blast-Induced TBI Mechanobiology - From Body to Neuron to Molecule

Blast induced Traumatic Brain Injury (bTBI) has become a signature wound of the recent military operations and is becoming a significant factor of recent civilian blast explosion events. In spite of significant clinical and preclinical research on TBI, current understanding of injury mechanisms is limited and little is known about the short and long-term outcomes. Mathematical models of bTBI may provide capabilities to study brain injury mechanisms, perhaps accelerating the development of neuroprotective strategies and aiding in the development of improved personal protective equipment. The paper presents a novel multiscale simulation framework that couples the body/brain scale biomechanics with micro-scale mechanobiology to study the effects of “primary” micro-damage to neuro-axonal structures with the “secondary” injury and repair mechanisms. Our results show that oligodendrocyte myelinating processes distribute strains among neighbor axons and cause their off-axis deformations. Similar effects have been observed at the finer scale for the Tau-Microtubule interaction. The paper also discusses the need for coupled modeling of primary injury biomechanics, secondary injury mechanobiology and model based assessment of injury severity scores. A new integrated computational and experimental approach is described coupling micro-scale injury criteria for the primary micro-mechanical damage to brain tissue/cells as well as to investigate various secondary injury mechanisms.

An unusual termination of facial vein and anterior division of retromandibular vein into external jugular vein: a case report.

Facial vein, being the largest vein of the face forms the common facial vein after joining with the anterior division of retromandibular vein below the angle of the mandible. Usually, it drains into the internal jugular vein. During routine dissection of head and neck region of a male cadaver, aged approximately 50 years, an unusual pattern in the termination of veins on the left side of the neck was observed. The formation, course and termination of external jugular vein were normal. The anterior division of retromandibular vein joined with external jugular vein about 5 cm above the clavicle and the facial vein opened into the external jugular vein about 2.5 cm above the clavicle. In addition, there was a thin venous communication between anterior division of retromandibular vein and external jugular vein. The superficial veins of the neck are often used for cannulation; either for intravenous infusion or for central venous pressure monitoring. Furthermore, these venous segments are used as a patch for carotid endarterectomies. Hence, a thorough knowledge of the normal anatomy and their variations may be useful for performing these procedures

On the marine atmospheric boundary layer characteristics over Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea during the Integrated Campaign for Aerosols, gases and Radiation Budget (ICARB)

Detailed measurements were carried out in the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL) during the Integrated Campaign for Aerosols, gases and Radiation Budget (ICARB) which covered both Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal during March to May 2006. In this paper, we present the meteorological observations made during this campaign. The latitudinal variation of the surface layer turbulent fluxes is also described in detail

A Comparative Rugoscopic Study of the Dentate and Edentulous Individuals in the South Indian Population

This study analyzes the rugae pattern in dentulous and edentulous patients and also evaluates the association of rugae pattern between males and females. Aims and Objectives. This study aims to investigate rugae patterns in dentulous and edentulous patients of both sexes in South Indian population and to find whether palatoscopy is a useful tool in human identification. Materials and Methods. Four hundred outpatients from Sree Balaji Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, were included in the study. The study group was equally divided between the sexes, which was further categorized into 100 dentulous and edentulous patients, respectively. Results. The edentulous male showed the highest mean of wavy pattern and total absence of circular pattern while the edentulous female group showed the highest mean of curved pattern and total absence of nonspecific pattern, while dentate population showed similar value as that of the overall population such as straight, wavy, and curved patterns. Conclusion. The present study concludes that there is similar rugae pattern of distribution between male and female dentate population while there is varied pattern between the sexes of edentulous population. However, the most predominant patterns were straight, wavy, and circular patterns

Load Balancing of Energy Cloud using Wind Driven and Firefly Algorithms in Internet of Everything

The smart applications dominating the planet in the present day and age, have innovatively progressed to deploy Internet of Things (IoT) based systems and related infrastructures in all spectrums of life. Since, variety of applications are being developed using this IoT paradigm, there is an immense necessity for storing data, processing them to get meaningful information and render suitable services to the end-users. The “thing” in this decade is not only a smart sensor or a device; it can be any physical or household object, a smart device or a mobile. With the ever increasing rise in population and smart device usage in every sphere of life, when all of such “thing”s generates data, there is a chance of huge data traffic in the internet. This could be handled only by integrating “Internet of Everything (IoE)” paradigm with a completely diversified technology - Cloud Computing. In order to handle this heavy flow of data traffic and process the same to generate meaningful information, various services in the global environment are utilized. Hence the primary focus revolves in integrating these two diversified paradigm shifts to develop intelligent information processing systems. Energy Efficient Cloud Based Internet of Everything (EECloudIoE) architecture is proposed in this study, which acts as an initial step in integrating these two wide areas thereby providing valuable services to the end users. The utilization of energy is optimized by clustering the various IoT network using Wind Driven Optimization Algorithm. Next, an optimized Cluster Head (CH) is chosen for each cluster, using Firefly Algorithm resulting in reduced data traffic in comparison to other non-clustering schemes. The proposed clustering of IoE is further compared with the widely used state of the art techniques like Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Adaptive Gravitational Search algorithm (AGSA). The results justify the superiority of the proposed methodology outperforming the existing approaches with an increased -life-time and reduction in traffic

Global, regional, and national sex-specific burden and control of the HIV epidemic, 1990–2019, for 204 countries and territories: the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2019

Background: The sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Understanding the current state of the HIV epidemic and its change over time is essential to this effort. This study assesses the current sex-specific HIV burden in 204 countries and territories and measures progress in the control of the epidemic. Methods: To estimate age-specific and sex-specific trends in 48 of 204 countries, we extended the Estimation and Projection Package Age-Sex Model to also implement the spectrum paediatric model. We used this model in cases where age and sex specific HIV-seroprevalence surveys and antenatal care-clinic sentinel surveillance data were available. For the remaining 156 of 204 locations, we developed a cohort-incidence bias adjustment to derive incidence as a function of cause-of-death data from vital registration systems. The incidence was input to a custom Spectrum model. To assess progress, we measured the percentage change in incident cases and deaths between 2010 and 2019 (threshold >75% decline), the ratio of incident cases to number of people living with HIV (incidence-to-prevalence ratio threshold <0·03), and the ratio of incident cases to deaths (incidence-to-mortality ratio threshold <1·0). Findings: In 2019, there were 36·8 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 35·1–38·9) people living with HIV worldwide. There were 0·84 males (95% UI 0·78–0·91) per female living with HIV in 2019, 0·99 male infections (0·91–1·10) for every female infection, and 1·02 male deaths (0·95–1·10) per female death. Global progress in incident cases and deaths between 2010 and 2019 was driven by sub-Saharan Africa (with a 28·52% decrease in incident cases, 95% UI 19·58–35·43, and a 39·66% decrease in deaths, 36·49–42·36). Elsewhere, the incidence remained stable or increased, whereas deaths generally decreased. In 2019, the global incidence-to-prevalence ratio was 0·05 (95% UI 0·05–0·06) and the global incidence-to-mortality ratio was 1·94 (1·76–2·12). No regions met suggested thresholds for progress. Interpretation: Sub-Saharan Africa had both the highest HIV burden and the greatest progress between 1990 and 2019. The number of incident cases and deaths in males and females approached parity in 2019, although there remained more females with HIV than males with HIV. Globally, the HIV epidemic is far from the UNAIDS benchmarks on progress metrics. Funding: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute on Aging of the NIH

Estimates of the global, regional, and national morbidity, mortality, and aetiologies of lower respiratory infections in 195 countries, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.

BACKGROUND: Lower respiratory infections are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) Study 2016, provides an up-to-date analysis of the burden of lower respiratory infections in 195 countries. This study assesses cases, deaths, and aetiologies spanning the past 26 years and shows how the burden of lower respiratory infection has changed in people of all ages. METHODS: We used three separate modelling strategies for lower respiratory infections in GBD 2016: a Bayesian hierarchical ensemble modelling platform (Cause of Death Ensemble model), which uses vital registration, verbal autopsy data, and surveillance system data to predict mortality due to lower respiratory infections; a compartmental meta-regression tool (DisMod-MR), which uses scientific literature, population representative surveys, and health-care data to predict incidence, prevalence, and mortality; and modelling of counterfactual estimates of the population attributable fraction of lower respiratory infection episodes due to Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae type b, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus. We calculated each modelled estimate for each age, sex, year, and location. We modelled the exposure level in a population for a given risk factor using DisMod-MR and a spatio-temporal Gaussian process regression, and assessed the effectiveness of targeted interventions for each risk factor in children younger than 5 years. We also did a decomposition analysis of the change in LRI deaths from 2000-16 using the risk factors associated with LRI in GBD 2016. FINDINGS: In 2016, lower respiratory infections caused 652 572 deaths (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 586 475-720 612) in children younger than 5 years (under-5s), 1 080 958 deaths (943 749-1 170 638) in adults older than 70 years, and 2 377 697 deaths (2 145 584-2 512 809) in people of all ages, worldwide. Streptococcus pneumoniae was the leading cause of lower respiratory infection morbidity and mortality globally, contributing to more deaths than all other aetiologies combined in 2016 (1 189 937 deaths, 95% UI 690 445-1 770 660). Childhood wasting remains the leading risk factor for lower respiratory infection mortality among children younger than 5 years, responsible for 61·4% of lower respiratory infection deaths in 2016 (95% UI 45·7-69·6). Interventions to improve wasting, household air pollution, ambient particulate matter pollution, and expanded antibiotic use could avert one under-5 death due to lower respiratory infection for every 4000 children treated in the countries with the highest lower respiratory infection burden. INTERPRETATION: Our findings show substantial progress in the reduction of lower respiratory infection burden, but this progress has not been equal across locations, has been driven by decreases in several primary risk factors, and might require more effort among elderly adults. By highlighting regions and populations with the highest burden, and the risk factors that could have the greatest effect, funders, policy makers, and programme implementers can more effectively reduce lower respiratory infections among the world's most susceptible populations. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation