Randomised double blind placebo controlled trial of inhaled fluticasone propionate in infants with chronic lung disease

In a double blind randomised controlled trial, 30 infants with chronic lung disease received fluticasone propionate or placebo for one year. There were no significant differences between treatment groups in the incidence of any day or night time symptoms or any other outcome measure

Magnetic phase diagram of Fe1.1Te1-xSex: A comparative study with the stoichiometric superconducting FeTe1-xSex system

We report a comparative study of the series Fe1.1Te1-xSex and the stoichiometric FeTe1-xSex to bring out the difference in their magnetic, superconducting and electronic properties. The Fe1.1Te1-xSex series is found to be magnetic and its microscopic properties are elucidated through Moessbauer spectroscopy. The magnetic phase diagram of Fe1.1Te1-xSex is traced out and it shows the emergence of spin-glass state when the antiferromagnetic state is destabilized by the Se substitution. The isomer shift and quadrupolar splitting obtained from the Moessbauer spectroscopy clearly brings out the electronic differences in these two series.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figure

Ultrasound intensification suppresses the need of methanol excess during the biodiesel production with Lipozyme TL-IM

The synthesis of biodiesel from sunflower oil and methanol based on transesterification using the immobilized lipase from Thermomyces lanuginosus (Lipozyme TL-IM) has been investigated under silent conditions and under an ultrasound field. Ultrasound assisted process led to reduced processing time and requirement of lower enzyme dosage. We found for the first time that ratio 1:3 (oil to methanol) was favoured for the ultrasound assisted enzymatic process which is lower as that favoured for the silent process (ratio of 1.4). Our results indicate that intensification provided by ultrasound suppresses the need of the excess of the methanol reactant during the enzymatic biodiesel production. Ultrasound assisted enzymatic biodiesel production is therefore a faster and a cleaner processes.The authors acknowledge Brenntag India Pvt. Ltd. for kindly providing gift sample of lipase enzyme Lipozyme TL IM to carry out the research work. All authors acknowledge the funding of Department of Science and Technology and Portuguese Science Foundation under the Indo-Portuguese collaborative program

Comparison of efficacy of labetalol and methyldopa in patients with pregnancy-induced hypertension

Background: In a country like India, where maternal mortality rate is still very high despite progress and development which has consistently been made in the health services, a big proportion is still deprived of it. Hypertension is the most common medical problem encountered during pregnancy. It is estimated that globally 6-8% of pregnancies are complicated by hypertension. Antihypertensive drugs are often used to lower blood pressure with the aim of preventing its progression to adverse outcomes for the mother and the fetus. The risk of developing severe hypertension is reduced to half by using antihypertensive medications. Hence, this study was planned to assess and compare efficacy of labetalol and methyldopa in controlling blood pressure in patients with PIH and to study maternal and perinatal outcome in rural Indian population.Methods: 180 patients with PIH were divided in to two groups randomly. After randomization, group A received methyldopa 250 mg tid and group B received labetalol 100mg tid. Mean Arterial pressure (MAP) was calculated according to formula systolic BP +2 diastolic BP /3. Patients were subjected to 6 hrly BP monitoring. Comparison of two drugs was done daily by calculating MAP of two groups. Following Observations were made as regards Fall in BP with Labetalol/ Methyldopa, Time required to control BP, Average dose of drugs required to control BP, Onset of labour-spontaneous/induced, Bishop score at induction of labour, Side effects of drugs.Results: Significant fall in MAP was seen in patients receiving Labetalol. Mean time required to control B.P in group A was 42.22 hours and in group B it was 36.97 hours. Mean Bishop score at induction in present study in group A was 8.27 and in group B was 9.33 with a statistically significant   p<0.05.  (33.33%) patients went in spontaneous labour in group A while in group B, 23 patients i.e. (48.94%) patients went in spontaneous labour.Conclusions: The freedom from maternal and fetal side-effects, the efficient hypotensive action indicates that labetalol is suitable for use during pregnancy

Enteral lactoferrin supplementation for very preterm infants: a randomised placebo-controlled trial

Background Infections acquired in hospital are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in very preterm infants. Several small trials have suggested that supplementing the enteral diet of very preterm infants with lactoferrin, an antimicrobial protein processed from cow's milk, prevents infections and associated complications. The aim of this large randomised controlled trial was to collect data to enhance the validity and applicability of the evidence from previous trials to inform practice. Methods In this randomised placebo-controlled trial, we recruited very preterm infants born before 32 weeks' gestation in 37 UK hospitals and younger than 72 h at randomisation. Exclusion criteria were presence of a severe congenital anomaly, anticipated enteral fasting for longer than 14 days, or no realistic prospect of survival. Eligible infants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either enteral bovine lactoferrin (150 mg/kg per day; maximum 300 mg/day; lactoferrin group) or sucrose (same dose; control group) once daily until 34 weeks' postmenstrual age. Web-based randomisation minimised for recruitment site, gestation (completed weeks), sex, and single versus multifetal pregnancy. Parents, caregivers, and outcome assessors were unaware of group assignment. The primary outcome was microbiologically confirmed or clinically suspected late-onset infection (occurring >72 h after birth), which was assessed in all participants for whom primary outcome data was available by calculating the relative risk ratio with 95% CI between the two groups. The trial is registered with the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number 88261002. Findings We recruited 2203 participants between May 7, 2014, and Sept 28, 2017, of whom 1099 were assigned to the lactoferrin group and 1104 to the control group. Four infants had consent withdrawn or unconfirmed, leaving 1098 infants in the lactoferrin group and 1101 in the sucrose group. Primary outcome data for 2182 infants (1093 [99·5%] of 1098 in the lactoferrin group and 1089 [99·0] of 1101 in the control group) were available for inclusion in the modified intention-to-treat analyses. 316 (29%) of 1093 infants in the intervention group acquired a late-onset infection versus 334 (31%) of 1089 in the control group. The risk ratio adjusted for minimisation factors was 0·95 (95% CI 0·86–1·04; p=0·233). During the trial there were 16 serious adverse events for infants in the lactoferrin group and 10 for infants in the control group. Two events in the lactoferrin group (one case of blood in stool and one death after intestinal perforation) were assessed as being possibly related to the trial intervention. Interpretation Enteral supplementation with bovine lactoferrin does not reduce the risk of late-onset infection in very preterm infants. These data do not support its routine use to prevent late-onset infection and associated morbidity or mortality in very preterm infants. Funding UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme (10/57/49)

Optimization of Strategies for Modelling of Energyabsorbing Structures in Vehicles

Crash performance is imperative to ensure safety of vehicle. A major challenge in the design and optimization of vehicle crash systems is the high computing costs needed for crash analysis. It is imperative that energy-absorbing structural principles can be introduced and optimized at the early stages of vehicle design in order to improve crash efficiency by creative and optimized vehicle architecture. Through developing rapid modelling strategies, this potential can be maximized. In this paper modelling approaches are investigated using Finite Element Method for one application. Description for energy absorption structures are studied and implemented into new user defined model description for an explicit Finite Element Crash Solver. The simplified energy absorbing structure is verified using Finite Element Model

Diffuse interface models of solidification with convection: The choice of a finite interface thickness

The thin interface limit aims at minimizing the effects arising from a numerical interface thickness, inherent in diffuse interface models of solidification and microstructure evolution such as the phase field model. While the original formulation of this problem is restricted to transport by diffusion, we consider here the case of melt convection. Using an analysis of the coupled phase field-fluid dynamic equations, we show here that such a thin interface limit does also exist if transport contains both diffusion and convection. This prediction is tested by comparing simulation studies, which make use of the thin-interface condition, with an analytic sharp-interface theory for dendritic tip growth under convection. © 2020, The Author(s)

Optimisation of semantic segmentation algorithm for autonomous driving using U-NET architecture

In autonomous driving systems, the semantic segmentation task involves scene partition into numerous expressive portions by classifying and labelling every image pixel for semantics. The algorithm used for semantic segmentation has a vital role in autonomous driving architecture. This paper's main contribution is optimising the semantic segmentation algorithm for autonomous driving by modifying the U-NET architecture. The optimisation techniques involve five different methods, which include; no batch normalisation network, with batch normalisation network, network with reduction in filters, average ensemble network, and weighted average ensemble network. The validation accuracy observed for the five methods were 90.28%, 91.68%, 89.80%, 92.04%, and 92.21% respectively. By reducing the filters in the network, the computation time reduces (Epoch time: 1 s 64 ms/step) as opposed to the typical (Epoch time: 4 s 260 ms/step), but the accuracy reduces. The optimisation techniques were evaluated for metrics like mean intersection over union (IoU), IoU for class, dice-metric, dice_coefficient_loss, validation loss, and accuracy. The dataset of 300 images used for this paper's study was generated using the open-source car learning to act (CARLA) simulator platform

Enteral lactoferrin supplementation for very preterm infants: a randomised placebo-controlled trial

Background Infections acquired in hospital are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in very preterm infants. Several small trials have suggested that supplementing the enteral diet of very preterm infants with lactoferrin, an antimicrobial protein processed from cow's milk, prevents infections and associated complications. The aim of this large randomised controlled trial was to collect data to enhance the validity and applicability of the evidence from previous trials to inform practice. Methods In this randomised placebo-controlled trial, we recruited very preterm infants born before 32 weeks' gestation in 37 UK hospitals and younger than 72 h at randomisation. Exclusion criteria were presence of a severe congenital anomaly, anticipated enteral fasting for longer than 14 days, or no realistic prospect of survival. Eligible infants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either enteral bovine lactoferrin (150 mg/kg per day; maximum 300 mg/day; lactoferrin group) or sucrose (same dose; control group) once daily until 34 weeks' postmenstrual age. Web-based randomisation minimised for recruitment site, gestation (completed weeks), sex, and single versus multifetal pregnancy. Parents, caregivers, and outcome assessors were unaware of group assignment. The primary outcome was microbiologically confirmed or clinically suspected late-onset infection (occurring >72 h after birth), which was assessed in all participants for whom primary outcome data was available by calculating the relative risk ratio with 95% CI between the two groups. The trial is registered with the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number 88261002. Findings We recruited 2203 participants between May 7, 2014, and Sept 28, 2017, of whom 1099 were assigned to the lactoferrin group and 1104 to the control group. Four infants had consent withdrawn or unconfirmed, leaving 1098 infants in the lactoferrin group and 1101 in the sucrose group. Primary outcome data for 2182 infants (1093 [99·5%] of 1098 in the lactoferrin group and 1089 [99·0] of 1101 in the control group) were available for inclusion in the modified intention-to-treat analyses. 316 (29%) of 1093 infants in the intervention group acquired a late-onset infection versus 334 (31%) of 1089 in the control group. The risk ratio adjusted for minimisation factors was 0·95 (95% CI 0·86–1·04; p=0·233). During the trial there were 16 serious adverse events for infants in the lactoferrin group and 10 for infants in the control group. Two events in the lactoferrin group (one case of blood in stool and one death after intestinal perforation) were assessed as being possibly related to the trial intervention. Interpretation Enteral supplementation with bovine lactoferrin does not reduce the risk of late-onset infection in very preterm infants. These data do not support its routine use to prevent late-onset infection and associated morbidity or mortality in very preterm infants. Funding UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme (10/57/49)

A thoracophagus conjoined twins with myelomeningocele: an unusual case

Conjoined twins represent one of the rarest forms of twin gestation. Conjoined twinning is rare, occurring in about 1% of monochorionic twins with an estimated incidence ranging from 1:30,000 to 1:2,00,000 live births and 1 in 650 to 900 twin deliveries. A 21 year old gravida 2, with an abortion, a resident of Ginjakheda, Deoli Wardha came to our hospital, AVBRH Sawangi and presented with history of amenorrhoea of six months. She had her first ultrasonography done which demonstrated thoracophagus conjoined twins. Patient was admitted in view of management of conjoined twins. She was posted for elective caesarean section on 5/11/11. A conjoined twin of combined weight around 2 kgs was extracted out. Both the foetuses were female with multiple congenital anomalies. In conclusion, conjoined twins are associated with a high perinatal mortality; therefore making an early diagnosis by means of ultrasonography, gives parents a chance to elect pregnancy termination