An interesting case of back pain

Meliodosis is a disease caused by gram negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Among its various clinical presentations, involvement of spine is rare phenomenon. On presentation they mimic tuberculosis and malignancy. We present a case of an elderly male with known case of diabetes mellitus presented with fever of unknown origin associated with back pain. On evaluation, all tests for tuberculosis and malignancy remained negative. Multiple visceral abscesses with hyper intense foci in T4vertebrae were seen. Pleural fluid culture grew Burkholderia pseudomallei. Patient was treated with parenteral meropenem for 2 weeks, oral doxycycline and trimethoprim/sulphamethazone for 12 weeks. Dramatic decrease in back pain with improvement of constitutional symptoms was seen within 2 days of initiation of appropriate antibiotics. Meliodosis should be considered in differential diagnosis of back pain with constitutional symptoms. Dedicated team of microbiologists and physicians is required to identify and treat the disease

VoIP-based Air Traffic Controller Training

Extending VoIP beyond the Internet telephony, we propose a case study of applying the technology outside of its intended domain, to solve a real-world problem. This work is an attempt to understand an analog hardwired communication system of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and effectively translate it into a generic, standards-based VoIP system that runs on their existing data network. We develop insights into the air traffic training and weigh on the design choices for building a soft real-time data communication system. We also share our real-world deployment and maintenance experiences, as the FAA Academy has been successfully using this VoIP system in five training rooms since 2006 to train the future air traffic controllers of the U.S. and the world

Benefication, sintering and processing of raw materials for the iron and steel industry

Beneficiation of iron ores relates not only to enrichment of the metal content but also to improvements in physical characteristics of the ore charged into the blast-furnace. The latter is achieved by crushing, sizing and agglo-meration of resultant fines etc. It is universally reco-ginzed that preparation of sized iron-ore burden and use of fluxed sinter in iron production can achieve (i) redu-ction in coke rate by reducing the metallurgical load on the blast-furnace by better utilization of available heat and (ii) increased productivity

Sintering of Iron Ore Fines, and Raw Materials for Bhilai Steel Plant

A detailed study has been made at the National Metall-urgical Laboratory on the sintering charactersitics of the iron-ores of Rajharapahar. Madhya Pradesh, and other raw materials likely to be used in the Bhilai steel plant. The effects of variables such as coke and moisture contents in sinter mix, basicity and raw material proportions, on the sintering time and their effects on the quality of sinter produced, have been studied with a sintering plant desig-ned and fabricated at the Laboratory. Optimum conditions for producing the best sinter have been determined. Results of the tests on the Bhilai sample show that coke has a pronounced effect on sinter properties whereas moisture content directly affects permeability and sint-ering rate. 6.1% by weight of coke was found to be the optimum quantity for producing a good sinter. The optimum water content in the charge for producing the most per-meable bed was 7%. The basicity for producing a good self-fluxing sinter in the shortest time was 0.

Microrheology of non mulberry silk varieties by optical tweezer and video microscopy based techniqueas

We have carried out a comparative study of the microrheol. properties of silk fibroin solns. formed from a variety of silks indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. We present the measured viscoelastic moduli of Tasar silk fibroin soln. using both a single and dual optical tweezer at 0.16​% and 0.25​% (w​/v)​. The bandwidth of the measurements carried out using optical tweezers is extended down to the lower frequency regime by a video microscopy measurement. Further, we have measured the viscoelastic moduli of Eri and Muga varieties of silk fibroin solns. at a higher concn. (1.00​% w​/v) limiting the tool of measurement to video microscopy, as the reduced optical transparencies of these solns. at higher concn. preclude an optical tweezer based investigation. The choice of a higher concn. of fibroin soln. of the latter silk varieties is so as to enable a comparison of the shear moduli obtained from optical methods with their corresponding fiber stiffness obtained from wide angle X-​ray scattering data. We report a correlation between the microstructure and microrheol. parameters of these silk varieties for the concn. of fibroin solns. studied

Multiclass Semi-Supervised Learning on Graphs using Ginzburg-Landau Functional Minimization

We present a graph-based variational algorithm for classification of high-dimensional data, generalizing the binary diffuse interface model to the case of multiple classes. Motivated by total variation techniques, the method involves minimizing an energy functional made up of three terms. The first two terms promote a stepwise continuous classification function with sharp transitions between classes, while preserving symmetry among the class labels. The third term is a data fidelity term, allowing us to incorporate prior information into the model in a semi-supervised framework. The performance of the algorithm on synthetic data, as well as on the COIL and MNIST benchmark datasets, is competitive with state-of-the-art graph-based multiclass segmentation methods.Comment: 16 pages, to appear in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume "Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods 2013", part of series on Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computin

Crystal structure of binary and ternary complexes of serine hydroxymethyltransferase from Bacillus stearothermophilus

Serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT), a member of the α-class of pyridoxal phosphate-dependent enzymes, catalyzes the reversible conversion of serine to glycine and tetrahydrofolate to 5,10-methylene tetrahydrofolate. We present here the crystal structures of the native enzyme and its complexes with serine, glycine, glycine, and 5-formyl tetrahydrofolate (FTHF) from Bacillus stearothermophilus. The first structure of the serine-bound form of SHMT allows identification of residues involved in serine binding and catalysis. The SHMT-serine complex does not show any significant conformational change compared with the native enzyme, contrary to that expected for a conversion from an "open" to "closed" form of the enzyme. However, the ternary complex with FTHF and glycine shows the reported conformational changes. In contrast to the Escherichia coli enzyme, this complex shows asymmetric binding of the FTHF to the two monomers within the dimer in a way similar to the murine SHMT. Comparison of the ternary complex with the native enzyme reveals the structural basis for the conformational change and asymmetric binding of FTHF. The four structures presented here correspond to the various reaction intermediates of the catalytic pathway and provide evidence for a direct displacement mechanism for the hydroxymethyl transfer rather than a retroaldol cleavage

Competition between Magnetic and Structural Transition in CrN

CrN is observed to undergo a paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic transition accompanied by a shear distortion from cubic NaCl-type to orthorhombic structure. Our first-principle plane wave and ultrasoft pseudopotential calculations confirm that the distorted antiferromagnetic phase with spin configuration arranged in double ferromagnetic sheets along [110] is the most stable. Antiferromagnetic ordering leads to a large depletion of states around Fermi level, but it does not open a gap. Simultaneous occurence of structural distortion and antiferromagnetic order is analyzed.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure