Renal cortical necrosis: A case series of nine patients & review of literature

Background: The purpose of this study is to review cases of renal cortical necrosis (RCN) which we came across during a period of five years, confirmed on needle biopsy specimens, with literature available so far.Methods: All renal biopsy records between January 1996 to December 2001 at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan were reviewed to identify patients with histologically proven renal cortical necrosis. Seven patients were also referred by the department of Nephrology, Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar, Pakistan. Patients\u27 medical records were reviewed for demographic, clinical, and follow up data.Results: There were total of nine patients identified with renal cortical necrosis. The mean age was 26.21 +/- 13.01 year. Five cases (55.5%) were caused by obstetric complications. The most common histology type of RCN was patchy cortical necrosis in seven patients (77.8%). Three patients were alive at last follow up; remaining patients were lost to follow up.Conclusion: Obstetric complications remain the leading cause of renal cortical necrosis in our setting. The recognition of this entity and value of renal biopsy in cases of acute renal failure needs to be emphasized as this helps in establishing diagnosis, to assess prognosis and to aid in selection of a rational approach to therapy

Distinguish Sea Turtle and Fish Using Sound Technique in Designing Acoustic Deterrent Device

Acoustic is a common method for underwater object classification and to observe fish schools or other marine animals in their environment, but it was never applied on sea turtle. Knowledge about turtle detection using sound is very limited and there are no target strength (TS) recorded before. In this study, an echo voltage reference methodincorporating standard target was used to measure ex situ target strength of two Green Turtle (Chelonian mydas) and three species of fish (Indian scad, Indian Mackerel and Bigeyescad). The echo signal of animals has been observed from echosounder output and every envelope of the echo was digitized at a sampling rate 1MHz using high speed analog to digital converter (USB‑1208HS). The finding shows a significant difference between fish and turtles aged 18 years old. The result also demonstrates that TS increase as age of turtle increase. This result is considered important in designing an acoustic deterrent device. The result reveals that size, surface, and animal body part influence in determining target strength value

Hybrid WDM/OCDMA system to support differentiated services in access network

This paper presents a new scheme of WDM/OCDMA system that capable of providing differentiated services in access network. We implement the proposed double-weight (DW) code in this system. The double-weight (DW) code has a fixed weight of 2 and exists for every natural number, n. In spectral-amplitude-coding optical code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, DW code has an ideal cross correlation to eliminate multiuser interference and suppress the noise. We analyze the performance of the system by evaluating the bit error rate (BER) of different services

Pool boiling on modified surfaces using R-123

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Saturated pool boiling of R-123 was investigated for five horizontal copper surfaces modified by different treatments, namely, an emery-polished surface, a fine sandblasted surface, a rough sandblasted surface, an electron beam-enhanced surface, and a sintered surface. Each 40-mm-diameter heating surface formed the upper face of an oxygen-free copper block, electrically heated by embedded cartridge heaters. The experiments were performed from the natural convection regime through nucleate boiling up to the critical heat flux, with both increasing and decreasing heat flux, at 1.01 bar, and additionally at 2 bar and 4 bar for the emery-polished surface. Significant enhancement of heat transfer with increasing surface modification was demonstrated, particularly for the electron beam-enhanced and sintered surfaces. The emery-polished and sandblasted surface results are compared with nucleate boiling correlations and other published data. © 2014 Syed W. Ahmad, John S. Lewis, Ryan J. McGlen, and Tassos G. Karayiannis Published with license by Taylor & Francis

Effects of cadmium acetate contaminated drinking water on vital organs: A histopathological and biochemical study

Cadmium (Cd) is a heavy metal with various human exposure sources. It accumulates in the liver, forming a complex with metallothionein protein and progresses to other organs. As a heavy metal, cadmium can replace calcium and other divalent ions and disturb their cascades, ultimately affecting the vital organs. Since cadmium acetate (CA) is considered more lethal than other Cd compounds, the current study examines the effect of different concentrations of CA doses in drinking water for different exposure times in murine models (Mus musculus). After the exposure period, the murine models were then examined histopathologically and biochemically. The histopathological examination of the heart, liver, and kidneys of the experimental group showed extensive degenerative effects. Atomic absorption spectroscopy was used to determine the quantity of cadmium in serum, kidney, and hepatic tissues. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis of hepatic proteins, especially metallothionein, directly related to Cd administration. The biochemical parameters, including creatine kinase, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, total proteins, glucose, urea, uric acid, and creatinine, were also analyzed. After thorough histochemical and biochemical analysis, it was concluded that even low dose exposure of CA is hazardous to murine models with damaging effects

A review of the state of the art in non-contact sensing for covid-19

COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has resulted in a global pandemic recently. With no approved vaccination or treatment, governments around the world have issued guidance to their citizens to remain at home in efforts to control the spread of the disease. The goal of controlling the spread of the virus is to prevent strain on hospitals. In this paper, we focus on how non-invasive methods are being used to detect COVID-19 and assist healthcare workers in caring for COVID-19 patients. Early detection of COVID-19 can allow for early isolation to prevent further spread. This study outlines the advantages and disadvantages and a breakdown of the methods applied in the current state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, the paper highlights some future research directions, which need to be explored further to produce innovative technologies to control this pandemic

LAPAROSCOPIC CHOLECYSTECTOMY: OUTCOME OF FIRST 202 CASES IN A DISTRICT HOSPITAL IN GILGIT

BACKGROUND: The incidence of gall stone disease is on the rise in Gilgit Baltistan. The objectives of the study were to assess the outcome of laparoscopic cholecystectomy in terms of conversion rate and postoperative morbidity, in The Aga Khan Medical Centre Gilgit. METHODS: It was descriptive case series. All patients that underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy between June 2009 to May 2014 were included. The data was collected prospectively. Demographic features, operative time, and hospital stay were studied. Postoperative complications were documented and evaluated according to outcome measures (bile duct injuries, morbidity, mortality, conversion rates, wound infections). RESULTS: A total of 202 consecutive patients were enrolled with a mean age of 49±15 years. There were 164 (81%) female and 38(19%.) male patients. Twenty nine (15%) patients had hypertension, 51 (25%) patients had diabetes mellitus as comorbid conditions. The mean operative time was 54±21 minutes. The operative time was longer in 52 (26%) patients. Three patients (1.5%) required conversion to open cholecystectomy due to obscured anatomy in the area of Calot\u27s triangle, and empyema gallbladder. The mean hospital stay was 2±0.7 days. No common bile duct injury, solid organ or bowel injury occurred in this study. The mean follow up duration was 30±15 months. Postoperative complications include, port site infection in 8 (2%) patient, chest infection in 5 (2.4%) patients, and one (0.5%) patient had myocardial infarction. There was no mortality reported in this group of patients. CONCLUSION: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is a safe procedure with advantages of decreased wound infection, less pain, decreased hospital stay, and early recovery

Contactless Human Activity Recognition using Deep Learning with Flexible and Scalable Software Define Radio

Ambient computing is gaining popularity as a major technological advancement for the future. The modern era has witnessed a surge in the advancement in healthcare systems, with viable radio frequency solutions proposed for remote and unobtrusive human activity recognition (HAR). Specifically, this study investigates the use of Wi-Fi channel state information (CSI) as a novel method of ambient sensing that can be employed as a contactless means of recognizing human activity in indoor environments. These methods avoid additional costly hardware required for vision-based systems, which are privacy-intrusive, by (re)using Wi-Fi CSI for various safety and security applications. During an experiment utilizing universal software-defined radio (USRP) to collect CSI samples, it was observed that a subject engaged in six distinct activities, which included no activity, standing, sitting, and leaning forward, across different areas of the room. Additionally, more CSI samples were collected when the subject walked in two different directions. This study presents a Wi-Fi CSI-based HAR system that assesses and contrasts deep learning approaches, namely convolutional neural network (CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and hybrid (LSTM+CNN), employed for accurate activity recognition. The experimental results indicate that LSTM surpasses current models and achieves an average accuracy of 95.3% in multi-activity classification when compared to CNN and hybrid techniques. In the future, research needs to study the significance of resilience in diverse and dynamic environments to identify the activity of multiple users