Image Segmentation Using Active Contours Driven by the Bhattacharyya Gradient Flow

©2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2007.908073This paper addresses the problem of image segmentation by means of active contours, whose evolution is driven by the gradient flow derived froman energy functional that is based on the Bhattacharyya distance. In particular, given the values of a photometric variable (or of a set thereof), which is to be used for classifying the image pixels, the active contours are designed to converge to the shape that results in maximal discrepancy between the empirical distributions of the photometric variable inside and outside of the contours. The above discrepancy is measured by means of the Bhattacharyya distance that proves to be an extremely useful tool for solving the problem at hand. The proposed methodology can be viewed as a generalization of the segmentation methods, in which active contours maximize the difference between a finite number of empirical moments of the "inside" and "outside" distributions. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed methodology is very versatile and flexible in the sense that it allows one to easily accommodate a diversity of the image features based on which the segmentation should be performed. As an additional contribution, a method for automatically adjusting the smoothness properties of the empirical distributions is proposed. Such a procedure is crucial in situations when the number of data samples (supporting a certain segmentation class) varies considerably in the course of the evolution of the active contour. In this case, the smoothness properties of the empirical distributions have to be properly adjusted to avoid either over- or underestimation artifacts. Finally, a number of relevant segmentation results are demonstrated and some further research directions are discussed

Indian Constitutional Framework for Commerce and Its Awareness Among Commerce Students

The Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. It is a living document, the permanent instrument which makes the government system work. It lays down the framework defining fundamental political principles, establishes the structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental rights, directive principles and the duties of the citizens. The awareness of the constitutional provisions among the citizens of our country is very essential since, it makes the individuals more responsible towards the country. The Indian Constitutional Framework for Commerce deals with the provisions and regulations related to trade, commerce and intercourse within the territory of India. Awareness of such constitutional provisions among the commerce students have been tested by the investigators. For the purpose of the study, the investigators used both primary and secondary data. An awareness test has been conducted in order to test the awareness of the students related to the Indian Constitutional Framework for Commerce

On the Asymptotic Weight and Stopping Set Distribution of Regular LDPC Ensembles

We estimate the variance of weight and stopping set distribution of regular LDPC ensembles. Using this estimate and the second moment method we obtain bounds on the probability that a randomly chosen code from regular LDPC ensemble has its weight distribution and stopping set distribution close to respective ensemble averages. We are able to show that a large fraction of total number of codes have their weight and stopping set distribution close to the average.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans on Information Theory (revised version). Minor comments from reviewers addresse

Awareness about inhalation general anaesthetics among dental students

Introduction: General anesthesia is a state of medically induced coma or unconsciousness. General anaesthetics are drugs that render a patient unresponsive and unconscious, so that the patient is unaware of surgery and does not move or feel pain while it's being carried out. The anaesthetic agent is administered through an intravenous line or the anaesthetic agent may be inhaled through a breathing mask or tube. Inhalation anesthetics are also known to be found in two forms, gaseous anesthetics and the volatile anaesthetics. The volatile anesthetics are liquids at room temperature and need vapourizers to make it suitable for the inhalation purposes. Aim:The present study aimed to assess the knowledge and awareness on inhalation anaesthesia among dental students. Materials and Methods: The present study is an online based survey conducted among the dental students.The participants were from 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th years of BDS. Questionnaires were prepared and distributed among dental students through an online link from the survey planet. Results and Discussion: About 62% of the students were well aware of inhalation general anaesthesia. 55% of the students were aware of nitrous oxide as inhalation general anesthetics. From the results of the survey it is clear that most of the dental students were well aware of inhalation general anaesthesia and also had proper knowledge about its complications

IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL INHIBITORS FOR LOWERING CHOLESTEROL LEVEL BY INHIBITING PCSK9

ABSTRACTObjective: PCSK9 has medical significance in lowering cholesterol levels. Inhibitors target and inactivate PCSK9 in the liver. Knocking out PCSK9 (proprotein convertase subtilisin kexin 9) reduces the amount of harmful LDL cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream. There are two known inhibitors for treating the cardiovascular disease Arilocumab†and Evalocumabâ€. However there are many side-effects. The current study is to identify natural and synthetic inhibitor using the pharmacophoric feature of the known inhibitor and validating the short listed candidates using Molecular dynamics and ADMET properties.Methods: Known inhibitors for the PCSK9 Protein were taken from the BINDING DATABASE. Molecular docking was performed for the known inhibitors with the PCSK9 protein. After docking the best inhibitor was selected and the docking result was then imported to find the pharmacophoric features.Results: The pharmacophore model was generated with 3 features containing  1 hydrogen bond acceptor(A),1 Hydrogen bond donor(B) and 1 Aromatic ring. The constructed e-pharmacophore model was screened with more than 20000 natural compounds. 5 compounds were short listed. Among them ZINC85625485 has  glide  score  of  -13.03  kcal/mol  with  glide  energy  was  -57.62 kcal/mol and ZINC85625406 has glide score of -8.1kcal/mol with glide energy was -39.33kcal/mol were taken as the best Hits.Conclusion: PCSK9 is known to be a therapeutic agent as it controls the plasma LDL cholesterol levels by posttranslational regulation of the LDL receptor. Therefore, up-regulation of PCSk9 can lead to elevated cholesterol level in such case inhibition of PCSK9 will be a effective remedy. In this study already known inhibitors were taken and pharmacophore feature was generated. Zinc database was screened to find out novel compounds with similar pharmacophore features that can act as potentially active compound against PCSK9. ZINC85625485 and ZINC85625406 were short listed as lead compounds with Molecular dynamics simulation and checking the ADMET properties. Keywords: PCSK9, Docking, ADMET, Molecular Dynamics.                                                            Â

Parental Perception Of Improvement In Prelinguistic Skills In Kids With Autism In Two Months Of Goal Directed Cognitive Approach

The study aimed to assess the parental perception of improvement in prelinguistic skills in children with Autism Spectrum disorder [ASD] after 1 and 2 months of Goal Directed Cognitive Approach. This was assessed by a questionnaire filled by parents of 26 consecutive ASD kids at a neurodevelopmental center. Parents were asked to rate these skills on a Likert scale of 1-5 before and after 1 month and 2 months of GDCA to check for any improvement. 69% of ASD kids were boys. Mean age at presentation was 2.6 years. The children were subjected to GDCA for an average duration of 13.7 months. Of these, 11.5% had seizures and 34.6 % had hyperactivity as a comorbidity. The average duration of sustained eye to eye contact at the time of presentation was 5.96 sec, which improved to 10.3 sec after 1 month ( p-0.0002) and further improved to 12.14 seconds at 2 months (p-0.005). Improvements in turn taking at 1 month( p-0.005) and after 2 months (p-0.002) and purposeful noises after 2 months of GDCA (p-0.003) and imitation after first month of treatment (p-0.0001) were significant. Responding and joint attention did not show any significant change with 2 months of therapy. Therefore, children with autism do improve significantly in eye contact, turn taking, imitation, purposeful noises with 2 months of GDCA. Long term follow up is required to assess responding and joint attention

Induction of interferon-stimulated genes by Simian virus 40 T antigens

AbstractSimian virus 40 (SV40) large T antigen (TAg) is a multifunctional oncoprotein essential for productive viral infection and for cellular transformation. We have used microarray analysis to examine the global changes in cellular gene expression induced by wild-type T antigen (TAgwt) and TAg-mutants in mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEFs). The expression profile of approximately 800 cellular genes was altered by TAgwt and a truncated TAg (TAgN136), including many genes that influence cell cycle, DNA-replication, transcription, chromatin structure and DNA repair. Unexpectedly, we found a significant number of immune response genes upregulated by TAgwt including many interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) such as ISG56, OAS, Rsad2, Ifi27 and Mx1. Additionally, we also observed activation of STAT1 by TAgwt. Our genetic studies using several TAg-mutants reveal an unexplored function of TAg and indicate that the LXCXE motif and p53 binding are required for the upregulation of ISGs