A randomized prospective comparative study of efficacy of asenapine, iloperidone and zotepine in patients with psychosis

Background: Antipsychotic drugs constitute the mainstay in the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. For these medications to be maximally beneficial, they must be efficacious, with an acceptable side effect profile and be taken as prescribed. The objective of the study was to compare the efficacy of iloperidone, asenapine and zotepinein subjects with psychotic disorders.Methods: Randomized prospective study was conducted in the Department of Psychiatry of a tertiary care hospital, at Mysore, India. Sixty Patients who met the criteria for acute psychosis and schizophrenia according to ICD 10 were recruited. Atypical antipsychotics-asenapine, iloperidone and zotepine were administered and their efficacy was monitored by brief psychiatric rating scale (BPRS), which was administered on day one, week 1, week 3 and week 6.Results: Out of 60 recruited subjects 31 (51.7%) completed all four visits of the study. Iloperidone and asenapine showed significant improvement in efficacy than zotepine at week 6. Among the total dropouts 55.2% subjects didn’t come for follow-up and 44.8% were dropped due to development of side effects.Conclusions: In patients with acute psychosis and schizophrenia, iloperidone appears more effective and tolerated than the other two. Asenapine was effective but less tolerated and zotepine was less efficacious and produced poor response. Asenapine and zotepine have more dropouts and showed few uncommon extrapyramidal side effects

Estimation of Soil Moisture in Bare Soils of the Northern Dry Zone of the Deccan Plateau, Karnataka, using Sentinel-1 Band C imagery

Soil moisture information is acritical input to water resource allocation, irrigation scheduling and climate risk management.The date of sowing is an important decision farmers take after initial rainfall occurs based on traditional knowledge and physical estimation of soil moisture. The present study was conducted on bare agriculture fields of Siruguppasub-district in Karnataka state in India to estimate surface soil moisture us in gradar remote sensing with the aim of developing an accurate and scalable methodology

Safety and efficacy of intravenous pulse cyclophosphamide therapy in children with steroid-dependent nephrotic syndrome

Background: Cyclophosphamide (Cyp) is a well-known alternative agent to spare the use of steroids and avoid the side effects that result from long-term steroid therapy in children with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (NS). Use of Cyp typically reduces the risk of relapse in comparison with prednisolone by about 50%. Objective: To study the safety and efficacy of intravenous pulse Cyp (IV Cyp) therapy in children with steroid-dependent NS (SDNS). Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective single-center analysis from a large government hospital in South India. The data were retrieved from the records of children attending the pediatric nephrology clinic between 2005 and 2016. Children with SDNS who received the complete schedule of IV Cyp were included in the study. Children who received other alternate drugs were excluded. Results: Fifty patients with SDNS were treated with IV Cyp, seven patients did not complete the treatment and were excluded from the analysis. 24 (56%) of the 43 patients stayed in remission throughout the course of Cyp treatment and prednisolone could be stopped and were considered as Cyp responsive. The remaining 19 (44%) children had relapsed while on Cyp therapy (Cyp resistant) and required treatment with alternate immunosuppressant drugs. 19 of the 24 Cyp responsive patients were in remission 6 months after stopping Cyp treatment (Cyp sensitive) while the remaining five patients relapsed within 6 months of stopping Cyp treatment (Cyp dependent). 9 children (20.9%) were relapse-free till the time of last follow-up with a median follow-up of 2.1 years. Among 24 children, 13 (30.23%) who responded were infrequently relapsing NS and 2 (4.5%) children were frequently relapsing NS

Antipsychotics in schizophrenia: a retrospective study of drug utilization pattern in outpatient department of psychiatry at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Psychiatric disorders are one of the major causes of morbidity and the burden of illness is enormous and remains grossly under represented. Psychotropic drugs have had a remarkable impact in psychiatric practice. Currently a large number of atypical antipsychotics available in the market are endorsed as better options for treating schizophrenia than the typical antipsychotics. The main objective of the study was to find the commonly prescribed antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients in a tertiary care center.Methods: After Institutional Ethics Committee approval, a retrospective cross-sectional drug utilization study of 400 prescriptions was under taken from 1st July 2015 to 30th July 2016 in the outpatient department of psychiatry of a tertiary care hospital. The prescribing pattern of antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients (N=107) was measured.Results: Out of 400 cases in the outpatient department, schizophrenia cases were predominant (N=107 i.e. 27%) out of which 42.1% were females and 57.9% were males. This was followed by mood disorders and neurotic & somatoform disorders. The most common antipsychotic used was olanzapine followed by risperidone. Least commonly used antipsychotic was haloperidol. Most of the patients who received risperidone also received an anticholinergic trihexyphenidyl (91.8%).Conclusions: Olanzapine and risperidone are the most commonly used antipsychotics. Anticholinergics should be used only in selected patients on antipsychotics as tolerance develops to extrapyramidal side effects. Anticholinergics are unnecessary after 3-6 months in all except 10% of patients. Moreover, it has its own side effects and adversely interacts with antipsychotics

Bridging the Divide between Neuroprosthetic Design, Tissue Engineering and Neurobiology

Neuroprosthetic devices have made a major impact in the treatment of a variety of disorders such as paralysis and stroke. However, a major impediment in the advancement of this technology is the challenge of maintaining device performance during chronic implantation (months to years) due to complex intrinsic host responses such as gliosis or glial scarring. The objective of this review is to bring together research communities in neurobiology, tissue engineering, and neuroprosthetics to address the major obstacles encountered in the translation of neuroprosthetics technology into long-term clinical use. This article draws connections between specific challenges faced by current neuroprosthetics technology and recent advances in the areas of nerve tissue engineering and neurobiology. Within the context of the device–nervous system interface and central nervous system implants, areas of synergistic opportunity are discussed, including platforms to present cells with multiple cues, controlled delivery of bioactive factors, three-dimensional constructs and in vitro models of gliosis and brain injury, nerve regeneration strategies, and neural stem/progenitor cell biology. Finally, recent insights gained from the fields of developmental neurobiology and cancer biology are discussed as examples of exciting new biological knowledge that may provide fresh inspiration toward novel technologies to address the complexities associated with long-term neuroprosthetic device performance

Accuracies of Soil Moisture Estimations Using a Semi-Empirical Model over Bare Soil Agricultural Croplands from Sentinel-1 SAR Data

This study describes a semi-empirical model developed to estimate volumetric soil moisture ( v ϑ) in bare soils during the dry season (March–May) using C-band (5.42 GHz) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery acquired from the Sentinel-1 European satellite platform at a 20 m spatial resolution. The semi-empirical model was developed using backscatter coefficient (σ° dB) and in situ soil moisture collected from Siruguppa taluk (sub-district) in the Karnataka state of India. The backscatter coefficients 0 VV σ and 0 VH σ were extracted from SAR images at 62 geo-referenced locations where ground sampling and volumetric soil moisture were measured at a 10 cm (0–10 cm) depth using a soil core sampler and a standard gravimetric method during the dry months (March–May) of 2017 and 2018. A linear equation was proposed by combining 0 VV σ and 0 VH σ to estimate soil moisture. Both localized and generalized linear models were derived. Thirty-nine localized linear models were obtained using the 13 Sentinel-1 images used in this study, considering each polarimetric channel Co-Polarization (VV) and Cross-Polarization(VH) separately, and also their linear combination of VV + VH. Furthermore, nine generalized linear models were derived using all the Sentinel-1 images acquired in 2017 and 2018; three generalized models were derived by combining the two years (2017 and 2018) for each polarimetric channel; and three more models were derived for the linear combination of 0 VV σ and 0 VH σ . The above set of equations were validated and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was 0.030 and 0.030 for 2017 and 2018, respectively, and 0.02 for the combined years of 2017 and 2018. Both localized and generalized models were compared with in situ data. Both kind of models revealed that the linear combination of 0 VV σ + 0 VH σ showed a significantly higher R2 than the individual polarimetric channels

Load Balancing in Cloud Computing: A Survey on Popular Techniques and Comparative Analysis

Cloud Computing is universally accepted as the most intensifying field in web technologies today. With the increasing popularity of the cloud, popular website2019;s servers are getting overloaded with high request load by users. One of the main challenges in cloud computing is Load Balancing on servers. Load balancing is the procedure of sharing the load between multiple processors in a distributed environment to minimize the turnaround time taken by the servers to cater service requests and make better utilization of the available resources. It greatly helps in scenarios where there is misbalance of workload on the servers as some machines may get heavily loaded while others remain under-loaded or idle. Load balancing methods make sure that every VM or server in the network holds workload equilibrium and load as per their capacity at any instance of time. Static and Dynamic load balancing are main techniques for balancing load on servers. This paper presents a brief discussion on different load balancing schemes and comparison between prime techniques

Standardisation of soil volume wetting for drip irrigation in mango (Mangifera indica L.,)

Field experiments were conducted in mango for four years during 2017-2020 at ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research to standardise optimum soil volume wetting for drip irrigation. Wetting soil volume upto 70% recorded higher mean fruit yield of 34.8 kg/plant (9.68 t/ha)and with further increase in the level of soil volume wetting irrigation (upto 80%), there was a decline in the mango yield (7.40 t/ha). Similarly, significantly increased response was observed in fruit weight upto 70% soil volume irrigation (226 g) although there were no significant differences in the TSS of the fruit. Significantly higher water use efficiency was observed for 30% soil volume wetting irrigation (274.1 kg/m3) and further no significant differences were observed in water use efficiency between 50% and 70% soil volume wetting irrigations indicating that in areas of water scarcity, it is enough to scheduling the irrigation only upto 50% soil volume wetting in mango for economising the water (232.1 kg/m3)

A Plane-Symmetric Inhomogeneous Cosmological Model of Perfect Fluid Distribution with Electromagnetic Field I

A plane-symmetric inhomogeneous cosmological model of perfect fluid distribution with electro-magnetic field is obtained. The source of the magnetic field is due to an electric current produced along the z-axis. $F_{12}$ is the non-vanishing component of electromagnetic field tensor. To get a deterministic solution, we assume the free gravitational field is Petrov type-II non-degenerate. The behaviour of the electro-magnetic field tensor together with some physical aspects of the model are also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, no figur