Revisiting the epidemiology of mid shaft clavicle fracture-recent and emerging trends

Background: Clavicle fracture is a common injury involving upper limb. It accounts for 2.6-5% of injuries. Most common mechanism causing this injury is a fall on an outstretched hand. Clavicle fractures have a bimodal distribution with 1st peak in young active adult males less than 30 years of age. Second peak in elderly females with osteoporotic bones. The annual incidence is highest in male under 20 age group, decreasing with subsequent age groups. Road traffic accidents is another mode of injury which is becoming increasingly common for mid shaft clavicle fractures.Methods: A prospective study was carried out over 12 months. A total of 126 patients met the inclusion criteria. The epidemiological data was collected at the time of presentation using standard case sheet proforma. Radiographic assessment was done for fracture classification.Results: Mid Shaft clavicle fracture was most common in middle aged males (31-40 years) with right side being most commonly affected. Road traffic accidents was the most common cause of injury (62%). AO/OTA type 15B1 is the most common fracture morphology (45%). Most of the high energy road traffic accidents are associated with 15B3 type fractures while type 15B1 is more common in low energy mechanisms like ground level fall.Conclusions: Mid shaft clavicle fracture is a common injury in young population. It is increasingly being associated with road traffic accidents. The number of comminuted fractures, which represent high energy injury mechanism has been on the rise due to increase in high velocity accidents

Functional and radiological outcomes of mid-shaft clavicle fracture managed by flexible intramedullary nailing

Background: Clavicle fracture is a common injury accounting for 2.6-5% of all injuries. The commonest site of fracture is the midshaft. Historically clavicle fractures were managed conservatively with figure-of-eight bandage resulting in higher non-union and symptomatic malunion rates. With the advent of operative fixation of these fractures the ideal surgical technique remains elusive. Flexible intramedullary nailing stands out as a minimally invasive and effective method with excellent outcomes for fixation of these fractures.Methods: A prospective study was carried out over 18 months. A total of 26 patients met the inclusion criteria and were operated with flexible intramedullary nailing. Regular follow up was done till 14 weeks. At each postoperative visit patients were evaluated for shoulder function using constant score and DASH score. Radiographs were taken at each visit to evaluate for fracture alignment and union.Results: In this prospective study a total of 26 patients with closed midshaft clavicle fracture were managed using flexible intramedullary nail. Average time to radiological union was 7.5 weeks. Average disabilities of arm, shoulder and hand (DASH) score at 14 weeks was 13 and average constant score was 95 suggesting excellent functional outcome.Conclusions: Flexible intramedullary nailing is a simple, minimally invasive surgical technique with excellent functional outcomes for management of midshaft clavicle fractures

A Modular Framework for Modeling Hardware Elements in Distributed Engine Control Systems

Progress toward the implementation of distributed engine control in an aerospace application may be accelerated through the development of a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system for testing new control architectures and hardware outside of a physical test cell environment. One component required in an HIL simulation system is a high-fidelity model of the control platform: sensors, actuators, and the control law. The control system developed for the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation 40k (C-MAPSS40k) provides a verifiable baseline for development of a model for simulating a distributed control architecture. This distributed controller model will contain enhanced hardware models, capturing the dynamics of the transducer and the effects of data processing, and a model of the controller network. A multilevel framework is presented that establishes three sets of interfaces in the control platform: communication with the engine (through sensors and actuators), communication between hardware and controller (over a network), and the physical connections within individual pieces of hardware. This introduces modularity at each level of the model, encouraging collaboration in the development and testing of various control schemes or hardware designs. At the hardware level, this modularity is leveraged through the creation of a SimulinkR library containing blocks for constructing smart transducer models complying with the IEEE 1451 specification. These hardware models were incorporated in a distributed version of the baseline C-MAPSS40k controller and simulations were run to compare the performance of the two models. The overall tracking ability differed only due to quantization effects in the feedback measurements in the distributed controller. Additionally, it was also found that the added complexity of the smart transducer models did not prevent real-time operation of the distributed controller model, a requirement of an HIL system

Effect of Solanum torvum Swartz on diabetic neuropathy in alloxan-induced diabetic rats

Solanum torvum Swartz is a well-known traditional herbal medicinal plant used in diabetes and diabetes-related complications. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of S. torvum on diabetic neuropathy in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced in Wistar rats by using a single intraperitoneal injection of alloxan monohydrate (150 mg/kg; i.p.). After confirmation of diabetes, rats received metformin (120 mg/kg, p.o.) and STME (30 and 100 mg/kg, p.o) for 5 weeks. Diabetic rats showed significant (P <0.05) behavioural changes, increase in blood glucose levels, decrease in relative organ weight of pancreas, significant (P <0.05) decrease in reduced glutathione (RGSH) and significant (P <0.05) increase in TBARS levels. While STME (100 mg/kg) treated diabetic rats significantly (P <0.05) reversed the above parameters as compared to diabetic rats. Treatment with STME (100 mg/kg) has also reversed histopathological changes as observed in diabetic control rats. The study suggests that methanolic extract of S. torvum ameliorates diabetic neuropathy in alloxan-induced diabetic rats

Effect of Solanum torvum Swartz on diabetic neuropathy in alloxan-induced diabetic rats

79-88Solanum torvum Swartz is a well-known traditional herbal medicinal plant used in diabetes and diabetes-related complications. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of S. torvum on diabetic neuropathy in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced in Wistar rats by using a single intraperitoneal injection of alloxan monohydrate (150 mg/kg; i.p.). After confirmation of diabetes, rats received metformin (120 mg/kg, p.o.) and STME (30 and 100 mg/kg, p.o) for 5 weeks. Diabetic rats showed significant (P P P P S. torvum ameliorates diabetic neuropathy in alloxan-induced diabetic rats

On Surgical Fine-tuning for Language Encoders

Fine-tuning all the layers of a pre-trained neural language encoder (either using all the parameters or using parameter-efficient methods) is often the de-facto way of adapting it to a new task. We show evidence that for different downstream language tasks, fine-tuning only a subset of layers is sufficient to obtain performance that is close to and often better than fine-tuning all the layers in the language encoder. We propose an efficient metric based on the diagonal of the Fisher information matrix (FIM score), to select the candidate layers for selective fine-tuning. We show, empirically on GLUE and SuperGLUE tasks and across distinct language encoders, that this metric can effectively select layers leading to a strong downstream performance. Our work highlights that task-specific information corresponding to a given downstream task is often localized within a few layers, and tuning only those is sufficient for strong performance. Additionally, we demonstrate the robustness of the FIM score to rank layers in a manner that remains constant during the optimization process.Comment: Accepted to EMNLP 202

The theoretical basis of universal identification systems for bacteria and viruses

It is shown that the presence/absence pattern of 1000 random oligomers of length 12� in a bacterial genome is sufficiently characteristic to readily and unambiguously distinguish any known bacterial genome from any other. Even genomes of extremely closely-related organisms, such as strains of the same species, can be thus distinguished. One evident way to implement this approach in a practical assay is with hybridization arrays. It is envisioned that a single universal array can be readily designed that would allow identification of any bacterium that appears in a database of known patterns. We performed in silico experiments to test this idea. Calculations utilizing 105 publicly-available completely-sequenced microbial genomes allowed us to determine appropriate values of the test oligonucleotide length, n, and the number of probe sequences. Randomly chosen n-mers with a constant G + C content were used to form an in silico array and verify (a) how many n-mers from each genome would hybridize on this chip, and (b) how different the fingerprints of different genomes would be. With the appropriate choice of random oligomer length, the same approach can also be used to identify viral or eukaryotic genomes

Software security requirements engineering: State of the art

Software Engineering has established techniques, methods and technology over two decades. However, due to the lack of understanding of software security vulnerabilities, we have not been so successful in applying software engineering principles that have been established for the past at least 25 years, when developing secure software systems. Therefore, software security can not be just added after a system has been built and delivered to customers as seen in today’s software applications. This keynote paper provides concise methods, techniques, and best practice requirements guidelines on software security and also discusses an Integrated-Secure SDLC model (IS-SDLC), which will benefit practitioners, researchers, learners, and educators

Software security requirements management as an emerging cloud computing service

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emerging cloud applications are growing rapidly and the need for identifying and managing service requirements is also highly important and critical at present. Software Engineering and Information Systems has established techniques, methods and technology over two decades to help achieve cloud service requirements, design, development, and testing. However, due to the lack of understanding of software security vulnerabilities that should have been identified and managed during the requirements engineering phase, we have not been so successful in applying software engineering, information management, and requirements management principles that have been established for the past at least 25 years, when developing secure software systems. Therefore, software security cannot just be added after a system has been built and delivered to customers as seen in today's software applications. This paper provides concise methods, techniques, and best practice requirements engineering and management as an emerging cloud service (SSREMaaES) and also provides guidelines on software security as a service. This paper also discusses an Integrated-Secure SDLC model (IS-SDLC), which will benefit practitioners, researchers, learners, and educators. This paper illustrates our approach for a large cloud system Amazon EC2 service