Severe anemia and adverse pregnancy outcome

Background: Anaemia is commonest medical disorder in pregnancy with 88% prevalence in India mainly due to ignorance, poverty and gender bias 40-60% of maternal deaths in developing countries. The aim of the study was to determine the association between severe anemia, maternal and perinatal complications.Methods: Case control study was done in department of obstetrics and gynecology, Government Medical College Nagpur, India from September 2011 to February 2012. 50 pregnant women, admitted for delivery and having severe anemia were studied and compared with 100 non anemic women of similar demographic features. Maternal and perinatal complications were observed. Pearson, chi-square and Fischer exact tests were used to calculate significance of results. Results: Of the severely anemic mothers, 36% babies were low birth weight (p=0.042) and 20% were small for gestational age (p = 0.026), as compared to 18% and 10% of controls, respectively.Conclusions: Severe maternal anemia carries significant risk of hemorrhage and infection in the mother. It is also associated with preterm birth, low birth weight

MEASURING HEAD IMPACT CONTACT PRESSURE IN COLLEGIATE FOOTBALL GAMES TO CORRELATE HEAD KINEMATICS TO BRAIN KINETICS ELUCIDATING BRAIN INJURY DYNAMICS

Does a brain store thoughts and memories the way a computer saves its files? How can a single hit or a fall erase all those memories? Brain Mapping and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) have become widely researched fields today. Many researchers have been studying TBIs caused to adult American football players however youth athletes have been rarely considered for these studies, contradicting to the fact that American football enrolls highest number of collegiate and high-school children than adults. This research is an attempt to contribute to the field of youth TBIs. Earlier studies have related head kinematics (linear and angular accelerations) to TBIs. However, fewer studies have dealt with brain kinetics (impact pressures and stresses) occurring during head-on collisions. The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) drop tests were conducted for linear impact accelerations and the Head Impact Contact Pressures (HICP) calculated from them were applied to a validated FE model. The results showed lateral region of the head as the most vulnerable region to damage from any drop height or impact distance followed by posterior region. The TBI tolerance levels in terms of Von-Mises and Maximum Principal Stresses deduced for lateral impact were 30 MPa and 18 MPa respectively. These levels were corresponding to 2.625 feet drop height. The drop heights beyond this value will result in TBI causing stress concentrations in human head without any detectable structural damage to the brain tissue. This data can be utilized for designing helmets that provide cushioning to brain along with providing a resistance to shear

Comparative study of vaginal hysterectomy and abdominal hysterectomy for enlarged uterus

Background: Hysterectomy is the second most common gynecological surgeries performed. Maximum (70% to 80%) hysterectomies are done by abdominal route. Abdominal route provides good visibility and easy access to pelvic organs.Methods: Randomized prospective comparative study was carried out to know the feasibility of vaginal hysterectomy in moderately enlarged uterus due to benign conditions and to compare operative complications and morbidity of vaginal and abdominal hysterectomy in moderately enlarged uterus due to benign conditions at Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at tertiary health care hospital during the period from October 2009 to September 2011.Results: Out of 50 cases, 25 cases were subjected for abdominal hysterectomy and 25 for vaginal hysterectomy. Cases with moderately enlarged uterus up to 16 weeks due to benign condition were included in the study. Cases with uterus more than 16 weeks, previous pelvic surgeries, adnexal mass, prolapse and restricted mobility were excluded from our studyConclusions: Bulk reducing techniques were used to remove the moderately enlarged uterus through vaginal route. Vaginal hysterectomy is invasive route, safe and feasible in cases with enlarged uteri up to 14 weeks due to benign causes

Spatio-Temporal Surrogates for Interaction of a Jet with High Explosives: Part II -- Clustering Extremely High-Dimensional Grid-Based Data

Building an accurate surrogate model for the spatio-temporal outputs of a computer simulation is a challenging task. A simple approach to improve the accuracy of the surrogate is to cluster the outputs based on similarity and build a separate surrogate model for each cluster. This clustering is relatively straightforward when the output at each time step is of moderate size. However, when the spatial domain is represented by a large number of grid points, numbering in the millions, the clustering of the data becomes more challenging. In this report, we consider output data from simulations of a jet interacting with high explosives. These data are available on spatial domains of different sizes, at grid points that vary in their spatial coordinates, and in a format that distributes the output across multiple files at each time step of the simulation. We first describe how we bring these data into a consistent format prior to clustering. Borrowing the idea of random projections from data mining, we reduce the dimension of our data by a factor of thousand, making it possible to use the iterative k-means method for clustering. We show how we can use the randomness of both the random projections, and the choice of initial centroids in k-means clustering, to determine the number of clusters in our data set. Our approach makes clustering of extremely high dimensional data tractable, generating meaningful cluster assignments for our problem, despite the approximation introduced in the random projections

Isolation and properties of a lectin from the seeds of Mimosa invisa L.

A lectin has been purified from the seeds ofMimosa invisa L. by gel filtration and preparative Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The purified lectin was homogeneous as judged by analytical Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, immunodiffusion and Immunoelectrophoresis. The apparent molecular weight is 100,000; the protein is a tetramer with two types of subunits (molecular weight 35,000 and 15,000). The lectin is a glycoprotein with approximately 21% carbohydrate and interacts with Sephadex and concanavalin A-Sepharose. It agglutinates erthrocytes non-specifically, does not agglutinate leucocytes and is not mitogenic, agglutinates Mimosa-nodulatingRhizobium and is a panagglutinin; the agglutination is not inhibited by several simple sugars. It is thermo-stable and has no metal ions

A comparative kinetic study on β-amylase and its antioxidant property in germinated and non germinated seeds of Glycine max. L

Enzyme activity plays a key role in each stage of plant development starting from the initial seed germination responses. A comparative analysis of beta amylase activity was performed, isolated from germinated and non germinated Glycine max seeds, which was partially purified by dialysis. The optimum pH and temperature for germinated seeds was found to be 4.5 and 370 C and that for non germinated seeds were 5.5 and 750 C respectively. MnCl2 and CoCl2 exhibited marked activating effect on the enzyme, while HgCl2 was a potent inhibitor for both seeds. The Km and Vmax value for β-amylase with soluble starch as substrate was found to be 3.03mg/ml and 6.6micromol/min/ml for germinated seed and for non germinated seeds it was found to be 5mg/m and 10micromole/min/ml respectively. The molecular weight of partially purified enzyme was 57±1kDa on SDS PAGE with 1.918 fold purification and 27.98% yield for germinated seeds and for non germinated seeds the purification fold was 1.507 with 26.65% yield. The enzyme showed highest amount of total antioxidant activity of 304µg/ml in partially purified germinated seed. For ABTS free radical scavenging activity, partially purified enzyme from germinated seed showed the highest of 76.09% activity with an IC50 value of 58.20µg/ml. Germinated seeds have highest enzymatic activity which can be considered for several industrial purposes

Spatio-Temporal Surrogates for Interaction of a Jet with High Explosives: Part I -- Analysis with a Small Sample Size

Computer simulations, especially of complex phenomena, can be expensive, requiring high-performance computing resources. Often, to understand a phenomenon, multiple simulations are run, each with a different set of simulation input parameters. These data are then used to create an interpolant, or surrogate, relating the simulation outputs to the corresponding inputs. When the inputs and outputs are scalars, a simple machine learning model can suffice. However, when the simulation outputs are vector valued, available at locations in two or three spatial dimensions, often with a temporal component, creating a surrogate is more challenging. In this report, we use a two-dimensional problem of a jet interacting with high explosives to understand how we can build high-quality surrogates. The characteristics of our data set are unique - the vector-valued outputs from each simulation are available at over two million spatial locations; each simulation is run for a relatively small number of time steps; the size of the computational domain varies with each simulation; and resource constraints limit the number of simulations we can run. We show how we analyze these extremely large data-sets, set the parameters for the algorithms used in the analysis, and use simple ways to improve the accuracy of the spatio-temporal surrogates without substantially increasing the number of simulations required

Studies on the oxidative positive gram negative rods in the perennial and pokkali fields around Cochin

Out of the three observations made during the period May and June 1997, totally 13 isolates of oxidase positive gram negative rods were encountered from water and sediment samples of perennial and pokkali fields. Three strains were producing greenfluorescent pigment. Fluorescent pigment production was enhanced by dipotassium hydrogen phosphate when compared to glycerol and magnesium chloride. Five cultures showed antagonistic activity against all the test pathogens, namely, Vibrio anguilarum. Mycobacterium and Cytophaga and were found highly resistant to penicillin

AN EFFICIENT ENVIRONMENTAL CHANNEL MODELLING IN 802.11P MAC PROTOCOL FOR V2I

Recent development in communication of wireless communication for automobile industry have aided the growth of SITS (Smart Intelligent Transport System) which solves numerous vehicular based communication service concerns like traffic congestion, accidental mishap etc. VANET (Vehicular Ad-hoc Network) a characteristic class of MANET (Mobile ad-hoc Network) which is a fundamental element of SITS in which the moving vehicles inter connected and communicates with each other remotely. Wireless technologies play an important part in assisting both Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) correspondence in VANET. The existing scheduling technique does not consider the environmental factor which affects the throughput performance and increases packet drop rate which result in degradation of service quality. Here in this work the author propose a RHU (Rural, Highway and Urban) environment model considering the environmental factor. The efficient environmental model algorithm is incorporated into slotted aloha in IEEE 802.11p MAC protocols which aided as a spine for assisting both safety application and non-Safety applications. Experiments are conducted for collision and throughput efficiency for varied traffic load and speed of vehicle. The experimental result shows the proposed environmental model impact on collision and throughput efficiency for varied environment and thus helps improving QoS for VANET application

A DECENTRALIZED ADAPTIVE MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL FOR V2I VANET

Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) resemble similar characteristic as Mobile Adhoc Network (MANETs). The performance of VANET are affected by factors such as mobility, vehicle density and environmental condition. Provisioning smart infotainment application on such network is challenging and efficient MAC is required. Recently many Medium Access Control (MAC) based approaches adopting Time Division Medium Access (TDMA) and Carrier Sense Medium Access or Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) has been presented for VANET. The simulation outcome of exiting approaches shows that TDMA based approach outperforms CSMA/CA based approaches. However, TDMA based approaches incurs bandwidth wastages. To address, cognitive radio techniques is adopted by existing research. However, it incurs computation overhead and varied environmental condition such as urban, rural and highway are not considered. This work present a decentralized adaptive MAC (DAMAC) that maximize system throughput and minimize collision. Experiment are conducted to evaluate performance of DAMAC over exiting approaches. The outcome shows significant over existing approaches