Serum magnesium at 18-20 weeks of gestation: can it be a predictor of gestational hypertension and fetomaternal outcome?

Background: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) is a major cause of maternal, fetal morbidity and mortality complicating 10% of all gestations. As effective treatments are very limited, prediction of HDP occurrence is most importance. Though many biomarkers have shown relationship with HDP, serum magnesium (Mg) has shown better predictor as involved in maintaining vascular contractility, tone. This study is intended to analyse incidence of GHT and fetomaternal outcome in pregnant women with normal and low serum magnesium level measured at mid trimester (18-20 weeks).Methods: A total of 105 consecutive singleton pregnant women in between 18-20 weeks of gestation attending OBG outpatient department were enrolled. After obtaining the informed consent, structured proforma was used to collect demographic, clinical details. Serum magnesium was measured by the colorimetric method and study participants were divided into two groups based on Mg cut off 1.5 mg/dl and followed up throughout pregnancy for fetomaternal outcome.Results: This study results revealed that 35.2% (37/105) pregnant women had serum Mg level < 1.5 mg/dl and mean value of Mg of all participant is 1.7 mg/dl, just above the lower limit. During follow-up of these two groups, statistically significant correlation between serum Mg levels (< 1.5 mg/dl) with GHT (8/12) occurrence and pre term birth was found. Other fetomaternal outcome not had significant correlation.Conclusions: As per the findings, serum Mg concentration measurement in between 18-20 weeks can be considered as a one of the predictors for subsequent occurrence of maternal outcome of GHT and fetal outcome of pre-term birth

Study on Gun Drilling Technology in CNC Machining

This document is the internship report of the Master in Product Design Engineering carried out at Tecnimoplás Lda. The company Tecnimoplás Lda is dedicated to manufacture of molds. They have an ability to make a small, medium and large size molds. Tecnimoplás is a company started in 1971 based in Marinha Grande, specialized in the service of mold. With this internship it was possible to get the industrial immersion that was the one of the objectives of the student for this stage. In the company after an initial inclosing, it was possible to develop work in the different equipment’s with different materials for mold in the company machines. This statement is a detailed description and analytical analysis with various processes to make a mold. In this process one of the main process is Deep Hole Drilling. It is also talking about the various types of tools used in deep hole drilling machines and also discuss about the various types of fixing system in deep hole drilling machines. This deep hole drilling is mainly used for Water and Oil circuit in the mold. This report also comprises of case study of Deep hole drilling process and the void formation in the parts of Deep hole drilling machines. This work also concluded that it is fundamental that the tools used in Deep Hole drilling, are used within the ranges of operation recommended by the tool’s manufacturers

Proteomics of early embryonic development of zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Doctoral thesis (PhD) – Nord University, 2021publishedVersio

Studying Mechanisms of Ionizing Radiation Resistance in Bacteria: Evidence for Multiple Pathways

Our lab created ionizing radiation (IR) resistant populations of E. coli MG1655 through twenty cycles of exposure to IR and outgrowth. To identify the genetic alterations responsible for increased IR tolerance, a total of seven isolates from the evolved final population were re-sequenced. However, the individual isolates sequence analysis revealed wide variety of unique genomic alterations with little overlap between the seven isolates and therefore, did not reveal the clear picture of the mutations responsible for IR resistance. Our current research focused on distinguishing the relevant mutations from the non-relevant mutations that contribute to IR resistance by using two methods: population sequencing and TaqMAMA with the assumption that beneficial mutations evolve and accumulate in the final population. A 255X deep coverage sequencing of the genomic DNA from the IR resistant final population determined mutant allelic percentage in this population for each polymorphism detected. TaqMAMA assay acted as a tool for verifying the sequencing results. This assay also revealed two evolutionary phenomena: clonal interference and hitchhiking suggesting that not all polymorphisms seen in the final population could contribute to IR resistance. The analysis of population sequencing results along with the phylogenetic analysis reduced the number of potential candidates responsible of IR resistance in these isolates. These possible contributors enable at least three unique mechanisms in the seven isolates and the survival data revealed that the related isolates have same levels of IR resistance possibly from the same mechanism. The identified candidates were transferred into the parent strain alone or in combination and the resulting strains were tested for survivability against IR. This experiment identified the possible reasons of IR resistance in these isolates. In fact, a RecA modification has been determined to be a lone contributor for IR resistance in the four isolates. The methods used here, enabled us to separate relevant mutations that accumulated during evolution from non-relevant mutations that do not and thus helped to reduce the number of alleles possibly that could contribute to IR resistance. However, genetic characterization is required to confirm their role in IR resistance due to complexity that exists in allelic selection during evolution

Development of a web portal to forecast the monthly mean chlorophyll concentration of the waters off Peninsular Malaysia's west coast

The principal photosynthetic pigment of chlorophyll (chl-a) in the water is produced by phytoplankton and its concentration (CC) is the biomass and abundance indicator of phytoplankton. The small pelagic fishes which feed on phytoplankton is one of the dominant groups caught in Malaysia. The typical challenge in fisheries is to identify a fruitful fishing ground at any given time. Based on the relationship amongst CC, phytoplankton and food chain of pelagic fishes, it can be suggested that waters with high levels of CC may indicate a more favourable fishing ground. Thus, using CC may help to narrow down the fishing ground search and would be useful to fishermen. This paper described the development of a web portal to forecast the monthly mean CC of the waters off Peninsular Malaysia’s west coast. The portal’s functionality was illustrated with time series modelling and forecasting of 3 fisheries sites using Holt-Winters seasonal additive model. The portal consists of forecast outputs as well as related information and is primarily intended for use as a tool for fishermen with the advantage of easy accessibility

Influence of nitrogen salts on growth and physiological responses of Rhizophora apiculata Blume in non-aerated water culture

Influence of two different forms of nitrogen on growth and physiological aspects of water-cultured seedlings of Rhizophora apiculata was studied. Of the two forms of nitrogen supplied to the growth medium, ammonium nitrogen was better than nitrate nitrogen by exhibiting increased dry matter production, shoot length, leaf area and also enhanced the contents of carotenoids, chlorophylls and their presence in photosystems and light harvesting protein complex

Cluster analysis of top 200 universities in Mathematics

University rankings are becoming a vital performance assessment for higher learning institutions worldwide. Besides the overall rankings, the universities are also ranked by subjects serving as comprehensive guide to discover the specialist strengths of universities worldwide by highlighting top 200 universities for a range of 30 individual popular subjects. Data for this ranking purpose consist four variables namely the academic reputation, employer reputation, citation per paper and H-index citations. In this ranking, universities are ranked according to their overall score calculated from linear combination of the aforementioned variables and their respective weightings. As the existing ranking technique based on overall score appears to be simple and since the rankings data are of multivariate nature, therefore it is possible to use multivariate statistical technique like cluster analysis. Agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis of top 200 QS ranked universities by Mathematics subject area 2014 has been performed to obtain natural clustering of the universities in an objective manner. The agreement between cluster analysis and existing QS rankings is verified and it is suggested that the distance between universities can be used as an alternative measure to rank universities. Cluster analysis applied on the same variables would serve as an alternative way to rank universities and to look at the rankings in a different perspective

-Amylase production by Penicillium fellutanum isolated from mangrove rhizosphere soil

The effects of pH, temperature, incubation time, salinity, sources of carbon and nitrogen were tested in submerged fermentation process in production of -amylase by Penicillium fellutanum isolated from coastal mangrove soil. The production medium without addition of seawater and with provision ofmaltose as carbon source, peptone as nitrogen source, incubated for 96 h, maintained with pH of 6.5 at 30oC, was found optimal for production of -amylase by P. fellutanu

An (S - 1; S) Inventory System with Negative Arrivals and Multiple Vacations

In this paper, we consider a continuous review one-to-one ordering policy inventory system with multiple vacations and negative customers. The maximum storage capacity is S. The customers arrive according to a Poisson process with finite waiting hall. There are two types of customers: ordinary and negative. An ordinary customer, on arrival, joins the queue and the negative customer does not join the queue and takes away any one of the waiting customers. When the waiting hall is full, the arriving primary customer is considered to be lost. The service time and lead time are assumed to have independent exponential distribution. When the inventory becomes empty, the server takes a vacation and the vacation duration is exponentially distributed. The stationary distribution of the number of customers in the waiting hall, the inventory level and the server status for the steady state case. Some system performance measures and numerical illustrations are discussed