The Design and Verification of a Synchronous First-In First-Out (FIFO) Module Using System Verilog Based Universal Verification Methodology (UVM)

With the conventional directed testbench, it is highly improbably to handle verification of current complex Integrated Circuit (IC) designs, because a person has to manually create every test case. The greater the complexity of the designs, the higher the probability of bugs appearing in the code. Increasing complexity of ICs has created a necessity for performing verification on designs with an advanced, automated verification environment. Ideally this would eliminate chip re-spins, minimizing the time required to enable checking of all the design specifications, ensuring 100% functional coverage. This paper deals with the design of Synchronous FIFO using Verilog. A FIFO (First-In-First-Out) is a memory queue, which controls the data flow between two modules. It has control logic embedded with it, which efficiently manages read and write operations. It has the capability to notify the concerned modules regarding its empty status and full status to help ensure no underflow or overflow of data. This FIFO design is classified as synchronous, as clocks control the read and write operations. Both read and write operations happen simultaneously using of Dual port RAM or an array of flip-flops in the design. After designing the Synchronous FIFO, its verification is carried out using the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM). A detailed discussion about the verification plan and test results is included

A Detailed Analysis of Air Pollution Monitoring System and Prediction Using Machine Learning Methods

Predicting air quality is a complex task due to the dynamic nature, volatility, and high variability in the time and space of pollutants and particulates.Due to the presence of governing factors, varying land uses, and many sources for the elaboration of pollution, the forecast and analysis of air pollution is a difficult procedure. At the same time, being able to model, predict, and monitor air quality is becoming more and more relevant, especially in urban areas, due to the observed critical impact of air pollution on citizens’ health and the environment. In this paper, various air pollution monitoring and prediction models with respect to hardware interfacing modules and various classification approaches. The Air Quality Index (AQI) parameter is used in this paper to monitor the quality of air pollution in various regions of the world. The drawbacks of the conventional air pollution monitoring and prediction models have been stated in this paper with the methodologies used for air pollution prediction

Low Power Design Methodology

Due to widespread application of portable electronic devices and the evaluation of microelectronic technology, power dissipation has become a critical parameter in low power VLSI circuit designs. In emerging VLSI technology, the circuit complexity and high speed imply significant increase in the power consumption. In low power CMOS VLSI circuits, the energy dissipation is caused by charging and discharging of internal node capacitances due to transition activity, which is one of the major factors that also affect the dynamic power dissipation. The reduction in power, area and the improvement of speed require optimization at all levels of design procedures. Here various design methodologies are discussed to achieve our required low power design concepts

Pleural Effusion- An Unusual Cause

Hepatitis A (HAV) infection is one of the most common forms of hepatitis in the paediatric age group in developing countries. It is usually self-limiting and rarely accompanied by extra hepatic complication. In this article, we report two children with hepatitis A who had associated issues of pleural effusion and ascites. Both issues improved with resolution of hepatitis after symptomatic treatment. Although uncommon, extra hepatic manifestations can occur with hepatitis A. However, they resolve completely. Paediatricians in developing countries should be aware of this rare association to avoid unnecessary investigations

A Deep Learning Framework with an Intermediate Layer Using the Swarm Intelligence Optimizer for Diagnosing Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

One of the most prevalent cancers is oral squamous cell carcinoma, and preventing mortality from this disease primarily depends on early detection. Clinicians will greatly benefit from automated diagnostic techniques that analyze a patient’s histopathology images to identify abnormal oral lesions. A deep learning framework was designed with an intermediate layer between feature extraction layers and classification layers for classifying the histopathological images into two categories, namely, normal and oral squamous cell carcinoma. The intermediate layer is constructed using the proposed swarm intelligence technique called the Modified Gorilla Troops Optimizer. While there are many optimization algorithms used in the literature for feature selection, weight updating, and optimal parameter identification in deep learning models, this work focuses on using optimization algorithms as an intermediate layer to convert extracted features into features that are better suited for classification. Three datasets comprising 2784 normal and 3632 oral squamous cell carcinoma subjects are considered in this work. Three popular CNN architectures, namely, InceptionV2, MobileNetV3, and EfficientNetB3, are investigated as feature extraction layers. Two fully connected Neural Network layers, batch normalization, and dropout are used as classification layers. With the best accuracy of 0.89 among the examined feature extraction models, MobileNetV3 exhibits good performance. This accuracy is increased to 0.95 when the suggested Modified Gorilla Troops Optimizer is used as an intermediary layer

Study of anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, and analgesic activity of Oscillatoria annae extract in rats and mice

The aqueous extract of the cyanobacterium Oscillatoria annae was investigated for its anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic,analgesic and cholesterol regulating properties in different experimental standard animal models. The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, indomethacin (10 mg/kg/body weight) was used as standard in the anti-inflammatory, and analgesic studies, while glibenclamide (600 μg/kg/b.wt.) was used as standard drug in the anti-diabetic study. The results reveal that O. annae possesses significant ameliorating effects in the studied animal models, including rats and mice. These effects were comparable to those obtained after treatment with the standard drugs used in this study. The results indicate that the cyanobacterial extract can act as natural remedy and also open a new avenue to identify the active ingredients behind these effects.Keywords: Oscillatoria annae, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, analgesic, cholestero

HSPIR: a manually annotated heat shock protein information resource

Heat shock protein information resource (HSPIR) is a concerted database of six major heat shock proteins (HSPs), namely, Hsp70, Hsp40, Hsp60, Hsp90, Hsp100 and small HSP. The HSPs are essential for the survival of all living organisms, as they protect the conformations of proteins on exposure to various stress conditions. They are a highly conserved group of proteins involved in diverse physiological functions, including de novo folding, disaggregation and protein trafficking. Moreover, their critical role in the control of disease progression made them a prime target of research. Presently, limited information is available on HSPs in reference to their identification and structural classification across genera. To that extent, HSPIR provides manually curated information on sequence, structure, classification, ontology, domain organization, localization and possible biological functions extracted from UniProt, GenBank, Protein Data Bank and the literature. The database offers interactive search with incorporated tools, which enhances the analysis. HSPIR is a reliable resource for researchers exploring structure, function and evolution of HSPs

Acute Bacterial Meningitis in an infant- A rare cause

We report a case of Salmonella paratyphi B meningitis in a 90 day-old male infant who was admitted with complaints of fever, vomiting and one episode of vacant stare. Clinically, the infant was found to be toxic and dull with a bulging anterior fontanelle. Subsequently, blood and cerebrospinal fluid cultures demonstrated the presence of Salmonella Paratyphi B organism

CoWO4 decorated ZnO nanocomposite: Efficient visible-light-activated photocatalyst for mitigation of noxious pollutants

Herein, well-designed eco-friendly CoWO4/ZnO (CoW/Zn) nanocomposite was fabricated by straightforward hydrothermal method using beyond any harmful surfactants or template. The structure and morphology of samples were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM, and UV–Vis DRS analysis. The photocatalytic behavior of CoW/Zn nanocomposite was examined by the deterioration of ciprofloxacin (CIP) drug and methylene blue (MB) dye under visible light irradiation. The CoW/Zn nanocatalyst exhibits excellent catalytic activity to the elimination of CIP drug and MB dye with 93.13% and 98.65% of efficiency, respectively. Radical trapping experiment proved that the .OH species portray a major part in the photodegradation process. In addition, the CoW/Zn nanocomposite showed better repeatability efficiency. The present study developed a new strategy to fabricate the recoverable CoW/Zn nanocomposite for the degradation of hazardous organic moiety from the circumstance. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.1

Vitamin B12 deficiency presenting as pancytopenia in a young boy--Helicobacter Pylori, a novel causative agent

Deficiency of vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is a well-known cause of megaloblastic anemia. It is a reversible cause of bone marrow failure and demyelinating nervous system disorder, hence early detection and prompt treatment of vitamin B12 deficiency is essential. After diagnosing vitamin B12 deficiency, tracking down its root cause is important in individualizing the treatment approach. Helicobacter pylori-related (H. pylori) B12 deficiency presenting as pancytopenia in pediatric age groups has been reported. However, vitamin B12 deficiency presenting as retinopathy in pediatric age groups has been rarely reported in the medical literature. We herein present the case of an adolescent male with pancytopenia  and retinopathy, secondary to vitamin B12 deficiency-associated H. pylori infection