Constraints on Lepton Asymmetry from Nucleosynthesis in a Linearly Coasting Cosmology

We study the effect of neutrino degeneracy on primordial nucleosynthesis in a universe in which the cosmological scale factor evolves linearly with time. The degeneracy parameter of electron type neutrinos ($\xi_e$) determines the $n/p$ (neutron to proton) ratio, which in turn determines the abundance of $^4$He in a manner quite distinct from the Standard Scenario. The observed abundances of $^4$He, $\mathrm{Y}_P$=0.254$\pm$0.003, and the minimum metallicity that is essential for fragmentation and cooling processes in star forming prestellar gas clouds (Z = Z$_{cr}$ = 10$^{-6}$Z$_\odot$), constrain the baryon to photon ratio, $\eta_B$=(3.927$\pm$0.292)10$^{-9}$, corresponding to a baryonic matter density, $\Omega_B$=0.263$\pm$ 0.026 and $\xi_e$=-2.165$\pm$0.171. This closes the dynamic mass estimates of matter in the universe by baryons alone. Useful byproducts are the threshold X(CNO) abundances required to trigger the CNO cycle in the observed low metallicity stars in the universe.Comment: 18 Pages, 9 Figures. Matches published versio

Coulomb screening in linear coasting nucleosynthesis

We investigate the impact of coulomb screening on primordial nucleosynthesis in a universe having scale factor that evolves linearly with time. Coulomb screening affects primordial nucleosynthesis via enhancement of thermonuclear reaction rates. This enhancement is determined by the solving Poisson equation within the context of mean field theory (under appropriate conditions during the primordial nucleosynthesis). Using these results, we claim that the mean field estimates of coulomb screening hardly affect the predicted element abundances and nucleosynthesis parameters$, \{\eta_9,\xi_e\}$. The deviations from mean field estimates are also studied in detail by boosting genuine screening results with the screening parameter ($\omega_s$). These deviations show negligible effect on the element abundances and on nucleosynthesis parameters. This work thus rules out the coulomb screening effects on primordial nucleosynthesis in slow evolving models and confirms that constraints in ref.[7] on nucleosynthesis parameters remain unaltered.Comment: 14 pages,11 figur

Fluorosensor-controlled Fed-batch Production Of Cyclosporin A From Beauveria Nivea

Cyclosporin-A (CyA), a secondary endocellular metabolite of the fungus Beauveria nivea ATCC 34921, is an immunosuppressant peptide used worldwide in human organ transplant operations. CyA has also been successfully used to treat a number of autoimmune diseases and parasitic infections. While a great number of papers are published each year about medical applications and mode of action of CyA, however, limited information is available regarding the production of CyA.;This work was divided into two sections: the first dealt with the optimization of medium in shake flasks and the second with the development of fermentation strategies to further increase the volumetric productivity of Cyclosporin-A in a 14-L bioreactor unit.;A new medium was developed that resulted in 222 mg of CyA per litre of fermentation broth in shake flasks. This corresponded to the yield of 14.8 mg CyA/g mycelial dry weight. Fructose concentration higher than 30 g/L inhibited the production of CyA.;Different fed-batch strategics were applied to increase the volumetric productivity of CyA in a 14-L bioreactor. A nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) fluorosensor, interfaced with a computer, was used to monitor the growth of the fungus B. nivea. Mathematical models were developed to relate the fluorescence intensity with biomass and fructose concentrations in the bioreactor. The most successful fed-batch fermentation strategy involved a continuous feeding of substrate at the rate of substrate consumption for 48 h, after the fructose concentration in batch mode had dropped down to 5 g/L. The substrate feed rate was then switched to the maintenance level for the next 72 h of fermentation. This strategy gave the highest CyA concentration of 504 mg CyA/L with a yield of 15.14 mg CyA/g mycelial dry weight. This is the highest concentration of CyA reported in the literature using the wild strain of B. nivea ATCC 34921.;This study also demonstrated that by monitoring in situ fluorescence of NADH, a fed-batch strategy can be developed by correlating it to the biomass and the substrate concentrations in the fermentation broth

Value Stream Mapping and Simulation Modelling for Healthcare Transactional Process Improvement

Lean management philosophy was originated in Japan from the Toyota production system. The main idea is to determine and eliminate waste. The concept of end-to-end value allows organizations to achieve competitive advantage through best quality product and services through minimum operational cost. These days there is more to be achieved by applying lean to services and transactional processes floors. Lean facilitators are facing challenges when trying to transform an organization to be a lean enterprise because it is possible in production systems, but that is not easier in the services and transactional sectors, which means there are challenges that should be considered. Some of the challenges for the service sector are; complex and mixed value streams, information and people are processed instead of parts and human interaction is a major part of the service sector

A Hybrid Similarity Measure Framework for Multimodal Medical Image Registration

Medical imaging is widely used today to facilitate both disease diagnosis and treatment planning practice, with a key prerequisite being the systematic process of medical image registration (MIR) to align either mono or multimodal images of different anatomical parts of the human body. MIR utilises a similarity measure (SM) to quantify the level of spatial alignment and is particularly demanding due to the presence of inherent modality characteristics like intensity non-uniformities (INU) in magnetic resonance images and large homogeneous non-vascular regions in retinal images. While various intensity and feature-based SMs exist for MIR, mutual information (MI) has become established because of its computational efficiency and ability to register multimodal images. It is however, very sensitive to interpolation artefacts in the presence of INU with noise and can be compromised when overlapping areas are small. Recently MI-based hybrid variants which combine regional features with intensity have emerged, though these incur high dimensionality and large computational overheads. To address these challenges and secure accurate, efficient and robust registration of images containing high INU, noise and large homogeneous regions, this thesis presents a new hybrid SM framework for 2D multimodal rigid MIR. The framework consistently provides superior quantitative and qualitative performance, while offering a uniquely flexible design trade-off between registration accuracy and computational time. It makes three significant technical contributions to the field: i) An expectation maximisation-based principal component analysis with mutual information (EMPCA-MI) framework incorporating neighbourhood feature information; ii) Two innovative enhancements to reduce information redundancy and improve MI computational efficiency; and iii) an adaptive algorithm to select the most significant principal components for feature selection. The thesis findings conclusively confirm the hybrid SM framework offers an accurate and robust 2D registration solution for challenging multimodal medical imaging datasets, while its inherent flexibility means it can also be extended to the 3D registration domain

A New Mutual Information based Similarity Measure for Medical Image Registration

Medical image registration (IR) is the systematic process of aligning spate images, often involving different modalities with common reference framework, so complementary information can be combined and compared. This paper presents a new similarity measure which uses Expectation Maximization for Principal Component Analysis allied with mutual information (EMPCA-MI) for medical IR. The new measure has been analysed on multimodal, three band magnetic resonance images (MRI) T1, T2 and PD weighted, in the presence of both intensity non-uniformities (INU) and noise. Both quantitative and qualitative experimental results clearly demonstrate both improved robustness and lower computational complexity of the new EMPCA-MI paradigm compared with existing MI-based similarity measures, for various MRI test datasets

Manipulation of shade and plant density for enhanced production of cut-foliage in Ruscus hypophyllum L.

Cut foliage are deep green with long lasting and evergreen properties which are commonly preferred by the floral industry as accents in floral arrangements. Ruscus hypophyllum L. is one of the commercially produced cut foliage material for making good line, filler and mass material in making floral arrangements. It requires shade for growth. Experiments were conducted with the objectives to find out optimum shade levels and planting density. The rhizomes were planted in factonal randomized block design under three shade levels ( 0, 50% and 75%) and three plant spacing (30x30 cm, 30x40 cm, 30x50cm) with planting density of 18, 15, and 12 plants per m2, respectively. It was observed that different shade levels and plant spacings exhibited significant effect on plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves, leaf size and number of stems harvested per plant. The plants were recorded tallest under 75 % shade levels and 30x30 cm plant spacing (61.30cm and 54.48 cm, respectively). The number of leaves produced per plant were maximum (69.99) under 75% shade, however, number of leaves per plant were maximum under 30x30cm spacing. Among various shade levels, 75% shade level resulted in maximum number of cut stems (16.28) that was at par with 50% shade level (16.08). However, the cut stems harvested per plant were recorded maximum (16.67) under 30x30cm spacing. From the results obtained, it was concluded that Ruscus hypophyllum grown under 75% shade level with 30x30 cm spacing and planting density of 18 plants per m2, produced maximum yield of cut stems with longer stem length

Relation Extraction using Explicit Context Conditioning

Relation Extraction (RE) aims to label relations between groups of marked entities in raw text. Most current RE models learn context-aware representations of the target entities that are then used to establish relation between them. This works well for intra-sentence RE and we call them first-order relations. However, this methodology can sometimes fail to capture complex and long dependencies. To address this, we hypothesize that at times two target entities can be explicitly connected via a context token. We refer to such indirect relations as second-order relations and describe an efficient implementation for computing them. These second-order relation scores are then combined with first-order relation scores. Our empirical results show that the proposed method leads to state-of-the-art performance over two biomedical datasets.Comment: Accepted for Publication at NAACL 201

To study the demographic profile of HCC patients and the pattern of clinical characteristics in a tertiary care centre of north western India

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prevalent malignancy globally and the fifth most common cancer worldwide. This retrospective study, spanning six years, explores the shifting etiological patterns of HCC in Northwestern India, particularly influenced by factors like Hepatitis B and C endemics, alcohol consumption, and vaccination programs. Data from 164 HCC patients reveal a significant shift, with Hepatitis C surpassing Hepatitis B as the primary etiological factor. The study highlights the distinctive HCC profile in Northwestern India, emphasizing the imperative to address HCV as a silent precursor to HCC and the need for enhanced surveillance and intervention strategies. The findings underscore the significance of controlling alcohol abuse, managing cirrhosis complications, and the urgency for improved diagnostic markers beyond AFP. The study prompts a reevaluation of vaccination interventions and advocates for heightened screening measures to detect and mitigate HCV-related HCC at earlier stages