Smear correction of highly-variable, frame-transfer-CCD images with application to polarimetry

Image smear, produced by the shutter-less operation of frame transfer CCD detectors, can be detrimental for many imaging applications. Existing algorithms used to numerically remove smear, do not contemplate cases where intensity levels change considerably between consecutive frame exposures. In this report we reformulate the smearing model to include specific variations of the sensor illumination. The corresponding desmearing expression and its noise properties are also presented and demonstrated in the context of fast imaging polarimetry.Comment: Article accepted for publication in Applied Optics on 08 Jun 201

Targeting Intrinsic and Extrinsic Vulnerabilities for the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a malignant plasma cell disorder, clinically characterized by osteolytic lesions, immunodeficiency, and renal disease. Over the past decade, MM therapy is significantly improved by the introduction of novel therapeutics such as immunomodulatory agents (thalidomide, lenalidomide, and pomalidomide), proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, carfilzomib, and ixazomib), monoclonal antibodies (daratumumab and elotuzumab), histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors (Panobinostat). The clinical success of these agents has clearly identified vulnerabilities intrinsic to the MM cell- as well as targets that emanate from the tumor microenvironment. Despite these significant improvements, MM remains incurable due to the development of drug resistance. This perspective will discuss more recent strategies which take advantage of multiple targets within the proteome recycling pathway, chromatin remodeling, and disruption of nuclear export. In addition, we will review the development of strategies designed to block opportunistic survival signaling that occurs between the MM cell and the tumor microenvironment including strategies for inhibiting myeloma-induced immune suppression. It has become clear that MM tumors continue to evolve on therapy leading to drug resistance. It will be important to understand the mechanism and additional vulnerabilities that occur due to the development of clinical resistance

Youth and marriage : a study of changing marital choices among the university students in India

Each social group in the Indian context, whether it may be a caste or religion or tribe, has its own rules and regulations that define the practices of social relations within the group and outside the group. Marriage as a social institution establishes a social relation with the members of two families. It is largely regulated by the norms and values of the groups and society. In the same way, choice of marriage is also much influenced by caste and religious norms and values. Here, the individual preferences are constrained by the groups' norms. At this juncture, higher education has the potential role in shaping the marital choices of students. This study sets out to analyse the students' views on choices of marriage in a university campus by employing qualitative and quantitative techniques. It also attempts to explain the changing forms of marital choices and types of marriages in the university campus. For this study, extensive data was collected from 450 selected students from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) through survey research questionnaire on marital choices among the students. In order to strengthen the reliability of the data, personal opinion on marital choices was drawn from 20 selected students from different caste and religious backgrounds by using open-ended questionnaire. The data analysis shows that the students' marital choices are still influenced by cultural factors like caste, religion, class, and family

Effect of paclobutrazol and sucrose on in vitro cormel formation in gladiolus

Studies with excised shoots of six gladiolus cultivars viz., Bellariana, Blue Moon, Cream White, Friendship, Her Majesty and Top Brass indicated that paclobutrazol enhanced early cormel initiation and development. The interaction between paclobutrazol and sucrose was significant for cormel size. Supplementation of 10 mg L–1 paclobutrazol and 120 g L–1 sucrose to Murashige and Skoog’s medium favored formation of bigger cormels. Among the cultivars response to exogenous sucrose supplementation varied significantly and absence of paclobutrazol produced longer leaves, roots and smaller cormels

Smart Acknowledgement Distributed Channel Access Scheme for TCP in MANETs

TCP upon wireless networks is most challenging issue because of random losses and ACK interference. Also, TCP suffers from performance declination in terms of creating delay and overhead in network because of poor characteristics of wireless channel. In order to overcome these issues, we proposed a Smart Acknowledgement Distributed Channel Access (SADCA) scheme for TCP in MANETs. In the proposed scheme, first a separate Access Category (AC) for data less TCP acknowledgement packets is used and then it is assigned with highest priority. In this way, delay during transmission of packet can be reduced and also packet can be acknowledged immediately. Also, to increase the performance, delay window size can be adjusted by considering the parameters such as transmission rate, number of hops, and channel occupied ratio (COR). Hence the proposed scheme helps to avoid any kind of delay and overhead for sending TCP acknowledgemen

Pancreas transplantation using compatible but non‐identical ABO blood group donors

Methods A review of all pancreas transplants from a single institution from 01/2003 to 07/2016 (n=606) revealed 41 recipients of a NIC donor pancreas which were matched for age, race, gender, year and type of transplant with 41 ABO identical cases. Groups were compared for allograft survival, incidence of acute cellular rejection (ACR), length of hospital stay, 3‐month readmissions and transfusion requirements. Serum haptoglobin and Lactate dehydrogenase were used to identify hemolysis in patients requiring repeated transfusions without overt blood loss. Results The 1‐year graft survival was 100% and 88% in the study and control groups. In the study group, 6/41(14%) developed hemolysis, all of which were ABO O into A. All responded to donor blood type specific transfusions. Discussion There are limited data on outcomes of solid organ transplant using NIC donors with almost none specifically addressing pancreas transplantation. In this study, graft survival was similar but 14% developed hemolysis, which was transient and treated with transfusion of donor blood type specific blood. Conclusion NIC pancreas transplants have similar graft survival compared to ABO identical. Hemolysis may occur so some caution is required

Genetic characterization of Vibrio cholerae strains by inter simple sequence repeat-PCR

The utility of inter simple sequence repeat-PCR (ISSR-PCR) assay in the characterization and elucidation of the phylogenetic relationship between the pathogenic and nonpathogenic isolates of Vibrio cholerae is demonstrated. A total of 45 V. cholerae strains including 15 O1 El Tor, nine O139 and 21 non-O1/non-O139 strains were analyzed using eight ISSR primers. These primers, which are essentially simple sequence repeats (SSR) with additional nonrepeat bases at the 5' or 3' end, amplify genomic regions interspersed between closely spaced SSRs. Neighbor-joining analysis showed that the strains belonging to the same serogroup clustered together with the exception of one O1 and two O139 strains. The absence of pathogenicity islands in these strains, as confirmed by PCR, suggested their non-O1/non-O139 origin. Thus the ISSR-PCR-based phylogeny was consistent with the classification of V. cholerae based on serological methods. A finer resolution of the clustering of the toxinogenic O1 El Tor and toxinogenic O139 subtypes was obtained by ISSR-PCR analysis as compared with the Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus sequences-based PCR analysis for the same set of strains. Thus, it is proposed that ISSR-PCR is an efficient tool in phylogenetic classification of prokaryotic genomes in general and diagnostic genotyping of microbial pathogens in particular

PRIVACY-PRESERVING DATA TRANSMISSION PROTOCOL FOR WIRELESS MEDICAL SENSOR DATA

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has fascinated to great extent significance in the last decade. It opened a new series of applications such as monitoring including environmental monitoring large area, exploration of wildlife, and real-time patient medical data which is collected by wireless sensors. The WSN provides the options of flexibilities and costs saving for patients and healthcare enterprises. At the same time, there is a viable concern about the hospitals’ ability to provide adequate care during emergency events. Tools that automate patient monitoring have likely to improve efficiency and quality of health care significantly. In hospitals, medical information sensors which monitor patients produce an increasingly large amount of real-time data. The delivery of this data through wireless networks in a hospital becomes a critical problem because the pathological information of an individual is highly sensitive. It must be kept private and secure. In this article, we propose a realistic approach to preventing the inside attack by ensuring secure data transmission. The main contribution of this article is securely distributing the patient data by implementing Privacy-Preserving Data Transmission Protocol and employing the Paillier and ElGamal cryptosystems to perform statistic analysis on the patient data without compromising the patients’ privacy. We enhance this protocol to reduce the overhead by implementing secure data aggregation method

An Empirical Critique of On-Demand Routing Protocols against Rushing Attack in MANET

Over the last decade, researchers had  proposed numerous  mobile ad hoc routing protocols for which are operate in an on-demand way, as standard on-demand routing protocols such as AODV, DSR and TORA, etc., have been shown to often have faster reaction time and  lower overhead than proactive protocols. However, the openness of the routing environment and the absence of centralized system and infrastructure make them exposed to security attacks in large extent.  In particular, one such kind of attacks is rushing attack, which is mostly hard to detect due to their inherited properties, that alters the network statistics radically. In this paper, we modeled a rushing attack which is a powerful attack that exploits the weaknesses of the secure routing protocols. Moreover, to know the weakness and strength of these protocols, it is necessary to test their performance in hostile environments. Subsequently, the performance is measured with the various metrics, some ot them are average throughput, packet delivery ratio, average end-to-end delay and etc., to compare and evaluate their performance