PREDICTORS OF CLINICAL OUTCOMES IN INDIAN PATIENTS WITH ACUTE ENCEPHALOPATHY: A PROSPECTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY FROM A TERTIARY CARE CENTER IN INDIA

Objective: Objective of the study was to evaluate the predictors of poor disease outcome at discharge and at 1 month in patients with acute encephalopathy. Methods: This prospective, observational, single center study included adult patients meeting the diagnostic criteria for acute confusion state and admitted in the intensive care unit of a tertiary care hospital. A modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of <3 was considered as “good outcome,” while mRS ≥3 was considered as an indicator of “poor outcome.” Results: Among the total population of 219, 52.5% (n=115) were male, the mean age was 41.58 (±18.10) years and mean disease duration was 14.30 (±10.05) days (range: 1–30 days). Lethargy was the most common history at presentation (84.93%), while sleep abnormalities were least common (4.57%), and tuberculous meningitis was the most common etiology (21%). Diminution of vision, diplopia, dysarthria, cranial nerve symptoms, abdominal pain, difficulty in breathing, seizures, high-risk behavior, loss of appetite and the diagnosis of posterior reversible encephalopathy, retroviral disease, stroke and tuberculous meningitis were significant predictors of “poor outcome” at discharge (p<0.05). A diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis, history of headache, diminution of vision, diplopia, dysarthria, seizures, sensory deficits and loss of appetite and neuroimaging findings of atrophy, intracranial bleeding, demyelination, and space-occupying lesion were found to be significant predictors of “poor outcome” at 1 month post-discharge in this population (p<0.05). Conclusion: In patients with acute encephalopathy, tuberculous etiology, the presence of focal brainstem deficits and specific neuroimaging findings indicate poor outcomes at discharge as well as at 1 month follow-up

Forces on A Suspended Seawater Intake System Exposed to Waves and Currents

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

The Removal of Random Valued Impulse Noise Using Contrast Enhancement and Decision Based Filter

Digital images are transmitted in noisy environment and it will frequently affected by impulse noise .To remove this noise from the image is a fundamental problem of image processing. There are various types of noise in an image especially salt and pepper noise and random valued impulse noise. This paper introduces a new filtering scheme based on contrast enhancement filter and decision based filter for removing the random valued impulse noise. The application of a nonlinear function to increasing the difference between noise pixels and noise-free and results in efficient detection of noisy pixels. As the performance of a filtering system, in general, depends on the number of iterations used, the effective stopping criterion based on noisy image characteristics to determine the number of iterations is also proposed. This proposed method removes only the corrupted pixel by its neighboring pixel values. As a result of this, the proposed method removes the noise effectively and preserves the edges without any loss up to 80% of noise level

Effect of the Milky Way on Magellanic Cloud structure

A combination of analytic models and n-body simulations implies that the structural evolution of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is dominated by its dynamical interaction with the Milky Way. Although expected at some level, the scope of the involvement has significant observational consequences. First, LMC disk orbits are torqued out of the disk plane, thickening the disk and populating a spheroid. The torque results from direct forcing by the Milky Way tide and, indirectly, from the drag between the LMC disk and its halo resulting from the induced precession of the LMC disk. The latter is a newly reported mechanism that can affect all satellite interations. However, the overall torque can not isotropize the stellar orbits and their kinematics remains disk-like. Such a kinematic signature is observed for nearly all LMC populations. The extended disk distribution is predicted to increase the microlensing toward the LMC. Second, the disk's binding energy slowly decreases during this process, puffing up and priming the outer regions for subsequent tidal stripping. Because the tidally stripped debris will be spatially extended, the distribution of stripped stars is much more extended than the HI Magellanic Stream. This is consistent with upper limits to stellar densities in the gas stream and suggests a different strategy for detecting the stripped stars. And, finally, the mass loss over several LMC orbits is predicted by n-body simulation and the debris extends to tens of kiloparsecs from the tidal boundary. Although the overall space density of the stripped stars is low, possible existence of such intervening populations have been recently reported and may be detectable using 2MASS.Comment: 15 pages, color Postscript figures, uses emulateapj.sty. Also available from http://www-astro.phast.umass.edu/~weinberg/weinberg-pubs.htm

Wind Integrated Thermal Unit Commitment Solution Using Grey Wolf Optimizer

The augment of ecological shield and the progressive exhaustion of traditional fossil energy sources have increased the interests in integrating renewable energy sources into existing power system. Wind power is becoming worldwide a significant component of the power generation portfolio. Profuse literature have been reported for the thermal Unit Commitment (UC) solution. In this work, the UC problem has been formulated by integrating wind power generators along with thermal power system. The Wind Generator Integrated UC (WGIUC) problem is more complex in nature, that necessitates a promising optimization tool. Hence, the modern bio-inspired algorithm namely, Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm has been chosen as the main optimization tool and real coded scheme has been incorporated to handle the operational constraints. The standard test systems are used to validate the potential of the GWO algorithm. Moreover, the ramp rate limits are also included in the mathematical WGIUC formulation. The simulation results prove that the intended algorithm has the capability of obtaining economical resolutions with good solution quality

Molecular and thermal studies of carbon fiber precursor polymers with low thermal-oxidative stabilization characteristics

In this investigation, terpolymers, copolymers, and homopolymer of acrylonitrile with dimethylaminopropyl acrylamide (DMAPA), itaconic acid (IA) viz., poly(acrylonitrile‐ran‐3‐dimethylaminopropyl acrylamide‐ran‐itaconic acid) [P(AN‐DMAPP‐IA)], poly(acrylonitrile‐co‐3, dimethylaminopropyl acrylamide) [P(AN‐DMAPP)] were synthesized with varying amounts of comonomers using solution polymerization process. The chemical structure, composition, bonding network were determined employing infrared, 1H and, 13‐carbon nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic techniques. Molecular characteristics of as‐synthesized polymers such as different kinds of average molecular weights, molecular weight distribution were estimated applying solution viscometry and size exclusion chromatography. The influence of comonomers (DMPAA, IA) on the thermal stabilization characteristics of acrylonitrile terpolymers in comparison with copolymers and homopolymers of acrylonitrile were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), hyphenated thermal techniques (thermal gravimetry coupled with differential thermal analyzer).The DSC curves of P(AN‐DMAPP‐IA) exhibit a distinct broader bimodal peaks with thermal exotherm initiating at as low as 165 °C, and followed by two peaks with temperature difference of 42 °C, releasing the evolved heat at a release rate of 0.7–0.11 J g−1s−1over 10 min as compared to 1.2, 7.5 J g−1s−1 in 4.5, 2 min as observed in P(AN‐DMAPP), polyacrylonitrile, respectively. The thermal stability of P(AN‐DMAPP‐IA) and P(AN‐DMAPP), as evidenced by TGA‐DTA was found to be higher than PAN homopolymers. Specific heat capacity measurements confirmed the DSC results. Bulk densities of P(AN‐DMAPP‐IA) were in the range 0.31–0.35 g/cc. These results confirm the low‐temperature stabilization characteristics and suitability of P(AN‐DMAPP‐IA) as low cost carbon fiber precursor polymer

Optimal Path Planning using RRT for Dynamic Obstacles

513-516Rapidly Exploring Random Tree is a technique that utilizes samples as constraints for arranging the paths from given source to reach multiple goals. A sample is randomly selected from the configuration space. Each data point is represented as a step that helps in travelling of a robot from one point to another. By initiating the search process, the pursuit calculation endeavors to achieve the objective of the proposed work, further the position assisted regions are investigated. However, when compared with A* calculation, the proposed method has a more reasonable good performance. The Simulation results demonstrate for reaching the desired goal starting from a source to destination in dynamic environment