Incidental papillary carcinoma of thyroid in Graves’ disease

Traditionally Grave's disease was considered as protection against thyroid cancer. The incidence of papillary carcinoma thyroid in grave’s disease is 2.4%. Thyroid cancer occurring in grave’s disease has higher frequency of persisting or relapsing disease than thyroid cancers occurring in matched euthyroid control patients. Here we present a case of papillary carcinoma in a Grave’s disease patient presented with nodular goiter

A case report of recalcitrant non union humerus treated with on lay fibular bone grafting and locking compression plate

Nonunion of diaphyseal fractures of the humerus are frequently seen in clinical practice (incidence of up to 15% in certain studies) and osteosynthesis using dynamic compression plates, intra medullary nails and Ilizarov fixators have been reported previously. Locking compression plates (LCP) are useful in the presence of disuse osteoporosis, segmental bone loss and cortical defects that preclude strong fixation. Fixation using a compression plate and a non-vascularised fibular graft achieves good outcome for infected non-union of the humerus despite prior multiple failed surgeries. We report a failed case of fracture shaft humerus which was operated three times, first with DCP and next two times with DCP and autologous cancellous bone graft from iliac crest. The patient is now treated with LCP and on lay fibular bone grafting

Formulation and In-Vitro Evaluation of Metronidazole Mucoadhesive Microspheres.

The advancement of pharmacokinetics has established that the drug should be present above a certain minimum concentration in blood for as long a period as possible for optimum drug therapy. Although, continuous infusion has been recognized as a superior mode of drug administration to maintain a constant and prolonged rug level in the body such mode of administration entails certain risk and hence requires hospitalization of the patient and close supervision. As a result, solid oral dosage forms have become the most important and mostly used class of drug delivery system. Ordinary tablet and capsules known as conventional drug delivery system have to be administered several times a day depending on the biological half-life of the drug. Such multiple dosing may reduce invariably high plasma level of drug leading to waste of costly drugs and patient noncompliance. Two important features as important while developing as drug delivery system. i.e., it should deliver the drug at a rate dictated by the needs of the body over the entire period of treatment and the drug should solely reach the site of action. On comparing the major criteria in evaluation such as drug content, encapsulation efficiency, in vitro wash off test and in vitro drug release characteristics, the formulation F9 was selected as the best formulation, as it showed the drug content as 46.96% and encapsulation efficiency was 87.21%, showed a good mucoadhesive nature in the in vitro wash off test was nearly 62.18% up to 8 hrs and in vitro drug released 81.76% up to 10 hrs. Based on all the above evaluation parameters it was concluded that the formulation F9 was found to be best formulation among the formulations F1 to F9 were prepared. The mechanism of drug released was calculated by applying the kinetic models and it was concluded that the formulations F9 follows the Korsmeyer – Peppas model and it undergoes Fickian diffusion mechanism (n≥0.5). According to the stability studies, the formulation F9 was found to be stable up to 3 months of storage period in drug content and in vitro drug released profile. The formulations F9 was concluded best formulation among the formulations were prepared

Ammonia: what adult neurologists need to know

Hyperammonaemia is often encountered in acute neurology and can be the cause of acute or chronic neurological symptoms. Patients with hyperammonaemia may present with seizures or encephalopathy, or may be entirely asymptomatic. The underlying causes are diverse but often straightforward to diagnose, although sometimes require specialist investigations. Haemodialysis or haemo(dia)filtration is the first-line treatment for acute severe hyperammonaemia (of any cause) in an adult. Here we discuss our approach to adult patients with hyperammonaemia identified by a neurologist

Hardware Trojan Detection and Mitigation in NoC using Key authentication and Obfuscation Techniques

Today's Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) contains many cores and integrated circuits. Due to the current requirements of communication, we make use of Network-on-Chip (NoC) to obtain high throughput and low latency. NoC is a communication architecture used in the processor cores to transfer  data from source to destination through several nodes. Since NoC deals with on-chip interconnection for data transmission, it will be a good prey for data leakage and other security attacks. One such way of attacking is done by a third-party vendor introducing Hardware Trojans (HTs) into routers of NoC architecture. This can cause packets to traverse in wrong paths, leak/extract information and cause Denial-of-Service (DoS) degrading the system performance. In this paper, a novel HT detection and mitigation approach using obfuscation and key-based authentication technique is proposed. The proposed technique prevents any illegal transitions between routers thereby protecting data from malicious activities, such as packet misrouting and information leakage. The proposed technique is evaluated on a 4x4 NoC architecture under synthetic traffic pattern and benchmarks, the hardware model is synthesized in Cadence Tool with 90nm technology. The introduced Hardware Trojan affects 8% of packets passing through infected router. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique prevents those 10-15% of packets infected from the HT effect. Our proposed work has negligible power and area overhead of 8.6% and  2% respectively

SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ACTIVITY OF NOVEL PYRAZOLE DERIVATIVES

Objectives: To synthesize novel pyrazole derivatives and their evaluation for anti-inflammatory activity. Methods: The synthesis of chalcone (1) was carried out by using Claisen-Schmidt condensation. which on further cyclization with thiosemicarbazidegives the substituted 3, 5-diphenyl-4, 5-dihydro-pyrazole-1-carbothoic acid amide (2), further reaction with different aldehydes yield title compounds(3). Using this scheme 8 compounds were synthesized which further have been evaluated for anti-inflammatory activity by egg-albumin induced pawedema.Results: All the synthesized compounds have been supported by spectral analysis. The anti-inflammatory activity of synthesized compounds wascompared with standard anti-inflammatory agent Diclofenac sodium.Conclusion: Compound-8, compound-2 and compound-3 showed greater anti-inflammatory activity due to the presence of alkene and electronwithdrawing groups (Cl and NO2). Keywords: Chalcone, Thiosemicarbazide, Pyrazole derivatives, Anti-inflammatory activity

Mechanical stiffness and dissipation in ultrananocrystalline diamond microresonators

We have characterized mechanical properties of ultrananocrystalline diamond UNCD thin films grown using the hot filament chemical vapor deposition HFCVD technique at 680 °C, significantly lower than the conventional growth temperature of 800 °C. The films have 4.3% sp2 content in the near-surface region as revealed by near edge x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy. The films, 1 m thick, exhibit a net residual compressive stress of 3701 MPa averaged over the entire 150 mm wafer. UNCD microcantilever resonator structures and overhanging ledges were fabricated using lithography, dry etching, and wet release techniques. Overhanging ledges of the films released from the substrate exhibited periodic undulations due to stress relaxation. This was used to determine a biaxial modulus of 8382 GPa. Resonant excitation and ring-down measurements in the kHz frequency range of the microcantilevers were conducted under ultrahigh vacuum UHV conditions in a customized UHV atomic force microscope system to determine Young’s modulus as well as mechanical dissipation of cantilever structures at room temperature. Young’s modulus is found to be 79030 GPa. Based on these measurements, Poisson’s ratio is estimated to be 0.0570.038. The quality factors Q of these resonators ranged from 5000 to 16000. These Q values are lower than theoretically expected from the intrinsic properties of diamond. The results indicate that surface and bulk defects are the main contributors to the observed dissipation in UNCD resonators

The use of simultaneous stereo-electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography in localizing the epileptogenic focus in refractory focal epilepsy

Both magnetoencephalography and stereo-electroencephalography are used in presurgical epilepsy assessment, with contrasting advantages and limitations. It is not known whether simultaneous stereo-electroencephalography–magnetoencephalography recording confers an advantage over both individual modalities, in particular whether magnetoencephalography can provide spatial context to epileptiform activity seen on stereo-electroencephalography. Twenty-four adult and paediatric patients who underwent stereo-electroencephalography study for pre-surgical evaluation of drug-resistant focal epilepsy, were recorded using simultaneous stereo-electroencephalography–magnetoencephalography, of which 14 had abnormal interictal activity during recording. The 14 patients were divided into two groups; those with detected superficial (n = 7) and deep (n = 7) brain interictal activity. Interictal spikes were independently identified in stereo-electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography. Magnetoencephalography dipoles were derived using a distributed inverse method. There was no significant difference between stereo-electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography in detecting superficial spikes (P = 0.135) and stereo-electroencephalography was significantly better at detecting deep spikes (P = 0.002). Mean distance across patients between stereo-electroencephalography channel with highest average spike amplitude and magnetoencephalography dipole was 20.7 ± 4.4 mm. for superficial sources, and 17.8 ± 3.7 mm. for deep sources, even though for some of the latter (n = 4) no magnetoencephalography spikes were detected and magnetoencephalography dipole was fitted to a stereo-electroencephalography interictal activity triggered average. Removal of magnetoencephalography dipole was associated with 1 year seizure freedom in 6/7 patients with superficial source, and 5/6 patients with deep source. Although stereo-electroencephalography has greater sensitivity in identifying interictal activity from deeper sources, a magnetoencephalography source can be localized using stereo-electroencephalography information, thereby providing useful whole brain context to stereo-electroencephalography and potential role in epilepsy surgery planning

Temperature dependence of mechanical stiffness and dissipation in ultrananocrystalline diamond

Ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) films are promising for radio frequency micro electro mechanical systems (RF-MEMS) resonators due to the extraordinary physical properties of diamond, such as high Young’s modulus, quality factor, and stable surface chemistry. UNCD films used for this study are grown on 150 mm silicon wafers using hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) at 680°C. UNCD fixed free (cantilever) resonator structures designed for the resonant frequencies in the kHz range have been fabricated using conventional microfabrication techniques and are wet released. Resonant excitation and ring down measurements in the temperature range of 138 K to 300 K were conducted under ultra high vacuum (UHV) conditions in a custom built UHV AFM stage to determine the temperature dependence of Young’s Modulus and dissipation (quality factor) in these UNCD cantilever structures. We measured a temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) of 121 and 133 ppm/K for the cantilevers of 350 ìm and 400 ìm length respectively. Young’s modulus of the cantilevers increased by about 3.1% as the temperature was reduced from 300 K to 138 K. This is the first such measurement for UNCD and suggests that the nanostructure plays a significant role in modifying the thermo-mechanical response of the material. The quality factor of these resonators showed a moderate increase as the cantilevers were cooled from 300 K to 138 K. The results suggest that surface and bulk defects significantly contribute to the observed dissipation in UNCD resonators