Evaluation of environmental conditions in a Norwegian fjord based on field measurements

As part of the project “Ferry-free E39”, a 5 km long floating bridge is planned to be built in Bjørnafjorden to replace the existing ferry connection. The demanding nature of the fjord and the sensitivity of the bridge to wind and wave excitations make the stability of the structure under harsh environmental conditions important. This thesis focuses on evaluating the environmental conditions in the fjord based on wind measurements in the area, by studying the effect of mean wind speed, mean wind direction and atmospheric stability on the various wind characteristics in the fjord. A total of 289 wind events were identified from 2015 to 2020 by selecting a threshold for the mean wind speed of 6 m/s. These wind events were used to study the wind characteristics, including angle of attack, turbulence intensity, wind spectra and coherence. The wind spectrum and coherence model from N400 were fitted to the wind measurements, and the fitted parameters were compared to the suggested values in the code. Overall results indicate that the complex topography of the fjord surrounding the wind masts significantly affects the wind characteristics. The main directions for the wind flow in the fjord were found to be from the north-west, south-west and south-east, which all correspond to wind flow over water with long fetch. As the mean wind speed increases, the suggested values in N400 represents the wind characteristics better compared to lower wind speeds. For wind flow over land, it was observed that N400 tends to underestimate the turbulence intensity and spectral parameters, while for wind flow over water it tends to overestimate these same values. For the coherence, N400 consistently underestimates the coherence in the horizontal plane and overestimates the coherence in the vertical plane. The distribution of the fitted parameters with atmospheric stability was difficult to interpret, but it was concluded that the stability only affected the distribution of the spectral parameter, and not the coherence parameter

Structural Phase Transition of Ytterbium Nitride under High Pressure

The structural and elastic properties of ytterbium nitride (YbN) with NaCl structure have been investigated by using an improved interaction potential model (IIPM). The compound YbN found to undergo from their initial NaCl (B1) phase to body centered tetragonal (BCT) phase at high pressure. The phase transition pressures and associated volume collapses obtained from the potential model developed here show a generally better agreement with available experimental data then others available in the literature. The elastic constants are also reported. This shows that the inclusion of three-body interaction and polarizability effect makes the present model suitable for high pressure studies. Keywords: Rare earth pnictides, three body interaction, phase transition, volume collapse

High Pressure Structural Properties of Rare-earth Antimonide

In the present paper, we have investigated the high-pressure structural phase transition of  rare-earth antimonide. We studied theoretically the structural properties of this compound (DySb) by using the three-body potential model with the effect of electronic polarizability (TBIPEP). These compounds exhibits first order crystallographic phase transition from NaCl (B1) to CsCl (B2) phase at 22.6 GPa respectively. The phase transition pressures and associated volume collapse obtained from present potential model(TBIPEP) show a good agreement with available experimental data. Keywords: High Pressure, Crystal Structure, Volume Collaps

Clinical Evaluation of Efficacy of 99mTC -Ethambutol in Tubercular Lesion Imaging

Purpose. The aim of this work was to develop specific radiopharmaceutical and to evaluate its efficacy in human to detect and locate the tubercular lesion. Materials and Methods. 99mTc-Ethambutol (EMB) was produced by direct labeling method. In vitro and in vivo biological studies and animal experiments were done. Phase I Clinical trial was performed. As per plan, 2 normal human subjects for biodistribution studies and fourteen patients (8 males and 6 females; age range of 25–50, with one patient aged 12 years as an exception) were chosen for clinical trial. Whole body scan and spots were acquired at 1 hour and 4 hour. Angiography, blood pool, and 24-hours spot images of the infected areas were also acquired. Result. Radiolabeling yielded >85% of labeled complex. In vitro and in vivo biological studies and animal experiments indicated 99mTc-EMB as a specific tuberculosis imaging agent. The biodistribution study in normal human subjects suggested stability of 99mTc-EMB, with main excretory pathways being renal and hepatobiliary, which appeared to be similar to the known behavior of unlabeled EMB. No adverse reactions were observed. 99mTc-EMB got localized in pulmonary and bone tubercular lesions. Scintigrams of 99mTc-EMB and 99mTc-Ciprofloxacin were compared at different time intervals. Conclusion. The present study states that developed 99mTc-EMB has high potential to qualify as a specific tuberculosis imaging radiopharmaceutical and is safe for human use

Comparative Analysis Among Steganographic LSB Variants

Combining the best features of steganography and cryptography is the trending concept which is being followed for the purpose of information security. Steganography provides the provision for hiding secret data in some cover file in order to make it undiscovered by the perpetrators. On the complementary, cryptography secures that secret data by manipulating its original form and converting it into an unintelligent form. Hence, making the data more powerful and secure against the prevailing security attacks and breaches. This paper represents the implementation of this combination on the two LSB variants namely sequential LSB and randomized LSB. A comparison among the two approaches is carried out by adding a secret text into a video cover file. The concept of chaotic sequence has been used as the security approach that converts the secret data into random bits pattern. The proposed work uses the traditional LSB approach as basic steganographic model. The inference on the basis of parameters concludes that the randomized LSB shows better results than the sequential LSB scheme

Byzantine-Resilient Federated PCA and Low Rank Matrix Recovery

In this work we consider the problem of estimating the principal subspace (span of the top r singular vectors) of a symmetric matrix in a federated setting, when each node has access to estimates of this matrix. We study how to make this problem Byzantine resilient. We introduce a novel provably Byzantine-resilient, communication-efficient, and private algorithm, called Subspace-Median, to solve it. We also study the most natural solution for this problem, a geometric median based modification of the federated power method, and explain why it is not useful. We consider two special cases of the resilient subspace estimation meta-problem - federated principal components analysis (PCA) and the spectral initialization step of horizontally federated low rank column-wise sensing (LRCCS) in this work. For both these problems we show how Subspace Median provides a resilient solution that is also communication-efficient. Median of Means extensions are developed for both problems. Extensive simulation experiments are used to corroborate our theoretical guarantees. Our second contribution is a complete AltGDmin based algorithm for Byzantine-resilient horizontally federated LRCCS and guarantees for it. We do this by developing a geometric median of means estimator for aggregating the partial gradients computed at each node, and using Subspace Median for initialization

Uterine leiomyoma presenting with unusual pathological features: a series of two cases

Leiomyomas are benign and most common smooth muscle neoplasms that can occur in any organ, most commonly in uterus, small bowel and esophagus. Leiomyomas may have unusual presentations either in form of location or various secondary changes like hyaline, myxoid, red degeneration, chondroid metaplasia, sarcomatous change, etc. We present two unusual cases of leiomyomas, one involving an unusual location (giant cervical fibroid) and the other a uterine leiomyoma with rare pure chondroid metaplasia. Both these entities are rare and hold importance in the differential diagnosis because it is imperative to differentiate the giant cervical fibroid from any ovarian neoplasm or procidentia and chondroid metaplasia from any other mesenchymal/mixed uterine tumor. Moreover giant leiomyomas require expert hands during surgical removal

Comparison of pregnancy outcome between clomiphene citrate and sequential clomiphene citrate+human menopausal gonadotropin in intrauterine insemination

Background: Intrauterine insemination (IUI) has been widely used as a common treatment for infertile couples. This study compares the sequential clomiphene citrate (CC) treatment with CC and human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG) treatment in women undergoing IUI. Therefore, this study was designed to determine the effects of addition of gonadotropin (CC+hMG) would improve the pregnancy rate in women undergoing IUI. And also compare the sequential CC+hMG treatment with CC treatment in women undergoing IUI.Methods: A cross-sectional study design was conducted at D. Y. Patil Fertility Centre, D.Y Patil Hospital, Navi Mumbai from September 2018 to August 2019. Source populations were all patients who live in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. A total of 67 patients were enrolled in this study. (It consisted of 67 sub fertile couples undergoing ovarian stimulation for IUI cycles). Results: There was no significant difference between the two studied groups regarding endometrial thickness (8.3±2.1 versus 9.7±2.8, respectively), number of mature follicles on the day of hCG injection (3.3±1.2 versus 3.5±1.1, respectively) and, but there was significant difference between the CC+hMG group and CC group regarding the total dose of gonadotropins used in ovulation induction (305±23.8 versus 655±192; total IU, respectively) p<0.05.Conclusions: Women undergoing IUI, ovarian stimulation CC combined with hMG, significantly improved the pregnancy and live birth rates as compared to that of CC group. In women undergoing ovarian stimulation and IUI, there are no significant differences in pregnancy and live birth rates among the various stimulation protocols

Invasive prenatal diagnostic procedures: a developing countries’ perspective

Background: Antenatal procedures are effective prenatal diagnostic tool for detection of fetal disorders. They have been practiced since time long, still in developing countries like India they are yet to find a place. Here, we report our experience with antenatal procedures from a single medical centre, focusing on the indications and outcome of invasive prenatal procedures.Methods: This is retrospective observational study was conducted on pregnant women presenting at Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences; Lucknow, India between July 2009 and September 2013 was conducted. The data were analyzed to find out the indications, gestational age, complications and outcome of diagnostic prenatal testing.Results: Antenatal diagnostic procedures include amniocentesis, chorionic villous sampling, cordocentesis, vesicocentesis and paracentesis. There were 473 total number of procedures done during this period, of which 53 (11.2%) were CVS, 315 (66.5%) were amniocentesis, 72 (15.2%) were cordocentesis, 21(4.4%) were vesicocentesis and 7 (1.4%) were paracentesis. Out of total procedures 47 (9.9%) procedures results were abnormal while 426 had normal results. In abnormal result group, 24 patients (51%) were of gestational age of less than or equal to 20 weeks. All those with lethal / major malformation underwent termination of pregnancy where gestational age of less than 20 weeks.Conclusions: With appropriate prenatal invasive test were able to prevent birth of affected fetus which is of huge importance considering the patients who give birth to abnormal babies only to see them suffering and frequently dying also. Prenatal invasive test were able to prevent this psychological, mental as well as physical trauma in these patients

Acceptance of non-invasive prenatal testing by cell free foetal DNA for foetal aneuploidy in a developing country: experience at a tertiary care centre in India

Background: Non-invasive prenatal testing is a new technique which is deepening its root all over the world. Its tremendous potential lies in its ability of using cell free fetal DNA from the plasma of pregnant women. However, to what extent the technology has reached to a common person is also to be given a thought. hence the study was planned to assess the acceptability of non-invasive prenatal testing in Indian settings, to study about the awareness and baseline knowledge about Down’s syndrome, to study the correlation between various indications of prenatal testing for aneuploidy and results of noninvasive prenatal testing.Methods: Noninvasive cell free fetal NA testing for aneuploidy was an informed patient choice after pre-test counseling. Patients with a positive test result were offered invasive prenatal diagnosis for confirmation of test results.Results: The diagnostic potential of cell free DNA for fetal aneuploidy matched equally with invasive tests avoiding slight but yet considerable risk of invasive tests. However, we found that, 90 % of patients in a tertiary centre hospital in India were not aware of trisomy 21 and various options available for prenatal screening for aneuploidy.Conclusions: Newer genomic technology involving cell free maternal DNA is a new storm in prenatal diagnosis. Its application in clinical practice is the need of the hour, however, the lack of awareness, high cost and unavailability of the test in the country appears to be a major limiting factor for its poor acceptability