Analysis of Invariant Natural Killer T Cells in Intra-Abdominal Sepsis

Sepsis is characterized by a severe systemic inflammatory response to infection that is associated with high morbidity and mortality despite optimal care. Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are potent regulatory lymphocytes that can produce pro- and/or anti-inflammatory cytokines, thus shaping the course and nature of immune responses; however, little is known about their role in sepsis. We demonstrate here that patients with sepsis/severe sepsis have significantly elevated proportions of circulating iNKT cells in their peripheral blood, as compared to non-septic patients. We therefore investigated iNKT cells in mice with intra-abdominal sepsis (IAS). Our data show that iNKT cells are pathogenic in IAS, and that T helper (Th)2-type polarization of iNKT cells using the synthetic glycolipid OCH significantly reduced mortality from IAS. This reduction in mortality is associated with the systemic elevation of the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-13, and reduction of several pro-inflammatory cytokines within the spleen, notably IL-17. Finally, we show that administration of OCH in septic mice is associated with significantly reduced apoptosis of splenic T and B lymphocytes, as well as macrophages, but not natural killer cells. We propose that modulation of iNKT cell responses towards a Th2 phenotype may be an effective therapeutic strategy in sepsis

DeepFuse: A Deep Unsupervised Approach for Exposure Fusion with Extreme Exposure Image Pairs

We present a novel deep learning architecture for fusing static multi-exposure images. Current multi-exposure fusion (MEF) approaches use hand-crafted features to fuse input sequence. However, the weak hand-crafted representations are not robust to varying input conditions. Moreover, they perform poorly for extreme exposure image pairs. Thus, it is highly desirable to have a method that is robust to varying input conditions and capable of handling extreme exposure without artifacts. Deep representations have known to be robust to input conditions and have shown phenomenal performance in a supervised setting. However, the stumbling block in using deep learning for MEF was the lack of sufficient training data and an oracle to provide the ground-truth for supervision. To address the above issues, we have gathered a large dataset of multi-exposure image stacks for training and to circumvent the need for ground truth images, we propose an unsupervised deep learning framework for MEF utilizing a no-reference quality metric as loss function. The proposed approach uses a novel CNN architecture trained to learn the fusion operation without reference ground truth image. The model fuses a set of common low level features extracted from each image to generate artifact-free perceptually pleasing results. We perform extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation and show that the proposed technique outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches for a variety of natural images.Comment: ICCV 201

Surgical intervention in pediatric trauma at a level 1 trauma hospital: a retrospective cohort study and report of cost data

Background: Given that the management of severely injured children requires coordinated care provided by multiple pediatric surgical subspecialties, we sought to describe the frequency and associated costs of surgical intervention among pediatric trauma patients admitted to a level 1 trauma centre in southwestern Ontario. Methods: All pediatric (age \u3c 18 yr) trauma patients treated at the Children’s Hospital — London Health Sciences Centre (CH-LHSC) between 2002 and 2013 were included in this study. We compared patients undergoing surgical intervention with a nonsurgical group with respect to demographic characteristics and outcomes. Hospital-associated costs were calculated only for the surgical group. Results: Of 784 injured children, 258 (33%) required surgery, 40% of whom underwent orthopedic interventions. These patients were older and more severely injured, and they had longer lengths of stay than their nonsurgical counterparts. There was no difference in mortality between the groups. Seventy-four surgical patients required intervention within 4 hours of admission; 45% of them required neurosurgical intervention. The median cost of hospitalization was $27 571 for the surgical group. Conclusion: One-third of pediatric trauma patients required surgical intervention, of whom one-third required intervention within 4 hours of arrival. Despite the associated costs, the surgical treatment of children was associated with comparable mortality to nonsurgical treatment of less severely injured patients. This study represents the most recent update to the per patient cost for surgically treated pediatric trauma patients in Ontario, Canada, and helps to highlight the multispecialty care needed for the management of injured children

Large Aperture, Tip Tilt Mirror for Beam Jitter correction in High Power Lasers

This paper describes a large aperture tip-tilt mirror (TTM) assembly for correction of beam jitter in high power lasers. The design intricacies and trade-offs among various parameters of TTM to meet the desired goals are discussed. The TTM assembly uses a 180 mm diameter and 5 mm thick silicon mirror glued onto the movable ring of a solid flexure. Four stacked piezo-ceramic based actuators have been used to incorporate angular tilts of the mirror along two orthogonal directions. Simulation studies have been carried out to study the dynamics of the TTM. The performance of the TTM assembly in both static and dynamic condition is provided. An experimental set-up is described to test the TTM performance in closed loop conditions. A tilt correction of ±200 micro-radians along two orthogonal directions with a closed loop bandwidth of 20 Hz has been achieved.Defence Science Journal, 2013, 63(6), pp.606-610, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.63.576

Behavior Change without Behavior Change Communication: Nudging Handwashing among Primary School Students in Bangladesh.

Behavior change communication for improving handwashing with soap can be labor and resource intensive, yet quality results are difficult to achieve. Nudges are environmental cues engaging unconscious decision-making processes to prompt behavior change. In this proof-of-concept study, we developed an inexpensive set of nudges to encourage handwashing with soap after toilet use in two primary schools in rural Bangladesh. We completed direct observation of behaviors at baseline, after providing traditional handwashing infrastructure, and at multiple time periods following targeted handwashing nudges (1 day, 2 weeks, and 6 weeks). No additional handwashing education or motivational messages were completed. Handwashing with soap among school children was low at baseline (4%), increasing to 68% the day after nudges were completed and 74% at both 2 weeks and 6 weeks post intervention. Results indicate that nudge-based interventions have the potential to improve handwashing with soap among school-aged children in Bangladesh and specific areas of further inquiry are discussed

Few-Shot Domain Adaptation for Low Light RAW Image Enhancement

Enhancing practical low light raw images is a difficult task due to severe noise and color distortions from short exposure time and limited illumination. Despite the success of existing Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based methods, their performance is not adaptable to different camera domains. In addition, such methods also require large datasets with short-exposure and corresponding long-exposure ground truth raw images for each camera domain, which is tedious to compile. To address this issue, we present a novel few-shot domain adaptation method to utilize the existing source camera labeled data with few labeled samples from the target camera to improve the target domain's enhancement quality in extreme low-light imaging. Our experiments show that only ten or fewer labeled samples from the target camera domain are sufficient to achieve similar or better enhancement performance than training a model with a large labeled target camera dataset. To support research in this direction, we also present a new low-light raw image dataset captured with a Nikon camera, comprising short-exposure and their corresponding long-exposure ground truth images.Comment: BMVC 2021 Best Student Paper Award (Runner-Up). Project Page: https://val.cds.iisc.ac.in/HDR/BMVC21/index.htm

Total phenolic and flavonoid content, antioxidant effects and antidiarrheal activity of balacaturbhadrika churna – an Ayurvedic preparation

485-492Balacaturbhadrika churna (BC) is an important pediatric preparation in Ayurveda. It is used to treat various diseases of gastro-intestinal tract particularly diarrhea in children. Free radicals cause oxidative damage in the intestine and are correlated with its diseases. In the current study, total phenolic and flavonoid contents of BC extracts were determined and their antioxidant evaluation in various in vitro models was carried out. Procedures mentioned in The Ayurvedic Formulary of India were followed to prepare in-house BC; alcoholic (BCAL) and aqueous (BCAQ) extracts were prepared and tested by standard procedures. BCAL was tested for antidiarrheal activity in castor oil induced model. The ethanolic extract showed better antioxidant activity in many of the models as compared to aqueous extract. The present study showed substantial amounts of flavonoids and phenolics in churna extracts. BCAL showed significant antidiarrheal activity against the tested model. The potential antioxidant and antidiarrheal activities displayed by Balacaturbhadrika churna extracts could be attributed to these contents

A Novel Approach and Implementation Concept For A Nanosatellite Backup on-Board Computer

STUDSAT-2 (STUDENT SATellite-2) is a one-of-a-kind satellite technology project undertaken by Indian undergraduate students. The aim of this project is to demonstrate the On-Board Computer's redundancy (OBC). The OBC subsystem is one of the many subsystems that make up the STUDSAT-2 satellite system. It is critical to the satellite's operation. Even a minor malfunction in this system could lead to the mission's complete failure. As a result, OBC redundancy management is required to overcome this. As a result, the proposed model of Backup On-Board Computer for STUDSAT-2 was planned and built by incorporating redundancy in both software and hardware, thus increasing the OBC's reliability

Total phenolic and flavonoid content, antioxidant effects and antidiarrheal activity of balacaturbhadrika churna – an Ayurvedic preparation

Balacaturbhadrika churna (BC) is an important pediatric preparation in Ayurveda. It is used to treat various diseases of gastro-intestinal tract particularly diarrhea in children. Free radicals cause oxidative damage in the intestine and are correlated with its diseases. In the current study, total phenolic and flavonoid contents of BC extracts were determined and their antioxidant evaluation in various in vitro models was carried out. Procedures mentioned in The Ayurvedic Formulary of India were followed to prepare in-house BC; alcoholic (BCAL) and aqueous (BCAQ) extracts were prepared and tested by standard procedures. BCAL was tested for antidiarrheal activity in castor oil induced model. The ethanolic extract showed better antioxidant activity in many of the models as compared to aqueous extract. The present study showed substantial amounts of flavonoids and phenolics in churna extracts. BCAL showed significant antidiarrheal activity against the tested model. The potential antioxidant and antidiarrheal activities displayed by Balacaturbhadrika churna extracts could be attributed to these contents

The role of Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) intraarticular injections in restoring articular cartilage of osteoarthritic knees. A systematic review and meta-analysis

To assess the effect of PRP on knee articular cartilage content (thickness/volume) and examine the correlation between cartilage changes and clinical outcomes in patients with knee OA. A systematic literature search was performed using the Cochrane methodology in four online databases. Studies were included if they reported on cartilage content with cross-sectional imaging pre- and post-injection. A random-effects model meta-analysis was performed. Correlation with clinical outcomes was evaluated. 14 studies (n ​= ​1099 patients) from 1452 records met the inclusion criteria: seven RCTs (n ​= ​688), one prospective (n ​= ​50), one retrospective (n ​= ​68), and four case-series (n ​= ​224). The PRP preparation process and treatment protocol varied widely (follow-up 6-12 months). In meta-analysis, PRP treatment was not associated with a significant increase in cartilage thickness (4 studies, n ​= ​187, standardized mean difference: Hedges g: 0.079; 95%CI: 0.358 - 0.516; p ​= ​0.723). Meta-analysis of 3 RCTs (n ​= ​112) showed no significant difference in the change of overall knee cartilage content with PRP injections compared with no PRP (Hedges' g: 0.217; 95%CI: 0.177 - 0.611; P ​= ​0.281). The current literature does not support the PRP as chondrogenic in treatment of knee OA. However, there is substantial heterogeneity in the evaluated studies which limits the robustness of any conclusion. An adequately powered RCT, with a standardized PRP regime and standardized high-resolution MRI is needed to definitely define any effect of PRP on knee cartilage content and its relation to clinical outcomes. Until such high-quality evidence becomes available, we recommend that PRP is not administered with the intention of promoting chondrogenesis. [Abstract copyright: © 2022 The Authors.