Survival Rate in Cancer Cervix Patients in a Regional Cancer Centre of South India: A Retrospective Analysis.

Context: Carcinoma Cervix is one of the leading prevalent cancers in India especially in rural population and causes a significant mortality. WHO has launched many projects for prevention, screening and treatment plans. Even after many projects, Cervical Cancer persists as a heavy burden public health problem in rural India. Aims: To calculate survival of cancer cervix patients in a rural population-based RCC and to discuss the factors affecting it. Methods and Material: A hospital-based gathering of retrospective data of the patients diagnosed with carcinoma cervix over 5 years from January 2013 to December 2017 (single institution analysis). We included 751 patient's data from our cancer registry for analysis. Data related to demographics, treatment and follow up records were taken and statistical analysis done. Results: The survival rates were 64.0%, 50.0%, 36.9% and 17.5% for Stage I, Stage II, Stage III and Stage IV, respectively. The best survival outcomes were for those treated with only surgery. Involvement of nodes had poor survival than those with no involvement. Various patient-related factors like Religion, Education and Marital status are found to be non-significant factors even-though they have survival differences. STAGE of the disease emerged as a significant prognostic factor. Conclusion: Our study concluded that higher stage and nodal involvement had poor outcomes and also lower survival compared to Western and Indian literature. We should also address all the socio-economic factors that affects survival. Randomized prospective studies are needed to evaluate the effect of socio-economic factors on survival.

Development of novel robotic platforms for mechanical stress induction, and their effects on plant morphology, elements, and metabolism.

This research evaluates the effect on herbal crops of mechanical stress induced by two specially developed robotic platforms. The changes in plant morphology, metabolite profiles, and element content are evaluated in a series of three empirical experiments, conducted in greenhouse and CNC growing bed conditions, for the case of basil plant growth. Results show significant changes in morphological features, including shortening of overall stem length by up to 40% and inter-node distances by up to 80%, for plants treated with a robotic mechanical stress-induction protocol, compared to control groups. Treated plants showed a significant increase in element absorption, by 20-250% compared to controls, and changes in the metabolite profiles suggested an improvement in plants' nutritional profiles. These results suggest that repetitive, robotic, mechanical stimuli could be potentially beneficial for plants' nutritional and taste properties, and could be performed with no human intervention (and therefore labor cost). The changes in morphological aspects of the plant could potentially replace practices involving chemical treatment of the plants, leading to more sustainable crop production.

High-intensity, high-contrast laser pulses generated from the fully diode-pumped Yb:glass laser system POLARIS.

We report on the first generation of high-contrast, 164 fs duration pulses from the laser system POLARIS reaching focused peak intensities in excess of 2×10(20) W/cm2. To our knowledge, this is the highest peak intensity reported so far that has been achieved with a diode-pumped, solid-state laser. Several passive contrast enhancement techniques have been specially developed and implemented, achieving a relative prepulse intensity smaller than 10(-8) at t=-30 ps before the main pulse. Furthermore a closed-loop adaptive-optics system has been installed. Together with angular chirp compensation, this method has led to a significant reduction of the focal spot size and an increase of the peak intensity.