Efficient agricultural pest classification using vision transformer with hybrid pooled multihead attention.

Accurate pest classification plays a pivotal role in modern agriculture for effective pest management, ensuring crop health and productivity. While Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been widely used for classification, their limited ability to capture both local and global information hinders precise pest identification. In contrast, vision transformers have shown promise in capturing global dependencies and enhancing classification performance. However, the traditional attention mechanism employed in vision transformers, which uses the same query (Q), key (K), and value (V), overlooks spatial relationships between patches, limiting the model's capacity to capture fine-grained details and long-range dependencies in the image. To address these limitations, this study presents a novel approach, termed Hybrid Pooled Multihead Attention (HPMA), for superior pest classification that outperforms both CNN models and vision transformers. The HPMA model integrates hybrid pooling techniques and modifies the attention mechanism to effectively capture local and global features within images. By emphasizing discriminative features and suppressing irrelevant information, the HPMA model achieves heightened robustness and generalization capabilities. The model is trained and tested on a newly built dataset consisting of 10 pest classes, achieving a remarkable accuracy of 98 %. Furthermore, the proposed HPMA model is validated on two benchmark datasets and achieves accuracies of 98 % and 95 %, demonstrating its effectiveness across diverse pest datasets. The results and ablation study of the proposed model contribute to exceptional performance in accurate pest classification. This tackles agricultural pest challenges and enables prompt pest control to reduce crop losses.

Endometrial carcinoma in asymptomatic post-menopausal women with a thickened endometrium and its influencing factors - A cross-sectional study.

Background: A thickened endometrium upon trans-vaginal ultrasound in asymptomatic post-menopausal women always poses a clinical dilemma. Objectives: To investigate the frequency of endometrial malignancies by histopathological examination and identify the associated factors influencing the thickened endometrium in asymptomatic post-menopausal women. Methods: In trans-vaginal ultrasonography, we enrolled 72 asymptomatic post-menopausal women with a thickened endometrium (>5 mm). Dilatation and curettage were performed for all cases, and the specimen was sent for histopathological examination. According to the data distribution, all the continuous variables were stated as mean ± standard deviation/median (inter-quartile range), categorical variables were expressed in frequency, and percentage will be compared using the Chi-square test/Fisher exact test. Results: In our study, most of the women were multipara. The age of post-menopausal women ranged from 46 to 68 years, and the mean duration of menopause was 8.10. The most common histological findings were benign in 72.22% of the cases. We identified pre-malignant and malignant lesions of the endometrium in 18.05% and 9.72% of the cases, respectively. To predict the condition of the lesion, we noticed no definite cut-off value of endometrial thickness to indicate the state of the lesion. We observed that none of the patient's characteristics showed a significant difference with a thickened endometrium. Conclusion: We observed an increased frequency of endometrial pathology irrespective of the presence or absence of risk factors. The result of this study is justified enough for the need of further evaluation of a thickened endometrium in asymptomatic post-menopausal women.

Post-COVID pulmonary fibrosis: therapeutic efficacy using with mesenchymal stem cells - How the lung heals.

COVID-19 is an acute respiratory infectious disease caused by SARS-COV 2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) that has become a global pandemic. COVID-19 mainly causes the respiratory complications of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), cytokine storm, and severe immune disruptions. The assays depict that though people recuperate from COVID-19, there are still symptoms that persists in the body causing discomfort, which is the consequence of the viral infection due to severe immune disruptions. Upon various difficulties of post COVID-19, the pulmonary fibrosis is the stumbling block in the lungs causing severe damage. In this review, we have shown the effectiveness and importance of the Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) secreted by Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) therapy on selective stoppage of the Transforming Growth Factor-Beta (TGF-ß) signalling pathway by causing immunomodulatory effects that ameliorate the pulmonary fibrosis through paracrine signalling. However, more pilot studies have to be carried out to determine the efficacy and outcomes of the re-emerging complication.

Histological Evaluation of Acquired Dermal Macular Hyperpigmentation.

CONTEXT: An umbrella term, acquired dermal macular hyperpigmentation (ADMH), has been proposed to denote conditions including ashy dermatosis, erythema dyschromicum perstans, lichen planus pigmentosus, and idiopathic macular eruptive pigmentation. AIMS: To classify the patients manifesting ADMH on the basis of histology. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: In this retrospective, cross-sectional study, histology specimens of patients of ADMH, who underwent skin biopsy in our institution from 1.1 2015 to 31.12.2017, were included after obtaining ethical clearance. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The histology specimens of patients of ADMH were reviewed by the pathologist and classified. Clinical features of individual patient were collected from previous records and the data analyzed. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Pearson's Chi-square test was used to determine significance of association between age of onset and duration of pigmentation with histology type. RESULTS: Three patterns of histology were identified in the study group (17 males and 13 females). Type 1: Basal cell degeneration and moderate to dense inflammation (12 patients, 40%), type 2: Significant pigment incontinence and sparse inflammation without basal cell degeneration, (12 patients, 40%), and type 3: sparse inflammation without basal cell degeneration or significant pigment incontinence (six patients, 20%). Statistically significant association was noted between age of onset of pigmentation and histology type (P value, 0.02). LIMITATIONS: Main limitation was the small sample size. CONCLUSIONS: Prospective studies evaluating the clinical progression and dermoscopy features and analyzing serial biopsies of ADMH patients may confirm whether the histology patterns observed represent different stages of same disease process or are different entities.

Synthesis, characterisation and biomedical applications of curcumin conjugated chitosan microspheres.

Curcumin is a diaryl heptanoid of curcuminoids class obtained from Curcuma longa. It possesses various biological activities like anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic, antioxidant, wound-healing, and antimicrobial activities. Chitosan is a biocompatible, biodegradable and non-toxic natural polymer which enhances the adhesive property of the skin. Chemical conjugation will leads to sustained release action and to enhance the bioavailability. This study aims to synthesis and characterize biocompatible curcumin conjugated chitosan microspheres for bio-medical applications. The Schiff base reaction was carried out for the preparation of curcumin conjugated chitosan by microwave method and it was characterised using FTIR and NMR. Curcumin conjugated chitosan microspheres (CCCMs) were prepared by wet milling solvent evaporation method. SEM analysis showed these CCCMs were 2-5µm spherical particles. The antibacterial activities of the prepared CCCMs were studied against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, the zone of inhibition was 28mm and 23mm respectively. Antioxidant activity of the prepared CCCMs was also studied by DPPH and H2O2 method it showed IC50 esteem value of 216µg/ml and 228µg/ml, and anti-inflammatory activity results showed that CCCMs having IC50 value of 45µg/ml. The results conclude that the CCCMs having a good antibacterial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. This, the prepared CCCMs have potential application in preventing skin infections.

Accelerating the sludge disintegration potential of a novel bacterial strain Planococcus jake 01 by CaCl2 induced deflocculation.

The present study investigates the impacts of phase separated disintegration through CaCl2 (calcium chloride) mediated biosurfactant producing bacterial pretreatment. In the initial phase of the study, the flocs were disintegrated (deflocculation) with 0.06g/gSS of CaCl2. In the subsequent phase, the sludge biomass was disintegrated (cell disintegration) through potent biosurfactant producing new novel bacteria, Planococcus jake 01. The pretreatment showed that suspended solids reduction and chemical oxygen demand solubilization for deflocculated - bacterially pretreated sludge was found to be 17.14% and 14.14% which were comparatively higher than flocculated sludge (treated with bacteria alone). The biogas yield potential of deflocculated - bacterially pretreated, flocculated, and control sludges were observed to be 0.322(L/gVS), 0.225(L/gVS) and 0.145(L/gVS) respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first study to present the thorough knowledge of biogas production potential through a novel phase separated biosurfactant bacterial pretreatment.