Evidence of a Hardening in the Cosmic Ray Proton Spectrum at around 166 TeV Observed by the GRAPES-3 Experiment.

We present the measurement of the cosmic ray proton spectrum from 50 TeV to 1.3 PeV using 7.81×10^{6} extensive air shower events recorded by the ground-based GRAPES-3 experiment between 1 January 2014 and 26 October 2015 with a live time of 460 day. Our measurements provide an overlap with direct observations by satellite and balloon-based experiments. The electromagnetic and muon components in the shower were measured by a dense array of plastic scintillator detectors and a tracking muon telescope, respectively. The relative composition of the proton primary from the air shower data containing all primary particles was extracted using the multiplicity distribution of muons which is a sensitive observable for mass composition. The observed proton spectrum suggests a spectral hardening at ∼166 TeV and disfavors a single power law description of the spectrum up to the Knee energy (∼3 PeV).

Design and operation of a hybrid LED/LD-pumped phosphor-converted white-light lamp.

Illumination sources based on phosphors, pumped by laser diodes (LDs), have seen rapid developments over the past decade. Here, we present a new, to the best of our knowledge, design that features both spectral richness and the capability for high brightness. Complete design details and operational characterization have been described. This basic design can be extended in various ways to customize such lamps for different operational requirements. A hybrid arrangement of both LEDs and an LD is used to excite a mixture of two phosphors. The LEDs, in addition, provide a blue fill-in to enrich output radiation and to tune the chromaticity point inside the white region. The LD power, on the other hand, can be scaled up to generate very high brightness levels that are not achievable with pumping from LEDs alone. This capability is gained using a special transparent ceramic disk that carries the remote phosphor film. We also show that the radiation from our lamp is free from speckle-producing coherence.

ADRENAL HISTOPLASMOSIS: AN EASTERN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE.

Context: The clinical presentation of histoplasmosis is varied. Due to its propensity for adrenal involvement, histoplasmosis is an important differential diagnosis in any patient presenting with adrenal mass, bilateral in particular. Objective: Data on clinical presentation, pattern of adrenal involvement, radiological appearance and long-term follow-up of adrenal histoplasmosis are relatively sparse; hence we looked at it. Design: This record based single-centre retrospective study was conducted in one of the tertiary care hospitals, situated in eastern India catering the Gangetic delta. Subjects and methods: Data on demographic characters, presenting manifestations, biochemical & hormonal parameters and radiological appearance of confirmed adrenal histoplasmosis cases (n=9), admitted between 2015-2019 have been retrieved. The treatment outcome and condition of patients after 1-4 years of follow-up has also been discussed. Results: Four out of the nine (44.4%) patients had predisposing immunocompromised conditions in the form of diabetes and/or chronic alcoholism while rest were immunocompetent. Seven out of nine patients (77.8 %) had signs and symptoms suggestive of adrenal insufficiency, while two (22.2%) presented with only pyrexia of unknown origin. All of them had bilateral adrenal mass, though the radiologically appearances were different. All patients received anti-fungal agents with/without hydrocortisone and/or fludrocortisone. One patient died (11.1%), while majority responded favourably to treatment. Adrenocortical function did not recover completely. Conclusions: The possibility of adrenal histoplasmosis should always be considered in patients presenting with bilateral adrenal mass, irrespective of adrenal morphology. Treatment is effective, but many of them require supplemental hydrocortisone for quite a long period, if not lifelong. Mineralocorticoid deficiency, however, is not permanent.

Broad immunophenotyping of the murine brain tumor microenvironment.

Here we present a 14-color flow cytometry panel for the evaluation of 13 myeloid and lymphoid populations within murine glioblastoma samples. Reagents, processing protocols, and downstream analyses were thoroughly validated and optimized to resolve the following populations: T cells (CD4, CD8, CD3), B cells (B220), NK cells (NK1.1), neutrophils (Ly6G), classical and non-classical monocytes (Ly6c, CD43), macrophages (F4/80, CD11b), microglia (CD45-lo, CD11b), and dendritic cells (DCs) (CD11c, MHC class II). In addition, this panel leaves Alexa Fluor 488/FITC open for the inclusion of fluorescent reporters or congenic marker staining.

Process improvement to effectively manage and reduce sharps injuries in a Tertiary Hospital in Northern India.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Needle stick injuries are associated with a 0.3-30% risk of transmission of Human Immunodeficiency virus, Hepatitis C virus, and Hepatitis B virus. Despite causing psychological trauma they also involve a huge financial burden. A robust process improvement (RPI) toolkit was introduced in order to effectively manage and reduce needle stick injuries, as well as an attempt to report prevalence, post-exposure management, and associated economic burden. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Prospective Observational Study (2015-2018) has been design in a Corporate Tertiary Care Hospital. The participants included were needle stick injuries exposed staff. RPI toolkit was implemented (2015-2018) focusing on root cause analysis, availability of safety engineered devices, immunization and post-exposure management of needle stick injuries exposed staff. The main outcome measure was needle stick injuries incidence. RESULTS: A total of 211 needle stick injuries were reported (mean - 52.72/year, needle stick injury incidence - 13.18/year/100 beds). Yearly trends showed a decrease of 21.3% in injuries from 2015 (61) to 2018 (48). Half (106, 50%) of the total injuries were reported among nurses. Use of hypodermic needles was involved in 116 (55%) injuries, with 114 (54%) occurring due to nonadherence to hospital policies. Overall, 204 staff had protective immunity, and 135 (64%) of these had completed their Hepatitis B immunizations. The source was known in 165 (78%) cases, and 113 of these cases had an injury from a source with negative viral markers. A 6-month follow-up was completed in 90 cases. No seroconversion was reported. Overall costs incurred in post-exposure prophylaxis was approximately €30,000 (mean cost €143.50/needle stick injury). CONCLUSION: Nurses are most at risk of needle stick injury in healthcare settings. Implementation of RPI toolkit led to a 21.3% reduction in sharps injury incidences. These injuries incur huge financial burden on the hospital. Appropriate immunization strategies saved about €1360 expenditure on post-exposure prophylaxis.

Impact of water deficit stress in maize: Phenology and yield components.

Fifteen million farmers in India engaged in Maize cultivation. India would require 45 MMT of Maize by 2022. But, only 15% of cultivated area of maize is under irrigation and water shortage has been a challenge for sustainability of maize production. Water deficit stress (WDS) during pre-flowering and grain filling stages massively affects the plant performance due to imprecise traits function. Thus, the effect of WDS on non-drought tolerant (NDT) and drought tolerant (DT) maize lines were investigated. WDS increased the flowering days, days to maturity, anthesis silk interval, decreased the leaf number, abnormal expression of secondary stress responsive traits, loss of normal root architecture which overall lead to a reduction in GY/ha. WDS at flowering and grain filling stage leads to significant yield penalty especially in NDT lines than DT lines. The yield penalty was ranged from 34.28 to 66.15% in NDT and 38.48 to 55.95% in DT lines due to WDS. Using multiple statistics, traits which improve WDS tolerance in maize were identified viz; number of leaves, number of stomata on lower surface of leaf, leaf angle at ear forming node internodal length between 3rd and 4th leaf from top, flag leaf length, flag leaf width, ear per plants, leaf senescence, pollen stainability, root fresh weight and root length. These traits would help in trait specific breeding in maize for WDS tolerance.

Development and characterization of a helicon plasma source.

The Helicon Plasma Source (HeliPS) designed and developed at the Centre of Plasma Physics-Institute for Plasma Research is a versatile helicon plasma device, which operates in a wide range of magnetic field configurations from 50 G to 500 G. This device is dedicated to perform a broad range of research activities. The main objective for development of the HeliPS is to carry out studies on ion-ion plasmas in electronegative gases. In the near future, ion-ion plasmas will be formed in electronegative gases in the downstream of the plasma production region. Although the system is primarily designed to carry out ion-ion plasma experiments, the same system can also be used for experimental studies on some basic helicon plasma properties such as wave propagation, wave coupling, and plasma instability. At present, argon plasma is produced with a RF power supply of 13.56 MHz frequency. External circuit parameters, such as antenna current, plasma resistance (Rp), and internal parameters, such as electron density and temperature, are measured. The details of the experimental setup development, device characteristic, as well as preliminary plasma production and characterization to confirm occurrence of the helicon plasma in the system are presented in this article.

Postnatal steroids in extreme preterm infants: Intra-tracheal instillation using surfactant as a vehicle.

Chronic Lung Disease (CLD) is a common respiratory morbidity in survivors following extreme preterm birth, and is associated with adverse neurodevelopment in the long term. Besides demographics, multiple risk factors are implicated in the pathogenesis of CLD. However, early lung inflammation appears to be the common pathway that leads to the pathological and clinical changes observed in CLD. Postnatal use of systemic steroids has been successful in reducing the incidence of CLD but resulted in unacceptable adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. The efficacy of inhaled steroids is not yet established. We review the evidence of tracheal instillation of steroids using surfactant as a lipid vehicle, including published data on drug distribution, in vitro physical studies, and clinical trials in animals and human infants.

Phonon-mediated repulsion, sharp transitions and (quasi)self-trapping in the extended Peierls-Hubbard model.

We study two identical fermions, or two hard-core bosons, in an infinite chain and coupled to phonons by interactions that modulate their hopping as described by the Peierls/Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. We show that exchange of phonons generates effective nearest-neighbor repulsion between particles and also gives rise to interactions that move the pair as a whole. The two-polaron phase diagram exhibits two sharp transitions, leading to light dimers at strong coupling and the flattening of the dimer dispersion at some critical values of the parameters. This dimer (quasi)self-trapping occurs at coupling strengths where single polarons are mobile. This illustrates that, depending on the strength of the phonon-mediated interactions, the coupling to phonons may completely suppress or strongly enhance quantum transport of correlated particles.

Microsatellite Instability in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia using D17S261 and D3S643 markers: A Pilot Study in Gujarat Population.

CONTEXT: Tumor progresses through a series of genetic alterations that involve proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes - the gatekeeper, caretakers, and landscaper genes. Microsatellites are short tandem repeat sequences, present over the span of human genome and are known to be variable at multiple loci due to errors in DNA Mismatch Repair machinery. AIM: The present study was aimed to evaluate the association between Microsatellite Instability (MSI) and evolution of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) - genetically a rare event but profound in this pilot study. SETTINGS AND DESIGNS: We explore the possibility of MSI in primary CML patients confirmed by t(9;22) using capillary electrophoresis. Fifteen CML patients and healthy individual samples, respectively, were used to study the markers D17S261 and D3S643. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The DNA was amplified using tagged and nontagged primers and further subjected to bioanalysis and fragment analysis. RESULTS: While the results from bioanalyzer fluctuated, fragment analysis indicated the presence of microsatellite variability in 80% of the patients' samples as compared to no MSI in normal individuals for both the markers. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that MSI is a genetic event that may have a role in CML progression or evolution. Further studies are warranted to understand the plausible underlying causes.

Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation of commercially elite rice restorer line using nptII gene as a plant selection marker.

Transformation of commercially important indica cultivars remains challenging for the scientific community even though Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocols for a few indica rice lines have been well established. We report successful transformation of a commercially important restorer line JK1044R of indica rice hybrid JKRH 401. While following existing protocol, we optimized several parameters for callusing, regeneration and genetic transformation of JK1044R. Calli generated from the rice scutellum tissue were used for transformation by Agrobacterium harboring pCAMBIA2201. A novel two tire selection scheme comprising of Geneticin (G418) and Paramomycin were deployed for selection of transgenic calli as well as regenerated plantlets that expressed neomycin phosphotransferase-II gene encoded by the vector. One specific combination of G418 (30 mg l(-1)) and Paramomycin (70 mg l(-1)) was very effective for calli selection. Transformed and selected calli were detected by monitoring the expression of the reporter gene uidA (GUS). Regenerated plantlets were confirmed through PCR analysis of nptII and gus genes specific primers as well as dot blot using gus gene specific as probe.

Transgenic rice expressing the cry2AX1 gene confers resistance to multiple lepidopteran pests.

A chimeric Bacillus thuringiensis toxin (Bt) gene, cry2AX1was cloned in a bi-selectable marker free binary vector construct. The cry2AX1 gene, driven by the Chrysanthemum rbcS1 promoter, was introduced into JK1044R, the restorer line (Oryza sativa L. ssp. Indica) of a notified commercially grown rice hybrid in India, by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Its effect against two major lepidopteran insect pests viz., yellow stem borer (YSB) Scirpophaga incertulas, rice leaf folder (RLF) Cnaphalocrocis medinalis and one minor insect pest, oriental army worm (OAW) Mythimna separata was demonstrated through bioassays of transgenic rice plants under laboratory and greenhouse conditions. The rbcS1 promoter with chloroplast signal peptide was used to avoid Cry2AX1 protein expression in rice seed endosperm tissue. A total of 37 independent transformants were generated, of which after preliminary molecular characterization and YSB bioassay screening, five events were selected for their protein expression and bioefficacy against all three rice insect. One elite transgenic rice line, BtE15, was identified with Cry2AX1 expression ranging from 0.68 to 1.34 µg g(-1) leaf fresh weight and with 80-92 % levels of resistance against rice pests at the vegetative and reproductive stages. Increase in Cry2AX1 protein concentration was also observed with crop maturity. The Cry2AX1protein concentration in the de-husked seeds was negligible (as low as 2.7-3.6 ng g(-1)). These results indicate the potential application of cry2AX1 gene in rice for protection against YSB, RLF and OAW.

A new approach of oral cancer detection using bilateral texture features in digital infrared thermal images.

Oral cancer is one of the most prevalent form of cancer and its severity is aggrandized specially among the socio-economically backward population in developing countries. A major fraction of patient population is unable to avail diagnosis for oral cancer due to scarcity of state-of-the-art infrastructure and experienced oral and maxillofacial pathologist. Contemporary gold standard of oral cancer confirmation relies on biopsy report. But biopsy is invasive and thus patients are usually reluctant to undergo this test. Moreover, biopsy yields considerable false negatives if investigated tissue is not collected precisely from the carcinogenic location. Till date, there is dearth of computer aided pre-screening tool for detection of oral cancer. The paper presents Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging as a viable modality for early screening of oral cancer. This is the pioneering attempt to discriminate normal subjects from patients by leveraging discriminating texture features on oral thermograms. Statistically significant texture features were selected from a) both halves of frontal face and b) right and left profile faces. Due to disparity of distribution of facial temperature between normal subjects and patients, the corresponding texture features form discriminative class specific local clusters. Such local conglomeration was exploited using k-means and fuzzy k-means clustering. We adopt the concept of cluster prototype classifier which assigns label to each cluster according to majority class labels within that cluster. Highest classification accuracy of 86.12% is attained on fusion of features from left and right half of frontal face of precancerous subject followed by fuzzy k-means guided cluster prototype classification. The proposed work outperforms our previously developed pre-screening framework by upto 6.5%. Such promising results boosts the viability of our approach.

Influence of boron addition to Ti-13Zr-13Nb alloy on MG63 osteoblast cell viability and protein adsorption.

Cell proliferation, cell morphology and protein adsorption on near ß-type Ti-13Zr-13Nb (TZN) alloy and Ti-13Zr-13Nb-0.5B (TZNB) composite have been investigated and compared to evaluate the effect of boron addition which has been added to the Ti alloy to improve their poor tribological properties by forming in situ TiB precipitates. MG63 cell proliferation on substrates with different chemistry but the same topography was compared. The MTT assay test showed that the cell viability on the TZN alloy was higher than the boron containing TZNB composite after 36 h of incubation and the difference was pronounced after 7 days. However, both the materials showed substantially higher cell attachment than the control (polystyrene). For the same period of incubation in fetal bovine serum (FBS), the amount of protein adsorbed on the surface of boron free TZN samples was higher than that in the case of boron containing TZNB composite. The presence of boron in the TZN alloy influenced protein adsorption and cell response and they are lower in TZNB than in TZN as a result of the associated difference in chemical characteristics.

Bandgap engineering through nanocrystalline magnetic alloy grafting on reduced graphene oxide.

High conductivity and the absence of ferromagnetism in pristine graphene fail to satisfy primary criteria for possible technological application in spintronics. Opening of the bandgap in graphene is primarily desirable for such applications. We report a simplified and novel approach of controlled grafting of a magnetic alloy on reduced graphene oxide. This eventually leads to ferromagnetism of the stable hybrid material at room temperature, with a large moment (∼1.2 µB) and a remarkable decrease in conductivity (∼10 times) compared to highly ordered pyrolytic graphite. Our model band-structure calculation indicates that the combined effect of controlled vacancies and impurities attributed to the nanocrystalline alloy grafting leads to a promising step toward band gap engineering.

Congenital hypothyroidism presenting as pseudo-obstruction in preterm infants.

Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) presenting as acute pseudo-obstruction is uncommon. We report two premature infants presenting with acute bowel obstruction subsequently diagnosed to have CH. Both responded well to medical management with thyroid supplementation.

Influence of in situ TiB reinforcements and role of heat treatment on mechanical properties and biocompatibility of ß Ti-alloys.

The effect of heat treatment on the mechanical properties of Ti-35Nb-5.7Ta-7.2Zr (TNZT) and Ti-35Nb-5.7Ta-7.2Zr-0.5B (TNZTB) alloys has been investigated. In the case of TNZT alloy, the presence of ω phase in the matrix has a greater effect on strength and hardness than the presence of secondary α precipitates. The TNZTB alloy shows higher hardness and tensile strength than the TNZT alloy due to the formation of hard TiB precipitates in the matrix of the former. However, the boron free alloy offers higher ductility than the boron containing alloy. Presence of TiB precipitates in the matrix increases the strength of the TNZTB alloy when ω precipitates are present in the matrix. However, the boride precipitates have no substantial influence on the strength of the TNZTB alloy when ω phase in the matrix is replaced by the α phase. The elastic modulus of the TNZT samples shows a very small variation with different heat treatment conditions. The TNZT alloy samples containing ß and ω phases show higher elastic modulus than the samples containing ß and α phases. The elastic modulus of the TNZTB alloy is higher than that of the TNZT alloy due to the formation of high modulus TiB particles in the matrix. Both the alloys show better cell adhesion and spreading than the control material (polystyrene). However, the boron free Ti-alloy shows better cell attachment than the boron containing Ti-alloy.

Maxillary sinusitis and fungal infection.

This cross sectional study was done to identify the fungal etiology of maxillary sinusitis. This study was done in the department of Otolaryngology & Head-Neck Surgery, Shahid Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The study period was 5 years (January 2003 to December 2007). Total 63 patients who were diagnosed clinically and radiologically as a maxillary sinusitis were enrolled in this study. All the patients were included randomly. Among 63 patients 8(12.69%) patients had laboratory proved fungal maxillary sinusitis. Collection of the laboratory specimen was done from antral wash out and biopsy for histopathology was taken by endoscopic surgery. By histopathological and fungal stain revealed noninvasive type of fungal infection in all cases. Post nasal drip (100%), Headache (100%), Nasal obstruction (65% cases) were the main presenting symptoms in case of fungal maxillary sinusitis. Anti fungal treatment along with systemic antibiotic was given in case of proven maxillary sinusitis and 100% cure rate was observed after treatment.