ARIMA modelling & forecasting of COVID-19 in top five affected countries.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: In a little over six months, the Corona virus epidemic has affected over ten million and killed over half a million people worldwide as on June 30, 2020. With no vaccine in sight, the spread of the virus is likely to continue unabated. This article aims to analyze the time series data for top five countries affected by the COVID-19 for forecasting the spread of the epidemic. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Daily time series data from 15th February to June 30, 2020 of total infected cases from the top five countries namely US, Brazil, India, Russia and Spain were collected from the online database. ARIMA model specifications were estimated using Hannan and Rissanen algorithm. Out of sample forecast for the next 77 days was computed using the ARIMA models. RESULTS: Forecast for the first 18 days of July was compared with the actual data and the forecast accuracy was using MAD and MAPE were found within acceptable agreement. The graphic plots of forecast data suggest that While Russia and Spain have reached the inflexion point in the spread of epidemic, the US, Brazil and India are still experiencing an exponential curve. CONCLUSION: Our analysis shows that India and Brazil will hit 1.38 million and 2.47 million mark while the US will reach the 4.29 million mark by 31st July. With no effective cure available at the moment, this forecast will help the governments to be better prepared to combat the epidemic by ramping up their healthcare facilities.

Rich and Poor Cities in Europe. An Urban Scaling Approach to Mapping the European Economic Transition.

Recent advances in the urban science make broad use of the notion of scaling. We focus here on the important scaling relationship between the gross metropolitan product (GMP) of a city and its population (pop). It has been demonstrated that GMP ∝ Y Ypopß with ß always greater than 1 and close to 1.2. This fundamental finding highlights a universal rule that holds across countries and cultures and might explain the very nature of cities. However, in an increasingly connected world, the hypothesis that the economy of a city solely depends on its population might be questionable. Using data for 248 cities in the European Union between 2005 and 2010, we found a double GMP/pop scaling regime. For West EU cities, ß = 1 over the whole the period, while for post-communist cities ß > 1 and increases from ∼1.2 to ∼1.4. The evolution of the scaling exponent describes the convergence of post-communist European cities to open and liberal economies. We propose a simple model of economic convergence in which, under stable political conditions, a linear GMP/pop scaling is expected for all cities. The results suggest that the GMP/pop super-linear scaling represents a phase of economic growth rather than a steady, universal urban feature. The results also suggest that relationships between cities are embedded in their political and economic context and cannot be neglected in explanations of cities, urbanization and urban economics.

Endodontic and periodontal management of a severely affected maxillary lateral incisor having combined mucosal fenestration and palatogingival groove.

Mucosal fenestrations, wherein the tooth root apices are clinically discernible in the oral cavity subsequent to loss of overlying alveolar bone and mucosa, are rare pathologic entities. Palato gingival grooves- anatomic aberrations are also infrequent occurrences that notoriously predispose to periodontal pathologies of varying extent. Both conditions independently are known to popularly affect maxillary lateral incisors. Coexistent fenestration defect and palato gingival groove in the same tooth is extremely rare and undoubtedly is a perfect combination to precipitate severe endodontic-periodontal consequences. In this report, a 34-year-old patient presented to the dental department with complaint of esthetics in relation to exposed root of right maxillary lateral incisor. On closer inspection, a palato gingival groove in addition to fenestration defect was evident on the root surface along with a periodontal pocket of >5 mm. An interdisciplinary treatment was instituted which included endodontic treatment followed by root end resection, osseous bone graft placement and guided tissue regeneration procedures for repair of mucosal fenestration defect. Debridement of the palatal pocket, with saucerization of the groove and restoration with glass ionomer cement were simultaneously employed to correct the palatal defect.

Quantitative proteomics of heat-treated human cells show an across-the-board mild depletion of housekeeping proteins to massively accumulate few HSPs.

Classic semiquantitative proteomic methods have shown that all organisms respond to a mild heat shock by an apparent massive accumulation of a small set of proteins, named heat-shock proteins (HSPs) and a concomitant slowing down in the synthesis of the other proteins. Yet unexplained, the increased levels of HSP messenger RNAs (mRNAs) may exceed 100 times the ensuing relative levels of HSP proteins. We used here high-throughput quantitative proteomics and targeted mRNA quantification to estimate in human cell cultures the mass and copy numbers of the most abundant proteins that become significantly accumulated, depleted, or unchanged during and following 4 h at 41 °C, which we define as mild heat shock. This treatment caused a minor across-the-board mass loss in many housekeeping proteins, which was matched by a mass gain in a few HSPs, predominantly cytosolic HSPCs (HSP90s) and HSPA8 (HSC70). As the mRNAs of the heat-depleted proteins were not significantly degraded and less ribosomes were recruited by excess new HSP mRNAs, the mild depletion of the many housekeeping proteins during heat shock was attributed to their slower replenishment. This differential protein expression pattern was reproduced by isothermal treatments with Hsp90 inhibitors. Unexpectedly, heat-treated cells accumulated 55 times more new molecules of HSPA8 (HSC70) than of the acknowledged heat-inducible isoform HSPA1A (HSP70), implying that when expressed as net copy number differences, rather than as mere "fold change" ratios, new biologically relevant information can be extracted from quantitative proteomic data. Raw data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD001666.

Modified single incision technique to harvest subepithelial connective tissue graft.

Dental therapy in general and periodontal therapy in particular is directed increasingly at the esthetic outcome for patients. Gingival recession is one of the most common esthetic concerns associated with periodontal tissues. Although various treatment modalities have been developed, subepithelial connective tissue grafting remains the most successful and predictable technique for treatment of gingival recession. Harvesting a connective tissue graft from the palate is many times not only traumatic, but also very painful for the patient. Use of single incision to harvest the subepithelial connective tissue graft is one of the least traumatic, but relatively difficult technique to accomplish. This article presents a modified single incision technique, which is not only less traumatic and painful, but comparatively simple to employ and master. Two new instruments have been introduced to make harvesting of the connective tissue graft easier.

GroEL and CCT are catalytic unfoldases mediating out-of-cage polypeptide refolding without ATP.

Chaperonins are cage-like complexes in which nonnative polypeptides prone to aggregation are thought to reach their native state optimally. However, they also may use ATP to unfold stably bound misfolded polypeptides and mediate the out-of-cage native refolding of large proteins. Here, we show that even without ATP and GroES, both GroEL and the eukaryotic chaperonin containing t-complex polypeptide 1 (CCT/TRiC) can unfold stable misfolded polypeptide conformers and readily release them from the access ways to the cage. Reconciling earlier disparate experimental observations to ours, we present a comprehensive model whereby following unfolding on the upper cavity, in-cage confinement is not needed for the released intermediates to slowly reach their native state in solution. As over-sticky intermediates occasionally stall the catalytic unfoldase sites, GroES mobile loops and ATP are necessary to dissociate the inhibitory species and regenerate the unfolding activity. Thus, chaperonin rings are not obligate confining antiaggregation cages. They are polypeptide unfoldases that can iteratively convert stable off-pathway conformers into functional proteins.

Patient Satisfaction with Hyaluronic Acid Fillers for Improvement of the Nasolabial Folds in Type IV & V Skin.

INTRODUCTION: Soft tissue augmentation by hyaluronic acid filler injections has become the most commonly done cosmetic procedure in the last 10 years. These are now being widely used for improvement of the nasolabial folds. The present study was done to evaluate the patient satisfaction after these injections. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was conducted on 10 consenting patients. Hyaluronic acid filler (22.5 ml cross linked), 1 ml on each groove was injected under an infraorbital block. Patient satisfaction was evaluated at 0, 14, 30, and 180 days. Photographic record was maintained. Any side effects experienced by the patients were recorded. RESULTS: All the patients were satisfied immediately after the procedure. More than 50% were not happy at 14 days. Majority of the patients were happy at 30 days and the satisfaction was maintained at 6 months. CONCLUSION: Fillers are a very safe and effective modality for improving the nasolabial fold. This could prove to be a very useful tool in dental practice. Setting the patient expectations before the procedure is performed can lead to satisfied and happy patients.

Random sequential renormalization of networks: application to critical trees.

We introduce the concept of random sequential renormalization (RSR) for arbitrary networks. RSR is a graph renormalization procedure that locally aggregates nodes to produce a coarse grained network. It is analogous to the (quasi)parallel renormalization schemes introduced by C. Song et al. [C. Song et al., Nature (London) 433, 392 (2005)] and studied by F. Radicchi et al. [F. Radicchi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 148701 (2008)], but much simpler and easier to implement. Here we apply RSR to critical trees and derive analytical results consistent with numerical simulations. Critical trees exhibit three regimes in their evolution under RSR. (i) For N0{ν}≲N

Interacting branching process as a simple model of innovation.

We describe innovation in terms of a generalized branching process. Each new invention pairs with any existing one to produce a number of offspring, which is Poisson distributed with mean p. Existing inventions die with probability p/τ at each generation. In contrast with mean field results, no phase transition occurs; the chance for survival is finite for all p > 0. For τ = ∞, surviving processes exhibit a bottleneck before exploding superexponentially-a growth consistent with a law of accelerating returns. This behavior persists for finite τ. We analyze, in detail, the asymptotic behavior as p→0.

Localization transition of biased random walks on random networks.

We study random walks on large random graphs that are biased towards a randomly chosen but fixed target node. We show that a critical bias strength bc exists such that most walks find the target within a finite time when b > bc. For b < bc, a finite fraction of walks drift off to infinity before hitting the target. The phase transition at b=bc is a critical point in the sense that quantities such as the return probability P(t) show power laws, but finite-size behavior is complex and does not obey the usual finite-size scaling ansatz. By extending rigorous results for biased walks on Galton-Watson trees, we give the exact analytical value for bc and verify it by large scale simulations.