Inflammatory Bowel Disease Cause-specific Mortality: A Primer for Clinicians

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) is perceived to harbor significant morbidity but limited excess mortality, thought to be driven by colon cancer, compared with the general population. Recent studies suggest mortality rates seem higher than previously understood, and there are emerging threats to mortality. Clinicians must be up to date and able to clearly convey the causes of mortality to arm individual patients with information to meaningfully participate in decisions regarding IBD treatment and maintenance of health. Methods: A MEDLINE search was conducted to capture all relevant articles. Keyword search included: “inflammatory bowel disease,” “Crohn's disease,” “ulcerative colitis,” and “mortality.” Results: CD and UC have slightly different causes of mortality; however, malignancy and colorectal cancer–associated mortality remains controversial in IBD. CD mortality seems to be driven by gastrointestinal disease, infection, and respiratory diseases. UC mortality was primarily attributable to gastrointestinal disease and infection. Clostridium difficile infection is an emerging cause of mortality in IBD. UC and CD patients have a marked increase in risk of thromboembolic disease. With advances in medical and surgical interventions, the exploration of treatment-associated mortality must continue to be evaluated. Conclusions: Clinicians should be aware that conventional causes of death such as malignancy do not seem to be as significant a burden as originally perceived. However, emerging threats such as infection including C. difficile are noteworthy. Although CD and UC share similar causes of death, there seems to be some differences in cause-specific mortality

Tuning the optical properties of silicon quantum dots via surface functionalization with conjugated aromatic fluorophores

The authors acknowledge Karen Nygard at UWO Biotron for assistance with confocal microscopy. This work was financially supported by NSERC Canada Discovery (Charpentier).Silicon Quantum Dots (SQDs) have recently attracted great interest due to their excellent optical properties, low cytotoxicity, and ease of surface modification. The size of SQDs and type of ligand on their surface has a great influence on their optical properties which is still poorly understood. Here we report the synthesis and spectroscopic studies of three families of unreported SQDs functionalized by covalently linking to the aromatic fluorophores, 9-vinylphenanthrene, 1-vinylpyrene, and 3-vinylperylene. The results showed that the prepared functionalized SQDs had a highly-controlled diameter by HR-TEM, ranging from 1.7–2.1 nm. The photophysical measurements of the assemblies provided clear evidence for efficient energy transfer from the fluorophore to the SQD core. Fӧrster energy transfer is the likely mechanism in these assemblies. As a result of the photogenerated energy transfer process, the emission color of the SQD core could be efficiently tuned and its emission quantum efficiency enhanced. To demonstrate the potential application of the synthesized SQDs for bioimaging of cancer cells, the water-soluble perylene- and pyrene-capped SQDs were examined for fluorescent imaging of HeLa cells. The SQDs were shown to be of low cytotoxicity.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

COVID-19: An Epidemiological Puzzle

Pneumonia of unknown etiology was reported from Wuhan, Hubei province of China on 31th December, 2019. WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30th January, 2020. Thereafter, it has spread throughout China and reached the level of a pandemic expanding to 210 countries with 9,653,048 confirmed cases and 491,128 deaths as per COVID-19 Situation Report issued by WHO based on data received upto 27th June, 2020. Manifold questions remain unanswered regarding pathogen associated variables for amplification dynamics, host environment and agent interaction. Multidimensional issues regarding the epidemiological spectrum have cropped up but still unresolved. This study makes an effort to analyse the information gathered from published articles of renowned journals and newsletters to explore the epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 disease. Hereby, we have tried to assemble the questions epidemiological lacunae created by the divergent demographic characteristics, long incubation period, secondary attack rate and puzzling transmission dynamics of COVID-19 that remain unanswered

Affinity Classification Problem by Stochastic Cellular Automata

This work introduces a new problem, named as, affinity classification problem which is a generalization of the density classification problem. To solve this problem, we introduce temporally stochastic cellular automata where two rules are stochastically applied in each step on all cells of the automata. Our model is defined on 2-dimensional grid having affection capability. We show that this model can be used in several applications like modeling self-healing systems

A New strategy for on-line Droop adjustment for Microgrid connected DGs

This paper proposes a simple and effective control technique for interconnection of DG resources to the power grid via interfacing converters based on Phase locked loop (PLL) and Droop control. The behaviour of a Microgrid (MG) system during the transition from islanded mode to grid-connected mode of operation has been studied. A dynamic phase shifted PLL technique is locally designed for generating phase reference of each inverter. The phase angle between filter capacitor voltage vector and d-axis is dynamically adjusted with the change in q-axis inverter current to generate the phase reference of each inverter. During fluctuations in load capacity, the grid-connected system must be able to supply balanced power from the utility grid side and micro-grid side. Therefore, droop control is implemented to maintain a balanced power sharing. The inverter operates in voltage control mode in order to control the filter capacitor voltage. An adjusted droop control method for equivalent load sharing of parallel connected Inverters, without any communication between individual inverters, has been presented. The control loops are tested with aid of MATLAB Simulink tool during several operating conditions

Numerical multigrid algorithm for solving integral equations

Integral equations arise in many scienti c and engineering problems. A large class of initial and boundary value problems can be converted to Volterra or Fredholm integral equations. The potential theory contributed more than any eld to give rise to integral equations. Integral equations also has signi cant application in mathematical physics models, such as di rac- tion problems, scattering in quantum mechanics, conformal mapping and water waves. The Volterra's population growth model, biological species living together, propagation of stocked sh in a new lake, the heat transfer and the heat radiation are among many areas that are described by integral equations. For limited applicability of analytical techniques, the numer- ical solvers often are the only viable alternative. General computational techniques of solving integral equation involve discretization and generates equivalent system of linear equations. In most of the cases the discretization produces dense matrix. Multigrid methods are widely used to solve partial di erential equation. We discuss the multigrid algorithms to solve integral equations and propose usages of distributive relaxation and the Kaczmarz method.Department of Mathematical SciencesThesis (M.S.

Human detection in surveillance videos and its applications - a review

Detecting human beings accurately in a visual surveillance system is crucial for diverse application areas including abnormal event detection, human gait characterization, congestion analysis, person identification, gender classification and fall detection for elderly people. The first step of the detection process is to detect an object which is in motion. Object detection could be performed using background subtraction, optical flow and spatio-temporal filtering techniques. Once detected, a moving object could be classified as a human being using shape-based, texture-based or motion-based features. A comprehensive review with comparisons on available techniques for detecting human beings in surveillance videos is presented in this paper. The characteristics of few benchmark datasets as well as the future research directions on human detection have also been discussed

Cholesterol Promotes Hemifusion and Pore Widening in Membrane Fusion Induced by Influenza Hemagglutinin

Cholesterol-specific interactions that affect membrane fusion were tested for using insect cells; cells that have naturally low cholesterol levels (<4 mol %). Sf9 cells were engineered (HAS cells) to express the hemagglutinin (HA) of the influenza virus X-31 strain. Enrichment of HAS cells with cholesterol reduced the delay between triggering and lipid dye transfer between HAS cells and human red blood cells (RBC), indicating that cholesterol facilitates membrane lipid mixing prior to fusion pore opening. Increased cholesterol also increased aqueous content transfer between HAS cells and RBC over a broad range of HA expression levels, suggesting that cholesterol also favors fusion pore expansion. This interpretation was tested using both trans-cell dye diffusion and fusion pore conductivity measurements in cholesterol-enriched cells. The results of this study support the hypothesis that host cell cholesterol acts at two stages in membrane fusion: (1) early, prior to fusion pore opening, and (2) late, during fusion pore expansion

Design and development of a double-row weeder for rice field: Eco-Friendly weed management solution.

Agricultural mechanization and technology adoption are rapidly increasing in Bangladesh, particularly in the context of weed management in rice fields. This study addresses the pressing need for efficient and labour-saving methods by designing and developing a manually operated double-row weeder tailored to the specific conditions of Bangladesh. The weeder is designed to clean weeds between field rows, optimizing the weeding and mulching processes. The hypothesis guiding the design includes a line-to-line distance of 20 cm, a push-pull action, and an operating condition of 3~5 cm of standing water to soften the field. The weeder incorporates essential elements such as a skid/float, float holder, main body frame, rotor, axel, bush, rotor holder, rotor holder adjuster, handle, handle holder, handle height adjuster, handle arm, handle arm jointer, nut, bolt, and more. For fabrication of the weeder, MS sheet, MS pipe, MS flat bar, MS nut-bolt, and other materials were used. The weeder features four rotors with six blades in each drum, strategically positioned for optimal weed uprooting and burial. The precise 2 mm-thick float assembly, set at a 20° angle, ensures smooth operation. With an efficient field capacity of 0.037 ha/h, the weeder demonstrates a weeding efficiency of 76.88%. The weeder weight is 7.5 kg, which helps pulverize the topsoil and enhance soil aeration. The developed weeder holds excellent potential for farmers in Bangladesh, offering improved comfort and reduced labour in weeding and mulching operations