The circulating microbiome signature and inferred functional metagenomics in alcoholic hepatitis

Intestinal dysbiosis is implicated in alcoholic hepatitis (AH). However, changes in the circulating microbiome, its association with the presence and severity of AH and its functional relevance in AH is unknown. Qualitative and quantitative assessment of changes in the circulating microbiome were performed by sequencing bacterial DNA in subjects with moderate (n=18) or severe AH (n=19). These data were compared to heavy drinking controls (HDC) without obvious liver disease (n=19) and non-alcohol consuming controls (NAC, n=20). The data were related to endotoxin levels and markers of monocyte activation. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) Effect Size (LEfSe) analysis, inferred metagenomics and predictive functional analysis using PICRUSt were performed. There was a significant increase in 16S copies/ng DNA both in MAH (p<0.01) and SAH (p<0.001) subjects. Compared to NAC, the relative abundance of phylum Bacteroidetes was significantly decreased in HDC, MAH, and SAH (p<0.001). In contrast, all alcohol consuming groups had enrichment with Fusobacteria; this was greatest for HDC and decreased progressively in MAH and SAH. Subjects with SAH had significantly higher endotoxemia (p=0.01). Compared to alcohol consuming groups, predictive functional metagenomics indicated an enrichment of bacteria with genes related to methanogenesis and denitrification. Also, both HDC and SAH showed activation of type III secretion system which has been linked to gram negative bacterial virulence. Metagenomics in SAH vs NAC predicted increased isoprenoid synthesis via mevalonate and anthranilate degradation, known modulators of gram positive bacterial growth and biofilm production respectively. In conclusion, heavy alcohol consumption appears to be the primary driver of changes in the circulating microbiome associated with a shift in its inferred metabolic functions

Beyond Humanity: Revisiting the Ethics of Body Politics and Violence Against Women in Partition Literature

The literary, historical, political and cultural stories of the partition which have been created by writers demonstrate that women, regardless of their cultural and religious backgrounds, were the worst affected by the recently recognized India-Pakistan border in 1947. The time period saw numerous forms of violence against women, regardless of any feeling of community. It has been a negative tradition to target all pious things for abusing, and revenging. Women have been regarded as a soft corner for all human beings. The bodies of women have been recognised as a notable tool for abusing and misbehaving. kidnapping stripping, making naked, rapping, deforming, cutting of breasts, engraving with religious symbols, and finally killing of women on the name of creed were witnessed in a great number which was the consequence of partition. The research work intends to give a complete analysis of the values and symbols of women's breasts by drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault on power politics. Many literary, cultural, historical, religious, and political texts have used the period as their backdrop. The rhetoric of mother India was framed out of chaos and violence particularly against women and generally against the mass. As a result, it is considered as a movement having wounded breasts as a metaphor for border crossing and as a terrible testament to the history of Partition, endangering the stability of the country. The world witnessed the worst partition in the history of the world. The paper attempts to examine the Partition massacre by focusing on and comprehending female corpses with scratched breasts as abject who break the bounds of normative society and show its flaws in light of Julia Kristen's abjection theory. The values, ethical considerations, political ploys, and communal sensibility presented in this piece may be seen as a terrible repudiation of a brutal decolonization process and as an occultist for feminist resistance. The misery and sadness of maimed women's bodies are used as an illustration of the dialectic between history and the body by authors like Bapsi Sidhwa, Bhishm Sahani, and Khushwant Singh. There is the development of breaches of women's rights.</jats:p

Pneumonia Detection Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract— Pneumonia is a life-threatening infectious disease affecting one or both lungs in humans commonly caused by bacteria called Streptococcus pneumoniae. One in three deaths in India is caused due to pneumonia as reported by World Health Organization (WHO). Chest X-Rays which are used to diagnose pneumonia, need expert radiotherapists for evaluation. Thus, developing an automatic system for detecting pneumonia would be beneficial for treating the disease without any delay particularly in remote areas. Due to the success of deep learning algorithms in analyzing medical images, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have gained much attention for disease classification. In addition, features learned by pre-trained CNN models on large-scale datasets are much useful in image classification tasks. In this work, we appraise the functionality of pre-trained CNN models utilized as feature-extractors followed by different classifiers for the classification of abnormal and normal chest X-Rays. We analytically determine the optimal CNN model for the purpose. Statistical results obtained demonstrates that pretrained CNN models employed along with supervised classifier algorithms can be very beneficial in analyzing chest X-ray images, specifically to detect Pneumonia. In this project Transfer learning and a CNN Model is used to detect whether the person has pneumonia or not using chest x-ray.</jats:p