A transparent and adhesive film-based enclosing and sealing method is here presented for out-of-cleanroom-based open-form microfluidic devices. The commercially available polyester flexible film ...known as Microseal 'B' is presented in this paper as a cover seal for open-form microfluidic devices. This film is adaptable to high working temperatures and is biocompatible. The quality of the sealing film was investigated by leak tests, fluorescence tests, and contact angle measurements. The investigations revealed its sealing strength, fluorescence detection compatibility, and surface wettability. It was found that the proposed sealing polyester film on the 3D-printed device could sustain a gauge pressure of 2.7 atm at a flow rate of 4 mL/min without any leaks. It also provided fluorescence detection compatibility and an intensity-to-background ratio in the range of 2.3 to 4.5 for particle sizes of 5 μm and 15 μm, respectively, which is comparable with the performances of other sealing materials. The film's hydrophobicity is comparable to other polymers used in microfluidics. This paper concludes by showcasing some applications of such transparent tops in classical microfluidic devices used for droplet generation and fluid mixing, in order to demonstrate the prospects of this fabrication technique in lab-on-a-chip devices.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Rodent ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are crucial to their social communication and a widely used translational tool for linking gene mutations to behavior. To maximize the causal interpretation of ...experimental treatments, we need to understand how neural control affects USV production. However, both the aerodynamics of USV production and its neural control remain poorly understood.
Here, we test three intralaryngeal whistle mechanisms-the wall and alar edge impingement, and shallow cavity tone-by combining in vitro larynx physiology and individual-based 3D airway reconstructions with fluid dynamics simulations. Our results show that in the mouse and rat larynx, USVs are produced by a glottal jet impinging on the thyroid inner wall. Furthermore, we implemented an empirically based motor control model that predicts motor gesture trajectories of USV call types.
Our results identify wall impingement as the aerodynamic mechanism of USV production in rats and mice. Furthermore, our empirically based motor control model shows that both neural and anatomical components contribute to USV production, which suggests that changes in strain specific USVs or USV changes in disease models can result from both altered motor programs and laryngeal geometry. Our work provides a quantitative neuromechanical framework to evaluate the contributions of brain and body in shaping USVs and a first step in linking descending motor control to USV production.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper details an investigation into the characteristic 'plink' sound produced by water droplets impacting a liquid surface, such as those falling from a dripping tap. Modern high-speed video and ...audio capture techniques have been applied to this problem for the first time. Previous literature investigating the underwater sound produced has been validated, with the key sound producing feature both above and below the water confirmed to be the entrainment of a small underwater air bubble. Recorded sound frequencies have been shown to align with the theoretical natural oscillation frequency of the entrained bubble, confirming this to be the driver of the characteristic 'plink' sound. For the first time these oscillations of the entrained bubble have been directly observed on video footage. An investigation into the effect of underwater reverberation showed that the airborne sound field is not simply the underwater field propagating through the water-air interface, as had previously been assumed. An alternative hypothesis is that the oscillating bubble induces oscillations of the water surface itself, giving a more efficient mechanism by which the underwater bubble drives the airborne sound field. A model for this new hypothesis produces good agreement with experimental data.
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To estimate the proportion and risk factors of non-thyroidal illness (NTI) in children with congenital heart disease (CHD) with congestive heart failure (CHF).
This study enrolled children (6 weeks ...to 60 months age) with CHD and CHF. The clinical profile and disease severity, derived from the Pediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS) was recorded. Baseline blood samples were taken within 24 hours of hospitalization and evaluated for free tri-iodothyronine (fT3), free thyroxine (fT4), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT pro-BNP) and reverse T3.
A total of 80 (64 acyanotic CHD) children of median (interquartile range) age 5 (2.5, 8.0) months were enrolled. NTI was seen in 37 (46%) of whom 27 had low fT3 levels. The proportion of NTI was highest in children with severe disease (20/30), than moderate (4/9) or mild disease (13/41) (p=0.018). Ten (27%) patients with NTI died compared to 2 (4.7%) without NTI with unadjusted odds ratio (OR) 95% confidence interval (CI) 7.593 (1.54, 37.38); p=0.006. After adjusting for NTI, shock and NT-pro-BNP levels, PEWS was the only significant predictor of mortality (OR: 1.41, 95% CI: 1.03, 1.92; p=0.032). Linear regression for fT3 identified a significant relationship with log NT-BNP beta -3.541, (95% CI: -1.387, -0.388) and with TSH beta 2.652 (95% CI: 0.054, 0.383). The cutoff (area under the curve, 95% CI) that predicted mortality were fT4 <14.5 pmol/L (0.737, 0.60, 0.88), fT3/rT3 index <1.86 pg/ng (0.284, 0.129, 0.438) and NT pro-BNP >3725 pg/mL (0.702; 0.53, 0.88).
NTI was present in a significant proportion of children with CHD and CHF. fT3 level was significantly associated with NTBNP levels and thus severity of CHF.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
The buildings are designed to provide the thermal comfort to the occupants. The most important consideration for the design of building is the extent to which it exposed to climatic condition. ...Climatic classification helps to design comfortable and energy efficient buildings. For the energy efficient building design, zoning of climatic classification, for the country into different regions is essential to differentiate the climate region wise. This paper focuses on the study of climatic classification of India considering the latest climatic data of India using multivariate technique, factor–cluster analysis. The outcome of study gives additional sub-climatic regions for India as compared to present five major climatic zones, (i) hot-dry (ii) warm-humid (iii) cold (iv) temperate and (v) composite, as defined in the climatic data handbook of CBRI (Bureau of Indian Standards, SP -72: National Lighting Code, CSIR-CBRI, 2010) and also National Building Code 2016 (in National Building Code of India 1:1–1226, 2016).
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Introduction: Metastatic vertebral fractures (VF) commonly cause severe disabling pain in cancer patients. VFs are common among elderly patients and account for approximately 1.5 million per year in ...the general population. Objective: Bone metastasis, which is a second major cause of pathologic fracture, may lead to severe intolerable pain, life-threatening hypercalcemia, spinal cord compression, and immobility. The purpose of this study was to evaluate pain relief and improvement in quality of life (QOL) in patients with metastatic VF undergoing percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP). Methods: Ten cancer patients having metastatic VF underwent PVP from July 2018 to August 2020. All demographic data, procedures, improvement in pain, and analgesic requirements of patients were taken from a computer data system and telephonic follow-up. Results: Majority of patients were suffering from carcinoma lung followed by carcinoma pancreas. The mean ± standard deviation of Visual Analog Scale preoperatively was 8.8 ± 1.35, reduced to 2.14 ± 2.11 at 6 months postoperatively, suggesting significant pain reduction. Eight patients had reduction in analgesic requirements and two did not require any analgesics postoperatively. During the entire follow-up, there was no delayed complication. Conclusion: PVP is an effective, safe, and minimally invasive procedure for treating painful metastatic vertebral compression fracture refractory to conservative treatments. It provides a marked reduction of pain, maintains mechanical stability of the vertebrae, and improves QOL.
Background: Coronary sinus (CS) is the largest diameter vessel in the coronary venous network, which serves as the primary collector of cardiac venous blood. Because the coronary venous system is not ...prone to the effects of atherosclerotic disease, it may also serve as a potential avenue for coronary artery bypass.
Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study was to provide morphological and histological data of CS for making an interventional device.
Materials and Methods: The present study cross-sectional study. Thirty hearts of different ages and of both sexes (22 males and 8 females) and duration of study is 2 years procured from cadavers available in the Department of Anatomy, SRMS IMS, Bareilly, U.P, India, were taken.
Results: The mean length of the CS is 36.83±17.29 mm. The width of CS at the point of opening in to right atrium is 4.92±3.53 mm. The mean length of CS in males was 41.44±11.37 mm. While in females the mean length of CS was 39.29±11.17 mm. Histological study by Orcein stain show different amount of elastic fibers in proximal, middle, and distal part.
Conclusion: Morphological and histological study of the CS suggests this structure to be an independent, cardiac chamber with a mural structure similar to atrial myocardium and it may be target for study and ablation, in the future therapy of atrial arrhythmias.
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Objective: Automatic heart sound analysis has the potential to improve the diagnosis of valvular heart diseases in the primary care phase, as well as in countries where there is neither the expertise ...nor the equipment to perform echocardiograms. An algorithm has been trained, on the PhysioNet open-access heart sounds database, to classify heart sounds as normal or abnormal. Approach: The heart sounds are segmented using an open-source algorithm based on a hidden semi-Markov model. Following this, the time-frequency behaviour of a single heartbeat is characterized by using a novel implementation of the continuous wavelet transform, mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, and certain complexity measures. These features help detect the presence of any murmurs. A number of other features are also extracted to characterise the inter-beat behaviour of the heart sounds, which helps to recognize diseases such as arrhythmia. The extracted features are normalized and their dimensionality is reduced using principal component analysis. They are then used as the input to a fully-connected, two-hidden-layer neural network, trained by error backpropagation, and regularized with DropConnect. Main results: This algorithm achieved an accuracy of 85.2% on the test data, which placed third in the PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge (first place scored 86.0%). However, this is unrealistic of real-world performance, as the test data contained a dataset (dataset-e) in which normal and abnormal heart sounds were recorded with different stethoscopes. A 10-fold cross-validation study on the training data (excluding dataset-e) gives a mean score of 74.8%, which is a more realistic estimate of accuracy. With dataset-e excluded from training, the algorithm scored only 58.1% on the test data.
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