Background
Adductor canal block (ACB) is a peripheral nerve blockade technique that provides good pain control in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty which however does not relieve posterior ...knee pain. The recent technique of an ultrasound-guided local anesthetic infiltration of the interspace between popliteal artery and the capsule of posterior knee (IPACK) has shown promising results in providing significant posterior knee analgesia without affecting the motor nerves.
Materials and methods
A prospective study was conducted from September 2016 to March 2017 in a total of 120 patients undergoing unilateral total knee arthroplasty. The initial 60 consecutive patients received ACB + IPACK (Group 1,
n
= 60), and the subsequent 60 patients received ACB alone (Group 2,
n
= 60). All patients were evaluated with VAS score for pain recorded at 8 h, postoperative day (POD) 1 and POD 2 after the surgery. The secondary outcome measures assessed were the range of movement (ROM) and ambulation distance.
Results
VAS score showed significantly (
p
< 0.005) better values in ACB + IPACK group compared to the ACB group. The mean ROM of knee and ambulation distance also showed significantly better values in ACB + IPACK group compared to the ACB group.
Conclusion
ACB + IPACK is a promising technique that offers improved pain management in the immediate postoperative period without affecting the motor function around the knee joint resulting in better ROM and ambulation compared to ACB alone.
► We have introduced a low-cost, abundantly locally available non-conventional adsorbent in place of activated carbons. ► The kinetic data were well described by second order kinetic model and ...intra-particle diffusion model. ► The Langmuir and generalized isotherm models were the best fitting for the isotherm results. ► Removal capacity of Jujuba seeds is more than so many agricultural wastes. ► Relative cost of Jujuba seeds for the removal of Congo red can be compared with activated carbons
The feasibility of using Indian Jujuba Seeds (IJS) (
Zizyphus maruritiana), abundantly available in and around the Nallamalla forest in Andhra Pradesh, for the anionic dye (Congo red, CR) adsorption from aqueous solution, has been investigated as low cost and eco-friendly adsorbent. Adsorption studies were conducted on a batch process, to study the effects of contact time, initial concentration of CR, pH and temperature. Maximum colour removal was observed at pH 2. The equilibrium data was analyzed by the Langmuir, the Freundlich and the General isotherms. The data fitted well with the Langmuir model, with a maximum adsorption capacity of 55.56
mg
g
−1. The pseudo-second-order kinetics was the best for the adsorption of CR, by IJS (
Z. maruritiana) with good correlation. Thermodynamic parameters, such as standard free energy change (Δ
G°), standard enthalpy change (Δ
H°) and standard entropy change (Δ
S°), were analyzed. The results suggest that IJS (
Z. maruritiana) is a potential low-cost adsorbent for the CR dye removal from synthetic dye wastewater.
Recent botnets such as Conficker, Kraken, and Torpig have used DNS-based "domain fluxing" for command-and-control, where each Bot queries for existence of a series of domain names and the owner has ...to register only one such domain name. In this paper, we develop a methodology to detect such "domain fluxes" in DNS traffic by looking for patterns inherent to domain names that are generated algorithmically, in contrast to those generated by humans. In particular, we look at distribution of alphanumeric characters as well as bigrams in all domains that are mapped to the same set of IP addresses. We present and compare the performance of several distance metrics, including K-L distance, Edit distance, and Jaccard measure. We train by using a good dataset of domains obtained via a crawl of domains mapped to all IPv4 address space and modeling bad datasets based on behaviors seen so far and expected. We also apply our methodology to packet traces collected at a Tier-1 ISP and show we can automatically detect domain fluxing as used by Conficker botnet with minimal false positives, in addition to discovering a new botnet within the ISP trace. We also analyze a campus DNS trace to detect another unknown botnet exhibiting advanced domain-name generation technique.
The incidence of diabetes and its associated micro- and macrovascular complications is greatly increasing worldwide. The most prevalent vascular complications of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes ...include nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy and cardiovascular diseases. Evidence suggests that both genetic and environmental factors are involved in these pathologies. Clinical trials have underscored the beneficial effects of intensive glycaemic control for preventing the progression of complications. Accumulating evidence suggests a key role for epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone post-translational modifications in chromatin, and non-coding RNAs in the complex interplay between genes and the environment. Factors associated with the pathology of diabetic complications, including hyperglycaemia, growth factors, oxidant stress and inflammatory factors can lead to dysregulation of these epigenetic mechanisms to alter the expression of pathological genes in target cells such as endothelial, vascular smooth muscle, retinal and cardiac cells, without changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Furthermore, long-term persistence of these alterations to the epigenome may be a key mechanism underlying the phenomenon of ‘metabolic memory’ and sustained vascular dysfunction despite attainment of glycaemic control. Current therapies for most diabetic complications have not been fully efficacious, and hence a study of epigenetic mechanisms that may be involved is clearly warranted as they can not only shed novel new insights into the pathology of diabetic complications, but also lead to the identification of much needed new drug targets. In this review, we highlight the emerging role of epigenetics and epigenomics in the vascular complications of diabetes and metabolic memory.
Northeast India, the only region which currently forms a land bridge between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, has been proposed as an important corridor for the initial peopling of East ...Asia. Given that the Austro-Asiatic linguistic family is considered to be the oldest and spoken by certain tribes in India, Northeast India and entire Southeast Asia, we expect that populations of this family from Northeast India should provide the signatures of genetic link between Indian and Southeast Asian populations. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyzed mtDNA and Y-Chromosome SNP and STR data of the eight groups of the Austro-Asiatic Khasi from Northeast India and the neighboring Garo and compared with that of other relevant Asian populations. The results suggest that the Austro-Asiatic Khasi tribes of Northeast India represent a genetic continuity between the populations of South and Southeast Asia, thereby advocating that northeast India could have been a major corridor for the movement of populations from India to East/Southeast Asia.
Density based clustering methods are proposed for clustering spatial databases with noise. Density Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) can discover clusters of arbitrary ...shape and also handles outliers effectively. DBSCAN obtains clusters by finding the number of points within the specified distance from a given point. It involves computing distances from given point to all other points in the dataset. The conventional index based methods construct a hierarchical structure over the dataset to speed-up the neighbor search operations. The hierarchical index-structures fail to scale for datasets of dimensionality above 20. In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based index structure method Groups that accelerates the neighbor search operations and also scalable for high dimensional datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the speed of DBSCAN by a factor of about 1.5–2.2 on benchmark datasets. The performance of DBSCAN degrades considerably with noise due to unnecessary distance computations introduced by noise points while the proposed method is robust to noise by pruning out noise points early and eliminating the unnecessary distance computations. The cluster results produced by our method are exactly similar to that of DBSCAN but executed at a much faster pace.
•A graph-based index structure is built for speeding up neighbor search operations.•No additional inputs are required to build the index structure.•Proposed method is scalable for high-dimensional datasets.•Handles noise effectively to improve the performance of DBSCAN.
•Nanostructured WO3 thin films were prepared by electron beam evaporation.•The gas sensing measurements were evaluated towards different operating temperatures, different gases and different ...concentrations.•When the substrate temperature increased to 100 °C, grain size of the film increased and nanorods appeared and possess a very high surface to volume ratio.•The films deposited at substrate temperature of 100 °C shows high response value of 58 towards ethanol gas.
In the recent years, metal oxide semiconductors such as SnO2, CuO, Fe2O3, TiO2, WO3 and ZnO were investigated for the detection of ethanol gas in the environment. Among these, WO3 is one of the best n-type semiconductor material for ethanol gas detection. In this paper, nanostructured WO3 thin films were prepared by electron beam evaporation on glass substrate and investigated their ethanol gas sensing properties. Surface morphology, structural and elemental analysis of the WO3 thin films were analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The as deposited films exhibited nanostructure and highly influenced by the substrate temperature. From the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis, we found that substrate temperature increases the binding energy shift in lower energy regions and shows that WO3 films contain oxygen vacancies. The gas sensor sensitivities were measured for different gases with different concentrations at various operating temperatures. The obtained results show that the nanostructure WO3 films are suitable sensing material for ethanol gas. The nanostructure WO3 films deposited at substrate temperature of 100 °C shows best sensitivity with quick response and recovery time, which is attributed to the formation of nanorods and possess a very high surface to volume ratio.
Moringa oleifera bark (MOB), an agricultural solid waste by-product has been developed into an effective and efficient biosorbent for the removal of Ni(II) from aqua solutions. The biosorbent was ...characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), elemental analysis and FTIR analyses. The experimental equilibrium adsorption data were analyzed by four widely used two-parameter equations – Langmuir, Freundlich, Dubinin–Radushkevich (D–R), and Temkin isotherms. Among the four isotherm models Langmuir model provided a better fit with the experimental data than others as revealed by high correlation coefficients, low chi-square values. The kinetics data fitted well into the pseudo-second-order model with correlation coefficient greater than 0.99. Desorption experiments were carried out to explore the feasibility of regenerating the biosorbent and the biosorbed Ni(II) from MOB was desorbed using 0.2
M HCl with an efficiency of 98.02% recovery. The thermodynamic parameters (∆
H, ∆
S and ∆
G) of the nickel ion uptake onto MOB indicated that, the process is endothermic and proceeds spontaneously. The findings of the present study indicates that MOB can be successfully used for separation of Ni(II) from aqueous solutions.
►The FTIR spectral results indicated that the biosorption of Ni(II) occurs at hydroxyl, carboxyl, and carbonyl functional groups present on the surface of MOB. ►The biosorption process follows pseudo- second order kinetic model. ►The calculated thermodynamic parameters showed the feasibility, endothermic and spontaneous nature of the biosorption of Ni(II) onto MOB biomass. ►The reusability of the biosorbent was good after six consecutive biosorption–desorption cycles.
Thermopriming induces genome-wide differential gene expression and alternative splicing patterns, and establishes a ‘splicing memory’ that helps plants to survive subsequent and otherwise lethal heat ...stress.
Abstract
Abiotic and biotic stresses limit crop productivity. Exposure to a non-lethal stress, referred to as priming, can allow plants to survive subsequent and otherwise lethal conditions; the priming effect persists even after a prolonged stress-free period. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying priming are not fully understood. Here, we investigated the molecular basis of heat-shock memory and the role of priming in Arabidopsis thaliana. Comprehensive analysis of transcriptome-wide changes in gene expression and alternative splicing in primed and non-primed plants revealed that alternative splicing functions as a novel component of heat-shock memory. We show that priming of plants with a non-lethal heat stress results in de-repression of splicing after a second exposure to heat stress. By contrast, non-primed plants showed significant repression of splicing. These observations link ‘splicing memory’ to the ability of plants to survive subsequent and otherwise lethal heat stress. This newly discovered priming-induced splicing memory may represent a general feature of heat-stress responses in plants and other organisms as many of the key components are conserved among eukaryotes. Furthermore, this finding could facilitate the development of novel approaches to improve plant survival under extreme heat stress.
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► Higher order of lipid peroxidation for E. coli treated with higher concentrations of ZnO NPs. ► Higher lipid peroxidation was corroborated with bacteriostatic and bacteriocidal ...conditions. ► ROS induced lipid peroxidation confirmed from the use of antioxidants. ► Deformation, cell swelling and membrane disruptions observed from TEM and SEM.
Recent studies indicated the role of ROS toward antibacterial activity. In our study we report ROS mediated membrane lipid oxidation of Escherichia coli treated with ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) as supported by detection and spectrophotometric measurement of malondialdehyde (MDA) by TBARS (thiobarbituric acid-reactive species) assay. The antibacterial effects of ZnO NPs were studied by measuring the growth curve of E. coli, which showed concentration dependent bacteriostatic and bacteriocidal effects of ZnO NPs. The antibacterial effects were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Further, antibacterial effect of ZnO NPs was found to decrease by introducing histidine to the culture medium treated with ZnO NPs. The ROS scavenging action of histidine was confirmed by treating histidine to the batch of Escherichia coli+ZnO NPs at the end of the lag phase of the growth curve (Set-I) and during inoculation (Set-II). A moderate bacteriostatic effect (lag in the E. coli growth) was observed in Set-II batch while Set-I showed no bacteriostatic effect. From these evidences we confirmed that the antibacterial effect of bare as well as TG capped ZnO NPs were due to membrane lipid peroxidation caused by the ROS generated during ZnO NPs interaction in culture medium.
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