There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

https://caltcm.memberclicks.net/assets/documents/acc_aha_chf_2013_guidelines.pdf

2013 ACCF/AHA Guideline for the Management of Heart Failure: A Report of the American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines

The lion's share of bacteria in various environments cannot be cloned in the laboratory and thus cannot be sequenced using existing technologies. A major goal of single-cell genomics is to complement gene-centric metagenomic data with whole-genome assemblies of uncultivated organisms. Assembly of single-cell data is challenging because of highly non-uniform read coverage as well as elevated levels of sequencing errors and chimeric reads. We describe SPAdes, a new assembler for both single-cell and standard (multicell) assembly, and demonstrate that it improves on the recently released E+V-SC assembler (specialized for single-cell data) and on popular assemblers Velvet and SoapDeNovo (for multicell data). SPAdes generates single-cell assemblies, providing information about genomes of uncultivatable bacteria that vastly exceeds what may be obtained via traditional metagenomics studies. SPAdes is available online ( http://bioinf.spbau.ru/spades ). It is distributed as open source software.

SPAdes, a new genome assembly algorithm and its applications to single-cell sequencing ( 7th Annual SFAF Meeting, 2012)

Soil Chemical Analysis

Statistics for Spatial Data.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the localization accuracy of range-free algorithm in three-dimensional (3D) space for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, weighted centroid localization algorithm using teaching learning based optimization (WCL-TLBO) is proposed to improve the positioning accuracy in 3D space of WSN. In range-free algorithms, only received signal strength (RSS) information between nodes is sufficient to determine the position of target nodes. RSS value gives the clue to find out the distance between sensor nodes but shows non-linearity between RSS and distance. To overcome this non-linearity, fuzzy logic system (FLS) is used. Edge weights of WCL are modelled using FLS. Further to reduce the errors, TLBO is applied to optimize these edge weights. Simulation results establish the superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of localization accuracy to other existing range-free algorithms in similar scenario.

3D Weighted Centroid Localization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network Using Teaching Learning Based Optimization

Case Report 97 year old female presented with pain, swelling and discharge from right eye for seven days, with history of loss of vision of right eye for 3 days. Patient was a known diabetic, on irregular treatment, with positive history of direct contact with livestock. On examination, in right eye there was no perception of light. There was extensive erosion of the periocular tissues extending upto the orbital rim on all sides, over an area of approximately 6X6 cm2. Both upper and lower lids were absent (Figure 1). On exploration of the wound, maggots were seen crawling on the wound and attempts at their removal were quite painful for the patient. Hence wound was cleaned with hydrogen peroxide and daily dressing of the wound was done with povidone iodine. Patient was investigated (TLC=13000; Blood Sugar=336mg%; HbA1C= 9.8) and started on oral antibiotics and hypoglycemics. Tab. Ivermectin 12 mg/day was given for three days. All the larvae were dead within 12 hours of starting treatment with Ivermectin. CT scan showed inflammatory lesions around right orbit with involvement of paranasal sinuses (Figure 2). Biopsy of the lesion revealed tumor tissue in dermis, attached to overlying epidermis, with a solid infiltration pattern and cells arranged in nests with prominent peripheral palisading, surrounding stroma showing desmoplastic reaction, features suggestive of Basal Cell Carcinoma (Figure 3). Patient’s condition slowly improved with treatment (Figures 4,5,6), and even though the eye was lost, we were able to prevent further damage and consequent morbidity without resorting to extensive mechanical debridement as is often required in such cases.

https://www.djo.org.in/filedownload.aspx?id=443

Ivermectin in the Management of Ophthalmomyiasis in an Elderly Immuno-compromised Female

Parametric chamfer alignment (PChA) is commonly employed for aligning an observed set of points with a corresponding set of reference points. PChA estimates optimal geometric transformation parameters that minimize an objective function formulated as the sum of the squared distances from each transformed observed point to its closest reference point. A distance transform enables efficient computation of the (squared) distances, and the objective function minimization is commonly performed via the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) nonlinear least squares iterative optimization algorithm. The point-wise computations of the objective function, gradient, and Hessian approximation required for the LM iterations make PChA computationally demanding for large-scale datasets. We propose an acceleration of the PChA via a parallelized and pipelined realization that is particularly well suited for large-scale datasets and for modern GPU architectures. Specifically, we partition the observed points among the GPU blocks and decompose the expensive LM calculations in correspondence with the GPU’s single-instruction multiple-thread architecture to significantly speed up this bottleneck step for PChA on large-scale datasets. Additionally, by reordering computations, we propose a novel pipelining of the LM algorithm that offers further speedup by exploiting the low arithmetic latency of the GPU compared with its high global memory access latency. Results obtained on two different platforms for both 2D and 3D large-scale point datasets from our ongoing research demonstrate that the proposed PChA GPU implementation provides a significant speedup over its single CPU counterpart.

Accelerated parametric chamfer alignment using a parallel, pipelined GPU realization

Application of structural time series model for forecasting gram production in India.

Objective Smoking rates among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) exceed those in the general population. This study identified smoking cessation strategies used in patients with RA and synthesized data on their effects. Methods We conducted a systematic review of studies that reported effects of interventions for smoking cessation in patients with RA. We searched 5 electronic databases until March 2022. Screening, quality appraisal, and data collection were done independently by 2 reviewers. Results We included 18 studies reporting interventions for patients or providers: 14 evaluated strategies for patients (5 education on cardiovascular risk factors including smoking, 3 educational interventions on smoking cessation alone, 3 education with nicotine replacement and counseling, and 1 study each: education with nicotine replacement, counseling sessions alone, and a social marketing campaign). Smoking cessation rates ranged from 4% (95% CI: 2%-6%, 24 to 48 weeks) for cardiovascular risk education to 43% (95% CI: 21%-67%, 104 weeks) for counseling sessions alone. The pooled cessation rate for all interventions was 22% (95% CI: 8%-41%, 4 weeks to 104 weeks; 9 studies). Four interventions trained providers to ascertain smoking status and provide referrals for smoking cessation. The pooled rates of referrals to quit services increased from 5% in pre-implementation populations to 70% in post-implementation populations. Conclusion Studies varied in patient characteristics, the interventions used, and their implementation structure. Only 3 studies were controlled clinical trials. Additional controlled studies are needed to determine best practices for smoking cessation for patients with RA.

Gaurav Sharma

Papers

3D Weighted Centroid Localization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network Using Teaching Learning Based Optimization

Ivermectin in the Management of Ophthalmomyiasis in an Elderly Immuno-compromised Female

Accelerated parametric chamfer alignment using a parallel, pipelined GPU realization

Application of structural time series model for forecasting gram production in India.

A systematic review with meta-analysis of the effects of smoking cessation strategies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis