Gabor-modulated depth separable convolution for retinal vessel segmentation in fundus images.

Background: In diabetic retinopathy, precise segmentation of retinal vessels is essential for accurate diagnosis and effective disease management. This task is particularly challenging due to the varying sizes of vessels, their bifurcations, and the presence of highly curved segments. While numerous automated segmentation techniques have demonstrated strong performance, deep neural networks have struggled to effectively model the geometric transformations of retinal vessels without extensive training datasets.

Unfolded deep kernel estimation-attention UNet-based retinal image segmentation.

Retinal vessel segmentation is a critical process in the automated inquiry of fundus images to screen and diagnose diabetic retinopathy. It is a widespread complication of diabetes that causes sudden vision loss. Automated retinal vessel segmentation can help to detect these changes more accurately and quickly than manual evaluation by an ophthalmologist.

Prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress among parents of neonates admitted to neonatal intensive care unit: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission causes significant distress that can hinder the successful transition into parenthood, child-parent relations, and child development.

Purpose: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to understand parental psychological phenomena. Here we assessed the emotional response of parents of newborns during NICU admission.

Audio Augmentation for Non-Native Children's Speech Recognition through Discriminative Learning.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) in children is a rapidly evolving field, as children become more accustomed to interacting with virtual assistants, such as Amazon Echo, Cortana, and other smart speakers, and it has advanced the human-computer interaction in recent generations. Furthermore, non-native children are observed to exhibit a diverse range of reading errors during second language (L2) acquisition, such as lexical disfluency, hesitations, intra-word switching, and word repetitions, which are not yet addressed, resulting in ASR's struggle to recognize non-native children's speech. The main objective of this study is to develop a non-native children's speech recognition system on top of feature-space discriminative models, such as feature-space maximum mutual information (fMMI) and boosted feature-space maximum mutual information (fbMMI).

Impact of probiotic on anxiety and depression symptoms in pregnant and lactating women and microbiota of infants: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Probiotics are non-invasive therapies composed of live bacteria and yeast. Administration of prebiotics improved the health status of pregnant and lactating women, as well as newborns. This review aimed to appraise the evidence concerning the effectiveness of probiotics on the mental health of pregnant women, lactating mother and the microbiota of the newborn.

The Psychological Morbidity among Health Care Workers During the Early Phase of Covid-19 Pandemic in India: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Across India, there have been multiple studies conducted to address the issues of the mental health of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study estimated the pooled prevalence of psychological morbidity among healthcare workers during the early phase of the COVID 19 pandemic in India. We searched the following electronic bibliographic databases: PubMed, ScienceDirect, Wiley online library, and Google scholar for studies conducted from the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic until 25 September 2021.

Closed-set automatic speaker identification using multi-scale recurrent networks in non-native children.

Children may benefit from automatic speaker identification in a variety of applications, including child security, safety, and education. The key focus of this study is to develop a closed-set child speaker identification system for non-native speakers of English in both text-dependent and text-independent speech tasks in order to track how the speaker's fluency affects the system. The multi-scale wavelet scattering transform is used to compensate for concerns like the loss of high-frequency information caused by the most widely used mel frequency cepstral coefficients feature extractor.

Prevalence of Physical and Psychological Impacts of Wearing Personal Protective Equipment on Health Care Workers During COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) among the frontline health care workers (HCWs). Even though PPE helps in preventing infection, it poses significant physical and psychological impacts at varying levels. Correspondingly, multiple independent studies have brought out the PPE-associated problems.

COVID-19 and Psychological Distress among the General Population of India: Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies.

Background: There is scanty evidence regarding the magnitude of COVID-19-related psychological distress (PD) among the general population of India.

Objectives: This study aimed to estimate the pooled prevalence of PD among the general public of India during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Material And Methods: We conducted a meta-analysis of 21 online surveys conducted across the Indian subcontinent and published between 2020 and 2021.

Effect of Perineural and Intravenous Dexamethasone on Duration of Analgesia in Supraclavicular Brachial Plexus Block with Bupivacaine: A Comparative Study.

Background: Perineural dexamethasone has been shown to improve analgesia in single injection supraclavicular block. Systemic mechanism of action of dexamethasone along with safety concerns of perineural route of administration has prompted the investigation of intravenous route as an alternative.

Aims: We aim to compare the effects of dexamethasone as an additive to local anesthetic when used via perineural and intravenous route in terms of duration of analgesia and onset of motor and sensory block.

Factors associated with maternal near miss: A study from Kerala.

Severe life-threatening situations leading to a "near-miss" event may arise unexpectedly in pregnancy. Delay in seeking help, delayed access to care, and poor quality of emergency obstetric services can lead to undesirable outcomes. Women meeting the WHO "near-miss" criteria were assessed using a cross-sectional study design.

Factors Associated with Delayed Reporting of Invasive Carcinoma Cervix in a Rural Tertiary Care Center.

Background: The delay in detection of premalignant and malignant lesions can have an adverse impact on the outcome of carcinoma cervix. In spite of relatively good healthcare facilities, women in Kerala continue to report in advanced stages of cervical malignancy.

Objective: To analyze factors associated with delayed reporting and to evaluate awareness about screening and vaccination programs for prevention of carcinoma cervix.

Comparative Kinetic Studies and Performance Evaluation of Biofilm and Biomass Characteristics of Pseudomonas fluorescens in Degrading Synthetic Phenolic Effluent in Inverse Fluidized Bed Biofilm Reactor.

The bioremediation potential of Pseudomonas fluorescens was studied in an Inverse Fluidized Bed Biofilm Reactor under batch recirculation conditions using synthetic phenolic effluent of various concentrations (400, 600, 800, 1000 and 1200 mg/l). The performance of the reactor was investigated and the characteristics of biomass and biofilm were determined by evaluating biofilm dry density and thickness, bioparticle density, suspended and attached biomass concentration, chemical oxygen demand and phenol removal efficiency. Biodegradation kinetics had been studied for suspended biomass culture and biofilm systems with respect to its specific growth and substrate consumption rates.

Statistical optimization and mutagenesis for high level of phytase production by Rhizopus oligosporus MTCC 556 under solid state fermentation.

The present study deals with production of phytase from Rhizopus oligosporus MTCC 556 by solid state fermentation (SSF) using different (ADT27, IR20, PAIYUR1, KG, and RASI) rice bran varieties, in which ADT27 rice bran yield maximum of 6.2 U gds⁻¹ phytase. Statistical optimization was employed by Central Composite Design (CCD); the results showed that 3.

Microbial desalination cell for enhanced biodegradation of waste engine oil using a novel bacterial strain Bacillus subtilis moh3.

Microbial desalination cell (MDC) is a bioelectrochemical system developed recently from microbial fuel cells (MFCs), for producing green energy from organic wastes along with desalination of saltwater. MDC is proved to be a better performer than MFC in terms of power output and chemical oxygen demand removal, with desalination as an additional feature. This study investigates the application potential of MDC for integrated biodegradation of waste engine oil.

Quality and shelf life of cooked buffalo tripe rolls at refrigerated storage under vacuum packaging condition.

Cooked buffalo tripe rolls prepared from a combination of buffalo tripe and buffalo meat by using mincing and blade tenderization process were stored at 4 ± 1 °C in polyethylene teraphthalate laminated with polythene (PET/PE) pouches under vacuum packaging condition. The samples were evaluated for physico-chemical parameters, microbial quality and sensory attributes at regular intervals of 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days of storage. Significant changes were seen in physico-chemical, microbial and sensory characteristics of BTRs during storage at refrigeration temperature (4 ± 1 °C) under vacuum packaging condition.

Preparation and characterization of Ni-doped TiO2 materials for photocurrent and photocatalytic applications.

Different amounts of Ni-doped TiO(2) (Ni = 0.1 to 10%) powders and thin films were prepared by following a conventional coprecipitation and sol-gel dip coating techniques, respectively, at 400 to 800°C, and were thoroughly characterized by means of XRD, FT-IR, FT-Raman, DRS, UV-visible, BET surface area, zeta potential, flat band potential, and photocurrent measurement techniques. Photocatalytic abilities of Ni-doped TiO(2) powders were evaluated by means of methylene blue (MB) degradation reaction under simulated solar light.

Development and quality evaluation of cooked buffalo tripe rolls.

Cooked buffalo tripe rolls (BTRs) were prepared from a combination of buffalo tripe (75%) and buffalo meat (25%) by using mincing (M-BTR) and blade tenderization (BT-BTR). They were stored at 4±1°C and studied for various physico-chemical, sensory and microbial qualities. Significantly (P<0.

Electrochemical oxidation for the treatment of textile industry wastewater.

This study elucidates the reduction of organics from textile effluents through electrochemical oxidation technique. Effect of pH and current intensity were investigated in this system. It was found that degradation was maximum at the current intensity of 0.

Emodin upregulates urokinase plasminogen activator, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 and promotes wound healing in human fibroblasts.

Urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) system is important for several biological processes that call for extracellular proteolysis, fibrinolysis, cell migration, proliferation and angiogenesis. The current study highlights the fibrinolytic and wound healing potential of emodin, an anthraquinone, with relevance to the uPA system. Emodin increased the fibrinolytic activity of fibroblast cells in a dose-dependent manner.