Diversity, distribution of Puroindoline genes and their effect on kernel hardness in a diverse panel of Chinese wheat germplasm.

Background: Kernel hardness, which has great influence on the end-use properties of common wheat, is mainly controlled by Puroindoline genes, Pina and Pinb. Using EcoTILLING platform, we herein investigated the allelic variations of Pina and Pinb genes and their association with the Single Kernel Characterization System (SKCS) hardness index in a diverse panel of wheat germplasm.

Results: The kernel hardness varied from 1.

SiNC: Saliency-injected neural codes for representation and efficient retrieval of medical radiographs.

Medical image collections contain a wealth of information which can assist radiologists and medical experts in diagnosis and disease detection for making well-informed decisions. However, this objective can only be realized if efficient access is provided to semantically relevant cases from the ever-growing medical image repositories. In this paper, we present an efficient method for representing medical images by incorporating visual saliency and deep features obtained from a fine-tuned convolutional neural network (CNN) pre-trained on natural images.

Histopathological Pattern Of Soft Tissues Tumors And Tumour Like Lesions In The Pathology Department Of Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar, Pakistan.

Background: Soft tissues tumours are tumours of mesenchymal origin excluding epithelial, skeletal tissue, reticuloendothelial system, brain coverings and solid viscera of the body. The objective of this study was to know the histopathological pattern of soft tissues tumours in the Pathology Department of Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan.

Methods: This descriptive study was conducted on retrospective data from January 2009 to December 2013.

All-Cause Mortality Risk in Australian Women with Impaired Fasting Glucose and Diabetes.

Aims: Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and diabetes are increasing in prevalence worldwide and lead to serious health problems. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate the association between impaired fasting glucose or diabetes and mortality over a 10-year period in Australian women.

Methods: This study included 1167 women (ages 20-94 yr) enrolled in the Geelong Osteoporosis Study.

Removal of potentially toxic elements from aqueous solutions and industrial wastewater using activated carbon.

Water contamination with potentially toxic elements (PTEs) has become one of the key issues in recent years that threatens human health and ecological systems. The present study is aimed at removing PTEs like cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu) and lead (Pb) from aqueous solutions and industrial wastewater using activated carbon (AC) as an adsorbent through different batch and column experiments. Results demonstrated that the removal of PTEs from aqueous solutions was highly pH dependent, except for Cr, and the maximum removal (>78%) was recorded at pH 6.

Environment effects for earliness and grain yield traits in F diallel populations of maize (Zea mays L.).

Background: Five maize inbred lines, 20 F diallel hybrids and two check genotypes were evaluated through genotype × environment interaction (GEI) and GGE biplot for earliness and yield traits at four locations.

Results: Genotype, environment and GEI showed highly significant differences for all the traits. In total sum of squares, environment and genotype played a primary role, followed by GEI.

Prevalence of Diabetes Type 2 in Hepatitis C Infected Patients in Kpk, Pakistan.

Hepatitis C (HCV) and diabetes mellitus are the two main health concerns that cause devastating health and financial worries worldwide. It has been observed in the past that both diseases have a high correlation that might be due to the abnormal conditions of the liver. But the mechanism of the prevalence of diabetes in patients with chronic HCV infection still remains unclear.

Tuning crystalline ordering by annealing and additives to study its effect on exciton diffusion in a polyalkylthiophene copolymer.

The influence of various processing conditions on the singlet exciton diffusion is explored in films of a conjugated random copolymer poly-(3-hexylthiophene-co-3-dodecylthiophene) (P3HT-co-P3DDT) and correlated with the degree of crystallinity probed by grazing incidence X-ray scattering and with exciton bandwidth determined from absorption spectra. The exciton diffusion coefficient is deduced from exciton-exciton annihilation measurements and is found to increase by more than a factor of three when thin films are annealed using CS solvent vapour. A doubling of exciton diffusion coefficient is observed upon melt annealing at 200 °C and the corresponding films show about 50% enhancement in the degree of crystallinity.

Quantum-corrected transient analysis of plasmonic nanostructures.

A time domain surface integral equation (TD-SIE) solver is developed for quantum-corrected analysis of transient electromagnetic field interactions on plasmonic nanostructures with sub-nanometer gaps. "Quantum correction" introduces an auxiliary tunnel to support the current path that is generated by electrons tunneled between the nanostructures. The permittivity of the auxiliary tunnel and the nanostructures is obtained from density functional theory (DFT) computations.

New complexity for aromatic ring agostic interactions.

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that for ligand directed aromatic ring C-H bond activation, the agostic donation can share the same antibonding acceptor orbitals as a previously unrecognised π-donation from the aromatic ring of the ligand. The recognition of carbon based orbitals assisting the agostic interaction has significant implication for C-H bond activation chemistry.

An Exploratory Study to Determine Whether BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutation Carriers Have Higher Risk of Cardiac Toxicity.

Anthracycline-based cardiotoxicity is concerning for women with breast cancer and portends a dose-dependent risk of developing left ventricular dysfunction. Overall, the prevalence of heart failure (HF) is ≈2% of the total US population; however, BRCA-deficient mice have shown increased HF. We evaluated for the inherent risk of HF in women with BRCA mutations to determine whether treatment with anthracycline-based therapy increased this risk.

Exciton Diffusion Length and Charge Extraction Yield in Organic Bilayer Solar Cells.

A method for resolving the diffusion length of excitons and the extraction yield of charge carriers is presented based on the performance of organic bilayer solar cells and careful modeling. The technique uses a simultaneous variation of the absorber thickness and the excitation wavelength. Rigorously differing solar cell structures as well as independent photoluminescence quenching measurements give consistent results.

Comparison of Direct Trocar Insertion with Other Techniques for Laparoscopy.

Objective: To assess the safety of direct trocar insertion (DTI) before creating pneumoperitoneum in laparoscopic procedures.

Study Design: An observational study.

Place And Duration Of Study: Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Kohat, Pakistan from November 2013 to January 2015.

Ageing, Chronic Disease and Injury: A Study in Western Victoria (Australia).

An increasing burden of chronic disease and associated health service delivery is expected due to the ageing Australian population. Injuries also affect health and wellbeing and have a long-term impact on health service utilisation. There is a lack of comprehensive data on disease and injury in rural and regional areas of Australia.

Visual saliency models for summarization of diagnostic hysteroscopy videos in healthcare systems.

In clinical practice, diagnostic hysteroscopy (DH) videos are recorded in full which are stored in long-term video libraries for later inspection of previous diagnosis, research and training, and as an evidence for patients' complaints. However, a limited number of frames are required for actual diagnosis, which can be extracted using video summarization (VS). Unfortunately, the general-purpose VS methods are not much effective for DH videos due to their significant level of similarity in terms of color and texture, unedited contents, and lack of shot boundaries.

Ascitic Fluid Culture in Cirrhotic Patients with Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis.

Objective: To determine the frequency and compare the culture yield of bacterial isolation by conventional and blood culture BACTEC bottle techniques in cirrhotic patients with spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP).

Study Design: Cross-sectional comparative study.

Place And Duration Of Study: Pathology Department, Bannu Medical College, Bannu, KPK, from January 2012 to December 2013.

Efficient eco-friendly inverted quantum dot sensitized solar cells.

Recent progress in quantum dot (QD) sensitized solar cells has demonstrated the possibility of low-cost and efficient photovoltaics. However, the standard device structure based on n-type materials often suffers from slow hole injection rate, which may lead to unbalanced charge transport. We have fabricated efficient p-type (inverted) QD sensitized cells, which combine the advantages of conventional QD cells with p-type dye sensitized configurations.

IDENTIFICATION OF QTLs ON CHROMOSOME 1B FOR GRAIN QUALITY TRAITS IN BREAD WHEAT (TRITICUM AESTIVUM L.).

The present study was designed considering the importance of grain quality traits, genetic diversity and marker-trait association analysis in wheat. A significant amount of genetic diversity was found for various seed traits though the genotypes included in the study were found structured. The extent of polymorphism was high with a range of 2-13 alleles and average of 6.

Dual-Level Security based Cyclic18 Steganographic Method and its Application for Secure Transmission of Keyframes during Wireless Capsule Endoscopy.

In this paper, the problem of secure transmission of sensitive contents over the public network Internet is addressed by proposing a novel data hiding method in encrypted images with dual-level security. The secret information is divided into three blocks using a specific pattern, followed by an encryption mechanism based on the three-level encryption algorithm (TLEA). The input image is scrambled using a secret key, and the encrypted sub-message blocks are then embedded in the scrambled image by cyclic18 least significant bit (LSB) substitution method, utilizing LSBs and intermediate LSB planes.

Use of Radiation Therapy in Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer Improves Survival: A SEER Database Analysis.

Objectives: Although both radiation therapy and chemotherapy are frequently used to treat locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) patients, the role of radiation therapy remains controversial with data evaluating its efficacy mostly derived from small randomized trials. In this study, we evaluate the survival benefit of radiation therapy using SEER dataset in patients with LAPC.

Materials And Methods: The SEER Registry dataset from 2004 to 2011 was queried to identify LAPC (TNM stage III) patients.

Improving Workplace-Based Learning for Undergraduate Medical Students.

Workplace-based learning is considered as one of the most effective way of translating medical theory into clinical practice. Although employed traditionally at postgraduate level, this strategy can be used in undergraduate students coming for clerkships in clinical departments. There are many challenges to workplace learning such as, unfavorable physical environment, lack of interest by clinical staff and teachers, and lack of student motivation.

Unprecedented Strong Panchromic Absorption from Proton-Switchable Iridium(III) Azoimidazolate Complexes.

Two new heteroleptic iridium(III) complexes bearing an aryldiazoimidazole ligand are reported. These complexes differ structurally with respect to the protonation state of the imidazole ring, but can be independently accessed by varying the synthetic conditions. Their structures have been unequivocally confirmed by X-ray crystal structure analysis, with surprising differences in the structural parameters of the two complexes.

Attenuated Tonic and Enhanced Phasic Release of Dopamine in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

It is unclear whether attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is a hypodopaminergic or hyperdopaminergic condition. Different sets of data suggest either hyperactive or hypoactive dopamine system. Since indirect methods used in earlier studies have arrived at contradictory conclusions, we directly measured the tonic and phasic release of dopamine in ADHD volunteers.

Sparse coded image super-resolution using K-SVD trained dictionary based on regularized orthogonal matching pursuit.

Image super-resolution (SR) plays a vital role in medical imaging that allows a more efficient and effective diagnosis process. Usually, diagnosing is difficult and inaccurate from low-resolution (LR) and noisy images. Resolution enhancement through conventional interpolation methods strongly affects the precision of consequent processing steps, such as segmentation and registration.