bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Prediction and Optimization of Parameters for the Al5083/ B4C Composite Wear Rate
Authors: Singh Ram , Shadab Malik , Debnath Rabisankar , Rai Ram Naresh 
Published: January 2019

Background:Al5083 has been basically used in marine and aerospace applications where it is intended for higher corrosion resistance and better weldability. Again this, Al5083 matrix has not been suitable for various other applications such as electrical contact brushes, cylinder liners, artificial joints and helicopter blades due to its poor wear resistance properties.Objective:The aim of this research is the optimization of wear rate of the composite with Al5083 matrix, reinforced with B4C (Boron carbide) particles, and it is achieved through the investigation of the subsequent effect: wt.% of the reinforcement, applied load and sliding speed.Methods:The material used for specimen is Al5083 and Al5083/B4C composite which is melted at 750°C in an induction furnace; the composite is prepared by stir casting technique. It was developed by an ex-situ technique. The liquid melt poured into preheated cast iron mould for carrying out the specimen preparation of wear testing.Results:The wear rate of Al5083/B4C composite is less than Al5083, the most influencing factor on wear rate is applied load and mechanism of deformation induced in the sliding surface of the pin was analysed by SEM (scanning electron microscope).Conclusion:Wear rate of Al5083 and Al5083/B4C composite increases with the increase of applied load, sliding speed and decreases as the wt. % B4C increases. The contribution of applied load is more in wear rate as compared to the other two factors and the value predicted by Taguchi, obtained by RSM (Response surface methodology) and evaluated by experiment are almost similar.
A Novel Desensitization Protocol for Infliximab Hypersensitivity in a 13-Year Old Patient with Pustular Psoriasis
Authors: Behera Sapan Kumar , Selvarajan Sandhiya , Mathews Jerene , Shajil Chandana , Das Saibal , Munisamy Malathi , Xavier Alphienes Stanley 
Published: January 2019

Background: Drug hypersensitivity reactions to infliximab have been reported in pediatric
patients. At times, these patients may need infliximab administration in spite of hypersensitivity.
However, only a few reports of desensitization protocols are available in the literature in pediatric
patients.

Case Report:We report a case of immediate hypersensitivity reaction to intravenous infliximab in a
13-year-old child suffering from pustular psoriasis who eventually underwent a 14 step desensitization
protocol for the administration of infliximab in a pediatric intensive care unit.

Results and Conclusion:Although our desensitization protocol was safe and effective, we recommend
the entire desensitization procedure to be performed under the supervision of experienced
personnel in a pediatric intensive care unit. Future studies with larger sample size are needed to confirm
our findings.
Legionella pneumophila Pneumonia in Pregnancy: A Case Report and Review of the Literature
Authors: Kleinberg Katherine A. , Antony Suresh J. 
Published: January 2019

:
L. pneumophila is an unusual cause of pneumonia with a prevalence of 2.7%, and it is
even more uncommon in pregnancy. To date, only 11 cases of Legionnaire’s Disease in pregnancy
have been reported, though this small number could possibly be attributed to underdiagnoses and
under documentation.

Case Presentation:
In this paper, we present a 31-year-old Hispanic female, gravida 4, para 1
from the southwest United States who presented with a 3-week history of fever, worsening cough,
dyspnea on exertion, and hypoxemia. Chest x-ray showed bibasilar infiltrates, with positive serology
for Legionella IgM and IgG (1:250 and 1:640 respectively), as well as positive urinary antigen.
Despite appropriate treatment with azithromycin 500 mg, she continued to have dyspnea and
mild respiratory distress.

Conclusion:
Upon follow up, mother and fetus initially remained stable without any signs of sequelae
from Legionnaire’s disease, but the patient miscarried 5 weeks after the second admission
to the hospital. The chest x-ray eventually cleared up after almost 21 days of azithromycin.
Distribution of Iron Uptake Systems Encoding Genes Among the Clinical Isolates of Escherichia coli Compared to Foodstuffs Isolates
Authors: Mahmoudi Hassan , Hossainpour Hadi , Moradi Mohammad , Alikhani Mohammad Yousef 
Published: January 2019

Background:
Bacteria require iron ions to grow and infect the host, which, by using
iron uptake systems, acquire free iron from their host cell. Escherichia coli is one of the most important
pathogens to cause food poisoning and clinical infections. The aim of this study was to assess
the distribution of iron uptake systems encoding genes in clinical isolates of E.coli compared
to food samples isolates.

Materials and Methods:
This investigation was conducted to determine the prevalence of E. coli
isolated from various sources of food and clinical specimens. The E. coli isolates confirmed by the
standard microbiological methods. The isolates were examined for the presence of iut A and iuc A
genes by specific primers using the polymerase chain reaction technique.

Results:
A total of 100 and 50 isolates of E. coli were collected from clinical samples and foodstuffs,
respectively. The prevalence of E. coli in the food and clinical samples was 33.33% and
64.10%, respectively. The frequency of iut A and iuc A genes in the food and clinical isolates were
76%-84% and 86% - 83%, respectively.

Conclusion:
Our results showed that the prevalence of E. coli isolates with iut A and iuc A genes
was relatively higher compared to many previous studies. The existence of these genes in E. coli
strains is likely to be related to pathogenicity in those strains, which requires further studies in the
future.
Phenotypic and Molecular Survey of Metallo-beta-lactamase-producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolated from Patients with Nosocomial and Non- Nosocomial Infections
Authors: Rouhi Samaneh , Ramazanzadeh Rashid 
Published: January 2019

Background:Resistance to antimicrobial agents in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) including carbapenems is a prominent problem in patients. The aim of this study is surveying Metallo-beta-lactamase (MBL)-producing P. aeruginosa isolated from patient specimens with nosocomial and non-nosocomial infections in Kurdistan province, Iran.Methods:In total, 146 Pseudomonas spp. were collected (December 2015 to August 2017). P. aeruginosa isolates were detected by phenotypic and polymerase chain reactions (PCR) of gyrB gene. Combination disk (CD) phenotypic test was used for the identification of MBL-producing strains and PCR was applied for identification of blaIMP and blaVIM genes in P. aeruginosa. Sensitivity and specificity of phenotypic tests were calculated as well. Fisher’s exact test and logistic regression were used for data analysis (p≤0.05).Results:A total of 134 (91.78%) and 133 (91.09%) P. aeruginosa were detected using PCR and the phenotypic test, respectively. Fifty-six (41.79%) clinical isolates were isolated from patients with nosocomial infection. CD test proved that 67 out of 134 (50%) P. aeruginosa isolates were positive for MBL, of which 11 (8.20%) carried blaIMP gene. No significant relationship was found between MBL-producing P. aeruginosa and blaIMP genes; as well as between MBL-producing P. aeruginosa and blaIMP genes with age, sex, city of residence, inpatient/outpatient and specimen's type (p≥0.05).Conclusion:Presence of MBL-producing P. aeruginosa strains and blaIMP genes were proved in this study; thus more precaution should be taken in the administration of carbapenem antibiotics to patients.
mRNA Expression Profile of SFKs and Involvement of SFKs in the Regulation of LPS-Induced Erk1/2 Signaling in PBMCs of Active BD Patients
Authors: Irtegun-Kandemir Sevgi , Icen-Taskin Irmak , Bozkurt Mehtap , Kalkanli-Tas Sevgi 
Published: January 2019

Background:
Behcet’s Disease (BD) is a multisystemic inflammatory disorder affecting
large vessels, lungs joints, gastrointestinal and neurological systems. The pathogenesis of BD remains
poorly understood. Identifying the key signaling pathway is crucial for a complete understanding of the
pathogenesis of BD.

Objective:
The aim of this study was to determine mRNA expression level of Src family kinases
(SFKs) members and their involvement in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced mitogen-activated protein
kinases (MAPKs) regulation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of active BD patients.

Methods:
Twenty- five active BD patients and twenty-five healthy controls were included in the study.
PBMCs were isolated from total blood by density gradient centrifugation. The mRNA expression levels
of SFKs members were measured by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). The effect of SFKs
activity on LPS-induced activation MAPKs (Erk1/2, p38 and JNK) was examined by Western blot.

Results:
The mRNA expression levels of Hck, Src, Lyn, Yes and Fyn were found to be slightly decreased
in active BD patients compared to the control subjects, but a slight change in mRNA level of
SFKs members did not impact on protein levels and protein activity. LPS-induced Erk1/2 phosphorylation
was significantly increased in the absence of SFKs activity in active BD patients. However, inhibition
of SFKs activity had no effect on LPS-induced phosphorylation of p38 and JNK in both controls
and active BD patients.

Conclusion:
SFKs downregulate LPS-induced Erk1/2 phosphorylation in PBMCs of active BD patients.
Efficacy of Fluorescence Technology vs Conventional Oral Examination for the Early Detection of Oral Pre-Malignant Lesions. A Clinical Comparative Study
Authors: Saini Rajiv , Cantore Stefania , Saini Sugandha R. , Mastrangelo Filiberto , Ballini Andrea , Santacroce Luigi 
Published: January 2019

Background and Objective:Oral cancer is one of the most common malignancies that affect human beings across the world and early detection of oral cancer is believed to reduce the morbidity significantly. Fluorescence diagnosis is emerging as a promising method in the differentiation of cancerous lesions and thus helping in the determination of resolution for the surgical resection of affected area of malignancy very accurately. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of an autofluorescence hand held device (OralID) to detect oral premalignant lesions.Methods:98 potentially high-risk oral cancer patients were divided into two groups (n=49/group). Both the groups were first examined by conventional oral examination under white light and oral findings were noted. Subjects under group B were further examined under fluorescence light through hand held device, i.e. OralID. After the examinations, a surgical biopsy sample was taken from the suspected lesions under local anaesthesia from both the groups to confirm the diagnosis through histopathological analysis.Results:The positive potential malignant lesions (PMLs) observed in Group A when compared with biopsy reporting was 89.47% true positive while in Group B was 95.24%. The sensitivity reported of Group A was 89.47% and Group B was 97.56%. We observed 8.09% more sensitivity and 11.36% more specificity when we incorporate adjunctive the fluorescence examination using OralID.Conclusion:Results from this study suggests that OralID is a true adjunct to conventional oral examination in detecting early potential malignant changes in subjects visiting for regular dental check-up.
Dimensionality Reduction Technique in Decision Making Using Pythagorean Fuzzy Soft Matrices
Authors: Bajaj Rakesh Kumar , Guleria Abhishek 
Published: January 2019

Background:Dimensionality reduction plays an effective role in downsizing the data having irregular factors and acquires an arrangement of important factors in the information. Sometimes, most of the attributes in the information are found to be correlated and hence redundant. The process of dimensionality reduction has a wider applicability in dealing with the decision making problems where a large number of factors are involved.Objective:To take care of the impreciseness in the decision making factors in terms of the Pythagorean fuzzy information which is in the form of soft matrix. The perception of the information has the parameters - degree of membership, degree of indeterminacy (neutral) and degree of nonmembership, for a broader coverage of the information.Methods:We first provided a technique for finding a threshold element and value for the information provided in the form of Pythagorean fuzzy soft matrix. Further, the proposed definitions of the object-oriented Pythagorean fuzzy soft matrix and the parameter-oriented Pythagorean fuzzy soft matrix have been utilized to outline an algorithm for the dimensionality reduction in the process of decision making.Results:The proposed algorithm has been applied in a decision making problem with the help of a numerical example. A comparative analysis in contrast with the existing methodologies has also been presented with comparative remarks and additional advantages.Conclusion:The example clearly validates the contribution and demonstrates that the proposed algorithm efficiently encounters the dimension reduction. The proposed dimensionality reduction technique may further be applied in enhancing the performance of large scale image retrieval.
Design of Dynamic Morphological Analyser for Hindi Nouns Using Rule Based Approach
Authors: Kumar Ishan , Dhir Renu , Lehal Gurpreet Singh , Sharma Sanjeev Kumar 
Published: January 2019

Background:
A grammar checker can be used as a proof reading tool, which depends upon
the basic definition of the words. If words are not defined correctly or are not being tagged with
correct grammatical meaning, the results will not be accurate.

Objective:
To attain this accuracy, Morphological analyser plays a crucial role. In Hindi, as the
whole structure and meaning of a sentence depends upon a Noun, so it is mandatory to tag a Noun
word properly. But, to tag a Noun with its correct grammatical meaning is a challenging chore.

Methods:
To tag a word, the word is being input in the tool, which is firstly searched inside the dictionary.
If the word is not found in the dictionary, then the grammar rules are applied to analyse the
word. As noun, contains names also, so some times the rules are not possible to apply on the words.
In that scenario, words are manually tagged and then added to dictionary for further use. Grammar
tag set of 650 tags is used to generate more accurate results. All the words are stored in a database.
The performance is measured by using Precision and Recall. Furthermore, this technique can be extended
to define other categories of grammar like verb, adjective, adverb, etc.

Results:
This paper represents a method for a Rule-Based Morphological Analyser for Hindi Nouns
only. It utilizes-a dictionary and a rule-based approach for defining words with their grammatical
meanings using the morphological analyser. The designed morph which has been discussed in this
work stores all the words in a database. As this morph analyser uses a set of 650 plus grammatical
tag sets (for complete Hindi morphological analyser), the user will always get more accurate results.
The Authors have preferred both time and accuracy over memory space, which is not a big issue
these days. Therefore this approach can be used for both types of morphological approach.

Conclusion:
Furthermore, this method can be extended to the other categories of the Hindi Grammar
like Adverbs, Adjectives, and Verbs, etc. The results are very promising and are expected to
provide even more advancement to the existing strategies and methodologies.
Performance Analysis of Kalman Filter in Computed Tomography Thorax for Image Denoising
Authors: Gupta Manoj , Lechner Jörg , Agarwal Basant 
Published: January 2019

:
Medical image processing is a very important field of study due to its large number of
applications in human life. For diagnosis of any disease, several methods of medical image acquisition
are possible such as Ultrasound (US), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or Computed Tomography
(CT). Depending upon the type of image acquisition, different types of noise can occur.

Background:
The most common types of noises in medical images are Gaussian noise, Speckle
noise, Poisson noise, Rician noise and Salt & Pepper noise. The related noise models and distributions
are described in this paper. We compare several filtering methods for denoising the mentioned
types of noise.

Objective:
The main purpose of this paper is to compare well-known filtering methods such as
arithmetic mean, median and enhanced lee filter with only rarely used filtering methods like Kalman
filter as well as with relative new methods like Non-Local Means (NLM) filter.

Methods:
To compare these different filtering methods, we use comparative parameters like Root
Mean Square Error (RMSE), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Structural Similarity
(MSSIM), Edge Preservation Index (EPI) and the Universal Image Quality Index (UIQI).

Results:
The processed images are shown for a specific noise density and noise variance. We show
that the Kalman filter performs better than Mean, Median and Enhanced Lee filter for removing
Gaussian, Speckle, Poisson and Rician noise.

Conclusion:
Experimental results show that the Kalman filter provides better results as compared to
other methods. It could be also a good alternative to NLM filter due to almost equal results and lower
computation time.
Clusterin Impairs Hepatic Insulin Sensitivity and Adipocyte Clusterin Associates With Cardiometabolic Risk
Authors: Bradley David , Blaszczak Alecia , Yin Zheng , Liu Joey , Joseph Joshua J. , Wright Valerie , Anandani Kajol , Needleman Bradley , Noria Sabrena , Renton David , Yearsley Martha , Wong Stephen T.C. , Hsueh Willa A. 
Published: January 2019

OBJECTIVE
Components of the adipose tissue (AT) extracellular matrix (ECM) are recently discovered contributors to obesity-related cardiometabolic disease. We identified increased adipocyte expression of ECM-related clusterin (apolipoprotein J) in obese versus lean women by microarray. Our objective was to determine 1) whether subcutaneous AT adipocyte (SAd) clusterin and serum clusterin are associated with insulin resistance (IR) and known markers of cardiometabolic risk and 2) how clusterin may contribute to increased risk.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
We validated increased clusterin expression in adipocytes from a separate group of 18 lean and 54 obese individuals. The relationship of clusterin gene expression and plasma clusterin with IR, cardiovascular biomarkers, and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) was then determined. Further investigations in human cultured cells and in aged LDLR−/− mice prone to development of obesity-associated complications were performed.

RESULTS
SAd clusterin correlated with IR, multiple CVD biomarkers, and CVD risk, independent of traditional risk factors. Circulating human clusterin exhibited similar associations. In human adipocytes, palmitate enhanced clusterin secretion, and in human hepatocytes, clusterin attenuated insulin signaling and APOA1 expression and stimulated hepatic gluconeogenesis. LRP2 (megalin), a clusterin receptor, highly expressed in liver, mediated these effects, which were inhibited by LRP2 siRNA. In response to Western diet feeding, an increase in adipocyte clusterin expression was associated with a progressive increase in liver fat, steatohepatitis, and fibrosis in aged LDLR−/− mice.

CONCLUSIONS
Adipocyte-derived clusterin is a novel ECM-related protein linking cardiometabolic disease and obesity through its actions in the liver.
Mendelian Randomization Analysis of Hemoglobin A1c as a Risk Factor for Coronary Artery Disease
Authors: Leong Aaron , Chen Ji , Wheeler Eleanor , Hivert Marie-France , Liu Ching-Ti , Merino Jordi , Dupuis Josée , Tai E Shyong , Rotter Jerome I. , Florez Jose C. , Barroso Inês , Meigs James B. 
Published: January 2019

OBJECTIVE
Observational studies show that higher hemoglobin A1c (A1C) predicts coronary artery disease (CAD). It remains unclear whether this association is driven entirely by glycemia. We used Mendelian randomization (MR) to test whether A1C is causally associated with CAD through glycemic and/or nonglycemic factors.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
To examine the association of A1C with CAD, we selected 50 A1C-associated variants (log10 Bayes factor ≥6) from an A1C genome-wide association study (GWAS; n = 159,940) and performed an inverse-variance weighted average of variant-specific causal estimates from CAD GWAS data (CARDIoGRAMplusC4D; 60,801 CAD case subjects/123,504 control subjects). We then replicated results in UK Biobank (18,915 CAD case subjects/455,971 control subjects) and meta-analyzed all results. Next, we conducted analyses using two subsets of variants, 16 variants associated with glycemic measures (fasting or 2-h glucose) and 20 variants associated with erythrocyte indices (e.g., hemoglobin [Hb]) but not glycemic measures. In additional MR analyses, we tested the association of Hb with A1C and CAD.

RESULTS
Genetically increased A1C was associated with higher CAD risk (odds ratio [OR] 1.61 [95% CI 1.40, 1.84] per %-unit, P = 6.9 × 10−12). Higher A1C was associated with increased CAD risk when using only glycemic variants (OR 2.23 [1.73, 2.89], P = 1.0 × 10−9) and when using only erythrocytic variants (OR 1.30 [1.08, 1.57], P = 0.006). Genetically decreased Hb, with concomitantly decreased mean corpuscular volume, was associated with higher A1C (0.30 [0.27, 0.33] %-unit, P = 2.9 × 10−6) per g/dL and higher CAD risk (OR 1.19 [1.04, 1.37], P = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS
Genetic evidence supports a causal link between higher A1C and higher CAD risk. This relationship is driven not only by glycemic but also by erythrocytic, glycemia-independent factors.