The potential of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in C cycling: a review.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) contribute predominantly to soil organic matter by creating a sink demand for plant C and distributing to below-ground hyphal biomass. The extra-radical hyphae along with glomalin-related soil protein significantly influence the soil carbon dynamics through their larger extent and turnover period need to discuss. The role of AMF is largely overlooked in terrestrial C cycling and climate change models despite their greater involvement in net primary productivity augmentation and further accumulation of this additional photosynthetic fixed C in the soil. However, this buffering mechanism against elevated CO2 condition to sequester extra C by AMF can be described only after considering their potential interaction with other microbes and associated mineral nutrients such as nitrogen cycling. In this article, we try to review the potential of AMF in C sequestration paving the way towards a better understanding of possible AMF mechanism by which C balance between biosphere and atmosphere can be moved forward in more positive direction.

Arbuscular mycorrhiza: a viable strategy for soil nutrient loss reduction.

Arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi's (AMF) role in plant nutrition and stress management is well known, but very few researches and studies have been conducted so far on the fungal ability to reduce different nutrient losses (runoff, leaching and volatilization) from the soil system. This important ecosystem service of AMF had been neglected largely. From the recent findings, it has been confirmed that mycorrhizal symbiosis has potential to check the losses of applied nutrients. The role of soil biota in nutrient cycling is indispensable and determines the nutrient availability to plants. Among these biota, AMF's association with plants is the most prevalent, but the exact mechanisms followed by AMF in nutrient cycling, transformation and reducing nutrient loss ability are still inconclusive. In this review, we will try to unlock this particular aspect of AMF which is important to achieve global food demand in a sustainable way.

A modified technique of laparoscopic mobilisation and transfer of intra-abdominal testis via inguinal canal.

Several techniques have been described for mobilising intra-abdominal testis (IAT) into the scrotum. Many are associated with significant morbidity. We hereby introduce our modification of the technique that is safe and reproducible. Surgical technique using a nylon tape to railroad instruments into the peritoneal cavity to minimise false passage and trauma is described in detail. Once the testis is delivered out of the scrotal wound, further division of restrictive bands to mobilise the testis is carried out laparoscopically. These steps are not previously described in the literature. A retrospective study of consecutive patients with IAT undergoing surgical intervention by a single surgeon over a period of 15 years has been included to demonstrate outcome. Twenty-five patients with unilateral IAT (10R, 15L) and 2 patients with bilateral IAT, a total of 29 IAT, underwent laparoscopic orchidopexy over the period 1997-2012. Median age of the patients was 3.0 years. One-stage testicular vessel preserving (VP) orchidopexy was performed in 20 testes, Fowler-Stephen (FS), vessel sacrificing orchidopexy (3 one-stage and 6 two-stage) was required in 9 testes. At follow-up, atrophy was detected in 1 (5.0 %) and 2 (22.2 %) patients of the VP and FS groups respectively. The railroading technique of transferring IAT into the scrotum via the inguinal canal under laparoscopic guidance minimises tissue trauma. It negates the need to create new tissue opening. It is reproducible with a testicular atrophy rate comparable to published literature.

Incarcerated inguinal hernia management in children: 'a comparison of the open and laparoscopic approach'.

PURPOSE: To compare the outcomes of management of incarcerated inguinal hernia by open versus laparoscopic approach. METHODS: This is a retrospective analysis of incarcerated inguinal hernina in a paediatric surgery centre involving four consultants. Manual reduction was attempted in all and failure was managed by emergency surgery. RESULTS: The laparoscopy group had 27 patients. Four patients failed manual reduction and underwent emergency laparoscopic surgery. Three of them had small bowel strangulation which was reduced laparoscopically. The strangulated bowel was dusky in colour initially but changed to normal colour subsequently under vision. The fourth patient required appendectomy for strangulated appendix. One patient had concomitant repair of umbilical hernia and one patient had laparoscopic pyloromyotomy at the same time. One patient had testicular atrophy, one had hydrocoele and one had recurrence of hernia on the asymptomatic side. The open surgery group had 45 patients. Eleven patients had failed manual reduction requiring emergency surgery, of these two required resection and anastomosis of small intestine. One patient in this group had concomitant repair of undescended testis. There was no recurrence in this group, one had testicular atrophy and seven had metachronous hernia. CONCLUSIONS: Both open herniotomy and laparoscopic repair offer safe surgery with comparable outcomes for incarcerated inguinal hernia in children. Laparoscopic approach and hernioscopy at the time of open approach appear to show the advantage of repairing the contralateral patent processus vaginalis at the same time and avoiding metachronous inguinal hernia.

Genetic and functional diversity among root-associated psychrotrophic Pseudomonad's isolated from the Himalayan plants.

Out of 534 psychrotrophic bacteria, 12 bacteria were selected on the basis of plant growth promoting activities at 4 °C and identified as Pseudomonas genus. These strains showed high level of genetic polymorphisms based on RAPD and rep-PCR fingerprinting. This genetic variability revealed that isolates belonging to same species were as high as the variability among different species. Further inoculation of these Pseudomonas strains significantly improves root/shoot biomass and nutrients uptake of lentil plant as compared to non-bacterized control after 40 days of seed showing. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering analysis of pot assay results revealed that genetically diverse strains showing the same prototype in functional parameter and representing diverse blueprint of plant growth promoting attributes. Results of present findings explain the huge beneficial microbial resources from root zone of hilly crops of Himalayan region that could be effectively exploited as bio-inoculums for cold climatic condition.

Machine learning based COVID -19 disease recognition using CT images of SIRM database.

The COVID-19 pandemic, probably one of the most widespread pandemics humanity has encountered in the twenty first century, caused death to almost 1.75 M people worldwide, impacting almost 80 M lives with direct contact. In order to contain the spread of coronavirus, it is necessary to develop a reliant and quick method to identify those who are affected and isolate them until full recovery is made. The imagery knowledge has been shown to be useful for quick COVID-19 diagnosis. Though the scans of computational tomography (CT) demonstrate a range of viral infection signals, considering the vast number of images, certain visual characteristics are challenging to distinguish and can take a long time to be identified by radiologists. In this study for detection of the COVID-19, a dataset is formed by taking 3764 images. The feature extraction process is applied to the dataset to increase the classification performance. Techniques like Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) are used for feature extraction. Then various machine learning algorithms applied such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Multi- Level Perceptron, Naive Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbours and Random Forests are used for classification of COVID-19 disease detection. Sensitivity, Specificity, Accuracy, Precision, and F-score are the metrics used to measure the performance of different machine learning models. Among these machine learning models SVM with GLCM as feature extraction technique using 10-fold cross validation gives the best classification result with 99.70% accuracy, 99.80% sensitivity and 97.03% F-score. We also ran these tests on different data sets and found that the results are similar across those too, as discussed later in the results section.

Post-traumatic Osteomyelitis of the Rib-point of Care In children, Presenting with chest Wall Pain.

Introduction: The rib osteomyelitis is a very rare entity and it hardly accounts for 1% of all cases of osteomyelitis. In this case report, we are presenting a case of acute osteomyelitis of rib in a very young child, with a previous history of mediocre trauma over the chest wall. Case Report: It is a case report of a young boy, who had sustained the blunt injury over the chest wall. The X-ray was unremarkable. After sometime, he presented to the hospital with the pain over the chest wall. Now, the X-ray showed the signs of rib osteomyelitis. Conclusion: In children, the clinical presentation of rib osteomyelitis is very non-specific. Sometimes, the injury while playing, which is very usual in this age group may create the confusion. Hence, it may need high index of suspicion by the physician to include is as a possible diagnosis.

Longitudinal Analysis of Biologic Correlates of COVID-19 Resolution: Case Report.

While the biomarkers of COVID-19 severity have been thoroughly investigated, the key biological dynamics associated with COVID-19 resolution are still insufficiently understood. We report a case of full resolution of severe COVID-19 due to convalescent plasma transfusion. Following transfusion, the patient showed fever remission, improved respiratory status, and rapidly decreased viral burden in respiratory fluids and SARS-CoV-2 RNAemia. Longitudinal unbiased proteomic analysis of plasma and single-cell transcriptomics of peripheral blood cells conducted prior to and at multiple times after convalescent plasma transfusion identified the key biological processes associated with the transition from severe disease to disease-free state. These included (i) temporally ordered upward and downward changes in plasma proteins reestablishing homeostasis and (ii) post-transfusion disappearance of a subset of monocytes characterized by hyperactivated Interferon responses and decreased TNF-α signaling. Monitoring specific dysfunctional myeloid cell subsets in peripheral blood may provide prognostic keys in COVID-19.

Biologic correlates of beneficial convalescent plasma therapy in a COVID-19 patient reveal disease resolution mechanisms.

BACKGROUND: While the biomarkers of COVID-19 severity have been thoroughly investigated, the key biological dynamics associated with COVID-19 resolution are still insufficiently understood. MAIN BODY: We report a case of full resolution of severe COVID-19 due to convalescent plasma transfusion in a patient with underlying multiple autoimmune syndrome. Following transfusion, the patient showed fever remission, improved respiratory status, and rapidly decreased viral burden in respiratory fluids and SARS-CoV-2 RNAemia. Longitudinal unbiased proteomic analysis of plasma and single-cell transcriptomics of peripheral blood cells conducted prior to and at multiple times after convalescent plasma transfusion identified the key biological processes associated with the transition from severe disease to disease-free state. These included (i) temporally ordered upward and downward changes in plasma proteins reestablishing homeostasis and (ii) post-transfusion disappearance of a particular subset of dysfunctional monocytes characterized by hyperactivated Interferon responses and decreased TNF-α signaling. CONCLUSIONS: Monitoring specific subsets of innate immune cells in peripheral blood may provide prognostic keys in severe COVID-19. Moreover, understanding disease resolution at the molecular and cellular level should contribute to identify targets of therapeutic interventions against severe COVID-19.

Alleviation of cold stress in inoculated wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seedlings with psychrotolerant Pseudomonads from NW Himalayas.

Twelve psychrotolerant Pseudomonad strains were selected on the basis of various plant growth-promoting (PGP) activities at cold temperature (4°C). The effect of inoculation with Pseudomonad strains on cold alleviation and growth of wheat seedling at cold temperature (8°C) was investigated under greenhouse condition. Inoculation with Pseudomonad strains significantly enhanced root/shoot biomass and nutrients uptake as compared to non-bacterized control at 60 days of plant growth. Bacterization significantly improved the level of cellular metabolites like chlorophyll, anthocyanin, free proline, total phenolics, starch content, physiologically available iron, proteins, and amino acids that are sign of alleviation of cold stress in wheat plants. Increased relative water content, reduced membrane injury (electrolyte leakage), and Na(+)/K(+) ratio were also recorded in bacterized wheat plants. Electrolyte leakage and Na(+)/K(+) were found inversely proportional to plant growth at cold temperature. Statistical analysis of twenty-three measured parameters revealed that uninoculated control was under cold stress while eight bacterial strains were positively alleviating cold stress in wheat plants. Thus, the psychrotrophic Pseudomonad strains could effectively provide a promising solution to overcome cold stress, which is major factor hindering wheat productivity under cold climatic condition.

Fibular Hypoplasia, Talar Aplasia, Absent Proximal Tibial Growth Plate and Oligosyndactyly (Variant of Fibular Aplasia, Tibial Campomelia, and Oligosyndactyly Syndrome) - Paucity of Case Reports with Evolving Definition.

INTRODUCTION: Fibular aplasia, tibial campomelia, and oligosyndactyly (FATCO) syndrome is a rare disorder with unknown molecular basis. Since it is a rare disorder, so it is commendable to report the each case, due to its sporadic incidence and paucity of the standardized management protocol for their management. CASE REPORT: It is a case report of newly born male baby, whose anxious parents presented to the outpatient department with a deformity in the left lower limb. This resembled the FATCO syndrome. After clinico-radiological workup, it was categorized as a variant of FATCO syndrome. CONCLUSION: Counseling of parents should be done and let them realize that what is inescapable with this syndrome and what is bound to happen during the treatment.

Adaptive Neural-Network Control of MIMO Nonaffine Nonlinear Systems With Asymmetric Time-Varying State Constraints.

In this paper, a novel robust adaptive barrier Lyapunov function (BLF)-based backstepping controller has been proposed for a class of interconnected, multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) unknown nonaffine nonlinear systems with asymmetric time-varying (ATV) state constraints. The design involves a neural-network-based online approximator to cope with uncertain dynamics of the system. To tune its weights, a novel adaptive law is proposed based on the Hadamard product. A theorem has also been proposed to have the bounds on virtual control signals beforehand. This theorem eliminates the need for tedious offline computation for the feasibility condition on the virtual controller in BLF-based controller design. To overcome the problem of unknown control gain in the nonaffine system, Nussbaum gain has been used during the design. A simulation study on the robot manipulator in task space has been performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Tailoring the electronic structure and magnetic properties of pyrochlore Co2Ti1-xGexO4: a GGA +Uab initiostudy.

We report the electronic structure and magnetic properties of Co2Ti1-xGexO4(0 ⩽x⩽ 1) spinel by means of the first-principle methods of density functional theory involving generalized gradient approximation along with the on-site Coulomb interaction (Ueff) in the exchange-correlation energy functional. Special emphasis has been given to explore the site occupancy of Ge atoms in the spinel lattice by introducing the cationic disorder parameter (y) which is done in such a way that one can tailor the pyrochlore geometry and determine the electronic/magnetic structure quantitatively. For all the compositions (x), the system exhibits weak tetragonal distortion (c/a≠ 1) due to the non-degeneratedz2anddx2-y2states (egorbitals) of the B-site Co. We observe large exchange splitting (ΔEX∼ 9 eV) between the up and down spin bands oft2gandegstates, respectively, of tetrahedral and octahedral Co2+(4A2(g)(F)) and moderate crystal-field splitting (ΔCF∼ 4 eV) and the Jahn-Teller distortion (ΔJT∼ 0.9 eV). These features indicate the strong intra-atomic interaction which is also responsible for the alteration of energy band-gap (1.7 eV ⩽Eg⩽ 3.3 eV). The exchange interaction (JBB∼ -4.8 meV, for (x,y) = (0.25, 0)) between the Co2+dominates the overall antiferromagnetic behaviour of the system for all 'x' as compared toJAA(∼-2.2 meV, for (x,y) = (0.25, 0)) andJAB(∼-1.8 meV, for (x,y) = (0.25, 0)). For all the compositions without any disorderness in the system, the net ferrimagnetic moment (Δµ) remains constant, however, increases progressively with increasingxdue to the imbalance of Co spins between the A- and B-sites.

Vaccination boosts protective responses and counters SARS-CoV-2-induced pathogenic memory B cells.

Much is to be learned about the interface between immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination. We monitored immune responses specific to SARS-CoV-2 Spike Receptor-Binding-Domain (RBD) in convalescent individuals for eight months after infection diagnosis and following vaccination. Over time, neutralizing antibody responses, which are predominantly RBD specific, generally decreased, while RBD-specific memory B cells persisted. RBD-specific antibody and B cell responses to vaccination were more vigorous than those elicited by infection in the same subjects or by vaccination in infection-naïve comparators. Notably, the frequencies of double negative B memory cells, which are dysfunctional and potentially pathogenic, increased in the convalescent subjects over time. Unexpectedly, this effect was reversed by vaccination. Our work identifies a novel aspect of immune dysfunction in mild/moderate COVID-19, supports the practice of offering SARS-CoV-2 vaccination regardless of infection history, and provides a potential mechanistic explanation for the vaccination-induced reduction of "Long-COVID" symptoms.

Osteoporotic Vertebral Compression Fracture and Single Balloon Extrapedicular Kyphoplasty: Findings and Technical Considerations.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the functional and radiological outcome of balloon kyphoplasty and to endorse the unilateral single balloon extrapedicular kyphoplasty as practically more feasible and safer method in comparison to the conventional methods. METHODS: Totally, 81 patients were presented to our center with osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture. Among these, 59 patients (61 vertebrae) were enrolled with stable wedge osteoporotic compression fracture. Pre-operatively percentage of vertebral height loss and kyphotic angle were calculated and single balloon extrapedicular kyphoplasty was performed in all cases. RESULTS: Postoperatively, anterior vertebral height improved to 79.61% of normal subjects. In our study, the mean segmental kyphosis correction following balloon kyphoplasty was 14.27°. Overall incidence of cement leak in our study was 15.25%. CONCLUSION: Although we encountered the few difficulties, but this technique holds the safety and feasibility measures. Furthermore, it is effective in restoring anterior vertebral height, alignment and angle of kyphosis.

Coronavirus lockdown helped the environment to bounce back.

As the transmission of novel corona virus (COVID-19) increases rapidly, the whole world adopted the curfew/lockdown activity with restriction of human mobility. The imposition of quarantine stopped all the commercial activity that greatly affects the various important environmental parameters which directly connected to human health. As all the types of social, economic, industrial and urbanization activity suddenly shut off, nature takes the advantages and showed improvement in the quality of air, cleaner rivers, less noise pollution, undisturbed and calm wildlife. This research aims to discuss the COVID-19 effect on the global environment. The outcome of this research says that "Although coronavirus vaccine is not available coronavirus itself is earth's vaccine and us humans are the virus".

Long-term quality of life postacute kidney injury in cardiac surgery patients.

BACKGROUND: Acute renal failure after cardiac surgery is known to be associated with significant short-term morbidity and mortality. There have as yet been no major reports on long-term quality of life (QOL). This study assessed the impact of acute kidney injury (AKI) and renal replacement therapy (RRT) on long-term survival and QOL after cardiac surgery. The need for long-term RRT is also assessed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients who underwent cardiac surgery between 2005 and 2011 (n = 6087) and developed AKI (RIFLE criteria, n = 570) were included. They were propensity-matched 1:1 to patients without renal impairment (control). Data were prospectively collected, and health-related QOL questionnaire was sent to patients who were alive at least 1-year postoperatively at the time of the study. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in the preoperative characteristics between the two groups (age, gender, left ventricular ejection fraction, procedure, urgency, logistic Euroscore), respectively. Median follow-up was 52 months. Survival data were available in all patients. Questionnaires were returned in 64% of eligible patients. Long-term survival was significantly lower, and QOL, in particular the physical aspect, was significantly worse for the AKI group as compared to non-AKI group (38.8 vs. 44.2, P = 0.002), especially so in patients who required RRT. In alive respondents, despite an 18% (66/359) incidence of ongoing renal follow-up, the need for late RRT was only in 1.1% (4/359). CONCLUSION: AKI and especially the need for RRT following cardiac surgery are associated with increased long-term mortality as well as worse quality of life in a propensity-matched control group.