Hybrid manifold smoothing and label propagation technique for Kannada handwritten character recognition.

Handwritten character recognition is one of the classical problems in the field of image classification. Supervised learning techniques using deep learning models are highly effective in their application to handwritten character recognition. However, they require a large dataset of labeled samples to achieve good accuracies. Recent supervised learning techniques for Kannada handwritten character recognition have state of the art accuracy and perform well over a large range of input variations. In this work, a framework is proposed for the Kannada language that incorporates techniques from semi-supervised learning. The framework uses features extracted from a convolutional neural network backbone and uses regularization to improve the trained features and label propagation to classify previously unseen characters. The episodic learning framework is used to validate the framework. Twenty-four classes are used for pre-training, 12 classes are used for testing and 11 classes are used for validation. Fine-tuning is tested using one example per unseen class and five examples per unseen class. Through experimentation the components of the network are implemented in Python using the Pytorch library. It is shown that the accuracy obtained 99.13% make this framework competitive with the currently available supervised learning counterparts, despite the large reduction in the number of labeled samples available for the novel classes.

Unicystic ameloblastoma - A case series.

Ameloblastoma is a benign, locally aggressive neoplasm that constitutes about 1-3% of the tumors of the jaw. Wide surgical excision with adequate safe margin is the most common treatment of choice. The study aimed to manage cases with unicystic ameloblastoma while preserving the continuity of the mandible (without resection). This article presents a series of cases ranging from 18 to 40 years old patients of both sexes with unicystic ameloblastoma, especially in the mandible showing more male predilection than female. All the cases presented in this article were treated by enucleation and curettage. None of the patients presented post-operative paresthesia. None of the cases went in for resection. Post-operative recovery was uneventful in all the patients. All the patients were followed up for a period of 3.5-5 years. None of the cases reported recurrence at the date of publication.

Familial Gigantiform Cementoma: Life-Saving Total Midface Resection and Reconstruction Using Virtual Surgical Planning and 3D Printed Patient-Specific Implant-A Clinical Study.

Background: Familial gigantiform cementoma (FGC) is a rare benign fibrocemento-osseous lesion of the jaw characterized by well-circumscribed, extensive, mixed radiolucent-radiopaque masses in the mandible and the maxilla that can cause severe facial deformity. This condition is extremely rare with less than 40 cases reported in the literature. Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to highlight the importance of virtual surgical planning and patient-specific implant in the treatment of a complex lesion and reconstruction of the facial skeleton. The clinical presentations, and diagnostic challenges encountered when managing the lesion have been discussed in this article with emphasis on the treatment plan. Method/Surgical plan: The sequence of treatment planned was resection of the lesion and immediate reconstruction with a patient-specific implant to improve the patient's quality of life. The management of FGC was a challenging one keeping in mind the rapid expansion of the lesion, widespread involvement of the jaws, and needs of the pediatric patient. Conclusion: Virtual surgical planning (VSP) along with 3D printed implant was instrumental in reconstructing the facial form of the child where the maxilla was completely resected and rehabilitation provided support to the vital structures of the face.

Effect of silver diamine fluoride, potassium nitrate, and glutaraldehyde in reducing the post vital tooth preparation hypersensitivity: A randomized controlled trial.

Aim: Hypersensitivity is the most common clinical problem which is encountered by most of dental patients undergoing a vital tooth preparation for a fixed crown prosthesis. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of silver diamine fluoride, potassium nitrate, and glutaraldehyde in reducing dentinal hypersensitivity following vital tooth preparation. Settings and Design: This study is a randomized control trial performed on 119 teeth of 68 patients who are in need of fixed prosthesis treatment. Materials and Methods: After a thorough clinical examination, patients were allocated into any of the randomly assigned four groups (Control, silver diamine fluoride, potassium nitrate, and glutaraldehyde) and the level of hypersensitivity was measured by blasting air on the surface of tooth at five different intervals (before preparation, after preparation, after application of desensitizers, before cementation and after a follow up period of about 30 days) and is graded using Schiff 's cumulative hypersensitivity index. Statistical Analysis Used: Kruskal wallis test is used to compare the rate of sensitivity between the 4 groups. Friedman and Wilcoxon test is used to compare the rate of sensitivity at 5 different intervals. Results: All the desensitizers used in this study reduced the level of hypersensitivity. Among which, silver diamine fluoride was found to be more effective after application, before cementation, and after a follow up period of about 30 days followed by GLUMA and potassium nitrate. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that silver diamine fluoride was found to be more effective after application, before cementation of the definitive prosthesis and after a follow up period of 30 days.

A family of familial gigantiform cementoma: clinical study.

Background: Familial gigantiform cementoma is an autosomal dominant fibro-cement osseous lesion that causes massive expansion of facial skeleton. Patients with such massive lesions have a compromised quality of life. The main goal of treating such patients is to restore and preserve the jaw as far as possible which would enhance their quality of life. Purpose: This study was conducted to identify the occurrence of gigantiform cementoma which had affected three generations of a family and also to focus on documentation of the clinical course and management. Method: Patients (one family-mother, grandmother, aunt and grandson) who had visited the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tamilnadu Government Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, over a period for their swelling in the maxillofacial region were clinically and radiographically evaluated and histopathologically diagnosed as familial gigantiform cementoma; later, they were surgically managed. Result: It is very rare to document three generations of this disease which had shown varied clinical presentation (asymptomatic slow growth, arrested growth and one case of aggressive growth). Management of these cases varied from observation to aggressive resection. Conclusion: Gigantiform cementoma follows an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance with variable phenotypic expression without gender predilection. These cases require regular observation and intervention if necessary.

A new paradigm for investigating temporal order memory shows higher order associations are present in recent but not in remote retrieval.

Memory of a sequence of distinct events requires encoding the temporal order as well as the intervals that separates these events. In this study, using order-place association task where the animal learns to associate the location of the food pellet to the order of entry into the event arena, we probe the nature of temporal order memory in mice. In our task, individual trials become distinct events, as the animal is trained to form a unique association between entry order and a correct location. The inter-trial intervals (> 30 min) are chosen deliberately to minimize the inputs from working memory. We develop this paradigm initially using four order-place associates and later extend it to five paired associates. Our results show that animals not only acquire these explicit (entry order to place) associations but also higher order associations that can only be inferred implicitly (temporal relation between the events) from the temporal order of these events. As an indicator of such higher order learning during the probe trial, the mice exhibit predominantly prospective errors that decline proportionally with temporal distance. On the other hand, prior to acquiring the sequence, the retrospective errors are dominant. In addition, we also tested the nature of such acquisitions when temporal order CS is presented along with flavored pellet as a compound stimulus comprising of order and flavor both simultaneously being paired with location. Results from these experiments indicate that the animal learns both order-place and flavor-place associations. Comparing with pure order-place training, we find that the additional flavor stimulus in a compound training paradigm did not interfere with the ability of the animals to acquire the order-place associations. When tested remotely, pure order-place associations could be retrieved only after a reminder training. Further higher order associations representing the temporal relationship between the events is markedly absent in the remote time.

Novel measures of Morris water maze performance that use vector field maps to assess accuracy, uncertainty, and intention of navigational searches.

Most commonly used behavioral measures for testing learning and memory in the Morris water maze (MWM) involve comparisons of an animal's residence time in different quadrants of the pool. Such measures are limited in their ability to test different aspects of the animal's performance. Here, we describe novel measures of performance in the MWM that use vector fields to capture the motion of mice as well as their search pattern in the maze. Using these vector fields, we develop quantitative measures of performance that are intuitive and more sensitive than classical measures. First, we describe search patterns in terms of vector field properties and use these properties to define three metrics of spatial memory namely Spatial Accuracy, Uncertainty and, Intensity of Search. We demonstrate the usefulness of these measures using four different data sets including comparisons between different strains of mice, an analysis of two mouse models of Noonan syndrome (NS; Ptpn11 D61G and Ptpn11 N308D/+), and a study of goal reversal training. Importantly, besides highlighting novel aspects of performance in this widely used spatial task, our measures were able to uncover previously undetected differences, including in an animal model of NS, which we rescued with the mitogen activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) inhibitor SL327. Thus, our results show that our approach breaks down performance in the MWM into sensitive measurable independent components that highlight differences in spatial learning and memory in the MWM that were undetected by conventional measures.

In vivo imaging of immediate early gene expression dynamics segregates neuronal ensemble of memories of dual events.

Identification of neurons undergoing plasticity in response to external stimuli is one of the pertinent problems in neuroscience. Immediate early genes (IEGs) are widely used as a marker for neuronal plasticity. Here, we model the dynamics of IEG expression as a consecutive, irreversible first-order reaction with a limiting substrate. First, we develop an analytical framework to show that such a model, together with two-photon in vivo imaging of IEG expression, can be used to identify distinct neuronal subsets representing multiple memories. Using the above combination, we show that the expression kinetics, rather than intensity threshold, can be used to identify neuronal ensembles responding to the presentation of two events in vivo. The analytical expression allowed us to segregate the neurons based on their temporal response to one specific behavioural event, thereby improving the ability to detect plasticity related neurons. We image the retrosplenial cortex (RSc) of cfos-GFP transgenic mice to follow the dynamics of cellular changes resulting from contextual fear conditioning behaviour, enabling us to establish a representation of context in RSc at the cellular scale following memory acquisition. Thus, we obtain a general method that distinguishes neurons that took part in multiple temporally separated events by measuring fluorescence of individual neurons in live mice.

Six-hole versus Four-hole Miniplates in Isolated, Unilateral Angle Fracture of the Mandible.

AIM: The aim of the study was to find the suitable situation for the fixation of "six" hole miniplates in open reduction and internal fixation of displaced and nondisplaced unilateral angle of the mandible fractures. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Displaced, nondisplaced, simple, compound (linear and noncomminuted) isolated unilateral angle fractures with or without occlusal derangement were included in this study. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Chi-square test was used for the statistical analysis. RESULTS: The parameters assessed preoperatively and postoperatively were mouth opening, occlusion, neurosensory deficit such as paresthesia, intraoperative time, stability of fragments, and access to the retromolar trigone which showed that the six-hole titanium miniplate was clinically useful in special clinical situations when compared to four-hole titanium miniplate. CONCLUSION: To conclude, six-hole titanium miniplate was clinically useful when compared to four-hole titanium miniplate in the following special clinical situations such as bone loss following extraction of third molar, no posterior occlusion and instability of fracture moderately displaced fracture needs more stability.

White-Eyed Blowout Fracture.

White-eyed blowout fracture is often found in pure orbital floor blowout fracture among pediatric patients. Unlike common orbital blowout fractures with apparent clinical signs, the diagnosis of white-eyed orbital blowout fractures is difficult because of minimal soft-tissue signs. This report describes an early missed-out diagnosis of a white-eyed blowout fracture in a 7-year-old child, due to negligible soft-tissue manifestation.

Flavor Dependent Retention of Remote Food Preference Memory.

Social Transmission of Food Preference (STFP) is a single trial non-aversive learning task that is used for testing non-spatial memory. This task relies on an accurate estimate of a change in food preference of the animals following social demonstration of a novel flavor. Conventionally this is done by providing two flavors of powdered food and later estimating the amount of food consumed for each of these flavors in a defined period of time. This is achieved through a careful measurement of leftover food for each of these flavors. However, in mice, only a small (~1 g) amount of food is consumed making the weight estimates error prone and thereby limiting the sensitivity of the paradigm. Using multiplexed video tracking, we show that the pattern of consumption can be used as a reliable reporter of memory retention in this task. In our current study, we use this as a measure and show that the preference for the demonstrated flavor significantly increases following demonstration and the retention of this change in preference during remote testing is flavor specific. Further, we report a modified experimental design for performing STFP that allows testing of change in preference among two flavors simultaneously. Using this paradigm, we show that during remote testing for thyme and basil demonstrated flavors, only basil demonstrated mice retain the change in preference while thyme demonstrated mice do not.

Sensitive Estimation of Flavor Preferences in STFP Using Cumulative Time Profiles.

Social transmission of food preference (STFP) is observed among rodents between a demonstrator and a naïve hungry observer. During social interaction, hungry observer receives information about safety of the food consumed by the demonstrator. This task has been implemented to develop a single trial non-aversive learning task in order to test hippocampus dependent non-spatial memory in rodents. In this protocol, we describe some novel modifications to the conventional STFP protocol and analysis for more sensitive estimation of change in preferences. Using this method, preference trends can be observed for weeks after training, allowing one to probe the role of systems consolidation (SC) in declarative memory that is relatively independent of spatial navigation.

Saturation Dynamics Measures Absolute Cross Section and Generates Contrast within a Neuron.

The intensity required to optically saturate a chromophore is a molecular property that is determined by its absorption cross section (σ) and the excited state lifetime. We present an analytical description of such a system and show that fluorescence around the onset of saturation is characterized by product of absorption cross section and lifetime. Using this approach we formulate a generalized method for measuring the multiphoton cross section of fluorophores and use it to obtain the absolute three-photon cross-section spectra of tryptophan. We find that the tryptophan three-photon cross section ranges from 0.28 S.I. units (m(6)s(2)photon(-2)) at 870 nm to 20 S.I. units at 740 nm. Further, we show that the product of molecular rate of excitation and de-excitation, denoted as ß, serves as a vital contrasting agent for imaging local environment. Our contrast parameter, ß, is related to fraction of the population present in the excited state and is independent of the fluorophore concentration. We show that ß-imaging can be carried out in a regular two-photon microscope setup through a series of intensity scans. Using enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) fluorescence from the brain slices of Thy-1 EGFP transgenic mice, we show that there is an inherent, concentration independent, variation in contrast across the soma and the dendrite.

Sjogren-Larsson syndrome: A rare neurocutaneous disorder.

Sjogren-Larsson syndrome is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by defective activity of fatty aldehyde dehydrogenase. It presents as a triad of congenital ichthyosis, spastic diplegia, and mental retardation. The pathology behind this syndrome is the failure of degradation of fatty aldehydes. This case is presented for its rarity.

A Forgotten Technique for Replacement of Maxillary Anteriors and an associated Bony Defect: A Case Report.

Fixed replacement of maxillary anterior teeth with an associated bony defect has challenged the restoring dentist with problems like weight of the prosthesis thereby leading to weakening of abutment teeth, difficulty in establishing smile line and mechanical stability. This article describes the management of a patient with such defect with a forgotten prosthesis - the Andrew bridge system, which has a fixed and a removable prosthetic component with retentive clips, which anchors on to a bar spanning the edentulous space. Andrew's bridge system has definite indications and offers immense advantages over the other prosthesis for rehabilitation of cases of such scenario. It addresses the problems aforementioned and provides the optimal retention, mechanical stability, esthetics and comfort to the patient.

Course of Near-hanging Victims Succumbed to Death: A Seven Year Study.

INTRODUCTION: Near hanging refers to victims who survive a hanging injury following attempted hanging, long enough to reach hospital. Delayed deaths in near hanging patients are mostly due to complication of hanging. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the demographics, mortality patterns and cause of delayed deaths in near hanging victims. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study autopsy files over a seven year period from 2007 to 2013 were reviewed, and data of near hanging deaths (attempted hanging cases who succumbed to death and subjected for medicolegal autopsy) was extracted. Records of 14,000 autopsies was reviewed, and 10 deceased having died delayed deaths after near hanging episode were identified. In each case, the patients' details, including gender, age, type of suspension, type of ligature material used for hanging and subsequent hanging mark produced were reviewed using autopsy reports and photographs taken during autopsy. RESULTS: Demographic and pathological aspects of the each case discussed to throw light on autopsy findings in victims who died following near hanging. Complete suspension was present in 3 cases, while partial suspension was present in 7 cases. Survivals in delayed death after near hanging episode have ranged from 9 h to 72 d. Hypoxic encephalopathy was the most common cause of death, followed by pneumonia. CONCLUSION: Most of the near hanging patients did succumb to hypoxic encephalopathy; however, consolidation of lungs (pneumonia) was the next common cause of death reflecting need for aggressive oxygen therapy and selective resuscitation should be performed in all such cases.

Studies on the growth and characterization of a non linear optical crystal: 3 Hydroxy Pyridinium Tartrate Mono Hydrate (3HPTMH).

Single crystals of 3 Hydroxy Pyridinium Tartrate Mono Hydrate (3HPTMH) was synthesised and successfully grown in mixed solvent of ethanol and water by slow evaporation technique at room temperature. 3HPTMH belongs to the orthorhombic crystal system with space group P212121. The lattice parameters of 3HPTMH are a=7.4597(2)Å, b=8.7012(3)Å, c=17.8786(5)Å, V=1160.47(6)Å(3), obtained by single crystal X ray diffraction studies. Hyperpolarizability and HOMO-LUMO analysis were performed for grown crystal using DFT calculations using Gaussian 03 software. Functional groups were identified by FT-IR studies. The lower cut-off wavelength of the 3HPTMH has been identified by UV-Vis study. The thermal behavior has been studied by thermal gravimetric analysis and differential thermal analysis. The powder second harmonic generation efficiency of 3HPTMH was compared with KDP.

Crystal structure of N'-[(E)-(4-chloro-phen-yl)(phen-yl)methyl-idene]-4-methyl-benzene-sulfono-hydrazide.

The title compound, C20H17ClN2O2S, was obtained by a condensation reaction between 4-chloro-benzo-phenone and tosyl hydrazide. The plane of the methyl-substituted benzene ring forms dihedral angles of 20.12 (12) and 78.43 (13)° with those of the chlorine-substituted benzene ring and the benzene ring, respectively, with the last two rings forming a dihedral angle of 67.81 (13)°. The chlorine substituent was also found to be 0.868 (2):0.132 (2) disordered over these two rings. In the crystal, mol-ecules are linked through pairs of N-H⋯O hydrogen bonds, giving centrosymmetric cyclic dimers [graph set R 2 (2)(8)], which are linked by weak C-H⋯O and C-H⋯Cl inter-actions into a chain structure which extends along the a-axis direction.