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Background Long COVID is a multisystem condition with prolonged symptoms that develop after recovery from the COVID-19 infection, often following a mild infection. Few studies have been conducted on cognitive function among medical students after recovery from mild COVID-19. This study aimed to assess the attention span and working memory (WM) capacity of medical students after six months of recovery. Methods A cross-sectional study was performed on 17 young adult medical students who had suffered a mild COVID-19 infection at least six months prior. Eighteen age-matched healthy medical students served as the controls. Audio-visual WM tasks and attention spans were assessed using computerized software for both the cases and controls. Results The mean ages of the case and control were 19.67±1.6 and 20.0±1.2 years, respectively. The most common symptoms among cases were fatigue (33%), weight loss (26%), and nasal stuffiness (13%). The overall proportion of correct responses across all visual and auditory WM tasks (p=0.085) and reaction times (p=0.609) did not differ between the cases and controls. However, the overall target hit rate of the auditory WM task was significantly lower in cases than in controls (p=0.002). This difference was not observed in the visual WM task (p=0.374). Conclusion In the current study, the overall WM functions (visual and auditory combined) and attention span did not differ between cases and controls. However, auditory WM performance was significantly impaired in patients compared with controls, indicating selective impairment of auditory WM in patients with long COVID.
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A novel approach has been proposed to classify bone disorders for classifying the radiographic bone image as normal, Osteopenia and Osteoporosis. The proposed system consists of three major stages to predict the accurate bone disorder classification. In the first stage, image preprocessing is performed where bilateral filtering is applied to remove noise and to enhance the image quality. Then, the image is fed to Otsu based segmentation approach for segmenting the abnormal area of the bone image. In the second stage, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is used to the segmented image. Once the image gets segmented then, the Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) method is applied to extract the features in terms of statistical texture-based. Further the image which is applied to Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce size of the feature vector. Besides, Bone Mineral Density (BMD) feature namely calcium volume is estimated from abnormal region in the segmented bone image and it is concatenated with the extracted texture features to obtain the final feature vectors. In the final stage, the Multi-class Support Vector Machine (MSVM) takes feature vectors as a inputto classify bone disorders. The simulation result demonstrates that the proposed system achieved the accuracy of 95.1% and sensitivity of 96.15%.
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Simulation of the deformation of polymers below their glass transition through molecular dynamics provides an useful route to correlate their molecular architecture to deformation behavior. However, present computational capabilities severely restrict the time and length scales that can be simulated when detailed models of these macromolecules are used. Coarse-graining techniques for macromolecular structures intend to make bigger and longer simulations possible by grouping atoms into superatoms and devising ways of determining reasonable force fields for the superatoms in a manner that retains essential macromolecular features relevant to the process under study but jettisons unnecessary details. In this work we systematically develop a coarse-graining scheme aimed at simulating uniaxial stress-strain behavior of polymers below their glass transition. The scheme involves a two step process of obtaining the coarse grained force field parameters above glass transition. This seems to be enough to obtain "faithful" stress-strain responses after quenching to below the glass transition temperature. We apply the scheme developed to a commercially important polymer polystyrene, derive its complete force field parameters and thus demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique.
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PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare gap arthroplasty with and without a temporalis muscle flap for the treatment of ankylosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixteen patients with temporomandibular joint ankylosis from 2001 to 2006 were included in the study, of which 7 were female and 9 were male. Fourteen patients had unilateral ankylosis and 2 patients had bilateral ankylosis. Sixteen patients were divided into 2 groups with 8 patients in each group. In group I patients, gap arthroplasty was performed with a mean follow-up of 20.3 months and in group II patients, interpositional arthroplasty with temporalis myofacial flap was performed with a mean follow-up of 23.1 months. All patients were assessed for mouth opening, diet consistency, and weight postoperatively. All patients were subjected to postoperative mouth opening exercises from the second postoperative day. RESULTS: There is no significant difference in postoperative mouth opening, diet consistency, and weight of the patients in both groups. Reankylosis occurred in 1 patient in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that there is no significant difference in maximal interincisal opening, diet scores, and weight of the patients in both groups. The overall outcome of the treatment depends on patient cooperation, active physiotherapy, and regular follow-up.
