Association of Inflammatory Cytokines,Lipid Peroxidation End Products and Nitric Oxide with the Clinical Severity and Fetal Outcome in Preeclampsia in Indian Women

Preeclampsia is a multisystem disorder associated with maternal hypertension, placental abnormalities and adverse fetal outcomes. The various pathways involved in its etiology include endothelial dysfunction, inflammatory milieu, lipid peroxidation and immunological imbalance. The present study was conducted to evaluate the causative and predictive role of nitric oxide, lipid peroxidation end products (MDA) and inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, TNF-α) in clinical presentation, severity and fetal outcome in preeclampsia. The study population was divided into 3 groups- Non- pregnant females comprising the control population; G1 and G2 groups included normal pregnant and pregnant females with preeclampsia with 50 patients in each group. Nitric Oxide and MDA levels were found to be highest in the preeclamptic patients as compared to other two groups. ROC curve analysis shows the superiority of the inflammatory markers as determinants of severity of preeclampsia which suggests the emerging role of pro inflammatory markers in the various pathological changes in preeclampsia. TNF-α emerged as the best marker in multivariate analysis and thus, has the potential for being used as a marker for PIH. Our study illustrates the multifactorial etiology of preeclampsia involving oxidative stress, proinflammatory milieu and endothelial dysfunction.     

Determining shelving accuracy via sampling in a community college library

Abstract

During the Fall 2017 semester, staff at the Hudson County Community College (HCCC), Library began to notice that many books listed as available in the catalog were often not being found on the shelves when patrons attempted to retrieve them. This situation puzzled library leadership because HCCC had recently conducted an inventory and removed all missing items from its holdings. To determine the cause of this discrepancy, HCCC staff decided to sample the library’s collection to determine if books were available at the expected locations. From this, the library found that a high percentage of its books were not present where they were expected to be. In response, library staff implemented a variety of changes to HCCC’s shelving and access services operations.     

Sliding mode controller design for MIMO nonlinear systems: A novel power rate reaching law approach for improved performance

This paper proposes a novel approach to the design of reaching law based on Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) for multi input multi output (MIMO) non-linear systems so as to overcome the drawbacks associated with conventional reaching law based SMC design strategies. The modification is proposed with an aim to completely eliminate chattering, to ensure control inputs within admissible limits and to guarantee fast response when SMC is used. Modification to conventional power rate reaching law is the point of interest here in order to ensure complete elimination of chattering. Two different modifications to power rate reaching law are presented which incorporate control constraints during controller design so that admissible control input limits are not exceeded. The first modified method ensures limited control effort as well as complete chattering free response, but does not improve the reaching characteristics. So a second adaptive modification to power rate reaching law is also presented here. This method ensures fast reaching to the sliding surface along with properties of complete elimination of chattering and bounded control inputs. However, as in power rate reaching law these modified methods retain the limitation of not possessing robustness properties. The method is applied to a three degree of freedom robotic arm which is typically a non-linear MIMO system. The ability of the presented method to satisfy attributes, viz., chattering free operation, bounded control inputs and fast response is compared with the performance of various reaching law methods available in the literature. The performance of the proposed method is validated through simulation studies on the robotic arm example.     

Raising awareness of campus diversity and inclusion: Transformationally teaching diversity through narratives of campus experiences and simulated problem solving

ABSTRACT

Courses: Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication

Objectives: This activity encourages students to learn collaboratively about diversity through the sharing of student experiences; deepen and complicate their understanding of organizational diversity; and enhance their ability to apply course material to increasingly complex organizational environments.