Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Objectives: To identify the hematological manifestations and its association with serum ferritin levels in SLE patients from Western India. Methods: Ninety clinically diagnosed SLE patients fulfilling ACR criteria were included. Disease activity was assessed at the time of evaluation using Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI). Sera were tested for serum ferritin levels by ELISA (Calbiotech, USA). Autoantibodies such as ANA, anti-dsDNA by indirect immunofluorescence test (IFA- Bio-Rad, USA) and anti-cardiolipin antibodies (ACA) to IgG and IgM isotypes and Anti-β2 GP antibodies to IgG and IgM isotypes were detected by ELISA using commercially available kits (Euroimmun, Lubeck, Germany). Results: Out of 90 SLE patients studied, 41 patients (45.6%) showed hematological abnormalities, where anemia (82.9%), leucopenia (26.8%), autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) (14.6%) and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) were noted in (34.1%) patients. Mean±SD serum ferritin levels among SLE patients were 270.2±266.0 ng/ml as compared to 29.0±15.8 ng/ml healthy normal controls (p<0.0001). A positive correlation between serum ferritin levels and SLEDAI scores (r= 0.2640, p=0.0124) and anti-dsDNA positivity was noted (r=0.32, p<0.0001). Serum ferritin levels were negatively correlated with hemoglobin levels (r=-0.5964, p=0.0001), WBC count (r=-0.1705, p=0.2316), platelet count ((r=-0.1701, P=0.2375), C3 levels (r=-0.4417, p=0.0034) and C4 levels (r=-0.0363, p=0.8215) Conclusion: Serum ferritin is an excellent marker of SLE which can be used for an evaluation of disease activity particularly in active stage of the disease mainly in patients having hematological and renal manifestations. © 2016, Journal of Association of Physicians of India. All rights reserved.

World University root node

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Journal of Association of Physicians of India

Association of serum ferritin levels with hematological manifestations in systemic lupus erythematosus patients from Western India

Viscum album L. or European mistletoe (Loranthaceae), a semi-parasitic shrub, has been used as a traditional medicine in Europe for centuries to treat various diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disorder, epilepsy, infertility, hypertension and arthritis. V. album contains diverse phytochemicals, which exert a large number of biological and pharmacological activities. The aim of this review is to compile the developments in the domain of V. album and research trends, with a focus on ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry and pharmacological properties, to illustrate the potential of this phytotherapeutic as an attractive commercial herbal medicine. Crude extracts and isolated chemical constituents from V. album have exhibited significant medicinal effects in experimental models and in patients with cancer, autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. Importantly, recent randomized clinical trials have suggested improved overall survival and quality of life in cancer patients treated with different mistletoe preparations. The current phytochemical studies have shown that lectins, hetero-dimeric glycoproteins, polysaccharides, viscotoxins, alkaloids, lipids, triterpenes, peptides, vesicles, flavonoids, cyclitols and amines are principal bioactive phytochemicals of V. album. Clinical studies and experimental models have revealed that V. album exhibits several pharmacological functions such as immunomodulatory, anti-hypertensive, anti-oxidant, cytotoxicity, anti-tumor, anti-inflammation, anti-diabetic, anti-microbial and sedative activities. It is conceivable that the heterogenous profile of biochemical compounds provides the basis for the broad diversity of pharmacological activities of mistletoe, as each single component contributes diverse modes of action in addition to imparting a synergistic beneficial action in conjunction with other molecules. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016.

Fulltext

RSC Advances

European Viscum album: A potent phytotherapeutic agent with multifarious phytochemicals, pharmacological properties and clinical evidence

The European Hematology Association (EHA) Roadmap for European Hematology Research highlights major achievements in diagnosis and treatment of blood disorders and identifies the greatest unmet clinical and scientific needs in those areas to enable better funded, more focused European hematology research. Initiated by the EHA, around 300 experts contributed to the consensus document, which will help European policy makers, research funders, research organizations, researchers, and patient groups make better informed decisions on hematology research. It also aims to raise public awareness of the burden of blood disorders on European society, which purely in economic terms is estimated at ∈ European Hematology Association (EHA) Roadmap for European Hematology Research highlights major achievements in diagnosis and treatment of blood disorders and identifies the greatest unmet clinical and scientific needs in those areas to enable better fu treatments, sometimes in revolutionary ways. This progress highlights the potential of focused basic research programs such as this EHA Roadmap. The EHA Roadmap identifies nine ‘sections’ in hematology: normal hematopoiesis, malignant lymphoid and myeloid diseases, anemias and related diseases, platelet disorders, blood coagulation and hemostatic disorders, transfusion medicine, infections in hematology, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. These sections span 60 smaller groups of diseases or disorders. The EHA Roadmap identifies priorities and needs across the field of hematology, including those to develop targeted therapies based on genomic profiling and chemical biology, to eradicate minimal residual malignant disease, and to develop cellular immunotherapies, combination treatments, gene therapies, hematopoietic stem cell treatments, and treatments that are better tolerated by elderly patients. © 2016 Ferrata Storti Foundation.

Haematologica

The european hematology association roadmap for european hematology research: A consensus document

Basophils are infrequent granulocytes which are important for Th2 responses, protection against helminthic parasites and the pathogenesis of allergy and other inflammatory conditions. Recent reports suggest that in mice basophils function as antigen-presenting cells for mediation of Th2 responses. However, human basophils lack features of antigen-presenting cells. © 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS.

Revue Francaise d'Allergologie

Orientation of the immune response by basophils

For cascaded multilevel inverter topologies with a single dc supply, closed-loop capacitor voltage control is necessary for proper operation. This paper presents zero and reduced common-mode voltage (CMV) operation of a hybrid cascaded multilevel inverter with predictive capacitor voltage control. Each phase of the inverter is realized by cascading two-three-level flying capacitor inverters with a half-bridge module in between. For the presented inverter topology, there are redundant switching states for each inverter voltage levels. By using these switching state redundancies, for every sampling instant, a cost function is evaluated based on the predicted capacitor voltages for each phase. The switching state that minimizes cost function is treated as the best and is switched for that sampling instant. The inverter operates with zero CMV for a modulation index upto 86%. For modulation indices from 86% to 96%, the inverter can operate with reduced CMV magnitude (Vdc/18) and reduced CMV switching frequency using the new space-vector pulsewidth modulation (SVPWM) presented herein. As a result, the linear modulation range is increased to 96% as compared to 86% for zero CMV operation. Simulation and experimental results are presented for the inverter topology for various steady state and transient operating conditions by running an induction motor drive with open loop V/f control scheme.

Department of Electrical Engineering

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics

A Predictive Capacitor Voltage Control of a Hybrid Cascaded Multilevel Inverter with a Single DC-Link and Reduced Common-Mode Voltage Operation

This paper proposes a new 9-level stacked inverter for a symmetric six phase induction motor with low voltage devices using a single DC link. The six phase inverter is developed using 2 three phase 9-level stacked inverters. Each of these three phase stacked inverter is developed by stacking two 5-level inverters. The three phase 9-level inverter needs two DC sources for its operation. All the capacitors in this topology can be balanced using the switching state redundancies within a sampling interval irrespective of load power factor and modulation index. Using proper switching state redundancies, the developed six phase inverter can be operated with a single DC link. A laboratory prototype is developed and a six phase IM is run using V/f control scheme. Both steady state and transient results are presented. © 2016 IEEE.

IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics

A new nine level stacked inverter topology for a symmetric six phase induction motor with low voltage devices and using a single DC link

This paper presents a novel Asymmetrical-Pulse-Width-Modulated (APWM) half-bridge resonant converter with one additional active switching device at the secondary side of the transformer. The proposed converter features load-independent Zero-Voltage-Switching (ZVS) of both of the primary side switches with minimal magnetizing current. Empirical formulae are derived to design the resonant network and the high-frequency transformer systematically. The circulating current is minimized not only by operating the converter exactly at the resonant frequency, but also by reducing the magnetizing current. Moreover, the additional secondary-side switching device (which is a low-voltage and high-current rated MOSFET) achieves zero current turn-off at all load conditions. Thus the efficiency of the overall converter is significantly improved for wide load range. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the analysis and to prove the significance of the additional switching device at the secondary side of the transformer. © 2016 IEEE.

Conference Proceedings - IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition - APEC

Design of a novel APWM half-bridge DC-DC resonant converter with load-independent soft-switching and reduced circulating current

In this paper, we present noise-robust photoplethysmographic (PPG) based biometric authentication method for wireless body area networks and m-health applications. The method consists of four steps: (i) preprocessing of PPG signals, (ii) systolic peak detection, (iii) ensemble averaged pulsatile waveform extraction and (iv) pulsatile waveform similarity matching using a normalized cross correlation (NCC) measure. The performance of the proposed method is tested and validated using different types of PPG signals taken from the standard PPG databases. For predefined threshold of 0.997, the NCC-based PPG biometric method achieves an average false rejection rate (FRR) of 0.32 and false acceptance rate (FAR) of 0.32. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed method achieves consistent authentication results as compared to the other methods under different kinds of artifacts and noise. © 2016 IEEE.

2016 22nd National Conference on Communication, NCC 2016

Robust photoplethysmographic (PPG) based biometric authentication for wireless body area networks and m-health applications

Early detection of life-threatening arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation (VF) and rapid ventricular tachycardia (VT) is most essential for an automatic external defibrillator and remote cardiac patient monitoring. In this paper, we present a low-complexity, robust detection method for automatically detecting VT and VF events in the ECG signal. The proposed detection method consists of four stages: (i) discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based noise removal, (ii) addition of random noise; (iii) zero-crossing rate (ZCR) estimator and (iv) detection rule. The proposed method is tested and validated using the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database (MITADB), Creighton university ventricular tachycardia database (CUDB) and the MIT-BIH malignant ventricular arrhythmia Database (MITMVFDB). The method achieves an overall sensitivity (Se) of 99.34%, and specificity (Sp) of 99.97% for 5 s signal. The robustness of the method is tested using different types of PQRST morphological patterns and various kinds of noises including the baseline wanders, powerline interference, muscle artifacts and white Gaussian noise. The results demonstrate the proposed method with additive random noise with single ZCR feature can achieve significantly better detection rates as compared with the existing detection methods based on the combination of morphological, spectral, time-frequency, and complexity features and the machine learning techniques such as neural networks, support vector machines (SVM), fuzzy neural networks (FNN). © 2016 IEEE.

2016 International Conference on Wireless Communications, Signal Processing …

Detection of life-threatening arrhythmias using random noise and zerocrossing information

Volts-per-hertz (V/f) controlled induction motor drives could exhibit small-signal instability in the low and medium speed ranges, and particularly under light-load conditions. This results in sustained sub-harmonic oscillations in motor current, torque and speed. This instability is accentuated on account of inverter dead-time. This paper examines improving the stability by connecting an external inductor in series with the stator winding. Further, to avoid an actual external three-phase inductor which could be expensive in the case of high-power drives, a simple control scheme which emulates this series inductor is proposed. The emulation scheme also has the advantage that the value of series inductor could be programmable. This inductive emulation scheme, along with V/f control, is implemented on a TMS320F2812 DSP processor platform to control a 100-kW induction motor drive. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control scheme is effective in mitigating the oscillations in the 100-kW induction motor drive. © 2015 IEEE.