Pattern of Congenital Overt and Occult Pediatric Surgical Anomalies in a Tertiary Care Centre Over 5 Years

ongenital anomalies are important cause of infant and childhood deaths, chronic illness and disability. The proportion of deaths and disability due to congenital anomalies has increased, as deaths due to other diseases have decreased over the years due to better health care. Hence it is essential to have basic epidemiological information of these anomalies. This is a hospital based, cross-sectional, record based study, conducted in the Department of Pediatric Surgery, Govt. Medical College Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Sample size included 300 children below the age of 12years admitted in the department of pediatric surgery with various major congenital anomalies, over a period of 5 years. More than half of these children were admitted after infancy for treatment, male children were more compared to females. Majority of these children were from low socioeconomic group. Only in 5.6% cases there was a history of consanguineous marriage. In 7.33% there was family history of congenital anomalies. In 32% cases the anomalies were detected in the antenatal period. Most of the anomalies were isolated anomalies. Genitourinary system was the most common system to be involved followed by, gastrointestinal tract. 91.67% children underwent surgical treatment, and only 10.67% children had major complications in postoperative period. This study shows that congenital anomalies are a major cause of hospital admissions in children of all ages. Pattern of anomalies seen in various centers are different. Knowledge of the pattern of congenital anomalies may be useful in planning health services. Keywords: Congenital, Anomalies, Pediatric surgery.

Advances and outlook of horticultural bioengineering

A Branch of modern biotechnology for creating unique relevant genotypes is bioengineering that harnesses a spectrum of plant genome modification technologies. The study aimed to analyse the current state of the art in genome modification of fruit and berry crops for more significant (vs. premium pure breeding varieties) deviations of norm in the traits and properties of biotic and abiotic resistance, productivity, fruit quality, etc. First horticultural crop transformation studies aimed at developing protocols based on selectable enzyme marker genes of phosphorylationmediated aminoglycoside antibiotics detoxification. Neomycin phosphotransferase nptII constitutes the most common system of transgenic fruit and berry crop selection. In pome crops, the transgenic selection priorities were resistance to scab (Venturia inaequalis (Wint.) Cke), rust (Gymnosporangium juniper-virginianae Schwein.) and bacterial blight (Erwinia amylovora Burrill, Winslow et al.), higher fruit quality, including bright colouring, and reduced enzymatic browning. In stone crops, it was tolerance to plum pox (PPV), papaya ringspot (PRSV) and Prunus necrotic ringspot (PNRSV) viruses. In berry crops — resistance to Sphaerotheca humuli (DC.) Burrill fungus, grey mould (Botrytis cinerea Pers.), root rot (Phytophthora cactorum (Lebert & Cohn) J.Schrot.) and powdery mildew (Oidium tuckeri Berkeley), as well as higher fruit quality. In citruses — resistance to bacterial canker (Xanthomonas citri sub sp.), citrus ulcer (Xanthomonas axonopodis pv citri), greening disease (Huanglongbing (HLB)) and fungi (Trichoderma harzianum Rifai). In tropical crops — resistance to papaya ringspot (PRSV) and banana streak (eBSV) viruses. Unique FT-phenotype transgenic fruit lines are leveraged in the new FasTrack breeding strategy. Nine fruit and berry transgenic crop lines have now been registered worldwide. Transgenic Arctic apples (Golden, Granny, Fuji), plums (Honey Sweet) and papaya (Rainbow, SunUp, Laie Gold) are industry-approved in fresh and processed form. The transgenic list regulated in the Russian Federation does not include fruit or berry crops.

AN APPROACH TO ANALYSIS OF ARCHIMATE APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE MODELS USING THE SOFTWARE COUPLING METRIC

Applications architecture is the baseline of any organizational activity, which main goal is to provide the executional environment for businessprocesses in order to deliver products or services to satisfy customer needs and generate revenue. Nowadays, large software engineering projectsalways begin with the architecture design phase, despite the waterfall or agile methodology is used by a software development team. Applicationsarchitecture design is the most important and, at the same time, error-prone stage of the whole software engineering project. It is well-known thatdesign shortcomings made on the design phase may increase drastically to testing and maintenance phases. Further costs to defects fixing may behundred times higher in the later project stages in compare to the design stage on which applications architecture is defined. Common system designsolutions, which were proven on practice and used in many projects, are known as architectural patterns. Software architecture patterns are consideredas building block for system implementation. The most popular and efficient way to share architectural patterns are graphical models that used as anyother blueprints of engineering solutions. Applications architecture models are built to represent system design, whereas, such models are alreadybased on certain patterns as the industry best practices. Hence, in this paper we consider a relevant problem of applications architecture modelsanalysis, which relevance is defined by those fact that designed blueprints of information systems and other software solutions should be carefullychecked for all presumable inefficiencies in order to avoid extra efforts and related costs for defects fixing in the later project stages. It is proposed touse ArchiMate enterprise architecture modeling language, since it can be used not only to represent applications architecture, but is connection tobusiness and technology layers. In order to evaluate applications architecture models, respective ArchiMate metamodel is considered and representedas labeled directed graph, and coupling software metric is selected for analysis. Sample calculations are demonstrated, obtained results are discussed,conclusion and future work directions are formulated.

Prevalence and clinical potential of extraspinal incidental findings in lumbosacral spine MRI of patients with suspected disc diseases

BACKGROUND Incidental findings could be observed in organs close to the spine while reporting lumbosacral spine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This study aimed to report the prevalence and clinical potential of extraspinal incidental findings in lumbosacral MRI of patients with suspected disc diseases. METHODS This single-centered cross-sectional study was carried out on 420 consecutive adult patients who underwent lumbar spine MRI for suspected disc disease from January to July 2019. The MRI was checked for the presence of extraspinal incidental findings, and each finding was categorized according to the body organ and its clinical significance. Each MRI plane that best displayed the findings was recorded, and the association between the findings and patient's age and sex was determined. RESULTS Of 420 samples, 135 cases showed extraspinal findings (32.1%), and 7.6% of the patients displayed suspicious lesions. The urinary tract was the most common system (18.6%) to display both clinically significant (5.0%) and benign findings (13.6%), and the axial MRI section was the plane which showed most of the incidental findings. Incidental findings in any body system were rarely found in the younger patients. Females had significantly higher benign findings than males (p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of extraspinal findings in lumbosacral spine MRI is high, and some are significant. Most findings are related to the urinary tract and best displayed in the axial plane.

BFT in Blockchains: From Protocols to Use Cases

A blockchain is a distributed system that achieves strong security guarantees in storing, managing, and processing data. All blockchains achieve a common goal: building a decentralized system that provides a trustworthy service in an untrustworthy environment. A blockchain builds a Byzantine fault-tolerant system where decentralized nodes run a protocol to reach an agreement on the common system state. In this article, we focus on the research of BFT protocols. In particular, we categorize BFT protocols according to both the system models and workflow. We seek to answer a few important questions: How has the research in BFT evolved in the past four decades, especially with the rise of blockchains? What are the driven needs for BFT research in the future?

APPROACHES TO DEFINING THE ESSENCE OF DIGITAL STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

In modern conditions of a transformational economy, the processes of forming partnerships are especially relevant, based on the construction of the concept of digital strategic partnership, which opens up new competitive opportunities in the search for rational behavior of economic microsystems. The article identifies three main stages of globalization and the place of digitalization of all processes of social life. The studied features of the development of digital strategic partnerships made it possible to highlight the prerequisites for creating digital strategic partnerships and the main factors influencing their development: economic, political, social, technical and cultural factors. The controversy of scientific views on the definition of the essence of the concept of "stra-tegic partnership" is considered, two main approaches to the definition of the essence of the concept of "strategic partnership" are highlighted – according to the goals of creation and levels of economic relations. According to the goal of creating strategic partnerships, it identifies such classification features as: partnership as an agreement, partnership as a model of competition, partnership as a relational model, partnership as an international alliance of enterprises. According to the levels of economic de-velopment, strategic partnerships are distinguished at the macro level, at the meso level and at the micro level. The author pres-ents the definition of the term "Digital Strategic Partnership" as a set of parties (enterprises) to achieve a certain strategic goal, in particular to increase efficiency, which implies the creation of a common system of values and processes based on the use of resources. and partner competencies based on a single digital platform for business organizations. The basic concepts that reveal the essence of digital strategic partnership are revealed – cooperation, agreement, interaction, integration, partnership, strategy. In the new digital economy, digital strategic partnerships enable businesses to gain new competency benefits by gaining a single, open information network of access to partner resources, including markets, technology, capital, and human resources.Keywords: globalization, partnership, strategic partnership, digital strategic partnership. У статті визначено три основні етапи глобалізації і місце цифровізації всіх процесів суспільного життя. Сформовано передумови створення цифрових стратегічних партнерств і чинники впливу на їх розвиток. Розглянуто полеміку наукових поглядів щодо визначення сутності поняття «стратегічне партнерство», виділено підходи до визначення сутності поняття «стратегічне партнерство» за метою створення партнерства: як угода, як конкурентна модель, як реляційна модель, як міжнародний альянс підприємств і за рівнями економічного розвитку: на макрорівні, мезорівні і мікрорівні. Представлено визначення терміна «цифрове стратегічне партнерство» та основні поняття, що розкривають суть цифрового стратегічного партнерства.Ключові слова: глобалізація, партнерство, стратегічне партнерство, цифрове стратегічне партнерство

THE COMMON SYSTEM ON THE VALUE ADDED TAX OF THE EUROPEAN UNION APPLIED TO THE INTRA-COMMUNITY OF PURCHASES OF MOTOR VEHICLES

The common system of value added tax (VAT) of the European Union (EU) is implemented through Directive 2006/112/EC amending the text of Directive 6, namely of Council Directive 77/388/EC of May 17th 1977 to clarify the existing EU VAT legislation. This tax applies to all transactions made in the EU by a natural person or a legal entity called a taxable person, who provides goods and services in the course of their business. Moreover, imports of goods and services by any taxable person are also subject to VAT. The intra-community purchase of means of transport represents the entry into Romania of motor vehicles coming from member states of the European Union, goods that are transported from another member state to Romania. The fiscal treatment is very different depending on the specifics of each particular circumstance at the intra-community purchase and it is regulated by Title VI of the Tax Code which transposes the provisions of Directive 2006/112/EC. We aim at analyzing and capturing the accounting and fiscal diversity generated by these particular circumstances in the intra-community purchase of motor vehicles.

Revisiting CFTR Interactions: Old Partners and New Players

Remarkable progress in CFTR research has led to the therapeutic development of modulators that rescue the basic defect in cystic fibrosis. There is continuous interest in studying CFTR molecular disease mechanisms as not all cystic fibrosis patients have a therapeutic option available. Addressing the basis of the problem by comprehensively understanding the critical molecular associations of CFTR interactions remains key. With the availability of CFTR modulators, there is interest in comprehending which interactions are critical to rescue CFTR and which are altered by modulators or CFTR mutations. Here, the current knowledge on interactions that govern CFTR folding, processing, and stability is summarized. Furthermore, we describe protein complexes and signal pathways that modulate the CFTR function. Primary epithelial cells display a spatial control of the CFTR interactions and have become a common system for preclinical and personalized medicine studies. Strikingly, the novel roles of CFTR in development and differentiation have been recently uncovered and it has been revealed that specific CFTR gene interactions also play an important role in transcriptional regulation. For a comprehensive understanding of the molecular environment of CFTR, it is important to consider CFTR mutation-dependent interactions as well as factors affecting the CFTR interactome on the cell type, tissue-specific, and transcriptional levels.

The specifics of Croatian folk mythology

The article is devoted to the areal distribution of Croatian mythological characters, taking into account the general picture of folk mythology in the space of Southern Slavia. The author regards demonological images specific to the Adriatic, southern and northern parts of Croatia (including the Istrian peninsula), northwestern Croatia (often representing a single whole with the neighboring Slovenian area), Slavonia and Croats living in the environment of a foreign-cultural and foreign-speaking majority (Drava’s Croats in Hungary and Burgenland’s Croats in Austria and Hungary). The need to analyze character types considering the neighboring South Slavic regions (Bosnian, Serbian, Slovenian) is caused by the common system of distribution of cultural dialects and the corresponding terminology of folk culture in the whole South Slavic territory. As far as the geolinguistic study of folk mythology is concerned, and more broadly – cultural dialects, the ethnolinguist’s attention naturally falls on borrowings in the names of demonological characters: Italian, German, Hungarian, etc.

Cultural Neuroaesthetics of Delicate Sadness Induced by Noh Masks

As an investigator of how culture interacts with neuroaesthetics in Japanese art, the author’s goal in the article under discussion is to explore the neural mechanisms involved in the social, affective, and cognitive processes of sadness induced by the Noh mask. Why do seemingly negative emotions, such as sadness, play a critical role in aesthetic experiences in the Noh theater? What brain activity is involved in feeling delicate sadness? Sadness induced by faces involves cortical interactions among various brain areas such as the amygdala, striatum, fusiform face area, and insula. The expectation for reward, hidden in the appreciation of the sad mask, might be a social reward. If so, it may be that appreciating sadness masks engages a common system that drives the expectation of negative rewards. The author ran a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants’ brains were scanned while watching sad Noh masks. Results confirmed predictions, revealing activation of the right amygdala while viewing sad masks.