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The study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance on financial distress of listed companies in Sri Lanka. Board size, board composition, CEO duality, board meeting, director ownership, and audit committee size are proxies for corporate governance while financial distress is measured by the Altman Z-score. Altman Z-score measures financial distress inversely and bigger the Z-score indicates the smaller the risk of financial distress. Using hundred and eight individual observations of firms listed in Sri Lanka for the period of 2019 to 2021 and employing fixed effects model, the effect of corporate governance practices on financial distress is evaluated. The results from panel data regression analysis reveal that firms having large number of directors on the board have a low likelihood of financial distress of listed companies in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, when a chief executive officer serves as the chairman of the board at a company, the more likely it is that the company will experience financial distress. But, board composition, audit committee size, board meeting and director ownership have not shown any significant impact on financial distress. The current study also provides evidence that firm-specific characteristics such as firm size, leverage and profitability, could be useful as to determining the likelihood of financial distress. The findings may be of prominence to the academic researchers, practitioners, and regulators who are interested in discovering the quality of corporate governance practices in a developing market and its impact on financial distress.

The design and the implementation of introducing smart irrigation technology enhances the effectiveness of water utilization and will help farmers make their activities more beneficial. it is to increase the agriculture sustainability in common and considering the characteristics of irrigation in the rural areas. This report brings forward new device based on wireless networks such as solar photovoltaic technology, Arduino-based controllers, transmitters, receivers, and sensor nodes are used to measure solar, soil moisture, humidity, temperature, and the sensor readings are transmitted to a remote station. Experimental results indicated that the developed system could provide a sustainable solution to enhance the efficiency of water use and to preserve it in the agricultural fields while using solar photovoltaic energy as a renewable power supply Encouraging the use of this energy-efficient system in various sectors creates a slowly declining cost to build-up the solar technology. Another sensor is implemented to measure the water tank level which serves as storage capacity that supplies the water to the system. With the integration of IoT, automated irrigation can be easily access and remotely monitored over the mobile application through a wireless communication device.

The aim of this study is to construct 3D models of potential drug targets for the Bacterial Kidney Disease (BKD) causing pathogen Renibacterium salmoninarum. The bacterial pathogen Renibacterium salmoninarum was selected for homology modeling studies since there were no known protein structures of the organism reported in the NCBI database. The reported protein sequences were run through DrugBank to pick out drug-targets. Online databases and web tools such as PMDB, UniProt, Drug Bank, and SwissModel were employed in this analysis. An aggregate of 412 protein sequences were identified as potential drug targets and were retrieved from the UniProt. Homology models of the protein sequences were constructed using the SwissModel database for all 412 proteins. These were then refined through a protein blast and Ramachandran plot analysis. Out of the 412 constructed models, 143 models were of reliable quality. These were then submitted to the PMDB database for further reference. To demonstrate the application of these constructed models, protein-ligand docking analysis using Auto Dock Vina was performed. Among the antibiotics that were tested against their known drug targets, trimethoprim demonstrated significant potential for the inhibition of R. salmoninarum’s dihydrofolate reductase protein, with a binding energy of -9.06 Kcal/mol and with the formation of 3 hydrogen bonds. Therefore through protein-ligand docking studies and the construction of 3D models of protein drug targets, Trimethoprim is proposed as a solution to the Bacterial Kidney Disease (BKD) problem in salmonid fishes. Further in-vitro evidences are in demand to prove this hypothesis.

Discharging facial lesions of dental etiology are almost always difficult to diagnose. Due to the lack of dental signs in most patients, these lesions are often misunderstood and overlooked. Such patients often seek cosmetic therapy and end up undergoing unnecessary treatments, if an odontogenic source is not established. To make an accurate diagnosis, a comprehensive medical and dental history, as well as knowledge of the various presentations of facial lesions, is of pivotal importance. The cases identified here were misdiagnosed at first, and they were treated with antibiotics and surgical procedures as a result. Root canal operations were performed after referral to a dental unit, and the sinus tract eventually healed. This emphasizes the significance of taking odontogenic sources into account when treating head and neck lesions.

AIM To compare the diagnostic accuracy of periapical radiography (PR) and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) for detecting pathoses of endodontic origin using the gold standard of direct surgical visualization. METHODOLOGY Seventy-four patients (112 teeth) underwent radiographic examination by periapical radiography and CBCT. The presence of periapical lesions, root perforations and their locations, root fractures, different types of external root resorptive defects, apicomarginal bone defects, through and through bone defects, buccal bone status and proximity of root apices and lesions to vital anatomical structures were assessed. These same parameters were assessed intraoperatively by direct surgical visualization which served as the gold standard reference for the radiographic assessments. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values, negative predictive values were determined for comparison of diagnostic accuracy between two modalities. RESULTS There were no significant differences between the two imaging modalities for root resorptive defects and root fractures. However, CBCT accurately detected periapical lesions, root perforations, apicomarginal bone defects and through and through bone defects. The overall accuracy of CBCT varied from 91% to 96% in detecting dehiscence and fenestration of buccal cortical plates. CONCLUSION Overall, CBCT had a higher diagnostic accuracy in complex endodontic pathoses compared to PR. Nevertheless, CBCT failed to diagnose apicomarginal bone defects in 33% teeth. In evaluating the status of buccal cortical plate from CBCT images, observers could detect absence of bone better than its presence. Thus, limited FOV CBCT should be considered for selective cases where periapical radiography has diagnostic ambiguity.

Hyperhidrosis is an excessive production of sweat more than the physiological amount necessary to maintain thermal homeostasis. Primary focal hyperhidrosis is a disorder of unknown etiology, causing excessive, bilateral, symmetrical sweating on the soles of the foot is called plantar hyperhidrosis. The condition results not only in physical impairment, but also interferes with professional and social life. Although not life- threatening, it is very uncomfortable and cause embarrassment and psychological trauma. Iontophoresis is a helpful method, which includes the presentation of particles into the body tissue through the skin. The essential principle is to place the ion particles under an electrode with the same charge, i.e. negative ion placed under cathode and positive ion placed under anode. This complete process is also known as “technique of ion transfer” into the body tissues by using electrical current as a driving force. It is a comparative study with pre and post intervention. 30 subjects with plantar hyperhidrosis were selected based on the inclusion criteria. The study duration was for about 4 weeks30 subjects of age group between 15 –25 years with idiopathic plantar hyperhidrosis of both male and female subjects were included in this study. Subjects with cardiac and respiratory disorders, pregnant or lactating, any cuts, abrasions, eczema or infections on plantar aspect, metal implants like pacemakers, Hypersensitivity to the active substance were excluded. The subjects were divided into 3 group Group A treated with iontophoresis using tap water alone. Group B were treated with iontophoresis using tap water along with 3%-5% of anticholinergic drug, glycopyrronium bromide solution. Group C were treated with iontophoresis using tap water along with 1% of indomethacin (NSAID). The result of this study shows that there were significant changes in outcome measures. On comparing Mean values of Group A, Group B & Group C on Minor test (Starch - Iodine Test) tap Water along with Glycopyrronium Bromide (Group B) shows 1.60 which has the Lower Mean value is effective than Group A and Group C .On comparing Mean values of Group A, Group B & Group C on Visual Analog Scale score tap Water along with Glycopyrronium Bromide (Group B) shows 3.80 which has the Lower Mean value is effective than Group A and Group C. On comparing Mean values of Group A, Group B & Group C on Hyperhidrosis Disease Severity Scale tap Water along with Glycopyrronium Bromide (Group B) shows 1.40 which has the Lower Mean value is effective than Group A and Group C. On comparing all the three groups, Group B shows better result than Group C and Group A in outcome measure. This study concluded that Tap water along with glycopyrronium bromide reduces the excessive sweating and decrease the sweating symptoms in subjects with plantar hyperhidrosis.

The design and implementation of humanoid gesture control robotic arm with multiple actuations is proposed. Utilization of gesture based design is made here. The design is made such a way that five separate movable fingers, flexion and extension installed wrist with tilt feature. Human palm movements are imitated in robotic arm using the motion glove. To develop the processing of arms with additional movement, to improve the aesthetics both for the safety and to look as less artificial. Already in this field metallic and plastic variants are used. The dimensions are made with the help of human palm dimensions. A human design is not sufficient. It also need the movements that is done by actual human [1] . This paper we propose the number of movements done by the arm is made to 120 [2] .

A rooftop is a top covering of a structure, including all materials and developments important to help it on the dividers of the structure and also provides protection against rain, wind, snow, sunlight and excess of temperature. The asbestos sheet is used in the 20th century widely because of inexpensive and non-flammable properties. South America and Asia are using asbestos in the vital range for producing asbestos cement sheets where the other continents stopped using because of health and legal issues during mining and handling of asbestos. Many industries are involved in the production of asbestos sheets. In such industries, counting of sheets is done by using a proximity sensor during the piling of sheets per day consecutively. The count per hour and count per shift are the manual jobs done by workers. The worker needs to count the sheets manually every hour and should record the count in the register books. Manual works may lead to errors and also it took much time for counting and recounting sheets if there is some error in counting. Hence an automatic counting per hour and per shift method is proposed in this paper. Normally, proximity sensor is used to count sheets. In addition to that GIC PL100 (PLC) is used for counting the sheets per hour and shift and SCADA is for displaying the sheet count in Personal Computer. This proposed method completely avoids the manual intervention and gives an accurate count by proximity senor.

The development of the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the recent years is mainly due to the readily obtainable low-cost and short-range sensors. The objective of the WSN system is to both sense and transmit the real-time sense contents belonging to a particular monitoring environment for the back-end system for performing the necessary processing and analysis tasks. One of the most significant tasks of prime consideration is to ensure the safety and privacy aspects of the WSN in a wireless channel. The ultimate idea of the wireless sensor network is to preserve the limited node energy and thereby process the huge volume of data without affecting the robustness. The main objective of this work is to strengthen the robustness of the wireless sensor network that particularly relies on a scale-free type of network. The ability of the Scale-free WSNs in tolerating the random attacks efficiently have made them appear significant; on the other hand, they may be vulnerable to certain malicious attacks, that specifically targets the significant nodes in the system. This limitation has been addressed in this work by means of introducing a new modelling strategy called sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) that assists in the generation of scale-free network topologies. SPRT, a unique robustness improvising algorithm for the scale free type of WSNs, has been designed in this work and also the proposed SPRT is compared with the existing EROSE technique. The wide range of experimental results thus ensure that the introduced SPRT modelling methodology can achieves robustness and enhances the security of WSN.

Cloud computing is a network access concept that provides simple, on-demand network access to a shared pool of customizable computing resources (such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be quickly provided and released with minimal administrative effort or service provider involvement. The idea of having a communication node on-board a vehicle that may make wireless connections with other adjacent communication nodes visible in the radio range is referred to as a Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET). The main focus of this paper is to design lightweight Vehicular Adhoc Network architecture for efficient secure data transmission. An improved Ciphertext Policy Attribute Based Encryption scheme and Identity Based offline/online Signature scheme are proposed to reduce the computational cost, storage overhead and communication overhead in vehicular ad-hoc network. Finally, concluded that the proposed work yields high performance than the existing work.

Cloud computing suggests that the applications conveyed as services over the internet and frameworks programming in the server that give various services and offers in “pay as you go” trend which means pay only for what you use. The information and services are managed as software as a service (SaaS). Some sellers utilize terms, for example, IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service). The purpose of cloud computing is quickly expanding in everyday life. Today the use of cloud computing is widespread to the point that it is being utilized even in the medicinal services industry. As the development of cloud computing in healthcare is happening at a fast rate, we can expect a noteworthy piece of the healthcare administrations to move onto the Cloud and along these lines more focus is laid on giving cost-effective and efficient services to the general population all around the world. Cloud these days are turning into the new building pieces of significant organizations spread the world over. They offer assistance in servicing to offer different frameworks. Cloud computing has enhanced its technique and technologies in a better way to provide better services. Existing e-healthcare has many difficulties from advancement to usage. In this chapter, the authors discuss how cloud computing is utilized and the services provided by the Cloud and their models and its infrastructure.

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a collection of tiny sensor nodes capable of sensing and processing the data. These sensors are used to collect the information from the environment and pass it on to the base station. A WSN is more vulnerable to various attacks. Among the different types of attacks, sinkhole attack is more vulnerable because it leads to a variety of attacks further in the network. Intrusion detection techniques are applied to handle sinkhole attacks. One of effective approach of intrusion detection mechanism is using Swarm Intelligence techniques (SI). Particle Swarm Optimization is one of the important swarm intelligence techniques. This research work enhances the existing Particle Swarm Optimization technique and the proposed technique is tested in a simulated environment for performance. It is observed that the proposed Enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization (EPSO) technique performs better in terms of Detection rate, False Alarm rate, Packet delivery ration, Message drop and Average delay when compared to the existing swarm intelligence techniques namely, Ant Colony Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization.

Deep reinforcement learning, and especially the Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic algorithm, has been successfully used to achieve super-human performance in a variety of video games. Starcraft II is a new challenge for the reinforcement learning community with the release of pysc2 learning environment proposed by Google Deepmind and Blizzard Entertainment. Despite being a target for several AI developers, few have achieved human level performance. In this project we explain the complexities of this environment and discuss the results from our experiments on the environment. We have compared various architectures and have proved that transfer learning can be an effective paradigm in reinforcement learning research for complex scenarios requiring skill transfer., arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1708.04782 by other authors

The assessment is done on a variety of methods of tracking and alerting the fishermen in maritime using GPS. Navigation in marine is the most important factor used by the fishermen. The tracking system uses the electronic scheme installed on the boat and with software design which allows the client or holder to track the boat location based on latitude and longitude data. Today global positioning system GPS technology is becoming the safe tool for navigation purpose. The position and location in sequence can be viewed in electronic map via GPS receiver. Ms. M. Florence Dayana | M. Vengadeswari | G. Keerthana | M. Vinothini "Fishermen Nautical Border Alert System" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-3 , April 2018, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd11653.pdf

We propose a system in which it allows the user to contact or make an alert during any emergency situation to the appropriate service provider directly using this application. Though there are several apps in the market, what makes our application special is that it is completely in our Tamil language. Here the user has to download and install the application along with all the required details. In case of any emergency situation, the user can just make an alert or call the service provider directly from the application. While making an alert or call, the global position using the latitude and longitudinal coordinates of the user will also be sent to the service provider. All the information about the service provider will be stored pre-definably in the application and it can also be updated or new contacts can be added if required. In this application, we did not use any tool for translating the text into our Tamil language. We are using the BAMINI as a font and is imported for the user interface of the application. The main drawback is to overcome the language complexity. It is in our Tamil language which makes it to be used even by people who doesn't know any foreign language hence making it more user-friendly.

A Wireless Local Area Network otherwise as WLAN gives a flexible data communication system rather than using a wired LAN within a building. It uses radio frequency to transmit and receive data which minimizes the need for wired connections. The intention of this paper is to evaluate the performance of WLAN protocol network IEEE802.11n with the data rate of 2.4GHz which is achieved by using optimized network simulating tool, RIVERBED modeler 17.5. The performance of the protocol were measured by setting up three main functions. Media access Delay, data packet loss, Data dropped buffer overflow. Data packet received by all the workstation is larger than the other protocols. The possibility of data flow and communication will be higher. In addition, the delay that occurs can be eliminated by increasing the channel transmission rate

In this paper, we suggest an interval Transportation problem where the source and destination parameters are chosen as interval numbers. The main objective of the problem is to minimize the total transportation cost and total delivery time. Algorithm is proposed (VAM and MODI) to determine initial allocation to the basic cells and the corresponding interval transportation cost. The optimal solution is obtained without converting the problem to its classical version. Numerical example is obtained which will be easy to understand the solution and procedure of the proposed method.

Moore's law states that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits has doubled approximately every two years; this is true for CMOS based VLSI circuit design. Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) replaces CMOS based VLSI technology. The assembly of quantum dots replaces transistors which is said to be 'quantum-dot cellular automata', an emerging nanotechnology in the field of quantum electronics. Such type of circuit can be used in many digital applications and has an advantage of reduced area utilisation. Quantum mechanics and cellular automata are together said to be QCA. QCA technology has advantages like small size and high speed. CMOS technology uses transistors to create a logic gates but in QCA technology, logic gates and wires are created by using QCA cells. The basic logic gates like AND, OR, inverter, majority gates are implemented. Many combinational and sequential circuits are designed by using these basic gates. This paper aims at the design of finite state machines and its use in vending machine and traffic light controller were discussed. The circuit was designed and the functionality of those was verified using QCADesigner tool.

Rapid developments in the communication arena has tremendously improved the transmission procedures today. The amount of information transmission in the commercial and military applications has grown tremendously therefore the need for security concerns have also grown simultaneously since these applications involve in the transmission of confidential contents. Information transmissions in wireless networks appear to be confidential, hence it becomes mandatory to safeguard these contents from the various available offenses by means of devising suitable security mechanisms. Various types of attacks have been observed in the ad hoc networks, namely, the active and passive types, internal and external types. Integrity, identity and privacy are the three major parameters to be ensured in the design of a secure network. This survey paper discusses about the various attacks on a network together with the essential security procedures to be incorporated for securing the network.

Rubber has good damping and vibrational characteristics and can reduce cracking significantly due to its elastic nature. This property of rubber can be incorporated in concrete to control vibrations and create better pavements. Crumb Rubber on being dumped in landfills has serious repercussions and causes soil and land pollution. An innovative use of waste tires is shredding them into small pieces and using them as a replacement for coarse aggregate. Crumb rubber is obtained by chopping scrap tires, and in this study it was added in two different sets named SET 1 - Treated Crumb Rubber and concrete, and SET 2 - Treated Crumb rubber with Ultra Fine GGBS as admixture in concrete. Coarse aggregate replaces Rubber in each of the 2 SET's in proportions of 5, 10, 15 and 20%. Properties like Compressive Strength, Young's Modulus, Direct and Semi direct Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity, Sorptivity, Damping ratio and Frequency were found out. Deformation and mode shape were studied with modal analysis and static analysis by applying a uniform pressure corresponding to the highest compressive strength of the slab, using ANSYS.

Nanotechnology is a fast growing and emerging new technology in recent years due to their extensive application. In current scenario, chemically induced synthesis of silver nanoparticles has played a significant role. In this study silver nanoparticles were produced in de-ionized water and dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) using D-galactose as reducing agent at 80°C. Silver nitrate (AgNO 3 ) was employed as the metal precursor for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs). D-galactose acted as reducing agent for the conversion of silver salts into silver ions under experimental condition. The formation of nanoparticles and Plasmon resonance kinetic energy was determined by UV - visible spectroscopy. The de-ionized water solution of D-galactose was better reductive activity in 400nm whereas DMSO solution of D-galactose in 350nm. The produced nanoparticles were subjected to perform antimicrobial efficacy against selected pathogens. D-galactose induced silver nanoparticles produced in de-ionized water exhibited higher antimicrobial activity against bacterial pathogens. Among the pathogens tested Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella paratyphi A showed maximum antibacterial activity. No activity was observed towards yeast Candida albicans . In conclusion D-galactose mediated silver nanoparticles using de-ionized water could be cost effective and eco-friendly technique for bulk production. The characterization studies are under progress to understand the size, shape and topography of the nanoparticles. Further biocompatibility and cytotoxicity studies are essential for pharmaceutical and biomedical applications.

Nanotechnology has drawn significant attention due to their unique and exceptional applications in recent years. Current scenario protract chemical methods of silver nanoparticle (Ag-NPs) production have noteworthy interest due to their huge demand. The demands of silver nanoparticle keep on increasing day by day. Silver nanoparticles are attracting much interest because of their potent antimicrobial activity. In the present study, silver nanoparticles were produced in aqueous solutions of starch in DMSO and Milli-Q water at high temperature (80°C) under continuous stirring condition. Starch acted as both reducing and stabilizing agents simultaneously for the production of silver nanoparticles. Silver nitrate (AgNO3) of 2mM aqueous solution was used as the metal ion precursor for the fabrication of Ag-NPs under the reaction condition over the period of time. The Plasmon resonance kinetics and their activation energy of nanoparticles were determined by UV – visible spectroscopy. The UV-Vis spectrum revealed the formation of silver nanoparticles by exhibiting the typical surface plasmon absorption maxima at 420 nm. The Milli-Q water solution of starch exhibited better reductive activity than the DMSO solution of starch. The produced silver nanoparticles were subjected to performed antimicrobial activity against selected microbial pathogens. The Milli-Q water solution of starch refereed silver nanoparticles were demonstrated superior antimicrobial activity against Candida albicans than other tested pathogens. The produced silver nanoparticles further to be characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, AFM etc., to pinpoint the size, morphology and actual constituents responsible for the antibacterial activity. This research opens a new avenue of nanotechnological niche in the field of nanobiotechnology.

Natural human communication is nuanced and inherently multi-modal. Humans possess specialised sensoria for processing vocal, visual, and linguistic, and para-linguistic information, but form an intricately fused percept of the multi-modal data stream to provide a holistic representation. Analysis of emotional content in face-to-face communication is a cognitive task to which humans are particularly attuned, given its sociological importance, and poses a difficult challenge for machine emulation due to the subtlety and expressive variability of cross-modal cues. Inspired by the empirical success of recent so-called End-To-End Memory Networks and related works, we propose an approach based on recursive multi-attention with a shared external memory updated over multiple gated iterations of analysis. We evaluate our model across several large multi-modal datasets and show that global contextualised memory with gated memory update can effectively achieve emotion recognition.