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Conventionally, volcanic margins have been considered devoid of hydrocarbon, but many discoveries and research in recent past have proved the presence of hydrocarbon prospects within them. However, hydrocarbon exploration within volcanic margin is constrained by seismic imaging. Further, identification of continent to oceanic boundary (COB) is critical to hydrocarbon search as hydrocarbon is found mostly over continental crust. Seaward dipping reflectors, associated with volcano-sedimentary sequences, located along rifted continental margins and represented by highly dipping strong amplitude seismic reflectors, play an important role to study volcanic margins. Keeping in view the problems of hydrocarbon exploration within volcanics, seaward dipping reflectors (SDRs) in Indian context have been studied in detail in this paper. It facilitates mapping of continent-oceanic boundary (COB). It has impact on hydrocarbon prospectivity in volcanic margins as it can provide formidable seal and secondary induced maturity. In India, several discoveries have been made in volcanic margins along west coast, from weathered, fractured basalt and sub-basalt sediments. In the present work, long offset regional seismic data (18 dip lines and 1 cross line), along east coast, have been interpreted. SDRs help in hydrocarbon prospectivity assessment for both discrimination of interbedded sediments and preferential accumulation of hydrocarbon. Mapping of linear features not only helped to demarcate COB but also their presence at 6–10 km depth. For the first time, such comprehensive study on SDRs has been done along Indian peninsular region with indications for hydrocarbon prospectivity at deeper levels along Indian peninsular region.

Inhalational therapy, today, happens to be the mainstay of treatment in obstructive airway diseases (OADs), such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and is also in the present, used in a variety of other pulmonary and even non-pulmonary disorders. Hand-held inhalation devices may often be difficult to use, particularly for children, elderly, debilitated or distressed patients. Nebulization therapy emerges as a good option in these cases besides being useful in the home care, emergency room and critical care settings. With so many advancements taking place in nebulizer technology; availability of a plethora of drug formulations for its use, and the widening scope of this therapy; medical practitioners, respiratory therapists, and other health care personnel face the challenge of choosing appropriate inhalation devices and drug formulations, besides their rational application and use in different clinical situations. Adequate maintenance of nebulizer equipment including their disinfection and storage are the other relevant issues requiring guidance. Injudicious and improper use of nebulizers and their poor maintenance can sometimes lead to serious health hazards, nosocomial infections, transmission of infection, and other adverse outcomes. Thus, it is imperative to have a proper national guideline on nebulization practices to bridge the knowledge gaps amongst various health care personnel involved in this practice. It will also serve as an educational and scientific resource for healthcare professionals, as well as promote future research by identifying neglected and ignored areas in this field. Such comprehensive guidelines on this subject have not been available in the country and the only available proper international guidelines were released in 1997 which have not been updated for a noticeably long period of over two decades, though many changes and advancements have taken place in this technology in the recent past. Much of nebulization practices in the present may not be evidence-based and even some of these, the way they are currently used, may be ineffective or even harmful.

Intrusive marketing is invasive in nature and it has negative impact on the consumers. Due to its turning off effect, customers may develop an antipathy to the brand. Hence, the marketing campaign may lead to just opposite of its objectives. With the large-scale proliferation of mobile communication, there has been a stringent shift from the traditional marketing to mobile phone-based marketing. However, due to the more personalised nature of device, customers are generally more sensitive towards the marketing campaigns delivered on their mobile phones. Any unwanted marketing campaign may elicit negative response and marketers need to be very careful in drafting their strategies to identify what and how to reduce the intrusive nature of their advertisements. The existing frameworks and models for marketing campaigns do not cover the intrusiveness of mobile marketing campaigns. Present work identifies the factors leading to the non-intrusive campaigns and their possible consumer effects. A strategic framework has been proposed for the development of non-intrusive mobile marketing campaigns along with technology-based solutions and content specific suggestions.

The role of topical nasal vasoconstrictor administration during flexible bronchoscopy is unclear.

This exploratory research focuses on analysing the impact of marketing-mix, culture and experience on purchase intentions and purchase decision for online music products in Indonesia. The study draws inference from consumer behaviour theories - theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour as foundation for this research. Culture and experience from these theories are considered as the moderating variables to purchase intention and decision. Marketing-mix or the 7Ps are also added as variables to the research model to identify their individual and collective impact on the intention to purchase and decision to buy. The research deploys structural equation modelling (SEM) using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to analyse the impact. The study finds that price, distribution and physical evidence have an impact on purchase intention, while the product and promotion have impact on purchase decision. Culture and experience as moderating variables also augment the consumer purchase intentions for online music product. The study also outlines the implications of this work for Indonesian music industry.

Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic granulomatous disorder of unknown etiology. Diagnosis of sarcoidosis is made by correlating clinical and radiological features along with the histopathological demonstration of non-necrotizing granulomas in tissue samples. Diagnosis is often challenging as the clinical profile may mimic other granulomatous disorders, including infections, inflammatory diseases, and lymphoid malignancies. Differentiation from tuberculosis is especially crucial in endemic regions where exclusion of mediastinal tuberculosis is necessary before any immunosuppressant treatment can be initiated for symptomatic sarcoidosis.

Background: Human brain is amongst the most complex organs in human body, and delivery of therapeutic agents across the brain is a tedious task. Existence of blood brain barrier (BBB) protects the brain from invasion of undesirable substances; therefore it hinders the transport of various drugs used for the treatment of different neurological diseases including glioma, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, etc. To surmount this barrier, various approaches have been used such as the use of carrier mediated drug delivery; use of intranasal route, to avoid first pass metabolism; and use of ligands (lactoferrin, apolipoprotein) to transport the drug across the BBB. Ligands bind with proteins present on the cell and facilitate the transport of drug across the cell membrane via. receptor mediated, transporter mediated or adsorptive mediated transcytosis. Objective: The main focus of this review article is to illustrate various studies performed using ligands for delivering drug across BBB; it also describes the procedure used by various researchers for conjugating the ligands to the formulation to achieve targeted action. Methods: Research articles that focused on the used of ligand conjugation for brain delivery and compared the outcome with unconjugated formulation were collected from various search engines like PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar, using keywords like ligands, neurological disorders, conjugation, etc. Results and Conclusion: Ligands have shown great potential in delivering drug across BBB for treatment of various diseases, yet extensive research is required so that the ligands can be used clinically for treating neurological diseases.

High user involvement with mobile phones presents a lot of opportunities for marketers for sending their promotional campaigns. Campaign relevance, product fit, security, content quality, and timing play important roles in the success of these mobile marketing campaigns. While chasing gets success, marketers also need to ensure that the campaigns remain ethical in the content and delivery, and do not result in irritation or negative sentiments. Right information, privacy, permission-based marketing, avoiding disturbance, and relevance of the product are the issues that need attention from marketers. Ethical issues, which are critical to the mobile marketing strategy, have been outlined in this paper, along with their possible impact. A comprehensive review of the marketing ethics has been done, including the industry standards and mapping of both the marketing and mobile-marketing ethics. A mobile marketing framework has been presented to take care of the ethical challenges, considering both the technological and managerial perspectives.

Increased use of smartphone and other mobile devices means more frequent contact between the brands and consumers. Interactions happen on anytime, anywhere basis, going much beyond the boundaries of traditional customer connect. Starting with the traditional e-mail, to pay per click, search engine optimisation, content writing, social media marketing, video and in-game advertisements, there are multiple channels to reach every segment of the audience as per their comfort. Considering the mobile communication media, optimisation of corporate website, e-mails, SMS, MMS channels, and building a native app are the prominent aspects of the present day mobile marketing campaigns. Present work highlights the importance of optimum mobile marketing campaigns as the mobile phones are serving as a preferred mode for accessing the information about the products and services. Suitability of various mobile marketing channels have been analysed to suffice the needs of different customer segments. Along with this, most important challenges and opportunities have been outlined, considering the present day market scenario. The work is very much helpful in strategic planning of the mobile marketing campaigns and selection of specific channels to cater to the targeted customer base.

Providing quality education to its citizens is one of the major goals for any nation. India, with a large population without access to the basic school education has taken numerous steps like 'Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan', 'Beti Padhao Beti Bachao' and corporate has also taken various initiatives under their CSR budgets. The Satya Bharti School Program by Bharti Foundation was launched in 2006, to the benefit of poor children and providing them quality education for free. This program aims to transform students into confident educated citizens and add to the country's growth and dignity. The uniqueness of this program lies in partnerships with other companies and people to get involved in the mission of long lasting sustainable impact in education. This case study emphasises on the various unique strategies to implement this education program on large scale, successfully dealing with the challenges and making it a well appreciated program.

Advances in the domain of information sharing and communication have generated huge volumes of data in last few decades. Data stored for the various business activities becomes important for performance measurement, corrections, modification, enhancement and venturing into other dimensions of business. Along with this data, there are various direct/indirect stakeholders having vast experience and great knowhow of the business processes, which may be critical to the business strategy. The modern information technology management tools have made it easy to manage and process the information from different sources which results in knowledge generation. The present work traverses the journey of knowledge management discipline from an organisational perspective considering the different levels of organisations. Prominent knowledge management models have been identified and a comparative analysis has been presented. Various knowledge management tools have been analysed to meet the needs of the modern businesses for management of information and generation of knowledge.

At the 77th National Conference on Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases, which took place on February 27, 2023, a pre-conference workshop on Basic Spirometry and Advanced Pulmonary Function Tests was held under the auspices of NATCON-2022.

Cyber crime has become an integral part of the transnational threat landscape and conjures up pressing images of nefarious and increasingly complex online activity. More recently, the concept of ‘organized crime’ has been attributed to cyber criminality. There has been subsequent disagreement and confusion concerning whether such crime is a derivation of traditional organized crime or an evolution of such crime within the online space. This paper analyses the opaque state of affairs which has been exacerbated by the relative lack of clear evidence attesting to and supporting either scenario. Technological advances have always been used to the advantage of the criminal fraternity. The crucial question that remains is whether those advances have merely facilitated the commission of physical crime or whether in fact they have led to the creation of a new wave of traditional, but virtual, organized crime. The paper also explores the behavioral ramifications on cyber crime on the informational value of the internet and its usage in consumer with demographic analysis level of its threat and increasing crime rate thus eroding the attractiveness of internet as a viable marketing channel.

With the modernization of Department of Defense (DoD) systems and the growing complexity of communication equipment, traditional test methods and processes have to evolve in order to maintain their effectiveness. DoD acquisition policy requires the use of modeling and simulation (M&S) in all phases of system development life-cycles in order to ensure technical certification and mission effectiveness. The complexity of these systems poses significant challenges over traditional interoperability test methodologies. The Automated Test Case Generator (ATC-Gen), funded by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC), captures a Military Standard (MIL-STD) 6016C document and translates it into rules. These are in turn formalized into test cases using the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS). In this paper, we present a new methodology to generate the test models and perform conformance testing using system theory, the DEVS M&S framework, the System Entity Structure (SES), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). This new methodology promotes the separation of the models, the simulator, and the distributed simulation. These separations distinguish and promote reusability by developing models, the simulator, and distributed simulation independently. The DEVS test models are generated from the test cases by the Test Model Generator using the system specifications. These models are written in an XML-SES format; the resulting C++ DEVS source code is generated based on the test model XML file. The Test Driver (TD) was designed based on the Model/Simulator/View/Control (MSVC) design pattern and developed to execute the DEVS test models. MSVC supports model and simulator separation design. It was also designed to support multiple network simulation protocols and rapid software modifications in order to incorporate new network protocols into the simulation software. This methodology was used to verify the conformance of the Integrated Architecture Behavior Model (IABM) to the MIL-STD 6016C, and the results of the test scenarios were validated using the JITC’s Simple J network packet-monitoring tool. The network packet monitor captured the transmissions and the receipt of the tactical data messages from the TD. The system analyst interpreted and verified the messages, and determined whether these messages were the intended behavior of the TD.

OBJECTIVE To define optic neuritis associated with chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infection in a clinical setting. METHODS This observational case series includes 14 patients with clinical features of CHIKV infection and associated optic neuritis. Complete ophthalmic evaluations were performed, as well as other examinations, including Mantoux test, Widal test, blood profile, color vision, neuroimaging, visual fields, visual evoked potentials, VDRL test, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for CHIKV-specific immunoglobulin. Relevant clinical findings of optic neuritis associated with seropositive CHIKV infection were recorded. RESULTS Nineteen eyes (in 14 patients) had optic nerve involvement. The mean ± SD patient age was 45.8 ± 15.6 years. Eight eyes (42%) had papillitis, 4 eyes (21%) had retrobulbar neuritis, 4 eyes (21%) had retrochiasmal (optic tract) neuritis, and 3 eyes (16%) had neuroretinitis. Parenteral corticosteroids were administered in all patients. Color vision, visual fields, and best-corrected visual acuity of 6/12 (or 20/40 Snellen visual acuity) or better improved statistically significantly by the end of 3 weeks (P < .001). Partial to complete recovery of visual function was seen in 10 patients (71%). Four patients had a poor visual outcome; 3 of them were initially seen 1 month after onset of ocular symptoms. CONCLUSIONS Acute-onset visual loss due to optic neuritis may be associated with CHIKV infection. Visual recovery is good. Corticosteroids accelerated recovery when initiated at an early stage of the disease.Arch Ophthalmol. 2007;125(10):1381-1386--

The combination of DoDAF operational views, which capture the requirements of an architecture, and System views, which provide its technical attributes, forms the basis for semi-automated construction of simulation models. In this paper, we describe an enhanced Model-View-Controller paradigm that works in tandem with the DEVS M&S framework. We also employ the recently introduced DoDAF extensions that incorporate new operational views to allow DoDAF specifications to be written in the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism and, in the process, refine these new extensions. This paper describes a DEVS-based network modeling and simulation environment with dynamic reconfiguration and simulation control. The DEVS modeling and simulation framework with its separation of model, experimental frame, and simulator facilitates the development of a simulation framework supporting run-time simulation tuning. We present a layered simulation architecture that provides the capability to control and reconfigure simulation on-the-fly and steer it toward the desired performance parameters. The rapid feedback cycle supported by “real-time” intervention allows experimentation with parameters and structures and results in effective model configuration that is difficult to achieve when turnaround requires hours or days. We explore the area of system reconfiguration further by providing enhanced capabilities to control the parameters for system design and performance evaluation with respect to Net-Ready Key Performance Parameters (NR-KPP) and the way in which the refined DoDAF extensions can expedite the development of Key Interface Profile (KIP) for any DoDAF architecture. We demonstrate the enhanced capabilities with an example of the development of a simulation environment for the Systems Capable of Planned Expansion (SCOPE) command.

A recent DoD mandate requires that the DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF) be adopted to express high-level system and operational requirements and architectures. DoDAF is the basis for integrated architectures and provides broad levels of specification related to operational, system, and technical views. The combination of DoDAF operational views, which capture the requirements of the architecture, and systems views, which provide its technical attributes, forms the basis for semi-automated construction of the needed simulation models. Unfortunately, DoDAF doesn't mandate any simulation methodology to analyze the system or perform any pre-design feasibility studies. In this paper, we describe an approach to support specification of DoDAF architectures within a development environment based on DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification). The result is an enhanced system life cycle development process that includes both development and testing in an integral manner. We introduce two new operational views (OVs) in the current DoDAF making way for modeling and simulation as a part of the design process. We illustrate the process to build these new OVs from the existing OVs and their impact on the overall DoDAF system development process. We discuss automated model generation using XML through the introduced OVs, which paves the way for OVs to become service-providing components in the web services architecture.

Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that affects around 3–4% of the population globally leading to skin inflammation. Tacrolimus is widely used in the treatment of psoriasis due to its ability to suppress inflammation and immune response. But formation of scaly plaques and dry patches are hurdle in delivering drug via topical route. The aim of present study was to develop, optimize and characterize tacrolimus loaded nanoemulsion gel to get enhanced anti-psoriatic activity. Nanoemulsion was prepared using spontaneous emulsification method combined with high pressure homogenization technique using fish oil and linseed oil (2 different oils), tween 80 (surfactant) and transcutol-P (co-surfactant). Fish oil and linseed oil were used as oil phase as they contain high amount of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid, and possess anti-inflammatory activity. The optimized nanoemulsions (fish oil an linseed oil containing nanoemulsions) attained using central composite rotable design had desired average hydrodynamic diameter (<130 nm) and narrow PDI along with high percentage transmittance (>95%). The optimized nanoemulsion was transformed into nanoemulsion gel using 1% carbopol-934. The cumulative drug permeated through the skin was 1.3 and 1.4-fold higher for nanoemulsion gel-F and L respectively compared to marketed ointment. The confocal laser scanning microscopy and dermatokinetic studies confirmed enhanced depth of permeation and skin retention (~1.5-folds) for developed nanoemulsion gel. In vivostudy performed on mice using Imiquimod induced psoriasis-like inflammation model, showed significantly high anti-psoriatic activity in mice treated with nanoemulsion gels compared to marketed ointment. Significant reduction in the levels of cytokines (TNF-α and IL-6) in the skin, showed promising outcome in the treatment of psoriasis, of developed nanoemulsion gels compared to marketed ointment. Thus, it was concluded that fish oil and linseed oil integrated tacrolimus nanoemulsion gel could improve the efficacy of tacrolimus and is a promising carrier in the treatment of psoriasis.