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The success of an organization is highly dependent on happy and satisfied workforce. Today’s organizations need to be more flexible so that they get equipped to develop their workforce according to the changing industrial scenario. Hence organizations are required to adopt a strategy to improve their employee's quality of work life to satisfy both the organizational objectives and employee needs. The term quality of work life refers to the favourableness or unfavourableness towards a total job environment for people to work. This study aims to measure such favourableness or unfavourableness by analysing four significant dimensions of workplace namely work environment, compensation and rewards, opportunities for career growth and development and work life balance of IT professionals in Taramani - The IT corridor of Chennai. The population of the study consists of 7 million units (as per CEO World Magazine Survey in 2016) among which the researcher chose 30000 units from two IT parks namely Tidal park and Ascendas for the study. The researcher had adopted a representative random sampling method by which 210 units that adequately replicates the larger population were studied to analyse the quality of work life of IT professionals in Taramani, Chennai. The researcher had used structured questionnaire with five-point scale to record the responses. Keywords: Quality of work life, Work force, IT professionals.

This work addresses the power penalty in a Visible Light Communication (VLC) emitter that re-uses illumination Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for high-speed communications. We quantify the effect of modulation depth for two widely explored modulation schemes in VLC, namely Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM). Extra power is dissipated in the LED and in the modulator due to such modulation. Two popular highspeed VLC transmitter topologies, namely a Bias Tee (Bias-T) and a Serial FET (Serial-F), are compared in terms of efficiency, Extra Energy Per Symbol/Bit (EEPS/B) and complexity. This work presents a theoretical model and compares it to simulationresults. We show that PAM outperforms OFDM in terms of better Bit Error Rate (BER), larger dynamic range for modulation depth, less extra power loss, thus higher power efficiency for communication over an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel.

This paper addresses the nonlinear memory effects in the response of typical illumination light emitting diodes (LEDs), in order to enhance the performance of visible light communication (VLC) systems. These LEDs have a limited bandwidth of only several MHz. To reflect the physical mechanisms in the quantum well, we describe the LED transient response by a nonlinear dynamic differential equation. Three different mechanisms of the nonlinearity are relevant in the double hetero-structure LEDs, which result in dynamic nonlinearities, that is, a mixture of nonlinearities and memory effects. Hitherto, generic pre-distorter and non-linear equalizers have been studied for the LEDs. Yet this paper shows that recombination rates of photon generation can be translated into an equivalent discrete-time circuit that can be inverted. This allows us to develop a new pre-distorter with a simpler and more efficient structure than previously studied and overly generic approaches. The novel pre-distorter along with a parameter estimation can effectively overcome LED nonlinearity for high-speed VLC with amplitude-based single carrier modulations, including ON-OFF keying and pulse amplitude modulation-4 systems, and with the multi-carrier orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. We report experimentally obtained eye-diagrams, first to justify our choice for the LED model on which our nonlinear pre-distorter have been based, and second to verify the effectiveness in enhancing the VLC link performance to the extent predicted by our model.

IN BRIEF Given the progressive nature of type 2 diabetes, treatment intensification is usually necessary to maintain glycemic control. However, for a variety of reasons, treatment is often not intensified in a timely manner. The combined use of basal insulin and a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist is recognized to provide a complementary approach to the treatment of type 2 diabetes. This review evaluates the efficacy and safety of two co-formulation products, insulin degludec/liraglutide and insulin glargine/lixisenatide, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled on either component agent alone. We consider the benefits and limitations of these medications based on data from randomized clinical trials and discuss how they may address barriers to treatment intensification.

Lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor-1 (LOX-1), one of the scavenger receptors for oxidized low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (ox-LDL), plays a crucial role in the uptake of ox-LDL by cells in the arterial wall. Mounting evidence suggests a role for LOX-1 in various steps of the atherosclerotic process, from initiation to plaque destabilization. Studies of the genetic structure of LOX-1 have also uncovered various genetic polymorphisms that could modulate the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular events. As evidence supporting the vital role of LOX-1 in atherogenesis keeps accumulating, there is growing interest in LOX-1 as a potential therapeutic target. This review discusses the discovery and genetics of LOX-1; describes existing evidence supporting the role of LOX-1 in atherogenesis and its major complication, myocardial ischemia; and summarizes LOX-1 modulation by some naturally occurring compounds and efforts toward development of small molecules and biologics that could be of therapeutic use.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are widely used for data transmission in emerging optical wireless communications (OWC) systems. This paper analyzes the physical processes that limit the bandwidth and cause nonlinearities in the light output of modern, high-efficiency LEDs. The processes of carrier transport, as well as carrier storage, recombination, and leakage in the active region appear to affect the communications performance, but such purely physics-based models are not yet commonly considered in the algorithms to optimize OWC systems. Using a dynamic modeling of these phenomena, we compile a (invertable) signal processing model that describes the signal distortion and a parameter estimation procedure that is feasible in an operational communications link. We combine multiple approaches for steady-state and dynamic characterization to estimate such LED parameters. We verify that, for a high-efficiency blue GaN LED, the models become sufficiently accurate to allow digital compensation. We compare the simulation results using the model against optical measurements of harmonic distortion and against measurements of the LED response to a deep rectangular current modulation. We show how the topology of the model can be simplified, address the self-calibration techniques, and discuss the limits of the presented approach. The model is suitable for the creation of improved nonlinear equalizers to enhance the achievable bit rate in LED-based OWC systems and we believe it is significantly more realistic than LED models commonly used in communications systems.

This paper presents a number of novel methods to measure the junction temperature and to estimate the health of gallium nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The methods are based on measurements of the dynamic impedance and optical output. Our experimental analysis reveals temperature sensitive parameters of the electrical and optical responses. Moreover, a correlation between the non-radiative current characterizing the active region defects and the small-signal impedance is shown. The demonstrated methods can be applied to enhance existing temperature-monitoring techniques. The derived dependencies also build a foundation for advanced in-field health monitoring of the LEDs using the infrastructure of visible light communication systems. Such methods and techniques are valuable for predictive maintenance of solid state lighting systems.

The visible light communication (VLC) can provide data transmission via the illumination light emitting diodes (LED). This paper introduces a new model to analyze the bit error rate (BER) of binary phase modulation in VLC for an arbitrary modulation depth and data duty cycle while taking into account both the Gaussian and signal-dependent shot noise. The impact of the driver design on the BER and its impact on ripple have not been considered in detail before. We compare two different LED driver schemes, namely directly adapting the driver control loop and binary shunting. We address data rate, BER, and power efficiency, for which we propose to use the extra energy per symbol above unmodulated light. We further introduce an analysis of the effect that (truncated) ripple interference has in the (matched or other) filter of the receiver. Ripple causes a harmful interference in VLC, and thus a BER expression is derived to include its effect. Two approximations are proposed to model the ripple interference, and their accuracies are compared by simulations. A low-pass filtering is proposed to alleviate the impact of ripple interference in VLC system.

Background Chikungunya virus infection is an emerging arbovirus disease. While many infected individuals recover after primary illness, others suffer from persistent debilitating arthralgia that can last for months to years. Currently, there are no immune correlates, vaccines, therapies or robust diagnostics that can affectively prevent, treat or diagnose Chikungunya. Therefore, this study focuses on development of a better diagnostic assay for Chikungunya infection.

In eukaryotes, calcium-binding proteins play a pivotal role in diverse cellular processes, and recent findings suggest similar roles for bacterial proteins at different stages in their life cycle. Here, we report the crystal structure of calcium dodecin, Rv0379, from Mycobacterium tuberculosis with a dodecameric oligomeric assembly and a unique calcium-binding motif. Structure and sequence analysis were used to identify orthologs of Rv0379 with different ligand-binding specificity.

The P1 lysozyme Lyz is secreted to the periplasm of Escherichia coli and accumulates in an inactive membrane-tethered form. Genetic and biochemical experiments show that, when released from the bilayer, Lyz is activated by an intramolecular thiol-disulfide isomerization, which requires a cysteine in its N-terminal SAR (signal-arrest-release) domain. Crystal structures confirm the alternative disulfide linkages in the two forms of Lyz and reveal dramatic conformational differences in the catalytic domain. Thus, the exported P1 endolysin is kept inactive by three levels of control—topological, conformational, and covalent—until its release from the membrane is triggered by the P1 holin.