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The World Health Organization (WHO) defines PV as the science and activities related to the detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects or any other possible drug-related problems (WHO 2004). In 1968, during the 16th World Assembly the 16.36 resolution called for “a systematic collection of information on serious adverse drug reactions during the development and particularly after medicines have been made available for public use”. This led to the formation of the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring (PIDM) in 1968. PV systems should include all entities and resources that protect the public from medicines-related harm (adverse reactions, poor product quality, medication errors, and therapeutic ineffectiveness), whether in personal healthcare or public health services. The PV system safeguards the public through efficient and timely identification, collection, and assessment of medicine-related adverse events and by communicating risks and benefits. The WHO has provided technical and normative leadership on PV since the development of the first voluntary notification scheme in 1961. As of January 2016, 123 countries have joined the WHO PIDM, and in addition 28 associate members are awaiting full membership. WHO has defined norms and guidelines for PV and has allowed information sharing among the participant countries. Another WHO PV-related activity is the work of the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) which was established jointly by WHO and UNESCO in 1949. Starting with the publication of the Suspect Adverse Reaction Report Form (CIOMS Form I) by the CIOMS working group II, other CIOMS publications have greatly shaped the direction of PV. CIOMS publications have also greatly influenced the development of International Conference on Harmonization of Technical requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) E2A-E2F guidelines in drug safety. The standard

Hemovigilance is defined as the surveillance procedures covering the blood transfusion chain (from the collection of blood and its components to the follow-up of its recipients), intended to collect and assess information on unexpected or undesirable effects. The word hemovigilance is derived from the word pharmacovigilance, which encompasses activities and systems to collect information useful in supervising medicinal products, with particular reference to adverse drug reactions in human beings, and to evaluate such information scientifically. An adverse drug reaction is a response to a drug which is noxious and unintended and which occurs at doses normally used in human for prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy of disease or for the modification of physiologic function. The aim of hemovigilance is to detect and to analyze all untoward effects of blood transfusion in order to correct their cause and to prevent recurrence, and to improve the safety of blood transfusion. Although several reports have been published on adverse events, including transfusion-associated deaths, the relative risk based on the number of actual cases divided by the number of units of blood products issued or transfused, is relatively low. Scope of different hemovigilance systems varies due to differences in spectrum of reporting. Ideally, the hemovigilance system should cover processes throughout the entire transfusion chain, from blood donation, processing, and transfusion to patients for the monitoring, reporting, and investigation of adverse events and reactions and near misses related to blood transfusion. Keywords: Serious Hazards of Transfusion (SHOT), European Hemovigilance Network (EHN), Pharmacovigilance Program of India (PVPI), Hemovigilance Program of India (HvPI), International Hemovigilance Network (IHN).

Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) is a noxious and unintended response to a medicine which occurs at doses normally used in human being. Pharmacovigilance (PV) is the process to monitor patient safety in practical condition and analyse adverse events during the entire life cycle of a drug beginning from its trial phase to post-marketing of the drug. Before medicines get authorised, they are tested in controlled trial conditions within a smaller population for a limited length of time. Post authorization, drugs are used by a larger population across various geographies without any control in place. So, it is very important to monitor adverse effect caused by these medicines throughout their life cycle in order to identify and minimize risks associated with the use of drug and enhance the knowledge of healthcare professionals. Under reporting is a major obstacle in the PV system. Research shows that the major causes of under reporting are lack of knowledge and awareness among healthcare professionals and also absence of established ADR reporting system in various part of the world. Some other reasons of under-reporting included large number of patients, lower doctor-patient ratio and common practice of self-medication. This article reviews the research done on ADR under-reporting scenario with a focus on the factors leading to this obstacle in PV. Keywords: ADRAdverse Drug Reaction, PVPharmacovigilance, WHOWorld Health Organisation, UMCUppsala Monitoring Centre, AMCADRs Monitoring Centres, AIIMSAll India Institute of Medical, Sciences, CDSCOCentral Drugs Standard, Control Organization, ICSR Individual Case Safety Report, FDA Food and Drug administration, ICH International Conference on Harmonisation, EMAEuropean Medicines Agency, PRAC Pharmacovigilance Risk, Assessment Committee, PMDA Pharmaceuticals and medical, Device Agency.

The pharmacist’s contribution will remain an important element in effective healthcare system. Pharmacists have a critical role in patient drug safety by contributing to the identification, documentation and reporting of adverse drug reactions. Pharmacists have key roles to play in establishing benefits and risks profile of a marketed medicine. Country level drug ADR monitoring and programs throughout the world differ in their way of collecting ICSR reports by healthcare professionals specially pharmacist. In contrast to North American continent countries like Canada or the US, where the majority of the reports come from licensed pharmacists, some European and Asian countries, such as UK, France, Ireland, Malaysia have the maximum contribution of ADR reports coming from practicing physicians.

The proposed work aims at designing a classification system for automatic identification of A. muelleri species, grown as a potential cash crop in many Asian countries, from the DNA fingerprints of Amorphophallus genus. Four sets of 48 DNA fingerprints belonging to 37 species of the Amorphophallus genus, developed with the help of four different primers are considered for the experiment, with an objective to identify only the fingerprints of the species of interest. A second experimental setup deals with the automatic classification of species containing high amounts of glucomannan from the same set of DNA fingerprints of the Amorphophallus genus. For each set of 48 DNA fingerprints generated with a specific primer, the DNA fingerprints are preprocessed to extract a 42 dimensional feature vector which is used to generate a k-Nearest Neighbor based classifier based on the Leave One Out Cross Validation protocol. Final classification based on outputs from individual classifiers constructed with respect to the four different primers is performed according to a n-star consensus strategy. The n-star consensus predicts species A. muelleri with cent per cent accuracy while it predicts species containing glucomannan with a more modest accuracy of 81.25%.

A new system (ARTeM) for human authentication using finger vein images is described here. The developed algorithm combines 1) a fuzzy contrast enhancement algorithm with 2) a mutual information and affine transformation based registration technique and 3) a correlation coefficient based template matching algorithm, to detect the identity of a person based on the match-scores with finger vein images stored in the database. For performance assessment of the ARTeM algorithm, the benchmark SDUMLA multimodal biometric database containing 3816 images of 106 persons is used. On the complete database, up to 95.28% classification accuracy is achieved with single finger images; while up to 98.11% accuracy is observed with a consensus of two fingers. On a reduced subset of 86 persons’ database, 98.84% accuracy is achieved with single finger classification and cent percent classification is obtained using a consensus of two fingers. Comparative analyses with other works also validate the effectiveness of the developed methodology.

Background: The prevalence of depression among elderly people varies across different setups such as old age homes (OAHs), community, and medical clinics. Aims: The aim of this study was to compare the epidemiological factors pertaining to depression among elderly residents of OAHs and community, using a new Gujarati version of the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-G). Settings and Design: A cross-sectional, epidemiological study conducted in an urban setup of Western India. Materials and Methods: All the eligible 88 elderly residents of all the six OAHs and 180 elderly residents from the same city were administered a pretested semistructured questionnaire having the GDS-G form. Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistics, odds ratio, Spearman's rank correlation test. Results: The elderly of OAHs were more depressed compared to those of community (odds ratio = 1.84; 95% confidence interval = 1.09–3.06). Older age, females, weaker family ties, economic maladies, poorer self-perception of health status, presence of chronic ailments, absence of recreational activity, lack of prayers, impaired sleep, history of addiction emerged as the predictors of depression in both the setups. More health complaints and a later self-perception of visit to a doctor were found among the depressed than the nondepressed in both the setups. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms were quite high among the elderly in both the setups. Special attention should be given toward health checkups of depressed persons in the OAH and improvement of family ties among depressed persons of the community.

Background: Urban Social Health Activists (USHAs) are the grass root health care workers of urban areas. There are 290 USHAs distributed in various Urban Health Centers (UHCs) of Rajkot city. Objectives: To compare the (i) effectiveness of the training received by the USHAs on their knowledge and counseling skills (ii) knowledge and counseling skills of USHAs on the awareness and utilization of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) care services by their beneficiaries. Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 32 USHAs and 416 beneficiaries served by the same USHAs. 32 USHAs serving in the same field practice area for more than two years were randomly selected. The beneficiaries were those mothers who had a child between 1-2 years age, and who had availed their antenatal and postnatal services in the same area. A scoring system was used to assess the knowledge and counseling skills of the USHAs and the knowledge and utilization of services by their beneficiaries. Results: The utilization of health services was significantly more in the beneficiaries who were serviced by USHAs having comparatively better knowledge (72.7% vs. 35.3%) and counseling skills (62.2% vs. 30.6%). The median score for knowledge (41 vs. 30) and counseling skills (20 vs. 16) of the USHAs was found to be more (P < 0.05) in those who had undertaken induction training. Conclusions: Induction training helped the USHAs to improve their knowledge and counseling skills. Utilization of MCH services was more in those areas served by USHAs having better knowledge and counseling skills.

With the unprecedented growth of technology in global world, internet plays a paramount role in all the major areas of our life and industries. With-in few clicks we can explore ample information which will help in conceptualizing many tasks in nanoseconds and realizing this power of internet, marketing is not far behind to use it as a driving channel to reach the global territory. eMarketing also known as digital marketing comprises the usage of virtual digital space with a scope of interaction, this digital space is been used by the marketer to promote and sell the products and services. This internet based marketing played a pivotal role to uplift the different economic sectors with special emphasize on marketing. Considering this is a cost effective, fast and flexible way to reach the audience of global Diasporas, e-marketing bring substantial business gains. However e-marketing has its own sets of limitations that include more of tech touch instead of personnel touch, ensuring the safety and security with aspect of privacy infringement. The paper starts with defining the concept, origin, how different emarketing is from traditional marketing, 7 C’s of e-marketing, different strategies of e-marketing the advantages, limitations, its future and conclusion.

The widely used H.264 video coding standard has adopted Context-based Adaptive Variable Length Coding (CAVLC) as one of its techniques for entropy encoding. In this work, VLSI design for implementing CAVLC decoder has been proposed. The design considers the speed requirements for transmission of HD videos. The architecture efficiently mixes both tree-based method and bit-parallel variable length decoding (VLD) which enhances the speed without compromising the area. The design is able to process HD frames (1080p format) at a frame rate of 30fps while working at 131 MHz clock frequency. Efficient utilization of area has been taken care off. The implemented architecture can be integrated with other blocks of H.264 to form a complete video codec.

H. 264 uses integer transformation approach in order to exploit the spatial redundancies in video sequences. This paper proposes efficient hardware design for implementing inverse integer transform of H.264. The hardware uses minimum adders and shifters and the datapath of the design is reconfigurable while being able to process HD frames in real-time. This designed is targeted to be integrated as a constituent of an entire H.264 based system. Using Xilinx Virtex-4 device, the presented architecture has been verified to operate at a maximum frequency of 165 MHz.

The present research work introduces a novel VLSI design of Context-Based Adaptive Variable Length Coding (CAVLC) entropy encoder. The proposed design is intended to be used for H.264/AVC CAVLC entropy encoder. The architecture is designed to be used as a part of a comprehensive H.264 video coding system. This hardware works in parallel and pipelined fashion and demonstrates a fair trade-off between speed and area. The proposed CAVLC encoder performs at an optimum clock frequency of 134 MHz when incorporated in Xilinx 9.2i, Virtex-5 technology. It offers higher speed performance when compared to the existing CAVLC architectures. While considering HD-1080 format video sequence, the proposed architecture satisfies the required real time processing requirement.

This work aims at designing a fuzzy matching algorithm that would automatically recognize an unknown ballet posture from seventeen fundamental ballet dance primitives. A novel and simple 7-stage system is proposed to achieve the desired objective. Minimized skeletons of the dance postures are generated after performing skin color segmentation on them. Straight line approximation on the minimized skeletons with the help of chain code and sampling generate their equivalent stick figure diagrams. Significant straight lines from the stick figure diagrams are considered, their fuzzy membership with respect to the 4 quadrants are evaluated. Finally with the help of the evaluated data, a fuzzy T-norm operator determines the proximity of a generated dance posture with the seventeen fundamental dance primitives.

CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells have been shown to be susceptible to HIV-1 infection, possibly due to a low-level expression of CXCR4, a coreceptor for HIV-1 entry. Given these observations, we have explored the impact of forskolin on cell surface expression of CXCR4 in a cell line model (TF-1). The elevation of intracellular cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) by forskolin through adenylyl cyclase (AC) resulted in transcriptional upregulation of CXCR4 with a concomitant increase in replication of the CXCR4-utilizing HIV-1 strain IIIB. Transient expression analyses also demonstrated an increase in CXCR4-, CCR5-, and CXCR4-/CCR5-utilizing HIV-1 (LAI, YU2, and 89.6, respectively) promoter activity. Studies also implicated the protein kinase A (PKA) pathway and the downstream transcription factor CREB-1 in interfacing with cAMP response elements located in the CXCR4 and viral promoter. These observations suggest that the cAMP signaling pathway may serve as a regulator of CXCR4 levels and concomitantly of HIV-1 replication in bone marrow (BM) progenitor cells.

About one third of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome cases in the USA have been attributed to the use of injected addictive drugs, frequently involving opioids like heroin and morphine, establishing them as significant predisposing risk factors for contracting human immuno-deficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). Accumulating evidence from in vitro and in vivo experimental systems indicates that opioids act in concert with HIV-1 proteins to exacerbate dysregulation of neural and immune cell function and survival through diverse molecular mechanisms. In contrast, the impact of opioid exposure and withdrawal on the viral life cycle and HIV-1 disease progression itself is unclear, with conflicting reports emerging from the simian immunodeficiency virus and simian–human immunodeficiency virus infection models. However, these studies suggest a potential role of opioids in elevated viral production. Because human microglia, astrocytes, CD4+ T lymphocytes, and monocyte-derived macrophages express opioid receptors, it is likely that intracellular signaling events triggered by morphine facilitate enhancement of HIV-1 infection in these target cell populations. This review highlights the biochemical changes that accompany prolonged exposure to and withdrawal from morphine that synergize with HIV-1 proteins to disrupt normal cellular physiological functions especially within the central nervous system. More importantly, it collates evidence from epidemiological studies, animal models, and heterologous cell systems to propose a mechanistic link between such physiological adaptations and direct modulation of HIV-1 production. Understanding the opioid–HIV-1 interface at the molecular level is vitally important in designing better treatment strategies for HIV-1-infected patients who abuse opioids.

A mathematical model based on the heat and mass balance of the Imperial Smelting Furnace (ISF) has been proposed. This model can be used by operating engineers to evaluate furnace behavior without the necessity of generating an exhaustive data bank for rate parameters. The model formulation is based on Rist's model of iron blast furnace, consisting of separate reaction zones. In the adapted approach, the ISF has been conceived as a combination of a lead reduction zone and a zinc reduction zone, separated by an equilibrium zone. The mass and energy balances comprising oxygen balance, heat demand, and heat supply analyses lead to the construction of an operating line for the furnace describing its behavior. The model has been validated by 1) predicting furnace coke consumption based on analytical heat balance for an actual smelter operation as reported in the literature and 2) estimating the coke ratio as a function of the oxygen content of the blast. Both of these parameters have been satisfactorily correl...

Previous studies have identified a CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) site located downstream of the transcriptional start site (DS3). The role of the DS3 element with respect to HIV-1 transactivation by Tat and viral replication has not been characterized. We have demonstrated that DS3 was a functional C/EBPβ binding site and mutation of this site to the C/EBP knockout DS3-9C variant showed lower HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR) transactivation by C/EBPβ. However, it was able to exhibit similar or even higher transcription levels by Tat compared to the parental LTR. C/EBPβ and Tat together further enhanced the transcription level of the parental LAI-LTR and DS3-9C LTR, with higher levels in the DS3-9C LTR. HIV molecular clone viruses carrying the DS3-9C variant LTR demonstrated a decreased replication capacity and delayed rate of replication. These results suggest that DS3 plays a role in virus transcriptional initiation and provides new insight into C/EBP regulation of HIV-1.

Background Approximately one-third of the AIDS cases in the United States have been attributed to the use of injected drugs, frequently involving the abuse of opioids. Consequently, it is critical to address whether opioid use directly contributes to altered susceptibility to HIV-1 beyond the increased risk of exposure. Previous in vitro and in vivo studies addressing the role of μ-opioid agonists in altering levels of the co-receptor CXCR4 and subsequent HIV-1 replication have yielded contrasting results. The bone marrow is believed to be a potential anatomical sanctuary for HIV-1. Methods The well-characterized CD34+CD38+ human bone marrow–derived hematopoietic progenitor cell line TF-1 was used as a model to investigate the effects of the μ-opioid receptor–specific peptide DAMGO (D-Ala2,N-Me-Phe4, Gly5-ol-enkephalin) on CXCR4 expression as well as infection of undifferentiated human hematopoietic progenitor cells. Results The results revealed the presence of the μ-opioid receptor-1 isoform (MOR-1) on the surface of TF-1 cells. Furthermore, immunostaining revealed that the majority of TF-1 cells co-express MOR-1 and CXCR4, and a subpopulation of these double-positive cells express the two receptors in overlapping membrane domains. Three subpopulations of TF-1 cells were categorized based on their levels of surface CXCR4 expression, defined as non-, low-, and high-expressing. Flow cytometry indicated that treatment with DAMGO resulted in a shift in the relative proportion of CXCR4+ cells to the low-expressing phenotype. This result correlated with a >3-fold reduction in replication of the X4 HIV-1 strain IIIB, indicating a role for the CXCR4 high-expression subpopulation in sustaining infection within this progenitor cell line. Conclusions These experiments provide insight into the impact of μ-opioid exposure with respect to inhibition of viral replication in this human TF-1 bone marrow progenitor cell line model.

The objective of this work is to recognize 17 fundamental ballet postures using a single camera. The proposed 7-stage algorithm first performs skin color segmentation on raw images and then finds minimized skeletons which are further approximated by straight lines using chain code and sampling. From the stick figures, the angles the significant lines make with the abscissa in dominant quadrants are determined. Finally, the unknown posture is recognized as the one of the 17 forms with which it holds maximum similarity as calculated by a similarity operator with average 88.9% accuracy.

This work aims at designing a classification system for automatic identification of A paeoniifolius species from the DNA fingerprints of Amorphophalus Genus. Four species, namely A. krausei, AmacrorhizusCraib, A. muelleri and A. paeoniifolius are considered for the experiment. Reduction of the dimensionality of the initial data matrix is done using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). During training stage, Artificial Neural Network based classifiers with back propagation learning algorithm, are designed with 5-fold cross validation experiment. The classification performance of the trained networks, that a DNA fingerprint of an unknown species is A. paeoniifoilius or not, are finally evaluated over an independent validation set.

This paper provides a framework for understanding competition and industry structure in the context of Fiber to the Home (FTTH). We present engineering cost models, which indicate that FTTH is a decreasing cost industry, thereby making facilities based competition an unlikely outcome. Non-facilities based competition (or service level competition) in FTTH can happen in data-link layer (or transport) services via unbundled dark fiber (i.e. unbundled network elements) and in higher layer (voice, video and data) services via logical layer unbundling (or open access). FTTH architectures differ in the extent to which they support unbundling and therefore the extent of non-facilities based competition in FTTH depends on the architecture of the shared network over which multiple service providers offer service. Among the four different FTTH architectures considered, the curbside single-wavelength Passive Optical Network architecture (PON) that has isolated pole-mounted splitters has the most economical fiber plant but permits unbundling only at the logical layer. Consequently, though a PON supports ‘open access’ based competition in higher layer services like voice, data and switched digital video, it does not facilitate competition in data-link layer services or in the provision of analog broadcast video services. In complete contrast, the Home Run architecture has the highest initial (fiber related) capital cost, but permits unbundling of both the physical plant and at the logical layer. The Home Run architecture therefore supports a per subscriber choice of data-link layer services (via UNE based competition) as well as competition in higher layer voice, video and data services (via open access). This work further identifies deployment strategies, which can facilitate physical plant unbundling at costs much lower than the Home Run architecture. Physical plant unbundling is made possible by establishing Optimal Fiber Aggregation Points (OFAPs) that aggregate multiple distribution fibers (or homes). Unbundling is achieved at the cost of longer distribution loop lengths (vis-a-vis a curbside PON). Ideally, both passive splitters and active electronics can be deployed at an OFAP. OFAP architectures further lead to higher utilization of splitter and Optical Line Termination (OLT) ports in markets that have less than 100% penetration thereby providing the service provider with a real option to (i) defer investment in OLT ports (ii) deploy multiple data-link layer technologies and (iii) effectively phase in new technologies - under both monopoly and competition.

Lanthanum modified lead titanate thin films with 20% of lanthanum content (PLT20) were prepared by laser ablation deposition technique. For the films deposited at 300°C, crystallization was induced by Rapid thermal annealing (RTA) process. The dielectric and electrical properties of PLT20 films were studied. The pyroelectric current was measured using Byer-Roundy technique. The RTA annealed films showed a dielectric constant of 482 and a loss factor of 0.033 at room temperature at 100 kHz frequency. The RTA annealed and insitu films showed 1100 x 10-6 Cm-2 K-1 and 609 x 10-6 Cm-2K-1 as pyroelectric coefficients respectively. A large pyroelectric coefficient of value 35000 μ Cm-2 K-1 was observed for the in-situ grown films at transition temperature. The figures of merit of current (Fi), voltage (Fv) and detectivity (FD) were calculated for both the films and the obtained values for the in-situ grown thin films were 1.9 x 10-10 CmJ-1, 0.088 m2 C-1, 5.38 x 10-5 pa-1/2 respectively. The difference in the pyroelectric properties for the films was discussed and the effect of temperature on dielectric and pyroelectric properties were studied to understand the suitability of these thin film composition for the application of pyroelectric detectors.