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Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured substantial interest from a wide array of marketing scholars in recent years. Our research contributes to this emerging domain by examining AI technologies in marketing via a global lens. Specifically, our lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer. Our country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in economic inequality across countries due to the considerable economic resources necessary for AI adoption. Our company-level analysis focuses on glocalization because while the hardware that underlies these technologies may be global in nature, their application necessitates adaptation to local cultures. Our consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns, as AI technologies often collect, store and process a cornucopia of personal data across our globe. Through the prism of these three lenses, we focus on two important dimensions of AI technologies in marketing: (1) human-machine interaction and (2) automated analysis of text, audio, images, and video. We then explore the interaction between these two key dimensions of AI across our three-part global lens to develop a set of research questions for future marketing scholarship in this increasingly important domain.

Background: Sedentary behavior is one of the leading modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. Physical exercise exerts beneficial physiological effects on cardiovascular fitness. Different grades of physical exercise have different effects on cardiovascular health. Objective: To compare the effect of moderate and high intensity exercise training on heart rate variability (HRV) in sedentary office workers. Methods: This study was conducted on 40 healthy sedentary volunteers aged between 20-40 years of both the genders. Participants were distributed into two groups of 20 subjects each. Subjects of group I and group II performed moderate intensity and high intensity exercise respectively on bicycle ergometer for 12 weeks. Their 5- minute ECG recording was done by three channel physiograph, and frequency domain indices of HRV and heart rate (HR) were analyzed and compared before and after exercise training. Their blood pressure was also recorded and compared before and after exercise training. Independent sample t-test and paired sample ttest were used for statistical analysis. Results: HF, systolic and diastolic blood pressure reduced significantly after exercise in group II (p=0.015, 0.005, and 0.015 respectively) while HR and LF/HF ratio reduced in both group I and group II (p=0.000 for HR, and 0.034, 0.001 for LF/HF). The decrease in HR was greater after high intensity exercise than moderate intensity exercise (p= 0.025). Conclusion: Parasympathetic activity improves after moderate and high intensity exercise but improvement is more after high intensity exercise training. Therefore, high intensity exercise training is more beneficial than moderate intensity exercise training. J Bngladesh Soc Physiol 2021;16(1): 16-23

Decoding human activity accurately from wearable sensors can aid in applications related to healthcare and context awareness. The present approaches in this domain use recurrent and/or convolutional models to capture the spatio-temporal features from time-series data from multiple sensors. We propose a deep neural network architecture that not only captures the spatio-temporal features of multiple sensor time-series data but also selects, learns important time points by utilizing a self-attention mechanism. We show the validity of the proposed approach across different data sampling strategies on six public datasets and demonstrate that the self-attention mechanism gave a significant improvement in performance over deep networks using a combination of recurrent and convolution networks. We also show that the proposed approach gave a statistically significant performance enhancement over previous state-of-the-art methods for the tested datasets. The proposed methods open avenues for better decoding of human activity from multiple body sensors over extended periods of time. The code implementation for the proposed model is available at https://github.com/isukrit/encodingHumanActivity., 8 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. IEEE Sensors Journal, 2020

Miniaturized antenna system for the safety of miners in an underground mine for providing communication has been presented in this paper. Miniaturization of the proposed antennas is achieved by using printed inverted-F and inverted-L elements. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna geometry for GSM application is over 16%. Measured and simulated characteristics of the antenna agree very well. The measured gain of the antenna, with a two-director, is over 4.98 dBi when mounted on a ground plane and around 5.2 dBi when placed on the wall of an underground mine. Proper placement of the antenna in the mine environment is discussed for better communication for miners. Experimental validation of the antenna system is performed in a real underground mine. The radiation performance of the system is also studied in the mine environment. The proposed antenna may be suitable for establishing communication in underground mines to ensure the safety of miners.

Synovial chondromatosis of the shoulder is a rare entity that is generally mono-articular and uncommon in diarthrodial joints. Treatment of synovial chondromatosis of the shoulder includes open arthrotomy retrieval of loose bodies and synovectomy. With advances in arthroscopy, the same could be achieved using arthroscopic techniques. This case report describes a case report of a 35-year-old male patient who presented with complaints of pain and restriction of movement for 6 months. The MRI of the patient was suggestive of multiple loose bodies in the shoulder joint, in the subdeltoid region, and subscapularis muscle with subacromial bursitis. Arthroscopically more than 100 loose bodies were retrieved with subacromial decompression. Shoulder synovial chondromatosis has been rarely reported in the literature. The malignant transformation although rare, but it is still a possibility. The recurrence rate varies from 3.2% to 22.3%. Open arthrotomy, synovectomy, and retrieval of loose bodies cause delayed recovery and more morbidity with high chances of subscapularis insufficiency due to the need of subscapularis tenotomy. Arthroscopic treatment although have limitations such as limited visualization, limited synovectomy, and difficult interventions around the axillary recess or biceps sheath, but provides with the advantage of lesser morbidity and early rehabilitation. Synovial chondromatosis can be successfully treated arthroscopically as it provides intra-articular and extra articular access with early rehabilitation, lesser morbidity, and early recovery.

Aims: The evaluation of antibiotic agents conveyed is critical for guaranteeing that the quality and fittingness of therapy. The study's purpose was to assess the use of antibiotics on the basis of WHO indicator in surgery department. Study Design: A prospective observational study was carried out in the surgery inpatient department for a period of six months after the approval of the ethical committee in tertiary care hospital. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Surgery, National Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital Jaipur, Rajasthan, between Feb 2019 and July 2019. Methodology: The information was gathered in a predesigned performa from the clinical case sheets, drug charts of patients. Descriptive statistics were applied to the gathered information and dissected utilizing Microsoft Excel programming. Results: A total of 190 prescriptions were collected of which 995 drugs were prescribed. The total number of antibiotics in prescription was found to be 263. The percentage of antibiotics was found to be 88.42% which was found to be higher on comparing with the WHO marker. Various class of antibiotics was prescribed in which cephalosporin with a total of 120 (45.62%) followed by penicillin 33 (12.54%), macrolide 1 (0.38%) fluoroquinolones 23 (8.75%), nitroimidazole 39 (14.82%), aminoglycoside 38 (14.44%) and other classes 9 (3.45%). Conclusion: The adequacy of anti-microbial is undermined by the worldwide ascent in bacterial resistance and antimicrobial resistance is currently perceived as a significant medical issue. The study shows that the pattern of antibiotics was found to diverge from the WHO recommendation and also practice was lacking in terms of selection of antibiotics as there was no culture sensitivity test was performed. There gives off an impression of being an urgent requirement for the improvement of recommending rules with regards to the use of antibiotic agents.

Background: Scrub typhus (ST) is a rickettsial infection caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi, which presents with flu like symptoms. This disease has been reported from all over India but with slight variations in its pattern. For decreasing the prevalence, preventing new incidences, and predicting the course of the ST, therefore, it is crucial to gain knowledge and perception of local risk components associated with the disease. The present study aimed to investigate the epidemiological distribution and potential risk factors of O. tsutsugamushi Infection in Eastern Uttar Pradesh (EUP), India. Methods: The serums of 211 samples were collected from the suspected cases along with the detailed information about the participants such as age, location, and place recorded in case history form (CRF). IgM estimation was performed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assay. Results: A total of 58 samples (27.4%) out of 211 ones were found to be positive for IgM antibodies against O. tsutsugamushi bacterium. Furthermore, the results were correlated with epidemiological data such as gender, rural or urban background, pets, and occupation. The results showed that 76.7% of the study participants were from rural areas or had bushes around their houses, 88.3% of them had pets/cattle or frequent encounter with rodents at their houses, and 30.3% of them had no toilet facilities at home. Conclusions: It was concluded that the proximity to pets/cattle, having rodents in closer vicinity, residing in places surrounded by vegetation/farm/bushy areas, and following occupations involving field work increased the chances of getting bitten by mites/chiggers. Overall, Orientia tsutsugamushi prevalence increased in EUP, with respect to clinical features, disease presentation, and laboratory diagnosis can help our community to reduce the mortality caused by this infectious disease.

In this work, Shape-memory alloy (SMA)-based micromirrors were fabricated and the actuation was controlled through thermal stimulus. The micromirrors play a significant role in scanning and light deflection in the MEMS field. The SMA micromirrors were developed by coating CuAlNi thin film on strained kapton polyimide substrate using thermal evaporation. Later patterns were made on micromirrors for transmission and reflection of the light beam during actuation. The displacement of each distinct pattern was explored at different voltages ranging from 1 to 3 V through Joule heating technique. The maximum displacement observed was 1.9 mm for deltoid-patterned micromirror at 3 V. The ladder pattern recorded the minimum deflection of 1.1 mm at 3 V. The shape recovery ratio analysis showed that deltoid pattern bimorph had the highest recovery of 1.656. Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) analysis showed that the composition was maintained after the deposition.

An integrated four-element dielectric resonator-based multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) polarization diversity antenna is proposed in this letter. The MIMO antenna comprises two microstrip-slot fed dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) elements and two conformal open-loop fed DRA elements. These two different types of antenna elements are intended to radiate in two opposite directions to reduce the field components' interference. This aspect can offer a reliable wireless connection. Also, circular polarization diversity is implemented between the diagonally placed antenna elements to improve the isolation and diversity performance. The measured overlapping impedance bandwidth ( ${S_{ii}}$ < −10 dB) of 500 MHz (3.22–3.72 GHz) is attained for the proposed MIMO antenna with interport isolations of more than 15 dB throughout the usable frequency band. The proposed MIMO antenna acquires a measured overlapping axial ratio (AR) bandwidth (AR < 3 dB) of 200 MHz (3.34–3.54 GHz), which covers the 3.4 GHz carrier frequency for the vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure applications.

A drone, technological term Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), means any aircraft operating or designed to operate autonomously or to be piloted remotely without a pilot on board. Essentially, a drone is a flying robot that can be remotely controlled or fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems, working in conjunction with onboard sensors and GPS. The easy accessibility to everyone led to an increase in drone crime. Criminals are using drones in many malicious activities worldwide due to the drones’ ability to offer live-stream, real-time video, and image capture, along with the ability to fly and transport goods. Terrorist groups are using aerial drones to conduct and coordinate attacks. Forensic laboratories have been receiving Drone cases throughout India. The drone has been built that can be operated by a radio frequency controller and send live audio-visual feedback. This paper aims to provide a case study of Drone, DJI Phantom 4 and presents the acquisition, examination, analysis of important artifacts recorded flight data and discuss some possible data extractions from its flash memory, GPS (navigator) & SD card.

International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has laid requirements for digital audio watermarking (DAW) schemes with regard to robustness, imperceptibility and payload. In addition, DAW schemes have to offer audio integrity. Many of the schemes fails to provide both copyright protection and tamper detection. Moreover, tamper detection of audio is not evaluated in quantitative manner. Therefore, a robust and blind DAW scheme has been developed in transform domain to suffice this requirement. Further, an objective performance metric, detection accuracy, is proposed to quantify the performance of tamper detection. In the proposed work, audio is fragmented and transform coefficients are obtained using Wavelet and Cosine Transforms. Watermark image is pre-processed using logistic map and BCH code. This pre-processed image is inserted into singular values of audio signal coefficients through quantization index modulation. Hash is generated with SHA-512 algorithm and is inserted in watermarked audio frames. Hash recovery at the receiver allows to identify any tampering involved in audio viz., deletion, copy-move and substitute attacks. Singular vectors are not required to extract the watermark, thus this method is free from false positive problem and can provide copyright protection. Experimentation is carried out on five different classes of audios which substantiates that robustness, imperceptibility and payload results are acquiescent to IFPI standard. Further, comparative analysis indicates that developed scheme is better when compared with other state-of art-schemes. Consequently, this DAW scheme helps in forensic examination of audio recording for authentication purpose.

Hip replacement is a surgical process where natural hip joints are replaced by artificial hip joint that helps the human being for getting better lifestyle by reduction in the unavoidable pain and better leg movement. The selection of material and durability of the hip joint replacement are serious significance for the implantation, because it determines how load is transferred through the stem. In the selection of materials, various problems related to hip joint replacement are found like adverse tissue reaction, allergic reaction, wear and corrosion resistance etc. To overcome this problem one has to create different new biomaterial. This review gives brief description about the different biomaterial used for hip joint replacement.

Efficient use of sensor’s available energy is one of prime issues to be solved for wireless sensor network (WSN) alive and functional as long as possible. Appropriate relay sensor selection to forw...

Nowadays, the growing number of cases of possession and distribution of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) material pose a significant challenge for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). In this paper, we decompose the automatic CSA detection problem into two simpler ones for which it is feasible to create massive labeled datasets, especially to train deep neural networks: (i) pornographic content detection and (ii) age-group classification of a person as a minor or an adult. We propose a deep CNN architecture with a novel attention mechanism and metric learning, denoted as AttM-CNN, for these tasks. Furthermore, the pornography detection and the age-group classification networks are combined for CSA detection using two different strategies: decision level fusion for binary CSA classification and score level fusion for the re-arrangement of the suspicious images. We also introduce two new datasets: (i) Pornographic-2M, which contains two million pornographic images, and (ii) Juvenile-80k, including 80k manually labeled images with apparent facial age. The experiments conducted for age-group and pornographic classification demonstrate that our approach obtained similar or superior results compared to the state-of-the-art systems on various benchmark datasets for both tasks, respectively. For the evaluation of CSA detection, we created a test dataset comprising one million adult porn, one million non-porn images, and 5 , 000 real CSA images provided to us by Police Forces. For binary CSA classification, our method obtained an accuracy of 92.72 % , which increases the recognition rate by more than 21 % compared to a well-known forensic tool, i.e. NuDetective. Furthermore, re-arrangement of the CSA test dataset images showed that 80 % of CSA images can be found in the top 8.5 % of images in the ranked list created using our approach.

Aim Of The Study:The study aims to review depression and pain in the elderly with knee Osteoarthritis. Material And Methods: Subjects fullling selection criteria were recruited from the Department of Orthopaedics Surgery, KGMU, Lucknow, India. 1. Mobile numbers of subjects from the records available were obtained from JANUARY 2018 to JANUARY 2020 2. Topics were contacted over the telephone and recruited according to the nomination standards for the study. The call was recorded after taking consent. 3. Subjects were contacted during the daytime 10 am -2 pm. 4. Subjects were approached three times. 5. The survey was completed in a maximum of 2 sessions,15 minutes each (if the subject was not comfortable answering in a single session). 6. Proper introduction of the Doctor calling them and the purpose of the telephone was given to the subjects. 7. Telephone subjects were interviewed based on the sociodemographic questionnaire. 8. Following the basic interview, subjects were evaluated using scales that include PHQ-9, SF-12 and WOMAC. ( Antonio Escobar, 2006) 9. HRQoL was measured by SF-12 which includes general health, limitation of activities, physical health, emotional health and social activities. ( MoheddineYounsi, 2015 ) 10. PHQ-9 to assess the diagnosis and severity of depression was applied. 11. WOMAC scale was applied which gives the status of pain, stiffness and physical disabilities. 12. Each assessment took 20-30 minutes. 13. If subjects and attenders ask for advice regarding the treatment were addressed properly following guidance from consultants. 14. For the subjects with depression, the advice was given to consult the geriatric mental health helpline number of KGMU. The specimen length assumed for this study is 90 (30 in each group in KL grade 2/3/4). Results: This study shows that depression was extensively observed among sufferers with knee OA. Patients with knee OA analyzed with these comorbidities encountered more pain and discomfort, had systematic hospital calls, took more medication, and documented less optimal results. Being a cross-sectional, telephonic survey, this study shows results accordingly.( Anirudh Sharma, et al., 2020). Conclusion: Depression seems to have adverse impacts on the sufferers with knee OA. Physicians or caregivers are highly instructed to contemplate these comorbidities in patients with knee OA. KOA studies usually comprise pain and function scores but haven't routinely incorporated psychosocial variables estimating QoL(Prtha Kudesia, et al., 2020). This study concludes that there is a considerable difference in pain and general health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Pain and HRQoL worsen with higher grading of KOA. Eventually, a holistic customised surveillance method is essential to enhance patient results.( Roman Sosnowski, et al., 2017).

Aim of the study: The study aims to find the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in older adult subjects with knee osteoarthritis pain. Material and methods: A cross-sectional, telephonic study was done on knee osteoarthritis subjects above 50 years of age. Socio-demographic scales and details,(ShalliBavoria, et al., 2020) i.e., WOMAC (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index), SF-12 (Short Form survey), PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire) et al were applied( Soo-Hyun Park and Byeong-Hun Kang., 2020). Information was retrospectively compiled and a semi-structured proforma was selected to gather the clinical variables. Results: Results were identified by domains of Health related quality of life.Results showed that there is significant difference in general health related quality of life based on the KL grading of KOA.(P=0.02,P=0.04)Study concluded that general HRQoL worsens with higher grading of KOA.The results showed that there was a substantial discrepancy witnessed between males and females where females encountered more pain.As stiffness increases HRQoL decreases. More severity of pain was observed in depressed people.(Roger B. Fillingim, et al., 2020) Conclusion: Daily challenges and actions, of which some may be unusual to sufferers in a pastoral setting in India, underlie sedentary and effective strategies to Osteoarthritis and its control. The study concluded that a significant difference in pain and general quality of life-based on the KL grading of KOA (P=0.02, P=0.04) was observed.(Hye-Young Shim, etal, 2018) It was also found that there is a considerable difference in pain based on the duration of ]knee osteoarthritis (P=0.05).( Aliasghar A. Kiadalir, et al., 2017).

Increased demand for conventional energy like coal, natural gas, and oil, forcing researchers to develop renewable or non-conventional energy resources. Renewable energy sources such as fuel cells,...

A novel maximum-ratio combined receiver (MRC-RX) is proposed and demonstrated through a proof-of-concept experiment, conducted to mitigate the system performance degradation caused by the low linearity of the silicon modulator when deployed in passive optical network (PON)-based access. By employing the proposed MRC-RX, an optimized receiver sensitivity is achieved, which enables the mitigation of the performance degradation induced by the silicon modulator, and a more reliable transmission in both cases of low and high received power. In the proof-of-concept experiment, at a bit error rate of 1.0 × 10−4, the receiver sensitivity of the MRC-RX was improved by 3.5 dB and 6.7 dB compared with the lite coherent receiver (lite CO-RX) and direct detection receiver (DD-RX), respectively. Compared with a system employing a commercial lithium niobate (LiNbO3) modulator, a maximum improvement of ∼5.6 dB in the receiver sensitivity was obtained for the MRC-RX in the silicon modulator system. Thus, the system performance degradation caused by the low linearity of the silicon modulator can be effectively reduced by employing the MRC-RX. The proposed method makes sense to the building of next generation high reliable photonics integrated access by employing silicon modulators.

Psychiatric disorders are a kind of psychological disorders characterized by vital feelings of anxiety and fear. Lately, the evolution of advance methods helps significantly to produce resources helping physicians to foresee psychological problems as well as help patient care. In this particular review paper, a study was done on investigation for the prediction of certain kinds of psychiatric disorders using neuro-fuzzy methods. Research had been selected as well as analyzed, revealing that neuro-fuzzy methods may be utilized for efficiently forecasting psychiatric problems. The precision of the outcomes differs based on the kind of the type of psychiatric disorder of strategies used for predicting the condition. We are able to deduce that single method cannot work well and has been accomplished on the prediction of psychiatric disorder using neuro-fuzzy methods. Nevertheless, with the help of advance research, we might achieve higher accuracy scores which can result in a much better support for patients.

A scientifically and ecologically robust system paradigm is emerging as digital agriculture services where sensors and actuators have a vital role in monitoring and management of farming practices. Generally, farm management decisions are taken by farmers based on cropland growing conditions, previous experience, and desired outcomes. These decisions can be supplemented with the recommendations derived from sensor-based farm management information systems. This work investigates the economic and environmental performance of conventional and ecological farming methods with the help of a techno-economic analysis of digital agriculture technologies in the Upper Gangetic Plains in North India. It attempts to describe the expected attributes that farmers value when it comes to digital agriculture services based on the empirical data obtained from technology developers, field-trainers, and participating farmers. The distinctive attributes of the services are decided after analyzing the collected data. Information sharing with the farmers about their land holdings, cultivated crops, irrigation facilities, used fertilizers, input cost, net income, use of digital technologies, farming apps, socioeconomic background, and their educational qualification was found helpful in improving their productivity and profitability. The conducted assessment contributed to the generalized management of agroecological resources toward highly optimized, intelligent, individualized, and anticipatory farm management practices.

Purpose The South African automotive industry, which is the most significant sector in the South African economy, needs to function efficiently to compete globally. The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that investigated the challenges faced by the South African automotive component manufacturers and their suppliers and provide a structure and identify the dependencies between these challenges. Design/methodology/approach Interpretive structural modelling (ISM) was adopted to explore the supplier relationship challenges and the dynamics and interlinkages between these challenges. ISM was deemed appropriate, as it is a multi-criterion decision-making technique suited for complex problems and provides an ordered, directional framework. Findings The findings revealed that advanced communication, rapid change in demand and dependence on a single customer are independent problems but have a lesser feedback loop and do not create instability by ripple effect. Interdependencies, on the other hand, create lesser ripples when tackled. Research limitations/implications Findings of this study will be able to guide all the stakeholders: the policymakers and the automotive industry players to target the driving issue which can bring efficiency in the South African automotive supply chain. If the automotive components manufacturers (ACMs) are able to have more than one customer, their reliance on one will decrease and the systems will improve which shall benefit the industry. This methodology can also be used in future for determining the roadmap for complex issues. Originality/value The framework presented in this paper provides decision makers with a realistic picture of their situation by providing insight into the interrelationships, ranking them by importance and aiding in creating a roadmap for addressing identified challenges.

The surge in diabetes prevalence has seized the increasing attention of Physicians, Patients, Healthcare Support Systems, as well as policymakers. Telemedicine is a frugal intervention in diabetes ...

To achieve wideband circular polarization (CP) characteristics, a new structure with a single feeding technique has been proposed. In the proposed CP structure, to excite the cylindrical dielectric resonator (CDR) four asymmetrical rectangular slots are etched on the ground plane, each rectangular slot is rotated by an angle of ( $\theta = 30^{\circ }$ ) with respect to its adjacent slots. The electric fields at each slot are separated by 30° in space with respect to its adjacent slot to create 90° angular separations between the E-field components. Two orthogonal broadside modes ( ${HE}_{11\delta }$ ) are excited inside the cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) independently to obtained CP characteristics. To compare the simulated outcomes with the experimental results, fabrication of the proposed antenna prototype has been done. The measured percentage of bandwidth achieved by the proposed radiator for $\vert \text{S}_{11}\vert $ and CP is 26.73% and 23.59%, respectively, and the whole usable axial ratio (AR) frequency bands overlap the impedance passband of the presented CP structure. The proposed radiator has achieved the maximum gain and radiation efficiency of 3.4 dB and 95% over the operating frequency range of the designed antenna, respectively. The proposed CP DRA has been configured for the WLAN band application.

Transition metal oxides (TMOs) have gained interest in photovoltaic community for their usages as dopant-free carrier-selective contacts in silicon based solar cells. TMOs such as MoOx, WOx, V2Ox, NiOx with high work function are used as hole-selective contacts whereas TiO2, ZnO are used as electron-selective contacts. We have fabricated solar cells using molybdenum trioxide (MoO3-x, x 88% in visible region and have band gap of 3.43 eV. As molybdenum trioxide has high work function ∼6.6 eV, it helps in the transport of holes in this structure. We have achieved power conversion efficiency of 4.44%, current density 28.44 mA/cm2 and open-circuit voltage 391 mV. Further optimization of processing parameter is necessary to improve the performance of these solar cells.

Objectives: The study aimed to assess the functionality of labour rooms by evaluating the labour room infrastructure with reference to the standard guidelines, the status of the availability of human resources, the availability of essential equipment and consumables in the labour room and by documenting the knowledge of the healthcare provider in terms of labour room practices. The study also explored the facility parameters associated with its delivery load taking the facility as a unit of analysis. Design: A cross-sectional analytical study. Setting: India has realised the importance of improving the quality of care in public health facilities, and steps are being taken to make healthcare more responsive to women's needs. With an increase in the proportion of institutional deliveries in India, the outcome of the delivery process can be improved by optimising the health facility components. Participants: The study was conducted in 52 health facilities and healthcare providers involved in the delivery process in the selected facilities. Results: The infrastructure of the facilities was found to be the best for medical college followed by district hospitals, Community Health Centres (CHCs), Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and subcentres. Similar findings were observed in terms of the availability of equipment and consumables. Lack of healthcare providers was observed as only 20% of the posts for health personnel were fulfilled in CHCs followed by PHCs, subcentres and district hospitals where 43, 50 and 79% of the available vacancies were fulfilled. The level of knowledge of healthcare providers in terms of partograph, active management of the third stage of labour and post-partum haemorrhage ranged as per their designation. The specialists were the most knowledgeable while the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (AMNs) were the least. All the components of structural capacity, i.e. infrastructure (r2 = 0.377, P value < 0.001), equipment and consumable (r2 = 0.606, P value < 0.001) and knowledge of healthcare providers (r2 = 0.456, P value < 0.001) along with the overall facility score were positively correlated with the average delivery load of the health facility. The results from multivariate linear regression depict significant relation between the delivery load and availability of equipment and consumables (t = 4.015, P < 0.01) and with the knowledge of healthcare providers (t = 2.129, P = 0.039). Conclusions: The higher facilities were better equipped to provide delivery and newborn care. A higher delivery load was found at high-level facilities which can be attributed to better infrastructure, adequate supply of equipment and consumables and availability of trained human resources.

The design of an antenna, for its subsequent characterization by means of real sets of measurement, requires a specific modeling that allows a best approximation to the actual construction of the device and true measured values. Like Fourier series expansion, the characteristic mode analysis (CMA) creates a set of orthogonal true current on a conducting material with arbitrary geometry. In this work, a hexagon-shaped wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna using CMA is presented. The design of the proposed antenna is completed in two stages: first, a hexagon-shaped monopole is designed to achieve circular polarization in the upper frequency band, and subsequently a hexagon-shaped slotted patch is implemented for obtaining circular polarization in the lower frequency band. This procedure helps in achieving the wideband CP antenna. In place of using the conventional method of analyzing simulated surface current distribution to verify CP radiation, CMA is used to understand the different modes of the antenna and their contribution toward CP radiation of antenna. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated with dimensions $0.36\lambda \times 0.36\lambda \times 0.013\lambda $ ( $\lambda $ corresponds to the wavelength for lowest working frequency) to validate the simulated results. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 2.3–7.6 GHz and the 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of the antenna is 3.4–6.5 GHz. The measured peak gain of the antenna is 4.6 dBic. The proposed antenna exhibits a consistent radiation pattern, and the operating frequency band of the antenna effectively includes the international mobile telecommunication (IMT), industrial, scientific, and medical band (ISM), and WiMAX spectrums.

The intensifying global distress towards the environmental problems and however, the demand for more versatile polymer-based materials has raised concerns about polymer composites containing natural organic fillers, i.e. fillers derived from renewable sources and biodegradable. The composites, which are often referred to as “green,” can be used in a variety of ways. Green composites are commonly listed as having possible applications in the automotive and construction industries, but an analysis of these applications shows that they are frequently an inappropriate fit for green composites' specific material properties. A concise summary of green composites is given, along with graphical comparisons of their relative benefits. In the present study flexural stress is calculated by using CATIA V5, AGMA and ANSYS. Designing a product is an important industrial activity that affects the quality of product, so because of this three dimensional objects is created, analysed and comparison among the three materials according to ASTM D 790 standard using modelling software CATIA V5. Coconut fiber reinforced with epoxy resin composite will have more life and durable because of its less deformation and high stress bearing capacity.

This paper presents a new pattern‐reconfigurable antenna. This antenna has been designed, fabricated, and measured for 2.45 GHz band application. It provides six different radiation patterns in the azimuth plane at the same angle interval. First, a new single‐pole three‐throw switching network with one input and three outputs has been built on the circuit simulator and afterward validated by structural simulation. This reconfigurable switching network provides six switching conditions by the combination of turning ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’ states of the used four radio frequency p‐i‐n diode switches. Second, three curved printed dipole antennas are designed with an equal interval of 120° in the azimuth plane. Finally, switching network and curved printed dipole antennas are simultaneously simulated for 2.45 GHz band applications followed by fabrication. Maximum half‐power beamwidth and average gain are obtained as 110° and 4 dBi, respectively, and the radiation efficiency is always better than 90.2%.

There are only 4500 buildings and about 4.17 billion square feet of the area under green buildings till 2016. It is only around 5% of India's total construction, and there is considerable potential for sustainable design in the Indian market. Sustainable building design requires passive and active techniques. It is vital to design a sustainable building that uses passive strategies to its fullest because they are cheaper and more efficient than active strategies. The designer emphasizes active features and neglects passive features to obtain sustainable building ratings in the current context. The whole purpose of sustainable design has been defeated. To achieve a sustainable design in a real sense, passive strategies should be formed in response to the local climate and given primary importance. Active strategies are only bound to complement passive strategies. This study focuses on understanding the passive design strategies for India's composite climate in response to the local climate through case studies of buildings. This paper deals with passive design strategies such as orientation, fenestration, shading devices, earth touch, roof garden, water, landscaping, and active strategies, often include solar panels, solar water heaters and wind towers. The two studies, i.e., the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Solar Energy Center, use the sunken courtyard, orientation, shading devices, water bodies, a verandah inspired by traditional passive features, and another study, the PEDA Complex, use the southern dome structure, shading devices, water bodies as modern passive features. All studies use active strategies to complement passive strategies. The study concludes that all three case studies use passive strategies as primary ones, either influenced by traditional architecture or modern perception and that active strategies complement passive strategies.

In India, the precious freshwater resources are becoming scarcer due to the climate change effect coupled with their inappropriate planning and management at the field level. Development of water resources and sensitization of farming community/irrigators towards effective utilization of these resources is need of the hour and it is one of the most important factors in conservation and preservation water resources for future requirements. This case study has highlighted the direct and indirect benefits derived by implementation of National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) scheme in Nawada, a village of the district East Champaran in Bihar state initiated by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Piprakothi, East Champaran under Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Bihar. Two groups of farmers of the village was chosen to evaluate the benefits derived from this scheme. Under this scheme, tube-wells were developed to facilitate assured irrigation. This study revealed that the total savings of approximate Rs.10,000 ($140) per hectare to irrigate wheat crop three times in Rabi season was achieved over conventional irrigation system. This scheme has also resulted in other intangible benefits which included a reduction in pollution, an increase in the number of crops- rabi , kharif and zaid seasons and adequate time to carryout out other farm operations.

Extensive use of sensor and actuator networks in many real-life applications introduced several new performance metrics at the node and network level. Since wireless sensor nodes have significant battery constraints, therefore, energy efficiency, as well as network lifetime, are among the most significant performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of given network architecture. This work investigates the performance of an event-based data delivery model using a multipath routing scheme for a wireless sensor network with multiple sink nodes. This routing algorithm follows a sink initiated route discovery process with the location information of the source nodes already known to the sink nodes. It also considers communication link costs before making decisions for packet forwarding. Carried out simulation compares the network performance of a wireless sensor network with a single sink, dual sink, and multi sink networking approaches. Based on a series of simulation experiments, the lifetime aware multipath routing approach is found appropriate for increasing the lifetime of sensor nodes significantly when compared to other similar routing schemes. However, energy-efficient packet forwarding is a major concern of this work; other network performance metrics like delay, average packet latency, and packet delivery ratio are also taken into the account.

Obesity is characterized by increased infiltration of macrophages. Cytokines derived from these macrophages significantly induce inflammatory response and desensitize insulin action. Disturbed sleep pattern is also associated with release of the same kind of cytokines that could play a central role in the development of insulin resistance. A computer-based search of the literature indexed in PubMed was made using the keywords: glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, adipokines, adiponectin, interleukin-6 (IL-6), leptin, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), monocyte chemo-attractant protein-1 (MCP-1), sleep deprivation, and sleep loss. In this review firstly we include the studies that have measured the relationship of cytokines with sleep duration and insulin resistance, and finally, we analyze the relationship of sleep duration with the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus. IL-6, IL-1β, TNF-α, and MCP-1 are secreted by many cell types including macrophages, adipocytes, etc. They are released in response to many stimuli including sleep loss, tissue injury, and infection. Some evidence has suggested that these cytokines are molecular link between obesity, sleep disturbances, and insulin resistance, because similar types of alterations in plasma levels of these cytokines are found in patients with obesity and disturbed sleep having type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM-2) or insulin resistance. We conclude that both sleep loss and obesity contribute to the onset of insulin resistance and DM-2 with the help of the same kind of cytokines. The mechanisms involved in the impaired glucose metabolism seem to act via a decreased efficacy of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and due to modified release of cytokines—especially IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and MCP-1 from adipocytes following obesity and poor quality of sleep. The aforementioned biomarkers could provide a minimally invasive means for early detection and specific treatment of these disorders.

Eminently, the countries of developing state have their economy based on agricultural crop yieldings. To retain the economic growth of these countries, the agricultural plants’ disease detection and proper treatment are a leading factor. The work available in the literature basically features pull out to classify the leaf images due to which the classification performance suffers. In the proposed work, we tried to resolve this rough image dataset problem. The proposed technique initially localizes the leaf region by utilizing the color features of the leaf image followed by mixture model-based county expansion for leaf localization. The classification of the leaf images depends on the features of discriminatory properties. The characteristics features of the diseased images show various types of patterns into the leaf region. Here, we utilized the features discriminable property using the Fisher vector in terms of different orders of differentiation of Gaussian distributions. The performance of the proposed system is analyzed using the PlantVillage databases of common pepper, root vegetable as potato, and tomato leaf images using a multi-layer perceptron, and support vector machine. The implementation results confirm the better performance measure of the proposed classification technique than the state of arts and provide an accuracy of 94.35 $$\%$$ with an area under the curve 94.7 $$\%$$ .

Hypoxia, particularly hypobaric hypoxia, is a multifaceted entity which includes certain molecular, patho-physiological and biochemical aspects. Any single aspect in itself cannot help us elucidate hypobaric hypoxia in its entirety. We observed three crucial lacunae within the existing literature. These include a lack of high-throughput investigations into redox PTMs, particularly NO-based PTMs; a prophylactic supplement with proven efficacy and safety which doesn’t involve medical supervision and is not contraindicated in hepatic, renal and cardiac insufficiencies; and a clinically validated rodent model of HAPE without any genetic/pharmacological manipulations. In the present study, we present an antagonistic interplay between nitrosylation and carbonylation which shows an additional NO-based network that is active in acclimatised individuals. Then we present a micronised aqueous suspension of silymarin which is efficacious at low doses in providing antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and hypoxia-adaptive vascular responses in addition to being a free radical quencher itself. Silymarin has an excellent safety and efficacy profile in humans. Finally, we create a SD rat model of HAPE which was used to reverse-translate a previously known HAPE marker in humans (SULT1A1) and elucidate the synergistic occurrence of HAPE and inflammation cascades. This is the first radiologically validated rodent HAPE model. In conclusion, we were able to elucidate the molecular, biochemical and patho-physiological aspects of hypobaric hypoxia which were left out by previous studies.

The recent outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus leading to the disease COVID 19 has become a global pandemic that is spreading rapidly and has caused a global health emergency. Hence, there is an urgent need of the hour to discover effective drugs to control the pandemic caused by this virus. Under such conditions, it would be imperative to repurpose already known drugs which could be a quick and effective alternative to discovering new drugs. The main protease (Mpro) of SARS-COV-2 is an attractive drug target because of its essential role in the processing of the majority of the non-structural proteins which are translated from viral RNA. Herein, we report the high-throughput virtual screening and molecular docking studies to search for the best potential inhibitors against Mpro from FDA approved drugs available in the ZINC database as well as the natural compounds from the Specs database. Our studies have identified six potential inhibitors of Mpro enzyme, out of which four are commercially available FDA approved drugs (Cobicistat, Iopromide, Cangrelor, and Fortovase) and two are from Specs database of natural compounds (Hopeaphenol and Cyclosieversiodide-A). While Cobicistat and Fortovase are known as HIV drugs, Iopromide is a contrast agent and Cangrelor is an anti-platelet drug. Furthermore, molecular dynamic (MD) simulations using GROMACS were performed to calculate the stability of the top-ranked compounds in the active site of Mpro. After extensive computational studies, we propose that Cobicistat and Hopeaphenol show potential to be excellent drugs that can form the basis of treating COVID-19 disease. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

In India food demand is increasingly doubled due to calorie consumption of fast growing population rate. For achieving and sustaining a high level of food production, especially in agriculture, soil must be regularly replenished with a balance of crop nutrients, like macronutrients, secondary nutrients and micronutrients. Sulphur (S) comes under secondary nutrients after nitrogen, phosphorus and potash (potassium) at number four as an essential nutrient. It exists in group 16 and period 3 with a molecular weight of 32 in the periodic table. Naturally S occurs as an element found in many minerals like iron pyrites, galena, gypsum and Epsom salts. In Igneous and Sedimentary rocks S occurs as sulphides and in soil it is also present as organic compounds also in industrial wastes, sea water as well as gaseous emission in the atmosphere. Under temperate conditions it assumes that more than 95% of total S in soil is present in the organic matter due to low decomposition rate. In plants, sulphur plays an important role in protein synthesis.

Sugarcane production technologies being developed by research institutions are highly location specific and require multi-location trials in diverse conditions before adoption. In India, multi-location trials of technologies are conducted under All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Sugarcane through a network of 36 centres in four disciplines of crop improvement, crop production, entomology and plant pathology. Monitoring and evaluation of trials is accomplished through experts’ field visits, meetings and workshop. Sugarcane being a long duration crop, a large amount of trial observation data are recorded by centres at various crop stages. Data are analysed, compiled and documented by centre officials, principal investigator and project coordinator for interpretation of trial results. Traditional system of data management poses many issues such as retyping of data, late reporting, wrong/missing data, poor documentation, wrong interpretation and poor decision support. A web-based software AICRP Reporter has been implemented for recording and reporting of AICRP trial data to solve these problems and to increase efficiency. Paper gives brief information about the data management technique used in this system for an effective coordination among various AICRP stakeholders for achieving its objectives. System enables timely reporting of data; consistent and reliable reports; and remote monitoring. Data once recorded can be utilized in historical perspective for new knowledge discovery. System is generic in nature and can be implemented for other such research organizations at national and international level with specific knowledge updation.

The term which is used to predict wind speed to produce wind power is wind speed forecasting. Deep learning, is a form of AI, basically indulging in artificial intelligence and thus can greatly increase the precision rate on larger datasets. In this research paper, the two techniques are being used together to obtain the better forecasting results. Both the techniques are forecasting based and combining LSTM and deep learning can increase the forecast rate because of the pattern remembering attribute of LSTM over a longer interval/period of time. If there is the inclusion of the ARIMA model the likelihood of a future value lying between two indicated limits is increased. So, overall if both the techniques are hybridized than it is most probable that the obtained results should be more accurate than both the techniques used separately. So, the main focus of this research article is on the efficiency and evaluation of hybridized LSTM-ARIMA model to predict wind speed forecasting.

Adoption of blockchain technology has been widely construed as disruptive. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology. It is secure by design because of its cryptography and distributed consensus mechanism, which also offers anonymity, persistence, auditability and resilience. The construction industry adopts a project-based approach and globally has been considered as a fragmented sector, predominantly in unorganised space. Given these characteristics, the technology adoption has been slow. This study looks at the challenges and adopts interpretive structural modelling technique to understand the linkages between these barriers. This study can provide managerial insights into designing strategies for overcoming the barriers for adoption of this disruptive technology.