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Structural and economic transformation takes place during the course of economic development. Generally, these changes are associated with the shift in economic activities from agricultural sector towards non-agricultural sectors. It is attributed to the fact that there are bleak prospects of employment after a point in the agricultural sector that ultimately shifts the trajectory of development towards industrialization and services sectors. However, in the Indian context, industrial offtake remained slow. Since 1950–1951, the contribution of industrial sector has doubled only to hover around 28% of GDP. Moreover, it has failed to offer large-scale employment to the labor force in the economy. Hence, present study is undertaken to assess the industrial performance and its prospects in future in terms of nature of industries, productivity and capacity utilization since 2000–2001.

Banks are the foundation of any nation as they are inescapable for the monetary advancement of a nation. Investors are the absolute entirety of any business. Banks are delegates between the investors and borrowers. This connection separates when the borrower neglect to reimburse the vital and premium sum; subsequently the banking segment concentrate on the issue of Non-Performing Assets. So far as India is worried, before 2002 banks have no alternative other than implementing the security through a court/tribunal, to recoup its duty. On the suggestion of Narasimham Committee –II SARFAESI Act 2002 came as a sigh of relief for the banking sector. This demonstration enabled the banks and budgetary organizations for the procurement of the secured resources of the borrowers held with the bankers at the time of availing loans. This paper endeavors to concentrate the execution and effect of SARFAESI Act 2002 for the administration of NPA in Indian Banking. The articles and papers published in different business journals, magazines, newspapers, periodicals were studied and data available on NPAs recovery have been used for analysis. Statistical tools like percentages used for analysis. At first DRTs performed well, however their advance was endured when they get overburdened with the vast number of cases alluded to them. Keywords: Economic Development, Inevitable, Narasimham Committee-II, SARFAESI ACT 2002, Secured Assets.

Timely nondestructive estimation of crop nitrogen (N) status is crucial for in-season site-specific N management. Active crop canopy sensors are the promising tools to obtain the needed information without being affected by environmental light conditions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential for the GreenSeeker active crop canopy sensor to estimate rice ( Oryza sativa L.) N status. Nine N rate experiments were conducted from 2008 to 2012 in Jiansanjiang, Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. The results indicated that across site-years and growth stages, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and ratio vegetation index (RVI) obtained with the GreenSeeker sensor could explain 73%–76% and 70%–73% of rice aboveground biomass and plant N uptake variability in this study, respectively. The NDVI index became saturated when biomass reached about ${\bf 4\nbsp\hbox{t}\nbsp\hbox{ha}^{ - 1}}$ or when plant N uptake reached about ${\bf 100\nbsp\hbox{kg}\nbsp\hbox{ha}^{ - 1}}$ , whereas RVI did not show obvious saturation effect. The validation results, however, indicated that both indices performed similarly, and their relative errors (RE) were still large ( $ {\bf \gt 40\% }$ ). Although the two indices only explained less than 40% of plant N concentration or N nutrition index (NNI) variability, the RE values were acceptable ( ${\bf \lt 26\%} $ ). The results indicated some potentials of using the GreenSeeker sensor to estimate rice N status nondestructively, but more studies are needed to further evaluate and improve its performance for practical applications.

Approximately 15-20% patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) suffer from a severe flare during their lifetime which required hospitalization. Intravenous corticosteroids are the first line of therapy for acute severe UC. While almost 70-80% of patients respond to corticosteroids 20% do not. Although colectomy for UC is curative, it has its problems such as increased frequency of stool and pouchitis, which led to search for colon rescue therapy. Cyclosporine and anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha (anti-TNF á) have emerged as effective colon rescue therapy. While the short-term efficacy of cyclosporine in preventing colectomy is 64-86%, the long-term efficacy is not as good and almost 70% eventually require colectomy over 1-7 years. The efficacy of cyclosporine is equivalent both at a high and low doses and cyclosporine is now used most often as a low dose regime in patients with steroid refractory acute severe UC. Furthermore, recent data suggest that the both cyclosporine and infliximab are equally effective in steroid refractory acute severe UC. Monitoring patients for adverse events and serum cyclosporine levels is mandatory. The response to both cyclosporine and infliximab is rapid and usually occurs within 4-5 days. Despite mounting evidence of its efficacy, cyclosporine remains largely underused because it requires intense monitoring for toxicity especially at higher dosage. Gastroenterologists need to be more familiar with cyclosporine for the management of steroid refractory acute severe UC.

E2F1, a transcription factor of E2F family, plays an important role in the proliferative and antiproliferative processes and its deregulated expression has been reported in the different types of cancers. Purpose of this study was to find the role of E2F1 intronic variant rs2071054(C/T) in cancer susceptibility. In this study, we genotyped 625 samples (that included 395 cancer patients and 230 normal healthy controls) for rs2071054 (C/T) polymorphism of the E2F1 gene. Genotyping was done applying Polymerase Chain Reaction-Artificial Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-ARFLP) method. Polymorphism rs2071054(C/T) was significantly associated with the susceptibility to head and neck cancer and the late stages of cervical cancer in the allelic model. The allelic frequencies were different in lung and cervical cancer patients; however, this difference was not significant. We conclude that E2F1 rs2071054(C/T) polymorphism is a risk factor for head and neck and cervical cancers in a North Indian population. Further studies on a large number of samples and functional validation are to establish it as a marker for these cancers.

This paper studies direct and indirect impact of the human-centered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems on user satisfaction. The objective of the paper is to measure a hierarchical influence of five human-centered dimensions on user satisfaction both directly and indirectly. This paper attempts to provide answers to whether the human-centered measurement models provide a systematic evaluation of ERP. The contributions of the paper to knowledge are to establish the need for the human-centered approach as a basis for the design of ERP systems, to define a systematic hierarchical human-centered model for measurement, in particular, and accounting information systems, in general, and to develop methodology for validation of the measurement model and applies it to evaluation of ERP systems. This paper suggests the application of a proposed five dimensional model in measuring the human-centeredness of ERP systems using hierarchical model and looks at the implementation in a university context.

This article studies the level of industrial development across different states of India, with the help of composite indices. The study has brought out that huge disparities exist among the states which have accentuated over a period of time. In order to find out the magnitude of inter-state disparities in industries, 21 major Indian states for the period 1980-81 to 2009-10 have been examined.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the incidence of various complications following routine exodontia performed using fixed protocols. Materials and Methods: A total of 22,330 extractions carried out in 14,975 patients, aged between 14 and 82 years, who reported to the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Padmashree Dr. D. Y. Patil Dental College and Hospital, Nerul, Navi Mumbai, were evaluated for various complications. Results: The most common complications encountered were tooth fracture, trismus, fracture of cortical plates and dry socket. Wound dehiscence, postoperative pain and hemorrhage were encountered less frequently. Luxation of adjacent teeth, fracture of maxillary tuberosity, and displacement of tooth into adjacent tissue spaces were rare complications. Conclusion: The practice of exodontia inevitably results in complications from time to time. It is imperative for the clinician to recognize impending complications and manage them accordingly.

As the organizational memory in terms of collective knowledge evolves, how to construct an effective knowledge sharing mechanism to covert individual knowledge into collective knowledge becomes fairly demanding. CoPs approach is widely accepted as effective mechanism to facilitate knowledge sharing. Knowledge nodes in the context of knowledge flow, unlike workflow, can often transcend organizational boundaries and are distinct and different than workflow models. This paper aims to develop, implement, and analyze a CoPs Centered knowledge flow model in a multinational organization. This model is underpinned in a CoPs framework built around four expected performance including four dimensions and sixteen criteria as a comprehensive mechanism to intensify knowledge sharing effect. Next, this study clusters knowledge workers/nodes with common criteria (attitudes and beliefs) towards this model. These common attitudes and beliefs between two knowledge workers/nodes imply that knowledge sharing among them is likely to be more effective than between knowledge workers/nodes with dissimilar attitudes and beliefs. Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making MCDM) and cluster analysis techniques are adopted as research methods. A Dynamic knowledge flow activity analysis model is also defined as part of future work.

KEYWORDS TGF-β1; tuberculosis; single nucleotide polymorphism; ARMS-PCR; cytokine ABSTRACT Tuberculosis (TB) is a curable infectious disease that kills around half million individuals every year in India. Cytokines play a vital role in the pathogenesis of this deadly disease. Transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF- β1) is one of the important anti-inflammatory cytokine found to be elevated in TB patients. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the promoter of TGF-β1 cytokine gene are known to alter the production of this important cytokine. Given its immunosuppressive nature increased production of this cytokine is implicated towards susceptibility to TB. The C/T polymorphism in TGF-β1 promoter at -509 site is strongly associated with circulating levels of this cytokine and T allele is shown to be associated with its high production. Thus, in the present study we looked for association of TGF-β1 (C-509T) SNP with TB. A total of 245 subjects (145 TB patients and 100 normal healthy controls) were recruited for study. The -509 polymorphism was studied using Amplification Refractory Mutation System- Polymerase Chain Reaction (ARMS-PCR). The distribution of C/T alleles in TB patients and normal healthy controls did not reveal any statistically significant association of this polymorphism with TB ( χ 2 = 0.04; p = 0.85).

Organizational transformations have been widely adopted by firms who wish to improve their competitive advantage to be better prepared to face external challenges. This research has chosen Communities of Practice (CoPs) as the subject of discussion for an assessment model to reform organizations that undertake CoPs for collective knowledge to enhance their core competencies. Given the interrelationships between criteria, this research uses the nonadditive fuzzy integral to develop a framework for the CoPs performance assessment. The purposes of this paper are to identify the key dimensions/criteria in the CoPs, to use fuzzy logic method to analyze the relative importance of each criterion, and to rank the criteria so that proper resources can be allocated while managing the CoPs. Through interviews with experts, four strategy alternatives and 16 criteria along four dimensions are generated. A survey of the CoPs practitioners is then conducted to compare the results of each criterion. The results will not only help organizations that intend to initiate changes via the CoPs activities to decide the ranking of their appraisal criteria, but it can also assist them in guiding the behavior of their staff while effectively monitoring and improving the performances of the CoPs

Research indicates that the environment has had a definite impact on consumer behaviour whereby suggesting to target consumers according to their environmental beliefs. This study investigated the consumers' green purchase behaviour using price and quality attributes as contributors to the formation of purchase intention. It attempts to construct a model that may facilitate the better understanding of green consumers' market segments through the use of an intelligent soft computing model. The model is designed to incorporate knowledge, beliefs, demographic profiles and situational variables. This potentially provides a more direct method for companies to gauge consumers' intention to purchase green products. The results showed strong preference for companies to place higher priority on reducing pollution than on increasing profitability. It highlighted different clusters that demonstrate various levels of the strength of intention to purchase and market segment profiles.

Precision nitrogen (N) management (PNM) is a promising strategy to improve N use efficiency and protect the environment while maintaining or increasing crop yield. In-season non-destructive diagnosis of crop N status is crucial for the success of this strategy. The objectives of this study were to (i) evaluate how well the GreenSeeker active canopy sensor can non-destructively estimate N status indicators of spring maize (Zea mays L.) in Northeast China and (ii) evaluate different N status diagnostic approaches based on N nutrition index (NNI) estimated via GreenSeeker sensor measurements. Two N rate field experiments involving 6 N rates (0, 60, 120,180, 240, and 300 kg N ha−1) were conducted in 2014 in Lishu County, Jilin Province in Northeast China. The results indicated that across sites and growth stages, GreenSeeker-based vegetation indices explained 89%–90% and 80%–86% of maize aboveground biomass and plant N uptake variability, respectively. The performance of GreenSeeker for estimating N status indicators from crop growth stage V7 to V10 was better than early growth stages (V5 and V6). The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) became saturated when aboveground biomass reached about 3.1 t ha−1 or plant N uptake reached about 75 kg ha−1; whereas no obvious saturation effect was found with ratio vegetation index (RVI). Across growth stages, about 50% of variability in maize N concentration was explained, but the standard error of estimate (SEa) was not acceptable. The NNI values were significantly correlated with GreenSeeker-based vegetation indices, with R2 being 0.64–0.80 at a specific growth stage. It is concluded that the GreenSeeker sensor has good potential for in-season non-destructive diagnosis of spring maize N status at V7–V8, but more studies are needed to further evaluate and improve its performance for practical applications.

In this paper we outline a human-centered multilayered multiagent distributed soft computing architecture for providing support to practitioners and problem solvers at four levels, namely, clerical, tool, optimization and task level, respectively. We describe the emergent characteristics of the architecture from a architectural, management and domain perspective. We illustrate the application of these four levels with the help of two image processing applications namely, face detection and annotation, and unstained mammalian cell classification.

SUMMARY Precision agriculture is a new and developing discipline that incorporates advanced technologies to enhance the efficiency of farm inputs in a profitable and environmentally sensible manner. Yield monitoring and variable rate application are the most widely used precision technologies. Versatile guidance systems utilizing the global positioning system (GPS) and management zone approaches are also being developed to further increase productivity by reducing error, cost, and time. These technologies provide tools to quantify and manage variability existing in fields across an array of cropping systems. A review of precision farming technologies that are currently being used in the United States and around the world is presented in this article.

ObjectivesSocially-assistive robots have been used with older adults with cognitive impairment in residential care, and found to improve mood and well-being. However, there is little known about the potential benefits in adults with other neuropsychiatric symptoms.AimsThe aim of this project was explore the utility and acceptability of a socially-assistive robot in engaging adults with a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms.MethodsBetty, a socially-assistive robot was installed in a unit which specialises in the assessment and diagnosis of adults presenting with neuropsychiatric symptoms. She is 39 cm tall, has a baby-face appearance and has the ability to engage individuals through personalised services which can be programmed according to individuals’ preferences. These include singing songs and playing games. Training for the nursing staff who were responsible for incorporating Betty into the unit activities was provided. The frequency, duration and type of activity which Betty was involved in was recorded. Patients admitted who could provide informed consent were able to be included in the project. These participants completed pre- and post-questionnaires.ResultsEight patients (mean age 54.4 years, SD 13.6) who had diagnoses ranging from depression and schizophrenia participated. Types of activities included singing songs, playing Bingo and reading the news. Participants reported that they were comfortable with Betty and did not feel concerned in her presence. They enjoyed interacting with her.ConclusionsThis pilot project demonstrated that participants found Betty to be acceptable and she was useful in engaging them in activities. Future directions would involve larger sample sizes and different settings.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Like most of the developed countries, Australia's population is ageing. In this paper the authors report on deployment of a socially assistive robot (Matilda) based multi-layer service architecture to support People with Dementia (PwD) in home-based care. The robots deliver a range of services in an emotionally engaging manner based on the lifestyle of PwD. The assistive social robots have been deployed in several Australian households over a six-month period. The results of trial demonstrate that multi-layer service architecture with personalized services and human-like communication modalities of Matilda have the ability of breaking technology barriers, providing sensory enrichment and social connectivity to the PwD as well as augmenting their good memories and providing respite to the partners.

In this paper, the learning knowledge and strategy of a generic neuro-expert system (GENUES) architecture for the training of neural networks in a power network alarm processing system is described. The GENUES architecture forms an important part of an integrated architecture used for developing a real-time alarm processing system in a regional power system control centre. The authors also report on some of the important implementation issues related to alarm processing.

Australia like most of the western world is bracing up for the looming ageing population crisis. Assistive robots are being seen as one of the ways for supporting aged care facilities building capacity and improving the quality of care of the elderly. In this paper, the authors report on three field trials of Matilda, a human like affective communication (service and companion) robot in nursing homes in Australia. The work demonstrates Matilda's ability to break technology barriers with the elderly, support nursing homes in group and one to one activities with elderly to help increase capacity of care as well as improve emotional well being of elderly to improve quality of care.

Emotional well being is one of two aspects of personal well-being that can be measured in quality of life assessments, and is a critical part of a senior citizen to help them age gracefully and remain independent as well as integrated with society. In order to improve the emotional well being of the elderly in the era of looming ageing population crisis, in this paper the authors report on design and a field trial of Matilda, a human-like assistive communication assistive robot in Australian residential care and home-based care facilities. The work demonstrates that by marrying the embodiment of care with artificial intelligence, emotion measuring techniques and positive emotion generation in its design and applications, Matilda has the ability to improve emotional well being of the elderly.

This research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the use of assistive robots for tele-health care in the home through an innovative service model. In contrast to existing tele-consultation, tele-monitoring and tele-medicine service models, the assistive robot enabled tele-health model focuses on providing holistic care (which includes reactive, proactive as well as preventative care). Additionally, unlike existing tele-health technologies it facilitates human-like engagement and reciprocal association between assistive robot and the human partner.

Business process management (BPM) is a common approach used in dynamic and complicated environment throughout the organizations’ operation. Knowledge Flow Networks (KFN) and Communities of Practice (CoPs), especially that resulting from innovation needs, is regarded as a BPM issue. It involves both personal and organizational aspects, and is an iteration of the transmission between explicit and tacit knowledge. We discuss business process management in the context of Knowledge Management (KM) and knowledge flow networks. KFN, unlike workflow, can often transcend organizational boundaries and are distinct and different than workflow models. In this chapter, we develop, implement, and analyze a CoPs Centered KFN model in a multinational organization. The CoPs Centered KFN model is underpinned in a CoPs model built around four organization performance evaluation dimensions and sixteen criteria. Many criteria and clusters need to be taken into consideration while establishing a CoPs model. For this purpose, fuzzy multi-criteria decision making and cluster analysis techniques for evaluation of the CoPs Centered KFN model are employed in this chapter. A Dynamic Knowledge Flow Activity Analysis Model is also defined as part of our ongoing and future work. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-669-3.ch024

Emotions form an important component of human behavior and decision making. This paper reports on the embodiment of emotions and other human attributes like gestures, speech and motion in a communication robot for conducting a job interview and measuring emotional and cultural fitness of a candidate for a sales job. The contributions include enhanced information quality for managerial decision making, customization of follow up face to face interviews, and enhancement of social interaction between people and communication robot in interview situations.

Knowledge Management (KM) is known to enhance an organization’s performance and innovation via the knowledge sharing both explicitly and tacitly. Moreover, Communities of Practice (CoPs) has been accepted as an effective way to retrieve and facilitate tacit knowledge particularly. Performance Evaluation of CoPs will significantly impact an organization’s strategic focus, knowledge transfer, resource allocation, and management performance. Meanwhile, proper measurement and decision making processes are critical for KM and CoPs success. However, the ultimate performance of CoPs implementation is uneasy to measure correctly. This chapter attempts to analyze how to establish a feasible framework to assess CoPs performance to meet organizational demands. This framework contains four dimensions and sixteen criteria built from review of existing literature and experts’ interviews in a large R &D organization. Therefore, this chapter tends to discuss the CoPs and its performance evaluation from a theoretical and practical perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the object. In particular, we focus on the face detection. By using the proposed method, we recognize faces with a near-infrared (NIR) camera. The face detection that used images from the NIR camera is comparatively difficult to be done, because they are gray scale images. In this paper, the filter by using the GA is designed for the purpose of getting the faces. The method of detecting faces and the position from the NIR images is proposed in the on-line image. It is demonstrated that our approach is effective for vehicle driver monitoring. Finally, it was confirmed that the proposed method works well.

Iris yellow spot virus and its onion thrips vector (Thrips tabaci) are yield limiting pests of onion in the western United States. This two-year project investigated the relationship of iris yellow spot to thrips populations, soil properties, and grower management practices in six onion fields during 2005 and 2006 in Colorado. Thrips density (average number of thrips per plant per day) was negatively associated with soil pH (r = -0.61). The incidence of iris yellow spot at harvest was positively associated with organic matter, zinc, potassium, percent sodium, percent hydrogen, copper, iron, and soil pH. Thrips-days had a clear non-linear association with disease incidence at harvest. Onion plant population was positively associated with levels of iron, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc; and negatively associated with calcium, salts, percent potassium, and cation exchange capacity (CEC). Marketable (medium or larger sized bulbs) yield was negatively associated with phosphorus and percent potassium, and positively associated with salts, calcium, and CEC. Results from this project could contribute to the development of a risk index to predict potential risk from Iris yellow spot virus and its onion thrips vector. Accepted for publication 6 July 2010. Published 20 August 2010.

This paper describes a method and system for monitoring and correlating digitized non-verbal data (like emotions and eye-gaze) with other kinds of data for decision support and information personalization. This is illustrated through two applications in this paper. The first one describes detection, monitoring and correlation of emotional state changes for behavior profiling of sales candidates. The second one outlines design of eye gaze tracking system using standard web camera (instead of more expensive infra-red camera) for holiday destination selection. The paper makes unique contributions in terms of modelling as well as correlation of non-verbal data in natural environments for improving digital information quality and decision making in business areas like recruitment and tourism.

This research discusses KFNs in the context of Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Knowledge Management (KM). KFNs unlike workflow can often transcend organizational boundaries and are distinct and different than workflow models. CoPs involve both personal and organizational aspects, and are an iteration of the transmission between explicit and tacit knowledge. This research develops, implements, and analyzes a CoPs Centered KFNs model in a multinational organization. The CoPs Centered KFNs model is underpinned in a CoPs model built around four organization performance evaluation dimensions and sixteen criteria. Many criteria and comprehensive segments should be taken into consideration while establishing CoPs model, this explains why this research employs fuzzy multi-criteria decision making. The cluster analysis techniques are used for evaluation of the CoPs Centered KFN model. The result of attribute analysis via KFNs model has been designed to determine the characteristic of each cluster and identify suggestions for effective linkage among knowledge workers.

Knowledge sharing is an important driver for innovation in research teams and organizations. This paper views knowledge sharing as occurring in a quasi knowledge market of buyers and sellers. It makes unique contributions in terms of i) constructing a knowledge sharing behavior model based on different categories of knowledge sellers/buyers; ii) outlines application of non-invasive method for measuring the transient emotional state changes of a knowledge worker while they are being evaluated on their knowledge sharing behavior, iii) describes novel method for determining psychological and emotional fitness of knowledge workers to facilitate team or organization innovation and iv) design of emotionally intelligent knowledge management systems involving cognitive & non-verbal or emotional information.

Extra pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) constitutes around 20% of all tuberculosis cases in India. Conventional methods are of limited use in diagnosing this form of the disease. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has emerged as a sensitive and specific tool for documenting the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical samples but lacks quantitative ability. The present study evaluates peripheral blood as an alternative clinical specimen for diagnosing EPTB. Peripheral blood samples from 38 EPTB and 89 non tuberculous subjects were analyzed for the presence of tubercle bacilli by MPB 64 gene based PCR method. The assay gave an overall sensitivity of 60.53% with negative predictive value of 76.92% which is superior to present gold standard of mycobacterial culture (10.53 and 72.36%). Additionally, 43.82% of non tuberculous subjects gave positive results with the PCR, thus mitigating the clinical utility of this test. An in-house Competitive PCR (C-PCR) assay was used to determine the mycobacterial load in peripheral blood from culture positive, culture negative EPTB patients and non tuberculous controls which ranged from 7498-12498, 602-4797 and 101-800 genome equivalent (ge)/mL, respectively. The data clearly demonstrated that C-PCR assay can furnish insightful information in diagnosing extra pulmonary disease.

Research in cognitive psychology and learning literature clearly suggests a link between emotions and constructive learning. In this paper the authors report on role of non-verbal emotional responses for designing e-Training programs. It involves measuring arousal or lack of it as a means of pro-active diagnostic assessment of a sales management trainee and using the assessment to customize e-Training course in inter-personal communication

This paper describes the role and correlation of non-verbal data (emotions) with other data in managerial decision making in natural environment. The work is targeted towards context-aware emotionally intelligent Human Resource Management (HRM), information personalization and managerial decision making in consumer and service sector industries like finance/banking, electronics, retail, tourism and health care.

Tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha is a pleiotropic, pro-inflammatory cytokine of 17 kDa, whose gene is localized on the short arm of chromosome 6. It has a G-308A polymorphism in the promoter region, which is known to be associated with its differential production; the A allele being the high producer. The circulating level of TNF-alpha is under genetic control and implicated in the pathophysiology of asthma and tuberculosis. Since raised levels of TNF-alpha have been found in asthma and tuberculosis, we looked for the association of TNF-alpha G-308A polymorphism in patients with these diseases.A total of 300 blood samples from patients (155 with asthma, 145 tuberculosis) and 211 normal healthy controls were collected. The G-308A polymorphism was studied using amplification refractory mutation system analysis.The distribution of G/A alleles in the two patient groups when compared with normal controls revealed a statistically significant association with asthma (p = 0.016) but not with tuberculosis (p = 0.178).The data support the common variant common disease hypothesis, which emphasizes that common genetic variations may participate as critical players in inciting common diseases.

Service innovation has been a serious debate in the literature on service management, especially when it is compared with new service development (NSD). While service innovation is defined based upon certain approaches, there is no specific definition that differentiates service innovation from NSD, especially in a certain technological context such as social assistive robots. Therefore, bringing a new approach that encompasses all features of service innovation is a topic of interest. This paper aims to introduce the holographic approach to service innovation in the condition of uncertainty by a critical narrative synthesis methodology on high quality and top-cited publications in the last three decades. The qualitative findings show that service innovation can be established in a social assistive robot as a certain technological context, based on the holographic approach in which each single component of the innovation process enfolds service innovation as a smaller whole.

In a health care context, the use RFID (radio frequency identification) technology can be employed for not only bringing down health care costs but also facilitate automating and streamlining patient identification processes in hospitals and use of mobile devices like PDA, smart phones, for design a health care management systems. In this paper, we outline a RFID model for designing a system in the health care. An application of the architecture is described in the area of RFID-based real-time hospital patient management system (HPMS).

Emotions form an important component of human behaviour and decision making and thus are an essential part of context-aware web-based decision support systems. In this paper a conceptual model based on sensemaking, affective and situational feedback is outlined for design of context-aware web-based decision support systems. An application of the model is illustrated in the area of web-based behaviour profiling and recruitment of salespeople. In this application cognitive responses of a sales candidate to behavioural questions from a e-Sales Recruitment and Benchmarking System (e-SRBS) are mediated with their real-time emotional or affective responses to facilitate context-aware decision support in e-recruitment applications. . The work reported has implications in not only e-recruitment but also in knowledge management, data mining, web personalisation and context-aware web-based decision support systems in general.

In this paper we outline a seven layer context-aware data mining architecture which combines context, sensemaking (cognitive and affective) and data mining technologies to design adaptive context-aware data mining systems. We particularly show how cognitive constructs and emotional attitudes of a user mediate in interpretation of meaning in hidden patterns. We illustrate the role of cognitive constructs in interpreting a CRM situation by a relationship manager in a banking and finance application. We also illustrate the role of emotional attitudes as an important factor in context-aware interpretation of mined behavioral patterns in a sales recruitment and benchmarking application.