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Introduction: Sign language is the only way to communicate for speech-impaired people. But this sign language is not known to normal people so this is the cause of barrier in communicating. This is the problem faced by speech impaired people. In this paper, we have presented our solution which captured hand gestures with Kinect camera and classified the hand gesture into its correct symbol. Method: We used Kinect camera not the ordinary web camera because the ordinary camera does not capture its 3d orientation or depth of an image from camera however Kinect camera can capture 3d image and this will make classification more accurate. Result: Kinect camera will produce a different image for hand gestures for ‘2’ and ‘V’ and similarly for ‘1’ and ‘I’ however, normal web camera will not be able to distinguish between these two. We used hand gesture for Indian sign language and our dataset had 46339, RGB images and 46339 depth images. 80% of the total images were used for training and the remaining 20% for testing. In total 36 hand gestures were considered to capture alphabets and alphabets from A-Z and 10 for numeric, 26 for digits from 0-9 were considered to capture alphabets and Keywords. Conclusion: Along with real-time implementation, we have also shown the comparison of the performance of the various machine learning models in which we have found out the accuracy of CNN on depth- images has given the most accurate performance than other models. All these resulted were obtained on PYNQ Z2 board.

Cholelithiasis is a very common condition affecting the Gallbladder. Gallstones are present in 10 -15 % of the adult population. Females are three times more likely to develop Gallstones than male. Gall stones are classified into cholesterol and pigment stone. About 80% of them are cholesterol stone and 15-20% pigment stone. Obstruction and infections are the common complications of Cholelithiasis. Approximately 1-2% of the patients become symptomatic and warrants cholecystectomy (1). With this background we conducted a cross sectional study in the Institute of Microbiology, MMC & RGGGH, for 72 consecutive patients who underwent cholecystectomy. The most common age group affected 41-60 yrs. The most common symptoms are abdominal pain, dyspepsia and Jaundice. In this study Gallstones are collected after surgery, processed and Antibiogram pattern also studied as per standard guidelines. Out of 72 samples studied 35 (48.6%) are culture positive. Escherichia coli is the predominant organism isolated followed by Klebsiella pneumonia(52). Most of the isolates were sensitive to commonly used antibiotics for Gram Negative bacilli.

Speech impaired people use hand based gestures to communicate. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people are not aware of the semantics of these gestures. In a attempt to bridge the same, we propose a real time hand gesture recognition system based on the data captured by the Microsoft Kinect RGB-D camera. Given that there is no one to one mapping between the pixels of the depth and the RGB camera, we used computer vision techniques like 3D contruction and affine transformation. After achieving one to one mapping, segmentation of the hand gestures was done from the background noise. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) were utilised for training 36 static gestures relating to Indian Sign Language (ISL) alphabets and numbers. The model achieved an accuracy of 98.81% on training using 45,000 RGB images and 45,000 depth images. Further Convolutional LSTMs were used for training 10 ISL dynamic word gestures and an accuracy of 99.08% was obtained by training 1080 videos. The model showed accurate real time performance on prediction of ISL static gestures, leaving a scope for further research on sentence formation through gestures. The model also showed competitive adaptability to American Sign Language (ASL) gestures when the ISL models weights were transfer learned to ASL and it resulted in giving 97.71% accuracy.

Single crystals of undoped (pure) glycine potassium sulphate (GPS) and sodium sulphate doped glycine potassium sulphate have been grown by the free evaporation method and the grown crystals have been characterized by various studies. Effect of sodium sulphate on the properties of glycine potassium sulphate (GPS) has been investigated here. X-ray diffraction analysis indicates the structure of the crystals as orthorhombic. The functional groups have been identified using Fourier transform infrared spectral analysis. The UV –Vis-NIR spectral analysis shows that these crystals have their cut off wavelength around 200 nm. Second Harmonic generation (SHG) measurement shows that the grown crystals are NLO crystals. Microhardness measurement was carried out for samples. Solubility was measured for both the samples at different temperatures. LDT of the samples have been determined. Due to doping, there is an increase in optical transparency, microhardness, LDT and solubility of the GPS crystals., {"references":["1.\tM. N. Bhat and S. M. Dharmaprakash, J. Cryst. Growth 235 (2002)511-516\t. 2.\tA. Deepathyand H. L. Bhat, J.Cryst.Growth226 (2001)287-293. 3.\tR. Rajasekaran, P. M. Ushashree, R. Jayavel and P. Ramasamy, J.Cryst.Growth229 (2001)563-567. 4.\tG. Albrecht, R. B. Corey, J.Am.Chem.Soc.61, 1087(1939) 5.\tE. Fischer, Ber.Deutsch.Chem.Ges.38, 2917 (1905) 6.\tY. Iitaka, Acta.Cryst.11, 25 (1958) 7.\tY. Iitaka, Acta.Cryst.14,1 (1961) 8.\tM. N. Bhat and S.M. Dharmaprakash, J. Cryst.Growth236 (2002) 376-380. 9.\tJ. K. Mohan Rao and M.A. Vishwamitra, ActaCrystallogr. B 28 (1972) 1484. 10.\tS. A. Martin Britto and S. Natarajan, Mater. Lett. 62(2008) 2633-2636. 11.\tRa. Shanmugavadivu, G. Ravi and A. Nixon Azariah, J.Phys. and Chem. Solids 67 (2006) 1858-1861. 12.\tM. R. Suresh Kumar, H. J. Ravindra and S. M. Dharmaprakash, J. Cryst. Growth 306 (2007) 361-365. 13.\tT. Balakrishnan and K. Ramamurthi, Spectrochim. Acta Part A 68 (2007) 360-363. 14.\tT. Balakrishnan and K. Ramamurthi, Mater. Lett. 62(2008) 65-68. 15.\tR. Pepinsky, K. Vedam and Y. Okaya, Phys .Rev. 110(1958) 1309-1311. 16.\tS. Hoshino, T. Mitsui, F. Jona and R. Pepinsky, Phys.Rev. 107(1957) 1255-1258. 17.\tH. Lipson and H. Steeple Interpretation of X-ray power Diffraction Patterns, MacMillan, New York, 1970. 18.\tS. K. Kurtz and T. T. Perry, J. Appl. Crystallography 9 (1968) 3798-3813. 19.\tR. S. Krishnan, K. Sankaranarayanan and K. Krishnan, J.Indian Inst. Sci. 55 (1973) 313. 20.\tU. Le. Fur, R. Masse, M. Z. Cherkaoui and J. K. Nicoud, Z. Kristallogr. 210 (1995) 856. 21.\tP. N. Kotru, A. K. Razdan, B. M. Wanklyn, J. Matter. Sci. 24 (1989)793. 22.\tJ. B. Charles, F. D. Gnanam, J. Matter. Sci. Lett. 12 (1993) 1395."]}

Deaf or hard-of-hearing people mostly rely on lip-reading to understand speech. They demonstrate the ability of humans to understand speech from visual cues only. Automatic lip reading systems work in a similar fashion - by obtaining speech or text from just the visual information, like a video of a person's face. In this paper, an automatic lip reading system for spoken digit recognition is presented. The system uses simple dynamic features by creating difference images between consecutive frames of the video input. Using this technique, word recognition rates of 83.79 and 65.58 are achieved in speaker-dependent and speaker-independent testing scenarios, respectively. A novel, extended region-of-interest (ROI) which includes lower jaw and neck region is also introduced. Most lip-reading algorithms use only the mouth/lip region for relevant feature extraction. Over simple mouth as the ROI, the proposed ROI improves the performance by 4 in speaker-dependent tests and by 11 in speaker-independent tests. © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.

Single crystals of Potassium Ammonium Sulphate (PAS) have been grown by the free evaporation method and characterized structurally, electrically, optically and mechanically. X-ray diffraction analysis indicates the crystal system as orthorhombic .The functional groups have been identified using Fourier transform infrared spectral analysis. UV-visible transmittance spectra showed wide transparency window in visible and near IR region. The hardness values of the grown sample have been found by Vickers microhardness test. Studies of electrical properties of PAS crystal using a complex impedance spectroscopy (CIS) technique show the decrease of bulk resistance with rise in temperature indicating a typical negative temperature coefficient of resistance (NTCR) type behavior similar to that of an insulator. The nature of Nyquist plots reveals the presence of bulk and grain boundary effects in PAS crystal. Moreover, the variation in dc conductivity is found to increase with temperature.

Visual Speech Recognition (VSR) deals with the task of extracting speech information from visual cues from a person's face while speaking. Accurate lip segmentation and modeling are essential in any VSR algorithm for good feature extraction. However, lip modeling is a complicated task and is not very robust in natural conditions. This paper describes a novel technique for limited vocabulary visual-only speech recognition that does not use lip modeling. For visual feature extraction, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) have been tested. An Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC) multi-class model using Support Vector Machine (SVM) binary learners is used for recognition and classification of words.

Shellac is being used in food, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries. It is seldom used for biomedical applications due to its poor mechanical property and instability. We designed thermoresponsive shellac-based bioactive nanofiber mats that mimic extracellular matrix to extend their utility in wound healing. Various blend compositions of shellac, gelatin, and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) enriched with a bioactive agent, nadifloxacin, were prepared and nanofiber mats were fabricated. The morphology of the nanofiber formation was influenced by the concentration of polymer, drug, and polymer blend composition. Polymer–drug interactions and thermal and crystalline properties of nanofiber mats were analyzed. The shellac/gelatin/poly(N−isopropylacrylamide) blend of composition 3%/7%/3% (w/v) was chosen to evaluate in vitro drug release. Release studies recorded slow, constant, and sustained release for 140 h. The release kinetics and mechanism confirmed zero-order release with resultant r2 values greater than 0.99, and the Korsmeyer–Peppas release exponent ( n) was slightly higher than 0.8, which indicated that drug diffusion was anomalous or non-Fickian type and drug release followed diffusion involving chain stretching. Indirect cytotoxicity studies recorded insignificant toxicity against normal human fibroblast cells. In vivo studies demonstrated that drug-loaded nanofiber mats were more suitable for faster tissue regeneration as compared to nanofiber mats without drug and commercial nadifloxacin cream.

Person tracking in non-overlapping camera networks is an important problem in many applications. Re-identification plays a significant role for successful tracking. Recently, much progress has been made in re-identification, but the traditional re-identification evaluation is not very suitable for tracking applications. It does not consider specific challenges of re-identification for person tracking such as open-set, dynamic and smaller gallery set and multiple cameras. We propose a new protocol for evaluating re-identification algorithms for person tracking considering issues as mentioned above. We also propose an on-line update scheme for improving the performance of re-identification algorithm. We learn a generic model of the persons off-line, then fine-tune the model to the specific person. We explain the generation of positive and negative samples. We have conducted experiments on six real-world datasets showing the effectiveness of proposed protocol and on-line update.

In this paper we address the problem of tracking a specific person among many in non-overlapping camera networks. It is an important problem with many applications in surveillance and security. Given a person to be tracked by initialising the person in one of the cameras, our objective is to track the person throughout the camera network. We propose a distributed solution where the processing is done in cameras itself and information is shared with neighbours to cooperatively work together. When the person goes out of a field of view (FOV) of a camera, the neighbour cameras go into search mode. We use an on-line fine-tuned re-identification and distributed minimum algorithms to successfully re-identify the person. We performed real-world data experiments showing the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are biopolymers synthesized by bacteria under unbalanced growth conditions. These biopolymers are considered as potential biomaterials for future applications because they are biocompatible, biodegradable, and easy to produce and functionalize with strong mechanical strength. Currently, PHAs are being extensively innovated for biomedical applications due to their prerequisite properties. The wide range of biomedical applications includes drug delivery systems, implants, tissue engineering, scaffolds, artificial organ constructs, etc. In this article we review the utility of PHAs in various forms (bulk/nano) for biomedical applications so as to bring about the future vision for PHAs as biomaterials for the advancement of research and technology.

The proposed Brain-Computer Interface system enables Quadriplegic patients, people with severe motor disabilities to send commands to electronic devices and communicate with ease. Interactive sessions are vital for effective knowledge transfer in any learning eco-system. The growth of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) has led to rapid development in 'Assistive Systems' for the disabled called 'assistive domotics'. Brain-Computer-Interface is capable of reading the brainwaves of an individual and analyse it to obtain some meaningful data. This processed data can be used to assist people having speech disorders and sometimes people with limited locomotion to communicate. In this Project, Emotiv EPOC Headset is used to obtain the electroencephalogram (EEG). The obtained data is processed to communicate pre-defined commands and queries for interactive learning. EEG data can also be used to monitor student's emotional behaviour and provide emotional feedback to the students. Other Vital Information like the heartbeat, blood pressure, ECG and temperature are monitored and uploaded to the server. The Data is processed in Intel Edison, system on chip (SoC). Patient metrics are displayed via Intel IoT Analytics cloud service.

Correction for ‘Polyhydroxyalkanoates as biomaterials’ by Bhagyashri S. Thorat Gadgil et al., Med. Chem. Commun., 2017, 8, 1774–1787.

Background/Objectives: Speech emotion recognition (SER) is an important aspect of Human-Computer Interaction systems which is widely used in different sectors like healthcare, robotics, automatic call centres and distance education. Speech emotion recognition involves in depth analysis of the signal and identifying the appropriate emotion based on its trained database using extracted features. Method/Statistical Analysis: This paper aims in devising SER system using linear prediction of the causal part of the autocorrelation sequence (OSALPC) algorithm which has been proven to efficiently reduce noise along with Linear Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (LFCC), Linear Predictive Coding (LPC), MFCC, LPC using cepstrum for feature extraction. After extracting the feature vectors from the voice signal, it is modelled using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). The MAP (Maximum a posteriori) rule is used for decision making. Findings: Performance was analysed and our proposed system showed an overall efficiency of 89% when tested on German database (Emo-DB) for 7 emotions. The overall efficiency has proven to increase compared to the studies made up to date on the German Database. The highest emotion recognition rate was for SAD using fused algorithm which was 95.56%. Also results were tabulated and compared using Modified MFCC. A Graphical unit interface of the proposed system is also devised. Application/Improvements: The applications of speech emotion recognition are farfetched. Further scope of this work will be a comparison of the achieved recognition rate using algorithms with recognition rate achieved by humans.

Enhanced Local Ternary Patterns (ELTP) significantly improves performance over other feature descriptor methods including Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and Local Ternary Patterns (LTP). Sequential implementation of ELTP results in poor performance in terms of execution time for real time systems. Speed and accuracy are important characteristics of a real time face recognition system. With the aim of fulfilling both these criteria, this paper presents an implementation of GPU Accelerated Face Recognition System with ELTP using OpenCL framework. As a result of our Optimization techniques, we have achieved highest kernel execution speedup of 374x for ELTP image and histogram generation with 4096 x H 4096 (16MP) image resolution when it is implemented on GPU. Face recognition with ELTP showed higher recognition rates on ORL database. We also implemented LBP and LTP algorithms on GPU and compared their performances with ELTP. Similar Optimization techniques were applied for LBP kernel executions, which resulted in much higher speedups when compared to their previous implementations. Experimental results demonstrated that Parallel implementation with ELTP on GPU (AMD Radeon HD 7650M) outperforms CPU based face recognition system using LBP in terms of speed and accuracy.

Egg albumen (EA), a highly functional globular protein with desirable properties, is the least-explored material for biomaterial applications, although it is available in abundance. In our studies, we explored the viability of EA and various blends with biocompatible and non-toxic poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) to produce nanofibers for biomedical applications. EA and PVA blends were prepared in various compositions. Electrospinning was used to fabricate non-woven nanofibers. Solution properties, such as viscosity and electrical conductivity, were evaluated for various prepared solutions. Solution viscosity increased with increasing polymer concentration. Solutions with higher contents of EA recorded increased conductivity, which decreased with increasing PVA content. The influence of solution properties on the morphological appearance of as-spun products was studied using scanning electron microscopy. Instead of nanofibers, nanoparticles and microparticles of EA were produced at even higher contents. In contrast, a gradual increase in the addition of PVA content to 8% EA solution resulted in the transformation of particles from large agglomerates to very fine fibers (≈100 nm in diameter) because of the influence of polymer content, viscosity and conductivity. The polymer–polymer interactions in the prepared materials have been validated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction and gel electrophoresis. In our studies, we explored the viability of egg albumen (EA) and its blend poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) to produce nanofibers for biomedical applications. EA and PVA blends were prepared in various compositions. Electrospinning was used for fabrication of non-woven nanofibers. EA showed nanoparticles and microparticles instead of nanofibers at even higher contents. In contrast, a gradual increase in the addition of PVA content to 8% EA solution resulted in the transformation of nanoparticles from large agglomerates to very fine fibers (≈100 nm).

Multiple target tracking is an important problem in analysing video data in camera networks. Distributed processing is a promising scheme to deal with huge volume of video data in camera networks. This paper addresses the problem of distributed multiple target tracking in camera networks. Each camera shares measurements with its immediate neighbours and performs inter-camera measurement-to-measurement association in distributed manner. The measurements are assigned to the targets using the nearest neighbourhood principle. To update the target state we use probabilistic data association with sigma point information filters. This filter is integrated with a consensus algorithm to develop distributed multi target tracking algorithm. We evaluated the proposed algorithm on various real world datasets and show that our algorithm outperforms the other related state-of-art distributed algorithms.

Distributed processing is a new paradigm to analyse the huge volume of video data in camera networks. This paper addresses the problem of distributed single target tracking considering false positives and missed detections. Target tracking is modelled as a dynamic state estimation problem with nonlinear process and measurement model. We propose to use the sigma point information filters combined with a consensus algorithm. Sigma point information filters are integrated with probabilistic data association filter to deal with false positives and missed detections. We use a distributed average consensus algorithm which converges in finite time. Unlike other related state of the art technique papers, we report results on real data and show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

This paper presents a real-time face recognition system using kinect sensor. The algorithm is implemented on GPU using opencl and significant speed improvements are observed. We use kinect depth image to increase the robustness and reduce computational cost of conventional LBP based face recognition. The main objective of this paper was to perform robust, high speed fusion based face recognition and tracking. The algorithm is mainly composed of three steps. First step is to detect all faces in the video using viola jones algorithm. The second step is online database generation using a tracking window on the face. A modified LBP feature vector is calculated using fusion information from depth and greyscale image on GPU. This feature vector is used to train a svm classifier. Third step involves recognition of multiple faces based on our modified feature vector.

Hydrogels were prepared by using egg white albumen (EWA) before and after chemical modification of its lysyl residues with ethylenediamine tetraacetic dianhydride (EDTAD) to incorporate carboxylic groups. This resulted in an increase in swelling ratio of the EWA hydrogels. The swelling ratio increased dramatically in deionized water substantially, more than in pH 7.4 buffer solution. The effects of medium pH, temperature and swelling were investigated, along with crosslinking of the gel network by glutaraldehyde (GLA), as well as acetone treatment. The gels denatured by acetone showed an insignificant increase in swelling ratio for the gels crosslinked with GLA during gel preparation, which is in contrast to the gels crosslinked subsequent to gel formation. The swelling behavior was positively affected by temperature and time. However, an insignificant effect of pH was observed due to electrostatic screening of the carboxylic groups by sodium ions in the buffer solution. Availability of various functional groups on EWA has resulted in adsorption of metals (Cu+2 ions) and non-metals (PO4−2 anions). Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry

Hydrogels of uncrosslinked gelatin, crosslinked gelatin (Gelx), and various compositions of semi-interpenetrating polymer network of cross-linked gelatin with uncross-linked sodium carboxymethylcellulose [Gelx-NaCMC] were investigated as potential matrices for substrate delivery. Simultaneous swelling behavior and controlled drug release under enzymatic conditions (erodible) were monitored for hydrogels of [Gelx-NaCMC] and Gelx. Results indicated a first order release indicating that the processes (rate of drug diffusion and degradation) do not follow the same kinetics.

Hydrogels have been recognized as versatile biomaterials in biomedical applications. This article describes the synthesis and characterization of a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) dialdehyde derivative, the modification of gelatin with ethylenediaminetetraacetic dianhydride (EDTAD), and the conjugation of PEG dialdehyde for enhanced hydrophilicity, biocompatibility, and flexibility. Hydrogels of gelatin conjugated with various percentages of PEG dialdehyde (10–30%), 35% EDTAD-modified gelatin, and 12% PEG dialdehyde conjugated with 31% EDTAD-modified gelatin with or without 1% chlorhexidine were prepared. For all the synthesized gel formulations, the swelling kinetics and drug release in pH 7.4 and pH 4.5 buffers at 37°C were studied. Gels of PEG-conjugated gelatin, 35% EDTAD-modified gelatin, and 12% PEG conjugated with 31% EDTAD-modified gelatin, with or without 1% chlorhexidine, showed significantly improved swelling ratios in comparison with gelatin. The drug release was unaffected by an increase in the percentage of PEG conjugation with gelatin. Complete drug release was recorded within 48 h in the pH 4.5 buffer, whereas in the pH 7.4 buffer, the drug release was accomplished within 128 h. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 1059–1067, 2004

Tetraology of Fallot is the most common congenital heart disease causing intracardiac right-left shunts. It is characterized by presence of ventricular septal defect, aortic overriding, pulmonary artery outflow obstruction and right ventricular hypertrophy. When these features are associated with atrial septal defect, it is often referred to as Pentology of Fallot (POF). If the lesions remain uncorrected, they can cause significant morbidity and mortality to the patient. Pregnancy and labour in such a patient present with significant haemodynamic changes, which can be challenging to the anaesthesiologist. Our patient with POF was managed with labour analgesia and subsequently epidural anaesthesia for drainage of vulval haematoma with successful outcome.

The effects of nonprotein polymers on the water-swelling properties of fish protein-based hydrogel were studied. Inclusion of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), or guar gum at a 2.5% (w/w) level in an 80% ethylenediaminetetraacetic dianhydide (EDTAD)-modified fish protein hydrogel (10% monomer concentration) significantly decreased the extent of water uptake of the hydrogel. Among these polymers, PVA exhibited the greatest inhibitory effect. The inhibitory effect of these polymers on the water uptake of fish protein hydrogel was apparently due to the thermodynamic incompatibility of these polymers with the fish protein gel network and the consequent effect on the extent of relaxation of the crosslinked polypeptide network. In contrast, inclusion of 60% EDTAD-modified soy protein up to a level of 40% of the total protein in the gel did not affect the extent of the equilibrium water uptake of the gel. At higher levels, however, soy protein also decreased the amount of water uptake by the gel. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 85: 45–51, 2002

This paper presents a novel approach for real time face detection using heterogeneous computing. The algorithm uses local binary pattern (LBP) as feature vector for face detection. OpenCL is used to accelerate the code using GPU[1]. Illuminance invariance is achieved using gamma correction and Difference of Gaussian(DOG) to make the algorithm robust against varying lighting conditions. This implementation is compared with previous parallel implementation and is found to perform faster.

Full interpenetrating polymer networks (FIPNs) of cross-linked gelatin with polyacrylamide [Gelx-PAamx] and N-isopropylacrylamide [Gelx-PNIPAx] of several compositions were prepared, respectively. Their dynamic swelling studies as a function of temperature were monitored. The rate of swelling increased with the rise in ambient temperature for [Gelx-PAamx]. For [Gelx-NIPAx] with the increase in temperature above its LCST (lower critical solution temperature) (i.e., 32°C) decreased the swelling and below its LCST increased in swelling. From the Fickian equation, the transport mechanism for [Gelx-PAamx] was determined to be anomalous, and for [Gelx-PNIPAx] below its LCST is anomalous and above, is Fickian type of diffusion. The activation energies were determined from the initial rate of swelling, which were found to be positive for [Gelx-PAamx] ranging from 36 to 55 kcal/mol, whereas for [Gelx-PNIPAx], the values were negative ranging from –331 to –55 kcal/mol. The enthalpies for these FIPNS were also estim...