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In India, the per capita availability of water is projected to be 1465 m3 and 1235 m3 by the years 2025 and 2050, respectively, and hence, India would be a water-stressed country as per the United Nations’ standard of less than 1700 m3 per capita water availability. India is predominantly an agricultural-dominant country. Rainfed agriculture in the country contributes 40% of food grain production and supports half of the human population and two-thirds of the livestock population. The country has 15 different agro-climatic zones, and each agro-climatic region has its own constraints of water availability and management along with the potential for their optimum utilization. Such situations warrant the formulation of regional-level strategies. Efforts were made to integrate and evaluate the feasibility of water harvesting and its utilization at twelve different sites representing six different agro-climatic conditions spanning pan India. It was found that water harvesting through tanks/ponds is a feasible approach and can increase the crop production as well as diversification. The results reveal that the range of crop diversification index increased from 0.49–0.85 to 0.65–0.98; the crop productivity index increased from 0.28–0.66 to 0.66–0.90; the cultivated land utilization index increased from 0.05–0.69 to 0.34–0.84; and the crop water productivity index increased from 0.20–0.51 to 0.56–0.96, among other production and diversification indices, due to additional water availability through rainwater harvesting intervention. Moreover, the gross return increased from INR 43,768–704,356 to INR 220,840–1,469,108 ha−1, representing a 108 to 400% increase in the returns due to the availability of water. The findings of this study suggest that the water harvesting in small ponds/tanks is economical and feasible, requires less technological intervention, and increases crop diversification in all the studied agro-climatic conditions, and hence, the same needs to be encouraged in the rainfed areas of the country.

Background: The annual incidence of CNS tumours range from 10-17 per 1,00,000 persons for intracranial tumors. Gliomas are the most common primary intracranial tumours and are of 3 types: Astrocytoma, ependymoma and oligodendroglioma. Glioblastoma, most frequently occurs in older age group whereas in children, pilocytic astrocytoma is most frequently found. The aim of this study is to analyse the age, sex and location wise distribution of CNS tumours and to study the histomorphological ndings of these tumours. T Methodology: his is a retrospective study done in a tertiary care hospital of north east India for a period of 1 year (2020-2021). All total of 52 cases were studied and analysed by histopathological examination. The mean age of the patient presented with CNS tumours was 32.77 Results: years. Out of 52 cases, 11 cases were found in children and 41 cases were of adult population. The overall male to female ratio was 1.4:1. In this study, Astrocytomas were found to be more common in males in both paediatric and adult population, whereas Meningioma was more common in females in case of adult population. Intracranial location was the most common location (96.2%) for the CNS tumours observed in this study. This Conclusion: study gives the current scenario of histopathological aspects of different CNS tumours as encountered in a tertiary care hospital of North east India

Background:The freshwater pearl mussel Lamellidens marginalis is found throughout India and is culturing to produce freshwater pearls. Understanding the process of pearl biomineralization provides insight into the genes responsible for the secretion of the complex nacre. However, information on the transcriptome of L. marginalis pearl sac, mantle tissue and gonads are lacking. Methods and Results: The present study generated the transcriptome resources for L. marginalis and identified genes involved in the biomineralization process in the species. The Illumina paired-end sequencing generated 11.13 million raw reads, and the reads were assembled into 133,246 contigs and 26,373 unigenes. 21,033 out of 26,373 unigenes showed homology with previously reported molluscan proteins. Genes of several proteins associated with biomineralization, namely, pif, perlucin, calreticulin, calmodulin, chitin synthase, chitin dehydrogenase, carbonic anhydrase, tyrosinase, shell matrix protein, chitinase 3, chitinase domain-containing protein 1, chitinase-like protein PB1E7.04c, and putative chitinase-1 were identified in the study. Conclusion: This study's findings will help identify differentially expressed genes that govern the characteristics of the pearl and identify the type-I markers in the genes.

Purpose: The temporal bone depicts a variety of pneumatization patterns which are incidental findings but have a great clinical significance for planning surgical procedures in this area. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the prevalence and incidence of pneumatization of articular tubercle and roof of glenoid fossa. Methods: 520 CBCT scans of 260 patients were evaluated to determine pneumatized articular eminence prevalence and characteristics. Gender, laterality and type of pneumatization were observed for both the left and right sides. Chi-square test was used to evaluate the relationship between pneumatized articular eminence and roof of glenoid fossa and gender and type. The software used for the statistical analysis was SPSS version 21.0 and the p-value < 0.05 were considered to indicate statistical significance. Results: PAT was detected in 180 (34.6%), consisting of 105 (20.2%) unilocular and 75 (14.4%) multilocular. PRGF was observed in 224 (43.1%) patients, consisting of 80 (15.4%) unilocular and 144 (27.7%) multilocular. There was 102(19.6%), 93(17.9%) unilateral PAT and PRGF and 44 (8.5%), 74 (14.2%) bilateral PAT and PRGF respectively. Significant corelation was observed for the distribution of types of PAT according to gender (p-value= 0.001).

Analytical observations (in silico) indicate molecular features of SARS-Cov2 genome that potentially explains the high prevalence of asymptomatic cases in Covid-19 pandemic. We observed that the virus maintains a low preference for ‘GGG’ codon for glycine (3%) in its genome. We also observed multiple putative introns of 26–44 nucleotide (nt) length in the genomic region between the coding regions of Nsp10 and RPol in the viral ORF1ab, like several other beta-coronaviruses of similar infectivity levels. It appears that the virus employs a dual strategy to ensure unhindered replication within the host. One of the strategies employ a (− )1 frameshift translation event through programmed ribosomal slippage at the ribosomal slippage site in the ORF1ab. The alternate strategy relies on intron excision to generate a read through frame. The presence of ‘GGG’ in this conserved ribosomal slippage site ensures adequate tRNA in cytoplasm to match the codon, implying no additional frameshift translation due to ribosomal stalling. With fewer replication events, viral load remains low and resulting in asymptomatic cases. We suggest that this strategy is the primary reason for the prevalence of asymptomatic cases in the disease, enabling the virus to spread rapidly. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12064-021-00349-3.

Introduction More than 80 million people have been infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection worldwide till date with more than 17,00000 fatalities. Although COVID-19 commonly affects respiratory system in the form of cough and dyspnea, a neurotropic presentation has been described in one-third of patients. Objective We report an atypical case of COVID-19 with mild symptoms who presented to our hospital with features suggestive of severe Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Discussion The mechanisms by which severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 causes neurologic damage are multifactorial, including direct damage to specific receptors, cytokine-mediated injury, secondary hypoxia, and retrograde travel along nerve fibers. The pathogenesis of GBS secondary to COVID-19 is not yet well understood. It is hypothesized that viral illnesses-related GBS could be mediated due to autoantibodies or direct neurotoxic effects of viruses. Conclusion In this ongoing era of pandemic, it is very important for the clinicians to be aware of association of GBS with COVID-19, as early diagnosis and treatment of this complication could have gratifying results. It is also very important to differentiate GBS from critical illness neuropathy and respiratory distress secondary to COVID-19 itself, as treatment to the above conditions is quite different and inability to correctly diagnose could lead to significant increase in morbidity and mortality.

The freshwater bivalve Lamellidens marginalis is native to Southeast Asia and one of the most widely used mussels for pearl production in the region. No studies have been carried out on stock chara...

This paper establishes a hybridized intelligent machine learning based currency exchange forecasting model using Extreme Learning Machines (ELMs) and the Jaya optimization technique. This model can very well forecast the exchange price of USD (US Dollar) to INR (Indian Rupee) and USD to EURO based on statistical measures, technical indicators and combination of both measures over a time frame varying from 1 day to 1 month ahead. The proposed ELM-Jaya model has been compared with existing optimized Neural Network and Functional Link Artificial Neural Network based predictive models. Finally, the model has been validated using various performance measures such as; MAPE, Theil's U, ARV and MAE. The comparison of different features demonstrates that the technical indicators outperform both the statistical measures and a combination of statistical measures and technical indicators in ELM-Jaya forecasting model. Keywords: Currency exchange prediction, Extreme Learning Machine (ELM), Jaya, Neural Network (NN), Functional Link Artificial Neural Network (FLANN)

Freshwater mussels play a key role in ecology and are often considered as ecological indicators. Conversely, these molluscs are one of the most threatened groups due to several anthropogenic factors. Knowledge of phylogenetic diversity would assist in formulating effective management and conservation measures. Lamellidens marginalis is one of the most widely used freshwater mussel for pearl production in India. The genomic resources for investigating its evolutionary relationship within the Unionidae family are lacking.In this study, the f-type mitochondrial genome of L. marginalis was sequenced using the Illumina sequencing platform. The length of the mitochondrial genome was 15,732 bp consisting of 23 tRNAs, 2 rRNAs and 13 protein coding genes. The arrangement of genes was UF1 type and gene overlap was observed between trnG and nad1. Comparative analysis with other Unionidae species showed a high divergence rate in nad6 followed by nad2 atp8 and nad5. The phylogenetic tree supported monophyly of the Unioninae subfamily and L. marginalis (Parreysiinae) formed a sister branch to this subfamily. The divergence time of the Parreysiinae from its most recent common ancestor (MRCA) was placed in the Mesozoic era.This information will be useful for the understanding the evolutionary pattern of the species of Parreysiinae subfamily.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a highly heterogeneous set of neurodevelopmental disorders with the global prevalence estimates of 2.20%, according to DSM5 criteria. With the advancements of technology and availability of huge amount of data, assistive tools for diagnosis of ASD are being developed using machine learning techniques. The present study examines the possibility of automating the Autism diagnostic tool using various machine learning techniques on a dataset of 701 samples that contains 10 fields from AQ-10-Adult and 10 from individual characteristics. It takes two scenarios into consideration. First one is ideal case, where there are no missing values in the test cases. In this case Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) classifiers are trained and tested on the pre-processed dataset. To reduce computational complexity Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) based feature selection algorithm is applied. To deal with the real-world data, in the second case missing values are introduced in the test dataset for the fields' 'age', 'gender', 'jaundice', 'autism', 'used_app_before' and their three combinations. Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Decision Tree and Logistic Regression based RFE algorithm is introduced to handle this scenario. ANN, SVM and RF classifier based learning models are trained with all the cases. Twelve classification models were generated with RFE, out of which best performing models specific to missing value were evaluated using test cases and suggested for ASD Diagnosis.

For the prediction of exchange rate, this paper proposes a hybrid learning frame work model which is a joint estimation of On-Line Sequential Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) along with optimized feature reduction using Krill Herd (KH). The proposed learning scheme is compared with Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) and Recurrent Back Propagation Neural Network (RBPNN), considering three factors such as; without feature reduction, with statistical based feature reduction using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and with optimized feature reduction techniques such as KH, Bacteria Foraging Optimization (BFO) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The models are applied over USD/INR, USD/EURO, YEN/INR and SGD/INR, constructed using technical indicators and statistical measures considering 3, 5, 7, 12 and 15 as window sizes. The results of comparisons of different performance measures in testing phase and MSE in training process demonstrate that the proposed OSELM-KH exchange rate prediction model is potentiality superior compared to others.

Purpose The timely management of cancer surgery suffered due to COVID-19 and nationwide lockdown. Continuing cancer surgery was a challenge faced by all. We present our experience on cancer surgery in a cancer centre with high volume of patients and limited resources during early pandemic. Methods We retrospectively analysed our operation theatre database on surgery and anaesthesia from 1st April to 30th June 2020. Results A total of 457 surgeries were done—complex major, major, intermediate and minor surgeries constituted 43%, 25%, 12% and 20%, respectively. Median age of patient was 50 years, and 76% were below 60. The median ASA class was I (I–IV), and 97% were ASA I and II. The median Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group score was 0 (0–3), and 92% had score 0 and 1. Major cases done under regional anaesthesia were 30.7%. Median length of intensive care unit stay was 1 (1–6) days, and length of hospital stay was 7 (7–15) days. Clavien–Dindo Grade II complication in patients above 60 years was 16.4% and below 60 years was 17.6% (p = 0.76). 10% in ASA I compared to 26% of ASA II (p = 0.00) and 15.9% with ECOG 0 and 1 compared to 30.9% with ECOG 3 and 4 (p = 0.01) had grade II complication. Four (1%) patients had Grade ≥ III CD complication. Covid testing was undertaken in 52% patients pre-operatively, and there was no positive case in post-operative period. Conclusions Adopting and implementing institutional policy catering to limited resource available at our centre, we facilitated cancer surgery.

Antenna designers around the globe have extensively researched upon the patch antenna and its array structures for achieving better performance for various operations. One of the novel techniques is to use nanomaterial composites over the substrate of a microstrip patch antenna to enhance its performance. Nanostructures can provide unique characteristics and have the potential to improve the performance of the patch antenna. This paper focuses on the study and design of a nanomaterial-based 1 × 2 rectangular microstrip patch antenna array for X band operation. The proposed antenna array is designed over an FR4 substrate where the individual radiating patches are realized using gold deposited Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanorods. The comparison of performance parameters of the proposed antenna array with the conventional copper (Cu)-based patch antenna array is made. The results obtained show that there is an improvement in the return loss and bandwidth of the proposed array structure.

Forecasting currency market plays an important role basically in all aspects of international financial management. Based on the claimed poor performance and less efficiency of the popular forecasting methods, an Extreme Learning Machine (ELM)—elitism-based self-adaptive multi-population Jaya model—is designed with the possibilities of getting maximum prediction accuracy. The model has evaluated by using the exchange rate data of USD to INR and USD to EURO as in most of the countries USD is used as the base currency. The experimented model has explored its prediction ability over six-time horizon, which includes the 6 days between 1 day and 1 month in advance. For a standardized comparison, two broadly accepted prediction models such as standard ELM and Back-Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) has been recommended for this research work. Along with these two standard models, a Jaya optimized technique applying on both ELM and BPNN is also considered for experimentation. The simulated result depicted the outstanding performance of the proposed ELM-elitism-based self-adaptive multi-population Jaya model over ELM, BPNN, ELM-Jaya, and BPNN-Jaya.

The unique combination of electrical, mechanical and electrochemical properties offered by multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) has emerged as a potential element for their use in many kinds of applications including biomedical fields. In this article, the crystallographic structural and electrical properties of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) have been discussed briefly. Finally the article concludes by focusing the key properties of MWCNTs which fostered their use in various biomedical applications, such as drug delivery, cancer treatment, gene therapy and diagnostics.

Mutual fund is an ideal investment basically for those who do not know how to invest money in the security market. Several research methods have been published by the researcher for predicting mutual fund. This study has explored on three prediction models such as back propagation neural network (BPNN), recurrent back propagation neural network (RBPNN) and recurrent radial basis function neural network (RRBFNN), and the prediction models are validated using SBI Magnum Equity and UTI Equity mutual fund dataset. These two mutual funds are outperformed over market cycles since 2010. The dataset has trained and tested in 7:3 ratio and the performance is validated using MSE during the training phase. The study has explored on 1, 5 and 7 days ahead prediction, and the performance of prediction methods are evaluated by RMSE and MAPE during testing. The simulation result shows that RBPNN is outperformed over the rest two prediction methods.

Sedation in paediatric cancer for fractionated radiation treatment (RT) is unique as the child has to be still for accurate delivery of RT, monitoring of the child is from a remote location and sedation is repeated for multiple sessions of RT. The present study was undertaken to compare the efficacy of intranasal dexmedetomidine with oral midazolam and ketamine combination for repeated sedation during fractionated RT in paediatric oncology.Ninety children aged between 3-6 years, planned for 21 fractions of RT, were randomised to receive intranasal dexmedetomidine 2 μg/kg (group D) or oral midazolam 0.2 mg/kg and ketamine 5 mg/kg (group MK). The 21 sessions of fractionated radiotherapy were divided into three subgroups of seven consecutive exposures 1-7, 8-14 and 15-21 for comparison. The primary endpoint was to determine the incidence of successful sedation. The sedation score achieved, time to satisfactory sedation and discharge, rescue ketamine required, and side effects were secondary endpoints.The incidence of successful sedation in the three successive RT subgroups; sessions: 1-7, 8-14 and 15-21, was 82%, 75.6% and 66.7% in group D, as compared to 40%, 24.4% and 13.3% in group MK, respectively. (P0.001). A decrease in successful sedation was noted in the successive subgroups. Time to successful sedation and discharge was earlier in group D in comparison to MK (P = 0.000). More patients in group MK required rescue ketamine (P = 000).Intranasal dexmedetomidine produces more satisfactory sedation as compared to oral ketamine with midazolam for fractionated RT.

This paper proposes a hybridized machine-learning framework called Extreme Learning Machine using self-adaptive multi-population-based Jaya algorithm for forecasting the currency exchange value. This learning technique attempts to take the advantages of generalization ability of Extreme Learning Machines (ELMs) along with the multi-population search scheme of Jaya optimization technique. This model can very well forecast the exchange price of USD–INR and USD–EURO based on statistical measures, technical indicators and combination of both measures over a time frame varying from 1 day to 1 month ahead. Proposed model has been compared with original ELM and ELM-Jaya along with technical analysis method such as discrete wavelet neural network optimized with self-adaptive multi-population-based Jaya and the comparison of different performance measures like MAPE, Theil’s U, ARV and MAE reveal that ELM using self-adaptive multi-population-based Jaya hybrid models possesses superior compared to the rest predictive models. Comparison of different features demonstrates technical indicators outperform other two features such as statistical measures and combination of both technical indicators and statistical measures.

Morphotypic differentiation is the external manifestation of dominance hierarchy in Macrobrachium rosenbergii . The intermediate morphotype orange claw (OC) male exhibits the highest growth rate and is subordinate in hierarchy to blue claw (BC) male while dominant on small male (SM). The present study was undertaken to examine the specific role of insulin-like androgenic gland ( iag ) hormone in morphotype differentiation of M. rosenbergii . To achieve this, RNAi mediated knockdown as well as augmentation of iag transcripts were effected in ∼60 g OC males using plasmid-based constructs pcD-IAG-lh and pcD-IAGorf, respectively. The treatments were administered to animals maintained in isolation as well as in community. The knockdown plasmid construct that expresses iag -specific long hairpin RNA caused 16-fold reduction of iag transcripts in the SSN1 cell line in vitro . When injected into OC males living in a community, 2.3-fold iag knockdown was recorded, while in isolated OC males it was 4.2-fold initially, but returned to normal subsequently. Compared with the respective controls, OC to BC transformations in the iag silenced animals were significantly lower in the community-reared group, while no difference was observed in the isolated animals. It is reported here for the first time that iag augmentation in OC males resulted in significantly higher OC to BC transformations, when animals were reared in community. This plasmid-based IAG knockdown approach could be developed into a low stress, feed or immersion treatment for controlling heterogeneous individual growth of M. rosenbergii males in aquaculture.

The present study describes a simple, portable, and inexpensive in-pond hatchery model assembled from locally available materials for seed production of small and medium-sized carp at high efficiency. This light-weight hatchery requires minimal engineering skills for assembly and operation. Further, the hatchery water supply mechanism has built-in components to filter out sediments and zooplankton from the pond water besides maintaining the water temperature 5°C–7°C lower than the pond surface water by drawing water from a metalimnion layer without additional energy requirements. Spontaneous spawning, automatic transfer of eggs to the incubation tank, and 80% hatching rates at an egg-holding capacity of 2,000 eggs/L was recorded for Barbonymus gonionotus, Labeo bata, and Labeo rohita with minimal human intervention. The production capacity of 0.06 million fry per cycle and estimated benefit-cost ratio of 2.48 demonstrated the high efficiency and economic feasibility of this portable hatchery.

Recent researches have extensively explored patch antenna design for deriving better performance for operation in X band. One of the novel techniques in slotted microstrip patch antenna design is to cut nano-sized slots over the substrate of the patch. Nanostructures are expected to provide unique characteristics and can possibly help in performance improvement of the patch antenna. This paper focuses on the study and design of a rectangular slotted microstrip patch antenna in High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS) simulation software for X band operation. The antenna is designed over an RT Duroid 5880 substrate with 100nm×100nm dimension square slots over its surface. The square slots are arranged in five different forms and their performances are compared. The results show that there is an improvement in the return loss with an increasing number of slots.

The basic aim of risk management is to recognize, assess, and prioritize risk in order to assure that the uncertainty should not deviate from the intended purpose of the business goals. Risk can take place from various sources, which includes uncertainty in financial markets, recessions, inflation, interest rates, currency fluctuations, etc. Various methods used for this management of risk are faced with various decisions such as the market price, historical data, statistical methodologies, etc. For stock prices, the information derives from the historical data where the next price depends only upon the current price and some of the outside factors. Financial market is very risky to invest money, but the proper prediction with handling the risk will benefit a lot. Various types of risk in the financial market and the appropriate solutions to overcome the risk are analyzed in this study.

Captive maturation and spawning in Penaeus monodon are currently induced by unilateral eyestalk ablation, a method that removes the gonad-inhibiting hormone (GIH) secreted from the eyestalk. However, unilateral eyestalk ablation creates physiological complications in the brooder due to the unintended removal of other hormones secreted by the eyestalks. Here we studied the effect of gih silencing by long hairpin RNA on the reproductive physiology of P . monodon . We observed 3–5 fold enhanced expression of the androgenic gland hormone (AGH) transcript in males, but no effect on vitellogenin expression in females. In the destalked animals, however, positive effect on the maturation indicator transcripts was seen in both the sexes, and surpassed the efficiency of the silencing treatment. There were indications of active spermatogenesis in histological sections of both the gih silenced and destalked males, but no changes at histological level in the females. We also observed a significantly higher rate of molting and associated mortality in the gih silenced animals at the end of the experiment. Our results suggest that eyestalk ablation is still the most efficient technique to induce maturation in P . monodon . Although gih silencing could be a potential alternative to eyestalk ablation, further research is needed to enhance its efficiency over eyestalk ablation by using tissue specific and/or inducible promoter for lhRNA expression. It is also evident that females need to be fairly large in size for these interventions to succeed. Statement of relevance Induction of captive maturation has been a challenge for shrimp industry. The seed production is often hampered by the low abundance and high price of naturally collected broodstock. Collection of natural brooders also has the intrinsic problem of WSSV infection. Also, genetic improvement of this highly preferred species is difficult unless the reproductive cycle is closed. For all these reasons it is important to study the reproductive physiology and endocrinology of this species and ways to manipulate it in order to induce captive maturation. The present study utilizes the RNA interference mechanism to silence the gonad-inhibiting hormone gene to see its effect on maturation.

Background and Objectives: The EuroQol five-dimensions – 3-level (EQ5D) is a versatile quality of life (QOL) instrument with five dimensions (mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression) and a visual analog scale. It can be used to calculate quality-adjusted life years. We aimed to evaluate the validity, reliability, and responsiveness of an Odia version of EQ5D and to study the QOL of cancer patients in our part of the country as cancer treatment in India still focuses largely on longevity due to scarcity of resources. Materials and Methods: The EQ5D tool was translated into Odia language in collaboration with the EQ group. This tool and the World Health Organization-5 (WHO-5) questionnaires were administered to 155 surgical outpatients and 150 cancer patients in two hospitals of Eastern India. The convergent and discriminant validities (construct validity), concurrent validity, reliability (test-retest method of administering the tool to a part of the population after 7–14 days), and the internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) were measured using preestablished hypotheses. The data from the cancer patients were analyzed separately. Results: The QOL worsened with age and was worse in cancer patients proved that the tool had good construct validity. The Anxiety Depression dimension had good correlation with all the dimensions WHO-5 (rho > 0.4) indicating a good concurrent validity. Internal consistency and reliability of the tool were good (Cronbach's alpha > 0.7). Cancer patients had a poor QOL (mean EQ5D index 0.37SD 0.4) with male patients, patients with Grade II cancer or referred for pain care services and those with living spouses reporting worse QOL. Conclusions: The Odia version of the EQ5D has good reliability and validity for the measurement of health status in cancer and outpatient department patients. Cancer patients in this part of the country have a poor QOL and may need a closer look at pain management and improved societal support systems.

Successful prediction of mutual fund with maximum accuracy is a great challenge because of highly fluctuating behaviour of the financial market. The prediction of Net Asset Value (NAV) of mutual fund helps investors to wisely plunge money into profitable mutual funds. This survey covers more than 40 related published articles in the field of mutual fund and gone through a systematic review of the various nature inspired techniques, used for NAV prediction with its performance analysis. The performance of mutual fund is highly correlated with the stock market, hence some of the stock market prediction analysis is also well throughout. Through this survey it is found that very few works is done in the field of NAV prediction using optimization techniques while for performance analysis of mutual fund many nature inspired optimization (NIO) techniques have been employed. On the whole, this paper gives a comprehensive review of the literature in the field of mutual fund.

Morphotypic differentiation is the external manifestation of dominance hierarchy in

We conducted three studies among European-American and Hindu Indian populations examining cultural differences in the norms underlying social support in friend relationships. Study 1 investigated the role of communal norms as compared with reciprocal exchange in real-life helping interactions among friends; Study 2 compared respondents' evaluations of contrasting modes of reciprocating help; while Study 3 experimentally tested whether reciprocation reduces readiness to respond to future need. We found that Indians give greater emphasis to communal norms in friend relationships than Americans do, with this effect unrelated to socioeconomic status; and that Americans place greater emphasis on reciprocal exchange, a relaxed form of exchange that is compatible with close interpersonal ties. Our results point to cultural variation in the strength of communal relationships and imply that reciprocal exchange assumes a more prominent role in close relationships than what has been previously observed in the communal/exchange tradition.

Patients in the perioperative period and intensive care unit are commonly exposed to blood transfusion (BT). They are at increased risk of transfusion transmitted bacterial, viral and protozoal diseases. The risk of viral transmission has decreased steadily, but the risk of bacterial transmission remains same. Bacterial contamination is more in platelet concentrates than in red cells and least in plasma. The chances of sepsis, morbidity and mortality depend on the number of transfusions and underlying condition of the patient. Challenges to safe BT continue due to new emerging pathogens and various management problems. Strategies to restrict BT, optimal surgical and anaesthetic techniques to reduce blood loss and efforts to develop transfusion alternatives should be made. Literature search was performed using search words/phrases blood transfusion, transfusion, transfusion transmitted diseases, transfusion transmitted bacterial diseases, transfusion transmitted viral diseases, transfusion transmitted protozoal diseases or combinations, on PubMed and Google Scholar from 1990 to 2014.