Report of Workshop on Mount Saint Helens: Its Atmospheric Effects and Potential Climatic Impact

The atmospheric and potential climatic aspects of a volcanic eruption were discussed. Measurements and techniques used in collecting the data are summarized

The prescribing pattern for the management of dengue fever in pediatric patients of a tertiary care hospital: an observational study

Background: Dengue fever is a mosquito borne viral infection which has become a global health hazard, especially in tropical and subtropical areas. Children have higher risk of developing severe forms of dengue fever, however, studies show that paediatric complications/fatalities from dengue fever are potentially avoidable by proper management. Data about drug usage patterns for dengue are particularly lacking, especially in the paediatric age group, therefore this study will help facilitate the rational use of drugs and aid in establishing a more specific management for dengue fever. The objective of the present study was to identify the prescribing pattern of dengue fever in paediatric inpatients admitted to RajaRajeswari Medical College and Hospital and assess according to the WHO core prescribing indicatorsMethods: This prospective observational study took place from March 2017 to September 2017 in the paediatric general wards. Data was collected from case files of NS1 positive patients of both genders between 1-18years. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and expressed as percentages, means and standard deviations. The prescription pattern was analysed using the prescribing indicators mentioned in the World Health Organization core drug use indicators.Results: Total of 300 drugs were prescribed for 110 prescriptions that were analysed excluding IV fluids and blood products. Mean number of drugs prescribed was 2.7±0.8. Drugs prescribed by a generic name was 7.33%. Patients prescribed an antibiotic was 12.73%. Patients prescribed with an injection was 62.72% Majority of drugs prescribed in this study come from essential medicines list created by regulatory bodies. Intravenous fluids were administered to all patients with majority receiving normal saline (60.9%).Conclusions: Mainstay of treatment of dengue fever for paediatric patients is symptomatic along with focus on fluid management. Majority of drugs prescribed are from essential medicines lists formed by regulatory bodies. With dengue infections being a worldwide health hazard, more studies are needed to facilitate rational use of drugs in this disease

Non-Linear Effects of Information Systems Innovation

This study investigates the impact of innovation on users of an evolving Information Systems (IS) product. Building on two different streams of research, Levitts (198) Total Product Concept and the Three Factor theory (Kano. 1984) this study identifies three types of innovation: Basic, Expected and Augmented. The impact of introducing these innovations on user satisfaction was found to be dependent on the level of user satisfaction (performance) before the innovations were introduced and the type of innovation. Basic innovations impacted user satisfaction positively when the current level of performance of the IS product was low but not when the current level of performance was high. Expected and Augmented innovations impacted user satisfaction when the current level of performance was high but not when the current level of performance was low. This finding has interesting implications for practice and future research

Lean Software Development: Evaluating Techniques for Parsimonious Feature Selection of Evolving Information Systems Products

Lean software development is a product development paradigm with focus on creating value for the customer and eliminating waste from all phases of the development life cycle. Applying lean principles, empirical studies were conducted focusing on identifying and assessing methods that parsimoniously select features from a given set of user feature requests. The results of the studies show that the Kano survey method has potential. It demonstrated efficacy in not only identifying the feature subset, from a given set of feature requests, that maximizes value to the users but also in eliminating waste by identifying the subset of features which does not provide significant value to the users when implemented into the software product. The design and results of one study is elaborated in this article. The findings obtained in the study have useful implications for practice and opens up new avenues of research for evolving market-driven software products

Breaking the Iron Triangle: The Impact of Information Sufficiency on Project Portfolio Decisions

IT project governance is plagued by an inability to stop projects that ultimately fail, resulting in the loss of scarce resourcesand IT departments unable to generate full value for money invested. This study investigates the impact of the measurementinformation framework on information sufficiency, a key factor in reaching effective decisions. Specifically, this researchaddresses the question “Does a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) measurement information framework provide higher informationsufficiency and greater decision making efficacy than the traditional Quality-Cost-Schedule approach in a project governancecontext?” This question is addressed using a randomized counterbalanced experimental design. Results were encouragingwith significant support for two of the three hypotheses positing improved outcomes from use of the Balanced Scorecardframework

Quantifying alignment in carbon nanotube yarns and similar two‐dimensional anisotropic systems

The uniaxial orientational order in a macromolecular system is usually specified using the Hermans factor which is equivalent to the second moment of the system\u27s orientation distribution function (ODF) expanded in terms of Legendre polynomials. In this work, we show that for aligned materials that are two‐dimensional (2D) or have a measurable 2D intensity distribution, such as carbon nanotube (CNT) textiles, the Hermans factor is not appropriate. The ODF must be expanded in terms of Chebyshev polynomials and therefore, its second moment is a better measure of orientation in 2D. We also demonstrate that both orientation parameters (Hermans in three dimensional (3D) and Chebyshev in 2D) depend not only on the respective full‐width‐at‐half‐maximum of the peaks in the ODF but also on the shape of the fitted functions. Most importantly, we demonstrate a method to rapidly estimate the Chebyshev orientation parameter from a sample\u27s 2D Fourier power spectrum, using an analysis program written in Python which is available for open access. As validation examples, we use digital photographs of dry spaghetti as well as scanning electron microscopy images of direct‐spun carbon nanotube fibers, proving the technique\u27s applicability to a wide variety of fibers and images

Hardware/Software co-design with ADC-Less In-memory Computing Hardware for Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are bio-plausible models that hold great potential for realizing energy-efficient implementations of sequential tasks on resource-constrained edge devices. However, commercial edge platforms based on standard GPUs are not optimized to deploy SNNs, resulting in high energy and latency. While analog In-Memory Computing (IMC) platforms can serve as energy-efficient inference engines, they are accursed by the immense energy, latency, and area requirements of high-precision ADCs (HP-ADC), overshadowing the benefits of in-memory computations. We propose a hardware/software co-design methodology to deploy SNNs into an ADC-Less IMC architecture using sense-amplifiers as 1-bit ADCs replacing conventional HP-ADCs and alleviating the above issues. Our proposed framework incurs minimal accuracy degradation by performing hardware-aware training and is able to scale beyond simple image classification tasks to more complex sequential regression tasks. Experiments on complex tasks of optical flow estimation and gesture recognition show that progressively increasing the hardware awareness during SNN training allows the model to adapt and learn the errors due to the non-idealities associated with ADC-Less IMC. Also, the proposed ADC-Less IMC offers significant energy and latency improvements, $2-7\times$ and $8.9-24.6\times$, respectively, depending on the SNN model and the workload, compared to HP-ADC IMC.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure

AN EVALUATION OF THE WOUND HEALING AND ANTI-MICROBIAL PROPERTY OF THE TINCTURE OF LANTANA CAMARA

Objective: Lantana camaraL (L. c) has been known for its anti-bacterial activity since quite some time in its various extracts and pharmacological preparations. In view of this, we plan to study and compare the wound healing property of tincture of L. cin surgically induced wound in animal models with tincture of iodine (I2).Methods: An herbal tincture was developed from stems of L. cin concentrations of 20%, 40%, alcohol in tincture was followed as mentioned in IP, tested against tincture I2 in same aged different groups of rats under incision and excision models, also with commonly wound infecting bacteria like S. aureus, E. coli, E. fecalis, P. aeruginosa[a1] . Wounds were induced surgically under anaesthesia. Excised rats were observed for wound contraction and epithelialisation. On 7th day, incised rats were subjected to wound dehiscence test. Tissue biopsy took on day 5, 14 and21 for histopathological studies.Results: Both test groups were found statistically significant against standard with P<0.05 and with mean epithelialisation day value 11±1.02 in the excision model and P<0.05 between the groups in incision model depicting 20% tincture as better with a mean value of 366.67±47.2. Histologically 40% tincture was found non-inferior against standard. Tincture was active against mentioned microbes in various dilutions.Conclusion: Tincture L. c was non-inferior to iodine. Further studies with concentrated extracts of L. cmay reveal its accelerated healing and better anti-microbial competency so that it can be developed for clinical practice.Â

Trigonocephaly pre- and post-operative evaluation by multidetector computed tomography

Trigonocephaly is the third most common single suture synostosis which is seen as bulging of the forehead due to early fusion of themetopic suture. It is linked with an increased level of neurodevelopmental delays. On imaging, multidetector computed tomographyshows anterior fontanelle ossification, hypoteliorism, narrowing of the anterior cranial fossa, and compensatory increase of themiddle cranial fossa with atrophic features of brain. Its reported incidence is 1 in 700-15,000 live births. Operative multipleosteotomies were done and imaged in follow-up