Soil moisture initialization effects in the Indian monsoon system

Towards the goal to understand the role of land-surface processes over the Indian sub-continent, a series of soil-moisture sensitivity simulations have been performed using a non-hydrostatic regional climate model COSMO-CLM. The experiments were driven by the lateral boundary conditions provided by the ERA-Interim (ECMWF) reanalysis. The simulation results show that the pre-monsoonal soil moisture has a significant influence on the monsoonal precipitation. Both, positive and negative soil-moisture precipitation (S-P) feedback processes are of importance. The negative S-P feedback process is especially influential in the western and the northern parts of India

A Quantitative Study on Indigenous Medicinal Plants used by Tribes of Kerala

A quantitative study of indigenous medicinal plants with detailed documentationamong tribal people was carried out in Idukki Wildlife Sanctuary, Idukki District, Kerala State. Nine tribal settlements were selected for the study based on the area and availability of information. Accordingly 120 informants were selected purposively. Direct observation, semi structured interview and group discussion were used to collect the data from the informants. The collected data was analysed using Micro-soft Excel spreadsheet 2010 and summarized using descriptive statistical methods. Five different quantitative statistical tools such as Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC), Use value (UV), Relative Importance Index (RI), Relative Importance Index (RI), Fidelity Level (FL) and Informants’ Consensus Factor (ICF) were analysed with score. Acacia caesia (L.) Wild had the highest RFC with rank I,; Adhatoda beddomei C.B. Clarke gave the highest use value with the maximum number of medicinal purposes (four).  A majority of species were found to be most used among the community. The highest level of ICF was obtained for urological ailments (UA) followed by gynaecological ailments (GAA) and Dermatological ailments (DA) in that order

Portuguese shoes : the sexiest industry in Europe : a repositioning strategy towards changing the perception of Portuguese footwear : a brand´s perspective

The Portuguese footwear industry is one of the most dynamic sectors in the country and has progressing steadily. Nonetheless, the industry has faced in the past decades, the challenge of aligning its image to the strategic positioning of the sector. This thesis revolves around the study of the Portuguese footwear industry and its image repositioning strategy as well as, the understanding of how an emergence luxury brand within this industry has been able to craft an intelligent marketing strategy, affirming its competitiveness among the international elite through a wellthought positioning strategy. Through this example students, readers and academics will be able to get an inside scoop of the industry and understand the underlying drivers and challenges of an industry´s image repositioning strategy whilst surrounded by the distinctive specificities of the current economic environment. The outcome of this study has yielded mainly two conclusions: The Portuguese footwear industry has evolved tremendously yet, it still faces a challenge in aligning its image to match the already excellent reputation Portuguese shoes have in terms of quality. Furthermore, the perceived value of the "Made in Portugal” brand is still not identified amongst consumers as a value added feature in Portuguese shoes. The Portuguese footwear industry is currently confronting such challenges and is indeed moving towards a fully integrated communication strategy, which aligns its excellent quality products to a sophisticated, luxurious image.A indústria do calçado Português é um dos sectores mais dinâmicos do país e tem progredido de forma notável. No entanto, a indústria tem enfrentado nas últimas décadas, o desafio de alinhar sua imagem ao posicionamento estratégico do sector. A presente tese gira em torno do estudo da indústria do calçado Português e da sua estratégia de reposicionamento de imagem, bem como, a compreensão de como uma emergente marca de luxo desta indústria tem sido capaz de criar uma estratégia de marketing inteligente, afirmando a sua competitividade entre a elite internacional através de uma esclarecida estratégia de posicionamento. Através deste exemplo estudantes, leitores e acadêmicos serão capazes de obter um olhar privilegiado da indústria e compreender as causas subjacentes e os desafios de uma estratégia de reposicionamento de imagem de uma indústria envolvida pelas especificidades distintivas do ambiente econômico actual. O resultado deste estudo culminou principalmente em duas conclusões: Ainda que a indústria do calçado Português tenha evoluído tremendamente na última década, ainda enfrenta um desafio no alinhamento da sua imagem para coincidir com a já excelente reputação que os sapatos portugueses têm em termos de qualidade. Além disso, a percepção de valor do "Made in Portugal" como marca ainda não está identificado entre os consumidores como uma característica valor acrescentado para sapatos portugueses. A indústria do calçado Português está atualmente a enfrentar tais desafios e caminha de facto para uma estratégia de comunicação totalmente integrada, alinhando os seus produtos de excelente qualidade com uma imagem sofisticada e luxuosa

A Topic Modeling Guided Approach for Semantic Knowledge Discovery in e-Commerce

The task of mining large unstructured text archives, extracting useful patterns and then organizing them into a knowledgebase has attained a great attention due to its vast array of immediate applications in business. Businesses thus demand new and efficient algorithms for leveraging potentially useful patterns from heterogeneous data sources that produce huge volumes of unstructured data. Due to the ability to bring out hidden themes from large text repositories, topic modeling algorithms attained significant attention in the recent past. This paper proposes an efficient and scalable method which is guided by topic modeling for extracting concepts and relationships from e-commerce product descriptions and organizing them into knowledgebase. Semantic graphs can be generated from such a knowledgebase on which meaning aware product discovery experience can be built for potential buyers. Extensive experiments using proposed unsupervised algorithms with e-commerce product descriptions collected from open web shows that our proposed method outperforms some of the existing methods of leveraging concepts and relationships so that efficient knowledgebase construction is possible

WHO/MOHFW - Guidelines to practice prosthodontics and implant procedures during COVID-19 pandemic

The high infectivity rate of the COVID-19 virus and its variations has had a significant influence on dentists and dental treatment. Because of the proximity of the patient and the prevalence of aerosol-generating procedures, governments and health authorities have implemented rules and regulations for practising dentistry, specifically aerosol-generating procedures in prosthodontics, to protect dentists and patients from infection, cross-infection, and re-infection. The current article focused on the World Health Organization\u27s (WHO) and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare\u27s (MOHFW) recommendations and guidelines for practicing prosthodontics and dental implant operations during the COVID-19 pandemic

Waqf Model of Madinah Mawaddah Waqf City: An Analysis

The private initiation to establish waqf has spurred the development of waqf worldwide. Corporations, companies, and Islamic financial institutions in several countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Malaysia have created, managed, and distributed waqf proceeds to the designated beneficiaries in various sectors, namely, health, education, and social. Recently, Pahang State Foundation (Yayasan Pahang), a subsidiary of the Malaysian state of Pahang, launched Madinah Mawaddah Waqf City (MMWC) with the dedication of 187 acres of land as waqf to Pahang Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (MUIP). The initiative to develop MMWC is considered one of the most significant waqf land development projects undertaken by a private company in Malaysia. The paper aims to study and analyze the structure of the waqf model of MMWC, which includes the governance, management, and underlying Shariah principles applied to establish MMWC.  It is a conceptual paper, and the authors use content analysis, library research, and case study methods to reach the findings. The findings of this study could provide some insight on the application of the waqf model within the institutional framework of a corporate or private company. Future studies can examine other aspects of waqf management more specifically, such as financial aspects

Abu a-Qasim al-Zahrawi's contribution to neurosurgery

This chapter investigates AI-Zahrawi's contribution to surgery especially neurosurgery. The main objective of this chapter is to study AI-Zahrawis' views on neurosurgery operation. Neurosurgery is concerned on causes of brain diseases, spine, peripheral nerves, and arteries of the neck. Abu AI-Qasim AI-Zahrawi was born in 936 C.E. in city Zahra of Cordoba. He was regarded as the father of modem surgery and his Kitab al-Tasrif (Book of Confessions) which consists of 30 volumes was translated into various European languages and used in medical schools

Peritumoral cystic meningioma

A case of 39 years old male is described who presented with headache, right-sided focal fits and decreased power in the right hand. CT scan brain showed a left fronto-parietal cystic lesion with centrolateral intramural nodule with homogenous enhancement. At surgery, the extra-axial lesion with cyst containing xanthochromic fluid had a well-defined capsule that could easily be separated from the peri-lesional cortical surface. The dural-based nodule with its cyst wall was resected in toto. The histopathology of mural nodule was reported as meningioma while the cyst wall histology revealed meningothelial cells

Blockchain for Healthcare: Securing Patient Data and Enabling Trusted Artificial Intelligence

Advances in information technology are digitizing the healthcare domain with the aim of improved medical services, diagnostics, continuous monitoring using wearables, etc., at reduced costs. This digitization improves the ease of computation, storage and access of medical records which enables better treatment experiences for patients. However, it comes with a risk of cyber attacks and security and privacy concerns on this digital data. In this work, we propose a Blockchain based solution for healthcare records to address the security and privacy concerns which are currently not present in existing e-Health systems. This work also explores the potential of building trusted Artificial Intelligence models over Blockchain in e-Health, where a transparent platform for consent-based data sharing is designed. Provenance of the consent of individuals and traceability of data sources used for building and training the AI model is captured in an immutable distributed data store. The audit trail of the data access captured using Blockchain provides the data owner to understand the exposure of the data. It also helps the user to understand the revenue models that could be built on top of this framework for commercial data sharing to build trusted AI models