Robustness of Predictive Performance of Arima Models Using Birth Rate of Tamilnadu

Birth Rate is one of the important measures in Vital Statistics. In Policy decision making, Birth rate of the state plays a major role and based on that Government makes decision for people welfare. Predicting births and birth rates are fundamental factors in predicting the future population of states. Time series models are one of the best methods for forecasting future values. In time series models, ARIMA models are the class of models which are used to predict the values which can be made the stationarity. In this study, the state TamilNadu birth rates from 1950-2019 has been considered to forecasts the birth rate of the state using Box-Jenkins methods. The ARIMA (5,1,1) models were found to have lower normalised Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and Akaike information criterion (AIC) values, making them more acceptable. The ARIMA (0,1,0) model was used to predict the birth rate for the next 30 years, and the results indicated that the birth rate will decline in succeeding years. In conclusion, co-efficient of robust ARIMA model compared with the classical ARIMA model and resulted the best ARIMA models to forecasts the birth rate of the state TamilNadu

Effective Deep Neural Network Method based Sentimental Analysis for Social Media Health Care Information

With the advent of natural language processing and machine learning techniques, Sentimental Analysis (SA) is receiving attention among various communities due to interpreting and classifying emotions from subjective data. The way of categorizing the emotions as positive, negative, and neutral enables the brand providers to know about their intention and reaction to their products. Existing researches have been focused on text summarization, feature reduction, and sentiment prediction separately. In this paper, all the approaches are integrated to provide a novel sentimental analysis framework for classifying the patients' emotions towards the medical facility through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. The main aim of the work is manifold. The proposed paper performs preprocessing at the outset, which includes word segmentation, tokenization, TF-IDF, and stemming. First, the text summarization is performed by applying query-based summarization, which adopts a Deep Neural Network (DNN) for encoding the input data encompassing text and icon to convert into a fixed size at the final state, followed by decoding the encoded text and icon using the unidirectional DNN for creating the summary of the input document. Second, to improve scalability, feature reduction is performed using the effective Genetic Algorithm. The proposed system is experimented with using the real-time datasets from social media platforms to analyze the proposed healthcare sentimental analysis model. The parameters such as accuracy, F-score, recall rate, and precision are chosen to analyze the performance against existing sentimental analysis models

Registration of Brain Images using Fast Walsh Hadamard Transform

A lot of image registration techniques have been developed with great significance for data analysis in medicine, astrophotography, satellite imaging and few other areas. This work proposes a method for medical image registration using Fast Walsh Hadamard transform. This algorithm registers images of the same or different modalities. Each image bit is lengthened in terms of Fast Walsh Hadamard basis functions. Each basis function is a notion of determining various aspects of local structure, e.g., horizontal edge, corner, etc. These coefficients are normalized and used as numerals in a chosen number system which allows one to form a unique number for each type of local structure. The experimental results show that Fast Walsh Hadamard transform accomplished better results than the conventional Walsh transform in the time domain. Also Fast Walsh Hadamard transform is more reliable in medical image registration consuming less time.Comment: 10 pages, 37 figures, 12 table

COMPARATIVE STUDY ON ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF SEAWEEDS

Objective: Secondary metabolites from natural resources are a potential source of antimicrobial leads and drugs can exploited to combat antimicrobial resistance in microorganisms. Seaweeds are considered as a valuable source with a broad spectrum of biological activities. Hence, this study was undertaken to screen seaweeds from Mandapam coastal waters, East coast of India, for antimicrobial activity.Methods: Compounds were extracted using methanol from the seaweeds, namely, Halimeda gracilis, Caulerpa serrulata, Sargassum swartzii, Sargassum wightii, Jania rubens, Ulva lactuca, Ulva fasciata, Gracilaria corticata, Stoechospermum marginatum, Caulerpa scalpelliformis, Caulerpa taxifolia, Chaetomorpha crassa, Enteromorpha flexuosa, and Turbinaria ornate. The extracts were screened for their antimicrobial activity against selected bacterial and fungal pathogens.Results: In the present study, S. swartzii, J. rubens, and S. marginatum showed broad spectrum of antibacterial activity against all the test bacterial pathogens. Among these, the maximum activity was exhibited by S. swartzii against Enterococcus faecalis (27.00 ± 0.88) and Streptococcus pyogenes (23.00 ± 0.84), followed by J. rubens against E. faecalis (26.00 ± 0.56) and S. pyogenes (22.00 ± 0.75), and S. marginatum exhibited significant inhibition against Staphylococcus aureus (15.00 ± 0.22) and S. pyogenes (18.00 ± 1.16).Conclusion: These seaweeds with significant antibacterial activity will subjected to phytochemical screening to find out the potential active principle responsible for antimicrobial activity. It is followed by purification and characterization of the compounds for possible application in drug formulation, can take this to large-scale application in pharmaceutical industries

Evaluating Customer Relationship Management Scorecard with Special Reference to Vellore District

The activities of the banking industry are diverse and competitive. There is a paradigm shift in banking business involving a network of the financial transaction to manage all aspects of a customer's financial portfolio. Banks today face complex challenges and multiple threats to its existence and growth. Customer expectations are growing with the demand for more rapid service delivery and more flexible, personalized interaction. The wave of liberalization, privatization, and globalization of the Indian economy has given a lot of challenges to this sector. A small attempt has been made in the marketing of financial services with the help of customer relationship management scorecard and brand perception metrics scorecard. Keywords: customer relationship management, scorecard, Brand perception metrics scorecard, Balance scorecard, SERVQUA

Location and Dynamics of the Immunodominant CD8 T Cell Response to SIVΔnef Immunization and SIVmac251 Vaginal Challenge

Live-attenuated SIV vaccines (LAVs) have been the most effective to date in preventing or partially controlling infection by wild-type SIV in non-human primate models of HIV-1 transmission to women acting by mechanisms of protection that are not well understood. To gain insights into mechanisms of protection by LAVs that could aid development of effective vaccines to prevent HIV-1 transmission to women, we used in situ tetramer staining to determine whether increased densities or changes in the local distribution of SIV-specific CD8 T cells correlated with the maturation of SIVΔnef vaccine-induced protection prior to and after intra-vaginal challenge with wild-type SIVmac251. We evaluated the immunodominant Mamu-A1*001:01/Gag (CM9) and Mamu-A1*001:01/Tat (SL8) epitope response in genital and lymphoid tissues, and found that tetramer+ cells were present at all time points examined. In the cervical vaginal tissues, most tetramer+ cells were distributed diffusely throughout the lamina propria or co-localized with other CD8 T cells within lymphoid aggregates. The distribution and densities of the tetramer+ cells at the portal of entry did not correlate with the maturation of protection or change after challenge. Given these findings, we discuss the possibility that changes in other aspects of the immune system, including the quality of the resident population of virus-specific effector CD8 T cells could contribute to maturation of protection, as well as the potential for vaccine strategies that further increase the size and quality of this effector population to prevent HIV-1 transmission

Impact of Real Time Compliance to certain Interventional Methods including VAP Bundle on Ventilator Associated Pneumonia among Patients on Mechanical Ventilator in Apollo Hospitals at Chennai

A Quasi Experimental Study to Assess the Impact of Real Time Compliance to Certain Interventional Methods Including VAP Bundle on Ventilator Associated Pneumonia among the Patients on Mechanical Ventilator. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY: PRIMARY: 1. To assess the incidence rate of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia among the pre-intervention and post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator. 2. To determine the impact of real time compliance to certain interventional methods including VAP bundle on the Ventilator Associated Pneumonia by comparing the incidence rate of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia between the pre – intervention and post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator. 3. To assess and compare the pretest and posttest knowledge scores regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle among nurses taking care of patients on mechanical ventilator. 4. To assess and compare the practice scores of nurses regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle among the pre-intervention and post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator. SECONDARY: 5. To find the correlation between the practice scores of nurses regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle and the incidence rate of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia among the pre – intervention and postintervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator. 6. To find the association between the selected demographic variables of patients on mechanical ventilator and the incidence rate of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia among the pre-interventionand post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator. 7. To find the association between the selected clinical variables of patients on mechanical ventilator and the incidence rate of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia among the pre-intervention and post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator. 8. To find the association between the selected demographic variables of nurses taking care of patients on mechanical ventilator and their knowledge scores regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle. 9. To assess the level of acceptability regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle among nurses taking care of patients on mechanical ventilator. METHODS: The conceptual framework for study was developed on the basis of Kurt Lewins Change Model (1947), which has been modified for the present study. An intensive review of literature and guidance from expert laid the foundation for the development of tools such as demographic and clinical variable proforma of the patients on mechanical ventilator, the demographic variable proforma of the nurses taking care of patients on mechanical ventilator, structured knowledge questionnaire and observation checklist of the practice regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle among nurses taking care of patients on mechanical ventilator and Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score. The data collection tools were validated and the reliability was established. In this study a quasi experimental time series design was adopted to assess the incidence rate of VAP during the twelve month period of data collection in the intensive care units of Apollo main hospital, Greams Road and Apollo specialty hospital, Teynampet in Chennai. The feasibility and researchability of the study were assessed by conducting a pilot study. After obtaining ethical clearance, setting permission and consent of the research participants, the samples (382 patients on mechanical ventilator and 163 nurses) were selected in the pre-intervention period by purposive sampling technique. The baseline data was collected regarding the demographic variables and clinical variables of the patients on mechanical ventilator, demographic variable of the nurse and incidence rate of VAP for a period of six months. A sensitising programme regarding the real time compliance to certain interventional methods including VAP bundle was organised and implemented by the researcher for the nurses. The certain interventional methods including VAP bundle were, elevation of the head of the bed to between 300 and 450, oral care every 2 hours with 3% chlorhexidine, daily “sedation vacation” and daily assessment of readiness to extubate, peptic ulcer disease (PUD) prophylaxis, deep venous thrombosis (DVT) prophylaxis), meticulous hand washing with 2% chlorhexidine, ryles tube aspiration every 4 hours, using separate oral suction catheter for oral and endo tracheal suctioning, subglottic suctioning every 4 hours, checking and maintaining cuff pressure every 4 hrs (>20cm of H2O), keep closed end of the ventilator circuit, suction device, mask off the bed and drain the ventilator condensate frequently without opening the circuit. The programme was conducted for four weeks (three days per batch of 20 – 21 nurses). Each session lasted for 55 – 60 minutes. The level of knowledge and practice regarding certain interventional methods including VAP bundle incidence rate of VAP was assessed in the post-intervention period of six months. The collected data were analysed using the appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics (frequency, percentage distribution, „t‟ test, Mann Whiteney, Pearson correlation, Cox regression and Chi square test). MAJOR FINDINGS OF THE STUDY: * Among the patients on mechanical ventilator, 31.7% and 35.2% were belonging to the age group between 50 to 64years , majority of them were males (68.3%, 70.4%), moderate level workers (61.8%, 56.2%), and most of them were non smokers (78.35 and 85.2%) and non alcoholic (81.2% and 83.%) in pre-intervention and post-intervention group respectively. * About 46.9% and 48.1% of the patients on mechanical ventilator were within the normal range of BMI, 28.3% and 33.3% of them were admitted with the diagnosis of the neurological disorder and most of the them were intubated orally (80.9% ,85.4%) for the chief reason of the respiratory problem (43.7% and 48.8%) among the pre-intervention and post-intervention group respectively as shown in fig.5. * The distribution of co morbid illnesses and other risk factors of ventilator associated pneumonia among patients on mechanical ventilator were as follows i.e. cardiovascular disease (18.3% and 22%) as shown in fig.6, diabetes mellitus (35.6% and 45.3%), hypertension (38.5 and 46.3%), respiratory disorder (12.3% and 9.1%), thyroid disorder (5% and 4.7%), cancer (18.1% and 17.1%), immunological disorders (2.6%, 4.7%) and renal disorders (8.6% and 10.1%) among pre-intervention and post-intervention group respectively. About 41.4% and 58.9% of the patient were on treatment for co-morbidity, with past history of accident (10.6%, 7.6%), infection (2.6%, 3.5%), hospitalisation (13.6%, 6.4%) and treatment with the antibiotic (10.7%, 7.2%) within the past six months of admission and most of them were on current treatment with antibiotic (83.8%, 77.2%) among the pre-intervention and post-intervention group of patients respectively. The mean score of the APACHE II was 20.2±7.6 in pre-intervention group and 22.3±6.9 in post-intervention group. * Most of the nurses taking care of patients on mechanical ventilator (96.3%) were in the age group between 30-39 years, females (92.6%), degree holders (88.3%) and nearly half of them had <1 year of experience in the intensive care unit (53.4%). * In the pre-intervention group 19 out of 382 (5.0%) patients developed ventilator associated pneumonia while only 3 out of 514 patients (0.6%) on mechanical ventilator developed VAP in the post-intervention group. * The VAP rate was 9.3/1000 (5.1 – 13.5/ 1000 days @ 95% Confidence interval) among the pre-intervention group that decreased to 1.2/ 1000 days (-0.1-2.5/1000 days @ 95% CI) among post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator and the difference was significant at P<0.01. * In the pre test 55.2% of the nurses had moderate level of knowledge and 43.6% of them had inadequate level of knowledge while most of the nurses (98.8%) had adequate knowledge in the post- test. * There was a significant difference in mean pre test (15.8±3.4) and post test knowledge scores of nurses (27.5±2.1) with the improvement mean score of 11.7±4.1 at P<0.001 revealing the effectiveness of the sensitising programme on real time compliance to Certain interventional methods including VAP bundle to the nurses. * The compliance scores during the post-intervention period demonstrated improvement for head end elevation from 63.6% to 99.2%, oral care from 67.3% to 75.3%, sedation vacation from 0.8% to 94.2%, peptic ulcer prophylaxis from 97.4,% to 99.8% , deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis 98.7% to 99.4%, hand hygiene 1.3% to 75.1%, ryles tube aspiration 0.5% to 90.1%, separate catheter for oral and ET suctioning 26.2% to 86.6%, subglottic suction 2.1% to 94.4%, cuff pressure monitoring 1.8% to 98.6%, open end of the ventilator circuit off the bed 1.8% to 89.7%, draining the circuit 5.2% to 80.7%. The overall full compliance score increased to 10 % for all the components. * There was a significant difference in the mean rank of practice score of the following components : elevation of head end (397.4 and 486.5 with the Z value 7.177), oral care (403.1and 482.3 with the Z value of 4.653), sedation vacation (197.9, 634.7 with the Z value 28.550), peptic ulcer prophylaxis (435.6 and458.1 with the Z value 4.206), hand hygiene (210.8 and 453.4 with the Z value 24.546), ryles tube aspiration (198.2 and 634.5 with Z value 27.065), separate catheter for suction (293.2 and 563.9 with the Z value 17.402), subglottic suctioning (198.6 and 634.2 with the Z value 28.209), cuff pressure monitoring (200.9 and 632.5 with the Z value 27.410), ventilator circuit off the bed (214.3 and 622.5 with the Z value 25.125) and draining the circuit (246.0 and 598.9 with the z value 21.314) at P<0.001 and deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis (441.9 and 453.4 with Z value 2.378) at P<0.05 level among the pre and post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator respectively. * The overall total mean rank of all the components purported a significant improvement in the post-intervention group (634.9) compared to preintervention group (197.6 ) with the Z value 25.040 (P<0.001). * There was significant negative correlation between Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score (CPIS) of the patients and the practice score of ryles tube aspiration (r value -0.130) at P<0.01, separate catheter for endotracheal suctioning (r value -0.101), cuff pressure monitoring (r value -0.120) ventilator circuit off the bed (r value -143) at P<0.05. * Among post-intervention group of patients there was a significant negative correlation between Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score and the practice scores of head end elevation (r value 0.089), sedation vacation (r value – 0.127), ryles tube aspiration (r value – 0.108), separate catheter for suctioning (r value - 0.104), cuff pressure monitoring (r value - 0.108) at P<0.05. * The total practice score of the nurses had significant negative correlation with the CPIS (r value -0.124 and -0.097) at P<0.05 among the pre-intervention and post-intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator respectively. * The oral care (Wald χ2 4.045, HR 0.295) and hand hygiene (Wald χ2, 4.784 HR.182) were significantly associated with the reduction in the risk of ventilator associated pneumonia at P<0.05. * There was no significant association between the incidence of VAP rate and the demographic variables age, gender, habit of smoking and alcoholism except the work pattern among patients on mechanical ventilator at P<0.05 level. * A significant association was found between incidence rate of VAP and the clinical variables such as the type of intubation (χ2=7.362), past history of thyroid disease (χ2=4.949) at P<0.05, APACHE level II score (χ2=16.658) of the patients on mechanical ventilator at P<0.001. * There was no significant association between the demographic variables such as age, gender, years of experience and the level of knowledge except their level of education at P<0.05 level. * Most of the nurses expressed high acceptability (84.66%) and 15.33% of the nurses demonstrated acceptability regarding time compliance to certain interventional methods including VAP bundle. CONCLUSION: The findings of the study reveal that there is a reduction in the incidence rate of ventilator associated pneumonia among the post intervention group of patients on mechanical ventilator thus projecting the impact of real time compliance to certain interventional method including VAP bundle

Per Flow Packet Scheduling Scheme to improve the end-to-end Fairness in Mobile Adhoc Wireless Network

Various fairness models and criteria proposed by academia and industries for wired networks can be applied for ad hoc wireless network. The end-to-end fairness in an ad hoc wireless network is a challenging task compared to wired networks, which has not been addressed effectively. Most of the traffic in an ad hoc network are transport layer flows and thus the fairness of transport layer flows has attracted the interest of the researchers. The factors such as MAC protocol, routing protocol, the length of a route, buffer size, active queue management algorithm and the congestion control algorithms affects the fairness of transport layer flows. In this paper, we have considered the rate of data transmission, the queue management and packet scheduling technique. The ad hoc network is dynamic in nature due to various parameters such as transmission of control packets, multihop nature of forwarding packets, changes in source and destination nodes, changes in the routing path influences determining throughput and fairness among the concurrent flows. In addition, the effect of interaction between the protocol in the data link and transport layers has also plays a role in determining the rate of the data transmission. We maintain queue for each flow and the delay information of each flow is maintained accordingly. The pre-processing of flow is done up to the network layer only. The source and destination address information is used for separating the flow and the transport layer information is not used. This minimizes the delay in the network. Each flow is attached to a timer and is updated dynamically. Finite State Machine (FSM) is proposed for queue and transmission control mechanism. The performance of the proposedapproach is evaluated in ns-2 simulation environment. The throughput and fairness based on mobility for different flows used as performance metrics. We have compared the performance of the proposed approach with ATP and the transport layer information is used. This minimizes the delay in the network. Each flow is attached to a timer and is updated dynamically. Finite State Machine (FSM) is proposed for queue and transmission control mechanism. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in ns-2 simulation environment. The throughput and fairness based on not mobility for different flows used as performance metrics. We have compared the performance of the proposed approach with ATP and MC-MLAS and the performance of the proposed approach is encouraging

Optimisation of CdTe electrodeposition voltage for development of CdS/CdTe solar cells

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films have been deposited on glass/conducting glass (FTO) substrates using low-cost two electrode system and aqueous electrodeposition method. The glass/FTO substrates were used to grow the CdTe layers at different deposition voltages. The structural, electrical, optical and morphological properties of the resulting films have been characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell measurements, optical absorption spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The XRD results indicate that at voltages less than or higher than 1.576 V, crystallinity is poor due to presence of two phases. When CdTe is grown at 1.576 V, the composition is stoichiometric, and the (111) peak has the highest intensity in the XRD diffractogram indicating a high degree of crystallinity. SEM studies showed that all layers had pin-holes and gaps between the grains. These openings seem to be more common in the samples grown at voltages away from the stoichiometric voltage (1.576 V). The linear I–V curves of glass/FTO/CdS/CdTe/Au structures fabricated using stoichiometric CdTe showed efficiency of 10.1 % under AM 1.5 illuminatio