A questionnaire based study-assessment of knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance among health care professionals, pre and post educational intervention

Background: Pharmacovigilance (PV) is an important tool in generating adverse drug reaction (ADR) data. However, the practice of PV is still very low among health care professionals due to lack of knowledge and awareness. This study was conducted to assess the level of  knowledge, awareness and practice of PV among health care professionals and to assess subsequent change in these after PV training session.Methods: A cross sectional questionnaire based study was conducted among health care professionals of a tertiary health care and teaching institute. Participants were given a questionnaire. They completed it before and after undergoing training programme in PV. Impact of effectiveness of educational intervention (continuing medical education-CME (pharmacovigilance workshop) was evaluated by paired t-test.Results: Out of 110 participants, 96 participants completely filled the questionnaire before and after the educational intervention (CME). CME on PV was found to increase knowledge and positive attitudes towards various aspects of PV.Conclusions: Training programme on PV will help increase the knowledge as well as awareness about principles and techniques of PV and improve the rate of spontaneous ADR reporting. Organising frequent CME programmes and workshops will increase the credibility of health care in the country.

Mitigation of Attacks via Improved Network Security in IoT Network using Machine Learning

In this paper, we develop a support vector machine (SVM) based attack mitigation technique from the IoT network. The SVM aims to classify the features related to the attacks based on pre-processed and feature extracted information. The simulation is conducted in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and f-measure over KDD datasets. The results show that the proposed SVM classifier obtains high grade of classification accuracy in both training and testing datasets

Some Investigation on DDOS Attack Models in Mobile Networks

With advancements in device and communication technologies, there has been a great revolution in development of net gadgets and communication technologies like 4G, 5G etc., In parallel, there has also been a widespread increase in ways to illegally hack data available over the internet and tamper the services offered to the customer. Common attacks include spoofing, Phishing, fraudulent extraction of transaction information and customer details. There have been attacks to cause traffic congestion over the network by introducing artificial infection packets over the internet. Hence, there is a great necessity in research for defence mechanism against these attacks to ensure smooth and safe provision of services to customers. This paper investigates and elaborates the different types of attacks that may be incident on a system or a network, their features and attack mechanisms which provide useful insights into developing an attack resistant system. Almost all types of attacks have been discussed systematically in this research paper with special emphasis on distributed denial of service attacks.</p

Role of clinical pharmacist in smoking cessation: A prospective randomized trial

Objective: In accordance with the pharmacist oath, service to the community is the moral responsibility of a clinical pharmacist. Patient counseling is one among the service to public towards greater wellbeing. It is designed to help people to explore and resolve their incongruity about behavior change. It was developed as a treatment for alcohol abuse, but it may also help smokers to a make a successful attempt to quit. The present study is aimed to study the role of clinical pharmacist in smoking cessation in smokers. Materials and Methods: A prospective randomized usual led trial was carried out. The study was approved by human institutional ethical committee. The sample size was calculated using standardized formula. Participants (n=80) were recruited based upon inclusion and exclusion criteria and were allocated on random basis into two groups, namely usual care and intervention care using computerized randomization model. Participants in both groups were counseled based on their nicotine dependence level. Results: We found improvements between baseline and after intervention regarding the outcome. At the end of motivational enhancement counseling, participants in the interventional arm showed significant improvement in quitting smoking habit than the usual arm. Conclusion: Study has proved that motivational enhancement counseling do have a tremendous reach in male smokers. The better understanding of the reason behind every individual smoker is an important key in motivating them and in getting the positive results

Effect of vitamin D3 on mild to moderate persistent asthmatic patients: A randomized controlled pilot study

Background: Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the bronchial airways. Well defined treatment options for asthma are very few. The role of vitamin D 3 on asthma is still baffling. Aim: We have examined the effect of vitamin D 3 supplementation in mild to moderate persistent asthma patients. Materials and Methods: We conducted an open labeled, randomized comparative trial in 48 asthma patients. The study duration was about 90 days. The study had a run-in-period of 2 weeks. At the end of run-in-period, patients were divided into two groups: Usual care group (n = 31) patients received budesonide and formoterol and intervention care group (n = 32) patients received vitamin D 3 supplementation along with their regular medicine. Results: The primary outcome of the study was to measure the improvement in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV 1 ). Patients in both groups had a significant improvement in FEV 1 at the end of the study. The mean difference in percentage predicted FEV 1 in usual care and intervention care group was 4.95 and 7.07 respectively. Conclusion: The study concluded that adjunctive therapy of vitamin D 3 is effective in asthma patients. The present study will be an evidence based report; however, future studies are warranted in longer duration of time to substantiate the present findings

Improved perturb and observe maximum power point tracking technique for solar photovoltaic power generation systems

The primary concerns in the practical photovoltaic (PV) system are the power reduction due to the change in operating conditions, such as the temperature or irradiance, the high computation burden due to the modern maximum power point tracking (MPPT) mechanisms, and to maximize the PV array output during the rapid change in weather conditions. The conventional perturb and observe (P&amp;O) technique is preferred in most of the PV systems. Nevertheless, it undergoes false tracking of maximum power point (MPP) during the rapid change in solar insolation due to the wrong decision in the duty cycle. To avoid the computational burden and drift effect, this article presents a simple and enhanced P&amp;O MPPT technique. The proposed technique is enhanced by including the change in current (dI), in addition to the changes in output voltage and output power of the PV module. The effect of including the dI profile with the traditional method is explained with the fixed and variable step-size methods. The mathematical expression for the drift-free condition is derived. The traditional boost converter is considered for validating the effectiveness of the proposed methods by employing the direct duty cycle technique

Azido-iodo-N-benzyl derivatives of threo-methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta): Rational design, synthesis, pharmacological evaluation, and dopamine transporter photoaffinity labeling

In contrast to tropane-based compounds such as benztropine and cocaine, non-tropane-based photoaffinity ligands for the dopamine transporter (DAT) are relatively unexplored. Towards addressing this knowledge gap, ligands were synthesized in which the piperidine nitrogen of 3- and 4-iodomethylphenidate was substituted with a benzyl group bearing a photoreactive azide. Analog (±)-3a demonstrated modest DAT affinity and a radioiodinated version was shown to bind covalently to rat striatal DAT and hDAT expressed in cultured cells. Co-incubation of (±)-3a with nonradioactive d-(+)-methylphenidate or (-)-2-β-carbomethoxy-3-β-(4-fluorophenyl)tropane (β-CFT, WIN-35,428, a cocaine analog) blocked DAT labeling. Compound (±)-3a represents the first successful example of a DAT photoaffinity ligand based on the methylphenidate scaffold. Such ligands are expected to assist in mapping non-tropane ligand-binding pockets within plasma membrane monoamine transporters. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved