The Relationship Between Stress and Remote Working in Indian Information Technology Companies

Purpose: While remote working is a common practice in Information Technology organization, it was mostly confined to a small percentage of employees. The COVID-19 pandemic forced several companies to swiftly adapt to a near 100 percentage remote working model. The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between Stress and Remote Working in the Indian IT companies.   Design/Methodology/Approach: With multiple waves of infection, several companies are yet to return back to office. It is by now clear that, remote working is going to be way of life. Most companies are looking at a hybrid work model even after the pandemic era. However, it is important to realise that implementation of remote working is a much broader subject. Employees have been complaining of stress and fatigue while working from home. NASSCOM data has shown an increase in attrition across IT organizations.  We decided to adopt the survey approach for studying work stress while working from home and the impact on the intent to stay amongst employees working in IT organizations. We followed the snowball sampling method and a total of 181 employees participated from IT Companies across India. A model was created to explore the relationship between Autonomy, Emotional Demands, Work Pressure, Work Engagement, Recognition, Intent to Leave and Stress. A PLS-SEM model was created and the relationships were analyzed.   Findings: A total of six hypotheses were tested and the result was conclusive. The result corroborated with the fact that working from home is stressful and identified the factors that influence the stress. While remote working continues to be a preferred option, the concerns raised by the employees were valid and hence stress induing. We also spoke to a group of HR Managers to understand and solution some of the problems that surfaced in our survey. Together, we arrived at recommendations that could help address these concerns. As remote working is going to be a part of future work strategy, it is important to bring about these changes to immediately reduce the increasing attrition in Indian IT organizations.   Research, Practical & Social implications: Organizations should understand that remote working is the future way forward. With more clients being open to have employees working from home it is important for the organizations to ensure that they provide a stress free work environment to their remote workers. While there could be other external factors that could induce stress, it is the responsibility of the organization to focus on the controllable factos.    Originality/Value: While working from home is not new to Indian Indian IT companies they have allowed only a small percentage of their workforce to operate remotely. Most employees are allowed to work from home on a need basis. However, permanent work from home is generally discouraged. Remote working by majority workforce was uncommon before the pandemic and hence this topic was rarely researched. The recommendations provided based on our research study could help bridge the gaps and help organizations reduce the stress levels of their employees

Remote Onboarding Effectiveness in Indian it Industry During the Pandemic

Purpose: The outbreak and impact of COVID-19 has definitely caused the most drastic and rapid shift to the global workforce. The Information Technology (IT) industry was amongst early responders who adopted a remote working model. The aim of this study was to understand the effectiveness of remote onboarding experience in the IT companies.   Design/methodology/approach: The perceived benefits of remote working such as creating valuable opportunities for cost saving and greater flexibility for staff has caused many businesses to understand it is a beneficial model of working in the future and hence adopt it. Now that remote working is here to stay, this research studied the experience of the employees who were recruited in the years 2019 and 2020 into various IT organisations. A survey was circulated to understand this effect and a total of 126 employees participated from 21 IT Companies across India. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire was verified and the data was analyzed using SPSS V22.   Findings: The results indicated that there is a significant difference in the joining experience between the two groups. The findings showed that the physical joining experience worked better as it helped in a higher employee satisfaction and hence helped learning the job faster. While the remote induction process seemed effective, the gaps pertain to lack of a structured onboarding process, knowledge transfer and supervisor interventions that are relevant for the remote working world.   Research, Practical & Social implications: Organizations should understand the importance of making a good first impression with the new joiners. They should ensure smoother interventions that could enhance the culture immersion and knowledge transfer process.    Originality/value: Most Indian IT companies have always allowed employees to work remotely. However, even these employees were required to be physically present for the onboarding process. Remote onboarding as a process did not exist prior to the pandemic and hence this study touches upon a lesser researched topic. The research recommendations provided in our study could help bridge the gaps and provide a better employee remote joining experience

Formulation and Evaluation of Levetiracetam Microspheres using Synthetic and Natural Polymers

Microspheres are one of the most promising sustained drug delivery systems. Microspheres are one of the most promising controlled and targeted drug delivery systems. The present study signifies the utility of microspheres in retarding the drug release. This may in turn reduce the frequency of dosing, thereby improving the patient compliance. In present study comparative study of Levetiracetam loaded microspheres using Ethyl cellulose as synthetic and Sodium alginate as natural polymers was done. Solvent evaporation and ionic gelation technique has been successfully employed to produce Levetiracetam loaded ethyl cellulose and sodium alginate microspheres with optimal drug encapsulation that sustained the drug release over a period of time. Based on the preformulation studies E1 to E4 and S1 to S4 batches were prepared using selected polymers. Prepared microspheres were evaluated for the percentage yield, drug content, drug entrapment efficiency and in-vitro dissolution test. We obtained good yields of microspheres with adequate encapsulation efficiency, with the highest for Levetiracetam loaded microspheres. The drug content and entrapment efficiency were good for all formulations. Among all formulations E3 shows better properties. From the SEM study, it was observed that microspheres were spherical and fairly rough surface. The formulations have shown good drug release in simulated intestinal medium, which is the desired medium for drug absorption. In addition, the release continues at a constant rate in this medium. All the formulations were evaluated different kinetic models like Zero order, First order, Higuchi matrix and Korsmeyer Peppas equation. The data obtained from the Invitro release showed highly correlated with Korsmeyer-Peppas model and Regression was found to be 0.9957 with 1.2 as a "n" value. The release kinetic study has shown that drug release from microspheres follows the Korsmeyer Peppas as the drug release occurs super case II transport with erosion. Ethyl Cellulose is found to be a best polymer for preparing the Levetiracetam microspheres with high entrapment efficiency, drug content, percentage yield and sustained release for 16 hours. The formulations were found to be linear in kinetic models and E3 was selected as optimised formulations and shows 88.55% of drug release after 16 hours. For optimised formulation the drug entrapment efficiency was 91.5%, Percentage yield was 77.3%, Drug content 85.7% Comparison was made between the best formulations E3 & S3 of microspheres prepared by using Ethyl cellulose as synthetic and Sodium alginate as natural polymers respectively. Among these formulations microspheres prepared by using ethyl cellulose as polymer found to be best formulation with highest drug content of 85.7%, entrapment efficiency of 91.5%, Percentage yield of 77.3% and in-vitro drug release 88.55% for 16 hours and ethyl cellulose polymers was found to be the best formulation for the preparation of novel drug delivery system for Levetiracetam. While control of drug release profile has been a major aim of pharmaceutical research and development of past decade, control of Gl transmit profile could be the focus of next few decades and might results in the availability of products with better therapeutic possibilities and substantial benefits for patients. Dosing frequency and loss of drug also reduced by the use of such type formulations and the bioavailability of drugs can also be increased. All the above studies reveal that the microsphere can serve as an ideal drug delivery system for Levetiracetam loaded microspheres. Further studies can be done on the stability on Levetiracetam loaded microspheres and the improvement in therapeutic efficacy due to the targeting effort on to the specific receptor sites

Anomaly Intrusion Detection based on Concept Drift

Nowadays, security on the internet is a vital issue and therefore, intrusion detection is one of the major research problems for networks that defend external attacks. Intrusion detection is a new approach for providing security in existing computers and data networks. An Intrusion Detection System is a software application that monitors the system for malicious activities and unauthorized access to the system. An easy accessibility condition causes computer networks vulnerable against the attack and several threats from attackers. Intrusion Detection System is used to analyze a network of interconnected systems for avoiding uncommon intrusion or chaos. The intrusion detection problem is becoming a challenging task due to the increase in computer networks since the increased connectivity of computer systems gives access to all and makes it easier for hackers to avoid their traces and identification. The goal of intrusion detection is to identify unauthorized use, misuse and abuse of computer systems. This project focuses on algorithms: (i) Concept Drift based ensemble Incremental Learning approach for anomaly intrusion detection, and (ii) Diversity and Transfer-based Ensemble Learning. These are highly ranked anomaly detection models. We study and compare both learning models. The Network Security Laboratory-Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (NSL-KDD99) dataset have been used for training and to detect the misuse activities

On the Utility of Model Learning in HRI

Fundamental to robotics is the debate between model-based and model-free learning: should the robot build an explicit model of the world, or learn a policy directly? In the context of HRI, part of the world to be modeled is the human. One option is for the robot to treat the human as a black box and learn a policy for how they act directly. But it can also model the human as an agent, and rely on a “theory of mind” to guide or bias the learning (grey box). We contribute a characterization of the performance of these methods under the optimistic case of having an ideal theory of mind, as well as under different scenarios in which the assumptions behind the robot's theory of mind for the human are wrong, as they inevitably will be in practice. We find that there is a significant sample complexity advantage to theory of mind methods and that they are more robust to covariate shift, but that when enough interaction data is available, black box approaches eventually dominate

Percutaneous trigger thumb release: a safe push-pull technique

Background: Stenosing tenosynovitis of the thumb is an inflammation of flexor tendon sheath of A1 pulley. Percutaneous release has recently gained popularity. Successful percutaneous release depends upon proper prediction of the location of the A1 pulley and circumventing injury to the neurovascular bundles. The aim of this study was to determine the safety of percutaneous release of trigger thumb.Methods: Twenty eight patients were included in the study between 2015 and 2018. All the patients were percutaneously released using push-pull technique. Steroid injection was given following the release. Quinnell grading, patient questionnaire and visual analogue scale score was used to assess the patients at 2 weeks, 6 weeks and 6 months and 1 year.Results: Satisfactory results were found in 93% of patients. Two patients complained of pain and swelling till third week. No digital nerve injury occurred in any patients.Conclusions: Percutaneous trigger thumb release using this push-pull technique is a simple and a safe technique with very minimal complications.

Unusual medial tibial plateau fracture fixation using dual plating

Background: Medial tibial plateau fractures is a subtype of proximal tibial fractures that involve the articular surface and can present in several distinct patterns. Purpose of this study was to assess the clinical outcome of stabilizing these biplanar medial tibial plateau fractures using dual plating technique through a single incision.Methods: Between 2017 to 2019, 12 men and 8 women with closed medial tibial plateau fracture who underwent reconstruction using two plates through a posteromedial approach were included in the study group. The fractures were classified using the three column concept of Lou.Results: One patient had an articular step off that was unacceptable and two patients had an acceptable articular step off. Functional assessment was done using the objective scoring of Oxford knee score criteria and radiological assessment was done using the Rasmussen modified score.Conclusions: Biplanar reconstruction using dual plates is a reliable and safe technique to reconstruct complex medial tibial plateau fractures

Pre-operative hypoalbuminemia: overlooked prior knee arthroplasty?

Background: Role of preoperative serum albumin on primary total knee arthroplasty.Methods: A total of 1022 patients who underwent primary knee arthroplasty were collected. All patients were divided into the control group (preoperative serum albumin ≥3.5 g/dl) and case group (preoperative serum albumin <3.5 g/dl). The risk factors of preoperative hypoalbuminemia and the postoperative complications were analyzed.Results: Compared to controls, hypoalbuminemia patients were older (p<0.05 ), had higher risk for any complication such as delayed wound healing, pleural effusion, and pneumonia, lower BMI and longer hospital stay (p<0.001).Conclusions: Preoperative hypoalbuminemia is more frequent in patients who are older, have poor nutritional condition, and have more than two concurrent disorders. Hypoalbuminemia before surgery is linked to a higher risk of postoperative problems