Development of an Oxygen Saturation Monitoring System by Embedded Electronics

Measuring Oxygenation of blood (SaO2) plays a vital role in patient’s health monitoring. This is often measured by pulse oximeter, which is standard measure during anesthesia, asthma, operative and post-operative recoveries. Despite all, monitoring Oxygen level is necessary for infants with respiratory problems, old people, and pregnant women and in other critical situations. This paper discusses the process of calculating the level of oxygen in blood and heart-rate detection using a non-invasive photo plethysmography also called as pulsoximeter using the MSP430FG437 microcontroller (MCU). The probe uses infrared lights to measure and should be in physical contact with any peripheral points in our body. The percentage of oxygen in the body is worked by measuring the intensity from each frequency of light after it transmits through the body and then calculating the ratio between these two intensities

Use of the Robson classification to assess caesarean section trends in tertiary hospital

Background: With caesarean sections on the rise WHO proposes that health care facilities use the Robson's 10 group classification system to audit their C-sections rates. This classification would help understand the internal structure of the CS rates at individual health facilities identify key population groups, indications in each group and formulate strategies to reduce these rates.Methods: This was a cross sectional study for a period of 6 months at a tertiary care hospital in a rural area in Karnataka, South India. Women who delivered during this period were included and classified into 10 Robson's classes and percentages were calculated for the overall rate, the representation of groups, contribution of groups and Caesarean percentage in each group.Results: Highest contribution was by Group 5 and Group 2. Together these two groups contributed to 50.3% of the total Caesareans. Followed by Group 1 and 10. A Groups 6, 4, 8 and 9 by themselves did not contribute much but within their groups had a 100% C-section rate.Conclusions: Robson 10-group classification provides easy way in collecting information about Caesarean section rate which obtains good insight into certain birth groups. Reducing primary section rates, adequate counselling and encouraging for VBAC, changing the norms for non-reassuring fetal status, training and encouraging obstetricians to perform versions when not contraindicated could reduce the contribution of Robson's groups towards the absolute C-Section rates

An Analysis of LoRa Low Power Technology and its Applications

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has exponentially increased in the last decade. With the increase in these devices, there is a necessity to effectively connect and control these devices remotely. Cellular technologies cannot handle this demand since they are not cost effective and easy to deploy. This is where LoRa technology comes handy. LoRa is long-range, low-power, low cost technology that supports internet of things applications. LoRa has many advantages in terms of capacity, mobility, battery lifetime and cost. It uses the unlicensed 915MHz ISM band and can be easily deployed. This research is focused on setting up a LoRa base-station to observe the functionality, reliability and limitations of the LoRa protocol. As a first step, the MultiTech gateway and node was set up and the IBM Watson (IBM BlueMix) IOT platform was used to transmit and receive messages. Information like temperature, pressure, accelerometer reading and location in terms of latitude and longitude could be sent to the MultiTech Conduit (gateway/concentrator) by simply sending a message from the mDot end device. Different sensors can be incorporated into the current setup and the functionality of the node can be enhanced by using Node-Red platform that allows programming the devices in use. Future work will involve setting up a base station using the OpenChirp infrastructure with LoRaBug (node) and the OpenChirp Gateway

IMPROVING WORD POWER: ENHANCING VOCABULARY

Across the country, the number of graduates passing out every year is high in number. In India, graduates are more in recent years compared to the days before 10 years. Especially, Engineering graduates are more. The percentage of employed ones is relatively low when compared to the students who have passed out. The reason is that the percentage of employable students is minimal. What is meant by employability? Employability depends on the candidate’s knowledge and skill. What is knowledge and what is skill? Knowledge is the technical (mostly theoretical) one and skill is the practical one. Those who are knowledgeable in English but not in a position to express themselves in an interview will not be successful.That is, today most of the students pursue their basic education in English medium. Even with exposure to the medium of instruction which is English, they lack the skill of speaking in English. It is because of lack of English speaking atmosphere and lack of vocabulary to express their ideas correctly. Even though they know English- speaking and practicing in English is minimal. It is because of the system that prevails in our country. To complete the syllabus and make the students understand the subject matter, the teachers help the students by explaining in Tamil or vernacular language.As our exam based system needs syllabus completion it becomes unavoidable. As the students lack practice, communication skillwhich plays a major role in employment is lacking among graduates. For fluency, more words are needed. Good package of vocabulary is needed. It becomes a lacuna among the present generation. The study of this paper is on how to improve the word power of the students and make their communication effective? This paper focuses on vocabulary building

Changes in the diet of predatory ribbonfish Trichiurus lepturus Linnaeus, 1758 with increasing body size along Chennai coast

In recent years, it has been recognised that predatory fishes are rapidly declining in marine habitats. Hence, gathering information on biological characteristics such as dietary dynamics of predatory fishes has assumed importance. Considering this, the dietary dynamics of the predatory ribbonfish Trichiuruslepturusfrom Chennai coast was assessed by analysing the stomach condition and contents, with reference to body size. Representatives of the Order Clupeiformes (Index of relative importance, IRI 33.7%) comprising oilsardine, lesser sardines and anchovies were the major prey items of T. lepturus.Predation by T. lepturus was aided by morphological adaptations, such as dentition, hard and spinous gill rakers, short stomach, high body depth-total length ratio of 1: 17.1 and large mouth (gape area of 1534 mm2 in adult fish).With increasing body size, the capacity to predate upon relatively larger prey increased. The differences in diet composition between ribbonfish of small, medium and large size were well-represented byIRI, prey specific abundance and cluster analysis. The fish is a top predator (trophic level: 4.17) and a specialist feeder (niche breadth: 2.63). As specialist feeders have a narrow choice of food, they are more vulnerable to fishing. It is important that management of multispecies fisheries should focus more on the sensitive predatory species

Juvenile croakers - a major component of the low value trawl by-catch landed at Chennai

Low value by-catch forms about 10-12% of the trawl landings at Chennai. Fishes form about 60 - 65% of this by-catch. The major fishes occurring in the by-catch include - silverbellies, cardinal fishes, flatheads, lizardfishes, whitebaits anchovies, croakers, threadfin breams, monocle breams, flatfishes, dragonets, glassies, rays and skates, goatfishes, pufferfishes, scorpionfishes etc. Juvenile croakers have been found to occur in considerable proportion in the by-catch

Obstetrical outcome in women with congenital uterine anomalies

Background: Congenital uterine anomalies are associated with higher incidence of reproductive failure and adverse obstetrical outcomes. The association of congenital anomalies and early pregnancy loss has been well established but its adverse effect on late pregnancy in from of malpresentation, preterm deliveries has not yet been elaborated. Thus, this study aims to summarize the clinical characteristics and perinatal outcome of pregnancy in women with congenital uterine anomalies.Methods: This is a retrospective study evaluating the obstetric outcomes of 32 patients with congenital abnormalities.Results: Among 32 women with uterine anomalies 6 delivered preterm, 16 malpresentations were seen (50%).Infants born to mothers having congenital uterine anomalies were of lower birth weight. Therefore, it can be concluded the women with congenital uterine anomalies had a higher risk of malpresentation and preterm deliveries. They also had a higher incidence of small for gestational age neonates.Conclusions: Presence of congenital uterine anomalies has adverse effect on obstetrical outcome. This knowledge warrants the need for a larger case control study to extrapolate these findings to the general population and also to recommend the need for universal Prenatal Screening for uterine anomalies so as to improve the obstetrical outcome in patients with uterine anomalies

STABILITY-INDICATING REVERSE-PHASE HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY METHOD FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS QUANTIFICATION OF APIGENIN AND LUTEOLIN FROM ACHILLEA MILLEFOLIUM LINN

Objective: A stability-indicating reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed and validated for the analysis of apigenin and luteolin. The degradation behavior of apigenin and luteolin was investigated under different stress conditions as recommended by the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH). Methods: In the present study, a reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography method was developed and the resolution of the plant constituents was successfully achieved using Hibar Lichrospher C8 column with ultraviolet detector at a wavelength of 269 nm. The mobile phase consisted of methanol and 0.5% trifluoroacetic acid (80:20 v/v) at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. Both apigenin and luteolin were subjected to various stress degradation studies such as oxidation, acid and alkaline hydrolysis, and photolytic degradation. Results: The proposed method was found to be linear (1–5 μg/ml) with the linear correlation coefficient of R2=0.99. Although the degradation products of stressed conditions were not identified, the methods were able to detect the changes due to stress condition. Conclusion: The method provides good sensitivity and excellent precision and reproducibility. Forced degradation studies on apigenin and luteolin give information about their storage and intrinsic stability conditions considering the advanced pharmaceutical aspects of formulations

Study of thyroid dysfunction in perimenopausal women with abnormal uterine bleeding

Background: AUB is a common but complicated clinical presentation and occurs in 15-20% of women between menarche to menopause and significantly affects the women’s health. Women with thyroid dysfunction often have menstrual irregularities, infertility and increased morbidity during pregnancy. The objective of present study is to find the correlation between thyroid disorders and AUB in perimenopausal women attending gynecology OPD.Methods: In the present study, Ninety patients with AUB were included and were evaluated for the cause including thyroid abnormality. Thyroid function tests were done in all patients.Results: Among 90 patients, 22 patients were diagnosed as hypothyroidism and 9 as hyperthyroidism, women with AUB 59 (65.4%) were euthyroid. Among 31 women with thyroid abnormality, heavy menstrual bleeding was seen in 14 (45.1%) women, 11 (35.4%) had Polymenorrhagia, 6 (19.3%) had oligomenorrhea. The frequent menstrual abnormality in women with hypothyroidism (22 women) was heavy menstrual bleeding in 9 (40.9%) women, 5 (22.7%) had oligomenorrhea, 8 (36.3%) had Polymenorrhagia. Out of 9 women with hyperthyroidism, 3 (33.3%) had oligomenorrhoea, 4 (44.4%) had heavy menstrual bleeding, 2 (22.2%) had Polymenorrhagia.Conclusions: AUB might be because of structural or non-structural causes. Thyroid abnormalities may present in perimenopausal women with abnormal uterine bleeding, therefore proper identification of the cause of AUB is needed to give appropriate treatment to the patient. And to avoid unnecessary surgical intervention

Study of serum lactate dehydrogenase level and seasonal variation in preeclampsia and eclampsia with its obstetric outcome

Background: Preeclampsia and eclampsia complicate 6–8% of all pregnancies and lead to various maternal and fetal complications. LDH is an intracellular enzyme and its level is increased in this women due to cellular death. So, serum LDH levels can be used to assess the severity of disease, to improve the maternal and fetal outcome. Studies in several countries have shown higher incidence of the disease in the winter season. This study is being conducted to correlate serum LDH levels and seasonal variation in preeclampsia and eclampsia.Methods: It is a retrospective observational study. Data for 102 cases were collected from the parturition register and patient discharge record from January to December 2016. All singleton pregnant women who came to R L Jalappa Hospital with severe preeclampsia and eclampsia were included in the study.Results: Total of 102 patients were studied. Incidence of the disease was most commonly seen in younger age group, which was statistically significant (p=0.020). Even though most of the cases presented in winter (39), there was no statistically significant association between seasonal variation in occurrence of the disease and serum LDH levels. LDH raised to >800IU/L in the cases was seen more in the younger age group.Conclusions: This study only showed that preeclampsia and eclampsia occurred most commonly in younger women. This study did not show any variation in serum LDH levels in patients presenting in different seasons