Effect of Micronutrient Fortified Biscuit Supplementation on the Weight, Height and BMI of Adolescent Girls

A study was designed to determine the effect of supplementation of biscuits with and without micronutrients on the weight and height of adolescent girls (N=107) in the age group of 10 to 16 years studying in a government school in Jaipur city. Data on weights and heights were collected using standardized techniques. Hundred grams of biscuits furnishing 497 kcal and 11.36 g of protein per day for all working days in a 4 month period was provided to the control group (N=54); and 100 g of biscuits fortified with one RDA levels of vitamin A, iron, folic acid, vitamin C and iodine was provided to the experimental group (N=53). Supplementation with biscuits resulted in significant weight gains of 1.85 kg and 2.00 kg in the control and experimental groups, respectively. As per weight for age, the increments in the normal category was from 27.8% to 40.7% in adolescent girls of the control group and from 34.0% to 45.3% in those of the experimental group. There was statistically significant improvement in the mean BMI, as well as in various grades of chronic energy deficiency, after intervention. In conclusion, intervention with biscuits with and without nutrients resulted in significant improvements in weight gain and BMI

Neural Machine Translation For Low Resource Languages

Neural Machine translation is a challenging task due to the inherent complex nature and the fluidity that natural languages bring. Nonetheless, in recent years, it has achieved state-of-the-art performance in several language pairs. Although, a lot of traction can be seen in the areas of multilingual neural machine translation (MNMT) in the recent years, there are no comprehensive survey done to identify what approaches work well. The goal of this paper is to investigate the realm of low resource languages and build a Neural Machine Translation model to achieve state-of-the-art results. The paper looks to build upon the mBART language model and explore strategies to augment it with various NLP and Deep Learning techniques like back translation and transfer learning. This implementation tries to unpack the architecture of the NMT application and determine the different components which offers us opportunities to amend the said application within the purview of the low resource languages problem space

Failure to complete adjuvant chemotherapy is associated with adverse survival in stage III colon cancer patients

Two recent North American studies have shown that completion of 5-fluorouracil (5FU)-based adjuvant chemotherapy is a major prognostic factor for the survival of elderly stage III colon cancer patients. The aim of the present study was to confirm this finding in a population-based series from Australia. The study cohort comprised 851 stage III colon cancer patients treated by surgery alone and 461 who initiated the Mayo chemotherapy regime. One-third of patients who initiated chemotherapy failed to complete more than three cycles of treatment. Independent predictors for failure to complete were treatment in district or rural hospitals, low socioeconomic index and treatment by a low-volume surgeon. Patients who failed to complete chemotherapy showed worse cancer-specific survival compared not only to those who completed treatment (HR=2.24; 95% confidence interval (CI) (1.66–3.03), P<0.001) but also to those treated by surgery alone (HR=1.37; 95% CI (1.09–1.72), P=0.008). The current and previous studies demonstrate the importance of completing adjuvant 5-FU-based chemotherapy for colon cancer. Further prospective studies are required to identify better the physiological and socioeconomic factors responsible for failure to complete chemotherapy so that appropriate improvements in health service delivery can be made

Micronutrient fortification of food and its impact on woman and child health: A systematic review

Background: Vitamins and minerals are essential for growth and metabolism. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 2 billion people are deficient in key vitamins and minerals. Groups most vulnerable to these micronutrient deficiencies are pregnant and lactating women and young children, given their increased demands. Food fortification is one of the strategies that has been used safely and effectively to prevent vitamin and mineral deficiencies.Methods: A comprehensive search was done to identify all available evidence for the impact of fortification interventions. Studies were included if food was fortified with a single, dual or multiple micronutrients and impact of fortification was analyzed on the health outcomes and relevant biochemical indicators of women and children. We performed a meta-analysis of outcomes using Review Manager Software version 5.1.Results: Our systematic review identified 201 studies that we reviewed for outcomes of relevance. Fortification for children showed significant impacts on increasing serum micronutrient concentrations. Hematologic markers also improved, including hemoglobin concentrations, which showed a significant rise when food was fortified with vitamin A, iron and multiple micronutrients. Fortification with zinc had no significant adverse impact on hemoglobin levels. Multiple micronutrient fortification showed non-significant impacts on height for age, weight for age and weight for height Z-scores, although they showed positive trends. The results for fortification in women showed that calcium and vitamin D fortification had significant impacts in the post-menopausal age group. Iron fortification led to a significant increase in serum ferritin and hemoglobin levels in women of reproductive age and pregnant women. Folate fortification significantly reduced the incidence of congenital abnormalities like neural tube defects without increasing the incidence of twinning. The number of studies pooled for zinc and multiple micronutrients for women were few, though the evidence suggested benefit. There was a dearth of evidence for the impact of fortification strategies on morbidity and mortality outcomes in women and children.Conclusion: Fortification is potentially an effective strategy but evidence from the developing world is scarce. Programs need to assess the direct impact of fortification on morbidity and mortality

Development of short circuit detection and protection test for three-phase inverter

In present day scenario, use of power converter system in applications where safety is critical has become inevitable. This also further increases and enhances the reliability of such systems. Power semiconductor devices such as IGBT’s have become an important component and the failure of these devices can cause catastrophic failure of the entire system. Short circuit faults are one of the most important causes for the failure of the devices. The main objective of this project is to develop a simulation and an experimental setup of a three-phase inverter system to validate the short circuit detection algorithm developed in Rolls-Royce corporate lab @NTU. A Power converter is an electro-mechanical device that converts electrical energy. Primarily the conversion is being done from DC supply to AC supply. A Switch is one of the most important component of converters and inverters as it controls the power of the system. IGBT is one of the main device that is used as a switch for its flexibility and fast switching characteristics. This project gives an insight into the experimental setup and simulation for the detection of short circuit using desaturation mode. Different approaches for short circuit detection have been discussed in the further chapters, introducing the user to new innovative techniques with their solutions for further and future research.Master of Science (Power Engineering