Evaluation of the effect of three innovative recyling methods on the shear bond strength of stainless steel brackets-an in vitro study

Orthodontists are commonly faced with the decision of what to do with debonded or inaccurately positioned brackets. An economical option to this dilemma is to recycle the brackets. Many recycling methods have been proposed, but the optimal bond strength of these recycled brackets needs further evaluation. Objectives: To evaluate and compare the effect of three recycling methods: (i) Sandblasting (ii) Sandblasting / direct flaming (iii) Sandblasting /direct flaming /acid bath solution on shear bond strength (SBS) of stainless steel brackets. Eighty human premolars were bonded with premolar stainless steel brackets as per manufacturer?s instructions. The teeth were divided into 4 groups (n=20): Recycling and initial debonding was not done in Control group (Group I). After initial bonding, the brackets in the rest of the three experimental groups were debonded and recycled by following methods: (i) Sandblasting (Group II) (ii) Sandblasting /direct flaming (Group III) (iii) Sandblasting /direct flaming /acid bath solution (Group IV). Further the recycled brackets were bonded. The specimens were then subjected to testing in a Universal machine. The evaluation of the variation of the shear bond strength (SBS) among test groups was done using one-way ANOVA test and inter-experimental group comparison was done by Newman-Keuls multiple post hoc procedure. Group I (8.6510±1.3943MPa) showed the highest bond strength followed by Group II (5.0185±0.9758MPa), Group IV (2.30±0.65MPa) and Group III (2.0455± 0.6196MPa). Statistically significant variations existed in the shear bond strength (SBS) in all groups analyzed except between Group III and Group IV. The following conclusions were drawn from the study: 1. Shear bond strength of new brackets is significantly higher than the recycled brackets. 2. Brackets sandblasted with 90µm aluminium oxide particle air-abrasion showed significantly higher shear bond strength compared to direct flaming/sandblasting and direct flaming/sandblasting/acid bath solution. 3. Sandblasting with 90µm aluminium oxide particle air-abrasion is the simplest, most efficient and hence, the preferred method of recycling debonded brackets

Community origins of industrial entrepreneurship in pre-independence India

We argue that community networks played an important role in the emergence of Indian entrepreneurship in the early stages of the cotton textile and jute textile industries in the late 19th and early 20th century respectively, overcoming the lack of market institutions and government support. From business registers, we construct a yearly panel dataset of entrepreneurs in these two industries. We find no evidence that entry is affected by prior trading experience or price shocks in the corresponding upstream sector. Firm directors exhibited a high degree of clustering of entrepreneurs by community. The dynamics of entry is consistent with a model of network-based dynamic

Pattern of trauma in a rural hospital and factors affecting mortality in trauma patients

Background: Trauma is associated with human civilization since ancient times. With the modern urbanization and increase in motor vehicles incidence and pattern of trauma changed. Hence the present study was conducted to study the pattern of trauma in a rural population admitted to a Kasturba Hospital Sewagram (Rural Hospital) and to detect factors affecting the mortality of trauma patients.Methods: A prospective randomized controlled trial was conducted in Department of general surgery, Kasturba Hospital, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sewagram. A total number of 1525 trauma patients were studied over a period of 2 yrs. The detail examination was done and findings were recorded. All the factors affectingmortality of trauma patients were studied.Results: Trauma affects younger population more with a male predominance. Incidences of vehicular accidents are more than the non-vehicular accidents and other modes of trauma. Head injury was most common type of injury as observed in the present study. Advancing age and polytrauma were the main factors for high mortality. The mortality increased as the Revised Trauma Score decreased. While mortality increased with increasing Injury Severity Score and vice versa.Conclusions: Age, sex, mechanism and type of injury affect the mortality in Trauma Patients. The mortality increased as the Revised Trauma Score decreased while mortality increased with increasing Injury Severity Score

Wearable Sensors for Evaluation Over Smart Home Using Sequential Minimization Optimization-based Random Forest

In our everyday life records, human activity identification utilizing MotionNode sensors is becoming more and more prominent. A difficult issue in ubiquitous computing and HCI is providing reliable data on human actions and behaviors. In this study, we put forward a practical methodology for incorporating statistical data into Sequential Minimization Optimization-based random forests. In order to extract useful features, we first prepared a 1-Dimensional Hadamard transform wavelet and a 1-Dimensional Local Binary Pattern-dependent extraction technique. Over two benchmark datasets, the University of Southern California-Human Activities Dataset, and the IM-Sporting Behaviors datasets, we employed sequential minimum optimization together with Random Forest to classify activities. Experimental findings demonstrate that our suggested model may successfully be utilized to identify strong human actions for matters related to efficiency and accuracy, and may challenge with existing cutting-edge approaches

Aux-Drop: Handling Haphazard Inputs in Online Learning Using Auxiliary Dropouts

Many real-world applications based on online learning produce streaming data that is haphazard in nature, i.e., contains missing features, features becoming obsolete in time, the appearance of new features at later points in time and a lack of clarity on the total number of input features. These challenges make it hard to build a learnable system for such applications, and almost no work exists in deep learning that addresses this issue. In this paper, we present Aux-Drop, an auxiliary dropout regularization strategy for online learning that handles the haphazard input features in an effective manner. Aux-Drop adapts the conventional dropout regularization scheme for the haphazard input feature space ensuring that the final output is minimally impacted by the chaotic appearance of such features. It helps to prevent the co-adaptation of especially the auxiliary and base features, as well as reduces the strong dependence of the output on any of the auxiliary inputs of the model. This helps in better learning for scenarios where certain features disappear in time or when new features are to be modelled. The efficacy of Aux-Drop has been demonstrated through extensive numerical experiments on SOTA benchmarking datasets that include Italy Power Demand, HIGGS, SUSY and multiple UCI datasets. The code is available at https://github.com/Rohit102497/Aux-Drop.Comment: Accepted at Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR). Link: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=R9CgBkeZ6

All states stand to save electricity were Indian Standard Time to be advanced

Earlier estimates of electricity savings from advancing Indian Standard Time (IST) to GMT + 6:00 using regional load curves provided encouraging results of savings during evenings. This persuaded us to undertake this more accurate study involving 13 states that account for 85% of India’s annual electricity consumption. As we expected, the savings obtained were higher than estimates from the five electrical regions of the country. Although advancing IST would benefit the northeastern and eastern regions, there is an apprehension that later dawns may inconvenience people in the north and northwest. In response we present data on postponement of the latest winter dawns in state capitals. We also report on the flattening of load curves in the six highest electricity consuming states and discuss how this affects the results

Qualitative study of loneliness in a senior housing community: the importance of wisdom and other coping strategies.

ObjectiveOlder adults are at a high risk for loneliness, which impacts their health, well-being, and longevity. While related to social isolation, loneliness is a distinct, internally experienced, distressing feeling. The present qualitative study sought to identify characteristics of loneliness in older adults living independently within a senior housing community, which is typically designed to reduce social isolation.MethodSemi-structured qualitative interviews regarding the experience of loneliness, risk factors, and ways to combat it were conducted with 30 older adults, ages 65-92 years. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded using a grounded theory analytic approach based on coding, consensus, co-occurrence, and comparison.ResultsThree main themes with multiple subthemes are described: (A) Risk and Protective factors for loneliness: age-associated losses, lack of social skills or abilities, and protective personality traits; (B) Experience of loneliness: Sadness and lack of meaning as well as Lack of motivation; and (C) Coping strategies to prevent or overcome loneliness: acceptance of aging, compassion, seeking companionship, and environment enables socialization.DiscussionDespite living within a communal setting designed to reduce social isolation, many older adults described feeling lonely in stark negative terms, attributing it to aging-associated losses or lack of social skills and abilities. However, interviewees also reported positive personal qualities and actions to prevent or cope with loneliness, several of which mirrored specific components of wisdom. The results support the reported inverse relationship between loneliness and wisdom and suggest a potential role for wisdom-enhancing interventions to reduce and prevent loneliness in older populations

Networkless Mobile Payments With Minimal changes in Trusted Execution Environments

Peer-to-peer mobile digital payments can be made in the absence of a network as follows: the receiver of funds verifies the availability of on-device balance by examining the prior, authenticated, transaction records of the sender. A new transaction record including the transaction amount is created, made immutable and secure using cryptographic techniques, and is stored at both sender and receiver. When either sender or receiver regains network connectivity, the transaction is settled with the original provider of the on-device balance, e.g., a financial institution. The integrity of the records of offline transactions, e.g., made in the absence of a mobile network, is vital for offline payments to be secure and trustworthy. This disclosure describes techniques that, with minimal modifications to trusted applications (TAs) in a trusted execution environment (TEE) to securely verify transaction records and to harden them against malicious attacks

Pattern of drug-induced bleeding in a tertiary care hospital

Background: It is a well-known fact that drug-induced bleeding causes considerable morbidity and mortality. Drugs that induce bleeding do so by affecting either anti-platelet Function and /or coagulation. By the frequency of their use, anti-platelet, a coagulant, thrombolytic and NSAIDs are the most commonly implicated drugs. Upper gastrointestinal bleeding is commonest adverse drug reaction associated with hospital admission. Significant number of these could be prevented if simple guidelines are followed. Spontaneous cessation of bleeding occurs in as many as 85% of cases. Early intervention is required in those if bleeding does not stop spontaneously. Objective of the study was to determine the pattern of drug induced bleeding in tertiary care hospital setting.Methods: It was a hospital based observational study conducted during one year study dura on ((June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2015) amongst all adult patients admitted to the hospital with drug induced bleeding. Statistical analysis was done by frequency measurement for categorical variables. Chi- square test was used to determine associations. A p-value of<0.05 was taken as statistically significant.Results: A total number of 110 cases with history of bleeding were enrolled. Commonest drug that caused bleeding was a platelet with 29 (26%) cases followed by combination of 2 or more drugs in 25 (23%) cases, then NSAIDs and anticoagulants in 24 (21%) and 23 (20%) cases respectively. Upper gastrointestinal bleeding was the commonest site of bleeding seen in 64 (58%) cases. The commonest drugs causing upper GI bleeding were NSAIDs seen in 24 (37.5%) cases followed by a platelet 22 (34.3%), combined drugs in 09 (14%) cases. (P<0.001) In overall severity most cases of drug induced bleeding had mild bleeding with 61 cases as compared to 38 cases of moderate and 11 cases of severe bleeding. There were significantly higher proportion of mild and moderate bleeding in upper gastrointestinal bleed cases in comparison to other sites of drug induced bleeding in this study (p<0.01). 7 (6.4%) out of 110 patients died and 103 (93.6%) patients recovered and were discharged.Conclusions: Clinical management of bleeds requires careful assessment of the patient, haemodynamic stabilisation, discontinuation of the offending medication and, where appropriate, reversal of the haemorrhagic effects and specific therapies such as endoscopic haemostatic therapy