SkillCheck: An Incentive-based Certification System using Blockchains

Skill verification is a central problem in workforce hiring. Companies and academia often face the difficulty of ascertaining the skills of an applicant since the certifications of the skills claimed by a candidate are generally not immediately verifiable and costly to test. Blockchains have been proposed in the literature for skill verification and tamper-proof information storage in a decentralized manner. However, most of these approaches deal with storing the certificates issued by traditional universities on the blockchain. Among the few techniques that consider the certification procedure itself, questions like (a) scalability with limited staff, (b) uniformity of grades over multiple evaluators, or (c) honest effort extraction from the evaluators are usually not addressed. We propose a blockchain-based platform named SkillCheck, which considers the questions above, and ensure several desirable properties. The platform incentivizes effort in grading via payments with tokens which it generates from the payments of the users of the platform, e.g., the recruiters and test-takers. We provide a detailed description of the design of the platform along with the provable properties of the algorithm.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

An Exploration of Knowledge Management Techniques

Knowledge Management (KM) is an emerging new tool for harnessing an organization\u27s largely untapped resource - Knowledge. KM is a process that includes the development, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of information and expertise, explicit as well as tacit, within the organization to support and improve an organization\u27s business performance. There are as many techniques to implement KM, as there are definitions of KM. Knowledge Management requires a major shift in organizational culture and a commitment at all levels of a firm to make it work. This paper explores what Knowledge Management is, the links between KM and innovation, the imperatives for KM, and technological tools for KM implementation in an organization

REVIEW OF CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF ABHRAKA WSR TO PINAKA ABHRAKA

Rasashastra (Vedic chemistry) is the root branch of the Ayurveda (the science of life) that deals with herbomineral preparations. Abhraka (mica) is a mineral that classified in Maharasa group of Rasashastra. It contains several elements such as Si, Fe, Al, Mg, Na, and K as main ingredients. Four types of abhrakas are described in the Classics of Rasashastra including pinaka. Property of Pinaka is told that when it is heated on fire, the layers get separates. Intake of its bhasma causes severe constipation. The characteristic effect of pinak abhraka can be correlated with muscovite – paragonite micas. Because their perfect basal cleavage allows them to be split into thin, flexible sheets. Muscovite–paragonite series group of mica having hydrous potassium, sodium, aluminum, and silicate minerals. In this hydrous group, aluminum hydroxide causes constipation. In this paper, an attempt will be made to explain how does pinaka abhrak causes severe constipation

Robust Lossless Semi Fragile Information Protection in Images

Internet security finds it difficult to keep the information secure and to maintain the integrity of the data. Sending messages over the internet secretly is one of the major tasks as it is widely used for passing the message. In order to achieve security there must be some mechanism to protect the data against unauthorized access. A lossless data hiding scheme is proposed in this paper which has a higher embedding capacity than other schemes. Unlike other schemes that are used for embedding fixed amount of data, the proposed data hiding method is block based approach and it uses a variable data embedding in different blocks which reduces the chances of distortion and increases the hiding capacity of the image. When the data is recovered the original image can be restored without any distortion. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed solution can significantly support the data hiding problem. We achieved good Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) while hiding large amount of data into smoother regions

The Role of Mediodorsal Thalamus in Temporal Differentiation of Reward-Guided Actions

The mediodorsal thalamus (MD) is a crucial component of the neural network involved in the learning and generation of goal-directed actions. A series of experiments reported here examined the contributions of MD to the temporal differentiation of reward-guided actions. In Experiment 1, we trained rats on a discrete-trial, fixed-criterion temporal differentiation task, in which only lever presses exceeding a threshold duration value were rewarded. Pre-training MD lesions impaired temporal differentiation of action duration, by increasing the dispersion of the duration distribution. Post-training MD lesions also impaired differentiation, but by reducing the average emitted press durations, thus shifting the distribution without increasing the dispersion. In Experiment 2, we trained rats to space their lever pressing above criterion inter-press-intervals in order to earn rewards. Both pre-training and post-training MD lesions impaired the differentiation of inter-press-intervals. These results show that MD plays an important role in the acquisition and expression of action differentiation

Correlation of Serum Zinc, Alkaline phosphatase and Ascorbic acid levels in Diabetes Mellitus

Introduction:Diabetes mellitus is a dangerous disease with complications and prevalence of mortality accounting for at least 10% of total health care A few published reports of both in vitro and in vivo studies on the interactions among Zinc (Zn), Alkaline- phosphatase (AP) enzyme activity, Ascorbic acid (AA) and glucose drew attention to their alterations in diabetic statesThe present work was aimed at evaluating the serum Zinc, Alkaline phosphatase and Ascorbic acid levels in Diabetes Mellitus and to statistically correlate the serum values of blood glucose with serum zinc, alkaline phosphatase [ALP] & Ascorbic acid [AA] for finding significance which could help in clinical outcome. Methods:  The sample size taken was 94 having both males and females of 22-85 years of age. The study group was divided into the following six categories. Group A: - Control group of 20 normal subjects in the age group of 22-70 years,      Group B: -14 IDDM without complication subject in the age group of 22-43 years.Group C: -20 IDDM with nephropathy subject in the age group of 41-85 years. Group D: - 20 NIDDM without complication subject in age group of 37-72 years.Group E:-10 NIDDM with nephropathy subject in age group of 45-65 years.Group F:-10 NIDDM with retinopathy subject in age group of 49-66 years. Some parameters were taken from each individual of this study like estimation of blood glucose [fasting and post prandial] by Asatoor and King method, determination of serum Zn was carried out using atomic absorption spectrophotometry, Serum alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity was determined by the method of King and Armstrong as modified by Kind and King, plasma ascorbic acid is determined using formulae Results:The decrease in serum AA levels and the increase in serum DHA were highly significant. However, no correlations could be demonstrated statistically among the above said parameters in healthy and diabetic subjects.. It is being speculated that the raised serum AP activity may be due to the de-inhibition of activity by lowered serum AA concentrations. Serum Alkaline Phosphatase activity is eliminated in diabetics. It is an indicator of liver function that may be hampered in long term in diabetics. Serum Ascorbic acid is an antioxidant and its levels are decreased in diabetics. Its values can be assayed for monitoring oxidative reaction in diabetics. The estimation of serum zinc is not needed as there is no statistical difference. The need for right eating, exercise and right thinking needs to be stressed, particularly for diabetics. Keywords: NSAIDs, severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs), cutaneous adverse drug reactions (CADRs), stevens johnson syndrome (SJS), fixed drug eruptions (FDEs), fixed dose combination (FDC), over the counter (OTC

Minimal Intubating Dose of Succinylcholine: A Comparative Study of 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6 mg/kg Dose

Muscle relaxants are integral part of modern balanced anesthesia and succinylcholine, a depolarizing drug, is in use despite its adverse effects. The excellent intubating condition, fastest onset and shortest duration of action make it an excellent choice for anesthesiologists. The conventional dose of 1.5-2 mg/kg is commonly used for obtaining relaxation for intubation. This study was conducted with much smaller dose of succinylcholine as 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6 mg/kg to evaluate the acceptable intubating dose at 60 seconds, which was unlikely to have any untoward/side effects

Correlation of Body Age with anthropometric parameters in students

Obesity is becoming a pandemic these days. People are overweight and are losing the joy of self control. Lack of exercise, poor dietary habits lead to hypertension and diabetes mellitus. It is essential to make students aware of their faulty habits so they may correct it at an early age. We analyzed the BMI, Body age, Visceral Fat, Total and subcutaneous fat using an OMRON Machine by bioelectrical impedance for 52 students. About 60% of students whose body age was more than their actual age were counseled to eat rightly and exercise regularly