Item analysis to identify quality multiple choice questions/items in an assessment in Pharmacology of II MBBS students in Guntur Medical College of Andhra Pradesh, India

Background: In medical education, multiple choice questions/Items are the more frequently used assessment tools to assess the knowledge abilities and skills of medical students, for being their objectivity, wide coverage in less time. However only the Quality Items gives a valid and reliable assessment. The quality of an Item is determined by difficulty index (DIF I), Discrimination Index (DI) and Distractor efficiency (DE). Aim of the study was to know the quality of Items in pharmacology by Item analysis and to develop a MCQs bank with quality Items.Methods: The present study was conducted on 150 II MBBS students of Guntur Medical College, AP, India. A class test containing 50 Items with 150 distractors from topic chemotherapy was conducted. Item with the correct choice/response was awarded with one mark and with the wrong choice zero marks, no negative marks. Each test Item was analysed with DIF I, DI and DE and the results were tabulated and tested statistically, with unpaired "t" test.Results: Mean DIF I, DI, DE values with standard deviations in the present study are 44.72+17.63%, 0.30+0.12%, 84.48+24.65 respectively. DIF I of 32 (64%) items was good to excellent range (31%-60%) 9 (18%) Items were easy (>61%) and 9(18%) Items were difficult (>30%). DI of 10 (20%) Items was good (0.15 to 0.24.) 29 (58%) Items were excellent with DI > 0.25 and 11 (22%) Items were poor with DI <0.15. Among 150 distractors, 127 (85%) were functional distractors (FDs) and 23 (15%) were non-functional distractors (NFDs). DE of 33 (66%) items with nil NFDs was 100%, for 12 (24%) Items with one NFD, was 66.6%, for 4 (8%) items with 2 NFDs was 33.3% and for 1 (2%) Item with 3NFDs DE was 0%. When unpaired "t" test was applied to the means of "difficult" and "easy" Items, 96.22+11.33% SD, 51.44+29.31% SD respectively, the p-value obtained was 0.00058, which was highly significant.Conclusions: The study showed that Item analysis is a valid tool to identify quality Items, which assess, the students’ knowledge abilities and discriminate different levels of performance abilities of students effectively

Graph based gene/protein prediction and clustering over uncertain medical databases.

Clustering over protein or gene data is now a popular issue in biomedical databases. In general, large sets of gene tags are clustered using high computation techniques over gene or protein distributed data. Most of the traditional clustering techniques are based on subspace, hierarchical and partitioning feature extraction. Various clustering techniques have been proposed in the literature with different cluster measures, but their performance is limited due to spatial noise and uncertainty. In this paper, an improved graph-based clustering technique is proposed for the generation of efficient gene or protein clusters over uncertain and noisy data. The proposed graph-based visualization can effectively identify different types of genes or proteins along with relational attributes. Experimental results show that the proposed graph model more effectively clusters complex gene or protein data when compared with conventional clustering approaches

Context rank based hierarchical clustering algorithm on medical databases (CRBHCA).

In this paper we propose a method that aims to reduce processing overheads by avoiding the need to choose between natural language processing tools such as part-of-speech taggers and parsers. Moreover, we suggest a structure for the immediate creation of a large-scale, annotated corpus with disease names, which can be applied to train our probabilistic model. In this proposed work, a context rank-based hierarchical clustering method is applied on different datasets relating to colon diseases, leukemia, mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL) and lymphoma medical diseases. An optimal rule-filtering algorithm is applied on these datasets to remove unwanted special characters for gene/protein identification. Finally, experimental results show that our proposed method outperformed existing methods in terms of time and clusters space

Phytochemical screening and evaluation of anti-microbial and anti-oxidant activity of Elettaria cardamom (Cardamom)

The present study deals with the phytochemical screening and evaluation of antibacterial and antioxidant activities from the crude methanol extract of the seeds of cardamom, Elettaria cardamom. Crude methanol extract was investigated for their antibacterial activity against Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC), Listeria monocytogenes,Bacillus pumilus and Escherichia coli. The extract showed maximum zone of inhibition (20.3 mm) against EPEC, however, the antibacterial potential of the extract was slightly lesser against normal E. coli (19 mm). It showed moderate anti-bacterial activity against L. monocytogenes and B. pumilus. Dose-dependent increase in antioxidant activity was also noticed in crude extract as measured by DPPH free radical scavenging assay. Thus, our study reports various phytochemicals in the seeds of cardamom with antioxidant and antibacterial potential

A compressive survey on different image processing techniques to identify the brain tumor.

Medical imaging technology has revolutionized health care over the past three decades, allowing doctors to detect, cure and improve patient outcomes. Medicinal imaging involves pictures - of internal organs, parts, tissues and bones - for therapeutic examination and research purposes. X-ray and CT scanners are the two greatest results of progress in imaging methods supplanting 2D procedures. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an imaging procedure that is utilized in radiology to visualize interior structures of the body and better understand how they work. X-ray provides a 3D image of the body's interior; as well as being critical for tumor discovery, this also enables surgeons to more easily dissect infections or tumors than was possible with older X-beam technology, which provided a 2D image. This paper provides an overview of different systems that can be used for distinguishing and preparing medical images

An efficient face recognition system using local binary pattern.

Facial recognition is a critical and prominent aspect of current research into image processing and computer vision, with particular applications including confront location, confront acknowledgement and outward appearance investigation. A basic advancement towards fruitful facial picture examination is to infer a viable facial portrayal from the first face pictures. Local Binary Patterns (LBP) have recently gained increased attention as an approach for facial depiction. Neighborhood double example (LBP) is a nonparametric descriptor, which proficiently abridges the nearby structures of pictures. In this paper, there will be a complete overview of LBP and an explanation of extentions of that concept. LBP-based facial picture examination is broadly evaluated, while its fruitful expansions (which manage different aspects of facial picture investigation) are additionally featured

Ni-doped Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 single crystal: a potential functional material for thermoelectricity, topological insulator, and optoelectronics

We report the growth of Ni-doped Bi0.5Sb1.35Ni0.15Te3 single crystal via the self-flux method. The crystalline nature of a grown single crystal was confirmed by the X-ray diffraction technique (XRD). Interestingly, the XRD pattern shows a sharp reflections of type of planes, revealing the growth of the crystal in c-direction. The grown single crystal was subjected for measurement of field dependence magnetization at 300 K and temperature-dependent magnetic moment. The electronic transport property of bulk single crystal was also carried out in a wide range of temperatures from 150 to 450 K. Reasonably large electrical conductivity sigma similar to 1584 S/cm at room temperature was observed which shows similar to 400% enhancement in sigma than the electrical conductivity of bare Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 single crystal (400 S/cm at 300 K). This enhanced electrical conductivity results to significant power factor similar to 1.68 x 10(- 3)W/m K(2)at 300K which is 163% larger than that of bare Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 single crystal (6.45 x 10(- 4)W/m K-2). Magnetic properties of a single crystal of Bi0.5Sb1.35Ni0.15Te3 reveal ferromagnetic behavior at 300 K. The photoluminescence (PL) behavior of Bi0.5Sb1.35Ni0.15Te3 single-crystal was also scrutinized. The PL spectra of Bi0.5Sb1.35Ni0.15Te3 single crystal shows the strong red emission peak in the visible region from 600 to 690 nm upon excitation at 375 nm wavelength, which corresponds to the optical bandgap of 2.1 eV

Investigation of Micro-indentation Hardness of Bi2Te3 Based Composite Thermoelectric Materials

We have successfully synthesized Bi0.5Sb1.7Te3+x (x = 0, 0.12, 0.14) composite thermoelectric materials via solid state reaction followed by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). The structural characterization of these materials carried out by X-ray diffraction reveals to be composite phase consisting of Bi2Te3-type phase with small amount of Te and Sb phase. The micro-hardness performed on samples Bi0.5Sb1.7Te3+x(x = 0, 0.12, 0.14) reveals the reduction of VHN with increasing Te concentration as compared to that of single phase state-of-the-art Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 thermoelectric materials

Heterosis for yield and quality traits in rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Twenty F1 hybrids from three CMS lines and eight pollen parents were evaluated to study the heterosis for various yield and quality traits in rice (Oryza sativa L.). The findings suggested that the magnitude of heterosis differed from character to character and cross to cross. Majority of the hybrids recorded desirable heterosis for grain yield. Among the rice hybrids exhibiting high heterosis for grain yield, IR-68897A x Pusa Sugandh-3, IR-58025A x HUR-JM-59221 and IR-58025A x Pusa Sugandh-5 were top performers. The hybrid, IR-68897A x Pusa Sugandh-3 recorded highest yield per plant, and was among the best three performers for traits, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity and number of effective tillers per plant. Thus, IR-68897A x Pusa Sugandh-3 may be considered as the best heterotic combination for yield and yield traits. Among the three high yielding hybrids, IR-58025A x Pusa Sugandh-5 was found to be relatively better performing for majority of the quality traits. Thus, IR-58025A x Pusa Sugandh-5 may be considered as the best cross combination if both yield and quality traits are taken into consideration