Named Entity Recognizer for Telugu language using Hybrid approach

The main goal of Named Entity Recognition (NER) is to classify all Named Entities (NE) in a document into predefined classes like Person name, Location name, Organization name and Miscellaneous. This paper outlines Named Entity Recognizer using hybrid approach i.e., combination of Rule based approach and one of the Machine learning technique i.e, Conditional Random Field (CRF). In Rule based approach we have prepared Gazetteer lists for names of persons, locations and organizations; some suffix and prefix features and dictionary consisting 350266 words to recognize the category of named entities. If ambiguity is rised while we are using Rule based approach, we use Machine learning technique i.e., CRF in order to improve the accuracy

Chromatographic estimation of maturity based phytochemical profiling of Ipomoea mauritiana

Collection of herbs at right maturity is one of such parameter which affect afficacy of medicinal plants. Standard reference markers used in quality control of herbal drugs mostly authenticate identity and not efficacy. In order to derive bioactive markers, knowledge regarding appropriate collection time for each herb is essential. Traditional medical knowledge is bioactivity-oriented and informs about best time of collection for certain medicinal species, as observed in case of Ipomoea mauritiana Jacq. (Vidari–Sanskrit). Only mature (bigger size) tubers of Ipomoea mauritiana are used by Traditional Medical Practitioners (TMP) for preparing galactagogues and immunomodulatory herbal medicines (Rasayan).Microscopy of transverse sections revealed structural variation between mature and immature tubers and girth of tubers determine the maturity of plant, the difference in phytochemical profiles of mature and immature tubers was observed.Variation in phytoconstituents of mature and immature tubers was confirmed through proximate analysis, phytochemical screening, qualitative HPLC and HPTLC analysis revealed the variation in phytoconstituents in mature and immature tubers.Keywords: Microscopy, HPLC, HPTLC, proximate analysis, phytochemical screening

Study on the efficacy of ceftriaxone versus azithromycin for the treatment of uncomplicated enteric fever among the patients admitted in a tertiary level hospital

Background: Typhoid fever is a severe debilitating and potentially life threating illness. In Bangladesh, typhoid fever is a round the year problem which sometimes take epidemic proportions. The reasons behind such occurrences are unsafe water supply, defective sewage system and unhygienic food handling practice. This study aimed to compare the efficacy of ceftriaxone and azithromycin in the treatment of uncomplicated enteric fever.Methods: An observational study was conducted at the department of pharmacology in Dhaka medical college, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Data were collected from blood culture positive patients for Salmonella typhi and Salmonella paratyphi, who admitted in the Dhaka medical college and hospital, Dhaka during the period of July 2015 to June 2016. Data was collected by using a structured questioner, face to face interview, physical examination and investigation reports. Patients were hospitalized during the entire treatment period and at admission evaluation was made by history and physical examination in a structured format. Subjects ware asked regarding changes in symptoms and possible adverse effects of the study drugs. All patients were asked to return two weeks after completion of treatment for follow up. Blood culture of Salmonella typhi or Salmonella paratyphi were done in all cases. Total 91 patients were culture positive for either S. typhi or S. paratyphi which were finally studied.Results: During the study period out of 91 patients, 51 were receiving ceftriaxone and 40 were receiving azithromycin. Clinical cure was achieved in 46 patients (90%) of ceftriaxone group and in 31 patients (78%) in the azithromycin group. There were no significant differences of clinical cure between both treatment groups (p>0.05). Mean fever clearance time in ceftriaxone group was 3±1.4 days and was 4±1.6 days for azithromycin group. Difference in fever clearance time was statistically significant (p<0.05). No clinical relapses were detected in any study subject. No major side effects of both drugs occurred in any subject.Conclusions: These results indicated that both ceftriaxone and azithromycin were effective against enteric fever caused by sensitive organisms and multi drug resistant S. typhi and S. paratyphi. It is concluded that ceftriaxone is more effective and can be a convenient alternative for the treatment of enteric fever, especially in developing countries like us where medical resources are scarce

Part-Of-Speech Tagging Of Urdu in Limited Resources Scenario

We address the problem of Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging of Urdu. POS tagging is the process of assigning a part-of-speech or lexical class marker to each word in the given text. Tagging for natural languages is similar to tokenization and lexical analysis for computer languages, except that we encounter ambiguities which are to be resolved. It plays a fundamental role in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications such as word sense disambiguation, parsing, name entity recognition and chunking. POS tagging, particularly plays very important role in processing free-word-order languages because such languages have relatively complex morphological structure. Urdu is a morphologically rich language. Forms of the verb, as well as case, gender, and number are expressed by the morphology. It shares its morphology, phonology and grammatical structures with Hindi. It shares its vocabulary with Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Turkish and Pashto languages. Urdu is written using the Perso-Arabic script. POS tagging of Urdu is a necessary component for most NLP applications of Urdu. Development of an Urdu POS tagger will influence several pipelined modules of natural language understanding system, including machine translation; partial parsing and word sense disambiguation. Our objective is to develop a robust POS tagger for Urdu. We have worked on the automatic annotation of part-of-speech for Urdu. We have defined a tag-set for Urdu. We manually annotated a corpus of 10,000 sentences. We have used different machine learning methods, namely Hidden Markov Model (HMM), Maximum Entropy Model (ME) and Conditional Random Field (CRF). Further, to deal with a small-annotated corpus, we explored the use of semi-supervised learning by using an additional un-annotated corpus. We also explored the use of a dictionary to provide to us all possible POS labeling for a given word. Since Urdu is morphologically productive. Hence we augmented Hidden Markov Model, Maximum Entropy Model and Conditional Random Field with morphological features, word suffixes and POS categories of words to develop robust POS tagger for Urdu in the limited resources scenario

Rule Based Syntax Analyser for Telugu Poems

Natural language processing concerns about interpretation of language between human and machine such a way that machine can understand human language and communicate with a human so that human can understand. Challenging topics in this field is processing the Indian languages . The objective is to reduce human effort and time taken to perform tasks , improve the throughput and quality of a service. Chandhassu is a basic information to know whether a given poem is syntactically correct or not .Some poems are meaning full even though they doesn’t follow Chandhassu but those are not good when listening and reading .Nowadays so many peoples are writing poetry but those poems are not popular as much as ancient poets due to the lack of knowledge about Chandhassu and vyakaranamu. Proposed system is help full to check whether a given poem is syntactically correct or not. This system can be developed based on predefined rules for each type of Chandhassu .In Sanskrit Chandhassu types are called vruthas, some vruthas are adapted to write telugu poetry, Vruthas based on number of letters. In telugu Chandhassu types are called jaathulu and upajaathulu . these are dependent on number of ganalu. And also it checks whether poem follows yathi and prasa properties . Poetry can be useful to represent large amount of information in a small and structured format such a way that it can be easy to remember. Main applications of Chandasu is to write a poems, songs, prabhandas (collection of poems), dwipada (poems that follow a typical pattern), Sataka (collection of 100 poems) etc. By using poetry we can able to effectively represent sthayi bhavalu (symptoms) . It is helpful to represent science of Chandhassu ,vyakarana ,alnkara ,sahithyamu . Poetry is also used to represent dictionaries , medicine ,math’s , testing of vasthu ,pearls ,authentication purpose in data transition

Nutritional status vis-a-vis iodine deficiency in children of "Save Our Soul"children’s village in rural Varanasi: a micro-level study

Background: There is paucity of data with regard to the Iodine deficiency in an organized sector like SOS children’s village which is an independent, non-governmental, social development organization located in urban Varanasi. Uttar Pradesh is one of the endemic states for goiter. It is expected that similar situation of goiter may prevail in children as well. It is a matter of concern that micro nutrient deficiency and under-nutrition may exist side by side. The objectives of the study were to assess nutritional status and find out the extent of Iodine deficiency in the study subjects, to find out the association between under nutrition and Iodine deficiency and to find out the Iodine content of salt used for cooking in the family.Methods: 118 children of age group 6 to 15 years, from a Non-Governmental Organization (Save Our Soul) in Rural Varanasi constituted materials of the study. Consent from the director of the institution and assent from the individual children was taken prior to examination. All the subjects were examined clinically for the Presence of Goiter. They were subjected to weight and height recording following standard technique. Salt samples from the houses were tested by spot Iodine detection kit.Results: In case of 72.6% female and 91.3% male subjects, BMI for age was <100% of the respective reference values; in all 76.3% subjects belonged to this category. Presence of Goiter among male children was 34.7% and among female children it was 22.2% and overall it was 24.6%. Significant association was observed between nutritional status and iodine deficiency (p<0.05). In 37.5% of salt samples, iodine content was 7 ppm and rest 62.5% shows iodine content 15ppm.Conclusions: Nutritional status of the children under reference was far from being satisfactory. High prevalence of Goiter is matter of serious concern. Iodized salt consumption in the houses was up to the mark but Iodine content of the salt samples from houses was not satisfactory

Parental supply of alcohol in childhood and risky drinking in adolescence: Systematic review and meta-analysis

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Whether parental supply of alcohol affects the likelihood of later adolescent risky drinking remains unclear. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize findings from longitudinal studies investigating this association. We searched eight electronic databases up to 10 September 2016 for relevant terms and included only original English language peer-reviewed journal articles with a prospective design. Two reviewers independently screened articles, extracted data and assessed risk of bias. Seven articles met inclusion criteria, six of which used analytic methods allowing for meta-analysis. In all seven studies, the follow-up period was ≥12 months and attrition ranged from 3% to 15%. Parental supply of alcohol was associated with subsequent risky drinking (odds ratio = 2.00, 95% confidence interval = 1.72, 2.32); however, there was substantial risk of confounding bias and publication bias. In all studies, measurement of exposure was problematic given the lack of distinction between parental supply of sips of alcohol versus whole drinks. In conclusion, parental supply of alcohol in childhood is associated with an increased likelihood of risky drinking later in adolescence. However, methodological limitations preclude a causal inference. More robust longitudinal studies are needed, with particular attention to distinguishing sips from whole drinks, measurement of likely confounders, and multivariable adjustment

Milt quality determination of a critically endangered fish, olive barb (Puntius sarana, Ham.) in Bangladesh

The present study was aimed to evaluate the characteristics of the olive barb sperm. Milt was collected fortnightly from 49 male fish (mean weight 90.8 g and length 18.64 cm) from April to July in 2008. In the olive barb ejaculated milt, volume (µl/g), motility (%), duration of motility (s), concentration (x 10 super(10)/ml) and pH values were found to be 6.06±0.32, 88.27±0.71, 171.41±7.41, 5.16±0.05 and 7.75±0.04, respectively. Milt volume was significantly (P<0.05) correlated with sperm concentration. Milt volume, sperm concentration, motility and duration of motility significantly varied (P<0.05) during spawning season

Patient-reported experience is associated with higher future revenue and lower costs of hospitals

BACKGROUND: Despite the established positive association between patient experience and patient volume, the relationship between patient experience and the financial performance of hospitals has not been studied thoroughly. METHODS: To investigate this relationship, we used longitudinal data from 132 Swiss acute-care hospitals from 2016 to 2019 to examine the associations between patient experience and the proportion of elective patients, revenue, costs, and profits of hospitals. To account for a potential time lag effect, we utilized annual patient experience data and employed multilevel mixed-effects regression modeling to investigate its association with the aforementioned financial performance indicators for the following year. RESULTS: Data for private and public hospitals were analyzed both separately and in combination, to account for the different proportions of elective patients in these types of hospitals. The resulting mixed models, revealed that for each year studied, the previous year's patient experience was positively associated with the current year's proportion of elective patients (β = 0.09, p = 0.004, all hospitals) and revenue (β = 1789.83, p = 0.037, private hospitals only), and negatively associated with costs (β =  - 1191.13, p = 0.017, all hospitals); but not significantly associated with future profits (β = 629.12, p = 0.240, all hospitals). CONCLUSIONS: This analysis showed that better patient experience is associated with a higher proportion of elective patients, greater revenue, and lower costs. Our findings may assist hospital managers and regulators in identifying strategies to increase revenue and reduce costs