Do Alternative Therapies Have a Role in Autism?

Interventions considered to be branches of Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) for autism are on the rise. Many new treatments have emerged & traditional beliefs of Ayurveda, Yoga, Behavioral therapy, Speech therapy and Homoeopathy have gained popularity and advocacy among parents. It is imperative that data supporting new treatments should be scrutinized for scientific study design, clinical safety, and scientific validity, before embarking on them as modes of therapy. Practitioners take care in explaining the rationale behind the various approaches that they practice, it is important to indicate possible limitations too during the initial clinical examination and interactive session. Clinicians must remember that parents may have different beliefs regarding the effectiveness of treatment since their information is derived more from the ‘hear-say’ route when they compare benefits/effects of CAM therapies on other children and often underestimate differential tolerance for treatment risks. It is thus significant that practitioners do not assume a "don't ask, don't tell" posture. The scientific validation and support for many interventions is incomplete and very different from the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement. In this article, we discuss the various modes of CAM and their utilities and limitations in relation to autism

Assessment of Metabolic Parameters For Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism is a brain development disorder that first appears during infancy or childhood, and generally follows a steady course without remission. Impairments result from maturation-related changes in various systems of the brain. Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, and severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior. The reported incidence of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has increased markedly over the past decade. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has recently estimated the prevalence of ASDs in the United States at approximately 5.6 per 1000 (1 of 155 to 1 of 160) children. Several metabolic defects, such as phenylketonuria, are associated with autistic symptoms. In deciding upon the appropriate evaluation scheme a clinician must consider a host of different factors. The guidelines in this article have been developed to assist the clinician in the consideration of these factors

Effect of Process Variables on High-Tension Separation - A Statistical Approach

The minerals like ilmenite, rutile and leucoxene behave as conducting minerals where as zircon, sillimanite, garnet and monazite behave as non-conducting minerals when high potential difference is applied. In a mineral processing plants effective separation of the conducting minerals depends on the efficiency of electrostatic separators. The commercial equipment are designed in an electro dynamic and electrostatic operating conditions depending on the process requirement and several stages of such operations are necessary to produce high pure mineral products with good recovery. The separation process becomes relatively more dcult when the particle size distribution is in wider ranging from very fine to coarser along with coated non-conducting minerals. The present study deals with the use of high-tension separa-tor in processing heavy minerals for recovery of conducting minerals. The process variables have been optimized with the help of statistical design of exper-iments and co-relations have been developed between the operating variables of high-tension separator, yield and the grade of conducting minerals recovered

Fault diagnosis in a five-level multilevel inverter using an artificial neural network approach

Introduction. Cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverters (CHB-MLI) are becoming increasingly used in applications such as distribution systems, electrical traction systems, high voltage direct conversion systems, and many others. Despite the fact that multilevel inverters contain a large number of control switches, detecting a malfunction takes a significant amount of time. In the fault switch configurations diode included for freewheeling operation during open-fault condition. During short circuit fault conditions are carried out by the fuse, which can reveal the freewheeling current direction. The fault category can be identified independently and also failure of power switches harmed by the functioning and reliability of CHB-MLI. This paper investigates the effects and performance of open and short switching faults of multilevel inverters. Output voltage characteristics of 5 level MLI are frequently determined from distinctive switch faults with modulation index value of 0.85 is used during simulation analysis. In the simulation experiment for the modulation index value of 0.85, one second open and short circuit faults are created for the place of faulty switch. Fault is identified automatically by means of artificial neural network (ANN) technique using sinusoidal pulse width modulation based on distorted total harmonic distortion (THD) and managed by its own. The novelty of the proposed work consists of a fast Fourier transform (FFT) and ANN to identify faulty switch. Purpose. The proposed architecture is to identify faulty switch during open and short failures, which has to be reduced THD and make the system in reliable operation. Methods. The proposed topology is to be design and evaluate using MATLAB/Simulink platform. Results. Using the FFT and ANN approaches, the normal and faulty conditions of the MLI are explored, and the faulty switch is detected based on voltage changing patterns in the output. Practical value. The proposed topology has been very supportive for implementing non-conventional energy sources based multilevel inverter, which is connected to large demand in grid.Вступ. Каскадні багаторівневі інвертори H-bridge все частіше використовуються в таких пристроях, як розподільні системи, електричні тягові системи, системи прямого перетворення високої напруги та багато інших. Незважаючи на те, що багаторівневі інвертори містять велику кількість перемикачів, що управляють, виявлення несправності займає значний час. У конфігурації аварійного вимикача увімкнено діод для роботи в режимі вільного ходу в умовах обриву несправності. При короткому замиканні аварійні стани виконуються запобіжником, який може визначити напрямок струму вільного ходу. Категорія несправності може бути визначена самостійно, а також відмова силових вимикачів, що порушує функціонування та надійність каскадних багаторівневих інверторів H-bridge. У цій статті досліджуються наслідки та характеристики обривів та коротких замикань багаторівневих інверторів. Характеристики вихідної напруги 5-рівневого інвертору часто визначаються характерними несправностями перемикача, при цьому при аналізі моделювання використовується значення індексу модуляції 0,85. В імітаційному експерименті значення індексу модуляції 0,85 в місці несправного перемикача створюються односекундні обриви і коротке замикання. Несправність ідентифікується автоматично за допомогою методу штучної нейронної мережі з використанням синусоїдальної широтно-імпульсної модуляції на основі спотвореного повного гармонійного спотворення та керується самостійно. Новизна запропонованої роботи полягає у застосуванні швидкого перетворення Фур’є та штучної нейронної мережі для ідентифікації несправного перемикача. Мета. Пропонована архітектура призначена для виявлення несправного комутатора при розмиканні та короткочасних відмовах, що має знизити повне гармонійне спотворення та забезпечити надійну роботу системи. методи. Запропонована топологія має бути спроектована та оцінена з використанням платформи MATLAB/Simulink. Результати. Використовуючи підходи швидкого перетворення Фур’є та штучної нейронної мережі, досліджуються нормальні та несправні стани багаторівневих інверторів, і несправний перемикач виявляється на основі моделей зміни напруги на виході. Практична цінність. Запропонована топологія дуже сприятлива для реалізації нетрадиційних джерел енергії на основі багаторівневого інвертора, пов'язаного з великим попитом у мережі

Effect of Teetering Pulp Density in Floatex Density Separator - A Case Study

The combination of gravity separators like air/wind/wet tables and spirals were used in multistages for the separation of heavier minerals such as monazite, zircon etc. from other minerals such as sillimanite, quartz etc. The introduction of modified commercially available hind-ered settling separators, like floated density/cross flow separators have revolutionized the separation techniques and simplified the earlier complicated process flow sheet. This paper deals with the use of such equipments and some experimental results on separation of fine sillimanite and quartz from the zircon rich fraction which was difficult to separate using conventional gravity concentrators

Isolation of genomic DNA from acetone-dried Aspergillus mycelia

A simple acetone-drying protocol was adopted to replace the lyophilization step while isolating genomic DNA from Aspergillus mycelia. This DNA is suitable for PCR, restriction enzyme digestion and Southern blot analysis with digoxigenin-labeled DNA probes. Acetone drying/ preservation can be a useful method in the molecular analysis of fungal DNA samples

Detection of Ricin in Water Samples using DisposableScreen-printed Electrodes

Ricin is a highly toxic plant toxin, which is extracted from the beans of the castor plant,Ricinus communis. Ricin is thousand times more poisonous than cyanide and thirty times morepotent than nerve gases. The toxin (ricin) could be used to contaminate food or water, causingpanic. Attempts were made for the detection of ricin in water samples by utilising amperometricimmunosensors. Single-use screen-printed electrodes were made using polystyrene and graphite.These electrodes were tested  for  their ability  to detect 1-naphthol which is the product of thereaction between 1-naphthyl phosphate and the enzyme alkaline phosphatase conjugate. Anindirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) system was used to detect ricin. First,ricin antigen was incubated on the screen-printed electrode. This was followed by blocking withBSA and incubation with antibody raised against ricin in rabbit. The last step wass the incubationwith anti-antibody of rabbit conjugated to enzyme alkaline phosphatase. This electrode is insertedin an electrochemical cell containing diethanolamine buffer and a potential of 0.4 V wrt referenceelectrode (Ag/AgCl) was applied  using a potentiostat.  Various experiments were carried out  foroptimising the conditions like substrate concentration, amount of antibody raised against ricin,anti-antibody alkaline phosphatase conjugate, and blocking agents. It was found that the responseof amperometric sensor is proportional to the logarithmic of ricin concentration from 100 ng/mlto 3200 ng/ml.  Using traditional methods, it is possible to detect ricin concentration up to 300ng/ml in 18 h, while with amperometric immunosensor, one can detect ricin as low as 40 ng/mlwithin 90 min. The details of making the screen-printed electrodes, characterisation, optimisationof various conditions for the highest sensitivity have been discussed

Precision in Predicting the Stock Prices –An Empirical Approach to Accuracy in Forecasting

Forecasting the future prices of stock by analyzing the past and current price movements in determining the trend are always areas of interest of chartists who believe in studying the action of the market itself rather than the past and current performances of the company. Stock price prediction has ignited the interest of researchers who strive to develop better predictive models with a fair degree of accuracy. The autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA)model introduced by Box and Jenkins in 1970has been in the limelight in econometrics literature for time series prediction, which has been at the core of explaining many economic and finance phenomena. ARIMA models in the research domain of finance and economics, especially stock markets, have shown efficient capability to generate short-term forecasts and have hence been able to outperform complex structural models in short-term prediction. This paper presents stock price predictive model using the ARIMA model to analyze the sensitivity of such models to different time horizons used in estimation of trends and verifies the validity of such forecasts in terms of their degree of precision. Published historical stock data, on an actively traded public sector bank’s share and historical movements in the banking sector index in which the selected bank is a constituent, obtained from National Stock Exchange(NSE), India and websites of Yahoo finance are used to build and develop stock price forecasts and index movement predictive models. The experiments with dynamic as well as static forecasting methods used revealed that the ARIMA model has a strong potential for short-term prediction and can offer better precision than from long term trend estimates. As a stock price prediction or index movement forecast tool, it can be relied extensively in deciding entry and exit to and from the volatile markets, notwithstanding the fact the risk the investor faces on account of noise or shocks still can be erroneous making the entire prediction irrespective of its degree of precision irrelevant