Editorial

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Knowledge Management Portal for Retaining Organizational Critical Knowledge

Knowledge Management (KM) is widely being accepted by many corporations. Large corporations like Siemens and Petronas have implemented their projects earlier realizing the importance of it. Main reason of implementing KM is it can retain & improve knowledge and skill in the organization. By implementing KM, it can help companies make better products in term of innovation and subsequently they can compete better in market (sustainability). This report discusses the background of KM and some success story about how companies have benefited fiom the project. The report also discusses how KM portal can be implemented in SMT Technologies (SMTT) with the belief of KM implementation can help the organization to retain critical knowledge/skill. This will help SMTT to overcome the problem of high rate of employee turnover. The portal is well accepted by the organization and will be implemented to manage the organization's knowledge

Visual Speech Recognition using Histogram of Oriented Displacements

Lip reading is the recognition of spoken words from the visual information of lips. It has been of considerable interest in the Computer Vision and Speech Recognition communities to automate this process using computer algorithms. In this thesis, we have developed a novel method involving describing visual features using fixed length descriptors called Histogram of Oriented Displacements to which we apply Support Vector Machines for recognition of spoken words. Using this method on the CUAVE database we have achieved a recognition rate of 81%

An anomaly-based intrusion detection system based on artificial immune system (AIS) techniques

Two of the major approaches to intrusion detection are anomaly-based detection and signature-based detection. Anomaly-based approaches have the potential for detecting zero-day and other new forms of attacks. Despite this capability, anomaly-based approaches are comparatively less widely used when compared to signature-based detection approaches. Higher computational overhead, higher false positive rates, and lower detection rates are the major reasons for the same. This research has tried to mitigate this problem by using techniques from an area called the Artificial Immune Systems (AIS). AIS is a collusion of immunology, computer science and engineering and tries to apply a number of techniques followed by the human immune system in the field of computing. An AIS-based technique called negative selection is used. Existing implementations of negative selection algorithms have a polynomial worst-case run time for classification, resulting in huge computational overhead and limited practicality. This research implements a theoretical concept and achieves linear classification time. The results from the implementation are compared with that of existing Intrusion Detection Systems

UNRAVELING THE POTENTIAL PHYTOCHEMICAL COMPOUNDS OF GYMNEMA SYLVESTRE THROUGH GC-MS STUDY

Objective: To profile the chemical composition of ethanolic extract of Gymnema sylvestre through Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry technique.Methods: The chemical compositions of the plant leaf extracts of G. sylvestre were investigated using Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectroscopy (Scion 436-GC Bruker model coupled with a Triple, quadruple mass spectrophotometer) and NIST-MS library.Results: GC-MS analysis of leaf extracts revealed the existence of Terpenes, alcohols, fatty acids, amine and sterols. The highest % Peak area is hexadecanoic acid, α-Santoline alcohol, recorded the next highest % peak area of 9.05. Major of the compounds belongs to terpeneoid group, namely 6-Octen-1-ol, 3,7-dimethyl, Isophytol, Squalene, Nerolidol, β-Amyrin and Cedrene-V6 which constitutes 30.7% of the peak area. The presence of α-Tocopherol-β-D-mannoside and Vitamin E also identified through this study.Conclusion: From the above finding we can interpret that the G. sylvestre contained a considerable amount of phytoconstituents especially terpenoids. In future, this study will be helpful for the quantitative analysis of phytochemicals as well as formulation studies.Â

Identifying drivers of sustainability initiatives in manufacturing organizations—an exploratory study from the Indian cement industry

In the current business scenario, firms need to increasingly focus on environmental sustainability issues, as a result of stricter regulatory enforcements that lay emphasis on cleaner production, and also due to growing pressures from the stakeholders. This paper aims at understanding the organizational factors that contribute towards the successful implementation of sustainability initiatives in a process industry setup. A qualitative case study from a major cement manufacturing firm located in India helps us to identify the key drivers in the context of sustainability. The case findings reveal that organizational culture and practices followed lead to the emergence of innovative and economically viable solutions, which help in achieving the sustainability targets. These exploratory results obtained can be further analysed in the backdrop of other industries

A study on the clinical profile of children with snake envenomation in a tertiary referral centre at Dharmapuri, Tamilnadu, India

Background: Snake envenomation is a well-known cause of morbidity and mortality in rural India. In the year 2009, WHO included snake bite in the list of neglected diseases.Methods: This study was conducted in children admitted with snake bite in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in the year 2015. Their demographic details, site of bite, arrival time, 20Minutes Whole Blood Cloting Time, Clinical signs and symptoms, complications and outcome were measured.Results: The male: female ratio was 2.57:1. Peak age group affected was 6 to 12 years old children. Lower limbs were commonly bitten. 65% of children arrived in the hospital between 6 and 24 hours after the bite. Pain and swelling at the site of bite were the most common symptom of envenomation. 80% of envenomation was found to be hematotoxic, 11% of envenomation was neurotoxic and 68% of children were successfully treated with 10 vials of ASV. There was only one death during the study period.Conclusion: This study reiterates the need for a more rapid transport and administration of ASV in the transit period. Other important observations in the study are that the number of neurotoxic snake bites is only 9% and the presence of allergic reactions to ASV in 6% of children. The development of monovalent ASV specific to the snake species may be considered, which will be associated with less anaphylaxis and more effective neutralisation of venom

Image Segmentation

Image segmentation is one of the important and useful techniques in medical image processing. As the image segmentation technique results robust and high degree of accuracy, it is very much useful for the analysis of different image modalities, such as computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the medical field. CT imaging gives more importance than MRI because of its wider availability, inexpensive and sensitiveness. In most cases, CT offers information needed to make decisions during urgent situations

Biogenic silver nanoparticles mediated by Broussonetia papyrifera: anticancer and antimicrobial activity against pathogenic organisms

Objective: To evaluate the potential aspects of biologically synthesized silver nanoparticles mediated by Broussonetia papyrifera against the human pathogens. The same is acknowledged to have high efficiency in the field of Pharmaceutical industry.Methods: The 1Mm of AgNO3 is prepared and mixed with appropriate volume of plant extract and reaction volume was made up to 100 ml. the physical   characterization of AgNPs was done. The anti-microbial activity was done against dread pathogens. Cytotoxic activity of the AgNPs was investigated against breast and lung cancer cell lines.Results: The FESEM and EDAX of the microscopic level showed the particle surface measurements around 44 nm to 50 nm. The XRD investigations are being an evidence for the crystalline structure of the AgNPs with 30 nm. The bacterial pathogen Rhodococcus rhodochrous showed the maximum zone of inhibition (11.8±0.447). The A549 human lung cancer cell line and MCF-7 human breast cancer cell line were tested against the toxicity of AgNPs. The toxicity of AgNPs was valued and corresponding IC50 for Lung cancer (A549) is 12.95± 0.05 µg/mL and Breast cancer (MCF-7) is 10.75± 0.05 µg/mL respectively.Conclusion: The present research denotes that biomolecules derived AgNPs have larger impact as antimicrobials in the biomedical field. Since the aggressive chemicals are not involved AgNPs production, these bio-substances can of alternative medicine to resistant once. The in-vitro experiments exhibits the therapeutic effect of this AgNPs based on the ambient concentration on the process.Â

Determination of the chromospheric quiet network element area index and its variation during 2008-2011

Generally it has been considered that the plages and sunspots are the main contributors to the solar irradiance. There are small scale structures on the sun with intermediate magnetic fields that could also contribute to the solar irradiance. It has not yet been quantified how much of these small scale structures contribute to the solar irradiance and how much it varies over the solar cycle. In this paper, we used Ca II K images obtained from the telescope installed at Kodaikanal observatory. We report a method to separate the network elements from the background structure and plage regions. We compute the changes in the network element area index during the minimum phase of solar cycle and part of the ascending phase of cycle 24. The measured area occupied by the network elements is about 30% and plages less than 1% of the solar disk during the observation period from February 2008-2011. During the extended period of minimum activity it is observed that the network element area index decreases by about 7% compared to the area occupied by the network elements in 2008. A long term study of network element area index is required to understand the variations over the solar cycle.Comment: 12 pages, 9 Figures, Accepted for publication in RA