Telemedicine in a Tertiary Care Hospital in South India- a Thirteen Year Review

Sri Ramachandra Hospital’s telemedicine centre located in Chennai, South India, has been providing telemedicine services since 2001. This centre has grown in its use from providing tele-consultation to the three sub-centres of the hospital to expanding its reach to 19 rural centres and six hospitals. While in the initial years ISDN lines were predominantly used, the scope of practice widened to include rural areas with VSAT connectivity which was provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation. Today most of the tele-consultations are via IP connectivity. A hybrid model of using both store and forward (asynchronous) as well as real time (synchronous) tele-consultations and evaluations is practiced. Since November 2001 until December 2014, 21,565 tele-consultations were provided, wherein, 80% of the consultations were in super specialties like endocrinology, dermatology, neurology and nephrology. Further, tele-technology was used to strengthen Continuing Medical Education (CME) and so far 1900 CME programmes have been conducted. In 2009, CMEs and tele-consultations were extended to countries of the African Union through the Pan-African Network provided by the Government of India. The uniqueness of this centre lies in its scope of practice with respect to its revenue model, doctor-to-doctor consultation, and involvement in disaster management. Not only is the telemedicine centre used for clinical applications but also for continuing education and research. This article describes the functioning and activities of the Sri Ramachandra Telemedicine centre

A STUDY ON HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT A CHALLENGING IN INDIA

Human Resource Management used to be considered as other conventional administrative jobs. But over a period of time, it has evolved as a strategic function to improve working environment, plan out human resources needs and strike a balance between the organization and employers in order to increase organizational productivity and meet organizational goals. Not to exaggerate but in today’s highly competitive world it has gradually become one of the most important functions of an organization. HR is a product of the human relations movement of the early 20th century, when researchers began documenting ways of creating business value through the strategic management of the workforce. The function was initially dominated by transactional work, such as payroll and benefits administration, but due to globalization, company consolidation, technological advancement, and further research, HR now focuses on strategic initiatives like mergers and acquisitions, talent management, succession planning, industrial and labor relations, and diversity and inclusion. This paper considers some of the key issues and challenges in human resource management in the Indian context

Antiproliferative effects of Vanilla planifolia leaf extract against breast cancer MCF-7 cells

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer disease among females in India and worldwide. This needs a critical research for finding the drugs to treat breast cancer with less side effects. The aim of the present study is to reveal the anti-proliferative effects of vanilla extract against MCF-7 cells.Methods: To reveal anti proliferative effects of vanilla leaf extract, MTT assay, cell cycle analysis and DNA fragmentation assay was performed as per standard protocols.Results: MTT assay showed decrease in cell viability with increase of dose of extract and revealed IC50 value at 31.2µg/ml. DNA fragmentation was seen in extract treated cells.Conclusions: The results of the present study confirm the antiproliferative property of vanilla leaf extract in MCF-7 cells. This study results conclude vanilla leaf extract as an effective plant source medicament for treating breast cancer

A Study on the Revenue Generation Trend of Thiruvallur and Thiruttani Taluks (Viz., Thiruppasur, Siruvanoor, Thiruvallur and Agoor and Pattabiramapuram Villages of Thiruttani) of Tamil Nadu+

Tamilnadu is one of the economically developed states in India which has 32 districts taluks in hundreds and villages in thousands But lots of studies on Tamilnadu s regional development have found a wide disparity in economic development across the state The North part of Tamilnadu is a comparatively backward region in general and the districts like Dharmapuri Villupuram Tiruvannamalai and Thiruvallur in particular As a result it is of special importance and essential to review the rural local bodies finances with reference to backward district in general and Thiruvellur district in particular in the wake of 73rd constitutional amendmen

Blockchain System for Secure and Efficient UAV-to-Vehicle Communication in Smart Cities

In a smart city environment, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) enables the vehicle to generate and communicate messages for safety applications. There exists a challenge where the integrity of the message needs to be verified before passing it on to other vehicles. There should be a provision to motivate the honest vehicles who are reporting the true event messages. To achieve this, traffic regulations and event detections can be linked with blockchain technology. Any vehicle violating traffic rules will be issued with a penalty by executing the smart contract. In case any accident occurs, the vehicle nearby to the spot can immediately send the event message to Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). It will check for its credibility and proceed with rewards. The authenticity of the vehicle inside the smart city area is verified by registering itself with UAVs deployed near the city entrance. This is enabled to reduce the participation of unauthorized vehicles inside the city zone. The Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA256) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA-192) are used for communication. The result of computation time for certificate generation and vehicles involvement rate is presented

Woven design data transmission using TTL logic for 128 hooks electronic cardless jacquard

A new electronic cardless handloom weaving apparatus which is an alternate to mechanical jacquard has been developed in order to improve the productivity and to reduce the occupational stress of the handloom weaver. The main objective of this development is to retain the features of the handloom with comfortable weaving and reduced laborious work. This development is based on embedded system to control the warp yarn vertical movement. The conventional punched cards are replaced by multimedia memory card file system. The shedding effect is programmatically controlled through miniature stepper motors. The new apparatus is found to be highly versatile for introducing variety of weaving patterns

A Study on Spiritual Intelligence of High School Teachers in Puducherry Region, India

The researcher made an attempt to study the spiritual intelligence of high school teachers in Puducherry, India. For this purpose, it was selected a sample of 122 high school teachers from this region, by using the simple random sampling technique. For measuring their spiritual intelligence, the tools constructed by Roquiya Zainuddin and Ms Anjum Ahmed were used. Mean, SD, ‘t’ test, Anova, Post-hoc Tukey test and Pearson’s product moment correlation statistical techniques were used for the analysis of data. This analysis indicated significant differences in spiritual intelligence in terms of age, gender, marital status and educational qualification, and not in the case of other sub-variables. Further good relationships were observed between the spiritual intelligence as a whole and its dimensions, which were found to be positive and significant at 0.01 level

Network Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease - A Computational Modeling Study

<p>Electrical stimulation of the sub-cortical regions (basal ganglia) of the brain, also known as deep brain stimulation (DBS), is an effective treatment technique for neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and essential tremor. Chronic high frequency stimulation in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or globus pallidus interna (GPi) reduces motor symptoms such as bradykinesia and tremor in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the therapeutic mechanisms of DBS are not fully understood despite its clinical benefits. We developed a biophysical network model comprising of the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic circuit representing the healthy and parkinsonian rat brain. The network properties of the model were validated by comparing the responses evoked in different basal ganglia (BG) nuclei by cortical (CTX) stimulation to published experimental results. The key emergent property of the validated model was generation of beta oscillations in the CTX and STN-GPe network (independent of synaptic inputs) during PD and propagation of that oscillatory activity to the output nucleus of the BG (GPi). Consistent with their putative pathological role, beta oscillations in the model BG neurons were exaggerated in the parkinsonian compared to the healthy condition. We used the validated model to quantify the effectiveness of STN DBS at different frequencies in suppressing pathological beta oscillations in GPe. STN DBS frequencies less than 40 Hz were ineffective in suppressing GPe beta band power. GPe beta band power decreased gradually for stimulus frequencies between 50 Hz and 135 Hz, and saturated at frequencies higher than 135 Hz. High frequency (HF) STN DBS produced an increased excitatory response in a large number of GPe neurons and a subsequent reduction in pathological oscillatory activity. Further, HF STN DBS suppressed pathological oscillations in GPi both by exciting and inhibiting the firing in GPi neurons, and the number of GPi neurons affected was greater for HF stimulation than low frequency stimulation. Therefore, therapeutic HF STN DBS effectively suppresses pathological oscillations by influencing the activity of a greater proportion of neurons in the output nucleus of the BG.</p>Thesi