CSR and Brand Marketing: A Strategy Alignment for Competitive Advantage

Corporate social responsibility is defined as doing business in a responsible manner that delivers value not only to the organization, but also to all of its stakeholders and the community within which it operates. CSR covers five main areas: environment, community, employee welfare, financial performance and corporate governance. Corporations know that CSR is inextricably linked to their reputations and brand identities. Integrating CSR and brand building efforts without a roadmap, however, can be daunting.The current CSR debate is clear evidence of missed opportunities to leverage CSR in brand-building activities. More money than ever is being invested in CSR and Corporations are making wide ranging organizational changes to support it. Most Corporations are formulating separate budget for their CSR activities and have established CSR departments reporting to the chief executive, publishing CSR reports and developing CSR strategies and plans. However, despite this intense investment activity, results are few and far between. This paper examines inter-dependence of CSR and Brand Marketing; and reviews different models and approaches for integrating CSR and Branding.  It recommends alignment of CSR and brand marketing as aligned strategy for competitive advantage. Keywords: CSR, Brand marketing, Strategy Alignment, Integration, Competitive Advantag

Indian Sign Language Recognition Using Deep Learning Techniques

By automatically translating Indian sign language into English speech, a portable multimedia Indian sign language translation program can help the deaf and/or speaker connect with hearing people. It could act as a translator for those that do not understand sign language, eliminating the need for a mediator and allowing communication to take place in the speaker's native language. As a result, Deaf-Dumb people are denied regular educational opportunities. Uneducated Deaf-Dumb people have a difficult time communicating with members of their culture. We provide an incorporated Android application to help ignorant Deaf-Dumb people fit into society and connect with others. The newly launched program includes a straight forward keyboard translator that really can convert any term from Indian sign language to English. The proposed system is an interactive application program for mobile phones created with application software. The mobile phone is used to photograph Indian sign language gestures, while the operating system performs vision processing tasks and the constructed audio device output signals speech, limiting the need for extra devices and costs. The perceived latency between both the hand signals as well as the translation is reduced by parallel processing. This allows for a very quick translation of finger and hand motions. This is capable of recognizing one-handed sign representations of the numbers 0 through 9. The findings show that the results are highly reproducible, consistent, and accurate

Blood transfusion needs among obstetric patients in a tertiary care hospital: a prospective observational study

Background: Pregnancy possess a special challenge as immune responses in pregnant and non-pregnant states are different. The objectives of this study were to analyze the various indications for blood and blood component transfusion in obstetric patients. To study the prevalence and indications for blood transfusion among obstetric patients. To evaluate the various risk factors among these women. To study the role of antenatal visits in patients requiring blood transfusionMethods: A prospective observational study will be undertaken over a period of one year from July 2018 to June 2019 in Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at SSIMS and RC, Davangere. This study was conducted on pregnant women and immediate postpartum patients (up to 7 days after delivery) admitted in Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and requiring blood and blood component therapy. Statistical analysis will be performed using Chi square test and Student’s t test.Results: During study period out of 5486 patients 543 patients required blood transfusion. The incidence of blood transfusion is 9.89%. The indications for blood and blood product transfusion observed in our study were anemia, obstetric hemorrhage, thrombocytopenia, disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, ruptured ectopic, incomplete abortion, complete abortion and hydatidiform mole. Anemia in pregnancy was the most common indication and was observed in 217 cases (39.96%) followed by postpartum hemorrhage, which was seen in 117 cases (21.54%). The incidence of transfusion reactions was 5.34% in our study.Conclusions: A proper knowledge of blood and blood product transfusion is needed to make it available for people who are actually in need and also to decrease the economic burden. Regular Antenatal checkups should be given more importance in order to maximize the hemoglobin level at the time of delivery and to screen out the high-risk patients. Active management of the third stage of labor is required to minimize the blood loss. Anemia followed by obstetric hemorrhage still persists to be a major cause for blood and blood product transfusion

Adaptive Learning Based Whale Optimization and Convolutional Neural Network Algorithm for Distributed Denial of Service Attack Detection in Software Defined Network Environment

SDNs (Software Defined Networks) have emerged as a game-changing network concept. It can fulfill the ever-increasing needs of future networks and is increasingly being employed in data centres and operator networks. It does, however, confront certain fundamental security concerns, such as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) assaults. To address the aforementioned concerns, the ALWO+CNN method, which combines ALWOs (Adaptive Learning based Whale Optimizations) with CNNs (Convolution Neural Networks), is suggested in this paper. Initially, preprocessing is performed using the KMC (K-Means Clustering) algorithm, which is used to significantly reduce noise data. The preprocessed data is then used in the feature selection process, which is carried out by ALWOs. Its purpose is to pick out important and superfluous characteristics from the dataset. It enhances DDoS classification accuracy by using the best algorithms.  The selected characteristics are then used in the classification step, where CNNs are used to identify and categorize DDoS assaults efficiently. Finally, the ALWO+CNN algorithm is used to leverage the rate and asymmetry properties of the flows in order to detect suspicious flows specified by the detection trigger mechanism. The controller will next take the necessary steps to defend against DDoS assaults. The ALWO+CNN algorithm greatly improves detection accuracy and efficiency, as well as preventing DDoS assaults on SDNs. Based on the experimental results, it was determined that the suggested ALWO+CNN method outperforms current algorithms in terms of better accuracies, precisions, recalls, f-measures, and computational complexities

Obstetric emergencies during the COVID-19 lockdown period: a case series

Obstetric emergencies during COVID-19 pandemic pose an enormous challenge to the concerned obstetrician. Risk stratification during obstetric triage will guide in the initial assessment & planning of further management to reduce maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality rates. As the health system adapts to cope with this pandemic, special attention needs to be given to the several moral and ethical dilemmas that may occur during patient care

Different architectural polymers used in drug/gene delivery

Synthetic polycations have shown promise as gene delivery vehicles but suffer from unacceptable toxicity and low transfection efficiency. In this thesis novel architectures are being explored to increase transfection efficiency, including hydrophobically modified poly(ethylene imine) (PEI), copolymers with thermoresponsive characters and bioresponsive polymers designed to promote cytosolic delivery. The physical properties of weak poryelectrolytes may be tailored via hydrophobic modification to exhibit useful properties under appropriate pH and ionic strength conditions as a sequence of the often inherently competing effects of electrostatics and hydrophobicity. Pulsed-gradient spin-echo NMR (PGSE-NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) have been used to examine the solution conformation and aggregation behavior of a series of hydrophobically modified hyperbranched PEI polymers in aqueous solution, an their interaction with sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS). According PGSE-NMR, branched PEI2K is monodispersed compare to PEI25K, PEI50K and PEI750K samples. Analysis of the SANS data showed that the propensity to form highly elliptical or rod-like aggregated at higher pHs, reflecting both the changes in protonation behavior induced by the hydrophobic modification and an hydrophobic interaction, but that these structures were disrupted with decreasing pH (increasing charge). The physicochemical characterization of a family of copolymers comprising a core of the cationic polymer PEI with differing thermoresponsive poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) grafts has been carried out using PGSE-NMR and SANS. Copolymers with longer chain PNIPAM grafts displayed clear picture for the collapse of grafts with increasing temperature and the associated emergence of an attractive interpolymer interaction. These aspects depend on the number of PNIPAM grafts attached to the PEI core. Even though a collapse in the smaller PNIPAM grafts is observed for the third polymer, could not observe any interpolymer interaction. These facts provide further insight into the association behavior of these copolymers, which is fundamental to developing a full understanding of how they interact with nucleic acids. Bioresponsive polymers designed to promote cytosolic delivery of macromolecular drugs (including proteins and genes) are so far unsuccessful to exhibit their potential in clinical applications. The physicochemical properties of rx)ly(arnidoamine) (PAA) ISA23.HC1 have been studied as a model polymer, in order to understand the mechanism of endosomolyitc polymers with biologically relevant surfaces over the pH range the polymer would encounter during membrane trafficking. Previous work has demonstrated that ISA23.HC1 interacted very strongly with the anionic surface of small globular micelles (SDS), but weak interaction with biologically relevant phospholipid-lyso-PC. This surprising conclusion is elaborated in this thesis for a series of simple membrane mimics studied via EPR using spin-probes dissolved into vesicle and a spin-labelled polymer. Vesicles have been prepared from mixtures of the three most common lipids found in membranes - l,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC), l,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphor-L-serine (sodium salt) (DPPS) and l,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine (DPPE) - in ratios that reflect the composition of plasma, endosomal and lysosoaml membranes. The spectrum arising from the nitroxide spin-probe present in the lipid bilayer provided a measure of the dynamics and polarity of the bilayer. The nitroxide spin- label covalently attached to the polymer gave a complementary measure of the polymer flexibility in the presence of the vesicles. No interaction between the polymer and vesicle surface was detected for any of these membrane mimics, across the entire pH range studied (pH 7.4 to 4.0)