Estimating predictive value of tests without having a Gold Standard: the concept of Etiologic Predictive Value (EPV)

Background: Patients with infectious diseases often require the use of microbiologic diagnostic tests. Predictive value of tests are used to describe the usefulness of a diagnostic test in a specific setting. Sometimes an acceptable Gold standard is lacking making it difficult to evaluate the usefulness of a new diagnostic test. Aims Of Study/project: Describe how predictive value of tests can be calculated despite the absence of an acceptable Gold Standard. Also to describe how to account for asymptomatic carriers. Methods: Mathematical derivation shows that information from a healthy control population can, for most scenarios, be used to calculate predictive value of tests despite the absence of a Gold Standard. Results: Rules for how the usefulness of diagnostic tests can be estimated in the absence of a Gold Standard. The new statistical method considers the influence asymptomatic carriers will have on the diagnostic process. These rules are especially suited for evaluating microbiologic diagnostic tests but can be used also in other scenarios. Conclusions/ Recommendations: The existing Gold Standard should always be challenged when evaluating a new diagnostic test. Etiologic Predictive Value offers an alternative to comparing the new test with a conventional Gold Standard

Comparing the effects of two treatments on two ordinal outcome variables

When evaluating whether the effect of one treatment is larger than that of another the first step in the comparison is to decide what should be understood by the statement that one patient has achieved a greater effect than has another patient. When the outcome variable is quantitative, measured on a ratio scale, absolute or relative effects are the most commonly used effect measures; however, such effects are usually not meaningful for ordinal outcome variables. In order to answer the question whether one of two treatments acts more effectively on one of two outcome variables and the other treatment more efficiently on the other we shall present a method of comparing the treatment effects of patients that is based on pair-wise comparisons between patients in analogy with many non-parametrical methods. These comparisons use only the ordinal properties of the outcome variables. We shall even define a measure of the difference between the treatment effects and demonstrate how confidence intervals can be constructed

Quantitative study of molecular N_2 trapped in disordered GaN:O films

The structure of disordered GaN:O films grown by ion-assisted deposition is investigated using x-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. It is found that between 4 and 21 % of the nitrogen in the films is in the form of molecular N_2 that interacts only weakly with the surrounding matrix. The anion to cation ratio in the GaN:O host remains close to unity, and there is a close correlation between the N_2 fraction, the level of oxygen impurities, and the absence of short-range order in the GaN:O matrix.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Is There Anything New? Exploring the Conceptual Structure of Customer Satisfaction Research in Tourism and Hospitality

This research paper explores the conceptual structure of the literature published on "customer satisfaction" and identifies novel research gaps. For the purpose of the study, we create the co-occurrence networks and conduct thematic analysis as well as factorial analysis of the content of the papers published on customer satisfaction in the last two decades (2000-2020) in tourism and hospitality journals. We use \u27R\u27 software to conduct the analysis based on the data retrieved from the web of science database. Findings from the network analysis and thematic analysis are discussed to identify novel research gaps to further advance the ever-evolving field of research on "customer satisfaction". Our purpose with this paper is to bring to light the research gaps using a systematic, quantitative and objective technique of drawing the conceptual structure. Findings reveal that research on customer satisfaction in emerging contexts and restaurant research prominently deserve further attention, including work that compares customer expectation and satisfaction pre-and-post COVID in a context such as restaurants, destination tourism, and sharing economy, to name a few

Prevalence of depression and quality of life in polycystic ovary syndrome patients at a tertiary care hospital: a cross-sectional study

Background: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common endocrinopathy among women of reproductive age. Physical symptoms in PCOS cause depression and decrease the Quality of Life (QoL). The objective was to study the prevalence of depression in women suffering from PCOS and to assess its correlation with QoL.Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted among one hundred patients diagnosed with PCOS. Women 18-40 years of age diagnosed with PCOS were included in the study. Patients with known psychiatric illness were excluded. Depression severity was assessed with Hamilton depression (HAM-D) scale. The quality of life (QoL) was assessed with Polycystic ovary syndrome questionnaire (PCOSQ). The data was analyzed using SPSS 20.0 for Windows.Results: The mean age and BMI was 25.64±3.25 years and 26.78±2.72 kg/m2 respectively. The mean depression score was 12.46±6.18. QoL domains showed that the lowest score was in the menstrual problem with a mean of 12.48±4.44 and the highest was in the emotional domain with a mean of 28.07±11.17. The negative correlations were between age and Hamilton score (p < 0.05). The Hamilton score was negatively correlated with the emotional score (p <0.01) and weight score was positively correlated with infertility score (p <0.01).Conclusions: PCOS was clearly associated with depression and reduced QoL. This should warrant health professionals to consider routine screening for depression and assess the impact of symptoms on their QoL to improve patient outcomes

SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION & VALIDATION OF PARACETAMOL, PHENYLEPHRINE HYDROCHLORIDE AND CHLORPHENIRAMINE MALEATE IN TABLETS BY SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHOD

The present work describes two methods for simultaneous estimation of phenylephrine hydrochloride and chlorpheniramine maleate in pure and solid dosage forms. First method employs the application of simultaneous equation and second, is a multi-wavelength spectrophotometric analysis method. Both methods utilize 0.1N NaOH as solvent. Simultaneous equation develops using 256.8 nm, 236.8 nm and 222.4 nm as the max of paracetamol, phenylephrine hydrochloride and chlorpheniramine maleate respectively. Calibration curves were linear over the concentration ranges of 0-35 μg/mL for all drugs. The results demonstrated that the procedure is accurate, precise and reproducible (relative standard deviation &lt; 1 %), while being simple, cheap and less time consuming, and hence can be suitably applied for simultaneous determination of three drugs in laboratory prepared mixtures and in commercial tablet preparation

Remote Monitoring System

The need for a comprehensive Remote Monitoring System in the Educational and Office Environments has been the source of inspiration for this project. The Project has been conceived and developed to work effectively in the above mentioned environments. The main aim was to reduce the burden on the System/Network administrators from responsibility of monitoring the Clients connected to a Server in the typical Ethernet based Client–Server network architecture. The Remote Monitoring System (RMS) monitors the Clients connected to the Server by providing information such as Client’s Name, IP address, User currently logged on and the Desktop Image of the Client. RMS also provides the functionalities such as Messaging and Control operations that can be performed on the Clients. The Supervisor can use these features to effectively monitor the Clients. The Architecture of Remote Monitoring System has two components: An Application which runs on the Server machine. A DLL which resides on the Client Machines. The Graphical User Interface based Application acts as the monitoring tool and provides the various functionalities to monitor the Clients. The DLL which resides on the Client machines sends required information as per the need to the Application at the server. Rapid Application Development paradigm of Software Engineering has been used to develop the system. The system’s development has been done based on the Application Programming Interface (API) of the Windows Environment, so that the system complies with all existing flavors of the Microsoft’s Windows Operating Systems. Rational Rose tool is used for analysis and design using Unified Modeling Language and the platform of implementation being Visual Studio 6.0

Implementation of RISC Processor for DSPAcceleratorArchitectureExploiting Carry Save Arithmetic

Hardware acceleration has been proved an extremely promisingimplementation strategyforthedigitalsignal processing(DSP) domain.Ratherthanadoptingamonolithicapplication-specificintegrated circuit designapproach,  in thisbrief, we present a  novel accelerator architecture comprising flexiblecomputational  units that support the executionofalargesetofoperationtemplatesfoundinDSPkernels. Wedifferentiatefrompreviousworksonflexibleacceleratorsbyenabling computations tobeaggressivelyperformedwithcarry-save(CS)formatteddata.Advancedarithmeticdesignconcepts, i.e.,recodingtechniques, areutilizedenabling CSoptimizationstobeperformedinalargerscope thaninpreviousapproaches.Extensiveexperimentalevaluationsshow thattheproposedacceleratorarchitecturedeliversaveragegainsofup to 61.91%in area-delay productand54.43%in energy consumption comparedwiththestate-of-artflexibledatapaths. In this paper, their concentration is on 16 bit operations but here in the proposed scheme, the focus is on 32 bit operations.Hardware Acceleration basically refers to the usage of computer hardware to perform some functions faster than they are actually possible within the software running on general purpose CPU. TheRISCor ReducedInstructionSetComputerisadesignphilosophythathasbecomeamainstreaminScientificandengineeringapplications.Themainobjectiveofthispaperis to design and implement of 32 – bit RISC(ReducedInstruction Set Computer) processor forflexible DSP Accelerator Architecture.Thedesignwillhelp to improve the speed of the processor, and to give thehigherperformance of the processor. The most important featureofthe RISC processor is that this processor is very simpleandsupport load/store architecture. The important componentsofthis processor include the Arithmetic Logic Unit,Shifter,Rotator and Control unit. The module functionalityandperformance issues like area, power dissipationandpropagation delay are analyzed. Therefore, here we meet some of the main constraints likeComplexity of the instruction set, which will reduce the amount of space, time, cost, power, heat and other things that it takes to implement the instruction set part of a processor. As the Time of execution decreases, the Speed of execution automatically increases.Hardware acceleration has been proved an extremely promisingimplementation strategyforthedigitalsignal processing(DSP) domain.Ratherthanadoptingamonolithicapplication-specificintegrated circuit designapproach,  in thisbrief, we present a  novel accelerator architecture comprising flexiblecomputational  units that support the executionofalargesetofoperationtemplatesfoundinDSPkernels. Wedifferentiatefrompreviousworksonflexibleacceleratorsbyenabling computations tobeaggressivelyperformedwithcarry-save(CS)formatteddata.Advancedarithmeticdesignconcepts, i.e.,recodingtechniques, areutilizedenabling CSoptimizationstobeperformedinalargerscope thaninpreviousapproaches.Extensiveexperimentalevaluationsshow thattheproposedacceleratorarchitecturedeliversaveragegainsofup to 61.91%in area-delay productand54.43%in energy consumption comparedwiththestate-of-artflexibledatapaths. In this paper, their concentration is on 16 bit operations but here in the proposed scheme, the focus is on 32 bit operations.Hardware Acceleration basically refers to the usage of computer hardware to perform some functions faster than they are actually possible within the software running on general purpose CPU. TheRISCor ReducedInstructionSetComputerisadesignphilosophythathasbecomeamainstreaminScientificandengineeringapplications.Themainobjectiveofthispaperis to design and implement of 32 – bit RISC(ReducedInstruction Set Computer) processor forflexible DSP Accelerator Architecture.Thedesignwillhelp to improve the speed of the processor, and to give thehigherperformance of the processor. The most important featureofthe RISC processor is that this processor is very simpleandsupport load/store architecture. The important componentsofthis processor include the Arithmetic Logic Unit,Shifter,Rotator and Control unit. The module functionalityandperformance issues like area, power dissipationandpropagation delay are analyzed. Therefore, here we meet some of the main constraints likeComplexity of the instruction set, which will reduce the amount of space, time, cost, power, heat and other things that it takes to implement the instruction set part of a processor. As the Time of execution decreases, the Speed of execution automatically increases

Community based rehabilitation by paraplegic - a case report

A journey of a young man started from day one in the hospital. When he came with the traumatic paraplegia, no doubt a paraplegic has to face a lot of challenges in his life when he came to know that his both legs are not working. He became bedridden and his moral is also become down for his future planning. But we accept the challenge, a team work by an orthopaedician and a physio-occupational therapist make it little easier. Postoperatively we prefer to offer rehabilitation through community base programme. Inspiration of hospital environment and equipment are going to help him for such kind of programme he accepts the challenge, basic aim of providing this programme is to reduce duration as well as incurred monitor losses. Special attraction of this case report is homemade bicycle, which served the purpose of providing repetitive rhythmic mobilisation of bilateral lower limbs which facilitates normal pattern of ambulation. Now he is ambulatory and goes back to his work. So, a person with spinal cord injury involved with their community with a little modification in his activity and equipment is worth for him. Traumatic paraplegia offers a big challenge to physio- occupational therapist due to long term recovery it takes.  For Such patients on regular follow up till complete recovery, we preferred community based rehabilitation. This made him independent and incurred reduced monitory losses