Future of Tele-echocardiography

Telemedicine is defined as the ‘delivery of health care and sharing of medical knowledge over a distance using telecommunication systems’. Echocardiography is often used to diagnose and exclude important cardiac diagnoses in adults and children. Evolving telemedicine technology has boosted access to echocardiography and has created a network that offers many possibilities for clinical, research and teaching activities.The two primary modes of telemedicine practise are ‘ store and forward’ and ‘real time’ videoconferencing. Using these technologies, relevant, up-to-date scientific information is instantly available for analysis and interaction. Studies have also shown these to be accurate, cost effective, improves patient care, enhances echocardiography quality and sonographer proficiency and promotes practice expansion.The growing use of technology such as smart phones, laptops and computer tablets as well as newer technologies like cloud computing, picture archiving computer systems(PACS) and the standardization of medical images(DICOM) has fuelled the now accelerating specific demands for tele-echocardiography. However, all these are not without challenges and obstacles. Some of these include lack of standardization of telemedicine components, confusing medico-legal and licensure issues, privacy/confidentiality, poor reimbursement, training issues as well as attitude and acceptance.These issues need to be addressed by all those involved in medical practice. Clinicians must work with sonographers, medical IT experts, hospital management and hospital physicists as well as manufacturers and insurance companies to ensure that the new system is integrated as an extra function within ultrasound consoles. National and international societies such as the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) could play a role in bringing everyone together and define the necessary training programmes. In conclusion, the revolution in digital technology is rapidly changing the world of telecommunications. Tele-echocardiography has a bright future to become an integrated part of our clinical available echocardiographic tool set – in a matter of tim

Mass Transfer Studies in Three-phase Fluidized Bed Using Response Surface Method

Mass transfer characteristics of co-current three-phase fluidization were determined in terms of mass transfer coefficient and Sherwood number using Box-Behnken method. The experiment was carried out in a 5.4 cm I.D, 6 cm O.D and 160 cm high vertical Perspex column. Gypsum particles of diameter 0.0842 cm, 0.1676 cm and 0.2818 cm, water, and air were used as solid, liquid and gaseous phase respectively. Initially, the superficial liquid velocity was maintained constant and superficial gas velocities varied. After attaining steady state, at a particular gas velocity, the fluidized bed height and manometer readings were recorded for pressure drop estimation. The above-mentioned procedure was repeated for four different liquid velocities in a fluidized bed. The effect of individual phase holdup and mass transfer coefficient for various particle sizes with the specific liquid flow rates and gas flow rates were studied. It was observed that the mass transfer coefficient and Sherwood number increased with increase in superficial gas velocity and particle size in cocurrent three-phase fluidized bed. A quadratic model for bed porosity, gas holdup, Sherwood number and mass transfer coefficient were developed using response surface method (RSM)

ECN based Congestion Control for a Software Defined Network

This paper deals with congestion control in a software defined network (SDN) setting. Presently, explicit router schemes, such as Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), work in conjunction with the TCP protocol to handle congestion in a distributed manner. With the emergence of SDN and centralized control, it is possible to leverage the global view of the network state to make better congestion control decisions. In this work, we explore the advantages of bringing in global information into distributed congestion control. We propose a framework where the controller with its global view of the network actively participates in the congestion control decisions of the end TCP hosts, by setting the ECN bits of IP packets appropriately. Our framework can be deployed very easily without any change to the end node TCPs or the SDN switches. We also show 30x improvement over the TCP Cubic variant and 1.7x improvement over TCP/RED in terms of flow completion times for one implementation of this framework, using the Mininet emulator

Ranching of clams in the Ashtamudi lake

Ranching of clams in the Ashtamudi lak

Wound Healing Ethnomedicinal Plants Popular among the Malayali Tribes in Vattal Hills, Dharmapuri, TN, India

Healing of chronic lower extremity wounds is a global problem, especially in developing countries where traditional medicine is often used by the people in remote places. India has a rich tradition of plant based knowledge pertinent to healthcare. A survey of ethnomedicinal plant species used by Malayali’s to heal cut/ wounds in Vattal Hills of Dharmapuri was made. A large number of plants/ extracts/ decoctions/ pastes are used by tribals to heal wounds, cuts and burns. In the present study, an attempt has been made to document ethnobotanical knowledge base and methods employed by Malayali’s for treatment of cut/ wounds. A large number of ethnomedicinal plants used by the Malayali’s have not been validated for wound healing potential. The present investigation resulted in the identification of 82 medicinal plant species distributed across 39 families that are used by Malayali’s to heal cut/ wounds. This study is an attempt to gather the information on the existing ethnobotanical knowledge base and document the traditional claims toward the development of safe of effective herbal drugs for cut/ wounds. Results of the study is organized in table form depicting the botanical name, family, vernacular name and habit with a brief note on plant parts used and method of administration