ASSESSMENT OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE REGARDING ANTIBIOTIC USE IN A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL

Objective: The present study was designed to investigate the public knowledge and attitude toward antibiotic use in a general population visiting thetertiary care hospital.Methods: A prospective cross-sectional survey conducted for a period of 6-month December-2013 to May-2014. Knowledge scoring was given basedon the percentage of correct responses. Data were collected using a self-prepared questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Associationof respondent's knowledge score with sex, age group, educational level, and income was analyzed by Chi-square test.Results: The results of our study showed that the level of knowledge on antibiotics use was poor in 117 (65%) of the study population who had given<50% correct response. The current study showed that there was a significant difference in knowledge between education level groups (p≤0.0001).The other responses regarding knowledge are 27.2% accepted that antibiotics are indicated for relieving pain and inflammation, 45% of participantsthought that antibiotics are the drugs indicated to reduce fever. About 76.6% of respondents had administered antibiotics without a doctor'sprescription, 44% of respondents used antibiotics with their friends and family member's suggestions. 48% of respondents keep antibiotics stockat home for future use and 79.4% of respondents keep leftover antibiotics for personal future use, 31% share their antibiotics with family memberswhen they are sick and 34% of respondents use leftover antibiotics for a respiratory illness.Conclusion: Patients, as well as healthcare professionals, have a major role to play in attaining rational antibiotic use. Antibiotic awareness campaignsand patient counseling should promote specific messages to public members from the high risk†groups, to fill up the knowledge and attitude gaps.Keywords: Antibiotic use, Self-medication, Attitude, Miss-use, Awareness, Microbial resistance

Oscillation criteria for third order neutral generalized difference equations with distributed delay

This paper aims to investigate the criteria of behaviour of certain type of third order neutral generalized difference equations with distributed delay. With the technique of generalized Riccati transformation and Philos-type method, some oscillation criteria are obtained to ensure convergence and oscillatory solution of suitable example is listed to illustrate the main result

Studies in biogas technology. Part I. Performance of a conventional biogas plant

This paper gives an account of a conventional 5.66 m3/day (200 cubic ft/day) biogas plant which has been instrumented, operated and monitored for 2 ½ years. The observations regarding input to the plant, sludge and biogas outputs, and conditions inside the digester, have been described. Three salient features stand out. First, the observed average daily gas yield is much less than the rated capacity of the plant. Secondly, the plants show ease of operation and a very slow response to reductions and cessations of dung supply. Thirdly, the unexpectedly marked uniformity of density and temperature inside the digester indicates the almost complete absence of the stratification which is widely believed to take place; hence, biogas plants may be treated as isothermal, 'uniform' density, most probably imperfectly mixed, fed-batch reactors operating at the mean ambient temperature and the density of water

Evaluation of anti ulcer activity of ethanolic root extract of Beta vulgaris in rats

Background: Beta vulgaris (chenopodiacea) is a plant reported for its variety of ethnic medicinal uses. Hence we have planned to screen anti ulcer activity of root of the plant with the alcoholic extract. Root powders successively extracted with alcohol and were subjected for phytochemical screening to identify different phytoconstituents.Methods: Anti ulcer activity was evaluated in various animal models like pylorus ligation and ethanol induced ulcer models in rats.Results: Preliminary phytochemical screening revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, carbohydrates, saponins, polyphenols. No mortality was observed with root extract up to maximum dose level of 4g/kg. Further alcoholic extract of 200 and 400mg/ kg / p.o significantly (p˂0.01) reduced the ulcer score, ulcer number, ulcer index, free acidity and total acidity in pylorus ligation and ethanol induced ulcer models in rats.Conclusions: The present study revealed that the root extract of Beta vulgaris has antiulcer activity

Triple Band Textile Array Antenna with Enhanced Gain and Low SAR for Off Body Communication Applications

A triple band wearable microstrip patch antenna array has been designed and analyzed in this work. The designed antenna can be operated in ISM, LAES and X-Band with moderate average gain of 4.2 dB. The antenna gain has been improved by constructing array structure of 1X2 and 1X4 with good impedance feeding by quarter wave transformer. The proposed array antennas are providing moderate gain of 5.7 dB (1X2) and 8.3 dB (1X4) with efficiency more than 90% in the operating bands. The antenna model and the array has been constructed on wearable substrate with conductive textile as radiating element in the design for off body wearable communication applications. SAR analysis also providing acceptable values below 1.6 w/kg at triple operating bands with body placement experimentation. &nbsp

Optimal Ensemble Learning Based on Distinctive Feature Selection by Univariate ANOVA-F Statistics for IDS

Cyber-attacks are increasing day by day. The generation of data by the population of the world is immensely escalated. The advancements in technology, are intern leading to more chances of vulnerabilities to individual’s personal data. Across the world it became a very big challenge to bring down the threats to data security. These threats are not only targeting the user data and also destroying the whole network infrastructure in the local or global level, the attacks could be hardware or software. Central objective of this paper is to design an intrusion detection system using ensemble learning specifically Decision Trees with distinctive feature selection univariate ANOVA-F test. Decision Trees has been the most popular among ensemble learning methods and it also outperforms among the other classification algorithm in various aspects. With the essence of different feature selection techniques, the performance found to be increased more, and the detection outcome will be less prone to false classification. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with F-statistics computations could be a reasonable criterion to choose distinctives features in the given network traffic data. The mentioned technique is applied and tested on NSL KDD network dataset. Various performance measures like accuracy, precision, F-score and Cross Validation curve have drawn to justify the ability of the method

In-silico analysis of PtpA - an antigenic protein of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

PtpA, a low-molecular weight tyrosine phosphatase, is a secreted protein of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Many secretory proteins of Mtb are known to be the prominent targets of host immune response. It plays an important role in host-pathogen interaction and it interferes with the passing of the protein from one endosomal vesicle to the next endosomal vesicle in the infected macrophage. It inhibits host phagolysosomal fusion in the infected macrophages and thus allows the bacteria to survive within macrophages. Analysis of primary and secondary structure of the protein was done by ProtParam and GOR IV respectively. Since the number of negatively charged residues are higher than the positively charged residues, PtpA is an acidic protein. Immunity against Mtb is T-cell mediated Thus an important criterion in seeking protective antigens should be that they induce T-cell- mediated immunity. The characterization of PtpA inducing CD4+ T-cell responses could critically contribute to the development of subunit vaccines for Mtb.  Here we performed computational analysis by using Proped, T-cell epitope prediction program. In-silico antigenicity prediction of PtpA was done using VaxiJen. Owing to the  resistance of this protein to the natural immune response, in-silico antigenicity and T-cell epitope prediction will be helpful to design better subunit vaccines to develop effective acquired immune response to Mtb