Flavor Tagging at Tevatron incl. calibration and control

This report summarizes the flavor tagging techniques developed at the CDF and D{\O}experiments. Flavor tagging involves identification of the B meson flavor atproduction, whether its constituent is a quark or an anti-quark. It is crucial for measuring the oscillation frequency of neutral B mesons, both in the B^0 and B_S system. The two experiments have developed their unique approaches to flavor tagging, using neural networks, and likelihood methods to disentangle tracks from $b$ decays from other tracks. This report discusses these techniques and the measurement of B^0 mixing, as a means to calibrate the taggers.Comment: 6 pages, 7 Figures, Write-up for Beauty 2006 Conference proceeding

Doctoral Education and Academic Research (in India)

[Excerpt] The state of doctoral education and academic research in India is poor and the country has scant representation among the world’s great universities. The decline has happened in spite of early achievements. Reasons behind this are complex and defy easy explanations. Several probable causes in terms of resources / facilities / opportunities granted to Ph.D. students, faculty quality, financial resources, academic leadership and other issues are explored and some suggestions for improvement are provided

DIL - A CONVERSATIONAL AGENT FOR HEART FAILURE PATIENTS

There is an exceptionally high rate of readmissions and rehospitalizations for patients suffering from chronic diseases especially Heart Failure. Best efforts to address this alarming problem from the Care giver community have fallen short due to a number of factors most notably resource constraints like shortage of trained clinical staff, and money. Using a Design Science Research framework, this work designed and evaluated DIL , a Conversational Agent that complements the work of clinicians in achieving the desired behavioral and clinical outcomes. The aim is to provide the hospital with an information system that could bridge the current gap in care that occurs when the patient transitions from the hospital environment to the home environment. The expected contribution is to produce a novel artifact and demonstrate the efficacy and utility of the tool to assist patients with heart failure in improving their self-care. The study conclusions were extremely positive. DIL scored high on User engagement and satisfaction. Every patient felt significantly more positive after their interaction with DIL during the trial period, and had a positive outlook on their quality of life going forward. The patients in the trial found DIL to be helpful in keeping them motivated to follow a healthy lifestyle by controlling their diet, and adhering to clinical guidelines of regular exercise, and taking medications on a timely manner. Given the extremely positive experience of the patients, there is definitely room for such an IT artifact in supporting patients as they make the transition from hospital to the home setting

DIL - A Conversational Agent for Heart Failure Patients

There is an exceptionally high rate of readmissions and rehospitalizations for patients suffering from Heart Failure. Best efforts to address this alarming problem from the Caregiver community have fallen short due to a shortage of trained clinical staff, failure to perform necessary self-management, and money. Using a Design Science Research framework, this work designed and evaluated DIL” (Sanskrit word for Heart), a Conversational Agent that complements the work of clinicians in achieving the desired behavioral and clinical outcomes. The aim is to provide the hospital with an information system that could bridge the current gap in care that occurs when the patient transitions from the hospital to the home environment. In a pilot study, we show that DIL was able to demonstrate the efficacy and utility as a tool to assist patients with heart failure in improving their self-care