Longitudinal Study of Child Face Recognition

We present a longitudinal study of face recognition performance on Children Longitudinal Face (CLF) dataset containing 3,682 face images of 919 subjects, in the age group [2, 18] years. Each subject has at least four face images acquired over a time span of up to six years. Face comparison scores are obtained from (i) a state-of-the-art COTS matcher (COTS-A), (ii) an open-source matcher (FaceNet), and (iii) a simple sum fusion of scores obtained from COTS-A and FaceNet matchers. To improve the performance of the open-source FaceNet matcher for child face recognition, we were able to fine-tune it on an independent training set of 3,294 face images of 1,119 children in the age group [3, 18] years. Multilevel statistical models are fit to genuine comparison scores from the CLF dataset to determine the decrease in face recognition accuracy over time. Additionally, we analyze both the verification and open-set identification accuracies in order to evaluate state-of-the-art face recognition technology for tracing and identifying children lost at a young age as victims of child trafficking or abduction

Social comparison behavior of firms and Underpricing of IPOs in India

This paper is an empirical research of social comparison behavior in Indian IPO market. To our knowledge this is the first study which is testing behavioral theory on Indian IPOs. As numerous evidences suggest the theories of behavioral finance are more efficient in explaining the stock market behavior than the traditional finance theories based on rational decision making. In the presence of international evidence of social comparison behavior in IPO market, we also assume this behavior in the Indian IPO market. The social comparison behavior found to be present in Indian IPO market and explains a fraction of underpricing. The objective of this paper is to find out whether there is a social or peer comparison among IPO issuing firms in India. For this purpose P/E and P/B ratios are used to statistically test whether an IPO firm in India follows earlier IPO firms P/E and P/B ratios while deciding its own price band and issue price. Keywords: Behavioral Finance, Social Comparison, IPO Underpricin

Evaluation of Road Traffic Congestion by Shock Wave Theory and Reduction Strategies

Road traffic congestion continues to remain a major problem in most cities around the world, especially in developing countries resulting in extensive delays, improved fuel wastage and financial losses. Urban traffic congestion has been a difficult problem in the growth of modern cities in India. The factors that reason the traffic congestion are complex and they mutually restrict. Transportation researchers have long struggled to find adequate ways of describing and analysing traffic congestion, as marked from the large number of often challenging approaches and models that have been developed. In this study, we explain traffic flow model with shockwave theory and operational strategies to manage traffic congestion in developing countries like India. Monitoring traffic density and speed helps to better manage traffic flow and plan transport infrastructure and policy. In this study, we present techniques to measure traffic density and speed in unplanned traffic, common in developing countries, and apply those techniques to better understand traffic patterns

Maternal and perinatal outcome in term singleton breech presentation at term pregnancy

Background: Breech presentation is defined as a fetus in a longitudinal lie with the podalic at the pelvic brim. There are three types of breech presentations: frank breech, complete, incomplete breech. The incidence of breech presentation decreases from about 20% at 28 weeks of gestation to 3-4% at term, as most babies turn spontaneously to the cephalic presentation. Studies have shown that the prevalence of term breech presentation varies globally. In India the incidence was shown to be, 2.1%, and in other Asian countries it was found to be around 2.9 -4.5%. Its incidence is around 25% at 28 weeks of gestation and it reduces to 4% by term. If patients are carefully selected, breech presentation can be delivered vaginally. However, the risk of neonatal complications still persists. sometimes the planned vaginal delivery has to be converted into emergency cesarean section. Such probability varies from 17.4 to 51%. Methods: This was a prospective observational study conducted in department of obstetrics and gynaecology department of SAMC and PGI, Indore, Madhya Pradesh from 1st April, 2021 to 31st October 2022. Ethical approval was taken from the institutional review committee. All term pregnant women (≥37 weeks) aged 18 years and above, admitted to the maternity and labor ward with the diagnosis of singleton breech presentation during the study period were included in the study. The patients were identified as having breech presentation on admission using physical examination and ultrasound. Those women who presented with antepartum hemorrhage, uterine rupture, fetuses with major congenital anomalies and intrauterine deaths were excluded from the study. After through exclusion sample of 70 people were included in study. Results: During the study period, 896 deliveries were conducted in this hospital. Among them, 70 (7.86%) of the deliveries were singleton breech delivery. The age of the participants in the study ranged from 16 to 45 years, with a mean age of 27.07±8.56 years. Most of them had elective cesarean section, and few had emergency cesarean section. The most common indication for emergency cesarean section was footling presentation. Most of the new-borns were males, mean weight of new-borns 2.75±0.5 kg. 21.9% neonates required admission in neonatal intensive care unit, 2.8% mothers developed wound infection and 10% had post-partum haemorrhage. Conclusions: Proper guidance, education and strict adherent to principles and steps of breech delivery, like monitoring taking up call for emergency c-sections, having proper NICU setup, trained doctors will help in reduction of complications. A protocol for the management of breech delivery and a regular training facility for junior health professionals to conduct assisted vaginal breech delivery are highly recommended

Evaluation of Performance Based Appraisal System in Higher Education Sector using DEA and AHP

There is a broad interest in the study of schemes for the measurement of the efficiency of the higher education sector, which generates demand but at the same time is controversial because of the complexity of the problem. Performance evaluation in Higher Education institutions is one of the essential activities in teaching and learning procedure. This problem is associated with the highly combinatorial characteristics that occur when facing the selection of the proper combination of the attributes, namely inputs and outputs. This study proposes an integrated approach to measure performance based appraisal system (PBAS) in higher educational institutions combining Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).The AHP allows consideration of the varying importance of each criterion of teaching performance, while DEA enables to the comparison of teachers on teaching as perceived by students with a view to identifying the scope for improvement by each teacher

Multilingual Speaker Identification using analysis of Pitch and Formant frequencies

In the modern digital automated world, speaker identification system plays a very important role in the field of fast growing internet based communications. In India there are many people who are bi-lingual or multilingual, so the requirements to design such system which is used to identify the multilingual speakers. Present paper explores the idea to identify multi-lingual person by basic features. For this the speech signals of three indian languages i.e Hindi, Marathi and Rajasthani are recorded and basic features pitch, first three formant frequency calculated from PRAAT software. The observation has been presented that the pitch and first three formant frequencies F1,F2 and F3 of speaker are increases when speaker change the language from rajasthani to hindi to marathi. The percentage deviation in pitch as well as formant frequencies for Rajasthani and Marathi from hindi are positive and negative respectively for utterance “p”. Similar analysis has been perform for ’k aand >. This observation will help to make such system which is used to identify the speaker in multilingual environments

A prospective randomized controlled trial showing efficacy of luteal phase low molecular weight heparin in fresh non-donor IVF/ICSI cycles in women with previous implantation failures

Background: Implantation failure is a major challenge in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles. The present study was undertaken to determine the immunomodulatory effects of heparin in patients with previous implantation failures undergoing assisted reproductive techniques (ART).Methods: This was a prospective randomized controlled trial with sample size of 100 patients who had history of at least one previously failed IVF/ICSI. Study group of 50 patients received heparin and 50 patients in control group received routine luteal phase support.Results: Primary outcome of the study was implantation rate (IR) which was 11.03% in the study group was and 5.48% in the control group (p=0.08). Biochemical pregnancy rate and clinical pregnancy rate in the study group was 18% and 12% in the control group (p=0.401). Calculated live birth was 5.15% and 3.42% in the study and control groups respectively (p=0.562). 11 babies were taken home from the study group and 6 from the control group (p=0.18).Conclusions: The result of this pilot study showed relative increase in implantation rates (IR) suggesting beneficial effects of heparin in patients with repeated implantation failures. Although these changes are not statistically significant, the presence of an increasing trend in all the outcome parameters signify the possible benefits of heparin proving for the present study hypothesis

Capstrum Coefficient Features Analysis for Multilingual Speaker Identification System

The Capstrum coefficient features analysis plays a crucial role in the overall performance of the multilingual speaker identification system. The objective of the research work to investigates the results that can be obtained when you combine Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Gammatone Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (GFCC) as feature components for the front-end processing of a multilingual speaker identification system. The MFCC and GFCC feature components combined are suggested to improve the reliability of a multilingual speaker identification system. The GFCC features in recent studies have shown very good robustness against noise and acoustic change. The main idea is to integrate MFCC & GFCC features to improve the overall multilingual speaker identification system performance. The experiment carried out on recently collected multilingual speaker speech database to analysis of GFCC and MFCC. The speech database consists of speech data recorded from 100 speakers including male and female. The speech samples are collected in three different languages Hindi, Marathi and Rajasthani. The extracted features of the speech signals of multiple languages are observed. The results provide an empirical comparison of the MFCC-GFCC combined features and the individual counterparts. The average language-independent multilingual speaker identification rate 84.66% (using MFCC), 93.22% (using GFCC)and 94.77% (using combined features)has been achieved

Overview of liver disorders during pregnancy at a tertiary care centre: Uttarakhand scenario

Background: Liver disorders in pregnancy encompass a spectrum of diseases encountered during antenatal and postnatal period resulting in abnormal liver function tests and hepatobiliary dysfunction or both. This study is aimed at determining the causes of liver disorders during pregnancy and associated maternal and fetal outcomes over a period of 3 years at a tertiary care centre of Dehradun.Methods: All case records of patients with liver disorders during pregnancy from May 2013 to May 2016 were retrieved from medical record department of SGRRIMHS, Dehradun and analyzed for various causes of liver disorders and associated maternal and fetal outcomes.Results: During the three-year study period, 146 pregnant patients were found to have liver disorders. The study found that viral hepatitis was the most common cause of liver disorders followed by Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy IHCP. There were 6 mortalities among the study group out of which hepatitis E was the culprit for maternal mortality in two patients. The serum bilirubin levels were directly proportional to the maternal deaths.Conclusions: Liver disorders during pregnancy are rare but an important cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Early recognition, timely referral and aggressive management may lead to better maternal and fetal outcome