Knowing Yourself-Journey to a Great Discovery

At one time or another we have all asked ourselves, “Why is this happening to me?” “Why do I keep having the same problems?” “Why am I so frustrated?” These difficult but important questions nudge us closer to a better understanding of ourselves and others. If they go unanswered, we become stuck in a cycle, continually repeating the past and forever on the defensive. Taking control of our lives requires that we find the answers. Thus it is essential to know oneself for being successful in both personal and professional life

Passion Quotient- The Greatest Secret to Success

The world is moving beyond the parameters of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) in measuring individuals. The Passion Quotient (PQ) is gaining ground in the current world due to its closeness to measure people having high degree of creativity, innovativeness and leadership traits. PQ brings out best out of the ordinary. While cultured, PQ can be helpful in cultivation of passion and makes a person passionate about doing things more actively and responsively. This book helps in developing a matrix of passion, which an individual can effectively follow in order to set and achieve the goals in his/her professional, entrepreneurial and social life

Emotional Quotient - The Inner Side of Leadership

The concept of emotional intelligence has become a very hot topic of psychological research in recent years, especially in regards to how it affects today’s workforce. Businesses are essentially people, so anything that impacts the effectiveness of people’s minds also impacts the businesses they run or work for. In fact, many experts now believe that a person’s emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) may be more important than their IQ and is certainly a better predictor of success, quality of relationships, and overall happiness

Assessment of socio-demographic and clinical factors associated with preeclampsia and eclampsia among primigravida attending tertiary care center in South India

Background: The objective of the study was to identify the socio demographic and clinical factors associated with preeclampsia and eclampsia among primigravida attending a tertiary care center in South India.Methods: A quantitative research approach with case control design was used. Non-probability convenience sampling was used to select two groups of primigravida mothers i.e. one group with 108 mothers having preeclampsia or eclampsia and one group with 108 mothers not having preeclampsia or eclampsia. A structured questionnaire was employed to collect the data.Results: The study found that preeclampsia and eclampsia was significantly associated with maternal age (p=0.026), hemoglobin level (p=0.003), body mass index (p=0.001), weeks of gestation (p=0.016), age at menarche (p=0.003), age at first pregnancy (p=0.007), nutritional education (p=0.001), history of thyroid disorder (p=0.025), family history of hypertension (p=0.016), salt consumption (p=0.001), consumption of fried fatty food (p=0.008) and processed sugar (p=0.045), and intake of green leafy vegetables (p=0.001), pulses and beans(p=0.031) and activity (p=0.015). In the multiple regression analysis, body mass index (Adjusted Odds Ratio [OR] 2.28 [1.40-3.71] p=0.001), thyroid disorder (adjusted OR 2.756 [1.135-6.645] p=0.025) and intake of green leafy vegetables (adjusted OR 1.69 [1.223-2.360] p=0.002) were found to be independent risk factors associated with preeclampsia and eclampsia.Conclusion: The study concluded that the risk factors should be identified and evaluated during the antenatal visits for early detection so as to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality.

Emulated Control System for a Nuclear Reactor

This paper discusses some of the instrumentation aspects of process control system developed for a nuclear power plant. Monitoring and controlling are the essential elements in the normal, abnormal and emergency operation of nuclear power plant. Through their sensors and transmitters, control systems measure process variables and inturn to control valves, motors and other electromechanical equipments of the nuclear plant. In this context, we have developed a Labview based such control system aimed at developing a real time system to deploy via IoT(Internet of Things). We represent here our conceptual design developed in Labview platform integrated with Arduino Uno microcontroller. The instrumentation and control system measures basic physical parameters like level, temperature and pressure using sensors. The monitoring and control of the temperature is done using virtual instrument software LabView, which acts as data acquisition module. It monitors performance and helps in controlling the nuclear plant operations to keep the process variables within the plant design limits and ensures the plant safety. The transmission of data from one end to another end is done through wireless technology ZigBee, to monitor and analyzeplant processes and equipment on the Labview platform

Climate Change and Policy-ClimEd Series:4

ClimEd Series IV- This instructional material “Climate Change and Policy” has been developed as a part of the Belmont funded project titled “Global Understanding and Learning for Local solutions: Reducing Vulnerability of marine dependent coastal communities” as a means to create awareness and impart climate change knowledge across the target populace

Placental growth factor as a predictor of pre eclampsia and its severity in ante natal population between 24 and 30 weeks’ gestation

INTRODUCTION: Preeclampsia is a multi-system pregnancy-specific disease which affects 2 to 8% of all deliveries. A predictor which would detect pre eclampsia earlier in gestation is the need of the hour in our setup. AIM OF THE STUDY: The aim of the study was to determine the levels of placental growth factor for predicting the occurrence of pre eclampsia and its severity in the gestational period from 24 to 30 weeks. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY: A prospective study was done in 80 randomly selected women with 2.5 ml of venous blood samples collected in EDTA tubes and plasma was assayed for free PlGF using immunofluorescence method and expressed in pg/mL. DISCUSSION: 21 out of 80 patients developed pre eclampsia (26.5%) with 6 (28.5%) developing severe pre eclampsia,of which 3 (14.2%) needed delivery within 2 weeks of detecting low PlGF. RESULTS: In the study, Area under the ROC curve is 0.92 which implies the diagnostic accuracy of PlGF is significant with a sensitivity and specificity of 80.95% and 89.83% respectively, for PlGF criteria of ≤ 350. CONCLUSION: From our study we concluded that Placental Growth Factor (PlGF) levels were significantly lower in patients prone to develop pre eclampsia,much lower in severe than in mild pre eclampsia. Larger studies are needed to further define the diagnostic accuracy and predictive capabilities of the various angiogenic markers

Economic valuation of marine ecosystem services: Methodological issues and challenges

The economy has a complex relationship with the environment. The environment not only provides the raw materials and energy for the production of goods and services that support people’s lifestyles, but also sustains damage through the activities of households and businesses. Environmental economics, being a sub-field of economics, is concerned with environmental issues. According to the quoting from the National Bureau of Economic Research Environmental Economics program, “Environmental Economics undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world. Particular issues include the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming’’. Environmental economics seeks to assess various losses due to the economic activities and to fix upon the most competent way to reduce them, as well as to compare the cost of environmental damage to the cost of mitigation

Application of response surface methodology for the composition optimization of polycaprolactone based composite membrane

Response surface methodology is successfully utilized for the optimization of the composition of Polycaprolactone based nanocomposite membrane. The amount of nanoclay used as the additive and Polyethylene glycol as the pore former is optimized based on the membrane properties porosity and hydrophilicity. The quadratic equations are obtained using the central composite design and the ANOVA results are validated. The values for the coefficient of determination (R-squared), adjusted R-squared, adequate precision and coefficient of variance describe the significance of the model developed for the responses, porosity and contact angle. Eigen value analysis of the Hessian matrix for each response has been carried out and the nature of optimum is found maximum for porosity and minimum for contact angle. Residual plots have been analysed to validate the obtained models and the combined interaction of the variables was analysed using contour plots and surface plots. The independent variables and their levels have been determined using batch studies with one parameter optimization. Also, the optimized composition obtained using one parameter optimization and RSM analysis is compared and the composition optimized using RSM is found to be less with better membrane porosity and contact angle