Mapping digital humanities in India

In a new study published by The Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, P.P. Sneha offers a detailed mapping of digital practices in arts and humanities scholarship in India. In this article, she summarises the value of conducting such a mapping in the Indian context and explores the implications of digital approaches and innovations for research and practice in humanities

Detection and emotional evaluation of an electric vehicle’s exterior sound in a simulated environment

Electric vehicles are quiet at low speeds and thus potentially pose a threat to pedestrians’ safety. Laws are formulating worldwide that mandate these vehicles emit sounds to alert the pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach. It is necessary that these sounds promote a positive perception of the vehicle brand, and understanding their impact on soundscapes is also important. Detection time of the vehicle sounds is an important measure to assess pedestrians’ safety. Emotional evaluation of these sounds influences assessment of the vehicle brand. Laboratory simulation is a new approach for evaluating exterior automotive sounds. This study describes the implementation of laboratory simulation to compare the detection time and emotional evaluation of artificial sounds for an electric vehicle. An Exterior Sound Simulator simulated audio-visual stimuli of an electric car passing a crossroad of a virtual town at 4.47 ms-1 (10 mph), from the perspective of a pedestrian standing at the crossroad. In this environment, 15 sounds were tested using experiments where participants detected the car and evaluated its sound using perceptual dimensions. Results show that these sounds vary significantly in their detection times and emotional evaluations, but crucially that traditional metrics like dB(A) do not always relate to the detection of these sounds. Detection time and emotional evaluation do not have significant correlation. Hence, sounds of a vehicle could be detected quickly, but may portray negative perceptions of the vehicle. Simulation provides a means to more fully evaluate potential electric vehicle sounds against the competing criteria

Lymphatic filariasis: the importance of screening all peripheral blood smears in low power for detection of asymptomatic cases

Lymphatic filariasis caused by the mosquitoborne, lymphatic-dwelling nematodes Wuchereria bancrofti and Brugia malayi is still a common tropical parasitic disease and 120 million people are affected in the world, of which two-third are in Asia. They cause high morbidity and mortality among humans. Irreversible “elephantiasis” is the major clinical manifestation for LF. Detection of microfilaria in peripheral blood is important. In addition to simple thick and thin blood smear tests, concentration techniques are used: mainly density gradient centrifugation, haemolysis and filtration of the blood through a polycarbonate membrane, which retains the parasite. Diagnosis has been revolutionized with the availability of circulating filarial antigen (CFA) tests which are easy to perform but are costly. Diethylcarbamazine (DEC) is the drug of choice for treating lymphatic filariasis. In the light of this information, hereby presenting a case series of 4 asymptomatic patients who were diagnosed with filariasis on peripheral blood smear examination. The article emphasizes the importance of low power scanning of every peripheral blood smear, especially when the laboratory is not facilitated with costly methods to detect microfilaria

PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT OF GUDAGATA VIKARA (ANORECTAL DISORDERS)- AYURVEDIC PERSPECTIVE

Gudagata Vikara (Anorectal disorders) refers to ailments of the anus and/ or rectum. Gudagata Vikara includes; Arsha (Haemorrhoids), Bhagandara (Fistula in Ano), Parikartika (Fissure in Ano), Guda Kandu (Pruritus Ani), etc. These are some common disorders in human being. A study by Sharma et al. showed that Hemorrhoids (49%) and fistula-in-ano (27%) were commonest anorectal conditions, mostly affecting the age group 18-45 years. Apathya Ahara and Vihara leads to vitiation of Doshas causing Mandagni and vitiation of Apanavayu resulting in stagnation of Mala in Gudavali which leads to anorectal disorders. In present study a thorough and scientific review of Ahara (diet) and Vihara (lifestyle) has been carried out for the prevention and management of anorectal diseases. Materials and methods: Ayurvedic treaties, text books, Dissertation, Articles from PUBMED, SCOPUS, Google scholar, Mesh, Google search has been searched thoroughly related to the subject. Discussion: Gudagata Vikara, Anorectal Disorders, Ahara (Diet), Vihara (Lifestyle), Dinacharya, Ritucharya, Sadvritta has been discussed. Conclusions: Food articles mentioned in Ayurvedic text are effective in the management of Anorectal diseases. Lifestyle changes according to Dinacharya, Ritucharya and Sadavritta and following do’s and don’ts are effective in the management of Anorectal disease

Graphical Analysis on Text Mining Unstructured Data Using D-Matrix

Fault dependency (D-matrix) is used as a diagnostic model that identifies the fault system data and its causal relationship at the hierarchical system-level. It consists of dependencies and relationship between identified failure modes and symptoms related to a system. Constructing such D-matrix fault detection model is time overwhelming task .A system is proposed that describes associate ontology based text mining on unstructured data using D-matrix for automatically constructing D-matrix by mining many repair verbatim text data (typically written in unstructured text) collected throughout the identification process. And also graphical model generation for each generated D-matrix. Initially we construct fault diagnosis ontology and then text mining techniques are applied to spot dependencies among failure modes and identified symptom. D-matrix is represented in graph so analysis gets easier and faulty parts becomes simply detectable. The proposed methodology are implemented as a prototype tool and validated by using real-life information collected from the automobile domain