Raoult's Formalism in Understanding Low Temperature Growth of GaN Nanowires using Binary Precursor

Growth of GaN nanowires are carried out via metal initiated vapor-liquid-solid mechanism, with Au as the catalyst. In chemical vapour deposition technique, GaN nanowires are usually grown at high temperatures in the range of 900-1100 ^oC because of low vapor pressure of Ga below 900 ^oC. In the present study, we have grown the GaN nanowires at a temperature, as low as 700 ^oC. Role of indium in the reduction of growth temperature is discussed in the ambit of Raoult's law. Indium is used to increase the vapor pressure of the Ga sufficiently to evaporate even at low temperature initiating the growth of GaN nanowires. In addition to the studies related to structural and vibrational properties, optical properties of the grown nanowires are also reported for detailed structural analysis.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, journa

FedPNN: One-shot Federated Classification via Evolving Clustering Method and Probabilistic Neural Network hybrid

Protecting data privacy is paramount in the fields such as finance, banking, and healthcare. Federated Learning (FL) has attracted widespread attention due to its decentralized, distributed training and the ability to protect the privacy while obtaining a global shared model. However, FL presents challenges such as communication overhead, and limited resource capability. This motivated us to propose a two-stage federated learning approach toward the objective of privacy protection, which is a first-of-its-kind study as follows: (i) During the first stage, the synthetic dataset is generated by employing two different distributions as noise to the vanilla conditional tabular generative adversarial neural network (CTGAN) resulting in modified CTGAN, and (ii) In the second stage, the Federated Probabilistic Neural Network (FedPNN) is developed and employed for building globally shared classification model. We also employed synthetic dataset metrics to check the quality of the generated synthetic dataset. Further, we proposed a meta-clustering algorithm whereby the cluster centers obtained from the clients are clustered at the server for training the global model. Despite PNN being a one-pass learning classifier, its complexity depends on the training data size. Therefore, we employed a modified evolving clustering method (ECM), another one-pass algorithm to cluster the training data thereby increasing the speed further. Moreover, we conducted sensitivity analysis by varying Dthr, a hyperparameter of ECM at the server and client, one at a time. The effectiveness of our approach is validated on four finance and medical datasets.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures, 7 table

Caregivers perceptions on factors contributing to their children’s malnutrition

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW)Complex factors contribute to child malnutrition. These include various factors for example stress, trauma, cognitive abilities and education, poverty, environmental and cultural practices. Caregivers’ situations and perceptions regarding these factors are of utmost importance in child malnutrition. Lesotho has a high incidence of malnourished children irrespective of various interventions to address the problem. The research question that the researcher wanted to answer is: What are caregivers’ perceptions on factors contributing to their children’s malnutrition? This was the question as caregivers’ environments and perceptions influence child malnutrition and they are the ones that accompany the children to the hospital where this research was done. The research goal was to get an understanding of caregivers’ perceptions on factors contributing to malnutrition. In order to reach the goal. the objectives were: To explore the factors contributing to malnutrition; to describe the factors contributing to malnutrition and to give recommendations to social workers and the multi-disciplinary team in order to address the factors contributing to malnutrition as preventative measures

Screening for GDM in first trimester of pregnancy and its outcome

Background: GDM is associated with increased risk of complications for both mother and fetus both during pregnancy as well as in the postpartum period. Screening for GDM is important to improve short and long term maternal and fetal outcomes. The main purpose of this review is to provide an update on screening for GDM. As per DIPSI criteria women can be diagnosed to have GDM in the first trimester, if the 2hour 75gms OGTT IS 140-199 mg/dL. A prospective observational study with 300 cases was conducted for a period of 1year and 11months (December 2012-2014) in VIMSAR Burla, Sambalpur.Methods: Universal screening was applied by means of DIPSI. Analysis was done by means of t-test, Odd’s ratio, chi squire test. P<.05 was taken as significant.Results: In the present study, 25 cases were diagnosed as GDM with an incidence of 8.33%. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) was found significantly associated with GDM cases (p value 0.02). The mean birth weight in women with GDM (3.05±0.47Kg) was higher than in women with non-GDM (2.65±0.43 Kg). Overall the macrosomia (≥4Kg) rate was 0.67% with 8% in case of GDM mothers. Not a single case of congenital fetal anomaly was detected in the GDM group under our study 20% of the GDM group had their babies admitted to NICU as compared to 17.65% of the non-GDM group (p value 0.76).Conclusions: Women with GDM are at an increased risk for adverse obstetrics and perinatal outcomes. Due to high prevalence of GDM in India early universal screening is essential. Screening for glucose intolerance during the early weeks of pregnancy is beneficial as this policy would help in identifying undiagnosed diabetes prior to conception and to render appropriate care. Screening and diagnosis of GDM with a single test procedure of 75g 2hr PGBS in a non-fasting woman i.e. following DIPSI guidelines is found to be effective, simple, economical and feasible.

The shortcomings of the common law and the Companies Act 61 of 1973 in regulating executive remuneration in South Africa : is the code of corporate practices and conduct the answer for listed companies?

Thesis (LL.M.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.King II articulated in an open manner, issues of disclosure, transparency, comparator ren1lmeration packages and a robust approach to the paYment of con1pensation in relation to poorly performing directors. While directors owe fiduciary duties to the company (shareholders present and future), by paying themselves huge packages, they do no longer act in the best interests of the con1pany because awarding themselves exorbitant packages may frustrate their duty to maximise shareholder value. The solution is that their interests be linked to those of shareholders by requiring that their pay be linked to their performance. With the advent of corporate governance reforms, other stakeholder interests have to be taken cognisance of by directors in corporate decision Inaking. As such, a huge gap between the salaries of rank and file employees and those of executive directors is seen as a conscious move to ignore the interests of legitimate stakeholders when there is no compelling reason to do so. To try and align the interest of shareholders and directors, it is felt that more emphasis has to be placed on actively engaging shareholders and employees in the determination of executive remuneration. It is subn1itted that pay that is not linked to performance is a breach of fiduciary duties, in particular, duty to avoid conflict of interest. However, our common law and Companies Act 61 of 1973 fail imn1ensely to address concerns relating to excessive remuneration pay. In particular, the business judgment nl1e precludes minority shareholders taking action on the basis of wrongs committed against the company by virtue of pay not being linked to performance. Neither has the introduction of corporate governance reforms impacted heavily on setting executive remuneration. They have not proved effective in curbing fat cat pay. It is acknowledged that these reforms have ~rought about a profound impact on attitudes in the corporate environment. However, numerous deficiencies, particularly in the context of South Africa can be identified. This thesis serves as a means of establishing whether fron1 a legal perspective, following recent reforms, the negative impact of exorbitant remuneration pay is of such a serious nature as to warrant more stringent regulation in one form or the other. South Africa should consider revan1ping and tightening current legislation, which as submitted is lacking in a number of respects. As a strategy to eradicate exorbitant pay, it is submitted that directors fiduciary duties have to be revised and legislated in order to successfully establish directors wrongdoing. It is felt that legislative enactment may be made stronger by the fact that it may have stronger and sharper teeth and hence able to reach where self-regulated codes are weak