Studies on plankton production in the inshore waters of Tuticorin

The results of hydro-biological investigations, with special reference to plankton production, in the inshore areas off Tuticorin for the period 1976 to 1985 have been presented. The primary production revealed three distinct peaks during the years, 1982-85, the first in January-April, the second in June August and the third October -December. The annual cycle of zooplankton production was dicyclic with slight variations throughout the period of study. Components of zooplankters showed definite seasonal fluctuations. Occurrence of fish eggs and larvae in increased percentages during March, June, July and September-October indicated the spawning seasons in this area. The distribution of bivalve and gastropod larvae exhibits two distinct modes during February-March and October-December, revealing the breeding season of this group. The environmental conditions of the inshore area relating to primary and secondary production are briefly discussed

Note on the subsistence fishery of Periasamipuram in Gulf of Mannar

The survey of Periasamipuram, one of the fishing villages has revealed that there are about 250 families in the village, among which 41 are actively engaged in the fishing activity. Three types of nets, a) Nachchuvalai, b) Viduvalai and c) Sippivalai are being employed for fishing. Some action has been initiated to establish a co- operative society at Periasamipuram

Measuring the Interestingness of Articles in a Limited User Environment Prospectus

Search engines, such as Google, assign scores to news articles based on their relevancy to a query. However, not all relevant articles for the query may be interesting to a user. For example, if the article is old or yields little new information, the article would be uninteresting. Relevancy scores do not take into account what makes an article interesting, which would vary from user to user. Although methods such as collaborative filtering have been shown to be effective in recommendation systems, in a limited user environment there are not enough users that would make collaborative filtering effective. I present a general framework for defining and measuring the ''interestingness'' of articles, called iScore, incorporating user-feedback including tracking multiple topics of interest as well as finding interesting entities or phrases in a complex relationship network. I propose and have shown the validity of the following: 1. Filtering based on only topic relevancy is insufficient for identifying interesting articles. 2. No single feature can characterize the interestingness of an article for a user. It is the combination of multiple features that yields higher quality results. For each user, these features have different degrees of usefulness for predicting interestingness. 3. Through user-feedback, a classifier can combine features to predict interestingness for the user. 4. Current evaluation corpora, such as TREC, do not capture all aspects of personalized news filtering systems necessary for system evaluation. 5. Focusing on only specific evolving user interests instead of all topics allows for more efficient resource utilization while yielding high quality recommendation results. 6. Multiple profile vectors yield significantly better results than traditional methods, such as the Rocchio algorithm, for identifying interesting articles. Additionally, the addition of tracking multiple topics as a new feature in iScore, can improve iScore's classification performance. 7. Multiple topic tracking yields better results than the best results from the last TREC adaptive filtering run. As future work, I will address the following hypothesis: Entities and the relationship among these entities using current information extraction technology can be utilized to identify entities of interest and relationships of interest, using a scheme such as PageRank. And I will address one of the following two hypotheses: 1. By addressing the multiple reading roles that a single user may have, classification results can be improved. 2. By tailoring the operating parameters of MTT, better classification results can be achieved

Prognostic significance of Red cell distribution width (RDW) and Neutrophil–Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR) in Acute Pancreatitis: Identification of an Optimal values

INTRODUCTION: Acute pancreatitis is usually a self-limiting process; however, 25% of patients present with or subsequently develop a severe form of the disease that is associated with a mortality of up to 50 %. Aim of the available Scoring system is to stratify the severity of the Acute Pancreatitis, and this in turn guides the management with improving outcomes. Currently available scoring system for assessment of Acute Pancreatitis is the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II) & Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) are suitable only in the intensive care setting and not for routine use in all patients presenting with Acute Pancreatitis. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To investigate the validity of RDW and NLR in predicting outcome, and to determine an optimal cut-off value that would allow division of patients into mild (MAP) and severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) groups based on NLRs & RDW within the first 48 h of hospitalization. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study is to be conducted among 30 patients with acute pancreatitis attending the Department of Medicine & Department of Medical gastroenterology, Govt. Rajaji Hospital, Madurai. Design of Study: Prospective analytical study. PERIOD OF STUDY: 5 Months. RESULT: 1. Age and sex distribution of the population in our study shows 26.7% of the study subjects were in the age group of 25-35years, 46.6% were in the age group of 36-45yrs, 26.7% were in the age group of 46-55 years. 2. All of the study subjects were males (100%). In our study about 73.3 % of the study subjects were classified as mild acute pancreatitis while 26.7% were developed complications, so called severe acute pancreatitis. 3. Among the severe acute pancreatitis group, about 37.5% of study groups developed pseudocyst of pancreas, 25% of patients developed pancreatic necrosis, 25 % developed acute renal failure and remaining 12.5% developed multi organ dysfunction syndrome. 4. By observing RDW, no significant change in values on 0, 24 & 48 hrs in both acute and chronic pancreatitis. But there is significant change observed in between acute & chronic pancreatitis; that is rise in RDW observed in severe acute pancreatitis. This change is more significant in 0 hr & 24 hrs than 48 hrs. 5. By observing NLR, there is significant change observed in between acute & chronic pancreatitis; that is rise in NLR observed in severe acute pancreatitis. This change is more significant in 0 hr & 24 hrs than 48 hrs. Similarly NLR ratio is higher than the normal population in acute pancreatitis; more significant rise observed in initial presentation than in 24 & 48 hours. 6. In addition, optimal cut-off RDW value of 15.2 on admission and15.5 at 24 hours are predict severe acute pancreatitis. Similarly optimal neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) of 10.5 on admission 9.1 at 24 hours also indicate severe acute pancreatitis. 7. These results indicate that NLR & RDW is convenient, economic, and sensitive monitoring method for helping clinicians predict complications in AP patients. CONCLUSION: Aim of this study is to optimize the RDW & NLR and investigate if incorporation in to current Acute Pancreatitis prognostic scoring systems increases the accuracy of current methods. Finally In this study we evaluated the ability of RDW & NLR values predicting the outcome of acute pancreatitis and found that NLR is more valuable than RDW; both are important prognostic marker in acute pancreatitis patients. Increased RDW can be used as a new indicator of mortality in patients with acute pancreatitis So NLR & RDW values in combination with other scoring systems will be useful for properly evaluating & predicting the severity of acute pancreatitis

Professional Values and Roles of Clinical Nurse Leader

The clinical nurse leader is a advanced nurse generalist with education at the master’s degree level. The clinical nurse leader role was proposed by the American association of college of nursing (AACN) to improve quality of patient care and to prepare nurses with competencies needed to thrive in the current and future health care system.  Hence, the clinical nurse leader must bring nursing leadership needed at the point of care to ensure high quality safe nursing care. Comprehensive knowledge of the patient and case management skills, allows the clinical nurse leader to facilitate improved clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.

Nonvolatile memory with molecule-engineered tunneling barriers

We report a novel field-sensitive tunneling barrier by embedding C60 in SiO2 for nonvolatile memory applications. C60 is a better choice than ultra-small nanocrystals due to its monodispersion. Moreover, C60 provides accessible energy levels to prompt resonant tunneling through SiO2 at high fields. However, this process is quenched at low fields due to HOMO-LUMO gap and large charging energy of C60. Furthermore, we demonstrate an improvement of more than an order of magnitude in retention to program/erase time ratio for a metal nanocrystal memory. This shows promise of engineering tunnel dielectrics by integrating molecules in the future hybrid molecular-silicon electronics.Comment: to appear in Applied Physics Letter

Seasonal abundance of bivalve and gastropod larvae in the plankton off Tuticorin coast

Estimation and identification of the commercially important molluscsn larvae occurring in the plant(ton collected from inshore waters off Tuticorin coast during 1976-1985 indicated their abundance in space and time. It is of practical significance to determine the fluctuations in the larval population and settlement of many of the bivalves iilce the pearl oyster. The occurrence of bivalve and gastropod larvae exhibit two distinct modes during February-April and September-December indicating the peal( spawning seasons of these groups. In certain years, another prominent occurrence of molluscan larvae was noticed during June-July. A maximum of 98.5% of bivalve larvae were recorded in February, 1976 and 91.8% of gastropod larvae during June, 1976. The distribution pattern of molluscan larvae and that of other planktonic organisms and the relationship with hydrological factors are discussed. Several larval forms have been identified from the collections indicating the significance of Tuticorin as an important molluscan resources zone

Observations on pelagic fish eggs and larvae in the coastal waters of Tuticorin

Quantitative Estimation of pelagic fish eggs and larvae which occurred in the plankton collections of Tuticorin coast during 1976-85 indicated their abundance in space and time A trimodal cycle in tin distribution of fish eggs and larvae with peaks in February-March, June-July and September-October was observed, indicating the spawning seasons. A maximum occurrence of 7,584 eggs contributing to 80.6% In the composition of total zooplankton was recorded In October, 1978 coinciding the permonsoon season. Hydrological and meteorological features of the area in relation to the distribution of fish eggs and larvae are briefly discussed. A variety of types of eggs and larvae sorted in the collections indicated the area as an important resourceful ground in the fishery map of Southeast coast of Indi