Prevalence of hypertension among rural population of Doiwala block, Dehradun, Uttarakhand India

Hypertension is a major health problem in developed as well as in developing countries. The prevalence pattern of hypertension in developing countries is different from that in the developed countries. The increasing epidemic of hypertension in India was documented by studies done at various places across the country. Various studies estimated a prevalence rate of hypertension among urban population ranging from 1.24% in 1949 to 36.4% in 2003 and for rural people from 1.99% in 1958 to 21.2 % in 1994.  Uttarakhand is a newly formed and one of the hilly states of the India with more than 70% rural population. Since very scanty reports are available on prevalence of hypertension from Uttarakhand so this community based cross sectional study was conducted to know about the prevalence of hypertension in rural population of an area of Uttarakhand. Gumaniwala, a village near Rishikesh was the place of survey.  A total of 340 peoples aged 30 years and above were selected through simple random sampling method for the study. All the subjects underwent an interview through a pretested questionnaire and clinical examination. Blood pressure of all the study subjects was measured using standardized technique. All the data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16.0. The prevalence of hypertension was presented as percentage. The association between categorical variables and hypertension were tested using Chi square test. A p value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.  The overall prevalence of hypertension and pre-hypertension was 33.2% and 40.6% respectively. The prevalence of hypertension among females is higher (34.2%) than in males (32.4%). Among all studied variables age, smoking and Body mass index (BMI) were significantly related with hypertension (p<0.05). Since prevalence of hypertension is associated with socio-demographic factors hence the identification of the variables influencing hypertension is an important aspect for taking appropriate preventive measures to stop increase in the incidence of hypertension

Evaluation of Data Mining Techniques and Its Fusion with IoT Enabled Smart Technologies for Effective Prediction of Available Parking Space

After experiencing the hard times of pandemic situations we learned that if we could have a smart system that can help us in automatic parking of the vehicles then it could be a great help to society. This idea motivated us to carry out this current work. Though, nowadays, in almost every application domain, IoT techniques are the buzzword. IoT techniques can also be used to achieve efficacy in predicting free available parking space in advance. But the biggest challenge with IoT techniques is that they generate numerous data, which makes its analysis intangible. It was realized that if IoT techniques can be fused with outperforming data mining techniques, more efficient predictions can be performed. Thus, for this purpose, the main objective of our paper is to firstly, select the most appropriate data mining technique, based on performance evaluation, and then to perform prediction of available parking space in advance by fusing it with IoT techniques. Due to the busy schedule, the drivers need to get information about free parking spaces in advance by using smart phones. With the help of this information, it will be easy for the drivers to park their vehicle in the exact location without wasting their precious time and will maintain social distancing in crowded areas too. Data mining techniques can play an important role in the prediction of available parking space, by extracting only relevant and important information when applied to the given dataset. For this purpose, a comparative analysis of five data mining techniques such as the Support Vector Machine, K- Nearest approach, Decision Tree, Random Forest, and Ensemble learning approaches are applied on PK lot data set by using Python language. For calculation of result anaconda (spyder) is used as a supportive tool. The main outcome of the paper is to find the technique that will give better results for the prediction of the available space and if we fused data mining techniques with IoT technologies results are improvised. Evaluation parameters that are used for finding the best technique are precision, recall, accuracy, and F1-Score. For numerical calculation of the results, the k-fold cross-validation method is used. As the empirical results are calculated using the Pk lot dataset, the decision tree outperformed the best among all the techniques that are selected for analysis

Performance assessment and analysis of development and operations based automation tools for source code management

Development and operations (DevOps), an accretion of automation tools, efficiently reaches the goals of software development, test, release, and delivery in terms of optimization, speed and quality. Diverse set of alternative automation tools exist for different phases of software development, for which DevOps adopts several selection criteria to choose the best tool. This research paper represents the performance evaluation and analysis of automation tools employed in the coding phase of DevOps culture. We have taken most commonly followed source code management tools-BitBucket, GitHub actions, and GitLab into consideration. Current work assesses and analyzes their performance based on DevOps evaluation criteria that too are categorized into different dimensions. For the purpose of performance evaluation, weightage and overall score is assigned to these criteria based on existing renowned literature and industrial case study of TekMentors Pvt Ltd. On the ground of performance outcome, the tool with the highest overall score is realized as the best source code automation tool. This performance analysis or measure will be a great benefit to our young researchers/students to gain an understanding of the modus operandi of DevOps culture, particularly source code automation tools. As a part of future research, other dimensions of selection criteria can also be considered for evaluation purposes

COVID-19, the novel coronavirus 2019: current updates and the future

COVID-19 is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans. It is large, enveloped, single-stranded RNA virus. The clinical features range from the common cold to more severe diseases i.e., MERS and SARS. Incubation period ranges between 1-12.5 days (median 5-6 days). As on 07 March, 2020 total confirmed cases are 1,01,927 with 3486 deaths in 93 countries/territories/areas. The various lab tests for COVID-19 virus are NAAT, serological testing, viral sequencing and viral culture. Many aspects of this virus is still not understood. The authors in this article describe studies to know the pathogenesis as well as immunological response with use of animal methods. Authors also discuss genetic engineering, evaluation of activation and inflammatory activity of myeloid cells during pathogenic human coronavirus, etc. that can help in prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in near future

Efficacy of topical phenytoin in healing diabetic foot ulcer

Background: India is fast becoming world diabetes capital. Complications are a cause of hospitalization in patients with diabetes mellitus especially foot complications. Gauze moistened with saline has been the standard method.Methods: The study was done from June 2015 to June 2016. The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of topical phenytoin compared to standard and conventional methods of wound care in improving the healing process. In this randomised control trial, the data from 70 patients with diabetic ulcers was collected, 35 patients underwent topical phenytoin dressing while remaining 35 underwent conventional wound care. Histopathological and Clinical examination were done and the following parameters were calculated: Granulation tissue formation in 2 weeks and Mean duration of hospital stay.Results: In this study, Mean hospital stay in days was 33.4 in Phenytoin treated group and in other group with use conventional materials, the mean hospital stay in days was 39.7 days. Granulation tissue formation was faster as compared to conventional materials of Dressings.Conclusions: In this study we conclude Topical phenytoin helps in faster healing of Diabetic Foot Ulcers and it also reduces the mean hospital stay of the patients

Sentiment Analysis Using Common-Sense and Context Information

Sentiment analysis research has been increasing tremendously in recent times due to the wide range of business and social applications. Sentiment analysis from unstructured natural language text has recently received considerable attention from the research community. In this paper, we propose a novel sentiment analysis model based on common-sense knowledge extracted from ConceptNet based ontology and context information. ConceptNet based ontology is used to determine the domain specific concepts which in turn produced the domain specific important features. Further, the polarities of the extracted concepts are determined using the contextual polarity lexicon which we developed by considering the context information of a word. Finally, semantic orientations of domain specific features of the review document are aggregated based on the importance of a feature with respect to the domain. The importance of the feature is determined by the depth of the feature in the ontology. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods

Quantitative estimation of serum 25(OH) D and associated risk factors of vitamin D deficiency among pregnant women attending a tertiary care hospital in Udaipur, Rajasthan

Introduction: Insufficiency of vitamin D is now known globally and is exceptionally common in temperate and tropical countries. Due to its several negative maternal and fetal health consequences, vitamin D insufficiency in pregnancy is a growing concern worldwide. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary medical hospital for one year. A sample of 280 pregnant women attending antenatal clinic (ANC) were enrolled using a random sampling technique. A standard questionnaire was designed to collect socio-demographic details and the sun exposure of participants. To analyse dietary habits and consumption of vitamin D-rich foods, a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was used. Serum samples were obtained and analyzed for and calcium levels. Results: High prevalence of maternal vitamin D insufficiency 122 (43.57%) and deficiency 92 (32.85%) observed. Most 263 (94%) participants had adequate serum calcium levels (> 8.5 mg/dL). Younger participants (< 25 yrs.) had low mean vitamin D (17.61±13.89 ng/mL), adequate calcium (9.52±0.70 mg/dL) levels. Rural residence, multigravida, advanced trimester, poor education, joint family, unemployment, and lower socioeconomic status were found associated with vitamin D insufficiency. Conclusion: In the present study a high prevalence of maternal vitamin D deficiency was observed. The burden of Vitamin D inadequacy (76.39%) reflects poor nutritional status and health risks for mothers and fetuses. Sociodemographic factors (Residence, Education, Family, and Socioeconomic status) were linked to this micronutrient deficiency. There is a need for further community-based nutritional research on sociodemographic, biological, and nutritional determinants for in-depth understanding

Leukocyte Pyruvate Kinase Expression is Reduced in Normal Human Pregnancy but not in Pre-eclampsia

Citation Xu Y, Madsen-Bouterse SA, Romero R, Hassan S, Mittal P, Elfline M, Zhu A, Petty HR. Leukocyte pyruvate kinase expression is reduced in normal human pregnancy but not in pre-eclampsia. Am J Reprod Immunol 2010; 64: 137–151Emerging evidence suggests that metabolism influences immune cell signaling and immunoregulation. To examine the immunoregulatory role of glycolysis in pregnancy, we evaluated the properties of pyruvate kinase in leukocytes from non-pregnant women and those with normal pregnancy and pre-eclampsia.We evaluated pyruvate kinase expression in lymphocytes and neutrophils from non-pregnant, pregnant, and pre-eclampsia patients using fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. Leukocyte pyruvate kinase activity and pyruvate concentrations were also evaluated. To study pyruvate’s effect on signaling, we labeled Jurkat T cells with Ca 2+ dyes and measured cell responses in the presence of agents influencing intracellular pyruvate.The expression of pyruvate kinase is reduced in lymphocytes and neutrophils from normal pregnant women in comparison with those of non-pregnant women and pre-eclampsia patients. Similarly, the activity of pyruvate kinase and the intracellular pyruvate concentration are reduced in leukocytes of normal pregnant women in comparison with non-pregnant women and women with pre-eclampsia. Using Jurkat cells as a model of leukocyte signaling, we have shown that perturbations of intracellular pyruvate influence Ca 2+ signals.Normal pregnancy is characterized by reduced pyruvate kinase expression within lymphocytes and neutrophils. We speculate that reduced pyruvate kinase expression modifies immune cell responses due to reduced pyruvate concentrations.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79222/1/j.1600-0897.2010.00881.x.pd