Recent Advances in Technology & Its Effects on Higher Education

The technology available to the generations preceding this generation pales in comparison to the technology available to this generation. The methods of education have also changed from generation to generation. There is a direct connection between the technology available and the education practices. All of the technological advancements made in education have allowed students to access vast stores of information and because of these advancements it became easier to get by without learning, and, on the other hand, learn in a much more efficient way. One of the techniques to improving the students’ meets the academic needs and helps them developing English language skills is providing multimedia during the process of teaching and learning in the classroom. Multimedia classroom provide the students chances for interacting with diverse texts that give them a solid background in the tasks and content of mainstream college courses. The writing aims to find out some advantages of the use of multimedia in the classroom. Also, the involvement of technology in the classroom cannot denied giving positive point to improving the quality of teaching and giving more various techniques in teaching a foreign language. The research uses a qualitative method giving a deeply description using multimedia in the classroom. The difference between a traditional classroom and multimedia classroom has been drawn in this writing. The writing shows that there are some advantages in teaching English using multimedia as a technique in teaching process in the classroom. Through the media the teacher could give more opportunity to students to express their opinions and enjoy during the course. The highly presence and motivation also bring positive aspects to students so that they can improve their skills. Keywords: Multimedia,  Technology,  Classroom, e tools ,Blogs, Skype ,Twitte

A cross-sectional study on quality of life among acne vulgaris patients

Background: In India, prevalence data from dermatology clinic in a teaching hospital in Varanasi reported acne in 50.6% of boys and 38.13% of girls in the age group 12-17 years. Though it is considered to be merely a cosmetic problem, it is associated with considerable psychological impairment which is comparable with certain chronic diseases. Acne patients are prone to low self-esteem, low self-confidence and social dysfunction which may lead to anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsiveness and sometimes suicidal ideation. Acne affects the functional abilities of individuals and patients have higher rate of unemployment when compared to those without acne. Acne also may have negative impact on personal relationships, sports activities and employment opportunities in teens and young adults. The management of acne must take into account the impact of acne on the patient’s quality of life. So the present study was carried out to determine the impact of acne and its clinical severity on quality of life among patients of different grades of acne patients in various age groups.Methods: The current cross sectional study was conducted in Patients diagnosed as acne vulgaris attending OPD of PCMS and RC Bhopal (India) in department of dermatology for a period of 2 year. (November 2012 – October 2014). 300 patients attending the Dermatology OPD with diagnosis of acne vulgaris were taken for the study. Patients aged 16 -35 years were included in our study. A detailed history was taken after obtaining consent from all the participants of study. Cardiff Acne disability index (CADI) and Dermatology life quality index (DLQI) were administered on patients to determine the impact of acne vulgaris on quality of life (QOL). Data was analyzed to compare the quality of life indices (CADI and DLQI) for duration and severity of acne.Results: Mean age of study population was 20.69 years. There was a male preponderance with ratio of 1.04:1 (M:F). According to this study 49% of patients had acne vulgaris for less than 1year. In present study maximum number 63.7% of patients presented with lesions over face followed by 14.7% of patients having lesions over face and back. According to DLQI scores of acne showed no effect in 4.3% of the patients, small effect in 26.3% of the patients, moderate effect in 38.7% of patients, very large effect in 29% of patients and extremely large effects on 1.7% of patients. According to CADI scores of acne showed low effect in 31.3% of the patients, majority had medium effect in 56.7% of patients and high effect was seen on 12 % of patients.Conclusions: Overall our study showed that quality of life is significantly impaired in patients of severe acne vulgaris. Use of these simple QOL measures as a part of integral clinical strategy will improve the outcome

Health Communication in Media: An Analytical Study of Coverage of World Blood Donor Day in Leading National Dailies from Jaipur

As we know Print media is known for its credibility. It is believed that whatever is published in newspapers is true and authentic. Newspapers have a wide reach and huge readership and it can be said that campaigning with mass media like newspapers are associated with many benefits. Firstly it can reach a large number of people.  Secondly, it is considered to be a credible source of information. Thirdly through the newspapers the readers can be reminded about the issues at hand their beliefs reinforced on regular basis. Newspapers have a large readership throughout the world. They can contribute maximally to health education awareness of people by publishing articles on health related issues. Global daily circulation of newspaper was 5.19 million having a readership of 2.3 billion in 2010. This was 20% more than the internet users worldwide. In the age of internet still newspapers are relevant and represent 8% of total media consumption time (https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/). In India Registered newspapers are 82,237 and Hindi language newspapers are leading the race followed by English and other regional languages. Thus, we can say that Newspapers are very important tool to disseminate health education among people and it can bring change in society. (http://rni.nic.in/

Diffusion of coronavirus and awareness among the people of western India: Analyses the role of print media

Introduction: Media is considered the most powerful platform to create awareness in human society. It plays an important role in spreading public awareness and disseminating information about pandemic diseases such as coronavirus. A survey through a questionnaire was used and the descriptive analysis of questions as asked to the people on COVID 19 published by the leading newspapers of Rajasthan, western India was done to analyze the role print media played in spreading awareness about Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). Materials and Methods: The objectives used both quantitative and qualitative methodology. In the quantitative method, a self-structured questionnaire was circulated among the various professionals. A descriptive method of secondary sources was also used to measure the effect of articles and advisements on the people published in the newspapers. Results: A total of 106 various professionals participated in the study. The research reveals that 56 percent of males and 43 percent of females are part of this research; more than 80 percent of respondents belong to the age group of fewer than 40 years. Among the active respondents, 91 percent are said to read the newspaper regularly. The study also shows that 96 percent of respondents are read articles, news, columns related to COVID-19 and particular about Coronavirus. Nearly 91 percent of respondents are in favor that media coverage of COVID-19 has improved their knowledge of Coronavirus. Around 93 percent of respondents agree that media spreading awareness among the people on Coronavirus through newspaper published articles, news, and advisements. The study exhibits that 95 percent of respondents expressed their views that print media has played an active role in disseminating the government directives on Coronavirus and almost 97 percent of the respondents are opined that print media will play a more effective role in spreading awareness on coronavirus. Conclusion: The respondents expressed that print media has played a vital role in spreading awareness on the pandemic of coronavirus disease. The newspaper spread awareness among the people on coronavirus through newspaper published articles, news and advisements. The newspaper also published a variety of queries and doubts as asked by the people to Doctors on coronvirus

Spectral Characterization of Himalayan Near-Fault Ground Motion

Near-Fault Ground Motion (NFGM) spectral characteristics of three moderate-sized Himalayan earthquakes, viz., the 1986 Dharamsala earthquake (Mw = 5:5), the 1991 Uttarkashi earthquake (Mw = 6:8), and the 1999 Chamoli earthquake (Mw = 6:5) have been studied from the 33 available strong ground motion recordings. Pulse characteristics of fault-normal components in terms of pulse-periods and pulse-indicators have been extracted adopting wavelet analysis. Seven mother wavelets were used in the analysis, and it was found that db4 and db7 mother wavelets were more efficient in extracting the pulse-type characteristics. NFGM spectra, at Bhatwari and Gopeshwar stations, showed higher spectral amplitudes in the velocity-sensitive and acceleration-sensitive regions compared to Indian codal response spectra. This is attributed to high PGV/PGA ratios. The study shows that NFGM leads to widening of acceleration-sensitive region, and the structures that are designed according to the Indian seismic code as flexible structures shall behave as stiff structures when subjected to NFGM

A comparative study of coronary artery disease in diabetics and non-diabetics

Background: Cardiovascular diseases accounts for the greatest burden of morbidity and mortality worldwide, both in developed and in developing countries. Coronary Heart Disease  makes up more than half of all CVD deaths in men and women  under 75 years of age, is eases with a lifetime risk of developing CHD after  age 40 years, of 49 per cent for men and 32 per cent for women. The Framingham study showed that the risk of cardiovascular death was increased 4-5 fold in women and 2 fold in men with predominantly type-2 diabetes mellitus.Methods: The present study was undertaken at Chandulal Chandrakar Memorial Hospital, Bhilai, Dist. Durg, Chhattisgarh, India between the periods of September- 2010, September-2012 (2 years). 120 cases of CAD were studied, out of which 60 cases are diabetic CAD and 60 cases are non-diabetic CAD. Sample is drawn by simple random technique. Ethical approval was obtained from institutional ethical committee. Total Cases were 120, Diabetic CAD (Group -1)-60 and Non-diabetic CAD (Group 2)-60. Results: Male to female ratio in group-1 was 2.3:1 and in group-2 it was 1.7:1. Females were commonly affected in the diabetic group than non-diabetic group. Diabetics are more obese than non-diabetics. Non-diabetics have higher ideal body weight 58.33% than diabetic (36.66%) (p<0.001); whereas proportion of over-weight people was same in both groups. Among the diabetic group and non-diabetic group maximum number of cases belonged to low risk category with total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, but with borderline risk with HDL cholesterol.Conclusions: CAD in diabetics had considerably higher percent of severe and unpredictable presentation. Diabetics have a higher risk factor profile and poor clinical outcome.

Digitization of Library Materials in Academic Libraries: Issues and Challenges

Abstract-Digitization as a method of preservation is now a global phenomenon as well as the new trend in managing a library collection especially precious ones among academic libraries. This paper discusses the reasons for digitization and also explains the processes and methodology of digitization. Issues and challenges involved in the process of digitization are also highlighted. Such major deterrents in the project include legal aspect and finances. Other factors are also discussed and the ways forward to the hindrances highlighted. This paper establishes that there are challenges militating against the digitization of academic libraries and concludes with the remarks that although digitization is a challenge still information professionals/librarians must meet with the practical skills and the vision to implement it in a controlled and manageable fashion

Streaming Speech-to-Confusion Network Speech Recognition

In interactive automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, low-latency requirements limit the amount of search space that can be explored during decoding, particularly in end-to-end neural ASR. In this paper, we present a novel streaming ASR architecture that outputs a confusion network while maintaining limited latency, as needed for interactive applications. We show that 1-best results of our model are on par with a comparable RNN-T system, while the richer hypothesis set allows second-pass rescoring to achieve 10-20\% lower word error rate on the LibriSpeech task. We also show that our model outperforms a strong RNN-T baseline on a far-field voice assistant task.Comment: Submitted to Interspeech 202

A Heart Disease Prediction Model using Decision Tree

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