FogGIS: Fog Computing for Geospatial Big Data Analytics

Cloud Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has emerged as a tool for analysis, processing and transmission of geospatial data. The Fog computing is a paradigm where Fog devices help to increase throughput and reduce latency at the edge of the client. This paper developed a Fog-based framework named Fog GIS for mining analytics from geospatial data. We built a prototype using Intel Edison, an embedded microprocessor. We validated the FogGIS by doing preliminary analysis. including compression, and overlay analysis. Results showed that Fog computing hold a great promise for analysis of geospatial data. We used several open source compression techniques for reducing the transmission to the cloud.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, 3rd IEEE Uttar Pradesh Section International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Electronics (09-11 December, 2016) Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi, Indi

Gulf migration study : employment, wages and working conditions of Kerala emigrants in the United Arab Emirates

This is the fourth in a series of Working Papers published by the CDS on Kerala migration. Unlike the other three, this one is financed by the Kerala Government and the data were collected in UAE. The objectives of this Working Paper are to: - document changes in the labour demand for different categories of emigrant workers - enumerate the emigration policies - examine employment and working conditions, wage levels and related problems of the Kerala emigrants - understand the education and training requirements of future emigrants to UAE

Designing a Healthcare QA Assistant: A Knowledge Based Approach

Question answer (QA) assistants are vital tools to address users’ information needs in healthcare. Knowledge graphs (KGs) and language models (LMs) have shown promise in building QA systems, but face challenges in their integration, and performance. Motivated thus, we take the case of a specific disease, skin eczema, to design a QA system combining KG and LM approaches. We present design iterations for systematically developing the KG, then fine-tuning a LM, and finally carrying out joint reasoning over both. We observe that while KGs are effective for fact finding, fine-tuned LMs perform better at answering complex queries. Initial results suggest that combining KG and LM approaches can improve the performance of the system. Our study contributes by laying out the design steps and developing a QA system that addresses various gaps in the related literature. Our future plan is to refine these techniques towards building a full-fledged healthcare QA assistant

Initial Experience of Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy at Lumbini Medical College

  Introduction: Renal stone disease is a challenging problem in urologic practice especially in our locality because of large stone burden and recurrence. Since ,the early 1980s when percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) was established for management of renal stones, open surgical procedures have virtually been replaced. PCNL is a safe, effective and minimally invasive approach compared to open surgery for patients with large single, multiple or staghorn stones. The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate and to review our experience with PCNL in management of renal and upper ureteric stones.   Methods: Prospective study carried out at Lumbini Medical College and Teaching Hospital during 1stJanuary 2011 to 31st October 2011. Sixty patients were evaluated and subjected to PCNL. After clinical investigations like ultrasonography (USG) and intravenous urography (IVU), once patients were found to have renal or upper ureteric stones they were informed and explained about PCNL, its likely complications, probable hospital stay, the cost of treatment and data were recorded along with the operative time, estimated blood loss, stone burden, stone-free rate, length of hospitalization and complications .Patients were followed up after three months to rule out recurrence of stones by plain abdominal x-ray of kidney, ureter and bladder and USG.   Results: Out of 60 patients 35 were male and 25 were female (M: F=1.4:1) with mean age of 37 years and were subjected to PCNL monotherapy. With the average stone size of 3.26cm, the mean operative time was 78 minutes. Complete stone removal achieved by PCNL alone in 60 cases, with insignificant residual small stones we achieved 97% stone clearance rate. The mean hospital stay was 3.7 days. No Serious complications were encountered, 9 (15%) patients required blood transfusion and 3 (5%) patients developed transient post-operative pyrexia.   Conclusion: PCNL is the first line treatment option for management of large renal stones which as monotherapy has advantages in removal of renal and upper ureteric stones and achieving excellent results with minimal morbidity

Experience of Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy at Lumbini Medical College Teaching Hospital

  Introduction: The difficult gallbladder is the most common difficult laparoscopy being performed by generalsurgeons all over the world and the potential one that places the patient at significant risk. The present study aimed to study all the cases of laparoscopic cholecystectomy conducted in current setup at Lumbini Medical College and Teaching Hospital, to compare the results with the published literature and also analyze the complications and ways to decrease the incidence of conversion to open procedure.   Methods: Five hundred twenty five patients age 10-90 years, male:female ratio of 1:3.86 with body weight 45-65 kilogram, who had undergone laparoscopic cholecystectomy for symptomatic cholelithiasis without choledocholithiasis from April 2011 to April 2013 were studied.   Results: All the laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) were without major complications. Only nineteen out of five hundred twentyfive (3.6%) required conversion to open cholecystectomy (OC). Reasons for conversion included: dense omental or visceral adhesions; two (0.38%), unclear anatomy; 16 (3.04%), common bile duct injury; one (0.19%). There were 20 cases of shrunken gallbladder suspicious of malignancy but didn’t required conversion.   Conclusion: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the preferred method in our setup even in difficult cases

Therapeutical and Nutraceutical Roles of Cyanobacterial Tetrapyrrole Chromophore: Recent Advances and Future Implications

Cyanobacteria have attracted the attention of researchers because of their promising role as primary and secondary metabolites in functional food and drug design. Due to an ever-increasing awareness of health and the use of natural products to avoid the onset of many chronic and lifestyle metabolic diseases, the global demand for the use of natural drugs and food additives has increased in the last few decades. There are several reports about the highly valuable cyanobacterial products such as carotenoids, vitamins, minerals, polysaccharides, and phycobiliproteins showing antioxidant, anti-cancerous, anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic, and antimicrobial properties. Recently, it has been shown that allophycocyanin increases longevity and reduces the paralysis effect at least in Caenorhabditis elegans. Additionally, other pigments such as phycoerythrin and phycocyanin show antioxidative properties. Because of their high solubility in water and zero side effects, some of the cyanobacterial tetrapyrrole derivatives, i.e., pigments, facilitate an innovative and alternative way for the beverage and food industries in place of synthetic coloring agents at the commercial level. Thus, not only are the tetrapyrrole derivatives essential constituents for the synthesis of most of the basic physiological biomolecules, such as hemoglobin, chlorophyll, and cobalamin, but also have the potential to be used for the synthesis of synthetic compounds used in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. In the present review, we focused on the different aspects of tetrapyrrole rings in the drug design and food industries and addressed its remaining limitations to be used as natural nutrient supplements and therapeutic agents

CLUSTERING OF NETWORK DEVICES TO FORM A VIRTUAL NETWORK SERVICE CONTROL PLANE

Enterprise networks often consist of multiple sites that often operate in a hierarchical manner for routing traffic among the sites, as well as to/from external networks. With the deployment of enterprise or hybrid cloud services within enterprise networks, such as cloud productivity services, communication services, etc. many policies, security, and/or performance requirements have to be met that often depend on the knowledge of sources and destinations, including their user/group information, security information, credentials, etc. However, it is often difficult to aggregate such information to scale in an end-to-end manner, similar to routing prefixes, as it can be difficult to store such information within the hardware resources of a network. In order to address such issues, techniques are presented herein through which a clustering capability can be enabled for existing and/or newly deployed physical and/or virtual networking devices in order to form a virtual network service control plane that can facilitate scaling for the deployment of hybrid cloud services. As described in further detail herein, networking protocols can be utilized to provide intent and guidance regarding the replication capability of databases in distributed operating system infrastructure within a set of networking devices such that the cluster forms the virtual network service control plane