UV Induced Processes in Biomolecules, Hydrated Clusters and Stark Deflected Beams

The nanoscale processes by which UV irradiation initiates damage in biological material have not yet been fully elucidated. This represents a barrier to innovations in radiotherapy and also limits our understanding of the molecular origins of life. Experiments on gas-phase biological building blocks can reveal detailed information via comparisons with high-level calculations, while parallel studies of biomolecular clusters offer a route to assess the effects of condensed biological environments. This thesis investigates the stabilities and relaxation pathways of isolated and clustered nucleobases in neutral electronic excited states and ionic states. Furthermore, it presents a new laser thermal desorption facility and reports advances in applying Stark deflection to narrow the range of molecular and cluster configurations in continuous supersonic beams. The key analytical tool in this thesis is UV multi-photon ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MPI-TOF). High-resolution measurements on the RNA base uracil and its fully-deuterated analogue provide new evidence supporting a ring-opening process in a neutral electronic excited state. Comparing experiments on uracil in supersonic beams and from the laser thermal desorption source show that the MPI channel that marks this ring-opening process is not sensitive to the vaporization method and aid comparisons with time-resolved experiments at Heriot Watt University. Exploiting the capabilities of reflectron mass spectrometry to study the metastable dissociation of excited ions and cluster ions is a major theme in this thesis. Photon energy thresholds for metastable dissociation from multi-photon ionized uracil and thymine are reported for the first time. We argue that these thresholds can provide a new route to deduce the adiabatic energies of neutral electronic excited states. Further metastable dissociation experiments and detailed comparisons with ab initio calculations provide the most detailed study of the stable configurations of thymine-water cluster ions to date. The variety of different structural configurations of biomolecules and clusters in neutral target beams presents a major challenge in the experimental study of radiation-induced processes. Stark deflection in electric field gradients offers a powerful method to address this challenge and has previously been used to select specific polar species from mixed pulsed supersonic beams. However, the low pulsing frequencies of such beams are unsuitable to study many collision-induced processes. This thesis reports on the development of a system at the Open University that uses Stark deflection to manipulate continuous beams with the ultimate aim of probing electron attachment processes in selected clusters. Controlled deflection of nitromethane is demonstrated in a helium beam with 94% recovery of the deflected molecules. The manipulation of nucleobases using Stark deflection is achieved for the first time, with continuous argon and krypton expansions providing the necessary rotational cooling. Isolated and clustered nucleobases show very different responses to the deflecting fields, providing a method to gain insights into the origins of specific fragment ions in MPI and electron impact ionization experiments

CYBER PORNOGRAPHY ADDICTION AMONGST MEDICAL STUDENTS OF WESTERN RURAL MAHARASHTRA

Introduction: Cyberpornography is an act of using cyberspace to create, display, distribute, impart or publish pornography or obscene materials, especially materials depicting children engaged in sexual acts with adults. Cyberpornography on one hand, has opened up the new terrain of \u27safe sex\u27, and a positive space for sexual non-conformists. At the same time, it has negatively impacted many offline relations, and a new space for sexual predation and exploitation. Objective: To find out the prevalence, type and form of risk towards cyber pornography addiction amongst the students. Methods & Materials: A prospective cross sectional study was conducted after obtaining an ethical approval from the institute and an informed consent from volunteers fulfilling the eligibility criteria. The Internet sex screening test (ISST) questionnaire with score sheet was used and was collected by complete anonymity and confidentiality. 300 medical students were considered for the study and data collected was analysed by Microsoft-office excel. Results: 57.15% of the volunteer are in low-risk group whereas 30% are vulnerable and 12.85% are in highest-risk group. For boys, 65% are vulnerable whereas 21% in low-risk and the remaining 14% are in highest-risk group. For girls, 73% are in a low-risk, 19% are vulnerable and 8% are in highest-risk group. Conclusion: It is concluded that the majority of boys come under vulnerable category whereas the girls comes in low-risk group showing male preponderance towards addiction. The study reveals that, questions coming under the subgroup of online sexual behaviour-isolated have been answered the maximum number of times, by both the sexes. Whereas, the questions coming under the subgroup of online sexual spending has been answered the least by both the sexes. KEYWORDS: Cyberpornography; Addiction; Sexual behaviour; ISST Questionnaire

Thyroid Storm: Clinical Manifestation, Pathophysiology, and Treatment

Thyroid storm is a rare but life-threatening endocrine emergency. It is an acute exaggerated clinical manifestation of thyrotoxic state. The exact incidence is unknown. It occurs in 1–2% of patients admitted for thyrotoxicosis. It has a mortality of 10–20%. This chapter would help us to understand its clinical manifestations, pathophysiology, and effective treatment. Terminal learning objective would be to diagnose impending storm early and start prompt treatment in day-to-day practice. The chapter would cover pathophysiology including triggers, clinical features including various diagnostic criteria, diagnosis, and treatment of thyroid storm. Indications of surgical treatment in storm will be discussed

Project success and critical success factors of construction projects: project practitioners’ perspectives

Project management is primarily practitioneroriented and loaded with many critical success factors (CSFs), and although these are well-evidenced in theory, they do not deliver as efficiently as factors of interest to project professionals during execution. The present study explores the perceptions of senior project managers (PMs) about project success, CSFs and complexity in large construction projects. Data from project practitioners were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using content analysis. The participants were selected with convenience sampling method given the complex understanding of the domain and included highly experienced PMs from the global community with expertise in project management. PMs perceive a small number of CSFs in contrast to the large exhaustive CSFs listed in the questionnaire surveys. Though important, traditional constraints of the Iron Triangle are considered inadequate in defining project success. Project professionals are seen as relying more on other performance indicators for defining a project as a success. They perceive complex construction projects in terms of a large number of interfaces, complex working systems and uncertainty. The findings of this paper suggest that project practitioners perceive differently about the CSFs and project success

CYBER PORNOGRAPHY ADDICTION AMONGST MEDICAL STUDENTS OF WESTERN RURAL MAHARASHTRA

Introduction: Cyberpornography is an act of using cyberspace to create, display, distribute, impart or publish pornography or obscene materials, especially materials depicting children engaged in sexual acts with adults. Cyberpornography on one hand, has opened up the new terrain of 'safe sex', and a positive space for sexual non-conformists. At the same time, it has negatively impacted many offline relations, and a new space for sexual predation and exploitation. Objective: To find out the prevalence, type and form of risk towards cyber pornography addiction amongst the students. Methods & Materials: A prospective cross sectional study was conducted after obtaining an ethical approval from the institute and an informed consent from volunteers fulfilling the eligibility criteria. The Internet sex screening test (ISST) questionnaire with score sheet was used and was collected by complete anonymity and confidentiality. 300 medical students were considered for the study and data collected was analysed by Microsoft-office excel. Results: 57.15% of the volunteer are in low-risk group whereas 30% are vulnerable and 12.85% are in highest-risk group. For boys, 65% are vulnerable whereas 21% in low-risk and the remaining 14% are in highest-risk group. For girls, 73% are in a low-risk, 19% are vulnerable and 8% are in highest-risk group. Conclusion: It is concluded that the majority of boys come under vulnerable category whereas the girls comes in low-risk group showing male preponderance towards addiction. The study reveals that, questions coming under the subgroup of online sexual behaviour-isolated have been answered the maximum number of times, by both the sexes. Whereas, the questions coming under the subgroup of online sexual spending has been answered the least by both the sexes. KEYWORDS: Cyberpornography; Addiction; Sexual behaviour; ISST Questionnaire

Curse of the technology-computer related musculoskeletal disorders and vision syndrome: a study

Background: Computer Related Musculoskeletal disorders and Vision Syndrome (CRMSKVS) is defined as symptoms due to prolonged use of Visual Display Terminal (VDT).Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was done among office-workers working on computer terminal. A self-reported questionnaire was distributed and Musculoskeletal (MSK) and visual symptoms in the preceding 12 months (01 October 2017 to 30 September 2018) were taken as dependent variable. Multivariate analysis was done to identify the determinants of CRMSKVS.Results: Responses from 1193 subjects were included in the study. CRMSKVS was present in 489 cases (40.98%; males - 37.5%, females - 58.29%).  The main MSK symptoms were pain/stiffness in neck (40.98%), shoulder (38.99%), lower back (35.6%) and elbow/wrist/hand/fingers (23.1%). The ocular symptoms were excessive watering (39.6%), pain (24.99), irritation (18.6%), burning/itching sensation (29.8%), redness (40.7%), blurring of vision (13.2%) and headache (40.9%). Female gender (OR-1.498(1.262-1.778)), long duration of working hours (OR-2.77(2.399-3.214)), poor break duration (OR-2.59(2.172-3.089)), excessive smart phone use (OR-2.071(1.834-2.338)), poor posture (OR-3.883(3.282-4.592)), inappropriate distance of computer screen (OR-2.173(1.829-2.582)), low height of screen (OR-1.936(1.527-2.454)), distance of keyboard (OR-3.161(2.528-3.953)) and distance of mouse (OR-5.785(3.932-8.512)) were identified as significant determinants of CRMSKVS.Conclusions: CRMSKVS is an emerging pandemic which needs urgent attention by medical and administrative authorities. The device factors, personal factors, environmental and ergonomic factors are the modifiable risk factors for CRMSKVS

Critical Success Factor Models for Project Success

Project success is dependent on multiple stakeholders’ perceptions; however, current theories on project success are not translating into practice. Previous studies have duly captured or highlighted the need for the identification of critical success factors (CSFs) from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives. However, most of the previous research on CSFs has been carried out in developed countries. Therefore, their applicability in developing economies needs to be explored. This study reviews the existing literature on multiple stakeholders’ CSFs models for project success and investigates the existing gaps in the Indian context for project success on construction projects located in India. The findings of this paper suggest that there are few previous references in the CSFs area for project success from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives in the Indian context. Very few previous studies have proposed a CSF model that is developed taking into account multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, multiple project types, and multiple project procurement methods. Further, none of the models reviewed has evaluated the effects on all four performance criteria of time, cost, quality, and client satisfaction. This reveals an important existing research gap, that is, the need for the development of such a model for developing economies like India

UTILIZING MACHINE LEARNING-BASED INTRUSION DETECTION TECHNOLOGIES FOR NETWORK SECURITY

Effective intrusion detection systems (IDS) are becoming essential for maintaining computer network security due to the growing complexity of cyber-attacks. Machine Learning (ML) can increase the effectiveness of intrusion detection technology, which is an essential resource to safeguard network security. A novel ML technique for intrusion information detection called Stochastic Cat Swarm Optimized Privacy-Preserving Logistic Regression (SCSO-PPLR) is proposed. We assess intrusion detection systems using KDDCup99 dataset. The dataset is pre-processed using Z-score normalization to normalize the features. Next, Features are extracted by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). By comparing the results of the SCSO-PPLR methodology with traditional methods and using assessment criteria including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, the model's performance is extensively evaluated. The study reveals that SCSO-PPLR is an acceptable strategy for intrusion detection in network security and it is effective. These insights broaden IDS and groundwork for further research on reliable cybersecurity remedies

Evolution and Final Fates of a Rotating 25 M⊙_{\odot} Pop III star

In this proceeding, we present the 1-dimensional stellar evolution of two rotating population III (Pop III) star models, each having a mass of 25 M$_{\odot}$ at the zero-age main-sequence (ZAMS). The slowly rotating model has an initial angular rotational velocity of 10 per cent of the critical angular rotational velocity. In contrast, the rapidly rotating model has an initial angular rotational velocity of 70 per cent of the critical angular rotational velocity. As an effect of rotationally enhanced mixing, we find that the rapidly rotating model suffers an enormous mass loss due to the deposition of a significant amount of CNO elements toward the surface after the main-sequence phase. We also display the simulated light curves as these models explode into core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe).Comment: Resubmitted after incorporating minor revision, Part of 3$^{rd}$ BINA conference proceeding

An Efficient method of image compression by merging IWPT transform coding with index vector Quantization through FNN

Abstract--By the use of Neural Network, it was found that the reconstructed image has least image complexity and the image size has been reduced considerably by reducing the number of samples. This causes a remarkable increase in quality of the reconstructed image. A new quantization method is proposed in this paper. This method is useful for enhancement of compression quality when each kind of neural network is used to compress the image. Quantization, involved in image processing is achieved by compressing a range of values to a single quantum value. When the number of discrete symbols in a given stream is reduced, the stream becomes more compressible. For example, reducing the number of colors required to represent a digital image makes it possible to reduce its file size. This causes a remarkable enhancement in quality of the reconstructed image. For testing the proposed method we use IWPT transform coding and by merging it with the proposed quantization method a new compression algorithm is obtained. Then results of compression by the merged method are compared with some other transform methods. Compression time and complexity in the merged method is also better than JPEG and make it suitable for the systems with low processor and hardware implementation. Obtained results show that the proposed compression algorithm increases the compression quality of the images remarkably