Aetiological Profile of Optic Atrophy: A hospital based prospective study

Objectives: This study was to evaluateclinical presentations and aetiological profiles of patients with optic atrophy.Methods:The patients had undergone complete ophthalmological examination, i.e. anterior segment examination with the help of slit lamp and posterior segment examination with the help of direct and indirect ophthalmoscopy. Visual fields and colour vision were performed whenever required and in possible cases. CT scan and MRI of the brain and orbits were done to rule out intracranial space-occupying lesions.Results:Mean age of the patients was 47.87±18.21 years.126(63%) patients were males. 146(73%) patients had bilateral involvement of eye. 82(41%) patients had glaucomatous optic atrophy.113(56.5%) had pressure and traction atrophy. Amon them this pressure and traction atrophy had included 74(65.49%) glaucomatous optic atrophy.126 patients had BCVA <6/60-CF 1 mt. Among them, 6/60-CF 1 mt was seen in 63(50%) pressure and traction atrophy and 47(37.30%) consecutive atrophy.Conclusions:Optic atrophy was commonly found in older age male population. Bilateral involvement was commonly seen. Glaucomatous atrophy was the main type optic atrophy. Second common was consecutive optic atrophy. Pressure and traction was the most common aetiological factors of optic atrophy. BCVA <6/60-CF 1 mt was seen in most of the patients. Most of the pressure and traction optic atrophy patients had <6/60-CF 1 mt BCVA. Hence, Ophthalmological counselling, preventive measures, early diagnosis and prompt treatment of aetiological factors are necessary for prevention from optic atrophy. Key words: Optic atrophy, Aetiology, Glaucomatous, Age group, Gende

GANTouch: An Attack-Resilient Framework for Touch-based Continuous Authentication System

Previous studies have shown that commonly studied (vanilla) implementations of touch-based continuous authentication systems (V-TCAS) are susceptible to active adversarial attempts. This study presents a novel Generative Adversarial Network assisted TCAS (G-TCAS) framework and compares it to the V-TCAS under three active adversarial environments viz. Zero-effort, Population, and Random-vector. The Zero-effort environment was implemented in two variations viz. Zero-effort (same-dataset) and Zero-effort (cross-dataset). The first involved a Zero-effort attack from the same dataset, while the second used three different datasets. G-TCAS showed more resilience than V-TCAS under the Population and Random-vector, the more damaging adversarial scenarios than the Zero-effort. On average, the increase in the false accept rates (FARs) for V-TCAS was much higher (27.5% and 21.5%) than for G-TCAS (14% and 12.5%) for Population and Random-vector attacks, respectively. Moreover, we performed a fairness analysis of TCAS for different genders and found TCAS to be fair across genders. The findings suggest that we should evaluate TCAS under active adversarial environments and affirm the usefulness of GANs in the TCAS pipeline.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, 3 algorithms, in IEEE TBIOM 202

On the Inference of Soft Biometrics from Typing Patterns Collected in a Multi-device Environment

In this paper, we study the inference of gender, major/minor (computer science, non-computer science), typing style, age, and height from the typing patterns collected from 117 individuals in a multi-device environment. The inference of the first three identifiers was considered as classification tasks, while the rest as regression tasks. For classification tasks, we benchmark the performance of six classical machine learning (ML) and four deep learning (DL) classifiers. On the other hand, for regression tasks, we evaluated three ML and four DL-based regressors. The overall experiment consisted of two text-entry (free and fixed) and four device (Desktop, Tablet, Phone, and Combined) configurations. The best arrangements achieved accuracies of 96.15%, 93.02%, and 87.80% for typing style, gender, and major/minor, respectively, and mean absolute errors of 1.77 years and 2.65 inches for age and height, respectively. The results are promising considering the variety of application scenarios that we have listed in this work.Comment: The first two authors contributed equally. The code is available upon request. Please contact the last autho

Economics of BN Hybrid Grass Production Bundelkhand Region of India: A Case Study

Napier grass is also called as Elephant Grass due to its tallness and vigorous vegetative growth. The plants tiller freely and a single clump may produce more than 60 tillers under favorable climatic and soil conditions. Unfortunately, the grass coarse-textured, the leaf blade sheaths as well as sharply serrated, leaf margins. Therefore, cross was made between Bajra which is more succulent, leafy, fine-textured, palatable, fast growing and drought resistant and Napier to combine these qualities with its high yielding potential. The outcome Hybrid Napier is a perennial grass which can be retained on field for 2-3 years. Hybrid napier grass are mostly grown under assured water supply but cultivating under varying agroclimatic condition is also possible. Low grass production in dry land area is mainly due to the limited availability of soil moisture and plant nutrients. Agrawal et al., (2001) reported NB hybrid is superior to guinea grass or setaria grass. However the economy of production plays an important role in introduction/ adoption of a crop in an area, village or farm. Many earlier studies have been conducted on economics of BN Hybrid production at research farm, or other government farms. But the information on economics of BN hybrid production at farmer’s field and its integration livestock feeding as well rooted slips are limited. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the object to study the economics of BN hybrid at farmer’s field in Bundelkhand

Rejuvenation of Wild Ber (\u3cem\u3eZizyphus\u3c/em\u3e Species) through Budding at Farmer’s Field

Ber is mainly cultivated for its fresh fruits, which are rich in vitamins C, A and B complex. Due to its nutritional qualities it is called poor man’s apple (Gajbhiya et al., 2003). A large number of wild ber shrubs (Zizyphus mauritiana, Z. rotundifolia and Z. nummularia) were seen growing on the neglected lands, uncultivated lands, roadsides and farm boundaries in Kadesara Kala Village in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh (India). Production potential of this species is very low because of poor upkeep and inferior genetic makeup. But they have extensive root system which can withstand prolonged drought and has capability to regenerate even if the shoot system is damaged completely (Batahr, 1990). They are also responsibly resistant to common insect and pest. Therefore, these species offer an excellent production potential from the degraded lands of Bundelkhand region of India (Sharma and Tiwari, 1994; Tiwari and Sharma, 1993) after in-situ budding with improved cultivars. It also provides sufficient leaf biomass (pala) which can be utilized as fodder in lean period and also suitable for hay and silage for goat as it contains 11-13 percent crude protein (Tewatia and Khirwar, 2002). Pruned twigs/stems of ber also meet, to some extent, the fuel wood requirement in rural areas (Kumar et al., 2004)

Constraints for Grassland Development in Kadesara Kala Village, Lalitpur, Bundelkhand: A Case Study

India is maintaining a livestock population of over 500 million and has a grim situation of forage and feed deficit to the tune of 35.6% green fodder, 10.95% crop residues and 44% concentrate. In term of nutrients, the deficit is expected to the tune of 24.6 and 19.9% respectively by the year 2020. The gap is to be bridged up through development as well as extension of appropriate fodder production technologies suitable for different farming situation strategies. Fifty-eight % of the available fodder comes from grazing land and 42% from stall feeding with crop residues (30%) and leaf fodder (12%). Grasses constitute the majority (88%) of fodder available in Uttar Pradesh (GOUP, 1994). However, the role of grasslands cannot be under judged, as the large animal populations owned by small, marginal and landless farm family strive upon these. The livestock sector achieved an average growth rate of 4.8 per cent during the Eleventh Five Year Plan (Economic Survey, 2012-13) and it contributed 3.6 percent of national GDP during the Eleventh Plan. In the same tune, the contribution from this sector is expected to improve because increasing purchasing power is favoring the proportion of protein from animal source in the human diets. Further, The Indian livestock sector is becoming more competitive participant in the world market. All this largely depends, however, on improvement and sufficiency in the production of feeds and forages. Notwithstanding the above, the grasslands and pastureland in the country are continuously shrinking. The paper addresses important issues limiting the development of new grasslands in semiarid Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh particularly the Lalitpur district

Nutrient Intake and Utilization in Jalauni Lambs Fed \u3cem\u3e Azolla \u3c/em\u3e Meal Supplemented Diet

Azolla is an important aquatic fungi due to the occurrence of both photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation in the leaves and also because of its profuse growth habbit, it appears as a potential source of protein, minerals and vitamins for livestock feeding. Keeping in view of the increasing cost and heavy deficit of concentrate ingredients in the country, an attempt was made to replace mustard cake protein @ 25% and 50% levels with Azolla (Microphylla) meal protein in the ration of sheep to investigate the effect of supplementation of azolla meal on nutrient intake and utilization in growing Jalauni lambs fed green chaffed MP Chari based rations

Indian Forage Scenario – Region Wise Availability and Deficit

In India, rapid urbanisation, changing food habit and higher purchasing power have increased the demand for animal based food products.Proper feeding strategies using green nutritious fodderis key to increase livestock production and productivity in economical and sustainable way.Three major sources of fodder are crop residues, cultivated fodder from arable land (irrigated and rainfed) and fodder from common property resources like forests, permanent pastures, grazing lands, cultivated wasteland, fallow lands etc. Based on the livestock census, we estimated the green and dry fodder availability vis-a-vis demand and emerging deficit/surplus situation. The state wise livestock population for Cattle, Buffaloes, Goat, Sheep, Yak and Mithun were taken into account and the requirement for green, dry forage and animal feed concentrate was worked out considering factors like age, milking or non-milking state, gender, working nature, feeding practices etc. The availability of green forages was estimated based on cultivated area under forage, cropping intensity, productivity etc., green fodder from fallow land, wasteland, forest fringe areas, social forestry, pasture land. For dry fodder, availability of crop residue for fodder was calculated based on the major utilizable cereals, pulses and oilseed crops, harvest index, production, and utilization pattern. Availability of dry forages from forest, wasteland, fallow land and cultivated field after harvest available for grazing were considered. On all India basis, there is an overall deficit of nearly 11 % in green fodder availability and 23 % in dry fodder availability. To meet the deficit scenario various strategies are proposed which includea national programme in mission mode for accelerating production; grassland and grazing policy; rejuvenation of degraded pastures; targeted research and extension programme; entrepreneurship in commercial venture of fodder production and utilization

Effect of Sugar Promoters on Biomass Yield and Sugar Content of Napier Bajra Hybrids

In India deficiency of green fodder is estimated to the tune of 35.7% and this difference is likely to increase in coming period due to possible decrease in acreage under fodder crops as the cultivated land is being utilized for urbanization and other industrial uses. In tropical countries like India, crop residues from cultivated crops and grasses (mainly monsoon grasses) constitute the basal diet of livestock. But the nutritive value of these grasses is low (protein and digestibility) than the fodder crops and even in green stage is able only to meet the maintenance requirement of animals. A conservative estimate is that around 220 million tones of surplus green herbages is available during flush season of monsoon and can be conserved through ensiling. But due to the low DM (dry matter) and WSC (water soluble carbohydrate) content (2-4%) in such tropical grasses, they results in poor fermentation of freshly cut materials under anaerobic environment of ensiling. A minimum of 7-8% of water-soluble carbohydrate is needed to initiate the fermentation process. Hence, there is a need to improve in the quality of grasses even to conserve them as silage. The research efforts put forth by animal nutritionist to conserve these grasses as silage were not successful mainly due to their low water soluble carbohydrate contents. The use of chemicals to increase immature internodal sucrose levels in sugarcane has been made in some parts of the world. In forages, such efforts may solve the issue of conservation of monsoon grass as hay. Keeping in the view, an attempt has been made to explore the possibility of improving the sugar content of BN Hybrid grass