Knowledge Organization and Inference Engine for the WVU Face Decision Support System

The knowledge-based organization for the West Virginia University Face Decision Support System is given, along with the initial development of the associated inference engine. The knowledge base contains generic knowledge about underground coal mines that utilize continuous miners. A typical knowledge entry is given, and the inference engine methodology is explained. The engine utilizes this knowledge with data from monitoring systems and from interaction with the section foreman, to assist in making section management decisions and plans

Effect of Paclobutrazol on Fruit Quality Attributes in Mango (Mangifera indica L.) Cv. Totapuri

Paclobutrazol application restricts vegetative growth while improving flowering and fruiting in mango. In the present study, effect of soil drenching with Paclobutrazol @ 3.0ml m-1 canopy diameter, applied during the 3rd week of August, on fruit quality attributes was investigated in cv. Totapuri. Parameters like fruit weight, total soluble solids (TSS), % acidity, and content of ascorbic acid, carotenoids, lycopene and individual sugars was estimated. Paclobutrazol application increased average fruit weight, TSS and content of ascorbic acid and total carotenoids, and reduced the acidity in fruits compared to fruits in untreated trees. Lycopene content was only marginally influenced by paclobutrazol. In fruits of paclobutrazol treated trees, increase of 23.4% in total sugars, 29.6% in reducing sugars, 77.4% in glucose and 27.8% in sucrose content was recorded over fruits from the untreated trees. Results indicated that, paclobutrazol application improved quality in mango fruit

ASSESSMENT OF PHARMACEUTICAL CARE SERVICES ON HEALTH RELATED QOL IN PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS – A PROSPECTIVE INTERVENTIONAL STUDY

Background: In the last three decades role of pharmacist has changed dramatically. Patient counselling by pharmacist deals with providing information to the patients regarding the disease, Medications and lifestyle modifications. Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a severe medical and social problem that affects patient's general wellbeing. Despite of the advances in understanding the disease and its management, the morbidity and mortality rate are in rise. Objective: To study the impact of pharmaceutical care services on quality of life in type 2 diabetes mellitus. To improve the knowledge, practice abd attitude, Quality of life of patients towards disease management. Methods: This is a prospective intervention study. It was carried out to determine the quality of life, based on which patients were counselled regarding disease, medication, nutrition, exercise, insulin, foot care, eye care, personal hygiene, self monitoring of glucose and self care. Out of 80 patients, who are having diabetes mellitus and given patient counseling again collected after 1st and 2nd month. The paired t-test in Graph Pad InStat was used for statistical calculation. Results: The overall KAP scores for diabetes patients between test of baseline and final follow up was statistically significant (P< 0.001). The test group has shown increased medication adherence than control which shows the importance of patient counseling. Conclusion: The study concluded that pharmacist mediated patient counseling and the disease, medications and lifestyle modifications will improve the knowledge, attitude and practice, Quality of life and Glycemic control

Chemical Constituents during the Main and Off-Season in Mango (Mangifera indica L.) Cv. Royal Special

Evaluation and quantification of fruit quality parameters like carbohydrates, phenolics, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, titrable acidity, Total Soluble Solids (TSS), carotenoids and lycopene content was done in fruits of mango cv. Royal Special, at ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru, India, during the off-season (October, 2012) and main-season (June, 2013), respectively. 'Royal Special' is a typical off-season bearing cultivar, often characterized by multiple flushing and flowering under South Indian conditions. Major phytonutrients such as total sugars, reducing sugars, starch, total carotenoids, lycopene, total phenols, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, TSS, titrable acidity and average fruit yield per plant, were recorded during the off- and main- seasons. Results indicated that fruits from off-season were higher in the major chemical constituents studied compared to the main-season crop, except for fruit yield per plant. This may be attributed to poor competition for nutrients among the developing fruits which act as a sink, besides fluctuating environmental conditions during the off-season, compared to the main-season

Open-Retrieval Conversational Question Answering

Conversational search is one of the ultimate goals of information retrieval. Recent research approaches conversational search by simplified settings of response ranking and conversational question answering, where an answer is either selected from a given candidate set or extracted from a given passage. These simplifications neglect the fundamental role of retrieval in conversational search. To address this limitation, we introduce an open-retrieval conversational question answering (ORConvQA) setting, where we learn to retrieve evidence from a large collection before extracting answers, as a further step towards building functional conversational search systems. We create a dataset, OR-QuAC, to facilitate research on ORConvQA. We build an end-to-end system for ORConvQA, featuring a retriever, a reranker, and a reader that are all based on Transformers. Our extensive experiments on OR-QuAC demonstrate that a learnable retriever is crucial for ORConvQA. We further show that our system can make a substantial improvement when we enable history modeling in all system components. Moreover, we show that the reranker component contributes to the model performance by providing a regularization effect. Finally, further in-depth analyses are performed to provide new insights into ORConvQA.Comment: Accepted to SIGIR'2

Experimental Evidence of Time Delay Induced Death in Coupled Limit Cycle Oscillators

Experimental observations of time delay induced amplitude death in a pair of coupled nonlinear electronic circuits that are individually capable of exhibiting limit cycle oscillations are described. In particular, the existence of multiply connected death islands in the parameter space of the coupling strength and the time delay parameter for coupled identical oscillators is established. The existence of such regions was predicted earlier on theoretical grounds in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 5109 (1998); Physica 129D, 15 (1999)]. The experiments also reveal the occurrence of multiple frequency states, frequency suppression of oscillations with increased time delay and the onset of both in-phase and anti-phase collective oscillations.Comment: 4 aps formatted RevTeX pages; 6 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Machinability study on Al7075/Al2O3-SiC hybrid composites

In the present research, the effects of volume fraction of SiC+Al2O3 particles and aging temperature on the machinability of stir-casted Al7075 metal matrix composites (MMC) have been investigated. The hybrid composites were fabricated using the liquid metallurgy route. Al7075 was reinforced with different wt. % of SiC (3%, 6%, and 9%) and Al2O3 (2%, 4%, and 6%) which were used to fabricate the hybrid metal matrix composites. The samples were aged at different temperatures (140 ºC, 160 ºC, and 180 ºC) for 4 h and cooled at furnace temperature (27 ºC). The machinability of hybrid metal matrix composites was studied by carrying out L27 orthogonal array experiments. Three process parameters were selected, such as 0.2 mm/min of the depth of cut, 0.1 mm/min of feed rate, and 1500 rpm of spindle speed. The obtained results indicate that the surface roughness and machining force of MMCs increase with an increase in weight percentage of Al2O3/SiC and decrease with the increase in aging temperature. Optimum machining force and surface roughness were obtained at 2% Al2O3 + 3 % SiC and 180°C of aging temperature

Effect of Organic Practices on Fruit Quality in Papaya Cv. Surya

A field experiment was conducted during 2009-10 at Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore using papaya cv. 'Surya'. Ten organic nutrient treatments along with recommended dose of fertilizers and control (no manure/fertilizer) were used totaling twelve treatment combinations of FYM, biofertilizers and vermicompost. Fruit quality parameters such as total carotenoids, lycopene, TSS, average fruit weight and ascorbic acid content were analyzed. Among the treatments, application of 50% recommended dose of fertilizers in the form of farm yard manure (FYM) applied as Azospirillum+Phosphate solubilizing bacteria+Mycorrhiza+Vermicompost showed high level of carotenoids, lycopene and low levels of ascorbic acid. TSS and average fruit weight were not affected by various organic nutrient treatments

Farmer participatory varietal selection in groundnut – A success story in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, India

Farmer participatory varietal selection trials in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, India identified ICGV 91114 as the most productive groundnut cultivar. This cultivar was adopted for large-scale production, giving higher pod and haulm yields and comparable shelling outturn compared with the control cultivar TMV 2