Attitudinal orientation of first level managers for improvement of municipal service delivery: Experience of training intervention in Kolkata

This paper discusses a program of attitudinal orientation courses provided for functionaries of a large municipal corporation in India. Almost 450 Assistant Managers from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation took part in the training, which was held at the Administrative Training Institute (ATI) of the Government of West Bengal, India.Under the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, Indian Municipalities/Corporations (Urban Local Bodies) are empowered and entrusted to perform planning, development and governance for the city/ town and to provide services to the citizens. The change in outlook towards the local government reflected in the Act has highlighted the need for greater awareness and a better attitude amongst municipal staff as well as elected representatives towards service delivery. Good governance can be achieved through the overall performance of officials of an organization, provided they possess the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and competencies. For historical reasons, knowledge, skills and attitudes amongst officials of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in India have been traditionally of a low standard. Willingness to perform better in the role of municipal service delivery is not common. Therein lies the need for training for improvement in service delivery, especially for organizations like large municipal corporations and municipalities

XRFID: Design of an XML Based Efficient Middleware for RFID Systems

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can automatically and inexpensively track items as they are moved through the supply chain. This can automate the whole updating and management system, thereby making the system work with a much smaller workforce and reducing the error that can occur because of interference by human beings. One of the major advantages RFID provides is that it does not require direct physical contact with the objects and also does not require the object to be placed in its ‘Line‐of‐ Sight’. This has given it an edge over other auto‐ identification systems, like bar‐codes. The recent proliferation of RFID tags and readers would require dedicated and very efficient middleware solutions that manage readers and process the vast amount of captured data according to the need of various applications. RFID middleware is the software sitting in between various RFID readers and the enterprise applications. Extracting meaningful information out of huge amount of scan data is a challenging task. In this paper we like to analyze the requirements and propose a design for such an RFID middleware. This paper demonstrates how to enable the middleware to handle a large amount of RFID scan data and execute business rules in real‐time. The conventional existing middleware solutions show dramatic degradation in their performance when the number of simultaneously working readers increases. Our proposed solution tries to recover from that situation also.  One of the major issues for large scale deployment of RFID systems is the design of a robust and flexible middleware system to interface various applications to the RFID readers. Most of the existing RFID middleware systems are costly, bulky, non‐portable and heavily dependent on the support software. Our work also provides flexibility for easy addition and removal of applications and hardware

A review on Video Classification with Methods, Findings, Performance, Challenges, Limitations and Future Work

In recent years, there has been a rapid development in web users and sufficient bandwidth. Internet connectivity, which is so low cost, makes the sharing of information (text, audio, and videos) more common and faster. This video content needs to be analyzed for prediction it classes in different purpose for the users. Many machines learning approach has been developed for the classification of video to save people time and energy. There are a lot of existing review papers on video classification, but they have some limitations such as limitation of the analysis, badly structured, not mention research gaps or findings, not clearly describe advantages, disadvantages, and future work. But our review paper almost overcomes these limitations. This study attempts to review existing video-classification procedures and to examine the existing methods of video-classification comparatively and critically and to recommend the most effective and productive process. First of all, our analysis examines the classification of videos with taxonomical details, the latest application, process, and datasets information. Secondly, overall inconvenience, difficulties, shortcomings and potential work, data, performance measurements with the related recent relation in science, deep learning, and the model of machine learning. Study on video classification systems using their tools, benefits, drawbacks, as well as other features to compare the techniques they have used also constitutes a key task of this review. Lastly, we also present a quick summary table based on selected features. In terms of precision and independence extraction functions, the RNN (Recurrent Neural Network), CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) and combination approach performs better than the CNN dependent method

Review on natural gums and mucilage and their application as excipient

Natural mucilage’s are included in novel drug delivered (NDDS) to multitask functions and in any cases directly or indirectly control the increase and rate of drug release. Substantial research efforts have been directed towards develop safe and efficient natural based mucilage particulate drug delivery systems., natural gums and mucilages and their isolation, purification, standardization and characterization characteristics along with their applications are covered. Recent trend towards the use of plant based and natural products demands the replacement of synthetic additives with natural ones. Today, the whole world is increasingly interested in natural drugs and excipients. These natural mucilages have advantages over synthetic ones since they are chemically inert, nontoxic, less expensive, and widely available

Self-medication of sleeping pills among MBBS students in a medical college of West Bengal, India

Background: Psychological stress, anxiety, depression and sleep disturbance are highly prevalent in medical students and therefore they are at higher risk of using sleeping pills defined as any pharmaceutical preparation inducing sleep. There is currently paucity in data describing the prevalence of sleeping pill use among medical students in India.Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of sleeping pill use among medical students in Burdwan Medical College (BMC).Methods: A cross sectional study was done by anonymous questionnaires from MBBS students enrolled at BMC. Questionnaire consisted of social and demographic variable and use of sleeping pills, tobacco and alcohol since enrollment. Collected data were analyzed by Athen's insomnia scale and DASS-21.Results: With response rate72.2% (397 out of 550) and of 397 respondants (1st yr-97+2nd yr-90+3rd yr part I-114+3rd yr part II-96), 6.3% reported use of sleeping pill at some time since enrollment. Athen's insomnia scales showed 27% poor sleepers. According to DASS-21, 44% respondents were depressive, 61.96% anxious, and 31.73% stressed. Insomnia were found to significantly (p value <0.0001) associated with sleeping pill use. Majority (96%) of sleeping pill uses were self-medicated.Conclusions: Tendency to use sleeping pill is very less (majority self-medicated), though a substantial proportion of medical undergraduate students were found to be depressed, anxious, stressed revealing a neglected area of students' psychology requiring urgent attention

EFFICIENT TECHNIQUE TO SOLVE TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEM USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

ABSTRACT In this paper, an efficient technique is proposed to solve the travelling salesman problem (TSP) using genetic algorithm. We can apply easily genetic algorithm operator to this problem and get the solution easily. Complexity is both in time and space, provided size of the problem an as integer. The solution of the traveling salesman problem is global optimum. There are number of cities and distances are given between them (cities). A Traveling salesman has to visit all of them. The salesman will start from city and after traversing the remaining cities (exactly once) he will reach to his starting position. Main objective of TSP is to find traveling sequence of cities to minimize the traveling distance so that the salesman can traverse the cities exactly one time. Initially we select parent1 &amp; parent2 by Roulette wheel selection philosophy. We have applied one point crossover operator on the parent and produce the new child. Again we apply the mutation operator on offspring and created new child. But the no. of bits (cities) in a chromosome will be inverted by the mutation operator, that is depended on mutation probability (p m ). So, one generation contain 6 individual (chromosome). We have to count fitness (minimum cost) of the individuals in each generation. We have to select two individuals with best (min fitness) fitness for the next generation. Here we see crossover between two good solution may not always yield a better or as good a solution. But since the parents are good, so there is a probability that child will be good. Every time we have to do, identity the good solution in the population and make multiple copies of the good solution

FORMATION OF A SCALE FOR EVALUATION OF THESIS QUALITY IN MD CURRICULUM IN WEST BENGAL

Back ground: Thesis  is an obligatory part of Medical post graduate or post doctoral courses under West Bengal University of Health Sciences.  The purpose of this thesis work is to make the doctors familiar with research methodology. There is no procedure or scale to evaluate the quality of thesis works in our state. Aim:Formation of a scale for evaluation of thesis work &amp; using this scale evaluation of ongoing thesis works of this medical university. Procedure: At first we develop a scale containing five factors  Format, Study design,Knowledge of the post graduate trainee,New ideas,Literature reviewed and validation of that  scale was done.With the help of this validated scale we have evaluated 135 thesis works of out going post graduate medical students. Result: After evaluation it was found that most of the thesis work fall in the excellent category.Very few are exceptional as well as good or acceptable.The scale also indicated that the weak areas of the thesis works. Conclusion: Our scale will indicate the clear picture of quality of a research work including strong and weak areas. This fact will help us in future to plan a better research work

RENAL PROFILE IN AMIKACIN THERAPY IN NEONATAL SEPTICEMIA

Background: Neonatal sepsis is the most common cause of neonatal deaths followed by extreme prematurity and birth asphyxia. In our hospital settings, a case of septicemia is treated with aminoglycosides (AG) combined with third generation cephalosporins. This is the standard guidelines of treatment of septicaemia.Though the duration of therapy should be 5-7days for most probable sepsis and 14 days for culture positive cases but as the cost of therapy is high, and the laboratory procedures for monitoring such duration of therapy is not possible in our hospital , short duration of 5-day therapy is practiced. Among the AGs, amikacin being extensively studied highly preferred agent because of its broadest spectrum, resistance to inactivating enzymes , least lysosomal damage, better tolerability profile and also low cost of therapy. The present piece of work aims at assessing any change in the renal profile of the babies being treated with 5-day amikacin therapy. Materials and methods: Serum Creatinine,urea,potassium and 24 hours urinary Creatinine clearance were estimated on day 1(before initiation of therapy)and on day 3, day 5 of the septicemic neonates.These parameters were selected to assess the status of renal function of the affected neonates. Results and conclusion :There was no significant changes in renal function with the regimen