A Study of the Awareness of Electronic Banking Services among Rural Women of Nelamangala, Bangalore, India

The revolution in electronic technology has taken the world by storm. The banking sector has not been immune to the impact of this digital revolution. In India, both private and public banks have changed their standard business practices and have now shifted entirely to electronic banking. The banking transactions that are executed through electronic devices and over the internet are termed electronic banking. One of the special features of urbanization is that urbanized society, irrespective of gender, is ready to accept the change and adjust to the new technologies quickly because of their extensive exposure to these innovations and their higher educational standard. This raises the question of how far these electronic banking reforms impact residents in rural areas, especially rural women who spend most of their lives within their homes. The present study has been undertaken to analyse the extent to which rural women are aware of electronic banking services with special reference to Nelamangala, which comes under the Bangalore Rural district of Karnataka state in India

Factors associated with anxiety and depression in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background: COPD is a progressive condition with significant co morbidities and extra pulmonary manifestations. It is well known that anxiety and depression are the major psychiatric comorbidities associated with COPD. However, little is known about the factors associated with these conditions.  Methods: A cross sectional observational study was performed, including 320 patients who satisfied the inclusion criteria. They were interviewed as part of the study. Anxiety and depression were screened using hospital anxiety depression rating scale (HADS). All patients were subjected for clinical examination, pulmonary function tests and routine blood examination.Results: We found that 59.4% of COPD patients had either anxiety or depression as co morbidity and 32.2% had both the psychiatric symptoms. 166 patients (51.9%) had anxiety and 127 patients (39.7%) had depression. The factors associated with anxiety and depression in COPD patients were hospitalization (in-patients), duration of disease, number of hospitalizations in the previous year, hypertension, MMRC grade, BMI, oxygen saturation, six minute walk distance, FEV1, FVC and BODE score.  Linear regression analysis showed that the number of hospital admissions in the previous year was the most significant factor associated with both anxiety (p=0.008) and depression (p=0.020).Conclusions: The number of hospital admissions in the previous year was the most significant factor associated with anxiety and depression in COPD.

Accuracy of Probabilistic Linkage Using the Enhanced Matching System for Public Health and Epidemiological Studies

The Enhanced Matching System (EMS) is a probabilistic record linkage program developed by the tuberculosis section at Public Health England to match data for individuals across two datasets. This paper outlines how EMS works and investigates its accuracy for linkage across public health datasets

Optimal time for sensing in open quantum systems

We study the time-dependent quantum Fisher information (QFI) in an open quantum system satisfying the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equation. We also study the dynamics of the system from an effective non-Hermitian dynamics standpoint and use it to understand the scaling of the QFI when multiple probes are used. A focus of our work is how the QFI is maximized at certain times suggesting that the best precision in parameter estimation can be achieved by focusing on these times. The propagation of errors analysis allows us to confirm and better understand this idea. We also propose a parameter estimation procedure involving relatively low resource consuming measurements followed by higher resource consuming measurements and demonstrate it in simulation.Comment: 11 pages,8 Figure

Postoperative outcome in thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis: a retrospective study

Background: Spinal tuberculosis is the most common location of extra pulmonary tuberculosis. ATT alone may not be suitable in all situations, especially when treating patients with risk of instability, progression of neurologic deficit, and failure of medical treatment. Surgical intervention is a major treatment modality for symptom relief in spinal tuberculosis.Methods: The aim of this study was to assess the immediate post-operative outcome in surgically treated patients with dorsolumbar spine tuberculosis at Department of Neurosurgery Government Medical College, Thrissur. All operated patients of dorsolumbar spinal tuberculosis during 2014 September to 2019 august were included under study.Results: A total of 57 patients were included in the study. The mean age of the patient was 42.77 years. There were 40 males (70.2%) and 17 females (29.8%). 55 (96.5%) out of 57 patients were having sensory symptoms. 41 (71.9%) out of 57 patients were having motor symptoms. Bladder involvement 23 (40.4%) and bowel involvement 15 (26.3%) were also noted in the study. Sensory symptoms improvement in post-operative period was noted in 46 (80.7%). Motor symptoms improvement was observed in 23 (56.1%) out of 41. Bladder symptoms improved in 6 (26.1%) out of 23. There is improvement in clinical symptoms, neurological function immediately after surgery. Surgical patients have faster improvement and can be mobilized earlier. Improvement in sensory symptoms (96.5%), motor symptoms (56.1%) and bladder symptoms (26.1%) were noted in our study in the immediate post-operative period.Conclusions: There was significant immediate relief in symptoms and morbidity of patients undergoing surgical treatment for dorsolumbar spine tuberculosis