Effective approach in making Capstone project a holistic learning experience to students of undergraduate computer science engineering program

Final year or Capstone Project is the final and important phase of the undergraduate curriculum in a Computer Science Engineering program. Final year project is a course where all the skills learnt by the students in the course are applied and evaluated. The important aspects in the delivery of this course are (i) developing a model to train the students to deliver quality project work and documentation, (ii) effective evaluation of the student based on rubrics which are mapped to the course outcomes (iii) Calculate program outcome and course outcome attainment and make necessary changes to improve the delivery of the course (iv) Map the feedback from stakeholders as per graduate attributes and measure performance. This paper discusses the approach followed for three academic years 2014-2017 on a batch of 180 students per year. Training sessions, evaluation rubrics, usage of project management tools, mapping performance of the students with the outcomes of the course and program, feedback from the stakeholders like companies and students themselves gives a clear view of improvement of the performance of the students during the Final Year Project course in three yearsPeer Reviewe

Association rule hiding using integer linear programming

Privacy preserving data mining has become the focus of attention of government statistical agencies and database security research community who are concerned with preventing privacy disclosure during data mining. Repositories of large datasets include sensitive rules that need to be concealed from unauthorized access. Hence, association rule hiding emerged as one of the powerful techniques for hiding sensitive knowledge that exists in data before it is published. In this paper, we present a constraint-based optimization approach for hiding a set of sensitive association rules, using a well-structured integer linear program formulation. The proposed approach reduces the database sanitization problem to an instance of the integer linear programming problem. The solution of the integer linear program determines the transactions that need to be sanitized in order to conceal the sensitive rules while minimizing the impact of sanitization on the non-sensitive rules. We also present a heuristic sanitization algorithm that performs hiding by reducing the support or the confidence of the sensitive rules. The results of the experimental evaluation of the proposed approach on real-life datasets indicate the promising performance of the approach in terms of side effects on the original database

Assessment of Metabolic Parameters For Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism is a brain development disorder that first appears during infancy or childhood, and generally follows a steady course without remission. Impairments result from maturation-related changes in various systems of the brain. Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, and severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior. The reported incidence of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has increased markedly over the past decade. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has recently estimated the prevalence of ASDs in the United States at approximately 5.6 per 1000 (1 of 155 to 1 of 160) children. Several metabolic defects, such as phenylketonuria, are associated with autistic symptoms. In deciding upon the appropriate evaluation scheme a clinician must consider a host of different factors. The guidelines in this article have been developed to assist the clinician in the consideration of these factors

A Study Of Orbital Fractures In A Tertiary Health Care Center

A retrospective study of patients with orbital fractures had 48% patients in the age group of 20 – 40 years with male : female ratio of 10:1. Road traffic accidents (71.43%) were the most common cause followed by injury due to fall (20%). Eighty five percent of patients had normal visual acuity at presentation and 65.57% patients had no ocular complaints. Diplopia was present in 14.2% of patients. Of the orbital fractures infraorbital rim was involved in 43.13%, floor in 19.6%, lateral wall in 13.7%, pure blow out in 14.28% and the roof in 2.9%. Important ocular findings were extraocular movements restriction in 9 (10.3%), infraorbital dysaesthesia in 3 (3.4%), enophthalmos in 2, RAPD and globe rupture in 1 patient each. 32 patients underwent surgical management. At the end of 4 months of follow up, 3 had restriction of EOM, 1 patient had vision loss due to globe rupture, 2 had RAPD (optic nerve compression), 1 had lagophthalmos, 1 had exotropia and 1 had atrophic bulbi

Bolstering cholesteryl ester hydrolysis in liver: A hepatocyte-targeting gene delivery strategy for potential alleviation of atherosclerosis

Current atherosclerosis treatment strategies primarily focus on limiting further cholesteryl esters (CE) accumulation by reducing endogenous synthesis of cholesterol in the liver. No therapy is currently available to enhance the removal of CE, a crucial step to reduce the burden of the existing disease. Given the central role of hepatic cholesteryl ester hydrolase (CEH) in the intrahepatic hydrolysis of CE and subsequent removal of the resulting free cholesterol (FC), in this work, we applied galactosefunctionalized polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer generation 5 (Gal-G5) for hepatocyte-specific delivery of CEH expression vector. The data presented herein show the increased specific uptake of Gal-G5/CEH expression vector complexes (simply Gal-G5/CEH) by hepatocytes in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, the upregulated CEH expression in the hepatocytes significantly enhanced the intracellular hydrolysis of high density lipoprotein-associated CE (HDL-CE) and subsequent conversion/secretion of hydrolyzed FC as bile acids (BA). The increased CEH expression in the liver significantly increased the flux of HDL-CE to biliary as well as fecal FC and BA. Meanwhile, Gal-G5 did not induce hepatic or renal toxicity. It was also not immunotoxic. Because of these encouraging pre-clinical testing results, using this safe and highly efficient hepatocyte-specific gene delivery platform to enhance the hepatic processes involved in cholesterol elimination is a promising strategy for the alleviation of atherosclerosis

Distance Based Topological Indices of Double graphs and Strong Double graphs

Topological index is a numerical representation of structure of graph. They are mainly classified as Distance and Degree based topological indices. In this article Distance based topological indices of Double graphs and Strong Double graphs are calculated. Let $G$ be a graph of order $n$ with the vertex set $V(G)$ containing vertices $v_1,v_2,....,v_n$. Double graph of graph $G$ is constructed by taking two copies of G in which a vertex $v_i$ in one copy is adjacent to a vertex $v_j$ in the another copy if $v_i$ and $v_j$ are adjacent in G. Strong Double graph is a double graph in which a vertex $v_i$ in one copy is adjacent to a vertex $v_j$ in the another copy if $i=j$.

A QUESTION MODULE FOR ASSESSING COMMUNITY STIGMA TOWARDS HIV IN RURAL INDIA

This paper describes a simple question module to assess community stigma in rural India. Fear of stigma is known to prevent people from seeking HIV testing and to contribute to further disease transmission, yet relatively little attention has been paid to community stigma and ways of measuring it. The module, based on a vignette of a fictional HIV-positive woman, was administered to 494 married women and 186 unmarried male and female adolescents in a village in rural Maharashtra, India. To consider the usefulness of the question module, a series of hypotheses were developed based on the correlations found in other studies between HIV-related stigma and socio-demographic characteristics (age, education, discussion of HIV with others, knowing someone living with HIV, knowledge about its transmission and whether respondents acknowledged stigmatizing attitudes as their own or attributed them to others). Many of the study's hypotheses were confirmed. Among married women, correlates of stigma included older age, lack of discussion of HIV and lack of knowledge about transmission; among adolescents, lower education and lack of discussion of HIV were the most significant correlates. The paper concludes that the question module is a useful tool for investigating the impact of interventions to reduce stigma and augment social support for people living with HIV in rural Indi

What is the best treatment for hypertension in African Americans?

In African Americans with hypertension, therapy is best initiated with the low-sodium Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and a thiazide-type diuretic (strength of recommendation [SOR]: A, based on randomized controlled trials). If the blood pressure goal is not achieved with thiazide monotherapy, a calcium channel blocker, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), or a beta-blocker can be added. An initial combination treatment is recommended for patients with systolic blood pressure >15 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure >10 mm Hg above target (SOR: C, expert opinion)

Social Networking Habits of Early and Late Adolescents-A Comparative Study

We are living in the Cyber or Networking Age and the advancement in the field of communication technology has created a world with no boundary or limitation. In India, social networking sites are getting more popular and it has become a vital part of our social life. This study seeks to find out the “social networking habits of adolescents”. Sixty early adolescents in the age group of 12 – 14 years and sixty late adolescents in the age group of 15 – 18 years, forming a total of 120 respondents were selected for the comparative study. The study revealed that the social networking habits of early and late adolescents did not differ significantly. However early adolescents were found to be more extensive user of social networking. The study also showed that although the respondents favoured social networking and spent considerable amount of time in social networking, they are concerned about the addictive influence of social networks and social networking habits taking away their time and deviating them from their responsibilities