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

An experimental evaluation of gastro protective activity of paracetamol on ulcerogenicity of some NSAIDs in albino rats

Background: Fixed dose combinations (FDCs) of NSAIDs are commonly prescribed and extensively sold over the counter. An indiscriminate usage of them leads to toxicity, mainly involving gastrointestinal system. Paracetamol appears to have controversial reputation regarding its gastro protective action. In this background, the study was planned to evaluate gastro protective effect of paracetamol on the ulcerogenicity of some relatively new NSAIDs in their therapeutic and sub therapeutic doses.Methods: Gatric toxicity and gastric juice analysis- Pyloric ligation method was adopted for assessing the ulcer index of 3 NSAIDs namely aceclofenac, nimesulide and lornoxicam individually and in combination with paracetamol. Gastric juice collected was subjected for total juice volume, free acidity, combined acidity and total acid output.Results: Paracetamol produced non significant gastric damage similar to that of control. When co administered with therapeutic doses of aceclofenac, nimesulide and lornoxicam, there was significant decrease in their gastric toxicity in a uniform manner and the ulcerogenicity of these NSAIDs in sub therapeutic doses was not affected by paracetamol. This upholds the uniform gastro protective activity of paracetamol in this study and this could be explained by its anti acid secretory action on gastric juice.Conclusions: Paracetamol, itself has least gastric damaging property. When co administered with other NSAIDs, their toxicity is rather reduced than enhancing the mucosal damage by them. Thus FDCs of various NSAIDs available in market are partially justifiable

Variable potentiation of analgesic anti- inflammatory activity of diclofenac by two medicinal plants rubia cordifolia and cassia fistula in wistar albino rats

Background: NSAIDS are commonly prescribed drugs in clinical practice. However, their usage is limited by their toxicity profile and research continues for an alternative therapy with higher efficacy and safety. Various plant preparations found to be safe and effective are emerging, but their interactions with synthetic drugs are not much known.Methods: Wistar rats were divided in to four groups of six animals each Rubia cordifolia (RC) root preparation and casissia fistula (CF) leaf preparation were studied with sub anti-inflammatory dose of diclofenac in various analgesic, acute and subacute inflammatory models and test results variables were expressed in mean reaction time, paw edema volume and granuloma weight respectively.Results: Various test results were tabulated, statistically analysed and significance was calculated at P value <0.5. Eddy’s hot plate model did not show any significant change, but carrageenan induced paw edema model and cotton pellet induced granuloma model showed comparable decrease in paw edema volume and granuloma dry weight.Conclusions: Diclofenac, a standard analgesic and anti –inflammatory was not potentiated in pain model but it was potentiated in carrageenan and cotton pellet granuloma models in a variable manner. CF potentiates acute anti-inflammatory action, whereas RC potentiates subacute anti-inflammatory actions of diclofenac

Obstetric and perinatal outcomes of expectant management and immediate induction of labour in term premature rupture of membranes: promising outcomes from expectant management cohort

Background: Premature rupture of membranes (PROM) is common obstetric entity, the management even at term is controversial and there is no consensus for definite protocol of management. Objective of the present study is to compare the effectiveness, safety of expectant management of 24 hours and immediate induction with PGE2 gel in terms of maternal and fetal outcome in term PROM.Methods: 200 women were randomized to group A expectant management and group B immediate induction, after strict Inclusion and exclusion criteria. In expectant group waiting period was 24 hours. Multiple end points were examined throughout management. Chi square test and independent t tests were performed for statistical analysis. P value<0.05 was considered significant.Results: Demographic parameters of patients, maternal and gestational age were similar in both groups. Primigravidae were more in both groups A and B. Vaginal delivery rate is more in expectant group and Caesarean Section rate is high in immediate induction group. CS rate was 37% and 23% in group A and B respectively; the difference is statistically significant (p value=0.031). ‘ROM to delivery interval’ was more in group A (16.31±8.67 hrs and 13.85±5.46 hrs) (p value=0.0256). Hospital stay was comparatively more in group A (5.40±0.81 days and 4.11±0.86 days) (p value=0.435). Infective morbidity of mother and baby was low in both groups and no difference was seen.Conclusions: An expectant management allows a good number of women to go into labour and deliver vaginally without an increase in CS rate and infectious morbidity for mother and fetus

An experimental evaluation of anti-inflammatory activities of some combined NSAID preparations in albino rats

Background: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are among the most commonly used drugs across the globe and they are also available over the counter for minor symptoms of pain and inflammation. Their toxicity profile limits their continued usage and search is continuing for the better effective and safer agent.Methods: Interaction of paracetamol with diclofenac, ibuprofen and mefenamic acid were studied on carrageenan induced rat paw edema and cotton pellet induced granuloma models. Potentiation of these NSAIDs by paracetamol was also studied on same models.Results: Addition of paracetamol did not increase anti-inflammatory activity of diclofenac, ibuprofen and mefenamic acid in both acute and subacute models of inflammation. Paracetamol found to potentiate the ibuprofen action in anti-inflammatory model where as in subacute inflammatory model diclofenac action was potentited.Conclusions: Our study does not support the rationality of various fixed dose combination of NSAIDs with paracetamol available in market. Either NSAIDs to be used individually or their dose need to be decreased in fixed dose combination

A prospective, randomized, cross sectional study of manual versus vacuum extraction of mobile head in caesarean section

Background: Considering the high rate of caesarean section, and the difficulty during delivery of the floating foetal head even by the most experienced obstetrician, the use of vacuum has been described. The present study was undertaken with the hypothesis that, vacuum assisted foetal head delivery during caesarean section is safe and effective without increasing maternal and neonatal complications. The outcomes enumerated by the limited literature available need to be evaluated before it is used routinely.Methods: A prospective, randomized, comparative, cross sectional Hospital based study was conducted at St. Philomena’s Hospital, Bangalore. Every woman randomized for the study received either conventional method or ventouse extraction of fetal head at cesarean section. 200 women were enrolled into the study with 100 in each arm. The primary outcome measures were percentage of successful extractions and I-D interval. The secondary outcome measures were, uterine incision extension, estimated blood loss, Apgar scores, neonatal hyperbilirubinemia and neonatal scalp or head injury.Results: Successful extraction was done in 89 % and 98 % cases in manual and vacuum extraction cases. (p =0.0184). U-D interval in the manual extraction group was 66.59±4.64 seconds and in the Vacuum extraction group it was 56.06±3.46 seconds (P&lt;0.001). The mean pre-delivery hemoglobin levels in group I was 11.6±0.73 compared to 11.36±0.49 gm% in group II. The mean post-delivery hemoglobin levels in group I was 10.29±0.79 compared to 10.21±0.53 gm% in group II (p &lt;0.001). The uterine incision extensions were significantly higher in manual extraction group, 18 of the 100 women (18 %), whereas only 2 of the 100 women in vacuum group had uterine extensions (p=0.0002).Conclusions: Authors conclude that the routine use of ventouse is safe and effective for mobile fetal head extraction at cesarean section

Clastogenicity of sugar factory effluent using Allium assay

In the current study, an attempt was made to assess the physicochemical parameters of distillery effluent and its cytotoxic effects on root tip cells of onion (Allium cepa L.). The Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) were found to be very high in the effluent. The onion bulbs were treated with different concentrations of the distillery effluent (25, 50, 75 and 100%) at room temperature. The percentage mitotic index and relative division rate were found to be decreased significantly as the concentration of the effluent increased. On the other hand, mitotic inhibition percentage and relative abnormality rate were found to increase as the effluent concentration increased. The chromosomal abnormalities were found to be increased as the concentration of the effluent increased when compared to the control. The observed chromosomal abnormalities include sticky metaphase, disturbed chromosome, sticky telophase, multipolar chromosome, laggards, fragmented metaphase, fragmented anaphase, scattered anaphase and chromosomal bridge. From the present study, it can be concluded that higher concentrations of the effluent inhibit cell division when compared to the control.Â

Robust recognition technique for handwritten Kannada character recognition using capsule networks

Automated reading of handwritten Kannada documents is highly challenging due to the presence of vowels, consonants and its modifiers. The variable nature of handwriting styles aggravates the complexity of machine based reading of handwritten vowels and consonants. In this paper, our investigation is inclined towards design of a deep convolution network with capsule and routing layers to efficiently recognize  Kannada handwritten characters.  Capsule network architecture is built of an input layer,  two convolution layers, primary capsule, routing capsule layers followed by tri-level dense convolution layer and an output layer.  For experimentation, datasets are collected from more than 100 users for creation of training data samples of about 7769 comprising of 49 classes. Test samples of all the 49 classes are again collected separately from 3 to 5 users creating a total of 245 samples for novel patterns. It is inferred from performance evaluation; a loss of 0.66% is obtained in the classification process and for 43 classes precision of 100% is achieved with an accuracy of 99%. An average accuracy of 95% is achieved for all remaining 6 classes with an average precision of 89%

Automatic Vehicle Tracking System Based on Fixed Thresholding and Histogram Based Edge Processing

Automatic detection, extraction and recognition of vehicle number plate region in traffic control systems is one of the prominent application in Computer vision. The drastic increase in number of vehicles in the current generation greatly increases the complexity in tracking the vehicles through the human visual system, manual procedure of controlling traffic and enforcement of various laws and rules is not sufficient for smooth control of traffic. This urges the need for development of technology that can automate this process. This paper mainly focuses on the development of an automatic number plate extraction and recognition algorithm by incorporating constructs like edge detection, horizontal and vertical edge processing using fixed threshold technique. The extracted number plate region is again processed using template matching algorithm for the recognition of the characters embossed on the number plate with respect to every individual piece of number plate. The algorithm developed has achieved an accuracy of around 100% and works for both front and rear images of the car