Emerging Technologies in Eye Sight Cor rection: Customers Perspective

LASIK (Laser in siter kerato milensis) is a form of refractive surgery which intends to correct eye sight error and reduces the need of other visual aids like glasses and contact lenses. With the emergence of latest technologies in the eye care, the aim of this paper is to explore the eye sight correction surgery: LASIK in the National Capital Region of Inida. It would further identify the market segments that have undergone the surgery or intend to do so in the future, hence highlighting the customers' perception about the same.The research explores upcoming technologies through personal interviews with Eye surgeons in the National Capital Region. The interviews specifically emphasize on the technological milestones in the eye correction area. Further, a questionnaire based survey was conducted, to evaluate customers experience and expectations from these eye care technologies. The study hence, provides a comprehensive overview of the technological high points in the eye sight correction. Also the paper focuses on the various apprehensions raised by customers relating to safety and pricing of these eye surgeries

Efficient Concurrent Execution of Smart Contracts in Blockchains using Object-based Transactional Memory

This paper proposes an efficient framework to execute Smart Contract Transactions (SCTs) concurrently based on object semantics, using optimistic Single-Version Object-based Software Transactional Memory Systems (SVOSTMs) and Multi-Version OSTMs (MVOSTMs). In our framework, a multi-threaded miner constructs a Block Graph (BG), capturing the object-conflicts relations between SCTs, and stores it in the block. Later, validators re-execute the same SCTs concurrently and deterministically relying on this BG. A malicious miner can modify the BG to harm the blockchain, e.g., to cause double-spending. To identify malicious miners, we propose Smart Multi-threaded Validator (SMV). Experimental analysis shows that the proposed multi-threaded miner and validator achieve significant performance gains over state-of-the-art SCT execution framework.Comment: 49 pages, 26 figures, 11 table

A CLINICAL STUDY TO EVALUATE THE EFFECT OF SHANKHPUSHPYADI YOGA IN THE MANAGEMENT OF VYANBALVRIDDHI W.S.R. TO HYPERTENSION

Changing lifestyle is responsible for increase in number of people suffering from Hypertension, Stress, Diabetes mellitus, Obesity, Heart ailments and other Non Communicable diseases. Among these life-style disorders hypertension is an important public health challenge worldwide. The disease Hypertension has no such clear cut reference in Ayurvedic texts. Eminent Ayurvedic scholar Vaidhya Brihaspati Dev Triguna Padam Vibhushan correlated high blood pressure with Vyana BalaVridhi. He postulated that increased Vyana Bala is responsible for increased Arterial pressure. Present study was conducted to explore evidence based therapeutic potential of Shankhpushpyadi Yoga in the management of Vyan Bal Vriddhi w.s.r. to Hypertension. The patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria and voluntarily wiling for trial were registered from O.P.D. & I.P.D. Dept. of Kayachikitsa R.G.G.P.G.AYU Hospital, Paprola. The Clinical trial was approved by I.E.C. The trial formulation contains Hydroalcoholic extract of Shankhpushpi 150 mg, Bhumyamlaki 250 mg, Punarnava 200 mg, Jatamanshi and Sarpagandha 100 mg each.  Clinical trial was of 45 days and total 30 patients were registered for the same.After45days analysis revealed that out of 30 patients, 4 patients showed excellent improvement,15 showed marked, 7 showed mild improvement and no improvement was noted in 2 patients. The mean systolic blood pressure before treatment was 148.71 mm of Hg which dropped to 140.14 mm of Hg at the end of 45 days therapy, with 5.28% reduction. The mean diastolic blood pressure before treatment was 95 mm of Hg which dropped to 87.142 mm of Hg at completion of trial with 8.27% reduction which was statistically significant.  Shankhpushpyadi yoga proved to be an effective and safe remedy for patients of Hypertension.&nbsp

A Multistage High Capacity Reversible Data Hiding Technique Without Overhead Communication

Reversible Data Hiding(RDH) has been extensively investigated, recently, due to its numerous applications in the field of defence, medical, law enforcement and image authentication. However, most of RDH techniques suffer from low secret data hiding capacity and communication overhead. For this, multistage high-capacity reversible data hiding technique without overhead is proposed in this manuscript. Proposed reversible data hiding approach exploits histogram peaks for embedding the secret data along with overhead bits both in plain and encrypted domain. First, marked image is obtained by embedding secret data in the plain domain which is further processed using affine cipher maintaining correlation among the pixels. In second stage, overhead bits are embedded in the encrypted marked image. High embedding capacity is achieved through exploiting histogram peak for embedding multiple bits of secret data. Proposed approach is experimentally validated on different datasets and results are compared with the state-of-the-art techniques over different images

Rapid Diagnosis of Intestinal Parasitic Protozoa, with a Focus on Entamoeba histolytica

Entamoeba histolytica is an invasive intestinal pathogenic parasitic protozoan that causes amebiasis. It must be distinguished from Entamoeba dispar and E. moshkovskii, nonpathogenic commensal parasites of the human gut lumen that are morphologically identical to E. histolytica. Detection of specific E. histolytica antigens in stools is a fast, sensitive technique that should be considered as the method of choice. Stool real-time PCR is a highly sensitive and specific technique but its high cost make it unsuitable for use in endemic areas where there are economic constraints. Serology is an important component of the diagnosis of intestinal and especially extraintestinal amebiasis as it is a sensitive test that complements the detection of the parasite antigens or DNA. Circulating Gal/GalNac lectin antigens can be detected in the serum of patients with untreated amoebic liver abscess. On the horizon are multiplex real-time PCR assays which permit the identification of multiple enteropathogens with high sensitivity and specificity

Diabetes mellitus and odontogenic infections: a life threatening combination in Ludwig's angina

Background: The present study was a prospective study which was aimed to assess the risk factors, microbiological profile, management strategies of Ludwig’s angina patients and its association with odontogenic infections and diabetes mellitus. Methods: The study population consisted of 40 patients of Ludwig’s angina those presented to and were managed in the department of ENT, Government Medical College, Amritsar, Punjab, India, from January 2022 to May 2023. All the patients exhibiting clinical symptoms and signs of Ludwig’s angina were examined and a detailed history of the duration of each symptom, present and past illness, dental infection, throat infection, diabetes mellitus was taken. Results: It was observed that in 85% cases of Ludwig’s angina history of dental infection was present. History of diabetes mellitus was present in 50% cases followed by tooth extraction (10%). Streptococcus viridans was found in 22.5% patients, Staphylococcus aureus (12.5%) and no growth was seen in 52.5% cases. Major co-morbidity was diabetes mellitus (50%), followed by HIV and HCV infections in 15% patients. Surgical drainage was performed in 90% cases including tracheostomy in 12.5% cases rest 10% patients were treated medically. Conclusions: Uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, delayed treatment of odontogenic infection complicates the management of Ludwig’s angina and leads to life threatening complications. Ludwig’s angina should be actively treated as a surgical and medical emergency in which incision and drainage is required as early as possible. Tracheostomy should be considered as an emergency measure to relieve the respiratory obstruction

DeHiDe: Deep Learning-based Hybrid Model to Detect Fake News using Blockchain

The surge in the spread of misleading information, lies, propaganda, and false facts, frequently known as fake news, raised questions concerning social media's influence in today's fast-moving democratic society. The widespread and rapid dissemination of fake news cost us in many ways. For example, individual or societal costs by hampering elections integrity, significant economic losses by impacting stock markets, or increases the risk to national security. It is challenging to overcome the spreading of fake news problems in traditional centralized systems. However, Blockchain-- a distributed decentralized technology that ensures data provenance, authenticity, and traceability by providing a transparent, immutable, and verifiable transaction records can help in detecting and contending fake news. This paper proposes a novel hybrid model DeHiDe: Deep Learning-based Hybrid Model to Detect Fake News using Blockchain. The DeHiDe is a blockchain-based framework for legitimate news sharing by filtering out the fake news. It combines the benefit of blockchain with an intelligent deep learning model to reinforce robustness and accuracy in combating fake news's hurdle. It also compares the proposed method to existing state-of-the-art methods. The DeHiDe is expected to outperform state-of-the-art approaches in terms of services, features, and performance.Comment: 13 Pages, 5 figures, and 1 tabl

Pelvic Organ Prolapse Management in Nepalese Women: an Exploration of Factors Effecting Quality of Life and Implications for Policy and Practice

Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is a major reproductive health problem in developing countries like Nepal. The government has addressed the problem by initiating free surgical camps. However, different issues related to the paternalistic mode of management raise questions about the effectiveness of this approach. For a successful outcome, the problem needs to be assessed and treated considering different quality of life (QOL) domains. In order to arrive at a solution to manage POP in Nepal that places the person at the centre of care (person-centred care, PCC), multiple ways of understanding the effectiveness are needed which include the voices of women and the voices of clinicians. A qualitative methodology, based on an interpretivist approach was used in this study. This study explores the views of women who experienced POP management together with the clinician’s views involved in the management of POP. The impact of POP, on QOL before and after its management forms the central focus for evaluating effectiveness. Fourteen one-to-one interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted. Narratives were obtained from the women about the experiences of living with POP as well as life after its management. Similarly, narrative accounts of POP management were obtained from the clinicians. These narratives from the two groups of participants were analysed using the framework analysis technique. This thesis highlights that the position of women in society was an important factor contributing to the development of POP amongst Nepalese women. Poverty, lack of education and socio-cultural disempowerment together with lack of access to a health care facilities were associated factors leading to delays in seeking timely health care. POP has been found to hamper the QOL for women significantly. The physical domain was the main domain effected above all other domains. Correction of physical symptoms was found to be associated with an improved QOL for women. The favoured clinical initiatives taken for the treatment of POP, though paternalistic, seemed successful as surgery for POP was found to be associated with an improvement in QOL for the majority of women. However, the management approach needs to be refocused on PCC in order to improve the overall lives of the women. Such a shift to PCC will require practice development at every level of its management. There is an urgent need to develop knowledgeable and skilled manpower both in curative and preventive care of POP. Integration of preventive aspects of POP management, within the government health care system, is a key factor if sustainable improvements are to be achieved