Alert-BDI: BDI Model with Adaptive Alertness through Situational Awareness

In this paper, we address the problems faced by a group of agents that possess situational awareness, but lack a security mechanism, by the introduction of a adaptive risk management system. The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture lacks a framework that would facilitate an adaptive risk management system that uses the situational awareness of the agents. We extend the BDI architecture with the concept of adaptive alertness. Agents can modify their level of alertness by monitoring the risks faced by them and by their peers. Alert-BDI enables the agents to detect and assess the risks faced by them in an efficient manner, thereby increasing operational efficiency and resistance against attacks.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to ICACCI 2013, Mysore, Indi

Urban lakes and wetlands: opportunities and challenges in Indian cities - Case study of Delhi

12 p.International audienceIn India, urban water bodies commonly become cesspools due to lack of sanitation facilities. Delhi is continually urbanizing at a rapid pace that has affected the condition of water bodies. To identify water resource available within Delhi, an extensive field survey and remote sensing based mapping was carried out in Delhi to map all the water bodies including groundwater recharge sites - 44 lakes and 355 village ponds. Hauz Khas, a historical tank and important recharge site, was restored by sourcing secondary treated wastewater and further improving water quality through ecological methods including bio-remediation that are cost effective. Water quality, water recharge and avian diversity data was collected to record improvement. The water table rose by more than 6 m, biological oxygen demand decreased from 50 to 15 mg/L in 21 days, the number of resident and migratory birds increased with two resident water bird species breeding in the lake

THERAPEUTIC EFFICACY OF ISOLATED STIGMA-5,22 DIEN-3-O-B-D-GLUCOPYRANOSIDE AND ETHANOLIC ROOT EXTRACT OF OPERCULINA TURPETHUM AGAINST N- NITROSODIMETHYLAMINE INDUCED HEPATOPATHY IN THE LIVER OF MICE: ULTRASTRUCTURAL AND HISTOLOGICAL EVIDENCES

Objective: Liver is the most important organ in the pivotal role of regulating various physiological processes and several vital functions like metabolism, secretion and storage. Plants are reputed in the indigenous systems of medicine for the treatment of various diseases. Toxicant or drug induced liver injury can be prevented by treating with non toxic hepatoprotective herbs, which can possess membrane stabilizing, hepatoprotective and antioxidant activities. NDMA (N- Nitrosodimethylamine) belongs to nitrosamine compounds which are known hepatic carcinogens. Methods: The aim of the present investigation was to analyse the effects of NDMA on the morphology of hepatic cells, to determine the reversible effect if any, after providing the treatment with the crude extract and isolated glycoside from the roots of Operculina turpethum. The treatment was given in different groups of Swiss Albino Mice. Results: Scanning Electron Microscopy and Light microscopical examinations indicated that NDMA treated mice livers (n = 6) displayed severe vascular and endothelial damage compared to control livers (n = 6). Liver sections appeared with inflammatory cellular infiltration, vacuolated hepatocytes, dilated sinusoids, increased number of Kupffer cells, fibrosis, endothelial fenestrations, intercellular spaces and spaces of Disse, and were accompanied by dilatation of bile canaliculi. Conclusion: These alterations were recovered with the treatment at the dose of 400 mg/kg of crude extract and 50 mg/kg of the isolated compound. Hence, it can be stated that this plant can show significant recovery in NDMA damaged livers

Performance Analysis of Handwritten Marathi Character Recognition with RBF, Cascade, Elman and Feed Forward Neural Networks

Character recognition of handwritten Marathi curve scripts is one of the most challenging areas of research in neural networks due to high variability in writing styles. Marathi characters have shirolekhas and spines. This seriously affects many of the performance recognition parameters and much more.In this paper, we are performing the performance analysis of RBF neural network, Cascade Neural network, Elman Neural network and Feed forward neural network for the character recognition of handwritten Marathi curve scripts. For the experiment, we have taken in to account the six samples each of 48 Marathi characters. For every sampled character, the �Edge detection and dilation method of Feature extraction�with a set of image pre-processing operations have been performed. Here to study and analyze the performance of these four neural networks, firstly we have created the network, trained the network, simulated the network and plotted the regression plots. It has been analyzed that RBF neural networks has a high regression value as compared to the rest of the methods for the training set

Performance Evaluation of RBF, Cascade, Elman, Feed Forward and Pattern Recognition Network for Marathi Character Recognition with CLAHE Feature Extraction Method

The purpose of this paper is to study, analyze and improve the performance of RBF, Cascade, Elman, Feed Forward and Pattern Recognition Networks using �Contrast-limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization method� of featureextraction. This work is divided in to two sections. In the earlier work, we have performed the performance analysis of RBF neural network, Cascade Neural network, Elman Neural network and Feed forward neural network for the character recognition of handwritten Marathi curve scripts using �Edge detection and Dilation method� of feature extraction. In this paper, we have applied the feature extraction methodknown as Contrast-limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). This feature extraction method enhances the contrast of images by transforming the values in the intensity image. For this experiment, we have considered the six samples each of 48 Marathi characters. For every sampled character, the CLAHE feature extraction method is applied. Then we have studied and analyzed the performance of these five Neural Networks for character recognition. It is found that except Elman Network, the performance of rest of all the networks is increased

Phenobarbitone induced drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS): a case report

Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is a life threatening cutaneous drug reaction with visceral involvement and hematological abnormalities. Being a rare side effect, it is often under-reported and misdiagnosed. The fatal adverse drug reaction is associated most commonly with aromatic anti-epileptics phenytoin, carbamazepine and less frequently with phenobarbitone. Here, we report a case of phenobarbitone induced DRESS in a 1 year old male child. He succumbed to fulminant hepatic failure inspite of being put on steroids, hepatoprotectives, antibiotics and ventilatory support

Deciphering the functional role of clinical mutations in ABCB1, ABCC1, and ABCG2 ABC transporters in endometrial cancer

ATP-binding cassette transporters represent a superfamily of dynamic membrane-based proteins with diverse yet common functions such as use of ATP hydrolysis to efflux substrates across cellular membranes. Three major transporters—P-glycoprotein (P-gp or ABCB1), multidrug resistance protein 1 (MRP1 or ABCC1), and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP or ABCG2) are notoriously involved in therapy resistance in cancer patients. Despite exhaustive individual characterizations of each of these transporters, there is a lack of understanding in terms of the functional role of mutations in substrate binding and efflux, leading to drug resistance. We analyzed clinical variations reported in endometrial cancers for these transporters. For ABCB1, the majority of key mutations were present in the membrane-facing region, followed by the drug transport channel and ATP-binding regions. Similarly, for ABCG2, the majority of key mutations were located in the membrane-facing region, followed by the ATP-binding region and drug transport channel, thus highlighting the importance of membrane-mediated drug recruitment and efflux in ABCB1 and ABCG2. On the other hand, for ABCC1, the majority of key mutations were present in the inactive nucleotide-binding domain, followed by the drug transport channel and membrane-facing regions, highlighting the importance of the inactive nucleotide-binding domain in facilitating indirect drug efflux in ABCC1. The identified key mutations in endometrial cancer and mapped common mutations present across different types of cancers in ABCB1, ABCC1, and ABCG2 will facilitate the design and discovery of inhibitors targeting unexplored structural regions of these transporters and re-engineering of these transporters to tackle chemoresistance

Comparative study of hypospadias morphology with normal age-matched subjects

Background: Hypospadias is the most common congenital malformation of the penis, affecting about 4-6 males per 1000 births, and ranging in severity from a ventrally located urethral meatus that is slightly off-center to tip of penis to up to the perineal area. The current research is intended towards studying the morphology of hypospadias and undertakes a comparison with the age matched population. Methods: It was an observational, cross-sectional study conducted in the Department of General Surgery, Himalayan institute of medical sciences, Swami Ram Nagar, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India over the period of 12 months. We included a total of 120 study subjects, consisting of 60 cases and 60 controls. All patients of hypospadias with no other genital pathology visiting the OPD for the 1st time were included. Patients were categorized as having distal (distal to corona), mid (proximal to corona & up to distal shaft), or proximal hypospadias (in the shaft). Mean maximum width, thickness and vertical length of the glans, stretched penile length, diameter and circumference of penile shaft were recorded. Results: Variables like stretched penile length, width and circumference of mid penile shaft and variables like urethral plate, urethral groove, breadth of dorsal hood, maximum width and thickness of glans were found to be insignificant when compared with controls. However, vertical length of glans among cases was significantly less when compared with controls. Conclusions: A significant association between vertical length of glans between controls and cases was found

A hospital based eye health survey to see the pattern of eye diseases in Uttarakhand, India

Background: The cause of blindness and low vision differs in different countries and communities. The requirements of eye services also vary according to the need of the native population. Studies showing the pattern of ocular morbidity are needed to build better infrastructure of eye care facilities.Methods: This prospective study was conducted in eye department of Government Doon Medical College, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India between April 2016 to May 2016.the patients were seen in eye OPD by ophthalmologists. Proper anterior and posterior segment evaluation was done and patients were treated accordingly. Data including the registration number, name of the patient, age, sex and diagnosis were recorded in OPD register and analysed.Results: Total 1259 patients were examined. 605 were male and 654 were female. The mean age of male patients was 43 years and for females was 41.33 years. Refractive error (20.97%) was the commonest ocular morbidity in our study followed by cataract (20.02%), follow ups of cataract surgeries and allergic conjunctivitis. Besides refractive errors total 137 (10.88%) patients were presbyopic.Conclusions: This study shows a slightly exceeding number of female patients, which shows that females are equally aware of their health problems. Refractive errors are the most common cause in present study with cataract being second, may be because of higher mean age of the patients presenting to OPD. In present study allergic conjunctivitis was third commonest cause of ocular morbidity in our district may be due to windy weather. The leading causes of ocular morbidity in our study were refractive errors, cataract, allergic conjunctivitis and, presbyopia. The high prevalence of refractive errors and cataracts shows that hospital still requires an improved infrastructure with spectacle provision to the patients

Performance analysis of Handwritten Devnagari Character Recognition using Feed Forward , Radial Basis , Elman Back Propagation, and Pattern Recognition Neural Network Model Using Different Feature Extraction Methods

This paper describes the performance analysis for the four types of neural network with different feature extraction methods for character recognition of hand written devnagari alphabets. We have implemented four types of networks i.e. Feed forward , Radial basis, Elman back propagation and Pattern recognition neural network using three different types of feature extraction methods i.e. pixel value, histogram and blocks mean for each network. These algorithms have been performed better than the conventional approaches of neural network for pattern recognition. It has been analyzed that the Radial Basis neural network performs better compared to other types of networks