An Insight into the Growth of New Retail Formats in India

The Indian retail sector is going through a transformation and this emerging market is witnessing a significant change in its growth and investment pattern. Both existing and new players are experimenting with new retail formats. Currently two popular formats -hypermarkets and supermarkets are growing very fast. Apart from the brick -mortar formats, brick -click and click-click formats are also increasingly visible on the Indian retail landscape. Consumer dynamics in India is changing and the retailers need to take note of this and formulate their strategies and tactics to deliver value to the consumer. This paper investigates modern retail developments and growth of modern formats in this country. We also discuss the challenges and opportunities available to the retailers to succeed in this country.

New models to study vascular mural cell embryonic origin: implications in vascular diseases.

A key question in vascular biology is how the diversity of origin of vascular mural cells, namely smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and pericytes influences vessel properties, in particular the regional propensity to vascular diseases. This review therefore first describes the role and regulation of mural cells during vascular formation, with a focus on embryonic origin. We then consider the evidence that connects heterogeneities in SMC and pericyte origins with disease. Since this idea has major implications for understanding and modelling human disease, then there is a pressing need for new model systems to investigate mural cell development and the consequences of heterogeneity. Recent advances arising from in vitro strategies for deriving mural cells from human pluripotent stem cells as well as from the zebrafish model will be discussed and the medical relevance of these discoveries will be highlighted

Possible role of alternative respiration in temperature rise of water stressed plants

Role of alternative respiration, a thermogenic pathway, was evaluated in temperature rise of water stressed plants. Transpiration rate, plant temperature and respiratory dynamics were monitored in field grown irrigated and unirrigated sorghum(Sorghum vulgare Pers.) hybrid CSH 6 and pearl millet(Pennirelum typhoider (Burm. f.) var. J 104 for 22 days. Transpiration rate of irrigated plants was always higher than the unirrigated plants. But the plant temperature and the alternative respiration activity of irrigated plants was always lower than unirrigated plants. The reduction in transpiration rate of unirrigated pearl millet was more as compared to unirrigated sorghum. Nonetheless, alternative respiration activity was higher in unirrigated sorghum as compared to unirrigated pearl millet. Temperature of unirrigated sorghum plants increased by 10.4°C during 22 days and it was 8.0°C higher than irrigated sorghum at day 22. Stressed pearl millet showed an increase of 3.9°C during 22 days and it was 2.9°C higher than the irrigated pearl millet at day 22. It is suggested that the heat released because of the alternative respiration activity also contributes towards temperature rise of water stressed plants

Policies for replacing long-term indwelling urinary catheters in adults

We would also like to thank the foll owing Cochrane Incontinence editorial base staff members for their help and support with this re-view: Cathryn Glazener, Sheila Wallace, Mandy Fader, Peter Her-bison and Suzanne Macdonald. The review authors are grateful to Toby Lasseron for his advice. The review authors are thankful to Dr Beverly Priefer for responding to our query about Priefer 1982. Policies for replacing long‐term indwelling urinary catheters in adults, Protocol, Fergus PM Cooper, Cameron Edwin Alexander, Sanjay Sinha, Muhammad Imran Omar; https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011115; 14 May 2014Peer reviewedPublisher PD

INTELLIGENT MECHANISM FOR ROBOCALL PREVENTION USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-DRIVEN INTERACTIVE QUESTION AND ANSWER TECHNIQUES

A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized auto-dialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call. Criminals and dishonest robocallers often alter or spoof the calling number of their outbound telephone calls in order to deceive a called party. This deception increases the chance that the called party will answer a robocall. In other cases, the spam calls may be more malicious. This proposal provides an artificial intelligence (AI)-based interactive and intelligent technique that utilizes a voicebot to detect spam calls by analyzing various answer/response patterns (or contexts) of callers in order to add such callers to a deny list without any user intervention

TRANSLATING BETWEEN REALTIME BI-DIRECTIONAL CONVERSATIONS AND PUSH-TO-TALK SYSTEMS

The techniques presented herein provide an artificial intelligence (AI)-based conversational agent to allow communications between (i.e., “translate for”) a push-to-talk (PTT) client and endpoints that support real-time, bi-directional conversation, including voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) endpoints (also referred to as IP telephony endpoints) and endpoints running multimedia applications that allow bi-directional, real-time conversation. These techniques are applicable when PTT deployments allow direct calls between endpoints that support real-time, bi-directional conversation (e.g., VoIP endpoints) and PTT endpoints. During these calls, the techniques may allow a caller from the real-time, bi-directional conversation endpoint to have a real-time or nearly real-time conversational experience while the PTT user has a start-stop PTT experience

A safe method for the retrieval of a dislocated trial head in total hip arthroplasty

Total hip arthroplasty is a life changing procedure providing a significant improvement in the quality of life for those receiving treatment. An 81-year-old male with severe right sided hip osteoarthritis underwent uncemented total hiparthroplasty. Intraoperatively the 32mm trial head dislodged from the trial stem over the anterior rim of the acetabulum relocating to within the pelvic cavity. Time efficient retrieval was performed during primary surgery through a mini-incision at the iliac crest

Myocardin overexpression is sufficient for promoting the development of a mature smooth muscle cell-like phenotype from human embryonic stem cells.

BACKGROUND: Myocardin is thought to have a key role in smooth muscle cell (SMC) development by acting on CArG-dependent genes. However, it is unclear whether myocardin-induced SMC maturation and increases in agonist-induced calcium signalling are also associated with increases in the expression of non-CArG-dependent SMC-specific genes. Moreover, it is unknown whether myocardin promotes SMC development from human embryonic stem cells. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL: Findings The effects of adenoviral-mediated myocardin overexpression on SMC development in human ESC-derived embryoid bodies were investigated using immunofluorescence, flow cytometry and real time RT-PCR. Myocardin overexpression from day 10 to day 28 of embryoid body differentiation increased the number of smooth muscle α-actin(+) and smooth muscle myosin heavy chain(+) SMC-like cells and increased carbachol-induced contractile function. However, myocardin was found to selectively regulate only CArG-dependent SMC-specific genes. Nevertheless, myocardin expression appeared to be sufficient to specify the SMC lineage. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Myocardin increases the development and maturation of SMC-like cells from human embryonic stem cells despite not activating the full repertoire of SMC genes. These findings have implications for vascular tissue engineering and other applications requiring large numbers of functional SMCs