Mapping digital humanities in India

In a new study published by The Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, P.P. Sneha offers a detailed mapping of digital practices in arts and humanities scholarship in India. In this article, she summarises the value of conducting such a mapping in the Indian context and explores the implications of digital approaches and innovations for research and practice in humanities

Lymphatic filariasis: the importance of screening all peripheral blood smears in low power for detection of asymptomatic cases

Lymphatic filariasis caused by the mosquitoborne, lymphatic-dwelling nematodes Wuchereria bancrofti and Brugia malayi is still a common tropical parasitic disease and 120 million people are affected in the world, of which two-third are in Asia. They cause high morbidity and mortality among humans. Irreversible “elephantiasis” is the major clinical manifestation for LF. Detection of microfilaria in peripheral blood is important. In addition to simple thick and thin blood smear tests, concentration techniques are used: mainly density gradient centrifugation, haemolysis and filtration of the blood through a polycarbonate membrane, which retains the parasite. Diagnosis has been revolutionized with the availability of circulating filarial antigen (CFA) tests which are easy to perform but are costly. Diethylcarbamazine (DEC) is the drug of choice for treating lymphatic filariasis. In the light of this information, hereby presenting a case series of 4 asymptomatic patients who were diagnosed with filariasis on peripheral blood smear examination. The article emphasizes the importance of low power scanning of every peripheral blood smear, especially when the laboratory is not facilitated with costly methods to detect microfilaria

Detection and emotional evaluation of an electric vehicle’s exterior sound in a simulated environment

Electric vehicles are quiet at low speeds and thus potentially pose a threat to pedestrians’ safety. Laws are formulating worldwide that mandate these vehicles emit sounds to alert the pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach. It is necessary that these sounds promote a positive perception of the vehicle brand, and understanding their impact on soundscapes is also important. Detection time of the vehicle sounds is an important measure to assess pedestrians’ safety. Emotional evaluation of these sounds influences assessment of the vehicle brand. Laboratory simulation is a new approach for evaluating exterior automotive sounds. This study describes the implementation of laboratory simulation to compare the detection time and emotional evaluation of artificial sounds for an electric vehicle. An Exterior Sound Simulator simulated audio-visual stimuli of an electric car passing a crossroad of a virtual town at 4.47 ms-1 (10 mph), from the perspective of a pedestrian standing at the crossroad. In this environment, 15 sounds were tested using experiments where participants detected the car and evaluated its sound using perceptual dimensions. Results show that these sounds vary significantly in their detection times and emotional evaluations, but crucially that traditional metrics like dB(A) do not always relate to the detection of these sounds. Detection time and emotional evaluation do not have significant correlation. Hence, sounds of a vehicle could be detected quickly, but may portray negative perceptions of the vehicle. Simulation provides a means to more fully evaluate potential electric vehicle sounds against the competing criteria

Prevalence of upper-cross syndrome in college going students-a cross sectional study

Background: Upper cross syndrome is becoming more prevalent in today’s population. Upper crossed syndrome refers to overactive and underactive muscles group in the neck and shoulder girdle. Our aim in this study is to check the tightness and weakness of shoulder and scapular muscles.Methods: 100 adults with age group between 18-23 years were randomly selected for the study. All the students were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Tightness for pectoralis major, trapezius weakness and neck disability index (NDI) was measured. Data was analysed using SPSS version 20. Mean and SD was analyzed. Frequency was assessed with percentage.Results: Frequency of tightness of pectoralis major was 8% and weakness of trapezius was 59% respectively. NDI values with mean values 36.66 (30.89) was measured.Conclusions: Upper cross syndrome is found to be prevalent in college going students

Normal categories of semigroup of order-preserving transformations on a finite chain

K. S. S. Nambooripad intoduced nornal categories to enable to describe the structure of regular semigroups fully. In this paper we describe the ideal categories of the regular semigroup $OX_n,$ of non-invertible order-preserving transformations on a finite chain $X_n=\{1\leq 2\leq \cdots \leq n \}$ which are normal categories. Further it is shown that the principal left ideal category of $OX_n$ as the power set category $P_o(X_n)$ of $OX_n$ and the principal right ideal category as $\prod_o(X_n)$ category of ordered partitions of $X_n$ and described the cone semigroup $T\mathscr L(OX_n)$ and prove that it is isomorphic to $OX_n.$Comment: 14 pages, 0 figure

Graphical Analysis on Text Mining Unstructured Data Using D-Matrix

Fault dependency (D-matrix) is used as a diagnostic model that identifies the fault system data and its causal relationship at the hierarchical system-level. It consists of dependencies and relationship between identified failure modes and symptoms related to a system. Constructing such D-matrix fault detection model is time overwhelming task .A system is proposed that describes associate ontology based text mining on unstructured data using D-matrix for automatically constructing D-matrix by mining many repair verbatim text data (typically written in unstructured text) collected throughout the identification process. And also graphical model generation for each generated D-matrix. Initially we construct fault diagnosis ontology and then text mining techniques are applied to spot dependencies among failure modes and identified symptom. D-matrix is represented in graph so analysis gets easier and faulty parts becomes simply detectable. The proposed methodology are implemented as a prototype tool and validated by using real-life information collected from the automobile domain

Clinical profile of patients with acute organophosphorus poisoning in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Organophosphorus compound poisoning episodes are relatively common in occurrence in this part of the world and are associated with high levels of morbidity as well as death, at times despite competent care. The present study was conducted to profile clinically the patients admitted with history of acute organophosphorus poisoning.Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted between September 2017 and October 2019 at four hospitals with intensive care units in a city in central-west India region, wherein clinically relevant details of patients admitted with history of acute organophosphorus poisoning were noted and analysed.Results: Out of 160 participants studied, males (58.75%) and those between 21-30 years age group (45.0%) were affected more. Suicidal attempt was the commonest mode (97.5%). Majority of the participants belonged to severity grade II (45%); with severity grades found directly related to longer hospital stay and death. Constriction of pupils (76.25%) was the commonest clinical sign observed. The death rate was calculated to be 21.25%, with monocrotophos (100%) and dicholorovas (66.63%) compounds being associated with very high mortality. Dimethoate was the commonest substance incriminated (18.75%).Conclusions: Organophosphorus poisoning has affected the young, productive males prominently. Higher severity of the disease process at presentation leads to significant mortality. Selective prohibition of the riskier compounds causing higher proportion of deaths is recommended