Mutual Dependence: A Novel Method for Computing Dependencies Between Random Variables

In data science, it is often required to estimate dependencies between different data sources. These dependencies are typically calculated using Pearson's correlation, distance correlation, and/or mutual information. However, none of these measures satisfy all the Granger's axioms for an "ideal measure". One such ideal measure, proposed by Granger himself, calculates the Bhattacharyya distance between the joint probability density function (pdf) and the product of marginal pdfs. We call this measure the mutual dependence. However, to date this measure has not been directly computable from data. In this paper, we use our recently introduced maximum likelihood non-parametric estimator for band-limited pdfs, to compute the mutual dependence directly from the data. We construct the estimator of mutual dependence and compare its performance to standard measures (Pearson's and distance correlation) for different known pdfs by computing convergence rates, computational complexity, and the ability to capture nonlinear dependencies. Our mutual dependence estimator requires fewer samples to converge to theoretical values, is faster to compute, and captures more complex dependencies than standard measures

A Study of Relationship among General Anxiety, Test Anxiety and Academic Achievement of Higher Secondary Students

In the present study an attempt was made to find out the relationship between anxiety and academic achievement of Higher secondary school students. This area of research has been of considerable interest to teachers who have observed that some children appear to perform below their best in situations characterized by a high degree of stress. It was expected that students with high anxiety would be more likely to perform less adequately throughout their studies than would non-anxious students. The Higher secondary level is a turning point in the life of the adolescents. The students and their parents take the decisions of their career selection during this transition period. Adolescents of our schools have many disturbing problems that often interfere with their academic achievement. Anxiety and anxiety related problems are very common during adolescence. The investigator randomly selected a total number of 12 schools for the study that included Government, Private aided and Private unaided schools. Sample comprised 180 students for the study. The findings of the study are: 1)There is a positive high correlation between general anxiety and test anxiety. 2) There is a negative low correlation between general anxiety and academic achievement. 3) There is a negative low correlation (-0.222) between test anxiety and academic achievement of higher secondary students.   Key words: General Anxiety, Test Anxiety and Academic Achievement, Higher Secondary student

Electrical neurostimulation for chronic pain: on selective relay of sensory neural activities in myelinated nerve fibers

Chronic pain affects about 100 million adults in the US. Despite their great need, neuropharmacology and neurostimulation therapies for chronic pain have been associated with suboptimal efficacy and limited long-term success, as their mechanisms of action are unclear. Yet current computational models of pain transmission suffer from several limitations. In particular, dorsal column models do not include the fundamental underlying sensory activity traveling in these nerve fibers. We developed a (simple) simulation test bed of electrical neurostimulation of myelinated nerve fibers with underlying sensory activity. This paper reports our findings so far. Interactions between stimulation-evoked and underlying activities are mainly due to collisions of action potentials and losses of excitability due to the refractory period following an action potential. In addition, intuitively, the reliability of sensory activity decreases as the stimulation frequency increases. This first step opens the door to a better understanding of pain transmission and its modulation by neurostimulation therapies

Micro Health Insurance Among Rural Women

The study determined the level of awareness and satisfaction with micro health insurance among rural women in the Puducherry Union territory. Using survey methods, primary data was acquired from insured members via a questionnaire. With the help of SPSS 20.0, a Chi-Square analysis was performed to determine the level of awareness and satisfaction, as well as demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The findings imply that boosting knowledge is a key prerequisite for voluntary participation in MHI schemes, and that interactive, contextualised awareness tools might help people better understand insurance. The research indicates that the Puducherry Union Territory's microhealth insurance scheme can be an effective instrument for increasing health among rural women

Design and FPGA Implementation of Variable FIR Filters using the Spectral Parameter Approximation and Time-Domain Approach

This brief present a design and FPGA implementation of variable FIR filters using time domain approach of the spectral parameter approximation (SPA) technique. Farrow structure is used to implement the SPA-based filter. In the design of variable filters first design the practical filters which satisfy the given transition bandwidth, passband ripple, and stopband attenuation specifications and then approximate the coefficients of these filters by the impulse response of the Farrow structure. Least-squares technique is used to approximation problem. Various design and implementation cases with FPGA synthesis results are presented

Bounds For The Complex Part of Phase Velocity

We study incompressible, inviscid, density stratified fluid with variable cross section in this present paper. For this problem, we have obtained a bound for the complex part of phase velocity. Furthermore, we have obtained an instability region which depends on number of parameters

A Survey of Hashing Techniques for High Performance Computing

Hashing is a well-known and widely used technique for providing O(1) access to large files on secondary storage and tables in memory. Hashing techniques were introduced in the early 60s. The term hash function historically is used to denote a function that compresses a string of arbitrary input to a string of fixed length. Hashing finds applications in other fields such as fuzzy matching, error checking, authentication, cryptography, and networking. Hashing techniques have found application to provide faster access in routing tables, with the increase in the size of the routing tables. More recently, hashing has found applications in transactional memory in hardware. Motivated by these newly emerged applications of hashing, in this paper we present a survey of hashing techniques starting from traditional hashing methods with greater emphasis on the recent developments. We provide a brief explanation on hardware hashing and a brief introduction to transactional memory

Discrepency in grade between preoperative biopsy and final specimen in stage I carcinoma endometrium: an institutional review

Background: Most endometrioid endometrial cancer are well differentiated (Grade I). Grade of the tumor is an important predictor of nodal metastasis and the discordance in histological grade of endometrial cancers between diagnostic biopsy and definitive surgery specimen was analyzed in our Institute.Methods: Around 221 patients diagnosed with carcinoma endometrium between 2006 and 2014 were taken into study. Histologic differentiation of the tumour between diagnostic biopsy and definitive surgery were analysed. All demographic data, tumor factors, follow up and recurrence were recorded.Results: Of the 221 patients taken into consideration for analysis, median age of presentation was 57 years with range between 38-77 years. The overall median body mass index was 27.70kg/m2. 66 % of patients had comorbid illness, with 33% having both diabetes and hypertension. Open staging was performed in 150 patients and laparoscopic staging in 71 patients. Mean duration of surgery was 3.06 hrs in laparoscopic staging and 2.74hrs in open staging. The median tumour size was 4cm.The median number of nodes dissected were 13. Discordance in the grade of tumour between diagnostic biopsy and surgical biopsy were 58.8% of grade 1 tumour, 16.2% of grade 2 tumours and 18.9% of grade 3 tumours.Conclusions: Discrepancies in correlation of the grade of tumour in diagnostic biopsy and tissue obtained at surgery supports the need for surgical staging in all patients

Art and craft of episiotomy

Background: Episiotomy is the most common obstetric surgical procedure performed in labor room. Mediolateral and Midline episiotomies are the most common types. Post-delivery suture angle is the most important determinant factor which predicts the risk of anal sphincter injuries. Mediolateral episiotomy has a significantly lower risk of OASIS rate when compared to midline episiotomies. Aim of the study was to know whether mediolateral episiotomies are actually mediolateral and does the angle of episiotomy influences the risk of anal sphincter injuries, maternal/fetal complications in the perinatal period.Methods: An observational study was conducted on 250 postpartum patients admitted to our hospital. Details of episiotomy in relation to incision angle, length, depth and post suturing angle were noted within two days of delivery.Results: Among the subjects included there were 40.8 % incisions were RMLE, average length was 3.32cms, average suture angle is 28.69 degree. OASIS was seen in 19.5% cases more so with midline episiotomies.Conclusions: Episiotomy is an essential, must to know skill. Compulsory ssupervised clinical teaching and use of skill lab training can prevent potential detrimental consequences

PMv Neuronal Firing May Be Driven by a Movement Command Trajectory within Multidimensional Gaussian Fields

The premotor cortex (PM) is known to be a site of visuo-somatosensory integration for the production of movement. We sought to better understand the ventral PM (PMv) by modeling its signal encoding in greater detail. Neuronal firing data was obtained from 110 PMv neurons in two male rhesus macaques executing four reach-grasp-manipulate tasks. We found that in the large majority of neurons (∼90%) the firing patterns across the four tasks could be explained by assuming that a high-dimensional position/configuration trajectory-like signal evolving ∼250 ms before movement was encoded within a multidimensional Gaussian field (MGF). Our findings are consistent with the possibility that PMv neurons process a visually specified reference command for the intended arm/hand position trajectory with respect to a proprioceptively or visually sensed initial configuration. The estimated MGF were (hyper) disc-like, such that each neuron's firing modulated strongly only with commands that evolved along a single direction within position/configuration space. Thus, many neurons appeared to be tuned to slices of this input signal space that as a collection appeared to well cover the space. The MGF encoding models appear to be consistent with the arm-referent, bell-shaped, visual target tuning curves and target selectivity patterns observed in PMV visual-motor neurons. These findings suggest that PMv may implement a lookup table-like mechanism that helps translate intended movement trajectory into time-varying patterns of activation in motor cortex and spinal cord. MGFs provide an improved nonlinear framework for potentially decoding visually specified, intended multijoint arm/hand trajectories well in advance of movement