Area Efficient Level Sensitive Flip-Flops – A Performance Comparison

Due to increased demand of portable and battery operated devices, ultra-low power and high speed devices with less area requirement are important nowadays. Latch is the basic element for all the sequential circuits. This paper presents comparison of various circuits of D latch on the basis of power consumption, area efficiency and delay. Basically in these latches transmission gates are replaced by pass transistors to reduce the transistor count. Comparison results indicate that latch design with least transistor count is the best choice for portable applications. Keywords: area efficient, latch, sub-threshold region, pass transistor, low power, level sensitive flip-flops, flip-flops

Assessing Effectiveness of Multicultural Readings in Increasing Ethnocultural Empathy for Undergraduate Students

This study examined how multicultural readings included in the introduction to psychology curriculum were linked to an increase in students’ multicultural interest and sensitivity. Specifically, this study investigated the impact of reading and discussing multicultural articles on students’ ethnocultural empathy, universality-diverse orientation, and openness to diversity. Second purpose of the study was to examine possible individual differences associated with response to the intervention. Participants in the current study were undergraduate students enrolled in five sections of the introduction to psychology class, which were randomly assigned as control and experimental groups. The multicultural readings are four original research articles that examine topics in psychology from a cross-cultural and multi-cultural perspective. Measures of dependent variables used in the study were: Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (Wang et al., 2003), Personality Style Inventory for Adolescents (Lounsbury et al., 2003), Experiences in Close Relationships Short Form (Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt, & Vogel, 2007), Miville–Guzman Universality– Diversity Scale-Short form (Fuertes, Miville, Mohr, Sedlacek,& Gretchen, 2000), Openness to Diversity Scale (Pascarella, Edison, Nora, Hagedon, & Terenzini, 1996), and Balanced Inventory of Desired Responding (Paulhus, 1984). A one-way Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis that the experimental group, after being exposed to the multicultural readings would show a greater increase in multicultural variables. The study’s main hypothesis was not supported, because the group X time treatment interaction was not significant. Exploratory analyses of personality traits as covariates suggested that only one variable, Attachment Avoidance, was associated with one multicultural outcome, namely, extent of change in SEE-Acceptance of Cultural Differences

Developing and evaluating a smartphone application for tuberculosis amongst private sector academic clinicians in India

Contexte : La tuberculose est la première cause de mortalité au monde et parmi les 10,4 millions de cas de tuberculose par année, 2,8 millions proviennent de l’Inde. De ce fait, il est considéré comme le pays ayant le plus haut taux d’incidence de la tuberculose au monde. Une manque de qualité des soins est une cause majeure pour l’épidémie de la tuberculose en Inde. Le secteur privé, qui n’est pas réglementé, prend soin de 50% des patients ayant la tuberculose. Des études précédentes indiquent le mauvais diagnostic ou le mauvais traitement comme des facteurs qui sont présents dans le secteur privé. Ce secteur comprend plusieurs types de médecins, dont ceux qui ont un diplôme en médecine et ceux qui n’ont pas de diplôme en médecine mais pratiquent la médicine. Une amélioration dans l’éducation des cliniciens utilisant les technologies mobiles, dont les applications mobiles, pourrait être une solution pour améliorer et assurer la qualité des soins des patients ayant la tuberculose. Toutefois, il existe peu d’études sur les technologies mobiles pour la tuberculose en Inde. Objectifs : Ce mémoire vise à évaluer l’expérience de l’usager et l’acceptabilité d’une application mobile (LearnTB) parmi les cliniciens académiques du secteur privé en Inde. Méthodes: L’étude a utilisé une approche à deux étapes. Cinq cliniciens (étape 1) et 101 cliniciens (étape 2) ont été contactés à Kasturba Hospital Manipal, Manipal, Inde entre février et mars 2017. L’expérience des participants était évaluée par le System Usability Scale. L’acceptabilité était évaluée par un questionnaire adopté du Technology Assessment Model. Les résultats étaient analysés à l’aide des statistiques descriptives, la régression linéaire multiple ainsi que la régression logistique. Résultats : Des taux de réponse de 100% et 99% ont été obtenus pour la première et deuxième partie respectivement. L’expérience de l’usager était vraiment positive. En ce qui concerne l’acceptabilité, une analyse de cheminement a confirmé la relation directe entre l’utilité perçue et l’intention d’utilisation, et la relation indirecte entre la facilité d’utilisation perçue et l’intention d’utilisation. La régression logistique a permis de cibler les items qui influencent fortement l’intention d’utilisation. Conclusion : L’expérience de l’usager pour LearnTB était vraiment positive, et l’utilité perçue a le plus grand impact sur l’intention d’utilisation (acceptabilité). Cette étude permet d’avoir une analyse préliminaire de l’acceptabilité des cliniciens concernant les technologies mobiles pour la tuberculose en Inde. D’autres recherches dans ce domaine sont requises afin d’assurer l’implantation optimale de ces technologies.Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious killer, and India accounts for 2.8 of the 10.4 million TB cases that occur each year, making it the highest TB burden country worldwide. Poor quality of TB care is a major driver of the epidemic in India. India’s large private, unregulated health sector manages over 50% of the TB patients, with studies showing suboptimal diagnosis and treatment in the private sector. This sector comprises of health professionals who are medically trained, and those who are not medically trained but are practicing medicine. Better education of doctors using mobile health (mHealth) applications is a possible solution. However, little is known about mHealth around TB in India. Objective: This masters thesis aimed to evaluate the user experience and acceptability of a smartphone application for TB (LearnTB) amongst private sector academic clinicians in India. Methods: This study adopted a two part approach. Five clinicians (part 1) and 101 clinicians (part 2) were contacted at Kasturba Hospital Manipal, Manipal, India between February and March 2017. The user experience of participants (part 1) was evaluated based on the System Usability Scale (SUS). Acceptability (part 2) was evaluated based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, multiple linear regression as well as logistic regression analysis. Results: Response rates of 100% and 99% were achieved for part 1 and part 2, respectively. User experience was very positive. Regarding acceptability, a path analysis confirmed the direct relationship between perceived usefulness and intention to use, and the indirect relationship between perceived ease of use and intention to use. Logistic regression analysis helped target items strongly influencing intention to use. Conclusion: The user experience with LearnTB was very positive, and perceived usefulness has the highest impact on intention to use (acceptability). This study provides a preliminary analysis of mHealth interventions for TB in India, and emphasizes the need for future research in this domain

Indian SMEs Perspective for election of ERP in Cloud

With increasing market competition and globalization, SMEs have shown interest to deploy ERP package to integrate their business processes. High investment in terms of cost, manpower and time are the major hurdles while selecting a traditional ERP package. Hence there is a need to look for a cost effective ERP solution. Deploying ERP on Cloud is one such option due to lower infrastructure cost and flexible payment. A SME evaluates an ERP solution from Economical, Technological and People perspectives with the factors that measure them. . . A factor can either be a benefit or a threat. A benefit facilitates whereas a threat holds back SMEs decision to adopt ERP in cloud. This research provides a benefit- threat framework on Economical, Technological and People perspective that a SME perceives while selecting ERP in cloud environment. The framework is validated and it suggests that Economical and Technological are two important perspectives while selection of ERP on cloud for a SME

Vaidyana- Dusri Zindagi: A Mono- act

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CROSS-TALK BETWEEN THE TUMOR SUPPRESSORS PAR-4 AND P53

This work describes the fascinating interplay between two tumor suppressors Prostate apoptosis response-4 (Par-4) and p53. The guardian of the genome, p53, is frequently mutated in human cancers, and may contribute to therapeutic resistance. However, p53 is intact and functional in normal tissues, and we observed that specific activation of p53 in normal fibroblasts could induce apoptosis selectively in p53-deficient cancer cells. This paracrine apoptotic effect was executed by Par-4 secreted in response to p53 activation. Accordingly, activation of p53 in wild-type mice, but not in p53-/- or Par-4-/- mice, caused systemic elevation of Par-4 that induced apoptosis of p53-deficient tumor cells. Mechanistically, p53 induced Par-4 secretion by suppressing the expression of UACA, a binding partner of Par-4, and thereby releasing Par-4 from sequestration by UACA. Thus, normal cells can be empowered by p53 activation to induce Par-4 secretion for inhibition of therapy-resistant tumors. Conversely, our studies have also revealed a definite role for Par-4 in regulating p53 expression. The pro-apoptotic tumor suppressor Par-4 is lost, down-regulated, inactivated or mutated in a number of cancers. Loss of Par-4 is associated with therapeutic resistance and poor disease prognosis, yet the mechanism for resistance is not clearly understood. Using genetically matched cells, we show that Par-4 expression is required for stabilization and function of the tumor suppressor p53, which constitutes the hub of signaling networks controlling important cellular and organismal phenotypes. In particular, the expression of p53 protein and its stabilization in response to genotoxic stress were remarkably attenuated in response to Par-4 loss. Accordingly, Par-4-null or -knockdown cells demonstrated increased resistance to apoptosis induced by genotoxic stress. Par-4 loss resulted in elevated Mdm2 activity, which is known to cause p53 degradation. Our findings suggest that Par-4 stabilizes p53 by inhibiting Akt-mediated phosphorylation of Mdm2 that is known to prevent translocation of Mdm2 into the nucleus for p53 ubiquitination and degradation. These studies identify a novel regulatory relationship between two tumor suppressors and may provide a better understanding of therapeutic resistance in tumors with p53 wild type status

A New Similarity Measure Based on Mean Measure of Divergence for Collaborative Filtering in Sparse Environment

AbstractMemory based algorithms, often referred to as similarity based Collaborative Filtering (CF) is one of the most popular and successful approaches to provide service recommendations. It provides automated and personalized suggestions to consumers to select variety of products. Typically, the core of similarity based CF which greatly affect the performance of recommendation system is to finding similar users to a target user. Conventional similarity measures like Cosine, Pearson correlation coefficient, Jaccard similarity suffer from accuracy problem under sparse environment. Hence in this paper, we propose a new similarity approach based on Mean Measure of Divergence that takes rating habits of a user into account. The quality of recommendation of proposed approach is analyzed on benchmark datasets: ML 100K, ML-1M and Each Movie for various sparsity levels. The results depict that the proposed similarity measure outperforms existing measures in terms of prediction accuracy