Working for a greater cause : interview with a special educator

How conscientiously would our student community learn and understand mutual respect if a school caters to both the disabled and non-disabled children! One such exemplary school that is doing this is GHPS Paper Town, Belagola, Mandya. The initiative by a government school teacher has changed the way children with disabilities are perceived by children studying in a regular school

Coping with tuberculosis and directly observed treatment : a qualitative study among patients from South India

Background: In India, the Revised National TB control programme (RNTCP) offers free diagnosis and treatment for tuberculosis (TB), based on the Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) strategy. We conducted a qualitative study to explore the experience and consequences of having TB on patients enrolled in DOTS and their caretakers in Tumkur district, located in a southern state of India, Karnataka. Methods: We conducted 33 in-depth interviews on a purposive sample of TB patients from three groups: (1) patients who reached RNTCP directly on their own and took DOTS at RNTCP; (2) patients who were referred by private practitioners (PPs) to RNTCP and took DOTS at RNTCP; and (3) patients diagnosed by RNTCP and took DOTS from PPs. Data was analyzed using a thematic approach with the support of NVivo9. Results: The study revealed that TB and DOTS have a large impact on patient's lives, which is often extended to the family and caretakers. The most vulnerable patients faced the most difficulty in accessing and completing DOTS. The family was the main source of support during patient's recovery. Patients residing in rural areas and, taking DOTS from the government facilities had to overcome many barriers to adhere to the DOTS therapy, such as long travelling distance to DOTS centers, inconvenient timings and unfavorable attitude of the RNTCP staff, when compared to patients who took DOTS from PPs. Advantages of taking DOTS from PPs cited by the patients were privacy, flexibility in timings, proximity and more immediate access to care. Patients and their family had to cope with stigmatization and fear and financial hardships that surfaced from TB and DOTS. Young patients living in urban areas were more worried about stigmatisation, than elderly patients living in rural areas. Patients who were referred by PPs experienced more financial problems compared to those who reached RNTCP services directly. Conclusion: Our study provided useful information about patient's needs and expectations while taking DOTS. The development of mechanisms within RNTCP towards patient centered care is needed to enable patients and caretakers cope with disease condition and adhere to DOTS

Novel evaluation framework for sensing spread spectrum in cognitive radio

The cognitive radio network is designed to cater to the optimization demands of restricted spectrum availability. A review of existing literature on spectrum sensing shows that there is still a broader scope for its improvement. Therefore, this paper introduces an efficient computational framework capable of evaluating the effectiveness of the spread spectrum concept in the context of cognitive radio network in a more scalable and granular way. The proposed method introduces a dual hypothesis using a different set of dependable parameters to emphasize the detection of optimal energy for a low signal quality state over the noise. The proposed evaluation framework is benchmarked using a statistical analysis method not present in any existing approaches toward spread spectrum sensing. The simulated outcome of the study exhibits that the proposed system offers a significantly better probability of detection than the current system using a simplified evaluation scheme with multiple test parameters

An Unsupervised Classification Technique for Detection of Flipped Orientations in Document Images

Detection of text orientation in document images is of preliminary concern prior to processing of documents by Optical Character Reader. The text direction in document images should exist generally in a specific orientation, i.e.,   text direction for any automated document reading system. The flipped text orientation leads to an unambiguous result in such fully automated systems. In this paper, we focus on development of text orientation direction detection module which can be incorporated as the perquisite process in automatic reading system. Orientation direction detection of text is performed through employing directional gradient features of document image and adapts an unsupervised learning approach for detection of flipped text orientation at which the document has been originally fed into scanning device. The unsupervised learning is built on the directional gradient features of text of document based on four possible different orientations. The algorithm is experimented on document samples of printed plain English text as well as filled in pre-printed forms of Telugu script. The outcome attained by algorithm proves to be consistent and adequate with an average accuracy around 94%

Evaluation of Incidence and Diagnostic Accuracy of Squash Cytology with Histopathology of Various CNS Lesions

Background: Central nervous system lesions continue to be one of the most diverse and difficult to research for neuropathologists. Accurate assessment of the damaged tissue is essential for the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the central nervous system (CNS). Historically, the "squash" or "crush" approach has been used for intraoperative diagnosis of CNS tumours. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of squash preparation for diagnosing central nervous system tumours in comparison to histology. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, sixty neuropathological samples were analysed. During the proper surgical process, fresh tissue samples of 0.5-1mm2 were taken and submitted for squash cytology. There were supposedly frozen and squash samples. Fast staining and paraffin-embedded tissue staining were both used to create cytology smears from squash; the results of these smears were reported, and they were correlated with slides from the histopathology lab. Squash cytology tumour grade was correlated with histopathology tumour grading. Results: CNS Neoplasms were found in 58 out of 60 patients (96.6 percent). Meningiomas, schwannomas, and small round cell tumours were also common cytological diagnosis alongside gliomas. There was a connection between the cytological and histological findings. The overall diagnosis accuracy of cytology for squash was 93%. Between the ages of 40 and 50, people had the highest prevalence of central nervous system lesions. Conclusion: Squash smear cytology is an effective and rapid stand-alone diagnostic procedure that can help surgeons make judgments regarding intracranial lesions during surgery when a frozen section facility is not available

Energy efficient data collection with multiple mobile sink using artificial bee colony algorithm in large-scale WSN

In most wireless sensor networks (WSN), multi-hop routing algorithm is used to transmit the data collected by sensors to user. Multi-hop forwarding leads to energy hole problem and high transmission overhead in large scale WSN. In order to address these problems, this paper proposes multiple mobile sink based data collection algorithm, which introduces energy balanced clustering and Artificial Bee Colony based data collection. The cluster head election is based on the residual energy of the node. In this study, we focused on a large-scale and intensive WSN which allows a certain amount of data latency by investigating mobile Sink balance from three aspects: data collection maximization, mobile path length minimization, and network reliability optimization. Simulation results show that, in comparison with other algorithms such Random walk and Ant Colony Optimization, the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce data transmission, save energy, improve network data collection efficiency and reliability, and extend the network lifetime

Detailed ECG analysis in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a predictor of multitude of complications

Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a systemic disease with life-threatening complications and morbidity. The 12 lead ECG, an easily available investigation, when studied in detail can give a lot of information and predict various microvascular and macrovascular complications apart from coronary artery disease.Methods: A random cross sectional study involving 100 patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus, in the age group of 18-80 years were included in study after applying various inclusion and exclusion criteria. They were subjected to ECG, 2D echocardiography and laboratory tests. Data were collected and analysed.Results: Arrythmia was not detected in any patient. A resting tachycardia (HR >100) in 30 patients correlated with Prolonged QTc (>440 miliseconds) (p=0.04). QRS amplitude was reduced in 26 patients. Prolonged QTc also correlated with presence of diabetic complications, retinopathy of NPDR type and nephropathy (p=0.004). Hence about 30% of the study group did show signs of early diabetic cardiac autonomic neuropathy and cardiomyopathy.Conclusions: The statistically significant utility of electrocardiogram in predicting various complications of diabetes apart from coronary artery disease

Analysis of Histomorphological Spectrum of CNS Tumors in a Tertiary Care Centre

Background: Central nervous system (CNS) tumours vary geographically and racially in incidence and distribution. They make up 2% of all cancers, with a rising incidence. Distinguishing non-neoplastic CNS lesions from brain tumours often requires histopathological examination due to clinical and radiological similarities. Therefore, this study formulated the analysis of histomorphological spectrum of CNS tumours in a tertiary care centre. Methodology: This retrospective study comprised 60 cases and was conducted at a tertiary healthcare hospital from July 2012 to July 2016. The cases were diagnosed through histopathological examination and categorized in accordance with the world health organization (WHO) 2016 classification. Results: Out of 60 cases, 31-40 age group had the highest number of cases, with 15 individuals affected, constituting 25.00% of the total cases. As age brackets increase, the incidence of CNS lesions rises. Astrocytomas constitute the most common CNS tumor (36.6%). The breakdown of tumor grades in relation to different age groups reveals that Grade II tumors display a broader distribution, occurring in every age group and accounting for a total of 10 cases. Conclusion: Our study identifies astrocytoma as the most common CNS tumor (22 cases in ages 31-50), followed by meningioma (6 cases in ages 31-60), and various other tumors with 6 cases each. Grade II tumors are prevalent (10 cases across all age groups)

A retrospective study on endometrial patterns in abnormal uterine bleeding

Background: To determine the type of endometrial patterns of the different age categories of women who presented as a case of abnormal uterine bleeding.Methods: This is a retrospective study conducted on 105 patients who presented with abnormal uterine bleeding who underwent fractional curettage in our hospital. The data on their age, presenting complaints, and comorbidities of all the women were collected. The patterns of endometrial changes were studied and classified.Results: The most common histopathological findings were anovulatory shedding (34.3%) and irregular shedding (18.1%). The other findings include irregular ripening, papillary endocervicitis, endocervicitis, pill endometrium, atrophic endometrium, squamous metaplasia, and endometrial hyperplasia. The most common malignant change seen was endometrioid carcinoma which was seen in women over 40 years of age.Conclusions: Histopathological examination of the endometrium shows a clear-cut differentiation between physiological and malignancy changes in the endometrium. Hence, endometrial sampling is considered the golden tool for accurate analysis of the endometrium