Achieving Breakthrough Service Delivery Through Dynamic Asset Deployment Strategies

Many firms have shifted their focus from their products to their customers and the value derived from owning and using the products. They see after-sales service as an important source of revenue and profit, customer acquisition and retention, and competitive differentiation. However, they also find it challenging to manage their service-supply chain. Service organizations must position and manage service-supply-chain resources optimally to support the delivery of after-sales service. They must also develop capabilities to respond rapidly to the demand for service in a cost-effective manner. To succeed in implementing a service-centric strategy, firms must determine what items in their products’ service bill-of-material hierarchy should be deployed throughout their geographical hierarchy of service support locations. They must make these complex and interrelated decisions in anticipation of service demand, which is uncertain. Firms must also be flexible and should understand the mechanisms in a service-supply chain needed to fulfill customers’ demands for service and the resulting demands for support assets and capacities. Dynamic asset deployment (DAD), a collection of management policies that promote this flexibility, can be used to develop the capabilities needed to effectively and profitably deliver services. These policies require a real-options-based optimization approach to decision making

Postgraduate pharmacology curriculum in current scenario and future prospects: an educational forum

In India Doctorate of Medicine (MD) pharmacology is primarily knowledge oriented based on teaching, seminars, lectures and research related activities including animals and paper-based experiments and day to day management of undergraduate classes. MD pharmacology student should be competent of both clinical and experimental pharmacology. So, the postgraduate pharmacology curriculum should be competent to meet all the job requirements. Therefore, medical council of India (MCI) has introduced new post graduate curriculum which is based on knowledge, practical, clinical skills, thesis skills, and attitudes including communication and training in research. In India demand for skilled clinical research professionals is increasing day by day for growing pharma industries and good academician. So, there is an urgent need for the experienced and skilled pharmacologist to fulfil the requirements. MD pharmacology students should get posting in different clinical departments and observatory posting in industry, clinical research organization (CRO), regulatory body and research organisations. The course of MD Pharmacology should be like that fulfil all the skills that a pharmacologist must have

Comparative study of zinc levels in benign and malignant lesions of prostate

BACKGROUND: Normal human prostate accumulates higher level of zinc than any other soft tissue in the body. In contrast, the zinc levels in prostate cancer are markedly decreased from the levels detected in non-prostate tissues. Earlier techniques of estimation of Zinc ion (chemical estimation or polarography) did not help to arrive at a specific correlation of the metal ion with development of disease. Atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) has been used in this study to find out if there is any change occurring in the serum zinc levels under diseased conditions. AIMS: This study aims to investigate the serum zinc levels in disorders of prostate, so as to find a correlation to either reinforce or refute any claims of a relationship between them as a diagnostic or screening tool. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was conducted on 80 patients with symptoms of prostatic diseaseof prostatic disease (normal baseline group comprised of 20 men, who had normal prostate on initial workup).Blood samples of all 80 cases and prostate tissue of 60 patients with enlarged prostate were taken for analysis. Serum sample was subjected to Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry ( AAS) for analysis of serum zinc levels. For statistical analysis student\u2032s \u2032t\u2032 test (unpaired) was used. RESULTS: Serum zinc levels showed an approximate rise of 78% in cases of benign prostatic hypertrophy while a fall of approximately 37% in those with prostate cancers as compared to normal individuals. CONCLUSION: The plasma zinc levels (as compared to normal individuals) were markedly raised in cases of benign prostatic disease and were dramatically lowered in patients with carcinoma prostate. This clearly indicates that both these diseases signify the opposite ends of the wide spectrum with regards to serum zinc levels; and that it can prove as an evaluation tool for the diagnosis / screening of prostate diseases. Also, the mean plasma zinc level in cases of carcinoma prostate with dissemination was not very diverse from those without metastasis. This indicated that metastasis in cases of carcinoma prostate had practically no effect on plasma zinc levels

Predicting and grading the degree of difficulty of cochlear implant surgery by evaluating temporal bone using high resolution computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging

Background: The current study was designed to assess the challenges that arise during cochlear implantation. Hence imaging based grading system, using a structured, 12-point scoring chart was developed with an aim to assess various anatomical factors of temporal bone helpful in contemplating complications involved in surgery and to assess various congenital and acquired abnormalities if detected during scan which can affect cochlear implant surgery.Methods: This was a descriptive study done on 60 patients with sensorineural hearing loss. They were evaluated preoperatively by using HRCT and MRI findings and subsequently underwent cochlear implantation. A 12-point scoring chart was developed based on imaging findings. Surgical times were noted in each case and each imaging point on the scoring chart was correlated with the surgical times.Results: Eleven out of 12 points in the scoring chart proved to be statistically significant in predicting the degree of difficulty of the surgical procedure. One point was not correlating with the surgical timings. Based on the grading system, in the present study, there were 37 patients (61.66%) classified as Grade 1, 16 patients (26.67%) classified as Grade 2 and 7 patients (11.67%) classified as Grade 3.Conclusions: These radiological image findings and its related grading system are relatively easy and quick to assess on readily available pre-operative temporal bone CT scan and MRI. They can form a pre-operative checklist that provides a formalized approach for the surgeons and, in particular surgical trainees, predict and, thus prepare for, potentially challenging cochlear implant cases

Lower Bounds in the Hardware Token Model

We study the complexity of secure computation in the tamper-proof hardware token model. Our main focus is on non-interactive unconditional two-party computation using bit-OT tokens, but we also study computational security with stateless tokens that have more complex functionality. Our results can be summarized as follows: - There exists a class of functions such that the number of bit-OT tokens required to securely implement them is at least the size of the sender\u27s input. The same applies for receiver\u27s input size (with a different class of functionalities). - Non-adaptive protocols in the hardware token model imply efficient (decomposable) randomized encodings. This can be interpreted as evidence to the impossibility of non-adaptive protocols for a large class of functions. - There exists a functionality for which there is no protocol in the stateless hardware token model accessing the tokens at most a constant number of times, even when the adversary is computationally bounded. En route to proving our results, we make interesting connections between the hardware token model and well studied notions such as OT hybrid model, randomized encodings, and obfuscation

FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF ORODISPERSIBLE LABETALOL TABLET FOR HYPERTENSIVE CRISIS

Labetalol HCl competitively blocks adrenergic stimulation of β-receptors within the myocardium (β1-receptors) and within bronchial and vascular smooth muscle (β2-receptors), and α1-receptors within vascular smooth muscle. Mouth dissolving drug delivery systems (MDTs) have acquired an important position in the market by overcoming previously encountered administration problems and contributing to extension of patent life. MDTs have the unique property of rapidly disintegrating and/or dissolving and releasing the drug as soon as they come in contact with saliva, thus obviating the requirement of water during administration. Taste masking was done by using Kyron-T 134 in ratio 1:3. The tablets were prepared by using direct compression method, using different Superdisintegrantsand they were then evaluated for pre and post compression parameters. More than 80% of drug was released from almost all the formulations within 5 min. Results of this study indicate among the superdisintegrants tried, Indion-414 showed the best result in 2% concentration

Analysis of the intra-night variability of BL Lacertae during its August 2020 flare

We present an analysis of the $BVRI$ photometry of the blazar BL Lacertae on diverse timescales from mid-July to mid-September 2020. We have used 11 different optical telescopes around the world and have collected data over 84 observational nights. The observations cover the onset of a new activity phase of BL Lacertae started in August 2020 (termed as the August 2020 flare by us), and the analysis is focused on the intra-night variability. On short-term timescales, (i) flux varied with ~2.2\,mag in $R$ band, (ii) the spectral index was found to be weakly dependent on the flux (i.e., the variations could be considered mildly chromatic) and (iii) no periodicity was detected. On intra-night timescales, BL Lacertae was found to show bluer-when-brighter chromatism predominantly. We also found two cases of significant inter-band time lags of the order of a few minutes. The duty cycle of the blazar during the August 2020 flare was estimated to be quite high (~90\% or higher). We decomposed the intra-night light curves into individual flares and determined their characteristics. On the basis of our analysis and assuming the turbulent jet model, we determined some characteristics of the emitting regions: Doppler factor, magnetic field strength, electron Lorentz factor, and radius. The radii determined were discussed in the framework of the Kolmogorov theory of turbulence. We also estimated the weighted mean structure function slope on intra-night timescales, related it to the slope of the power spectral density, and discussed it with regard to the origin of intra-night variability.Comment: 46 pages, 19 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (manuscript version after proof correction