Does Confidence Reporting from the Crowd Benefit Crowdsourcing Performance?

We explore the design of an effective crowdsourcing system for an $M$-ary classification task. Crowd workers complete simple binary microtasks whose results are aggregated to give the final classification decision. We consider the scenario where the workers have a reject option so that they are allowed to skip microtasks when they are unable to or choose not to respond to binary microtasks. Additionally, the workers report quantized confidence levels when they are able to submit definitive answers. We present an aggregation approach using a weighted majority voting rule, where each worker's response is assigned an optimized weight to maximize crowd's classification performance. We obtain a couterintuitive result that the classification performance does not benefit from workers reporting quantized confidence. Therefore, the crowdsourcing system designer should employ the reject option without requiring confidence reporting.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, SocialSens 2017. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1602.0057

An efficient approach for secured communication in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor network (WSN) have limited bandwidth, low computational functions, energy constraints. Inspite of these constraints, WSN is useful where communication happens without infrastructure support. The main concern of WSN is the security as the sensor nodes may be attacked and information may be hacked. Security of WSN should have the capability to ensure that the message received was sent by the particular sent node and not modified during transmission. WSN applications require lightweight and strong authentication mechanisms for obtaining data from unprivileged users. In wireless sensor networks, authentication is the effective method to stop unauthorized and undisrupted communication service. In order to strengthen the authenticated communication, several researchers have developed mechanisms. Some of the techniques work with identifying the attacked node or detecting injected bogus message in the network. Encryption and decryption are the popular methods of providing the security. These are based on either public-key or symmetric-key cryptosystems Many of the existing solutions have limitations in communication and computational expertise. Also, the existing mechanisms lack in providing strength and scalability of the network. In order address these issues; a polynomial based method was introduced in recent days. Key distribution is a significant aspect in key management in WSNs. The simplest method of distribution of key is by hand which was used in the days of couriers. Now a days, most distribution of keys is done automatically. The automatic distribution of keys is essential and convenient in networks that require two parties to transmit their security keys in the same communication medium. In this work, a new type of key exchange mechanism is proposed. The proposed method for authentication among sensor nodes proves to be promising as per the simulation results. The nodes which are unknown to each other setup a private however arbitrary key for the symmetric key cryptosystem

Evaluation of Antioxidants and Phytoactives in Colocasia Esculenta (L.) Schott

Colocasia esculenta is a perennial plant of araceae family and possess a large corm having a very large, heart-shaped leaves that are borne on thick stalks. The juvenile leaves of this plant are rich in Vitamins C, B1, B2, Riboflavin and Niacin. The tubers contain amino acids and are rich in starch. This multipurpose perennial plant is used as a traditional medicine that acts as anti-cancer agent, anti-hepatotoxic agent, antimicrobial agent, anti-diabetic agent. This shows the necessity for the study of Colocasia esculenta. In this study, The ethanolic leaves extract of Colocasia esculenta showed the maximum antioxidant activity and phytoactives efficacy, Thus suggesting the sample to be as a potential therapeutic source of various disease

Expression of miRNAs Regulates Growth and Development of French Bean (Phaseolus Vulgaris) under Salt and Drought Stress Conditions

Identification of stress-regulated miRNAs is crucial for understanding how plants respond to environmental stimuli. We are interested in the identification of miRNAs in French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) to uncover different plant strategies to cope with adverse conditions and because of its relevance as a crop in developing countries. In this study, we investigated the effect of salt and drought stress in expression of small regulatory RNAs. Both salt and drought stresses altered the expression pattern of miRNA in a dose-dependent manner. However, each miRNA responded to drought stress in a different pattern. Salt and drought stress changed the expression level of miRNAs mainly from 0.9-fold up-regulation to 0.7-fold down-regulation. Micro RNAs were less sensitive to drought than salinity, as evidenced by the narrow fold change in expression levels. Although the range of change in expression level of miRNAs was similar under salt and drought stress, no miRNAs displayed significant change in expression level under all tested salt conditions. Micro RNAs, miR156 and miR162, showed significant change in expression level under high drought stress. This suggests that miR156 and miR162 may attribute to the adaption to drought stress and are good candidates for improving the vegetable crop by transgenic technology

Femtosecond Laser Micro/nano Machining on Metallic and Semiconductor Materials

Formation of ripples or laser induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on semiconductor material like Silicon (Si) and on metals like Aluminum (Al) and Copper (Cu) and fabrication Silver (Ag) nanostructures in polymer matrix by femtosecond (fs) laser direct writing are reported in this paper. Laser irradiation was performed at normal incidence in air using linearly polarized Ti:Sapphire fs laser pulses of ~ 110 fs pulse duration and ~ 800 nm wavelength. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) is utilized for imaging surface morphologies of laser written structures, revealing that surface morphology depends on various material processing parameters like laser fluence, polarization, material properties and number of applied pulses. Formation of polymer capped Ag nanoparticles inside the laser written microstructures is confirmed by the appearance of surface plasmon absorption band at 448 nm in the UV-Vis extinction spectrum. Nanoparticles formed were spherical in shape with an average particle size less than 20 nm. This technique is efficient, universal, cost-effective, and environmental friendly, which has potential applications in the fabrication of micro/nanostructures on variety of materials for microelectromechanical systems, nanoelectronics and nanophotonics

Cost effectiveness analysis in the management of stroke in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Stroke has a high economic impact on the society especially in a developing country like India. In India health insurance doesn’t cover all people leading to out of pocket expenditure. The objective of the present study was to study the cost of illness and outcome of stroke in a tertiary care hospital.Methods: Direct medical and nonmedical costs were obtained after 28 days of follow-up. The outcome of the stroke was measured by modified Rankin scale (mRS).Results: The mean age of the patients was 65.38±13.98 years. Majority of the patients suffered from ischemic stroke and belonged to lower middle socioeconomic group. The mean cost of stroke was INR 39819. There was improvement in the mRS score after 28 days following treatment of acute stroke.Conclusions:Direct medical costs forms major component of cost of stroke. Early management and hospital discharge can reduce the economic burden of stroke.

First trimester uric acid level: a reliable marker for gestational diabetes mellitus

Background: The prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing worldwide and more in developing countries like India. The diabetic epidemic experienced in India can be due to strong genetic factors coupled with increasing urbanization, sedentary lifestyle, changes in the dietary patterns and increasing obesity. Indians are at an 11-fold increased risk of developing gestational glucose intolerance and hence universal screening is essential. Uric acid is a known marker of oxidative stress. Hyperuricemia in early pregnancy may be an indicator of the existing metabolic disturbance which can hinder the maternal physiological adaptations generally seen in pregnancy thus making the pregnant women more vulnerable to the development of gestational diabetes mellitus. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between elevated uric acid levels in the first trimester of pregnancy with gestational diabetes.Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted in Chinmaya mission hospital, Bangalore from June 2016 to March 2017 (10 months). Three hundred and twelve (312) pregnant women of gestational age less than 12 weeks who attended the OBG outpatient department within this time of period for regular antenatal check-up were enrolled in the study. Along with the other antenatal investigations serum uric acid levels were estimated before 12 weeks and also between 24-28 weeks. At 24-28 weeks screening for GDM was done by OGCT using 75 gms of glucose (IADPISG criteria). Other parameters like age, parity, BMI, family history of diabetes was noted and compared.Results: In our study, among the 312 pregnant women, 88 (28%) developed GDM. Of these 74 Women (84%) with GDM had uric acid levels above 3.5 mg/dl and 14 women (15.9%) with GDM had uric acid levels below 3.5 mg/dl. Women with higher BMI showed high uric acid levels.Conclusions: Elevated serum uric acid in the first trimester has a significant correlation with development of GDM. In present study; the cut-off level of maternal serum uric acid of 3.5 mg/dl in the first trimester appears to have a good sensitivity and specificity in identifying those patients who are most likely to develop GDM later in pregnancy

Majorization-Minimization based Hybrid Localization Method for High Precision Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper investigates the hybrid source localization problem using the four radio measurements - time of arrival (TOA), time difference of arrival (TDOA), received signal strength (RSS) and angle of arrival (AOA). First, after invoking tractable approximations in the RSS and AOA models, the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) problem for the hybrid TOA-TDOA-RSS-AOA data model is derived. Then, in the MLE, which has the least-squares objective, weights determined using the range-based characteristics of the four heterogeneous measurements, are introduced. The resultant weighted least-squares problem obtained, which is non-smooth and non-convex, is solved using the principle of the majorization-minimization (MM), leading to an iterative algorithm that has a guaranteed convergence. The key feature of the proposed method is that it provides a unified framework where localization using any possible merger out of these four measurements can be implemented as per the requirement/application. Extensive numerical simulations are conducted to study the estimation efficiency of the proposed method. The proposed method employing all four measurements is compared against a conventionally used method and also against the proposed method employing only limited combinations of the four measurements. The results obtained indicate that the hybrid localization model improves the localization accuracy compared to the heterogeneous measurements. The integration of different measurements also yields good accuracy in the presence of non-line of sight (NLOS) errors