Electronic Health Records and User Participation: Digital Natives versus Digital Immigrants

The need for clarity in the healthcare management is a matter of frequent discussion and concern among healthcare professionals, practitioners, patients and academicians. Electronic Health Records would provide clarity, transparency, interoperability and transferability in the health care information and data of the patients. It will also reduce the human mistakes and will reduce the likelihood of wrongly reading or interpreting the information. This paper introduces this useful concept and links it to the two classes of health care practitioners- ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’. The paper further identifies and discusses the relationship between user participation and system success and analyses the impact of moderation by digital natives and digital immigrants. The paper draws evidences from the existing state of literature to propose the relationships. Implications of the research to the practitioners and researchers are discussed

Linking Sustainability to Quality Management and Firm Performance

Environmental management practices have evolved significantly over the past two decades. During that time, sustainable operations management practices have purportedly made positive contributions to overall firm performance. This paper develops two conceptual frameworks regarding the relationships among specific elements of environmental management, quality management, and firm performance. We suggest that innovation in quality management mediates the relationship between design for environment and firm performance, and that statistical process control techniques moderate the relationship between environmental management systems and firm performance. We identify future research possibilities, based on these frameworks, to inform scholarly research and practice in environmental management and quality management

A Novel Approach for Multilingual Speech Recognition with Back Propagation Artificial Neural Network

“Speech Recognition” of audio signal is important for telecommunication, language identification and speaker verification. Robust Speech Recognition can be applied to automation of houses, offices and telecommunication services. In this paper Speech Recognition & Language Identification have done for Bengali, Chhattisgarhi, English and Hindi speech signals. The Bengali, Chhattisgarhi, English, Hindi speech signals are “Ekhone Tumi Jao”, “Ae Bar Teha Ja”, “Now This Time You Go” and “Ab Is Bar tum Jao” respectively. This method is mainly applied in two phases, in the first phase Speech Recognition and Language identification have done with Back Propagation Artificial neural Network (BPANN) and in the second phase Speech Recognition and Language Identification have done with the combination of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) feature selection technique and BPANN. For the feature extraction Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) & Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) is used. MFCC and LPC are the most widely used feature extraction method. BPANN is a feed forward type neural network, it can trace back the error signal for weight modification, error signal generates when the actual output value differs from the target output value. The system accuracy and performance is measured on the basis of “Recognition Rate” and amount of error. Multilingual Speech Recognition and Language Identification with PSO feature selection technique gives the better Recognition Rate as compare to the without PSO feature selection technique

Effect of paper industry effluent on enzyme activity and protein profiling of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is a legume which is mostly cultivated in India than other countries that can give significant amounts of dietary minerals and protein to humans. The effect of paper industrial effluent on chick-pea (C. arietinum L.) were analysed along with different concentration (10%, 20% 40%, 60% 80% and 100%) and pure tap water as a control to compare the effect of paper industrial effluent for one week. The amount of protein were comparable with control, their amount was increased at 40% in effluent treated seeds. The maximum activity of enzymes was found below 40% level of effluent. In this study protein profile of imbibed seeds, shoot, root and residual cotyledons were examined under the different concentration of effluent. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of total protein showed that the maximum number of protein bands seen in the imbibed seeds whereas minimum number of protein bands observed in the root. SDS-PAGE revealed that less degradation and/or more rapid accumulation of proteins occurred in higher molecular weight proteins. From this study, it is clear that the industrial effluent rich in organic matter and plant nutrients are finding their use in agriculture as the cheaper way of disposal

Post graduate survey and evaluation of role of animal experimentation, status and relevance of current syllabus, and challenges for alignment with requirements of the pharmaceutical industry

Background: The current scenario has brought the validity of animal experimentation (AE) under scrutiny. The requirements from an academician in the pharmaceutical industry are not sufficiently handled. A gnawing need was felt to conduct a study amongst the post graduate MD pharmacologists regarding the role of AE, relevance of current syllabus and challenges faced in the pharmaceutical industry.Methods: This questionnaire-based survey was carried out amongst post graduate (PG) residents pursuing MD pharmacology. Students were enrolled via social contacts, email, and in 2 workshops/conferences. The survey questionnaire consisted of 20 questions in total. 47 completed questionnaires were returned from a total 60. The data was collected in an anonymous fashion to avoid bias.Results: From the study we observe that PG residents were aware of the current MCI/University guidelines on AE. Only 42.5% (n=20) of the volunteers replied that they had access to simulator software. Participants were of the opinion that the current PG teaching curriculum is ill-adapted to tackle challenges encountered in the pharmaceutical industry. Compulsory industry rotation (31.9%) was one of the favoured suggested changes. Overall satisfaction with MD pharmacology was obtained in the positive.Conclusions: We conclude that the importance of AE in pharmacology is irrefutable, although advent of alternatives is the direction to be headed in. The curriculum is archaic at times, thus warrants changes. Preparedness for pharmaceutical industry is also low and needs to be addressed

Hot Strip Mill Transportation in Rourkela Steel Plant

This paper discussed possible adaptation of electronic transport means in Hot Strip Mill for improving finished product quality. The present system operating in Rourkela steel plant is discussed. Additional electronic means are proposed