Effort Estimation of Agile and Web-Based Software Using Artificial Neural Networks

The agile methodology of software development is accepted as a superior alternative to conventional methods of software development, because of its inherent benefits like iterative development, rapid delivery and reduced risk. Hence, software developers are required to estimate the effort necessary to develop projects by agile methodology in an efficient manner because the requirements keep on changing. Web has become a part and parcel of our lives. People depend on Internet for almost everything these days. Many business units depend on Internet for communication with clients and for outsourcing load to other branches. In such a scenario, there is a necessity of efficient development of web-based software. For improving the efficiency of software development, resource utilization must be optimum. For achieving this, we need to be able to ascertain effectively, what kind of people/materials are required in what quantity, for development. This research aims at developing efficient effort estimation models for agile and web-based software by using various neural networks such as Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN), Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFN), Functional Link Artificial Neural Network (FLANN) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) and provide a comparative assessment of their performance. The approach used for agile software effort estimation is the Story Point Approach and that for web-based software effort estimation is the IFPUG Function Point Approach

Awareness regarding Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) among mothers: a community based cross-sectional study in rural area of Raipur district, Chhattisgarh

Background: In order to increase accessibility of health care services for pregnant women and sick infants and to reduce out-of-pocket expenditure, Ministry of Health and Family welfare, Government of India has launched a nationwide initiative- Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram on June 01, 2011. The objective of the study was to find out the awareness level about the entitlements of JSSK among mothers with child less than one year and its association with different socio-demographic variables.Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in rural block of Raipur district, Chhattisgarh, India, among 352 mothers having child less than one year using multistage random sampling using predesigned, pretested proforma from July 2015 to June 2016. Chi-square test was applied to find out the association between awareness level and different socio-demographic variables. P <0.05 was considered significant.Results: Among 352 mothers, good awareness were found in only 207 mothers (58.80%). Maximum awareness (89.20%) regarding entitlements among mothers was seen for free transport services from home to health institution followed by the drop back transport facility from hospital to home (85.22%). None of the mothers know about free diagnostic services for mothers and for sick infants and for free provision of blood for sick infants. Increasing parity was significantly associated with good awareness regarding JSSK.Conclusions: Level of awareness regarding JSSK entitlements for pregnant mothers and sick infants was found to be low. Extensive IEC needed to further increase the awareness regarding JSSK entitlements to increase utilization among beneficiaries

Prevalence of goitre, iodine uptake and salt iodization level in Mahasamund district of Chhattisgarh: a baseline study in Central India

Background: Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) is the single most important preventable cause of brain damage. Iodine deficiency disorders (IDDs) refer to all of the consequences of iodine deficiency in a population, which can be prevented by taking adequate amount of Iodine.  The objectives was to ascertain the prevalence goitre among 6-12 year children by clinical examination in Mahasamund district; 2) to document the iodine uptake status reflected by random urinary excretion levels in a sub-sample of 6-12 year children covered for clinical examination, and 3) to evaluate the coverage of iodized salt at community level (i.e. at household and retail shop) on-the-spot test by using rapid salt testing kit.Methods: A cross sectional community based survey was done in Mahasamund district during April 2015 to September 2015. The study population was children in the age group of 6-12 years. 30 cluster sampling methodology was applied using PPS sampling technique, based on latest survey guidelines of NIDDCP of Govt. of India. The parameters studied were prevalence of goitre, urinary iodine excretion, and iodine content in salt at community level (i.e. household and shop).Results: A total of 2700 children aged from 6-12 years were assessed clinically for goitre. The total goitre prevalence was 4.29% (95% CI: 3.3-5.27). The median urinary iodine excretion (MUIE) was 106.67μg/L (range 11-216.7μg /L) among surveyed children.  37.4% of the urinary iodine excretion values were <100 μg/L. The households consuming inadequately iodized salt (i.e. iodine content ≤15 ppm) was 20% in the surveyed district.Conclusions: Although prevalence of goitre and median urinary iodine excretion among surveyed population was found satisfactory against the norms set by NIDDCP in surveyed district but universal salt iodization (USI) is yet to achieve in surveyed district.

Comprehensive analysis of temporal alterations in cellular proteome of bacillus subtilis under curcumin treatment

Curcumin is a natural dietary compound with antimicrobial activity against various gram positive and negative bacteria. This study aims to investigate the proteome level alterations in Bacillus subtilis due to curcumin treatment and identification of its molecular/cellular targets to understand the mechanism of action. We have performed a comprehensive proteomic analysis of B. subtilis AH75 strain at different time intervals of curcumin treatment (20, 60 and 120 min after the drug exposure, three replicates) to compare the protein expression profiles using two complementary quantitative proteomic techniques, 2D-DIGE and iTRAQ. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive longitudinal investigation describing the effect of curcumin treatment on B. subtilis proteome. The proteomics analysis revealed several interesting targets such UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 1-carboxyvinyltransferase 1, putative septation protein SpoVG and ATP-dependent Clp protease proteolytic subunit. Further, in silico pathway analysis using DAVID and KOBAS has revealed modulation of pathways related to the fatty acid metabolism and cell wall synthesis, which are crucial for cell viability. Our findings revealed that curcumin treatment lead to inhibition of the cell wall and fatty acid synthesis in addition to differential expression of many crucial proteins involved in modulation of bacterial metabolism. Findings obtained from proteomics analysis were further validated using 5-cyano-2,3-ditolyl tetrazolium chloride (CTC) assay for respiratory activity, resazurin assay for metabolic activity and membrane integrity assay by potassium and inorganic phosphate leakage measurement. The gene expression analysis of selected cell wall biosynthesis enzymes has strengthened the proteomics findings and indicated the major effect of curcumin on cell division

Refinement and Processing of Steel Microstructure Images Facilitating Automated Heat Treatment Process Prediction

Steels are alloys of iron and carbon (with up to 2.1 weight percent), widely used in construction, electronics, automotive and transport, energy, packaging, containers, appliances, etc. The variety of properties that the different grades of steel (used in these different industries) possess, is high. Different applications and various industries require different physical, mechanical and chemical characteristic features of steels, which necessitates making of different grades of steel. The application specific properties or features of steels are obtained by subjecting the metallic alloy to thermomechanical, or heat treatment procedures. Majority of these heat treatment procedures in the steel industry generally involve a lot of human resources as automation in this sector still requires more advancement. Also, these processes are highly resource intensive and time consuming. If because of these manual errors, the desired grade/quality is not achieved in the final product, it leads to a lot of wastage of resources. To curb this, automated or computerized simulations of these heat treatment procedures are increasingly being considered as an alternative. In this thesis the challenge of digitizing plain carbon steel microstructure images is addressed, which would aid in the automation of steel heat treatment processes in the metallurgy industry. This kind of automation will help in quicker novel material discovery and facilitate easier inverse design of materials, i.e., designing materials given a set of desired properties. Multiple neural network architectures for the refinement (denoising and segmentation) of raw steel microstructure images are developed, suitable for the above purpose. During the process of building optimal deep learning architectures, it was found that generative models are better suited for handling the variable types and amounts of noise found in plain carbon steel microstructure images. Also, using generative models for microstructure image refinement tasks like denoising and segmentation, helps us bypass deploying very deep convolutional neural network models, which have high computational demands, and take more time to converge/train successfully. Finally, in this thesis, a machine learning framework is elucidated, for the accurate prediction of a suitable thermomechanical treatment process, in order to attain a target grade of steel from a given initial steel sample. Conventional image featurebased or texturebased tools, when combined with machine learning techniques prove to be very useful in microstructure classification/prediction. Deep learning based classifiers have also been used, and the conventional machine learning techniques report comparable performance with these stateoftheart deep learning models

School absenteeism during menstruation amongst adolescent girls in Delhi, India

Background: Girls' health and education form the cornerstone of development and the gateway to full participation as women in political, economic, and cultural life of a country. Poor menstrual hygiene management has been shown to result in a sense of shame, anxiety, and embarrassment that contributes to absenteeism and poor performance at school. The objectives of this study were to determine the percentage of girls absent from school during menstruation, to evaluate the various factors associated with school absenteeism during menstruation, and to assess the practices regarding menstrual hygiene. Materials and Methods: A mixed method research of combined cross-sectional study and qualitative research was conducted in six government schools of Delhi by means of a questionnaire survey and focus group discussions. The sample size was 600 adolescent girls. Results: Out of 600, 245 (40%) girls remained absent from school during their menstruation. School absenteeism was significantly associated with the type of absorbent used, lack of privacy at school, restrictions imposed on girls during menstruation, mother's education, and source of information on menstruation. Nearly 65% reported that it affected their daily activities at school and that they had to miss their class tests and classes as a result of pain, anxiety, shame, anxiety about leakage, and staining of their uniform. Conclusion: Since mothers are the primary source of information, they should be counseled to dispose of their taboos about discussing issues related to menstruation. They should be taught about the ill effects of adhering to taboos related to menstruation. The curriculum on general biology should have more detail on menstruation

Comprehensive analysis of temporal alterations in cellular proteome of Bacillus subtilis under curcumin treatment.

Curcumin is a natural dietary compound with antimicrobial activity against various gram positive and negative bacteria. This study aims to investigate the proteome level alterations in Bacillus subtilis due to curcumin treatment and identification of its molecular/cellular targets to understand the mechanism of action. We have performed a comprehensive proteomic analysis of B. subtilis AH75 strain at different time intervals of curcumin treatment (20, 60 and 120 min after the drug exposure, three replicates) to compare the protein expression profiles using two complementary quantitative proteomic techniques, 2D-DIGE and iTRAQ. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive longitudinal investigation describing the effect of curcumin treatment on B. subtilis proteome. The proteomics analysis revealed several interesting targets such UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 1-carboxyvinyltransferase 1, putative septation protein SpoVG and ATP-dependent Clp protease proteolytic subunit. Further, in silico pathway analysis using DAVID and KOBAS has revealed modulation of pathways related to the fatty acid metabolism and cell wall synthesis, which are crucial for cell viability. Our findings revealed that curcumin treatment lead to inhibition of the cell wall and fatty acid synthesis in addition to differential expression of many crucial proteins involved in modulation of bacterial metabolism. Findings obtained from proteomics analysis were further validated using 5-cyano-2,3-ditolyl tetrazolium chloride (CTC) assay for respiratory activity, resazurin assay for metabolic activity and membrane integrity assay by potassium and inorganic phosphate leakage measurement. The gene expression analysis of selected cell wall biosynthesis enzymes has strengthened the proteomics findings and indicated the major effect of curcumin on cell division

Effect of curcumin treatment on the <i>B</i>. <i>subtilis</i> AH75 growth and cell morphology.

<p><b>(A)</b><i>B</i>. <i>subtilis</i> AH75 strain was grown in LB media having spectinomycin antibiotic (100 μg/mL) till the OD₆₀₀ reached to 0.1. Then the cultures were treated with DMSO (control), 20 μM (IC₅₀ concentration) and 100 μM (MIC concentration) curcumin. Growth curve was plotted by measuring the OD₆₀₀ for all the samples at every 20 min interval till 360 min (mid-exponential phase). The three time points of curcumin treatment (20, 60 and 120 min) used in proteomic analysis are indicated by arrows. IC₅₀ concentration was used for subsequent proteomic analysis. (<b>B)</b><i>B</i>. <i>subtilis</i> AH75 strain was grown in the presence of 20 μM (IC₅₀ concentration) curcumin and the samples was collected after 20, 60 and 120 min of the drug treatment. Cultures treated with only DMSO was used as control. The nuclear materials were stained using 1 μg/μL DAPI for 20 min at room temperature in dark for all the samples. The fluorescence microscopic images were captured with both DAPI and DIC filters. The control <i>B</i>. <i>subtilis</i> cells showed normal cell length with one or two nucleoids per cell whereas after 20, 60 and 120 min of incubation with 20 μM (IC₅₀ concentration) curcumin, most of the cells turned into filamentous structure with multiple nucleoids. I- DIC image, II- DAPI image and III- overlay image.</p

List of differentially expressed proteins in <i>B</i>. <i>subtilis</i> due to curcumin treatment obtained from DIGE analysis and its comparison with iTRAQ analysis^$.

<p> This is a partial list having selected candidates with >1.5 fold change and complete list is provided in S2 Table

#: Proteins unique in DIGE, Bold: Same trend in both DIGE and iTRAQ (Orbitrap data);

* or NS: No significant change in iTRAQ in Orbitrap data (less than 1.2 fold up and down);

NI- Not identified in iTRAQ analysis.

List of differentially expressed proteins in B. subtilis due to curcumin treatment obtained from DIGE analysis and its comparison with iTRAQ analysis</a>.</p</sup>