Semi-Supervised Recurrent Neural Network for Adverse Drug Reaction Mention Extraction

Social media is an useful platform to share health-related information due to its vast reach. This makes it a good candidate for public-health monitoring tasks, specifically for pharmacovigilance. We study the problem of extraction of Adverse-Drug-Reaction (ADR) mentions from social media, particularly from twitter. Medical information extraction from social media is challenging, mainly due to short and highly information nature of text, as compared to more technical and formal medical reports. Current methods in ADR mention extraction relies on supervised learning methods, which suffers from labeled data scarcity problem. The State-of-the-art method uses deep neural networks, specifically a class of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) which are Long-Short-Term-Memory networks (LSTMs) \cite{hochreiter1997long}. Deep neural networks, due to their large number of free parameters relies heavily on large annotated corpora for learning the end task. But in real-world, it is hard to get large labeled data, mainly due to heavy cost associated with manual annotation. Towards this end, we propose a novel semi-supervised learning based RNN model, which can leverage unlabeled data also present in abundance on social media. Through experiments we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, achieving state-of-the-art performance in ADR mention extraction.Comment: Accepted at DTMBIO workshop, CIKM 2017. To appear in BMC Bioinformatics. Pls cite that versio

Human Development Index (HDI): A Case study of Aasgaon Village, Dist- Satara, Maharashtra, India

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary composite index that measures average achievement of particular nation in three basic aspects of human development. These aspects are popularly known as (1) A long and healthy life. (2) Knowledge (3) A decent standard of living. This research paper focus on HDI of Aasgaon- a small & popular village of satara district of Maharashtra state, which is role model for rural development and self sufficiency. The village has achieved success because of its social transformation with the help & active participation of local people, especially women. Key words: HDI, Life expectancy index, Education index, Adult literacy index, Gross enrollment index, GDP index

Synthesis and biological studies of novel pyranochromene derivatives.

Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2015.Abstract available in PDF file

Objective Measures in Aesthetic and Functional Nasal Surgery: Perspectives on Nasal Form and Function

The outcomes of aesthetic and functional nasal surgery are difficult to assess objectively due to the intricate balance between nasal form and function. Despite historical emphasis on patient-reported subjective measures, objective measures are gaining importance in both research and the current outcomes-driven healthcare environment. Objective measures presently available have several shortcomings which limit their routine clinical use. In particular, the low correlation between objective and subjective measures poses a major challenge. However, advances in computer, imaging, and bioengineering technology are now setting the stage for the development of innovative objective assessment tools for nasal surgery that can potentially address some of the current limitations. Assessment of nasal form following aesthetic surgery is evolving from two-dimensional analysis to more sophisticated three-dimensional analysis. Similarly, assessment of nasal function is evolving with the introduction of computational fluid dynamics techniques, which allow for a detailed description of the biophysics of nasal airflow. In this paper, we present an overview of objective measures in both aesthetic and functional nasal surgery and discuss future trends and applications that have the potential to change the way we assess nasal form and function

Determination of physical properties of soybean at different moisture levels

The physical properties of soybean are important in designing and fabricating equipment and structures for handling, transporting, processing and storage, and also for assessing the quality of soybean.  The study was conducted to investigate some physical properties of soybean at various moisture levels.  The average length, width, thickness and thousand mass were 6.55 mm, 5.56 mm, 4.53 mm and 103.57 g, respectively, at moisture content of 7.37% (dry basis).  The geometric mean diameter increased from 5.44 to 5.57 mm and the sphericity varied between 0.83 and 0.84 as moisture content increased from 7.37% to 15.80% (db), respectively.  In the same moisture range, the bulk and true densities decreased from 749.1 to 644.4 kg/m3 and 1250 to 1111.11 kg/m3, respectively, whereas the corresponding porosity increased from 40.07% to 41.9%.  As the moisture content increased from 7.37% to 15.80% (db) angle of repose as found to increase from 26.35° to 30.96°.  The static coefficient of friction of soybean increased linearly against the surfaces of two structural materials, namely glass and wood as the moisture content increased from 7.37% to 15.80% (db). Keywords: moisture content, physical properties, soybean, Indi

Grader: A review of different methods of grading for fruits and vegetables

Grading of agricultural produce especially the fruits and vegetables has become a perquisite of trading across borders.  In India mostly fruit growers grade the fruit manually.  Manual grading was carried out by trained operators who considered a number of grading factors and fruit were separated according to their physical quality.  Manually grading was costly and grading operation was affected due to shortage of labor in peak seasons.  Human operations may be inconsistent, less efficient and time consuming.  New trends in marketing as specified by World Trade Organization (WTO) demand high quality graded products.  Farmers are looking forward to having an appropriate agricultural produce-grading machine in order to alleviate the labor shortage, save time and improve graded product’s quality.  Grading of fruits is a very important operation as it fetches high price to the grower and improves packaging, handling and brings an overall improvement in marketing system.  The fruits are generally graded on basis of size and graded fruits are more welcome in export market.  Grading could reduce handling losses during transportation. Grading based on size consists of divergent roller type principle having inclination, expanding pitch type, inclined vibrating plate and counter rotating roller having inclination type graders.  Weight grading based on density and specific gravity of agricultural commodities.  The need to be responsive to market demand places a greater emphasis on quality assessment, resulting in the greater need for improved and more accurate grading and sorting practices.  Size variation in vegetables like potatoes, onions provided a base for grading them in different categories.  Every vegetable producing country had made their own standards of different grades keeping in view the market requirements.   Keywords: grading, handling, packaging, color sensor, specific gravity, Indi