Analysis of Image Compression Techniques

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Prevalence of Non-Albicans Candida Among the Patients Attending a Tertiary Care Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal

The main objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of non-albicans Candida among the patients attending a tertiary care hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Candida spp. isolated from different clinical samples (sputum, urine, vaginal swab, blood, endotracheal (ET) secretion, pus) from 250 patients between the period of February 2013 and December 2015 were included in the study. Of those 250 patients, 20% were immunocompromised. Sabouraud dextrose agar was used for the isolation of Candida spp. and the identification was performed on the basis of colony morphology, Gram’s stain, India ink preparation, germ tube test, temperature tolerance test, characteristic color change in CHROMagar, chlamydospore production, sugar fermentation test and sugar assimilation test.Out of total 300 Candida spp., majority were isolated from sputum (43.33%) followed by urine (40%) and vaginal swab (6.67%). Of total 151 (50.33%) non-albicans Candida, the most common species isolated were C. tropicalis (62.25%) followed by C. glabrata (23.84%). High prevalence of non-albicans Candida among the patients attending a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal was noted

Micro Expression Classification Accuracy Assessment

The ability to identify and draw appropriate implications from non-verbal cues is a challenging task in facial expression recognition and has been investigated by various disciplines particularly social science, medical science, psychology and technological sciences beyond three decades. Non-verbal cues often last a few seconds and are obvious (macro) whereas others are very short and difficult to interpret (micro). This research is based on the area of micro expression recognition with the main focus laid on understanding and exploring the combined effect of various existing feature extraction techniques and one of the most renowned machine learning algorithms identified as Support Vector Machine (SVM). Experiments are conducted on spatiotemporal descriptors extracted from the CASME II dataset using LBP-TOP, LBP-SIP, LPQ-TOP, HOG-TOP, HIGO-TOP and STLBP-IP. We have considered two different cases for the CASME II dataset where the first case measures performance for five class i.e. happiness, disgust, surprise, repression and others and the second case considers three classes namely positive, negative and surprise. LPQ-TOP with SVM produced highest accuracy against rest of the approaches in this work

Colloidal synthesis and characterizations of metal, metal- oxide, and semiconductor nanoparticles by inductive heating method

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of ChemistryViktor ChikanThe goal of this thesis is to develop a faster, safer, and industrial-level scale-up methodology for the synthesis of diverse nanomaterials applying the inductive heating methodology. This thesis discusses the size control magnetic inductive heating synthesis of iron, iron- oxide, manganese, manganese/iron alloys, and germanium nanoparticles (NPs) in different chapters. Background in the magnetic heating methodology and how it can be used for nanomaterial synthesis is discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes the synthesis and characterization of colloidal insulating iron-oxide NPs. Fe2O3 and Fe3O4 NPs were prepared by inductive heating. Their morphological and magnetic properties were studied in detail. The effect of different solvents and heating times on the size of NPs was explored. Furthermore, this chapter discusses how the inductive heating methodology can be utilized for the use of solid precursors to prepare monodispersed, phase pure γ- Fe2O3 NPs. Chapter 4 is aimed to describe the synthesis of air-stable metallic iron NPs with their size tuning. TEM, HRTEM, PXRD, and elemental analysis were carried out to confirm the formation of iron NPs and their particle size distributions. SQUID was used to investigate the magnetic properties of thus synthesized NPs. Chapter 5 focuses on achieving greater control over the size distribution in the solution synthesis of semiconducting germanium NPs. The effect of concentration of precursor and heating time was explored. This chapter will also discuss the possible defects present in as-synthesized NPs. Various spectroscopic characterizations such as transient absorption and UV-Vis-NIR were performed to identify the quality of crystals. Finally, Chapter 6 describes the use of the inductive heating methodology for the synthesis of manganese oxide and iron-manganese oxide alloy nanoparticles, a potential material for fossil-free ammonia synthesis by step catalysis. The one-pot inductive heating-assisted method promises a scalable and low-cost production of highly crystalline NPs by overcoming the traditional disadvantages of long reaction times, high temperature and pressure, complicated precursor preparation, and exhaustive post-synthetic purification steps

Everyday Life Experiences of Post-Stroke Patients: A Qualitative Study on the: Importance of Adjustment Strategies of Post-stroke Patients

This study is an attempt to describe the everyday life experiences of post-stroke patients and their adjustment strategies. It examines the coping strategies of post-stroke patients and analyzes how these strategies have influenced stroke survivors in post-stroke life. A stroke is an unexpected life event leading an individual with various physical, psychological, and social consequences. Stroke survivors may have to deal with immense pain, psychological disturbance, and other cognitive problems such as memory loss, communication deficit, etc., and interruption of social and professional life. Stroke survivors try to cope with their stroke to return to their normal/pre-stroke life. Coping strategies play a significant role as it paves hope and enhances post-stroke patients' quality of life. The study uses the social cognitive transition model post-stroke patients (SCoTS) to see post-stroke patients' coping strategies. This qualitative research is based on the subjective experiences of post-stroke patients. A semi-structured qualitative interview is conducted with six Norwegian stroke survivors to collect the primary data. The findings of the study illustrate that participants experienced that their post-stroke life has been changed markedly. Bodily change, disruption in working life, and losing pre-stroke self are some of the participants' everyday life experiences. They adopted different types of coping strategies to deal with the stroke. Positivity, support from various sources, exercise and training, and engagement in other activities are some of the strategy participants applied to their everyday lives. In a nutshell, this study is relevant for post-stroke patients and health professionals to gain a better understanding of the everyday experiences of post-stroke patients and their coping strategies to achieve a normal life. This research also highlights some of the common post-stroke experiences and coping strategies with specific subjective experiences

Folie a deux

Shared psychotic disorderis a rare psychiatric disorder. It is defined when a primary psychotic person imposes his/her delusional beliefs to the other person usually in a close relationship. Occurrence of this disorder among family members and close friends has been described. However, its exact incidence and prevalence is not known. Since such case has not been reported in Nepal to best of our knowledge, we present a case of shared delusional disorder along with brief review of literature. This case report describes a case of common shared persecutory delusion in husband and wife. Keywords: folie a deux; shared psychotic disorder

Folie a deux

Shared psychotic disorderis a rare psychiatric disorder. It is defined when a primary psychotic person imposes his/her delusional beliefs to the other person usually in a close relationship. Occurrence of this disorder among family members and close friends has been described. However, its exact incidence and prevalence is not known. Since such case has not been reported in Nepal to best of our knowledge, we present a case of shared delusional disorder along with brief review of literature. This case report describes a case of common shared persecutory delusion in husband and wife. 
 Keywords: folie a deux; shared psychotic disorder