Computer vision-based monitoring of abrasive loading during wood machining

Surface quality is an important characteristic commonly assessed in wooden products. Sanding relies on coated abrasives as tooling for both dimensioning and surface finishing but their performance is dependent on chip loading and grit wear. Traditionally, the useful life of abrasive belts in sanding operation has been manually assessed. This type of inspection is highly subjective and dependent upon individual expertise, consequently leading to under utilization or over utilization of the abrasive. This, in turn, affects the production costs and quality of the product. In this work, an intelligent classification method that determines the optimal replacement policy for a belt exposed to known manufacturing parameters is developed. Controlled experiments were conducted to develop abrasive belts of known exposure, followed with digital microscopy to capture images and process them with pattern recognition and classification algorithms. Grit size and machining time were the parameters of interest while response of the experiments included image information from the abrasive sheets after every experimental run. These images were used in training an artificial neural network that in turn, help in determining data to categorize the useful life of the abrasive. The results show a 95% success rate in accurately classifying abrasive images of similarly conditioned abrasives. Also, the results show that the classification of interpolated and extrapolated times of abrasive usage are classified with a 95% success rate. A classification of abrasive images is proposed to be used as one of the inputs to a decision system that would help in evaluating the life of the abrasive and replacement policies. Further research on the relationship between the different parameters affecting the useful life of the abrasive is proposed

Maternal Health Situation in India: A Case Study

Maternal Health Services are one of the basic health services to be provided by nay government health system as pregnant women are one of the most vulnerable victims of dysfunctional health system, India, in spite of rapid economic progress is still farm away from the goal of lowering maternal mortality to less than 100 per 100,000 live births. It still accounts for 25.7% maternal deaths. The maternal mortality in India varies across the states. Geographical vastness and socio-cultural diversity make implementation of health sector reforms a difficult task. The chapter analyses the trends in maternal mortality and various maternal health programs implemented over the years including the maternal health care delivery system at various levels including the recent innovative strategies. It also identifies the reasons for limited success in maternal health and suggests measures to improve the current maternal health situation. It recommends improvement in maternal death reporting, evidence based, focused, long term strategy along with effective monitoring of implementation for improving Maternal Health situation. It also stress the need for regulation of private sector and proper Public Private Partnership (PPP) policy together with a strong political will for improving Maternal Health.

Development and in-vitro evaluation of an optimized carvedilol transdermal therapeutic system using experimental design approach

AbstractThe effect of formulation variables on in-vitro release and permeation properties of carvedilol from transdermal patch was studied by varying one factor at a time as preliminary study. Based on these results, design of experiments technique was applied followed by regression analysis and response surface methodology to optimize formulation variables. Central Composite IV model design was used with four formulation variables: drug loading, matrix thickness, adhesive layer thickness, and propylene glycol concentration. Nineteen formulations were prepared according to the design; and the effect of formulation variables was studied on in-vitro release and permeation profiles of these formulations. In all cases, the permeation profiles paralleled in-vitro release profiles. The drug released at 7 h and 24 h was used as release response parameters while permeation flux obtained was employed as permeation response parameter. All four formulation variables were found to be significant for release properties and three of these exhibited significant effect on permeation profile of carvedilol across artificial membrane. Constrained optimization, using 47.9% of cumulative carvedilol released at 7 h and 99.8% at 24 h as well as 25.7 μg/cm2/h of permeation flux, was applied to obtain desired release and permeation profiles. Experimentally, carvedilol was observed to release from the optimized formulation with 51.4% drug release at 7 h and 98.5% at 24 h with an observed flux value of 27.4 μg/cm2/h across artificial membrane, which showed an excellent agreement with the predicted values. The results of this investigation show that the quadratic mathematical model developed could be used to further predict formulations with desirable release and permeation properties

Efficacy of Decentralized CSS Clustering Model Over TWDP Fading Scenario

Cognitive Radio technology, which lowers spectrum scarcity, is a rapidly growing wireless communication technology. CR technology detects spectrum holes or unlicensed spectrums which primary users are not using and assigns it to secondary users. The dependability of the spectrum-sensing approach is significantly impacted from two of the most critical aspects, namely fading channels and neighboring wireless users. Users of non-cooperative spectrum sensing devices face numerous difficulties, including multipath fading, masked terminals, and shadowing. This problem can be solved using a cooperative- spectrum-sensing technique. For the user, CSS enables them to detect the spectrum by using a common receiver. It has also been divided into distributed CSS and centralized CSS. This article compares both ideas by using a set of rules to find out whether a licensed user exists or not. This thought was previously used to the conventional fading channels, such as the Rician, Rayleigh and the nakagami-m models. This work focused on D-CSS using clustering approach over TWDP fading channel using two-phase hard decision algorithms with the help of OR rule as well as AND rule. The evaluation of the proposed approaches clearly depicted that the sack of achieve a detection-probability of greater than 0.8; the values SNR varies between -14 dB to -8 dB. For all two-phase hard decision algorithms using proposed approach and CSS techniques, the detection probability is essentially identical while the value of signal to noise ratio is between -12 dB to -8dB. Throughout this work, we assess performance of cluster-based cooperative spectrum-sensing over TWDP channel with the previous findings of AWGN, Rayleigh, and wei-bull fading channels. The obtained simulation results show that OR-AND decision scheme enhanced the performance of the detector for the considered range of signal to noise ratios

Comparison of diagnostic methods of malaria by peripheral smear, centrifuged buffy coat smear and rapid antigen detection test

Background: Malaria is common, life threatening infection in endemic area and presents diagnostic challenge to laboratories in most endemic areas. A rapid and accurate diagnosis is a pre requisite for effective treatment, especially for potentially fatal cases of falciparum infection.Methods: Total 200 patients presented with fever and chills, were taken for study and performances of peripheral blood and centrifuged buffy coat smear were compared against the result of rapid antigen detection test (standard method).Results: out of 200 cases, 55 were positive by rapid detection test.30 of P. vivax, 24 of P. falci and 1 was mixed infection. Peripheral smear had 85.5% sensitive and 100% specific compared to RDT which was 100 % sensitive and specific whereas centrifuged buffy coat was 92.7% sensitive and 99.3% specific.Conclusions: Easy, rapid, most sensitive and specific diagnostic method will help in early diagnosis and lead to decrease in morbidity and mortality

Communication interventions to promote the public's awareness of antibiotics: a systematic review.

BackgroundInappropriate antibiotic use is implicated in antibiotic resistance and resultant morbidity and mortality. Overuse is particularly prevalent for outpatient respiratory infections, and perceived patient expectations likely contribute. Thus, various educational programs have been implemented to educate the public.MethodsWe systematically identified public-directed interventions to promote antibiotic awareness in the United States. PubMed, Google Scholar, Embase, CINAHL, and Scopus were queried for articles published from January 1996 through January 2016. Two investigators independently assessed titles and abstracts of retrieved articles for subsequent full-text review. References of selected articles and three review articles were likewise screened for inclusion. Identified educational interventions were coded for target audience, content, distribution site, communication method, and major outcomes.ResultsOur search yielded 1,106 articles; 34 met inclusion criteria. Due to overlap in interventions studied, 29 distinct educational interventions were identified. Messages were primarily delivered in outpatient clinics (N = 24, 83%) and community sites (N = 12, 41%). The majority included clinician education. Antibiotic prescription rates were assessed for 22 interventions (76%). Patient knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs (KAB) were assessed for 10 interventions (34%). Similar rates of success between antibiotic prescription rates and patient KAB were reported (73 and 70%, respectively). Patient interventions that did not include clinician education were successful to increase KAB but were not shown to decrease antibiotic prescribing. Three interventions targeted reductions in Streptococcus pneumoniae resistance; none were successful.ConclusionsMessaging programs varied in their designs, and many were multifaceted in their approach. These interventions can change patient perspectives regarding antibiotic use, though it is unclear if clinician education is also necessary to reduce antibiotic prescribing. Further investigations are needed to determine the relative influence of interventions focusing on patients and physicians and to determine whether these changes can influence rates of antibiotic resistance long-term