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Ongoing years have seen an expanded interest in recommender frameworks. Notwithstanding huge advancement in this field, there still stay various roads to investigate. Surely, this work gives an investigation of misusing on the web travel data for customized travel bundle suggestion. A basic test along this line is to address the remarkable attributes of movement information, which recognize travel bundles from customary things for proposal. With that in mind, in this work, we initially dissect the qualities of the current travel bundles and build up a traveler region season subject (TAST) model. This TAST model can address travel bundles and sightseers by various subject disseminations, where the point extraction is molded on both the vacationers and the inherent highlights (i.e., areas, travel periods) of the scenes. GPS empowers cell phones to constantly give new freedoms to improve our day by day lives. For instance, the information gathered in applications made by Uber or Public Transport Authorities can be utilized to design transportation courses, gauge limits, and proactively recognize low inclusion zones.

Background: Neonatal sepsis is a major problem worldwide. Positive blood culture, the diagnostic gold standard is expensive, time consuming and yields result in limited cases. Hence reliable surrogate markers are needed. Aims and Objective: To ascertain haematological parameters which are reliable adjuvants to blood culture for diagnosing Neonatal Sepsis. Materials and Methods: A retrospective observational study was carried over two years in alevel3 NICU among neonates admitted with suspected sepsis. Data on demographics, clinical background, blood laboratory results were extracted from medical records and statistically analysed by multivariate regression analysis to identify surrogate markers for sepsis. Results: Over two years, 182 neonates admitted with Suspected Sepsis were enrolled in the study. In all clinical examination followed by laboratory investigations viz CBP (TLC, ANC, ITR, degenerative changes, platelet count), CRP and blood culture was carried out prior to treatment. A total of 64 (35.2%) were blood culture positive. On multivariable regression analysis, ITR >0.2 [OR 16.3; 95% CI (1.5-176.8), platelet count Conclusions: The study revealed that Immature to total neutrophil ratio >0.2, platelet count Key Messages: 1. Blood culture, the gold standard for diagnosing neonatal sepsis is expensive, time consuming and yields positive results in limited cases. 2. Effective surrogate markers are Immature to total neutrophil ratio (ITR), thrombocytopenia and cytotoxic degenerative changes in neutrophils. 3. These surrogate markers would identify the neonate at risk requiring early antibiotic therapy. Keywords: ANC, Blood Culture, ITR, Neonatal Sepsis, Surrogate Markers.

Textile industry outlet Waste water contain a several mixture of polluting substances involving solvents, detergents and dyes. Textile manufacturers are in a situation to sort out this issue by adopting a suitable treatment technology for textile effluent. Notably the application of ceramic Nano Filtration (NF) plays a significant role in recycling the specific waste in the textile industry thereby paving way to waste recycling instead of being disposed of in land whereas it seems to be impossible for most of the conventional technologies in treating this textile effluents. The Initial performances of commercial NF membranes have been studied thoroughly pertaining to Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) rejection. The outcome showed that maximum separation of dye and salts where achieved by some of the commercial membranes while some achieved higher flux owing to the inconsistent parameters of textile waste water and NF membranes chosen. These work forefronts and studied the problem associated with textile waste water and waste water recycling using the ceramic nano filtration membrane.

ObjectivesInforming research participants of the results of studies in which they took part is viewed as an ethical imperative. However, there is little guidance in the literature about how to do this. The Fluoxetine Or Control Under Supervision trial randomised 3127 patients with a recent acute stroke to 6 months of fluoxetine or placebo and was published in the Lancet on 5 December 2018. The trial team decided to inform the participants of the results at exactly the same time as the Lancet publication, and also whether they had been allocated fluoxetine or placebo. In this report, we describe how we informed participants of the results.DesignIn the 6-month and 12-month follow-up questionnaires, we invited participants to provide an email address if they wished to be informed of the results of the trial. We re-opened our trial telephone helpline between 5 December 2018 and 31 March 2019.SettingUK stroke services.Participants3127 participants were randomised. 2847 returned 6-month follow-up forms and 2703 returned 12-month follow-up forms; the remaining participants had died (380), withdrawn consent or did not respond.ResultsOf those returning follow-up questionnaires, a total of 1845 email addresses were provided and a further 50 people requested results to be sent by post. Results were sent to all email and postal addresses provided; 309 emails were returned unrecognised. Seventeen people replied, of whom three called the helpline and the rest responded by email.ConclusionIt is feasible to disseminate results of large trials to research participants, though only around 60% of those randomised wanted to receive the results. The system we developed was efficient and required very little resource, and could be replicated by trialists in the future.Trial registration numberISRCTN83290762; Post-results.

The demand for the energy has increased drastically as a result of the rapid growth in industrialization, urbanisation and higher standard of living. One such potential substitute to fossil fuels is biodiesel that ensures sustainable energy source. The selection of appropriate source of biodiesel and proper blending of biodiesel plays a major role in alternate energy production. In the present work, a novel hybrid Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique was proposed to evaluate and select the optimum fuel biodiesel blend for the IC engine with conflicting criteria to enhance the energy efficiency. Exploratory analysis were carried out on a single cylinder four stroke, air cooled, constant speed, direct injection diesel engine with a rated output of 4.4 kW at 1500 rpm at different loads. Two hybrid MCDM models, namely Fuzzy TOPSIS and Fuzzy VIKOR were proposed. Fuzzy was applied to determine the relative weights of the evaluation criteria whereas TOPSIS and VIKOR were applied to obtain the final ranking of alternatives. Diesel, B20, B40, B60, B80 and B100 fuel blend alternatives are prepared by varying the proportion of biodiesel for MCDM model. Similarly BTE, MRPR, NOx, CO2, CO, HC, SMOKE, ID, CD and Exhaust gas temperature were considered as the evaluation criteria. The ranking order by Fuzzy TOPSIS is based on closeness coefficient and Fuzzy VIKOR is based on VIKOR index. In Fuzzy TOPSIS, B40 stands first at 50% and 75% load conditions and second at 25% and full load conditions respectively. In Fuzzy VIKOR, B40 stands first at 25% and 50% conditions and second at no load, 75% and full load conditions respectively. The ranking of alternatives as obtained by both Fuzzy-TOPSIS and Fuzzy-VIKOR is B40 > B20 > Diesel > B80 > B60 > B100 and B40 > B20 > Diesel > B60 > B80 > B100. From the results, it was observed that both the methods indicated that B40 is the best blend to operate the engine. Hence, it is concluded that mixing 40% biodiesel with diesel is suggested as a good partial replacement for diesel. This paper highlights a new insight into MCDM techniques to evaluate the best fuel blend for the decision makers such as engine manufactures and R& D engineers to meet the fuel economy and emission norms to empower the green revolution and energy management.

Objective: Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycemia with a global prevalence rate of 8.3%. Diabetes not only affect general health but also oral health leading to periodontitis. Low level of knowledge about diabetes and lack of awareness regarding preventive options will ultimately impact self-care behavior. To assess diabetes related knowledge among patients attending Vinayaka Mission’s Sankarachariyar (VMS) Dental College outpatient department in Salem city, Tamilnadu. Materials And Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out for about two weeks which encompassed a convenient sample of 400 subjects aged 18-80 years. Knowledge of respondents regarding diabetes was measured using 15 item self-administered modified Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire (DKQ). Results: When knowledge regarding cause of diabetes was considered, only 40% of subjects were aware that diabetes is not a communicable disease. Almost half (57.5%) of the participants believed that sweet consumption causes diabetes. Furthermore, 55% participants knew that diabetes can damage kidney and around 54.5% agreed that diabetes can also affect dental health. The higher mean knowledge scores was observed among males compared to females and the difference was statistically insignicant (p=0.37). Significantly higher mean knowledge scores were dissipated by subjects with graduation education (p=0.01), those with professional occupation (p=0.02) and participant from urban location (p=0.00). Conclusion: The study showed significantly lower level of awareness regarding diabetes among rural respondents compared to urban residents. Gap related to diabetes mellitus knowledge should be abridged between rural and urban province in order to reduce disease burden and to yield positive health outcomes in the society.KeywordsDiabetes mellitus; Diabetes management; Knowledge; Oral self-care.

This paper presents energy control of a battery powered Electric Vehicle (EV) with the aid of Ultra Capacitor (UC). Induction motor powered EV is fed by the battery through the buck boost converter and inverter with New European standard Driving Cycle (NEDC). A 48V battery and 300F UC is connected to the motor load of excitation of 200 V through a 5kW bi-directional buck boost converter. The voltage profile of the load is controlled by Reset-Set-Track (RST) controller thereby controlling the load torque profile. Energy flow to load is from both battery and UC with power management, which limits the battery current requirement and hence improves the battery performance. Results show that the voltage regulation of battery is improved from 4.8% to 1.8 % by the compensation of voltage sag of load with the aid of UC and the State Of Charge (SOC) is increased by4.2% over a period of2 hours. Peak power management is also improved by monitoring the load profile. Simulation has been done using MATLAB/SIMULINK.

As a novel abridged record of patients' medical data, PHR would be accessed online. Nevertheless, this very sensitive private information might be attained through illegal parties as of the cloud. Numerous existent algorithms utilized CP-ABE to protect the data as of unapproved users, however, it loses the high-efficiency against the conventional methods on account of the security parameters’ requirement of large size. To surmount these issues, a HAP-CP-ABE-based encryption technique with HAP based authentication scheme intended for PHR is proposed. The proposed work encompasses '3′ phases: (A) the authentication phase, which includes verification before the user uploads the PHR files. (B) Secure upload phase: initially, the features are all extracted as of the PHR files. Then, the features are lessened as of the extracted features utilizing ENT-LDA. Then, HAP will be created using SHA-512. Lastly, securely upload PHR to cloud utilizing HAP-CP-ABE. (C) In the secure download phase, primarily, the system corroborates the HAP for the requested user. If it is matched, then it permits them to access, or else the system declined permission. After authentication, the system permits the requested user to download the file. Extensive analysis along with investigational outcomes shows the proposed system's security together with efficiency.

Cloud computing is an aspired reverie of computing that provides a huge capacity of storage. The users of the cloud, store large volumes of their private data, where sometimes they have to suffer vulnerabilities and attacks on it. Since there is only partial control over the stored data, the users require strong and significant protection techniques to guard their data. The protection of data storage is a challenging and formidable task and so the user data should be protected against security threats. There is a great deal of uncertainty on how to provide security for the user data also. Thus, encrypting the data before storage might be the most promising approach. In this paper, a hybrid layered approach is proposed to protect the user's data along with the association of lattice-based security technique. In this proposed model, a new approach has been incorporated for checking roles and responsibilities using lattice model. For this implementation text-based Patient Health care Records (PHR) are taken and significance of the proposed method is tested. Advanced Encryption Standard and Rivest-Shamir-Adleman are employed in this approach to provide further and better security to the sensitive data. The proposed model uses a CloudSim simulator in which virtual machine has been created with balanced configuration and it is implemented as well as tested. Compared to the existing methods, the proposed scheme is more secure and we offers easy interface to the patients for uploading and downloading their records. We have tested the differed parameters of proposed method with state of art approaches. The experimentation results show that the proposed scheme is more efficient.

This article explores the extraction and characterization of natural fiber from the agro-waste of Lagenaria siceraria (LS)plant stem (commonly known as „bottle guard‟) for the first time. The extracted fiber from the waste stems has highcellulose content (79.91 %) with good tensile strength (257–717 MPa) and thermal stability (withstand up to 339.1°C). Theimmense percentage of crystalline index (92.4%) with the crystalline size (7.2 nm) as well as low density (1.216 g/cm3) ofthe LS fiber renders their possibilit

Background: Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the basic sciences also contributes in health maintenance and promotion for the population. Objectives: The primary objective was to assess knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) among pharmacy students in Salem toward oral health. Secondary objectives are to correlate KAP with their oral health status. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out using self-administered 16-item pretested and pre-validated questionnaire and oral health status data were collected using the WHO oral health assessment form (1997) targeting pharmacy students Vinayaka Missions College of pharmacy. Six, four, and six questions were used to assess pharmacy students' knowledge, attitude, and practice, respectively. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 20.0 to perform the Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, Spearman's correlation, and linear regression analysis. Results: 386 participated in the survey (263 males and 123 females). The highest mean for knowledge was among 17–21 years of age group students (18.07 ± 3.07) and this was statistically significant when compared to another age group (P < 0.05). The gender difference was seen with males having a significantly (P < 0.001) more positive mean ± SD oral health KAP compared to their female counterparts. KAP scores upon correlation revealed a positive relationship between knowledge-attitude (r = 0.015), knowledge-practice (r = 0.016), and attitude-practice (r = 0.069). Results: 386 participated in the survey (263 males and 123 females). The highest mean for knowledge was among 17–21 years of age group students (18.07 ± 3.07) and this was statistically significant when compared to another age group (P < 0.05). The gender difference was seen with males having a significantly (P < 0.001) more positive mean ± SD oral health KAP compared to their female counterparts. KAP scores upon correlation revealed a positive relationship between knowledge-attitude (r = 0.015), knowledge-practice (r = 0.016), and attitude-practice (r = 0.069). Conclusion: Results of this study suggest that oral health KAP of students is inadequate and needs to be improved as they play an important role in the patients' counseling toward oral care.

This research explores the extraction and characterization of natural fiber from the agro-waste of Lagenaria siceraria (LS) plant stem (commonly known as bottle guard). The extracted fiber from the waste stems has high cellulose content (79.91 %) with good tensile strength (257–717 MPa) and thermal stability (withstand up to 339.1°C). The huge percentage of crystalline index (92.4%) with the crystalline size (7.2 nm) as well as low density (1.216 g/cm3) of the LS fiber renders their possibility to use as an effective reinforcement material in lightweight eco-friendly composites for various industrial applications.

Power line communication (PLC) could be a promising technique for info transmission victimization existing power lines PLC technologies will be utilized in associate inside-building low voltage surroundings, a short-distance medium voltage surroundings, or a long-distance high voltage surroundings. Mixed high voltage, medium-voltage, and low-tension power provide networks may well be bridged to make terribly giant networks for communications, as a substitute to telecommunication networks One in all the popular modulation schemes is that the OFDM that forms the physical layer decides the information rate of power cable communication standards. During this analysis work, performance analysis of OFDM design is allotted with stress on speed, space and power for hardware realization on re configurable platforms.

Solar powered adsorption refrigeration system is renewable source in the future energy demands and more useful for off-grid area. In this paper a mathematical model was developed to investigate the performance of a cooling cabinet of a activated carbon-ammonia adsorption refrigeration system, and a new effective method about the refrigeration studies. A brief thermodynamic study of the cooling cabinet is carried out and the effect of operating parameters such as temperature, pressure, cooling effect of the system is numerically analyzed. The impact of solar intensity on performance of the system is significant. The cooling cabinet model is completely analysied for varies capacity and it is able to calculate the cooling cabinet coil length .The designed mathematical model is analyzed by the use of coolpack software and the results are compared with ansys software. It is observed that the system operate more efficient while maximum solar intensity and the cooling effect. Key words: Solar, Adsorption Refrigeration, Mathematical model, Analysis, Solar intensity.

In this work low leakage and high noise immunity domino circuit with negligible speed degradation is proposed. Wide Fan-In Gates are widely used as address decoders in memories. Wide Fan-In Gates increase the capacitance of the dynamic node which reduces the speed in domino circuits. Current contention exists between keeper transistor and evaluation network adding to speed reduction. To overcome this problem logic implementation network in the proposed Leakage Compensating Keeper (LCK) is separated from the dynamic node by current comparison stage in which the current of the pull up network is used to charge the capacitor at the dynamic node. Since capacitance is reduced the loss in speed due to additional transistors is compensated. Because of reduced parasitic capacitance Current Mirror based LCK is enough to design faster circuits. LCK improves the noise immunity by grounding the pull up networks leakage current. Simulation results shows that the proposed circuit has 22% power reduction compared to Standard Footless Domino for a 64bit input OR gate.

Background: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are the most well established risk factors for the spread of HIV infection. STIs act as cofactors and facilitators for HIV transmission. The effects of HIV infection on immunity can increase susceptibility to other STIs. The aims and objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence of co-infection of sexually transmitted infections among people living with HIV and AIDS.Methods: A retrospective chart review of the data collected from the clinical records of all HIV patients who had attended the STI clinic of Chengalpattu Medical College, Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu during the five years period, from January 2013 to December 2017, was carried out. Demographic data, clinical manifestations, co-infection of STIs among HIV patients, laboratory investigations and treatment were collected. The data collected were computed and analyzed statistically.Results: During the study period of 5 years from 2013 to 2017 the total number of patients attended the STI clinic were 10825, among that males were 4534 (41.88%) and females were 6291 (58.12%). STIs/RTIs were seen in 2560 (23.65%) cases among the total number of patients attended. HIV was found to be positive in 294 cases, in that 168 (57.15%) were males and 126 (42.85%) were females. In male HIV patients, 51 (30.36%) had co-infection with other STIs/RTIs. In female HIV patients, 57 (45.24) % had co-infection with other STIs/RTIs. Viral STIs was the common co-infection seen in males and vaginal cervical discharge was common in females.Conclusions: STI/RTI co-infection, both symptomatic and asymptomatic are common among PLHIV. Hence they should be regularly counselled regarding the significance of periodic screening for STI/RTIs avoidance of high risk sexual behaviour.

In complex fistula-in-ano, preoperative imaging can help identify secondary tracts and abscesses that can be missed, leading to recurrence. We evaluated hydrogen peroxide-enhanced endoanal ultrasound (PEEUS) in the characterization of fistula compared with standard clinical and operative assessment. Patients with complex fistula-in-ano treated between February 2008 and May 2009 at our institution were prospectively evaluated by PEEUS with recording of the preoperative clinical examination and intraoperative details of the fistula. Of the 135 patients with fistula-in-ano, 68 met the inclusion criteria for complex fistula-in-ano. Correlation of clinical findings and PEEUS to the gold standard intraoperative findings was assessed in characterizing the fistula. The percent agreement between the clinical and PEEUS findings against the gold standard was derived, and the kappa statistic for agreement was determined. The mean age of the cohort was 42.54 ± 10.86 years. The fistula tracts were curvilinear, high, and transsphincteric in 16 (23.53 %), 8 (11.76 %), and 42 (61.76 %) patients, respectively. Secondary tracts and associated abscess cavities were seen in 28 (33.82 %) and 35 (51.47 %) patients, respectively. PEEUS correlated better than clinical examination with regard to site (92.65 vs 79.41 %; p

Service oriented computing is growing as the prominent technology both in the technical and business perspectives. Due to the rapid growth in the volume of service repositories and services, obtaining the appropriate service is becoming tedious in the current scenario. Though advanced techniques are proposed to handle these challenges in conventional environments, still it is in its critical stage in the resource constrained scenarios, particularly in wireless mobile environments. The work presented in this paper proposes a Service Cache Management (SCM) for Mobile Peer-to-Peer (MP2P) networks to facilitate the efficient retrieval of services. We used a communication structure called Distributed Spanning Tree (DST), in which nodes of MP2P are made to form a forest of spanning trees in a distributed fashion. Using the DST structure, fast service cache and retrieval can be achieved within MP2P. Further to enhance the effectiveness of the proposed system, the DST network is optimized with Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), to identify the simplest path between nodes of each layer on the DST. The merits of the proposed techniques are demonstrated in terms of reduced time requirement for cached service search, increased availability, enhanced consistency, scalability and improved hit ratios.

Ailment epidemics due to polluted nourishment are a foremost concern not merely for the food- processing industry but also for the communal at bulky. Performances for mechanized exposure and classification of germs can be a great help in preventing outbreaks and maintaining the safety of the nation's nourishment supply. Identification and classification of food borne pathogens incontrollable gathering scatter arrays is an inspiring new label-free technique that utilizes image-analysis and machine-erudition tools. However, the piece-extraction tools hired for this tactic are computationally complex, and choosing the right amalgamation of scatter related geographies encompasses extensive testing with unalike feature combinations. In this study, I used terminal clusters to hurry up the nose-extraction process, which enables us to analyze the contribution of different scatter-based features to the overall classification accuracy. A set of 1000 sprinkle decorations representing ten different bacterial strains was used. Zernike and Chebyshev moments as well as Haralick texture geographies were computed from the available light-scatter patterns. The most promising features were first selected using Fisher's discriminate analysis, and subsequently a support-vector-machine classifier with an undeviating kernel was used. With extensive testing, we were able to identify a small subset of features that bent the preferred fallouts in terms of classification accuracy and execution speed. The use of scattered computing for scatter pattern analysis, chin extraction, and selection affords an accurate utilization for huge-scale positioning of a sunny scatter constructed tactic to infectious classification.

Biometrics plays an important role in electronic authentication based on biological features of the human beings like hand geometry, palm print, finger print, retina and face geometry. The hardware requirements of the different electronic systems that are subset of biometric systems of categories mentioned above vary significantly. The power consumption increases with the hardware complexity used. Large power consumption leads to less portability which is not desired. Most biometric recognition systems require complex optical systems for properly capturing data without noise. The digital pre-processing of input image is an added advantage. Hand Geometry Recognition is the simplest and robust recognition system among all other recognition methods available. Hand geometry recognition involves extracting the hand which is the foreground from the background using segmentation process. Several segmentation algorithms are available. K-Means algorithm is one of the algorithms. In this work the K-Means algorithm is optimized to be used in the recognition process.

Cloud Computing is an environment for providing information and resources that are delivered as a service to end-users over the Internet on demand. Thus cloud enables users to access their data from any geographical locations at any time and also has brought benefits in the form of online storage services. Cloud storage service avoids the cost expensive on software, personnel maintenance and provides better performance, less storage cost and scalability. But the maintenance of stored data in a secure manner is not an easy task in cloud environment and especially that stored data may not be completely trustworthy. Cloud delivers services through internet which increases their exposure to storage security vulnerabilities. However security is one of the major drawbacks that preventing several large organizations to enter into cloud computing environment. This work surveyed on several existing cloud storage frameworks, techniques and their advantages, drawbacks and also discusses the challenges that are required to implement secure cloud data storage. This survey results help to identify the future research areas and methods for improving the existing drawbacks.

Replica Management is a key issue to reduce the bandwidth consumption, to improve data availability and to maintain data consistency in large distributed systems. Global Replica Management (GRM) means to maintain the data consistency across the entire network. It is preferable particularly for multi-group distributed systems. On the other hand, GRM is not favorable for many applications because a very large number of message passes is needed for replica management processes. In this paper, in order to reduce the number of message passes needed to achieve the efficient GRM strategy, an interconnection structure called the Distributed Spanning Tree (DST) has been employed. The application of DST converts the peer network into logical layered structures and thereby provides a hierarchical mechanism for replication management. It is proved that this hierarchical approach improves the data availability and consistency across the entire network. In addition to these, it is also proved that the proposed approach reduces the data latency and the required number of message passes for any specific application in the network.

Introduction: Male homosexual behavior carries a high risk of transmitting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Ignorance regarding the associated high risk, indulgence inspite of no natural homosexual orientation and not using protective barrier methods can affect the sexual health of adolescents and adults. Aim: (1) To assess the proportion of men who have sex with men (MSM) having a natural homosexual orientation compared to those who had acquired the homosexual behavior initially under various circumstances (such as due to certain misconceptions, fear of having heterosexual contact, peer pressure, and influence of alcohol). (2) To assess the level of awareness regarding increased risk of transmission of STIs associated with homosexual behavior and regarding protective barrier methods. Materials and Methods: After obtaining consent from the subjects, questionnaire - based interview used for obtaining data for this observational (cross-sectional) study. Results: (1) Of the 50 subjects, only about 25% had interest in homosexual behavior prior to initial episode. (2) About 50% subjects indulged in homosexual behavior due to lack/fear of having heterosexual contact. (3) About 60% subjects believed that homosexual behavior carried relatively lower risk of acquiring STIs and 68% subjects have had unprotected contact. (4) About 70% subjects had only acquired this behavior and nearly 60% subjects were interested in heterosexual marriage and not interested in further homosexual behavior. Conclusion: (1) Homosexuality is a natural orientation in some and an acquired behavior in the rest. (2) If homosexual behavior is acquired, due to misconceptions, then imparting sex education and awareness regarding involved risks, and the importance of protective barrier methods will prevent ignorance driven behavior. For those with natural homosexual orientation, the importance of protective barrier methods in homosexual behavior needs emphasis.

Vibration signals extracted from rotating parts of machineries carries lot many information with in them about the condition of the operating machine. Further processing of these raw vibration signatures measured at a convenient location of the machine unravels the condition of the component or assembly under study. This paper deals with the effectiveness of wavelet-based features for fault diagnosis of a gear box using artificial neural network (ANN) and proximal support vector machines (PSVM). The statistical feature vectors from Morlet wavelet coefficients are classified using J48 algorithm and the predominant features were fed as input for training and testing ANN and PSVM and their relative efficiency in classifying the faults in the bevel gear box was compared.

This paper deals with the application of fast single-shot multiclass proximal support vector machine for fault diagnosis of a gear box consisting of twenty four classes. The condition of an inaccessible gear in an operating machine can be monitored using the vibration signal of the machine measured at some convenient location and further processed to unravel the significance of these signals. The statistical feature vectors from Morlet wavelet coefficients are classified using J48 algorithm and the predominant features were fed as input for training and testing multiclass proximal support vector machine. The efficiency and time consumption in classifying the twenty four classes all-at-once is reported.

The wavelet transform (WT) is used to represent all possible types of transients in vibration signals generated by faults in a gear box. It is shown that the transform provides a powerful tool for condition monitoring and fault diagnosis. The vibration signal of a spur bevel gear box in different conditions is used to demonstrate the application of various wavelets in feature extraction. In present work, a discrete wavelet, Daubechies wavelets (db1-db15) is used for feature extraction and their relative effectiveness in feature extraction is compared. The major steps in pattern classification are feature extraction and classification. This paper investigates the use of discrete wavelets for feature extraction and a Decision Tree for classification. J48 Decision Tree algorithm has been used for feature selection as well as for classification. This paper illustrates the powerfulness and flexibility of the discrete wavelet transform to decompose linear and non-linear processing of vibration signal.

Over the past two decades considerable efforts have been undertaken to develop and introduce new alternative fuels for the conventional gasoline and diesel. Many alternative fuels, both liquid and gaseous, have been experimented and some have even been commercialized such as ethanol, natural gas, etc. Hydrogen has been considered as an excellent fuel to replace the petroleum-based fuels due to its clean burning characteristics. In the present experimental investigation, hydrogen was injected in the intake manifold and diesel fuel was injected inside the engine cylinder in the conventional manner. Hydrogen injection parameters such as injection timing, injection duration and quantity of hydrogen injected were optimized based on the performance and emission characteristics. Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) technique was adopted to reduce the oxides of nitrogen emission. From the results it was observed that for hydrogen diesel dual fuel (DF) engine, the optimal operating parameters for hydrogen injection were start of injection at gas exchange top dead centre with injection duration of 30° crank angle with the hydrogen flow rate of 7.5 litres per minute (lpm). With EGR the optimized condition was found to be 20% for the entire load. The brake thermal efficiency with 20% EGR increases by 16% at 75% load as compared with diesel, while at full load it reduces by 8% due to the recirculation of exhaust gases that results in a reduction of intake oxygen concentration compared with part load. NOX emission decreases by five and half times, while other emissions increase by 1.4 times as compared with DF engine. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

To determine the condition of an inaccessible gear in an operating machine the vibration signal of the machine can be continuously monitored by placing a sensor close to the source of the vibrations. These signals can be further processed to extract the features and identify the status of the machine. The vibration signal acquired from the operating machine has been used to effectively diagnose the condition of inaccessible moving components inside the machine. Suitable sensors are kept at various locations to pick up the signals produced by machinery and these signals are very meaningful in condition diagnosis surveillance. To determine the important characteristics and to unravel the significance of these signals, further analysis or processing is required. This paper presents the use of decision tree for selecting best statistical features that will discriminate the fault conditions of the gear box from the signals extracted. These features are extracted from vibration signals. A rule set is formed from the extracted features and fed to a fuzzy classifier. The rule set necessary for building the fuzzy classifier is obtained largely by intuition and domain knowledge. This paper also presents the usage of decision tree to generate the rules automatically from the feature set. The vibration signal from a piezo-electric transducer is captured for the following conditions - good bevel gear, bevel gear with tooth breakage (GTB), bevel gear with crack at root of the tooth (GTC), and bevel gear with face wear of the teeth (TFW) for various loading and lubrication conditions. The statistical features were extracted and good features that discriminate the different fault conditions of the gearbox were selected using decision tree. The rule set for fuzzy classifier is obtained by once using the decision tree again. A fuzzy classifier is built and tested with representative data. The results are found to be encouraging.

Over the past two decades there has been a considerable effort to develop and introduce alternative transportation fuels to replace conventional fuels, gasoline and diesel. Environmental issues are the principal driving forces behind this effort. To date the bulk of research has focused on the carbon-based fuels such as reformulated gasoline, methanol and natural gas. One alternative fuel to carbon-based fuels is hydrogen which is considered to be low polluting fuel. In the present experimental investigation hydrogen was injected into the intake manifold by using an injector. Using an electronic control unit (ECU) the injection timing and the duration were controlled. From the results it is observed that the optimum injection timing is at gas exchange top dead center (GTDC). The efficiency improved by about 15% with an increase in NOX emission by 3% compared to diesel. The smoke emission decreased by almost 100%. A net reduction in carbon emissions was also noticed due to the use of hydrogen. By adopting manifold injection technique the hydrogen–diesel dual fuel engine operates smoothly with a significant improvement in performance and reduction in emissions.

Hydrogen is receiving considerable attention as an alternative fuel to replace the rapidly depleting petroleum-based fuels. Its clean burning characteristics help to meet the stringent emission norms. In this experimental investigation a single-cylinder diesel engine was converted to operate in hydrogen—diesel dual-fuel mode. Hydrogen was injected in the intake manifold and the diesel was injected directly inside the cylinder. The injection timing and the injection duration of hydrogen were optimized on the basis of performance and emissions. Best results were obtained with hydrogen injection at gas exchange top dead centre with an injection duration of 30° crank angle. The flowrate of hydrogen was optimized as 7.5l/min with optimized injection timing and duration. The optimized exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) flowrate was 20 per cent at 75 per cent load. The optimized timings were chosen on the basis of performance, emission, and combustion characteristics. The EGR technique was adopted in the hydrogen—diesel dual-fuel mode by varying the EGR flowrate from 0 per cent to 25 per cent in steps of 5 per cent. The maximum quantity of exhaust gases recycled during the test was 25 per cent (up to 75 per cent load); beyond that unstable combustion was observed with an increase in smoke. The brake thermal efficiency with 20 per cent EGR decreases by 9 per cent compared with diesel. The nitrogen oxide (NO x) emission in hydrogen manifold injection decreases by threefold with 20 per cent EGR operation at full load. The NO x emission tends to reduce drastically with increase in the EGR percentage at all load conditions owing to the increase in heat capacity of the exhaust gases. The smoke decreases by 80 per cent in the dual-fuel operation compared with diesel at 75 per cent load.

The condition of an inaccessible gear in an operating machine can be monitored using the vibration signal of the machine measured at some convenient location and further processed to unravel the significance of these signals. This paper deals with the effectiveness of wavelet-based features for fault diagnosis using support vector machines (SVM) and proximal support vector machines (PSVM). The statistical feature vectors from Morlet wavelet coefficients are classified using J48 algorithm and the predominant features were fed as input for training and testing SVM and PSVM and their relative efficiency in classifying the faults in the bevel gear box was compared.

Exhaust gas recirculation, EGR, is one of the most effective means of reducing NOx emissions from IC engines and is widely used in order to meet the emission standards. In the present work, experimental investigation has been carried out to study the NOx reduction characteristics by exhaust gas recirculation in a dual fueled engine using hydrogen and diesel. A single cylinder diesel engine was converted to operate on hydrogen-diesel dual fuel mode. Hydrogen was injected in intake port and diesel was injected directly inside the cylinder. The injection timing and injection duration of hydrogen were optimized initially based on the performance and emissions. It was observed that start of injection at 5° before gas exchange top dead center (BGTDC) and injection duration of 30° crank angle gives the best results. The flow rate of hydrogen was optimized as 7.5 lpm for the best start of injection and injection duration of hydrogen. Cold exhaust gas recirculation technique was adopted for the optimized injection parameter of hydrogen and flow rate. Maximum quantity of exhaust gases recycled during the test was 25% beyond this the combustion was not stable resulting in increase in smoke.

Diesel engines are the most trusted power sources in the transportation industry. They intake air and emit, among others, the pollutants NO X and particulate matter. Continuous efforts and tests have tried to reduce fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of internal combustion engines. Alternative fuels are key to meeting upcoming stringent emission norms. We study hydrogen as an air-enrichment medium with diesel as an ignition source in a stationary diesel engine system to improve engine performance and reduce emissions. Stationary engines can be operated with less fuel than neat diesel operations, resulting in lower smoke levels and particulate emissions. Hydrogen ( H 2 ) -enriched air systems in diesel engines enable the realization of higher brake thermal efficiency, resulting in lower specific energy consumption (SEC). NO X emissions are reduced from 2762 to 515 ppm with 90% hydrogen enrichment at 70% engine load. At full load, NO X emission marginally increases compared to diesel operation, while both smoke and particulate matter are reduced by about 50%. The brake thermal efficiency increases from 22.78% to 27.9% with 30% hydrogen enrichment. Thus, using hydrogen-enriched air in a diesel engine produces less pollution and better performance.

The internal combustion engines have already become an indispensable and integral part of our present day life style, particularly in the transportation and agricultural sectors [Nagalingam B. Properties of hydrogen. In: Proceedings of the summer school of hydrogen energy, IIT Madras, 1984]. Unfortunately the survival of these engines has, of late, been threatened due to the problems of fuel crisis and environmental pollution. Therefore, to sustain the present growth rate of civilization, a nondepletable, clean fuel must be expeditiously sought. Hydrogen exactly caters to the specified needs. Hydrogen, even though “renewable” and “clean burning”, does give rise to some undesirable combustion problems in an engine operation, such as backfire, pre-ignition, knocking and rapid rate of pressure rise [Srinivasa Rao P. Utilization of hydrogen in a dual fueled engine. In: Proceedings of the summer school of hydrogen energy, IIT Madras, 1984; Siebers DL. Hydrogen combustion under diesel engine conditions. Hydrogen Energy 1998;23:363–71]. The present investigation compares the performance and emission characteristics of a DI diesel engine with gaseous hydrogen as a fuel inducted by means of carburation technique and timed port injection technique (TPI) along with diesel as a source of ignition [Swain N, Design and testing of dedicated hydrogen-fueled engine. SAE 961077, 1996]. In the present study the specific energy consumption, NOx emission and the exhaust gas temperature increased by 6%, 8% and 14%, respectively, and brake thermal efficiency and smoke level reduced by 5% and 8%, respectively, using carburation technique compared to baseline diesel. But in the TPI technique, the specific energy consumption, exhaust gas temperature and smoke level reduced by 15%, 45% and 18%, respectively. The brake thermal efficiency and NOx increased by 17% and 34%, respectively, compared to baseline diesel. The emissions such as HC, CO, and CO2 is very low in both carburation and TPI techniques compared baseline diesel.

With higher rate of depletion of the non-renewable fuels, the quest for an appropriate alternative fuel has gathered great momentum. Though diesel engines are the most trusted power sources in the transportation industry, due to stringent emission norms and rapid depletion of petroleum resources there has been a continuous effort to use alternative fuels. Hydrogen is one of the best alternatives for conventional fuels. Hydrogen has its own benefits and limitations in its use as a conventional fuel in automotive engine system. In the present investigation, hydrogen-enriched air is used as intake charge in a diesel engine adopting exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) technique with hydrogen flow rate at 20 l/min. Experiments are conducted in a single-cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, direct-injection diesel engine coupled to an electrical generator. Performance parameters such as specific energy consumption, brake thermal efficiency are determined and emissions such as oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, smoke and exhaust gas temperature are measured. Usage of hydrogen in dual fuel mode with EGR technique results in lowered smoke level, particulate and NOx emissions.

In recent days, the importance of environment and energy have been emphasized and, among various energy sources, the fuels for automotive use are attracting attention as they are closely related to day-to-day life. The fossil fuels that are widely used have some serious problems. One of these problems is the limit in reserves, the second problem is that they cannot be recycled, and another problem is that they produce many exhaust emissions. Therefore, various research studies on alternative fuels have been carried out to find a substitute for fossil fuels. Hydrogen, a non-carbon fuel, can meet zero-emission vehicles standards in the future and can be commercially used as a fuel, even though it has a number of technical and economical barriers. For this paper, experiments were conducted to determine the optimized injection timing, injection duration, and injection quantity of the fuel for a manifold injected hydrogen-operated engine using diesel fuel as an ignition source for hydrogen. In the manifold injection technique, the optimized condition is the start of injection at gas exchange top dead centre (TDC) with an injection duration of 30° crank angle (CA) with a hydrogen flowrate of 7.5 l/min. The brake thermal efficiency is found to increase by 9 per cent compared with diesel fuel. Smoke is found to be lower for all hydrogen flowrates at all the load conditions owing to the absence of carbon in hydrogen. CO emissions vary from 0.03 to 0.12 vol% compared with from 0.08 to 0.14 vol% in a diesel fuel investigation. The exhaust gas temperature is found to be slightly higher by 7 per cent for the hydrogen operation compared with diesel fuel. Manifold injection systems with diesel fuel as the ignition source operate smoothly, show improved performance, and emit less pollution than diesel fuel does. It is possible to operate the direct-injection diesel engine smoothly using hydrogen in dual-fuel mode for the entire load spectrum.

Objective: Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a condition that has been studied over decades and whose pathogenesis has still not been well defined. Various open and minimally invasive procedures are in vogue for the treatment of intractable TN. All these procedures have their complications and recurrence rates. Percutaneous retrogasserian glycerol rhizotomy (PRGR) is one of the minimally invasive procedures that have been popular for quite a long time. Material and Methods: This paper is a prospective study analyzing the results of 93 patients with refractory TN who were treated with PRGR. Results: There was an immediate pain relief in 96.8% of patients and long-term pain relief in 89.4% of patients, with a mean follow-up duration of 18.8 months. Recurrence of pain was seen in 10.4% of patients. Conclusions: The PRGR is a simple, safe, cost-effective procedure without any need for expensive equipment and with a good outcome that is compared to the other relatively more expensive open and minimally invasive procedures.

Web services are playing a very important role in various business-based applications. There are an enormous amount of web services present and they are creating a huge web traffic. The organizations are trying to reduce the web traffic by having cluster-based web servers. It is a vital task to handle these cluster-based web servers while they have a varying load on it. These servers should be highly scalable and available. Load balancing is an important technique to provide rapid response to the requests of the client. As the process of load balancing occurs fault tolerance should be taken care of. This paper focuses on the scalable, fault-tolerant, and load balancing mechanism of cluster-based web servers. The distributed spanning tree structure is used for balancing the client requests among the cluster-based servers. An architecture based on DST is proposed in this paper for cluster-based web servers.

Seborrhoeic keratosis is a benign tumour composed of epidermal keratinocytes, displaying varying morphological features, frequently pigmented and more common in the elderly. Various clinical and histopathological variants have been described. A genetically determined predisposition to Seborrhoeic keratosis is largely accepted. We report a case of multiple Seborrhoeic keratoses of childhood onset and transmitted for three generations in her family members as an autosomal dominant trait.

A significant group of patient with estrogen receptor (ER) α positive breast tumors fails to appreciably respond to endocrine therapy. An increased understanding of the molecular basis of estrogen-mediated signal transduction and resultant gene expression may lead to novel strategies for treating breast cancer. In this study, we sought to identify the dysregulated genes in breast tumors related to ERα status. Microarray analyses of 31 tumor samples showed 108 genes differentially expressed in ERα (+) and ERα (–) primary breast tumors. Further analyses of gene lists indicated that a significant number of dysregulated genes were involved in mRNA transcription and cellular differentiation. The majority of these genes were found to have promoter-binding sites for E74-like factor 5 (ELF5; 54.6% genes), E2F transcription factor 1 (E2F1; 22.2% genes), and nuclear transcription factor Y alpha (NFYA; 32.4% genes). Six candidate genes ( NTN4, SLC7A8, MLPH, ENPP1, LAMB2, and PLAT) with differential expression were selected for further validation studies using RT-qPCR (76 clinical specimen) and immunohistochemistry (48 clinical specimen). Our studies indicate significant overexpression of all the six genes in ERα (+) breast tumors as compared to ERα (–) breast tumors. In vitro studies using T-47D breast cancer cell line confirmed the estrogen dependant expression of four of the above six genes ( SLC7A8, ENPP1, LAMB2, and PLAT). Collectively, our study provides further insights into the molecular basis of estrogen-dependent breast cancer and identifies “candidate biomarkers” that could be useful for predicting endocrine responsiveness.

Controlling unstable nonlinear systems with neural networks can be problematic. Two examples show that evolutionary programming provides a feasible method for addressing such control problems. >

The proposed work deals with Fault classification a fault location techniques for parallel overhead transmission lines. Fault location is carried out by measuring the distributed line model of faulted line parameters. Different system faults such as LG, LLG and LLLG on a protected transmission line should be detected, classified a located rapidly in order to bring the system to the normal state. A novel application of neural network approach with three variance of feed forward neural networks such as the one with Back propagation algorithm (BPN), Radial basis function (RBF) network and Cascaded correlation feed forward network (CFBPN) is proposed for the protection of double circuit transmission line has been demonstrated in this work. The proposed method uses line current values to learn the hidden relationship in the input patterns. Using the proposed approach, fault detection, classification, location and faulted phase selection could be achieved. An improved performance is experienced once the neural network is trained sufficiently and suitably, thus performing correctly when faced with varied system parameters and conditions. Results of performance studies show that the proposed neural network-based modules outperform the performance of conventional fault selection algorithms. Among the ANN modules, result of RBF network is found to be better than the other two networks in terms of accuracy.

We describe a unique case of prolonged nausea and vomiting following posterior fossa craniotomy for removal of a meningioma. No apparent neurological or gastrointestinal causes were discovered except for a delayed gastric emptying time. The symptoms gradually resolved along with normalization of the gastric emptying time. Possible pathogenic mechanisms are discussed.