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Background: Automatic human emotion recognition system is an active area of research due to its wide applications in the field of Human Computer Interaction(HCI) systems, driver fatigue monitoring systems, surveillance systems, human assistance systems, smile detectors etc. Objective: The study presents a fuzzy based approach to extract facial features from input image and builds different classification models to classify the image into two emotion classes i.e. happy and neutral. The system has potential implications in the field of smile detection systems, customer experience analysis and patient monitoring systems. Methods: The proposed system determines the dimensional attributes (l-attribute and w-attribute) of mouth region extracted from the facial image using viola-jones algortithm. The feature set is generated by using a total of 136 images from JAFFE, NimStim and MUG dataset. The differentiating power of the attribures is then evaluated using five different classification models. Results: The accuracy, precision and recall is determined for each classification model. The results show good accuracy of 70% for the grayscale JAFFE and NimStim databases and 95% for the coloured MUG database. Conclusion: The mouth features calculated in the study are based on the geometric coordinates which eliminates the possibility of false distance measurements due to presence of noise or shadows.

Spectro-temporal features of speech are the basis of phonological comprehension and production in the brain. Thus, these features provide a relevant framework to study speech and language development in children. In this paper, we present a novel framework to study the statistics of spectro-temporal features of speech that are encoded at different timescales. These timescales correspond to different linguistic units such as prosodic or syllabic components. The framework is tested on a speech corpus consisting of 169 speech samples. The paper demonstrates usage of the proposed framework in finding milestones of speech development in children. The results indicate the presence of more number of spectro-temporal features encoded at short timescales in adults as compared to children. However, no significant difference is observed in the spectro-temporal features encoded at long timescales between these groups. The proposed framework is also used in studying the speech impairments of children and adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. The results reveal the absence of some spectro-temporal features encoded at both the timescales and their absence is more prominent in shorter timescales. The suggested framework can be used for studying speech development and impairment in different disorders.

This study presents a geometric feature based automatic facial expression recognition system. The proposed system utilises the facial landmark points to determine the relative distances between the facial features in order to capture deformities caused by the movement of facial muscles due to different expressions. Three feature sets are generated by using landmark coordinates, relative distances between the facial points and a combination of both. Discriminating power of each feature set is determined by training different classification models for classifying an image into six basic emotions or neutral state. The proposed system is validated on two publically available facial expression databases. Experimental results show good accuracy of 95.5% for MUG database on the combined features by using ensemble neural network.

The objective of this study was to examine the prevalence and relationship between maternal periodontal disease and preterm low birth weight (LBW) babies among women delivering at Hindu Rao Hospital, Delhi, India. A case control study was performed on 150 women fulfilling the selection criteria over a period of one year. The study consisted of 50 cases, (women delivering preterm babies weighing ≤2.5 kg, Group I) and 100 controls (women delivering babies at ≥37 weeks and weighing >2.5 kg, Group II). Associated risk factors for preterm low birth weight (PT-LBW) were ascertained by means of a structured questionnaire and maternal notes. Women having any of the possible risk factors for preterm LBW were either excluded or confounded in the study. The prevalence of periodontal disease was assessed by the community periodontal index of treatment needs (CPITN) scoring method, with scores ranging from 0 to 4. Data were analyzed using Graphpad Prism-5 software. P value and odds ratio (OR) with 95 % confidence interval were calculated as and when required for statistical analysis. Prevalence of periodontal disease was 84.66 % (n = 150) in the study population. Prevalence of periodontal disease was high, at least in some form or other, in cases (100 %) as compared to controls (77 %). The prevalence of severe periodontal disease (CPITN score-4) was 8 % in cases and 3 % in controls. Periodontal disease is an avoidable risk factor for LBW as almost all of the known risk factors for LBW were either excluded or confounded during the study. Hence, routine periodontal examination and advice on good oral hygiene should be included as part of preconceptional care and antenatal checkups during pregnancy. Any dysfunction should be thoroughly investigated and treated for the sake of health of both mother and baby.

Development of speech is very crucial for good quality of life. People with learning disabilities face challenges in communication due to deficiencies in speech production and require interventions in terms of training and rehabilitation to become less dependent. For providing specific trainings, it will be valuable to know the exact nature of these deficiencies through acoustic analysis. This study investigated fundamental frequency and intensity in a speech of 95 subjects including 39 normal developing children, 20 adults and 36 subjects with mild to moderate intellectual disability (mental retardation). The results show significant differences in these acoustic measurements. This present study also developed a model that classify the normal developing and intellectually disable groups based on these acoustic features. The findings suggest that acoustic cues such as fundamental frequency along with intensity play a significant role in classifying the groups. It was shown that classifiers with good accuracy can be built based on these parameters which indicate differentiating capabilities of the said features. Such attempts to build classification models can also aid in early diagnosis of intellectual or learning disabilities.

Sharing medical data with numerous stakeholders for varied purposes is a perplexing problem facing healthcare systems throughout the world. All this needs to be done, whilst ensuring patient and health data privacy and data integrity. Through this paper, an attempt has been made to present a novel distributed digital health record management system. The blockchain framework has been built using the tools provided by hyper ledger, an open source project. This system empowers patients with a comprehensive, secure, immutable, and easily accessible digital record of their health. Also, this information is available across multiple practitioners and healthcare providers throughout the world. This system can therefore empower the emergence of health data economics, empowering researchers with the health data and giving patients an opportunity to share their health data without losing anonymity. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a prototype of a health data management system utilising blockchain.

Background: Pain and pyrexia are the warning signals, primarily protective in nature, that cause discomfort and suffering and may even be unbearable and incapacitating. The modern drugs (like opioids, NSAIDs, corticosteroids) currently used for the management of pain, fever and inflammatory conditions, present with many known adverse effects. Tinospora cordifolia known as Giloe, widely used in folk medicine due to its property to cure a number of diseases. Hence the present study was undertaken to explore the analgesic activity of water-soluble extract of stem of T. cordifolia in albino rats in experimentally induced pain.Methods: Present study was done in the department of pharmacology, albino rats were used to study the analgesic activity of T. cordifolia aqueous extract at the dose of 1.25g/kg,2.5g/kg and 5g/kg p.o. Various methods like Eddy’s hot plate, tail flick test and acetic acid induced writhing were used for the anti- nociceptive study.Results: In Eddy’s hot plate and tail flick test an increase in reaction time was observed with peak effect at 90min. Results were similar to the standard drug Tramadol in acetic acid induced writhing increase in time of onset, decrease in number and duration of writhing was observed.Conclusions: Aqueous extract of T. cordifolia was effective in all the three models of pain suggesting its possible action by central and peripheral mechanisms. Activity of T. cordifolia can be attributed to various phytoconstituents viz. protoberberine alkaloids, terpenoids, glycosides and polysaccharides. It can be developed as potent analgesic agent in future.

This paper reviews the technology used in Speech-to-Speech Translation that is the phrases spoken in one language are immediately spoken in another language by the device. Speech-to-Speech Translation is a three step software process which includes Automatic speech Recognition, Machine Translation and voice synthesis. This paper includes the major speech translation projects using different approaches for speech recognition, translation and text to speech synthesis highlighting the major pros and cons for the approach being used.

This paper describes the characteristics comparison of bulk FINFET and SOI FINFET. The scaling trend in device dimension require limit on short channel effect through the control of subthreshold slope and DIBL characteristics.It can be achieved by proper device design. The subthreshold characteristics are plotted with the variation of gate voltage for different doping profile .This paper also compares the performance improvement of Multi-gate Bulk and SOI MOSFET over Single-gate bulk and SOI MOSFET.The simulation results are obtained with the help of TCAD 3-D device simulator are well matched with the ideal characteristics.

In speech development research, it's important to know how speech acoustic features vary as a function of age and the age when the variability and magnitude of acoustic features start to exhibit adult-like patterns. During the first few years of life, a child's speech changes from the cries and babbles of an infant to adult-like words and phrases of a young child. A number of acoustic studies observed that, adult's speech compared to children's speech, exhibits lower pitch and formant frequencies, shorter segmental durations, and lesser temporal and spectral variability. In this research we extracted acoustic, spectral and temporal features of a speech signal and then classify these features to predict the age of the subjects using different classification techniques. The feature vector comprised of fundamental frequency, formants, lpc coefficients and segmental duration. This study investigated the developmental patterns and the varying trends observed in speech acoustics with advancement in age and gender. The investigation then contributed in predicting the age of the speakers by analyzing these extracted features using various classification techniques and the result revealed maximum recognition rate by using neuro-fuzzy classifiers. This prediction of age may further help us in analyzing the speech samples in order to predict early speech disorders or language delay in children with neuro-developmental disorder.

Fibroids arising from cervix are rare tumours accounting for 2% of all fibroids. A cervical leiomyoma is commonly single and is either interstitial or subserous, rarely it becomes submucous and polypoidal. Anterior cervical fibroid may press on urinary bladder and urethra and displace the urethro-vesical junction giving rise to urinary frequency and retention. Management of symptomatic cervical fibroid is hysterectomy or myomectomy and need an expert hand. Here we report a case of huge anterior cervical fibroid of 15x15x7cm with an unusual presentation of menorrhagia of only 2 days and no urinary symptoms. Inspite of the fibroid being huge and impacted, hysterectomy was done successfully without any injury to bladder and ureters.

This is a case of a 9-year-old boy with a congenital arteriovenous malformation (AVM) of the right upper extremity arising from the right subclavian artery. He underwent open surgical excision of the vascular tumor. Upon reviewing the literature, a high incidence of right-sided congenital AVM of the proximal upper extremity was identified. It has been suggested that this high incidence may be related to the complexity of the embryologic development of the right subclavian artery.

Thalassemia and thalassemic hemoglobinopathies pose serious health problem leading to severe morbidity and mortality in Indian population. Plethora of hemoglobin variants is prevalent in multiethnic Indian population. The aim of the present study was to analyze laboratory aspects, namely, hematological profile and HPLC findings of the hemoglobin variants detected, and to discuss problems that we faced in diagnosis in a routine clinical laboratory. We screened a total of 4800 cases in a hospital based population of North India in a 2-years period of by automated HPLC method using the Variant Hemoglobin Testing System (Variant II Beta Thalassemia Short Program, Bio-Rad Laboratories) under the experimental conditions specified by the manufacturer. Whole blood in EDTA was used and red cell indices were determined using automated hematology analyzer. We detected 290 cases with abnormal variants in which beta thalassemia was the most common followed by hemoglobin E. Here, we discuss the laboratory aspects of various hemoglobin disorders and diagnostic difficulties in cases like borderline HbA2 values, presence of silent mutation, alpha thalassemia gene, and few rare variants which at times require correlation with genetic study. Special attention was given to HbA2 level even in presence of a structural variant to rule out coinheritance of beta thalassemia gene.

The results and management of penetrating thoracic trauma are largely dependent upon the extent of injury to internal organs as well as the skills of the attending clinicians. Thoracic trauma in children may be associated with rib fractures, flail chest, soft tissue injury, intrapleural lesions such as haemothorax and pneumothorax, parenchymal lung injuries such as pulmonary contusion and lung laceration as well as mediastinal lesions, including cardiac injury,[1,2] and yet our patient fortuituously had none of these, despite suffering a major, and what could potentially have been a life-threatening accident. The sources of perioperative morbidity and mortality in subjects suffering penetrating thoracic injuries include airway obstruction, respiratory failure and haemorrhage. Clinicians need to be adequately trained to deal with these problems. Trauma mainly affects the younger population and happens to be the most common cause of mortality in patients in the first three decades of life. The technical difficulties encountered during the perioperative management of the patient with severe penetrating thoracic injury are highlighted here.

Background: Thyroid nodule is one of the most common endocrinopathies occurring children and adolescents. Though thyroid nodule is rare in the pediatric age group, the rate of malignancy is much higher in this age group compared to adult population. Aim: The objective is to study the application of The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology (TBSRTC) in pediatric patients and compare the findings with histology. Materials and Methods: A total of 218 cases younger than 18 years were studied in a 4-year period from August 2010 to July 2014. The smears were categorized according to TBSRTC into six categories — Nondiagnostic, benign, atypia of undetermined significance/follicular lesion of undetermined significance (AUS/FLUS), suspicious for follicular neoplasm (SFN), suspicious for malignancy (SM), and malignancy. Results: Out of 218 cases, 33 were males and 185 were females. Histological follow-up was available in 44 cases. The diagnosis according to TBSRTC included 12 (5.5%) nondiagnostic, 151 (69.26%) benign, 23 (10.5%) AUS/FLUS, 18 (8.2%) SFN, 5 (2.3%) SM, and 9 (4.1%) malignancy cases. On histological follow-up, the rate of malignancy in each category was 0%, 0%, 8.3%, 10% 100%, and 100%, respectively. Conclusion: The study demonstrates that TBSRTC in pediatric thyroid nodule is as sensitive and specific as in adults, especially with 100% accuracy in the diagnosis of benign and malignant categories.

An ad hoc network is a group of wireless mobile computers or nodes in which individual nodes cooperate by forwarding packets for each other to allow nodes to communicate beyond direct wireless transmission range. In this paper I presented the design and performance evaluation of a new on demand ad hoc routing protocol, called SWARM. SWARM used mechanisms of swarm intelligence to based select good routes to destinations. SWARM was Scalable, Adaptable, Autonomous and have good Fault tolerance capability. This paper presents the simulated performance comparison of SWARM with AODV and DSR in different CBR traffic flow. Performance evaluation of AODV, DSR and SWARM was evaluated on packet delivery ratio, network throughput, end-to-end latency and packet transmission rate.

Cantrell's pentalogy with ectopia cordis is an extremely rare and lethal congenital anomaly, with a reported incidence of 1:100000 births in developed countries. We report a neonate who presented with ectopia cordis along with cleft lower sternum, upper abdominal wall defect, ectopic umbilicus, diaphragmatic defect, and interventricular septal defect. The neonate had respiratory distress with peripheral cyanosis and died because of acidosis and electrolyte imbalance before surgical intervention could be undertaken. We discuss the case and present a brief review of literature and of embryogenesis