195 research outputs found
Food Security in South Asia : Issues and Opportunities
Get PDFFood security is defined as economic access to food along with food production and food availability. Agriculture in the SAR (South Asian Region) is caught in a low equilibrium trap with low productivity of staples, supply shortfalls, high prices, low returns to farmers and area diversification - all these factors can be a threat to food security. South Asia still has the highest number of people (423 millions) living on less than one dollar a day. The region has the highest concentration of undernourished (299 million) and poor people with about 40 per cent of the worlds hungry. Despite an annual 1.7 per cent reduction in the prevalence of undernourishment in the region in the past decade, the failure to reduce the absolute number of the undernourished remains a major cause for concern. Estimates by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) indicate that by 2010, Asia will still account for about one-half of the worlds undernourished population, of which two-thirds will be from South Asia. Though SAARC countries have established a food bank to meet the needs of food security in the region, it has not been operational even during times of crisis. This is despite the felt need of member nations to evolve mechanisms to make the SAARC Food Security Reserve operational. It is against this background that this study has been undertaken. Conducted in collaboration with think-tanks from South Asian countries, it aims to identify issues relating to food security, the policy initiatives taken to tackle these issues, evaluate these policies and suggest measures to overcome identified constraints in order to improve the food security situation in the region.South Asia, food security, Safety Nets, Food Bank
Supporting bodily communication in video consultations of physiotherapy
Get PDF© 2018 Dr Deepti AggarwalPhysiotherapists are increasingly organising video consultations to support their patients over-a-distance. Physiotherapy is all about movements, and physiotherapists work on improving the subtle differences in the movements to restore the functioning of the affected body part. However, there exists a limited understanding on how physiotherapists assess and treat patient’s movements over video particularly when the limitations of video technology in mediating bodily information are already known.
This thesis attempts to fill the gap by investigating how interactive technologies can support physiotherapists in understanding the patient’s bodily information during video consultations. To address this question, I conducted three studies each employing a different methodology. Study 1 examined the challenges that physiotherapists face in interpreting patients’ bodily information during video consultations through a field study. This study highlighted that video technology limits physiotherapists in understanding subtle differences in patient’s movements particularly related to lower limbs. Findings of this study guided the development of a research prototype, SoPhy - a wearable technology that monitors lower limb movements of patients over-a-distance. SoPhy consists of two parts: (1) a pair of socks with embedded sensors that captures patient’s movements; and (2) a web-interface that displays information about weight distribution, range of movement, and foot orientation to physiotherapists in real-time. Study 2 and 3 were focused on the evaluation of the developed prototype first in the laboratory through experimental research, and then in the hospital setting through field deployments. Study 2 showed that SoPhy increased the diagnostic confidence of physiotherapists in assessing lower limb movements over video. And Study 3 showed that SoPhy enhanced the clinician-patient communication, and guided more accurate assessment and treatment of the patients during video consultations.
This thesis makes four contributions: First, it provides a detailed understanding of how bodily communication is employed by physiotherapists during video consultations. Secondly, it develops an understanding of the limitations of video technology in supporting the tasks of physiotherapists. The third contribution is a novel technology, SoPhy, that communicates information of patient’s weight distribution patterns over-a-distance to support physiotherapists in their clinical tasks. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that the efficacy of physiotherapists to assess and treat patients over video can be enhanced by using sensing technologies like SoPhy. The thesis aims to stimulate interest in designing novel technologies that can support effective assessment and treatment of body movements over-a-distance
Doctor, can you see my squats?: Understanding bodily communication in video consultations for physiotherapy
No full textThis paper investigates the challenges of bodily communication during video-based clinical consultations. While previous works describe the lack of eye contact and gestures over video, it is unclear how these limitations impact the course of a clinical consultation, particularly in a domain like physiotherapy where the focus is on improving body movements and functioning. To contribute to this understanding, we conducted observations of 10 naturally occurring video and face-to-face consultations for physiotherapy. We found that clinicians rely on a variety of incidental bodily cues and fine-details of body movements to assess and examine the patient. These bodily cues were noticeable during face-to-face consultations; however, a variety of bodily cues got missed over video. Consequently, video consultations became conversational where the clinicians used verbal conduct to get a fair understanding of the patient's health. To guide design of future video consultation systems, we reflect on our understanding as 4 design sensitivities: Visual Acuity, Field-of-view, Clinical Asymmetries, and Time Sequence
MKW 1
No full textThis version of TMCM works almost entirely in terms of food. The town visitor asks if his country host does not have other food to offer. When told No, he answers Then come with me. I will show you all the tasty food I eat everyday. Cake and juicy fruits are both mentioned and pictured. Pictured are also cheese and crackers. By contrast with most versions, here a pretty woman disturbs their feast, followed by a cat. I can't eat. I don't feel safe here! Upon arrival in the country, He was happy and safe in his home. Moral: No pleasure is greater than a safe life. Each page has two or three lines of text and a large, energetic picture. Perhaps the best illustration shows the country mouse still shaking and sweating on 13.Edited by Deept
MKW 4
No full textThis version of LM has the mouse entering the lion's cave during the lion's nap after lunch. This mouse pleads If you free me, then, one day, I will also help you. The lion's English seems a bit strange in his answer: How a small mouse like you can help me? The art establishes well from the beginning that all this takes place in a forest. Each page has two or three lines of text and a large, energetic picture. Perhaps the best illustration is the lion's wake-up look at the mouse on his paw (3). The editors were wise to choose it for the cover picture.Edited by Deept
Secure Data Mining in Cloud using Homomorphic Encryption
No full textME, CSEDWith the advancement in technology, industry, e-commerce and research a large amount
of complex and pervasive digital data is being generated which is increasing at an
exponential rate and often termed as big data. Traditional Data Storage systems are not
able to handle Big Data and also analyzing the Big Data becomes a challenge and thus it
cannot be handled by traditional analytic tools. Cloud Computing can resolve the problem
of handling, storage and analyzing the Big Data as it distributes the big data within the
cloudlets. No doubt, Cloud Computing is the best answer available to the problem of Big
Data storage and its analyses but having said that, there is always a potential risk to the
security of Big Data storage in Cloud Computing, which needs to be addressed. Data
Privacy is one of the major issues while storing the Big Data in a Cloud environment.
Data Mining based attacks, a major threat to the data, allows an adversary or an
unauthorized user to infer valuable and sensitive information by analyzing the results
generated from computation performed on the raw data. This thesis proposes a secure kmeans
data mining approach assuming the data to be distributed among different hosts
preserving the privacy of the data. The approach is able to maintain the correctness and
validity of the existing k-means to generate the final results even in the distributed
environment
The traveler as author: examining self-presentation and discourse in the (self) published travel blog
Get PDF© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. From the perspective of Goffman’s theories of self-presentation, travel blogs can be described as narratives that indicate the different roles occupied by an individual’s online self. A blogger may discursively position the self as a traveler, rather than a tourist, a dichotomy that underpins much critical debate in the area of travel and tourism studies, thus creating tensions within the blog. These tensions are heightened when blogs presented as accounts of travel are published as guidebooks or books that promote tourism. It can be argued that in such cases the act of publishing commercializes these narratives and introduces an element of touristic discourse. Moreover, the choice of either a legacy publisher or a self-publishing service can have implications for how a travel blogger may be presented and perceived as a reputable published author. Against this background, this article explores how travel blogs negotiate the discursive tensions produced as a result of the presentation of various aspects of self, particularly as a published author and as a traveler as opposed to a tourist
SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies: Longevity, breadth, and evasion by emerging viral variants
No full textThe Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibody neutralization response and its evasion by emerging viral variants and variant of concern (VOC) are unknown, but critical to understand reinfection risk and breakthrough infection following vaccination. Antibody immunoreactivity against SARS-CoV-2 antigens and Spike variants, inhibition of Spike-driven virus–cell fusion, and infectious SARS-CoV-2 neutralization were characterized in 807 serial samples from 233 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)–confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) individuals with detailed demographics and followed up to 7 months. A broad and sustained polyantigenic immunoreactivity against SARS-CoV-2 Spike, Membrane, and Nucleocapsid proteins, along with high viral neutralization, was associated with COVID-19 severity. A subgroup of “high responders” maintained high neutralizing responses over time, representing ideal convalescent plasma donors. Antibodies generated against SARS-CoV-2 during the first COVID-19 wave had reduced immunoreactivity and neutralization potency to emerging Spike variants and VOC. Accurate monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses would be essential for selection of optimal responders and vaccine monitoring and design
SoPhy: Smart socks for video consultations of physiotherapy
No full textWhile physiotherapists are increasingly organizing video consultations, assessment of lower body movements over video remains a challenge. We present a wearable technology, SoPhy that captures and presents information related to three key aspects of lower limb movements - range of foot movement, weight distribution and foot orientation. SoPhy consists of a pair of socks embedded with sensors for the patients to wear, and a web-interface that displays the captured information to physiotherapists in real-time. The objective of this demonstration is to offer first-hand experience of SoPhy and to create conversations around designing technologies for supporting bodily communication in video consultations
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