370 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Panel 9. Paper 9.3: Connecting social and physical boundaries of the commons : Study of kuhl irrigation systems of Kangra
No full textAmit Tandon is trained as an architect and has a masters degree in Water Policy & Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and works as an independent professional in the field of Water and Habitat. He brings transdisciplinary perspective in his work keeping Water as a core-discipline. His work looks into water resource management, water-data, policy research, policy advocacy and water heritage. He is also the recipient of Safe Water Crusade award (2019) and active member of Working Group for Water&Heritage in India.Water has been a lifeline of Indian agrarian society. The thriving agrarian economy requires water for irrigation and the need for resources to the evolution of indigenous technology through generations of communities. Kuhl irrigation system of Kangra is a community managed traditional irrigation systems found in western Himalayan. These are a centuries-old network of interconnected drainage channels that drain water from nearby khads (rivers) into the fields. The irrigation systems have codified customary laws, systems of collective action for maintenance and preservation and various traditional livelihoods. Kuhls of Kangra is a unique case where the community is owned and managed kuhls exist. There are kuhls where communities practice public water management practices, conflict resolution and where are the kuhls where public department has taken over kuhls. The paper explores kuhl irrigation systems in the current context of changing governance and physical structure of the kuhls. It can be seen as an example of a socio-ecological system and further comments on the resilience of the socio-ecological system. In the paper it looks at external challenges such as ecological, socio-political and economic, and provides a framework for the development of local interventions for water resource management
Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during winter
No full textRelated data used for the Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans paper entitled "Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during winter" by Karimpour, F., Tandon, A., and Mahadevan, A.</p
Development of an automated updated selvester QRS scoring system using SWT-based QRS fractionation detection and classification
No full textThe Selvester score is an effective means for estimating the extent of myocardial scar in a patient from lowcost ECG recordings. Automation of such a system is deemed to help implementing low-cost high-volume screening mechanisms of scar in the primary care. This article describes, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, an automated implementation of the updated Selvester scoring system for that purpose, where fractionated QRS morphologies and patterns are identified and classified using a novel Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) based fractionation detection algorithm. This stage informs the two principal steps of the updated Selvester scoring scheme - the confounder classification and the point awarding rules. The complete system is validated on 51 ECG records of patients detected with ischemic heart disease. Validation has been carried out using manually detected confounder classes and computation of the actual score by expert cardiologists as the ground truth. Our results show that as a stand-alone system it is able to classify different confounders with 94.1% accuracy whereas it exhibits 94% accuracy in computing the actual score. When coupled with our previously proposed automated ECG delineation algorithm, that provides the input ECG parameters, the overall system shows 90% accuracy in confounder classification and 92% accuracy in computing the actual score and thereby showing comparable performance to the stand-alone system proposed here, with the added advantage of complete automated analysis without any human intervention
Long-segment myelitis, meningoencephalitis, and axonal polyneuropathy in a case of scrub typhus
No full textScrub typhus, a mite-borne zoonotic disease, is endemic in several parts of India. It may cause multisystemic disease involving lungs, heart, spleen, liver, hematological system, and nervous system. Neurological involvement may include meningoencephalitis, cerebellitis, cranial nerve palsies, plexopathy, transverse myelitis, muscle dysfunction, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, parkinsonian syndrome, and Guillain–Barre syndrome. Here, we report a rare patient of scrub typhus, who developed meningoencephalitis followed by long-segment myelitis and axonal polyneuropathy, with hepatic, renal, hematological, and pulmonary involvement, following acute febrile illness with associated neurocysticercosis. He gained consciousness with a resolution of almost all of his complaints, with the exception of muscular power, which showed partial improvement following treatment with doxycycline, azithromycin, and steroids. What needs to be explored is whether the existence of neurological scrub typhus with neurocysticercosis is the coincidental price paid for living in the tropics or there is something more to it as in case of Japanese encephalitis and neurocysticercosis co-infection
Endobronchial neurogenic tumor: A combination of traumatic neuroma and neurofibroma
No full textTraumatic neuromas are uncommon and benign lesions arising from a peripheral nerve injury during surgery. Here we describe a case with histopathologic features of both a traumatic neuroma and neurofibroma in a patient without integumentary physical exam findings nor prior surgical history. A 54 year old male was admitted for surgical debridement of a foot ulcer. During pre-operative evaluation and review of imaging multiple CT scans revealed a stable, 4 mm endobronchial lesion in the left lower lobe. Given history of nicotine abuse, bronchoscopy was performed. Bronchoscopy showed a pearly, polypoid lesion. Histopathological results showed strong positivity for S-100 protein and spindle cell proliferation. Repeat CT chest showed no new lesions in the bronchial tree. The rarity of this case is noted not only by the limited number of bronchial neurogenic tumors, but the combined features in this case of a traumatic neuroma and neurofibroma which has not been described
Sistem Kontrol Motor Pompa Pengisi Tower Air (Tandon)
No full textThe need for clean water has become a basic need that must be met every day. The community needs a lot of water consumption but sometimes a little. Due to the irregular use of water, it will result in the supply of water in the reservoir will quickly decrease which results in the volume of water in the tendon will run out. Usually to monitor the water supply in the water storage tank (tower) using an ordinary pump, where humans fill the pump continuously or permanently. This has an impact on the reduction of water supply due to erratic usage. The author with the title "Pump Motor Control System Filling Water Tower (Tandon)" which aims if at the time of use of water expenditure is very much, the volume in the reservoir will quickly decrease. Then the pump motor will accelerate the automatic rotation so that it will quickly fill the volume of water in the reservoir. So that the tendon is not empty due to more use. And if at the time of using a small amount of water discharge, the volume in the reservoir will decrease slowly, the pump motor will automatically rotate slowly. This will be efficient and flexible due to the uncertainty of excessive usage so that the volume of water in the reservoir does not empt
Recommended from our members
Task-Based Information-Theoretic Design of X-Ray Computed Tomography Systems: Detection and Estimation Tasks
No full textX-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is an established imaging and anomaly detection modality that is employed widely across multiple applications such as medical imaging, security screening and non-destructive testing. In security screening applications, traditional X-ray threat detection systems employ image reconstruction and segmentation as pre-processing steps before making threat/non-threat decision. In this work, we consider image reconstruction and threat detection as separate tasks. For the threat detection task, we consider detection directly on the raw CT sinogram data without any post-measurement data processing steps like image reconstruction and segmentation. We also explore methods that improve the X-ray CT threat detection and image reconstruction performance using non-traditional measurement designs. In the first part of this work, we consider multiplexed measurement design by optimizing a metric on the threat detection error rate (Bhattacharyya Bound), given a fixed photon budget. We also consider an adaptive measurement design for X-ray threat detection, where the next measurement design is based on the information retrieved from previous measurements. We observe that while multiplexed and conventional systems have comparable threat detection performance, the adaptive system outperforms both systems in terms of detection error rate. We also study the effect of material variation on the threat detection performance of X-ray CT systems. Traditionally, X-ray measurements are modeled by Poisson distribution (shot-noise) based on a fixed photon-absorption model. The fixed photon absorption model ignores the inherent material variations due to environmental and manufacturing factors that are encountered in applications. Here we incorporate material variability in the X-ray measurement by employing a Negative Binomial (NB) distribution. Based on this measurement model, we derive an information-theoretic metric (Cauchy-Schwarz Mutual Information) as a measure of threat detection performance. We observe that material variation in high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) region becomes a limiting factor for threat detection performance of X-ray systems. However, in low SNR region the measurement is dominated by shot-noise and the effect of material variation on threat detection performance is negligible. In the second part of this work, we consider multiplexed measurement design for the image reconstruction task using the Bayesian Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (BCRLB) on Mean Squared Error (MSE) metric subject to a fixed photon budget. We observed that the multiplexed system with 5 exposures outperforms the conventional system in terms of MSE.Release after 11/09/201
Inclusive Design for Regaining Lost Identity: Accessible, Aesthetic and Effortless Clothing
No full textInclusive Design for Regaining Lost Identity is a research project that aims to design and develop accessible clothing that is inclusive and fashionable to foster psycho-social well-being and to enhance the self-esteem of women with disabilities. The research explored inclusive design solutions for the saree – a traditional Indian garment for women, through a practice-led iterative methodology of designing and producing pragmatic and aesthetic sarees with enhanced ease of dressing and undressing. These sarees are intended to offer the participants a sense of independence and individuality whilst responding to their needs for self-expression. Clothing for persons with disabilities frequently follows a medical model which focuses on their inabilities. Such experiences tend to aggravate feelings of inadequacy and lower self-esteem due to the limited choices of pertinent fashionable clothing. Ethnographic research was conducted with women in the age range of twenty to forty years with mild to moderate physical disabilities, including those with cerebral palsy, reduced dexterity and limb amputations. Investigations into apparel-related barriers they face and their expectations and desires about clothing pointed to a huge void in terms of designed inclusive clothing for women with physical disabilities. Self-efficacy emerged as a significant criteria for the selection of garments. A series of informed study prototypes of adaptive sarees were designed and developed along with an exploration into the feasibility of 3D printed fasteners intended to alleviate potential feelings of frustration and deprivation while wearing saree is an elaborate garment that requires precise draping, which makes the saree complicated to wear and inconvenient to carry, particularly for women with physical disabilities. For many women in India, the saree remains the customary dress, especially for work and occasions, yet minimal progress and advancement has been made to enhance its accessibility and ease of use. This research aspires to provide inclusive design solutions that seamlessly embrace persons with disabilities, to elevate their agency and to challenge and change prevailing negative attitudes, misconceptions, and stereotypes in relation to their specific needs and desires
A low-complexity ECG feature extraction algorithm for mobile healthcare applications
No full textThis paper introduces a low-complexity algorithm for the extraction of the fiducial points from the Electrocardiogram (ECG). The application area we consider is that of remote cardiovascular monitoring, where continuous sensing and processing takes place in low-power, computationally constrained devices, thus the power consumption and complexity of the processing algorithms should remain at a minimum level. Under this context, we choose to employ the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) with the Haar function being the mother wavelet, as our principal analysis method. From the modulus-maxima analysis on the DWT coefficients, an approximation of the ECG fiducial points is extracted. These initial findings are complimented with a refinement stage, based on the time-domain morphological properties of the ECG, which alleviates the decreased temporal resolution of the DWT. The resulting algorithm is a hybrid scheme of time and frequency domain signal processing. Feature extraction results from 27 ECG signals from QTDB, were tested against manual annotations and used to compare our approach against the state-of-the art ECG delineators. In addition, 450 signals from the 15-lead PTBDB are used to evaluate the obtained performance against the CSE tolerance limits. Our findings indicate that all but one CSE limits are satisfied. This level of performance combined with a complexity analysis, where the upper bound of the proposed algorithm, in terms of arithmetic operations, is calculated as 2:423N + 214 additions and 1:093N + 12 multiplications for N 861 or 2:553N + 102 additions and 1:093N +10 multiplications for N > 861 (N being the number of input samples), reveals that the proposed method achieves an ideal trade-off between computational complexity and performance, a key requirement in remote CVD monitoring systems
Corporate governance and equity prices : evidence from the Czech and Slovak Republics
No full textThe 1992 Czechoslavakia mass privatization program involving about 1,500 eneterprises and implemented through a voucher scheme with competitive bidding was a bold step in changing the ownership and governance of a large part of the economy. It represents a clear test case of one approach, and other countries may benefit from its lessons. At the time, much skepticisism was voiced about mass privatization: it would lead to diffuse ownership, and no effective corporate governance would result. But innovative forces led to the emergence of investment funds that collected much of the individuals'voucher points, leading to a much more concentrated ownership structure. It has been expected that this concentrated ownership would lead to improved corporate governance. But the jury is still out. So far, only limited and largely anecdotal evidence is available on the impact investment funds have on the way firms are being managed. Too little time has passed and too many shocks have occurred (for example, the split of the Czech and Slovak Republics) to expect to find discernible changes in corporate governance on measures of actual firm performance. An alternative approach is to investigate whether firms that ended up with more concentratedownership -- and possibly improved governance -- sell for higher prices, either in the last voucher round or in the secondary market since then. In a forward-looking financial market, one can expect prices to incorporate the effects of better ownership on future firm performance and associated dividends to shareholders. Put differently, one would expect that two firms with different shareholding structures, but otherwise identical, would trade at different prices -- with the firm with a more concentrated ownership, and presumably better corporate governance, trading at a higher price. On a cross-sectional basis, ownership structure may thus be significant in explaining (relative) share prices. The author explores this line of reasoning. Controlling for a number of firm and sector-specific variables: he finds: 1) Majority ownership by a domestic or foreign investor has a positive influence on firm prices. 2) Firms with many small owners have lower prices. 3) Ownership by many small scale investors makes it easier for any single investor to establish effective control, but such control does not necessarily translate into higher prices. The author also provides two possible explanations of why higher prices appear to be associated only with majority ownership by a single investor: he finds: 1) The corporate legal framework and the difficulty in collecting proxy votes in the Czech and Slovak Republics may prevent a small investor from making the necessary changes in the way firms are managed, thus keeping prices low; and 2) Commercial banks are both managers of invesment funds and creditors of individual firms. Funds managers may face conflicts of interest and not be interested in increasing the value of equity alone but also the value of credits. This could explain why prices are relatively lower for those firms in which investment funds have effective control.Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research
- …
