158 research outputs found
Rise of Red Terror: The Ethics and Effectiveness of Maoist Violence in India
No full textThe University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.The media can be accessed here: http://streaming.osu.edu/knowledgebank/mershon10/043010.mp4Sangeeta Mahapatra is a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellow. As a visiting scholar at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, she is currently working on a comparative study of counterterrorism strategies of India, Israel and the United States. As Mahapatra argues, the core of counterterrorism is capability. While states may set for themselves certain goals, how far they are able to deliver on them determines the strengths and weaknesses of their counterterrorism strategy. The aim of the study is to expand the scope of counterterrorism decision-making by studying how the three countries use their political, legal, civilian and economic structures to deal with an outlier event. The question is not about expending a lot of resources on a "high risk-low probability" threat but about responding to it in timely, cost-efficient and effective manner. Mahapatra is the author of Pacification of the Irreconcilable: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Kolkata, 2005) and Miasma: A Collection of Short Stories (Chowringhee Prakashini Press, Kolkata, 1999). She has also published various journal articles including "Economic Globalization: Understanding the Process beyond the Politics," in Globalization in India: New Frontiers, Emerging Challenges, ed. by Swapan Kumar Pramanick and Ramanuj Ganguly (Prentice Hall of India, 2009) and "Human Rights in Pakistan: A Heuristic of Hope and Despair," in Human Rights in South Asia, ed. by Joseph Benjamin (Nagpur University, 2009).Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studie
Quality of care in cancer: An exploration of patient perspectives
No full textIntroduction: Patient satisfaction is as important as is the care itself. When the patient has a disease like cancer it becomes even more important. A cancer patient not only suffers from the disease but also undergoes substantial mental trauma, agony, stress, uncertainty, and apprehension. There are limited studies in India eliciting patient's views on the quality of care being received by cancer patients. Methodology: A cross-sectional triangulation data transformation model mixed method design (Quant + Qual) was used to conduct the study between March and May 2015 among patients attending specialty hospitals providing oncology services in Odisha, India. The quantitative data were collected using, Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire-18 to assess satisfaction. The qualitative data were obtained through in-depth interviews using open-ended questionnaire. Results: The results showed that general satisfaction among the patients was 60%. The maximum score was obtained for the communication of doctors. The qualitative findings revealed that travel for distant places for minor illness, waiting period, and lack of services at the primary care facilities were reasons for patient's dissatisfaction. Conclusion: The study found that the patients were generally satisfied with the quality of services. However, more studies should be conducted including perceptions of the patients as well as the caregiver
Spinal dysraphism controversies: AIIMS experiences and contribution
No full textA large series of split cord malformation (SCM). Over the last 22 years, we have operated more than 1500 patients of SD, of which over 450 are (SCM), and 300 are with various lipomatus malformations. About 55% type II and 45% type I SCM. A separate sub-classification of type I SCM (a,b,c and d), is presented which alter the surgical approach and influence the results. Overall improvement following surgery in patients with SCM was observed in 94%. Fifty percent patients improved and 44% remained stable. However, deterioration was noticed in 6%, mostly with composite type of SCM. A paradigm for management of SCM is provided taking into consideration also the author′s large experience
FEDERATED REINFORCEMENT LEARNING FOR CONTENT DISSEMINATION IN UAV NETWORKS
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Electrical and Computer Engineering - Doctor of Philosophy, 2025In disaster scenarios with compromised communication infrastructure, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can provide ad hoc connectivity for resilient information dissemination. This thesis develops a hierarchical UAV-assisted framework of federated multi-armed bandit learning for post-disaster content dissemination. The developed framework incorporates a two-tier UAV hierarchy consisting of Anchor UAVs (A-UAVs) with high-cost backhaul connectivity, and more mobile Micro-Ferrying UAVs (MF-UAVs) without backhaul links. Such a hierarchy allows for strategic offloading of storage-intensive tasks to A-UAVs, while leveraging the mobility of MF-UAVs to dynamically ferry content across disconnected user clusters. By integrating trajectory-aware selective caching strategies into UAV operations, the framework aligns aerial mobility patterns with evolving spatio-temporal content demands. Algorithmic innovation of the framework stems from a federated bandit and stateless reinforcement learning paradigm, which enables UAVs to collaboratively learn content popularity profiles, and adapt caching policies based on localized user request patterns. Unlike centralized methods, the federated approach preserves data locality and minimizes inter-UAV communication overhead, which is critical in bandwidth- and energy-constrained post-disaster environments. The multi-armed bandit learning mechanism utilizes a multi-dimensional reward feedback architecture that captures content relevance, inter-UAV delivery latency, and caching diversity across disjointed and isolated user communities. The thesis also explores the interplay between UAV energy budgets, caching capacities, and mission-critical delivery constraints such as quality-of-service expectations in terms of tolerable access delay. To summarize, the research in this thesis bridges multi-agent learning with mission-oriented aerial networking towards developing solutions for smart content dissemination in networks with sparse connectivity.Description based on online resource. Title from PDF t.p. (Michigan State University Fedora Repository, viewed ).Includes bibliographical references
Diet monitoring through breathing signal analysis using wearable sensors
No full textThis dissertation presents a framework of wearable food and drink intake monitoring system that analyzes human breathing signal for identifying swallows during the intake process. The system works based on a key observation that a person's otherwise continuous breathing cycles are interrupted by brief intra-cycle apneas during the swallows. This dissertation develops wireless wearable electronics for capturing and processing human breathing signal, and algorithms for identifying intake-related swallows via recognizing apneas extracted from breathing signal. A family of apnea detection mechanisms including matched filters and machine learning has been developed. Algorithms are developed for detecting various types of swallowing events including for solid and liquid in the presence of many artifacts presents in free-living conditions. It is demonstrated that using these algorithms and the electronics, run-time intake monitoring and analysis are feasible at acceptable accuracy levels. Further accuracy improvements were explored using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based mechanism that leverages known temporal locality in the human swallow sequence. Finally, it was demonstrated that by combining swallowing signatures from breathing signal with hand movement signatures using accelerometers, it is possible to train a hierarchical Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers and a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for accurate mealtime and duration estimation. The developed wearable system, along with a smartphone App, was experimentally validated on tens of subjects with approval from MSU's Institutional Review Board (IRB).Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Electrical Engineering, 2014Includes bibliographical reference
Protocol and Performance Optimization for Handling Heterogeneous Network Dynamics
No full textThis work is an establishment for routing enhancement in wired and wireless data communications. The work is classified into three distinct parts. Part I is focused on the IP packet networks. Part II concerns routing and interference handling in cellular communications. Part III illustrates our scheme of collision handling in TDMA-based and ad hoc networks. \textbf{Wired communications:} Relay routing for IP networks has been well-documented in past years. However, the implementation cost of relay solutions has not yet been conclusively identified. Dynamic relay relies on periodic probing of routing changes for enhanced performance. Static relay routing, however, uses nonperiodic probes to measure latency and packet loss at a lower rate. The ultimate goal of a dynamic relay is to maximize QoS, while a static relay seeks reliability in routing over time. There exists considerable research focused on understanding IP link changes due to fluctuations in routing dynamics. This work, in particular, examines new relay characteristics such as the number of hops in a relay path or Hop-To-Live (HTL) of minimum delay relay paths over similar dynamics. This HTL is to predict minimum and stable relay paths and minimize the probing overhead. By considering delay, we find those relay paths are more stable and short. This study proposes a hybrid TCP-UDP for TCP-based services such as YouTube and VoIP. The analysis of streaming of estimation-based layer- hybrid relay on a network of shows a bandwidth increase for such streams. Further, we have included an analysis of delay traces from a network of 138 hosts to demonstrate the rich existence of IP relay paths that can be leveraged to enhance layer- performance. This is a counterpart of current and pure TCP relay schemes and benefits delay and throughput-sensitive applications. The specific analysis of end-to-end delay is to enhance TCP throughput and transfer time over the default TCP relay. Results show such relay benefit TCP by orders of magnitude. \textbf{Cellular communications:} There is a new trend in cellar networks that allows mobile carriers for dynamic spectrum access. The FCC adopted rules for shared commercial use of the - MHz band, Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) in 2015. This band is occasionally in radar data communications and is now open for future LTE-based dynamic-spectrum access. Further, currently, there is no infrastructure corporation between cellar carriers like Verizon Wireless, AT\&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint for instance, in normal or emergencies. Dynamic spectrum access is proposed to better utilize the scarce spectrum resources. Recently, the FCC opened up the Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) for wireless service providers to enable dynamic spectrum access for 5G networks. However, the lack of collaboration among cellular providers has been hampering reliable access due to the increasing interference from multiple carriers. This work considers a new network architecture to foster collaboration among providers through Collaborative Multihop and Multi-Channel Cellular Networks (CMCNs). This work proposes a suboptimal solution to manage interference and congestion by utilizing minimum backoff schemes. Moreover, we develop a near-optimal scheduling algorithm to provide Minimum Broadcast Delay Forwarding (MBDF), which approximates a polynomial scheduling paradigm. Then, we present 6-policy based scenarios that summarize the scheduling paradigm. The designed mapping paradigm is to compute a near-optimal solution. This mapping via conflict graphs allows our analysis to establish a new transformation for MBDF, on which dependency between interference components can be easily visualized and solved. The simulation results show that our approach outperforms the existing models in terms of scheduling delay and message redundancy. The confidence in our proposed scheduling has been examined over distinct sets of CBRS channels by comparing MBDF with a minimum scheduling demand. \textbf{Ad Hoc communications:} In ad hoc collision is a major cause of performance degradation. TDMA scheduling is a well-studied subject for ad hoc networks to manage collisions. Reinforcement Learning (RL), in particular, Q-Learning (QL) is a tool to achieve a collision-free TDMA schedule. However, the slow convergence and the complex reward design might be a challenge for a distributed QL-based TDMA over a minimum frame length. This work proposes a QL-based TDMA for distributed systems via control from a slot-based weighted exploration algorithm. This new algorithm is a distributed directional and count-based network weighting and cycle detection for slot-based wireless networks with a reduced search overhead comparing existing schemes like Rocha\u2013Thatte algorithm in~\cite{rocha2015distributed}. The proposed QL-based TDMA applies a slot of length milliseconds in a minimum frame length for any given topology. The reasons behind such a modification when using a minimum required frame are: (1) To achieve smaller communication delay. (2) This minimum frame reduces the scheduling handshake overhead or acknowledgments. The literature is rich in conventional TDMA protocols that operate above minimum frame length and are designed as ACK/NACK-based scheduling schemes. Here, nodes learn successful policies for a collision-free frame based on previous collision statistics. This occurs while having minimum NACK and no ACK flows. Each newly chosen slot is accessible only over the next frame and not the current one. This could raise convergence time. However, for a node with a synchronized and just elapsed current sending slot of a frame and a newly chosen slot of the next frame, such a node can still examine all slots between those two slots of the current frame instead of the next one to minimize convergence. This work has shown how wireless nodes could benefit from collided signals to avoid the next collisions, and while being in a listening mode can infer hop and hops surrounding collisions. The simulation has shown that wireless sensor nodes can learn minimum collision-free frames over a practical convergence period.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Electrical and Computer Engineering - Doctor of Philosophy, 2023Includes bibliographical reference
Management and outcomes of patients with chronic upper limb ischemia secondary to arterial thoracic outlet syndrome
No full textIntroduction: Post stenotic dilation of the subclavian artery by cervical rib compression is generally seen in young patients with upper limb ischemia. Materials and Methods: We conducted a retrospective study on 26 consecutive patients who underwent surgical decompression for arterial thoracic outlet syndrome (aTOS) with subclavian artery repair from 2010 to 2015. Supraclavicular decompression of the thoracic outlet with cervical rib excission, scalenectomy with subclavian artery reconstruction by aneurysmorrhaphy was performed as per Scher staging of aTOS. The management and post operative outcome with regards to objective changes in the upper limb arterial pressure was studied & followed for 1 year with clinical examination, duplex scan and non invasive segmental vascular pressure. Result: The average age at presentation was 32 years, with equal gender distribution. However, symptomatic right: left aTOS at presentation was 18:8. The Scher classification system for aTOS based on subclavian artery compression identified 14 patients in stage III, 10 patients in stage II and 2 in stage I .8 out of 26 patients had digital ischemia with minor tissue loss and were managed medically by intravenous Alprostadil (Prostaglandin E1) postoperatively for 6 months .The mean above elbow pressure (AEP) before surgery has improved from 62.08±12.97 to 108.46±16.81& the below elbow pressure (BEP) has improved from 48.00±13.13 to 93.46± 32.02 . Above elbow pressure improvement is found statistically significant (p value0.037) across all Scher stages. Complete relief of vascular symptoms was seen in all patients immediately or gradually over a period of 6 months. Minor amputation was carried out in 8 patients of Scher stage 2 & 3 aTOS during follow of 6 months. Conclusion: This study finds its uniqueness in demonstrating the objective improvement of pressure with respect to different Scher stages which which is not reported in the literature
Effectiveness of tobacco cessation intervention among patients visiting primary care settings in India: a quasi-experimental study
No full textTowards discrete-pulse-based networking and event detection architectures for resource-constrained applications
No full text"In this dissertation thesis, we develop a scalable and energy-efficient discrete-pulse-based networking architecture along with a Spiking-Neuron-based low-power detection framework for use in resource-constrained settings. Applications such as Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) using wireless sensor networks powered by ambient energy harvesting are particularly suited for such a framework. The key idea in pulse-based networking is to eschew unnecessary overhead as incurred in traditional packet-based networking and encode only the essential information using small number of discrete pulses and their positions with respect to a synchronized time frame structure. The baseline pulse networking does not scale well with increase in network size. In order to ameliorate this, we develop a scalable time frame structure for use in applications with large network size while preserving the energy advantages of pulse networking. In addition, we stress the importance of judicious use of erratic energy availability in ambient energy harvesting powered systems. To that effect, we build energy-awareness syntaxes within the pulse networking framework for better utilization of energy resources in such systems. We also demonstrate the feasibility of pulse networking over a through-substrate ultrasonic link layer and the advantages thereof in terms of utilizing existing infrastructure and removing the need for radio retrofits. We explore how the protocol performance varies for an airplane stabilizer monitoring application powered by ambient vibration energy harvesting in different energy availability scenarios. Beyond this, we also develop a Spiking-Neuron-based low-power event pattern detection architecture and illustrate how this can be incorporated within a pulse-networked SHM system. The Spiking Neuron based architecture is evidenced to be simpler in terms of implementation but more efficient in terms of computation and energy usage, thus enabling in-situ detection even at intermediate nodes in the network and robust low-power event pattern detection immune to pulse drifts and errors."--Pages ii-iii.Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Electrical Engineering, 2019Includes bibliographical references (pages 142-150
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