12 research outputs found
Sex trafficking of girls and women : Evidence from Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh
Get PDFA crucial gap in the trafficking literature from India is the dearth of primary data and micro studies that could be used for vulnerability mapping of the source areas and addressing the identified risk factors. The present paper is a small attempt to contribute to plugging the gap in the context of Andhra Pradesh, identified as a hot spot in the trafficking literature. This paper is based on case studies of 78 women who had been trafficked from their places of origin in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh to metropolitan cities across India and who have since returned to their homes. The paper attempted to identify the individual and family circumstances that contribute to the causes of trafficking, to highlight in particular the gendered vulnerabilities that set these women up for trafficking, and to capture the process of the trafficking experience. The findings of the study are located in the dynamic interplay of the social structural context and specificities of the district that contribute to causes of trafficking and the individual circumstances and agency of the women. The case studies reported in this paper are a pointer to the compelling urgency of interventions that will go beyond the forced / voluntary divide in trafficking and sex work.Andhra Pradesh, India, trafficking
Protein Characterization from Fish Egg and Preparation of Protein Concentrates and Hydrolysates
No full textThis Dissertation / Report is the outcome of investigation carried out by the creator(s) / author(s) at the department/division of Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore mentioned below in this page
Blind Hurdle Stick: Android Integrated Voice Based Intimation via GPS with Panic Alert System
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Fragility Estimates of Rc Building Using Etabs
Get PDFEarthquakes are the most destructive natural disaster causing lot of casualties, injuries and economic losses leaving behind a trail of panic. Earthquake risk assessment is needed for disaster mitigation, disaster management, and emergency preparedness. Vulnerability of building is one of the major factors contributing to earthquake risk. The vulnerability functions framed for a particular building is input parameter for loss estimation. Procedure for developing fragility curves of specific building type is discussed. Seismic fragility curves were developed and damage probability threshold has been constructed for the chosen problems
Exploring the Effects of Om Chanting on Cognitive Functions of Individuals: A Narrative Review
Get PDFOm chanting is a fundamental practice in yoga and meditation, known for its potential cognitive and physiological benefits. This review aims to explore the effects of Om chanting on cognitive functions, particularly memory, attention, and executive function, among healthy individuals. Several studies indicate that Om chanting modulates brain activity, enhances neural connectivity, and improves psychological well-being.[1,2] By examining existing literature, we highlight the mechanisms through which Om chanting influences cognitive processes, including autonomic nervous system regulation, cerebral blood flow enhancement, and neurochemical modulation.[3,4] This review provides insights into the therapeutic applications of Om chanting in cognitive health and suggests directions for future research
FCUDA-HB: Hierarchical and Scalable Bus Architecture Generation on FPGAs With the FCUDA Flow
No full textRecent progress in high-level synthesis (HLS) has helped raise the abstraction level of hardware design. HLS flows reduce designer effort by allowing development in a high-level language, which improves debugging, code reuse and ability to explore different implementation options. However, although the HLS process is fast, implementation and performance analysis still require lengthy logic synthesis and physical design. For design optimization, HLS tools require design space exploration to obtain parallelism at multiple levels of granularity including parallelism within a single HLS-generated core and parallelism between multiple instances of cores. Core interconnect and external bandwidth limitations can significantly impact feasible options in the design space. With many dimensions in a design space exploration, it quickly becomes infeasible to perform full logic synthesis and physical design for each possible design point. However, generation and evaluation of communications infrastructure as part of the exploration is critical to determine the system performance. Thus, in this paper, we extend the prior multilevel granularity parallelism exploration in the FCUDA HLS flow, which takes CUDA code as design input and generates a corresponding field programmable gate array implementation. Our framework performs an initial characterization of the application design space, then analytically explores the design space considering parallelism, core interconnect, and external memory bandwidth, and selects a pareto-optimal set of designs. Our flow is completely automated to perform the exploration to characterize the analytical model, perform the exploration, select a solution, and integrate multiple instantiations of FCUDA cores via an advanced extensible interface bus interconnect. Our results demonstrate that this new FCUDA flow efficiently identifies and generates implementations with up to 5x improved system performance compared to single-level granularity parallelism (core-level optimization).Research Grant for the Human-Centered Cyber-Physical Systems Programme at the Advanced Digital Sciences Center from Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and ResearchSCI(E)[email protected]
Retinal oximetry in normal and amblyopic children:a pilot study
Get PDFPurpose To study the retinal vascular oxygen saturation in amblyopic eyes and compare them to unaffected fellow eyes and eyes of normal subjects. Methods A total of 32 amblyopic, 24 normal and 13 fellow eyes of patients below age of 18 were enrolled in this prospective observation study. Retinal oximetry was performed using the Oxymap T1 retinal oximeter. Retinal vascular oxygen saturations and diameters were compared between amblyopic eyes, normal eyes and unaffected fellow eyes. Results The average age was 8.6 years in the amblyopia group (M:F 16:16) and 10.9 years in the normal group (M:F 7:5; p = 0.024). Median corrected distance visual acuity in the amblyopia group was 20/50; it was 20/20 in the other groups (p <0.001). The average arteriolar and venous saturation in the amblyopia, normal and fellow group was 84.5% (95% CI: 82.6-86.4), 83.2% (95% CI: 80.7-85.6) and 80.8% (95% CI: 78.6-82.9) and 51.9% (95% CI: 50.4-53.4), 50.8% (95% CI: 48.2-53.4) and 49.3% (95% CI: 45.7-52.9). There was no statistically significant difference between the saturation values of the amblyopia group and the controls, however, significantly higher values were found in the amblyopia group compared to the fellow group for arteriolar and venous saturations (p = 0.013; p = 0.005). Arteriolar and venous diameters showed no significant difference between groups. Conclusion Amblyopic eyes showed higher mean oxygen saturations than the fellow eyes. This observation could be due to altered neuronal activity or could be due to a measurement artefact due to alterations in retinal reflectivity.</p
Primary Cardiac Sarcoma: Clinical Characteristics and Prognostic Factors over the Past 2 Decades
No full textBackground: Primary cardiac sarcomas (PCS) are extremely rare malignant tumors involving the heart. Only isolated case reports have been described in the literature over different periods of time. This pathology has been associated with a dismal prognosis and given its rarity; treatment options are very limited. Furthermore, there are contrasting data about the effectiveness of current treatment modalities in improving the survival of patients with PCS, including surgical resection which is the mainstay of therapy. There is a paucity of data on the epidemiological characteristics of PCS. This study has the objective of investigating the epidemiologic characteristics, survival outcomes, and independent prognostic factors of PCS. Methods: A total of 362 patients were ultimately registered in our study from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The study period was from 2000 to 2017. Demographics such as clinical characteristics, overall mortality (OM), and PCS-specific mortality (CSM) were taken into account. A p value of p p = 0.033); and PCS with distant metastases (HR = 1.888, 95% CI 1.389–2.566, p p = 0.025) had a better OM (HR = 0.606, 95% CI 0.465–0.791, p p p p = 0.008) and those who underwent surgery (HR = 0.581, 95% CI 0.436–0.774, p p p = 0.001) were found to have a higher OM in the multivariate analyses adjusting for covariates). Lower OM was found in patients with rhabdomyosarcoma (HR = 0.364, 95% CI 0.154–0.86, p = 0.021) and widowed patients (HR = 0.506, 95% CI 0.263–0.977, p = 0.042). Multivariate cox proportional hazard regression analyses of CSM also revealed higher mortality of the same groups, and lower mortality in patients with Rhabdomyosarcoma. Conclusion: In this United States population-based retrospective cohort study using the SEER database, we found that cardiac rhabdomyosarcoma was associated with the lowest CSM and OM. Furthermore, as expected, age and advanced disease at diagnosis were independent factors predicting poor prognosis. Surgical resection of the primary tumor showed lower CSM and OM in the crude analysis but when adjusted for covariates in the multivariate analysis, it did not significantly impact the overall mortality or the cancer-specific mortality. These findings allow for treating clinicians to recognize patients that should be referred to palliative/hospice care at the time of diagnosis and avoid any surgical interventions as they did not show any differences in mortality. Surgical resection, adjuvant chemotherapy, and/or radiation in patients with poor prognoses should be reserved as palliative measures rather than an attempt to cure the disease
