Covance (India)

The article here is about the disorder Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and the various treatments from the herbal background more specifically in India. It has been found that DM is a very common disorder affecting people mostly from the Asian subcontinent. The most common form of diabetes is Non-insulin dependent Diabetes Mellitus (NIDDM) or Type 2 DM (T2DM) and although a number of treatment approaches have been taken for this, herbal drugs never stand apart. Herbal medicines have been the backbone of the entire medicinal system in India and hence this paper will specifically look into all the original, novel, and ancient ways to treat the disorder. Several plants have been found to have anti-diabetic effects like catechu, basil, ginko biloba, fenugreek, and much more. Also, there have been many marketed herbal products too like Bitter gourd powder, episulin, Dia care, and much more which have been discussed in detail in the paper. Interestingly, all of these herbal products have some mechanism of action which are quite varied and have been discussed here. So, the main approach behind this paper is to re-establish herbal drugs as effective ways of medication against the disorder of Diabetes Mellitus.

Palliative care aims at improving the quality of life of a patient who is suffering from a chronic serious ailment like that of advanced cancer. Nobody wants to be away from his/her own family, especially when it’s known, he has limited days to live in this world. A patient gets the best treatment when it’s given in his own home and that too by his close ones. When palliative care is provided at the patient’s home, it provides a sense of safety, privacy, confidentiality and peace of mind for the patient. Specialist home-based palliative care improves symptom control, health-related communication and psychosocial support. It helps in better preparing the patient and the family members to accept death. It is provided by a team of trained members which includes doctor, nurse, social worker, volunteers, physiotherapist etc. They pay regular visits at the home of the patient and provide necessary health care to the patient. Considering the increasing cost of treatment of chronic illnesses, it’s sometimes hard on the part of the family to continue treatment in a hospital or hospice. It’s especially true in scenarios where population are not protected financially, in countries like India. The family members also play a vital role in home-based palliative care. They get trained from the team to learn the basics of palliation. Home based palliative care needs to be integrated into regular home health care services.

Rett syndrome (RS) is a progressive neuro developmental disorder with a significant severity of intellectual disability that occurs mainly in females. The syndrome was named after an Austrian physician called Andreas Rett who first described it in the medical literature in the year 1960. This disorder involves a regression of previously acquired skills followed by a period of typical development. Rett syndrome unveils multitude of symptoms such as deceleration in head growth, gait abnormalities, loss of purposeful hand movements often replaced with repetitive stereotypical movement, loss of speech and breathing abnormalities. It is caused by the mutations (de novo mutations) in methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2) and Cyclin-dependent kinase-like 5(CDKL5) genes. In this article, various aspects of Rett Syndrome along with the gene modifying therapy were discussed. The road to cure Rett syndrome is paved with novel findings but also escalating many challenges. In the current scenario a special focus is laid in addressing the specific symptoms of Rett syndrome neglecting the underlying cause, which might impact the disease progression. Therefore a multidisciplinary team approach to treat the prevailing symptoms will maximise the patient’s abilities and provides an effective cure. This will involve major efforts on the part of translational researchers and collaboration with both pharmaceutical enterprises and regulatory agencies overseeing the critical safety concerns.

Augmented reality has found itself as an excellent candidate to deliver content for education. There is a definite need for improved visualization when it comes to Engineering education. AR could present itself as a good candidate to do so. This paper presents the use of Augmented Reality for engineering education. The need for visualization finds itself at the core of imparting Engineering education and there are various platforms to do so. We continue the work presented in an earlier publication where we have implemented our smartbooks concept for delivering an engaging AR experience. We have presented the use of AR for delivering content for three fundamental engineering subjects: Engineering mechanics, engineering drawing and electrical engineering. We have also explored a different user interface to improve our AR content delivery. Examples for each are demonstrated and so are their use cases. Measuring the impact of using AR was a particular challenge with variable usage across students. We have defined certain metrics (engagement factor) that help us correlate usage with impact. We have measured the impact of our AR implementation through well designed questionnaires, and used the academic scores of the candidates as an output metric to measure impact. The objective of this research is to present a case for the use of AR in being a front-runner ICT technology for delivering engineering education.

This paper discusses a FPGA-PSOC interface to be used as a lab platform in engineering education. We selected the Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) and Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) in the Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) device to externally interface with a Spartan 3E FPGA. Implementation on the FPGA was done using VHDL while analysis and experiments were performed to test for accuracy and speed. Results show that there was promise in using the interface and combination of the two devices for future teaching platforms with errors found to be sub 8% in both the ADC and DAC interfaces.