A Novel CNN-Based Approach for Distinguishing Between COVID and Common Pneumonia

It is well known that the symptoms of Coronavirus disease (COVID) and common pneumonia (CP) disease are very similar though the first one often leads to severe complications and may even be fatal. Hence, it is of vital importance to be able to correctly distinguish between the two. This paper attempts to achieve this task using whole 3-D CT scans of lungs. A number of models have been experimented with, using convolutional and radiomic features as well as their concatenations, and different classifiers (MLP and Random Forest) with two different sizes of input CT images (50 × 128 × 128 and 25 × 256 × 256 ) and their performances have been compared. The most significant contribution of this work is the postulation of a 3-D dual-scale framework using CT scans, employing both intra-scale and inter-scale information, thereby achieving performance scores which are much higher than the state of the art methods to distinguish between COVID-19 and CP using lung CT scans. Specifically, Accuracy of 98.67% and Receiver Operating Characteristics-Area Under The Curve (AUC) of 99% are worth mentioning. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Exploring trade prospects of Chhurpi and the present status of Chhurpi producers and exporters of Nepal

Chhurpi is the hardest cheese known in the world that is typically made in the mountain region of Nepal by coagulating milk with the help of coagulating agents and thereby partly draining the whey from the milk of Yaks, Chauris, Cows, and Buffaloes. Especially hard Chhurpi of Nepal is gaining popularity abroad as a dog food. However, the crosscutting issues of Chhurpi production and trade have remained largely unexplored. Therefore, to increase our understanding and add some information on the Chhurpi enterprise in Nepal, the present study was undertaken to investigate the current status of producers and exporters of Chhurpi and the crosscutting issues of the Chhurpi trade. The study was conducted during the month of July/August (2021) by preparing a different set of questionnaires for exporters and producers, for which five municipalities of Ilam were purposively selected for producers, while Kathmandu was selected for exporters as a study area. The study was performed during COVID-19 pandemic, so a survey was done via telephonic and electronic means at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. After analysis of obtained data, results revealed that exporting companies are making annual average growth of 10–11% from the last five fiscal years resulting in an increment of export. With an increase in annual sales, exporters are earning 10–15% profit of sales which is surging each year. The percentage of annual export decreased recently in the fiscal year 2020/21 due to COVID-19 as demand was low so production was made lower. The study area was dominated by educated, middle-aged respondents who mostly were males. Brahmin and Chhetri were major ethnic groups among producers most of whom are involved in cooperatives. Most of the producers were earning up to NPR 5 lakhs (USD 3817) annually only from Chhurpi. Price variation among wholesalers and retailers was prevalent in the production area. Most producers have reared cattle and their major problem includes feed shortage, disease in animal and breed improvement. Production areas should be made Foot and Mouth Disease free zone by the government through specific laws to further increase export to new countries. © 2022, The Author(s).

Who is behind the Mask: Periocular Biometrics when Face Recognition Fails

The ongoing COVID-19 epidemic has emphasized the importance of hygienic and contactless identification au-Thentication. On the other hand, the pandemic resulted in the widespread usage of face masks, which are still necessary to keep the infection under control. The consequence of wearing a mask on facial recognition is a sensitive yet understudied issue right now. Furthermore, the performance and reliability of contactless identity verification using facial recognition can indeed be affected by different types, sizes, and colors of masks. Therefore, this study evaluates the performance of face recognition system with various kinds of occlusions. Periocular region based authentication, especially when only a partial face is available, is proposed. Experimental results prove the reliability, robustness, and superiority of periocular recognition over the face under studied circumstances. © 2022 IEEE.

Crisis aboard the aircraft carrier uss theodore roosevelt

The case details the events which happened aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the last weeks of March and the beginning of April of 2020. Some sailors onboard became infected by the coronavirus and there was every danger of it spreading rapidly. The Captain of the carrier was Brett Crozier, a distinguished naval officer with many years of service behind him. As his requests to get sailors off the ship was not responded to promptly, he resorted to emailing a four page letter to around 20 recipients “outside” the naval hierarchy. This was soon leaked to the press and became a major talking point. The acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly reacted by relieving Brett Crozier of his command, stating that the latter had shown poor leadership qualities and had not followed the chain of command in communicating his problems when he had the means to do so. Crozier was a popular captain and the crew gave him a fond and touching farewell in contrast to the antagonism they showed Modly when he addressed them after the event. There was a lot of criticism about Modly’s decision making abilities which surfaced shortly after the incident and ultimately he resigned from his job. The focus of the case is on crisis management and the need for clear decision making under stressful conditions. © 2020 NeilsonJournals Publishing.

Awareness and psychosocial effects of covid-19 pandemic on health care professionals and medical students across the state of Maharashtra

Background: COVID 19-The pandemic which has advanced globally in mere time, is a disease resulting from an infection by a newly discovered strain of coronavirus-‘ SARS-coV-2’. The healthcare professionals, are working tirelessly, and are honour-ing their services towards the general population, despite the threat of getting infected. Therefore in such circumstances, it has become essential to assess the knowledge and attitude of the medical professionals towards this pandemic, and also to discuss the effects this crisis is causing on their psychosocial stability. Objective: 1. To assess the knowledge regarding COVID-19 mode of transmission, clinical effects, its protective and preventive measures from our health care professionals and medical students. 2. To assess psychological behavioural pattern in the form of fear, anxiety, sleep patter, depression from analyzing solutions from these questionnaires. Methodology: A validated questionnaire was distributed amongst the doctors, private practitioners, Postgraduate residents, interns, medical students and the nursing staff in various government and private institutions. The results were then analysed statistically and the answers were recorded, tabulated and represented in pie charts. Results: The study would play a key role in assessing the level of knowledge, attitude and practices of healthcare professionals and medical students have in context to COVID 19. Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic has affected psychologically as well as psychosocially on medical professionals which could be analysed from our study. © IJCRR.