People’s Participation in Farm Pond Programmes in Dry Land Areas of Tamil Nadu

People’s participation in planning, implementation and maintenance stage is important for making any programmes successful. Realizing it, Government of India (2011), issued a Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects, Revised Edition, 2011 in which participation of beneficiary farmers was made as mandatory. Hence, here an attempt has been made to study the extent of participation of beneficiaries in involvement of farm pond programmes under three stages such as planning, implementation and maintenance were studied. The study was conducted during 2020 in dry land areas of Tamil Nadu to measure the extent of people’s participation in farm pond development programme. The results revealed that overall participation Index score was 64.75 per cent. It means that moderate level of participation was observed among the farmers in farm pond development programmes. Further it is noted that high level of participation was exhibited by farmers in planning stage (72.12%) and moderate level was exhibited by farmers in implementation stage (63.78%) as well as maintenance stage (58.36%) of farmers in farm pond programmes. It means farmers were participated and contributed more during planning followed by implementation and maintenance stages of programme.

Stages and Processes of Change for Weight Loss in Acute Stroke or TIA Patients Living with Obesity

Background: Obesity is associated with an increased prevalence of vascular risk factors and incidence of stroke. As such weight loss is recommended for patients living with obesity in the secondary prevention of stroke. Few studies, however, have examined the stages and processes of change for weight loss in stroke patients living with obesity. Objective: To evaluate the stages and processes of change for weight loss in patients living with obesity who have had a recent stroke or TIA. Methods: Using a validated questionnaire, we assessed each patient’s stage of behavioral change according to the Transtheoretical Model (precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance). We also examined four processes of behavioral change, which quantify activities and experiences that patients undergo on the way to behavioral change: emotional re-evaluation (EMR), weight management action (WMA), weight consequence evaluation (WCE), and supporting relationships (SR). Processes scores were compared between patients in the action and maintenance stages and those in the precontemplation, contemplation and preparation stages. Results: Out of 49 patients who provided informed consent, 44 met the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Of these 44 patients, 6 (14%) were in the precontemplation stage of change, 7 (16%) were in contemplation, 2 (5%) were in preparation, 13 (30%) were in action, and 16 (36%) were in maintenance. Those in the action and maintenance stages accounted for the majority of participants (n=29, 66%). Patients in the action and maintenance stages (N=29) had higher EMR scores (mean 79, SD 13 vs mean 68, SD 19, t=2.0, p=0.03) and WMA scores (mean 69, SD 13 vs mean 59, SD 19, t=2.0, p=0.03) as compared to those in the precontemplation, contemplation and preparation stages (N=15). Conclusions: Our results suggest that without counseling or specific intervention, approximately two-thirds of stroke/TIA patients living with obesity are in the action or maintenance stage of behavior change with respect to weight loss and therefore more likely to succeed in intensive lifestyle-based interventions targeted towards weight loss. Patients who score higher in EMR and WMA are more likely to be in the action or maintenance stage of change.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS IMPLEMENTATION IN PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE PROJECT IN MALAYSIA

PFI involved a project with long-term relationships at various stages from pre-contract stage to contractual stage and in use stage which also include maintenance stage. KM process is one of the elements to ensure the success of the KM system. In the PFI project, the KM process also needs to be checked whether it is applied in the various stage of the pre-contract stages. Questionnaires had been distributed to the parties involved at the pre-contract stage. The results are then analyse using the Relative Important Index (RII) to identify the ranking of KM usage in various stages of the pre-contract stage. According to the analysis, some of the stages in the pre-contract process of the PFI are not fully implemented in the KM process. For knowledge acquisition and storage practise, the high usage of the process is at the conduct of value management, submission to cabinet and access, evaluation, and approval. The next KM process which is capturing and storing, the process evaluation, negotiation and recommend are the activities at the higher level practising these KM processes. At next KM process which is re-using and sharing are Access and approval by the ministry, evaluation, negotiate and recommend practise more on this KM process.

Physical Activity Engagement outside of College Physical Education: Application of the Transtheoretical Model

Objective: In this study, we examined physical activity (PA) engagement outside of college physical education (PE) classes using the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). Methods: Overall, 414 university students enrolled in PE classes voluntarily participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete a survey packet to measure 4 core constructs of TTM and their PA level performed outside of PE classes. Among the participants, 150 randomly selected students were asked to wear a triaxial accelerometer for 7 consecutive days to identify their PA level. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses of variance were used to determine the association between stages of motivational readiness and other strategic core constructions. Results: We categorized 77% of respondents into either the "action" stage or the "maintenance" stage for engaging in additional PA outside of the classes. Behavioral processes of change showed a graded and significant association with the stages. Both self-efficacy and decisional balance were significantly higher in students at higher stages. Conclusion: Our findings showed that most students enrolled in college PE classes had additional PA outside of the class participation. In addition, behavioral processes may be effective strategies for this specific target group to promote PA.

An Empirical Analysis of Software Fault Proneness Using Factor Analysis with Regression

During the early stages of the life cycle development process for software, the developer mainly makes use of the fault prediction process for the development of different modules. These modules help in detecting faulty modules and classes. Further, this process also helps in determining the modules which require a high level of refactoring during the maintenance stage. The objective of this research is to classify faults and to explore the usability of Factor Analysis with Regression (FAWR) which drastically ameliorate the system performance. A review of recent studies performed that uses the different fault prediction techniques. To direct this research, two research questions (RQ) are defined, one related to the integration of techniques to enhance the development of fault prediction model, and another is to check the technique to overcome the limitations of old methods. To answer these RQs, FAWR techniques are used for predicting faults. To assess the quality of the technique, two experiments were conducted. Results show that FAWR is the better performing method among the two prediction methods investigated. The results proved that the prediction capability of FAWR technique is significantly better. Factorization method is able to classify a module whether it is fault-prone or not. The constructed models use to estimate the proneness of faults surpass the standard regression models. The system evaluations indicate that the reduction of terms results in the betterment of outcomes. Moreover, the consideration of FAWR is a significant technique for the prediction of faults in software.

Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease in Spain

Purpose: To describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of patients with Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) disease in Spain. Methods: This was a retrospective multicenter analysis of data from VKH patients followed for at least 6 months. The data collected were related to demographics, clinical manifestations, treatments, and complications. Results: Participants were 112 patients (224 eyes), from 13 tertiary referral centers, of mean age 37.5 ± 14.7 years; 83.9% were women. Ethnicities were 61.6% Caucasian and 30.4% Hispanic. The disease was classified as complete in 16.1%, incomplete in 55.4%, and probable in 28.6%. When seen for the first time, the clinical course was acute in 69.6%, recurrent chronic in 15.2%, and chronic in 14.3%. The most frequent treatment was corticosteroids (acute stage 42.2%, maintenance stage 55.6%). The most common complications were cataract (41.1%) and ocular hypertension (16.1%). In most eyes, visual acuity was improved (96.7%) or remained stable at the end of follow up. Conclusion: VKH in Spain mostly affects women and presents as incomplete acute stage disease. Visual prognosis is good. Cataract and glaucoma are the two most frequent complications.

Driving Waveform Optimization by Simulation and Numerical Analysis for Suppressing Oil-Splitting in Electrowetting Displays

Electrowetting display (EWD) is a new reflective display device with low power consumption and fast response speed. However, the maximum aperture ratio of EWDs is confined by oil-splitting. In order to suppress oil-splitting, a two-dimensional EWD model with a switch-on and a switch-off process was established in this paper. The process of oil-splitting was obtained by applying different voltage values in this model. Then, the relationship between the oil-splitting process and the waveforms with different slopes was analyzed. Based on this relationship, a driving waveform with a narrow falling ramp, low-voltage maintenance, and a rising ramp was proposed on the basis of square waveform. The proposed narrow falling ramp drove the oil to rupture on one side. The low-voltage maintenance stage drove the oil to shrink with a whole block. The proposed rising ramp was pushed the oil into a corner quickly. The experimental results showed that the oil splitting can be suppressed effectively by applying the proposed driving waveform. The aperture ratio of the proposed driving waveform was 2.9% higher than that of the square waveform with the same voltage.

A hybrid method for matching analysis of construction project characteristics with operation and maintenance requirements

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to extract the real requirements of the owner (or users) for the construction project in the operation and maintenance stage completely and accurately and carry out the construction based on the requirements, to make the project status and operation and maintenance requirements (RO&M) consistent after delivered.Design/methodology/approachThis study creatively proposes the operation and maintenance functions deployment (OMFD) under RO&M. In addition, the OPAR (naming is made up of the initials of owners, project, analysis and result) model is constructed to fully identify the requirements of both owners and projects. In this study, three typical construction projects are taken as examples to calculate the correlation strength between project characteristics (PC) and operation and maintenance requirements through the Apriori algorithm, and order parameters are obtained from the cost chain.FindingsThis study found that there are significant differences in the correlation strength between 11 types of RO&M and PC, in which the “cost of types” (TC) correlation of residential housing and factory buildings is the largest, while the largest correlation demand of commercial buildings is “safety of types” (TS) and “system” (S). Simultaneously, through the calculation of order parameters, the most influential factors on project characteristics are obtained.Practical implicationsThis study could effectively help the owner (or users) to check whether the delivered project fully satisfy their real requirements and also extract the key technical points to realize RO&M, which can guide the accurate construction of the same type of projects.Originality/valueThis research establishes OPAR model to accurately identify the requirements of the project in the operation and maintenance stage and establishes the association rules between the requirements and the construction scheme, which is helpful for the project to construct under the expected requirements.