Retrieval and Generative Approaches for a Pregnancy Chatbot in Nepali with Stemmed and Non-Stemmed Data : A Comparative Study

The field of Natural Language Processing which involves the use of artificial intelligence to support human languages has seen tremendous growth due to its high-quality features. Its applications such as language translation, chatbots, virtual assistants, search autocomplete, and autocorrect are widely used in various domains including healthcare, advertising, customer service, and target advertising. To provide pregnancy-related information a health domain chatbot has been proposed and this work explores two different NLP-based approaches for developing the chatbot. The first approach is a multiclass classification-based retrieval approach using BERTbased multilingual BERT and multilingual DistilBERT while the other approach employs a transformer-based generative chatbot for pregnancy-related information. The performance of both stemmed and non-stemmed datasets in Nepali language has been analyzed for each approach. The experimented results indicate that BERT-based pre-trained models perform well on non-stemmed data whereas scratch transformer models have better performance on stemmed data. Among the models tested the DistilBERT model achieved the highest training and validation accuracy and testing accuracy of 0.9165 on the retrieval-based model architecture implementation on the non-stemmed dataset. Similarly, in the generative approach architecture implementation with transformer 1 gram BLEU and 2 gram BLEU scores of 0.3570 and 0.1413 respectively were achieved.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. In proceedings of the International Conference on Technologies for Computer, Electrical, Electronics & Communication (ICT-CEEL 2023), Bhaktapur, Nepa

A comparative study of magnetic chitosan (Chi@Fe3O4) and graphene oxide modified magnetic chitosan (Chi@Fe3O4GO) nanocomposites for efficient removal of Cr(VI) from water

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. Magnetic chitosan (Chi@Fe3O4) nanocomposite was synthesized and modified with graphene oxide (Chi@Fe3O4GO) and the potential of both materials as adsorbents was assessed for the removal of chromium (Cr(VI)) from water. The physico-chemical characteristics of magnetic nanocomposites were studied by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET). The synthesized adsorbents exhibited varied Cr(VI) removal efficiency at solution pH 2. The reaction kinetics correlated well with the pseudo-second-order model. The maximum adsorption capacity was found to be 142.32 and 100.51 mg g−1 for Chi@Fe3O4 and Chi@Fe3O4GO, respectively. Analysis of thermodynamic parameters suggested that the reaction occurred spontaneously and was endothermic in nature. Reusability studies showed that the adsorbents can be reused for up to four cycles of regeneration. Fixed bed column experiments revealed that the adsorption performance of Chi@Fe3O4 was affected by the flow rate, adsorbent loading and influent metal ion concentration. The results suggest that the prepared adsorbents have the potential to be used in removing Cr(VI) ions from contaminated water

Aid conditionalities, international Good Manufacturing Practice standards and local production rights: a case study of local production in Nepal

© 2015 Brhlikova et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development [RES-167-25-0110] through the collaborative research project Tracing Pharmaceuticals in South Asia (2006 – 2009). In addition to the authors of this paper, the project team included: Soumita Basu, Gitanjali Priti Bhatia, Erin Court, Abhijit Das, Stefan Ecks, Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, Rachel Manners, and Liz Richardson. Martin Chautari (Kathmandu) and the Centre for Health and Social Justice (New Delhi) provided resources drawn upon in writing this paper but are not responsible for the views expressed, nor are ESRC or DFID. Ethical review was provided by the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and ethical approval in Nepal for the study granted by the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC)

OUTCOMES OF SHORT-COURSE ORAL CORTICOSTEROID WITH NONSTEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUGS FOR EARLY STAGE OFFROZEN SHOULDER AT KOSHI ZONAL HOSPITAL

Introduction: Frozen shoulder or adhesive pericapsulitis is a common condition estimated to be afflicting 2-5 % of the general population. It presents with pain and progressive limitation of both active and passive shoulder movement. Numerous treatment options have been described in the literature. Among them, one of the treatment methods commonly used is oral corticosteroid combined with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID). This treatment has been found effective in the early stage of frozen shoulder. Objective: Evaluation of the outcomes in patients with a frozen shoulder after short course oral corticosteroid and NSAIDS. Methodology: In this cross-sectional study, 50 patients having an early stage of frozen shoulder presenting to the outpatient department of Koshi Zonal Hospital from July to December 2017 were included. We included those patients who had already taken more than two courses of NSAID elsewhere but symptoms did not alleviate. We excluded those patients who were diabetic, pregnant and who had a history of trauma in and around the shoulder, neuromuscular disease, suspected pathology such as a tumor, rotator cuff rupture, infection, and arthritis. Oral steroid and NSAID tablets were given to all the patients under coverage of an oral proton pump inhibitor. The shoulder home exercise program was also instituted. The follow-ups were done on the1st,7th,14thand 21stday in the physiotherapy department to measure range of motion (ROM) and shoulder pain and disability index (SPADI) to evaluate the final outcomes. The data was analyzed by using Microsoft Excel program. Results: We found the mean age 49.46 years ( range 30-60 years), duration of illness mean 15 weeks (range 10-19 weeks), considerable improvement of ROM from the baseline. Total SPADI scoresDownloaded from Medico Research Chronicles “Outcomes of short-course oral corticosteroid with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for early stage of frozen shoulder at Koshi Zonal hospital” RajKharel Y. et al., Med. Res. Chron., 2018, 5 (3), 246-251 DOI No. 10.26838/MEDRECH.2018.5.3.412 Medico Research Chronicles, 2018 247 calculated on the1stdaywas mean total 66.7, the 1st week was mean 49.99, 2ndweekwas mean 38.53 and3rd week was mean 26.63 respectively. Conclusion : The short- course of corticosteroid with NSAID along with shoulder stretch exercises provides rapid pain relief as well as improved ROM and SPADI in a patient with the early-stage frozen shoulder

Study on Oral Hygiene Practices, Tobacco use, and Food Habits among Tharu Community of Gadi Rural Municipality, Nepal

Background An unhealthy diet with high sugar content use of tobacco high consumption of alcohol and poor oral hygiene are common factors affecting the oral health of people This study was conducted to explore oral hygiene practices use of tobacco and food habits among Tharu people the indigenous community in the Gadi rural municipality of Sunsari Nepal Methods A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted at the Tharu community of Gadi rural municipality Sunsari Nepal from February to August 2015 using a purposive sampling method A face-to-face interview was used to collect data Descriptive statistics were performed using the IBM-SPSS 17 0 Results Females were predominant 57 9 in this study About 86 8 of the participants used a toothbrush with toothpaste as a method of cleaning their teeth 81 76 brushed once a day 84 3 brushed in the morning Almost 80 of the participants brushed their teeth using fluoridated toothpaste The majority 75 of the participants replied that they change their toothbrush for at least 6 month

SubFoveal Choroidal Imaging in High Myopic Nepalese Cohort

Current image captioning models produce fluent captions, but they rely on a one-size-fits-all approach that does not take into account the preferences of individual end-users. We present a method to generate descriptions with an adjustable amount of content that can be set at inference-time, thus providing a step toward a more user centered approach to image captioning

OUTCOMES OF MINIMALLY INVASIVE PLATE OSTEOSYNTHESIS (MIPO) FOR DIAMETAPHYSEAL DISTAL TIBIA FRACTURES AT KOSHI ZONAL HOSPITAL

Introduction: Lower limb trauma is a common presentation in our day to day clinical practice. Distal diametaphyseal tibia being subcutaneous bone is one of the common fracture sites. Open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) could further endanger their circulation adding iatrogenic trauma. Closed reduction and minimally invasive plate osteosynthesis (MIPO) with pre-contoured locking plate on basis of biological osteosynthesis (BO) is an alternative treatment option. The aim of this study is to estimate hospitalization period, fracture union period and complications of MIPO with pre-contoured locking plate on diametaphyseal distal tibia fracture. Objective: Evaluation of outcomes after MIPPO in distal diametaphyseal fractures managed by using distal tibial pre-contoured locking plate at Koshi Zonal Hospital. Methodology: Twenty-seven patients with close distal tibia diametaphyseal fracture were treated with MIPO technique between May 2016 to June 2018 in Koshi Zonal hospital. Results: There were 27 patients with mean age 43.83 years ( range: 18- 70 years). The average duration of hospital stay was 11.94 days (range: 6-25 days). Average fracture union duration was 21.05 weeks (range:17-27weeks); among them, two cases got a superficial infection. There was no angulation and no implant failure. Eight patient complained implant prominence and pain around ankle after fracture healed. Conclusion: MIPO with pre-contoured locking plating in distal tibia diametaphyseal fracture is a rational choice with short union time, few complications and early rehabilitation

Aerosol processing technique for the synthesis of mixed-phase copper on carbon catalyst : insights into CO₂ adsorption and photocatalytic activity

AbstractIn this study, spray pyrolysis; an aerosol processing technique was utilized to produce a mixed-phase copper on carbon (Cu/CuxO@C) catalyst. The catalyst production was performed via chemical reduction of copper nitrate by a reducing sugar, i.e., glucose, using aqueous solution. The physical and chemical properties of the produced particles was assessed using various characterization techniques. The synthesis temperature had pronounced effect on the final particles. Since CO₂ adsorption onto the catalyst is an important step in catalytic CO₂ reduction processes, it was studied using thermogravimetric and temperature programmed desorption techniques. Additionally, photocatalytic activity of the particles was evaluated by gas-phase oxidation of acetylene gas which revealed excellent activity under both UV and visible light irradiation indicating the possible use of wider range of the solar spectrum.Abstract In this study, spray pyrolysis; an aerosol processing technique was utilized to produce a mixed-phase copper on carbon (Cu/CuxO@C) catalyst. The catalyst production was performed via chemical reduction of copper nitrate by a reducing sugar, i.e., glucose, using aqueous solution. The physical and chemical properties of the produced particles was assessed using various characterization techniques. The synthesis temperature had pronounced effect on the final particles. Since CO₂ adsorption onto the catalyst is an important step in catalytic CO₂ reduction processes, it was studied using thermogravimetric and temperature programmed desorption techniques. Additionally, photocatalytic activity of the particles was evaluated by gas-phase oxidation of acetylene gas which revealed excellent activity under both UV and visible light irradiation indicating the possible use of wider range of the solar spectrum

Community Composition of Beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera) along Elevational Gradients in Phulchowki Hill, Lalitpur, Nepal

Beetles are recognized as important bio-indicators of the ecosystem that can be used to determine species diversity, genetic diversity and ecosystem diversity. We investigated the species composition and diversity of beetles in four seasons along elevational gradients in Phulchowki hill from June 2018 to May 2019. Sampling was done using pitfall traps in five sites located at 1500 m, 1800 m, 2100 m, 2400 m and 2700 m altitude respectively. Overall, we documented 43 morphospecies under 37 genera and 12 families from the study area. Scarabaeidae was the most dominant family whereas Onthophagus sp.2 being the most abundant species in our study. The Shannon-Weiner diversity index, species richness and abundance were highest at 1500 m. Furthermore, diversity and species richness were highest in the spring, whereas peak beetle abundance was observed in summer. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to analyze the distribution patterns of the beetle families along the elevational gradients. PCA revealed a strong association of the Carabidae family with 1500 m, 1800 m and 2100 m altitude whereas the Scarabaeidae family were mostly associated with human-influenced areas such as 1500 m and 2700 m altitude. The generalized linear model (GLM) revealed that temperature had a major impact on the overall beetle composition.</jats:p