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EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND INNOVATIVE NEW MEDIA STRATEGIES.
New media is prevalent tool and a mass medium since it became associated with social networking. Public relations companies and executives used new media like YouTube; Facebook extensively since the dominance and wide implications of these mediums was first witnessed. With the existing new media strategies of Facebook events, advertisements and campaigns there is an increase in demand for unconventional new media strategies. The new media audience is rapidly changing and adapts rather quickly to already existing new media tools. This research paper intends to study the imporantnce of Public engagement and innovation in new media strategies. It will help in field of public relations and advertisement at large by answering significant questions on public engagement, its application in Indian campaings, if applied its success or failure and other detailed synthesis of its existance or lack or willingness of the Indian masses and industry experts to adopt or embrace public engagement and innovation in new media strategizing. -
EFFECTIVENESS OF SERVICE QUALITY IN MULTISPECIALITY AND SINGLESPECIALITY HOSPITALS-A COMPARATIVE STUDY
The growth in the health care services in the country is primarily driven by the 350 million strong middle class people aspiring for quality health care services. A health care provider is an institution (such as a hospital or clinic) or person (such as a physician, nurse, other health care service provider) that provides preventive, curative, rehabilitative or palliative care services in a systematic way to individuals, families or communities. Improving access, coverage and quality of health services depends on the way, the services are organized and managed, and on the incentives influencing providers and users. The rate of growth of the health care industry in India is moving ahead neck to neck with the pharmaceutical industry and the software industry of the country. Much has been said and done in the health care sector for bringing about improvement. Till date, approximately 12% of the scope offered by the health care industry in India has been tapped. The health care industry in India is reckoned to be the engine of the economy in the years to come. Health care industry in India is worth $17 billion and is anticipated to grow by 13% every year. The health care sector encompasses health care instruments, health care in the retail market, hospitals enrolled to the hospital networks etc. Literature review on Service quality in the hospitals has mostly emphasized on patients perception of the services, the factors responsible for creating customer satisfaction and their intentions to return for future services available. The literature also reveals the gap between customer expectations and customer perception. The findings of the literature identifies the future courses of action to be taken by the hospitals. The loyalty is created in the hospitals by service quality dimensions. The literature so far shows the research in Hospitals; the research gap is that no research has been done in the sectors like Multispeciality Hospitals and Singlespeciality Hospitals. Statement of the problem: Effectiveness of service quality in Multispeciality and Singlespeciality Hospitals- A comparative study The population for the study consists of the patients from both the sectors. The Questionnaire were administered to 315 respondents out of which 292 were the usable data for analysis. The sampling technique adopted was Convenience sampling. The sample was drawn from 6 multispeciality hospitals and 5 single speciality hospitals in Bangalore city only. The Questionnaire consisted of three sections; the first section on the Demographic characteristics, Section 2 consists of the service quality dimensions for expectations and perception. The dimensions were rated on 7 point Likert scale. The third section on the customer loyalty. The patients of the hospitals have rated independently without any bias. The developed questionnaire was found to be very reliable and valid. Conclusion:The present research found that the service quality is high in Multispeciality hospitals when compared to single speciality hospitals. The Reliability dimension is very important when compared to the other dimension. Also the study revealed that price is the very sensitive variable that the customer loyalty depends on the price justification. Hence the research throws light upon the Servqual and the customer loyalty. -
Effectiveness of Working Capital Management in Maximizing Profitability of Construction Companies in Bangalore.
Working capital in any organizations has a significant role in driving the business forward.Hence,there is an imminent need for the management of the working capital.The efficiency with which working capital is managed in a business or organization determines the health of the business or the organization.On having an effective working capital management firms tend to be successful and while ineffective working management leads to the failure of the business. Hence, the management of working capital is of great importance. The research study is to evaluate the effectiveness of working capital management in maximizing the profitability of construction companies in Bangalore. The research will analyze the construction companies to establish an understanding of the significance of effective WCM for maximizing the profitability. The working capital is the life blood of a business and an important function of finance that defines and deals with the liquidity of the firm. Also, profitability of firms is another major aspect of business. The research explores the correlation between the working capital and profitability to understand the effectiveness of working capital management in maximizing the profitability. The construction industry is the second largest industry of the country after agriculture. Construction activity is an integral part of a countrys infrastructure and industrial development. It includes hospitals, schools, townships, offices, houses and other buildings; urban infrastructure (including water supply, sewerage, drainage); highways, roads, ports, railways, airports; power systems; irrigation and agriculture systems; telecommunications etc. Covering as it does such a wide spectrum, construction becomes the basic input for socio-economic development.The construction industry generates substantial employment and provides a growth impetus to other sectors through backward and forward linkages. It is, essential therefore, that, this vital activity is nurtured for the healthy growth of the economy. With the present emphasis on creating physical infrastructure, massive investment is planned during the Tenth Plan. The construction industry would play a crucial role in this regard and has to gear itself to meet the challenges.In order to meet the intended investment targets in time, the current capacity of the domestic construction industry would need considerable strengthening. The construction sector has major linkages with the building material industry since construction material accounts for sizeable share of the construction costs these include cement,steel,bricks/tiles,sand/aggregates,fixtures/ fittings, paints and chemicals, construction equipment, petro-products, timber, mineral products, aluminum, glass and plastics. The construction sector is one of the largest employers in the country. In '99-2000, it employed 17.62 million workers, a rise of 6 million over 1993-94. The sector also recorded the highest growth rate in generation of jobs in the last two decades, doubling its share in total employment. -
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Efficient management of feed resources using data mining techniques /
Feed is the largest input in any livestock enterprise and the rapid increase in feed prices and shortage of feed resources has been one of the major constraints for farmers, livestock industries, planners and the policy makers. This calls for prudent management of available resources and application of computing techniques can be one of the possible potential approaches. India is endowed with a wide range of feed resources varying widely in their composition and utility for different livestock species. Clustering of feed resource into different groups based on the composition can help in better feed management. To evaluate and to suggest a best technique for clustering feed resources, we have evaluated three clustering techniques viz. K-means, spectral k-means and auto spectral on two different data sets containing 236 and 106 feed resources with major constituents like crude protein, crude fiber ash, fat etc., . -
Elusive Healthcare and Ailing Population: An Analysis of Indias Health Policy with Reference to the Health Status of Urban Poor in Bangalore
Health is a state of mental, physical and social well-being. India is in need of a healthcare system that can fulfill the demands of over a billion people who are unable to bear the burden of the cost of healthcare. The major challenges in the countrys healthcare system are the universal access to healthcare, health equity, healthcare human resources and healthcare finance. Increasing population in cities and urban poverty has raised a strong concern in the health condition of the urban poor in particular. The speedy growth of cities in the country in conjunction with the growth of the urban poor has made this position more important at this point of time. The present study basically aimed at finding the major factors influencing urban health and healthcare. This research aims in finding out the reasons for the fragmentation of Bangalores health services with unequal distribution of resources and minimum communication between various services. This study also focuses on areas of health concern like insufficient primary healthcare, lack of referral system, insufficient public participation towards healthcare promotion, co-ordination between various governmental or non-governmental departments etc. It is mainly based on secondary data. Interview guide is used as a tool to collect primary data. Content analysis is used to analyse and describe the present scenario objectively and systematically. Bangalore has a wide infrastructure of healthcare centres but still the poorer sections of the society do not have easy access to them. A significant number of government schemes have been implemented to provide better healthcare services in Bangalore. It can be said that Bangalore has got enough health resources to serve its people. However, the urban poor do not have the necessary means to access a proper healthcare due to various reasons like the shortage of staff, medicines, diagnostic services in public sector and private healthcare expenses which are unaffordable. The government has been failing to achieve its health target in the urban areas and ultimately left the same in the hands of private health sector. The funds allocated on health are not used effectively towards improved health service delivery. Healthcare budgeting, healthcare policies, disease eradication programmes and improvement plans of primary healthcare centres and dispensaries etc. are the main areas in which the government is falling short. There is a need to empower the urban poor to maintain their rights within the context of development. A policy which is more oriented towards the partnership of private and public healthcare sectors is advisable. A universalized system to provide equitable and basic care to every individual is required. Public-Private Partnership in health sector is a key for improving the health of the population. The governments act of financing towards healthcare must in fact be increased to 2-3 per cent of GDP. As such, the present study came out with a lot of suggestions to improve the health status of urban poor. It has also made an attempt to analyse the policy issues associated with healthcare. The researcher believes that this will be definitely an addition to the existing literature on healthcare systems in India. Layout of the dissertation: The dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introductory part of the research. It defines the basic concepts by giving brief summary or by providing information which are necessary to understand this research. This chapter also describes the research problems which motivates the researcher to conduct the study. Second chapter reviews the literature of healthcare problems faced by the common man. It includes reviews of various articles and books contributed towards healthcare and health policies by various health experts and practitioners. The third chapter talks about the methods used to implement the research. It explains the methodological procedures such as tools for data collection, sources of data and research design which are used to carry out the study. Data analysis is the fourth chapter and this part of the research includes the analysis of the various collected data. It includes the process of inspecting and transforming of the collected data with the goal of highlighting useful information, later helping towards suggesting conclusion of the research. The final chapter presents the summary of the research with important findings and suggestions. Key words: healthcare, health policy, health status, ailing people, urban poor, cost of treatment, public health sector, private health sector, health infrastructure. -
EMOTICONS AND THE NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION: WITH REFERENCE TO FACEBOOK
In the recent years, the use of emoticons in text-based and computer-mediated communications has gained a lot of popularity. Though emoticons (a combination of punctuation marks and letters) first began as a representation of facial expression, they have over the years been transformed to now include graphical representations of a variety of items (both static and animated). The usage of emoticons and their interpretation differ from one person to another, depending on factors such as gender, age and culture. Facebook is a platform where people across the globe communicate, share opinions and connect with each other. The researcher, thus, seeks to understand whether emoticons have the ability to infuse the text-based computer-mediated- communications on Facebook with the richness and authenticity of face-to-face interactions, and to arrive at an understanding of how these different groups use and interpret emoticons. A sample size of 139 was selected using the snowball sampling technique. The methods of primary data collection included surveys in the form of questionnaires that were distributed online. A quantitative analysis of the collected data was conducted using SPSS. The study revealed that age, gender and location do have a bearing on the patterns of usage and interpretation of emoticons. It also showed that emoticons cannot provide the text-based computer-mediated- communications on Facebook with the richness and authenticity of face-to-face interactions. -
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EMPIRICALLY VALIDATING THE JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODEL IN THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
The original model developed by Hackman & Oldham (1976, 1980) was tested for the healthcare sector in India following three staged model as proposed by the original authors. Out of several studies conducted so far using this model, majority of the studies had adopted two staged model. Stratified sampling technique was adopted to select the hospitals (equal number of hospitals selected from private, public and trust hospitals). Convenience sampling was adopted to administer the questionnaire (questionnaires were administered to the target sample from hospitals that gave permission under the three categories). Judgmental sampling method was adopted for deciding whom to administer the questionnaire. Inclusion and exclusion criteria included as employees should have worked for minimum 12 months in the present hospital to complete the questionnaire. 1550 questionnaires were distributed and 1244 fully completed questionnaires were compiled for analysis (80% response rate). Initially the model was tested using structural equation modeling. The study found that the job characteristics model as suggested by Oldham and Hackman (1976 and 1980) did not find good fit in the healthcare sector in India. Further the model was tested separately for nursing, paramedical and nonmedical category as they were the major stake holders in the healthcare sector. The result of the second model fit was also poor and found further fall in strength, which was tested based on the categorization ?? paramedical, nursing and nonmedical staff. Hence, the researcher found no scope of testing the structural equation model any further. Therefore, as the measurement model fails, the researcher intended to explore the dimensions using exploratory factor analysis. The result of the exploratory analysis indicated extracted 17 dimensions from 83 items. These 17-factors extracted from the exploratory factor were applicable to the Indian healthcare sector. This new tool needs to be tested in India for measuring the job characteristics, psychological states and personal outcome linkages. In this study we have analyzed the implications based on the results found. Some of the implications of the study were in the area of autonomy and feedback from the core job dimensions, experienced meaningfulness and knowledge of result from the critical psychological states and general satisfaction and specific satisfaction on pay from the personal outcome. We found very low pay satisfaction among the healthcare workers in India. It is suggested to the future scholars to experiment with the proposed new tool in the future research and explore the new model. A focused study interview could be conducted to find out the responses to job design using the qualitative approach and interviewing the most experienced professionals in hospitals. Two stage model could be tested in the Indian healthcare sector that is job characteristics and personal outcome, excluding critical psychological states. Key words: Job characteristics model, Healthcare, Paramedical, Nonmedical, Nurses. -
Employee Challenges and its Solutions in Virtual Information Technology Industry
This study aimed at identifying the challenges faced by the employee working in virtual environment, to further propose a conceptual model and to explore the enabling factors required to provide sustainable solutions to these challenges. An organizations precursors are a must to mitigate the identified challenges by adopting the suggested solutions. In this era of IT and ICT, it is inevitable to understand what are those challenges, issues or problems employee of a virtual team faces and how do they resolve them or behave in that particular scenario. Radically changing work environment impacts the workforce productivity. In this ICT environment, it is unavoidable to expect challenges emerged out of such working conditions. Further, to study challenges becomes crucial for a better work environment. The qualitative grounded theory method approach has been used to identify challenges of 20 cases through in-depth interview techniques. The interviews have been then transcribed, coded and categorized. The conceptual model is the final outcome of this research work that depicts the challenges, the precursors ?? a company must have and last but not the least the recommended solutions to mitigate challenges. Keywords ?? IT (Information Technology), ICT (Information and Communication Technology), Challenges (A challenge is a general term referring to things that are imbued with a sense of difficulty and victory). -
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN RELATION TO ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ORGANIZATIONS
Employee contribution becomes a critical business issue because in trying to produce superior output, companies have no choice but to try and engage not only the body but the mind and soul of every employee. Most organizations today realize that a satisfied employee is not necessarily the best employee in terms of loyalty and productivity. The best employee is really an engaged employee ?? one who is intellectually and emotionally bound with the organization, who feels passionate about its goals and is committed towards its values. This employee goes the extra mile beyond the basic job requirements. Currently, organizations expect their employees to be proactive and show initiative, collaborate smoothly with others, take responsibility for their own professional development, and to be committed to high quality performance standards. Thus employees who feel energetic and dedicated and who are absorbed by their work, employees who can create a culture in the organization that would be for the well-being of the organization and people involved in the organization are most critical for the organization. These voluntary behaviors which contribute to the business unit performance are Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. Engaging employees of an organization is critical to the organizations success. Employee Engagement is often the most significant differentiator between competing IT organizations. This is true particularly for service based IT companies as revenues are directly proportional to number of engaged workforce in the organization. Majority of researches on employee engagement from survey houses and consultancies have established the relationship between employee engagement, financial business performance and profitability. Interestingly, there are very few academic literatures on engagement. Several literatures on OCB have highlighted the relationship between OCB and productivity, in-role performance, and business unit performance. However there has been no research established to find out if there is any relationship between employee engagement and OCB. In this research, the researcher is interested to focus on employee engagement and OCB in Indian and multinational companies operating in the IT sector in India. The research is focused to analyze if the dimensions of OCB like helping behavior, taking initiative, self development indicate the engagement levels of an employee. Based on the review of literatures and identified the gap, the investigator felt an imperative need to pursue with the current research. The sample consisted of 235 IT professionals from both Indian and MNC companies. The judgmental and convenient sampling technique was adopted for selecting the respondents. Two standard tools were used to measure the variables of the study:- 1.Employee Engagement questionnaire by Dilys Robinson (2004), the reliability for the scale was.880. 2.Organizational Citizenship Behavior questionnaire by Podsakoff (2000), the reliability for the scale was .703 The major findings of the study were - i. There was a positive significant relationship between Employee Engagement and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. ii.The drivers of engagement viz. pay and benefits, feeling valued and involved, training and development, job satisfaction, management, colleagues, equal opportunities, communication, current career intention are found to have significant positive correlation with Employee Engagement. iii.There was a significant negative relation between Employee Engagement and stress and work pressure. iv.The variable with highest influence on engagement was current career intension, followed by job satisfaction, pay & benefits, management, equal opportunities, and organization citizenship behavior. v.The variables colleagues, communication, training and development, feeling valued and involved were not found to have any significant impact on Employee Engagement. vi. There were significant differences in job satisfaction behavior between men and women professionals. Job satisfaction was significantly higher for women than for men. vii.There were significant differences in organizational citizenship behavior between men and women professional. The Organizational citizenship Behavior was higher for men than women. viii.There were significant differences in current career intension between different age groups. Current career intension was generally increasing with age, with the exception of the 41-45 yr. age group. There was no significant difference in other dimensions between age groups. ix.There was no significant difference in any of the dimensions based on work experience. x.There were significant differences in satisfaction with pay and benefits based on qualification. Satisfaction with pay and benefits was highest for professionals with PhDs, and lowest for post-graduates. xi.Stress and work pressure was highest for graduates, and lowest for PhDs there was no significant difference in other dimensions based on qualification. xii.There were significant differences in Employee Engagement and the type of companies. Employee Engagement was higher for professionals working in Multi National Companies than for those in Indian companies. xiii.Satisfaction with management was higher for professionals working in Multi National Companies than those working in Indian companies. xiv.Satisfaction with management was significantly higher for professionals working in Multi National Companies than those working in Indian companies. xv.Stress and work pressure was significantly higher for professionals working in Indian companies than those working in Indian companies. xvi.At a micro level analysis, it was found that type of IT company the employees belonged did not significantly differ among pay and benefits, feeling valued and involved, job satisfaction, colleagues, equal opportunities, training and development and current career intention. xvii.It was found that the driver qualification did not have any significant difference among feeling valued and involved, colleagues, equal opportunities, job satisfaction training and development and management. xviii.Gender did not significantly differ among the variables feeling valued and involved, colleagues, equal opportunities,training and development and current career intention, and management. xix.It was found that age did not significantly differ among any of the dimensions like feeling valued and involved, colleagues, equal opportunities, job satisfaction training and development and management. Length of service in the organization did not significantly differ among employees in any of the dimension. xx.It was found that there was no significant difference between Organizational citizenship Behavior, age of the employees, work experience of the employees, and qualification of the employees. xxi.It was found that there was no significant difference between Organizational citizenship Behavior, age of the employees, work experience of the employees, and qualification of the employees. xxii.It was found that male employees were satisfied with pay and benefits. xxiii.Female employees were feeling more valued and involved than male employees. xxiv.The female employees were more satisfied with the training and development activities. xxv.It was found that female employees had more levels of Employee Engagement than male employees. xxvi.It was found that female employees were more satisfied with management and colleagues. xxvii.Male employees seem to undergo more of stress and work related pressure than male employees. xxviii.It was found that male employees were more satisfied with communication and equal opportunities. xxix.Female employees had more intentions to stay with their companies than male employees. xxx.The level of Organizational citizenship Behavior was higher for men than women. xxxi.Employees working in MNCs were satisfied with pay and benefits, feeling valued and involved training and development. xxxii.Employee engagement level of MNC employees was higher than Indian employees. xxxiii.The stress and work pressure was higher for Indian employees than MNC employees. -
Employee Performance Prediction Model
With the dominance of knowledge power in the success of an organization, competent human resource has become crucial for realization of organizational objectives. Human Resource Management, HRM is a set of tasks to maintain and develop a proficient human resource. A performance appraisal process helps the HRM in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of an employee. This evaluation of employee is based on several different parameters according to the work domain and organizational objectives. This activity of employee evaluation has a high significance in making strategic decisions of manpower planning than just salary reviews. The objective of the prediction model constructed in the study is to assist HR personnel in decision making by predicting the performance of an employee. This study, has developed an Employee Performance Prediction Model which can predict the performance category of an employee. Academic industry data is used for the analysis. The supervised learning approach of classification has been first applied to the performance data to construct the model. The methodology adapted by the study is a five step process of Data preprocessing, Dimensionality Reduction, Application of classification algorithm to build the classifier and Evaluation of the classifier. Based on the hierarchical characteristics of the data, three different approaches ?? Direct, Hierarchical and Integrated are followed for the construction of the classifiers. A comparative analysis of the classifiers performances based on prediction accuracy and error rate is performed. Unsupervised learning approach is used to understand natural similarities among the employees to enhance the evaluation process. The thesis is organized into five chapters. Chapter1, Introduction, starts with a brief overview of HRM and presents the objective of the study and the problem statement. It further describes a typical KDD process and role of data mining in a KDD process. Chapter 2, Literature review, discusses background work in the field of data mining and HRM. Different models and techniques used in the context are described. Chapter 3, Methodology elaborately discusses the processes and techniques used for constructing the Employee Performance Prediction Model. Starting with the block diagram, the chapter elaborates the sequence of steps that led to the results. Chapter 4, Results and Discussion discusses the performance statistics of the different classifiers constructed in the study. Chapter 5, Conclusion, summarizes the inferences concluded based on the results obtained. The chapter also discusses limitations and challenges and concludes with future scope of the study. Keywords: Human Resource Management, Performance Appraisal, Knowledge discovery, Data Mining, Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, Classification and Prediction. -
Employee performance prediction model /
With the dominance of knowledge power in the success of an organization, competent human resource has become crucial for realization of organizational objectives. Human Resource Management, HRM is a set of tasks to maintain and develop a proficient human resource. A performance appraisal process helps the HRM in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of an employee. This evaluation of employee is based on several different parameters according to the work domain and organizational objectives. This activity of employee evaluation has a high significance in making strategic decisions of manpower planning than just salary reviews. The objective of the prediction model constructed in the study is to assist HR personnel in decision making by predicting the performance of an employee. -
Energy efficient routing protocols for wireless sensor networks
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained universal attention now a day???s owing to the advancements made in the fields of information and communication technologies and the electronics field. This innovative sensing technology incorporate an immense number of sensor nodes or motes set up in an area to perceive any continuously fluctuating physical phenomena. These tiny sensor nodes sense and process the sensed data and transfer this information to a base station or sink via radio frequency (RF) channel. The small size of these sensors is an advantage as it can be easily embedded within any device or in any environment. This feature has attracted the use of WSNs in immense applications especially in monitoring and tracking; the most prominent being the surveillance applications. But this tiny size of sensor nodes restricts the resource capabilities. Usually the WSNs are installed in application areas where the human intervention is quite risky or difficult. The sensed information might be needed to take critical decisions in emergency applications. So maintaining the connectivity of the network is of utmost importance. The efficient use of the available resources to the maximum extend is a necessity to prolong the network lifetime. If any node runs out of power, the entire network connectivity collapses and intend of the deployment might become futile. Because of this reason most of the research in the area of WSNs has concentrated on energy efficiency where the design of energy efficient routing protocols plays a major role. This research work titled ???Energy Efficient Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks??? proposes to develop energy efficient routing protocol strategies so as to enhance the lifetime of the WSNs. A thorough study of the existing literature serves as the back bone for attaining acquaintance concerning the pertinent scenario, the problems faced and the application of the WSNs. The use of clustering and sink mobility to enhance the energy utilisation is explored in this research. A modification of the most traditional energy efficient routing protocol for WSNs, LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) is implemented initially by modifying the clustering mechanism. An enhancement of it by incorporating sink mobility, to further augment the energy efficiency is executed next. A modification of HEED (Hybrid Energy Efficient Distributed Clustering Hierarchy) protocol using the unequal clustering technique is also proposed. The modified protocols are simulated using MATLAB under different circumstances by varying the number of sensor nodes and the area of deployment. These modified protocols are intended for delay tolerant applications that require periodic sensing. The performance of the modified protocols is evaluated using metrics like residual energy of the network, packet delivery ratio, energy consumed by the network, delay, and the number of live nodes. The simulation outcomes showcased the effectiveness of the modified protocols compared to the relevant existing protocols in literature. -
Establishing a service composition frame work for smart healthcare system
As the idea of location awareness has already matured and numerous applications are flooded in today???s word, the logical next step reasons out, to context-awareness. Though the idea of context-awareness has been in the research field for close to two decades, the recent advancement in Internet of Things has brought a more compelling thrust in its research. Sensor networks integrating billions of sensors and actuators will be prevalent in the near future producing big data. Filtering and analysing this data with the contextual information will yield more significant results. But deducing the context information itself poses many challenges and unresolved research problems. Context-awareness systems involve acquiring, analysing, reasoning the data and composing the services for suitable action. Service composition either by orchestrating or choreographing technique has been deployed in certain applications, however, each domain requires unique methodology. Healthcare has always been the top priority when it comes to applying novel technologies. Applying context-awareness computing in the healthcare service sector is of paramount importance. The problem context for this research lies in a cardiology speciality hospital???s Intensive Therapy Unit or the post-surgery recovery ward which has lot of scenarios emanating that involves course of actions to be delivered by the healthcare professionals depending on the context. Depending on mere human service may not be adequate. With the available advancements in technologies, it would be possible to leverage optimum service in that time critical situations, provided technology can sense the changes in context and act accordingly. The course of actions to be taken involves an amalgamation of understanding the location, presence availability, relevance of and coordination among various departments, machines and personnel. This can be summarized as ???Response??? with ???Context-Awareness???. The primarily task is to sense the context and then determine and locate the relevant services, which are distributed in the World Wide Web, to achieve a goal situation as a solution to the problem. In order to deliver such a solution we need to develop an exclusive context-aware framework. The existing frameworks will not be adequate to meet such a demanding situation and hence, the research problem is to evolve a comprehensive service composition framework for smart healthcare systems. In order to solve this problem, a use-case approach was followed. After identifying an appropriate use-case, the solution was first modelled using Automata. The concept of service automata and timed automata were fused to deliver a timed-service automaton which is appropriate to model and test the framework and algorithm for service composition. As a solution to the research problem, a composition based framework of a context-aware smart healthcare system has been presented. It will guide software developers to deploy services for critical healthcare, under the umbrella of Service Oriented Architecture. The matured concept of Automata has been tweaked to present novel timed-service automata which will enable service composition precisely for meeting the time constrained demands of modern healthcare service requirements. It has been tested with UPPAAL verification tool for validity and concurrency. A prototype has been implemented to study the validity of the established framework. Apache JMeter tool was used to test the strength of the services and engine developed based on the proposed algorithm for effective service composition. -
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Evaluation and analysis of quality in e commerce (B2C Website) /
There has been a phenomenal growth in Ecommerce in the last few years and it is still growing. As the market is expanding, more and more organizations want to have web presence. Due to sudden and rapid demand in Ecommerce website, website development companies are ignoring or skipping the quality factor. Apart from this, due to popularity of Internet, more and more consumers are buying products and services through ecommerce websites. The software development companies want to delivery the products quickly, to make fast money. To meet the deadlines, usually the quality of the product is not taken as a priority, resulting in a product full of bugs, being shipped to the customers. Once the software becomes live, more and more bugs keep coming resulting in loss of business and credibility of the organization is affected. Lack of quality Ecommerce websites result in consumers moving back to the alternate methods of shopping or switching to another website. With the increase in the competition, companies have started studying the consumer behavior and determining the factors that affect the quality of Ecommerce websites form the consumers perspective. During these years, several lessons have been learned about the technology, business and economy of Ecommerce. -
EVALUATION OF INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT
In India the ICT trend is in boom and as seen as hugely beneficial, and India is also been considered as the most preferred global destination foe outsourcing of IT and IT related activities after having said so it becomes important to use the benefits of IT to solve the prominent problem of India that is Rural development. Will the application of IT on this sector have the similar results? This study is based on the growing trend of information communication technology (ICT) based projects for development which is popularly known as ITCD. India being the hub for ICTD projects this paper attempts to evaluate the pros and cons of this developing system. It has been stated by many authors that most of the ICT projects are non-sustainable. This paper tries to examine the reasons for adopting this technology for rural development which is largely illiterate and the risks and reasons which lead to failure of such projects. Various organization like the government of India, International organizations and non-profit organizations have been investing largely in terms of finance as well as human resource. Is this investment worth the outcome is one major issue which the study looks into. In order to conduct this research qualitative tools have been employed. Interviews with experts were conducted and a case study was deeply analyzed. This paper presents a brief review of the technologies, the rural ICT projects and the issues associated with the use of ICT for rural development. -
Evolution of Virtual Prey using a Virtual Predator
Can evolution happen on a computer is it possible for Images to evolve? This paper tries to show that Mother Nature has got it right and evolution is the future for programs. How many times will a new release come to solve my previous problem and in the process create new problems! Evolution can happen on a computer is very clear in this work titled Evolution of a Virtual Prey using a Virtual Predator. The Virtual Prey can evolve its skin color based on an Artificial Intelligent Virtual Predator. Monochrome patterns have evolved very successfully. Some repeatable patterns in the Brodatz Texture Database have also evolved. Charles Darwin in his famous book Origin of Species suggests that evolution takes place using a method he termed Natural Selection. Survival of fittest has to be considered in context of the environment in which the species are living. One of the criteria of survival depends on whether the specie was able to propagate before it was hunted down by a predator. For example the skin color of a prey like an insect evolves to match the background it is living on such that the predators like birds and frogs will not detect them. Assume there are thousand insects on a surface and if nine hundred and ninety are eaten over a period of time are eaten. Then the last 10 will be those which have got skin color, pattern, and texture closest to the original. Some findings have been in the comparison of different genetic operators to evolve specie. Use of Mutation and Crossover operator is critical. Some level of continuation is required in the next generation to maintain and not lose the quality which has been already attained. The number of generations required depend on DNA length and on the correct use of these three parameters.. The runtime from thirty minutes has been reduced to ten minutes to evolve specie of 100 plus variables in the DNA of the images. If we are ready to run the program for a day on multiple machine in parallel then the possibilities of great diversity is very much possible. The predator will be an algorithm which tries to do a basic computer vision operation of correlating two images and ranking them. Then it eliminates a certain percentage of the population. The dissertation is broken down in chapters. Chapter 1 gives the Introduction and Chapter 2 gives an idea of what all research is happening in this area. Chapter 3 is the core content of my work and it shows the different approaches I have used to evolve textures, the use of different operators. This chapter is followed by the testing I had to do due to the complexity of the application and high chance of error creeping into the results. An idea of the application can be got from the Appendix where I have given a walk through of the Zing World