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Acculturative stress: Psychological health and coping strategies
There is an increasing shift in focus from the causes of immigration to the consequences of immigration, a major aspect being the stress triggered by the myriad changes and challenges experienced during the process of moving into a different culture and settling in. The main aim of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the concept of acculturative stress in detail. The author has gathered the content by doing a keyword search of relevant terms on Google Scholar and choosing articles that provide insight into acculturation, acculturative stress, and psychological health. The chapter will delve into how the different strategies of acculturation are associated with the level of acculturative stress experienced and consequent mental health problems as well as strategies to manage or reduce acculturative stress. 2023, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Accumulation of heavy metals (Cr, Cu, As, Cd, Pb, Zn, Fe, Ni, Co) in the water, soil and plants collected from Edayar Region, Ernakulam, Kerala, India
The accumulation of heavy metals in the environment is a significant concern due to their potential toxicity and persistence. This study investigates the levels of heavy metal contamination in the water, soil and plants of the Edayar region in Ernakulam, Kerala, India. The region has experienced industrialization and urbanization, leading to concerns about heavy metal pollution. The study aims to assess the concentrations of chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) in water, soil, aquatic and terrestrial plants. Samples were collected from various locations within the Edayar region, and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) was conducted to quantify heavy metal concentrations. The findings of this study will contribute to the assessment of heavy metal pollution in the Edayar region. Plants with a high diversity index were taken for analysis from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Scoparia dulcis L. seems to specialize in metal accumulation, possibly for protective purposes. Synedrella nodiflora Gaertn demonstrates adaptability to metal-rich environments through robust metal uptake and tolerance mechanisms. Alternanthera philoxeroides (Mart.) Griseb, on the other hand, appears to have developed mechanisms to manage heavy metal exposure. The results indicate significant levels of heavy metal contamination across all samples, with the highest concentrations detected in soil, followed by water and plants. Chromium and lead levels in soil exceeded the permissible limits set by international standards, posing potential risks to human health and the ecosystem. The accumulation patterns in plants varied, with higher bioaccumulation factors observed for zinc and copper, suggesting their preferential uptake. This study highlights the urgent need for remediation strategies and continuous monitoring to mitigate the impact of heavy metal pollution in the Edayar region. The results will help in understanding the environmental impact of human activities. Copyright: The Author(s). -
Accumulation of lead (Pb II) metal ions by Bacillus toyonensis SCE1 species, innate to industrial-area ground water and nanoparticle synthesis
Groundwater samples were collected from Peenya Industrial area of Bengaluru, India to check its inherent bacterial population. After the isolates were grown in lead-induced media, the bacteria that could resist lead were further isolated, identified, and grown. The isolated bacterium was identified as Bacillus toyonensis SCE1 species, and the maximum amount of lead taken up by it to sustain itself as a live biomass was 8ppm. Lead accumulation was studied based on different factors such as pH, concentration, and time. Bacterial characterization through scanning electron microscopy showed there was lead sorption on the bacterial cells. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that accumulated lead ions inside the bacteria were in the range of 180190nm, this was found to correlate with the data obtained by the particle size analyzer. The optimum pH for highest lead accumulation was 7.2, for a time period of 160min. It was observed that the stable production of homogenous nanoparticles using biomass could be achieved by optimizing factors such as incubation period, agitation, pH, temperature, and contact time. 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. -
Accuracy Enhancement of Portrait Segmentation by Ensembling Deep Learning Models
Portrait segmentation is widely used as a preprocessing step in multiple applications. The accuracy of portrait segmentation models indicates its reliability. In recent times, portrait segmentation using deep learning models have achieved significant success in performance and accuracy. However, these portrait segmentation models are limited to a single model. In this paper, we propose ensemble approach using multiple portrait segmentation models to improve the segmentation accuracy. The result of experiment shows that the proposed ensemble approach produces better accuracy than individual models. Accuracy of single models and proposed ensemble approach were compared with Intersection over Union (IoU) metric and false prediction rate to evaluate the accuracy performance. The result shows reduced false negative rate and false discovery rate, this reduction in false prediction has enabled ensemble approach to produce segmented images with optimized error and improved result of segmentation in portrait area of human body than individual portrait segmentation models 2020 IEEE. -
Acetylcholine esterase inhibition activity of leaf extract of Saraca asoca using zebrafish as model organism
Alzheimers disease, also called as Senile Dementia, is a progressive neurogenerative disease that slowly destroys important mental functions like memory, reasoning and thinking. A plethora of factors including genetics, lifestyle, environment, age etc. play a part in determining its incidence. One of the commonly used techniques to slow down the progression of Alzheimers is to reduce the functioning of Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzyme which breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Plants have been found to be natural sources of AChE inhibitors. Hence the present investigation was an attempt to screen Ashoka plant (Saraca asoca) for such inhibitors. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) was used as a model organism due to its genetic similarities with humans. Both in vivo and in vitro analyses using zebrafish indicated inhibitory action of the leaf extract on AChE. Gas Chromatography- Mass spectrometry (GCMS) analysis of the methanolic leaf extract and further docking studies of prominent phytochemicals revealed the AChE inhibitory potential of molecules like Stigmasterol, ?-sitosterol, Vitamin E etc. Hence these molecules can be thought of as targets in the therapy of Alzheimers disease. 2020 World Research Association. All rights reserved. -
Achievenment motivation and self esteem among handicapped children
How the children with handicap perceive themselves and their self esteem levels are important yet not much focussed aspect in disability research. If we have a correct evaluation of their motivational level and self esteem it may help us to modify their training interventions and also would make them feel more satisfied and confident. So we planned to study achievement motivation and self esteem levels of handicapped children. The Objective of the study is that to to compare achievement motivation of physically handicapped to that of non-handicapped school children, and to compare self esteem of physically handicapped to that of non-handicapped school children. Methodology 40 physically handicapped school students and 40 age, gender and education matched non handicapped students were included in the study. Handicapped children of other categories like sensory disability, visual impairment, hearing impairment and speech impairment were excluded. Achievement motivation questionnaire was used to measure the motivational behaviour and Rosenberg self-esteem scale was applied by asking the respondents to reflect on their current feelings. Results and Conclusions Achievement motivation and self esteem were observed to be significantly lower in physically handicapped students compared to healthy controls. Significant gender difference in favour of females was observed i.e., self esteem and achievement motivation was significantly higher in females of both the groups compared to males. The study emphasizes need for interventions to improve self esteem and motivation levels of handicapped children. -
Achieving Organisational Achievement via the Use of Al in Machine Management
Among the most effective ways of increasing the outcomes of the company, there is the application of Artificial Intelligence ( Al) in machine management. This study article focuses on the role of Al in improving the work of machines and decision-making as well as increasing the effectiveness of organisations. The focus of the study is to enhance the machine management efficiency in order to reduce the downtime, decrease the costs of operation and increase the productivity through the application of Al technologies such as automated systems, predictive maintenance and real-time data analysis. This study finds that the indicators of operational efficiency, product quality and labour safety are determined by a case study of various industries. This study has proposed that the integration of Al into machine management goes beyond being a technical adjustment; it is a shift in the culture and approach of organisations, human resource management (HRM) practices and operations. The real-time insights and predictive analysis of the market that is provided by Al can help in meeting the needs of the market that are ever-evolving while at the same time being efficient and innovative. This makes enterprises to have an edge over the competitors. The findings of the study are therefore a clear indication that in the ever evolving business environment, there is the need to embrace the use of Al to foster growth and development of organisations. 2025 Shiney Chib, Falguni Pawar, Shantanu S. Bose, Thirulogasundaram V.P., Prasanna H.N. and Lakshmi S.R. All rights reserved. -
Achieving organizational performance by integrating industrial Internet of things in the SMEs: a developing country perspective
Purpose: This research investigates the adoption of the industrial Internet of things (IIoT) in SMEs to achieve and increase organizational performance. With the latest technology, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can create a competitive edge in the market and better serve customers. Design/methodology/approach: Twelve hypotheses are proposed for this study. This study constructed a questionnaire based on technological, organizational, environmental and human perspectives. A survey is conducted on the SMEs of India using the questionnaire. Findings: Eight hypotheses were accepted, and four hypotheses were not supported. The hypotheses rejected are infrastructure, organizational readiness, internal excellence and prior experience. The findings suggested that adopting IIoT in SMEs will increase organizational performance. Research limitations/implications: This study will be helpful for the manager, top management and policymakers. This study identified the areas SMEs need to work on to adopt the technologies. Originality/value: In the literature, no article considered IIoT adoption in SME firms as a human factor. Therefore, this study is unique, including human, technological, organizational and environmental factors. 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited. -
Achieving SDGs through MSMEs: An empirical assessment of environmental consideration initiatives in India
Today, addressing environmental concerns and reducing carbon emissions has become imperative for every organization. Hence, eliminating the adverse impacts of business operations is no longer limited to large organizations, even small business organizations are taking a proactive approach in this direction. The present study aims to investigate pertinent issues related to the adoption of environmental practices faced by MSMEs in India and how these practices can fulfill the aim of achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs 2030). However, in this chapter, the authors are only going to emphasize the environmental aspect of the sustainability dimensions. Further, this study also identifies the factors that impact the adoption of environmental consideration initiatives among MSMEs in India. The findings of the study offer significant contributions to the research related to environmental consideration initiatives of the Indian MSMEs sector. Further, it also highlights the need for mandatory frameworks and guidelines to facilitate the adoption of sustainability practices among MSMEs in India. 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Acid functionalized Arachis hypogaea skin based carbon nanosphere as efficacious material for enhanced energy storage
The present introduces a single step approach for enhancing supercapacitor performance by utilizing acid-functionalized porous carbon derived from the inner skin of Arachis hypogaea as a sustainable biomass precursor. Through pyrolysis at 800 C in a nitrogen atmosphere, the resulting porous carbon material demonstrates unique structural and electrochemical behavior as confirmed by FTIR, XRD, Raman spectroscopy, FE-SEM, HR-TEM,EDS,BET analyses. The acid functionalized variant (FAH8) significantly outperformed the non-functionalized carbon (AH8), showing a fourfold increase in specific capacitance. Electrochemical evaluations revealed that FAH8 achieved a high specific capacitance of 273 Fg?1 at 0.25 Ag?1 in 3 M KOH, with an energy density of 22.5 Wh kg?1 and a power density of 125 W kg?1 in a three-electrode setup. The symmetrical CR2032 device of FAH8 exhibited a maximum capacitance of 98 Fg?1 and displayed excellent stability, with 98.5 % efficiency and 97.4 % capacitance retention after 7500 cycles. Notably, the device also delivered a high energy density of 23.17 Wh kg?1 and power density of 325.0 W kg?1. The enhanced performance attributed by the simple acid functionalization highlights the potential of this material in energy storage. Thus, the study not only emphasizes the effective use of low-cost biomass precursors but also provides a straightforward functionalization strategy to boost energy storage capabilities, paving the way for sustainable high-performance supercapacitors. 2025 Elsevier Ltd -
Acid functionalized Arachis hypogaea skin based carbon nanosphere as efficacious material for enhanced energy storage
The present introduces a single step approach for enhancing supercapacitor performance by utilizing acid-functionalized porous carbon derived from the inner skin of Arachis hypogaea as a sustainable biomass precursor. Through pyrolysis at 800 C in a nitrogen atmosphere, the resulting porous carbon material demonstrates unique structural and electrochemical behavior as confirmed by FTIR, XRD, Raman spectroscopy, FE-SEM, HR-TEM,EDS,BET analyses. The acid functionalized variant (FAH8) significantly outperformed the non-functionalized carbon (AH8), showing a fourfold increase in specific capacitance. Electrochemical evaluations revealed that FAH8 achieved a high specific capacitance of 273 Fg?1 at 0.25 Ag?1 in 3 M KOH, with an energy density of 22.5 Wh kg?1 and a power density of 125 W kg?1 in a three-electrode setup. The symmetrical CR2032 device of FAH8 exhibited a maximum capacitance of 98 Fg?1 and displayed excellent stability, with 98.5 % efficiency and 97.4 % capacitance retention after 7500 cycles. Notably, the device also delivered a high energy density of 23.17 Wh kg?1 and power density of 325.0 W kg?1. The enhanced performance attributed by the simple acid functionalization highlights the potential of this material in energy storage. Thus, the study not only emphasizes the effective use of low-cost biomass precursors but also provides a straightforward functionalization strategy to boost energy storage capabilities, paving the way for sustainable high-performance supercapacitors. 2025 Elsevier Ltd -
Acid Orange-7 uptake on spherical-shaped nanocarbons
Acid-dyes, typically used in textile productions, could infer poisoning harmful effects on the environment as well as on human health, if not properly treated during their disposal. Henceforth, there is an absolute necessity to achieve new efficient low-cost techniques to remove these dyes from industrial chemical waste. Here, the leaves of oil palm, which are abundant in tropical countries, were used as precursor in the development of carbon nanospheres (adsorbent) to remove hazardous acid Orange-7 (AO-7) dye (C16H11N2NaO4S). The removal efficacy of spherical-shaped nanocarbons was investigated as a function of contact period, by varying their dose (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5mg), pH (acidic, native and basic), and initial AO-7 concentration (10, 15, 20, 25 and 30?M). Amazingly, the oil palm leavesbased carbon nanospheres removed acid-dye up to an efficiency of about 99%. Pseudo second-order kinetics governs the adsorption mechanism and the RedlichPeterson isotherm model fits well to the adsorption results, with regression co-efficient close to unity. This study suggests the importance of natural biowaste-based carbon nanoparticles in sustainable recycling, within the worldwide demanded circular economy. The Author(s) 2021. -
Acidified coconut husk as a potential biosorbent for adsorption of textile dye reactive yellow 160
Coconut husk could be employed as an environment friendly adsorbent for removal of various xenobiotics from the environment, especially the reactive dyes from the polluted waterbodies. In this study the Acidified Coconut Husk(ACH) with 0.1 N Hydrochloric acid was identified as a potentially low-cost biosorbent for the removal of Reactive Yellow 160(RY160) in aqueous solution. Optimization of various parameters such as the effect of agitation at shaker rotor speed of 120 rpm, adsorbent dosage ranging from 0.54%, initial dye concentration (200 to 1000 mg/L) and pH (3 to 11) were conducted and it was found that maximum adsorption percentage of 93% occurred with 4% adsorbent dosage at 200 mg/L initial dye concentration and pH 3 under agitating conditions. Adsorption was confirmed with the changes in FTIR spectrum, XRD and SEM of the ACH before and after adsorption. Adsorption kinetics studies proved a best fit into the pseudo second order kinetics model (R2= 0.9973) indicating chemisorption as the rate-limiting step of the process. Adsorption capacity(qe) of 4.56 mg/g fitted more into Langmuir isotherm model (R2= 0.9884) than Freundlich isotherm (R2= 0.8792) with Qmax value of 35.97 mg/g. Acidified coconut husk is proved as feasible adsorbent for textile dye removal from the aqueous environment. 2026 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. -
Acidified groundnut cake for enhanced bio adsorption of anionic textile dye Reactive Red 195
This study focuses on the improvement of bioremediation of textile dye Reactive Red 195 using agro-industrial waste, groundnut oil cake (GNOC) obtained after oil-pressing. The treatment of GNOC with 1 N H2SO4 had resulted in physiochemical changes on the insoluble porous adsorbent, which improved their adsorption efficiency. The dye removal efficiency increased from 55% to 94% on acidification of GNOC. The raw groundnut oil cake (RGNOC) and acid-treated groundnut oil cake (AGNOC) were characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction, and zeta potential. The rate and efficiency of dye adsorption were examined using adsorption kinetics and isotherm models. The results confirm that acid-treated GNOC eliminates impurities, alter the surface functional groups, and significantly increase porous surface areas of RGNOC. The investigation of key factors such as contact time, initial concentration of dye, static/agitation impact, particle size, and adsorbent dose had significantly influenced adsorption capacity of GNOC. Adsorption of dye fits best into the Langmuir model and equilibrium data of dye on AGNOC was explained by psuedo-second-order reaction with maximum adsorption capacity of 12.65 mg/g. This emphasis AGNOC has a very excellent potential to remove the textile dye Reactive Red dye from industrial effluent. 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. -
Active galactic nucleus feedback in NGC 3982
The energetic feedback from supermassive black holes can influence star formation at the centres of galaxies. Observational evidence for active galactic nucleus (AGN) impact on star formation can be searched for in galaxies by combining ultraviolet imaging and optical integral field unit data. The ultraviolet flux directly traces recent star formation, and the integral field unit data can reveal dust attenuation, gas ionisation mechanisms, and gas kinematics from the central regions of the galaxy disk. A pilot study on NGC 3982 shows star formation suppression in the central regions of the galaxy, likely due to negative AGN feedback, and enhanced star formation in the outer regions. The case of NGC 3982 could be observational evidence of AGN feedback operating in a Seyfert galaxy. 2022 EDP Sciences. All rights reserved. -
Active Learning from an Imbalanced Dataset: A Study Conducted on the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Dataset
The proposed chapter deals with psychological data related to depression, anxiety, and stress to study how the classification and analysis is carried out on imbalanced data. The proposed study not only contributes on providing practical information about the balancing techniques such as synthetic minority oversampling technique but also reveals the strategy for dealing with the working of many existing classification algorithms such as the support vector machine, random forest, XGBoost, etc. on the imbalanced dataset. The present use of evaluation metrics that are solely implied for the imbalanced data classification is also illustrated. It was observed that the ordinary model assessment techniques do not precisely quantify model execution when gone up against imbalanced datasets and that the common techniques such as the logistic regression and decision tree have a predisposition toward classes that have many observations. The attributes of the minority class are treated low and are routinely overlooked. Henceforth, there is a high likelihood of misclassification of the minority class when compared to the majority class. A confusion matrix which contains data about the real and predicted class is used as an assessment standard to check the exhibition of grouping calculation. Rather than going for accuracy, F-score and the area under the curve are considered as the measures to evaluate the classification model. 2022 selection and editorial matter, Vishal Jain, Sapna Juneja, Abhinav Juneja, and Ramani Kannan. -
Activity Classifier: A Novel Approach Using Naive Bayes Classification
Activity movements have been recognized in various applications for elderly needs, athletes activities measurements and various fields of real time environments. In this paper, a novel idea has been proposed for the classification of some of the day to day activities like walking, running, fall forward, fall backward etc. All the movements are captured using a Light Blue Bean device incorporated with a Bluetooth module and a tri-axial acceleration sensor. The acceleration sensor continuously reads the activities of a person and the Arduino is designed to continuously read the values of the sensor that works in collaboration with a mobile phone or computer. For the effective classification of a persons activity correctly, Nae Bayes Classifier is used. The entire Arduino along with acceleration sensor can be easily attached to the foot of a person right at the beginning of the user starts performing any activity. For the evaluation purpose, mainly four protocols are considered like walking, running, falling in the forward direction and falling in the backward direction. Initially five healthy adults were taken for the sample test. The results obtained are consistent in the various test cases and the device showed an overall accuracy of 90.67%. Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020. -
Actor-critic guided CDBN with GAN augmentation for robust facial emotion recognition
Facial emotion recognition (FER) remains challenging under limited data, noise, and occlusion. This study introduces an ActorCritic Convolutional Deep Belief Network (ACCDBN) that unifies Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)based augmentation, deep probabilistic feature learning, and reinforcement-driven optimization. Conditional GANs expand minority emotion classes, enhancing data diversity, while the CDBN extracts hierarchical texture features through convolutional and restricted Boltzmann layers. An ActorCritic module dynamically refines representations by rewarding accurate emotion classification and penalizing uncertain predictions. Trained and validated on the CK+ dataset with five-fold cross-validation, the proposed model achieves higher accuracy and stability than CNN, LSTM, and ResNet-50 baselines, maintaining strong performance under noise and occlusion. The approach demonstrates how reinforcement-guided generative learning can improve both accuracy and robustness in FER tasks.1. To implement this, the research utilised the publicly available Cohn-Kanade+ dataset, consisting of eight classes with samples of 920 grey-scale images.2. An improved ACCDBN model outperformed with 90.4% accuracy and 0.69 MCC (Mathews Correlation Coefficient) in 5-fold cross-validation using the cGAN-generated dataset and 87% on the CK+ dataset3. The main objective is to present an advanced facial emotion recognition (FER) system that combines a Convolution Deep Belief Network (CDBN) with a model-free reinforcement learning technique, namely the actor-critic approach. 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ -
Acute Leukemia Subtype Recognition in Blood Smear Images with Machine Learning
Acute leukemia is a swiftly progressing blood cancer affecting white blood cells which poses a significant threat to the immune system and often leads to fatal outcomes if not detected and treated promptly. The current manual diagnostic method, being time-consuming and prone to errors, necessitates an urgent shift toward a comprehensive automated system. This paper presents an innovative approach to automatically identify acute leukemia cells and their subtypes by analyzing microscopic blood smear images. The proposed methodology involves the segmentation of clustered lymphocytes, isolation of nuclei, and extraction of diverse features from each nucleus. A random forest classifier is then trained to categorize nuclei into healthy or cancerous, with further precision in classifying cancerous nuclei into specific subtypes. The method achieves an impressive 97% accuracy across all evaluations, holding profound implications for pathologists and medical practitioners in their decision-making processes. 2024, J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology. All rights reserved. -
Acute Toxicity of Leaf Extracts of Enydra fluctuans Lour in Zebrafish (Danio rerio Hamilton)
The present study was focused on the concentration-dependent changes in oral acute toxicity of leaf extracts of E. fluctuans in zebrafish. The study was also aimed at the details of histopathological changes in the gill, liver, brain, and intestine of zebrafish exposed to the leaf extracts of the plant E. fluctuans. Enydra fluctuans Lour is an edible semiaquatic herbaceous plant used widely for the alleviation of the different diseases. Since there were no toxicity studies conducted on this plant, the present study was an attempt to look into the elements of toxicity of the plants. Two types of experiments are conducted in the present study. First, the acute oral toxicity study was conducted as per the OECD guidelines 203. Second, histopathological changes were observed in the fishes exposed to the lethal concentrations of plant extract. The oral acute toxicity studies conducted on Zebrafish have revealed that the leave extracts of E. fluctuans were toxic to the tested fish at the concentration of 200 mg/kg body weight. The histopathological studies conducted on the intestine of treated fishes showed that treatment has induced rupturing of the villi structure and fusion of villi the membrane and detachment of the villi structure from the basal membrane of the intestine. The histology of the liver also showed severe vacuolization in the cells while it is not affected in control. The studies on gills showed the detachment of the basal epithelial membrane in the gills compared to control which might have led to death of the fish. The histopathological observations of brain tissues treated with test samples also revealed the marked impingement in the brain parenchyma while the control is normal without impingement of the brain. 2020 Jobi Xavier and Kshetrimayum Kripasana.