Aditya Hegde

Bio: Aditya Hegde is an academic researcher from National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences. The author has contributed to research in topics: Provisioning & Network architecture. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 25 publications receiving 166 citations. Previous affiliations of Aditya Hegde include Indian Institute of Technology Madras & Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.

Caregiver distress in schizophrenia and mood disorders: the role of illness-related stressors and caregiver-related factors.

Abstract: Background: Studies using the stress-appraisal-coping model to examine caregiving in schizophrenia and mood disorders are limited.Aim: This study attempted to examine psychological distress among c...

SCoPe: A Decision System for Large Scale Container Provisioning Management

Abstract: Operating system (OS) containers provide a process level virtualization in a multi-tenant Cloud environment. Such containers are becoming increasingly popular in developer community as they facilitate fast development and delivery of enterprise class Cloud services. Furthermore, these containers share a common OS and hence, they have a low resource foot-print leading to reduced provisioning time. In this paper, we investigate such promise of containers while provisioning large scale 3-tier applications. First, through benchmarking, we observe that at very large scale, several application scaling factors (e.g., number of containers of an application provisioned in parallel, application load) and system state parameters (e.g., number of applications and containers running on a system) introduce variability in application provisioning time because of resource bottleneck in general, and specifically due to the OS process overhead. To address such variability, we propose a provisioning decision management system SCoPe that provides an application partitioning and provisioning strategy where we determine the maximum number of containers of every application that can be provisioned in parallel across physical machines, while meeting the service level agreement (SLA) on provisioning time and Cloud provider specific objectives (e.g., maximize consolidation of applications, minimize operating cost). This joint partitioning and provisioning problem is NP-hard and we propose a greedy heuristic solution. Using real data set and through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the performance of SCoPe for large scale container based application provisioning. Compared to other well-known heuristics, SCoPe can reduce the partitioning by 5x or more, while meeting SLAs.

Network architecture supporting seamless flow mobility between LTE and WiFi networks

Abstract: Recently, there has been a tremendous growth in mobile network traffic. Network providers are looking for techniques that selectively offload the mobile data traffic onto WiFi (IEEE 802.11) networks to balance the load and improve network performance. Several architectures based on Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) have been proposed to support seamless data offloading. The demerits of PMIPv6 include lack of flow mobility and single point of failure. There exist architectures that extend PMIPv6 to support flow mobility, but still face the problem of overhead at the gateway and single point of failure. In this paper, we propose Seamless Internetwork Flow Mobility (SIFM), a new architecture that overcomes these drawbacks and provides seamless data offload supporting flow mobility. Both the PMIPv6 and the SIFM architectures have been implemented and evaluated incorporating salient LTE and WiFi network features in the ns-3 simulator. The performance studies validate that seamless mobility can be achieved for clients in both of these architectures. The results show that for the best possible (scenario dependent) offload value, the SIFM architecture shows an improvement of 13.86%, 29.05% and 11.33% whereas the PMIPv6 architecture shows an improvement of 7.96%, 19.52% and 7.83% in terms of delay, packet loss and throughput respectively compared to no offload scenario in each architecture. Further, we also show that the support for flow mobility in the SIFM architecture provides the flexibility to move selective flows to another network. This helps in achieving better performance gain compared to moving all the flows of the user as done in the PMIPv6 architecture.

"I swear, I can't stop it!" - A case of severe Tourette's syndrome treated with deep brain stimulation of anteromedial globus pallidus interna.

Abstract: Introduction: Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of multiple motor and vocal tics. Here, we report the case of a young man with severe TS refractory to multiple medications who underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS), which was successful in substantially ameliorating his tics. To our knowledge, this is the first such report from India and South Asia. Case Report: An 18-year-old right-handed male patient was diagnosed with TS at the age of 10 years. He had facial and ocular tics. He was also hitting his fist against his chest and shouting obscenities. The manifestations would be present in every waking hour with a maximum tic free interval of 15–20 minutes. They would often result in self-injury or damage to objects. He would have frequent crying spells, anger outbursts, and death wishes. As tics became highly conspicuous and socially inappropriate, he dropped out of school and remained almost completely house-bound for the preceding year. On evaluation, he scored 96 (46 on tic-severity subscale and 50 on impairment subscale) of a maximum of 100 on the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale. (YGTSS). Management: After failure of multiple combinations of medicines, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, and behavioural therapies, he successfully underwent DBS to bilateral anteromedial globus pallidus interna. Conclusion: Tic severity reduced substantially post-surgery, with the YGTSS score improving by more than 72%. These improvements were sustained on follow-up visits with the patient successfully returning to join college. To our knowledge, this is the first such report from India and South Asia.

Evidence-based guidelines and secondary meta-analysis for the use of transcranial direct current stimulation in neurological and psychiatric disorders

Abstract: Background Transcranial direct current stimulation has shown promising clinical results, leading to increased demand for an evidence-based review on its clinical effects. Objective We convened a team of transcranial direct current stimulation experts to conduct a systematic review of clinical trials with more than 1 session of stimulation testing: pain, Parkinson's disease motor function and cognition, stroke motor function and language, epilepsy, major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, schizophrenia, and drug addiction. Methods Experts were asked to conduct this systematic review according to the search methodology from PRISMA guidelines. Recommendations on efficacy were categorized into Levels A (definitely effective), B (probably effective), C (possibly effective), or no recommendation. We assessed risk of bias for all included studies to confirm whether results were driven by potentially biased studies. Results Although most of the clinical trials have been designed as proof-of-concept trials, some of the indications analyzed in this review can be considered as definitely effective (Level A), such as depression, and probably effective (Level B), such as neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, migraine, post-operative patient-controlled analgesia and pain, Parkinson's disease (motor and cognition), stroke (motor), epilepsy, schizophrenia, and alcohol addiction. Assessment of bias showed that most of the studies had low risk of biases, and sensitivity analysis for bias did not change these results. Effect sizes vary from 0.01 to 0.70 and were significant in about 8 conditions, with the largest effect size being in postoperative acute pain and smaller in stroke motor recovery (nonsignificant when combined with robotic therapy). Conclusion All recommendations listed here are based on current published PubMed-indexed data. Despite high levels of evidence in some conditions, it must be underscored that effect sizes and duration of effects are often limited; thus, real clinical impact needs to be further determined with different study designs.

A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Different Cortical Targets Used in Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) for the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Abstract: Randomised and sham-controlled trials (RCTs) of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have yielded conflicting results, which may be due to the variability in rTMS parameters used. We performed an updated systematic review and meta-analysis on the effectiveness of rTMS for the treatment of OCD and aimed to determine whether certain rTMS parameters, such as cortical target, may be associated with higher treatment effectiveness. After conducting a systematic literature review for RCTs on rTMS for OCD through to 1 December 2016 using MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Google, and Google Scholar, we performed a random-effects meta-analysis with the outcome measure as pre-post changes in Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores. To determine whether rTMS parameters may have influenced treatment effectiveness, studies were further analysed according to cortical target, stimulation frequency, and length of follow-up. Data were obtained from 18 RCTs on rTMS in the treatment of OCD. Overall, rTMS yielded a modest effect in reducing Y-BOCS scores with Hedge's g of 0.79 (95% CI = 0.43-1.15, p < 0.001). Stimulation of the supplementary motor area yielded the greatest reductions in Y-BOCS scores relative to other cortical targets. Subgroup analyses suggested that low frequency rTMS was more effective than high frequency rTMS. The effectiveness of rTMS was also greater at 12 weeks follow-up than at four weeks follow-up. Our meta-analysis implies that low frequency rTMS applied over the supplementary motor area may offer the greatest effectiveness in the treatment of OCD. The therapeutic effects of rTMS also appear to persist post-treatment and may offer beneficial long-term effectiveness. With our findings, it is suggested that future large-scale studies focus on the supplementary motor area and include follow-up periods of 12 weeks or more.