Central University of Kerala

About: Central University of Kerala is a education organization based out in Kāsaragod, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Catalysis. The organization has 556 authors who have published 881 publications receiving 7474 citations.

Urine total glutathione levels as a potential marker of increased oxidative stress in autism

Abstract: Objective: Glutathione supplement has been prescribed as a therapy in autism often without proper glutathione quantification in the body. Though, increased speech and increased imaginary play is reported, increased screaming and loosening of stools have been reported as side effects. In this scenario, for an effective management of glutathione administration, we suggest a simple and reliable means of glutathione quantification before its administration. This study pertains to the quantification of total glutathione in autistic children using noninvasively taken urine as sample. Materials & Methods: Urine samples were collected from ten autistic and nine neurotypical children of similar age and sex. Total glutathione was quantified using enzymatic recycling method. Results: Mean levels of total glutathione in autistic children were significantly lower than the neurotypical children (p-value <0.001). Conclusion: We conclude that total glutathione is lower in autistic children and noninvasively collected urine can be used for glutathione quantification before administering glutathione as a therapeutic measure.

Applying Hybrid Deep Neural Network for the Recognition of Sign Language Words Used by the Deaf COVID-19 Patients

Abstract: The rapid spread of the novel corona virus disease (COVID-19) has disrupted the traditional clinical services all over the world. Hospitals and healthcare centers have taken extreme care to minimize the risk of exposure to the virus by restricting the visitors and relatives of the patients. The dramatic changes happened in the healthcare norms have made it hard for the deaf patients to communicate and receive appropriate care. This paper reports a work on automatic sign language recognition that can mitigate the communication barrier between the deaf patients and the healthcare workers in India. Since hand gestures are the most expressive components of a sign language vocabulary, a novel dataset of dynamic hand gestures for the Indian sign language (ISL) words commonly used for emergency communication by deaf COVID-19 positive patients is proposed. A hybrid model of deep convolutional long short-term memory network has been utilized for the recognition of the proposed hand gestures and achieved an average accuracy of 83.36%. The model performance has been further validated on an alternative ISL dataset as well as a benchmarking hand gesture dataset and obtained average accuracies of $$97\%$$ and $$99.34\pm 0.66\%$$ , respectively.

Changing role of the state: an analysis of economic intervention of the government in india after liberalization

Abstract: Economic liberalisation policies are mostly aimed to reduce the role of government in economic activities. It is argued that as a country moves on its growth path it should slowly reduce the role of government in economic activities and allow the more efficient private sector to take up the growth momentum. This study investigates into the changing role of government in India by looking into the nature, trends and pattern of revenue and expenditures of Central and State governments after the economic liberalization policies of 1991.The study shows that there is no much paradigm shift in the government’s expenditure pattern after the 1991 economic reforms. Though we expected an increased trend in developmental expenditure of the governments because of its facilitator role, the study indicates declining trend in the share of developmental expenditure while the share of non-developmental expenditure showed a slightly increasing trend during the liberalization regime. Unlike the case of government expenditure, there were considerable differences in the pattern of government receipts, especially in tax receipts. While the share of indirect taxes in the total revenue receipts showed a steady fall, there was a corresponding increase in the share of direct tax revenue. The increase in direct taxes and income taxes was propelled by the significant growth in corporation taxes and income taxes mainly due to the privatisation measures adopted during the economic liberalization period.We conclude that the economic liberalization measures have not much changed the role of government in terms of its expenditures but helped in restructuring the pattern of government receipts. .

Techno-Stress Scale of Teacher Educators: Construction of the Tool

Abstract: The primary purpose of the research is to develop and standardize the scale of technostress of Teacher Educator. The researcher had developed the draft statements to measure teacher educators' technostress based on the psychological experts' interaction and some theoretical inputs. Thirty-six items have been constructed as a preliminary draft of the tool. The study sample was collected randomly from the 150 teacher educators of Kasaragod and Kannur Districts of Kerala. The item analysis was done through the 'Cronbach's Alpha if Item Deleted' strategies through SPSS 22 Version. After finalizing the item analysis strategies the investigator prepared the final draft of the tool consists of thirty-two items in a five-point scale. The Cronbach Alpha and split-half reliability analysis strategies were used to verify the consistency of the instrument. This tool would be very much useful to measure the technological stress of teacher educators. This paper explains the procedure of technostress scale construction and standardization.

2D layer stacked metallic Cu-serine triangular pyramids and their surface plasmon resonance properties

Abstract: 2D copper crystals are synthesized by following a novel solution process. Layer stacked 2D metallic Cu nanostructures are successfully synthesized by chemical reduction using l -Serine and ascorbic acid. SEM and TEM images showed the formation of 2D crystals of copper which are layer by layer stacked to deliver triangular pyramidal structures with embedded spherical as well as rod shaped Cu NPs. Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) is studied as a function of pH and concentration of l -serine. SPR is originated from the sharp corners and edges of the triangular pyramid structure and large number of surface particles of copper which are embedded on the 2D copper sheets. The results are highly useful for the development of non-noble metal based SPR sensors.