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Proposes to provide some New Zealand public sector examples that reflect the ideas contained in the quotation “information is a currency of democracy”. The discussion in the first part of the paper concludes that in modern democracies such as New Zealand, information is used as a currency for democracy. The second part of the paper provides specific government initiatives that support this argument through their key government goals founded on the ethos of social inclusion. The National Library’s contribution to these goals is illustrated by the advent of the new National Library of New Zealand Aotearoa (Te Puna Ma¯tauranga o Aotearoa) Act 2003. The second part of the paper also carries an overlay of the national information strategy framework devised by the wider library and information sector through their professional organisation the Library and Information Association New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA) and Te Ro¯pu Whakahau (Ma¯ori Library and Information Workers Association).

The purpose of the paper was to assess the functional properties vegetable gourds & the validated health claims so as to help the future researchers to locate the gaps. However, emphasizing on the scientifically available reports was required to make information available in a nutshell to the health-conscious consumers, as well as the researcher from the area of functional foods and nutrition.

The paper is a mini-review of scientific findings in different studies on gourd vegetables. The approach to information collection was finding the research gaps and potential areas for future work with a nutritional perspective.

Ash gourd, bitter gourd and bottle gourd have been extensively studied, and several health benefits and functional components have been reported, while ridge gourd, snake gourd and pointed gourd have been sparsely studied for their therapeutic benefits and the validation thereof; hence, there lies a scope for researchers.

The scarcity of scientific reports compared to the traditional usage and folkloric beliefs was a limitation.

Understanding the nutritional potential of gourd vegetables from scientific reports may influence both the work areas and consumers in the appropriate direction.

This study aims to explore perceived barriers to participating in regular physical activity (PA) among middle-aged adults in Una, Himachal Pradesh, India.

This study used qualitative methodology. The authors conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews among adults between 40 and 60 years of age. Eleven interviews were conducted in participants’ vernacular language and were audio-recorded. The recordings were transcribed, and emergent findings were evaluated and interpreted using an open-ended method.

PA was mostly related to household chores by female participants. Male participants considered their daily tasks synonymous with PA. The main barriers identified were lack of enthusiasm/time, advancing age and declining health status, misperceptions of being physically active, lack of skill/knowledge, family responsibilities, lack of social support, lack of open spaces, parks and other facilities, and social restrictions due to the pandemic.

The findings of this study will aid in designing better interventions targeted at promoting PA. Identification of the existing modifiable barriers can be a target source for most public health programs.

The barriers existing among the community must be addressed to achieve the recommended level of PA. The promotional strategies should focus on individual factors, such as increasing self-efficiency and knowledge about recommended levels of PA. The social barriers must also be addressed through peer support and group-based activities. Health policies should emphasize making societies more active by ensuring more open spaces and parks.

Barriers to PA may differ among the socioeconomic strata and geographical locations. The present study explored barriers among working adults in an urban Indian setting.

The selection of effective library software not only plays an important role for students, academic staff and the library staff but also helps an institution by having the library management system more centralized. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) cause and effect factor model for the implementation of the Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) software.

A thorough review of the literature is conducted to develop an initial list of the appropriate evaluation factors that play a significant role in the implementation of GSDL software. The data were collected from a domain of experts in the library sciences field. A combined approach of Delphi-DEMATEL methods is employed for the definition of these factors and to construct an MCDA cause-effect model which represents their relationships.

The DEMATEL analysis resulted in the division of all factors into two groups, causes and effects. The results show that content management, having a user-friendly interface and usability, information search and retrieval and authentication and authorization fall into the cause group. These factors directly affect the remaining factors. Content acquisition, classification, access, control and privacy management and metadata submission and support fall into the effect group. The research findings can help library professionals to make effective decisions to facilitate the successful implementation of GSDL software in a library and the enhancement of library technology.

The results of this study can be useful for library professionals and decision-makers to select the most appropriate software for the implementation of library technology. The study analysis shows that for GSDL, user-friendly interface and usability, information search and retrieval plus authentication and authorization factors have seven positive relationships with other factors. Secondly, content management and classification have six relationships with other factors. Thirdly, access control plus privacy and management have two relationships. Content acquisition has only one relationship with other factors. It is recommended that the user-friendly interface and usability, information search and retrieval, as well as authentication and authorization should be the initial areas of focus if GSDL is to be implemented successfully in digital libraries.

The proposed MCDA cause-effect model can be useful for library professionals or decision-makers in the context of selecting software to be implemented in a library and to minimize implementation costs.

The literature reveals there is a limited knowledge regarding the extraction of long natural fibers, in particular those extracted from leaves. This investigation aims to present the extraction process and the characterization of long natural cellulose fibers from doum palm leaves (Hyphaene thebaica L.), with properties suitable for polymeric composite materials and textile applications.

The resulting H. thebaica L. fibers were identified using Attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The physical properties of the extracted fibers were measured to estimate the reliability of extraction conditions. Mechanical properties were evaluated to determine ultimate strength, Young’s modulus and strain-at-failure of the fibers of the doum leaves.

The following properties of the doum palm are listed in this paper: physical properties of doum palm fibers (H. thebaica L.), TGA, XRD of doum palm fibers, tensile properties of doum palm fibers and surface morphology of doum palm fibers.

Like synthetic fibers, the inclusion of short or long natural fibers into the polymer matrix can increase tensile, flexural and compressive strengths of these matrixes. Compared to the short-length natural fibers, longer-length fibers provide better reinforcements and therefore accord higher performances to the composites. Long fibers can also provide exceptional opportunities to develop a new class of advanced lightweight composites and have the potential to rival glass fiber in the manufacture of composite materials, using matrix materials, such as polypropylene, epoxy and phenolic resins.

The following values are presented in this paper: density of doum palm fibers = 1.14-1.40 g/cm², linear density (Tex) = 33.10 ±11.5, equivalent diameter (µm) = 178.72 ± 41.7, diameter (µm) = 137.02-220.42, tensile strength (MPa) = 124.84-448.10, Young’s modulus (GPa) = 8.06-19.59, strain-at-failure (%) = 0.81-2.86.

This paper aims to address not only technical and economic challenges in electrical distribution system but also environmental impact and the depletion of conventional energy resources due to rapidly growing economic development, results rising energy consumption.

Generally, the network reconfiguration (NR) problem is designed for minimizing power loss. Particularly, it is devised for maximizing power loss reduction by simultaneous NR and distributed generation (DG) placement. A loss sensitivity factor procedure is incorporated in the problem formulation that has identified sensitivity nodes for DG optimally. An adaptive weighted improved discrete particle swarm optimization (AWIDPSO) is proposed for ascertaining a feasible solution.

In AWIDPSO, the adaptively varying inertia weight increases the possible solution in the global search space and it has obtained the optimum solution within lesser iteration. Moreover, it has provided a solution for integrating more amount of DG optimally in the existing distribution network (DN).

The AWIDPSO seems to be a promising optimization tool for optimal DG placement in the existing DN, DG placement after NR and simultaneous NR and DG sizing and placement. Thus, a strategic balance is derived among economic development, energy consumption, environmental impact and depletion of conventional energy resources.

In this study, a standard 33-bus distribution system has been analyzed for optimal NR in the presence of DG using the developed framework. The power loss in the DN has reduced considerably by indulging a new and innovative approaches and technologies.

This work shows the results of a systematic literature review on biomedical text mining. The purpose of this study is to identify the different text mining approaches used in different application areas of the biomedical domain, the common tools used and the challenges of biomedical text mining as compared to generic text mining algorithms. This study will be of value to biomedical researchers by allowing them to correlate text mining approaches to specific biomedical application areas. Implications for future research are also discussed.

The review was conducted following the principles of the Kitchenham method. A number of research questions were first formulated, followed by the definition of the search strategy. The papers were then selected based on a list of assessment criteria. Each of the papers were analyzed and information relevant to the research questions were extracted.

It was found that researchers have mostly harnessed data sources such as electronic health records, biomedical literature, social media and health-related forums. The most common text mining technique was natural language processing using tools such as MetaMap and Unstructured Information Management Architecture, alongside the use of medical terminologies such as Unified Medical Language System. The main application area was the detection of adverse drug events. Challenges identified included the need to deal with huge amounts of text, the heterogeneity of the different data sources, the duality of meaning of words in biomedical text and the amount of noise introduced mainly from social media and health-related forums.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, other reviews in this area have focused on either specific techniques, specific application areas or specific data sources. The results of this review will help researchers to correlate most relevant and recent advances in text mining approaches to specific biomedical application areas by providing an up-to-date and holistic view of work done in this research area. The use of emerging text mining techniques has great potential to spur the development of innovative applications, thus considerably impacting on the advancement of biomedical research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of personality factors in influencing mentoring relationships in the South-Asian context.

The sample included 363 subjects from public and private sector organizations in North India.

Results revealed that in the Indian context, conscientiousness acts as significant predictor of perceived psychosocial mentoring, agreeableness acts as significant predictor of perceived career mentoring support, and emotional stability acts as significant predictor of both categories of mentoring relationships. Further, managers employed in public sector organizations were found to be high on all the Big Five personality factors and mentoring functions in contrast to managers from private sector organizations.

Overall, the results suggest that mentoring relationships should operate in organizations with a firm understanding of employees’ personality traits. Implications and future research directions were also discussed. Further, suggestions have also been given for incorporating various interventions in order to handle employees with different personality attributes such as counseling for helping emotionally unstable employees manage their emotions and stress.

To the knowledge, this is the first study that seeks to examine impact of personality factors on mentoring relationships in the South-Asian context.

Telemedicine is delivered to patient anywhere during emergency treatment care, and medical information is transferred from one site of patient to another site of specialist doctors by using mobile internet communication. Some rural areas have slow internet speed because of weak internet signal propagation from mobile towers. A good design of antenna is needed to improve mobile internet speed for big medial data transmission in telemedicine application. Hence, this paper aims to propose economically low-cost design of antenna.

Telemedicine recommended to design the satellite frequency modulation dish (SAT FMD) antenna ( where in FM radio antenna, dish antenna are combined ) to improve the internet speed at Telemedicine system and Hospitals for purpose of Telemedicine communication and information for emergency treatment.

In the proposed system, designed SAT FMD satellite-based antenna improved internet speed is achieved at 90.6% accuracy in this research method. Finding latitude and longitude angles to identify the patient location, nearest hospitals location and finding distance, shortest path routing between patient and hospital. Finding elevation, Azimuth, latitude, longitude, skew for alignment dish to focus satellite and mobile cell tower to improve internet speed at telemedicine area and hospitals and reduced transmission delay and nodal delay of big medical data.

The social awareness among people can be shared information of accident patient to communicate Hospital and Ambulance driver by internet mobile app tools and help find nearest hospitals to emergency treatment for accident people.

This paper presents SAT FMD antenna model based on satellite dish antenna consisting of FM radio receiver antenna and dish antenna for telemedicine communication.

Medical textiles is a vibrant emerging field in the area of technical textiles and its category is based on its performance and biofunctional properties for hygienic and health care products. Biodegradable fabrics are widely used for medical textiles in recent years. Seaweeds provide a wide range of therapeutic possibilities for human beings both internally and externally due to the presence of bioactive compounds. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This present study investigates the development of bioactive gauze fabric from Chaetomorpha linum seaweed/cotton blended fibres and also analysed the characteristics of Chaetomorpha linum seaweed/cotton blended gauze fabric and 100 per cent cotton gauze fabric. The effect of fibres on physical properties of fabric such as tensile strength, air permeability, wickability, water drop test and colour fastness properties were analysed. The antibacterial properties and antioxidant activity were assessed by DPPH radical scavenging, AATCC 100 and EN ISO 20645 test methods.

The experimental results indicate that the maximum antioxidant activity of 103.28±1.23 per cent inhibition was achieved at minimum concentration (500 µg/ml) of the blended fabric extract, and maximum antibacterial reduction of 95 per cent and zone of inhibition of about 26 mm were achieved in a blended fabric. The tensile strength, percentage of elongation and air permeability were more or less the same in both gauze fabrics. It is also found that Chaetomorpha linum seaweed/cotton blended gauze fabric exhibit better wickability and water absorbency properties than 100 per cent cotton gauze fabric. The colour fastness properties to washing and rubbing showed excellent results in the blended gauze fabric, and it is used for making wound dressing materials.

This bioactive gauze fabric was used for non-implantable materials such as wound healing, face mask, surgical gowns and hygienic textiles in recent years.