Obesity and Healthy Eating Habits

Obesity is a growing problem, most prevalent in the developed countries, especially US. Children and adolescents are gaining weight at a fast pace as compared to their parents. Although, it is very complicated to exactly know the cause of obesity, its risk factors, its prevention in different populations, yet, it has been observed that changes in life style and particularly in eating habits has contributed to an increased obesity incidence globally. These habits include eating junk food, synthetic and bakery products, increased hoteling, increased consumption of meat and unstaturated fats. If we compare the urban and rural regions at a global scale, we may come to know that Obesity and gastrointestinal problems are more prevalent in urban areas. It also indicates that these disorders are mostly attributed to bad eating habits and wrong choices of food which lack nutritional value but cause various disorders. Atleast 2 decades ago, when there was less digitalization and technological advancements, if people consumed high cholesterol diet or meat, they could digest it as they were physically very active. But in these days, there is less physical activity and our digestive systems cannot digest such food. Moreover, junk food may contribute to obesity. No doubt genetics may also has some role which cannot be denied but the modifiable risk factors can be controlled, monitored and may prevent such disorders. However, global investigations in this regard are direly needed to know the dietary habits and patterns worldwide, their effects in different populations, so that policies may be devised and implemented. Parents are also not aware of a proper healthy pattern that meets the requirements of their children. Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) Surveys and then awareness campaigns may play a positive role in this regard. Teaching healthy dietary patterns for different age groups at school level may also serve the purpose.

Interference Aware Energy Efficient Topology Control and Routing in Selfish Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, the devices are equipped with constrained energy resources, therefore, efficient utilization of these resources is essential to prolong the operation of the network. In this thesis, we address energy efficiency problem in selfish wireless ad hoc networks and develop multiple algorithms to improve the performance of these networks. The proposed solutions establish energy efficient network topology, minimize route discovery overhead, and reduce interference in the network, which are the primary factors that degrade the performance of the wireless ad hoc network. The proposed topology control solution establishes connections among nodes using game theory such that the energy consumption of the nodes is minimized. In order to reduce the energy consumption of the nodes during route search operation, we develop two route discovery algorithms that reduce redundant transmission of route request packets in the network. In addition, we propose an interference aware cooperative routing (IACR) protocol that minimizes the interference in the network by establishing low interference routes between source and the destination using node cooperation. As a result, improvement in network throughput and reduction in energy consumption is achieved. In order to prove the efficiency and improvement of proposed solutions, we perform extensive simulations for various network parameters and compare the results with previously proposed algorithms. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms improve the energy consumption of individual nodes during topology establishment and route discovery phase while the IACR algorithm improves the end-to-end quality of the route. The results show that the proposed solutions are better in terms of reduced energy consumption, low end-to-end delay, higher throughput, and reduced control packet overhead as compared to conventional approaches.