Evaluation of fungal and bacterial antagonists' seed treatment for controlling damping-off disease in forest nurseries

Biological control potential of six well reported biocontrol agents, Trichomerma viride, T. harzianum, Gliocladium virens, Bacillus sp., B. subtilis and Pseudomonas fluorescens against Rhizoctonia solani, R. bataticola, Fusarium oxysporum, F. moniliformae, F. solani and Phythium aphanidermatum causing damping-off in forest nurseries was studied in vitro and under screen house conditions. In vitro evaluation of biocontrol agents by dual inoculation method revealed that P. fluorescens, Bacillus sp. and T. viride significantly inhibited mycelial growth of the damping-offfungi. In pot experiments, seed treatment of T. viride and P. fluorescens proved superior to other fungal and bacterial biocontrol agents in reducing damping off (pre and post emergence) incidence compared to untreated controls

Training need assessment of nursing personnel as super specialty tertiary care hospitals in Northern India

Background - Super specialty tertiary care hospital equips nurses with the requisite knowledge and skills to deliver high quality care in their practice areas. This has necessitated adopting a structured approach to the training needs assessment (TNA) to identify the development needs of the nursing workforce at a tertiary care centre. This study involves Micro Level – Task/Job analysis i.e. identifies and describes all the skills performed by employees in a particular job and the knowledge, skills, attitudes and other behaviours needed for successful job performance. Aim and objectives: The study explores the training needs of nursing personnel at super specialty tertiary care hospital in northern India by analyzing the areas of knowledge and skills deficit as perceived by the nurses and assessing the expectations of doctors, about the role of nurses and deficiencies in their current knowledge, skills Design: Structured questionnaire based descriptive cross sectional study Methods: A set of questionnaire were framed using core competencies of nurses listed by Massachusetts department of higher education and nursing council of Hongkong and A questionnaire based descriptive cross sectional study among nurses, faculty, senior residents and patients were done. Results: The total sample collected for the study was 274 which included 19 faculty, 44 senior résidents, 211 nurses. Training needs identified to be further developed for Grade II and grade I nurses both by nurses and doctors are maximum in patient care and research domain followed by managerial/administrative and communication domain. Training needs agreed to be promoted for ANS’s are maximum in managerial/ administrative and communication domain. Training needs recognized for DNS’s /NS/CNO are maximum in managerial/ administrative and research domain followed by communication domain Conclusion – This study reflects the training need assessment of nurses in a super specialty tertiary care hospita

Management of Vatarakta w.s.r. to Gout through Panchakarma

Vatarakta is more distressing and common metabolic disorder prevalent in present era. It is Vatapradhana Tridoshaja Vatavyadhi where Rakta is main Dushya. Vata is a predominant Dosha in Vatarakta, when it is excessively aggravated with vitiated Rakta is called Vatarakta. Vatarakta is correlated with gout in modern science. Gout is an abnormality of purine metabolism causes hyperuricemia and deposition of monosodium urate crystals in joints. Pain is predominant symptom of gout, which disturbs day-today life of the patients. The Panchakarma is not only a important component of Ayurvedic treatment but it is also forms the fundamental basis of Ayurveda therapy. The different procedures like Swedana, Vamana, Virechana, Basti, Sirovirechana, Raktamokshana focus on the purification which detoxifies the human body, i.e. the correction of the metabolism at molecular level. These detoxification procedures are essential components of the management in various metabolic disorders. So Panchakarma is an unique approach in the management of Vatarakta

THE EFFECT OF UPANAHA SWEDA AND VATARI GUGGULU IN THE MANAGEMENT OF JANUSANDHIGATA VATA (KNEE OSTEOARTHRITIS): A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Every man derives the happiness and benefit of his life through locomotion i.e., using his joints. For the minute if he loses this power of locomotion he not only feels himself a miserable creature but also becomes a burden both of his family and society. The loss or reduction in his locomotive power is due to dysfunction of the joints causing an impediment to his movements. If not treated in time, the disease makes man disable. Sandhigata Vata is most common articular disorder. It is a type of Vata Vyadhi which mainly occurs in Vriddhavastha, due to Dhatukshaya. Sandhigata Vata can be correlated with osteoarthritis (OA) which is one such chronic, degenerative, inflammatory disease and has a great impact on the quality of the life of an individual. Different modalities of treatment have been explained in the classics to tackle the condition effectively. The present study was aimed to assess clinically the effect of Upanaha Sweda and Vatari Guggulu in the management of Janusandhigata Vata. In this study total 42 patients were divided in 2 groups. In Group A, patients were treated with only Upanaha Sweda and other group patients were treated with Upanaha Sweda and Vatari Guggulu. Results obtained were analyzed for statistical significance which shows group B in which Vatari Guggulu and Upanaha Sweda were given, was more effective in bringing relief in signs and symptoms of Janusandhigata Vata

Feeding and reproductive behaviour of pigeon slender louse, Columbicola columbae (Phthiraptera, Insecta, Ischnocera)

Columbicola columbae, the pigeon slender louse mostly feeds upon the barbules of feathers but in addition to this it also feeds upon skin scurf, epidermal scales, sheaths of growing feathers, pellicle of skin etc. C. columbae is exclusively keratin feeder and does not take host blood. Any sex or stage related difference in feeding habit has not been recorded. It neither harbours any triturating agent in the crop nor is involved in cannibalism or predation. C. columbae exhibits sub-feminal mating behaviour (i.e., the male is under the female). Completecopulation lasts about 10 hours. The louse prefers the wing and tail feathers for oviposition. The eggs are generally laid on the ventral surface of the first row of undercoverts of wing feathers. Every event that takes place prior to eclosion of nymph, the time required for detachment of operculum and the freeing of nymph has been noted during hatching

RDD2022: A multi-national image dataset for automatic Road Damage Detection

The data article describes the Road Damage Dataset, RDD2022, which comprises 47,420 road images from six countries, Japan, India, the Czech Republic, Norway, the United States, and China. The images have been annotated with more than 55,000 instances of road damage. Four types of road damage, namely longitudinal cracks, transverse cracks, alligator cracks, and potholes, are captured in the dataset. The annotated dataset is envisioned for developing deep learning-based methods to detect and classify road damage automatically. The dataset has been released as a part of the Crowd sensing-based Road Damage Detection Challenge (CRDDC2022). The challenge CRDDC2022 invites researchers from across the globe to propose solutions for automatic road damage detection in multiple countries. The municipalities and road agencies may utilize the RDD2022 dataset, and the models trained using RDD2022 for low-cost automatic monitoring of road conditions. Further, computer vision and machine learning researchers may use the dataset to benchmark the performance of different algorithms for other image-based applications of the same type (classification, object detection, etc.).Comment: 16 pages, 20 figures, IEEE BigData Cup - Crowdsensing-based Road damage detection challenge (CRDDC'2022