Energy-efficiency and environmental policies & income supplements in the UK: Their evolution and distributional impact in relation to domestic energy bills

The paper examines the financial costs of energy-efficiency and environmental policies that directly affect domestic electricity and gas bills in the UK over time. It also attempts for the first time to work out the current distributional impacts of these policies and others that act as income supplements thereby presenting a consistent picture across time and income deciles. Figures suggest that during 2000-11, the percentage share of policy costs in typical domestic electricity and gas bills rose by 14% and 4%, respectively. This reflects a growing share of policy costs in bills which is relatively small for gas customers but significant for electricity customers. Moreover, distributional impacts of the energy-policy mix highlight the issue of imperfect targeting of low-income households during 2009-10. The study also indicates that during 2010-11, 76% of the funds for energy-efficiency schemes were handled by the private sector. Given that a long-term solution to fuel poverty lies in improving thermal efficiency of houses; this research draws attention towards the need for definitive evidence on the ways in which energy suppliers charge policy costs from their domestic customers. This would facilitate in making the future policies more empirically grounded. In time, a clearer understanding of official statistics on energy bills will go a long way in restoring consumers’ trust in the pricing mechanism of the energy market

Tuberculosis Notification: Issues and Challenges.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem. An emerging menace in India is drug resistant forms of TB. In order to ensure proper TB diagnosis and case management, reduce TB transmission and address the problems of emergence of spread of Drug Resistant-TB, it is essential to have complete information of all TB cases. Therefore, Govt. of India declared Tuberculosis a notifiable disease on 7th May 2012. This paper highlights the fact that notification of TB in the absence of regulation of diagnostic practices, rational use of anti-TB medicines and availability of diagnostic and treatment facilities for drug-resistant TB will pose more problems rather than provide solutions to this problem

Energy-efficiency and environmental policies & income supplements in the UK: Their evolution and distributional impact in relation to domestic energy bills

The paper examines the financial costs of energy-efficiency and environmental policies that directly affect domestic electricity and gas bills in the UK over time. It also attempts for the first time to work out the current distributional impacts of these policies and others that act as income supplements thereby presenting a consistent picture across time and income deciles. Figures suggest that during 2000-11, the percentage share of policy costs in typical domestic electricity and gas bills rose by 14% and 4%, respectively. This reflects a growing share of policy costs in bills which is relatively small for gas customers but significant for electricity customers. Moreover, distributional impacts of the energy-policy mix highlight the issue of imperfect targeting of low-income households during 2009-10. The study also indicates that during 2010-11, 76% of the funds for energy-efficiency schemes were handled by the private sector. Given that a long-term solution to fuel poverty lies in improving thermal efficiency of houses; this research draws attention towards the need for definitive evidence on the ways in which energy suppliers charge policy costs from their domestic customers. This would facilitate in making the future policies more empirically grounded. In time, a clearer understanding of official statistics on energy bills will go a long way in restoring consumers’ trust in the pricing mechanism of the energy market

Parameterization and R-Peak Error Estimations of ECG Signals Using Independent Component Analysis

Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to reduce dimensionality of electrocardiogram (ECG) data prior to performing independent component analysis (ICA). A newly developed PCA variance estimator by the author has been applied for detecting true, actual and false peaks of ECG data files. In this paper, it is felt that the ability of ICA is also checked for parameterization of ECG signals, which is necessary at times. Independent components (ICs) of properly parameterized ECG signals are more readily interpretable than the measurements themselves, or their ICs. The original ECG recordings and the samples are corrected by statistical measures to estimate the noise statistics of ECG signals and find the reconstruction errors. The capability of ICA is justified by finding the true, false and actual peaks of around 25–50, CSE (common standards for electrocardiography) database ECG files. In the present work, joint approximation for diagonalization of the eigen matrices (Jade) algorithm is applied to 3-channel ECG. ICA processing of different cases is dealt with and the R-peak magnitudes of the ECG waveforms before and after applying ICA are found and marked. ICA results obtained indicate that in most of the cases, the percentage error in reconstruction is very small. The developed PCA variance estimator along with the quadratic spline wavelet gave a sensitivity of 97.47% before applying ICA and 98.07% after ICA processing

Prevalence of Dental Anxiety among Patients Visiting a Dental Institution in Telangana, South India

BACKGROUND: Anxiety and fear are common problems frequently experienced by patients during undergoing dental procedures across the globe. AIM: The present study aimed to assess the prevalence of dental anxiety among the patients attending the Out Patient Department (OPD) of a Dental Institution in Telangana, South India MATERIALS & METHOD:  A sample of 300 adults (Females =149, Males = 151) with age ranging from 15 years to 60 years were enrolled in the study. Data was collected by using the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS). Chi Square test and ANOVA was used to find significant comparisons between the different variables assessed in the study (age, gender, educational qualification, income, previous dental visits, previous dental experience and postponement of visit). Futher, Spearman’s Correlation was used to analyse these variables with the mean anxiety scores of the patients.  RESULTS: The prevalence of anxiety among patients in was found to be 3.6%. Reportedly the level of anxiety was found more in females than in males. It was revealed that while age depicted an inverse relationship, postponement of the dental treatment had a direct effect on dental anxiety. CONCLUSION:  Various dental procedures such as drilling the tooth for restorative procedures, injection techniques for various anaesthetic procedures are the most common reasons which cause dental anxiety to patients. Younger adolescents and patients who belong to lower socioeconomic groups were more anxious. Efforts need to be directed towards alleviation of this anxiety to provide quality dental care to one and all

Awareness of COPD in a High Risk Indian Population: A Cross Sectional Study

INTRODUCTION: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a major impact on the health of an Individual and is a burden to the society.AIM: To assess the attitudes towards COPD among smokers who are at a high risk of developing the disease in Ranga Reddy District, Telangana, IndiaMATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was a cross-sectional survey conducted among five dental camps conducted in district of Ranga Reddy in current smokers (both bidi and cigarette) aged 45 years and older with a history of at least 10 pack(for cigarette)/bundle(for bidi)-years of smoking. The subjects were distributed over four age groups, which were 45‒49 years, 50‒59 years, 60‒69 years, and >70 Years. Data was collected through a pre-validated, close ended structured questionnaire divided into four parts regarding the participant’s demographics, current health status, symptoms, awareness of COPD, attitudes towards COPD and willingness to quit smoking. Data was analysed using SPSS version 21.0.RESULTS: Of a total of 426 subjects, (male predominance 94.2%.) , people belonging to the age groups of 40-49 years and >70 years reported themselves being in “Good health”. Only 3.5% reported having to know COPD as a respiratory disease as compared to 24.9% of the population who recognised lung cancer as the most common respiratory disease. 46.2% subjects acknowledged that cough was a symptom most commonly associated with COPD. Only a few portion of the subjects (1.8%) were willing to visit a doctor for diagnosis of COPD. Willingness to quit smoking among the respondents was seen in only 24.7% of the population and 14.5% could not decide about the same.CONCLUSION: Efforts are needed to be directed towards proper counselling and education of the people of Ranga Reddy district to prevent them from the ill-effects of Tobacco and its related diseases, especially COPD