Double burden of malnutrition among urban Bengalee adolescent boys in Midnapore, West Bengal, India

Malnutrition is an important public health problem worldwide. Therefore a study was undertaken to assess the prevalence of adolescent thinness, overweight and obesity in Midnapore town, West Bengal, India. A total of 974 adolescent boys aged 10-18 years were selected following multistage cluster sampling method from three higher secondary schools. Data was collected using pretested questionnaire following standard technique. Presence of thinness was evaluated using the cut-off values of international survey as suggested by Cole et al (2007). While overweight and obesity was determine by using international cut-off values develop by Cole et al (2000) based on international surveys as recommended by IOTF. Overall the prevalence of thinness, overweight and obesity were 20.8%, 14.9% and 3.8%, respectively. This study developed age specific smooth BMI percentile values using LMS method. Moreover, the study also developed BMI cut-off values to define thinness, overweight and obesity. In conclusion, the present analyses indicated that the prevalence of adolescent undernutrition is still a major problem. In addition, there was also an emerging trend for overweight/obesity, thereby indicating a double burden of malnutrition as observed in other developing countries

Patterning in Birthweight in India: Analysis of Maternal Recall and Health Card Data

National data on birthweight from birth certificates or medical records are not available in India. The third Indian National Family Health Survey included data on birthweight of children obtained from health cards and maternal recall. This study aims to describe the population that these data represent and compares the birthweight obtained from health cards with maternal recall data in terms of its socioeconomic patterning and as a risk factor for childhood growth failure.The analytic sample consisted of children aged 0 to 59 months with birthweight data obtained from health cards (n = 3227) and maternal recall (n = 16,787). The difference between the card sample and the maternal recall sample in the distribution across household wealth, parental education, caste, religion, gender, and urban residence was compared using multilevel models. We also assessed the ability of birthweight to predict growth failure in infancy and childhood in the two groups. The survey contains birthweight data from a majority of household wealth categories (>5% in every category for recall), both genders, all age groups, all caste groups, all religion groups, and urban and rural dwellers. However, children from the lowest quintile of household wealth were under-represented (4.73% in card and 8.62% in recall samples). Comparison of data across health cards and maternal recall revealed similar social patterning of low birthweight and ability of birthweight to predict growth failure later in life. Children were less likely to be born with low birthweight if they had mothers with over 12 years of education compared to 1-5 years of education with relative risk (RR) of 0.79 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.52, 1.2) in the card sample and 0.70 (95% CI: 0.59, 0.84) in the recall sample. A 100 gram difference in a child's birthweight was associated with a decreased likelihood of underweight in both the card (RR: 0.95; 95% CI: 0.94, 0.96) and recall (RR: 0.96; 95% CI: 0.96, 0.97) samples.Our results suggest that in the absence of other sources, the data on birthweight in the third Indian National Family Health Survey is valuable for epidemiologic research

On the long-term variability of temperature trends and changes in surface air temperature in Kolkata Weather Observatory, West Bengal, India

The impact of climate change on annual air temperature has received a great deal of attention from climatologists worldwide. Many studies have been conducted to illustrate that changes in temperature are becoming evident on a global scale. Air temperature, one of the most important components of climate parameters, has been widely measured as a starting point towards the apprehension of climate change and variability. The main objective of this study is to analyse the temporal variability of mean monthly temperature for the period of 1941 to 2010 (70 years). To detect the magnitude of trend in mean monthly temperature time series, we have used non-parametric test methods such as The Mann-Kendall test, often combined with the Theil-Sen’s robust estimate of linear trend. Whatever test is used, the user should understand the underlying assumptions of both the technique used to generate the estimates of a trend and the statistical methods used for testing. The results of this analysis reveal that four months – January, February, March and December – indicate a decreasing trend in average temperature, while the remaining eight months have an increasing trend. The magnitude of Mann-Kendall trend statistic Zc for this declining temperature and the magnitude of slope for the months of January, February and December are confirmed at the high significance levels of α = 0.001, 0.01 and 0.1 respectively. Though, the overall trend is positive for monthly as well as seasonally efficient time series

Synthetic Studies toward the Citrinadin A and B Core Architecture

[Image: see text] The core architecture of the citrinadin alkaloids has been prepared in racemic form by utilizing a strategy that exploits the alkylation of 2-methoxypyridines. An initially planned indolizidine to quinolizidine transformation to build the D/E rings was unsuccessful. Success was ultimately gained by a direct alkylation to establish the citrinadin core architecture

Effect of periodic gas-puffs on drift-tearing modes in ADITYA/ADITYA-U tokamak discharges

The effect of a periodic train of short gas-puff pulses on the rotation frequency and amplitude of drift-tearing modes has been studied in ADITYA/ADITYA-U tokamak. The short gas puffs, injecting approximately similar to 10(17)-10(18) molecules of fuel gas (hydrogen) at one toroidal location, are found to concomitantly decrease the drift-tearing mode rotation frequency and the mode amplitude during the period of injection and then recover back to its initial values when the gas pulse is over. This leads to a periodic modulation of the rotation frequency and amplitude of the drift-tearing modes that is correlated with the periodicity of the gas pulse injection. The underlying mechanism for this change in the mode characteristic appears to be related to gas puff induced change in the radial profile of the plasma pressure in the edge region that brings about a reduction in the diamagnetic drift frequency. Detailed experimental measurements and BOUT++ code simulations support such a reduction in diamagnetic drift frequency. Our results reveal a close interaction between the edge dynamics and core MHD phenomena in a tokamak that could help us better understand the rotation dynamics and amplitude pulsations of magnetic islands