Impacts of Responsible Tourism in Environmental sustainability issues: A Case Study in Kerala, India

Abstract Integrating tourism and sustainable practices will enhance positive impacts to visitors and the local community. It is an innovative mantra for improving the quality of life through increased socio-economic benefits and improved natural resource management. Green growth is a new paradigm to develop a resource-efficient, cleaner and more resilient sustainable development. The paper describes the positive impacts of responsible tourism initiatives in environmental sustainability. The case study focuses on providing better insights into the existing tourism initiatives in Kerala. By integrating the green growth concept with tourism helps to address the gaps of sustainable development. The research adopted qualitative research methodology to collect data from the tourism stakeholder’s through participant observation and interviews. This aims to integrate the tourism industry with green growth concept to minimize the negative impacts of tourism development on the environment. Keywords: Tourism, Responsible tourism, Green growth, Sustainable development, Quality of life

Foreword

European Union ( EU ) law is no more immune than any other functioning body of law to technological innovation, and the European institutions need to adapt to such change. EU law has done so in a wide variety of ways, only a sampling of which can be presented in this issue of the Columbia Journal of European Law that we are honored to introduce. The Journal\u27s commission of this Special Issue evidences its keen awareness of both the promises and challenges that technological change presents to Europe and its legal institutions

A SKOS Core approach to implementing an M2M

The proliferation of distributed digital libraries and repositories has increased the need for improved interoperability between terminologies in order to facilitate user access to the discrete heterogeneous digital objects held therein. The emergence of the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Core is a useful development in this context. In this paper we describe a SKOS Core approach to implementing a web services (i.e. M2M) terminology server employing terminology mapping and using SKOS Core to wrap terminology responses. Aspects advantageous to this approach are explored, as are issues and areas for future research

Numerical Modeling of Geocell Reinforced Beds

Geocell is one of the geosynthetic products used primarily for reinforcing pavements. The numerical modeling of geocell was always a challenge because of its complex honeycombed geometry. This unique three dimensional structure of geocell provide an additional lateral confinement to the encapsulated soil thereby distributing the stresses developed under loading to a wider area. This mechanism of geocell increases the performance of the sand bed to a greater extent

Review of clinical profile, risk factors, and outcome in patients with Tuberculosis and COVID -19

Coronavirus disease (COVID 19) has involved millions of people all over the world. Tuberculosis (TB) continues to affect millions of people every year with high mortality. There is limited literature on the occurrence of COVID 19 in patients with TB. We reviewed the available data on various clinical details, management, and outcome among patients with COVID-19 and TB. 8 studies reported a total of 80 patients with this coinfection. These patients were reported from ten different countries, with Italy reporting the largest number of cases. Migrant, males constituted a major proportion of cases. Most reported patients were symptomatic. Fever, dry cough, and dyspnea were the most commonly reported symptoms. Bilateral ground glass opacities were more common in COVID 19 infection and cavitary lesions were more common in patients with TB. Most reported TB patients had been found to have mycobacterium tuberculosis from sputum culture in the background of pulmonary TB. Most patients of TB were treated with multidrug regimen antitubercular therapy. In all 8 studies, COVID 19 was treated as per the local protocol. Mortality was reported in more than 10% of patients. Mortality was higher in elderly patients ( \u3e 70 years) and amongst patient with multiple medical comorbidities

Mechanisms of neurological injury in COVID-19

We read with much interest the article “Neurological Impact of Coronavirus Disease (COVID 19): Practical Considerations for the Neuroscience Community” by Werner et al. published in your esteemed Journal. Authors have described the various neurological details of COVID-19 in detail.1 We believe this topic is important and is continuously evolving. We have the following comments as an addition to the article

Cerebrovascular events in COVID-19 patients

Neurological manifestations in patients with COVID-19 are more frequently being reported. Cerebrovascular events have been reported in around 3% of patients. In this review we summarize the published literature on cerebrovascular events in patients with COVID-19 as available on the PubMed database. So far, 3 studies have reported cerebrovascular events. Cerebrovascular events were identified on screening patients with decreased consciousness or in the presence of focal neurological deficits. These events were common in elderly, critically ill patients and in patients with prior cardio-cerebrovascular comorbidities. The diagnosis of cerebrovascular events was confirmed with computed tomography of the brain in most studies reporting neurological events. Multiple pathological mechanisms have been postulated regarding the process of neurological and vascular injury among which cytokine storm is shown to correlate with mortality. Patients with severe illness are found to have a higher cardio- cerebrovascular comorbidity. With an increasing number of cases and future prospective studies, the exact mechanism by which these cerebrovascular events occur and attribute to the poor outcome will be better understood

Sensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) immunoassays for detecting lipoarabinomannan (LAM) and ESAT-6 in urine and serum from tuberculosis patients.

BackgroundTuberculosis (TB) infection was responsible for an estimated 1.3 million deaths in 2017. Better diagnostic tools are urgently needed. We sought to determine whether accurate TB antigen detection in blood or urine has the potential to meet the WHO target product profiles for detection of active TB.Materials and methodsWe developed Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) immunoassays for Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) and ESAT-6 detection with detection limits in the pg/ml range and used them to compare the concentrations of the two antigens in the urine and serum of 81 HIV-negative and -positive individuals with presumptive TB enrolled across diverse geographic sites.ResultsLAM and ESAT-6 overall sensitivities in urine were 93% and 65% respectively. LAM and ESAT-6 overall sensitivities in serum were 55% and 46% respectively. Overall specificity was ≥97% in all assays. Sensitivities were higher in HIV-positive compared to HIV-negative patients for both antigens and both sample types, with signals roughly 10-fold higher on average in urine than in serum. The two antigens showed similar concentration ranges within the same sample type and correlated.ConclusionsLAM and ESAT-6 can be detected in the urine and serum of TB patients, regardless of the HIV status and further gains in clinical sensitivity may be achievable through assay and reagent optimization. Accuracy in urine was higher with current methods and has the potential to meet the WHO accuracy target if the findings can be transferred to a point-of-care TB test

A Novel Sensitive Immunoassay Targeting the 5-Methylthio-d-Xylofuranose-Lipoarabinomannan Epitope Meets the WHO's Performance Target for Tuberculosis Diagnosis.

The only currently commercialized point-of-care assay for tuberculosis (TB) that measures lipoarabinomannan (LAM) in urine (Alere LF-LAM) has insufficient sensitivity. We evaluated the potential of 100 novel monoclonal antibody pairs targeting a variety of LAM epitopes on a sensitive electrochemiluminescence platform to improve the diagnostic accuracy. In the screening, many antibody pairs showed high reactivity to purified LAM but performed poorly at detecting urinary LAM in clinical samples, suggesting differences in antigen structure and immunoreactivity of the different LAM sources. The 12 best antibody pairs from the screening were tested in a retrospective case-control study with urine samples from 75 adults with presumptive TB. The best antibody pair reached femtomolar analytical sensitivity for LAM detection and an overall clinical sensitivity of 93% (confidence interval [CI], 80% to 97%) and specificity of 97% (CI, 85% to 100%). Importantly, in HIV-negative subjects positive for TB by sputum smear microscopy, the test achieved a sensitivity of 80% (CI, 55% to 93%). This compares to an overall sensitivity of 33% (CI, 20% to 48%) of the Alere LF-LAM and a sensitivity of 13% (CI, 4% to 38%) in HIV-negative subjects in the same sample set. The capture antibody targets a unique 5-methylthio-d-xylofuranose (MTX)-dependent epitope in LAM that is specific to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and shows no cross-reactivity with fast-growing mycobacteria or other bacteria. The present study provides evidence that improved assay methods and reagents lead to increased diagnostic accuracy. The results of this work have informed the development of a sensitive and specific novel LAM point-of-care assay with the aim to meet the WHO's performance target for TB diagnosis

Constraints perceived by the field extension functionaries of Dairy Development Department, Kerala

The study was conducted in Kerala state in 2021–2022, with the objective of identifying the constraints related to effective role performance as perceived by the Field Extension Functionaries (FEFs) of the Dairy Development Department (DDD). Through non-proportionate stratified random sampling, a sample of 120 FEFs was chosen, of whom 60 were Dairy Extension Officers (DEOs) and 60 were Dairy Farm Instructors (DFIs). The study found that inadequate infrastructure facilities and lack of transport facilities were the major physical constraints perceived by the respondents. Among organisational constraints, inadequate staff strength and heavy administrative work were cited as the major constraints. The most significant technological constraints perceived were inadequate knowledge about dairy innovations among the farmers and lack of technical support for implementing schemes. Inadequate budget allocation for programme execution and lack of monitoring and evaluation of schemes were the major managerial constraints. Under communication constraints, weak research-extension-farmer linkage, and lack of feedback from farmers were perceived as the major ones