The role of women in a new health order

"In recent years, thanks to the efforts of several voluntary agencies, there has been a growing national awareness of the deficiencies in our health and education systems, as also of the enormity of the deprivation discrimination to which our women are subjected to. If this awareness is channelized in constructive directions that could promote reappraisal of our present strategies and a reordering of the existing systems, the country will stand greatly benefited. The time has come for an honest, in-depth examination of the factors that underlie (1) the Poor out-reach of basic primary health-care to our rural masses despite impressive investments in our Public Health System; (2) the persistent high rates of female illiteracy in most parts of the country despite a vast programme of Primary Education, and (3) the shockingly poor status of large sections of Women of our society, both within the family and in the community at large. Fortunately, we already have some indication that the need for such reappraisal is now being widely recognised The National Perspective Plan for Women Report is welcome indication that, at the highest levels of our Government, it is now being openly recognised (and publicly owned) that our efforts a upliftment of the status of women during the last forty years after independence, have been inadequate and that new initiatives are now needed-this, despite the fact that we may not agree with all the 'solutions' suggested in that report.

The effect of molybdenum levels in sorghum (Sorghum vulgare Pers.) on uric acid and copper excretion in man

1. The effect of various dietary levels of molybdenum on uric acid and copper excretion was studied in experiments with four adult men given diets based on two sorghum varieties (Sorghum vulgare Pers.) differing widely in Mo content. 2. With a Mo intake of 160, 540 or 1540 µg/d the urinary excretion of uric acid was unaltered. 3. The excretion of Cu in urine increased with increasing Mo intake. 4. Cu-balance studied with high- and low-Mo diets showed that with a high-Mo diet urinary Cu excretion increased but faecal Cu was unaffected. This indicates that dietary Mo had no effect on Cu absorption. 5. The high serum concentration of Cu with diets high in Mo indicates that Mo either mobilizes tissue Cu or inhibits Cu uptake, or both

Fish protein concentrates in the treatment of kwashiorkor

Fifty-seven children suffering from kwashiorkor were hospitalized and given diets in which the major source of protein was from either fish protein concentrate (FPC) or skim milk. Diets containing fish protein concentrates were not well accepted by a large proportion of the children. In those who did consume it, both the clinical and biochemical responses compared favorably with those obtained in children receiving the diets containing skim milk, except for the increase in body weight after the disappearance of edema. Analysis of the cooked diets showed that the amounts of available lysine were lower in the FPC diets than in the skim milk diets. However, supplementation studies, using pure l-lysine, suggested that the lower gain in body weight could not be ascribed to this factor. Fish flour does not appear to be a satisfactory substitute for skim milk in the treatment of kwashiorkor, not only because of its non-acceptance by a large number of children but also because of its inability to promote body weight gains

Effect of protein depletion on urinary nitrogen excretion in undernourished subjects

The extent of labile protein stores and their response to protein feeding was studied in undernourished adult subjects. Urinary nitrogen excretion following 3 levels of protein intake (62, 82 and 96 g/day), each protein period alternated with a protein-free diet, was studied in 4 apparently healthy but undernourished young men. Urinary nitrogen with a protein-free diet decreased to a nearly steady value within 2 to 3 days. The initial decrease was small, however, indicating poor labile protein stores in these subjects. With diets containing protein considerable nitrogen was retained. The retained nitrogen, however, was not excreted when the subjects were changed over from protein-containing diets to protein-free diets. Endogenous urinary nitrogen excretion in these subjects was not different from that of normal subjects

Classifications of undernutrition-their limitations and fallacies

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A Tale of Two DRAGGNs: A Hybrid Approach for Interpreting Action-Oriented and Goal-Oriented Instructions

Robots operating alongside humans in diverse, stochastic environments must be able to accurately interpret natural language commands. These instructions often fall into one of two categories: those that specify a goal condition or target state, and those that specify explicit actions, or how to perform a given task. Recent approaches have used reward functions as a semantic representation of goal-based commands, which allows for the use of a state-of-the-art planner to find a policy for the given task. However, these reward functions cannot be directly used to represent action-oriented commands. We introduce a new hybrid approach, the Deep Recurrent Action-Goal Grounding Network (DRAGGN), for task grounding and execution that handles natural language from either category as input, and generalizes to unseen environments. Our robot-simulation results demonstrate that a system successfully interpreting both goal-oriented and action-oriented task specifications brings us closer to robust natural language understanding for human-robot interaction.Comment: Accepted at the 1st Workshop on Language Grounding for Robotics at ACL 201

A Tale of Two DRAGGNs: A Hybrid Approach for Interpreting Action-Oriented and Goal-Oriented Instructions

Robots operating alongside humans in diverse, stochastic environments must be able to accurately interpret natural language commands. These instructions often fall into one of two categories: those that specify a goal condition or target state, and those that specify explicit actions, or how to perform a given task. Recent approaches have used reward functions as a semantic representation of goal-based commands, which allows for the use of a state-of-the-art planner to find a policy for the given task. However, these reward functions cannot be directly used to represent action-oriented commands. We introduce a new hybrid approach, the Deep Recurrent Action-Goal Grounding Network (DRAGGN), for task grounding and execution that handles natural language from either category as input, and generalizes to unseen environments. Our robot-simulation results demonstrate that a system successfully interpreting both goal-oriented and action-oriented task specifications brings us closer to robust natural language understanding for human-robot interaction.Comment: Accepted at the 1st Workshop on Language Grounding for Robotics at ACL 201

Studies of vitamin A deficiency in children

The clinical features of 319 children with vitamin A deficiency observed in Coonoor and forty-nine children studied in Hyderabad have been discussed in detail. Estimations of the contents of vitamin A and carotene in the serum and the in vitro destruction of vitamin A by lysed red blood cells were carried out. There was a lack of association between the incidence of night blindness and other ocular signs of vitamin A deficiency. Although signs of vitamin A deficiency were always associated with a low dietary intake of carotene and vitamin A, the reverse did not always occur. The proportion of patients with vitamin A deficiency who had keratomalacia was much greater in Hyderabad than in Coonoor. Levels of vitamin A and carotene in the serum were low in all children with vitamin A deficiency. Levels of vitamin A in the serum of subjects with kwashiorkor but without clinical signs of vitamin A deficiency were also found to be significantly lower than the levels in apparently normal children. Treatment with a high protein diet without vitamin A supplementation brought about a significant increase in the levels of vitamin A in the serum in the latter. The in vitro destruction of vitamin A by lysed red blood cells of children suffering from vitamin A deficiency appeared to be higher than that of the normal controls Treatment with vitamin A lowered this abnormal in vitro destruction

Kwashiorkor and mental development

Nineteen children successfully treated for kwashiorkor were followed up to see the effect of early malnutrition on growth and mental functions. These children were compared with appropriately matched controls selected from the same locality and the school from which the experimental children were derived. These controls were matched for age, sex, religion, caste, socioeconomic status, family size, birth order, and educational level of the parents and the subjects. Suitable intelligence tests and sensory development tests were constructed and these tests were applied to both the experimental and control groups of children. In addition to these tests, anthropometric measurements were also taken on all children. The salient features of the study are: a) There was a significant difference between the performance of the control and the experimental subjects with regard to the intelligence tests. This difference was particularly marked in the younger age group (8-9 years) and tended to diminish in the older age group (10-11 years). b) Intersensory organization was poorer in the experimental subjects than in the control subjects. The performance in the intersensory tests was markedly poorer in the younger age group and tended to improve in the older age group (10-11 years). c) The retardation was noticeable mainly with regard to perceptual and abstract abilities

Biochemical changes in the skin in kwashiorkor

The total nitrogen, dermal nitrogen, and collagen nitrogen content of the skin and the amino acid pattern of the dermis were determined in the skin obtained from 10 normal children and in 19 children suffering from kwashiorkor, 7 of whom had characteristic cutaneous lesions. The skin of children with kwashiorkor had lower levels of total nitrogen, dermal nitrogen, and collagen nitrogen compared with normal children, and the reduction in all these components was of a greater magnitude in children who had cutaneous lesions. There was a significant reduction in the hydroxyproline content of the dermis in all children and a rise in the arginine and ammonia content. In the dermis of children with cutaneous lesions, hydroxyproline, tyrosine, proline, and glycine levels were lowered. These findings provide a biochemical explanation for the occurrence of cutaneous lesions in kwashiorkor