Sustainability of Commercial Vegetable Cultivation : A Multidimensional Analysis

The present study was conducted in Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala. One hundred farmers engaged in commercial vegetable cultivation were selected based on the maximum area under commercial vegetable cultivation. Sustainability was the dependent variable of the study. Sixteen independent variables were selected based on judges’ relevancy rating. A well-structured interview schedule was used for data collection from the respondents. Majority of the respondents belonged to medium category with respect to sustainability. Economic dimension of sustainability contributed seventy two percent of the total sustainability, followed by socio- psychological dimension, environmental dimension, technological dimension and temporal dimension

Piercing the Veil: The Limits of Brain Death as a Legal Fiction

Brain death is different from the traditional, biological conception of death. Although there is no possibility of a meaningful recovery, considerable scientific evidence shows that neurological and other functions persist in patients accurately diagnosed as brain dead. Elsewhere with others, I have argued that brain death should be understood as an unacknowledged status legal fiction. A legal fiction arises when the law treats something as true, though it is known to be false or not known to be true, for a particular legal purpose (like the fiction that corporations are persons). Moving towards greater transparency, it is legally and ethically justifiable to use this fiction to determine when to permit treatment withdrawal and organ transplantation. However, persistent controversy and recent conflicts between hospitals and families over the treatment of brain-dead patients demonstrate the need for clearer limits on the legal fiction of brain death. This Article argues that more people should recognize that brain death is a legal fiction and further contends that existing scholarship has inadequately addressed the appropriate use of the legal fiction of brain death in legal conflicts. For instance, as in Jahi McMath’s case (in which a mother wanted to keep her daughter on a ventilator after she was determined brain dead), families may distrust physicians and hospitals who fail to acknowledge that brain death is a legal fiction. Legislators in most states have ignored the need to permit statutory exceptions for individuals with strong sanctity of life views. When hospitals treat braindead pregnant women, as in Marlise Mu˜ noz’s case, courts have failed to weigh the fundamental constitutional rights of pregnant women against the state’s interests. Finally, judges and legislators should sometimes “pierce the veil” of brain death and should not use the legal fiction in cases involving: (1) religious and moral objections, (2) insurance reimbursement for extended care of brain-dead patients, (3) maintenance of pregnant, brain-dead women, and (4) biomedical research. The Article concludes with general guidance for judges, legislators, and other legal actors to use regarding legal fictions

Experimental Execution

On July 23, 2014, an execution in Arizona lasted nearly two hours, with the inmate struggling to breathe and gasping over 600 times, according to a local reporter witnessing the execution. This was the third example of a botched execution in seven months. The Supreme Court last evaluated the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection in 2008, but did not provide a clear standard for evaluating risks. Since that time, the lethal injection landscape has transformed. States are using entirely new drugs and drug combinations, and sometimes obtain these drugs from questionable sources, making it hard to predict what will happen in any given execution. The Court has now granted certiorari to examine the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol in the case of Glossip v. Gross. Although it is increasingly common to refer to lethal injection executions as experimental, this Article is the first to conduct a rigorous analysis of whether and to what extent executions by lethal injection involve the conduct of research and therefore should be analyzed under the ethical and regulatory framework that governs biomedical research. I argue that an important factor driving this high error rate is that the use of novel drugs, drug combinations, and dosages in lethal injection executions is a type of research. More specifically, it is poorly designed experimentation that is not based on evidence. If the death penalty is justified, individual inmates are being exposed to uncertain (and sometimes unnecessary) risks in order to obtain benefits for others by furthering the underlying aims of capital punishment. This insight suggests three important conclusions. First, states should draw from existing scholarship on ethics and regulations that apply to biomedical research with captive and vulnerable populations. Prisoners are considered a vulnerable population, and experimental executions involving prisoners should abide by the general principles that are applicable to research: respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, and justice. Second, legal safeguards that follow from these principles should be applied to executions—in particular, states should ask for informed consent from prisoners to modifications of lethal injection protocols, obtain independent review by a regulatory body like the Food and Drug Administration, and apply a standard requiring risk minimization in the choice of drugs and procedures. Finally, states should systematically gather data as they engage in experimental execution

Web Citations and Decay of URLs: A Case Study of Indian Journal of Agricultural Library and Information Services.

The present study is conducted to identify the prevailing citation trends, durability of web citations or URLs, decay and half-life of URLs by analyzing articles’ citations of Indian Journal of Agricultural Library and Information Services published during 2012 -2016. A total of 980 citations were reported in 94 articles out of which 33.16 percent were having web citations. Of web citations, 62.15 percent of URLs were accessible at the time of testing and the remaining 37.85 percent of URLs were not accessible. HTTP error message 404 “page not found’’ was the irresistible error message appeared and represented 51.22 percent of all HTTP error messages. Average half-life of URLs was estimated to be 4.62 years. There was no association found between path depth and decay of URLs. Articles accessed from domain .org, .net and .co/.com were found more alive than other domains

From a Constitutional Right to a Policy of Exceptions: Abigail Alliance and the Future of Access to Experimental Therapy

Although there has been considerable attention to the plight of terminally ill patients with highly sympathetic constitutional and contractual claims that they should be permitted access to unapproved drugs, courts have been appropriately reluctant to grant such claims. Congress and administrative agencies have the requisite institutional competence to decide complex policy issues related to science and health care such as those involved in establishing an expanded access program. Congress and FDA should allow only limited access to unapproved therapies because there are significant concerns about the safety and efficacy of unapproved drugs. Moreover, many of the proposals to widen access may cause delays to the approval process and increased health care costs that are unlikely to be borne in our current climate. Accordingly, we propose limiting access outside of clinical trials, but expanding eligibility for clinical trials in order to ensure that people receive access in a controlled and systematic manner

Study of antenatal prevalence of HIV and its trend in a tertiary care hospital

Background: HIV/AIDS has become a global problem since first detection in 1981.Women of childbearing age constitute nearly half of the 30 million adults currently living with HIV/AIDs worldwide. Pregnant women are considered as low risk for HIV so estimating prevalence in such low risk people provides us a good basis for long term strategy for implementation of HIV/AIDS control programme. The objective of this study was to study acceptance of antenatal HIV testing during routine ANC checkups using opt in strategy. To study prevalence of antenatal HIV and its trend.Methods: Observational and analytic study. Antenatal women coming for routine antenatal care in obstetric OPD were counseled and blood sample were taken according to guidelines for HIV testing from period 1/1/2014 to 31/12/2018.Results: Out of total 23907 women attending antenatal clinic 23841 accepted HIV testing, Out of these 72 were found positive, making HIV seroprevalence rate of 0.30. 42 spouses were also found positive.Conclusions: Though seroprevalence of HIV in antenatal women is low, slowly rising trend worths a caution for us