International perspectives on Gender, science and Development

International perspective on Issues in Gender, Science and Economic Development Abstract The gender issues in science and economic development have two major dimensions: economic opportunities for women and abilities of women. The focus of this study is on economic opportunities for women from a global perspective. While there are significant increases in the female labor force participation rates in almost all countries, the proportion of female professional and technical workers remains much smaller. Using data from fifty countries with high human development index, we find that high index of achievement in education and high per capita incomes are important factors that contribute to the growth of professional and technical women workers. Gender empowerment index alone does not guarantee increased participation of women in science and technology.Gender empowerment; human development

Sustainable Urban Development: Bioregionalistic Vision for Small Towns

Cities and towns are the social constructs in regional settings. They physically manifest and exist as power centres through various layers of culture, economy, politics, and religion. There was a symbiotic relationship between the ‘setting’ and the ‘construct’ in the past. With time and advent of technology, haphazard developments led to degradation of ecological systems and have become a confronted affair. Global warming, its adverse effects and the constant references to the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’ pose questions on the existing planning models. Small towns experiencing a tremendous pressure of urbanisation and rich in natural resources, coherence and identity are fast changing. An indispensable change in the planning models is necessary to mitigate this existential crisis and condition the emerging urbanism in small towns sustainably. This paper unearths the role and possibilities of bioregional planning as a sustainable urban development paradigm and suggests few indicative parameters for envisioning bioregionalism in small towns

Determination of rate and analysis of reasons for discarding blood and blood components in a blood bank of tertiary care hospital:a retrospective study

Background: The transfusion of blood and blood components has become an integral part of patient management in modern medicine. There are no substitutes for human blood. Thus, proper utilization of blood is necessary with minimal wasting.Methods: A total of 15,333 donors donated blood during the study period of 3 years in blood bank of a tertiary care hospital, south Maharashtra from 1 st of January, 2013 to 31 st December 2015, which were screened.Results: Of the total 3355 whole blood collection, 615 blood bags were discarded. Out of these 615 bags 544 (88.45%) were discarded because of date expired, 41(6.66%) blood bags were discarded due to seropositivity for TTI and 22 (3.5%) blood bags were due under collection and leakage and other reasons contributed for 1.3%. A total of 4026 blood components were discarded against 29,715 blood components prepared during the study period. Among blood components discarded, most common units were platelets. The most common cause of discarding the blood components was expiry of date due to non-utilization were 3475 (86.31%).Conclusions: Properly implemented blood transfusion policies, training of staff as well as implementation of automation will also help to improve process and output of BTS. This would reduce the discarding of blood components and wastage due to non-conformance. These discarded bags, because they are unutilized are both financially as well as socially harmful to the blood bank

Design of Asynchronous Viterbi Decoder for Low Power Applications

In todays digital communication systems, convolutional codes are broadly used in channel coding techniques.The viterbi decoder due to its high performance is commonly used for decoding the convolutional codes. Fast developments in the communication field have created a rising demand for high speed and low power viterbi decoders with long battery life and low weight. Despite the significant progress in the last decade, the problem of power dissapation in the viterbi decoders still remains challenging and requires further technical solutions.In this paper we proposed the methods for survivor path storage and decoding as Register Exchange Method (REM) and Hybrid Register Exchange method (HREM). REM cosumes large power and area, due to huge switching activity.The problem of switching activity of Viterbi decoder can be reduced by combining Traceback and REM and the method called Hybrid Register Exchange Method (HREM). The Viterbi decoder is designed using REM and HREM and simulated on Quartus tool and power is calculated on Power play power analyzer. As the switching activity is reduced in HREM as compared to REM the viterbi decoder achieves reduction in power in HREM as compared with REM .For further reduction in power of viterbi decoder we proposed asynchronous techniques like handshaking protocol. Here we designed the Asynchronous Viterbi decoder by using 2 phase dual rail encoding (LEDR)

A Low Power Asynchronous Viterbi Decoder using LEDR Encoding

With the consumer demand for increased content and as a result, increasing high data bandwidth continuing to drive communications systems, coding for error control has become extraordinarily important. One way to improve the Bit Error Rate (BER), while maintaining high data reliability, is to use an error correction technique like the Viterbi algorithm. Originally conceived by Andrew Viterbi as an error-correction scheme for noisy digital communication, the Viterbi algorithm provides an efficient method for Forward Error Correction (FEC) that improves channel reliability. Today, it is used in many digital communications systems in applications as diverse as LTE Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), CDMA and GSM, digital cellular, dial up modems, satellite, deep-space communications, and 802.11 wireless LANs. Though it is useful for error correction it dissipates large power. A lot many researches were carried out at architectural as well as algorithmic level to optimize the ACS (Add compare and Select) unit and Survival Memory Management in Synchronous Viterbi Decoders. But still there is a problem of power dissipation which requires more technical solutions. Due to requirements of high speed, low power, low weight and long battery life a low power Viterbi decoders has a great demand in the communication field. This paper proposed the method for survivor path storage and decoding as Minimum Transition Hybrid Register Exchange Method along with handshaking protocol as Level Encoded dual rail (LEDR) encoding to make the system asynchronous. The whole system has been designed on algorithmic level and Simulation is done on Xilinx Tool for Asynchronous Viterbi Decoder using MTHREM

Body Stalk Syndrome: A Curiosity

Limb body wall complex (LBWC) /Body stalk syndrome anomaly refers to a rare complicated polymalformative fetal malformation syndrome of uncertain etiology firstly described by Van Allen et al in 1987. There are very few cases reported in literature and thus we report a rare case of LBWC. Twenty seven years female presented to labour room with 32 weeks of gestation with no prenatal care and delivered a low birth weight still born fetus weighing 1100gms. On fetal autopsy large abdominal wall defect was noted with difficulty in identifying abdomino-pelvic organs and ambiguous genitalia. Placenta weighed 250gms with attached short umbilical cord measuring 7cms, arising from periphery. A cyst noted attached to placental membrane measuring 9x5cms which on dissection retrieved partially maldeveloped organs. Post mortem radiological findings included Absence of right femur with short tibia and right fibula, Complex vestibral malformation, Craniosynostosis and Overcrowding of ribs

Comparative Assessment of Soil Quality at the Defence Establishments

The present study was carried out to adjudge the soil quality of two sites at the defence establishments in India. Various soil samples were collected from the surface and up to 20 cm depth (subsurface) as per apportioned gridding method. These samples were subjected to air drying for 15 days and were characterised for various parameters. The soil is clayey and loamy with granular blocky structure on both the sites.  The pH ranged from 7.1 to 7.72 0.1 for site I and from 5.5 to 8.0 f 0.1 for site 11; salinity and bulk density ranged from 0.1 per cent to 8 per cent and from 1.2 glcm3 to 1.5 g/cm3, respectively and soil moisture was about 0.4 f 1 per cent for both the sites. Similarly, total Kjeldahl nitrogen ranged from 1100 mg kg-' to 1900 mg kg-' for site I and 1700 mg kg-' to 9000 mg kg ' for site I1 and total organic carbon ranged from 18 mg g-' to 75 mg g ' for both the sites. A good correlation between nitrate concentration and various explosive process activities has been observed which gives substantial evidence in terms of contamination of the soil. High performance liquid chromatography analysis, which shows varied concentrations of RDX-HMX, NB, DNB, DNT, and TNT in the respective ranges 0.003-2.300 rng g-1, 0.002-0.350 mg g~1, 0.002-0.550 mg g-1, 0.004-0.041 mg g-1 and 0.010- 0.050 mg g-1 for site 1 and 0.002 - 0.013 mg g-1, 0.005 - 0.350 mg g-1, 0.003 - 0.080 mg g-1, 0.001- 0.100 mg g-1, 0.0001- 0.044 mg g ~a1n d 6*10-6- 0.080 mg g-1 for sites I1 has also indicated the contamination of soil by nitro-organics. These results serve as a valuable database for an ongoing project on the development of phytoremediation technology to detoxify such sites

Adverse blood transfusion reactions at tertiary care hospital

Background: The goal of hemovigilance is to increase the safety and quality of blood transfusion. It is necessary to recognize and prompt response to adverse transfusion reactions, which will help in taking appropriate steps to reduce their incidence and make blood transfusion process as safe as possible. The aim of the study was to determine the frequency and type of transfusion reactions (TRs) occurring in patients, reported to the blood bank at our institute.Methods: A retrospective review of all TRs reported to the blood bank Krishna Hospital, between January 2011 and July 2013 was done. All the TRs were evaluated in the blood bank and classified using standard definitions.Results: During the study period a total 13126 units of blood and components were issued by our blood bank and total of 45 (0.3%) adverse reactions were reported to blood bank. The most common reaction observed was allergic reaction 25(55.6%) followed by FNHTR 15 (33.3%).Conclusions: Not a single case of anaphylactic reactions, TRALI, acute immune hemolytic transfusion reaction, and Sepsis was observed. This can be an underestimation of the true incidence because of under reporting which can be improved by proper hemovigilence system to provide better patient care.

Studies on development and storage stability of dehydrated pumpkin based instant soup mix

The study was carried out to develop and standardize Instant Soup Mix (ISM) from dehydrated pumpkin powder and to evaluate nutritional (moisture, sugars, protein, ?-carotene, fat, fibre and water activity) and sensory qualities (colour, texture, flavour and overall acceptability) for determining its shelf-life during a period of six month. It was packed in aluminium laminated pouches and was analyzed periodically for changes in quality. Among various recipes optimized for the development of soup mix, soup mix containing 20g pumpkin powder, 5g moong dhal, 15g tomato powder, 11.4g spices (salt and black pepper) and condiments (onion, garlic and ginger powder), 2g dried pea, 2g dried spinach, and 2g dried carrot was selected as base recipe for addition of different starch source viz. rice, corn and potato @ 10 g. From the nutritional analysis, it was observed that corn based Instant Soup Mix had higher ?-carotene (7.01 mg/100 g) and protein (12.65 %) content, while fibre (2.09 %) was higher in soup mix containing rice starch. It was observed that on the basis of sensory evaluation corn based soup mix was more acceptable. Therefore, results of nutrition and sensory evaluation indicated that a good quality ISM can be prepared by using corn starch. During the six month of storage, there was about 5.49 per cent increase in moisture, 3.16 and 5.27 per cent decrease in protein and ?-carotene, respectively, along with slight losses in total sugars, fat and sensory quality. Further, the product was stable for 6 months under ambient condition

A Novel Technique to Enhance the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks through Software Realization

In the most of the real world scenarios, wireless sensor networks are used. Some of the major tasks of these types of networks is to sense some information and sending it to monitoring system or tracking some activity etc. In such applications, the sensor nodes are deployed in large area and in considerably large numbers [1]-[3]. Each of these node will be having constrained resources whether it might be energy, memory or processing capability. Energy is the major resource constraint in these types of networks. Hence enough care to be taken in all aspects such that energy can be used very efficiently. Different Activities which will be taking place in a sensor node are sensing, radio operations and receiving and computing. Among all these operations, radio consumes maximum power. Hence there is a need of reducing the power consumption in such radio operations. In the proposed work a software module is developed which will reduce the number of transmissions done to the base station. The work compares the consecutively sensed data and if these data are same then the old data then the old data will be retained. In other case the newly sensed data will be sent to the sink node. This technique reduces the number of data transmissions in a significant way. With the reduced number of transmissions, the energy saved in each node will be more, which will increase the lifetime of the entire network