Gender, Affect and Upward Influence

Upward influence tactics affect the attitude, perceptions and behavior of the supervisors towards their subordinates. This influence may be used both for organizational and personal purposes. With more and more women joining the work place, gender becomes a significant construct given that upward influence tactics may have nuances different for men and women, especially in the Indian context. The hypotheses that made an attempt to understand gender differences in terms of use of upward influence tactics and the moderating effect of the positive and the negative affect, were tested with a sample of employees (N=107) working in a large bank in Western India. The study employed both in-depth exploratory interviews and a survey methodology. While the interview data was subjected to rigorous content analysis techniques, regression analysis was performed on survey data. Results indicated that the gender of the agent and the supervisor, as well as the interaction of gender and affective styles, influenced the choice of upward influence tactics.

A prospective study of obstetric and gynaecological emergencies in a tertiary care hospital

Background: The management of obstetrics and gynaecological emergency is directed at the preservation of life, health, sexual function and the perpetuation of fertility. The main aim of the study was to access the burden of surgical emergency and to study the course of management at a tertiary care hospital.Methods: This prospective study was carried out in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology, S. S. G. Hospital, Baroda for a period from January to December 2018.Results: A total of 73 patients presented to our emergency room who required urgent surgical intervention. All patients were resuscitated and surgery was done at earliest possible time. The age of patient ranged from 18 to 45 years.  About 75.8% of female presented with the complaint of acute abdomen, followed by 32.9% with bleeding per vaginum. 16.4% had vomiting, 6.8% with fever and 4.1% with mass per abdomen. In majority of cases a diagnosis of ruptured ectopic pregnancy (34 patients) was made, followed by PPH in 14 patients and 12 cases of rupture uterus. Four cases of torsion of ovarian mass and 3 cases of septic peritonitis were operated. The most common surgery performed was salpingectomy followed by subtotal obstetric hysterectomy. A mortality rate of 8.2% was noted.Conclusions: This study emphasized the great role of timely surgical intervention as lifesaving procedures. Skilled clinicians and immediate intervention in a tertiary care is the main-stay of the emergency case management and are indispensable for decreasing mortality and morbidity

Genetic structure of Plasmodium falciparum field isolates in eastern and north-eastern India

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Molecular techniques have facilitated the studies on genetic diversity of <it>Plasmodium </it>species particularly from field isolates collected directly from patients. The <it>msp-1 </it>and <it>msp-2 </it>are highly polymorphic markers and the large allelic polymorphism has been reported in the block 2 of the <it>msp-1 </it>gene and the central repetitive domain (block3) of the <it>msp-2 </it>gene. Families differing in nucleotide sequences and in number of repetitive sequences (length variation) were used for genotyping purposes. As limited reports are available on the genetic diversity existing among <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>population of India, this report evaluates the extent of genetic diversity in the field isolates of <it>P. falciparum </it>in eastern and north-eastern regions of India.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A study was designed to assess the diversity of <it>msp-1 </it>and <it>msp-2 </it>among the field isolates from India using allele specific nested PCR assays and sequence analysis. Field isolates were collected from five sites distributed in three states namely, Assam, West Bengal and Orissa.</p> <p>Results</p> <p><it>P. falciparum </it>isolates of the study sites are highly diverse in respect of length as well as sequence motifs with prevalence of all the reported allelic families of <it>msp-1 </it>and <it>msp-2</it>. Prevalence of identical allelic composition as well as high level of sequence identity of alleles suggest a considerable amount of gene flow between the <it>P. falciparum </it>populations of different states. A comparatively higher proportion of multiclonal isolates as well as multiplicity of infection (MOI) was observed among isolates of highly malarious districts Karbi Anglong (Assam) and Sundergarh (Orissa). In all the five sites, R033 family of <it>msp-1 </it>was observed to be monomorphic with an allele size of 150/160 bp. The observed 80–90% sequence identity of Indian isolates with data of other regions suggests that Indian <it>P. falciparum </it>population is a mixture of different strains.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present study shows that the field isolates of eastern and north-eastern regions of India are highly diverse in respect of <it>msp-1 </it>(block 2) and <it>msp-2 </it>(central repeat region, block 3). As expected Indian isolates present a picture of diversity closer to southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and Latin American countries, regions with low to meso-endemicity of malaria in comparison to African regions of hyper- to holo-endemicity.</p

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead