Buying Practices and Prevalence of Adulteration in Selected Food items in a Rural Area of Wardha District: A Cross - Sectional Study

Introduction: Food adulteration in India includes both willful adulteration and substandard food which do not confirm to prescribe food standard. There is striking paucity of reliable data with regard to extent of adulteration and documentation of food borne illnesses reflecting lack of attention and focus on this problem. Objectives: To find the prevalence of food adulteration, buying practices of selected food items and their awareness towards food adulteration act. Also assess relationship between per-capita incomes, education of respondents, and food borne illnesses with magnitude of adulteration in each house-hold. Methods: With the best estimate of 50%, sample size comes to 89. By stratifying the village according to social strata and randomly selecting the households with PPS. Questionnaire was administered to fulfill our objectives and food items were tested. Data analyzed by numeral with percentage, Pearson moment correlation, F test and chi square test. Results: In 68.5% Households, wife (home-maker) buys the grocery. Majority of them never read the food labels. All the selected food items were adulterated ranging from 76 % to 11%. Mean percentage of purity was highest in literates (47.5 ± 22.48) than illiterates and just literates. Food borne illness was prevalent in households with low purity of food. Association was found between per capita income and percentage of purity (0.765)

Circadian Regulation of Mtor Signaling via bmal1 Dependent Mechanism

Understanding mechanisms of aging is important for the treatment and prevention of age-associated pathologies. However, these mechanisms are not well understood. Recently we have demonstrated that the circadian clock (an internal time keeping system) regulates longevity in mammals, but the molecular mechanisms are not known. The aim of our current study is to investigate a possible interconnection between the circadian clock and mTORC1 (mammalian target of Rapamycin) signaling pathway. mTORC1 pathway is a nutrient response pathway involved in many cellular processes many recent studies indicate a role of mTORC1 pathway in aging. Here we demonstrate that circadian system regulates mTORC1 signaling in vivo. Analysis of liver, heart and spleen from WT mice reveals circadian rhythms in phosphorylation of known mTOR targets such as S6K1 and 4EBPs. These rhythms are disrupted in the tissues of BMAL1 KO mice providing potential mechanistic explanation of reduced longevity of these mice. Further analysis of expression of mTORC1 complex components and upstream regulators demonstrated that some of them have circadian rhythms at protein and mRNA levels. Taken together, these results suggest that circadian clock controls aging by regulating mTOR signaling pathway through BMAL1 dependent control of gene expressio

Mental health in India: Challenges ahead

With the advent of latest technologies and rapid industrialization human beings have made advancement to a great extent, in the materialistic world. He has mechanized his instruments in such a sophisticated way so as to carry out complicated and heavy tasks in comparatively lesser time and utilizing lesser manpower. In this pursuit of progress, he became more and more ambitious which further led him to stressful life and to make compromises with his other aspects of life intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. One has to consider all the aspects of individual’s physical, mental, social and psychological angles which play an important role in maintaining the individual’s overall personality development as well as wellbeing so that he may lead a productive life. These factors along with the environmental and surroundings influences the behavior of individual. In the present day life though human beings may have progressed socially, economically and also intellectually but somewhere he tended to neglect his emotions, feelings, tolerance and above all there is a growing concern of loneliness amongst all age groups. There is an imbalance between the amount of stress a person takes up with the amount he can cope up with, which has led to increase in behavioral and mental health problems. Burden of mental disorders had risen over last few decades in general mental health is often equated with the cognitive and emotional wellbeing - it is all about the way one thinks, feels and behaves. Mental health, can also mean an absence of a mental disorder. Various factors which has led to the rise in mental health problems are - growing population, continuous stress, over exertion, high ambition, socioeconomic conditions, loneliness, drug abuse, expectations, competitions and failures etc. The list is unending. It has been observed that there is a growing concern worldwide among developed as well as developing nations regarding the rise in behavioral and mental health disorders. According to the World Health Organization, mental health is “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community. WHO estimated that globally over 450 million people suffer from mental disorders. Currently mental and behavioral disorders account for about 12 percent of the global burden of diseases. This is likely to increase to 15 percent by 2020. Major proportions of mental disorders come from low and middle income countries. (1) In 2010, a study conducted in NIMHANS, Bangalore reported that the burden of mental and behavioral disorders ranged from 9.5 to 10.2 per 1000 population which is very low compared to western countries mainly due to underreporting. (2)&nbsp

Dynamic slicing of aspect oriented programs

As software application grows larger and become more complex, program maintenance activities such as adding new functionality, debugging and testing consume increasing amount of available resources for software development. In order to cope with this increased complexity, programmer need effective computer supported methods for decomposition and dependence analysis of programs. Program slicing is one method for such decomposition and dependence analysis. Program slicing is a decomposition technique which extracts program elements related to a particular computation from a program. A program slice consists of those parts of a program that may directly or indirectly affect the values computed at some program point of interest, referred to as a slicing criterion. A program slice can be static or dynamic. Static slice contains all the statements that may affect the slicing criterion for every possible inputs to the program. Dynamic slice contains only those statements that actually affect the slicing criterion for a particular input to the program. Aspect-oriented programming is a new programming technique proposed for cleanly modularizing the cross- cutting structure of concerns. An aspect is an area of concern that cuts across the structure of a program. The main idea behind aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is to allow a program to be constructed by describing each concern separately. Aspect J is an aspect-oriented extension to the Java programming language. Aspect J adds new concepts and associated constructs called join points, pointcuts, advices, introductions, and aspects to Java. Zhao developed the aspect-oriented system dependence graph (ASDG) to represent aspect-oriented programs and used two-pass slicing algorithm to compute static slice of aspect-oriented programs. But the disadvantage of his ASDG is that the weaving process is not represented correctly and this graph cannot be used for dynamic slicing. Our objective was to develop a suitable intermediate representation of an aspectoriented program and to develop suitable dynamic slicing technique

Application of Two Dimensional Fractional Sine Transforms to Differential Equation

Transforms with cosine and sine functions as the transform kernels represent an important area of analysis. It is based on the so-called half-range expansion of a function over a set of cosine or sine basis functions. Because the cosine and the sine kernels lack the nice properties of an exponential kernel, many of the transform properties are less elegant and more involved than the corresponding ones for the Fourier transform kernel. The aim of this paper is we introduced ne w differential operator and also its ad joint operato

Studies on processing technology and cost estimation of fig (Ficus carica L.) fruit powder enriched Burfi (Indian cookie)

The present article was designed with the aim to develop processing technology for preparation of fig (Ficus carica L.) fruits powder (Deanna variety) and the prepared fig powder was subsequently utilized in value added product like burfi (Indian cookie). In contrast to fig pulp and dried figs, the fig powder was found to be superior in terms of yield and ease of processing technology. Fig powder also open further fields of application that may promote fig powder processing at industrial scale in future. The products prepared by processing of figs viz. fig powder and fig burfi were chemically and sensorial assessed and also assessed for their economical feasibility and compared with market samples. Fig powder incorporated burfi was nutritionally rich in terms of fiber (3.7 %), potassium (0.464 %) and protein (13.12 %). The prepared product was found to be low cost as compared to the similar market products

Numerical Study of Mixing of Different Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Fluids in Stirred Tank

Mixing has the most common occurrence in process industries like chemical, food and polymer and plays a significant part in overall success of the processes. Stirred tanks are commonly used for mixing various types of Newtonian and non-Newtonian liquids. Impeller is the movable part and is used as the rotating device in stirred tank systems for achieving mixing. An impeller while it rotates imparts shear force in the vicinity along the peripheral zone. Literature is rich with information on various experimental and theoretical findings on the hydrodynamics and mixing behaviour of Newtonian fluids in stirred tank systems. However, with non-Newtonian fluids, limited published literature is available on the hydrodynamic behaviour of the mixing process in stirred vessels. A few available experimental works in literatures successfully explained the mixing process in a non-Newtonian system using Rushton turbine (impeller commonly used in industry). But unavailability of the theoretical prediction of the same is basically explains the motivation behind the study on the mixing of non-Newtonian fluids in stirred tank with Rushton turbine. For mixing highly viscous liquids, helical ribbon impellers are most suited. In this thesis work, it was aimed to study the computational aspects of the hydrodynamic performance of helical ribbon impeller in a highly viscous non-Newtonian system and comparing the results with helical screw ribbon impeller through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Entropy generation minimization study is an integral part of this thesis work. Mostly, the earlier works involve use of analytical expressions from basics of mass, energy and entropy balance which has got certain limitations because of many assumptions. Here, we aimed for a detailed numerical study on the same. Also, the understanding of residence time distribution (RTD) study in a stirred tank system gives an idea on the distribution of flow structure. Although, this particular aspect has been studied by various research groups, however, some of the experimental data are not compared with numerical findings for validation. In this work it was aimed to predict RTD numerically especially by using swept volume of the impeller into consideration. A computational fluid dynamics study using Ansys Fluent was carried out to determine the mixing performance of a tank stirred with Rushton turbine. The predicted profiles of the velocity components were validated with literature data. The non-parametric Spearman’s rank order test was used to find the interaction of velocity profiles with the impeller Reynolds number and flow behavior index. The characteristic performance parameters such as power number and flow number of the impeller were predicted. The variations of entropy generation due to only viscous dissipation with Reynolds number, tank geometry, etc. were calculated for the isothermal tank. The entropy generation minimization (EGM) approach was used to optimize the performance of the non-isothermal continuous stirred tank with respect to the system parameters like inlet Reynolds number, impeller speed, and impeller clearance and impeller blade width. The numerical study of the stirred tank with helical ribbon (HR) and helical ribbon with screw (HRS) impellers was carried out successfully. The CFD models were successfully validated with the experimental power number given in literature. The power constant for Newtonian fluid (Kp) and non-Newtonian fluid (Kp(n)) were calculated and compared successfully with the literature data. The Metzner Otto or geometry constant, Ks were computed following four different methods and the best one was identified by predicting successfully the generalized power curve. The flow numbers of HRS impeller were predicted for wide range of impeller Reynolds number. The non-dimensional mixing times were varied in scattered way with impeller Reynolds number, and the dispersive flow away from the impeller shaft was observed. The entropy generations were increased with the impeller Reynolds number, and an empirical model of entropy generation with impeller Reynolds number was developed. The non-isothermal stirred tank with HR and HRS impellers were optimized employing the entropy generation minimization technique. The hydrodynamic and the residence time distribution (RTD) behavior of the viscous Newtonian fluid was studied using a tracer age distribution function, I(θ). The experimental tracer age distribution functions were predicted by CFD tools using tracer injection and swept volume methods. The predicted results were found in good agreement with the literature data. The mixing behaviour was changed from dispersion to ideal mixing state with increasing the tank Reynolds number and impeller rotations. The mixing performance parameters like holdback, segregation, number of ideal continuous stirred tank in series equivalent to single actual continuous stirred tank were also calculated to identify the necessary flow parameters and their magnitude to obtain the ideal flow distribution in the tank

Study of physico-chemical parameters of orange (Citrus reticulate Blanco) for the development of orange wine

Physico-chemical properties are an essential factor during processing and preservation of food. The retention and changes in physico-chemical properties depends upon the processing technique. In this work, physicochemical parameters of orange like vitamin C (ascorbic acid), pH, total soluble solids (TSS), % acidity, temperature and color were studied with all the optimized conditions of fermentations for the development of orange wine. The fermentation of the fruit juice was completed within 7 days period at temperature 27oC, pH 4.5 and total soluble solids of 24oBrix with an inoculum level of 10% (v/v). Thus, orange wine with ethanol content of 8.5% (v/v) was prepared from the orange variety ‘Nagpur Santra’ (Citrus Reticulata Blanco) in controlled physico-chemical parameters

Single Parent Initiative

The eighth of thirteen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) focuses on promoting economic growth around the world. There is a particular group that has often been overlooked when considering economic hardships in the United States- single parents. The US has one of the highest rates of single parent households in the world. This disproportionately affects minority communities and communities of color. Currently, there are very few initiatives that support single mothers and even fewer for single fathers. We plan to advance the condition of single parents through educating people on how these families are trapped in the poverty cycle. The economic disparity of lone parents is fueled by the lack of awareness and support, both legislative and societal. There are initiatives and organizations to help these families, but without a change in public perception, they will be stuck in the endless cycle of poverty. Through further debate and discussion, we hope to pave the way to a better economic future for these families

Crossing the Chasm of Agile Enterprise Architecture Innovation: A Case Study of Service Modernization at a Railroad Company

Agile EA is the process for managing enterprise architecture modeling and redesign efforts with principles of agile methods such as iterations, lean thinking, pair programming etc., for faster development times. However, very little work has been done till date on how organizations adopt these methodological innovations such as integration of agile methods with enterprise architecture. This is problematic, because we know that organizations face stiff challenges in bringing new innovations that fundamentally disrupt their enterprise architecture. It is for this reason organizations rely on external consultants to internalize the concepts that are non-native to its actors. Hence we ask: What factors affect the adoption process of agile EA in organizations? If so what is the adoption rate over time? And what is the role of internal and external change agents in adoption process? To address this questions, we plan on conducting a field study in a top railroad company referred to as “Alpha” (a pseudonym) for exploring the variations in routines to understand the agile EA adoption process. Specifically, the proposed research study has two goals. First, we wish to develop a formal process theory about the adoption of agile enterprise architecture innovations using grounded theory approach. Second, through this study we would like to provide design guidelines for crossing the chasm of agile EA