Ethnic differentials of the impact of Family Planning Program on contraceptive use in Nepal

There is wide variation of family planning services use among ethnic groups in Nepal. Despite three decades of implementation the need for family planning services is substantially unmet (25%), and there have been no systematic studies evaluating the impact of the family planning program. This study pooled data from nationally representative surveys conducted in 1996, 2001, and 2006. Multilevel logistic regression analysis of 23,381 married women of reproductive age nested within 764 clusters indicated that Muslims, Janjatis, and Dalits were significantly less likely to use contraceptives than Brahmins and Chhetries (OR=0.27, 0.88 and 0.82 respectively). The odds of using contraceptives by the Newar were higher than the odds for Brahmins and Chhetries, although it was not significant. Exposure of women to family planning messages through health facilities, family planning workers, radio, and television increased the odds of using modern contraceptives. However, the impact of family planning information on contraceptive use varied according to ethnicity. We also found that modern contraceptive use varied significantly across the clusters, and the cluster-level indicators, such as mean age at marriage, mean household asset score, percentage of women with secondary education, and percentage of women working away from home, were important in explaining this.ethnic differentials, family planning, family planning programs, Nepal

Comparision of Iris Identification by Using modified SIFT and SURF keypoint Descriptor

A wide variety of systems require reliable personal recognition schemes to either confirm or determine the identity of an individual requesting their services. The purpose of such schemes is to ensure that only a legitimate user, access the rendered service. A biometrics system is essentially a pattern recognition system, which makes a personal identification by determining the authenticity of a specific physiological or behavioral characteristic possessed by the user. Iris serves as one of the excellent biometric traits due to the stability and randomness of its unique features. After localization of the iris, Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract the local features. But SIFT is found out to be computational complex.So in this paper another keypoint descriptor ,Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF), is tested and then modified which compare the performance of different descriptor and hence gives promising results with very less computations. We finally carry out a comparision of both the descriptors performance wise

The role of cytochrome c in caspase activation in Drosophila melanogaster cells

The release of cytochrome c from mitochondria is necessary for the formation of the Apaf-1 apoptosome and subsequent activation of caspase-9 in mammalian cells. However, the role of cytochrome c in caspase activation in Drosophila cells is not well understood. We demonstrate here that cytochrome c remains associated with mitochondria during apoptosis of Drosophila cells and that the initiator caspase DRONC and effector caspase DRICE are activated after various death stimuli without any significant release of cytochrome c in the cytosol. Ectopic expression of the proapoptotic Bcl-2 protein, DEBCL, also fails to show any cytochrome c release from mitochondria. A significant proportion of cellular DRONC and DRICE appears to localize near mitochondria, suggesting that an apoptosome may form in the vicinity of mitochondria in the absence of cytochrome c release. In vitro, DRONC was recruited to a >700-kD complex, similar to the mammalian apoptosome in cell extracts supplemented with cytochrome c and dATP. These results suggest that caspase activation in insects follows a more primitive mechanism that may be the precursor to the caspase activation pathways in mammals

Asymptomatic Proteinuria and Hematuria in School Going Children

Background: This study was undertaken because many cases of asymptomatic proteinuria and hematuria are present in school children.Aims and Objectives:The study was under taken to evaluate asymptomatic proteinuria and hematuria in 100 school children of both sexes from 6 to 15 years of age. Material and Methods: Samples were collected randomly from students of different classes at the Government Kannada Primary School, K H B Colony,Bijapur, Karnataka (India). The midstream urine sample was collected in a clean wide mouth jar,examined by dipsticks for proteinuria and hematuria by microscopy. Results:We found that asymptomatic proteinuria and hematuria was more prevalent amongst the children between 10 to 13 years of age group with female predominance i.e.16% proteinuria and 5% of microscopic hematuria respectively. Conclusion:By this study we conclude that it would be possible to screen a large population of children for asymptomatic proteinuria and hematuria at a relatively low cost

Open Access Extracts from Acacia catechu suppress HIV-1 replication by inhibiting the activities of the viral

Background: Acacia catechu (Mimosa family) stem bark extracts have been used traditionally as a dietary supplement as well as a folk medicine given its reported anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, hepatoprotective, antioxidant, anti-microbial and anti-tumor activities. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the anti-HIV-1 activity of the extracts from stem bark of A. catechu. Methods: The aqueous and 50 % ethanolic extracts of A. catechu stem bark were prepared and 50 % ethanolic extract was further fractioned by successively partitioning with petroleum ether, chloroform and n-butanol. All the extracts and fractions were evaluated for cytotoxicity and anti-HIV-1 activity using different in vitro assays. The active n-butanol fraction was evaluated for its inhibition against HIV-1 reverse transcriptase, integrase, protease, pro-viral genome integration and viral Tat protein mediated transactivation. The effect of n-butanol fraction on the induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines secretion in Vk2/E6E7 cells and transepithelial resistance in Caco-2 and HEC-1A cells was investigated. Results: The aqueous and 50 % ethanolic extracts of A. catechu showed IC50 values of 1.8 ± 0.18 μg/ml and 3.6 ± 0.31 μg/ml, respectively in cell-free virus based assay using TZM-bl cells and HIV-1NL4.3 (X-4 tropic). In the above assay, n-butanol fraction exhibited anti-HIV-1 activity with an IC50 of 1.7 ± 0.12 μg/ml. The n-butanol fractio