Indian Handicrafts in Globalization Times: An analysis of Global-Local Dynamics

Globalization - which refers to the growing integration of societies, economies and cultures around the world, has become one of the most hotly-debated topics and key area of research among the policy makers, statesmen, corporate, politicians and academia respectively over the past few years. As India opens up her doors to the multinationals during the era of economic reform and liberalized market, putting an end to the 'license raj', it is not only the economies that often meet in the global market sphere, but also the people and cultures, which bring a new dimension to the multi-cultural setting. What we can see in present day modern world is that there is always a cross-cultural interaction between the 'local' and 'global' and the much discussed 'global village', is now not just a possibility but a reality despite many contradictions. Talking about Indian Handicrafts, which constitutes a significant segment of the decentralized sector of the economy, its export has reached at a commendable height. Indian folk art and crafts which are the integral parts of the Indian culture and tradition, are in high demand among the western consumers. Again, foreign fashion industry borrows a great deal from Indian appliquéd motifs Saree designs, an ethnic Indian wear. Needless to say, the borders between the world cultures are now eroding out and becoming irrelevant, therefore prompting to call it as a deterritorialized world. But notwithstanding, the real concern for many of us is that, can the 'local' really meet with the 'global' by truly sustaining its localness? The biggest problem in the Indian Handicraft industry is that the village craftsmen remain concerned that with free trade and mass production, hand-made products from other parts of the world will out price the products of their hard labour. So the basic question arises, is globalization a panacea for every human problems that the mother earth is facing now? With a brief theoretical understanding, this paper looks at globalization's increasing impact on Indian handicrafts and crafts persons. It tries to assess how far globalization serves as an opportunity and threat to the artisans. The role of the government in promoting the crafts and protecting the artists will also be discussed before concluding the paper.globalization, handicraft, global, local, glocal

Management and Outcomes of Meconium ileus, A six-year review: Pain Management: Oral Acetaminophen Versus Topical Lidocaine With/Without Epinephrine in Neonatal Circumcision

Introduction: Meconium ileus is one of the most common causes of intestinal obstruction in the newborn, accounting for 9–33% of neonatal intestinal obstructions1. It is characterized by the lack of excretion of meconium caused by impaction of thick, desiccated protein rich pallet like meconium in the distal part of ileum, associated with clinical and specific radiological findings of intestinal obstruction2. It is the intestinal obstructive variant of cystic fibrosis3, Recent studies demonstrate that it can occur frequently without association of cystic fibrosis. The exact pathogenesis of MI in the absence of cystic fibrosis is yet to be known, a spectrum of genetic and pathological abnormalities may play a role4. Two forms of meconium ileus can be described, simple and complex meconium ileus4,5. In 1969, Noblett suggested the use of Gastrografin enema to treat uncomplicated meconium ileus7. Many surgical options have been used in the surgical treatment of meconium ileus including resection with Primary anastomosis, Mikulicz ileostomy, Bishop–Koop operation, and Santulli stoma. Resection with primary anastomosis was first described in 1962 9,15. An alternative to this approach was small bowel resection with creation of a stoma and eventual closure of the stoma with an end-to-end anastomosis. A distal chimney enterostomy (Bishop-Koop procedure) involves resection of disparately enlarged ileal loop filled with inspissated meconium and anastomosis between the end of the appropriately sized proximal segment to the side of the distal segment of bowel approximately 4 cm from the opening of the distal segment and the distal end is brought out as the ileostomy8, the reverse of the distal chimney enterostomy is the Santulli and Blanc proximal enterostomy. The Mikulicz double-barreled enterostomy where both proximal and distal loop was exteriorized. Bishop-Koop enterostomy has advantages over other procedure16,17,18 as 1) it provides access for insertion of a catheter into distal bowel for post operative instillation of solubilizing agents for irrigation, 2) there is also decreased ostomy drainage after 12- 24 hrs of post operative period, so there will be less fluid and electrolyte loss, and 3) Permits an eventual enterostomy closure by bedside ligation of chimney stoma, avoiding another laparotomy for resection and anastomosis of bowel. Here we compare between various methods of treatment of meconium ileus and relative outcome and complications for each method.   Materials and Methods:  This is Retrospective study was conducted from March 2016- February 2022 in the Department of Paediatric Surgery, SVPPGIP, S.C.B Medical College and Hospital Cuttack, Odisha. Patients with clinical and radiological suspicion of meconium ileus were included in the study. They were grouped according to the severity as simple or complicated meconium ileus. Then Many surgical options have been used in the surgical treatment of meconium ileus including resection with Primary anastomosis, Mikulicz ileostomy, Bishop–Koop operation, and Santulli stoma. Resection with primary anastomosis was first described in 1962 9,15. An alternative to this approach was small bowel resection with creation of a stoma and eventual closure of the stoma with an end-to-end anastomosis. A distal chimney enterostomy (Bishop-Koop procedure) involves resection of disparately enlarged ileal loop filled with inspissated meconium and anastomosis between the end of the appropriately sized proximal segment to the side of the distal segment of bowel approximately 4 cm from the opening of the distal segment and the distal end is brought out as the ileostomy8, the reverse of the distal chimney enterostomy is the Santulli and Blanc proximal enterostomy. The Mikulicz double-barreled enterostomy where both proximal and distal loop was exteriorized. Bishop-Koop enterostomy has advantages over other procedure16,17,18 as 1) it provides access for insertion of a catheter into distal bowel for post operative instillation of solubilizing agents for irrigation, 2) there is also decreased ostomy drainage after 12- 24 hrs of post operative period, so there will be less fluid and electrolyte loss, and 3) Permits an eventual enterostomy closure by bedside ligation of chimney stoma, avoiding another laparotomy for resection and anastomosis of bowel. Here we compare between various methods of treatment of meconium ileus and relative outcome and complications for each method.   Materials and Methods:  This is Retrospective study was conducted from March 2016- February 2022 in the Department of Paediatric Surgery, SVPPGIP, S.C.B Medical College and Hospital Cuttack, Odisha. Patients with clinical and radiological suspicion of meconium ileus were included in the study. They were grouped according to the severity as simple or complicated meconium ileus. Then they were followed up and grouped according to type of intervention carried out. After diagnosis, babies were admitted, resuscitation and stabilization of patients done, Parents were counselled about possible treatment options and prognosis for each patient separately. Patients with simple meconium ileus without any other associated radiological or clinical complication are first treated with conservative management by gastrografin enema under USG guidance. Failed cases and all other simple and complicated cases subjected to different surgical modalities as mention above.   Results: During the study period of six years, total 91 cases (7.5%) were diagnosed to be MI and included in this study. Among 91, 50 were male and 41 were female, 30 cases were Uncomplicated or simple, and 61 cases were complicated MI. Out of 30 simple MI, 18 were managed conservatively and rest 13 cases were managed with operative procedures. Among patient treated with nonoperative management only 7 responded and improved and 9 didn’t responded. 84 cases including all cases of complicated MI were treated by exploratory laparotomy. 49 cases were treated by Bishop-Koop ileostomy, 19 Mickulitz double barrel ileostomy and Santuli procedure were done in 11 patients. Primary anastomosis was done only in 5 cases. All cases were followed up for post-operative complications. 13 cases expired during follow up.   Conclusion:    MI is a neonatal emergency which need early diagnosis, referral from peripheral hospital and early intervention by Pediatric surgeons. Proper evaluations, careful applications of conservative management, timely and proper surgical interventions may improve survival. Among all surgical procedure Bishop Koop ileostomy procedure is better option to treat MI both in uncomplicated and complicated groups.  

Effect of Surface Modification of Vetiver Fibers on Their Physical and Thermal Properties

Surface modification of natural fibers is essential in order to improve their compatibility with polymer matrices to develop eco-friendly composite materials. This workdeals with different surface modifications of vetiver fibers to study their effects on mechanical and thermal properties. The efficiency of each treatment has been evaluated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometry, and scanning electron microscopy. It has been observed that benzoylation-treated vetiver fiber shows better performance in comparison to other treatments

Study of association and significance of hyponatremia in patients with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI)

Introduction: Pneumonia, the severe form of lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) is one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in children especially from the developing nations. Pneumonia is the infection and associated inflammation of the lung parenchyma. Pneumonia is the leading infectious killer of under 5 children claiming more lives than any other diseases. The burden is more in the developing nations. Around 15% of under 5 mortality is attributed to pneumonia. Hyponatremia is a common electrolyte imbalance which occurs in children with pneumonia. Many studies have reported the incidence of hyponatremia around 40 to 45%. Aim & Objective-: To see the frequency of hyponatremia in patients with LRTI & its significance in relation to disease severity. Materials & Methods:  It was a hospital based observational study. The study has been conducted in the Department of pediatrics, S C B Medical college hospital & SVPPPGIP, Cuttack. Result: Hyponatremia was a frequent finding in children with bronchopneumonia (44.6%). Patients with hyponatremia group had initial high body temperature in present study (101.9ºc vs99.7). Conclusion: There is importance of measuring serum electrolytes in patients with LRTI. Appropriate fluid should be done in case of LRTI

Isolation and Identification of Pathogenic Bacteria from Brackish Waters of Chilika Lagoon, Odisha, India for Pharmaceutical Use

Aims: The present investigation was undertaken in order to isolate bacteria from eighteen different water samples collected from three different sectors of ‘Chilika’ lagoon of India and to study the resistance against ten different antibiotics viz., norfloxacin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, neomycin, nalidixic acid, ofloxacin, chloramphenicol, nitrofurantoin, streptomycin and amoxicillin as well as their serological implications.Methodology and Results: Four different pathogenic bacteria species viz., Shigella dysenteriae, Streptococcus lactis, Bacillus cereus and Klebsiella pneumoniae were isolated which showed a wide range of sensitivity to norfloxacin,tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin and nitrofurantoin. S. dysenteriae was sensitive to streptomycin where as other isolates were found to be resistant. Agarose gel electrophoresis failed to reveal plasmid DNA band indicating that theobserved resistance was perhaps encoded by nucleotide sequences harboured on the chromosomal DNA. Bacterial isolates were used as antigen for the production of polyclonal antibodies in rabbits.Conclusion, significance and impact of study:All the isolates exhibited strong antigenic character with specific serological relationship which can be implicated towards development of novel and pharmaceutically effective antibacterial products

A Novel Approach for Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Using Asymmetric Deep Learning Features

Automatic screening of diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a well-identified area of research in the domain of computer vision. It is challenging due to structural complexity and a marginal contrast difference between the retinal vessels and the background of the fundus image. As bright lesions are prominent in the green channel, we applied contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) on the green channel for image enhancement. This work proposes a novel diabetic retinopathy screening technique using an asymmetric deep learning feature. The asymmetric deep learning features are extracted using U-Net for segmentation of the optic disc and blood vessels. Then a convolutional neural network (CNN) with a support vector machine (SVM) is used for the DR lesions classification. The lesions are classified into four classes, i.e., normal, microaneurysms, hemorrhages, and exudates. The proposed method is tested with two publicly available retinal image datasets, i.e., APTOS and MESSIDOR. The accuracy achieved for non-diabetic retinopathy detection is 98.6% and 91.9% for the APTOS and MESSIDOR datasets, respectively. The accuracies of exudate detection for these two datasets are 96.9% and 98.3%, respectively. The accuracy of the DR screening system is improved due to the precise retinal image segmentation

Using the Mercy Method for Weight Estimation in Indian Children

This study was designed to compare the performance of a new weight estimation strategy (Mercy Method) with 12 existing weight estimation methods (APLS, Best Guess, Broselow, Leffler, Luscombe-Owens, Nelson, Shann, Theron, Traub-Johnson, Traub-Kichen) in children from India. Otherwise healthy children, 2 months to 16 years, were enrolled and weight, height, humeral length (HL), and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) were obtained by trained raters. Weight estimation was performed as described for each method. Predicted weights were regressed against actual weights and the slope, intercept, and Pearson correlation coefficient estimated. Agreement between estimated weight and actual weight was determined using Bland–Altman plots with log-transformation. Predictive performance of each method was assessed using mean error (ME), mean percentage error (MPE), and root mean square error (RMSE). Three hundred seventy-five children (7.5 ± 4.3 years, 22.1 ± 12.3 kg, 116.2 ± 26.3 cm) participated in this study. The Mercy Method (MM) offered the best correlation between actual and estimated weight when compared with the other methods ( r 2 = .967 vs .517-.844). The MM also demonstrated the lowest ME, MPE, and RMSE. Finally, the MM estimated weight within 20% of actual for nearly all children (96%) as opposed to the other methods for which these values ranged from 14% to 63%. The MM performed extremely well in Indian children with performance characteristics comparable to those observed for US children in whom the method was developed. It appears that the MM can be used in Indian children without modification, extending the utility of this weight estimation strategy beyond Western populations

Enhancement of Mechanical, Thermal and Morphological Properties of Eleusine Indica Grass Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites

This research focuses on developing a new material by reinforcing chemically treated Eleusine Indica (EI) fiber with epoxy resin as matrix. Composites using varying wt% of treated EI fibers were fabricated taking epoxy as matrix. The effect of chemical treatment and fiber loading on various mechanical properties, thermal, and morphology using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) was investigated. From the results obtained, it is obvious that the mechanical and thermal properties of composites reinforced with chemically treated fibers were enhanced due to fiber surface modification which helps in better bonding with matrix. Moreover, the composites with 20 wt% fiber concentration shows good tensile strength, Young’s modulus, impact strength and was found to be 79.31MPa, 3.84 GPa, 32.24 KJ/m2 respectively. At this fiber loading the composites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and thermogravimetric (TGA) and compared with untreated fiber reinforced composites and neat epoxy. Finally, the failure analysis of fracture surface due to delimitation, pull-out of the fibers, percentage of voids, and composite fracture has been verified using scanning electron microscope. The findings provide manufacturers and engineers with a general concept of how to employ the composites to make low-weight automotive parts for improved fuel efficiency