Recapitulation of Gandhaka Shodhana

Gandhaka is a primary substance and a fundamental part of Ayurvedic laboratory. Gandhaka being the first among the Uparasa Varga, plays a vital role in the preparation of Chaturvidha RasaRasayanas. Sagandha Yogas are considered as most efficacious among all the herbo-mineral preparations and hence can be used for longer duration without any complications. Also, Gandhaka is the best antidote for Parada Kalpa. Hence there is a requirement to screen, understand, and analyse various methods of Gandhaka Shodhana which are scattered in our classical Rasagranthas. Here is an attempt made to review all the different methods of Gandhaka Shodhana in Rasagranthas and also to analyse the ratiocination behind each method

Food Safety Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato Puree Handlers in Kenya

Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato (OFSP) puree is a nutritious food ingredient for promoting Vitamin A intake in processed food products in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). OFSP puree handlers play an important role in ensuring production of consistently safe and quality OFSP puree and related processed products. Lack of or insufficient knowledge on food safety coupled with poor practices by food handlers are major causes of foodborne illnesses and deterioration in food quality along the food chain. The current study assessed levels of food safety knowledge, attitude and hygiene practices (KAP) of OFSP puree handlers in Kenya. A cross-sectional study using a self-administered structured questionnaire was conducted among 35 OFSP puree handlers chosen by exhaustive sampling during the period of July and August 2016. The mean percentage scores for knowledge, attitude, practices and overall KAP were 73, 89, 80 and 81, respectively. OFSP puree handlers in this study had low level of knowledge on personal hygiene, food contamination, foodborne illnesses, cleaning and sanitation with mean scores of 80, 64, 76 and 63%, respectively. Training had a significant impact on knowledge (p=0.020), attitude (p=0.050), practices (p=0.006) and overall KAP (p=0.001) with majority of the OFSP puree handlers (63%) having received a training on food safety. A significant moderate positive correlation existed between knowledge and practices (r=0.358, p=0.035) and attitude and practices (r=0.42, p=0.013). As per adjusted linear regression analysis, food safety practices significantly (p=0.045) increased by 0.32% with one percent increase in knowledge and by 0.38% (p=0.018) with one percent increase in attitude. OFSP puree handlers had low level of knowledge and practices but demonstrated a positive attitude on food safety. Frequent food safety training is needed to improve knowledge and hygienic practices of OFSP puree handlers. Keywords: Food handlers, Foodborne illnesses, Contamination, Personal hygien

Censorious appraisal of Malahara Kalpana

The name “Malahara'' is derived from the Unani system of medicine, where similar formulations are termed as “Malham”. In Ayurveda it comes under “Lepa Kalpana'' and has been in existence since the time of Charaka Samhita. However, the term “Malahara'' was first observed in Yogaratnakara and subsequently seen in Bharat Bhaisajya Ratnakara, Rasatarangini and Rasatantrasara & Sidhaprayoga Sangraha in sequential order. Malahara Kalpana is a very useful and potent pharmaceutical preparation for external use, and it can be compared with ointments, creams and pastes in modern pharmaceuticals. These formulations are predominantly used in conditions like Vrana (wounds) and Kushtha (skin diseases). Here the active medicaments are mixed with fatty bases, which in addition to facilitating absorption into skin, enhancing shelf life and bringing convenience of use, also add their own properties to the formulation. Not only the ingredients but even the method of preparation used in various Malahara Kalpanas, has been meticulously designed and varies based on the ingredients and the indication of the formulations. Although in Ayurvedic texts we find a detailed description about its different kinds of formulation, there is limited knowledge available about Malahara Kalpana. This article is an attempt to bring about clarity on the subject through review of various Malahara Kalpana given in different texts

Unmanned ground vehicles: adaptive control system for real-time rollover prevention

Real-Time Rollover prevention of Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) is very paramount to its reliability and survivability mostly when operating on unknown and rough terrains like mines or other planets.Therefore this research presents the method of real-time rollover prevention of UGVs making use of Adaptive control techniques based on Recursive least Squares (RLS) estimation of unknown parameters, in order to enable the UGVs to adapt to unknown hush terrains thereby increasing their reliability and survivability. The adaptation is achieved by using indirect adaptive control technique where the controller parameters are computed in real time based on the online estimation of the plant’s (UGV) parameters (Rollover index and Roll Angle) and desired UGV’s performance in order to appropriately adjust the UGV speed and suspension actuators to counter-act the vehicle rollover. A great challenge of indirect adaptive control system is online parameter identification, where in this case the RLS based estimator is used to estimate the vehicles rollover index and Roll Angle from lateral acceleration measurements and height of the centre of gravity of the UGV. RLS is suitable for online parameter identification due to its nature of updating parameter estimate at each sample time. The performance of the adaptive control algorithms and techniques is evaluated using Matlab Simulink® system model with the UGV Model built using SimMechanics physical modelling platform and the whole system runs within Simulink environment to emulate real world application. The simulation results of the proposed adaptive control algorithm based on RLS estimation, show that the adaptive control algorithm does prevent or minimize the likely hood of vehicle rollover in real time.Electrical and Mining EngineeringM. Tech. (Electrical Engineering

Pressure induced electronic topological transition in Sb2S3

Pressure induced electronic topological transitions in the wide band gap semiconductor Sb2S3 (Eg = 1.7-1.8 eV) with similar crystal symmetry (SG: Pnma) to its illustrious analog, Sb2Se3, has been studied using Raman spectroscopy, resistivity and the available literature on the x-ray diffraction studies. In this report, the vibrational and the transport properties of Sb2S3 have been studied up to 22 GPa and 11 GPa, respectively. We observed the softening of phonon modes Ag(2), Ag(3) and B2g and a sharp anomaly in their line widths at 4 GPa. The resistivity studies also shows an anomaly around this pressure. The changes in resistivity as well as Raman line widths can be ascribed to the changes in the topology of the Fermi surface which induces the electron-phonon and the strong phonon-phonon coupling, indicating a clear evidence of the electronic topological transition (ETT) in Sb2S3. The pressure dependence of a/c ratio plot obtained from the literature showed a minimum at ~ 5 GPa, which is consistent with our high pressure Raman and resistivity results. Finally, we give the plausible reasons for the non-existence of a non-trivial topological state in Sb2S3 at high pressures.Comment: 24 pages, 6 Figures, 2 tables submitted for publicatio

Authentic leadership and extra role behaviour among public utility sector employees in Sri Lanka

All organizations greatly depend on employees, as a matter of necessity, to act proactively and perform in their jobs. Basically, three types of employee performance have been identified, namely in-role performance, extra role performance and counterproductive work behaviour. In order for organizations to survive, compete and sustain growth in an ever-changing turbulent business environment, the task-related in-role performance alone appears inadequate. Hence, discretionary or extra role behaviour plays a key role in organizations, contributing positive outcomes. The primary objective of this study was to examine the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour with the mediation impact of psychological capital and the moderation effect of the generational differences. The disproportionate stratified random sampling method was used in which samples were drawn from six public utility organizations in Sri Lanka. Data was collected from 396 samples of front line workers through self-administrated questionnaires. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS – SEM) was applied to test the hypotheses. The results of the study confirmed that authentic leadership (AL) and psychological capital (PsyCap) are significant predictors of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and organizational citizenship behaviour towards the environment (OCBE). More importantly, the results also confirmed the mediating effect of PsyCap on the relationship between AL and OCB as well as between AL and OCBE. It indicates that PsyCap is an underlying process which explains the spillover effect of AL on both types of OCB. However, there is no evidence of moderation effect of generational differences on the relationship between PsyCap and both types of OCB. The findings of this study stand as an extension to the existing organization behaviour literature by integrating the factors that could enhance the employee’s extra role performance. The findings also have some significant practical contributions to the public utilities sector in Sri Lanka in terms of policies and practices related to human resource management

A comparitive pharmaceutico analytical study of Nishamalaki Vati

Vati Kalpana is the widely used dosage forms because of its advantages like palatability, easy transportation and fixation of dose; an effort is made to analyze the organoleptic, physical and analytical changes with and without addition of starch in the preparation of Nishamalaki Vati. Here, a small attempt of two different pharmaceutico-analytical techniques is implied in making of Nishamalaki Vati which may bring change in pharmaceutical science of Ayurveda

ESPOUSING AND REFINEMENT OF IMPRECISE THUMBPRINT

Distortion revision is treated as the pressure touching relapse situation the gnarled dab forms the testimony and crop is the misuse terrain. In our work, unique breakthrough was projected to operate pressure of mark misrepresentation. Identification of exaggeration is in sight as the issue of two position designation, for whatever registered rib coordination map again end map of dactylogram are utilized as mark bearing. Support bearing engine clarifier enrol to perform the task of regulation. The recommended organization does not need any changes for the real dactylogram sensors also the procedures of identify gain. This good is consequential for advisable unionization into the common methods of identify acceptance. In the projected technique when described a testimony dab, credit of exaggeration is performed at the beginning and when it persists ultimate perverted, thereafter misrepresentation progress transport set on reconstruct testimony dactylogram to a natural one

Proximate composition and vitamin a contribution of biofortified orange fleshed sweet potato value added products

Orange fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) is rich in provitamin A carotenoids and can thus be utilized to tackle Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Puree with high amounts of β-carotene processed from OFSP roots is currently being incorporated in baked products such as bread, cakes, biscuits, and buns. The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritional composition of OFSP puree supplemented food products, that is, bread, buns, flakes, cakes, biscuits, muffins, soft cookies, golden biscuits and whole wheat flour bread. The composite products made from OFSP puree were analyzed for β-carotene content and proximate analysis. The highest concentration of β-carotene (19.86 mg/100g) was obtained in OFSP flakes. The concentration in buns with 20% puree was 0.58 mg/100g, while bread with 35% puree had a concentration of 3.02 mg/100g. Biscuits, cookies and cakes with high puree of 40% had β-carotene concentrations of 2.39, 1.83, and 2.30 mg/100g respectively. These concentrations are lower than in bread with 35% puree, and we see different proportions of ingredients and other factors such as cooking method, duration of cooking also play a major role in the final β-carotene concentration of the products. The total Retinol Activity Equivalents (RAE) for the OFSP products were significantly different with bread (35% puree) having a higher concentration of 216.67 μg/100g and OFSP buns (20% puree) having a lower concentration of 41.19 μg/100g. Orange fleshed sweet potato flakes had the highest concentration of 1443.2 μg/100g and whole wheat flour bread having the least of 6.9 μg/100g. The moisture content, total ash, crude fiber, crude fat, crude protein, and carbohydrate content of the OFSP products varied between 2.4-29.7%, 0.7-2.4%, 1.0-4.5%, 0.7-18.1%, 5.1-7.9% and 50.7-83.7%, respectively. The findings of this study show that different proportions of OFSP puree: wheat flour is not the only determinant on the final β-carotene concentration of the different OFSP products, the type and quantity of ingredients used, cooking time and method also contribute to the VA content. Diversification of OFSP food products helps increase its consumption and its added value.&nbsp