An Assessment of Knowledge and Practices Regarding Tuberculosis in the Context of RNTCP Among Non Allopathic Practitioners in Gwalior District

Introduction: India has the highest TB burden accounting for one-fifth of the global incidence with an estimated 1.98 million cases. Non- allopathic practitioners are the major service providers especially in rural and peri-urban areas, treating not just patients of diarrhea, respiratory infections and abdominal Pain but also of tuberculosis. Objectives: To assess the knowledge of sign and symptoms of TB and its management as per the RNTCP guidelines and to assess the practicing pattern regarding tuberculosis. Material & Methods: The present was carried out among the registered non allopathic practitioners providing their services in Gwalior District during the study period. A total of 150 non allopathic practitioners of various methods from both government and private sectors were interviewed using a pre-designed, pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. The information was collected on the General profile of the participant, knowledge about signs and symptoms of TB and its management, practices commonly adopted in the management and their views on involvement of non allopathic practitioners in RNTCP programme. Result: The average score of government practitioners was 7.3 compared to 4.6 by private practitioners. There was a statistically significant difference between the two group on issue related to the management of TB patients as per the RNTCP guidelines. Government practitioners relied mostly on sputum examination for diagnosis and follow up compared to private practitioners who chose other modalities like X-ray, blood examination for this work. Conclusion: There is a gap in knowledge and practices of practitioners of both the sectors. Some serious efforts were required to upgrade the knowledge of non allopathic practitioners if the government is serious about controlling tuberculosis in India

Prospects of digital information system and services in National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR), Jamshedpur

NML library plays a pivotal role in the development of R&D in particular and society in general by providing information in the field of Metallurgy and Materials Science.It was established in 26th November 1950 at Jamshedpur, Jharkhand (Earst While Bihar). The Library has helped to carry out basic and applied research in the field of Metallurgy, Materials Science and allied discipline. One can find here a Bound Volume journals of 1891 to latest on-line database pertaining to on going research. The Information Technology has changed the complexion of library in a big way with the current thrust on availability of the latest information for Research and Development .In order to make automation, the manual information storage and retrieval system is currently being converted into digitised form by using AURUM-version-4.The secondary source is supposed to be Bible for R&D Library is being currently provided on optical media..To access the database on Internet,the useful World Wide Web has been identified and free information provided by information society has been downloaded on Intranet. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, this year it started to procure Electronic Journal from Elsevier publication and we are getting the same on electronic mode. The present paper discusses various factors involved in transformation of traditional libraries into electronic one and discuss the information available on Internet fall in the NML domain

Intake ground vortex characteristics

The development of ground vortices when an intake operates in close proximity to the ground has been studied computationally for several configurations including front and rear quarter approaching flows as well as tailwind arrangements. The investigations have been conducted at model scale using a generic intake geometry. Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes calculations have been used and an initial validation of the computational model has been carried out against experimental data. The computational method has subsequently been applied to configurations that are difficult to test experimentally by including tailwind and rear quarter flows. The results, along with those from a previous compatible study of headwind and pure cross-wind configurations, have been used to assess the ground vortex behaviour under a broad range of velocity ratios and approaching wind angles. The characteristics provide insights on the influence of the size and strength of ground vortices on the overall quality of the flow ingested by the intake

Secure state estimation against sensor attacks in the presence of noise

We consider the problem of estimating the state of a noisy linear dynamical system when an unknown subset of sensors is arbitrarily corrupted by an adversary. We propose a secure state estimation algorithm, and derive (optimal) bounds on the achievable state estimation error given an upper bound on the number of attacked sensors. The proposed state estimator involves Kalman filters operating over subsets of sensors to search for a sensor subset which is reliable for state estimation. To further improve the subset search time, we propose Satisfiability Modulo Theory-based techniques to exploit the combinatorial nature of searching over sensor subsets. Finally, as a result of independent interest, we give a coding theoretic view of attack detection and state estimation against sensor attacks in a noiseless dynamical system

Improvement of Atmospheric Pollution in the Capital Cities of US during COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 during 2020 impacted the whole world and still affecting the lives of people living in some parts of the world. The spread of this epidemic started in the US in late March 2020 and became a major issue in April due to an outburst of COVID-19 cases. Most of the countries in the world imposed complete to partial lockdown, but in the US, few states imposed lockdowns. Even after the advisory of the various Government department, the mobility data suggest that there was an enhancement (10–15%) in mobility during March 2020. Later sudden drop in mobility was observed during April 2020. The fall in aerosols optical depth (AOD), particulate matter concentration, NO2, and Ozone are observed along with the positive shifts in the SO2. In some of the states, AOD shows pronounced decline during May and June (5–40.90%), in the month of May more than 80% decline was observed compared to the month of June 2020. In the month of April 2020, up to 73.64% decline was observed in NO2, and 70–99% in the months of May and June 2020. We found a good relationship between the mobility data and improvement in the air quality of the US. The changes were not significant compared to other countries in the world due to scattered lockdown policy, but in the US a pronounced change is observed during April month compared to March and May