Ultra-narrow and widely tunable Mn^(2+) Emission from Single Nanocrystals of ZnS-CdS alloy

Extensively studied Mn-doped semiconductor nanocrystals have invariably exhibited photoluminescence (PL) over a narrow energy window of width <= 149 meV in the orange-red region and a surprisingly large spectral width (>= 180 meV), contrary to its presumed atomic-like origin. Carrying out emission measurements on individual single nanocrystals and supported by ab initio calculations, we show that Mn PL emission, in fact, can (i) vary over a much wider range (~ 370 meV) covering the deep green-deep red region and (ii) exhibit widths substantially lower (~ 60-75 meV) than reported so far, opening newer application possibilities and requiring a fundamental shift in our perception of the emission from Mn-doped semiconductor nanocrystals.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Relevance of Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) for Procurement of Equipments in a Government Medical College and Hospital in North-East India

Introduction: Continuous procurement of various equipments in the hospitals is essential to keep up with global progress of healthcare services. In public sectors, procurement process largely depends on budget sanctions and also by a number of formal procedures and rules which leads to delayed procurement. With this prevalent scenario, the present study was carried out to evaluate the procurement of two major equipments in an apex tertiary care institute using Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). Objective: This study was done to evaluate the procurement of two major equipments using PERT in a tertiary care institute. Method: This study was conducted using Operational Research technique in an apex tertiary care institute i.e., medical college and hospital, in one of the North Eastern states of India. All the procurements related to equipments in that teaching hospital initiated in the financial year 2021 were listed. Out of them, two procurement files were selected by simple random sampling; procurement of Operating Table and Bio Safety cabinet Level – III. Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) was applied to calculate the possible reduction in time in the whole procurement process. Results: The present study showed that procurement of Operating table took 185 days where minimum 8 days could have been saved and procurement of Bio-Safety cabinet Level-III was completed by 702 days where minimum 196 days could have been saved. Conclusion: Application of PERT in this procurement evaluation process can play significant role by calculating critical path and predicting the possible delay

Climate change awareness among the livestock rearers of east coast of India

The phenomenon of global climate change is directly affecting the livestock production system world overall. Therefore, understanding the changing climatic scenario by the millions of resource poor livestock rearers across the east coast of India found to be imperative to get information for strategic planning to improve the livelihoods of rural people. But, systematic methodology to assess climatic change awareness among the livestock rearers is currently not available. Therefore, a psychometric scale entitled “Climate Change Awareness Scale” was developed and applied among the randomly selected 480 livestock rearers of eastern coastal region of India. Results reflected majority of the population exhibit their strong level of awareness towards changing climatic scenario in general and particularly towards broad spectrum of climate change like causes, features, effects and impacts. It was also found that 37.188% of livestock rearers of coastal region were having higher level of awareness followed by 31.973% and 30.839% were having lower and medium level of awareness. Comparisons of state of awareness with the factual climatic data validated farmers’ claim and established the authenticity of the psychometric tool. Hence, this study will provide a significant tool for researchers and policy makers to assess state of climate change awareness among the end users and to develop appropriate adaptation strategies to minimize the risk of livestock sector to climate change

A Flexible Resource Allocating Network for Noisy Data

The resource allocating network(RAN) provides a simple and powerful method for on-line modeling with incremental growth in model complexity. However, the network growing algorithm is susceptible to outliers in the output domain. Pruning techniques subsequently proposed for RAN, though satisfactory for dealing with outliers in the input domain, are incapable of removing units grown in response to outliers in the output domain. The addition of a coarse scale unit in response to an output outlier results in a much larger network where units are wasted to negate the effect of the spurious unit. The resulting network generalizes poorly. In this paper, we discuss the problems associated with RAN in the presence of outliers, and provide a modified learning algorithm which recognizes and prunes units associated with spurious data. We also present a strategy to modify the remaining units, once a unit is pruned. Keywords: Resource allocating network, outlier, pruning, function approximation 1...

Awareness and practice of animal bite management among patients attending rabies clinic of a tertiary hospital, Burdwan, India

Introduction: Rabies is a neglected disease of poor and vulnerable populations whose deaths are rarely reported. Although rabies is 100% fatal, it is 100% preventable also, but unfortunately, lots of death is occurring around the year. With this, the present study was performed to assess the sociodemographic profile and awareness and practice regarding management of animal bite among patients attending Rabies Clinic of Burdwan Medical College and Hospital (BMC&H), Burdwan, India. Methodology: This study was conducted among 220 patients in Rabies Clinic of BMC&H, Burdwan, India, between July and December 2012. Information about sociodemographic characteristics, awareness, and practices of animal bite were collected. Results: More than half (120, 54.6%) of the participants got animal bite-related information from health personnel (doctors, nurses, etc.). Dog bite was seen in 80% (176) of the cases; interestingly, monkey bite was seen in 4.1% (9) of the cases. Nearly sixty-six percent (65.8%) patients were classified as Category III according to the World Health Organization classification of the severity of wounds. Almost half of the victims (102, 46.3%) washed wound with soap under running tap water, whereas 12.9% (28) had taken no action. Most of the animal bite victims (177, 80.5%) received injection of tetanus toxoid and anti-rabies vaccine following animal bite. Conclusion: The present study showed that more than half of the participants got animal bite-related information from health personnel (doctors, nurses, etc.) and 12.9% (28) had taken no action after animal bite. These indicate proper control of stray animals as well as right medical advice and adequate treatment of animal bite cases can reduce the incidence of rabies

Assessing the impact of hand hygiene training on medical students' knowledge: A study in a tertiary care hospital in West Bengal.

Background: Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) continue to pose significant challenges to patient safety and healthcare systems worldwide. Poor hand hygiene among healthcare professionals remains a major contributing factor to the spread of HAIs. Despite its importance, hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers, including medical students, remains low. Training programs to improve hand hygiene knowledge and compliance have been implemented globally. This study aims to assess the impact of a hand hygiene training program on medical students at Burdwan Medical College & Hospital in West Bengal. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 122 Professional MBBS students who were selected through purposive sampling. Written informed consent was obtained from each participant. The students' baseline hand hygiene knowledge was assessed using the WHO questionnaire before providing hand hygiene training. Post-training, the same questionnaire was used to evaluate the level of knowledge acquired. The data were analyzed using the student t-test to determine the statistical significance of the training program. Results: The mean pre-test score was 11.24±5.29, while the mean post-test score significantly increased to 17.34±5.4 (p<0.001, 95% CI). This finding indicates a substantial improvement in hand hygiene knowledge among medical students after undergoing the training program. Conclusion: Regular and frequent training programs on hand hygiene, accompanied by monitoring and timely feedback, are crucial for increasing awareness and compliance among medical students. It is essential for medical colleges to establish an Infection Prevention and Control Committee to organize and oversee such training initiatives, which play a pivotal role in mitigating the risk of HAIs

Adapting to climate change: Traditional coping mechanism followed by the <i>Brokpa </i>pastoral nomads of Arunachal Pradesh, India

752-761Transhumance system of livelihood of the Brokpa pastoral nomads inhabiting in the yak tracts of Arunachal Pradesh with special emphasis on climate change adaptation was assessed in the present study. A representative sample of the 240 Brokpa pastoral nomads from all the yak rearing tracts of Arunachal Pradesh was selected randomly. The Brokpa pastoral nomads mainly depend upon livestock, like yak, yak-cattle hybrid etc, rearing for their livelihood. They perceived that season cycle has been changed in lower and mid altitude. They also perceived that onset of summer is getting started 1-2 month(s) earlier than before and also extended by 2-3 months. Therefore, Brokpa pastoral nomads of Arunachal Pradesh have expanded their migration duration by 2-3 months in searching of congenial environment for their livestock specially yak and yak-cattle hybrid. They adopted 10 coping mechanisms to cope up with negative impact of climate change. Among the coping mechanisms, ‘duration of migration has expanded by 2-3 months’ and ‘change in pasture utilization practice’ were found to be mostly adopted