Life style characteristics of hospital paramedical healthcare professionals: a study from a tertiary care hospital, Pondicherry

Background: Life style is linked with future cardiovascular diseases. The aim of the work was to study the life style characteristics of hospital paramedical healthcare professionals.Methods: Paramedical professionals working in Aaruapadai veedu medical college and hospital were taken up for the study. The study was done as a cross sectional study using a pretested questionnaire method. Age, height, weight, waist circumference, diet pattern, physical activity, sleep and yoga pattern in all the hospital paramedical professionals were collected and studied.Results: Of the total one hundred hospital paramedical professionals, there were 90 female paramedical professionals. Among the female paramedical professionals, there were 69 of age less than 30years. Normal body mass index of less than 25 was seen (56) 62% of female paramedical professionals. Nine paramedical professionals had abdominal obesity. Of the total 10 male paramedical professionals 6 (60%) were taking food at improper time. Seven male and 58 female paramedical professionals did not do any form of exercise. A total of 84 female paramedical professionals were taking carbohydrate rich diet. Nineteen female paramedical professionals were doing regular exercise and three paramedical professionals were doing yoga. Eighty-five female paramedical professionals had refreshing normal sleep.Conclusions: Hospital paramedical healthcare professionals had a poor physical activity and diet pattern. The prevalence of abdominal obesity was less in paramedical professionals

Enhancing Trajectory-Based Operations for UAVs through Hexagonal Grid Indexing: A Step towards 4D Integration of UTM and ATM

Aviation is expected to face a surge in the number of manned aircraft and drones in the coming years, making it necessary to integrate Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) into Air Traffic Management (ATM) to ensure safe and efficient operations. This research proposes a novel hexagonal grid-based 4D trajectory representation framework for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) traffic management that overcomes the limitations of existing square/cubic trajectory representation methods. The proposed model employs a hierarchical indexing structure using hexagonal cells, enabling efficient ground based strategic conflict detection and conflict free 4D trajectory planning. Additionally, the use of Hexagonal Discrete Global Grid Systems provides a more accurate representation of UAV trajectories, improved sampling efficiency and higher angular resolution. The proposed approach can be used for predeparture conflict free 4D trajectory planning, reducing computational complexity and memory requirements while improving the accuracy of strategic trajectory conflict detection. The proposed framework can also be extended for air traffic flow management trajectory planning, Air Traffic Control (ATC) workload measurement, sector capacity estimation, dynamics airspace sectorization using hexagonal sectors and traffic density calculation, contributing to the development of an efficient UTM system, and facilitating the integration of UAVs into the national airspace system with AT

Development of breathable and liquid/microbes barrier woven surgical gowns for hospital usage

An attempt has been made to develop a breathable woven surgical gown with antimicrobial and liquid repellent properties by finishing with nanoparticles of silver and fluorocarbon using pad-dry-cure method. Box-Behnken design has been used to optimize the coating parameters, i.e. concentrations of nanosilver (NS), nanofluorocarbon (NFC) and binder. The selected coating parameters has decisive influence on the fabric properties, such as air permeability, moisture vapour permeability, antimicrobial and tensile behaviour. The optimum coating parameters such as concentrations of NS, NFC and binder result in improved air permeability and moisture vapour permeability of the fabric for 3 g/L of NS and 40 g/L of NFC. The antibacterial activity of fabric is found to be higher for increased NS concentration and lower for increased NFC. In case of tensile properties of coated fabrics, the increase in NS concentration increases the tensile strength and decreases the bending modulus of fabrics

Effects of salinity on the growth, photosynthesis and mineral constituents of the mangrove Rhizophora apiculata L. seedlings

The effects of salinity on growth, chlorophyll content, photosynthetic rates, as measured by leaf stomatal conductance and leaf chlorophyll fluorescence induction, and ion accumulation in the mangrove plant Rhizophora apiculata were determined. The following questions were addressed:                (1) What effect does salinity have on growth responses at different ages? (2) Is R. apiculata an ion accumulator? (3) Does R. apiculata accumulate chlorophyll, net photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence in response to salinity? Rhizophora apiculata  plants were grown in pots at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 % in sand culture in a plant growth chamber and plants were harvested after 30 and 90 d. Plant total fresh and dry weight and moisture content was significantly inhibited at 75 per cent seawater. Seawater salinity stimulated the chlorophyll contents and they were increased upto 75 per cent seawater.  The net photosynthesis increased with increasing salinity upto the optimal level and the CO2 uptake rate was identical in this species at various salt concentrations. Even at extreme salinity, the CO2 uptake was comparable to that non-saline control plants and CO2 uptake could be correlated with the chlorophyll content. The photochemical activities such as PSI and PSII of the isolated cells increased upto the optimal salinity. The result of the chlorophyll fluorescence kinetics provided with additional proof to the finding of CO2 exchange rate and photochemical activities.  The Na+ and Cl− content in both shoots and roots increased with increases in salinity. Increased treatment levels of NaCl induced decreases in Ca+, P, K+, Mg+   and N in plants

Translation and Validation of Vanderbilt Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Diagnostic Parent Rating Scale (VADPRS) in Tamil Language and determination of its Psychometric Properties

BACKGROUND: ADHD is a commonly encountered neuro behavioural disorder in child psychiatry assessed using the VADPRS. Since majority population attending tertiary care units are only Tamil speaking rural population, there is a felt need for a validated and standardised Tamil version. AIM OF THE STUDY: To translate and validate VADPRS into Tamil language and determine its psychometric properties. METHOD: The methodology involves i) translation process using a multistep approach with forward and backward translations as per standard guidelines ii) adaptation of the translated Tamil version in a target sample to estimate psychometric properties. RESULTS: The Likert scale expert reviews of the translation for individual scale items were ‘moderately’ to ‘extremely’ comparable and similar to the original English version. There were significant positive Pearson correlations with ‘r’ values up to 0.9; good convergent validity with DSM-4 criteria and KSADS-ADHD supplement scores; high internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha more than 0.9 and also with Split half analysis. CONCLUSION: Tamil version of the VADPRS was highly comparable and similar with the original English version and has significant psychometric properties. Hence it is a well validated tool for screening, diagnosis, assessment of severity and follow up of children with ADHD in the Tamil population

A study on dyslipidemia assosciated with chronic kidney disease and the atherogenic index of plasma in various stages of CKD

INTRODUCTION : Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). This association is multifactorial, but CKD is often associated with dyslipidemia, which likely contributes. Patients with CKD have dyslipidemia even at early stages of renal dysfunction and dyslipidemia tends to progress with deterioration of kidney function. OBJECTIVES : To study the pattern of dyslipidemia in various stages of CKD and to assess the cardiovascular risk by correlating the atherogenic index of plasma to various stages of CKD METHODS : 85 patients were carefully selected after assessing their eligibility using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. History, clinical examination and biochemical investigations were performed .Blood for the assessment of lipid profile was collected after a minimum of 8 hours fasting and a light fat free diet on the previous day. Data was analysed using SPSS software. RESULTS : Patients with chronic kidney disease were likelier to have higher levels of triglyceride, VLDL - C and lower HDL values and as the stage of CKD progressed, the abnormalities in TGL and HDL values increased. There is no significant difference in the lipid levels between the diabetic and non - diabetic CKD population. Dialysis patients had a worsened lipid abnormality when compared with the pre dialysis patients.Atherogenic index of plasma was calculated, which showed a significant negative correlation with the stages of CKD. CONCLUSION : Lipid metabolism is significantly altered in most patients with renal failure. Our results indicate that CKD patients show significant abnormalities of lipid metabolism such as hyper - triglyceridemia, hyper – cholesterolemia and low HDL – C which contribute to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases. Further research is needed to confirm whether early detection and treatment could be helpful in the prevention of adverse clinical outcomes in CKD patients

Antibacterial Activity of Salicornia brachiata, A Halophyte

Antibacterial activity of Salicornia brachiata was studied by the agar diffusion and dilution methods.  The methanolic extract of leaves of this species was more active than the aqueous extracts against Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus pumilus, Micrococcus luteus and Staphylococcus aureus.ÂÂ

The Study of changes in surface energy of fibre layers

Oblast nanovláken je v současném moderním světe nejvíce rostoucí a nejdůležitější odvětví textilních materiálů. Smáčení nanovláken je vlastnost, která dláždí cestu k jejich použití v různých aplikacích, zejména pak v lékařství. Syntetické polymery nejsou ve své povaze dobře smáčitelné. Naštěstí je možné je učinit hydrofilní a tím se nabízí jejich použití v mnoha aplikacích, jako je lékařství, filtrace a geotextilní aplikace. V této diplomové práci je studována povrchová energie polykaprolaktonu. Tato diplomová práce se zabývá studiem povrchové energie vrstev polykaprolaktonových vláken vlivem materiálových a procesních parametrů. Vlákenné vrstvy byly vyráběny technikou elektrostatického zvlákňování pomocí jehlové elektrody. U vyrobených vlákenných vrstev pomocí elektrostatického zvlákňování byla testována jejich povrchová energie pomocí metody měření kontaktního úhlu. Pro výpočet kontaktního úhlu a povrchové energie vlákenných vrstev polykaprolaktonových nanovláken se používá přístroj System E navržený společností Advex Instruments Czech Republic. Výsledky této diplomové práce jsou použity pro další studium a jsou vhodné také pro různé aplikace, zejména tam, kde se používají nanovlákenné materiály.Nano-fibres are most growing and important part of textile materials as of now in this modern world. The wetting characteristics of the Nano-fibres paves way for using them in various applications mainly in the medical field. Man-made polymers are not good at wetting in their nature. Fortunately making them hydrophilic is an interesting work for implying them in numerous applications such as medical, filtration and geo-textiles applications. The surface energy of the polycaprolactone is studied in this diploma thesis. Different material parameters and process parameters are involved in this diploma thesis work for the study of the surface energy of the polycaprolactone fibre layers. Fibre layers are produced using needle electrospinning technique. The fibrous layers produced by electrospinning are tested for their surface energy using contact angle method. See System E instrument designed by Advex Instruments Czech Republic is used for calculating contact angle and surface energy of the polycaprolactone fibre layers. The results of this diploma thesis work are used for further study, and also suited for the various field application especially where the Nano-fibrous materials are used

Detection and Quantification of Phthalates in Liquid Food Products by GC-MS

INTRODUCTION: Packaging is the process by which the products are suitably placed so that they should retain their therapeutic effectiveness from the time of their packaging till they are consumed. “ Packaging may be defined as the art and science which involves preparing the articles for transport, storage, display and use”. A package is a manufactured product consisting of any material or material combination used to present, contain, protect, handle and distribute goods, from raw materials to finished products, in every phase of the distribution chain. Thus the basic packaging functions follow: 1. To contain the product, 2. To present and identify the product, 3. To protect the products physical integrity, 4. To preserve the products properties and quality characteristics, 5. To prepare the product for handling during transportation and commercial distribution, 6. To inform the consumer. Packages have changed with time in response to the following social factors: population growth, urbanization, necessity to avoid food detoriation and loss, internationalization of commerce, greater awareness about hygiene, consumption of more natural foods and environmental detoriation. AIM AND OBJECTIVE: Analytical instrumentation plays an important role in production and evaluation of new product. Analytical technique is a method that is used to determine the concentration of a chemical compound or chemical element. There are a wide variety of techniques used for analysis, from simple weighing to titration to advanced techniques using highly specialized instruments. Analytical techniques play a crucial role in new drug development. An appropriate analytical method is required to study the pharmacokinetic, therapeutic and toxicological effects of new drug entities. The present work is focused on developing new analytical technique for determination and quantification of phthalates contamination in liquid food products. In the present scenario, the market is flaked with consumables containing phthalates induced food samples and consumers are taken to ride. No studies have been carried out for determination of phthalates in food products in INDIA. The world we live in today is directly influenced by the progression of science. From ancient to modern times, the role of science has always been to further the development of society. This project addresses aspects concerning the well-being of the individuals and families in the society. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION:The present work deals with the development and validation of GC-MS technique for the detection and quantification of phthalates. The validation of the proposed method was carried out as per ICH guidelines. Linearity was obeyed in the concentration range of 0.5 to 5 mg/L. The developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of phthalate esters in liquid food samples. The sample preparation method for liquid samples was quick and easy to accomplish using n-hexane as extraction solvent which provided constant and high recoveries even at trace level. The average recovery of the sample analysis by this method was 102.1%. Among the phthalates generally present, Di 2-ethyl hexyl phthalate was detected in all the samples in the concentration range of 1.31 to 1.65 mg/L. The GC-MS measurement method is highly accurate as demonstrated with precise calibrations and spiked liquid samples. The proposed GC-MS method has good usability, provides the necessary sensitivity and delivers the complete spectrum information for identification and confirmation of a wide variety of possible phthalate ester contaminations by comparison with the NIST mass spectral library. The determination of phthalate plasticizers using the proposed GC-MS method is very sensitive and accurate. It is easy to perform, rapid and covers a wide linear range to meet the need for trace level detections of PAEs in liquid food samples. The advancement of medical science always has influenced mankind. Science builds on itself over time, each period gives its own contribution. Sometimes the knowledge is not true, but it is in the act of trying that leads to success. This accumulation of medical knowledge over time has allowed society to advance health care to where it is today. In conclusion, the sciences emerged from human curiosity and ingenuity because of the questions and problems the environment has thrust upon us. The information gained is not always equitable but does serve as a medium for correct sciences to appear. Thus, if history repeats itself, the road ahead for science will be intermittently rewritten to serve the future needs of both scientific communities and society at large. This project can be considered as the effect of an activity on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals, thus imparting a social impact in the society