Community Participation in Rural Development Project Implementation: Case Study of Kandaketiya Divisional Secretariat in Sri Lanka

Rural development projects are advancing slowly in rural areas partly due to a lack of community participation in project implementation.  In the Sri Lankan context, state-governed projects are often planned by the Ministries and Departments, yet beneficiaries get the chance to engage with projects at the implementation stage. Divisional Secretariats play a major role when implementing projects at the rural level in Sri Lanka. Hence, this study aims to explore the reasons for lower community participation in rural development project implementation in a selected divisional secretariat called Kandaketiya in Sri Lanka, to examine issues encountered in community participation in rural development project implementation, and to make suggestions to increase active community participation. The study used a qualitative case study design by collecting data from the field officers engaged in rural project implementation and community members separately. Six focus group discussions were employed, and data analysis was done thematically.  As the reasons for lower community participation, the study found that lack of awareness, negative community perception, administrative and management issues of government institutes, time constraints, geographical barriers, and limited infrastructure availability. The study revealed that issues encountered in community participation in rural development project implementation as intergenerational conflicts and poor teamwork, insufficient monitoring by field officers, poor officer-community relationship, and lack of transparency in financial matters. Introducing a daily wage system, enhancing communication facilities, conducting need analysis tests, increasing financial transparency, conducting community awareness and capacity-building training for officers, and introducing people-centric project designs were stated as suggestions for increasing community participation. Keywords - Community Participation, Project Implementation, Rural Developmen

Digitalization of Public Service Delivery: A Case of Immigration and Emigration Department of Sri Lanka

Adaptation of digital technologies leads public sector organizations to innovate and tap their potentials. The Immigration and Emigration Department of Sri Lanka (IEDSL) has commenced digitalization of its functions during the last decade. It is one of most efficient “one-stop” service centers that cater the requirements of 2,500 citizens on a daily basis. Therefore, this paper intends to explore the adoption of digitalization in the Immigration and Emigration Department of Sri Lanka and to identify the lesson learnt from digitalization process at IEDSL. This is a qualitative study which employs the case study approach. The study uses both the primary and secondary data sources. Primary data are collected through the in-depth interviews with five senior officials involved in digitalization process at IEDSL and secondary data sources are annual performance reports, other publications and the website of the organization. The IEDSL has digitalized the entire cycle of passport issuing process. This initiation enabled the IEDSL to provide efficient service delivery by reducing public waiting time and transaction cost for the public, maintaining an equal access to the service, and making information freely available. Also, it enabled inter-link between the Immigration and Emigration Department and the Airport Authority. This paper highlighted on the lessons learnt from digitalization experience of IEDSL as robust leadership, promote employee engagement, perceive continuous development through collaborations, improving the services through introducing value added services

Incidence of Bleeding and Overdose Complications with Vitamin K Antagonists Therapy: A Cross Sectional Study

Vitamin K antagonist therapy is a significant intervention for the management of thromboembolic diseases and also who have poor anticoagulation control are at increased risk for adverse events. Pharmacist assisted VKA therapy originated with the goal of helping physicians and patients in the anticoagulation therapy. The aim of the study was to investigate the incidence of bleeding and overdose complications among patients prescribed with vitamin K antagonist. A prospective study was conducted from June 2019 to September 2019 in Kovai Medical Center and Hospital, Coimbatore. Patients’ knowledge about VKA therapy was assessed by using Anticoagulation Knowledge Tool questionnaire. Patients INR and PT values were monitored during visit 1 and visit 2. In this study period no one reported any incidence of bleeding. Patients VKA therapy knowledge was increased significantly in first and second visit after patient counselling (p<0.0001). Their was a huge improvement in the counseling. Our study reveals that the well-structured counseling by a pharmacist regarding VKA therapy had a significant impact on the improvement of patient knowledge and INR and PT ranges

The Unrealized Promise of College-in-prison: Financial Hurdles to Reenrollment and Completion in the Era of Pell Reinstatement

College-in-prison programs are positioned to expand substantially under the reinstatement of Pell Grant eligibility for people in prison. While this change will enable more students who have been systemically excluded from higher education to attend college, degree completion is rare during incarceration and post-release. Student perspectives can shed light on both the value of college-in-prison and the financial barriers to realizing its value. This study analyzes data from 12 focus groups with 105 total college-in-prison student participants, 114 student survey responses, and 45 stakeholder interviews. The data were collected between 2018-2022 during a process evaluation of the College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative, which provided funding to college-in-prison programs in New York State as part of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Criminal Justice Investment Initiative. The findings demonstrate that students value college-in-prison, describing how it fostered self-reflection and personal growth and provided them with a skillset that may help them gain employment upon release. However, students also raised concerns about reenrolling and completing their degrees following release. Intentional, holistic reentry support could address the largely financial barriers to reenrollment. In so doing, students will be more likely to earn their college degrees after incarceration and experience the full value of a college education

Prospective study of the prescribing pattern of antibiotics and their outcome in patients admitted to intensive care unit at tertiary center

Background: Antibiotics are currently the most commonly prescribed drugs in hospitals, worldwide. overuse of antibiotics has important economic implications. Periodic evaluation of drug utilization in the intensive care unit (ICU) is necessary for optimization of health care system, proper use of resources and making prescription policy because ICU is considered as the epi-center of antimicrobial resistance. The aim of this study is to evaluate antibiotic prescription and consumption patterns at admission into intensive care unit and to know the average costs of antibiotics.Methods: The prescription data on 250 consecutive patients at admission into the ICU was audited from January to March 2019. Total antibiotics, dose, route and cost of antibiotics were noted and the defined daily dose/100 bed days of most common antibiotics were calculated. Statistical analysis is done using SPSS software.Results: A total of 689 antibiotics were prescribed in the 250 patients studied that is, an average of 2.28 antibiotics/prescription. Empirical antibiotics were prescribed to all the patients admitted to ICU. Average cost of the antibiotics was rupees 163.89 per patients. The most commonly prescribed antibiotic at ICU admission was ceftriaxone (62%) of all prescription. Second most common is metronidazole (32%). In this study, 76 patients recovered while 174 patients expired.Conclusions: Our study reveals that antibiotics are widely prescribed in critically ill patients and form significant drug consumed in the ICU. At admission elderly patients are prescribed >2 antibiotics and prescribing antibiotics where the cost of antibiotic is high

Local antimagic chromatic number of partite graphs

Let $G$ be a connected graph with $|V| = n$ and $|E| = m$. A bijection $f:E\rightarrow \{1,2,...,m\}$ is called a local antimagic labeling of $G$ if for any two adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$, $w(u) \neq w(v)$, where $w(u) = \sum_{e \in E(u)}f(e)$, and $E(u)$ is the set of edges incident to $u$. Thus, any local antimagic labeling induces a proper vertex coloring of $G$ where the vertex $v$ is assigned the color $w(v)$. The local antimagic chromatic number is the minimum number of colors taken over all colorings induced by local antimagic labelings of $G$. Let $m,n > 1$. In this paper, the local antimagic chromatic number of a complete tripartite graph $K_{1,m,n}$, and $r$ copies of a complete bipartite graph $K_{m,n}$ where $m \not \equiv n \bmod 2$ are determined

An Implementation of Polyglot Voice Supervise Home Device Using Raspberry Pi

Most of us tend to enjoy the ease of living by doing the bare minimum. The same applies while operating the devices at home by just a few touches or by using our voice in the preferred language. A smart home is an Internet of Things (IoT) platform that uses the internet to control the devices at our home, and this technology has grown enormously over the past few years encouraging new ideas. And with that thought, this system will be implementing Home Automation with Raspberry Pi and Google Assistant by controlling the appliances like lights, fans, air conditioners, temperature sensors, and more, in any preferred language.&nbsp; Platforms like If This Then That (IFTTT), Adafruit, Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and Raspberry Pi IO are used to connect the hardware with the software that is a common path for devices that are connected to the Relay module and the Google Assistant. The IFTTT platforms are easily available on our smartphones or a website that makes it easy for us to access different devices at different parts of the house or anywhere. Home automation minimizes the manual switching&nbsp; ON/OFF of the appliances whilst being controlled by the commands that are given by the users. This project builds an automation system that uses the range of Wifi or Bluetooth, which is easily accessible by the users to connect their devices and control them by voice through Google Assistant. This makes it easy for the users to access their devices wherever they are.&nbsp; Home automation comes as an advantage for older people and especially the physically disabled. The main objective of this proposed project is to provide a comfortable and a digitalized environment to use the day-to-day appliances with added security

Design and development of an instrument for non- destructive fabric weight measurement

In this study, an image processing approach for fabric weight measurement has been proposed and tested. The system involves digital capturing of image using a microscope and then its processing in simple steps using image processing software (MATLAB). The study is conducted using a range of woven fabric samples. The fabrics have been conventionally weighed using an electronic weighing balance, and digital images of the sample fabrics are obtained and processed. The process involves application of suitable filters to obtain weft count, warp count, EPI, PPI and yarn crimp. The values are then substituted in standard formula to obtain the fabric weight. The study shows that the results of the proposed method of image processing, based on fabric weight measurement, are well correlated with the results of conventional method of measurement