Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Scope of phytotherapeutics in targeting ACE2 mediated Host-Viral Interface of SARS‐CoV2 that causes COVID-19

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that cause COVID-19 becomes a global threat and spread its pandemicity across the boundaries. Recent demography issued by WHO forecasting the severity of disease prevalence in more than 200 countries resulted in 16,96,588 laboratory confirmed cases excluding 1,05,952 deaths as on 12 April 2020. Countries like USA (4,92,881), Italy (1,52,271), Spain (1,61,852), Germany (1,20,479) are struggling hard to flatten their epidemic curve of COVID-19. Dynamic strategies are of utmost important in order to manage the crucial spread of SARS-CoV-2. Drug of herbal origin may offer reliable therapeutic opportunity in controlling widespread transmission. It was evident from the scientific outcomes that SARS‐CoV-2 gains access in to the host cell through angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors. Hence drugs that reveals potential binding affinity with core amino acid of ACE-2 may expected to interfere the host-viral interaction. In our present investigation 28 lead molecules from well documented medicinal herbs were subjected to molecular docking analysis targeting ACE2 receptor and their potential of impeding host-viral interface were evaluated. Results of computational analysis signifies that out of 28 ligands nearly 11 bioactive lead molecules exhibit potential binding affinity of about 100% with the target amino acid residue (31 Lys and 353 Lys)</p

Literature Survey and Research Agenda of Risk Determinants in Indian Equities and Machine Learning

Notwithstanding the financial slowdown and severity of the Coronavirus pandemic during 2020, several retail investors ventures directly to the secondary equities market, setting off gigantic purchasing. A review of SEBI data indicates that over 6 million new dematerialization accounts between April and September 2020 are about 125 percent growth on year on year basis. At the same time, data reported by AMFI shows net outflows from equity funds by retail investors. These data points indicate that retail investors may have opted to invest using direct stock investments instead of relying on the equity mutual fund manager. Equity Investment is a dynamic process requiring and require considering different variables in selecting and, more importantly, avoiding stocks. The cornerstone of wealth creation is to invest in stores at a price considerably smaller than their intrinsic value. The very foundation of creating long-term wealth using equities is deeply embedded. One is buying businesses at a price substantially below its intrinsic value (intrinsic value indicates the entity's future cash flows after estimating the number of accounting risk, macro-economic, managerial, and behavioral risk determinants). This Literature review, therefore, is organized to cover Behavioral, Accounting, Macro-economic, Volatility, and Management theories and Forecasting and ML techniques for clustering, predictions, and classification to support risk decisions using different models, e.g., ARIMA, LSTM, VAR, Facebook Prophet, ARCH and GARCH family models, etc. The literature review also establishes that the concept of risk is highly subjective and is perceived by different investors differently; it is not always entirely objective and outside the beliefs, cognitive and socio-cultural considerations requiring careful assessment before making investment decisions. However, examining the critical risk indicators would allow investors to make a more informed decision. The research gap and identified agenda for further review were defined and assessed using valuable ABCD and SWOT management frameworks. Consequently, the literature investigation findings are analyzed by offering recommendations for creating a comprehensive research agenda pertinent to long-term equity investors in the Indian Equity market

Academic Institutions Risk Decisions using Six Thinking Hats Based Analysis

Today, almost everyone faces extraordinary health, social, and economic risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As for all industries, academic institutions face unprecedented challenges and are witnessing the change in short-and long-term risk profile due to COVID19, e.g., enhanced information and cybersecurity risk due to the adoption of new collaboration tools, deterioration in the effectiveness of traditional fraud risk mitigants as enrollment and document verifications over email, and increased risk of financial viability. In addition to having a robust risk management framework, it is critical for the institutions to carefully recognize and mitigate these emerging risks, which may have long-term implications on the institution's academic performance and perpetuity. Educational institutions, therefore, must adopt a broad spectrum of thinking methods that allow a practical framework for risk decisions and provide a strong foundation for academic institutions to function and enforce strategies both throughout and after the COVID-19 period. With the help of an example, this paper explores how "Six Thinking Hats" may serve as a decision aid and facilitate the risk decisions in an academic institution around risk appetite, risk identification, risk assessment, control design, and risk monitoring. The "Six Thinking Hats" or colors are all about gaining direction, i.e., what can happen (threat and opportunities; effect and probability) and not merely about explaining the event, what is or what has happened. Risk management being forward-looking, this is a significant risk decision consideration. The paper also analyzes the "Six Thinking Hats" method using the ABCD analysis framework as a research case study

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Not AvailableOf late, grafting has emerged as an effective tool in successful vegetables production, though it is in practice for centuries in woody perennial crops, by exploiting its potentials primarily to tackle the issues prevailing under intensive vegetables production system such as soil pests/ pathogens. However, recent researches have demonstrated that the adverse effects of certain abiotic stresses (moisture stress, thermal stress, salinity, alkalinity, heavy metals) on shoots of commercial improved cultivars could also be effectively minimized by grafting them onto suitable hardy rootstock genotypes. Using grafted transplants in fruiting vegetables (tomato, brinjal, pepper, cucumber, muskmelon and watermelon) has become common practice in many parts of the world, with being more popular in East Asia and Western world (Europe, U.S. and Middle East) for both greenhouse as well as open field vegetables cultivation. However, in India is still in infancy stage, despite being a number of environmental factors cause significant losses in vegetable production. Particularly, arid and semi-arid regions, where vegetables production suffer from limited water availability, prevalence of salinity in soil and water, and toxic elements in contaminated soils and sewage irrigating water, etc. Hence, there is immense potential to increase the vegetables production under such constraint conditions by exploiting the benefit of grafting. In fact, grafting enables joining the attributes of two dissimilar plants into one, which means the inherent resistance of resistant/ hardy rootstock (for drought, salinity etc.) could be provided to the susceptible commercial scion cultivar by way of grafting. Moreover, despite several adversity arid and semi-arid regions hold good wealth in terms of biodiversity of vegetables species, especially in cucurbitaceous species. Many lines collected from this regions are documented for specific traits including for drought and salinity stress and fruit quality (sweetness and shelf life), besides various diseases. These need to be exploited as potential rootstock materials to improve the commercial one through grafting.Not Availabl

Boosting Education Through Mobile Technology in India - Study with Reference to Generation Z

Twenty-first century recognize the younger generation as Gen Z that is mobile first generation who live-in the virtual world in par with reality through extensive usage of smartphones &amp; related gadgets. The usage of Mobile Technology in the education sector has become the need of the day. Students have started relying on mobiles for information, surfing the net, chatting, using applications and connecting to social media like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Viber, etc. The usage of mobile technology depends on the emerging need for the advancement of education and student behavioural patterns. In the competitive era, the accomplishment of extensive learning goals is possible only by the adaptation of new teaching&nbsp; pedagogies. The educational institutions have started encouraging teaching and learning pedagogies which are suitable to Gen Z along with regimented chalk and talk method. Schools have started using applications to compete with the current style of education. Information Technology has changed the world into Gen Z where people think, senses and use information through technology. This study aims to evaluate the utilization of mobile technology in classroom teaching, analyze the impact of technology towards enriching the learning abilities of the students, to explore new pedagogies suitable for learning and teaching. This paper suggests measures to teaching fraternity to improve the pattern of educational delivery by introducing innovative and advanced techniques of mobile technologies

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Not AvailableAlike in other areas, greenhouse cultivation is getting special impetus in arid regions owing to providing favourable micro-climate, besides protecting crops from various external crop limiting factors which causes considerable losses to productivity. Cultivar selection is among the most critical aspect for successful greenhouse cultivation. In order to select appropriate cultivar for peculiar arid conditions, the performance of twenty indeterminate tomato hybrids were evaluated under greenhouse condition at Jodhpur during September to April, 2016–17. The performance of hybrids was assessed for their growth, yield and quality characteristics. Results obtained from the study reveal that the performance of tomato hybrids differ significantly for different growth and yield parameters among them. Shoot (leaf + stem) biomass production showed wide variation among the hybrids, ranging from 162g (IA05) to 225.7g (Avtar) per plant. Fruit yield also varied widely (2.36 kg to 4.94 kg plant−1). Hybrid Myla (4.94 kg) was found superior in per plant fruit yield, followed by TR4343 (4.71kg) and TR4266 (4.65kg). Significant differences were also observed for fruit quality attributes such as pericarp thickness, total soluble solids, pH and EC in different hybrids. The character association analyses show that the yield per plant had significant positive correlation with average fruit weight (0.72), fruit diameter (0.50) and pericarp thickness (0.45). The highest fruit number was found in TR4266 (68.4), which had statistically similar per plant fruit yield with Myla. Whereas, the highest average fruit weight (166.8g), though lowest fruit number (40.3) was recorded in TR4293. The high mean values of the yield associated parameters in high-yielding hybrids Myla, TR4343, TR4266, TR4293 corroborates their production potential under greenhouse in arid regions.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableAlike in other areas, greenhouse cultivation is getting special impetus in arid regions owing to providing favourable micro-climate, besides protecting crops from various external crop limiting factors which causes considerable losses to productivity. Cultivar selection is among the most critical aspect for successful greenhouse cultivation. In order to select appropriate cultivar for peculiar arid conditions, the performance of twenty indeterminate tomato hybrids were evaluated under greenhouse condition at Jodhpur during September to April, 2016-17. The performance of hybrids was assessed for their growth, yield and quality characteristics. Results obtained from the study reveal that the performance of tomato hybrids differ significantly for different growth and yield parameters among them. Shoot (leaf + stem) biomass production showed wide variation among the hybrids, ranging from 162g (IA05) to 225.7g (Avtar) per plant. Fruit yield also varied widely (2.36 kg to 4.94 kg plant-1). Hybrid Myla (4.94 kg) was found superior in per plant fruit yield, followed by TR4343 (4.71kg) and TR4266 (4.65kg). Significant differences were also observed for fruit quality attributes such as pericarp thickness, total soluble solids, pH and EC in different hybrids. The character association analyses show that the yield per plant had significant positive correlation with average fruit weight (0.72), fruit diameter (0.50) and pericarp thickness (0.45). The highest fruit number was found in TR4266 (68.4), which had statistically similar per plant fruit yield with Myla. Whereas, the highest average fruit weight (166.8g), though lowest fruit number (40.3) was recorded in TR4293. The high mean values of the yield associated parameters in high-yielding hybrids Myla, TR4343, TR4266, TR4293 corroborates their production potential under geenhouse in arid regions.Not Availabl

Improved technologies of vegetable production in arid region

A training manual comprised of edited chapters of training organizedNot Availabl

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Not AvailableClimatic vagaries of arid zones make cultivation of annual crops risky and unsustainable. Horticultural sector proved beyond doubt its potentiality for gainful economy in such fragile ecosystems. Immense opportunity existed in arid zone for quality production of some of the most water economizing horticultural crops. In recent years arid and semi-arid regions witnessed a greater shift from traditional to commercial horticulture with constant government support and technical input of research and development institutions. Technologies developed on ber, pomegranate, date palm and other arid fruits by Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur, Rajasthan showed significant impact on development of dry regions at national level. However, after near plateau for some time, horticultural scene in arid region was brightened up with introduction of newer options viz. commercial tissue culture techniques in date palm and pomegranate, protected cultivation of high value crops and new varieties and technologies in region's adapted species. However, expanding the scale of horticultural production is often hindered by lack of market access, technological awareness and abiotic stressesNot Availabl