Education policies and practices: What have we learnt and the road ahead for Bihar

This paper assesses the status of education, both quantity and quality, in Bihar in both absolute terms and relative to other states in India. It then performs a regression exercise using a panel data of Indian states to identify the correlates of educational outcomes. It also surveys the broader literature on education policies which provides a perspective on the current policies in the field of education in Bihar. Finally, it makes a case for several policy initiatives that should be accorded priority by the policymakers in Bihar

Pain Management During COVID-19 and Scope of Ayurvedic Marijuana

During this novel corona virus outbreak, it is found that the most vulnerable population are the old age, especially with co-morbidities like Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other related pain diseases that are at greater risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. This infection is because of their impaired immune systems due to use of corticosteroids and certain drugs.  Ayurvedic marijuana, as a safe remedy with phytochemicals known as cannabinoids have shown significant promise in basic experiments on pain management. Study shows leaves?of this plant have been found effective in alleviating pain and other symptoms in patients

Targeting Pro-Inflammatory Function of Microglia Using Small Molecules to Combat Neurodegeneration

Microglia are the brain’s resident immune cells that are responsible for maintaining homeostasis in healthy conditions. During injury or infection, resting microglia get activated and produce pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1b, IL-1a, IL-6, etc. along with reactive oxygen species like nitric oxide (NO) to combat neuroinflammatory diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inflammation is characterized by the activation of resident-immune cells in the brain called microglia that respond to the eat-me signals released by the toxic amyloid beta peptides as well as the dying neurons in the microenvironment. Recent studies have shown that activated microglia induce neuronal death by secreting IL-1a, TNF-a, and C1q. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms in this process are not well understood. Furthermore, it has been previously shown that IL-1a and TNF-a promote neuronal death via the activation of astrocytes during inflammation. We used BV2 mouse microglia to investigate the IL-1a and TNF-a cytokine production in response to LPS activation using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In addition, the viability of the cells along with their NO production was evaluated using cell titer blue assay (CTB) and Griess assay. In this study, we show that small molecules can be used in single treatment and in combination to combat the inflammatory functions of microglia. These small molecules that modulate microglial functions may play an important role in developing new therapeutics for neuroinflammation

The future Clean Energy Harvesting by Wind Power Generation

The electricity generation today is the major issue toward development of human mankind. The current electricity generation depends almost completely on the fissile fuels like coal, petroleum products etc. we are using it in very large scale resulting in pollution and high cost of electricity. The non-conventional methods like solar & wind is being developed on the scale where its use is affordable and pollution free, without any side effects. In this paper we have discussed the basics of wind power generation and the technologies involved in the process. The overall energy harvesting by wind power plants and transmitting it into usable form can solve the electricity problems, In country like India where electricity demand is estimated to increase at least 30% in next 5 to 10 years. This process involves the complex engineering and out of which some of the basics aspects like capacity , stricter of turbines, Synchronous generators are discussed briefly along with the basic components of the Wind Power Generation. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15015

Modeling Sub-Band Information Through Discrete Wavelet Transform to Improve Intelligibility Assessment of Dysarthric Speech

The speech signal within a sub-band varies at a fine level depending on the type, and level of dysarthria. The Mel-frequency filterbank used in the computation process of cepstral coefficients smoothed out this fine level information in the higher frequency regions due to the larger bandwidth of filters. To capture the sub-band information, in this paper, four-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT) decomposition is firstly performed to decompose the input speech signal into approximation and detail coefficients, respectively, at each level. For a particular input speech signal, five speech signals representing different sub-bands are then reconstructed using inverse DWT (IDWT). The log filterbank energies are computed by analyzing the short-term discrete Fourier transform magnitude spectra of each reconstructed speech using a 30-channel Mel-filterbank. For each analysis frame, the log filterbank energies obtained across all reconstructed speech signals are pooled together, and discrete cosine transform is performed to represent the cepstral feature, here termed as discrete wavelet transform reconstructed (DWTR)- Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC). The i-vector based dysarthric level assessment system developed on the universal access speech corpus shows that the proposed DTWRMFCC feature outperforms the conventional MFCC and several other cepstral features reported for a similar task. The usages of DWTR- MFCC improve the detection accuracy rate (DAR) of the dysarthric level assessment system in the text and the speaker-independent test case to 60.094 % from 56.646 % MFCC baseline. Further analysis of the confusion matrices shows that confusion among different dysarthric classes is quite different for MFCC and DWTR-MFCC features. Motivated by this observation, a two-stage classification approach employing discriminating power of both kinds of features is proposed to improve the overall performance of the developed dysarthric level assessment system. The two-stage classification scheme further improves the DAR to 65.813 % in the text and speaker- independent test case

Higher-Order Numerical Scheme for the Fractional Heat Equation with Dirichlet and Neumann Boundary Conditions

In this article, we consider a higher-order numerical scheme for the fractional heat equation with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. By using a fourth-order compact finite-difference scheme for the spatial variable, we transform the fractional heat equation into a system of ordinary fractional differential equations which can be expressed in integral form. Further, the integral equation is transformed into a difference equation by a modified trapezoidal rule. Numerical results are provided to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed algorithm

A prospective study to compare the efficacy of tacrolimus vs cyclosporine in vernal keratoconjunctivitis in children in India

Background: Vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) is a chronic allergic conjunctival disease. Immunomodulatory drugs like cyclosporine is being used for its treatment. Tacrolimus is another immunomodulator drug that can be used in VKC. This study was done to compare the efficacy of tacrolimus and cyclosporine in VKC.Methods: This prospective study was conducted on 60 patients of either sex by dividing them into two groups. The first group was treated with cyclosporine (0.05%) ophthalmic eye drop and second group with tacrolimus (0.03%) ophthalmic ointment. Total five objective signs (hyperaemia, oedema, papillae, corneal involvement and tantra’s dot) and five subjective symptoms (itching, tearing, foreign body sensation, discharge and photophobia) data was collected and tabulated for statistical analysis.Results: Authors found TSSS in both groups decrease significantly (p <0.05 or p <0.01 or p <0.001) at all post periods as compared to respective predecessor periods except 4 weeks to 6 weeks in cyclosporine group and 6 weeks to 8 weeks in tacrolimus group. Similarly, for each period, on comparing the mean TSSS between the groups TSSS between the groups at all periods does not differed statistically though at final evaluation (mean change from baseline to 8 weeks), it improved 5.2% more in tacrolimus group (83.7%) than cyclosporine group (78.5%). Similarly, TOSS also decreased at all post periods except 4 weeks to 6 weeks, and 6 weeks to 8 weeks in cyclosporine group and 6 weeks to 8 weeks in tacrolimus group. Improvement in scores was 11.6% more in tacrolimus (81.6%) than cyclosporine (70.0%). Cyclosporine eye drops are associated with burning sensation and redness of eyes while transient ocular irritation was only observed side effect with tacrolimus.Conclusions: The study found tacrolimus is clinically better drug for treatment of vernal keratoconjunctivitis than cyclosporine and is also cost effective

Molecular characterization of senescence marker protein-30 gene promoter: Identification of repressor elements and functional nuclear factor binding sites

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Senescence marker protein-30 (SMP30), whose expression declines during aging in rat liver, has been proposed as an important aging marker. Besides apoptosis, SMP30 also protects cells against various other injuries by enhancement of membrane calcium-pump activity. The mechanism of this differential gene expression mechanism is not known. DNA-protein interactions, mutation analysis and luciferase reporter assay studies have been performed to elucidate the mechanism of transcriptional regulation of SMP30 gene.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have characterized up to -2750 bp of the promoter by DNA-protein interactions studies. Twenty eight transcription factor binding sites have been identified by DNase I footprinting and electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). Transient transfection of 5' and 3' -deleted promoter-reporter constructs and luciferase assay illustrated the region between -128/+157 bp is sufficient to drive promoter activity. We have mapped an essential regulatory region between -513 to -352 bp which causes a drastic decline of reporter activity. This region contains CdxA, GATA2 and SRY transcription factor binding sites. Individual mutation of these three sites showed increase in reporter activity. Mutation in SRY site (-403/-368) showed maximum increase in reporter activity among these three sites. Therefore, we suggest that SRY like protein may be acting as a strong repressor of SMP30 gene along with CdxA and GATA-2. We also report that mutation of both Sp1 (172/-148 bp) and a C/EBPβ (-190/-177 bp) transcription binding site located adjacent to each other on SMP30 gene promoter, causes a significant enhancement in reporter activity than individual mutation, thus may be causing the repression of SMP30 promoter activity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These studies provide novel insights into the mechanism that regulate SMP30 gene expression.</p