WATSAN in partnership with NGOs and communities of Nepal

The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Fund Development Board (The Board) has been implementing WATSAN schemes in Nepal since March 14, 1996 under assistance from World Bank/IDA and DFID. The Board delivers Demand Driven Community based water supply and sanitation projects to promote cost effective and sustainable services to the rural people of Nepal. Under the Board fund presently 165 NGOs partner together with local communities in 71 districts of Nepal to deliver safe water and sanitation services. Communities in the four phased project cycle spend twelve months for health and sanitation knowledge, practices and also develop fourteen community actions plans (CAP) to graduate their scheme for construction. Health KAP base line and Impact studies has shown that in 90 percent of houses people practice hand washing during critical juncture. Study on Total Sanitation in randomly selected 241 completed projects showed that 33 percent are in total sanitation status and 40 percent fall under 75-95 percent advanced towards ‘no open defecation practice’. The Board has significant contribution in MDG and National Plan in WATSAN sector

Risk Factors Linked to Development of Cardiomyopathy in Adults with Beta- Thalassemia Major in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Beta-thalassemia major is a genetic disorder adversely affecting the life of the patient and the whole family. Repeated blood transfusions are required to maintain the hemoglobin level, which create a state of iron overload in the body leading to ectopic iron deposition in the heart, liver, pancreas and other organs. Thalassemia cardiomyopathy is the most dreaded complication of this resultant iron overload. The present study was a cross-sectional study involving 77 patients with thalassemia major, whose age, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure (BP), hemoglobin, serum ferritin levels were correlated with their twodimensional echocardiographic findings. Out of the total 77 patients, 63 had diastolic dysfunction, 6 had systolic dysfunction and remaining 8 had normal left ventricular function. The mean age of the patients was 22.42 years and their mean BMI was 16.82. Patients with systolic dysfunction had lower hemoglobin and higher serum ferritin levels as compared to other patients. The study concluded that cardiac dysfunction is seen more in younger age, higher BMI, lower BP, low hemoglobin levels and raised serum ferritin levels. Thus, early intensive iron chelation therapy should be provided to all the patients to curb this dreaded complication

Stable isotope systematics of surface water bodies in the Himalayan and Trans-Himalayan (Kashmir) region

Stable hydrogen (δD) and oxygen (δ 18O) isotope ratios of the headwaters of the Indus and its tributaries, surface ice in glaciers, saline and fresh water lakes and thermal springs in the Himalayan and Trans-Himalayan (Kashmir) region are reported. The δD−δ18 relationship for the river samples shows a slope of 9.12±0.29 which agrees well with the estimate of 8.99±0.33 based on a simple Rayleigh fractionation model. The unique signature of a higher deuterium excess (d) of the 'Western Disturbance' is preserved in these samples. An altitude effect of −0.9 per mil/km is observed in the δ18O of Indus waters. At a lower altitude (Beas) the altitude effect is almost double, indicating that the altitude effect decreases with elevation in this region

Air-conditioning guidelines for healthcare facilities during the covid pandemic

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease spreads primarily through respiratory droplets, physical contact and contact with surfaces as well as fomites. Isolation of patients in hospitals and quarantine of contacts in separate facilities are the mainstay of outbreak containment. This pandemic has brought forward various challenges to the hospital administrators, one of the most important being air-conditioning of hospitals in the time of this pandemic

Herlyn-Werner-Wunderlich syndrome complicated with pyocolpos: an unusual cause of postabortal sepsis

Obstructive mullerian anomalies give rise to a spectrum of clinical presentations and are uncommon in routine gynecologic practice. The patient usually becomes symptomatic in early reproductive years. Recurrent pelvic pain, dysmenorrhoea, enlarging abdominopelvic mass and abnormal vaginal discharge are the common presenting symptoms. We describe a rare case of a mullerian anomaly getting diagnosed 13 years after attaining menarche during evaluation of postabortal sepsis. Patient presented two weeks following evacuation done for missed abortion, with acute abdominal pain, fever and foul smelling discharge per vaginum. The anomaly was identified as uterus didelphys with obstructed left hemivagina and ipsilateral renal agenesis (Herlyn-Werner-Wunderlich syndrome) complicated by pyocolpos. She was successfully managed by single stage transvaginal septum resection under laparoscopic control

A high-molecular-weight outer membrane protein of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae exhibits similarity to non-fimbrial adhesins of animal pathogenic bacteria and is required for optimum virulence

Transposon insertions in a novel 3.798 kb open reading frame (ORF) of the rice pathogen, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) cause virulence deficiency and altered colony/lawn morphology. This ORF encodes a protein, XadA, of 1265 amino acids that exhibits significant similarity to non-fimbrial adhesins of animal pathogenic bacteria such as Yersinia YadA and Moraxella UspA1. An interesting feature is that the YadA similarity region is repeated six times within the XadA sequence and encompasses almost the entire length of the protein. Anti-XadA antibodies identified a 110 kDa outer membrane protein that was sensitive to protease treatment of whole cells. XadA expression is induced in minimal medium. Homology modelling suggests that XadA adopts a β-helix conformation-like pertactin, a non-fimbrial adhesin of Bordetella pertussis. This work is the first characterization of a non-fimbrial adhesin-like molecule in a plant pathogenic bacterium. It extends our knowledge about the repertoire of homologous virulence factors that are deployed by animal and plant pathogenic bacteria to include functions potentially involved in adhesion

In-silico designing of an inhibitor against mTOR FRB domain: Therapeutic implications against breast cancer

Worldwide breast cancer causes significant fatalities in women. The effective therapeutic solution for treating the disease is using new and probable antagonistic biologically available ligands as anticancer drugs. To identify a successful therapeutic approach, the scientific community is now interested in creating novel ligands that in the future may be used as anticancer drugs. The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a protein kinase connected to several processes governing immunity, metabolism, cell development, and survival. The proliferation and metastasis of tumors have both been linked to the activation of the mTOR pathway. Female breast cancer represents about 15.3% of all new cancer cases in the U.S. alone and is frequently diagnosed among women aged 55 to 69 years. Given that the P13K/AKT/mTOR pathway is one of the most often activated in cancer, much attention has been paid to its resistance as a novel oncological treatment approach. mTOR/FRB Domain’s recruitment cleft as, well as substrate recruitment mechanism, was targeted using a structural-based approach. A series of selective inhibitory small molecules have been designed and screened for the best inhibiting target binding triad of the FRB Domain with better ADME and no detectable toxic effects

Visual Fields at Presentation and after Trans-sphenoidal Resection of Pituitary Adenomas

Purpose: To evaluate visual field changes in patients with pituitary adenomas following trans-sphenoidal surgery. Methods: Eighteen patients with pituitary adenomas underwent a complete ophthalmic assessment and visual field analysis using the Humphrey Field Analyzer 30-2 program before and after trans-sphenoidal surgical resection at the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences over a one year period. Visual acuity, duration of symptoms, optic nerve head changes, pattern of visual field defects, and variables such as mean deviation and visual field index were compared. Results: Thirty-six eyes of 18 patients including 10 male and 8 female subjects with mean age of 35.1±9.9 years and histologically proven pituitary adenoma were included. Mean visual acuity at presentation was 0.29 logMAR which improved to 0.21 logMAR postoperatively (P = 0.305). Of 36 eyes, 24 (66.7%) had visual field defects including temporal defects in 12 eyes (33.3%), non-specific defects in 10 eyes (27.8%), and peripheral field constriction in 2 eyes (5.6%). Mean deviation of visual fields at presentation was -14.28 dB which improved to -11.32 dB postoperatively. The visual field index improved from 63.5% to 75% postoperatively. Favorable visual field outcomes were correlated with shorter duration of symptoms and absence of optic nerve head changes at presentation. Conclusion: Visual field defects were present in two thirds of patients at presentation. An overall improvement in vision and visual fields was noted after surgical resection. An inverse correlation was found between the duration of symptoms and postoperative visual field recovery, signifying the importance of early surgical intervention

Association Rule Mining on Metrological and Remote Sensing Data With Weka Tool

Drought is one of the major environmental disasters in many parts of the world. There are several possibilities of drought monitoring based on ground measurements, hydrological, climatologically and Remote Sensing data. Drought indices that derived by meteorological data and Remote Sensing data have coarse spatial and temporal resolution. Because of the spatial and temporal variability and multiple impacts of droughts, we need to improve the tools and data available for mapping and monitoring this phenomenon on all scales. In this paper we present discovering knowledge by association rules from metrological and Remote Sensing data and we have also used descriptive modeling. For calculating drought taking metrological data which is extract from metrological department of Pune at Maharastra (India) and Remote Sensing data is extract from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Soil Biological Activity Contributing to Phosphorus Availability in Vertisols under Long-Term Organic and Conventional Agricultural Management

Mobilization of unavailable phosphorus (P) to plant available P is a prerequisite to sustain crop productivity. Although most of the agricultural soils have sufficient amounts of phosphorus, low availability of native soil P remains a key limiting factor to increasing crop productivity. Solubilization and mineralization of applied and native P to plant available form is mediated through a number of biological and biochemical processes that are strongly influenced by soil carbon/organic matter, besides other biotic and abiotic factors. Soils rich in organic matter are expected to have higher P availability potentially due to higher biological activity. In conventional agricultural systems mineral fertilizers are used to supply P for plant growth, whereas organic systems largely rely on inputs of organic origin. The soils under organic management are supposed to be biologically more active and thus possess a higher capability to mobilize native or applied P. In this study we compared biological activity in soil of a long-term farming systems comparison field trial in vertisols under a subtropical (semi-arid) environment. Soil samples were collected from plots under 7 years of organic and conventional management at five different time points in soybean (Glycine max) -wheat (Triticum aestivum) crop sequence including the crop growth stages of reproductive significance. Upon analysis of various soil biological properties such as dehydrogenase, β-glucosidase, acid and alkaline phosphatase activities, microbial respiration, substrate induced respiration, soil microbial biomass carbon, organically managed soils were found to be biologically more active particularly at R2 stage in soybean and panicle initiation stage in wheat. We also determined the synergies between these biological parameters by using the methodology of principle component analysis. At all sampling points, P availability in organic and conventional systems was comparable. Our findings clearly indicate that owing to higher biological activity, organic systems possess equal capabilities of supplying P for crop growth as are conventional systems with inputs of mineral P fertilizers