Effectiveness of Jacobson’s Relaxation Technique on Dysmenorrhea among the Adolescent Girls

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY: Dysmenorrhea is painful menstruation of sufficient magnitude so as to incapacitate day to day activities which is manifested by cramping pain on the ovulatory cycles along with nausea, vomiting, fatigue and fainting. It affects 17% - 80% in global level. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of Jacobson’s relaxation technique on dysmenorrhea among school going adolescent girls in selected schools at Madurai. METHODOLOGY: Assessment of pain was done by Visual Analogue Scale. Jacobson’s relaxation technique was given for 30 minutes twice a day on the day of menstruation. DESIGN: Quasi- experimental non equivalent pre-test and post-test control group design was used. SETTINGS: The students studying in IXth standard of two sections were selected 30 in experimental group and 30 in control group from CSI Girls Higher Secondary School at Madurai. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS : Analysis was done by using Percentage, Chi square test. RESULT : The mean post test dysmenorrhea score 4.33 of the experimental group was lower than the mean post test dysmenorrhea score 7.5 of the control group with a ‘t’ value of 9.52 . There was significant reduction in post test level of dysmenorrhea score, in the experimental group compared to the control group, (MD- 3.17 P<0.001). There was there was no association between post test dysmenorrhea score and selected demographic variables. CONCLUSION : Most of the adolescent girls suffer from dysmenorrhea. Jacobson’s relaxation technique was effective in reducing the level of dysmenorrhea among adolescent girls

ECOLOGY AND THE RAPD TECHNIQUES USED TO ASSESS THE GENETIC DIVERSITY IN PTEROLOBIUM HEXAPETALUM, A SCRAMBLING MEDICINAL SHRUB IN MARUTHAMALAI AND CHENNIMALAI HILLS, THE WESTERN GHATS

Objective: To investigate the ecological and genetic diversity, climatic factors, edaphic factors morphological and reproductive characters and RAPD analysis of medicinal plant species Pterolobium hexapetalum in two hills viz., Maruthamalai (arid) and Chennimalai (very arid), which is located in Coimbatore and Erode districts, Tamil Nadu. Methods: The present research was carried out by using a random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was made to determine the genetic variation between the two populations of the medicinal shrub, Pterolobium hexapetalum in an environmental gradient. Among the five primers tested, the OPN7 (80 %) and OPN17 (71.4 %) produced higher polymorphism was used in RAPD analysis. Results: The results of RAPD analysis showed the presence of 51 individual bands were formed, out of which, 29 were polymorphic bands which showed the existence of genetic variation between populations. A dendrogram was constructed based on Jaccard’s coefficient to determine the degree of genetic relationship among the two populations and analysed. The primers OPN7 and OPN17 were clustered together at a genetic distance level 10. Considering the elevation and proximity, the temperature ranges from 18 °C to 37.6 °C in Maruthamalai hill and 20 °C to 39.4 °C in Chennimalai hill. Conclusion: From the morphoecological studies the results indicated that both arid and very arid climatic conditions showed slight differences in their vegetative and reproductive characters

Botany, chemistry, and pharmaceutical significance of Sida cordifolia: a traditional medicinal plant

Sida cordifolia Linn. belonging to the family, Malvaceae has been widely employed in traditional medications in many parts of the world including India, Brazil, and other Asian and African countries. The plant is extensively used in the Ayurvedic medicine preparation. There are more than 200 plant species within the genus Sida, which are distributed predominantly in the tropical regions. The correct taxonomic identification is a major concern due to the fact that S. cordifolia looks morphologically similar with its related species. It possesses activity against various human ailments, including cancer, asthma, cough, diarrhea, malaria, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, obesity, ulcer, Parkinson’s disease, urinary infections, and many others. The medical importance of this plant is mainly correlated to the occurrence of diverse biologically active phytochemical compounds such as alkaloids, flavonoids, and steroids. The major compounds include β-phenylamines, 2-carboxylated tryptamines, quinazoline, quinoline, indole, ephedrine, vasicinone, 5-3-isoprenyl flavone, 5,7-dihydroxy-3-isoprenyl flavone, and 6-(isoprenyl)- 3-methoxy- 8-C-β-D-glucosyl-kaempferol 3-O-β-D-glucosyl[1–4]-α-D-glucoside. The literature survey reveals that most of the pharmacological investigations on S. cordifolia are limited to crude plant extracts and few isolated pure compounds. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate many other unexplored bioactive phytoconstituents with evidences so as to justify the traditional usages of S. cordifolia. Furthermore, detailed studies on the action of mechanisms of these isolated compounds supported by clinical research are necessary for validating their application in contemporary medicines. The aim of the present chapter is to provide a detailed information on the ethnobotanical, phytochemical, and pharmacological aspects of S. cordifolia

Design of an Adaptive Distributed Critical-Care Extensive Response Network (AD-CERN) Using Cooperative Overlay Network

The main objective of this paper is to propose Adaptive Distributed Critical-Care Extensive Response Network (AD-CERN) which includes self-management and self-defense in the network. The proposed network has the following considerations. (1) Dynamic coevolution is elucidated with interaction between independent rational strategies and structure of overlay network. (2) Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) specific to overlay network is adopted with the combination of network reciprocity and group selection mechanism. (3) The cooperative efficient network structure is put forth by the multinode link-formation game. In this network, each node will be trained independently based on Naïve Bayes classification algorithm to react against any critical services in the network. The proposed network's significant characteristics are self-learning, independent training, collaborative detection, reaction to critical services, protecting the target machine before being collapsed, and maintaining the network performance without any hindrances. It controls the flow of high rate critical services such as Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) flooding attacks and blocks the unwarranted services without any interruption to legitimate users. Hence, there is no doubt that this self-managed and self-defensive system will move from realm of fiction to real-time network engineering with high detection accuracy (98.3%), classification rate up to 99%, and improved clustering coefficient