Potential of Biocontrol Agents in Plant Disease Control for Improving Food Safety

Plant disease control is mainly based on extraneous application of pesticides to improve agriculture productivity. However, only a part of applied pesticides is used for killing of pathogens and pests. Large part of applied pesticides remains either as residual pesticide or gets volatilized or leached resulting in ecological and environmental problems, and human health hazards. The increased consumer demands for safe food have invigorated research on development of safe and ecofriendly biopesticides. The use of microorganisms for biological control of pests is considered as a pragmatic approach which can drastically lessen the adverse outcomes of agrochemicals in soil. Rhizospheric microorganisms isolated from various crops produce different antagnostic compounds and inhibit the growth of various phytopathogens and insect pests. Moreover, in several plants, hormones like salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene contribute towards induction of both, systemic acquired as well as induced systemic resitance. In this article, antagonistic rhizosphere microorganisms have been explored for control of phytopathogens. Further, recent advances in field of biopesticides using rhizosphere microorganisms under field conditions is discussed for improvingcrop productivity in sustainable agricultur

Changing physician behavior: interventions to improve prescription writing practices in a secondary level hospital in Delhi

Background: According to a report by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003, approximately 50% of all patients fail to take their medicine correctly. This is due to errors in prescription, underuse or misuse of medicines and ignorance of prescribers, dispensers, and patients.Methods: It is a hospital-based interventional-study carried out in a secondary level multispecialty hospital of Delhi. Investigators collected 536 prescriptions from the outpatient department of various departments and studied according to WHO core prescribing indicators for assessing drug prescription writing pattern. Interventions to improve the prescribing pattern included one continued medical education session and one workshop on prescription writing (providing essential drug list [EDL] etc.,), sharing the baseline data with the physicians and administrative approach. Evaluation of the prescribing pattern after 6 weeks of the intervention was done to find out the impact.Results: On an average 3.43 drug per encounter before intervention increased to 3.46 drugs per encounter. Inclusion of generic drugs and from EDL increased significantly from 54.8% to 73.4% and 76.9% to 88.4% respectively.. Prescribing antibiotics and injectables showed no significant reduction from baseline. The completeness of the prescriptions with respect to the various components improved significantly.Conclusion: Combining different intervention seems a noble approach to improve the prescription writing practices with respect to completeness and inclusion of generic drugs, drugs from EDL

Evaluation of computerized health management information system for primary health care in rural India

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Comprehensive Rural Health Services Project Ballabgarh, run by All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi has a computerized Health Management Information System (HMIS) since 1988. The HMIS at Ballabgarh has undergone evolution and is currently in its third version which uses generic and open source software. This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a computerized Health Management Information System in rural health system in India.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The data for evaluation were collected by in-depth interviews of the stakeholders i.e. program managers (authors) and health workers. Health Workers from AIIMS and Non-AIIMS Primary Health Centers were interviewed to compare the manual with computerized HMIS. A cost comparison between the two methods was carried out based on market costs. The resource utilization for both manual and computerized HMIS was identified based on workers' interviews.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There have been no major hardware problems in use of computerized HMIS. More than 95% of data was found to be accurate. Health workers acknowledge the usefulness of HMIS in service delivery, data storage, generation of workplans and reports. For program managers, it provides a better tool for monitoring and supervision and data management. The initial cost incurred in computerization of two Primary Health Centers was estimated to be Indian National Rupee (INR) 1674,217 (USD 35,622). Equivalent annual incremental cost of capital items was estimated as INR 198,017 (USD 4213). The annual savings is around INR 894,283 (USD 11,924).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The major advantage of computerization has been in saving of time of health workers in record keeping and report generation. The initial capital costs of computerization can be recovered within two years of implementation if the system is fully operational. Computerization has enabled implementation of a good system for service delivery, monitoring and supervision.</p

Electrostatic Solitary Structures in Space Plasmas: Soliton Perspective

Occurrence of electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) is ubiquitous in space plasmas, e.g., solar wind, Lunar wake and the planetary magnetospheres. Several theoretical models have been proposed to interpret the observed characteristics of the ESWs. These models can broadly be put into two main categories, namely, Bernstein–Green–Kruskal (BGK) modes/phase space holes models, and ion- and electron- acoustic solitons models. There has been a tendency in the space community to favor the models based on BGK modes/phase space holes. Only recently, the potential of soliton models to explain the characteristics of ESWs is being realized. The idea of this review is to present current understanding of the ion- and electron-acoustic solitons and double layers models in multi-component space plasmas. In these models, all the plasma species are considered fluids except the energetic electron component, which is governed by either a kappa distribution or a Maxwellian distribution. Further, these models consider the nonlinear electrostatic waves propagating parallel to the ambient magnetic field. The relationship between the space observations of ESWs and theoretical models is highlighted. Some specific applications of ion- and electron-acoustic solitons/double layers will be discussed by comparing the theoretical predictions with the observations of ESWs in space plasmas. It is shown that the ion- and electron-acoustic solitons/double layers models provide a plausible interpretation for the ESWs observed in space plasmas

Electrostatic Solitary Structures in Space Plasmas: Soliton Perspective

Occurrence of electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) is ubiquitous in space plasmas, e.g., solar wind, Lunar wake and the planetary magnetospheres. Several theoretical models have been proposed to interpret the observed characteristics of the ESWs. These models can broadly be put into two main categories, namely, Bernstein–Green–Kruskal (BGK) modes/phase space holes models, and ion- and electron- acoustic solitons models. There has been a tendency in the space community to favor the models based on BGK modes/phase space holes. Only recently, the potential of soliton models to explain the characteristics of ESWs is being realized. The idea of this review is to present current understanding of the ion- and electron-acoustic solitons and double layers models in multi-component space plasmas. In these models, all the plasma species are considered fluids except the energetic electron component, which is governed by either a kappa distribution or a Maxwellian distribution. Further, these models consider the nonlinear electrostatic waves propagating parallel to the ambient magnetic field. The relationship between the space observations of ESWs and theoretical models is highlighted. Some specific applications of ion- and electron-acoustic solitons/double layers will be discussed by comparing the theoretical predictions with the observations of ESWs in space plasmas. It is shown that the ion- and electron-acoustic solitons/double layers models provide a plausible interpretation for the ESWs observed in space plasmas

Cardiology update - The first quarter

The first round of this year covers a lot about dual-antiplatelet therapy duration after stent placement, coronary angiography after a cardiac arrest, transcatheter aortic valve replacement indications in low-risk patients, sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor results, angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitor in acute heart failure, and many other trials

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Technical Bulletin on management of insect pests and diseases in arid regionTechnical Bulletin on management of insect pests and diseases in arid regionNot Availabl

A Mechanism for Large-Amplitude Parallel Electrostatic Waves Observed at the Magnetopause

Large-amplitude electrostatic waves propagating parallel to the background magnetic field have been observed at the Earth’s magnetopause by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft. These waves are observed in the region where there is an intermixing of magnetosheath and magnetospheric plasmas. The plasma in the intermixing region is modeled as a five-component plasma consisting of three types of electrons, namely, two counterstreaming hot electron beams and cold electrons, and two types of ions, namely, cold background protons and a hot proton beam. Sagdeev pseudo-potential technique is used to study the parallel propagating nonlinear electrostatic solitary structures. The model predicts four types of modes, namely, slow ion-acoustic mode, fast ion-acoustic mode, slow electron-acoustic mode and fast electron-acoustic modes. Except the fast ion-acoustic mode, all other modes support solitons. Whereas slow ion-acoustic solitons have positive potentials, both slow and fast electron-acoustic solitons have negative potentials. For the case of 4% cold electron density, the slow ion-acoustic solitons have electric field ∼(40–120) mV m−1. The fast Fourier transforms (FFT) of slow ion-acoustic solitons produce broadband frequency spectra having peaks between ∼100 Hz to 1000 Hz. These theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the observations. The slow and fast electron-acoustic solitons could be relevant in explaining the low-intensity high (>1 kHz) frequency waves which are also observed at the same time

Ion- and electron-acoustic solitons in two-electron temperature space plasmas

Properties of ion- and electron-acoustic solitons are investigated in an unmagnetized multi-component plasma system consisting of cold and hot electrons and hot ions using the Sagdeev pseudo-potential technique. The analysis is based on fluid equations and the Poisson equation. Solitary wave solutions are found when the Mach numbers exceed some critical values. The critical Mach numbers for the ion-acoustic solitons are found to be smaller than those for electron-acoustic solitons for a given set of plasma parameters. The critical Mach numbers of ion-acoustic solitons increase with the increase of hot electron temperature and the decrease of cold electron density. On the other hand, the critical Mach numbers of electron-acoustic solitons increase with the increase of the cold electron density as well as the hot electron temperature. The ion-acoustic solitons have positive potentials for the parameters considered. However, the electron-acoustic solitons have positive or negative potentials depending whether the fractional cold electron density with respect to the ion density is greater or less than a certain critical value. Further, the amplitudes of both the ion- and electron-acoustic solitons increase with the increase of the hot electron temperature. Possible application of this model to electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) observed on the auroral field lines by Viking spacecraft is discussed