Arsenic Contamination of Groundwater: A Review of Sources, Prevalence, Health Risks, and Strategies for Mitigation

Arsenic contamination of groundwater in different parts of the world is an outcome of natural and/or anthropogenic sources, leading to adverse effects on human health and ecosystem. Millions of people from different countries are heavily dependent on groundwater containing elevated level of As for drinking purposes. As contamination of groundwater, poses a serious risk to human health. Excessive and prolonged exposure of inorganic As with drinking water is causing arsenicosis, a deteriorating and disabling disease characterized by skin lesions and pigmentation of the skin, patches on palm of the hands and soles of the feet. Arsenic poisoning culminates into potentially fatal diseases like skin and internal cancers. This paper reviews sources, speciation, and mobility of As and global overview of groundwater As contamination. The paper also critically reviews the As led human health risks, its uptake, metabolism, and toxicity mechanisms. The paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art knowledge on the alternative As free drinking water and various technologies (oxidation, coagulation flocculation, adsorption, and microbial) for mitigation of the problem of As contamination of groundwater

How the montessori methodology gives rise to innovative teaching-learning outcomes

The Montessori method is one hundred and five years old and to talk of "innovative teaching-learning practices" with reference to it seems to be an oxymoron! However, the truth is that for a variety of reasons, its principles and practices are not yet widespread to make it the accepted way of organising classrooms

On the Hydrogen-Ion Concentration in the Alimentary Canal of Certain Orthopteroid Insects.

The hydrogenion concentration of the foregut, midgut and hindgut in the fifteen species of orthopteroid insects studied ranges from 5.4 to 6.6, 6.0 to 6.8 and 5.4 to 7.0 respectively. The data at our disposal leads us to the following conclusions: -(1) that different groups of insects may differ widely from each other in respect to the pH of the alimentary canal but within a group the range of variation is limited and determined by the group to which the insects belong;(2) that, while insects with different feeding habits may show different midgut pH, the midgut pH of the same insect is not markedly affected by different food given to it, i. e., the midgut pH shows a 'constancy'; (3) that the pH in the foregut and the hindgut may show a variation with change of food; and (4) that there exists a marked degree of correspondence between the pH of the midgut and that of the blood.The hydrogenion concentration of the foregut, midgut and hindgut in the fifteen species of orthopteroid insects studied ranges from 5.4 to 6.6, 6.0 to 6.8 and 5.4 to 7.0 respectively. The data at our disposal leads us to the following conclusions: -(1) that different groups of insects may differ widely from each other in respect to the pH of the alimentary canal but within a group the range of variation is limited and determined by the group to which the insects belong;(2) that, while insects with different feeding habits may show different midgut pH, the midgut pH of the same insect is not markedly affected by different food given to it, i. e., the midgut pH shows a 'constancy'; (3) that the pH in the foregut and the hindgut may show a variation with change of food; and (4) that there exists a marked degree of correspondence between the pH of the midgut and that of the blood

Fluoxetine enhances maximal electroshock seizure threshold in Albino rat model when compared to phenytoin

Background: Individuals with epilepsy have a higher incidence of psychiatric disorders than person without epilepsy. Epidemiological studies have shown that the co-morbidity of epilepsy and depression to be high as 50%. The conventional anti-depressants are believed to lower the seizure threshold making it difficult to treat the co-morbid depression, but animal studies have shown SSRIs, a common anti-depressant, to have anti-convulsant properties. So, we propose to study the anticonvulsant effects of fluoxetine, a SSRI, in albino rats against maximal electroshock seizure and to compare against a standard antiepileptic drug phenytoin.Methods: The anticonvulsant effect of fluoxetine was observed in model of maximal electroconvulsive seizure threshold in albino rats. The animals were divided into 3 groups having 6 animals each, receiving distilled water, fluoxetine and phenytoin respectively. The drugs were given orally, and the effect was observed on day 7, 14 and 21. Tonic hind-limb extension was taken as the parameter of electroshock seizure. The effects were compared against a standard anti-seizure drug phenytoin.Results: Fluoxetine showed significant elevation of the seizure threshold following 14 days of administration (P value 0.031). The effect was comparable to phenytoin with no significant difference after 7, 14 and 21 days of treatment (P-value 0.485, 0.699 and 0.818 respectively) though phenytoin showed significant anti-seizure effect since day 7 of treatment.Conclusions: Fluoxetine showed significant anti-seizure activity against electroconvulsive seizure in albino rats

Prioritized Service Scheme with QOS Provisioning in a Cloud Computing System

Cloud computing is a compilation of existing techniques and technologies, packaged within a new infrastructure paradigm that offers improved scalability, elasticity, business agility, faster startup time, reduced management costs, and just-in-time availability of resources. It is based on the pay as you use policy and virtual servers are used in this technology. This technology is capturing the market at a rapid rate and is an advancement over the distributed computing technology. There is a scheduling issue in this technology as in case of normal scheduling the service with the more burst time blocks the service of less burst time hence we need to prioritize the service in the way that every service gets equal opportunity to execute. A priority scheme is proposed in which the prioritized customers are categorized into different priority queues. These prioritized customers have guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) by the cloud computing system in terms of less response time. The concept of selection probability is introduced according to which the cloud metascheduler chooses the next query for execution. The priority queues are modeled as M/M/1/K/K queues and an analytical model is developed for the calculation of selection probabilities. Two algorithms are proposed for explaining the processing at the users’ end and at the Cloud Computing server’s end. The results obtained are validated using the numerical simulations. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15024

Emotion Recognition With Temporarily Localized 'Emotional Events' in Naturalistic Context

Emotion recognition using EEG signals is an emerging area of research due to its broad applicability in BCI. Emotional feelings are hard to stimulate in the lab. Emotions do not last long, yet they need enough context to be perceived and felt. However, most EEG-related emotion databases either suffer from emotionally irrelevant details (due to prolonged duration stimulus) or have minimal context doubting the feeling of any emotion using the stimulus. We tried to reduce the impact of this trade-off by designing an experiment in which participants are free to report their emotional feelings simultaneously watching the emotional stimulus. We called these reported emotional feelings "Emotional Events" in our Dataset on Emotion with Naturalistic Stimuli (DENS). We used EEG signals to classify emotional events on different combinations of Valence(V) and Arousal(A) dimensions and compared the results with benchmark datasets of DEAP and SEED. STFT is used for feature extraction and used in the classification model consisting of CNN-LSTM hybrid layers. We achieved significantly higher accuracy with our data compared to DEEP and SEED data. We conclude that having precise information about emotional feelings improves the classification accuracy compared to long-duration EEG signals which might be contaminated by mind-wandering

To study the effect of various combinations of haart in CD4+ cell count in HIV patient at RIMS, Ranchi Art Centre

Background: India has the third largest HIV epidemic in the world. In 2013, HIV prevalence in India was an estimated 0.3%, an estimated 130,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses. Overall, India’s HIV epidemic is slowing down, with a 19% decline in new HIV infections (130,000 in 2013), and a 38% decline in AIDS-related deaths between 2005 and 2013. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the treatment of HIV infection has improved steadily since the advent of potent combination therapy in 1996. ART has dramatically reduced HIV-associated morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study is to see the change in CD4+ count in patient taking various combination of HAART (Highly active anti-retroviral treatment).Methods: A total of 215 patients were included in this study that came to the rims art centre for regular follow up and there cd4+ count at 6 monthly interval upto 18 months was taken and analysed.Results: The patients were evaluated for their change in CD4+ cell count. Mean of CD4+ count at 6 monthly interval was taken in this study which showed that haart combination causes significant improvement in cd4+ count in each group (1) stavudine, lamivudine, nevirapine (2)stavudine, lamivudine, efavirenz (3) zidovudine, lamivudine, nevirapine (4) zidovudine, lamivudine, efavirenz, (5) tenofovir, lamivudine, efavirenz.Conclusions: SLN combination was found most effective in increasing the CD4+ Cell count in comparision to the other combination. Other drugs combinations in decreasing order are as follows- SLE, ZLE, TLE, ZLN.

Antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of urine culture isolates in a tertiary care hospital of Jharkhand, India

Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the common infections encountered by the clinicians. Though a good number of antimicrobial agents are available, still UTIs have become difficult to treat due to development of resistance by the uropathogens. So, regional data regarding the common uropathogens and their sensitivity pattern is required to guide the clinicians to start empirical therapy while managing UTIs. The purpose of the study was to identify different species of microorganisms, along with their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern, causing urinary tract infection in outpatient and indoor patients at RIMS, Ranchi, Jharkhand.Methods: Observational study was conducted using urine culture and sensitivity reports collected retrospectively from records maintained in the department of Microbiology over a period from July 2016 to Feb 2017 in tertiary care hospital.Results: UTI was more common in females (57.74%) than in males (42.26%). Among the uropathogens isolated Escherichia coli (37.41%) was found to be the predominant organism followed by Klebsiella species (32.79%), Pseudomonas species (25.86%), and gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus accounted (3.92%) of total cases. The most common isolates were E. coli showed high sensitivity to amikacin (79.24%), followed by levofloxacin (77.21%) and gentamycin (62.26%). It was found to be resistant to norfloxacin (86%), nalidixic acid (86.76%) and cefotaxime (69.88%).Conclusions: Though various microorganisms are responsible for UTI. Escherichia coli species is the most common organism. Antimicrobial resistance has already emerged against many antibiotics, making empirical treatment of these infections challenging