VEDANADHYAYA: A CRUCIAL CONTRIBUTION OF KASHYAP SAMHITA IN PEDIATRIC CLINICAL EXAMINATION

The field of Ayurveda is broadly divided into eight parts. Kaumarbhritya refers to the science of diseases and care of children, right from conception till adolescence. Kashyap samhita is undoubtedly the pioneer text in this branch of Ayurveda. The text is divided in various sections (sthanas) of which Vedanadhyaya is twenty fifth chapter in Sutra sthana. It concerns the symptomalogy of various diseases in children and serves as a great guidance for pediatric examination and diagnosis as children are unable to narrate their symptoms themselves. The present article reviews the original text of the chapter and critically analyses it in light of contemporary medical science. It is noticeable that Acharya Kashyap has included a wide range of diseases pertaining to various systems like skin, ENT, gastro-biliary, hematology and urinary system and has also included the Bal grahas. The symptoms described are accurate and reasonable in contemporary scientific era also. Thus, a thorough study of Vedanadhyaya is essential for proper understanding of Ayurvedic perspective of pediatric illness and their common demarcating symptoms. It reinforces the view that children are not miniature adults and diseases in pediatric population have distinct features and need to be understood separately.

Sexually transmitted infections or reproductive tract infections prevalence and treatment efficacy of syndromic approach in reproductive age group women attending gynaecological out-patient department

Background: Sexually transmitted infections (STI) and reproductive tract infections (RTI) continue to be a major health, social and economic problem worldwide, especially in developing countries. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of STI and RTI among women of reproductive age (18-49 years) attending gynaecological consultations. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 1006 women of reproductive age attending a hospital was conducted over a period of 1 year. Out of these 116 women were not followed up, so they were excluded from the study. Thus, 890 women between the ages of 18 and 49 who were fertile completed the study, whether or not they had symptoms. Results: According to a laboratory test, the overall prevalence of STDs and STIs in women of childbearing age was 24.62% in symptomatic individuals and 12% in asymptomatic individuals. Vaginal discharge (61.91%) was the most common symptom Conclusions: To reduce the prevalence of STIs, RTI /STI screening for women in all reproductive age groups is essential. Early detection and treatment can reduce the severity of long-term sequelae and prevent complications

Evolution of Financing Needs in Indian Infrastructure

India has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies even in the difficult financial downturn era. In coming years, India will be demanding a large number of infrastructure services to match the demand and keep an upward sloping growth curve. Indian infrastructure including both soft (port services, air and telecom) and hard (road, railways and airways) infrastructure is growing at a fast pace at present. The country also has largest road network (3.34 million km) and second largest rail network of the world. Requirement for investment in infrastructure projects was expected to increase by 145.6% from Five Year Plan 2002-07 to FYP 2007-11. Part of the investment is expected to come from the various resources as public private partnerships and public investments. Indian government is also trying to experiment with different tools of PPP (public private partnerships) financing such as VGF (viability gap financing), SPV (special purpose vehicle) to decrease the deficits on the accounts of infrastructure. This paper studies the evolution of financing needs and consequential innovative methodologies in Indian infrastructure. Government has made various efforts to match the growth in infrastructure with country’s economy growth. However, Indian infrastructure is still lagging behind globally. This study analyzes existing frameworks available for financing and risk involved in them. India has lot of opportunity to grow using public private partnership model, but still the numbers of project financed are very less. We also have studied project financing model and capital financing model which are used by various competitive countries to India. A regression analysis has been conducted on a macroeconomic model of investment in infrastructure which takes into account the exogenous variables interest rate, inflation rate, foreign exchange rate (USD/INR) and nominal gross domestic product based on Indian data from 1987-2010. Here we study how changes in any one of the aforementioned factors impact the infrastructure investment. The paper also tries to find out the correlation between and trends followed by CNX Infra and S&P 500 based on daily time series for both. A comparative analysis of two South Asian countries namely South Korea and Malaysia has been carried out with respect to India. The objective of this study is to find out what are the similarities and complementarities between the infrastructure investments of these countries and India. This helps in suggesting which ways India can move forward in order to optimize and align its infrastructure development with its continuously burgeoning needs. Finally, we have made our recommendation to facilitate infrastructure financing optimally by removing the externalities from the existing system. We also suggest a few innovative ways to finance infrastructure in India which might prove successful

Evolution of Financing Needs in Indian Infrastructure

India has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies even in the difficult financial downturn era. In coming years, India will be demanding a large number of infrastructure services to match the demand and keep an upward sloping growth curve. Indian infrastructure including both soft (port services, air and telecom) and hard (road, railways and airways) infrastructure is growing at a fast pace at present. The country also has largest road network (3.34 million km) and second largest rail network of the world. Requirement for investment in infrastructure projects was expected to increase by 145.6% from Five Year Plan 2002-07 to FYP 2007-11. Part of the investment is expected to come from the various resources as public private partnerships and public investments. Indian government is also trying to experiment with different tools of PPP (public private partnerships) financing such as VGF (viability gap financing), SPV (special purpose vehicle) to decrease the deficits on the accounts of infrastructure. This paper studies the evolution of financing needs and consequential innovative methodologies in Indian infrastructure. Government has made various efforts to match the growth in infrastructure with country’s economy growth. However, Indian infrastructure is still lagging behind globally. This study analyzes existing frameworks available for financing and risk involved in them. India has lot of opportunity to grow using public private partnership model, but still the numbers of project financed are very less. We also have studied project financing model and capital financing model which are used by various competitive countries to India. A regression analysis has been conducted on a macroeconomic model of investment in infrastructure which takes into account the exogenous variables interest rate, inflation rate, foreign exchange rate (USD/INR) and nominal gross domestic product based on Indian data from 1987-2010. Here we study how changes in any one of the aforementioned factors impact the infrastructure investment. The paper also tries to find out the correlation between and trends followed by CNX Infra and S&P 500 based on daily time series for both. A comparative analysis of two South Asian countries namely South Korea and Malaysia has been carried out with respect to India. The objective of this study is to find out what are the similarities and complementarities between the infrastructure investments of these countries and India. This helps in suggesting which ways India can move forward in order to optimize and align its infrastructure development with its continuously burgeoning needs. Finally, we have made our recommendation to facilitate infrastructure financing optimally by removing the externalities from the existing system. We also suggest a few innovative ways to finance infrastructure in India which might prove successful

Comparative evaluation of Hand, Rotary and Reciprocation motion on Dentin thickness and instrumentation time in Primary anterior teeth using CBCT: An observational study

Ultimate goal of BMP is to extirpate the pulp tissue completely, microorganisms, debris & shaping the canal which preserves the original course of the canal to receive an obturating material. Due to various morphological challenges present in deciduous root canal, there is high demand of an improved quality & design of file system with less working length to prevent undesirable complication & reduce treatment time. Aim: To evaluate & inter-compare the dentin thickness and instrumentation time in root dentin of deciduous teeth after BMP in Hand, Rotary & Reciprocation motion with single-file systems. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 60 extracted primary single rooted teeth with un-resorbed roots were included in the study. Teeth were divided into three groups consisting of 20 teeth in each group. In Group-1 Root canal preparation was done with pediatric Hand files, In Group-2 with pediatric Single-file system in rotary motion and in Group-3 with pediatric Single-file system in reciprocating motion. Teeth were scanned before & after preparation with CBCT. Segments were analyzed for dentin thickness at 3mm,5mm and 7mm respectively. Instrumentation time was recorded by an assistant. RESULTS: Mean instrumentation time of Rotary was least as compared to Reciprocation & Hand respectively, instrumentation time taken by hand filing was significantly higher. Reciprocating filing helps in better dentin debridement at apical and the middle third and no difference was found at the coronal third among all three groups. CONCLUSIONS: Reciprocating filing helps in better dentin debridement and rotary instrumentation requires least time for canal preparation. Key words:Hand Files, Rotary Files, Reciprocating motion, CBCT

Knowledge and attitude among Indian medical students towards thalassemia: a study in Delhi NCR

Background: Thalassemia can easily be prevented by awareness, education, screening, premarital genetic counselling and prenatal diagnosis. There are only a handful of articles on knowledge and awareness about thalassemia among general population or parents of thalassaemic children. Aims and objectives was to evaluate the level of awareness, knowledge and attitudes of medical students towards thalassemia as well as to analyse the differences if any between the first year and second year MBBS students and their correlation with various socio-demographic parameters.Methods: This was an institutional based cross sectional observational descriptive study regarding knowledge and attitude of first and second year MBBS students about thalassemia using a pre-designed, structured, self-administered questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 17. Values of p<0.05 were considered significant.Results: Mean knowledge scores of second year MBBS students compared to first year MBBS were 11.73±1.78 versus 10.8±1.92, the difference being statistically significant, however, the difference between mean attitude scores was not found to be significant. There was no effect of age, gender, region or Kuppuswamy’s socio-economic class on the knowledge or attitude of MBBS students towards thalassemia.Conclusions: Majority of the MBBS students had good knowledge and positive attitude towards thalassemia. To confirm the observations, large scale studies need to be conducted comprising of different study populations. Screening for thalassemia should be made mandatory, as part of medical examination, at entry to a medical college so that the medical college students are sensitized and can spread awareness among general population

Literacy improves short-term serial recall of spoken verbal but not visuospatial items - Evidence from illiterate and literate adults

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. This manuscript is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For further details please see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/It is widely accepted that specific memory processes, such as serial-order memory, are involved in written language development and predictive of reading and spelling abilities. The reverse question, namely whether orthographic abilities also affect serial-order memory, has hardly been investigated. In the current study, we compared 20 illiterate people with a group of 20 literate matched controls on a verbal and a visuospatial version of the Hebb paradigm, measuring both short- and long-term serial-order memory abilities. We observed better short-term serial-recall performance for the literate compared with the illiterate people. This effect was stronger in the verbal than in the visuospatial modality, suggesting that the improved capacity of the literate group is a consequence of learning orthographic skills. The long-term consolidation of ordered information was comparable across groups, for both stimulus modalities. The implications of these findings for current views regarding the bi-directional interactions between memory and written language development are discussed.Peer reviewe

Can fluid-solid contact area quantify wettability during flow? – a parametric study

Wettability characterization in a porous medium is challenging owing to the heterogeneity and large-scale of the interacting surface. Measuring the liquid-solid contact area can be used as a real-time wettability quantification at the Darcy scale. However, flow, grain size, and saturation path can affect the liquid-solid contact area. In this work, we use the two-tracer experiments to quantify the liquid-solid contact area and relate it with different parameters affecting the liquid-solid contact area. We do experiments at different conditions, i.e. (a) when the organic phase is at residual saturation and (b) when both phases flow. When the organic phase is immobile, increasing the flow rate does not change the residual saturation significantly; however, the water-solid contact area increases because of the increased corner flow. When both organic and aqueous phases flow, the relationship between the water saturation and water-solid contact area is found to be dependent on the grain size

Dual Wavelength based Approach with Partial Least Square Regression for the Prediction of Glucose Concentration

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic disorder characterized by high blood sugar levels. Monitoring of blood glucose levels at regular intervals plays a crucial role in the management of diabetes. The non-invasive real-time monitoring of glucose using near-infrared (NIR), Raman, acoustic and bio-impedance techniques have an edge over available invasive techniques but suffers from low Signal to Noise ratio (S/N) and other interferences. In the present work, we have attempted to improve S/N for the efficient detection of feeble signals corresponding to the physiological glucose concentrations. Investigations were carried out in the NIR region particularly from 800-1400 nm for the identification of the unique absorption features of glucose using UV-Vis NIR spectrophotometer with different ranges of glucose concentrations including 5 g/dl- 45 g/dl, 1400 mg/dl -2500 mg/dl, 35 mg/dl-650 mg/dl . Savitzky Golay (SG) pre-processing filter was applied on the raw data for enhancing the S/N for better prediction of glucose concentrations. The absorption spectra of glucose revealed the presence of a peak at 960 nm. Therefore, considering the absorbance at 960 nm, provided an enhancement in the S/N ratio from 17 dB to 27 dB. Further, partial least square regression (PLSR), has been applied on SG filtered data for a better prediction of glucose concentration with a correlation coefficient ( R2) value of 0.99 and root mean square error of prediction (RMSE) of 2.29 mg/dl. Further, based on the NIR spectral data, we have developed a measurement technique using two LED sources of 950 nm and 860 nm, and a wide detector (700 - 1100 nm) which converts obtained optical signal into voltage. It has been observed that by considering dual wavelength detection points the prediction of glucose concentration is improved. Furthermore, with increase in the test glucose concentrations, the voltage signal decreased corresponding to the 950 nm LED. This is attributed to reduced signal intensities reaching the photodiode as a result of the increase in glucose absorption. Incorporating dual wavelengths for PLSR reduced the RMSE from 8.98 mg/dl to 6.49 mg/dl and also improved the R2 value from 0.97 to 0.99

Truncated hemoglobin, HbN, is post-translationally modified in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and modulates host-pathogen interactions during intracellular infection

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a phenomenally successful human pathogen having evolved mechanisms that allow it to survive within the hazardous environment of macrophages and establish long term, persistent infection in the host against the control of cell-mediated immunity. One such mechanism is mediated by the truncated hemoglobin, HbN, of Mtb that displays a potent O2-dependent nitric oxide dioxygenase activity and protects its host from the toxicity of macrophage-generated nitric oxide (NO). Here we demonstrate for the first time that HbN is post-translationally modified by glycosylation in Mtb and remains localized on the cell membrane and the cell wall. The glycan linkage in the HbN was identified as mannose. The elevated expression of HbN in Mtb and M. smegmatis facilitated their entry within the macrophages as compared with isogenic control cells, and mutation in the glycan linkage of HbN disrupted this effect. Additionally, HbN-expressing cells exhibited higher survival within the THP-1 and mouse peritoneal macrophages, simultaneously increasing the intracellular level of proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-α and suppressing the expression of co-stimulatory surface markers CD80 and CD86. These results, thus, suggest the involvement of HbN in modulating the host-pathogen interactions and immune system of the host apart from protecting the bacilli from nitrosative stress inside the activated macrophages, consequently driving cells toward increased infectivity and intracellular survival