Social Work - A Practice Based Profession

Social Work Profession has spanned many decades and has evolved tremendously over those decades. It is passing through a very critical period mainly because of rapid and startling alterations through the globe. In the 21st century, globalization leads to changes that challenge social work practice and social work education. In India, the social work education has completed more than seven decades. As a discipline of study in the university department and affiliated, private, government colleges and deemed universities, social work has established its own mark. Social work is an international profession and similarly social work education internationally has always embraced both academic and practical components. Social work education exists within the national education systems of all the country, but the content, the pedagogy, and the practice may differ from one country to another. Social work education comprises of a theoretical component taught in the classroom and field- based education involving integration of the academic aspect and practice. It can be said that theory without practice is empty and practice without theory is meaningless. Field work practicum is the heart and soul of social work education and social work profession.Fieldwork, which is also known as field instruction, field placement, field education, practicum or internship is therefore an integral component of social work education. The present article throws some light on Field Work Practicum in Social Work - its Role and Importance in Social Work Education and Training, Field Work Supervision, etc. Keywords: Field Work, Social Work Education, Supervisio

Protective role of Broccoli powder against continuous ingestion of Escitalopram antidepressant drug induced hepatotoxicity in Swiss albino male mice

To investigate the protective role of broccoli powder “Brassica Oleracea Italica” against continuous ingestion of escitalopram antidepressant drug induced hepatotoxicity in Swiss albino male mice.Mice were divided into different groups. Group1: Normal control (0.9% NaCl), Group 2: Escitalopram drug treated only (20 mg/kg), Group 3: Broccoli powder with Escitalopram drug treated (200 mg/kg + 20 mg/kg), Group 4: Olive oil vehicle control, Group 5: Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) referenced as positive control (33 mg/kg), Group 6: Broccoli powder with CCl4 treated (200 mg/kg + 33 mg/kg). The effect of these groups on liver tissue was studied after three different time periods for 4, 8 and 12 weeks.The results showed that the treatment with escitalopram drug displayed significantly increased serum SGOT, SGPT, ALP level and alter liver antioxidant enzymes level (LPO, SOD and GSH) that are comparable with CCl4intoxicated group considered as positive control. Comparing escitalopram drug treated group with group that received both broccoli powder and escitalopram drug displayed a significant decrease in serum SGOT, SGPT, ALP levels and restored the level of antioxidant enzymes. The protective effect of broccoli powder on escitalopram drug induced hepatotoxicity was also supported by histopathological studies.

HEPATOPROTECTIVE EFFECT OF CHENOPODIUM QUINOA SEED AGAINST CCL4-INDUCED LIVER TOXICITY IN SWISS ALBINO MALE MICE

  Objective: To study the effect of Quinoa seed on carbon tetrachloride (CCL4)-induced liver toxicity in Swiss albino male mice.Methods: Swiss albino male mice were divided into three groups: Group 1 served as control group; Group 2 served as hepatotoxic group (CCl4 treated); and Group 3 served as combination of Quinoa seed powder (20 mg/kg) + CCl4-treated group. The effect of these groups on liver tissue was studied after three different periods of 4, 8, and 12 weeks. Liver marker enzyme level of serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase, serum glutamic-pyruvic transaminase, serum alkaline phosphatase and liver antioxidant enzyme level of lipid peroxidation, superoxide dismutase, and reduced glutathione were measured. Further, histopathological analysis of liver was also conducted.Results: The results showed that the treatment with Quinoa seed powder significantly reduced CCl4-induced elevated serum level of hepatic enzymes and restored the level of liver antioxidant enzymes toward the normal levels, which was also confirmed by histopathological studies.Conclusion: Results of the present study concluded that the Quinoa seed (Chenopodium quinoa) showed hepatoprotective effect against CCl4-induced liver damage in Swiss albino male mice

RNAi-Mediated Control of Lepidopteran Pests of Important Crop Plants

Insects as pests destroy annually an estimated 18–20% of the crop production worldwide. Caterpillars, the larval stage of moths, are the major pests of agricultural products owing to their voracious feeding habits. In the past few decades, the potent methods of insect control, such as insecticides and Bt toxins, have been constrained as a result of health hazards, environmental issues, and development of resistance, after their prolonged application. Thus, there is need to find alternative options to improve plant protection strategies. Recently, RNA interference (RNAi), the post-transcriptional gene-silencing mechanism, has emerged as one of such a novel, sustainable, and environment friendly approaches for insect management and crop protection. RNAi technology relies on selection of a vital insect pest target gene and its expression as a double stranded RNA or stem-loop RNA molecule, which is recognized by the host RNAi machinery and processed into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) or microRNAs (miRNAs). The siRNA/miRNA along with the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) binds to the complimentary mRNA and induce gene silencing at post-transcriptional level. With effective target-gene selection and transgenic plants expressing these precursor RNA molecules, insect pests of various crops have been efficiently managed. In this chapter, we discuss the basic mechanism of RNAi and its application in controlling lepidopteran pests of important crop plants

Preventing Discriminatory Decision-making in Evolving Data Streams

Bias in machine learning has rightly received significant attention over the last decade. However, most fair machine learning (fair-ML) work to address bias in decision-making systems has focused solely on the offline setting. Despite the wide prevalence of online systems in the real world, work on identifying and correcting bias in the online setting is severely lacking. The unique challenges of the online environment make addressing bias more difficult than in the offline setting. First, Streaming Machine Learning (SML) algorithms must deal with the constantly evolving real-time data stream. Second, they need to adapt to changing data distributions (concept drift) to make accurate predictions on new incoming data. Adding fairness constraints to this already complicated task is not straightforward. In this work, we focus on the challenges of achieving fairness in biased data streams while accounting for the presence of concept drift, accessing one sample at a time. We present Fair Sampling over Stream ($FS^2$), a novel fair rebalancing approach capable of being integrated with SML classification algorithms. Furthermore, we devise the first unified performance-fairness metric, Fairness Bonded Utility (FBU), to evaluate and compare the trade-off between performance and fairness of different bias mitigation methods efficiently. FBU simplifies the comparison of fairness-performance trade-offs of multiple techniques through one unified and intuitive evaluation, allowing model designers to easily choose a technique. Overall, extensive evaluations show our measures surpass those of other fair online techniques previously reported in the literature

Measuring progress and projecting attainment on the basis of past trends of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries: an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are grounded in the global ambition of “leaving no one behind”. Understanding today’s gains and gaps for the health-related SDGs is essential for decision makers as they aim to improve the health of populations. As part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016), we measured 37 of the 50 health-related SDG indicators over the period 1990–2016 for 188 countries, and then on the basis of these past trends, we projected indicators to 2030

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 328 diseases and injuries for 195 countries, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

As mortality rates decline, life expectancy increases, and populations age, non-fatal outcomes of diseases and injuries are becoming a larger component of the global burden of disease. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) provides a comprehensive assessment of prevalence, incidence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 328 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016

Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016. METHODS: We have evaluated how well civil registration systems captured deaths using a set of demographic methods called death distribution methods for adults and from consideration of survey and census data for children younger than 5 years. We generated an overall assessment of completeness of registration of deaths by dividing registered deaths in each location-year by our estimate of all-age deaths generated from our overall estimation process. For 163 locations, including subnational units in countries with a population greater than 200 million with complete vital registration (VR) systems, our estimates were largely driven by the observed data, with corrections for small fluctuations in numbers and estimation for recent years where there were lags in data reporting (lags were variable by location, generally between 1 year and 6 years). For other locations, we took advantage of different data sources available to measure under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) using complete birth histories, summary birth histories, and incomplete VR with adjustments; we measured adult mortality rate (the probability of death in individuals aged 15-60 years) using adjusted incomplete VR, sibling histories, and household death recall. We used the U5MR and adult mortality rate, together with crude death rate due to HIV in the GBD model life table system, to estimate age-specific and sex-specific death rates for each location-year. Using various international databases, we identified fatal discontinuities, which we defined as increases in the death rate of more than one death per million, resulting from conflict and terrorism, natural disasters, major transport or technological accidents, and a subset of epidemic infectious diseases; these were added to estimates in the relevant years. In 47 countries with an identified peak adult prevalence for HIV/AIDS of more than 0·5% and where VR systems were less than 65% complete, we informed our estimates of age-sex-specific mortality using the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP)-Spectrum model fitted to national HIV/AIDS prevalence surveys and antenatal clinic serosurveillance systems. We estimated stillbirths, early neonatal, late neonatal, and childhood mortality using both survey and VR data in spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression models. We estimated abridged life tables for all location-years using age-specific death rates. We grouped locations into development quintiles based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and analysed mortality trends by quintile. Using spline regression, we estimated the expected mortality rate for each age-sex group as a function of SDI. We identified countries with higher life expectancy than expected by comparing observed life expectancy to anticipated life expectancy on the basis of development status alone. FINDINGS: Completeness in the registration of deaths increased from 28% in 1970 to a peak of 45% in 2013; completeness was lower after 2013 because of lags in reporting. Total deaths in children younger than 5 years decreased from 1970 to 2016, and slower decreases occurred at ages 5-24 years. By contrast, numbers of adult deaths increased in each 5-year age bracket above the age of 25 years. The distribution of annualised rates of change in age-specific mortality rate differed over the period 2000 to 2016 compared with earlier decades: increasing annualised rates of change were less frequent, although rising annualised rates of change still occurred in some locations, particularly for adolescent and younger adult age groups. Rates of stillbirths and under-5 mortality both decreased globally from 1970. Evidence for global convergence of death rates was mixed; although the absolute difference between age-standardised death rates narrowed between countries at the lowest and highest levels of SDI, the ratio of these death rates-a measure of relative inequality-increased slightly. There was a strong shift between 1970 and 2016 toward higher life expectancy, most noticeably at higher levels of SDI. Among countries with populations greater than 1 million in 2016, life expectancy at birth was highest for women in Japan, at 86·9 years (95% UI 86·7-87·2), and for men in Singapore, at 81·3 years (78·8-83·7) in 2016. Male life expectancy was generally lower than female life expectancy between 1970 and 2016, an

Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 333 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (HALE) for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

BACKGROUND: Measurement of changes in health across locations is useful to compare and contrast changing epidemiological patterns against health system performance and identify specific needs for resource allocation in research, policy development, and programme decision making. Using the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we drew from two widely used summary measures to monitor such changes in population health: disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) and healthy life expectancy (HALE). We used these measures to track trends and benchmark progress compared with expected trends on the basis of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI). METHODS: We used results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 for all-cause mortality, cause-specific mortality, and non-fatal disease burden to derive HALE and DALYs by sex for 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016. We calculated DALYs by summing years of life lost and years of life lived with disability for each location, age group, sex, and year. We estimated HALE using age-specific death rates and years of life lived with disability per capita. We explored how DALYs and HALE differed from expected trends when compared with the SDI: the geometric mean of income per person, educational attainment in the population older than age 15 years, and total fertility rate. FINDINGS: The highest globally observed HALE at birth for both women and men was in Singapore, at 75·2 years (95% uncertainty interval 71·9-78·6) for females and 72·0 years (68·8-75·1) for males. The lowest for females was in the Central African Republic (45·6 years [42·0-49·5]) and for males was in Lesotho (41·5 years [39·0-44·0]). From 1990 to 2016, global HALE increased by an average of 6·24 years (5·97-6·48) for both sexes combined. Global HALE increased by 6·04 years (5·74-6·27) for males and 6·49 years (6·08-6·77) for females, whereas HALE at age 65 years increased by 1·78 years (1·61-1·93) for males and 1·96 years (1·69-2·13) for females. Total global DALYs remained largely unchanged from 1990 to 2016 (-2·3% [-5·9 to 0·9]), with decreases in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional (CMNN) disease DALYs offset by increased DALYs due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The exemplars, calculated as the five lowest ratios of observed to expected age-standardised DALY rates in 2016, were Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Maldives, Peru, and Israel. The leading three causes of DALYs globally were ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and lower respiratory infections, comprising 16·1% of all DALYs. Total DALYs and age-standardised DALY rates due to most CMNN causes decreased from 1990 to 2016. Conversely, the total DALY burden rose for most NCDs; however, age-standardised DALY rates due to NCDs declined globally. INTERPRETATION: At a global level, DALYs and HALE continue to show improvements. At the same time, we observe that many populations are facing growing functional health loss. Rising SDI was associated with increases in cumulative years of life lived with disability and decreases in CMNN DALYs offset by increased NCD DALYs. Relative compression of morbidity highlights the importance of continued health interventions, which has changed in most locations in pace with the gross domestic product per person, education, and family planning. The analysis of DALYs and HALE and their relationship to SDI represents a robust framework with which to benchmark location-specific health performance. Country-specific drivers of disease burden, particularly for causes with higher-than-expected DALYs, should inform health policies, health system improvement initiatives, targeted prevention efforts, and development assistance for health, including financial and research investments for all countries, regardless of their level of sociodemographic development. The presence of countries that substantially outperform others suggests the need for increased scrutiny for proven examples of best practices, which can help to extend gains, whereas the presence of underperforming countries suggests the need for devotion of extra attention to health systems that need more robust support. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

XRCC2 Regulates Replication Fork Progression during dNTP Alterations

RAD51 paralogs are essential for maintenance of genomic integrity through protection of stalled replication forks and homology-directed repair (HDR) of double-strand breaks. Here, we find that a subset of RAD51 paralogs, XRCC2 (FANCU) and its binding partner RAD51D, restrain active DNA synthesis during dinucleotide triphosphate (dNTP) alterations in a manner independent of HDR. The absence of XRCC2 is associated with increased levels of RRM2, the regulatory subunit of ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), and concomitantly high nucleotide pools, leading to unrestrained fork progression and accumulation of DNA damage during dNTP alterations. Mechanistically, this function is independent of redox signaling and RAD51-mediated fork reversal and is regulated by ataxia-telangiectasia and Rad3-related (ATR) signaling through phosphorylation of XRCC2 (Ser247). Together, these findings identify roles of RAD51 paralogs in the control of replication fork progression and maintenance of genome stability during nucleotide pool alterations