Powerful-synergies: Gender Equality, Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability

This is a collection of evidence-based papers by scholars and practitioners that explore the interconnections between gender equality and sustainable development across a range of sectors and global development issues such as energy, health, education, food security, climate change, human rights, consumption and production patterns, and urbanization. The publication provides evidence from various sectors and regions on how women's equal access and control over resources not only improves the lives of individuals, families and nations, but also helps ensure the sustainability of the environment

A Study to Assess Changes in Cortisol Level and Heart Rate Variability between Fixed Duty and Shift Duty Health Care Providers in a Tertiary Care Hospital- A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: Increased demand of service 24 hours around the clock has divided the workers into 2 domains as “Fixed duty” and “Shift duty”. Personals associated with shift duty are increasing in numbers day by day. Shift duty or more specifically night duty is associated with increased stress which results in high morbidity and decrease in work efficiency. Cortisol hormone and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) are useful parameters to determine the effects of stress. Aim: To find any change in cortisol levels, HRV, Athens score among the fixed duty and shift duty healthcare providers. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional comparative study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital at Kolkata between July, 15th to Sept, 15th 2021. Predesigned and pretested questionnaire was made and ethical clearance was taken from institutional IEC. Then after taking consent total 120 (60 fixed duty and 60 shift duty) healthcare providers were recruited for the study. Subjects of the study filled up a questionnaire {including Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS)}. After applying exclusion criteria (any cardiovascular, neurological, psychological, sleep disorder) 120 health individuals were taken five minutes short-term HRV (time and frequency domain) recording in supine posture and 4 PM blood sample (for cortisol) were obtained from the participants which was further analysed in Chemiluminescence Immunoassay (CLI). Data was analysed in SPSS version 20.0. Statistical tests like student t-test, Cron bach’s alpha and chi-square tests were applied significant p<0.05 (95% CI). Results: After analysis, shift duty workers showed a significant (p6) than fixed duty workers. Blood test showed that shift duty workers had significantly high evening cortisol level than fixed duty workers (p= 0.036). The time domain of HRV showed that the parameters like Standard Deviation all NN interval (SDNN) (p=0.001), Mean HR (p=0.037), RMSSD (p <0.001), NN50 (p=0.006), pNN50 (p=0.002) were significantly different in the two groups. Whereas the frequency domain of HRV showed that HF power was lower and LF power (p=0.002), LF/HF ratio (p <0.001) were significantly higher in shift duty workers. Conclusion: The study showed that shift duty workers had comparatively higher stress levels resulting in significantly high sympathetic drive and increased risk of insomnia. This can be associated with morbidity and ill health in the shifting duty workers

Carbon to Diamond: An Incident Remediation Assistant System From Site Reliability Engineers’ Conversations in Hybrid Cloud Operations

Conversational channels are changing the landscape of hybrid cloud service management. These channels are becoming important avenues for Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) %Subject Matter Experts (SME) to collaboratively work together to resolve an incident or issue. Identifying segmented conversations and extracting key insights or artefacts from them can help engineers to improve the efficiency of the incident remediation process by using information retrieval mechanisms for similar incidents. However, it has been empirically observed that due to the semi-formal behavior of such conversations (human language) the conversations are very unique in nature and also contain domain-specific terms. %It is important to identify the correct keywords and artefacts like symptoms, issue etc., present in the conversation chats. In this paper, we build a framework that taps into the conversational channels and uses various learning methods to (1) understand and extract key artefacts from conversations like diagnostic steps and resolution actions taken and (2) present an approach to identify past conversations about similar issues. Experimental results on our dataset show the efficacy of the methods used in our proposed system

The atrial resting membrane potential confers sodium current sensitivity to propafenone, flecainide and dronedarone

Background: Although atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation is increasingly used for rhythm control therapy, antiarrhythmic drugs (AADs) are commonly used, either alone or in combination with ablation. The effectiveness of AADs is highly variable. Prior work from our group suggests that alterations in the atrial resting membrane potential (RMP) induced by low Pitx2 expression could explain the variable effect of flecainide. Objective: This study assessed whether alterations in the atrial/cardiac RMP modify the effectiveness of multiple clinically used AADs. Methods: The sodium channel blocking effects of propafenone (300nM, 1μM), flecainide (1μM) and dronedarone (5μM, 10μM) were measured in human stem cell derived cardiac myocytes, HEK293 expressing human Nav1.5, primary murine atrial cardiac myocytes and murine hearts with reduced Pitx2c. Results: A more positive atrial RMP delayed INa recovery, slowed channel inactivation and decreased the peak AP upstroke velocity. All three AADs displayed enhanced sodium channel block at more positive atrial RMPs. Dronedarone was the most sensitive to changes in the atrial RMP. Dronedarone caused greater reductions in AP amplitude and peak AP upstroke velocity at more positive RMPs. Dronedarone evoked greater prolongation of the atrial effective refractory period and post-repolarisation refractoriness in murine Langendorff-perfused Pitx2c+/- hearts, which have a more positive RMP compared to wild-type. Conclusion: The atrial RMP modifies the effectiveness of several clinically used AADs. Dronedarone is more sensitive to changes in atrial RMP than flecainide or propafenone. Identifying and modifying the atrial RMP may offer a novel approach to enhancing the effectiveness of AADs or personalizing AAD selection