Maternal Healthcare Services and the Health Workers among the Migrant Slum Dwellers of Bangalore City, Karnataka, India

The health workers play a variety of roles which include provision of outreach, information, referral, advocacy and other support to promote health and help people meet their healthcare. The poor migrants usually settle in unauthorized slums or settlements. The migrant health is found in a disadvantageous position due to poor access to healthcare services. The present paper examines the maternal healthcare services provided by the peripheral health workers among the interstate migrants living in slums of Bangalore city. After conducting a pilot survey, five slums (migrant camps/non-notified slums) were identified based on the criteria of 1) inter- state migration 2) year of migration <7 years 3) having more than 100 households. Mothers with a child below 2 years (n=100) were interviewed with a pretested questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected from the mothers, key informants and healthcare workers through in- depth interviews. The maternal healthcare services by the health workers are not able to reach the migrant population due to migrants’ location of staying and many women went back to their native place for child delivery. The migrants who moved for delivery to their native place (32.4%) accessed the services of the health workers better than the respondents who stayed in the Bangalore city (13.5%). Similar situation was found for the visit of the heath workers for post-natal care. Some institutional lacuna like lack of space, toilets, water and also the shortage of staff etc. were pointed out by the health workers, which are required. The study warrants the need to understand the realities and healthcare needs of the migrant population. A better mechanism should be developed to improve the services of peripheral health workers in delivering primary healthcare services like maternal health care

Hemicastration-induced changes in the electrophoretic pattern of some enzymes in the brain of the skink, Mabuya carinata

Hemicastration in the skink induces change in the electrophoretic pattern of some enzymes like LDH, MDH, acid phosphatase and esterases

Activity of radon (222Rn) in the lower atmospheric surface layer of a typical rural site in south India

Analysis of one year measurements of in situ radon (222Rn) and its progenies along with surface air temperature, relative humidity and pressure near to the Earth’s surface has been carried out for the first time at the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL, 13.5∘N and 79.2∘E) located in a rural site in Gadanki, south India. The dataset was analysed to understand the behaviour of radon in relation to the surface air temperature and relative humidity at a rural site. It was observed that over a period of the 24 hours in a day, the activity of radon and its progenies reaches a peak in the morning hours followed by a remarkable decrease in the afternoon hours. Relatively, a higher concentration of radon was observed at NARL during fair weather days, and this can be attributed to the presence of rocky hills and dense vegetation surrounding the site. The high negative correlation between surface air temperature and activity of radon (R = – 0.70, on an annual scale) suggests that dynamical removal of radon due to increased vertical mixing is one of the most important controlling processes of the radon accumulation in the atmospheric surface layer. The annual averaged activity of radon was found to be 12.01±0.66 Bq m−3 and 4.25±0.18 Bq m−3 for its progenies, in the study period

Network Intrusion Detection Systems Using Genetic Algorithm

Intruder Detection system is so important implementations which considers all network information like temporal and spatial which make the system to build the rule for IDS. This helps for the administrator to detect complex anomalous behaviors of the system. This work is focused on the TCP/IP network protocols.   Genetic Algorithm is used to generate dynamic IP for the network to avoid unauthorized data transfer and prevent from attack. The Intrusion Detection System can be viewed as a rule-based system (RBS) and Genetic Algorithm can be viewed as a tool to help generate knowledge for the RBS. This project shows how network connection information can be modeled as chromosomes and how the parameters in genetic algorithm can be defined in this respect.

Variation of Radon Progeny Concentration over a Continental Location

Background: The variation of the radon progeny concentration in outdoor environment and meteorological parameters at fine resolution were studied for one year at a continental location, National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Gadanki, India.Materials and Methods: The concentrations were measured using Alpha Progeny Meter by collecting air samples at a height of 1 m above the Earth’s surface at a known flow rate. Results: Radon progeny concentration shows temporal variations on diurnal and monthly scales, and is due to mixing in the atmosphere. Peak in the early morning hours and low values during afternoon compared to nighttime are due to differential heat contrast between earth’s surface and its atmosphere. However, the activity during February shows maximum compared to June/July months.The diurnal variation of radon progeny shows positive correlation with the relative humidity and negative correlation with ambient temperature.The monthly mean activity of radon progeny for the year 2012 was found to be 4.76 ± 0.73 mWL. Conclusion: The mean concentration of radon progeny in the study region is relatively high compared to the other locations in India and may be due to the rocky terrains and trapping of air-masses near the observation site due to its topography

Fresnel scatter revisited-comparison of 50 MHz radar and radiosondes in the Arctic, the Tropics and Antarctica

High-resolution radiosondes and calibrated radars operating close to 50 MHz, are used to examine the relationship between the strength of radar scatter and refractive index gradient. Three radars are used, in Kiruna in Arctic Sweden, at Gadanki in southern India and at the Swedish/Finnish base Wasa/Aboa in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. Calibration is accomplished using the daily variation of galactic noise measured at each site. Proportionality between radar scatter strength and the square of the mean gradient of potential refractive index, M2, is found in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere at all three sites, confirming previously reported results from many VHF radars. If the radar scatter is interpreted as Fresnel scatter, the constant of proportionality between radar scatter and M2 is found to be the same, within the calibration uncertainties, for all three radars. The radiosondes show evidence of distinct layering with sharp gradients, extending over 10s of kilometers horizontally, but the scatter is found to be two orders of magnitude weaker than would be expected from true Fresnel scatter from such layers. Using radar reflectivities resolved to a few 100 ms, we show that this is due to strong temporal variability in the scattering conditions, possibly due to undulations of the scattering layers. The constancy of the radar scatter – M2 relationship between the different sites suggests an unexpected uniformity in these perturbations between very different regions of the globe

Vectored Machine Learning Rearing Process: Early Detection of Leaf Diseases

619-625Over the past years, the plant leaf analyses through image processing have drawn a remarkable approach in assessing leaf disease severity through accurate and precise conclusions. We proposed, ‘Scale Invariant Feature Transform’ (SIFT) based Distinctive Scale Invariant Mapping Procedure (DSIMP) for training images. Random Separation Propagation (RSP) Procedure and Redundant multiclass Support Vector Machine (RM-SVM) are implemented to detect the rice and groundnut leaf diseases at its early stages. Discriminative Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (DGLCM) and K means clustering is used for recognition and quantification to give the best color analysis. Experiments with 1000 samples of rice and groundnut leaf images show promising performance