Blood Transfusions: Are They Life Saving or Transfusing Infections?

Introduction: There is a risk of 1 - 2 per 1000 recipients receiving contaminated blood with viral, bacterial and parasitic agents.TTI’S are the most commonly encountered complications in transfusion medicine. The objective of the study was to determine the seroprevalence of TTI’s among blood donors, who represent healthy population at large. Materials & methods: A total of 33,658 blood units were received from voluntary and replacement donors over a period of 5 years. Surface antigen of HBV and antibodies to HIV and HCV were determined using ELISA. Syphilis was detected using TPHA test. Results: 947 (2.81%) blood units tested positive for HBV, HCV, HIV and / or syphilis. Overall prevalence was HBV – 1.77%, HCV – 0.13%, HIV – 0.63% and Syphilis – 0.28%. Nine (0.03%) donors had coinfections. Conclusion: The screening of blood donors is the corner stone in assuring the safety of blood transfusion

No-Sense: Sense with Dormant Sensors

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have enabled continuous monitoring of an area of interest (body, room, region, etc.) while eliminating expensive wired infrastructure. Typically in such applications, wireless sensor nodes report the sensed values to a sink node, where the information is required for the end-user. WSNs also provide the flexibility to the end-user for choosing several parameters for the monitoring application. For example, placement of sensors, frequency of sensing and transmission of those sensed data. Over the years, the advancement in embedded technology has led to increased processing power and memory capacity of these battery powered devices. However, batteries can only supply limited energy, thus limiting the lifetime of the network. In order to prolong the lifetime of the deployment, various efforts have been made to improve the battery technologies and also reduce the energy consumption of the sensor node at various layers in the networking stack. Of all the operations in the network stack, wireless data transmission and reception have found to consume most of the energy. Hence many proposals found in the literature target reducing them through intelligent schemes like power control, reducing retransmissions, etc. In this article we propose a new framework called Virtual Sensing Framework (VSF), which aims to sufficiently satisfy application requirements while conserving energy at the sensor nodes.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Twentieth National Conference on Communications (NCC-2014

Seasonal Occurrence of Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata (F.) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) and Its Parasitoid on Ashwagandha in India

The outbreak of Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata (F.) was noticed on a medicinal plant, Withania somnifera Dunal during 2004-05. The population level of the pest was reached its peak in August. The parasitoid Pediobius foveolatus caused 51.94±12.20 parasitism. The pest completed its life cycle in 20.15±1.50 days on W. somnifera. The longevity of the male and female adults of the pest was 22.07±3.71 and 31.07±4.38 days, respectively. The gravid females of H. vigintioctopunctata laid an average of 287.64±33.38 eggs during their oviposition period of 10.40±2.80 days. © 2006 Korean Society of Applied Entomology, Taiwan Entomological Society and Malaysian Plant Protection Society