SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE ORGANIC RACE

Organic production is carried out under an extensive regulatory setup because organic products are sold as value-added products with certified organic labelling in developed countries. Production is strictly monitored at every step in production chain. Organic production apart from being eco-friendly offers higher net returns per unit area compared to conventional agriculture. Organic production uses traditional tillage systems, crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, legumes, green manures, off-farm organic wastes, mineral bearing rocks, and biological pest and weed control to maintain soil productivity. Thus, an organic farm should be a self contained system of production with minimal dependence on external inputs. Those farms having dairy as one of the active components will have to convert to organic livestock management so that manures supplied are as per requirements for organic production. The dairy products can also be certified organic to fetch higher prices. Organic farming is a highly labour intensive enterprise. Some of the major organic accreditation agencies are IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements), FiBL, Demeter and many more. APEDA has also developed national standards for organic production. Indian farmers face many challenges in adoption of certified organic production. Some of the important organic production requirements as per national standards for organic production have been developed by APEDA.Genetically engineered cultivars or plant materials are not permitted in organic production. Some of the important organic production requirements as per national standards for organic production have been developed by APEDA. Some of the important organic production requirements as per national standards for organic production have been developed by APEDA.Before products from a farm/project can be certified as organic, inspection shall be carried out during the conversion period. To ensure a clear separation between organic and conventional production, the certification programme (agency) shall inspect, where appropriate, the whole production system. Organic production is one area of agriculture which can convert India’s ‘Green Revolution’ into ‘Evergreen Revolution’

Evaluating the Prosthodontic Status of People Visiting a Dental Clinic in New Delhi, India

BACKGROUND: Oral diseases place a huge economic and social burden on the population in terms of pain, suffering and lost productivity, as well as expenditure on treatment and prevention. The elderly people are worst affected by tooth loss as edentulism further leads to deterioration of their existing frail general health. MATERIALS AND METHOD: The present study is an attempt to study the prosthodontic status of people attending a private clinic in Delhi from April to December 2018. Data was collected with the help of WHO Oral Health Assessment Form (2004) and survey was conducted as per guidelines of American Dental Association for Type III examination. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 20.0. RESULTS: Out of 204 study subjects, 30.4% were completely dentulous, 7.4% were completely edentulous and rest were partially edentulous for the maxillary arch. While 34.8% were completely dentulous, 14.7% were completely edentulous and 50.5% were partially edentulous for the mandibular arch. Prosthodontic status for both the maxillary and mandibular arch was very poor with 79.4% and 85.3% individuals being devoid of any kind of prosthesis in the maxillary and mandibular arch respectively. CONCLUSION: The population of Delhi has a poor prosthodontics status. High cost of prosthetic treatment, lack of availability of skilled healthcare professionals, poor infrastructure and the general attitude of the population towards replacement of missing teeth are the major hindrances in the way of healthcare delivery system in our country. This has lead to the poor prosthodontic status in general population

Multiple-stopping time Sequential Detection for Energy Efficient Mining in Blockchain-Enabled IoT

What are the optimal times for an Internet of Things (IoT) device to act as a blockchain miner? The aim is to minimize the energy consumed by low-power IoT devices that log their data into a secure (tamper-proof) distributed ledger. We formulate a multiple stopping time Bayesian sequential detection problem to address energy-efficient blockchain mining for IoT devices. The objective is to identify $L$ optimal stops for mining, thereby maximizing the probability of successfully adding a block to the blockchain; we also present a model to optimize the number of stops (mining instants). The formulation is equivalent to a multiple stopping time POMDP. Since POMDPs are in general computationally intractable to solve, we show mathematically using submodularity arguments that the optimal mining policy has a useful structure: 1) it is monotone in belief space, and 2) it exhibits a threshold structure, which divides the belief space into two connected sets. Exploiting the structural results, we formulate a computationally-efficient linear mining policy for the blockchain-enabled IoT device. We present a policy gradient technique to optimize the parameters of the linear mining policy. Finally, we use synthetic and real Bitcoin datasets to study the performance of our proposed mining policy. We demonstrate the energy efficiency achieved by the optimal linear mining policy in contrast to other heuristic strategies

Trans-anastomotic tube in esophageal atresia with trachea-esophageal fistula repair: how beneficial are they?

Background: Congenital esophageal atresia with tracheo-esophageal fistula is a common congenital anomaly facing at our centre. There is various proposed anastomotic technique to avoid post-operative complications. In our center, feeding has been conventionally initiated after a contrast esophagogram done at the seventh day post repair. The current study tried to assess the benefits and risks of initiation of early feeding in these patients by placement of a Tran’s anastomotic feeding tube during the repair.Methods: Twenty-five patients had a trans anastomotic feeding tube inserted during trachea esophageal fistula repair and were followed up for different outcomes.Results: Twenty-five patients were operated out of which were sixteen males and nine were females. Early complications of esophageal atresia surgery such as anastomotic leak, surgical site infection, pneumonia and sepsis occur in eight patients. All the complications were managed successfully conservatively, however, one patient died due to anastomotic leak and subsequent septicemia.Conclusions: We conclude that early tube feeding is safe and does not increase risks of anastomotic leaks. It also reduces the need of total parenteral nutrition bringing down the costs of procedure in developing nations.  

A profile of poisoning in pediatric population in rural hospital in Jammu

Background: Acute poisoning is one of the commonest Pediatric emergencies and an important cause of morbidity and mortality. This study is aimed at understanding the incidence, aetiology and manner of poisoning, outcome among children less than 18 years reporting to Pediatric department at sub district Hospital level in Jammu region.Methods: All the children between one month and eighteen years of age reporting to the Pediatric Emergency of SDH Akhnoor, Jammu over a period of one year as a case of acute poisoning were included in the study. The information obtained from subjects/parents/guardians and examinations of subjects was recorded on a pretested proforma and analyzed.Results: A total of 150 patients were admitted as a case of poisoning over a study period of one year. Male: Female ratio was 1.41:1. Total incidence rate was 2.94/100 0 population over a period of one year. Majority of the cases were accidental (94.67%) while suicidal attempt cases were 5.33%. Most the cases (49.33%) were due to accidental ingestion of household products followed by drug ingestion (21.33%), food poisoning (14%) and then agricultural/industrial products (8%). Maximum patients (86.6%) recovered while 2% referred to higher centre and rest 11.3% either absconded or lost to follow up.Conclusions: Acute poisoning in children is usually accidental with favourable outcome. Death can happen depending upon nature of poison and the stage at which the patient is brought to the hospital. Poisoning can be prevented by increasing public awareness, counselling and right guidance to the parents.

CoS: a new perspective of operating systems design for the cyber-physical world

Our day-to-day life is dependent on several embedded devices, and in the near future, many more objects will have computation and communication capabilities enabling an Internet of Things. Correspondingly, with an increase in the interaction of these devices around us, developing novel applications is set to become challenging with current software infrastructures. In this paper, we argue that a new paradigm for operating systems needs to be conceptualized to provide aconducive base for application development on Cyber-physical systems. We demonstrate its need and importance using a few use-case scenarios and provide the design principles behind, and an architecture of a co-operating system or CoS that can serve as an example of this new paradigm

A Traffic Control Framework for Uncrewed Aircraft Systems

The exponential growth of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) services demands assurances of safety in the airspace. This research a Traffic Control Framework (TCF) for developing digital flight rules for Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) flying in designated air corridors. The proposed TCF helps model, deploy, and test UAS control, agents, regardless of their hardware configurations. This paper investigates the importance of digital flight rules in preventing collisions in the context of AAM. TCF is introduced as a platform for developing strategies for managing traffic towards enhanced autonomy in the airspace. It allows for assessment and evaluation of autonomous navigation, route planning, obstacle avoidance, and adaptive decision making for UAS. It also allows for the introduction and evaluation of advance technologies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in a simulation environment before deploying them in the real world. TCF can be used as a tool for comprehensive UAS traffic analysis, including KPI measurements. It offers flexibility for further testing and deployment laying the foundation for improved airspace safety - a vital aspect of UAS technological advancement. Finally, this papers demonstrates the capabilities of the proposed TCF in managing UAS traffic at intersections and its impact on overall traffic flow in air corridors, noting the bottlenecks and the inverse relationship safety and traffic volume.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure