Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccination Among Health Care Workers in India

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 has been spread almost all over the world in the last two years, including in India. Vaccines are a critical tool in the battle against COVID-19, and India has flagged the largest vaccination drive on 16 January 2021. Although public acceptance was varying, which can lead to non-acceptance. Aim & Objective: To estimate an acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine and its associated factors. Settings and Design: An analytical cross-sectional study among health care workers in India   Methods & Material: It was conducted using a validated, self-administrated online survey questionnaire, and data were analyzed using SPSS 23 version. The outcome variable was healthcare workers’ acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. Results: A total of 450 HCWs participated, including 205(45.6%) women and 245(54.4%) men. A total of 270 (60%) subjects will accept vaccines, while 33.3% were unwilling to accept and wait for vaccines. Male gender (OR=3.14), being married and experienced (OR=11.49), vaccine effectiveness (OR=6.4), vaccine safety (OR=3.4), and past history (OR=2.28) were significantly associated. On applying logistic regression for associated factors, gender (B= -1.145, S.E.= 0.200, Wald 32.748), being married (B= -1.482, S.E.= 0.216, Wald 46.937), for experienced (B= -0.865, S.E.= 0.200, effectiveness (B= -1.856, S.E.= 0.245, Wald 57.431), Safety (B= -1.224, S.E.= 0.202, Wald 36.633) and past history (B= -0.357, S.E.= 0.248, Wald 2.071) found significant. Recommendation: Proper information is crucial and healthcare workers’ attitudes about vaccines are an important factor for acceptance and recommendation of the vaccine to the public for population-wide coverage

Analysis of waiting and service cost for a multi-server queuing model in a tertiary care hospital

A common situation that occurs in everyday life is that of queuing or waiting in line. The problem of queuing in relation to the time spent by patients to access clinical services is increasingly becoming a major source of concern to most health –care providers. As the patients wait too long for service could result to cost to them which is called as waiting cost. Providing good service capacity to operate a system involves excessive cost. But not providing enough service capacity results in excessive waiting time and cost. In this study, the queuing characteristics at the tertiary care hospital of the Autonomous State medical College, Firozabad was analyzed using a multi-Server queuing Model and the Waiting and service Costs determined with a view to determining the optimal service level. Data for this study was collected at the tertiary care hospital for four weeks through observations, interviews and by administering questionnaire. The data was analyzed using TORA optimization Software as well as using descriptive analysis.&nbsp

Integrating Psychometric Analysis and Machine Learning to Augment Data for Cheating Detection in Large-Scale Assessment

Machine learning methods have been explored for cheating detection in large-scale assessment programs. While some studies analyzed item response and response time (RT) data, a few studies experimented with other data and data augmentation in cheating detection. However, none study has explored data augmentation integrating results from both psychometric analysis and machine learning for cheating detection though Kim et al. (2016) compared the results from these two perspectives. This study explored data augmentation in the stacking learning for cheating detection adding both person-fit measures from psychometric analysis and outlier measures from anomaly detection methods. An empirical data set from a high-stake large-scale testing program is used to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. Class imbalance is addressed via resampling. The performance of the proposed method is compared with alternative approaches. It is found the proposed data augmentation approach effectively increases the cheating detection accuracy with the highest F1 score compared with the values reported in similar studies

Assessment of Genetic Variability and Different Character Association in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under Late Sown Condition

In the present study, 102 chickpea germplasm showed wide range of variation for various characters evaluated during Rabi 2017-18 along with BG 372, Udai and Pant G 186 as checks varieties. The experiment was conducted in Augmented Block Design at Agronomy Research Farm of Narendra Deva University of Agriculture and Technology, Narendra Nagar (Kumarganj), Ayodhya (U.P.). The observations were recorded on 11 quantitative characters viz., days to 50 per cent flowering, days to maturity, primary branches per plant, secondary branches per plant, plant height (cm), pods per plant, seeds per pod, biological yield per plant (g), seed yield per plant (g), harvest index (%) and 100-seed weight (g). After analyzing the data statistical study of each characters genotypes revealed a wide range of results Genotypes GJG 1416 followed by BG 256, GJG 1416, PhuleG0819, IPC 2011-141 and IPC 1014 produced higher seed yield per plant and these genotypes constituted the top significant group for these traits..On other hand genotypes PDG 84-16, IPC 1014, H06-6, GJG 1401, GJG 1403 and JG2016-44 for early maturity;; BG 256, GJG 1209, GJG 1401, GJG 1416 and JG 11 were identified for high number of pods per plant; GJG 1416, GJG 1001, BG 256, RS 2011-06 and BG 3027 were identified for bold seed size; IPC 1014, PhuleG0805 and IPC 2010-134 for harvest index were found promising which may be used as potential donors for the traits in chickpea improvement programme. Seed yield per plant exhibited positive and highly significant correlations with secondary branches per plant, pods per plant, seeds per pod, biological yield per plant, harvest index and 100-seed weight. The positive significant correlations of seed yield per plant were found with primary branches per plant and non-significant with plant height. It exhibited negative non-significant association with days to 50 per cent flowering and days to maturity

Incidence of adverse drug reaction and its outcome among patients in tertiary care hospital, Uttar Pradesh

Introduction: World Health Organization defines adverse drug reactions (ADRs) as any noxious, unintended, and undesired effect of a drug, which occurs at doses used in humans for prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy. For evaluating the incidence and outcome of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to assist in minimizing the deleterious effects, the present study was planned to find the incidence of ADR, its severity, and outcomes among patients. Material and Methods: The spontaneous ADR reporting technique and the Suspected Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Form were used for the data collection and reporting. All patients who developed an ADR during the study period has included. By using Expanded Rawlins and Thompson’s classification, all patients were categorized into types A to F and classified according to the severity levels (mild, moderate, severe) by applying the Modified Hartwig severity scale. The classification of outcomes of the ADRs was done as per WHO criteria as fatal, continuing, recovering, recovered, unknown, or any other. Results: Type B (Bizarre) ADRs were found to be the most frequently occurring ADRs (51%) followed by type A (Augmented) 29%. Maximum ADR cases were found in the 12-45 years age group (58%).&nbsp

Estimation of Genetic Variability, Correlation and Path Analysis for Yield and Some Yield Contributing Traits in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

A study was conducted at the Student Instruction Farm, Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur, during the rabi season of 2022–2023, to estimate the genetic variability, correlation, and path coefficient analysis of yield and its contributing traits in cross combination. Ten wheat cultivars were grown in a randomized block design with three replications. The analysis of variance revealed that the treatments were highly significant for all the characters. The higher magnitudes of genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) and phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) were recorded for grain yield, biological yield, harvest index and plant height. The high heritability in broad sense was estimated for all the characters except for day to 50% heading, flag leaf area (cm2), number of leaves/main tiller, number of spikelets/ear and protein content (%).A high value of heritability suggests that it could be due to a higher contribution of genotypic components. High heritability associated with high genetic advantage as a percentage of the mean was found for plant height, harvest index, biological yield, and grain yield, indicating a predominance of additive gene action in the inheritance of these traits. The estimated correlation coefficients showed high direct genotypic and phenotypic correlations for days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, productive tillers/plant, test weight, biological yield, and harvest index. In contrast, flag leaf area (cm2), number of leaves/main picks, number of kernels/spike, and seed hardiness were negatively correlated with grain yield. Path analysis showed that biological yield had the largest direct positive effect on grain yield, followed by harvest index, ear length, plant height, and days to 50%, indicating that these factors were the largest contributors to grain yield

Study about the Genetic Variability, Heritability and Genetic Advance for Yield and Yield Attributing Traits of Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

Brinjal is an important vegetable crop grown in India, Asia, and many parts of the world. The primary objective of brinjal breeding is to develop varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases, have higher yields, and better fruit quality. In this study, 10 brinjal varieties were crossed to obtain F1’s hybrids. The F1’s were evaluated for yield and yield-related characters. The results showed a wide range of variation for all characters. The estimates of heritability in F1 varied from 45.43% (number of primary branches per plant) to 97.69% (Average Fruit weight). The genetic advance percent over mean for F1 varied from 6.25 % (Number of primary branches per plant) to 62.16 % (Average Fruit weight). Seven characters showed high performance viz. Average Fruit weight (62.16%) , Number of Fruit per Plant (50.37%), Fruit yield per plant (49.37), Fruit circumference (35.18), Plant height (32.77), Number of Secondary branches per plant (29.14%) and Fruit length (27.11%); three medium  performance viz. Days of 50% Flowering after transplanting (18.09), Days of First Fruit harvest after transplanting (15.35) and Fruit T.S.S (11.92%); one low performance i.e., Number of primary Branches per plant (6.25%). The PCV was higher than GCV indicate the role of environment in performance of characters while value of both have narrow difference indicate the mainly genetic factors is responsible for the performance of the characters of genotypes.High heritability coupled with high genetic advance was found for yield and yield attributing characters, which indicates that selection for these traits will be effective

Percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy in mitral stenosis and left atrial appendage clot patients in special conditions: Hospital-based study

Background: The percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy is an important procedure for the treatment of mitral stenosis. A lot of mitral stenosis cases have left atrial appendage clot which precludes the patient from the benefit of this procedure. The aim of the study was to study the feasibility and safety of the procedure in a patient with appendage clot in the setup of certain urgent conditions. Method: All cases of mitral stenosis with significant dyspnea and mitral valve area <1.5 cm2 with left atrial appendage clot and a condition which would preclude the patient from continuing on anticoagulation and needed urgent intervention were included in the study. From January 2011 to December 2013, twenty patients coming to Shahid Gangalal National Heart Centre, Kathmandu were selected for the procedure with conventional sampling technique. Informed written consent was obtained from the patients explaining all possible complications. The approval of the study was taken from the ethical committee of the hospital. Result: Mean mitral valve area increased from 0.90 cm2 (SD ± 0.14) to 1.5 cm2 (SD ± 0.21) (p = 0.02). Left atrial mean pressure decreased from mean of 20 to 10 mmHg. Subjective improvement was reported in all. All of the patients had fulfilled criteria for successful PTMC. There was no mortality during hospital stay or in one-week follow-up period. There were no neurological complications or any need for emergency surgery. Conclusion: The immediate result of percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy in selected cases of mitral stenosis with left atrial appendage clot is safe and acceptable in certain urgent situations in experienced hands

Evaluation of benzothiophene carboxamides as analgesics and anti-inflammatory agents

Nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) represent standard therapy for the alleviation of pain and inflammation. At present various classes of compounds have been reported as selective inhibitors of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2). However, they are associated with adverse side effects. To address these issues, we report here a new class of compounds that exhibit potent analgesic and anti-inflammatory response. Substituted bromo-benzothiophene carboxamides (4-11) were examined for their analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties. Our findings demonstrate that newly synthesized bromo-benzothiophene carboxamide derivatives 4, 6, and 8 attenuate nociception and inflammation at lower concentration than classical NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen. These compounds act by selectively inhibiting COX-2 and by disrupting the prostaglandin-E2-dependent positive feedback of COX-2 regulation, which was further substantiated by reduction in the levels of cytokines, chemokines, neutrophil accumulation, synthesis of prostaglandin-E2, expression of COX-2, and neutrophil activation at lower concentration than the classic NSAID ibuprofen. Toxicological study reveals that these compounds are well tolerated and metabolized to avoid any toxicity. Thus, these molecules represent a new class of analgesic and anti-inflammatory agents. (c) 2014 IUBMB Life, 66(3):201-211, 201