Servant Leadership and Student-Worker Satisfaction

There are several studies that show that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to immense physical and mental health distress. Not only did it impact people’s health but it posed a threat to their financial and professional security. The pandemic, in addition to the several socio-economic challenges, resulted in the restructuring of the corporate work environment. It gave rise to work-from-home culture which eventually became the preferred mode of work for many people. However, companies eventually started calling people back into work reducing the flexibility in schedule that was previously available to employees working from home. As a result, the post-pandemic corporate world has seen a rise in the phenomena such as the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting across various sectors. However, one section of the working class that has yet to be studied extensively comprises of students who are also working full-time or part-time, alongside completing their educational degrees. The toll that the pandemic took on their ability to manage both education and professional work (in many cases, both taking place remotely) needs to be examined in greater detail. This study looks at the need for flexibility and hands-off management style in the post-pandemic world for student workers who are managing their academic pursuits alongside their professional work requirements, and how this need may be best met through the servant leadership style of management

Psychosocial aspects of changes during adolescence among school going adolescent Indian girls

Background: Physical as well as psychological changes during adolescence create a state of physiological stress that must be coped with. This study was undertaken to study the psychosocial aspects of changes associated with adolescence among school going girls.  Methods: A predesigned questionnaire was administered to students of class VI to XII prior to a talk on ‘Adolescent health’ in two urban schools of Bhopal. The questions were directed at understanding the psychosocial aspects of behavior among the girls during adolescence while they cope with changes of adolescence.  Results: A total of 414 schoolgirls from classes VI-XII participated in the study. Their mean age was 14.4years [SD 2.01; Range 10-18 years]. Of them, 277 reported having attained menarche, the mean age at menarche being 12.7 years [SD 1.52]. Almost 63% of girls had knowledge about menstruation before attaining menarche. Majority of them had learned about it from their mother (41%). Nearly one third (30.6%) of girls were not comfortable with the bodily changes of adolescence; 41% reported feeling anxious and 26.4% reported suffering from low self-esteem. Excessive irritability was reported by 47% of girls; undue anger by 51.4%, and 34.7% felt uncomfortable interacting with people. One third of girls had frequent arguments with parents. Almost 80% of girls found their parents supportive.  Conclusions: A good proportion of adolescent girls appear to be in need for counseling and support for optimally coping with the bodily as well as psychological changes of adolescence. This preliminary study unveils the need for more widespread and regular Adolescent School health programs for increasing awareness and support services

Low molecular weight heparin prophylaxis: a boon for women with history of placental mediated complications

Background: Prevention of placental mediated pregnancy complication is likely the best approach to decrease maternal mortality and morbidity. Anticoagulation therapy represents a good preventive option. Methods: A prospective randomized case control study was conducted at Safdarjang hospital. Patients were recruited from Sept. 2011 till May 2012 and followed till delivery. Thirty cases & controls were enrolled which comprised of non- thrombophilic patients with previous history of severe preeclampsia, Fetal Growth Restriction (FGR), severe placental abruption, stillbirth after 20 weeks. Study group received LMWH according to weight subcutaneously, once daily started at < 15 weeks till 36 weeks of gestation. Maternal outcomes were observed in both groups.Results: Incidence of stillbirth and abruption were significantly lower in study group (0 versus 3.3%, P = 0.05; and 0 versus 20%, P = 0.01). The respective incidence of severe preeclampsia and FGR were 6.6% versus 40% (P = 0.04) and 6.6% versus 30 % (P = 0.02). There was reduction of 72.7% of total adverse outcome.Conclusions: Prophylactic LMWH before 15 weeks of gestation decreases the incidence of placental mediated complications in non thrombophilic pregnant women who had previously suffered with these complications

Continuous Density Hidden Markov Model for Hindi Speech Recognition

State of the art automatic speech recognitionsystem uses Mel frequency cepstral coefficients as featureextractor along with Gaussian mixture model for acousticmodeling but there is no standard value to assign number ofmixture component in speech recognition process.Currentchoice of mixture component is arbitrary with littlejustification. Also the standard set for European languagescan not be used in Hindi speech recognition due to mismatchin database size of the languages.Parameter estimation withtoo many or few component may inappropriately estimatethe mixture model. Therefore, number of mixture isimportant for initial estimation of expectation maximizationprocess. In this research work, the authors estimate numberof Gaussian mixture component for Hindi database basedupon the size of vocabulary.Mel frequency cepstral featureand perceptual linear predictive feature along with itsextended variations with delta-delta-delta feature have beenused to evaluate this number based on optimal recognitionscore of the system . Comparitive analysis of recognitionperformance for both the feature extraction methods onmedium size Hindi database is also presented in thispaper.HLDA has been used as feature reduction techniqueand also its impact on the recognition score has beenhighlighted

REASSESSING THE ROLE OF HOMOCYSTEINE AND HOLOTRANSCOBALAMIN LEVELS IN DIAGNOSING VITAMIN B12 DEFICIENCY ANEMIA

Background: Vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to irreversible neurological damage, megaloblastic anemia, osteoporosis, cerebrovascular, and cardiovascular diseases, and thus, early diagnosis is essential. Objective: The objective of the study was to assess homocysteine (Hcy) and holotranscobalamine (HoloTC) levels among patients with Vitamin B12 deficiency and to see if Hcy and HoloTC level assay can help us in diagnosis of Vitamin B12 deficiency. Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional observational study on 60 patients of Sr. B12 deficient male and female patients between the ages of 18 and 65 years in IPD and OPD patients at multispecialty hospital. Data were collected from predefined pro forma and were asked about their diet, socioeconomic status, and history. Then, these patients further undergone anthropometric measurements and investigated for Hcy and HoloTC level. The statistical analysis was done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SSPS) software (version 11). Results: About 60% of cases were vegetarian and 40% of cases were non-vegetarian. Mean age of study participants was 43.67 years, mean of mean cellular volume was 90.7 fl, mean of B12 was 138 pmol/L, mean of HoloTC was 60.84 pmol/L, and mean of Hcy was 34.17 umol/L. Out of 60 patients, 10 patients had anemia, 21 patients had neurological manifestation, and 29 patients had gastrointestinal (GI) manifestation. In male group, out of 32, 11 patients had HoloTC &lt;8.9, 19 patients had value between 8.9 and 128, and two patients had HoloTC more than 128. In female group, out of 28, seven patients had HoloTC &lt;8.9, 14 patients had value between 8.9 and 128, and seven patients had HoloTC &gt;128. In group of 32 male patients, none of male patients showed Hcy value &lt;5.9, four patients showed Hcy between 5.9 and 16, and 28 patients showed Hcy value &gt;16. Out of 28 female patients, none of female patients showed Hcy &lt;3.36, nine patients showed Hcy between 3.36 and 20.4, and 19 patients showed Hcy &gt;20.4. p &lt;0.001 is highly statistically significant. Conclusion: In our study, we found that 31.33% of cases also showed decreased HoloTC along with B12 deficiency, but this correlation was statistically insignificant. We also found that 78.33% of cases showed increased Hcy along with serum B12 deficiency, which was statistically significant, so we concluded that there is a strong association between serum B12 and Hcy. We found that all patients with elevated Hcy also had low HoloTC except in two cases, but this correlation was not found to be statistically significant

Role of microbes in alleviating abiotic stress in plants

The leading threat to agricultural productivity is the recurrent variations in environmental conditions. A battery of abiotic stresses namely flooding, salinity, temperature, drought, heavy metal toxicities, nutrient deficiencies and oxidative stress causes irreversible damage resulting in loss of plant’s vigor and yield. The relationship between plants and microorganisms is a highly dynamic system. The plant microbiome consists of plant growth-promoting bacteria and fungi. In the last decade, many microbes that give hosts the ability to withstand abiotic stress have been characterized in detail. Their beneficial association with plants enables the plant to endure different stresses imposed on them thereby enhancing the plant's sustainability and productivity. For sustainable agriculture, it is very significant to comprehend microbiome-assisted mechanisms for mitigating abiotic stress. This review will shed light on the current knowledge about the roles of various microorganisms in mitigating against abiotic stresses. The understanding of these mechanisms will help to increase the yield of plants and meet the food demands of the expanding population

Conjoined Twins with a Single Heart

A case of abdomino-thoracopagus twins with single heart is described. The male twins were delivered in the 15th week of gestation following the desire of the parents to terminate pregnancy. This case is of particular interest because of the rarity of the abdomino-thoracopagus twins with a single heart, in the literature, that too, of male conjoined twins

Genetic diversity of biovar 3 and 4 of Ralstonia solanacearum causing bacterial wilt of tomato using BOX- PCR, RAPD and hrp gene sequences

Genetic diversity of Ralstonia solanacearum, causal agent of bacterial wilt of tomato was assessed by using three different molecular methods such as random amplified polymorphism DNA (RAPD), BOX-PCR and hrp (hypersensitive response and pathogenicity) gene sequence analysis technique. Twelve isolates of Ralstonia solanacearum belonging to biovar 3 (9 isolates) and 4 (3 isolates) were collected from Northern parts of India including Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand states from infected tomato plants. Out of 16 primers used in RAPD fingerprinting, four primers (OPA-2, OPA-11, OPC-5, OPE-7) showed monomorphic bands and remaining 12 primers exhibited polymorphic amplified products of both the biovars of R. solanacearum. The primer OPE-10 showed the highest level of genetic diversity among the isolates. Ten isolates of R. solanacearum were classified into two clusters at 20 per cent similarity coefficient and cluster 1 represented all isolates of biovar 3 (UTT-23, UTT-10, UTT-26, HPT11, UTT-9, UTT-32, HPC-3) and cluster 2 comprised the biovar 4 (UTT-22, HPT-3, UTT-24). BOX-PCR fingerprint of R. solanacearum clearly distinguished biovar 3 and 4 grouped into two distinct clusters at 40% similarity coefficient. Cluster 1 represented all isolates of R. solanacearum biovar 3 and cluster 2 comprised the biovar 4 isolates. The isolates of R. solanacearum have genetic diversity in hrpB gene, but it could not differentiate the isolates of biovar 3 and 4. However, the biovars 3 and 4 of R. solanacearum can be genetically distinguished by using BOX- PCR and specific primer of RAPD