Menopause: a new beginning of happy years

Menopause is an essential phase of women’s life. Essentially, human female experiences different phases pertaining to the reproductive system and hormonal status these phases are prominently as follows. Childhood phases (0 to 12 year) menstrual phase (12 to 45±4 years) menopausal face (45 to 50±years) and post menopause (50 to till end of her life). Menopause is complete cessation of menstrual cycle at least for a year. Menopausal phase causes many hormonal, physical, physiological, emotional and psychological changes in humans female. These changes are prominent in the reproductive system and hormonal profile. Menopausal state of women indicates the end of her reproductive period with other associated changes. Majority of women get disturbed physiologically, emotionally and psychologically. Menopausal woman develops the feeling of end of her sexual life and women hood. This paper reviews the state and perception of menopause, misconception regarding end of sexual life, better management of menopausal state and how menopause could be new the beginning of happier life physically, mentally, physiologically and sexually

Challenges of virtual classroom during COVID-19 pandemic: An empirical analysis of Indian higher education

Higher education institutions (HEIs) usually work open throughout the academic session. In the COVID-19 pandemic time, all the HEIs were also closed temporarily. The study examined the major challenges faced by the teachers and students from the virtual classroom during the nationwide lockdown. Due to the nationwide lockdown and lack of funding, convenience sampling and snowball sampling techniques were used for data collection. A total of 893 responses were analyzed for this study. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire on a Likert scale from 305 teachers and 588 students of higher education institutes from the entire India. Network connectivity was the major challenge faced by the faculty members (mean value of 3.68) followed by 3.17 mean value for lack of professional environment at home, 3.03 for lack of teaching material at home, 2.92 for lack of personal computer/laptop. Lack of professional environment at home (mean value of 3.59) was the major challenge faced by the students followed by 3.57 for lack of teaching material at home, 3.35 for network connectivity, 3.31 for lack of personal computer/laptop. Virtual classrooms have challenges such as poor internet connectivity, non-availability of appropriate electronic devices, lack of a teaching environment at home, less information and communication technology (ICT) knowledge among students and teachers. It implied less engagement of students and teachers in the teaching and learning process

Disparity in cost of oral hypoglycemic agents available in Indian market

Background: Diabetes is one of the most common non-communicable disease worldwide, of which India has been crowned with the title of “diabetes capital of the world”. On an average a person spends 20% of his or her income for the treatment of diabetes per year. So, it’s become very important to conduct a complete cost disparity study among oral hypoglycemic agent available in the market. Information generated from the current analysis, will be helpful to doctors in choosing the right drug for their patient and for the health sector in successfully utilizing the available resources.Methods: The study was conducted in the department of pharmacology AIIMS, Patna 2019. Price of the drugs per tablet/capsule/vial were reviewed from “Current Index of Medical Specialties” January-April 2019 and “Drug Today” October-December, 2018 for analysis of different formulations of oral hypoglycemic agents.Results: The cost of total 16 drugs belonging to 6 different classes, available in 38 different formulations were analyzed. Total 44 different pharmaceutical companies were involved in the manufacture of oral hypoglycemic agents. Overall glibenclamide (5 mg) and bromocriptine (2.5 mg) showed maximum % price variation of 422.79 and 586.27 respectively. Dapagliflozin and canagliflozin both belonging to sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors shows minimum price variation of 9.86 and 0.9 respectively.Conclusions: The current study shows that there is a huge price variation among oral hypoglycemic agents manufactured by different companies and government needs to take essential steps to bring about the uniformity in the price

Controlling the size distribution of nanoparticles through the use of physical boundaries during laser ablation in liquids

A simple, yet effective method of controlling the size and size distributions of nanoparticles produced as a result of laser ablation of target material is presented. The method employs the presence of physical boundaries on either sides of the ablation site. In order to demonstrate the potential of the method, experiments have been conducted with copper and titanium as the target materials that are placed in two different liquid media (water and isopropyl alcohol). The ablation of the target material immersed in the liquid medium has been carried out using an Nd:YAG laser. Significant differences in the size and size distributions are observed in the cases of nanoparticles produced with and without confining boundaries. It is seen that for any given liquid medium and the target material, the mean size of the nanoparticles obtained with the boundary-fitted target surface is consistently higher than that achieved in the case of open (flat) targets. The observed trend has been attributed to the plausible role(s) of the confining boundaries in prolonging the thermalisation time of the plasma plume. In order to ascertain that the observed differences in sizes of the nanoparticles produced with and without the presence of the physical barriers are predominantly because of the prolonged thermalisation of the plasma plume and not due to the possible formation of oxide layer, select experiments with gold as the target material in water have also been performed. The experiments also show that, irrespective of the liquid medium, the increase in the mean size of the copper-based nanoparticles due to the presence of physical boundaries is relatively higher than that observed in the case of titanium target material under similar experimental conditions.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, a part of this work has been published in Photonics Prague 2017, (Proc. SPIE 10603, Photonics, Devices, and Systems VII, 1060304) titled "A novel method for fabrication of size-controlled metallic nanoparticles

Integrated management approaches for controlling root rot of bael caused by Fusarium solani

An experiment was carried out to find out the effective management practices to control the recently recorded pathogen (Fusarium solani) inciting root rot disease in Bael. Rampant incidence due to this pathogen is resulting in excess damage and reduction in acreage. Out of six fungicides screened in vitro, Topsin-M and Bavistin stood at first place in inhibiting the mycelial growth of F. solani. Topsin-M showed 100% inhibition at 50 ppm concentration whereas Bavistin showed 100% inhibition at 150 ppm concentration. Bavistin and Topsin-M as seed dressers effectively protected pre and post emergence seedlings mortality to the tune of 68.75 and 70.95%; 65.00 and 67.54%, respectively. Pre-sowing drenching of soil with Bavistin (0.4%) reduced the pre-emergence mortality from 26.50 to 8.25% and post-emergence mortality from 39.00 to 16.25%. The integration of seed treatment and pre-sowing drenching resulted in 72.51% control of pre emergence mortality and 82.92% control of post emergence mortality. In dual culture method, maximum inhibition of mycelial growth was recorded with Trichoderma harzianum (72.18%) followed by T. viride (67.70%). Glomus mosseae in combination with T. harzianum was found very effective against F. solani under screen house conditions as minimum pre emergence mortality (10.00%) and post emergence mortality (13.25%) against control where the values were 27.25% and 40.25%, respectively. The studies and results compiled here in provide an explanation for the potential of selected fungicides and antagonists in the control of bael root rot disease