Developmental Disparities in Rural Health Care: Distant Dream to Achieve Universal Health Coverage in India

There is always a health gap striking between rural and urban, advantaged and marginalized section of society while accessing and utilizing health care services. This research paper tries to throw some light on the disparities and challenges faced by healthcare service recipients (rural community people) as well as healthcare service providers (Government Healthcare system like PHC and Rural Hospital). The study reveals that majority of the healthcare services in the remote & tribal „padaas‟ lack health centres, medical doctors, and medical equipment. Adding to it, the shortage of trained medical professionals especially lab technicians, pharmacist and nurses and non availability of essential medicines to poor patients adversely affects access to and utilization of health care service, thus making Universal Health Coverage a distant dream to achieve in India

Preliminary study on diminution level of RNA/DNA ratio in tissue of Labeo rohita by exposure to some endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs)

Effects of EDCs particularly on RNA/DNA ratio are yet to be investigated to manage the effluents in natural waters. We investigated exposure effects of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) phthalic acid ester (PAE) and hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) on the RNA/DNA ratio in tissue of an Indian major carp Labeo rohita. Fish were exposed to pre-determined sublethal concentrations of phthalic acid ester (Di-methyl phthalate (DMP), di-butyl phthalate (DBP), and di-(2- ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and also HCH for determining the tissue RNA/DNA ratio after 30, 60 and 90 days of exposure in the doses of 0.2 mg L-1, 0.3 mg L-1, and 0.5 mg L-1 respectively. All these tested chemicals significantly (P0.05) inhibited RNA/DNA ratio. The ratio gradually significantly (P0.05) decreased after DEHP where it was 1.9±0.51 F1, 18=15.8 P=0.014 n=19; in case of DBP it was 1.92±0.62 F1, 20=6.5 P=0.012 n=19 and for HCH it was 0.94±0.21 F1, 18=18.08 P=0.0012 n=19 at treatments concentrations of 0.3 mg L-1 and 0.5 mg L-1, compared to control (2.9±0.2) after 90 days. However, there was no statistical significance (P0.05) in RNA/DNA ratio after the DMP (F1, 20=2.4 P=0.15n=21) treatment

Cosmological Implications of Unimodular Gravity

We consider a model of gravity and matter fields which is invariant only under unimodular general coordinate transformations (GCT). The determinant of the metric is treated as a separate field which transforms as a scalar under unimodular GCT. Furthermore we also demand that the theory is invariant under a new global symmetry which we call generalized conformal invariance. We study the cosmological implications of the resulting theory. We show that this theory gives a fit to the high-z supernova data which is identical to the standard Big Bang model. Hence we require some other cosmological observations to test the validity of this model. We also consider some models which do not obey the generalized conformal invariance. In these models we can fit the supernova data without introducing the standard cosmological constant term. Furthermore these models introduce only one dark component and hence solve the coincidence problem of dark matter and dark energy.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, major revisions, substantial changes in analysis, results and conclusion

A Heart Disease Prediction Model using Decision Tree

Abstract-I

Learning best-practices in journalology: Course description and attendee insights into the inaugural EQUATOR Canada Publication School

Background and purpose Dissemination of research results is a key component of the research continuum and is commonly achieved through publication in peer-reviewed academic journals. However, issues of poor quality reporting in the research literature are well documented. A lack of formal training in journalology (i.e., publication science) may contribute to this problem. To help address this gap in training, the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Canada Publication School was developed and facilitated by internationally-renowned faculty to train researchers and clinicians in reporting and publication best practices. This article describes the structure of the inaugural course and provides an overview of attendee evaluations and perspectives. Key highlights Attendees perceived the content of this two-day intensive course as highly informative. They noted that the course helped them learn skills that were relevant to academic publishing (e.g., using reporting guidelines in all phases of the research process; using scholarly metrics beyond the journal impact factor; open-access publication models; and engaging patients in the research process). The course provided an opportunity for researchers to share their challenges faced during the publication process and to learn skills for improving reproducibility, completeness, transparency, and dissemination of research results. There was some suggestion that this type of course should be offered and integrated into formal training and course curricula. Implications In light of the importance of academic publishing in the scientific process, there is a need to train and prepare researchers with skills in Journalology. The EQUATOR Canada Publication School provides an example of a successful program that addressed the needs of researchers across career trajectories and provided them with resources to be successful in the publication process. This approach can be used, modified, and/or adapted by curriculum developers interested in designing similar programs, and could be incorporated into academic and clinical research training programs

Prevalence of sensory impairments in home care and long-term care using interRAI data from across Canada

Background In the general population, sensory impairments increase markedly with age in adults over 60 years of age. We estimated the prevalence of hearing loss only (HL), vision loss only (VL), and a combined impairment (i.e., dual sensory loss or DSL) in Canadians receiving home care (HC) or long-term care (LTC). Methods Annual cross-sectional analyses were conducted using data collected with one of two interRAI assessments, one used for the HC setting (n = 2,667,199), and one for LTC (n = 1,538,691). Items in the assessments were used to measure three mutually exclusive outcomes: prevalence of VL only, HL only, or DSL. Trends over time for each outcome were examined using the Cochran-Armitage trend test. A negative binomial model was used to quantify the trends over time for each outcome while adjusting for age, sex and province. Results In HC, there was a significant trend in the rate for all three outcomes (p \u3c 0.001), with a small increase (roughly 1%) each year. In HC, HL was the most prevalent sensory loss, with a rate of roughly 25% to 29%, while in LTC, DSL was the most prevalent impairment, at roughly 25% across multiple years of data. In both settings, roughly 60% of the sample was female. Males in both HC and LTC had a higher prevalence of HL compared to females, but the differences were very small (no more than 2% in any given year). The prevalence of HL differed by province after adjusting for year, age and sex. Compared to Ontario, Yukon Territory had a 26% higher rate of HL in HC (relative rate [RR] = 1.26; 95% confidence interval [CI]:1.11, 1.43), but LTC residents in Newfoundland and Labrador had a significantly lower rate of HL (RR: 0.57; CI: 0.43, 0.76).When combined, approximately 60% of LTC residents, or HC clients, had at least one sensory impairment. Conclusions Sensory impairments are highly prevalent in both HC and LTC, with small sex-related differences and some variation across Canadian provinces. The interRAI assessments provide clinicians with valuable information to inform care planning and can also be used to estimate the prevalence of these impairments in specific population sub-groups

Evaluation of RANS-DEM and LES-DEM Methods in OpenFOAM for Simulation of Particle-Laden Turbulent Flows

CFD-DEM modelling of particle-laden turbulent flow is challenging in terms of the required and obtained CFD resolution, heavy DEM computations, and the limitations of the method. Here, we assess the efficiency of a particle-tracking solver in OpenFOAM with RANS-DEM and LES-DEM approaches under the unresolved CFD-DEM framework. Furthermore, we investigate aspects of the unresolved CFD-DEM method with regard to the coupling regime, particle boundary condition and turbulence modelling. Applying one-way and two-way coupling to our RANS-DEM simulations demonstrates that it is sufficient to include one-way coupling when the particle concentration is small (O ~ 10−5). Moreover, our study suggests an approach to estimate the particle boundary condition for cases when data is unavailable. In contrast to what has been previously reported for the adopted case, our RANS-DEM results demonstrate that simple dispersion models considerably underpredict particle dispersion and previously observed reasonable particle dispersion were due to an error in the numerical setup rather than the used dispersion model claiming to include turbulence effects on particle trajectories. LES-DEM may restrict extreme mesh refinement, and, under such scenarios, dynamic LES turbulence models seem to overcome the poor performance of static LES turbulence models. Sub-grade scale effects cannot be neglected when using coarse mesh resolution in LES-DEM and must be recovered with efficient modelling approaches to predict accurate particle dispersion