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This paper studies the technical characteristics of a Unique Health Identifier (UHID) in Indian and global context while also dwells upon the usage of Aadhaar has a Unique Health Identifier in India. Specifically, we highlight the major properties of a Unique Identifier (UID) transitioning into a Unique Health Identifier and study the advantages and disadvantages of using them and limit our scope to the technical aspects of these identifiers. Further, we study and discuss National Identification Numbers/UIDs of various countries along with an in-depth policy level and feature level study of UHID in India and applicability of Aadhaar for the same.

Machine learning has proven its ability in health care as an assisting technology for health care providers either by saving precious time or timely alerts or vitals monitoring. However, their application in real world is limited by availability of data. In this paper, we show that simple machine learning algorithms especially neural networks, if designed carefully, are extremely effective even with limited amount of data. Specifically with exhaustive experiments on standard Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology database (MNIST) dataset, we analyse the impact of various parameters for effective performance. Further, on a custom data set collected at a tertiary care hospital for hypertension analysis, we apply these design considerations to achieve better performance as compared to competitive baselines. On a real-world dataset of only a few hundred patients, we show the effectiveness of these design choices and report an accuracy of 75% in determining whether a patient suffers from hypertension.

Mother child tracking system(MCTS) is an information system for tracking maternal and child health beneficiaries in Indias public health system, and improving service delivery planning and outcomes. Auxiliary nurse midwife(ANM) has broad spectrum of responsibilities to play in under National health mission. In the present study the workload of ANM was estimated using standard methodology WISN(Workload indicators of staffing needs) given by WHO. Quantitative research approach with time-motion research design was chosen for the study. Workload was estimated in 21 civil dispensaries of Chandigarh, India. The workload was found to be high in 9 dispensaries. It was very high in 4 dispensaries where ANMs spent their total annual working time in doing activities under MCTS and they are left with no time for doing activities under other national health programs. &nbsp

The obstetric quality of recovery scoring tool (ObsQoR-11) was developed and validated in the United Kingdom for use after elective and emergency caesarean delivery. Quality of recovery scoring tools validated in one country may not be valid in other countries with significant cultural, socio-economic and linguistic variations. The aim of the current study was to validate a Hindi version of the ObsQoR-11.In this prospective observational study, 100 parturients who underwent elective caesarean delivery in a tertiary care obstetric referral university hospital in North India were asked to complete a Hindi version of the ObsQoR-11 scoring tool 24 h after surgery. The performance of the Hindi version of ObsQoR-11 was assessed using measures of validity, reliability, and feasibility.The Hindi version of ObsQoR-11 correlated moderately with the global health visual analogue scale (r=0.45, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.59; P 0.0001) and discriminated well between good and poor recovery (mean (SD) score 84.6 (9.4) vs 75.0 (11.2); P 0.0001). The reliability and internal consistency were moderate (Cronbach's alpha=0.66; Spearman-Brown Prophesy Reliability estimate=0.57) with good repeatability (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.85, 95% CI 0.69 to 0.93; P 0.0001) and no floor or ceiling effects. All parturients completed the questionnaire in a (median (IQR) time of completion of 3 (1.5 - 5.5) min).The Hindi version of the ObsQoR-11 questionnaire is a promising scoring tool to evaluate quality of recovery after elective caesarean delivery. Further research is needed to evaluate the Hindi tool in other institutions in India as well as in other languages.

Phospholipases D (PLDs) are phospholipid hydrolyzing enzymes and crucial components of lipid signaling in plants. PLDs are implicated in stress responses in different plants however, characterization of PLDs in chickpea is missing. Here, we identify 13 PLD genes in the chickpea genome. PLD family could be divided into α, β, δ, e and ζ isoforms based on sequence and structure. Protein remodeling described that chickpea PLDs are composed of defined arrangements of α-helix, β-sheets and short loops. Phylogenetic analysis suggested evolutionary conservation of chickpea PLD family with dicots. In-planta subcellular localization showed the plasma membrane localization of chickpea PLDs. All PLD promoters had hormone and stress related cis-regulatory elements, which suggested overlapping function of PLDs in hormone and abiotic stress signaling. The qRT-PCR expression analysis revealed that most PLD genes are differentially expressed in multiple abiotic stresses (drought, salt and cold stress). Moreover, several PLD genes had overlapping expression in abiotic stress and ABA and JA treatment. These observations indicate the involvement of PLD gene family in cross-talk of phytohormone and abiotic stress signaling in chickpea. Thus, present study opens new avenues of utilizing PLD related information for understanding hormone-regulated abiotic stress signaling in legume crops.

In this paper, we confine over selves to obtain some results on fixed point theorems for Lebesgue integrable mapping satisfying b-(E.A.) property in b- metric spaces. We have given an example to support our results and also prove that the fixed point problem is well posed for the mappings.

The sessile nature of plants has made them extremely sensitive and flexible toward the constant flux of the surrounding environment, particularly light and dark. The light is perceived as a signal by specific receptors which further transduce the information through the signaling intermediates and effector proteins to modulate gene expression. Signal transduction induces changes in hormone levels that alters developmental, physiological and morphological processes. Importance of light for plants growth is well recognized, but a holistic understanding of key molecular and physiological changes governing plants development under dark is awaited. Here, we describe how darkness acts as a signal causing alteration in hormone levels and subsequent modulation of the gene regulatory network throughout plant life. The emphasis of this review is on dark mediated changes in plant hormones, regulation of signaling complex COP/DET/FUS and the transcription factors PIFs which affects developmental events such as apical hook development, elongated hypocotyls, photoperiodic flowering, shortened roots, and plastid development. Furthermore, the role of darkness in shade avoidance and senescence is discussed.

Fingerprinting codes are used to protect copyright issues of digital media. The digital media before distribution is embedded with fingerprinting codes. Each intended recipient has a unique fingerprinting code inserted in digital media. If any user makes illegal copies of distribution, then these fingerprinting codes can be considered to identify the culprit user. The threat to fingerprinting codes comes from collusion attacks. Collusion attacks are attacks where, group of users having different finger printing codes of the same content collude together collectively to launch attack against fingerprinting code. Thus collusion attacks are real challenge to fingerprinting codes and thus they pose a challenge to protect the copy right of the digital media. This paper evaluates performance of Boneh-Shaw fingerprinting codes by mounting Minority Value Collusion attacks.

Background: Pressure ulcer (PU) is one of the common, neglected and avoidable complications among bedridden patients. Despite the potential to reduce PU incidence, the evidence on the effect of patient/caregiver education is low. This pragmatic randomized controlled trial (CTRI/2011/07/001862) compared the impact of two structured educational interventions to patients and caregivers on prevention of PU in immobile orthopaedic patients. Methodology: Ninety-two orthopedically immobile patients (Braden score ≤12 or stage I PU) and their caregivers were (block) randomized into two equal groups. One group was offered Prevention Package 1 (PP1), i.e., self-instruction manual (SIM), one to one training and counselling on PU care practices. The second group (PP2) was given SIM only. Patients were followed equally at the hospital and home after discharge. Intention to treat analysis was conducted. Results: The cumulative incidence of PU was 8.7% in PP1 and 21.7% in PP2 for the entire study period. PU incidence rate in PP1 and PP2 was 0.9 and 2.41 per 1000 person-days, respectively. Incidence rate ratio was 2.67 (95% CI: 0.89, 8.02, p-0.04). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves of PP1 and PP2 were statistically significantly different (p-0.043). PP1 also showed statistically significant improvement in knowledge on the prevention and management of PU compared to PP2 at post-intervention (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Individualized, structured education of patients and caregiver is effective in improving the knowledge and preventing the PU in immobile orthopaedic patients. A comprehensive approach involving hospital administrators, health care professionals, patients and caregivers may be further researched upon for a sustainable reduction in PU.

Health systems in low- and middle-income countries like India continue to struggle with the overwhelming burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) alongside the coexistence of multiple medical conditions. Such cases are challenging to diagnose and treat, especially in places where electronic health records are not readily available. In such contexts, using colour coding system for recording health conditions may ensure optimal documentation, effective patient-provider communication, adherence to treatment and follow up, quality of health services, and an overall improvement in health systems performance for NCDs. Colour coding is a common tool used in several service industries including public health programmes locally and globally. Despite such promising aspects, colour coding is not widely used for NCDs in health services organizations, which necessitates a translation of evidence from other sectors and the adoption of innovative and evidence-based approaches to promote the use of colour coding for better addressing NCD epidemic.

Management of high patient loads at tertiary hospitals presents a significant challenge in streamlining healthcare service delivery. Patients often need to queue up at various service areas in hospitals such as at registration, laboratory test and bill payment counters. Queue Management Systems (QMS) present a viable solution for patient management in such scenarios. However, conventional QMS are not generic by design, depend on hardware components or do not provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution that caters to the complete patient workflow. This paper presents a mobile-augmented smart queue management system that can be easily configured with an operational Hospital Management Information System (HMIS). It provides multiple interfaces for token generation and consumption on mobile devices integrated with hospital service counters, while using smart algorithms for token generation and allocation. The solution is comprehensive as that it caters to streamlined queue management across multiple hospital service areas using a single token for a patient, which improves patient experience and also helps the hospital administration track and optimize key performance metrics. We present the architectural and operational design of this system, along with an illustration of the use of this system in tracking productivity of service counter operators in a pilot implementation.

This paper introduces a novel approach for dengue fever classification based on online learning paradigms. The proposed approach is suitable for practical implementation as it enables learning using only a few training samples. With time, the proposed approach is capable of learning incrementally from the data collected without need for retraining the model or redeployment of the prediction engine. Additionally, we also provide a comprehensive evaluation of machine learning methods for prediction of dengue fever. The input to the proposed pipeline comprises of recorded patient symptoms and diagnostic investigations. Offline classifier models have been employed to obtain baseline scores to establish that the feature set is optimal for classification of dengue. The primary benefit of the online detection model presented in the paper is that it has been established to effectively identify patients with high likelihood of dengue disease, and experiments on scalability in terms of number of training and test samples validate the use of the proposed model.

The scopoletin one of the major bioactive components of Convolvulus prostratus Forssk known to have a role in acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, memory enhancer, antimicrobial, antioxidative etc. properties are investigated in the present study. The concentration of scopoletin in C. prostratus is investigated in leaf, stem and root at different growth stages of plant development viz., 30, 45, 60 and 90 days after sowing (DAS). A highly sensitive LC-MS method was developed to quantify the scopoletin even at low concentration with LOD and LOQ of 8 and 24 ng/ml, respectively. The highest quantity of scopoletin was recorded in stem (732 μg/g dry weight) and leaf (650 μg/g dry weight) collected 90 DAS whereas lowest was recorded at 45 DAS in leaf (90.00 μg/g dry weight) and Stem (110 μg/g dry weight). Based on the highest and lowest concentration of scopoletin in stem and root tissues at 45 and 90 DAS were selected for transcriptome study. Differential gene expression analysis revealed the differential expression of genes involved in scopoletin biosynthesis. Seven genes viz., phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), 4-coumarate CoA ligase (4CL), trans-cinnamate 4-monooxygenase (TCM), shikimate O- hydroxycinnamoyl transferase (C3'H), 5-O-4-coumaroyl-D-quinate 3'-monooxygenase (HCT), caffeoyl-CoA-O-methyltransferase (CCoAOMT) and feruloyl-CoA 6'-hydroxylase (F6'H) were identified in the phenyl propanoid pathway. Expression of the novel enzyme F6'H showed down regulation in both tissues at 45 DAS. Real-time PCR showed a correlation with the expression of this F6'H genes with the accumulation of scopoletin at 90 DAS. This indicated that the growth stage of plant and expression of F6'H control the scopoletin accumulation in Convolvulus. The results of present investigation may useful in pharmaceutical, drug and cosmetic industries that the harvesting of plant part especially stem of C.prostratus at 90 DAS to get maximum quantity of scopoletin. Also, the novel gene F6'H need to be further characterized to understand its expression dynamics so that scopoletin content can be increase at the highest.

Adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) is one of the most important molecules in living cells. ATP is majorly produced in the mitochondria by the processes of oxidative phosphorylation by the enzyme ATP synthase. extracellular ATP (eATP) is essential for several crucial physiological processes such as cell growth and cell death, neurotransmission, muscle contraction and immune response in animals. The visualization of eATP in the extracellular matrix of the different tissues has been a challenging task. The lack of a suitable technique for detection of eATP is a major hindrance in assessing the dose-dependent effect of eATP in vivo. The probable role of ectoapyrases in plant responses, such as growth and nodulation, can be established by further studies that can prove the correlation of polar auxin transport with the depleted eATP levels due to ectoapyrase activity. Mechanical stress is known to increase eATP levels in Arabidopsis seedlings. Touch, osmotic stress and hypertonic stress are able to induce ATP release to a significant extent.

INTRODUCTION: We know that risk communication is equally important as risk identification, which is usually not communicated properly to the patients and resulting in poor outcomes, especially in hypertensive patients. OBJECTIVE: Our study objective was to evolve and test a colour coded client segmentation based public health approach to educate the community to deal with problem of hypertension. METHODOLOGY: This cross-sectional pilot study was done in March 2020 among purposively approached in a primary health centre to 100 people aged above 18 years, among them 41 gave written consent for the study and their demographic information was noted. They were given colour coded cards as per the current blood pressure level and previous history of hypertension. On each colour coded card, specific advice was written for that category. For all the participants, blood pressure and treatment seeking behaviour was noted. For hypertensive patients, adherence to medication and non-pharmacological measures was noted. RESULTS: Mean age of the participants was 46.5 ± 13.06 years. Mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) of the participants were 135 ± 16.85 mm Hg and 86 ± 11.42 mm Hg, respectively. Among the participants, 10 (24.39%) had a known history of hypertension. Among them, as per the blood pressure levels measured on the day of the study 50% (5) had their blood pressure levels under control. Interestingly 16 (39%) participants were found hypertensive incidentally. DISCUSSION: It is evident from the studies that colour coded approach is used in multiple ways, in multiple settings, for multiple diseases. To our knowledge, little focus has been given for hypertensive disorders in the community level. We merely bother about making their risk profiling, even in the digital age. Sometimes physicians in emergency become puzzled whenever patients collapsed in front of them and we missed the “Golden Hour” for the treatment by searching patients' medical details. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The above problem can be solved by risk profiling of chronic patients by colour coded OPD/Health cards.

The main purpose behind this study is to compare the existing ERP framework modules in five selected private universities of Punjab region. In this, researcher want to highlight & differentiate different Modules of ERP whether it is beneficial for the Institution or not. Also explore the usage of various modules by staff & students in selected private Universities. For finding the reviews about the study researcher collected empirical data through a structured questionnaire from 282 respondents of 5 private Universities of Punjabe Convenience sampling method is used for shortlisting the respondent's responses. Through the detailed analysis results shows that various factors reflected in modules & different universities those are essential for the growth of the Institution. The motivation behind this paper is to improve the discussion on the significance of ERP frameworks particularly in educational Institutions setting by concentrating on the qualities for the most part credited to ERP and study empirically shows there is no significance comparison between the universities of ERP Implementation. It concludes that the Academics/Operations Modules most prefers in all Private universities and there is no significance difference among the ERP modules in selected five Private Universities in Punjab. At last, the paper attempts to reveal insight into ERP utilitarian and non-Functional necessities in the advanced education setting. The findings may help to Universities & ERP vendors to modify and update ERP modules as per user requirement & process to ensure successful Implementation.

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have shown promising success in optimizing health-care processes and improvising health services research and practice leading to better health outcomes. However, the role of public health ethics in the era of AI is not widely evaluated. This article aims to describe the responsible approach to AI design, development, and use from a public health perspective. This responsible approach should focus on the collective well-being of humankind and incorporate ethical principles and societal values. Such approaches are important because AI concerns and impacts the health and well-being of all of us collectively. Rather than limiting such discourses at the individual level, ethical considerations regarding AI systems should be analyzed enlarge, considering the complex socio-technological reality around the world.

Objective: The purpose of present research was to develop and statistically optimize nitrendipine nanoemulsion gel for transdermal delivery using box-behnken statistical design.Method: The ...

The performance of heuristic algorithms highly depends on the parameter values of the algorithms. Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is a newly developed heuristic algorithm which has strategy parameter a that decreases linearly from 2 to 0 as iteration increases. In this paper, two algorithms, modified whale optimization algorithm-1 (MWOA-1) and modified whale optimization algorithm-2 (MWOA-2), have been proposed based on the variation of the strategy parameter a. The experiments are performed on a set of 23 benchmark problems. Results are compared with original WOA, gravitational search algorithm and grasshopper optimization algorithm. Based on the analysis of results, it is concluded that the overall performance of MWOA-1 and MWOA-2 is better than others on scalable unimodal function with dim = 30, scalable multimodal functions with dim = 30 and low-dimensional multimodal functions.

Based on first-principle calculations, we have systematically studied the spin dependent structural, electronic, magnetic and optical properties of CrS2 monolayer and nanoribbons (zigzag and armchair). The observed positive phonon frequencies of CrS2 monolayer, ensures the structural stability of the material. The computed binding energy calculations reveal that CrS2 monolayer is more stable than CrS2 zigzag which is further more stable than CrS2 armchair. Also we found that as we go from monolayer (2D) to nanoribbons (1D) electronic band gap reduced and the system changes its behaviour from non-magnetic (monolayer) to magnetic (nanoribbon). CrS2 is one of the meterial in TMD’s which shows different behaviour in armchair and zigzag nanoribbons with spin up and down. From optical properties we conclude that CrS2 based photodetector can be fabricate to detect light in the visible range (1.59-3.26 eV).

Accumulation of toxic substances in biosphere negatively affects the structure and function of natural ecosystem. With progress in technology, diverse array of pollutants are rapidly being added to the atmosphere by mankind without understanding their fate in nature. Therefore, it becomes essential to analyze the impact of these pollutants on organisms. It is important to understand the effect of these pollutants on plants from where it is transferred to next members of food chain ultimately affecting the mankind. Various physiological and biochemical processes such as gaseous exchange, photosynthesis, respiration, and protein synthesis are known to be affected by air pollutants. Plants respond to these abiotic stress situations by activating the stress signals leading to various physiological, genetic, and metabolic changes. This chapter highlights the effect of variety of air pollutants on plant health and activation of antioxidant system as a defense mechanism.

The application of data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques in the field of diagnostics is not a new concept, and these techniques have been very successfully applied in a variety of applications, especially in dermatology and cancer research. But, in the case of medical problems that involve tests resulting in true or false (binary classification), the data generally has a class imbalance with samples majorly belonging to one class (ex: a patient undergoes a regular test and the results are false). Such disparity in data causes problems when trying to model predictive systems on the data. In critical applications like diagnostics, this class imbalance cannot be overlooked and must be given extra attention. In our research, we depict how we can handle this class imbalance through neural networks using a discriminative model and contrastive loss using a Siamese neural network structure. Such a model does not work on a probability-based approach to classify samples into labels. Instead it uses a distance-based approach to differentiate between samples classified under different labels. The code is available at https://tinyurl.com/DiscriminativeCHD/

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of physiotherapeutic intervention to improve the deviated balance of pregnant women.A total of 174 subjects were included in the study out of which 62 had postural deviation. They were divided into three groups, two intervention groups and one control group. The target population consisted of women in the antenatal stage, randomly selected from Obstetrics and Gynecology OPD, PGIMER, Chandigarh. The study was conducted over a period of 3 years (2014-2017). They were advised exercises, postural correction, regular walking, and hot water fomentation. Six follow-ups were taken into consideration throughout the pregnancy and postnatal stage.The impact of the intervention package on both ante-natal and postnatal women with balance problems showed significant improvement.Postural deviations, pain, heaviness in the lower limb, incontinence, breathlessness, etc., are common complaints during and after pregnancy. The problem starts early in pregnancy and increased over time and may persist throughout life if treatment does not start early in the pregnancy. This intervention can be practiced in primary care setting after giving proper training to the health care workers by experienced physiotherapists.

Virtual conferences are environment-friendly alternatives to physical conferences. COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of virtual conferences. However, they are not without their share of impact on the environment. We assessed the carbon emissions (CE) of a three day national public health conference with 1474 attendees held in virtual mode and the potential CE saved compared to the physical mode. The CE of the virtual conference were estimated to be 6.44 Metric Tonne (MT) carbon dioxide (CO2) Equivalent (Eq). Potential CE that would have resulted from the physical mode of the conference were 355.85 MT CO2 Eq which is 55 times higher than the virtual mode. The live video streaming of the proceedings was the highest contributor to the virtual conference’s overall CE (81.5%). A digitally sober conference would have emitted 1.27 MT CO2 Eq, translating to a CE reduction of 80.3% from the estimated virtual conference emission. Academic conferences should strive to become carbon neutral by adopting the virtual mode of conferencing, and within that, digital sobriety should be the policy of action. Policies to motivate the adoption of virtual conferencing and digital sobriety need to be undertaken at the organizational and individual levels.

Objective India is one of the countries with high maternal mortality ratio. Home deliveries persist despite various initiatives, including cash incentives, to promote hospital birth. This study aims to compare the profile of women who deliver at home and those who deliver at institutions with a special focus on migration status. Methods A list of all women who delivered between January to December 2012 was obtained from the antenatal register of a polyclinic in Chandigarh, India. An unmatched case control study design was used to compare the profile of women who delivered at home and women who delivered in an institution. Results Of 219 women studied, 57 (26%) had delivered at home. Our study identified being a migrant, having lower family income, living in slums, illiteracy of mother, early age at marriage, higher parity and no previous childbirth in an institution as factors favoring home delivery. Ninety three percent of home deliveries were among women who had migrated into Chandigarh from other states. The significant association between migration status and home delivery (Odds ratio (OR) = 3.262, p = 0.026) ceased to exist after adjusting for education (OR = 1.699, p = 0.367) and income (OR = 2.277, p = 0.152). Conclusion and clinical implication Most home deliveries had occurred among migrant women. Health-related choices of the migrants apparently reflect the influence of other social determinants of health like education and income. Mainstreaming of the health efforts addressing the complex web of social determinants intertwined with the process of migration is the need of the hour.

Internet of Things (IoT) applications and platforms are becoming increasingly prevalent. Alongside this growth of smart devices comes added costs for deployment, maintenance, and the need to manage power consumption so as to reduce recurrent costs of replacing batteries. To alleviate recurrent battery replacement and maintenance, we propose a novel battery-free, stick-on capacitive energy harvester that harvests the stray electric field generated around AC power lines (110 V/230 V) without an ohmic connection to earth ground reference, thereby obviating the need for cumbersome scraping of paint on concrete walls or digging a earth ground plate. Furthermore, our harvester does not require any appliance or load to be operating on the power line and can continuously harvest power after deployment. In effect, end-users are expected to simply stick the proposed harvester onto any existing power-line cord in order to power a sensing platform. Our controlled lab measurements and real-world deployments demonstrate that our device can harvest 270.6 μJ of energy from a 14 cm long interface in 12 min. We also demonstrate several applications, such as distributed temperature monitoring, appliance state monitoring, and environmental parameter logging for indoor farming.

Electrical grids need to embed smartness not just at the generation and distribution side but also at the consumption side. Specifically, in regard to office buildings, information technology (IT) loads such as desktops and printers, operating in non-working hours, can lead to significant energy wastage. Detailed understanding and quantification of this wastage can lead to motivational insights for reduction in this wastage. However, it is impractical to monitor such a large number of loads individually. In this paper, we propose a single point smart sensor to detect and track the operation of these IT appliances. Existing methods, based on state-of-the art sensors, have been ineffective at detecting IT loads that have time-varying power consumption patterns. Our proposed sensor detects IT loads using their common mode electromagnetic emissions (CM EMI) injected on the grid. The sensor is low cost, portable, and built using commercial off-the-shelf components. We use a nearest neighbor-based classification algorithm on the statistical features extracted from histograms of the measured CM EMI. Experimental evaluations carried out with multiple instances of commonly found IT appliances display up to 87% detection accuracy, thus validating the real world applicability of our proposed system.

Introduction: Polycystic ovarian syndrome affects 4% to 23% women, worldwide. Obesity, insulin resistance and uncontrolled eating are usually reported in PCOS. However, there is paucity of data describing associations between eating disorder and PCOS. Aim: To compare the anthropometric profile and eating behavior polycystic ovarian syndrome cases with those of healthy age-matched women. Method: Eighty-five PCOS cases and 85 controls were selected for the study from Gyne OPD of PGIMER, Chandigarh. Anthropometric assessments were performed on the cases and controls. Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21) was used for determining the eating behavior. In addition, the frequency of eating processed food from outside was recorded. Results: The average weight of the cases and controls was 65.16 kg and 57.07 kg, respectively. The average frequency of eating processed food in a month was 15 in cases and 4.41 among controls. The average raw score of uncontrolled eating was 23.26 (cases) in comparison to 18.97 (controls). Average raw scores of emotional eating were 12.67 in cases and 10.76 in controls. The cognitive restraint average raw scores were 11.34 (cases) and 13.62 (controls). The cases had higher BMI than the controls. Monthly consumption of processed food was three times higher than the controls in cases. Uncontrolled eating and emotional eating scores were significantly higher in cases. Conclusion: More of PCOS cases were overweight/ obese with higher BMI, and higher emotional eating and uncontrolled eating scores in comparison to the healthy controls.

The problem of reconstruction of 3D curves and surfaces is modelled as a nonlinear optimization problem in which the objective function to be minimized is the error function between given data poin...

AP2C1 dephosphorylates CIPK9 to negatively regulate its function in controlling root growth and seedling development under low-K+ conditions in Arabidopsis., Potassium (K+) is a major macronutrient required for plant growth. An adaptive mechanism to low-K+ conditions involves activation of the Ca2+ signaling network that consists of calcineurin B-like proteins (CBLs) and CBL-interacting kinases (CIPKs). The CBL-interacting protein kinase 9 (CIPK9) has previously been implicated in low-K+ responses in Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we report a protein phosphatase 2C (PP2C), AP2C1, that interacts with CIPK9. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC), and co-localization analyses revealed that CIPK9 and AP2C1 interact in the cytoplasm. AP2C1 dephosphorylates the auto-phosphorylated form of CIPK9 in vitro, presenting a regulatory mechanism for CIPK9 function. Furthermore, genetic and molecular analyses revealed that ap2c1 null mutants (ap2c1-1 and ap2c1-2) are tolerant to low-K+ conditions, retain higher K+ content, and show higher expression of K+-deficiency related genes contrary to cipk9 mutants (cipk9-1 and cipk9-2). In contrast, transgenic plants overexpressing AP2C1 were sensitive to low-K+ conditions. Thus, this study shows that AP2C1 and CIPK9 interact to regulate K+-deficiency responses in Arabidopsis. CIPK9 functions as positive regulator whereas AP2C1 acts as a negative regulator of Arabidopsis root growth and seedling development under low-K+ conditions.

In the present study, we report perhaps for the first time the use of novel varieties of Brassica oleracea var. botrytis and Raphanus sativus as potential bioreductant, to synthesize highly stable silver nanoparticles (AgNPs, no aggregation observed for six months), which is a significant finding as plant extract-directed AgNPs are intrinsically unstable and tend to aggregate. The reduction of Ag+ to Ag0 nanostructures was confirmed using UVVis spectroscopy showing SPR spectra at 400–435 nm. Nanosight and transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis showed monodisperse spherical AgNPs (4–18 nm). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis revealed that the polyphenolics and other secondary metabolites including glucosinolates in the aqueous extracts may act as reducing/capping agent for the nanoparticle synthesis. X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed the face centered cubic crystalline (fcc) structure of AgNPs. Controlled synthesis of AgNPs was achieved by varying experimental parameters (AgNO3 concentration, extract volume, pH and temperature). These AgNPs exhibited strong antibacterial activity at significantly lower concentration (5 ppm) against both Gram negative (Escherichia coli, Myroides, Psuedomonas aeruginosa) and Gram positive (Kocuria and Promicromonospora) bacteria. In the present study, the green AgNPs showed (10–30%) better antimicrobial efficacy than chemical AgNPs and AgNPs from other Brassicaceae members. These green AgNPs may have promising application in nano-drug formulation to combat bacterial infections, in future.

Herein, we explore the effect of graphene concentration on performance of poly [2-methoxy-5-2-ethylhexoxy-p-phenylene vinylene] (MEH:PPV)/graphene nanocomposite based devices. The surface morphology of the nanocomposites analyzed through emission scanning electron microscopy suggest that increase in graphene concentration results in the formation of aggregation. Optical and structural properties of the nanocomposites examined through UV–Vis absorption and Raman spectra revealed that the addition of graphene has no affect on the conjugation length and structure of the MEH:PPV. The electrical characteristics of devices have been investigated by I–V measurement under dark and illumination at room temperature. The devices show increase in the current value and reduction on turn-on voltage with increase in the graphene concentration up to 5 wt%. However, increase in graphene concentration above 5 wt% leads to the performance degradation of the devices. Moreover, charge transport mechanisms of the devices have been explained through Ohmic behavior at lower voltages and trap charge limited conduction at higher voltages.

For the first time, Negative Differential Resistance (NDR) is reported in purely polymeric systems. A tri-layer thin film system of PEDOT:PSS, P3HT and PCBM was prepared using spin coating method on ITO substrates and Al contact was deposited on other side using thermal vacuum evaporation. Current –Voltage (I-V) measurements were carried out at room temperature where NDR behaviour was observed which was repeatable only qualitatively for as-prepared device. On annealing at 40 °C for 2 h, the NDR became stable however at the cost of peak broadening and was even repeatable quantitatively within reasonable percentage of errors. On further annealing at higher temperatures (60° & 80° C), the NDR disappeared most likely due to isolated networks and disconnected domains of P3HT/PCBM. Simple construction, robust NDR and large current shown by these devices make them potential candidate for the development of organic memory elements.