28 research outputs found
A cross sectional study to estimate prevalence of obesity and its risk factors in adolescent school children in Western Maharashtra, India
No full textBackground: There is an increase in prevalence of childhood obesity and its chronic health effects especially in developing countries like India in last 2-3 decades. This study is small effort to know prevalence and risk factors causing obesity. Aim of the study was to estimate prevalence of obesity and its risk factors in school students of age group 11 to 16 years.Methods: About 207 adolescent school children from selected school were enrolled in the study. Research tool comprised of questions about demographic characteristics, daily physical activity, frequency of having junk food intake etc. Height and weight were measured on calibrated scales. For statistical analysis MS Excel and SPSS 16 were used.Results: Among participants 58.9% were boys. 66.7% students were in the 13 to 14 years of age group. As per body mass index, 46.9% children were underweight and 8.7% were obese. 77.3% participants were eating junk food more than once in a week.Conclusions: Health education on dietary habits and physical activity is needed for adolescent children to prevent development of obesity and complications related to it
Tajik Labour Migrants and their Remittances: Is Tajik Migration Pro-Poor?
No full textFor the four years since 2006, Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, has led the world in the receipt of foreign remittance as a proportion of GDP. Needless to say, key reasons for this are the low income levels in Tajikistan and the country's special relationship with Russia, which is enjoying rapid economic growth. Yet while interest in the relationship between migration and foreign remittance has existed for a long time, not many studies have looked at this region. This paper used household survey forms from two points in time to profile households in Tajikistan and international labour migration by Tajiks, and examined the relationship between household income levels in Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet republics, and foreign remittance being received from international labour migrants and the likelihood of migrants being supplied. It found no correlation between household income levels and amounts of money received from abroad, which suggests that altruistic models of the relationship between migration and remittance do not apply. Moreover, it also found that households with high incomes are more likely to supply migrants, indicating that international labour migration from Tajikistan may not be conductive to reducing poverty in that country.
Rhynchosia aurea Candolle 1825
No full textRhynchosia aurea (Willdenow 1803: 218) Candolle (1825: 386). ≡ Glycine aurea Willdenow (1803: 218) ≡ Nomismia aurea (Willdenow) Wight & Arnott (1834: 237) Lectotype (designated here):— INDIA, Tamil Nadu, Tranquebar s.d., J.P. Rottler s.n. (JE barcode JE00002174 [digital image!]; isolectotype S barcode S12-9624 [digital image!]. Notes: — Willdenow (1803) while describing the Glycine aurea, did not provide any detail about collection number and herbarium where the specimens are housed, nor did Candolle (1825). The only clue available is that the specimens were collected by Rottler and place of collection was Tranquebar (Rottler 1803; Matthew 1993). We traced two specimens collected by Rottler at JE and S which qualify as syntypes, according to Art. 9.6 (Turland et al. 2018). The specimen at JE bears a label with annotation Hedysarum aureum Koenig, Nomismia aurea Wight & Arnott, collector name i.e. Rottler and place of collection i.e. Tranquebar. On the other hand the specimen housed at S also bears label with same annotation and collector name but lacking place of collection, instead of that mentioned Ind. Orient. The best preserved specimen, i.e. JE00002774 is designated here as the lectotype (Fig. 1) while S12-9624 becomes isolectotype. There seems clear disagreement among different world plant name databases (Roskov et al. 2020; IPNI 2021; POWO 2021; Tropicos 2021; The Plant List 2013) regarding the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea. Such errors are common with most of the Rottler’s and Willdenow’s given names. Often the names validated by Willdenow (1803) were attributed to Rottler and vice versa, possibly because Rottler’s paper was published along with remarks given by Willdenow as footnotes to Rottler’s text. Most among these database (Plants of the World Online (POWO 2021), Catalogue of life (Roskov et al. 2020), The Plant List (2013) cite Willdenow as earlier author of the specific epithet aurea i.e. accepting Glycine aurea as the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea, which rationally should be adopted unanimously. Other sources such as International Plant Names Index (IPNI 2021) and Tropicos (2021) however cite Rottler as the earlier author, as such considering Hedysarum aureum Rottler (1803: 218) as the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea erroneously. Inorder to avoid this confusion one must be aware of the fact that Willdenow has either provided a slightly altered diagnoses for some of the new species described in the text by Rottler or sometimes contrasted a species described by Rottler and in all validated 21 names of the species (Daniel 1991). Glycine aurea was one among those 21 names validly published by Willdenow in Rottler’s paper and is therefore reasonably the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea, not Hedysarum aureum that was invalidly published by Rottler in his own paper of 1803 (Daniel 1991).Published as part of Mishra, Ajay K., Hurrah, Imtiyaz A., Dhole, Pankaj A. & Wagh, Vijay V., 2021, Lectotypification of Glycine aurea, the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea (Fabaceaee), pp. 62-64 in Phytotaxa 528 (1) on page 62, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.528.1.7, http://zenodo.org/record/576927
A Cross-Sectional Study to Assess Effects of Schoolbag Weight and Musculoskeletal Health Problems in Primary School Students of Kolhapur
No full textIntroduction: Musculoskeletal pain in school children is becoming new topic of health concern. Government recommendation of safe load limit of schoolbag is 10% of body weight. The study aimed to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal health problems in primary school students of Kolhapur.
Methodology: This school based cross sectional study included 886 primary students (age 6-10 years). Institutional Ethical Com- mittee Consent, consent from School Authorities and parents was taken before conducting the study. Author-assisted questionnaire and a digital weighing scale were used as tools of assessment. Analysis was done using SPSS software and results were consid- ered significant when p < 0.05.
Results: Of the 886 primary school students, 82.7% (n=826) carried schoolbags >10% body weight. 64% (n= 567) complained of mus- culoskeletal discomfort related to carrying their schoolbag.
Conclusions: Prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms in students from English medium schools and Marathi medium schools was 77.4% & 36.9% respectively; prevalence of musculoskeletal symp- toms is higher in CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Educa- tion)pattern schools (73%)than in SSC (Secondary School Certifi- cate) pattern schools (55%). The study provides practically feasible solutions to tackle the mus- culoskeletal health problems in primary school students and em- phasizes on securing ‘the health’ in a healthy childhood
Studies in viral population genetics and bioinformatics
No full textThis thesis consists of two studies pertaining to the evolution and genomic signatures of viruses. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that have a great impact on human, animal and plant health. The first study involves the human infecting Influenza A H5N1 viruses. H5N1 is an avian virus which occasionally infects humans, with a 50-60% mortality rate. Human-to-human transmission is limited, and most H5N1 infections are transmitted to humans from birds. Under such a transmission scheme, there can be a possibility of a biased transmission of H5N1 strains from birds to humans. Such a biased transmission could arise due to higher efficiency of some avian strains in infecting humans, an enhanced ability of the human immune response to clear some of the human-infecting avian strains, etc. We developed a novel strategy to identify such signatures and analyzed publicly available H5N1 hemagglutinin sequences from China, Egypt, and Indonesia. In each geographic region, it was found that human infecting strains arose from a subset of the avian viral pool characterized by geography specific mutations. These mutations lie in functionally important regions of hemagglutinin proteins involved in viral attachment to cells, immune response etc. After correcting for this transmission bias, an absence of further widespread bias was observed. This research also showed that vaccine evasion mutant viruses are unlikely to infect humans, a finding with significant implications for rational vaccine design. As a separate project, we developed a new method to detect novel capsid sequences. It is expected that a large part of the virosphere still remains uncharacterized. Viruses show remarkably high levels of sequence diversity. Hence, sequence similarity based methods have limited success in detection of novel viral sequences in metagenomic studies. However, in contrast to high sequence diversity, the capsid proteins from diverse families of icosahedral viruses show a conserved eight stranded beta barrel known as the ``Jelly-roll'' fold. Motivated by this structural conservation, we sought to classify such capsid protein sequences using a machine learning approach on alignment free features. The nature of the alignment free features suitable for the problem are first discussed. Using these alignment free features, a high-accuracy Support Vector Machine (SVM-Caps) was developed for classifying jelly-roll capsid proteins against other proteins. The predictive power of this classifier was compared to that of BLAST, a popular tool based on sequence similarity. SVM-Caps was found to have comparable but lower power to detect capsid sequences of known viral families, but significantly higher power in detection of capsid sequences from novel families. As an application of this method, the viral metagenomic data from the French Lake Bourget study were analyzed and many potential novel capsid sequences were found.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Kshitij Wag
Development of porous ceramic air bearings
No full textPorous air bearings enjoy some important advantages over conventional air
bearing types such as increased load carrying capacity, higher stiffness and
improved damping. However, these types of bearings have yet to find
widespread acceptance due to problems with obtaining materials with
consistent permeability, instability issues relating to the volume of gas trapped
at the bearing surface in the pores, and manufacturing the bearing without
altering the permeability.
Using a series of fine grades of alumina powder to minimise surface pore
volume it has been demonstrated that it is possible to consistently and
reproducibly manufacture porous bearings by injection moulding and slip
casting. The relationship between powder size, processing conditions, porosity,
mechanical properties and fluid flow characteristics were experimentally
determined. The temperature of processing and the green density were found
to be the controlling parameters in the resulting fluid flow properties for a
given powder size,
Test bearings were produced from the range of processing conditions
investigated. It was found that the fine powder size bearings were stable over
the entire range of test conditions irrespective of their initial manufacturing
route. The most important consideration for the bearing performance was the
quality of manufacture. The bearings were found to be sensitive to the flatness
of their working surface and quality of fit in their test holder.
The bearings were compared with published theories for load capacity and
stiffness. A reasonable agreement was found with load carrying capacity once a
correction for surface roughness was incorporated. Stiffness predictions
provided a useful tool for the analysis and prediction of properties such as
optimum values of permeability for a given geometry, if certain allowances are
made
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Bridging the 'gap‘ between migrants and the banking system: an innovative business model promoting financial integration, financial stability, and profitability
No full textThe thesis probes a specific area - the banking system and the business niche concerned with migrants' remittances - and considers the flows of these people and their money in today‘s global economy (over 3% of the world's population). It argues that the banking system has failed to understand the changing "paradigm" of the migrant market and thus has not updated its business plan or business model for this business segment in response. In failing to harness the liquidity of the migrant market, the author argues, the banking industry is missing out on a potentially profitable business segment that could create financial stability within the industry and the world's economies. Furthermore, by ignoring the "gap" that exists between the financial products on offer to the migrant sector and their needs in this respect in both the host and origin countries - providing a service at "both ends of the corridor" - the industry is also in danger of losing site of its commitment to social responsibility and the financial integration of migrants. At the heart of the argument for financial stability and financial integration is the proposition that there is a lack of communication among stakeholders, namely academic and financial institutions, governments, Diaspora associations and other decision makers
НАЛОГОВО-ДОЛГОВЫЕ СТРАТЕГИИ ФИСКАЛЬНОГО РЕГУЛИРОВАНИЯ ТРАНЗИТИВНОЙ ЭКОНОМИКИ
No full text Topic. In modern circumstances, it is especially the acute question of developing new priorities ensuring the dynamic development of the economy. Among the tools of state regulation of economic growth, it is of special importance ensuring an efficient interaction of fiscal and debt policy. The article examines the problem of establishing an optimal balance between taxation and public borrowing to solve the optimization problem of financial provision of the state’s functions and maximizing GDP growth.Purpose. Taxation is an alternative source of replenishment of the budget to government borrowings. In the article, the author proposes new approaches to the formation of tax and debt policies. Also, it is grounded the most desired quantitative relation between tax and debt burden. Methods. In the article, we used a content analysis of the optimization and descriptive analytical models of the relationship of fiscal expansion (spending) of the state and economic growth. We used economic and mathematical models of the tax and debt strategies. Based on the comparative analysis we assessed the ability of tax to ensure the functioning of the state against the potential fiscal effect of economically justifiable government borrowing and the total amount of expenses of the budget.Results. The use of these models allowed comparing the evaluation of future debt burden under different parameters of economic development and match them with possible values of the tax burden. Derived indicators can be compared with the permissible values of indicators of the safe level of debt. It has practical meaning, both for national security and for identifying opportunities for the placement of new loans.Conclusions. The strategy of tax policy should be based on scientific methodological principles of fiscal relations between taxpayers and the state. Government borrowing is advisable to use exclusively for funding capital investments. Social expenditures, which are not secured by tax revenues and/or state borrowing, definitely needs to be reviewed in accordance with criteria of fiscal adequacy, economic efficiency, and social justice.Предмет. В современных условиях особо остро встает вопрос выработки новых приоритетов обеспечения динамичного развития экономики. Среди инструментариев государственного регулирования экономического роста особое значение имеет обеспечение эффективного взаимодействия фискальной и долговой политики. В статье исследуется проблема установления оптимального соотношения между налогообложением и государственными заимствованиями для решения задачи оптимизации финансового обеспечения функций государства и максимизации роста ВВП.Цель. Альтернативным налогам источником пополнения бюджета выступают государственные займы. В статье сформулированы новые подходы к формированию налогово-долговых стратегий фискального потенциала государства с обоснованием наиболее желаемых для данного этапа развития экономики стоимостных пропорций налоговой и долговой нагрузки. Методы исследования. В статье проведен контент-анализ оптимизационных и дескриптивных аналитических моделей взаимосвязи фискальной экспансии (расходов) государства и экономического роста. Использованы экономико-математические модели налогово-долговых стратегий. На основе метода сравнительного анализа дается оценка возможности налогового обеспечения функционирования государства в сопоставлении с потенциальным фискальным эффектом экономически оправданного государственного заимствования и общим объемом расходов бюджета.Результаты. Результирующими выражениями моделей является сравнение оценки будущей долговой нагрузки при различных параметрах развития экономики и сопоставления их с возможными величинами налоговой нагрузки. Рассчитанные на их основе показатели могут сопоставляться с допустимыми значениями показателей долговой безопасности, что имеет прикладное значение как для обеспечения национальной безопасности, так и для выявления возможностей размещения новых займов. Выводы. Стратегия налоговой политики должна базироваться на научно методологических основах построения фискальных взаимоотношений налогоплательщиков и государства. Государственные заимствования целесообразно использовать исключительно для финансирования капиталовложений. Социальные расходы, финансово не обеспеченные налоговыми поступлениями и государственными заимствованиями, однозначно необходимо пересмотреть в соответствии с критериями фискальной достаточности, экономической эффективности и социальной справедливости
