A legislative framework for bio-medical waste management (BMWM) was established in the country more than a decade ago. Though some studies have identified gaps at local levels, no systematic effort ...was done to collect data from different parts of the country. The objective of this nationwide study was to document existing resources, infrastructure and practices related to BMWM across the study districts.
The study was conducted in 25 districts spread over 20 States of India including urban and rural areas. Primary (n=388), secondary (n=25) and tertiary care (n=24) health facilities from public (n=238) and private (n=199) sector were assessed and scored for the state of BMWM through 9 items representing system capacity, availability of resources and processes in place. Health facilities were assigned into one of the three categories (Red, Yellow and Green) based on the cumulative median scores.
Around 82 per cent of primary, 60 per cent of secondary and 54 per cent of tertiary care health facilities were in the 'RED' category. Multivariate analysis indicated that charts at the point of waste generation, availability of designated person, appropriate containers and bags, availability of functional needle destroyers, availability of personal protective gears, segregation of waste at point of generation and log book maintenance were independently (OR-between 1.2-1.55; P <0.03 or less) associated with better BMWM system in the health facilities. This was true for both rural-urban and public or private health facilities.
The study highlighted the urgent need for greater commitments at policy and programme levels for capacity building, and resource investments in BMWM.
Diamond-like nanocomposite (DLN) coatings have been deposited over different substrates used for biomedical applications by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD). DLN has an ...interconnecting network of amorphous hydrogenated carbon and quartz-like oxygenated silicon. Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform–infra red (FT–IR) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) have been used for structural characterization. Typical DLN growth rate is about 1
m/h, measured by stylus profilometer. Due to the presence of quartz-like Si:O in the structure, it is found to have very good adhesive property with all the substrates. The adhesion strength found to be as high as 0·6 N on SS 316 L steel substrates by scratch testing method. The Young’s modulus and hardness have found to be 132 GPa and 14· 4 GPa, respectively. DLN coatings have wear factor in the order of 1 × 10
− 7
mm
3
/N-m. This coating has found to be compatible with all important biomedical substrate materials and has successfully been deposited over Co–Cr alloy based knee implant of complex shape.
Modern Indian studies have recently become a site for new, creative, and thought-provoking debates extending over a broad canvas of crucial issues. As a result of socio-political transformations, ...certain concepts-such asahimsa, caste,darshan, and race-have taken on different meanings.
Bringing together ideas, issues, and debates salient to modern Indian studies, this volume charts the social, cultural, political, and economic processes at work in the Indian subcontinent. Authored by internationally recognized experts, this volume comprises over one hundred individual entries on concepts central to their respective fields of specialization, highlighting crucial issues and debates in a lucid and concise manner.
Each concept is accompanied by a critical analysis of its trajectory and a succinct discussion of its significance in the academic arena as well as in the public sphere. Enhancing the shared framework of understanding about the Indian subcontinent,Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studieswill provide the reader with insights into vital debates about the region, underscoring the compelling issues emanating from colonialism and postcolonialism.
In order to study the material characteristics, it is essential to obtain the quantitative description of micro-structure of the materials. In this context, digital image processing is used to ...analyze the microscopic images of the materials. Extraction of grains/phases present in the material is the fundamental step to achieve the description of the micro-structure. In this work, we present an automated scheme for segmenting the phases present in the microscopic image of high strength low alloy steel. The challenge posed by the presence of revealed grain boundaries bearing striking similarity with one of the phases also has been addressed successfully. Experiment shows that proposed scheme has the inherent capability to cope up with the factors like magnification, imaging condition affecting the image characteristics.
Mining a high speed bursty data stream is always a challenge on a limited size buffer. Often a relatively cheaper AMS (anytime mining solution) approach may be the only plausible scheme one could ...rely on at times. Mining task becomes enormously complicated when the first-level buffer has to host several dependent streams. This becomes worse when incoming data streams take time to settle down in their respective steady states. A buffer sharing and capture models are indicated for some simple situations involving multiple streams. These models could be extended to generalize a linear buffer model to a hierarchical model