ABSTRACT
Background: Tobacco abuse is one of the biggest curses that modern society has come across. It is not confined to any one country or region alone, but has widely afflicted the globe. The most susceptible time for initiating use of tobacco in India is adolescence and early adulthood, ages 15-24 years while some start as young as 10 years.Approximately 55,500 adolescent start using tobacco every day in India, joining the 7.7 million young people under the age of 15 who already use tobacco on a regular basis.Methods: It is a community based cross-sectional study conducted among school going adolescent boys of urban field practice area of medical college during July to September 2017. Data was collected through pretested semi-structured self -administered questionnaire given to students by the investigators. Data collected were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 17 software.Results: The prevalence of ever use of tobacco was 17.5% among school going adolescent boys in urban field practice area. In the present study it was observed that 174 (95.1%) adolescent boys had knowledge regarding hazards of tobacco. 110 adolescents (60.1%) had knowledge that passive smoking was harmful.Conclusions: The study suggests that the prevalence of tobacco consumption was high among school going adolescent boys in urban field practice area of medical college. The knowledge of students regarding harmful effects of tobacco was not adequate. Attitude and practice regarding tobacco consumption is also not satisfactory.
ABSTRACT
Absence or hypoplasia of the epiglottis is a rare anomaly. Most patients, with absent or hypoplastic epiglottis, have presented, life-threatening symptoms of respiratory distress and severe aspiration in infancy or early childhood. We report a case of completely asymptomatic 30 year old female with absent epiglottis posted for modified radical mastoidectomy for chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM).
ABSTRACT
Cellulase production studies have been carried out using the fungal strain Trichoderma reesei NCIM 992 by using three different lignocellulosic materials by solid state fermentation (SSF). The effect of basic fermentation parameters (pH, temperature, moisture content, particle size of substrate and moistening agent) on enzyme production was studied. Maximum cellulase production was 2.63 U ml-1 using wheat bran as substrate. The optimal conditions for cellulase production for wheat bran were found to be: initial moisture content-70%, initial medium pH-5.0, temperature-30oC, moistening agents (MSS) and particle size of substrate (500 @m).The optimal incubation time for production was six days. Results indicate the scope for further optimization of the production conditions to obtain higher cellulase titres using the strain under SSF.
ABSTRACT
In the present study, performance of the trickle bed air biofilter (TBAB) for treating mono-chlorobenzene (MCB) was evaluated for various influent volatile organic compound (VOC) loadings using coal and mixed consortium of activated sludge as the packing material. Microbial acclimation to MCB was achieved by exposing the system continuously for 31 d to an average inlet MCB concentration of 0.688 g m-3 at an empty bed residence time (EBRT) of 188 s. The TBAB achieved maximum removal efficiency of 87% at an EBRT of 188 s for an inlet concentration of 0.681 g m-3, which is quite significance than the values reported in the literature. Elimination capacities of MCB increased with an increase of the influent VOC loading, but an opposite trend was observed for the removal efficiency. The maximum elimination capacity of the biofilter was 110.75 g m-3 hr -1 at an inlet MCB concentration of 1.47 g m-3. The effect of starvation on the TBAB was also studied. After starvation, the TBAB lost its ability to degrade MCB initially. However, the biofilter recovered very quickly. Evaluation of the concentration profile along the bed height indicated that the bottom section of TBAB has the best performance for all concentrations. By using Wani’s method of macrokinetic determination based on simple Monod kinetics, the maximum removal rate of MCB, rmax and saturation constant Km was to be found as 1.304 g m-3 s-1 and 113.446 g m-3, respectively.