Two Indians selected as Yale World Fellows |  |
- Two Indians selected as Yale World Fellows
- Hygiene camp Wednesday for Mumbai's pani-puri sellers
- New trauma centres to be opened along highways
- NTU and NAC launch first-of-its-kind Singapore Writing Residencies
- Unique AED pads give hearts a second chance
- Health-care alliance for tobacco dependence treatment launches training in the Middle East
- CU-Boulder leading study of wind turbine wakes
- No funds for iron rich salt programme, says official
- Iodized salt usage up by 20 percent in rural households: Study
- Women's car rally to spread word about cancer among children
| Two Indians selected as Yale World Fellows Posted: 27 Apr 2011 10:33 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Washington, April 27 - Two Indians figure among 16 World Fellows for 2011 selected by the Ivy League Yale University as part of its 'signature global leadership development initiative' and its commitment to internationalisation. They are are Monika Halan, editor of India's second largest business newspaper, Mint Money, and Sonali Kochhar, Medical Director, India, Institute for OneWorld Health. Halan is 'a media personality well-known for her financial expertise'. She is editor of Mint Money, which has an exclusive partnership with the Wall Street Journal. A medical doctor and clinical researcher, Kochhar leads efforts to develop safe, affordable, and accessible drugs and vaccines for diseases prevalent in the developing world, including HIV/AIDS. She previously served as Medical Director for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Others include an executive at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and a director at the World Economic Forum; the director of the World Health Organization's tuberculosis control Programme in China; a policy maker in Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the executive director of Greenpeace Brazil. This year's cohort brings the total number of Yale World Fellows to 171, representing 77 countries, the New Haven, Connecticut University announced Tuesday. Each year since 2002, Yale has welcomed a group of exemplary mid-career professionals from a wide range of fields and countries for an intensive four-month period of academic enrichment and leadership training, the university said. From August to December, the 2011 World Fellows will enrol in a specially designed seminar taught by leading Yale faculty; audit any of the 3,000 courses offered at the University; participate in weekly dinners with distinguished guest speakers; receive individualized skill-building training; and meet with US and foreign leaders. The Yale World Fellows Programme has at its core three main goals: to provide... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| Hygiene camp Wednesday for Mumbai's pani-puri sellers Posted: 27 Apr 2011 12:32 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Mumbai, April 26 - A Congress member of parliament will Wednesday organise a hygiene awareness camp for pani-puri and bhel-puri sellers in north Mubai. The camp, organised by Sanjay Nirupam comes in the wake of recent attacks on pani-puri and bhel-puri sellers of Mumbai and Thane after a vendor was caught urinating in a serving vessel. 'The camp has been organised to lay down guidelines to ensure that highest standards of cleanliness and hygiene are maintained,' Nirupam said Tuesay. According to him, the camp will assist the vendors in restarting their business without compromising on the quality of the food served in their stalls. Hand gloves will be distributed free of cost to all the vendors attending the camp. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena - April 14 attacked over 300 stalls selling pani-puri. The attack followed a Mumbai tabloid exposing a Thane city pani-puriwalla, who was seen urinating in a container which was also used to serve the hungry customers. The vendor, Rajdev Lakhan Chauhan, 59, ran a stall at Bhaskar Colony in Navpada, was caught on camera by a 19-year old college student, Ankita Rane, March 12. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| New trauma centres to be opened along highways Posted: 26 Apr 2011 08:32 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, April 26 - Over 160 new trauma centres will be opened along the major national highways across the country in the 12th plan to address the high death rates caused by road accidents, a senior official said Tuesday. According to Director General of Health Services R.K. Srivastava, the health ministry is implementing a project for the upgradation and strengthening of emergency trauma care facility in state government hospitals located on national highways. The project is under the scheme 'Assistance for Capacity Building' to provide immediate treatment to the victims of road traffic injury, he said at an inter-ministerial meeting on road safety. The scheme was started in the 11th plan with a total outlay of Rs.732.75 crore for establishing 140 trauma care centres along the Golden Quadrilateral highways. The Golden Quadrilateral includes 5,846 km of highways connecting Delhi-Kolkata-Chennai-Mumbai-Delhi and North-South and East-West Corridors covering 7,716 km connecting Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Silchar to Porbandhar respectively. 'So far, 113 trauma care centres have been provided with financial assistance in 15 states which are at various stages of progress,' Srivastava said. Health Secretary K. Chandramouli said loss of life caused by road accidents needs to be avoided through a strategic action plan. According to WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety, more than half of the road accidents victims in India are in the age group of 25-65 years, the key wage earning and child raising age group. A global 'Decade of Action Plan for Road Safety' is scheduled to be launched by United Nations in May. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| NTU and NAC launch first-of-its-kind Singapore Writing Residencies Posted: 26 Apr 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The literary arts in Singapore get a major boost through a new programme where local and international literary luminaries will write and teach at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). NTU and the National Arts Council (NAC) have established the Singapore Writing Residencies, a new scheme where distinguished writers join NTU's Division of English for up to a year while working on a literary project. The three-year, $1.5 million programme is co-funded by NTU and the NAC, and is the first of its kind in Singapore, offering two writers-in-residence positions each year for local and international writers. This allows them to work side by side on literary projects, while teaching and mentoring students of creative writing at NTU. The writers will also take part in literary activities at the university and in the cultural life of the local community. NTU's Dean of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Alan Chan says, The programme will support the development of Singapore literature by giving valuable time and space to Singapore's own writers, allowing them to take on and develop substantial creative projects. By drawing top international writers to Singapore, the programme will also help foster dynamic new connections between local and global literatures. The writing residencies will, at the same time, expose the new generation of young Singapore writers to the best in local and international literary practice, as the selected writers get to teach and mentor students in NTU's Creative Writing programme, Professor Chan added. The positions will be open to novelists, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, graphic novelists and writers of creative non-fiction, the first of whom may take up their positions from August 2011. Director of Literary Arts, Sector Development at NAC, Mr Paul Tan says, This residency fills an important gap in the Singapore's arts community: undergraduates who are aspiring writers now have a... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Unique AED pads give hearts a second chance Posted: 26 Apr 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) An invention by Rice University bioengineering students in collaboration with the Texas Heart Institute (THI) is geared toward giving immediate second chances to arrhythmia victims headed toward cardiac arrest. For their capstone design project, a team of Rice seniors created a unique pad system for automated external defibrillators (AEDs), common devices that can shock a victim's heart back into a proper rhythm in an emergency. Often, the first shock doesn't reset a heart and the procedure must be repeated, but the sticky pads on the chest must first be repositioned. The pads need to be in the right location to send current through the heart, and someone with no experience who tries to provide aid might miss the first time. The Second-Chance AED Pads let rescuers try again without losing valuable time to remove the pads from the victim's chest. The pads incorporate three electrodes, two in a single pad with an A/B switch attached, and a third in its own pad. If one shock doesn't restart the patient's heart, flipping the switch will change the jolt's path, just a little bit, for the second attempt. The pads were developed by students on the DefibTaskForce -- Lisa Jiang, Joanna Nathan, Justin Lin, Carl Nelson and Brad Otto -- in tandem with Mehdi Razavi, director of electrophysiology clinical research at THI, and their adviser, Renata Ramos, a Rice lecturer in bioengineering. The potential for their project was clear from the beginning. We did some calculations that suggested we could save at least 13,000 lives per year, Otto said. Cardiac defibrillation is very time-sensitive. Thirty seconds can be the difference between life and death in a lot of situations. The time it takes to flip the switch is negligible compared with the time it takes to remove the pads, shave and prep a new area on the body, reapply the pads and administer another shock. And a layman might not even know to try a second position. Rather than try to... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Health-care alliance for tobacco dependence treatment launches training in the Middle East Posted: 26 Apr 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Global Bridges, a healthcare alliance for tobacco dependence treatment based at Mayo Clinic, and its regional partner, King Hussein Cancer Center (KHCC) in Amman, Jordan, announced today that they will start training health care providers in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO) on how to successfully treat tobacco users. The first training, scheduled for April 27-28 at KHCC, will engage 15 health care professionals from Jordan. Feras Hawari, M.D., director of the Cancer Control Office at KHCC and regional director for Global Bridges, will conduct this workshop. In addition, KHCC will collaborate with other regional and international organizations to hold a four-day regional workshop in June. Prevalence of tobacco use is high in most of the Eastern Mediterranean countries, and only a few countries have structured tobacco dependence services. By offering training, we are making a step towards addressing this epidemic, says Dr. Hawari, who is also chief of pulmonary and critical care service at KHCC. Global Bridges -- a collaboration among Mayo Clinic's School for Continuous Professional Development and Mayo Clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center, the American Cancer Society and the University of Arizona -- was established in 2010 as a worldwide, science-based initiative to help health care providers unite to treat tobacco use and dependence while advocating for effective tobacco control policies. During its first year, Global Bridges has positively impacted 400,000 patients around the world through training over 5,400 health care providers in Mayo Clinic-led sessions on how to deliver culturally appropriate tobacco dependence treatment. Global Bridges adapts to regional needs and enhances access to proven treatment methods throughout each of the World Health Organization's (WHO) six regions, says Richard Hurt, M.D., founder and director of the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center and principal... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| CU-Boulder leading study of wind turbine wakes Posted: 26 Apr 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) While wind turbines primarily are a source of renewable energy, they also produce wakes of invisible ripples that can affect the atmosphere and influence wind turbines downstream -- an issue being researched in a newly launched study led by the University of Colorado Boulder's Julie Lundquist, assistant professor in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department. The study, called the Turbine Wake and Inflow Characterization Study, or TWICS, also includes researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Scientists and wind energy developers will use results of the study to better understand power production and increase the productivity of wind farms, according to the researchers. Today's massive wind turbines stretch into a complicated part of the atmosphere, said Lundquist, who also is a joint appointee at NREL. If we can understand how gusts and rapid changes in wind direction affect turbine operations and how turbine wakes behave, we can improve design standards, increase efficiency and reduce the cost of energy. To measure wind shifts and wake behavior, the researchers will monitor a wind turbine at NREL's National Wind Technology Center in south Boulder, using an instrument developed at NOAA called a high-resolution scanning Doppler lidar. The lidar produces three-dimensional portraits of atmospheric activity and can capture a wedge of air up to 3,280 feet from the ground and 4.3 miles long. Robert Banta, an atmospheric scientist with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory and a TWICS researcher, has worked with the instrument for several years. The wake effect has been modeled in wind tunnel studies and numerical models, said Banta, but the atmosphere is different, it's more variable and complicated. Researchers also will use a specialized laser... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| No funds for iron rich salt programme, says official Posted: 25 Apr 2011 09:26 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, April 25 - Even as the plans for promoting iron rich salt is on government's anvil, the programme may not be implemented soon for lack of funds, a health ministry official said Monday. 'We don't have the budget for implementing the programme immediately,' the official told IANS. A meeting at the Prime Minister's Office last week decided that iron-fortified iodised salt will be promoted to deal with malnutrition and the problem of anaemia in the country. The meeting chaired by the principal secretary to the prime minister was attended by the officials from the health ministry, women and child development ministry, and representatives from the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad. The institute has developed technologies for the double fortification of salt with iodine and iron. 'It will take at least two years,' the official said. The deficiency of iron, a micronutrient which increases haemoglobin in blood, is a major cause for anaemia among millions of women, causing maternal deaths. Micronutrient International, an international NGO specialising in addressing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, has said double fortified salt with iodine and iron is on its agenda for India. 'Salt is something commonly used everywhere and anaemia is a big problem in India. The double fortified salt will be very effective, right now some experimental programmes are being run,' Micronutrient Initiative regional director for India Melanie Galvin said. 'We are in the process of getting an approval from food safety and standards authority of India,' she added. She also said that studies are on for the use of zinc to reduce deaths due to diarrhea. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Iodized salt usage up by 20 percent in rural households: Study Posted: 25 Apr 2011 08:30 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, April 25 - Use of iodized salt has increased by 20 percent in rural households, a study released Monday said, reflecting the success of India's iodine programme. The study done by Micronutrient Initiative, an international not-for-profit organisation, under the guidance of the Indian government's Salt Commissioner's Office, said at present 47.3 percent of rural households are using 'adequately iodized' salt. This is against the figure of 27 percent recorded in the national family health survey 2005-06. 'India is one of the countries which have accepted iodine deficiency as a national public health problem and resolved to ensure provision of iodized salt to its population,' Salt Commissioner of the country S. Sundaresan said after releasing the report. According to a statement from Micronutrient International, Iodine Deficiency Disorder - is the leading cause of mental retardation worldwide. 'Children born in iodine deficient areas have an average of 13.5l percent lower intelligence quotient - compared with children born in iodine sufficient areas. It is a significant public health problem; every year 13 million children are born in India unprotected from brain damage caused by iodine deficiency. It is estimated that 200 million people in India are exposed to the risk of IDD and more than 71 million suffer from goitre and other forms of IDD,' the statement said. The study collected samples from over 9,600 households across 960 clusters in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. The study also showed that 57 percent of the rural population preferred packaged crushed salt compared to the loose or rock salt. 'India is one of the few Asian countries which has recognized the importance of addressing iodine deficiency diseases by supplying iodized salt,' Micronutrient Initiative regional director for India Melanie Galvin said. 'Mirroring the rapid... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Women's car rally to spread word about cancer among children Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:41 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, April 25 - A group of 22 women, including some cancer survivors, will participate in an inter-state car rally to raise awareness about the disease and generate funds for children suffering from it, an organiser said here Monday. The rally being held by NGO CanKids will be flagged off by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit at 8.30 a.m. from her 1, Moti Lal Nehru residence Tuesday. Dikshit will also interact with children suffering from cancer and their families. The All Women's Car Rally will cross four states - Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh - spreading awareness about cancer,and chiefly that 70-90 percent of cancers among children are curable. The participants come from diverse backgrounds but there is one common factor that binds them - they all have been touched by cancer. 'They are either cancer survivors, parents of children suffering from cancer or care-givers to cancer patients,' said an organiser. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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