The study assessed the potential for use of millets in mid-day school meal programs for better nutritional outcomes of children in a peri-urban region of Karnataka, India, where children conventionally consumed a fortified rice-based mid-day meal. For a three-month period, millet-based mid-day meals were fed to 1500 adolescent children at two schools, of which 136 were studied as the intervention group and were compared with 107 other children in two other schools that did not receive the intervention. The intervention design was equivalent to the parallel group, two-arm, superiority trial with a 1:1 allocation ratio. The end line allocation ratio was 1.27:1 due to attrition. It was found that there was statistically significant improvement in stunting (p = 0.000) and the body mass index (p = 0.003) in the intervention group and not in the control group (p = 0.351 and p = 0.511, respectively). The sensory evaluation revealed that all the millet-based menu items had high acceptability, with the highest scores for the following three items: finger millet idli, a steam cooked fermented savory cake; little and pearl millet bisi belle bath, a millet-lentil hot meal; and upma, a pearl and little millet-vegetable meal. These results suggest significant potential for millets to replace or supplement rice in school feeding programs for improved nutritional outcomes of children.
AbstractIn the present communication, an attempt is made to prepare and study the structural, optical, and aging properties of polyvinylchloride (PVC)-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) blend films for their probable applications as biodegradable/biocompatible materials in biomedical and optoelectronics fields. The surface properties such as contact angles and surface free energies of films are measured to investigate the interaction of polymer films with water. These measurements reveal that on increasing the weight percentage concentration of PVP in PVC, the hydrophilicity of the films increases. The surface free energy was found to increase with increasing concentration of PVP in PVC, which indicates that these films tend to adsorb more moisture from the atmosphere and, thereby, will have a tendency to age faster. The Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR) spectra of blend films indicate a significant change in the intermolecular/intramolecular interactions taking place. The UV-visible (VIS) absorption spectra clearly reveal that blend films absorb UV radiations appreciably compared to visible light. The optical band gap, Urbach energy, and the carbonaceous cluster size were estimated from the absorption spectra.
In the extraction of coal underground, the incubation period is customarily used as a tool, for deciding the size of an underground coal mine panel, so that coal therein can be extracted within this period without any sign or symptoms of spontaneous heating. Nevertheless, in compatible geomining conditions, spontaneous combustion occurs frequently within the proclaimed incubation period of the mine panel; resulting huge quantities of coal being left un-extracted due to premature sealing. The aim of the present study is, therefore-to develop and test methods and technologies for uprising the incubation period of spontaneous combustion of coal in an underground mine panel. The methods comprise the development of objective models (equations) for the assessment and evaluation of causative factors playing significant roles in abrupt change of incubation period; the rise of temperature due to, increased rate of oxidation, fragmentation, impact and friction after commencing of the roof fall; and propagation of fire into the interconnected workings. The technologies comprise the development and application of water fog, chemical fog, gel fog and inert gel fog at various Indian mines, and other methodologies.
The neutral particle temperature in the edge region of the Aditya-U tokamak has been measured by recording the hydrogen Balmer alpha emission spectra at 656.28 nm from different lines of sight in both the high and low field sides. The spatial profile of the Hα emission has been recorded using a 1 m multi-track spectrometer. The neutral temperature is estimated from the Doppler broadening of the measured Hα spectrum by appropriately removing the contribution from the Zeeman splitting of the spectral lines. A computer simulation code was developed to estimate the neutral temperature by including the broadening mechanisms such as Doppler broadening and the Zeeman effect to simulate the Hα emission spectrum along with the proper convolution of the instrumental width of the diagnostic system. It has been observed that the high field side neutral temperature (~4–6 eV) during plasma flat top is almost twice that of the low field side (~2–3 eV) suggesting poloidal asymmetry in the neutral temperature.
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