Purpose:The purpose was to compare the different calculated methods of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) estimation and to determine which of them correlate best with the direct method.Materials and Methods:The records of 480 samples for lipid profile were analyzed. Apart from the direct method, LDL-C was calculated by Friedewald low-density lipoprotein cholesterol method (F-LDL-C), modified Friedewald low-density lipoprotein cholesterol method (MF-LDL-C), and Anandaraja low-density lipoprotein cholesterol method (A-LDL-C). Paired t-test and Pearson correlation were evaluated between the different methods. Degree of agreement between the calculated methods and direct method was detected by Bland–Altman graphical plots.Results:A strong correlation was found between all calculated LDL-C methods and direct low-density lipoprotein cholesterol method (D-LDL-C) assay, that is, F-LDL-C versus D-LDL-C = 0.94; A-LDL-C versus D-LDL-C = 0.93 and MF-LDL-C versus D-LDL-C = 0.95. No statistically significant difference was found between D-LDL-C and MF-LDL-C. Bland–Altman plot for MF-LDL-C showed minimal negative bias.Conclusions:The study pointed out that MF-LDL-C correlated maximally with D-LDL-C estimation at all levels of triglycerides and MF-LDL-C can be used in place of D-LDL-C when the direct method cannot be afforded.

Context:Depressive disorders often start at a young age. There is a need for early identification of depression, anxiety, and stress (DAS) and prevention. The present study was undertaken to find the magnitude of DAS among adolescents.Aims:To find the mental health status of school going adolescents in Chandigarh. The objectives were (i) to study the prevalence of DAS among school going adolescents and (ii) to study the correlates of DAS.Settings and Design:A Cross-sectional survey of students of four classes from 9th to 12th studying in government schools.Subjects and Methods:Ten government schools in Chandigarh were randomly selected through lottery method. In each school, for each of the four classes, a section was randomly selected again by the lottery method. Forty students were selected from each school reaching sample size of 470. DAS scale 21 questionnaires were used.Statistical Analysis Used:The data entry was done in MS Office Excel 2007. The analysis was done in the form of frequency tables, charts cross tables. For statistical significance, Chi-square test and correlation was found between various factors.Results:The prevalence of DAS was 65.53%, 80.85%, and 47.02%, respectively. Overall, comorbidity between depression and anxiety was 57.65%. Extremely severe depression was very less (3%). The prevalence of DAS was higher in females. For depression and anxiety, the peak age was 18 years.Conclusions:The prevalence of DAS was high among school going adolescents in Chandigarh. There is a need for early and effective identification of DAS that can prevent many psychiatric disorders at their nascent stage.

The epilepsy intervention educational package provided a positive, short term, impact on the knowledge and skills of teachers about epilepsy. There is a need for regular workshops to improve and reinforce the knowledge and skills of the teachers about health problems like epilepsy.

Background:Knowledge about epilepsy and its management is not satisfactory among school students in developing countries. The present study was planned to ascertain the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of students regarding first-aid management of epilepsy seizures in school setting.Materials and Methods:A total of 177 students of government schools of Chandigarh, a city of northern India, were taken. They were administered with a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire (for knowledge and attitude assessment) and an observational checklist after role play (for practice assessment) on first-aid management of epilepsy. A scoring system was devised to quantify the knowledge and practices of students.Results:Seventy-one percent of them had either heard or read about epilepsy. Half of the students believed epilepsy as a hindrance to education. Ayurvedic treatment was preferred by more than half of the students; however, many believed that visit to religious places and exorcism as ways to cure epilepsy. Nearly 74% of students would call a doctor as first-aid measure for seizure in a person with epilepsy.Conclusion:We concluded that the knowledge about various aspects of epilepsy was average among school students in Chandigarh. However, there was no significant difference in knowledge, attitude and practice between students who lived in urban, urban slum and rural areas. It is recommended that first-aid management of seizures in epilepsy should be a part of school curriculum.

In the cloud computing environment, the privacy of the electronic data is a serious issue that requires special considerations. We have presented a state-of-the-art review of the methodologies and approaches that are currently being used to cope with the significant issue of privacy. We have categorized the privacy-preserving approaches into four categories, i.e., privacy by cryptography, privacy by probability, privacy by anonymization and privacy by ranking. Moreover, we have developed taxonomy of the techniques that have been used to preserve the privacy of the governing data. We also presented a comprehensive comparison of the privacy-preserving approaches from the angle of the privacy-preserving requirements' satisfaction. Therefore, it is highly desirable that the mechanisms should be developed to deploy efficient auditing and accountability mechanisms that anonymously monitor the utilization of data records and track the provenance to ensure the confidentiality of the data.

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The management of data while maintaining its utility and preservation of security scheme is a matter of concern for the cloud owner. In order to minimize the overhead at cloud service provider of applying security over each document and then send it to the client, we propose a layered architecture. This approach maintains security of the sensitive document and privacy of its data sensitivity. To make a balance between data security and utility, the proposed approach categorizes the data according to its sensitivity. Perseverance of various categorization requires different algorithmic schemes. We set up a cloud distributed environment where data is categorized into four levels of sensitivity; public, confidential, secret, top secret and a different approach has been used to preserve the security at each level. At the most sensitive layers i.e. secret and top secret data, we made a provision to detect the faulty node that is responsible for data leakage. Finally, experimental analysis is carried out to analyze the performance of the layered approach. The experimental results show that time taken (in ms) in processing 200 documents of size 20 MB is 437, 2239, 3142, 3900 for public, confidential, secret and top secret data respectively when the documents are distributed among distinct users, which proves the practicality of the proposed approach.

BackgroundAlthough violence against women (VAW) is a global public health issue, its importance as a health issue is often unrecognized in legal and health policy documents. This paper uses Sri Lanka as a case study to explore the factors influencing the national policy response to VAW, particularly by the health sector.MethodsA document based health policy analysis was conducted to examine current policy responses to VAW in Sri Lanka using the Shiffman and Smith (2007) policy analysis framework.ResultsThe findings suggest that the networks and influences of various actors in Sri Lanka, and their ideas used to frame the issue of VAW, have been particularly important in shaping the nature of the policy response to date. The Ministry of Women and Child Affairs led the national response on VAW, but suffered from limited financial and political support. Results also suggest that there was low engagement by the health sector in the initial policy response to VAW in Sri Lanka, which focused primarily on criminal legislation, following global influences. Furthermore, a lack of empirical data on VAW has impeded its promotion as a health policy issue, despite financial support from international organisations enabling an initial health systems response by the Ministry of Health. Until a legal framework was established (2005), the political context provided limited opportunities for VAW to also be construed as a health issue. It was only then that the Ministry of Health got legitimacy to institutionalise VAW services.ConclusionNearly a decade later, a change in government has led to a new national plan on VAW, giving a clear role to the health sector in the fight against VAW. High-level political will, criminalisation of violence, coalesced women’s groups advocating for legislative change, prevalence data, and financial support from influential institutions are all critical elements helping frame violence as a national public health issue.