Increasing prevalence of childhood obesity calls for comprehensive and cost-effective educative measures in developing countries such as India. School-based educative programmes greatly influence children's behaviour towards healthy living. We aimed to evaluate the impact of a schoolbased health and nutritional education programme on knowledge and behaviour of urban Asian Indian school children. Benchmark assessment of parents and teachers was also done. We educated 40 196 children (aged 8 -18 years), 25 000 parents and 1500 teachers about health, nutrition, physical activity, non-communicable diseases and healthy cooking practices in three cities of North India. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to assess randomly selected 3128 children, 2241 parents and 841 teachers before intervention and 2329 children after intervention. Low baseline knowledge and behaviour scores were reported in 75 -94 % government and 48-78 % private school children, across all age groups. A small proportion of government school children gave correct answers about protein (14-17 %), carbohydrates (25 -27 %) and saturated fats (18-32 %). Private school children, parents and teachers performed significantly better than government school subjects (P,0·05). Following the intervention, scores improved in all children irrespective of the type of school (P, 0·001). A significantly higher improvement was observed in younger children (aged 8-11 years) as compared with those aged 12-18 years, in females compared with males and in government schools compared with private schools (P,0·05 for all). Major gaps exist in health and nutrition-related knowledge and behaviour of urban Asian Indian children, parents and teachers. This successful and comprehensive educative intervention could be incorporated in future school-based health and nutritional education programmes.

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In this study, the authors present three different metamaterial absorbers (MMAs) namely, T, split‐I (SI) and split‐Jerusalem cross (SJC) with different dimensions and geometrical configurations. The absorption rates of T‐, SI‐ and SJC‐shaped absorbers are studied at microwave frequencies. T‐shaped absorber demonstrates perfect absorption at 10.19 GHz, making it suitable for single band operation, whereas SI‐shaped absorber exhibits two perfect absorption peaks at 9.32 and 10.75 GHz finding its application in dual band operation. However, novel SJC‐shaped absorber demonstrates multiple absorption peaks at 9.92, 10.42, 10.93, 11.75 and 13.25 GHz with absorption of 99.5, 91, 99.9, 91.8 and 99.6%, respectively, making it suitable for X‐ and Ku‐band operations. The proposed MMAs have a thickness of around 0.8 mm (i.e. <λ/37) with respect to the lowest frequency of operation. Furthermore, the absorbers are analysed for different angles of polarisation and incidence for transverse electric polarised wave with a step size of 15°. The proposed absorbers have been fabricated and experimentally demonstrated at X‐band verifying the results obtained from simulations and implementing an equivalent circuit method. Further, SJC‐shaped absorber is demonstrated for multi‐and wide‐band terahertz applications exhibiting four perfect absorption peaks at 2.76, 2.89, 3.02 and 3.31 THz.

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Background: The prevalence of overweight and obesity among children is increasing in India. However, knowledge of, attitude towards and practice of health and nutrition in mothers and children have not been researched. Objective: To assess knowledge of, attitude towards and practice of nutrition, physical activity and other lifestyle practices in a nationally representative sample of urban children and mothers in India. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study of 1,800 children aged 9-18 years and their mothers, using qualitative (focus group) and quantitative (semi-structured survey) data. Results: The overall prevalence of overweight/obesity among the children was 19.2% in males and 18.1% in females; 64.8% of mothers were either overweight [body mass index (BMI) 23.0-24.9; 23.3%] or obese (BMI >25.0; 41.5%). Household family income, related socioeconomic factors, and overweight in mothers were most significantly associated with obesity in children (all p ≤ 0.001). Dietary consumption patterns (snacking, fast food etc.) showed a marked association between mothers and children (all p ≤ 0.000). Focus group discussion revealed several interesting attitudes and misconceptions among children (‘home-cooked food is old fashioned') and mothers (‘a child with chubby cheeks is healthy, not fat'). Importantly, only a few mothers understood that excess weight or diets are contributory factors of morbidities in children or themselves. Conclusions: This study highlights the poor knowledge, faulty attitudes and practices of urban Asian Indian mothers and their children in a highly correlated manner. These knowledge gaps must be addressed to formulate effective strategies for the prevention of obesity and related metabolic disorders.

We present a high-performance bilayer graphene (BLG) and mercury cadmium telluride (Hg1−xCdx=0.1867Te) heterojunction based very long wavelength infrared (VLWIR) conductive photodetector.

This paper presents three self-powered photodetectors namely, p+-bilayer graphene (BLG)/n+-ZnO nanowires (NWs), p+-BLG/n+-Si NWs/p–-Si and p+-BLG/n+-ZnO NWs/p–-Si. The Silvaco Atlas TCAD software is utilized to characterize the optoelectronic properties of all the devices and is validated by analytical modeling. The proposed dual-junction photodetectors cover broadband spectral response varying from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths. The dual-heterojunction broadband photodetector exhibits photocurrent switching with the rise and fall time of 1.48 and 1.27 ns, respectively. At −0.5 V bias, the highest external quantum efficiency, photocurrent responsivity, specific detectivity, and the lowest noise equivalent power of 71%, 0.28 A W−1, 4.2 × 1012 cmHz1/2 W−1, and 2.59 × 10–17 W, respectively, are found for the dual-heterojunction device with a wavelength of 480 nm at 300 K. The proposed nanowires based photodetectors offer great potential to be utilized as next-generation optoelectronic devices.