Digital Divide Among the Tribals of Kerala

In the present society, the real apartheid is not between the racial or ethnic groups but between the ability to access and use the new modes and forms of information and communication technology. The gap between the ready availability of technology and those who do not have access to the computers and internet is called the digital divide. The society with high digital divide has social, financial, and political instability. The role of libraries as community information centers in rural and tribal regions will help to reduce the digital divide. The study identifies capacity building of rural people to make use of ICTs is crucial to solve the problem. This chapter focuses on the digital divide in the two tribal regions in Kerala, namely Kannavam and Thavainjal Panchayath, India. The quantitative comparative data of the factors affecting the digital divide, barriers for ICT access, the role of social media usage in reducing the digital divide in both the villages are quantitatively compared in this chapter.

From Aboriginal Equality to Limited and Unstable Inequality

During the first 97 percent of the approximately 200,000-year history of Homo sapiens, when humans existed as hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists, they lived with little political and economic inequality, due to the ready availability of stone weapons and ability of the weaker ones to form defensive coalitions blocking bullies’ attempts to amass political power. Their egalitarian incentive structure rewarded them for sharing food, child care, and practically everything else. The slow adoption of agriculture beginning about 10,000 years ago created the material condition on which a limited degree of social hierarchy could develop. About 9,000 years ago, chiefs arose by ideologically claiming special access to celestial powers to better assure the welfare of the community. They thereby gained greater access to material goods and mates. However, their legitimacy was fragile, readily upset by poor harvests or other catastrophes that delegitimated their ideology and returned their societies to economic and political equality.

Beyond equality of opportunity: from 'common sense' to 'good sense'

This article addresses the Labour Party's apparent inability to capitalise on the ready availability of good, progressive ideas. It suggests the key is to be found in the idea that the Labour Party no longer represents working-class people, a disjunction that can be best understood using Gramsci's distinction between 'common sense' and 'good sense'. Good sense is a more coherent development of everyday, commonsense thinking, based on its 'healthy nucleus'. However, it must never lose contact with common sense and become abstract and disconnected from life. Using this distinction, a critique of the common-sense notion of meritocracy follows, since the educational disconnect between Labour politicians and their working-class supporters is one of its malign results. This critique builds from the evidence of working-class rejection of meritocracy - the healthy nucleus that recognises the inadequacy of its justifying principle of equality of opportunity. To this is counterposed a good-sense notion of equality - one that embraces equal access to the means for achieving a flourishing life. This notion of equality is then used to explore a number of currently circulating political ideas concerned with equality, both their relationship to common sense and their potential to meet good sense criteria. These ideas include universal basic income, the Conservatives' proposed 'levelling up' agenda, and the demands of Black Lives Matter for racial justice, including the demand to 'defund the police'. A second thread is focused on the relationship between these discourses of common or good sense and the social forces with which they can be connected.

Evidence based teledentistry: a systematic review of literature on smartphone apps

Dental healthcare continues to be limited for large populations of both developing and developed nations. Hectic metropolitan work schedule, improper dentist-population ratio, lack of awareness, or global health emergencies such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic could be the possible reasons. This results in proliferation of teledentistry based practice, aided by global smartphone networking. Smartphone teledentistry apps require proper scientific literature backup along with ready availability in popular app stores such as Google Play store, and Apple app store. This article aims to identify which smartphone apps designed to provide teledentistry features are rooted in evidence-based literature such that the percentage of scientifically supported apps that were commercially available to consumers can be determined. Smartphone apps for teledentistry were evaluated in three phases. Phase 1 identified all teledentistry apps reported in the scientific literature. Phase 2 identified which apps from the literature review were available in the app stores. Phase 3 identified the top teledentistry apps available in the app stores. 11 studies identified 5 apps with only 1 being available in both the app stores. Few apps qualified the scientific searching process, whereas the number of apps available on app stores are greater.

In Silico Identification and Validation of Organic Triazole Based Ligands as Potential Inhibitory Drug Compounds of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is highly contagious to humans and has caused a pandemic of global proportions. Despite worldwide research efforts, efficient targeted therapies against the virus are still lacking. With the ready availability of the macromolecular structures of coronavirus and its known variants, the search for anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics through in silico analysis has become a highly promising field of research. In this study, we investigate the inhibiting potentialities of triazole-based compounds against the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro). The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) is known to play a prominent role in the processing of polyproteins that are translated from the viral RNA. Compounds were pre-screened from 171 candidates (collected from the DrugBank database). The results showed that four candidates (Bemcentinib, Bisoctrizole, PYIITM, and NIPFC) had high binding affinity values and had the potential to interrupt the main protease (Mpro) activities of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The pharmacokinetic parameters of these candidates were assessed and through molecular dynamic (MD) simulation their stability, interaction, and conformation were analyzed. In summary, this study identified the most suitable compounds for targeting Mpro, and we recommend using these compounds as potential drug molecules against SARS-CoV-2 after follow up studies.

Knowledge and practices of physicians on blood component therapy: a cross-sectional study from two tertiary hospitals in Nigeria

Introduction: Comprehension of blood component therapy (BCT) has profound impact on transfusion outcomes. Varia- tions from the standards in practices of BCT may jeopardize patient care. Aim: To assess the understanding and implementation of BCT by physicians. Methods: The study was carried out at two tertiary health care centres. It was a descriptive cross- sectional study using a self-administered, questionnaire comprising of 30 questions. Result: A total of 265 physicians responded from various clinical specialties. Physicians studied showed remarkable knowl- edge (98%) of BCT. Nevertheless, 92.8% of the respondents' were inclined to prescribing whole blood and the common- est reason given was ready availability at the blood bank. More than half of the respondents' have prescribed BCT with sedimented red cells and platelet concentrates being the most frequently prescribed blood components. Non-availability of blood components and cost implications were some of the identified limitations to the use of BCT. Conclusion: Majority of the physicians have a good knowledge concerning BCT. Nonetheless, there was a knowledge-prac- tice mismatch attributable to the unavailability of the various blood components limiting optimal practice of BCT. Strategies should be formulated to overcome these identified challenges to ensure quality transfusion services in our healthcare facil- ities. Keywords: Physicians; blood component therapy; blood transfusion; blood components; knowledge.

Application of Exploratory Factor Analysis in the Construction of a Self-Perception Model of Informational Competences in Higher Education

The progress experienced by society resulting from the ready availability of information through the use of technology highlights the need to develop specific learning related to informational competences (IC) in educational settings where future professionals are trained to educate others, specifically in university degrees in social sciences. This study seeks to ascertain the opinions of students enrolled in these degrees at the Universidad de Córdoba (Spain) with regard to the knowledge they consider that they possess about IC for their future professional development, through the practical application of exploratory factor analysis. The methodology designed is based on a descriptive, non-experimental, correlational survey. The results show that factor analysis is a fundamental tool for obtaining results in terms of students’ perception of their knowledge of IC because its psychometric value has confirmed construct validity and enabled us to break down the items that made up the four initial dimensions of IC into eight factors to improve the understanding and explanation of these IC.

Effect of Urea Addition on Anatase Phase Enrichment and Nitrogen Doping of TiO2 for Photocatalytic Abatement of Methylene Blue

TiO2-based materials are commonly employed as photocatalysts for industrial wastewater treatment. The primary reasons of employing TiO2 include cost effectiveness, ready availability, eco-friendliness, non-toxic behavior, and exceptional resistance towards photo-corrosion. However, the wider band gap of pure TiO2 restricts its performance because of its optical absorption of solar light to the ultraviolet (UV) region only, and to some extent of photo-excited charge recombination. In the present work an attempt is made to develop a facile synthesis approach by using urea, a cheap chemical precursor, to form nitrogen doped TiO2 with the key objective of extended light absorption and thus enhanced photocatalytic performance. It was also observed that the urea-induced anatase phase enrichment of TiO2 is another key factor in promoting the photocatalytic performance. The photocatalysts prepared by varying the amount of urea as a nitrogen dopant precursor, are characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) to evaluate their crystallinity, morphology, functional groups, and charge separation properties, respectively. Moreover, the surface area was also estimated by physicochemical adsorption. The maximum nitrogen-doped sample yielded >99% photodegradation efficiency of methylene blue (MB) dye-simulated wastewater as compared to a pure TiO2 sample which exhibited 6.46% efficiency. The results show that the simultaneous factors of nitrogen doping and anatase phase enhancement contributes significantly towards the improvement of photocatalytic performance.

A Review of Blood and Blood Products Requisition and Utilization in Post-neonatal Ward of a Tertiary Hospital in South Western Nigeria

Background: Blood and its products ordering is a common practice in paediatrics. The ready availability of blood and blood components has resulted in liberal use. Inappropriate use of blood and blood products exposes patients to the risk of transfusion transmissible diseases and allergic and haemolytic reactions. Objective: To assess blood and blood products requisition and utilization in a post-neonatal ward in a semi-urban tertiary hospital in Nigeria Methods: Retrospective analysis of medical records of all transfused post-neonatal patients during the study period from 1st July 2015 to¬ 31st December 2016 to calculate the cross-match to transfusion ratio, transfusion probability and transfusion index. Results: The units of blood cross-matched were 98 and 90 blood units transfused. The cross-match to transfusion ratio was 1.09 indicative of significant blood usage. The transfusion probability was 100% indicative of significant blood usage. The transfusion index was 1.10 indicative of significant blood utilization. Conclusion: Transfusion of blood and blood products in the post-neonatal ward of our setting meet the standard criteria for quality indicators for blood utilization.

Plastic Recovery and Utilization: From Ocean Pollution to Green Economy

Due to their numerous merits (such as high durability, diverse applicability, ready-availability, low-cost, reusability, and so on), the presumably inevitable use of plastics makes their waste ubiquitously dispersed in our environment, especially in the oceans. The environmental damage posed, especially to the ecosystem, initiated the need for recourse control of these environmentally refractory pollutants. In this review, the various sources, classifications, fate, and control measures of plastic wastes were appraised. Further, of the three primary techniques for resource control, pyrolysis was reviewed in-depth, showing its relevance and superiority over others. Specific case studies showed that liquid and gaseous fuels derived from pyrolyzed plastics are a waste-to-wealth system that requires optimization and intensification. Such an approach would further help rid our planet of the numerous plastic wastes while improving our economy and achieving our energy demand. One approach identified to improve the current pyrolysis technology is catalysis. Further research should devise green methods for organic catalysis, which are environmentally benign.