Feature Article

There is limited experience in India of using mobile phones for sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, in rural areas where service coverage is still insufficient and accurate information is lacking. Information and integral support can be provided by leveraging mobile health (mHealth) services, but issues of privacy and gender sensitivity are crucial for its success.

A plethora of problems face Southern and Northern family agricultures in the current neo-liberal era of financial capital domination worldwide, and has paved the way for the revival of peasant struggles for their social emancipation and legitimate right of access to land and food. Obviously, such struggles also concern all categories of workers and people because what is at stake is the challenge to reach food sovereignty and to build our societies at the local, national and global levels, on the principles of social justice, equality and real democracy.

The BJP needs to think beyond farm loan waivers to address intensifying rural unrest. (Editorial)

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) may help cigarette smokers quit smoking, yet they may also facilitate cigarette smoking for never-smokers. Researchers quantified the balance of health benefits and harms associated with e-cigarette use at the population level.

Original Source

Albedo—a primary control on surface melt—varies considerably across the Greenland Ice Sheet yet the specific surface types that comprise its dark zone remain unquantified. Here we use UAV imagery to attribute seven distinct surface types to observed albedo along a 25 km transect dissecting the western, ablating sector of the ice sheet. Our results demonstrate that distributed surface impurities—an admixture of dust, black carbon and pigmented algae—explain 73% of the observed spatial variability in albedo and are responsible for the dark zone itself.

The population structure of the Phytophthora infestans populations that caused the recent 2013–14 late blight epidemic in eastern India (EI) and northeastern India (NEI) was examined. The data provide new baseline information for populations of P. infestans in India. A migrant European 13_A2 genotype was responsible for the 2013–14 epidemic, replacing the existing populations. Mutations have generated substantial sub-clonal variation with 24 multi-locus genotypes (MLGs) found, of which 19 were unique variants not yet reported elsewhere globally.

Pterosaurs were winged cousins of the dinosaurs and lived from around 200 million years ago to 66 million years ago, when the last pterosaurs disappeared during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. The pterosaurs are thought to have declined in diversity before their final extinction, suggesting that gradual processes played a major role in their demise. However, pterosaur fossils are very rare, and thus, it is unclear whether pterosaurs were really low in diversity at this time or whether these patterns merely result from a paucity of fossils.

Within the human host, the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is exposed to multiple selection pressures. The host environment changes dramatically in severe malaria, but the extent to which the parasite responds to—or is selected by—this environment remains unclear. From previous studies, the parasites that cause severe malaria appear to increase expression of a restricted but poorly defined subset of the PfEMP1 variant, surface antigens. PfEMP1s are major targets of protective immunity.

Kerala, the land of rich biodiversity, is a treasure of land races of many crops. The speciality rice varieties of Kerala include Pokkali (organic rice), Jeerakasala and Gandhakasala (scented rice varieties), Black Njavara and Golden Njavara (medicinal rice varieties). A study on the nutraceutical properties of these speciality rice varieties was made to understand their health benefits.

There has been little investigation into whether the “social gradient to health”—whereby people belonging to groups higher up the social ladder have better health outcomes than those belonging to groups further down—exists in developing countries like India. The relative strengths of economic and social status in determining the health status of persons in India is evaluated using the National Sample Survey Office data set for 2004 and 2014. This is evaluated with respect to two health outcomes: the age at death and the self-assessed health status of elderly persons.