Health Care Innovation for Low-Resource Settings: The Value of Local Immersion and Partnership.

Health Care Innovation is the creation, development, and translation of new and better solutions to health care challenges. At its core, this endeavor does not require extending the frontiers of science or the creation of new fundamental technologies. Rather, it is primarily focused on the use of existing science and established technologies in the design of new solutions to problems in health care. Successfully innovating for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) requires a needs and stakeholder-driven approach to enable development and adoption of available, accessible, and acceptable solutions tailored to the specific need and context of care.

Digital lock-in amplifier for space rubidium atomic clock.

In many low-noise applications, extracting information from the extremely noisy signal is required. This task can be accomplished by a lock-in amplifier if the frequency of the signal is known before detection. Error signal output from the physics package of the rubidium atomic clock (RbAC) is one of those noisy signals. A lock-in amplifier extracts the desired information from such a signal as the frequency of the error signal is known beforehand. The Space Applications Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation is developing the Indian Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standard (IRAFS) for Navigation with Indian Constellation. We have developed a digital lock-in amplifier with a very high-resolution frequency control voltage for IRAFS. This paper demonstrates the digital lock-in amplifier with a novel method of combining two 12-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs) to get higher resolution 20-bit output for precise frequency control and tuning. This design technique allows a digital lock-in amplifier to be used for high-performance RbAC for space applications as precision DACs with higher resolution are not available in space-qualified versions.

Foetal growth parameters--clinical versus ultrasonographic.

The study was conducted in 2831 pregnant women with no diagnosed complication at the time of registration to obtain normal foetal growth pattern for clinical and ultrasonographic parameters. Normal values for maternal weight, fundal height and abdominal girth for clinical and biparietal diameter, abdominal circumferences and femoral length for ultrasonographic parameters are presented. Clinical and ultrasonographic parameters were compared for their efficacy in prediction of low birth weight. Neither clinical nor ultrasonographic parameters were found to be satisfactory in identifying the foetus at risk of low birth weight. It has been found that clinical parameters for routine monitoring are as effective as ultrasonographic parameters and have the added advantage of being easily replicable at the peripheral level of health care.

Food and energy choices for India: a programming model with partial endogenous energy requirements.

This paper presents a mathematical model for all matter-energy processing subsystems at the level of the society, specifically India. It explores India's choices in the food and energy sectors over the coming decades. Alternative land intensive, irrigation energy intensive, and fertilizer intensive techniques of food production are identified using a nonlinear programming model. The land saved is devoted to growing firewood. The optimum combination of railway (steam, diesel, and electric traction) and road (automobiles, diesel trucks, and diesel and gasoline buses) transport is determined. For the oil sector, two alternative sources of supply of crude oil and petroleum products are included, namely, domestic production and imports. The optimum choice is determined through a linear programming model. While the model is basically a static one, designed to determine the optimal choice for the target year of 2000-2001, certain intertemporal detail is incorporated for electricity generation. The model minimizes the costs of meeting the needs for food, transport in terms of passenger kilometers and goods per ton per kilometer, energy needs for domestic cooking and lighting, and the energy needs of the rest of the economy.