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Removal of Struvite in Wastewater Using Anammox Bacteria
Struvite precipitation in wastewater has proved to be an effective method in treating wastewater and has helped in the recovery of ammonia nitrogen and phosphate phosphorus. Nutrient recovery from wastewater has become a new trend attracting the interests of several researchers. Extraction of the nutrients based on struvite crystals as nutrition sources from wastewater has been acknowledged as a need of the hour solution to tackle the water pollution issue. This review focuses on the featured characteristics of struvite as a chemical fertilizer for plant and the struvite formation process related to physiochemical conditions in wastewaters. In the present work, struvite precipitation in the actual swine wastewater is studied by strategically controlling aeration, pH, and mixing of anammox bacteria. The effect of organic solids in the wastewater has also been studied. Laboratory experiments were conducted by optimizing pH value. pH was found to be an important parameter in the simultaneous removals of ammonium nitrogen and orthophosphate. This work reveals that the struvite removal from wastewater can be reduced to 80% using anammox bacteria. Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022. -
Rendering support for the empowerment of rural women to overcome life impediments
The socio-cultural and economic landscape of rural India is not totally conducive for women. Surveys and reports in this regard would suggest the continuous existence of gender-based discrimination and its negative effects on the status and livelihood of rural women. Recognizing this situation, the Centre for Social Action (CSA) has pioneered its efforts to sensitize and involve youth (especially students) in the mitigation of rural issues and has been supporting women in select villages by promoting Self Help Groups (SHGs). These SHGs, in turn, organize capacitybuilding and empowerment programmes for the women to enhance their livelihood and socio-economic well-being. The present study is designed to understand the impact of CSA's intervention on the status and livelihood of women in the select project sites. Towards this end, we collected data from a sample of 150 women beneficiaries of CSA's initiative using a structured interview schedule. The study used a mixedmethod design. The study's outcome indicates a positive correlation between women's participation in CSA initiatives and their status and livelihood improvements. The results are encouraging that they would help one formulate effective models similar to this one for the empowerment of women. 2024 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. -
RESEARCH INSIGHTS ON TEACHER EDUCATION
Teacher education is an important academic domain, as it determines the quality of school education through the teachers produced by teacher education. The changing demands and nature of learners at school force teachers to adapt themselves constantly. This requires change in the methods of teacher training and its curriculum. Thus, researchers specialised in the area of teacher education must find innovative approaches to train preservice and in-service teachers to meet the changing demands. The present chapter presents the research conducted on the developmental aspects of teacher education across the globe in the last two decades. The chapter organises the research inputs in five different areas for ease of understanding: research related to the application of sociological, psychological and technological theories to teacher education practices, research related to transformational changes, research on teacher and teaching competence and research pertaining to teacher reflection. This would help teacher educators, schoolteachers, trainee teachers and policy makers to organise and implement effective teacher training programmes. 2023 selection and editorial matter G.S. Prakasha and Anthony Kenneth; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Research Intention Towards Incremental Clustering
Incremental clustering is nothing but a process of grouping new incoming or incremental data into classes or clusters. It mainly clusters the randomly new data into a similar group of clusters. The existing K-means and DBSCAN clustering algorithms are inefficient to handle the large dynamic databases because, for every change in the incremental database, they simply run their algorithms repeatedly, taking lots of time to properly cluster those new ones coming data. It takes too much time and has also been realized that applying the existing algorithm frequently for updated databases may be too costly. So, the existing K-means clustering algorithm is not suitable for a dynamic environment. Thats why incremental versions of K-means and DBSCAN have been introduced in our work to overcome these challenges.To address the aforementioned issue, incremental clustering algorithms were developed to measure new cluster centers by simply computing the distance of new data from the means of current clusters rather than rerunning the entire clustering procedure. Both the K-means and the DBSCANDBSCAN algorithms use a similar approach. As a result, it specifies the delta change in the original database at which incremental K-means or DBSCANDBSCAN clustering outperforms prior techniques. 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. -
Research Potentials and Future Trends of Digital Sustainability
A once-in-a-century pandemic has left scars on countries already roiled by the increasingly erratic weather patterns induced by the climate crisis, wreaking havoc on sectors as diverse as food security, industrial production, and defence. Countries are torn between ameliorating COVID-19's devastating impact on education, health, and livelihoods of citizens, and finding their footing in a new global order. But from this ferment are emerging technologies, ideas, and solutions that will drive the world of the future; innovation and big ideas are building a vision that is bold and transformative. As the digital technologies evolve, its comprehensive impact on the environment needs to be considered to harness its full potential. Technology is transforming our world, but at the same time it brings new opportunities as well as challenges for sustainability. The unintended negative environmental impacts emerging from technologies are likely to be outweighed by potential of technology to solving it. Advances in technology, coupled with artificial intelligence, innovation in analytics, and data generation, is likely to have positive sustainability impacts. This chapter highlights the research potential and future trends of digital technologies for sustainability purposes. We intend to evaluate the implications of digital technology such as cloud computing, blockchain, Internet of Things, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence on pollution reduction, sustainable farming practices, conservation of biodiversity, and natural disaster management. Using real-life cases, we will investigate how digital technologies can be both an obstacle and enabler to global sustainability, which will enable devising appropriate digitalization strategies geared towards the achievement of sustainability. 2024 selection and editorial matter, Vandana Sharma, Balamurugan Balusamy, Munish Sabharwal, and Mariya Ouaissa. -
Reshaping the Education Sector of Manipur Through Blockchain
The use of technology in education has been over a century, yet blockchain is in its nascent stage in education. Over the years, technology has enhanced the teaching-learning method, and blockchain can improve even in the administrative section of education. The states of North East, India, in general, lag behind the rest of Indian states in almost all sectors, and the lack of transparency in the administrative sector significantly contributed to it. If blockchain is incorporated into the education department at the administrative level, it could pave the way for a faster, more transparent, and smoother administration. Given the harsh reality that transportation is hard and expensive, a standardised blockchain can alleviate the need to be physically present for any academic-related activity. The attempt of this study would be to show how blockchain can be beneficially used even at the institutional level, where unabated printing could be reduced and adopting to e-paper be maximised. Besides the educational institutions, the administrative sector in education could profitably use them in offices, thereby avoiding red tape for the common people. The chapter points out how blockchain can be a trailblazer in reshaping the education sector in Manipur. Educational institutions must take the lead towards a sustainable future, and blockchain can aid in bringing some visible change in the educational sector. This chapter uses an interdisciplinary approach to substantiate the importance and need for blockchain in the context of Manipur to change for a sustainable future. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024. -
Responding to the pandemic: A case of the indian hotel industry
The chapter presents a case study on how Indian hotel industry was affected by COVID-19. Three hotels-Lemon Tree, Oyo Rooms, and Taj Hotels-were selected to elaborate. The study found that the hotel industry developed various policies to keep running their hotels during the pandemic. Lemon Tree joined various hospitals to provide rooms to COVID patients, provided free food and face masks to individuals. Oyo Rooms gave employee stock ownership plans of Rs 130 crore to its COVID-hit employees. Taj Hotels did not cut down the salaries of their employees and reduced its seating capacity by 50%. The study concluded that as the hospitality sector battled hard to continue during the pandemic, modernization would become an imperative tool in the post-COVID period to beat obstructions and spotlight advancement. So, the companies should minimize fixed costs and maximize variable costs. They should preferably have liquid cash available that could enable them to mitigate the risk. 2022, IGI Global. -
Rethinking growth for long-term welfare: A case for circular economy transition in the tourism sector in Nepal
The construct of Circular Economy (CE) is emerging as an alternate to the existing linear "extraction-use-disposal" economic model. CE concept emphasises the significance of sustaining the value of resources like materials and products within the economy, lessening waste generation, thereby enhancing sustainability. The pandemic crisis has offered a rare prospect to pause and ruminate on crucial anxieties about the future prospects of the tourism industry, together with issues related to overall resilience, undesirable environmental and social impacts, opportunities, and risks amidst the emerging sustainability challenges. Over-tourism, GHG emissions and biosphere degradation problems will not automatically recede post-pandemic when the 'normalcy' returns. Principally, these challenges have to be dynamically addressed so as to rebuild a tourism industry that is economically and environmentally sustainable and more resilient. This paper aims to understand the need and implications of the shift of the tourism industry to the circular economy model. An attempt is made to examine the prospect of Nepal transitioning into a CE so that there is a well-balanced and restorative accomplishment from economic and environmental standpoints. 2024 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. -
Review of Medical Drones in Healthcare Applications
Drone technology has an immense potential to provide various efficient solutions in the healthcare sector. It has been used in different applications ranging from transportation to rescue. The recent benefits of drone technology to assist emergency situations have achieved academic attention, which results in extensive practical implementation and simulation. However, it still needs to come into a reality beyond a certain extent. The involvement of drones in the healthcare industry has grown to be smart and intelligent for providing better medical care, fast transport and delivery of medicines, and search and rescue operations. The most important reason behind the evolution of drones is the replacement of human service, which is required during the global health crisis. Recent technology such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and the 5G network joined hands with drone technology, resulting in a great benefit to the healthcare industry. Drones are needed to battle the coronoavirus by delivering medicines and test samples. It is also involved in remote pandemic management in the form of helping the authorities to monitor social gatherings, by broadcasting the awareness messages and nearby hospitals details, for spraying virus protection liquid on the street, and many more. Therefore, this chapter proposes the intricacies of the Internet of medical drones in the healthcare sector, in hopes of empowering and eliciting more aggressive investigation. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Saravanan Krishnan and M. Murugappan; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Review on Segmentation of Facial Bone Surface from Craniofacial CT Images
Three-dimensional (3D) representation of facial bone surface is needed in the virtual surgical planning for orthognathic surgery. Segmentation of facial bone surface from computed tomography images is first step in developing the 3D model. With the advent in the computer vision techniques, various automatic and semi-segmentation algorithms were developed in the recent years for segmentation of facial bone surface from craniofacial computed tomography images. In the proposed paper, the various segmentation techniques for extracting bone surface from 3D CT images for corrective jaw surgery available in the literature have been discussed. By reviewing all the methods available in the literature, it is found that each method has its own merits and demerits. 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. -
Revisiting African womanhood: Historical archives
This chapter highlights African women's lives, experiences, and contributions to the continent's social, economic, and political development by revisiting historical archives about African womanhood. The chapter provides critical insights into the diversity and complexity of women's experiences in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial contexts by examining historical sources such as oral histories, archival documents, and secondary literature. The chapter explores topics including women's roles in pre-colonial societies, the impact of colonialism on women's lives, women's activism in nationalist movements, and the challenges and opportunities of post-colonial African femininity. It also emphasizes the impact of gendered power relations on women's lives and women's strategies to resist and challenge these power dynamics. In conclusion, the chapter demonstrates the significance of emphasizing women's voices and perspectives in writing African history and its implications for current efforts to advance gender equality and social justice in Africa and beyond. 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Revisiting the efficacy of policies in the Indian primary healthcare sector: Interventions and approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has wracked even the most modern healthcare systems worldwide and has influenced Indias healthcare sector and vastly affected the governments and corporate stakeholders healthcare reform plans; hence, this chapter is intended to unfold the paradigm shift in Indias primary healthcare industry due to the pandemic in the last one and half years. This chapter described Indias experience with the coronavirus during the first and second waves and tried examining the public health difficulties in the COVID era. It provides a timeline of significant events of the pandemics growth in India and worldwide and how India responded to the situations through their economic and healthcare policies. We also go through some of the pandemics impacts and Indias recovery approach and strategies for its revival. All possibly available secondary data like Scopus, Web of Science, Medline/PubMed, and Google Scholar search engines, newspapers, government websites, etc., were excavated to meet this purpose; secondary sources were used to analyze the data. This chapter also examined the effect of COVID-19 on healthcare workers in India. This chapter critically examined the primary healthcares role during this pandemic and the governments policies and processes to deal with COVID-19 and any other unforeseen situations which the country may encounter in the future. 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -
Revisiting the Nexus Between Suicides and Economic Indicators: An Empirical Investigation
In India, as of 2021, there was a 7.2% increase in suicides. With the economic burden inflicted by the pandemic and increasing suicides, a systematic investigation needs to be done. This empirical investigation uses the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to obtain long and short-term estimates for the relationship between suicides and prominent economic indicators. The findings suggest that economic indicators like GDP per capita growth, age dependency ratio, and unemployment rate have a significant dynamic relationship with suicides. In this regard, preventive measures can be formulated and implemented in such a way that focuses on improving the countrys economic scenario which will in turn reduce suicides. Organizations and governments can plan training and mental health care programs for farmers, workers, and students. Mental health care services require attention from the government so that at a macro level the problem of increasing suicides can be handled. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. 2024. -
Revitalizing education: A roadmap for school transformation
Educational equity, school transformation, and policy and practice alignment are crucial in the evolution of educational systems. It requires an all-encompassing comprehension that transcends historical contexts, technological impacts, and conceptual frameworks to address students' varied requirements and eliminate inequalities. Acknowledging educational equity as a moral imperative underscores the ethical obligation of stakeholders. School transformation necessitates the presence of forward-thinking administrators, the active involvement of stakeholders, and a comprehensive reassessment. A cohesive approach to equity requires the utilization of robust frameworks, ongoing professional development, and continuous assessment to align policy and practice. Overcoming obstacles requires confronting opposition, capitalizing on technological advancements, deriving lessons from past failures, and establishing the foundation for a future characterized by greater inclusivity. 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Revitalizing language acquisition journey: A multidisciplinary approach to combat burnout
This chapter presents an all-encompassing strategy for combating digital fatigue in second language acquisition (SLA). It examines digital exhaustion's symptoms, causes, and psychological effects, emphasizing the need for healthy digital practices. Excessive use of technology, such as language applications and social media, can exacerbate exhaustion and necessitate self-care and stress management. Learners should prioritize their well-being by engaging in self-reflection, relaxation, and non-language activities, including mindfulness and meditation. Instructors are essential for fostering supportive environments incorporating feedback and a development mindset. Peer participation fosters community and reduces fatigue. This comprehensive strategy engages learners, instructors, parents, and peers to ensure a successful SLA journey in the digital age, with well-being at its core. 2023, IGI Global. -
Revolutionizing healthcare telemedicine's global technological integration
The pursuit of universal and high-quality healthcare services is a fundamental obligation of any responsible state, yet India faces persistent challenges in achieving this goal despite governmental efforts and policies. Notably, the 65th World Health Assembly emphasized universal health coverage (UHC) as pivotal for global public health advancement. Addressing this, a 2010 high-level expert group identified impediments in UHC implementation, highlighting issues such as health financing, infrastructure, skilled human resources, and access to medicines. This study focuses on exploring telemedicine's potential to mitigate these challenges and become instrumental in realizing universal health coverage in India. It aims to scrutinize government plans, critically assess policies on telemedicine implementation, and propose effective integration models, particularly in rural areas, to facilitate UHC. Additionally, the research aims to examine the role of AI, ML, deep learning, and neutral networks within telemedicine, envisaging their contribution to augmenting telemedicine's efficacy towards achieving universal health coverage in India. 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Revolutionizing Healthcare with IoT: Connecting the Dots for Better Patient Outcomes
Healthcare enhances ones physical and emotional well-being via the detection, treatment, and eventual cure of disease, illness, injuries, and other debilitating conditions. The importance of information systems has increased everywhere, particularly in the healthcare sector. Information technology has long benefitted the health business, from electronic health records to cloud-based platforms. Information systems are becoming increasingly important in advancing healthcare and healthcare administration. The pandemic brought virtual space and services to all sectors of the economy, especially healthcare, which was predominantly supported through face-to-face services earlier, but due to the requirement of social distancing, hospitals started offering services in virtual mode. Also, evolution in the information system and the Internet has paved the way for the Healthcare Internet of Things (HIoT). The Healthcare Internet of Things (HIoT) is the interconnection of intelligent objects or devices that enables the development of new healthcare services and applications. HIoT can take many forms, namely medical devices, public health services, innovative technology, medication refills, and remote monitoring. This healthcare data is a new treasure for healthcare stakeholders to improve patients health and experiences while creating revenue opportunities and improving healthcare operations. Thus, HIoT is redefining healthcare by ensuring better care, improved treatment outcomes, and reduced patient costs, as well as better processes and workflows, improved performance, and patient experience for healthcare providers. HIoT devices can also be useful for asset management tasks like controlling inventory at the pharmacy, checking refrigerator temperatures, and controlling humidity and temperature in the environment. Having said the advantages, one cannot deny the challenges it has brought to safety, security, privacy, and scalability aspects. Hence, this chapter will explore the evolution of IoT in healthcare, its elements, applications, and challenges. 2024 selection and editorial matter, Alex Khang. -
Revolutionizing legal services with blockchain and artificial intelligence
[No abstract available] -
Revolutionizing lifelong learning AI, virtual, and augmented reality in education
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the revolutionary effects that artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) have had on the educational environment, specifically with regard to the revolutionization of lifelong learning. It investigates the ways in which the incorporation of cuttingedge technology is changing conventional instructional approaches, therefore providing students with individualized and immersive educational experiences. The conversation focuses on the inclusive and dynamic character of education that is made possible by artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality, while also addressing problems such as the limitations of technology and ethical implications. It is emphasized that in order to fully realize the potential of modern technologies in the field of education, it is necessary for educators, legislators, and technologists to work together. This abstract offers a succinct overview of the ways in which artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality are profoundly changing paradigms of lifelong learning. 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Revolutionizing packaging sustainability through advanced materials and technologies
Consumer engagement is identified as a catalyst for positive environmental impact in the context of sustainable packaging. It probes into three fundamental aspects collectively contributing to forming a conscientious community: packaging transparency and labelling, consumer education, and packaging as a narrative medium. Education promotes advocacy for sustainability, transparent labelling enables individuals to make informed decisions, and packaging narratives establish emotional connections. Collectively, they facilitate a transition towards conscientious consumption. The potential for improved environmental impact of packaging is further enhanced by the collaborative efforts of consumers and brands, which can shape corporate strategies and contribute to preserving the planet. 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved.