The ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a global public health emergency. Adherence to biosafety practices is mandatory to protect the user as well as the environment, while handling infectious agents. A biological safety cabinet (BSC) is the most important equipment used in diagnostic and research laboratories in order to safeguard the product, the person, and the environment. The World Health Organization has emphasized the use of validated BSCs in order to ensure quality of the results. There are different classes of BSCs that are used in various work environments based on the need. It is imperative to use appropriate levels of biosafety and types of BSCs in laboratories based on the risk assessment of the pathogen used. During the development of COVID-19 laboratories and training of laboratory staff, we came across several queries about the functions and selection of BSCs and realized that the knowledge about the detailed information on selections and applications of BSCs is scanty. There are several guidelines regarding the biosafety aspects for diagnostic and research laboratories handling infectious pathogens from national and international agencies. However, there is no detailed information on the use of appropriate types of BSCs and their functions in the context of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In view of this, the present paper describes in detail the selection and applications of BSCs, which could be useful for laboratories handling or planning to handle SARS-CoV-2 and suspected samples.

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Cultural manifestations of communities imbue deep-rooted meanings to places and establish intricate webs of relationships between people and places. These relationships cohesively add to the unique heritage of any place. In this era of urbanization, these webs are getting ruptured to make way for a globalized, homogenized and incoherent built environment leading to the loss of meanings, associations and identities. With the increasing recognition for the need of a holistic heritage management in both national and global platforms, a probe towards formulating a framework for such interventions becomes extremely essential today. This article signifies the role of spatial mapping of ‘people–place ties’ in the heritage management process. The methodology of documenting community–place relationships, mapping and interpreting maps to form a basis for interventions is demonstrated by taking the case of Puri, India. A number of research methods such as mental maps, essays and precoded questionnaire surveys have been used. To visualize this qualitative aspect, choropleth maps have been generated with the help of Geographic Information System (GIS) to be compared for residents of various age groups to interpret built environment qualities which need to be conserved/intervened. Thus, this process could be a part of a framework designed to sensitively intervene in rapidly transforming morphologies of heritage cities and help in sustaining and reinforcing their ‘place identity’.

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Universal Design Education has become a worldwide movement but demonstrated limited acceptance amongst architecture, planning and design schools in India. There are no specialized courses on universal design in the country, this is perhaps because the benefits of designing in a more inclusive way are not immediately apparent and also because there are many other pressing issues that require attention. Center for Human Centric Research in School of Planning and Architecture Bhopal organizes an annual National Student Design Competition on Universal Design (NSDC-UD) together with a Hands-on Workshop and Exhibition, to explore creative ways to offer universal design to the students of diverse design disciplines in the country. The center has organized three such events since 2010, which provided an intense and experiential universal design understanding to the students. The events also provided an opportunity to explore Student Design Competition as a pedagogical tool to meet educational objectives that the school is striving to include in Academic Curricula. The paper presents this annual academic event in brief and summarizes the lessons learnt for the contextual aptness of