No abstract

Since the first case was diagnosed in 2019 and global outbreak started in 2020, the corona virus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has become one of the world’s most critical health problems. Covid-19 was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Corona virus rapidly spread in crowed area. Paschim Medinipur district is over populated place, therefore it may control with the help of adequate knowledge, positive attitude and to avoid risky practice regarding Covid-19. Therefore, the present study mainly focuses on the construction and standardization of a usable scale/ tool that will help the researcher to know about the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) regarding Covid-19 of undergraduate college students. Education system of India was fully affected for last two years due to Covid-19 pandemic. Total education system was converted as a novel teaching and learning approaches- as digital online learning or virtual classroom during this pandemic phase. This study conducted on fifty undergraduate students, who has been participated for item analysis and sixty undergraduate students was considered for reliability test for this study from different colleges of Paschim Medinipur district. Researcher has generated the items of questionnaire/scale based on the review of literature related to Covid-19 and finally addition or alteration by the experts was done. This questionnaire/scale was divided into three sections i.e. knowledge, attitude and practice section/portion. Knowledge and attitude sections are divided into five and four dimensions respectively. Likert type summative three point rating scale was used in this scale. After construction of scales/tool researcher analysed the items based on discrimination index and difficulty value and Pearson’s product-moment coefficient of correlation (r) was used for the reliability of the scale/tool. Initially, the scale was prepared with the help of 32 knowledge items, 23 items related to attitude and 12 items related to practice. Finally, after item analysis, it was found that in the knowledge section 19 items were accepted out of 32 items, in attitude section 19 items were accepted out of 23 items and in practice section 11 items were retained out of 12 items. The test – retest method was applied for reliability test and Pearson’s Product Moment method was used to determine the correlation between two tests of this scale. The coefficient of correlation (r) of the scale was found as 0.89, 0.83 and 0.78 of knowledge, attitude and practice section respectively, which is highly significant. The present study describes how to construct a standardized tool to assess knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding Covid-19 that has a good items and significant reliability.

A simple haemolytic assay method for quantitative estimation of the delta endotoxin of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis from a crude preparation has been developed. The method has several advantages over mosquito-larvicidal methods of assay as it is inexpensive, highly sensitive and easier to run and can be used for performing a reasonably large number of assays rapidly with high precision and with a coefficient of variation that does not exceed 1.96%.

<div><p class="UserBody">Dietary behavior is very important for the growth and development of human beings. Nutritional status of an individual is highly influenced by varied eating patterns. In recent years there is a tendency of excessive intake of dietary fats and sugars in comparison to fruits and vegetables. Especially children and adolescents are getting more and more addicted to junk foods and fast foods and pursuing an unhealthy food habit. The adults have also fallen prey to this menace. The consequences are obesity, various physical and mental complications, learning disorders, etc. This paper is aimed at finding out the actual reasons behind such problem and how it can be solved. Informal and formal learning may have profound effect in this regard. Children, youth and adults need to realize that they are vulnerable to rapidly changing world and have to learn how to cope with it. For this they require continuous building up of practical knowledge, attitude, skills and motivation that will lead them to a healthy lifestyle or healthy living.</p></div>