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This article focuses on the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), India's largest nutrition and early child development programme. It describes the political, organisational and technical challenges to building and sustaining an outcomes-oriented approach to nutrition monitoring in India. We show that the environment is conducive to strengthening nutrition programme monitoring and evaluation. Political commitment is growing, financial allocations have increased and there have been a number of reforms to strengthen the ICDS monitoring systems, but weaknesses remain. The article analyses seven technical challenges to improving the outcomes-orientation of ICDS and suggests steps that could be taken to improve monitoring.

This study aims to evaluate the performance of groundwater-based tube well irrigation systems of Sarlahi District in Nepal considering a water–energy–food nexus approach. The deep tube well (DTW) irrigation systems showed better performance over shallow tube well (STW) irrigation systems in terms of water supply and agricultural output per unit of irrigated area. On the other hand, the STW-based irrigation systems showed better performance in terms of energy use, management operation and maintenance (MOM) cost and benefit–cost ratio compared to DTW-irrigated systems. The productivity of irrigation water and energy input to major crops showed the best performance for maize followed by rice and wheat. The simulated yields of cereal crops through the AquaCrop model showed significant scope for enhancing crop yields and associated benefits through judicious use of water and fertilizer. (Résumé d’auteur

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Mitochondrial and lysosomal membranes are prominent membranes of cardiac cells and are the factors that determine membrane function in myocardial ischemia. In this study, isolation of mitochondria and lysosome from heart tissue under the control, isoproterenol (ISO) (8.5mg/100g) induced cardiotoxic rats and oral pretreatment with Z. armatum fruit (200, 400mg/kg body weight) treated rats. Further characterization of marker enzymes was done. A decreased in the activity of all the mitochondrial and lysosomal marker enzymes in ISO administered cardiotoxic rats when compared to control rats which indicate ISO decreased the stability of the membrane. Pretreatment with hydroethanolic extract of Z. armatum fruit to ISO induced rats significantly reverted these biochemical alterations near to normal. The possible mechanism for the protection of heart mitochondria and lysosome against oxidative damage induced by ISO might be due to quenching of free radicals and enhancing the action of marker enzymes.