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HEALTH AND DISEASEThe concept of Health is somewhat difficult to understand. When we say a person is healthy, it means to the lay man that the person is normally doing his activities and does not outwardly show any signs of any disease in him. However, for the medical man it denotes the conformity to certain standards like physical measurements, biochemical norms and rates, physiological standards, etc. Even these standards vary with race, rest, exercise, food, habits, starvation, climate, altitude, latitude, etc. It has been extremely difficult for scientists concerned with human biology to lay definite criteria for health and define the term Health in a specific manner.From the history of medicine we know that there have been various systems of medicine or healing arts evolved in different parts of the world during different civilizations. But in no system has there been a clear-cut definition of health.In the oxford dictionary health means the state of being free from sickness, injury or disease, bodily conditions; something indicating good bodily condition. A few decades ago this meaning was conveyed in the definition of health but recently the World Health Organization have considered it necessary to give a direction towards the achievement of a robust and happy and active bodily and mental condition capable of continuous productive ability and, therefore, have defined health as follows:”Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO—1948) it will be seen that even after having this definition it will be difficult to conceptualise and standardise positive health with specific clear-cut attributes and criteria for measurement. A person may be enjoying mental equanimity and enthusiasm for doing anything. He may also be physically able to do any amount of work, but he may be having some minor dysfunction or deficiency or even a mild infection causing a very minor disturbance which however does not upset his normal activities.For example, Hyper pigmentation on the skin or lack of pigmentation on the skin; angular stomatitis due to B complex deficiency; a ring-worm patch on the skin, etc. In these conditions strictly speaking the person cannot be called ‘health’ but for outward purpose he will appear healthy and he will also be fully active. Similarly, under the mental component there are ever so many stresses and strains that an individual is exposed to and depending on his own mental make-up he is either able to overcome the strain or suffers from worry and depression. If in spite of his worry he is able to function normally others may take him to be healthy, whereas the worry may normally be making him mentally unsound.Social well-being is very much related to the mental adjustment of the individual to others around him in the family or in the community. Sometimes it may so happen that a person may find it had to adjust with his group and may, therefore, be under a mental strain. But he may be doing his work normally from which others would judge him to be healthy. It is only if he reaches a break-point and behaves either in a withdrawn manner or becomes aggressive that his mental condition will become manifest to be seen and experienced by others.We have, therefore, to understand that the term health is not an abstract thing but a relative concept. In it we see a continuum of freedom from sickness to better health and positive health. When we say positive health we refer to a condition in which the body has sufficient reserve nutrition and resistant factors to prevent the invasion of the body by any micro-organism or by the deprivation of any nutritional factors causing a deficiency pathology and, therefore, completely free from disease.Disease is a little less difficult to define than Health. It denotes the condition of the human body in which something has gone wrong and has upset the Norman functions of the body including the mind. As in health there is also a continuum from a predisposition or premonition of illness which may or may not be experienced or noticed even by the individual concerned, to a definite condition of illness manifested by signs or symptoms and impairment of body functions.This continuum may further extend from mild sickness to severe sickness and death or recovery from sickness back to a debilitated condition and later to a normal condition.As has been pointed out in the previous paragraphs the normally of health of person may shift towards positive health depending on the improvement of health by wholesome food, wholesome water proper living conditions, proper work atmosphere, good personal hygiene, etc., or the deterioration of health due to faulty or inadequate food, infection through food, water or air, skin or due to external injuries, accident etc.For maintenance of good health the following things are essential:1. Adequate quantities of proper nutrition
2. Adequate quantities of safe drinking water
3. Proper shelter with adequate ventilation and lighting
4. Proper clothing
5. Proper work, exercise and rest and recreation
6. Proper social conditions for a harmonious existence and work
7. Proper security from fear of any kind
8. Proper sexual behavior
9. Personal hygiene
10. Provision and utilization of health services.Disease can be due to say one or more of the following causes:1. Genetic traits
2. Congenital deformity or malformation
3. Cancer
4. Malnutrition
5. PoisonsThe above are the direct causes.The science of epidemiology employs various methods and approaches to explore, investigate, identify and establish the cause of disease as against maintenance of health in the individual, in the community and in a geographical area. Modern epidemiology has revealed a multiple causation theory for most of the diseases. The direct or immediate causes may be congenital, traumatic, infection or cancerous growth, etc. But besides these direct causes, many indirect and predisposing causes have been described,For example, tuberculosis is caused by the tubercule bacilli, called myco bacterium tuberculosis, this is the direct cause. The other causes which predispose a person to the infection by tubercule bacillus may be overcrowding, poor nutrition, bad ventilation, heavy work, fatigue, etc. It may be appreciated that these causes are socio-economic causes. The economic factors arising out of poor means of livelihood, inadequate food, etc., are also inter-related with human and social factors like bad ways of living, customs, habits, beliefs, superstitions, etc. Taking another example, malnutrition may be due to either lack of availability of nutritious food in adequate quantities or the wrong practices of preparation of food in which nutrients may be wasted. The economic factors may be the cause for non-accessibility and the social factors may be the cause of wastage of nutrition even after the food stuffs are available or on the contrary over eating and addiction to alcohol, etc., causing metabolic disorder. In the rural countryside we have a lot of locally available food resources but the habits may be such that the people do not know what can be eaten and how, for deriving nutrition.The human and social factors are very predominant determinants in any society or community. In affluent countries many of the metabolic diseases like obesity, heart diseases, diseases due to air pollution, etc., are on the increase due to social customs. In the poor countries the large number of communicable diseases and nutritional deficiencies are due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene and low and faulty intake of food. These are again in turn due to economic and social factors.Study of human behavior is extremely important in public health and in any community oriented programme. The mere opening and establishment of hospitals or clinics or treatment centers by any government or voluntary agencies does not immediately ensure that all the people will use the facilities whenever they fall sick. For a person to seek treatment for a particular illness from a doctor or an institution the following stages of human behavior are expected to take place.Social psychology has a very prominent place as a diagnostic tool in the beginning of the programme and also as a tool of evaluation where the programme is under progress or at its termination. For example, in the control of Cholera or any gastro enteric infection, it will be futile to introduce any sanitation programme unless the people know the causative factor and the mode of transmission of infection. There may be need to improve the water supply, provide proper excreta disposal, food hygiene and personal hygiene. All these things involve a scientific awareness of the reasoning behind each measure or practice and a change of behavior accordingly.

Business owners and managers want to compare equipment finance companies to their bank and for a good reason; a bank is a company’s first point of reference when borrowing money or financing equipment or an expansion project. A bank is the most obvious place to start and a secure place to store your money and use their multiple services. But what a bank does not do well, both historically because of their structure and the recent tightening of the credit market, is offer business financing for capital assets (equipment). Yet many people get confused when looking for an equipment loan because they are not seeing the whole picture; this is a case where you definitely want to compare apples to apples to get the best results.Here are a few points to compare; these are not set in stone but based on years of experience, these trends apply a majority of the time.1) Total Dollars Financed – banks normally require that you keep a balance of 20% or 30% of the equipment loan amount on deposit. This means they are only financing 70% or 80% of your equipment costs because you have to keep a certain amount of YOUR money in a fixed account for the duration of the loan. In contrast, an equipment finance company will cover 100% of the equipment including all “soft” costs and will only request a one or two month prepayment. No fixed deposits required.2) Soft Costs – banks also will normally not cover “soft” costs like labor, warrantees, consulting and installation which means these costs come out of your pocket. An equipment finance company will cover 100% of the equipment price including “soft” costs and some projects can be financed with 100% “soft” costs which no bank would ever consider.3) Interest Rates – this is the most popular question in the finance world; what’s my rate? If the bank requires 30% deposit in a fixed account then that automatically raises a 5% interest rate to a 20% rate. Now people will argue that you get that deposited money back at the end of the term but that is money which you do not have access to and has an opportunity cost associated with it. Equipment finance companies target their financing rates between 3-5% for cities and 7-9% for commercial financing which is a real fixed rate and not under-stated as the bank rates can be thus independent finance company rates are very competitive with “true” bank rates.4) Process Speed – banks often take weeks to review and approve a finance request while independent finance companies normally only take a few days and can work much more quickly. Finance underwriters only review business financing while a bank has other types of requests clogging their channel.Banks also have many more levels of approval and review to pass while independent finance companies normally only have two, underwriting and credit committee. Even with complicated deals, the finance company’s process is always faster.5) Guarantee – banks require, as a standard part of their documentation, a blanket lien on all assets, both personal and business assets are used as guarantee against default on the loan. Your business assets, your home, your car, and your boat can all be on the line when entering into a bank transaction. This may also be the case with an equipment financing company but if your business operation is solvent then only your business will be listed as collateral and not your personal assets; this is known as a “corp only” approval.6) Monitoring – banks require yearly “re-qualifying” of all their business accounts which means on the anniversary date of your loan each year, you must submit requested financial documents to assure the bank that everything is going well and nothing has affected your business in a negative way. Finance companies do not require anything during the term of the loan or finance as long as the monthly payments are made on time. Nobody will be checking into your business or policing what you do.When comparing your bank financing to an independent equipment finance company, you have to make sure you are evaluating all the key parameters, not just one. Clearly, the fine print and terms of the transaction are more important than the big numbers. Banks work well within their space but have proven time and again not to be as flexible or solution-oriented as an independent finance company which solely focuses on business lending can be.

Patents are the largest source of technological information. Patent are given to the inventor as a reward for its innovation in the form of the exclusive right of the monopoly for a period of 20 years from the priority date of the invention. Due to advancement in the IT sector and internet, now these valuable documents are in the reach of the general public. Any person skilled in the art can go through various patent databases and after a search can get the patent document of their need. There are different patent databases viz, USPTO, EPO, JPO, etc freely open for the public access. If we go through the patents related to a specific technological area, we will be able to find the lots of information about the life cycle of the technological innovation viz.,o evolutionary path of a specific technology,o technological development,o technological diversification,o technology merges,o major players in specific technological area,o key points of the specific technology,”The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) revealed that 90% to 95% of all the world’s inventions can be found in patented documents.”Patent analysis can reveals very valuable informations, which is not available anywhere. After patent search the crucial part is the patent analysis, and one have to be very concise about their objective of the study. The information in the patent documents can be utilized in different form according to the need and mapped accordingly to get the picture of the entire analysis in snapshots.Patent data can be used for the preparation of technological landscapes. Logistic mathematics and circle mathematics can be very useful in the plotting of the technological landscape. It can reveal the evolutionary trend of a technology, how it is evolved from a basic technology, along with the period of the technological diversification and its nature. These maps will also give the detailed overview of the merging of the different technologies to give rise to break-through technologies. These types of maps will be very useful for the R&D personals to evaluate the position of their research and technology, and also they will find way to more innovate more advanced and valuable technology.In the today’s global context firms need to know what technologies can competitors choke easily, and may be attempting to. They also need to know the spaces in technologies where competition is intense, and the areas where competitors are concentrating their IP development and their R&D efforts. They need to be able to track patent acquisition and development strategies and chart out the competitive landscape. To evaluate technology before making any investment decision, firms need to know the pace of patenting activity in the technology, which patents embody fundamental ideas in the technology and how vulnerable the firm’s technologies are to patent infringements. This will give them much needed information in deciding between technology development and technology acquisition.The ability to extract relevant information from patent literature is a crucial success factor for anyone involved in technological innovation. The technology mapping technique’s that can be used to transform patent information into knowledge that can influence decision-making.Patents are an important source of technological intelligence that companies can use to gain strategic advantage. Technology Intelligence is a can be used for gathering, analyzing, forecasting, and managing external technology related information, including patent information. Computational patent mapping is a methodology for the development and application of a technology knowledgebase for technology and competitive intelligence. The primary deliverables of patent mapping is in the form of knowledge visualization through landscape and maps. These maps provide valuable intelligence on technology evolution/revolution, nature of various types of pioneering; big; pure; and emerging players, state-of-the-art assessment, etc.These types of technological maps will prove to be a valuable multiplier in R&D and commercialization activities, in various ways including the following:o Developing further insights in response to strategic requirements and policy formulation in the organizationo Forecasting and identifying technological activities and trends in the industryo Aiding in the visualization of alternative development and growth paths available to the organizationo Enabling pre-emptive recognition and action on potential licensing opportunitieso Identifying prospective partners and clientso Identify technology discontinuities and areas of opportunities in their chosen technologieso Monitor and evaluate the technological process of competitors and potential competitorso Support decisions on foray and investment into particular technologies and sub-technologieso Surveillance of technological progress of competitors as well as to alert oneself to new entrants to the fieldo Spotting of white spaces or opportunity areas within a dense technological domaino Creative tool to simulate new ideas and create new IPo Complementing corporate IP filing strategieso Support technology proposals for large scale national and international level projectso Support investment and technology due diligence on companiesPatent mapping can be an integral part of IP management. It can uncover valuable information hidden in patents and can provide useful indicators for technical trends, market trends, competitors changes and technological profile and innovation potential of a company. Patent maps are visual representations of patent information that has been mined and aggregated or clustered to highlight specific features. There is a high degree of flexibility in visualization, which may be in the form of time-series or as spatial maps. We provide a more market and technology oriented analysis of the complete set of patent portfolio assets via our patent mapping services. Patent mapping can be used to ascertain the quality of patents with respect to prevailing technology and the extent to which patents affect the technology. This is a valuable input in technology sourcing/development and R&D decisions. Patent mapping can be indispensable for both firms that have an under-utilized patent profile and are looking to license/assign it at the most favorable terms, as well as to firms that are looking at developing patent portfolio strength in a particular technological field.Mere subject specialization is not enough for this, but analytical thinking and innovations are very essential. Today lots of software resources are available for mapping the patent data, but almost all are confined to bibliographic informations. The machine work cannot be compared with that of human intelligence. Patent mapping requires many skills. First and foremost among these is an ability to understand the complex scientific ideas protected by the patents themselves. Although it is possible to create a patent map by analyzing the relationships between patents without understanding the subject matter, such a map is often useless and needs to be refined by someone who understands the intricacies of the particular scientific discipline that is the basis of the invention. Thus, I expect that the need for people with scientific (and engineering) expertise in the field of patent mapping is on the increase. That’s why today lots of KPO firm are looking for the right individual and there is a huge demand today, which will certainly increase in the near future.