Publications by authors named "V K Unnikrishnan"

The unprecedented and multi-faceted challenges health and care workers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the world's health ministers to call for a new Global Health and Care Worker Compact at the 74th World Health Assembly in 2021. The Care Compact identifies key areas where governments can use law and policy to prevent harm, provide support, ensure inclusivity, and safeguard rights of health and care workers toward improving population health. Using policy surveillance methods, we conducted an empirical analysis of the national law and policy environments on health and care workers' protection and rights in 182 countries.

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Article Synopsis
  • Oral cancer is prevalent in developing countries like India, largely due to smokeless tobacco use, which contains harmful trace elements.
  • Researchers used laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to analyze the elemental composition of two types of Paan masala and four packaged tobacco varieties, revealing common elements like calcium, iron, aluminum, nickel, and chromium.
  • The study found that harmful inorganic elements, particularly carcinogenic nickel, are present in both commercially packaged tobacco and Paan masala, highlighting the health risks associated with these products.
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Microplastics are one of the concerning environmental pollutants because of their ubiquity. Their capability to adsorb other environmental pollutants increases the risk even further. Existing identification approaches for microplastic characterization for polymer class and their surface-adsorbed heavy metal detection require the utilization of multiple resources and expertise.

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Selective cleavage of amide bonds holds prominent significance by facilitating precise manipulation of biomolecules, with implications spanning from basic research to therapeutic interventions. However, achieving selective cleavage of amide bonds via mild synthetic chemistry routes poses a critical challenge. Here, we report a novel amide bond-cleavage reaction triggered by Na[AuCl] in mild aqueous conditions, where a crucial cyclization step leads to the formation of a 5-membered ring intermediate that rapidly hydrolyses to release the free amine in high yields.

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The present study describes the seasonal distribution of microplastics (MPs) and their associated biofilms in the water column of the Netravathi-Gurupura estuary, southwest India. An average abundance of 8.15 (±3.

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