Background: In maternal and child health arena iron deficiency anaemia has been recognized as a major health issue for developing countries. This has a huge impact on maternal morbidity, childhood morbidity, and child development. There is a critical need for low cost, diagnostic capability to guide iron supplementation. There is currently a crisis in diagnosis and associated treatment guidelines, as health workers lack the tools to make immediate decisions for treatment of distressed mothers and children. Proposal: We propose development of a non-invasive device to measure body iron and also the presence of malaria non-invasively. However the World Health Organization has recently called a halt to iron supplementation in malaria endemic regions, but this stalemate will be unacceptable in the long term. Methodology: The above mentioned goals will be accomplished by a measurement of the paramagnetic properties of iron in the liver as well as in Plasmodium hemazoin. While operating, the device is simply held near the liver for a body iron measurement. It can be held near the extremities for a malaria screening. No blood or body part touching is needed for the functioning of the instrument. Results: The initial screening validates the non-invasive magnetometer model has 99% Naive Bayes accuracy and above 95% SVM accuracy in identifying iron deficiency anaemia using liver as the medium. Conclusion: If AI machine learning techniques are used to support this non-invasive approach to iron detection, it will show to be effective, economical and time-efficient. Before being put into practice, the experiments must be validated on a bigger scale.

Since Melatonin, Tryptophan and Flavonoids are both directly and indirectly responsible for generating sleep hormones, this study focuses on determination of the above compounds in assorted dietary samples which comprises of seeds of Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), peels of Orange (Citrus recticulata) and Banana (Musa sapientum) and leaves of Green Tea (Camellia sinensis). Estimation was done with 1:5 ethanolic and aqueous extract of above samples in dilutions of 10%, 20%, 50%, 100% against Melatonin, Tryptophan and Gallic acid as standards. Results were recorded both– i) Spectrophotometrically and ii) using a Smartphone application PhotoMetrix Pro App at 530nm, 300nm and 510nm respectively. Comparable results showing similar trends indicated Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) having highest Melatonin content whereas Tryptophan and Flavonoids are present in maximum amount in Green Tea leaves (Camellia sinensis) and Orange peels (Citrus recticulata) respectively in 100% concentration. Though Banana peel recorded considerable amount of above compounds in different concentration, Orange peel turned out to be of maximum benefit with a significant (P<0.05) amount of these chemicals at all concentration.

Polyphenols and melanin both are important antioxidants with lot of biological activities. Since polyphenol undergoes oxidation, present study is focused on determination of amount of polyphenol present, rate of oxidation and subsequent generation of melanin in tea of various caffeinated and non-caffeinated natural products which comprises of seeds of fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.), seeds of cumin (Cuminum cyminum), leaves of black tea (Camellia sinensis var.), leaves of green tea (Camellia sinensis), peels of orange (Citrus reticulata) and peels of banana (Musa acuminata). These estimations were done spectrophotometrically with 1:10 aqueous extract (w/v) of above samples against gallic acid and melanin as standards at 760-765nm, 475nm respectively. Rate of oxidation values (P<0.05) were noted from concentration of melanin formation at an interval of 5 mins. Sequestering potential/metal chelating activity against heavy metals (lead and cadmium) were studied from foam forming capacity of these substrates using laureth sulphate. Orange peel tea recorded highest content of polyphenol and least polyphenol oxidation. Green Tea was found to contain maximum melanin. Highest metal-chelating capacity with both lead and cadmium was found in banana peel tea. Cumin tea also recorded highest chelating potential with cadmium only.