From the Chief Editor’s Desk

I would like to welcome the readers to the Winter Issue of the 6^th Online Edition of IJASM, the Journal we nurtured over the last 65 years. As this Issue is planned to be released by Chief of the Air Staff, the Chief Petron of our Society on the glorious occasion of the Diamond Jubilee celebration of the 60^th Annual Conference of ISAM, I take this as an opportunity to present few milestone activities. Firstly, IJASM has already been registered with abstracting partners like Google Scholar, CrossRef, ReadCube, National Science Library and Index Copernicus and has made significant progress in the path of getting indexed. Secondly, the online publication has enabled our research works to have far and wide visibility. Thirdly, in addition to our esteemed reviewers of Aerospace Medicine Specialty, we have identified an academic panel of Domain Knowledge Experts from the allied specialties. I am sure contribution from these academicians will immensely enrich the scientific content of our research work. Fourthly, we have achieved substantial progress in archiving our older issues of the Journal on online platform. Finally, we have ensured adherence to publication timelines. The Journals are now being published well on time, an essential requirement of the process of indexing. While the Editorial Team has been striving hard and making sincere efforts to publish high quality scientific papers in an attempt to make the IJASM one of the leading Journals in the field of Aerospace Medicine in the international forum, we sincerely look forward to your valuable inputs, comments and suggestions.

With the beginning of the new era of India venturing into Human Space Program and developing capabilities to meet the new challenges, we have two interesting articles from our young researchers addressing the fundamental questions on human space exploration. The study on the effects of transverse acceleration simulating spacecraft launch and recovery gives an insight into the likely cardiorespiratory changes under such conditions. Another brilliant piece of research work explores the cardiopulmonary responses to simulated parabolic flight. The study brings out the parabolic flight profile which can be simulated in the human centrifuge to study the physiological changes.

There are two more interesting simulator-based research papers in the present Edition. Hypoxia has been known as a silent killer. The usefulness of ‘Hypoxia Signature’ as a tool for hypoxia recognition and its potential application in hypoxia indoctrination and training for aircrew has been lucidly brought out with scientific evidence. In another article, the author has studied the effects of whole-body vibration on human contrast sensitivity functions, a parameter which takes the upper hand over visual acuity for optimal visual performance in operational aerospace environment. Extending the laboratory-based research to operational application, we have one more well researched article, wherein, the authors have quantified the period of sleepiness which may persist following a short duration afternoon nap of 30 min, a realistic and practical eventuality in military air operations.

In this Edition, we also have two field studies on contemporary aeromedical topics. With the Covid pandemic hitting the globe, a maiden study in the Air Force deciphering the incidence and transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Covid 19 among the healthy recruits is an important contribution. Another field study brings out the injury patterns among Parajumpers by comprehensively analyzing the records of more than three lakh jumps.

Patient satisfaction has been an important indicator to assess and improve quality of healthcare services. Simple yet objective method of assessing patient satisfaction in Indian Armed Forces healthcare delivery centers would directly help in improving peripheral healthcare facilities through data driven specific interventions. A short communication in the Journal brings out the findings and recommendations of such a structured objective survey undertaken in one of the operational commands in the IAF.

As always, our vision for the IJASM continues to be publishing high quality papers based on institutionalized as well as field studies to enrich scientific information to the readers and towards highlighting practical applications. We are strongly moving ahead on this track.

In the end I thank all the contributors, readers, reviewers and the Editorial Board members for the invaluable support and contribution to the Journal.

Happy Reading!

Jai Hind!