Total Antioxidant Activity in Normal Pregnancy

Objective: Pregnancy is a state, which is more prone for oxidative stress. Various studies report development of a strong defence mechanisms against free radical damage, as the pregnancy progresses. Aim of our study is to assess the antioxidant status by measuring the total antioxidant activity. Methods: Total antioxidant activity was assayed by Koracevic’ et al’s method, with the plasma of twenty five pregnant women (with normal blood pressure) as test group and twenty five age matched non-pregnant women as control group. All complicated pregnancies are excluded from the study. Results: Highly significant decline (P< 0.001) in antioxidant activity was observed in pregnant women with a value of 1.40 ± 0.25mmol/l, as compared to controls, 1.63 ± 0.21 mmol/l. Conclusion: Reduction in total antioxidant activity could be due to the fall in individual antioxidant levels. But several studies report an elevated enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants during pregnancy. Any way total antioxidant activity is not a simple sum of individual antioxidants, but the dynamic equilibrium & cooperation between them. So inspite the rise in individual antioxidants , total antioxidant activity may be low. Further studies need to be done with antioxidant activity as a marker of complicated pregnancies like pregnancy induced hypertension

SU(2) Invariants of Symmetric Qubit States

Density matrix for N-qubit symmetric state or spin-j state (j = N/2) is expressed in terms of the well known Fano statistical tensor parameters. Employing the multiaxial representation [1], wherein a spin-j density matrix is shown to be characterized by j(2j+1) axes and 2j real scalars, we enumerate the number of invariants constructed out of these axes and scalars. These invariants are explicitly calculated in the particular case of pure as well as mixed spin-1 state.Comment: 7 pages, 1 fi

Representing a cubic graph as the intersection graph of axis-parallel boxes in three dimensions

We show that every graph of maximum degree 3 can be represented as the intersection graph of axis parallel boxes in three dimensions, that is, every vertex can be mapped to an axis parallel box such that two boxes intersect if and only if their corresponding vertices are adjacent. In fact, we construct a representation in which any two intersecting boxes just touch at their boundaries. Further, this construction can be realized in linear time

Cubicity of interval graphs and the claw number

Let $G(V,E)$ be a simple, undirected graph where $V$ is the set of vertices and $E$ is the set of edges. A $b$-dimensional cube is a Cartesian product $I_1\times I_2\times...\times I_b$, where each $I_i$ is a closed interval of unit length on the real line. The \emph{cubicity} of $G$, denoted by \cub(G) is the minimum positive integer $b$ such that the vertices in $G$ can be mapped to axis parallel $b$-dimensional cubes in such a way that two vertices are adjacent in $G$ if and only if their assigned cubes intersect. Suppose $S(m)$ denotes a star graph on $m+1$ nodes. We define \emph{claw number} $\psi(G)$ of the graph to be the largest positive integer $m$ such that $S(m)$ is an induced subgraph of $G$. It can be easily shown that the cubicity of any graph is at least \ceil{\log_2\psi(G)}. In this paper, we show that, for an interval graph $G$ \ceil{\log_2\psi(G)}\le\cub(G)\le\ceil{\log_2\psi(G)}+2. Till now we are unable to find any interval graph with \cub(G)>\ceil{\log_2\psi(G)}. We also show that, for an interval graph $G$, \cub(G)\le\ceil{\log_2\alpha}, where $\alpha$ is the independence number of $G$. Therefore, in the special case of $\psi(G)=\alpha$, \cub(G) is exactly \ceil{\log_2\alpha}. The concept of cubicity can be generalized by considering boxes instead of cubes. A $b$-dimensional box is a Cartesian product $I_1\times I_2\times...\times I_b$, where each $I_i$ is a closed interval on the real line. The \emph{boxicity} of a graph, denoted $box(G)$, is the minimum $k$ such that $G$ is the intersection graph of $k$-dimensional boxes. It is clear that box(G)\le\cub(G). From the above result, it follows that for any graph $G$, \cub(G)\le box(G)\ceil{\log_2\alpha}

A COST OF ILLNESS STUDY OF TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS IN MANGALORE, KARNATAKA, INDIA

Objective: The aim of the study was to study the cost of illness of uncomplicated and complicated type 2 diabetes mellitus.Methods: The non-interventional retrospective study was carried out in K.S. Hegde Medical Academy. Annual laboratory costs, pharmacy cost, consultation charges, hospital bed charges, and surgical/intervention costs of 340 diabetic patients were obtained from the medical record section of the hospital. Patients were divided into six groups, uncomplicated, diabetic retinopathy (DR), nephropathy, neuropathy, diabetic foot (DF), and those with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and different costs were compared. Correlation of costs with duration of the study and glycemic control were studied.Results: Uncomplicated patients had significantly lower costs (p&lt;0.0001) compared to other groups. Patients with IHD had highest expenses (p&lt;0.0001), followed by diabetic nephropathy (DN) and DF (p&lt;0.0001). Cost incurred in diabetic neuropathy (DNeu) was almost the double compared to uncomplicated group, but annual medical cost (AMC) was minimum among other diabetic complications. DR had higher expenses compared to DNeu. The similar pattern of distribution was observed in other individual costs. A positive correlation was observed between the costs incurred and duration of diabetes, a negative correlation between the glycemic status and cost incurred. Cost incurred was double when compared to that of previous decade.Conclusion: The total AMC is significantly higher in complicated diabetic patients as compared to those without complications. Diabetic patients with IHD had the highest expenses, followed by DN, DF, DR, and DNeu which was least expensive

Entangling capabilities of Symmetric two qubit gates

Our work addresses the problem of generating maximally entangled two spin-1/2 (qubit) symmetric states using NMR, NQR, Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Hamiltonians. Time evolution of such Hamiltonians provides various logic gates which can be used for quantum processing tasks. Pairs of spin-1/2's have modeled a wide range of problems in physics. Here we are interested in two spin-1/2 symmetric states which belong to a subspace spanned by the angular momentum basis {|j = 1, {\mu}>; {\mu} = +1, 0,-1}. Our technique relies on the decomposition of a Hamiltonian in terms of SU(3) generators. In this context, we define a set of linearly independent, traceless, Hermitian operators which provides an alternate set of SU(n) generators. These matrices are constructed out of angular momentum operators Jx,Jy,Jz. We construct and study the properties of perfect entanglers acting on a symmetric subspace i.e., spin-1 operators that can generate maximally entangled states from some suitably chosen initial separable states in terms of their entangling power.Comment: 12 page