Cardiovascular Risk Factors Among People being Treated for HIV in Nepal: a Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) are found to be strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases. Data are sparse on the prevalence and distribution of cardiovascular risk factors among people being treated for HIV in South Asia region. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 103 HIV patients (51 women and 52 men) attending routine follow-up consultations at the largest ART centre in Nepal was conducted. Data on several cardiovascular risk factors were collected through interview questionnaires, biophysical measurements and consulting medical records. Results: The most common cardiovascular risk factors observed were central obesity [34.6%, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 25.3% to 43.9%], chronic kidney disease [20.7% (95% CI: 11.6% to 29.7%)] and tachycardia [20.6% (95% CI: 12.7% to 28.5%)]. Females were significantly more likely to have central obesity (male 9.8% vs. female 60%, p=0.016) and chronic kidney disease (male 15.4% vs. female 26.3%, p=0.003) as compared to the males. Participants were fairly active but a large proportion, especially men, had smoked [65% (95% CI: 57%-72.3%)], used tobacco products [66% (95% CI: 56.4%-74.4%)] or drugs (53.8% of the men) and consumed alcohol [60.2% (95% CI: 50.5%-69.1%)]. Conclusion: A high prevalence of several cardiovascular risk factors was observed among patients being treated for HIV in Nepal. Further larger studies are warranted to better understand the relevance and public health impact of cardiovascular risk factors in this region

Thorny Spheres and Black Holes with Strings

We consider thorny spheres, that is 2-dimensional compact surfaces which are everywhere locally isometric to a round sphere $S^2$ except for a finite number of isolated points where they have conical singularities. We use thorny spheres to generate, from a spherically symmetric solution of the Einstein equations, new solutions which describe spacetimes pierced by an arbitrary number of infinitely thin cosmic strings radially directed. Each string produces an angle deficit proportional to its tension, while the metric outside the strings is a locally spherically symmetric solution. We prove that there can be arbitrary configurations of strings provided that the directions of the strings obey a certain equilibrium condition. In general this equilibrium condition can be written as a force-balance equation for string forces defined in a flat 3-space in which the thorny sphere is isometrically embedded, or as a constraint on the product of holonomies around strings in an alternative 3-space that is flat except for the strings. In the case of small string tensions, the constraint equation has the form of a linear relation between unit vectors directed along the string axes.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figure

Agro-morphological Diversity of High Altitude Bean Landraces in the Kailash Sacred Landscape of Nepal

Many varieties of bean are widely grown across diverse agro-ecological zones in Nepal. And opportunities exist for improving the crops and enhancing their resilience to various biotic and abiotic stressors. In this context, an experiment was conducted from June to October 2016 in Khar VDC of Darchula district to study the phenotypic traits of nine landraces of bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). The bean landraces were planted using randomized complete block design in three sites (Dhamidera, Dallekh and Sundamunda villages), with three replications in each site for their comparative analysis. The study considered the following phenotypic traits: days to emergence, days to 50% flowering, days to 90% pod maturity, number of nodes, pod length, pod width, number of pods, number of seeds per pod and weight and grain yield for 100 seeds. Kruskal-Wallis test showed significant differences in the landraces both within and among locations. KA-17-08-FB and KA-17-04-FB were late  flowering (63 and 65 days respectively) compared to other landraces whereas KA-17-07-FB flowered earliest (within 42 days). In all three sites, three landraces namely KA-17-07-FB, KA-17-04-FB and KA-17-06-FB were found to be relatively more resistant to pest and diseases than other landraces. Eight out of nine landraces in Dhamidera and Dallekh villages and seven out of nine in Sundamunda village produced seeds greater than 1.0 t/ha. Among the nine varieties KA-17-02-FB was the highest yielding variety, with an average yield of 3.8 t/ha. This study is useful for identifying suitable landraces for future promotion based on their maturity, grain yield, diseases resistance and other qualitative and quantitative characteristics

Univalent Foundations and the UniMath Library

We give a concise presentation of the Univalent Foundations of mathematics outlining the main ideas, followed by a discussion of the UniMath library of formalized mathematics implementing the ideas of the Univalent Foundations (section 1), and the challenges one faces in attempting to design a large-scale library of formalized mathematics (section 2). This leads us to a general discussion about the links between architecture and mathematics where a meeting of minds is revealed between architects and mathematicians (section 3). On the way our odyssey from the foundations to the "horizon" of mathematics will lead us to meet the mathematicians David Hilbert and Nicolas Bourbaki as well as the architect Christopher Alexander

Regulation of protein O-glycosylation by the endoplasmic reticulum–localized molecular chaperone Cosmc

Regulatory pathways for protein glycosylation are poorly understood, but expression of branchpoint enzymes is critical. A key branchpoint enzyme is the T-synthase, which directs synthesis of the common core 1 O-glycan structure (T-antigen), the precursor structure for most mucin-type O-glycans in a wide variety of glycoproteins. Formation of active T-synthase, which resides in the Golgi apparatus, requires a unique molecular chaperone, Cosmc, encoded on Xq24. Cosmc is the only molecular chaperone known to be lost through somatic acquired mutations in cells. We show that Cosmc is an endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–localized adenosine triphosphate binding chaperone that binds directly to human T-synthase. Cosmc prevents the aggregation and ubiquitin-mediated degradation of the T-synthase. These results demonstrate that Cosmc is a molecular chaperone in the ER required for this branchpoint glycosyltransferase function and show that expression of the disease-related Tn antigen can result from deregulation or loss of Cosmc function

Middle mountains forests of Nepal

Publication no. 3201

BPS String Solutions in Non-Abelian Yang-Mills Theories and Confinement

Starting from the bosonic part of N=2 Super QCD with a 'Seiberg-Witten' N=2 breaking mass term, we obtain string BPS conditions for arbitrary semi-simple gauge groups. We show that the vacuum structure is compatible with a symmetry breaking scheme which allows the existence of Z_k-strings and which has Spin(10) -> SU(5) x Z_2 as a particular case. We obtain BPS Z_k-string solutions and show that they satisfy the same first order differential equations as the BPS string for the U(1) case. We also show that the string tension is constant, which may cause a confining potential between monopoles increasing linearly with their distance.Comment: 11 pages, Latex. Minor changes to the text. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

High mountains and high Himal forests of Nepal

Publication no. 4201

Abelian Higgs Hair for Electrically Charged Dilaton Black Holes

It is argued that an electronically charged dilaton black hole can support a long range field of a Nielsen-Olesen string. Combining both numerical and perturbative techniques we examine the properties of an Abelian-Higgs vortex in the presence of the black hole under consideration. Allowing the black hole to approach extremality we found that all fields of the vortex are expelled from the extreme black hole. In the thin string limit we obtained the metric of a conical electrically charged dilaton black hole. The effect of the vortex can be measured from infinity justifying its characterization as black hole hair.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, Revtex, to appear in Phys.Rev.D1