Huge Multinodular Goiter with occult carcinoma: A case report

Enlarged nodular goiters are becoming increasingly infrequent. They are still common in certain geographical areas and can present with compressive symptoms to the trachea, oesophagus and recurrent laryngeal nerve. Surgical treatment of enlarge goiter involves a high degree of skill which can lead to serious complications. We present a case 73 year old female patient who had huge enlarged multinodular goiter for more than 15 years. Surgery was planned and thyroidectomy was done. Surgical excision resolved the local symptoms. Histopathological examination revealed papillary carcinoma with multiple cysts and areas of haemorrhage and necrosis

Detecting stars, galaxies, and asteroids with Gaia

(Abridged) Gaia aims to make a 3-dimensional map of 1,000 million stars in our Milky Way to unravel its kinematical, dynamical, and chemical structure and evolution. Gaia's on-board detection software discriminates stars from spurious objects like cosmic rays and Solar protons. For this, parametrised point-spread-function-shape criteria are used. This study aims to provide an optimum set of parameters for these filters. We developed an emulation of the on-board detection software, which has 20 free, so-called rejection parameters which govern the boundaries between stars on the one hand and sharp or extended events on the other hand. We evaluate the detection and rejection performance of the algorithm using catalogues of simulated single stars, double stars, cosmic rays, Solar protons, unresolved galaxies, and asteroids. We optimised the rejection parameters, improving - with respect to the functional baseline - the detection performance of single and double stars, while, at the same time, improving the rejection performance of cosmic rays and of Solar protons. We find that the minimum separation to resolve a close, equal-brightness double star is 0.23 arcsec in the along-scan and 0.70 arcsec in the across-scan direction, independent of the brightness of the primary. We find that, whereas the optimised rejection parameters have no significant impact on the detectability of de Vaucouleurs profiles, they do significantly improve the detection of exponential-disk profiles. We also find that the optimised rejection parameters provide detection gains for asteroids fainter than 20 mag and for fast-moving near-Earth objects fainter than 18 mag, albeit this gain comes at the expense of a modest detection-probability loss for bright, fast-moving near-Earth objects. The major side effect of the optimised parameters is that spurious ghosts in the wings of bright stars essentially pass unfiltered.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Muhammadiyah dalam Perkembangan Pendidikan Islam di Indonesia

Muhammadiyah is an organization founded by Kyai Ahmad Dahlan which is mostly engaged in business charities in the field of education such as PAUD/TK, SD, SLTP, SLTA, and Universities. The purpose of this study is to provide a brief review of several research articles that discuss the Muhammadiyah movement from its founding background to its influence in the world of Islamic education in Indonesia. This research method is a literature study because in the end all the material that has been read must be drawn a conclusion in the form of a report. Data sources consist of primary data and secondary data. The results of this study indicate that the emergence of the Muhammadiyah organization is a response to the enforcement of Islamic teachings that depart from the Qur'an and Sunnah. Also of the factors raised from the two studies above are about the purification of monotheism which was influenced by colonialism regarding shirk, superstition, bid'ah and superstition and living in poverty, destitution and ignorance. Muhammadiyah organization is very concerned about the condition of a pluralistic society in the development of the education curriculum in Indonesia

Formulation and Evaluation of Sustained Release Matrix Tablets of Isoxsuprine Hydrochloride by Direct Compression Method

A sustained-release tablet formulation should ideally have a proper release profile insensitive to moderate changes in tablet hardness that is usually encountered in manufacturing. Isoxsuprine hydrochloride is structurally a novel vasodilator. The short biological half-life (5±2 hr) and the fast clearance make the drug, a suitable candidate for the development of modified release formulation. A novel oral controlled delivery system for isoxsuprine hydrochloride was developed and optimized. Matrix tablets of isoxsuprine hydrochloride were prepared by using hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC K15), Gaur Gum and PVP K 30 as polymer substance to achieve required sustained release profile. The matrix tablets were prepared by direct compression method which is now days considered a cost effective and simple method of manufacturing. It is considered as an appropriate method for hygroscopic and thermolabile substances. Six formulations of different polymer percentages were formulated (F1-F6). Pre-compression parameters were evaluated. The influence of matrix forming agents and binary mixtures of them on isoxsuprine hydrochloride release was investigated. The formulated tablets were characterized by hardness, friability, thickness, weight variation and in vitro drug release. The formulated tablets had acceptable physicochemical characters. There was no chemical interaction found between the drug and excipients throughout FT-IR and UV study thought of in the present investigation. The quantity of isoxsuprine hydrochloride present in the tablets and the release medium were estimated by a simple, rapid and validated UV method. The dissolution results show that increased amount of polymer resulted in reduced and extended drug release. F4 formulation is the optimum formulation due to its better targeting profile in terms of release. First order kinetic profiles were achieved. This formulation may provide an alternative for oral controlled delivery of isoxsuprine hydrochloride and be helpful in the future treatment of   peripheral vascular disease. Keywords: Isoxsuprine hydrochloride, HPMC K15, Gaur Gum, PVP K30, Direct compression method, Dissolutio

Thermoregulatory effects of swaddling in Mongolia: A randomised controlled study

Objective To investigate thermal balance of infants in a Mongolian winter, and compare the effects of traditional swaddling with an infant sleeping-bag in apartments or traditional tents (Gers).Design A substudy within a randomised controlled trial.Setting Community in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Subjects A stratified randomly selected sample of 40 swaddled and 40 non-swaddled infants recruited within 48 h of birth.Intervention Sleeping-bags and baby outfits of total thermal resistance equivalent to that of swaddled babies.Outcome measure Digital recordings of infants’ core, peripheral, environmental and microenvironmental temperatures at 30-s intervals over 24 h at ages 1 month and 3 months.Results In Gers, indoor temperatures varied greatly ( 25°C), but remained between 20°C and 22°C, in apartments. Despite this, heavy wrapping, bed sharing and partial head covering, infant core and peripheral temperatures were similar and no infants showed evidence of significant heat or cold stress whether they were swaddled or in sleeping-bags. At 3 months, infants in sleeping-bags showed the ‘mature’ diurnal pattern of a fall in core temperature after sleep onset, accompanied by a rise in peripheral temperature, with a reverse pattern later in the night, just before awakening. This pattern was not related to room temperature, and was absent in the swaddled infants, suggesting that the mature diurnal pattern may develop later in them.Conclusions No evidence of cold stress was found. Swaddling had no identifiable thermal advantages over sleeping-bags during the coldest times, and in centrally heated apartments could contribute to the risk of overheating during the daytime.Trial registration number ISRTN01992617

<i>Gaia</i> Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties

Context. At about 1000 days after the launch of Gaia we present the first Gaia data release, Gaia DR1, consisting of astrometry and photometry for over 1 billion sources brighter than magnitude 20.7. Aims. A summary of Gaia DR1 is presented along with illustrations of the scientific quality of the data, followed by a discussion of the limitations due to the preliminary nature of this release. Methods. The raw data collected by Gaia during the first 14 months of the mission have been processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) and turned into an astrometric and photometric catalogue. Results. Gaia DR1 consists of three components: a primary astrometric data set which contains the positions, parallaxes, and mean proper motions for about 2 million of the brightest stars in common with the HIPPARCOS and Tycho-2 catalogues – a realisation of the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) – and a secondary astrometric data set containing the positions for an additional 1.1 billion sources. The second component is the photometric data set, consisting of mean G-band magnitudes for all sources. The G-band light curves and the characteristics of ∼3000 Cepheid and RR-Lyrae stars, observed at high cadence around the south ecliptic pole, form the third component. For the primary astrometric data set the typical uncertainty is about 0.3 mas for the positions and parallaxes, and about 1 mas yr−1 for the proper motions. A systematic component of ∼0.3 mas should be added to the parallax uncertainties. For the subset of ∼94 000 HIPPARCOS stars in the primary data set, the proper motions are much more precise at about 0.06 mas yr−1. For the secondary astrometric data set, the typical uncertainty of the positions is ∼10 mas. The median uncertainties on the mean G-band magnitudes range from the mmag level to ∼0.03 mag over the magnitude range 5 to 20.7. Conclusions. Gaia DR1 is an important milestone ahead of the next Gaia data release, which will feature five-parameter astrometry for all sources. Extensive validation shows that Gaia DR1 represents a major advance in the mapping of the heavens and the availability of basic stellar data that underpin observational astrophysics. Nevertheless, the very preliminary nature of this first Gaia data release does lead to a number of important limitations to the data quality which should be carefully considered before drawing conclusions from the data

Gaia Data Release 1: Testing parallaxes with local Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars

Context. Parallaxes for 331 classical Cepheids, 31 Type II Cepheids, and 364 RR Lyrae stars in common between Gaia and the Hipparcos and Tycho-2 catalogues are published in Gaia Data Release 1 (DR1) as part of the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS). Aims. In order to test these first parallax measurements of the primary standard candles of the cosmological distance ladder, which involve astrometry collected by Gaia during the initial 14 months of science operation, we compared them with literature estimates and derived new period-luminosity (PL), period-Wesenheit (PW) relations for classical and Type II Cepheids and infrared PL, PL-metallicity (PLZ), and optical luminosity-metallicity (M V -[Fe/H]) relations for the RR Lyrae stars, with zero points based on TGAS. Methods. Classical Cepheids were carefully selected in order to discard known or suspected binary systems. The final sample comprises 102 fundamental mode pulsators with periods ranging from 1.68 to 51.66 days (of which 33 with σ Ω /Ω < 0.5). The Type II Cepheids include a total of 26 W Virginis and BL Herculis stars spanning the period range from 1.16 to 30.00 days (of which only 7 with σ Ω /Ω < 0.5). The RR Lyrae stars include 200 sources with pulsation period ranging from 0.27 to 0.80 days (of which 112 with σ Ω /Ω < 0.5). The new relations were computed using multi-band (V,I,J,K s ) photometry and spectroscopic metal abundances available in the literature, and by applying three alternative approaches: (i) linear least-squares fitting of the absolute magnitudes inferred from direct transformation of the TGAS parallaxes; (ii) adopting astrometry-based luminosities; and (iii) using a Bayesian fitting approach. The last two methods work in parallax space where parallaxes are used directly, thus maintaining symmetrical errors and allowing negative parallaxes to be used. The TGAS-based PL,PW,PLZ, and M V - [Fe/H] relations are discussed by comparing the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud provided by different types of pulsating stars and alternative fitting methods. Results. Good agreement is found from direct comparison of the parallaxes of RR Lyrae stars for which both TGAS and HST measurements are available. Similarly, very good agreement is found between the TGAS values and the parallaxes inferred from the absolute magnitudes of Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars analysed with the Baade-Wesselink method. TGAS values also compare favourably with the parallaxes inferred by theoretical model fitting of the multi-band light curves for two of the three classical Cepheids and one RR Lyrae star, which were analysed with this technique in our samples. The K-band PL relations show the significant improvement of the TGAS parallaxes for Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars with respect to the Hipparcos measurements. This is particularly true for the RR Lyrae stars for which improvement in quality and statistics is impressive. Conclusions. TGAS parallaxes bring a significant added value to the previous Hipparcos estimates. The relations presented in this paper represent the first Gaia-calibrated relations and form a work-in-progress milestone report in the wait for Gaia-only parallaxes of which a first solution will become available with Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) in 2018. © ESO, 2017

Gaia Data Release 1: Open cluster astrometry: performance, limitations, and future prospects

Context. The first Gaia Data Release contains the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS). This is a subset of about 2 million stars for which, besides the position and photometry, the proper motion and parallax are calculated using Hipparcos and Tycho-2 positions in 1991.25 as prior information.Aims. We investigate the scientific potential and limitations of the TGAS component by means of the astrometric data for open clusters.Methods. Mean cluster parallax and proper motion values are derived taking into account the error correlations within the astrometric solutions for individual stars, an estimate of the internal velocity dispersion in the cluster, and, where relevant, the effects of the depth of the cluster along the line of sight. Internal consistency of the TGAS data is assessed.Results. Values given for standard uncertainties are still inaccurate and may lead to unrealistic unit-weight standard deviations of least squares solutions for cluster parameters. Reconstructed mean cluster parallax and proper motion values are generally in very good agreement with earlier HIPPARCOS-based determination, although the Gaia mean parallax for the Pleiades is a significant exception. We have no current explanation for that discrepancy. Most clusters are observed to extend to nearly 15 pc from the cluster centre, and it will be up to future Gaia releases to establish whether those potential cluster-member stars are still dynamically bound to the clusters.Conclusions. The Gaia DR1 provides the means to examine open clusters far beyond their more easily visible cores, and can provide membership assessments based on proper motions and parallaxes. A combined HR diagram shows the same features as observed before using the HIPPARCOS data, with clearly increased luminosities for older A and F dwarfs