High division of sciatic nerve

Background: The Sciatic nerve is the largest and thickest nerve in the human body with a long course in the inferior extremity. It divides into tibial and common peroneal nerves which can occur at any level from the sacral plexus to the inferior part of the popliteal space. Sciatic nerve variations are relatively common. These variations may contribute to clinical conditions ex sciatica, coccygodynia and piriformis syndrome and have important clinical implications in anaesthesiology, neurology, sports medicine and surgery.Methods:10 cadavers were dissected with no previous history of trauma/surgery to study the anatomical variations of sciatic nerve.Results:In all except two cadavers, the nerve divided at the apex of the popliteal fossa. In two cadavers the sciatic nerve divided bilaterally in the upper part of thigh.Conclusion: The high division presented in this study can make popliteal nerve blocks partially ineffective. The high division of sciatic nerve must always be borne in mind as they have important clinical implications

An anatomic variant caudate lobe in a cadaver

The liver can present a number of congenital anomalies. Most common among them are the irregularities in shape and the number of lobules. Less common variations include presence of accessory lobes or accessory fissures. The accessory lobe may be attached to the liver through a mesentery or a bridge of hepatic tissue and they are usually asymptomatic. An accessory liver lobe though a very rare occurrence but when it exists it becomes clinically important because of its rarity. We are reporting one such case of accessory caudate lobe of liver found during routine dissection of embalmed cadaver of a 60 year old male. It was separated from the caudate lobe by a well-defined fissure. The quadrate lobe and fissure for ligamentum teres were totally absent. Ligamentum teres was found embedded in the substance of the liver on its inferior surface. The presence of additional lobes and fissures or the absence of normal lobes and fissures might lead to confusion during surgery or clinical misdiagnosis. Knowledge and awareness of these anomalies is useful to the clinician to rule out diseases, surgeons during segmental resection of liver and radiologist when interpreting liver radiologic findings

Multifractal Scaling, Geometrical Diversity, and Hierarchical Structure in the Cool Interstellar Medium

Multifractal scaling (MFS) refers to structures that can be described as a collection of interwoven fractal subsets which exhibit power-law spatial scaling behavior with a range of scaling exponents (concentration, or singularity, strengths) and dimensions. The existence of MFS implies an underlying multiplicative (or hierarchical, or cascade) process. Panoramic column density images of several nearby star- forming cloud complexes, constructed from IRAS data and justified in an appendix, are shown to exhibit such multifractal scaling, which we interpret as indirect but quantitative evidence for nested hierarchical structure. The relation between the dimensions of the subsets and their concentration strengths (the "multifractal spectrum'') appears to satisfactorily order the observed regions in terms of the mixture of geometries present: strong point-like concentrations, line- like filaments or fronts, and space-filling diffuse structures. This multifractal spectrum is a global property of the regions studied, and does not rely on any operational definition of "clouds.'' The range of forms of the multifractal spectrum among the regions studied implies that the column density structures do not form a universality class, in contrast to indications for velocity and passive scalar fields in incompressible turbulence, providing another indication that the physics of highly compressible interstellar gas dynamics differs fundamentally from incompressible turbulence. (Abstract truncated)Comment: 27 pages, (LaTeX), 13 figures, 1 table, submitted to Astrophysical Journa

Study of rationality and utilization pattern of antimicrobials in ear, nose, throat outpatient department of Tertiary Care Hospital, Nanded

Background: Antimicrobials are most commonly prescribed drugs worldwide. Around 50% of the prescriptions of antimicrobial drugs are either not needed, inappropriate or in wrong doses. With the widespread use of antimicrobial agents (AMAs), the prevalence of resistance has increased. To evaluate the prescription pattern and utilization of AMA in ear, nose, throat (ENT) outpatient department (OPD) of Tertiary Care Hospital, Nanded.Methods: This prospective study was conducted in ENT OPD of Dr. Shankarrao Chavan Government Medical College, Nanded over a period of 3 months. During this period, approximately 1100 patients visited ENT OPD and 600 prescriptions were evaluated. The excluded patients were of post-operative follow-up and of patients undergoing medical examination for fitness and handicap certificate. Data were collected by using specially designed case report form. Appropriateness of AMA was assessed by Kunin’s modified criteria.Results: Total 600 prescriptions were analyzed out of which (91%) consist of AMA. Most of them reported with upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) (30.4%), chronic suppurative otitis media (21.4%), acute suppurative otitis media (10.4%), tonsillitis (3.3%), sinusitis (2.7%), and others (15%). Amoxicillin (43.9%) was preferred AMA followed by ciprofloxacin (30.6%), cotrimoxazole (5.8%), azithromycin (3.2%), doxycycline (3.2%) cefixime + clavulanate (3.2%), and amoxicillin + clavulanate (1.8%). Single antibiotic was preferred in all prescriptions. In the concomitant medications, antihistaminics were prescribed in 97.22% of patients, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in 94.96% of patients, and antacids in 87.76% of patients. Fixed-dose combinations were used in 10% of prescriptions. Brand names of AMA were used in 10% of prescriptions. As per the Kunin’s modified criteria, 83% of patients received AMA therapy appropriately, while 17% patients inappropriately.Conclusions: Amoxicillin is the most common AMA prescribed and URTI is the most common diagnosis made. All AMAs should be prescribed only when needed and should be used in proper dose and for proper duration. Institution wise antibiotic policy should be used to contain resistance. Proper training and regular orientation programs of the juniors’ doctors for judicial use of AMAs will foster the habit of rational prescribing of AMA

Amniotic membrane as a scaffold in wound healing and diabetic foot ulcer: an experimental technique and recommendations

Background: Human amniotic membrane has been used clinically in a variety of applications for over the past 100 years and produced a significant amount of data in multiple areas of medicine. Its clinical usage ranges from wound coverage for burn victims to healing of the conjunctiva after pterygium repair. The amniotic membrane natural properties provide an easy to use, safe option for various medical applications. There is need to develop a method for storage of amniotic membrane which can retain the biological properties and as well have long shelf life too.Methods: The experimental technique was standardized for cryopreservation of amniotic membrane. For this, amniotic membrane was obtained from mothers who had delivered through caesarean section with their consent.Results: The standardized protocol for cryopreservation of amniotic membrane was found to be safe and preserved amniotic membrane is expected to have long shelf life.  Conclusions: The advantages associated with amniotic membrane such as easily available, inexpensive, non-immunogenic and antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory properties make it a suitable graft to be used in wound healing and diabetic foot ulcers

Scaling in the Bombay Stock Exchange Index

In this paper we study BSE Index financial time series for fractal and multifractal behaviour. We show that Bombay stock Exchange (BSE)Index time series is mono-fractal and can be represented by a fractional Brownian motion.Comment: 11 pages,3 figure

Multifractality of the quantum Hall wave functions in higher Landau levels

To probe the universality class of the quantum Hall system at the metal-insulator critical point, the multifractality of the wave function $\psi$ is studied for higher Landau levels, $N=1,2$, for various range $(\sigma )$ of random potential. We have found that, while the multifractal spectrum $f(\alpha)$ (and consequently the fractal dimension) does vary with $N$, the parabolic form for $f(\alpha)$ indicative of a log-normal distribution of $\psi$ persists in higher Landau levels. If we relate the multifractality with the scaling of localization via the conformal theory, an asymptotic recovery of the single-parameter scaling with increasing $\sigma$ is seen, in agreement with Huckestein's irrelevant scaling field argument.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, 5 figures available on request from [email protected]

Breakdown of Simple Scaling in Abelian Sandpile Models in One Dimension

We study the abelian sandpile model on decorated one dimensional chains. We determine the structure and the asymptotic form of distribution of avalanche-sizes in these models, and show that these differ qualitatively from the behavior on a simple linear chain. We find that the probability distribution of the total number of topplings $s$ on a finite system of size $L$ is not described by a simple finite size scaling form, but by a linear combination of two simple scaling forms $Prob_L(s) = 1/L f_1(s/L) + 1/L^2 f_2(s/L^2)$, for large $L$, where $f_1$ and $f_2$ are some scaling functions of one argument.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, figures include

Flow induced by a sphere settling in an aging yield-stress fluid

We have studied the flow induced by a macroscopic spherical particle settling in a Laponite suspension that exhibits a yield-stress, thixotropy and shear-thinning. We show that the fluid thixotropy (or aging) induces an increase with time of both the apparent yield stress and shear-thinning properties but also a breaking of the flow fore-aft symmetry predicted in Hershel-Bulkley fluids (yield-stress, shear-thinning fluids with no thixotropy). We have also varied the stress exerted by the particles on the fluid by using particles of different densities. Although the stresses exerted by the particles are of the same order of magnitude, the velocity field presents utterly different features: whereas the flow around the lighter particle shows a confinement similar to the one observed in shear-thinning fluids, the wake of the heavier particle is characterized by an upward motion of the fluid ("negative wake"), whatever the fluid's age. We compare the features of this negative wake to the one observed in viscoelastic shear-thinning fluids (polymeric or micelle solutions). Although the flows around the two particles strongly differ, their settling behaviors display no apparent difference which constitutes an intriguing result and evidences the complexity of the dependence of the drag factor on flow field