Isgur-Wise Function for Heavy Light Mesons in D dimensional Potential Model

We report results of a potential model for mesons in D space-time dimension developed by considering the quark-antiquark potential of Nambu-Goto strings. With this wave function, we have studied Isgur-Wise function for heavy-light mesons and its derivatives like slope and curvature. The dimensional dependence of our results and a comparative study with the results of 3+1 dimensional QCD are also reported.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

People and plant: Learning with Adi community on ethnomedicinal practices and conservation in Arunachal Pradesh, India

74-82Local plant species have been in use in variety of ethnomedicinal practices from the time immemorial among the people of various communities for treating various human diseases. This paper reports about the plant species used by Adi community in curing various human diseases and ailments. A study was conducted during 2008-2009 and further refined in succeeding years with the 12 purposively selected traditional knowledge holders (TKHs) of Adi tribe of East Siang district, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Data were collected using combined approaches of personal interview, participant observations and transect walks. It was observed that with Shannon-Weaver diversity index 2.73, there were 39 local plant species belonging to 25 plant families and used as ethnomedicinal practices by the TKHs. Most of the species (17) were used by Adi TKHs with their green leaf parts followed by root and fruits (5 each) to develop ethnomedicinal formulations. Out of these, several species namely Leucas aspera (Willd.) Link.; Plumeria rubra L.; Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don; Solanum torvum Swartz; Solanum khasianum C.B. Clarke; Oroxylum indicum (L.) Benth.ex Kurze; and Tinospora cordifolia (Thunb.) Miers) were found in use by Adis against asthma, bronchitis, cough, sinusitis, diabetes, malaria, typhoid and jaundice. The Adi TKHs maintain a rich cultural ethics, govern by their own world-view in continuing ethnomedicinal practices, and harvesting the species from various land use systems with the aim to sustain biodiversity and associated practices. The key findings indicated that, plant species used as ethnomedicines for some of the diseases and ailments by the Adi TKHs, can be undertaken for the long-term trial to find some natural remedies against few human diseases, including search of immune enhancer against COVID-19, provided TKHs of Adi community are partnered in ethically and culturally appropriate manner.&nbsp

Modal Logics of Topological Relations

Logical formalisms for reasoning about relations between spatial regions play a fundamental role in geographical information systems, spatial and constraint databases, and spatial reasoning in AI. In analogy with Halpern and Shoham's modal logic of time intervals based on the Allen relations, we introduce a family of modal logics equipped with eight modal operators that are interpreted by the Egenhofer-Franzosa (or RCC8) relations between regions in topological spaces such as the real plane. We investigate the expressive power and computational complexity of logics obtained in this way. It turns out that our modal logics have the same expressive power as the two-variable fragment of first-order logic, but are exponentially less succinct. The complexity ranges from (undecidable and) recursively enumerable to highly undecidable, where the recursively enumerable logics are obtained by considering substructures of structures induced by topological spaces. As our undecidability results also capture logics based on the real line, they improve upon undecidability results for interval temporal logics by Halpern and Shoham. We also analyze modal logics based on the five RCC5 relations, with similar results regarding the expressive power, but weaker results regarding the complexity

People and plant: Learning with Adi community on ethnomedicinal practices and conservation in Arunachal Pradesh, India

Local plant species have been in use in variety of ethnomedicinal practices from time immemorial among the people of various communities for treating various human diseases. This paper reports about the plant species used by Adi community in curing various human diseases and ailments. A study was conducted during 2008-2009 and further refined in succeeding years with the 12 purposively selected traditional knowledge holders (TKHs) of Adi tribe of East Siang district, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Data were collected using combined approaches of personal interview, participant observations and transect walks. It was observed that with Shannon-Weaver diversity index 2.73, there were 39 local plant species belonging to 25 plant families and used as ethnomedicinal practices by the TKHs. Most of the species (17) were used by Adi TKHs with their green leaf parts followed by root and fruits (5 each) to develop ethnomedicinal formulations for treating a range of diseases and ailments. Out of these, most of the species [(e.g., Leucas   aspera (Willd.) Link.; Plumeria rubra L.; Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don; Solanum  torvum Swartz; Solanum  khasianum C. B. Clarke; Oroxylum  indicum (L.) Benth. ex Kurze; and Tinospora  cordifolia (Thunb.) Miers)] were found in use by Adis against asthma, bronchitis, cough, sinusitis, diabetes, malaria, typhoid and jaundice. The Adi TKHs holders maintain a rich cultural ethics, govern by their own world-view in continuing ethnomedicinal practices, and harvesting the species from various land use systems with the aim to sustain biodiversity and associated practices. The key findings indicated that, plant species used as ethnomedicines for some of the diseases and ailments by the Adi TKHs, can be undertaken for the long-term trial to find some natural remedies against few human diseases, including search of immune enhancer against COVID-19,  provided TKHs of Adi community are partnered in ethically and culturally appropriate manner.

Treatment of hypertension in rural Cambodia: results of a 6-year programme

This study was aimed to describe the outcomes of a hypertension treatment programme in two outpatient clinics in Cambodia. We determined proportions of patients who met the optimal targets for blood pressure (BP) control and assessed the evolution of mean systolic and diastolic BP (SBP/DBP) over time. Multivariate analyses were used to identify predictors of BP decrease and risk factors for LTFU. A total of 2858 patients were enrolled between March 2002 and June 2008 of whom 69.2% were female, 30.5% were aged >/=64years and 32.6% were diabetic. The median follow-up time was 600 days. By the end of 2008, 1642 (57.4%) were alive-in-care, 8 (0.3%) had died and 1208 (42.3%) were lost to follow-up. On admission, mean SBP and DBP were 162 and 94 mm Hg, respectively. Among the patients treated, a significant SBP reduction of 26.8 mm Hg (95% CI: 28.4-25.3) was observed at 6 months. Overall, 36.5% of patients reached the BP targets at 24 months. The number of young adults, non-overweight patients and non-diabetics reaching the BP targets was more. Older age (>64 years), uncontrolled DBP (>/=90 mm Hg) on last consultation and coming late for the last consultation were associated with LTFU, whereas non-diabetic patients were 1.5 times more likely to default than diabetics (95% CI: 1.3-1.7). Although the definite magnitude of the BP decrease due to antihypertension medication over time cannot be assessed definitely without a control group, our results suggest that BP reduction can be obtained with essential hypertension treatment in a large-scale programme in a resource-limited setting