Prevalence of cricket-related musculoskeletal pain among Indian junior club cricketers

Background: Cricket is the most commonly played sport in India. The number of children playing cricket are increasing. There is growing evidence that injury rates in junior cricketers are higher than professional cricketers. In India at the community level, there are no standardized specific cricket injury prevention programmes (CIPP) which reduce injury risk. Minimal data is available from Asian countries, especially on junior cricketers. Our study is an attempt to focus on junior club cricketer injuries, plan safety precautions and emphasize role of CIPP.Methods: It was an observational study conducted on male junior club cricketers in the age group of 8-16 years. Based on a self-reported questionnaire, player’s physical status, training, injuries and their nature are assessed over a period of 12 months.Results: Over the study period 36 of 50 cricketers were symptomatic. The lower limb is the most frequently injured. Most common etiology is overuse. We found that the players are not following pre-training warm-up and post-training cool-down.Conclusions: CIPP should be implemented and strictly followed from the early stages of sports life. Pre-training warm-up and post-training cool-down should be included in their routine training. Overuse i.e. playing overtime and ignoring the pain during practice or match should be avoided. A supervised training and regular screening of players by orthopaedician or sports physician will keep them fit to play with full potential

Linear Stability of Equilibrium Points in the Generalized Photogravitational Chermnykh's Problem

The equilibrium points and their linear stability has been discussed in the generalized photogravitational Chermnykh's problem. The bigger primary is being considered as a source of radiation and small primary as an oblate spheroid. The effect of radiation pressure has been discussed numerically. The collinear points are linearly unstable and triangular points are stable in the sense of Lyapunov stability provided $\mu< \mu_{Routh}=0.0385201$. The effect of gravitational potential from the belt is also examined. The mathematical properties of this system are different from the classical restricted three body problem

The Effect of Radiation Pressure on the Equilibrium Points in the Generalised Photogravitational Restricted Three Body Problem

The existence of equilibrium points and the effect of radiation pressure have been discussed numerically. The problem is generalized by considering bigger primary as a source of radiation and small primary as an oblate spheroid. We have also discussed the Poynting-Robertson(P-R) effect which is caused due to radiation pressure. It is found that the collinear points $L_1,L_2,L_3$ deviate from the axis joining the two primaries, while the triangular points $L_4,L_5$ are not symmetrical due to radiation pressure. We have seen that $L_1,L_2,L_3$ are linearly unstable while $L_4,L_5$ are conditionally stable in the sense of Lyapunov when P-R effect is not considered. We have found that the effect of radiation pressure reduces the linear stability zones while P-R effect induces an instability in the sense of Lyapunov

X-Stream: Edge-centric Graph Processing using Streaming Partitions

X-Stream is a system for processing both in-memory and out-of-core graphs on a single shared-memory machine. While retaining the scatter-gather programming model with state stored in the vertices, X-Stream is novel in (i) using an edge-centric rather than a vertex-centric implementation of this model, and (ii) streaming completely unordered edge lists rather than performing random access. This design is motivated by the fact that sequential bandwidth for all storage media (main memory, SSD, and magnetic disk) is substantially larger than random access bandwidth. We demonstrate that a large number of graph algorithms can be expressed using the edge-centric scatter-gather model. The resulting implementations scale well in terms of number of cores, in terms of number of I/O devices, and across different storage media. X-Stream competes favorably with existing systems for graph processing. Besides sequential access, we identify as one of the main contributors to better performance the fact that X-Stream does not need to sort edge lists during pre-processing

Transmission blocking activity of a standardized neem (Azadirachta indica) seed extract on the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei in its vector Anopheles stephensi

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The wide use of gametocytocidal artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) lead to a reduction of <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>transmission in several African endemic settings. An increased impact on malaria burden may be achieved through the development of improved transmission-blocking formulations, including molecules complementing the gametocytocidal effects of artemisinin derivatives and/or acting on <it>Plasmodium </it>stages developing in the vector. Azadirachtin, a limonoid (tetranortriterpenoid) abundant in neem (<it>Azadirachta indica</it>, Meliaceae) seeds, is a promising candidate, inhibiting <it>Plasmodium </it>exflagellation <it>in vitro </it>at low concentrations. This work aimed at assessing the transmission-blocking potential of NeemAzal^®, an azadirachtin-enriched extract of neem seeds, using the rodent malaria <it>in vivo </it>model <it>Plasmodium berghei</it>/<it>Anopheles stephensi</it>.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p><it>Anopheles stephensi </it>females were offered a blood-meal on <it>P. berghei </it>infected, gametocytaemic BALB/c mice, treated intraperitoneally with NeemAzal, one hour before feeding. The transmission-blocking activity of the product was evaluated by assessing oocyst prevalence, oocyst density and capacity to infect healthy mice. To characterize the anti-plasmodial effects of NeemAzal^®on early midgut stages, i.e. zygotes and ookinetes, Giemsa-stained mosquito midgut smears were examined.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>NeemAzal^®completely blocked <it>P. berghei </it>development in the vector, at an azadirachtin dose of 50 mg/kg mouse body weight. The totally 138 examined, treated mosquitoes (three experimental replications) did not reveal any oocyst and none of the healthy mice exposed to their bites developed parasitaemia. The examination of midgut content smears revealed a reduced number of zygotes and post-zygotic forms and the absence of mature ookinetes in treated mosquitoes. Post-zygotic forms showed several morphological alterations, compatible with the hypothesis of an azadirachtin interference with the functionality of the microtubule organizing centres and with the assembly of cytoskeletal microtubules, which are both fundamental processes in <it>Plasmodium </it>gametogenesis and ookinete formation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This work demonstrated <it>in vivo </it>transmission blocking activity of an azadirachtin-enriched neem seed extract at an azadirachtin dose compatible with 'druggability' requisites. These results and evidence of anti-plasmodial activity of neem products accumulated over the last years encourage to convey neem compounds into the drug discovery & development pipeline and to evaluate their potential for the design of novel or improved transmission-blocking remedies.</p

What is known about the patient's experience of medical tourism? A scoping review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Medical tourism is understood as travel abroad with the intention of obtaining non-emergency medical services. This practice is the subject of increasing interest, but little is known about its scope.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A comprehensive scoping review of published academic articles, media sources, and grey literature reports was performed to answer the question: what is known about the patient's experience of medical tourism? The review was accomplished in three steps: (1) identifying the question and relevant literature; (2) selecting the literature; (3) charting, collating, and summarizing the information. Overall themes were identified from this process.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>291 sources were identified for review from the databases searched, the majority of which were media pieces (<it>n </it>= 176). A further 57 sources were included for review after hand searching reference lists. Of the 348 sources that were gathered, 216 were ultimately included in this scoping review. Only a small minority of sources reported on empirical studies that involved the collection of primary data (<it>n </it>= 5). The four themes identified via the review were: (1) decision-making (e.g., push and pull factors that operate to shape patients' decisions); (2) motivations (e.g., procedure-, cost-, and travel-based factors motivating patients to seek care abroad); (3) risks (e.g., health and travel risks); and (4) first-hand accounts (e.g., patients' experiential accounts of having gone abroad for medical care). These themes represent the most discussed issues about the patient's experience of medical tourism in the English-language academic, media, and grey literatures.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This review demonstrates the need for additional research on numerous issues, including: (1) understanding how multiple information sources are consulted and evaluated by patients before deciding upon medical tourism; (2) examining how patients understand the risks of care abroad; (3) gathering patients' prospective and retrospective accounts; and (4) the push and pull factors, as well as the motives of patients to participate in medical tourism. The findings from this scoping review and the knowledge gaps it uncovered also demonstrate that there is great potential for new contributions to our understanding of the patient's experience of medical tourism.</p

European research priorities for intracerebral haemorrhage

Over 2 million people are affected by intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) worldwide every year, one third of them dying within 1 month, and many survivors being left with permanent disability. Unlike most other stroke types, the incidence, morbidity and mortality of ICH have not declined over time. No standardised diagnostic workup for the detection of the various underlying causes of ICH currently exists, and the evidence for medical or surgical therapeutic interventions remains limited. A dedicated European research programme for ICH is needed to identify ways to reduce the burden of ICH-related death and disability. The European Research Network on Intracerebral Haemorrhage EURONICH is a multidisciplinary academic research collaboration that has been established to define current research priorities and to conduct large clinical studies on all aspects of ICH. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Base

MODifieR : an ensemble R package for inference of disease modules from transcriptomics networks

MOTIVATION: Complex diseases are due to the dense interactions of many disease-associated factors that dysregulate genes that in turn form so-called disease modules, which have shown to be a powerful concept for understanding pathological mechanisms. There exist many disease module inference methods that rely on somewhat different assumptions, but there is still no gold standard or best performing method. Hence, there is a need for combining these methods to generate robust disease modules. RESULTS: We developed MODule IdentiFIER (MODifieR), an ensemble R package of nine disease module inference methods from transcriptomics networks. MODifieR uses standardized input and output allowing the possibility to combine individual modules generated from these methods into more robust disease-specific modules, contributing to a better understanding of complex diseases. AVAILABILITY: MODifieR is available under the GNU GPL license and can be freely downloaded from https://gitlab.com/Gustafsson-lab/MODifieR and as a Docker image from https://hub.docker.com/r/ddeweerd/modifier. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.CC BY 4.0"Applications Note". "Systems biology". </p