Green's Matrix for a Second Order Self-Adjoint Matrix Differential Operator

A systematic construction of the Green's matrix for a second order, self-adjoint matrix differential operator from the linearly independent solutions of the corresponding homogeneous differential equation set is carried out. We follow the general approach of extracting the Green's matrix from the Green's matrix of the corresponding first order system. This construction is required in the cases where the differential equation set cannot be turned to an algebraic equation set via transform techniques.Comment: 19 page

Use of a simple pain model to evaluate analgesic activity of ibuprofen versus paracetamol

Objective: To evaluate the analgesic activity of ibuprofen against paracetamol using a simple pain model.Design: A double-blind study.Setting: Twenty general practitioners in Harare, Zimbabwe.Patients: Adults with acute sore throat of a maximum of two days’ duration.Interventions: One hundred and thirteen patients with acute pain associated with tonsillopharyngitis randomly received either 400mg ibuprofen or 1000mg paracetamol. The study design included repeated administration up to 48 hours to assess tolerability.Main outcome measures: At hourly intervals for six hours after the first dose of treatment, the patients evaluated pain intensity on swallowing, difficulty in swallowing and global pain relief according to visual analogue scales.Results: Ibuprofen 400mg was significantly more effective than paracetamol 1000mg in all three ratings, at all time-points for pain intensity and difficulty in swallowing, and from two hours onwards for pain relief. There were no serious adverse effects and no statisticallysignificant difference in the incidence of adverse effects in the two treatment groups.Conclusions: Sore throat pain provided a sensitive model to assess the analgesic efficacy of class I analgesics and discriminated between the analgesic efficacy of ibuprofen and paracetamol

Clinical study of Rh-isoimmunization in pregnant women

Background: Iso-immunization has been defined as the process whereby immune antibodies are produced in an individual in response to antigens from another individual of same species. Objective was to study the fetal outcome in immunized and non-immunized women and also to prevent isoimmunization during pregnancy and labour.Methods: A total of 40 patients attending outdoor antenatal clinic or admitted in the indoor wards in obstetric unit of Obstetrics and Gynecology department were included in the present study which was hospital based cross sectional study. The study was carried out for one year at Government Medical College Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, India. Permission from Institutional Ethics Committee was obtained. From each and every patient included in the study, initially informed individual consent was taken.Results: Maximum patients (25%) had an income of Rs. 200- 300 per month and minimum patients (10%) had an income of Rs. 500- 600 per month. Maximum cases of Rh – negative patients 87.5% are Hindus and 10 % are Muslims while only 2.5% are Christians. The percentage of patients below 20 years is 2.5, that between 20 to 25 are 67.5, between 26 to 30 is 27.5 and between 31 to 35 is 2.5. Thus, maximum patients belong to the age group 20 to 25 years and above 31 years.. Accordingly, 6 patients had history of abortion, 2 had pre- term deliveries, and 18 had full term deliveries. 4 had history of operation and 1 had history of jaundice in previous children. Cases with presence of Rh- Antibody in Maternal Circulation during Pregnancy. It was found that one out of 40 patients, had Rh- Antibody in titer of 1: 128 and 39 cases, did not show presence of Rh- Antibody in their circulation. Outcome of pregnancy in 40 patients studied. 3 patients had pre- mature labour, 26 had normal vaginal delivery, 10 had caesarean section and one patient was Ante- natal.Conclusions: Present study reveals more than Maximum patients were from low socioeconomic group and minimum cases were from higher socio- economic group. Majority of cases were Hindus, next in order Muslims and then Christians. Age of maximum patients ranged from 20-25 years. Maximum patients had normal full term deliveries. In 65% cases, outcome of pregnancy was normal vaginal delivery

Cleaning of complex soil layers on vertical walls by fixed and moving impinging liquid jets

Cleaning by a horizontal water jet, impinging onto a soiled Perspex vertical plate, is described. The plate, the substrate, was coated with PVA or petroleum jelly, the soil. The substrate was either.(i) fixed, for batch tests in which the cleaned area, roughly circular, grew with time, or(ii) the substrate moved vertically up or down in its own plane, the water jet remaining fixed; this reproduced the effect of a jet moving across a surface for cleaning, as found in real tank cleaning operations.In the batch experiments, growth of the radius a of the cleaning area is well described, at early times t, by a5 – ao5 = K5 (t – to), ao being the initial radius of the cleaned area at time to; K is a constant. At later times with petroleum jelly, the cleaning front reached a maximum value, when the outward momentum of the radially flowing water film balanced the strength of the soil. This maximum value is modelled as a ramp of viscoplastic soil inclined at angle χ to the substrate surface, where χ was found to vary from 7° to 25°.In the tests of continuous cleaning of petroleum jelly, a lengthening cleaned area, of width wc, was observed on the moving substrate. Near the jet was a stationary clean front, whose shape looked like half an ellipse. This shape, and the width wc, are well described by theory (Wilson et al., 2015, 123, 450–459) using parameters from the above-mentioned batch experiments. This establishes a good link between batch and continuous cleaning experiments.Funding for RKB from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission is gratefully acknowledged, as are helpful conversations with Michael Smith and Paul Hodgson. FDG measurements on the PVA layers were performed by Shiyao Wang.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2015.12.02

Mobile satellite service in the United States

Mobile satellite service (MSS) has been under development in the United States for more than two decades. The service will soon be provided on a commercial basis by a consortium of eight U.S. companies called the American Mobile Satellite Consortium (AMSC). AMSC will build a three-satellite MSS system that will offer superior performance, reliability and cost effectiveness for organizations requiring mobile communications across the U.S. The development and operation of MSS in North America is being coordinated with Telesat Canada and Mexico. AMSC expects NASA to provide launch services in exchange for capacity on the first AMSC satellite for MSAT-X activities and for government demonstrations

The AMSC mobile satellite system

The American Mobile Satellite Consortium (AMSC) Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) system is described. AMSC will use three multi-beam satellites to provide L-band MSS coverage to the United States, Canada and Mexico. The AMSC MSS system will have several noteworthy features, including a priority assignment processor that will ensure preemptive access to emergency services, a flexible SCPC channel scheme that will support a wide diversity of services, enlarged system capacity through frequency and orbit reuse, and high effective satellite transmitted power. Each AMSC satellite will make use of 14 MHz (bi-directional) of L-band spectrum. The Ku-band will be used for feeder links

Item Response Models to measure Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a multidimensional con- cept that involves several aspects, ranging from Environment, to Social and Governance. Companies aiming to comply with CSR standards have to face challenges that vary from one aspect to the other and from one industry to the other. Latent variable models may be use- fully employed to provide a unidimensional measure of the grade of compliance of a firm with CSR standards that is both understand- able and theoretically solid. A methodology based on Item Response Theory has been implemented on the multidimensional sustainability rating as expressed by KLD dataset from 1991 to 2007. Results sug- gest that companies in the industry Oil & Gas together with firms in Industrials, Basic Materials and Telecommunications have a higher difficulty to meet the CSR standards. Criteria based on Human rights, Environment, Community and Product quality have a large capacity to select the best performing firms, as they are very discriminant, while Governance does not exhibit similar behavior. A stock selection based on the ranking of the firms according to the proposed CSR measure supports the hypothesis of a positive relationship between CSR and financial performanc

Studies on factors influencing conception rate in rural cattle

The data of 14,937 farmers spread over 29 tehsils in 15 districts of six Indian states revealed mean conception rate as 55.96±0.31 %. State wise conception rate recorded in Bihar was 51.08±0.73%; Jharkhand; 62.03±0.63%; Maharashtra, 56.64±0.74%; Odisha, 59.24±0.91%; Punjab, 47.11±1.03%; Uttar Pradesh, 54.70±0.77% respectively, which was highly significant between the states. The education level of center in-charge, economic status of farmers, animal breed, animal parity, AI sequence and sire breed had significant effect on conception rate while effect of AI season did not significantly affect conception rate in rural animals across the states studied. It was recommended that due consideration need be given to consider effect of significant factors affecting conception rates while planning for improving conception rate in rural animals

A review on biomass-derived materials and their applications as corrosion inhibitors, catalysts, food and drug delivery agents

Owing to the overconsumption of petroleum-based resources and growing demand for fossil-based fuels and chemicals, it has become imperative to adopt alternative resources that are renewable. With the availability of biomass, it is believed that this technology has the capability to valorize waste into wealth. Recently, efficient utilization of plant biomass, a chief renewable resource, has gained tremendous attention in research as it offers distinct social, economic, and sustainable benefits. The present review focuses on the various biomass from waste resources. Subsequently, the applications of these polymeric biomass composites are reviewed in catalysis, drug delivery, and food applications. Finally, corrosion studies along with DFT calculations and theoretical aspects have also been reviewed. Naturally occurring carbohydrate polymers found in lignocellulosic biomass are biopolymers have been used for various physical and chemical applications; as catalyst, coatings, drug delivery, corrosion inhibitors etc. This review reports these material applications of carbohydrate polymers. In this review, we focus on new and emerging applications of polymers from lignocellulosic biomass