40 research outputs found
Tunneling conductivity in anisotropic nanofibre composites: a percolation-based model
The Critical Path Approximation ("CPA") is integrated with a lattice-based
approach to percolation to provide a model for conductivity in nanofibre-based
composites. Our treatment incorporates a recent estimate for the anisotropy in
tunnelingbased conductance as a function of the relative angle between the axes
of elongated nanoparticles. The conductivity is examined as a function of the
volume fraction, degree of clustering, and of the mean value and standard
deviation of the orientational order parameter. Results from our calculations
suggest that the conductivity can depend strongly upon the standard deviation
in the orientational order parameter even when all the other variables
(including the mean value of the order parameter ) are held invariant.Comment: 35 pages, 9 figure
Quasiuniversal connectedness percolation of polydisperse rod systems
The connectedness percolation threshold (eta_c) and critical coordination
number (Z_c) of systems of penetrable spherocylinders characterized by a length
polydispersity are studied by way of Monte Carlo simulations for several aspect
ratio distributions. We find that (i) \eta_c is a nearly universal function of
the weight-averaged aspect ratio, with an approximate inverse dependence that
extends to aspect ratios that are well below the slender rod limit and (ii)
that percolation of impenetrable spherocylinders displays a similar
quasiuniversal behavior. For systems with a sufficiently high degree of
polydispersity, we find that Z_c can become smaller than unity, in analogy with
observations reported for generalized and complex networks.Comment: 5 pages with 3 figures + 2 pages and 4 figures of supplemental
materia
AN OPD BASED PROSPECTIVE EXPLORATORY STUDY OF DERMATOPHYTOSIS - FOCUS ON TREATMENT OUTCOMES, MEDICATION ADHERENCE, AND QUALITY OF LIFE
Objective: The study was planned primarily to judge the effectiveness, safety, and adherence of the prescribed treatments in dermatophytosis along with the effect on the Quality of Life (QoL) of the affected individuals.
Methods: In this prospective observational study, spanning over 5 months, participants (dermatophytosis patients) were assessed at baseline and 6 week-follow-up at study site. Information about their clinical presentation, QoL (Quality of Life) parameters, medication adherence, and adverse drug reaction (ADR) were entered in the Case Report Form (CRF) prepared by utilizing global standard tools such as 5D-itch scale, Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS), and WHO-ADR reporting form respectively.
Results: Total 60 subjects (33 males and 27 females) had completed the study. Overall, tinea cruris (40%) was the most common variety followed by combination of tinea corporis and cruris (35%), tinea corporis (20%), and tinea incognito (3%). Pruritus was the predominant symptom. There was a significant (p<0.001) improvement of both 5D-itch & DLQI scores from baseline to follow-up stage (after 6 weeks). Treatment regimens were well tolerated (only eight subjects reported any adverse event such as gastric irritation and sedation). Medication adherence to the prescribed treatment was good; (mean MARS score 7.588±1.82). Mostly prescribed regimen was a combination of antifungal (oral plus topical) and antihistamine tablet (58/60, 96.66%). The most common drug combination was capsule itraconazole, luliconazole cream, and cetirizine or levocetirizine tablet with or without ketoconazole soap (35/60, 58.33%).
Conclusion: Prescribed treatment regimen for dermatophytosis was effective, tolerable, acceptable with high medication adherence and also improved the QoL of the study subjects
Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search
Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe
Relation between a heterogeneous percolation model for cylinders and phase separation in the lattice fluid problem
A relationship based upon analogy is explored between (i) a lattice-based model for percolation by cylinders that employs distinct site types with unequal occupation probabilities in order to capture heterogeneities in the particle dispersion, and (ii) the well-studied mean-field lattice gas model. The strength of the correlation that sites in the percolation model that have distinct occupation probabilities are adjacent to each other maps into the coupling constant for the associated lattice fluid problem. Pursuing the analogy further, the vapor-liquid coexistence curve for the lattice gas translates into a phase boundary for the percolation problem, in terms of a locus of correlation strengths that demarcate a region of phase separation into sites with different occupation probabilities and distinct percolation thresholds. The dependence of the percolation thresholds in the one- and two-phase regions as delineated by this analogy are calculated as functions of the degree of disparity between site occupation probabilities and the strength of the correlation between adjacent site types
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Chaos, Hubbub, and Order Scale and Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescents in Los Angeles.
ObjectiveTo determine the relationship between household chaos and substance use, sexual activity, and violence-related risk behaviors in adolescents.Study designWe analyzed cross-sectional data among 929 high-school students in Los Angeles who completed a 90-minute interview that assessed health behaviors and household chaos with the 14-question Chaos, Hubbub, and Order Scale (CHAOS). Using the generalized estimating equation and adjusting for personal, parental, and family covariates, we examined associations of CHAOS score with substance use, sexual activity, and violent behavior outcome variables. We also examined the role of depression and school engagement as mediators.ResultsMean (SD) age of the 929 students was 16.4 (1.3) years, 516 (55%) were female, and 780 (84%) were Latino. After adjustment, compared with students with CHAOS score 0, those students with the greatest scores (5-14) had ORs of 3.1 (95% CI 1.1-8.7) for smoking, 2.6 (95% CI 1.6-4.4) for drinking, 6.1 (95% CI 1.8-21) for substance use at school, and 1.9 (95% CI 1.1-3.3) for fighting in the past 12 months. Associations between CHAOS score and sexual risk and other violent behaviors were not significant. Depression and school engagement attenuated the associations.ConclusionsIn this group of adolescents, greatest CHAOS score was associated with increased odds of risky health behaviors, with depression and school engagement as potential mediators. In the future, CHAOS score could be measured to assess risk for such behaviors or be a target for intervention to reduce chances of engaging in these behaviors