Fresh water influence on nutrient stoichiometry in a tropical estuary, southwest coast of India

Cochin backwaters, a micro tidal estuary, undergo a characteristic transformation from a river-dominated system during summer monsoon to a tide-dominant system during pre-monsoon season. The present study observes that as the river flow weakens after monsoon, the flushing of the estuary diminishes and the nitrogen and phosphorous loadings through anthropogenic activities (industries) and sediment re-suspension alter the nutrient stoichiometry substantially. The increased tidal activity during pre-monsoon changes the estuary into a vertically mixed, eutrophic and flow-restricted system supporting an enhanced organic production. This implies that monsoon-induced hydrology plays an important role in regulating the nutrients, secondary production and even the migrant fauna of the estuary. The system is delicately poised, as continuous release of pollutants including nutrients into this estuary would suppress fish and shell fish production, where only pollution tolerant species can exist

The co-occurrence of anemia and cardiometabolic disease risk demonstrates sex-specific sociodemographic patterning in an urbanizing rural region of southern India.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: To determine the extent and sociodemographic determinants of anemia, overweight, metabolic syndrome (MetS) and the co-occurrence of anemia with cardiometabolic disease risk factors among a cohort of Indian adults. SUBJECT/METHODS: Cross-sectional survey of adult men (n=3322) and nonpregnant women (n=2895) aged 18 years and older from the third wave of the Andhra Pradesh Children and Parents Study that assessed anemia, overweight based on body mass index, and prevalence of MetS based on abdominal obesity, hypertension and blood lipid and fasting glucose measures. We examined associations of education, wealth and urbanicity with these outcomes and their co-occurrence. RESULTS: The prevalence of anemia and overweight was 40% and 29% among women, respectively, and 10% and 25% among men (P<0.001), respectively, whereas the prevalence of MetS was the same across sexes (15%; P=0.55). The prevalence of concurrent anemia and overweight (9%), and anemia and MetS (4.5%) was highest among women. Household wealth was positively associated with overweight and MetS across sexes (P<0.05). Independent of household wealth, higher education was positively correlated with MetS among men (odds ratio (95% confidence interval): MetS: 1.4 (0.99, 2.0)) and negatively correlated with MetS among women (MetS: 0.54 (0.29, 0.99)). Similar sex-specific associations were observed for the co-occurrence of anemia with overweight and MetS. CONCLUSIONS: Women in this region of India may be particularly vulnerable to co-occurring anemia and cardiometabolic risk, and associated adverse health outcomes as the nutrition transition advances in India

The Impact of a 4th Generation on Mixing and CP Violation in the Charm System

We study D0-D0 mixing in the presence of a fourth generation of quarks. In particular, we calculate the size of the allowed CP violation which is found at the observable level well beyond anything possible with CKM dynamics. We calculate the semileptonic asymmetry a_SL and the mixing induced CP asymmetry eta_fS_f which are correlated with each other. We also investigate the correlation of eta_fS_f with a number of prominent observables in other mesonic systems like epsilon'/epsilon, Br(K_L -> pi0 nu nu), Br(K+ -> pi+ nu nu), Br(B_s ->mu+ mu-), Br(B_d -> mu+ mu-) and finally S_psi phi in the B_s system. We identify a clear pattern of flavour and CP violation predicted by the SM4 model: While simultaneous large 4G effects in the K and D systems are possible, accompanying large NP effects in the B_d system are disfavoured. However this behaviour is not as pronounced as found for the LHT and RSc models. In contrast to this, sizeable CP violating effects in the B_s system are possible unless extreme effects in eta_fS_f are found, and Br(B_s ->mu+ mu-) can be strongly enhanced regardless of the situation in the D system. We find that, on the other hand, S_psi phi > 0.2 combined with the measured epsilon'/epsilon significantly diminishes 4G effects within the D system.Comment: 22 pages, 23 figures, v2 (references added

Solubility and dissolution enhancement of poorly aqueous soluble drug atorvastatin calcium using modified gum karaya as carrier: In vitro-In vivo evaluation

Solid dispersion is a unique and promising approach for improving the oral absorption and oral bioavailability of BCS class II drugs. Modified gum karaya a recently developed excipient was evaluated as a carrier for solubility and dissolution enhancement of poorly water soluble drug atorvastatin calcium. Physical mixtures along with solid dispersions of drug and polymer was  prepared using three methods kneading, solvent evaporation and solvent wetting method in 5 different ratios (1:1,1:3,1:5,1:7,1:9). Among the three methods used atorvastatin calcium solid dispersions prepared by kneading method in 1:3 ratio showed most promising results in terms of  percent yield, percent drug content, solubility of solid dispersions in phosphate buffer pH 6.8, XRD, DSC, SEM and In vitro release studies. These solid dispersions were selected to prepare tablets using Ac-di-sol as superdisintegrant (T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5). Tablets were characterized for hardness, friability, disintegration time, percent drug content, drug release studies and stability studies. Tablets T5 showed highest dissolution rate and best dissolution efficiency at (DE30) and (DE120) minutes. Release data of T5 tablet was subjected to various release kinetics models to know the type and order of drug release. Order was found to be Korsemeyer–Peppas&gt;Hixson–Crowell cube root law &gt;zero-order &gt;first-order &gt;Higuchi. The similarity factor was calculated for comparison of the dissolution profile before and after stability studies. The f2 value was found to be more than 50 (~ 90.9) thereby indicating a close similarity between both the dissolution profiles. In vivo studies was conducted on healthy albino rats and formulation given by oral route showed that at the end of 14 days solid dispersion 1:3 performed better than pure atorvastatin calcium in reducing total cholesterol and TG level and increasing HDL- cholesterol levels

Formulation of Fast-Dissolving Tablets of Promethazine Theoclate

Purpose: To optimize and formulate promethazine theoclate fast-dissolving tablets that offer a suitable approach to the treatment of nausea and vomiting. Method: The solubility of promethazine theoclate was increased by formulating it as a fast-dissolving tablet containing &beta;-cyclodextrin, crospovidone, and camphor, using direct compression method. A 33 full factorial design was used to investigate the combined influence of three independent variables - amounts of camphor, crospovidone and &beta;-cyclodextrin - on disintegration time, friability and drug release after 5 min. Result: The optimization study, involving multiple regression analysis, revealed that optimum amounts of camphor, crospovidone and &beta;-cyclodextrin gave a rapidly disintegrating/dissolving tablet. A checkpoint batch was also prepared to verify the validity of the evolved mathematical model. The optimized tablet should be prepared with an optimum amount of &beta;-cyclodextrin (3.0 mg), camphor (3.29 mg) and crospovidone (2.61 mg) which disintegrated in 30 s, with a friability of 0.60 % and drug release of 89 % in 5 min. Conclusion: The optimized approach aided both the formulation of fast-dissolving theoclate tablets and the understanding of the effect of formulation processing variables on the development of the formulation.Keywords: Fast-dissolving tablet, 33 Factorial design, Promethazine theoclate, Optmization studies

Pure-glue hidden valleys through the Higgs portal

We consider the possibility that the Higgs boson can act as a link to a hidden sector in the context of pure-glue hidden valley models. In these models the standard model is weakly coupled, through loops of heavy messengers fields, to a hidden sector whose low energy dynamics is described by a pure-Yang-Mills theory. Such a hidden sector contains several metastable hidden glueballs. In this work we shall extend earlier results on hidden valleys to include couplings of the messengers to the standard model Higgs sector. The effective interactions at one-loop couple the hidden gluons to the standard model particles through the Higgs sector. These couplings in turn induce hidden glueball decays to fermion pairs, or cascade decays with multiple Higgs emission. The presence of effective operators of different mass dimensions, often competing with each other, together with a great diversity of states, leads to a great variability in the lifetimes and decay modes of the hidden glueballs. We find that most of the operators considered in this paper are not heavily constrained by precision electroweak physics, therefore leaving plenty of room in the parameter space to be explored by the future experiments at the LHC.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figures. Major revision for JHEP, corrected an error in Eq. 5.1, comments adde

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Rapidity and Centrality Dependence of Proton and Anti-proton Production from Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 130GeV

We report on the rapidity and centrality dependence of proton and anti-proton transverse mass distributions from Au+Au collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 130GeV as measured by the STAR experiment at RHIC. Our results are from the rapidity and transverse momentum range of |y|<0.5 and 0.35 <p_t<1.00GeV/c. For both protons and anti-protons, transverse mass distributions become more convex from peripheral to central collisions demonstrating characteristics of collective expansion. The measured rapidity distributions and the mean transverse momenta versus rapidity are flat within |y|<0.5. Comparisons of our data with results from model calculations indicate that in order to obtain a consistent picture of the proton(anti-proton) yields and transverse mass distributions the possibility of pre-hadronic collective expansion may have to be taken into account.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, submitted to PR

Ratio of the Isolated Photon Cross Sections at \sqrt{s} = 630 and 1800 GeV

The inclusive cross section for production of isolated photons has been measured in \pbarp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 630$ GeV with the \D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The photons span a transverse energy ($E_T$) range from 7-49 GeV and have pseudorapidity $|\eta| < 2.5$. This measurement is combined with to previous \D0 result at $\sqrt{s} = 1800$ GeV to form a ratio of the cross sections. Comparison of next-to-leading order QCD with the measured cross section at 630 GeV and ratio of cross sections show satisfactory agreement in most of the $E_T$ range.Comment: 7 pages. Published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 251805, (2001