Awareness of COPD in a High Risk Indian Population: A Cross Sectional Study

INTRODUCTION: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a major impact on the health of an Individual and is a burden to the society.AIM: To assess the attitudes towards COPD among smokers who are at a high risk of developing the disease in Ranga Reddy District, Telangana, IndiaMATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was a cross-sectional survey conducted among five dental camps conducted in district of Ranga Reddy in current smokers (both bidi and cigarette) aged 45 years and older with a history of at least 10 pack(for cigarette)/bundle(for bidi)-years of smoking. The subjects were distributed over four age groups, which were 45‒49 years, 50‒59 years, 60‒69 years, and >70 Years. Data was collected through a pre-validated, close ended structured questionnaire divided into four parts regarding the participant’s demographics, current health status, symptoms, awareness of COPD, attitudes towards COPD and willingness to quit smoking. Data was analysed using SPSS version 21.0.RESULTS: Of a total of 426 subjects, (male predominance 94.2%.) , people belonging to the age groups of 40-49 years and >70 years reported themselves being in “Good health”. Only 3.5% reported having to know COPD as a respiratory disease as compared to 24.9% of the population who recognised lung cancer as the most common respiratory disease. 46.2% subjects acknowledged that cough was a symptom most commonly associated with COPD. Only a few portion of the subjects (1.8%) were willing to visit a doctor for diagnosis of COPD. Willingness to quit smoking among the respondents was seen in only 24.7% of the population and 14.5% could not decide about the same.CONCLUSION: Efforts are needed to be directed towards proper counselling and education of the people of Ranga Reddy district to prevent them from the ill-effects of Tobacco and its related diseases, especially COPD

All unitary cubic curvature gravities in D dimensions

We construct all the unitary cubic curvature gravity theories built on the contractions of the Riemann tensor in D -dimensional (anti)-de Sitter spacetimes. Our construction is based on finding the equivalent quadratic action for the general cubic curvature theory and imposing ghost and tachyon freedom, which greatly simplifies the highly complicated problem of finding the propagator of cubic curvature theories in constant curvature backgrounds. To carry out the procedure we have also classified all the unitary quadratic models. We use our general results to study the recently found cubic curvature theories using different techniques and the string generated cubic curvature gravity model. We also study the scattering in critical gravity and give its cubic curvature extensions.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, v2: A subsection on cubic curvature extensions of critical gravity is added, v3: The part regarding critical gravity is revised. Version to appear in Class. Quant. Gra

Temperature dependence of electrical properties in In/Cu2ZnSnTe4/Si/Ag diodes

WOS: 000458625200001Cu2ZnSnTe4 (CZTTe) thin films with In metal contact were deposited by thermal evaporation on monocrystalline n-type Si wafers with Ag ohmic contact to investigate the device characteristics of an In/CZTTe/Si/Ag diode. The variation in electrical characteristics of the diode was analysed by carrying out current-voltage (I-V) measurements in the temperature range of 220-360 K. The forward bias I-V behaviour was modelled according to the thermionic emission (TE) theory to obtain main diode parameters. In addition, the experimental data were detailed by taking into account the presence of an interfacial layer and possible dominant current transport mechanisms were studied under analysis of ideality factor, n. Strong effects of temperature were observed on zero-bias barrier height (Phi(B0)) and n values due to barrier height inhomogeneity at the interface. The anomaly observed in the analysis of TE was modelled by Gaussian distribution (GD) of barrier heights with 0.844 eV mean barrier height and 0.132 V standard deviation. According to the Tung's theoretical approach, a linear correlation between Phi(B0) and n cannot be satisfied, and thus the modified Richardson plot was used to determine Richardson constant (A*). As a result, A* was calculated approximately as 120.6 A cm(-2) K-2 very close to the theoretical value for n-Si. In addition, the effects of series resistance (R-s) by estimating from Cheng's function and density of surface states (N-ss) by taking the bias dependence of effective barrier height, were discussed

Hamiltonian analysis of BHT massive gravity

We study the Hamiltonian structure of the Bergshoeff-Hohm-Townsend (BHT) massive gravity with a cosmological constant. In the space of coupling constants $(\Lambda_0,m^2)$, our canonical analysis reveals the special role of the condition $\Lambda_0/m^2\neq-1$. In this sector, the dimension of the physical phase space is found to be $N^*=4$, which corresponds to two Lagrangian degree of freedom. When applied to the AdS asymptotic region, the canonical approach yields the conserved charges of the BTZ black hole, and central charges of the asymptotic symmetry algebra.Comment: LATEX, 21 pages; v2: minor correction

Massive Gravity Theories and limits of Ghost-free Bigravity models

We construct a class of theories which extend New Massive Gravity to higher orders in curvature in any dimension. The lagrangians arise as limits of a new class of bimetric theories of Lovelock gravity, which are unitary theories free from the Boulware-Deser ghost. These Lovelock bigravity models represent the most general non-chiral ghost-free theories of an interacting massless and massive spin-two field in any dimension. The scaling limit is taken in such a way that unitarity is explicitly broken, but the Boulware-Deser ghost remains absent. This automatically implies the existence of a holographic $c$-theorem for these theories. We also show that the Born-Infeld extension of New Massive Gravity falls into our class of models demonstrating that this theory is also free of the Boulware-Deser ghost. These results extend existing connections between New Massive Gravity, bigravity theories, Galileon theories and holographic $c$-theorems.Comment: 11+5 page

Extra gauge symmetries in BHT gravity

We study the canonical structure of the Bergshoeff-Hohm-Townsend massive gravity, linearized around a maximally symmetric background. At the critical point in the space of parameters, defined by $\Lambda_0/m^2=-1$, we discover an extra gauge symmetry, which reflects the existence of the partially massless mode. The number of the Lagrangian degrees of freedom is found to be 1. We show that the canonical structure of the theory at the critical point is unstable under linearization.Comment: LATEX, 12 page

Generalised massive gravity one-loop partition function and AdS/(L)CFT

The graviton 1-loop partition function is calculated for Euclidean generalised massive gravity (GMG) using AdS heat kernel techniques. We find that the results fit perfectly into the AdS/(L)CFT picture. Conformal Chern-Simons gravity, a singular limit of GMG, leads to an additional contribution in the 1-loop determinant from the conformal ghost. We show that this contribution has a nice interpretation on the conformal field theory side in terms of a semi-classical null vector at level two descending from a primary with conformal weights (3/2,-1/2).Comment: 25 p., 2 jpg figs, v2: added 6 lines of clarifying text after Eq. (2.38

Nonlinear Dynamics of Parity-Even Tricritical Gravity in Three and Four Dimensions

Recently proposed "multicritical" higher-derivative gravities in Anti de Sitter space carry logarithmic representations of the Anti de Sitter isometry group. While generically non-unitary already at the quadratic, free-theory level, in special cases these theories admit a unitary subspace. The simplest example of such behavior is "tricritical" gravity. In this paper, we extend the study of parity-even tricritical gravity in d = 3, 4 to the first nonlinear order. We show that the would-be unitary subspace suffers from a linearization instability and is absent in the full non-linear theory.Comment: 22 pages; v2: references added, published versio

Tricritical gravity waves in the four-dimensional generalized massive gravity

We construct a generalized massive gravity by combining quadratic curvature gravity with the Chern-Simons term in four dimensions. This may be a candidate for the parity-odd tricritical gravity theory. Considering the AdS$_4$ vacuum solution, we derive the linearized Einstein equation, which is not similar to that of the three dimensional (3D) generalized massive gravity. When a perturbed metric tensor is chosen to be the Kerr-Schild form, the linearized equation reduces to a single massive scalar equation. At the tricritical points where two masses are equal to -1 and 2, we obtain a log-square wave solution to the massive scalar equation. This is compared to the 3D tricritical generalized massive gravity whose dual is a rank-3 logarithmic conformal field theory.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure, version to appear in EPJ

Holographic two-point functions for 4d log-gravity

We compute holographic one- and two-point functions of critical higher-curvature gravity in four dimensions. The two most important operators are the stress tensor and its logarithmic partner, sourced by ordinary massless and by logarithmic non-normalisable gravitons, respectively. In addition, the logarithmic gravitons source two ordinary operators, one with spin-one and one with spin-zero. The one-point function of the stress tensor vanishes for all Einstein solutions, but has a non-zero contribution from logarithmic gravitons. The two-point functions of all operators match the expectations from a three-dimensional logarithmic conformal field theory.Comment: 35 pages; v2: typos corrected, added reference; v3: shorter introduction, minor changes in the text in section 3, added reference; published versio