Association of sociodemographic characteristics with KAP regarding menstrual hygiene among women in an urban area in Delhi

Introduction: Menstruation despite being a natural process is linked with several misconceptions and false practices, which sometimes results in adverse health outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding menstrual hygiene and their association with sociodemographic determinants among women in an urban area of Delhi.Materials and Methods: A community‑based cross‑sectional survey was conducted for a period of 1 year among 350 women age 18–45 years residing in an urban resettlement colony in Delhi. Semi‑structured questionnaire containing questions regarding subject’s demographic profile, their knowledge, attitude, and practices pertaining to menstrual hygiene was used. It had seven questions regarding knowledge and eight questions each about attitude and practices regarding menstrual hygiene, respectively. A 5‑point Likert scale was used to assess women’s responses to attitude questions. Practices satisfactory or unsatisfactory were based on UNICEF guidelines. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 17.Results: The mean age of women was 26.53 ± 0.295 years. More than three‑fourths (88.3%) women had good knowledge, whereas only 32.3% of women had a positive attitude regarding menstrual hygiene. More than two‑thirds of the women were using sanitary pads as menstrual absorbent. Significant association was seen between knowledge and subject’s marital status (P = 0.034) and subject’s occupation (P = 0.046). A significant association was observed between attitude and socioeconomic status of the participant (P = 0.001).Conclusion: These findings indicate the need for education about healthy menstrual practices. Health education is an essential requirement to fill the knowledge gap to promote accessibility, availability, and sanitary facilities and products.Keywords: Attitude; knowledge; menstrual hygiene; practice

Interaction of mycobacterium tuberculosis rsha and sigh is mediated by salt bridges

10.1371/journal.pone.0043676PLoS ONE78

Synchronized pulse control of decoherence

We present a new strategy for multipulse control over decoherence. When a two-level system interacts with a reservoir characterized by a specific frequency, we find that the decoherence is effectively suppressed by synchronizing the pulse-train application with the dynamical motion of the reservoir.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger paradoxes for N quNits

In this paper we show the series of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger paradoxes for N maximally entangled N-dimensional quantum systems.Comment: 6 page

From Gapped Excitons to Gapless Triplons in One Dimension

Often, exotic phases appear in the phase diagrams between conventional phases. Their elementary excitations are of particular interest. Here, we consider the example of the ionic Hubbard model in one dimension. This model is a band insulator (BI) for weak interaction and a Mott insulator (MI) for strong interaction. Inbetween, a spontaneously dimerized insulator (SDI) occurs which is governed by energetically low-lying charge and spin degrees of freedom. Applying a systematically controlled version of the continuous unitary transformations (CUTs) we are able to determine the dispersions of the elementary charge and spin excitations and of their most relevant bound states on equal footing. The key idea is to start from an externally dimerized system using the relative weak interdimer coupling as small expansion parameter which finally is set to unity to recover the original model.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Characterization of a New Phase and Its Effect on the Work Characteristics of a Near-Stoichiometric Ni30Pt20Ti50 High-Temperature Shape Memory Alloy (HTSMA)

A new phase observed in a nominal Ni30Pt20Ti50 (at.%) high temperature shape memory alloy has been characterized using transmission electron microscopy and 3-D atom probe tomography. This phase forms homogeneously in the B2 austenite matrix by a nucleation and growth mechanism and results in a concomitant increase in the martensitic transformation temperature of the base alloy. Although the structure of this phase typically contains a high density of faults making characterization difficult, it appears to be trigonal (-3m point group) with a(sub o) approx. 1.28 nm and c(sub o) approx. 1.4 nm. Precipitation of this phase increases the microhardness of the alloy substantially over that of the solution treated and quenched single-phase material. The effect of precipitation strengthening on the work characteristics of the alloy has been explored through load-biased strain-temperature testing in the solution-treated condition and after aging at 500 C for times ranging from 1 to 256 hours. Work output was found to increase in the aged alloy as a result of an increase in transformation strain, but was not very sensitive to aging time. The amount of permanent deformation that occurred during thermal cycling under load was small but increased with increasing aging time and stress. Nevertheless, the dimensional stability of the alloy at short aging times (1-4 hours) was still very good making it a potentially useful material for high-temperature actuator applications

Tracking development assistance for health and for COVID-19 : a review of development assistance, government, out-of-pocket, and other private spending on health for 204 countries and territories, 1990-2050

Background The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed, especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was disbursed for COVID-19. We aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020. Methods We estimated domestic health spending and development assistance for health to generate total health-sector spending estimates for 204 countries and territories. We leveraged data from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database to produce estimates of domestic health spending. To generate estimates for development assistance for health, we relied on project-level disbursement data from the major international development agencies' online databases and annual financial statements and reports for information on income sources. To adjust our estimates for 2020 to include disbursements related to COVID-19, we extracted project data on commitments and disbursements from a broader set of databases (because not all of the data sources used to estimate the historical series extend to 2020), including the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistance Financial Tracking Service and the International Aid Transparency Initiative. We reported all the historic and future spending estimates in inflation-adjusted 2020 US$, 2020 US$ per capita, purchasing-power parity-adjusted US$per capita, and as a proportion of gross domestic product. We used various models to generate future health spending to 2050. Findings In 2019, health spending globally reached$8. 8 trillion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 8.7-8.8) or $1132 (1119-1143) per person. Spending on health varied within and across income groups and geographical regions. Of this total,$40.4 billion (0.5%, 95% UI 0.5-0.5) was development assistance for health provided to low-income and middle-income countries, which made up 24.6% (UI 24.0-25.1) of total spending in low-income countries. We estimate that $54.8 billion in development assistance for health was disbursed in 2020. Of this,$13.7 billion was targeted toward the COVID-19 health response. $12.3 billion was newly committed and$1.4 billion was repurposed from existing health projects. $3.1 billion (22.4$2.4 billion (17.9%) was for supply chain and logistics. Only $714.4 million (7.7$1519 (1448-1591) per person in 2050, although spending across countries is expected to remain varied. Interpretation Global health spending is expected to continue to grow, but remain unequally distributed between countries. We estimate that development organisations substantially increased the amount of development assistance for health provided in 2020. Continued efforts are needed to raise sufficient resources to mitigate the pandemic for the most vulnerable, and to help curtail the pandemic for all. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D‾\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens

Performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

At the start of Run 2 in 2015, the LHC delivered proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13\TeV. During Run 2 (years 2015–2018) the LHC eventually reached a luminosity of 2.1× 10$^{34}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, almost three times that reached during Run 1 (2009–2013) and a factor of two larger than the LHC design value, leading to events with up to a mean of about 50 simultaneous inelastic proton-proton collisions per bunch crossing (pileup). The CMS Level-1 trigger was upgraded prior to 2016 to improve the selection of physics events in the challenging conditions posed by the second run of the LHC. This paper describes the performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger upgrade during the data taking period of 2016–2018. The upgraded trigger implements pattern recognition and boosted decision tree regression techniques for muon reconstruction, includes pileup subtraction for jets and energy sums, and incorporates pileup-dependent isolation requirements for electrons and tau leptons. In addition, the new trigger calculates high-level quantities such as the invariant mass of pairs of reconstructed particles. The upgrade reduces the trigger rate from background processes and improves the trigger efficiency for a wide variety of physics signals