1,798 research outputs found
Knowledge and attitude towards sexually transmitted infections among female students living in hostels in a university community of the south-south region of Nigeria
Introduction: A cross sectional study was conducted in the female students’ hostel of the University of Calabar to determine their knowledge and attitude towards sexually transmitted infections (STI).Methodology: A structured questionnaire was administered to those who consented to the study. Information obtained were age, year of study, knowledge of sexually transmitted infections.Results: Most subjects were in the age category of 21-25years (56.2%) and predominantly of the Igbo tribe 34%. Over 90% of the subjects had heard of STIs. Vaginal itching (70.2%) and discharge (65.7%) were the commonest symptoms reported. Despite the level of knowledge, some students still patronize Chemist 4.8% and self-injection administration 4.8%.Conclusion: The awareness of STI is high but the understanding of symptomatology is poor.Keywords: Sexually transmitted infections, Female hostel, Tertiary Institution
Psychopathic traits influence amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity during facial emotion processing
There is accumulating evidence that youths with antisocial behavior or psychopathic traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these impairments. A number of neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity during facial emotion processing in youths with Conduct Disorder (CD) and adults with psychopathy, but few of these studies tested for group differences in effective connectivity – i.e., changes in connectivity during emotion processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and psycho-physiological interaction methods, we investigated the impact of CD and psychopathic traits on amygdala activity and effective connectivity in 46 male youths with CD and 25 typically-developing controls when processing emotional faces. All participants were aged 16-21 years. Relative to controls, youths with CD showed reduced amygdala activity when processing angry or sad faces relative to neutral faces, but the groups did not significantly differ in amygdala-related effective connectivity. In contrast, psychopathic traits were negatively correlated with amygdala-ventral anterior cingulate cortex connectivity for angry versus neutral faces, but were unrelated to amygdala responses to angry or sad faces. These findings suggest that CD and psychopathic traits have differential effects on amygdala activation and functional interactions between limbic regions during facial emotion processing
Spatially Resolved Mapping of Local Polarization Dynamics in an Ergodic Phase of Ferroelectric Relaxor
Spatial variability of polarization relaxation kinetics in relaxor
ferroelectric 0.9Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.1PbTiO3 is studied using time-resolved
Piezoresponse Force Microscopy. Local relaxation attributed to the
reorientation of polar nanoregions is shown to follow stretched exponential
dependence, exp(-(t/tau)^beta), with beta~~0.4, much larger than the
macroscopic value determined from dielectric spectra (beta~~0.09). The spatial
inhomogeneity of relaxation time distributions with the presence of 100-200 nm
"fast" and "slow" regions is observed. The results are analyzed to map the
Vogel-Fulcher temperatures on the nanoscale.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, supplementary materials attached; to be
submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
When are active Brownian particles and run-and-tumble particles equivalent? Consequences for motility-induced phase separation
Active Brownian particles (ABPs, such as self-phoretic colloids) swim at
fixed speed along a body-axis that rotates by slow angular
diffusion. Run-and-tumble particles (RTPs, such as motile bacteria) swim with
constant \u until a random tumble event suddenly decorrelates the
orientation. We show that when the motility parameters depend on density
but not on , the coarse-grained fluctuating hydrodynamics of
interacting ABPs and RTPs can be mapped onto each other and are thus strictly
equivalent. In both cases, a steeply enough decreasing causes phase
separation in dimensions , even when no attractive forces act between
the particles. This points to a generic role for motility-induced phase
separation in active matter. However, we show that the ABP/RTP equivalence does
not automatically extend to the more general case of \u-dependent motilities
Vortex Glass and Vortex Liquid in Oscillatory Media
We study the disordered, multi-spiral solutions of two-dimensional
homogeneous oscillatory media for parameter values at which the single
spiral/vortex solution is fully stable. In the framework of the complex
Ginzburg-Landau (CGLE) equation, we show that these states, heretofore believed
to be static, actually evolve on ultra-slow timescales. This is achieved via a
reduction of the CGLE to the evolution of the sole vortex position and phase
coordinates. This true defect-mediated turbulence occurs in two distinct
phases, a vortex liquid characterized by normal diffusion of individual
spirals, and a slowly relaxing, intermittent, ``vortex glass''.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter
Interaction of Vortices in Complex Vector Field and Stability of a ``Vortex Molecule''
We consider interaction of vortices in the vector complex Ginzburg--Landau
equation (CVGLE). In the limit of small field coupling, it is found
analytically that the interaction between well-separated defects in two
different fields is long-range, in contrast to interaction between defects in
the same field which falls off exponentially. In a certain region of parameters
of CVGLE, we find stable rotating bound states of two defects -- a ``vortex
molecule".Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Backpropagation training in adaptive quantum networks
We introduce a robust, error-tolerant adaptive training algorithm for
generalized learning paradigms in high-dimensional superposed quantum networks,
or \emph{adaptive quantum networks}. The formalized procedure applies standard
backpropagation training across a coherent ensemble of discrete topological
configurations of individual neural networks, each of which is formally merged
into appropriate linear superposition within a predefined, decoherence-free
subspace. Quantum parallelism facilitates simultaneous training and revision of
the system within this coherent state space, resulting in accelerated
convergence to a stable network attractor under consequent iteration of the
implemented backpropagation algorithm. Parallel evolution of linear superposed
networks incorporating backpropagation training provides quantitative,
numerical indications for optimization of both single-neuron activation
functions and optimal reconfiguration of whole-network quantum structure.Comment: Talk presented at "Quantum Structures - 2008", Gdansk, Polan
Risk factors associated with the coexistence of stunting, underweight, and wasting in children under 5 from 31 sub-Saharan African countries.
OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the risk factors associated with the coexistence of stunting, underweight, and wasting among children under age 5 in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). DESIGN: Data of 127, 487 under-5 children from 31 countries in SSA were pooled from the Demographic and Health Surveys collected between 2010 and 2019. We examined the risk of coexistence of stunting, underweight, and wasting using multinomial logistic regression models. The results were presented using relative risk ratios (RRR) with corresponding confidence intervals (CIs). SETTING: Thirty-one sub-Saharan African countries. PARTICIPANTS: Children under age 5. OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcome variables were three child anthropometrics: stunting (height-for-age z-scores); underweight (weight-for-age z-scores) and wasting (weight-for-height z-scores). RESULTS: The prevalence of coexistence of stunting, underweight, and wasting varied across countries, with the highest (12.14%) and lowest (0.58%) prevalences of coexistence of stunting, underweight and wasting in Benin and Gambia respectively. The risk of coexistence of the three indicators of undernutrition was higher among children aged 1 year (RRR=3.714; 95% CI 3.319 to 4.156) compared with those aged 0. The risk of coexistence of the three dimensions was lower among female children (RRR=0.468 95% CI 0.420 to 0.51), but higher for those with small size at birth (RRR=3.818; CI 3.383 to 4.308), those whose mothers had no education (RRR=3.291; 95% CI 1.961 to 5.522), not working (RRR=1.195; 95% CI 1.086 to 1.314), had no antenatal visits during pregnancy (RRR=1.364; 95% CI 1.20 to 1.541), children delivered at home (RRR=1.372; CI 1.232 to 1.529), those from poor households (RRR=1.408; 95% CI 1.235 to 1.605), those whose mothers had no access to media (RRR=1.255; 95% CI 1.144 to 1.377) and living in households with an unimproved toilet facility (RRR=1.158; 95% CI 1.032 to 1.300). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest the urgent need for consideration of the coexistence of stunting, wasting and underweight among under-5 children in policy design and programming of interventions to eradicate child malnutrition in SSA. In the short-term, national-level policies and interventions need to be well tailored considering the compositional characteristics
Spiral Motion in a Noisy Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation
The response of spiral waves to external perturbations in a stable regime of
the two-dimensional complex Ginzburg-Landau equation (CGLE) is investigated. It
is shown that the spiral core has a finite mobility and performs Brownian
motion when driven by white noise. Combined with simulation results, this
suggests that defect-free and quasi-frozen states in the noiseless CGLE are
unstable against free vortex excitation at any non-zero noise strength.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Noncoaxial multivortices in the complex sine-Gordon theory on the plane
We construct explicit multivortex solutions for the complex sine-Gordon
equation (the Lund-Regge model) in two Euclidean dimensions. Unlike the
previously found (coaxial) multivortices, the new solutions comprise single
vortices placed at arbitrary positions (but confined within a finite part of
the plane.) All multivortices, including the single vortex, have an infinite
number of parameters. We also show that, in contrast to the coaxial complex
sine-Gordon multivortices, the axially-symmetric solutions of the
Ginzburg-Landau model (the stationary Gross-Pitaevskii equation) {\it do not}
belong to a broader family of noncoaxial multivortex configurations.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figures in colou
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