8,937 research outputs found
Caregivers’ perceptions of childhood fever in Ilorin, North-Central Nigeria
Background: Fever remains a common clinical indicator of disease, accounting alone for over 25% of paediatric emergency rooms consultations. Perception of this important sign is a crucial prelude and determinant of outcome in febrile children. The aim was to determine knowledge and attitudes of parents regarding fever in their children.Methods: The study is a crosssectional descriptive study carried out at the Emergency Paediatric Unit of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH). Fourhundred under-five children presenting with fever wererecruited along with their caregivers. A semi-structured questionnairewas administered to collect information on sociodemographics, and caregiver’s knowledge and attitudes regarding fever in their wards.Results: The mean age of the caregivers was 29.5 ± 4.46 years (Range 21 – 41 years). Only 30.3% of caregivers could correctly describe what fever was. The most frequently utilised fever detection method was tactile assessment. Only 3.2% of the caregivers used a thermometer to detectfever. Social class, maternal age and religion significantly influenced the decision to use thermometers. The most common remedies caregivers would use for fever in their children were to give paracetamol (96.3%), sponging (73.2%) and a warm bath (63.8%). About 61% of caregivers had a wrong perception of the possible complications of fever.Conclusions: Caregivers in this study had a poor knowledge of fever, and parental educational and socioeconomic status impacted on their responses to fever. There is a need for education of caregivers at all contacts with the healthcare system on fever, and its management. Keywords: Antipyretic, Attitude, Fever, Thermometr
Enumerating Cyclic Orientations of a Graph
Acyclic and cyclic orientations of an undirected graph have been widely
studied for their importance: an orientation is acyclic if it assigns a
direction to each edge so as to obtain a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with the
same vertex set; it is cyclic otherwise. As far as we know, only the
enumeration of acyclic orientations has been addressed in the literature. In
this paper, we pose the problem of efficiently enumerating all the
\emph{cyclic} orientations of an undirected connected graph with vertices
and edges, observing that it cannot be solved using algorithmic techniques
previously employed for enumerating acyclic orientations.We show that the
problem is of independent interest from both combinatorial and algorithmic
points of view, and that each cyclic orientation can be listed with
delay time. Space usage is with an additional setup cost
of time before the enumeration begins, or with a setup cost of
time
Holographic non-perturbative corrections to gauge couplings
We give a direct microscopic derivation of the F-theory background that
corresponds to four D7 branes of type I' theory by taking into account the
D-instanton contributions to the emission of the axio-dilaton field in the
directions transverse to the D7's. The couplings of the axio-dilaton to the
D-instanton moduli modify its classical source terms which are shown to be
proportional to the elements of the D7 brane chiral ring. Solving the bulk
field equations with the non-perturbatively corrected sources yields the full
F-theory background. This solution represents the gravitational dual of the
four-dimensional theory living on a probe D3 brane of type I', namely of the
N=2, Sp(1) SYM theory with Nf=4. Our results provide an explicit microscopic
derivation of the non-perturbative gravitational dual of this theory. They also
explain the recent observation that the exact coupling for this theory can be
entirely reconstructed from its perturbative part plus the knowledge of the
chiral ring on the D7 branes supporting its flavor degrees of freedom.Comment: Latex, 39 pages, 6 figure
Nondestructive selective probing of phononic excitations in a cold Bose gas using impurities
We introduce a detector that selectively probes the phononic excitations of a
cold Bose gas. The detector is composed of a single impurity atom confined by a
double-well potential, where the two lowest eigenstates of the impurity form an
effective probe qubit that is coupled to the phonons via density-density
interactions with the bosons. The system is analogous to a two-level atom
coupled to photons of the radiation field. We demonstrate that tracking the
evolution of the qubit populations allows probing both thermal and coherent
excitations in targeted phonon modes. The targeted modes are selected in both
energy and momentum by adjusting the impurity's potential. We show how to use
the detector to observe coherent density waves and to measure temperatures of
the Bose gas down to the nano-Kelvin regime. We analyze how our scheme could be
realized experimentally, including the possibility of using an array of
multiple impurities to achieve greater precision from a single experimental
run.Comment: 11+4 pages, 7 figure
Serum zinc levels as a predictor of clinical features and outcome of paediatric acute lower respiratory infections in Nigeria
Background: Malnutrition, especially macronutrient deficiency, has been shown to be interrelated with ALRI-related morbidity and mortality. However the import of zinc deficiency has only recently become the focus of research attention.Objective: The current study was carried out in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria to determine the relationship between serum zinc levels, clinical features and outcome in hospitalized children with acute lower respiratory infections(ALRI).Method: A descriptive crosssectional hospital-based study involving 120 children aged two months to five years with ALRI. Socio-demographic, clinical and laboratory data were obtained. The serum zinc was analyzed with a Jenway™ spectrophotometer after initial preparation with theQuantiChrom™ zinc assay kit.Results: Children with tachypnoea and crepitations had significantly lower mean serum zinc levels compared to the corresponding values in those without these features (each p<0.05). Significantly higher mean serum zinc level was recorded in children with grunting respiration compared with thosewithout grunting (p=0.028). Agerelated tachypnoea, grunting, and crepitations remained significant (each p<0.05) following a linear regression analysis. The mean serum zinc level in children with multiple complications was significantly lower than the corresponding level recorded in children who had one complication, p=0.020. No significant differencewas found between the mean serum zinc level of the children who were discharged compared with the corresponding level recorded in those that died, p=0.589.Conclusion: The presence of crepitations had the strongest clinical association with a low serum zinc level. Children managed for ALRI would benefit from post-treatment zinc supplements and appropriate zinc-rich sources of food at discharge.Keywords: Children zinc respiratory infection
Recommended from our members
Hall effect and transmission electron microscopy of epitaxial MnSi thin films
We present Hall effect measurements on MnSi/Si(111) epilayers and find an anomalous Hall contribution that is significantly smaller than in bulk crystals, which enables the observation of an additional contribution to the anomalous signal previously overlooked in MnSi. Our measurements indicate the signal is not due to skyrmions in MnSi thin films, which are absent in out-of-plane fields, but rather are the result of scattering from the cone phase. The absence of magnetic contrast in the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) measurements are consistent with this interpretation. We provide a method to model TEM images of skyrmions lattices to determine the conditions necessary for their observation in other B20 epilayers with an anisotropy that is favourable to their formation.T.L.M. and M.N.W. acknowledge support from NSERC and the support of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Atlantic Innovation Fund, and other partners which fund the Facilities for Materials Characterization, managed by the Institute for Research in Materials. Work done by J.C.L. was funded by the Royal Society. The work of F.N.R. was supported by RFBR, research project No. 14-02-31012.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in Physical Review B (SA Meynell, MN Wilson, JC Loudon, A Spitzig, FN Rybakov, MB Johnson, TL Monchesky, Physical Review B 2014 90, 224419)
More on STAT1 Gain of Function, Type 1 Diabetes, and JAK Inhibition
This is the final version. Available from the Massachusetts Medical Society via the DOI in this recor
Populating the swampland: the case of U(1)^496 and E_8 x U(1)^248
For d=10 N=1 SUGRA coupled to d=10 N=1 SYM, anomaly cancellation places
severe constraints on the allowed gauge groups. Besides the ones known to
appear in string theory, only U(1)^496 and E_8 x U(1)^248 are allowed. There
are no known theories of quantum gravity that reduce in some limit to these two
last supergravity theories, and in this note I present some evidence that those
quantum theories might not exist. The first observation is that, upon
compactification, requring that the quantum theory possesses a moduli space
with finite volume typically implies the existence of singularities where the
4d gauge group is enhanced, but for these two theories that gauge enhancement
is problematic from the 10d point of view. I also point out that while these
four supergravity theories present repulson-type singularities, the known
mechanism that repairs those singularities for the first two - the non-Abelian
enhancon - is not available for the last two theories. In short, these two
supergravity theories might be too Abelian for their own good.Comment: 12 page
- …