Prevalence and intensity of depression in mothers of children with beta-thalassemia major in Talghani Hospital of Gorgan, Iran

Background: Thalassemia is a chronic disease that it leads to psychological and social problems for parents. Mothers are at markedly increased risk of suffering from psychological distress and depression because they usually take on a considerable part of extra care that their children need.This study was designed to determine prevalence and intensity of depression in mothers with a thalassemic child. Material and Methods: In this cross - sectional study, 65 mothers of children with thalassemia major (case group) and 65 mothers of children without thalassemia major (control group) were assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Data were analyzed by using SPSS (v 16.0) for windows. Results: Prevalence of depression was significantly higher in case group than that in control group (84.6%vs. 56.9%, p <0.05). Moderate depression had a highest prevalence in the both groups (33.4% in case group and 30.8% in control group). Prevalence of severe depression in case group was markedly higher than that in control group (29.2% vs. 3.1% p<0.05). There was a significant difference between intensity of depression in mothers of case group that had another child with beta-thalassemia major (p<0.05). Conclusion: Mothers of children with thalassemia major are vulnerable to depression. They need psychosocial support to promote their health. © Journal of Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences University

Quantum Discord for Generalized Bloch Sphere States

In this study for particular states of bipartite quantum system in 2n?2m dimensional Hilbert space state, similar to m or n-qubit density matrices represented in Bloch sphere we call them generalized Bloch sphere states(GBSS), we give an efficient optimization procedure so that analytic evaluation of quantum discord can be performed. Using this optimization procedure, we find an exact analytical formula for the optimum positive operator valued measure (POVM) that maximize the measure of the classical correlation for these states. The presented optimization procedure also is used to show that for any concave entropy function the same POVMs are sufficient for quantum discord of mentioned states. Furthermore, We show that such optimization procedure can be used to calculate the geometric measure of quantum discord (GMQD) and then an explicit formula for GMQD is given. Finally, a complete geometric view is presented for quantum discord of GBSS. Keywords: Quantum Discord, Generalized Bloch Sphere States, Dirac matrices, Bipartite Quantum System. PACs Index: 03.67.-a, 03.65.Ta, 03.65.UdComment: 26 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1107.5174 by other author

Minimum Cost Homomorphisms to Locally Semicomplete and Quasi-Transitive Digraphs

For digraphs $G$ and $H$, a homomorphism of $G$ to $H$ is a mapping $f:\ V(G)\dom V(H)$such that$uv\in A(G)$implies$f(u)f(v)\in A(H)$. If, moreover, each vertex$u \in V(G)$is associated with costs$c_i(u), i \in V(H)$, then the cost of a homomorphism$f$is$\sum_{u\in V(G)}c_{f(u)}(u)$. For each fixed digraph$H$, the minimum cost homomorphism problem for$H$, denoted MinHOM($H$), can be formulated as follows: Given an input digraph$G$, together with costs$c_i(u)$,$u\in V(G)$,$i\in V(H)$, decide whether there exists a homomorphism of$G$to$H$ and, if one exists, to find one of minimum cost. Minimum cost homomorphism problems encompass (or are related to) many well studied optimization problems such as the minimum cost chromatic partition and repair analysis problems. We focus on the minimum cost homomorphism problem for locally semicomplete digraphs and quasi-transitive digraphs which are two well-known generalizations of tournaments. Using graph-theoretic characterization results for the two digraph classes, we obtain a full dichotomy classification of the complexity of minimum cost homomorphism problems for both classes

Quantifying Spatiotemporal Chaos in Rayleigh-B\'enard Convection

Using large-scale parallel numerical simulations we explore spatiotemporal chaos in Rayleigh-B\'enard convection in a cylindrical domain with experimentally relevant boundary conditions. We use the variation of the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents and the leading order Lyapunov vector with system parameters to quantify states of high-dimensional chaos in fluid convection. We explore the relationship between the time dynamics of the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents and the pattern dynamics. For chaotic dynamics we find that all of the Lyapunov exponents are positively correlated with the leading order Lyapunov exponent and we quantify the details of their response to the dynamics of defects. The leading order Lyapunov vector is used to identify topological features of the fluid patterns that contribute significantly to the chaotic dynamics. Our results show a transition from boundary dominated dynamics to bulk dominated dynamics as the system size is increased. The spectrum of Lyapunov exponents is used to compute the variation of the fractal dimension with system parameters to quantify how the underlying high-dimensional strange attractor accommodates a range of different chaotic dynamics