Innovative school-level quantitative chemistry experimental technique (II) an affordable, sensitive, stable and user-friendly colorimeter

The paper is a continuation of Part (I) of the article [1] published in the Special Issue of AJCE, Vol 9 No. 3, 2019. It introduces a home-made  colorimeter sensor which when connected to a commercial digital multi-meter (DMM) can act as a conventional colorimeter. Rationale of the sensor design is based on affordability without sacrificing sensitivity, stability and availability. As such, it has the following features: (i) a professional cuvette is used, ensuring reading display reproducibility (Fig. 1), (ii) improved circuit design , (iii) a RGB tri-colour LED is used instead of optical filter for near-monochromatic light source (Fig. 2), (iv) the “DMM Display” technique is adopted in which the sensor output is limited to a full-scale reading of 2000 mV DC with the DMM’s voltage readings acting as transmittance parameter, (v) do away with the concept of absorbance and Beer’s law which are not recommended for most school level chemistry syllabuses. When using the sensor, output voltage readings are treated as  quantified transmittance and that a blank sample transmittance is adjusted to have a voltage reading of 100 mV which is regarded as a full-scale reading of 100 with no unit, (vi) portable with no location limitation and (vii) battery operated capable of long period of continuous operation.&nbsp

Prevention of neural tube defects By folic acid in pregnancy.

Pakistan is a developing country facing variety of challenges including maternal malnutrition and neonatal mortality. Globally Pakistan has the third highest neonatal mortality rate(1). Maternal malnutrition contributes to low birth weight neonates and birth anomalies. A study conducted in tertiary care hospital of Karachi catering to lower socioeconomic background showed 10.9% of birth defects to be of central nervous system. Maternal factor related to neural tube defects in same study showed 81.3 % mothers had not taken folic acid during pregnancy

Treatment of patellar tendinopathy with extracorporeal shock wave therapy

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) on patellar tendinopathy. Method: This was a single-centre, randomized controlled trial, with 20 male and female subjects ranging from age 23 to 52. Treatment subjects received three to five sessions of ESWT and the control subjects received three to five sessions with the use of an energy-absorbing pad. The effects of the shock wave therapy were measured using the Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment (VISA) test and a vertical jump test. Pretreatment ultrasound was used to determine which subjects had neovascularization in the area of the patellar tendon. Results: ESWT resulted in a significant improvement in the VISA score for questions 1, 3, and 6; for the VISA total score; and for the vertical jump score. Additionally, anecdotal evidence suggested an overall decrease in pain and an increase in function. Conclusions: Extracorporeal shock wave therapy appears to be a useful adjunct to the eccentric drop-squat strength protocol in the treatment of chronic patellar tendinopathy. Future studies need to include a larger subject pool, a long-term follow-up, and a reliable objective measure of the microscopic and macroscopic improvement of the patellar tendon

Fermion-scalar interactions with domain wall fermions

Domain wall fermions are defined on a lattice with an extra direction the size of which controls the chiral properties of the theory. When gauge fields are coupled to domain wall fermions the extra direction is treated as an internal flavor space. Here it is found that this is not the case for scalar fields. Instead, the interaction takes place only along the link that connects the boundaries of the extra direction. This reveals a richness in the way different spin particles are coupled to domain wall fermions. As an application, 4-Fermi models are studied using large N techniques and the results are supported by numerical simulations with N=2. It is found that the chiral properties of domain wall fermions in these models are good across a large range of couplings and that a phase with parity-flavor broken symmetry can develop for negative bare masses if the number of sites along the extra direction is finite.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 8 eps figures; comment regarding the width of Aoki phase added in sec. 3; references adde

Initiatives of Tropical Agroforestry to Sustainable Agriculture: A Case Study of Capasia Village, Northern Bangladesh

A relatively large percentage of the population in Bangladesh lives under the poverty line and is affected by the country's degrading natural resources. Agroforestry has been seen as one of the few options to lift people out of poverty. Research into the costs and benefits of agroforestry was undertaken in Capasia Village in Northern Bangladesh. Initial results indicate that agroforestry may not only be an optimal livelihood solution for poor farmers, biodiversity conservation and environmental sustainability but agroforestry systems also provide good economic rates of return. Thus the farmers who engage in agroforestry are benefited in different ways

Institutionalization of quality assurance within district health management: Experiences from Maharashtra and Karnataka

The Population Council, with financial support from UNFPA, provided technical assistance to the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, India in implementing a quality assurance (QA) program and helped its institutionalization in the district level of health management. An analysis of all the facilities covered as of December 2007 revealed substantial gaps in the infrastructure and human resources available to provide good-quality services, as well as adherence to standards for providing the services. To build the capacity to undertake QA visits, the Population Council and state authorities organized a series of events to orient and train state and district officials, facility-level workers, and members of the District Quality Assurance Group. The district health officers of both districts have subsequently established a mechanism to monitor and assess the extent to which the facilities have taken initiatives to address the gaps identified during QA visits. There are indications that the QA process is being institutionalized in the overall National Rural Health Mission/Reproductive and Child Health program

Increasing dual protection among rickshaw pullers in Bangladesh

The main objective of this study, conducted in six urban clinics of Dhaka, Bangladesh was to increase contraceptive use among rickshaw pullers, with special emphasis on condom use. The study tested two strategies to increase access to family planning and reproductive health (RH) information and services: a) an educational campaign together with improved availability of condoms; and b) an educational campaign alone. Findings show that rickshaw pullers’ knowledge on contraceptive methods increased significantly in both the experimental sites compared to the control site. Use of any contraceptive method increased significantly in the experimental sites, and condom use increased significantly in site I. However, translation of acquired knowledge about condoms into changes in risky behaviors does not seem to have happened, as evidenced by the increase in extramarital sex across all groups. These findings provide some important guidance on reaching men with RH information and services, and the report offers recommendations for the scale-up efforts

Cardiac cephalgia: A headache of the heart

AbstractAtypical presentations of common diseases are often difficult to identify in time, nonetheless necessary, especially in cases of diseases like ischemic heart disease (IHD) which otherwise may progress into irreversible stage and ultimately, fatality, in the absence of timely administered medical treatment. We report a case of a 51-year-old male, presenting initially with only headache as the sole symptom, who later was diagnosed with severe coronary artery disease, and the symptoms resolved completely after coronary angioplasty with stenting.<Learning objective: Atypical presentations, such as headache, can be more prevalent in ischemic heart disease (IHD) than was thought of, so awareness of the possibility of IHD while assessing headache and further study to see actually how commonly headache is associated with IHD are necessary.

Liver lipid content and inflammometabolic indices in peripartal dairy cows are altered in response to prepartal energy intake and postpartal intramammary inflammatory challenge.

This study evaluated the effect of feeding a control diet (CON) or a moderate energy diet (overfed, OVE) during the dry period (∼45d) and a postpartum intramammary lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge on blood metabolic and inflammatory indices, milk production, and hepatic gene expression. A subset of cows (n=9/diet) in CON (1.34 Mcal/kg of dry matter) and OVE (1.62 Mcal/kg of dry matter) received an intramammary LPS challenge (200 μg; CON-LPS, OVE-LPS, respectively). Liver biopsies were harvested at -14 d from calving, and postpartum at 2.5h post-LPS on d 7, 14, and 30. Prepartum, the OVE group was in more positive energy balance (EB) and had greater body condition score compared with CON. In contrast, during wk 1 postpartum and before the LPS challenge, the OVE group was in greater negative EB than CON. Prepartal diet did not affect postpartal milk production or dry matter intake. At 2h postchallenge on d 7, we observed an increase in serum nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) and bilirubin and a decrease in hydroxybutyrate, regardless of diet. That was coupled with greater haptoglobin in OVE-LPS compared with CON-LPS. In addition, OVE-LPS cows versus CON nonchallenged, OVE nonchallenged, and CON-LPS had greater liver triacylglycerol (TAG) concentration 2.5h postchallenge on d 7. The concentration of TAG in liver of OVE-LPS remained elevated by 30d postpartum. The liver TAG concentration in OVE-LPS compared with CON-LPS cows was associated with greater serum concentration of NEFA and reactive oxygen metabolites on d 10 and 14 postpartum. Cows in OVE-LPS also had greater concentrations of ceruloplasmin, cholesterol, and vitamin E from d 10 through 21. Among 28 genes associated with fatty acid oxidation, inflammation, oxidative stress, and gluconeogenesis, only SAA3 (which encodes an acute phase protein) was greater in CON-LPS compared with OVE-LPS at 2.5h postchallenge. Expression of HP, which encodes another acute phase protein, was greater in OVE-LPS than in CON-LPS at 14 and 30 d postpartum. Several inflammation-related genes (TNF, IRAK1, NFKB1, ANGPTL4) showed markedly decreased expression between 7 and 14 d, after which expression remained unchanged. No differences were observed in several genes of the growth-hormone/insulin-like growth factor-1 axis, except for SOCS2, expression of which decreased markedly between 7 and 14 d in OVE-LPS but not in CON-LPS. These data suggest that overfeeding a moderate-energy diet prepartum alters the response of the cow to an intramammary challenge after calving and may predispose it to sustained liver lipidosis