Recent advances in our knowledge of the biology and conservation of mahseers

Mahseers (Tor khudree), at one time considered to be of single species, are now represented by 6 valid species distributed all over India. Studies on their food habits, ecology of spawning grounds, eggs, larval development and especially methods of artificial propagation have advanced in recent years. Transport of eggs of Tor khudree by air in moist cotton has been possible for easy distribution. Breeding of T. khudree not only by hypophysation, but even without it in small ponds by manipulation of flow of water, exercise and feed has also been possible. Fry and fingerlings of T. khudree are being distributed to many of the states in the country to help conserve the species

Bone marrow evaluation of patients having pancytopenia at tertiary care center, M. Y. hospital, Indore, India: one-year study

Background: Pancytopenia is reduction of all three formed elements of blood below the normal reference range leading to anemia, leucopenia, thrombocytopenia. Bone marrow aspiration is extremely helpful in evaluating the cause of pancytopenia by cellularity and cytology in order to prevent grave complications and mortality as the underlying pathology determines the management and prognosis of the patients. Aim of research study was to evaluate the patients having pancytopenia at tertiary care center, M.Y.H. Hospital, Indore, India.Methods: The present study was carried out over a period of one year from 2017 to 2018, in the Department of Pathology, M. Y. Hospital, Indore. During this period, a total of 109 bone marrow smears were examined. Out of these, 42 cases had the clinical presentation of pancytopenia. A detailed study was done regarding clinical examination and hematological and radiological investigations.Results: In this study 42 cases of pancytopenia were examined over a period of one year. The commonest cause of pancytopenia was megaloblastic anemia (33.34%) followed by aplastic anemia (19.05%). Others includes myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), acute leukemia, erythroid hyperplasia and plasmacytosis.Conclusions: Bone marrow aspiration can diagnose majority of the cases of pancytopenia. Megaloblastic anemia and aplastic anemia are the commonest causes of pancytopenia

Higher order WKB corrections to black hole entropy in brick wall formalism

We calculate the statistical entropy of a quantum field with an arbitrary spin propagating on the spherical symmetric black hole background by using the brick wall formalism at higher orders in the WKB approximation. For general spins, we find that the correction to the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy depends logarithmically on the area of the horizon. Furthermore, we apply this analysis to the Schwarzschild and Schwarzschild-AdS black holes and discuss our results.Comment: 21 pages, published versio

Nail lacquer films’ surface energies and in vitro water-resistance and adhesion do not predict their in vivo residence

The in vivo residence of nail lacquers (which are ideal topical drug carriers for the treatment of nail diseases) determines their frequency of application, and is thereby expected to influence patient adherence and success of treatment. Thus in vitro measurements to indicate lacquers’ in vivo residence are routinely conducted during formulation development. However the literature on in vitro-in vivo correlations is severely limited. Thus, the aim of the work discussed in this paper was to investigate correlations between in vivo residence and in vitro film resistance to water, in vitro film adhesion and surface energy of lacquer films. In vivo measurements were conducted on fingernails in six volunteers. Seven commercially available nail lacquers were tested in commonly-used measurements. Correlations between in vivo residence and in vitro water resistance and adhesion were found to be extremely poor. The surface energies of the lacquer films (which were between 33 and 39 mJ/m2) were also not predictive of in vivo residence. High density polyethylene (HDPE) sheet – whose surface energy was determined to be similar to that of the human nailplate – was found to be a suitable model for the nailplate (when investigating surface energy) and was used in a number of experiments

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

The forward physics facility at the high-luminosity LHC

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential

Search for gravitational-wave transients associated with magnetar bursts in advanced LIGO and advanced Virgo data from the third observing run

Gravitational waves are expected to be produced from neutron star oscillations associated with magnetar giant f lares and short bursts. We present the results of a search for short-duration (milliseconds to seconds) and longduration (∼100 s) transient gravitational waves from 13 magnetar short bursts observed during Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA’s third observation run. These 13 bursts come from two magnetars, SGR1935 +2154 and SwiftJ1818.0−1607. We also include three other electromagnetic burst events detected by FermiGBM which were identified as likely coming from one or more magnetars, but they have no association with a known magnetar. No magnetar giant flares were detected during the analysis period. We find no evidence of gravitational waves associated with any of these 16 bursts. We place upper limits on the rms of the integrated incident gravitational-wave strain that reach 3.6 × 10−²³ Hz at 100 Hz for the short-duration search and 1.1 ×10−²² Hz at 450 Hz for the long-duration search. For a ringdown signal at 1590 Hz targeted by the short-duration search the limit is set to 2.3 × 10−²² Hz. Using the estimated distance to each magnetar, we derive upper limits upper limits on the emitted gravitational-wave energy of 1.5 × 1044 erg (1.0 × 1044 erg) for SGR 1935+2154 and 9.4 × 10^43 erg (1.3 × 1044 erg) for Swift J1818.0−1607, for the short-duration (long-duration) search. Assuming isotropic emission of electromagnetic radiation of the burst fluences, we constrain the ratio of gravitational-wave energy to electromagnetic energy for bursts from SGR 1935+2154 with the available fluence information. The lowest of these ratios is 4.5 × 103

A joint Fermi-GBM and Swift-BAT analysis of gravitational-wave candidates from the third gravitational-wave observing run

We present Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (Fermi-GBM) and Swift Burst Alert Telescope (Swift-BAT) searches for gamma-ray/X-ray counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) candidate events identified during the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Using Fermi-GBM onboard triggers and subthreshold gamma-ray burst (GRB) candidates found in the Fermi-GBM ground analyses, the Targeted Search and the Untargeted Search, we investigate whether there are any coincident GRBs associated with the GWs. We also search the Swift-BAT rate data around the GW times to determine whether a GRB counterpart is present. No counterparts are found. Using both the Fermi-GBM Targeted Search and the Swift-BAT search, we calculate flux upper limits and present joint upper limits on the gamma-ray luminosity of each GW. Given these limits, we constrain theoretical models for the emission of gamma rays from binary black hole mergers

Constraints on the cosmic expansion history from GWTC–3

We use 47 gravitational wave sources from the Third LIGO–Virgo–Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC–3) to estimate the Hubble parameter H(z), including its current value, the Hubble constant H0. Each gravitational wave (GW) signal provides the luminosity distance to the source, and we estimate the corresponding redshift using two methods: the redshifted masses and a galaxy catalog. Using the binary black hole (BBH) redshifted masses, we simultaneously infer the source mass distribution and H(z). The source mass distribution displays a peak around 34 M⊙, followed by a drop-off. Assuming this mass scale does not evolve with the redshift results in a H(z) measurement, yielding ${H}_{0}={68}_{-8}^{+12}\,\mathrm{km}\ \,\ {{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ (68% credible interval) when combined with the H0 measurement from GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterpart. This represents an improvement of 17% with respect to the H0 estimate from GWTC–1. The second method associates each GW event with its probable host galaxy in the catalog GLADE+, statistically marginalizing over the redshifts of each event's potential hosts. Assuming a fixed BBH population, we estimate a value of ${H}_{0}={68}_{-6}^{+8}\,\mathrm{km}\ \,\ {{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ with the galaxy catalog method, an improvement of 42% with respect to our GWTC–1 result and 20% with respect to recent H0 studies using GWTC–2 events. However, we show that this result is strongly impacted by assumptions about the BBH source mass distribution; the only event which is not strongly impacted by such assumptions (and is thus informative about H0) is the well-localized event GW190814