Characteristics of Patients with Tuberculous Pleural Effusion in Rural Nepal

  Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is a major cause of mortality and morbidity in developing countries. TubercularPleural effusion is the second most common form of extra pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB), superseded in Prevalence only by lymph node tuberculosis. Pleural effusion occurs in approximately 5% of patients with TB. The purpose of this study was to assess the demographic characteristics of patients presenting with pleural effusion in rural Nepal.   Methods: A retrospective study was conducted with all the cases diagnosed and admitted with pleural effusion at Lumbini Medical College And Teaching Hospital from April 2011 to March 2013 of all the cases diagnosed andadmitted with pleural effusion were included in the study. Hundred cases diagnosed with pleural effusion by clinical Examination or chest X-ray or ultrasonography’s (USG) of the chest were included in the studied. The following parameters patients demographic profile, causes of pleural effusion, location (unilateral/bilateral), hemoglobin and complete blood count, sputum stain and culture sensitivity, Monteux test, chest X-ray and USG findings and Pleural fluid analysis (biochemical, hematological, microbiological and cytological) were analyzed by using SPSS 21.   Results: Out of 100 cases, the cause of pleural effusion in 59 patients was tuberculosis, 14 by malignancy, next 14 by Para pneumonic Effusion, 12 by congestive cardiac failure and three cases by alcoholic liver disease. Patients with tuberculous pleural effusion were younger, predominantly males, had unilateral effusion, lower blood hemoglobin, lower Pleural fluid neutrophils, higher pleural fluid Adenosine Deaminase (ADA) levels and higher level of pleural fluid to serum protein ratio as compared to the patients with non-tuberculous effusion.   Conclusion: Tuberculosis is the most common cause of pleural effusion in patients of rural Nepal

Quasi-Z-source-based bidirectional DC-DC converters for renewable energy applications

This article presents a design, analysis, and implementation of a novel impedance-source-based bidirectional DC-DC converter. The proposed converter employs an impedance network to the existing dual-active-bridge (DAB) circuit. It inherits all the advantages of the DAB converter along with extra benefits. Compared with the traditional isolated DC-DC converter, the proposed converter improved the boost ability of the converter. Also, the converter can withstand the shoot-through phenomenon in an H-bridge, improving the reliability. The converter can work in the normal buck/boost DAB mode when extra boost is not required. The bidirectional feature is inherent along with soft switching capability. It is therefore well-suited for the applications, where wide range of voltage gains are required such as renewable energy systems. The topological configuration and control strategy of the proposed topology in both operational modes are discussed. Simulation and experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed converter topology. The peak efficiency 97% was observed at the rated load of 500 W

G10/COSMOS : 38 band (far-UV to far-IR) panchromatic photometry using LAMBDAR

We present a consistent total flux catalogue for a ∼1 deg2 subset of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) region (RA ∈ [149∘.55, 150∘.65], Dec. ∈ [1∘.80, 2∘.73]) with near-complete coverage in 38 bands from the far-ultraviolet to the far-infrared. We produce aperture matched photometry for 128 304 objects with i < 24.5 in a manner that is equivalent to the Wright et al. catalogue from the low-redshift (z < 0.4) Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. This catalogue is based on publicly available imaging from GALEX, Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope, Subaru, Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, Spitzer and Herschel, contains a robust total flux measurement or upper limit for every object in every waveband and complements our re-reduction of publicly available spectra in the same region. We perform a number of consistency checks, demonstrating that our catalogue is comparable to existing data sets, including the recent COSMOS2015 catalogue. We also release an updated Davies et al. spectroscopic catalogue that folds in new spectroscopic and photometric redshift data sets. The catalogues are available for download at http://cutout.icrar.org/G10/dataRelease.php. Our analysis is optimised for both panchromatic analysis over the full wavelength range and for direct comparison to GAMA, thus permitting measurements of galaxy evolution for 0 < z < 1 while minimizing the systematic error resulting from disparate data reduction methods.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Potensi Serbuk Biji Ketumbar dan Rimpang Jahe terhadap Hama Kumbang Kacang Azuki Callosobruchus chinensis

Adzuki bean weevil, Callosobruchus chinensis (Linnaeus) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) is one of primary pests that infest the adzuki bean, mung bean, cowpea, chickpea, and other legumes. This study aimed to investigate the effect of coriander seed and ginger rhizome powders in 1, 2, and 3 g dose admixed directly with adzuki bean on biological variables of C. chinensis and grain quality in laboratory conditions. This study was arranged by completely randomized design (CRD) that consisted of six combination treatments and control. Each of treatment was repeated five times. Observed biological variables consisted of adult longevity, fecundity, and F1 progeny. Observed grain quality variables consisted of percentage of damaged grain and grain viability. Results showed that adzuki bean treated with ginger powder on 2 and 3 g dose had good results to control C. chinensis and kept the grain quality in relatively good condition compared to other treatments and control

Galactic googly : the rotation-metallicity bias in the inner stellar halo of the Milky Way

The first and second moments of stellar velocities encode important information about the formation history of the Galactic halo. However, due to the lack of tangential motion and inaccurate distances of the halo stars, the velocity moments in the Galactic halo have largely remained ‘known unknowns’. Fortunately, our off-centric position within the Galaxy allows us to estimate these moments in the galactocentric frame using the observed radial velocities of the stars alone. We use these velocities coupled with the hierarchical Bayesian scheme, which allows easy marginalization over the missing data (the proper motion, and uncertainty-free distance and line-of-sight velocity), to measure the velocity dispersions, orbital anisotropy (β) and streaming motion (vrot) of the halo main-sequence turn-off (MSTO) and K-giant (KG) stars in the inner stellar halo (r ≲ 15 kpc). We study the metallicity bias in kinematics of the halo stars and observe that the comparatively metal-rich ([Fe/H] > −1.4) and the metal-poor ([Fe/H] ≤ −1.4) MSTO samples show a clear systematic difference in vrot ∼ 20-40 km s−1, depending on how restrictive the spatial cuts to cull the disc contamination are. The bias is also detected in KG samples but with less certainty. Both MSTO and KG populations suggest that the inner stellar halo of the Galaxy is radially biased i.e. σr > σθ or σϕ and β ≃ 0.5. The apparent metallicity contrariety in the rotation velocity among the halo sub-populations supports the co-existence of multiple populations in the galactic halo that may have formed through distinct formation scenarios, i.e. in situ versus accretion.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Visual Reasoning with Multi-hop Feature Modulation

Recent breakthroughs in computer vision and natural language processing have spurred interest in challenging multi-modal tasks such as visual question-answering and visual dialogue. For such tasks, one successful approach is to condition image-based convolutional network computation on language via Feature-wise Linear Modulation (FiLM) layers, i.e., per-channel scaling and shifting. We propose to generate the parameters of FiLM layers going up the hierarchy of a convolutional network in a multi-hop fashion rather than all at once, as in prior work. By alternating between attending to the language input and generating FiLM layer parameters, this approach is better able to scale to settings with longer input sequences such as dialogue. We demonstrate that multi-hop FiLM generation achieves state-of-the-art for the short input sequence task ReferIt --- on-par with single-hop FiLM generation --- while also significantly outperforming prior state-of-the-art and single-hop FiLM generation on the GuessWhat?! visual dialogue task.Comment: In Proc of ECCV 201

Halo orbits in cosmological disk galaxies : tracers of information history

We analyze the orbits of stars and dark matter particles in the halo of a disk galaxy formed in a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. The halo is oblate within the inner ∼20 kpc and triaxial beyond this radius. About 43% of orbits are short axis tubes—the rest belong to orbit families that characterize triaxial potentials (boxes, long-axis tubes and chaotic orbits), but their shapes are close to axisymmetric. We find no evidence that the self-consistent distribution function of the nearly oblate inner halo is comprised primarily of axisymmetric short-axis tube orbits. Orbits of all families and both types of particles are highly eccentric, with mean eccentricity �0.6. We find that randomly selected samples of halo stars show no substructure in “integrals of motion” space. However, individual accretion events can clearly be identified in plots of metallicity versus formation time. Dynamically young tidal debris is found primarily on a single type of orbit. However, stars associated with older satellites become chaotically mixed during the formation process (possibly due to scattering by the central bulge and disk, and baryonic processes), and appear on all four types of orbits. We find that the tidal debris in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations experiences significantly more chaotic evolution than in collisionless simulations, making it much harder to identify individual progenitors using phase space coordinates alone. However, by combining information on stellar ages and chemical abundances with the orbital properties of halo stars in the underlying self-consistent potential, the identification of progenitors is likely to be possible

Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): halo formation times and halo assembly bias on the cosmic web

We present evidence for halo assembly bias as a function of geometric environment (GE). By classifying Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) galaxy groups as residing in voids, sheets, filaments or knots using a tidal tensor method, we find that low-mass haloes that reside in knots are older than haloes of the same mass that reside in voids. This result provides direct support to theories that link strong halo tidal interactions with halo assembly times. The trend with GE is reversed at large halo mass, with haloes in knots being younger than haloes of the same mass in voids. We find a clear signal of halo downsizing – more massive haloes host galaxies that assembled their stars earlier. This overall trend holds independently of GE. We support our analysis with an in-depth exploration of the L-Galaxies semi-analytic model, used here to correlate several galaxy properties with three different definitions of halo formation time. We find a complex relationship between halo formation time and galaxy properties, with significant scatter. We confirm that stellar mass to halo mass ratio, specific star formation rate (SFR) and mass-weighed age are reasonable proxies of halo formation time, especially at low halo masses. Instantaneous SFR is a poor indicator at all halo masses. Using the same semi-analytic model, we create mock spectral observations using complex star formation and chemical enrichment histories, which approximately mimic GAMA’s typical signal-to-noise ratio and wavelength range. We use these mocks to assert how well potential proxies of halo formation time may be recovered from GAMA-like spectroscopic data