Dead Bodies and Their Disposal in Emergencies

The recent floods and landslides in Uttarakhand and the flood of Jammu and Kashmir have been a rude reminder for India of its historical disasters. Jammu and Kashmir is battling one of the worst floods in six decades. The flood situation has worsened as more areas have submerged in the waters leaving a trail of death and destruction. The toll in the devastating floods has reached 160 with more than 3500 villages affected and 450 submerged. Thousands of families are still stranded and awaiting help in their homes across the valley. South Kashmir districts are the worst hit by the catastrophe with many areas still cut off. Over 30 per cent of capital Srinagar city is under flood waters and over 10 lakh population affected in Jammu division. Here are the ten worst natural disasters that have affected millions of lives in the country since the 17th century. The great famine of 1876-78, statistically, was the worst ever disaster in the Indian history. The famine took a toll on millions of lives in south India, affecting at least 5.8 crore people for a period of two years. Covering a total area of 670,000 square km, the famine caused distress to people mainly in south, south western India and later spread to the then central provinces (now Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states) and also united provinces (now Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand). Historians estimate that at least 3 crore people were killed in the great famine. The world was better connected by the late nineteenth century which saw the disease making its way to India from Hong Kong through Bombay (now Mumbai). The country then saw another natural disaster under the British era as about 1.2 crore succumbed to the plague pandemic over a period of three decades. The state of Bengal was struck by a major catastrophe in the 18th century as a famine caused deaths of about 1 crore people (approximately one-third of the then state's population) in the state. Bengal, a territory under the British East India Company, comprised of modern West Bengal, Bangladesh, and parts of Assam, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand. The famine caused distress in the territory between 1769 and 1773. In 1943, a massive famine struck the state of Bengal, India's rice-belt, killing at least 40 lakh people

Envenoming: Neglected Issues in Health

Envenomings are diseases that result from bites by rabid mammals or bites and stings by venomous animals, especially snakes and scorpions etc. In all cases, appropriate early treatment, including therapeutic antisera, can prevent life-threatening conditions and even spread of the virus or venom toxins in the body. This will reduce a lot of deaths occurring especially in areas where health care is at a distance or is unavailable

Total DNA Content: An Analytical Marker for Secondary Prevention of Breast Cancer

The most important component of the five levels of prevention, particularly regarding non- communicable diseases like cancer stands to be early Diagnosis and Treatment (EDT). Approximate management and policies of EDT are vital to reduce cancer mortality. This has been amply proved in cases of cervical cancer where Pap smear makes it possible. However lack of methodology for EDT, illiteracy and absence of proper health education/ awareness makes the situation much cloudy and sorrowful. Formulation of screening programs, implementation of control programs, knowledge regarding natural history of cancer service delivery, information system registry and program evaluation, thus remain as the different tasks and activities of the Preventive Oncology as a whole. “Down staging” of different cancer screening at the grass root level by health care workers or the patient herself has also been suggested by WHO. However, the next stage of down staging at the diagnostic arena has been the deficiency of a “marker” to brand a mass in breast as malignant or benign– where decision making for curative measures can become possible.The present article highlights the importance of the total DNA content of breast tissue as a solution for the same

Inverse seesaw and dark matter in models with exotic lepton triplets

We show that models with exotic leptons transforming as E ~ (1,3,-1) under the standard model gauge symmetry are well suited for generating neutrino mass via a radiative inverse seesaw. This approach realizes natural neutrino masses and allows multiple new states to appear at the TeV scale. The exotic leptons are therefore good candidates for new physics that can be probed at the LHC. Furthermore, remnant low-energy symmetries ensure a stable dark matter candidate, providing a link between dark matter and the origins of neutrino mass.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures (revtex4.1, two-columns

SO(3) Gauge Symmetry and Neutrino-Lepton Flavor Physics

Based on the SO(3) gauge symmetry for three family leptons and general see-saw mechanism, we present a simple scheme that allows three nearly degenerate Majorana neutrino masses needed for hot dark matter. The vacuum structure of the spontaneous SO(3) symmetry breaking can automatically lead to a maximal CP-violating phase. Thus the current neutrino data on both the atmospheric neutrino anomaly and solar neutrino deficit can be accounted for via maximal mixings without conflict with the current data on the neutrinoless double beta decay. The model also allows rich interesting phenomena on lepton flavor violations.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex, no figures, minor changes and references added, the version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Anomalous Neutrino Interaction, Muon g-2, and Atomic Parity Nonconservation

We propose a simple unified description of two recent precision measurements which suggest new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle interactions, i.e. the deviation of $\sin^2 \theta_W$ in deep inelastic neutrino-nucleon scattering and that of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Our proposal is also consistent with a third precision measurement, i.e. that of parity nonconservation in atomic Cesium, which agrees with the Standard Model.Comment: 9 pages, including 1 figure, latest muon g-2 information adde

Primordial Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Z' Properties

In models involving new TeV-scale Z' gauge bosons, the new U(1)' symmetry often prevents the generation of Majorana masses needed for a conventional neutrino seesaw, leading to three superweakly interacting ``right-handed'' neutrinos nu_R, the Dirac partners of the ordinary neutrinos. These can be produced prior to big bang nucleosynthesis by the Z' interactions, leading to a faster expansion rate and too much ^4He. We quantify the constraints on the Z' properties from nucleosynthesis for Z' couplings motivated by a class of E_6 models parametrized by an angle theta_E6. The rate for the annihilation of three approximately massless right-handed neutrinos into other particle pairs through the Z' channel is calculated. The decoupling temperature, which is higher than that of ordinary left-handed neutrinos due to the large Z' mass, is evaluated, and the equivalent number of new doublet neutrinos Delta N_nu is obtained numerically as a function of the Z' mass and couplings for a variety of assumptions concerning the Z-Z' mixing angle and the quark-hadron transition temperature T_c. Except near the values of theta_E6 for which the Z' decouples from the right-handed neutrinos, the Z' mass and mixing constraints from nucleosynthesis are much more stringent than the existing laboratory limits from searches for direct production or from precision electroweak data, and are comparable to the ranges that may ultimately be probed at proposed colliders. For the case T_c = 150 MeV with the theoretically favored range of Z-Z' mixings, Delta N_nu 4.3 TeV for any value of theta_E6. Larger mixing or larger T_c often lead to unacceptably large Delta N_nu except near the nu_R decoupling limit.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures; two additional references adde

What can we learn from neutrinoless double beta decay experiments?

We assess how well next generation neutrinoless double beta decay and normal neutrino beta decay experiments can answer four fundamental questions. 1) If neutrinoless double beta decay searches do not detect a signal, and if the spectrum is known to be inverted hierarchy, can we conclude that neutrinos are Dirac particles? 2) If neutrinoless double beta decay searches are negative and a next generation ordinary beta decay experiment detects the neutrino mass scale, can we conclude that neutrinos are Dirac particles? 3) If neutrinoless double beta decay is observed with a large neutrino mass element, what is the total mass in neutrinos? 4) If neutrinoless double beta decay is observed but next generation beta decay searches for a neutrino mass only set a mass upper limit, can we establish whether the mass hierarchy is normal or inverted? We base our answers on the expected performance of next generation neutrinoless double beta decay experiments and on simulations of the accuracy of calculations of nuclear matrix elements.Comment: Added reference

Order rho^2 Corrections to Randall-Sundrum I Cosmology

We derive the corrections to the Friedmann equation of order rho^2 in the Randall-Sundrum (RS) model, where two 3-branes bound a slice of five-dimensional Anti-deSitter space. The effects of radion stabilization by the Goldberger-Wise mechanism are taken into account. Surprisingly, we find that an inflaton on either brane will experience no order rho^2 corrections in the Hubble rate H due to its own energy density, although an observer on the opposite brane does see such a correction. Thus there is no enhancement of the slow-roll condition unless inflation is simultaneously driven by inflatons on both branes. Similarly, during radiation domination, the rho^2 correction to H on a given brane vanish unless there is nonvanishing energy density on the opposite brane. During the electroweak phase transition the correction can be large, but is has the wrong sign for causing sphalerons to go out of thermal equilibrium, so it cannot help electroweak baryogenesis. We discuss the differences between our results and exact solutions in RS-II cosmology.Comment: 26 pp., latex; fixed typo in eq. (4.22

Large Extra Dimensions and Decaying KK Recurrences

We suggest the possibility that in ADD type brane-world scenarios, the higher KK excitations of the graviton may decay to lower ones owing to a breakdown of the conservation of extra dimensional ``momenta'' and study its implications for astrophysics and cosmology. We give an explicit realization of this idea with a bulk scalar field $\Phi$, whose nonzero KK modes acquire vacuum expectation values. This scenario helps to avoid constraints on large extra dimensions that come from gamma ray flux bounds in the direction of nearby supernovae as well as those coming from diffuse cosmological gamma ray background. It also relaxes the very stringent limits on reheat temperature of the universe in ADD models.Comment: 16 pages, late