Ultrasonography: A Cost- effective Modality for Diagnosis of Rib Tuberculosis --- A Case Report

Tuberculosis can involve any bone in the body but involvement of rib as such is rare. Here, we present a case of a 15 year old girl who presented with chest wall swelling, altered bowel habits and constitutional symptoms. Tubercular rib abscess associated with abdominal tuberculosis was diagnosed with ultrasound and polymerase chain reaction for mycobacterium tuberculosis on the aspirate taken from the lesion on the chest wall. Patient responded well to antitubercular treatment

Synthesis & Characterization of Sr0.53Ba0.47Nb2O6 based Ferroelectric Composites for Pyroelectric Applications

Currently much research is focused on functional materials due to their wide range of applications. Especially developing materials with good pyroelectric figure of merits is essential for usage in military vigilance, medical diagnostic and industrial quality control applications. Among ferroelectrics, lead based materials are most researched and exploited materials due to their excellent pyroelectric properties in comparison with the lead free materials. Pb0.76Ca0.24TiO3 (PCT) and Pb0.85La0.15TiO3 (PLT) systems having perovskite structure exhibit good ferroelectric and pyroelectric properties with transition temperatures ~300 and ~283 ˚C, respectively. However, due to toxicity of lead, presently research is focussed on developing lead free/low lead content materials. Sr0.53Ba0.47Nb2O6 (SBN) having tetragonal tungsten bronze structure (TTB) exhibits good pyroelectric properties among lead free materials. However, SBN system has disadvantage of low transition temperature (~115oC). Also, the pyroelectric detectors with SBN system can only be operated from -25 to 30˚C temperature range. It is well known that composites combine the properties of the constituent phases resulting in a material with different properties. In order to tailor the properties of the materials, composites of ferroelectric materials with different structures have been synthesized and reported to show better electrical properties compared to both the constituent materials. In this work, composites (less amounts of lead, weight % 90% were obtained. Surface morphology studies revealed inhomogeneity in grain size distribution in the ceramic-composites. The values of dielectric constant (εr) of SBN+xPCTand SBN+xPLT ceramic-composites were found to be lower and higher than that of pure SBN ceramics, respectively. The P-E loops of SBN+xPLT ceramic composites were found to be slimmer in comparison with the P-E loops of SBN+xPCT ceramic composites. The ceramic composites were found to show better pyroelectric properties compared to pure SBN ceramics at RT and at higher temperatures (up to 70 ˚C). SBN+0.1PLT ceramic composite sintered at 1250 ˚C is found to exhibit better pyroelectric properties compared to pure SBN ceramic system. It is well known that due to fragile nature of ceramics, ceramic-composites cannot be used in applications where large area/flexible detector materials are required. Polymers have the advantage of flexibility and can be drawn as thin wafers. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is a ferroelectric polymer with good pyroelectric properties. However, the pyroelectric properties are low in comparison with SBN ceramics. In order to enhance the pyroelectric properties of PVDF by preserving its flexural property, composites of PVDF and SBN[ (1-φ)PVDF+φSBN, φ=10, 20, 30 vol%] were prepared by hot uniaxial press. Structural, dielectric and pyroelectric properties of these (1-φ)PVDF+φSBN composites have been investigated. Enhanced pyroelectric properties compared to pure PVDF were obtained in 0.7PVDF+0.3SBN composites

EFFECT OF SHILAJIT ON EXPERIMENTAL MODELS OF INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE IN RATS

Objective: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic condition of the intestine with unknown etiology involving multiple immunes, genetic and environmental factors. Oxidative stress is believed to be a key factor in the pathogenesis and perpetuation of the mucosal damage in IBD. The present study is to elucidate the effects of shilajit extract on the extent and severity of enterocolitis induced by subcutaneous administration of Indomethacin (7.5 mg/kg b. w) in Wistar rats.Methods: Study comprised of 6 groups (n=6), normal vehicle control, indomethacin-induced (7.5 mg/kg, 2days), shilajit alone 50 mg/kg b. w, shilajit treated groups (25 and 50 mg/kg, p. o) and sulfasalazine treated (100 mg/kg, p. o) groups. Drug treatment continued for 11 d and on 12th d scarification was done. The colonic mucosal injury was assessed by macroscopic scoring, biochemical (LDH, MPO, GSH and LPO) tests were performed.Results: Pretreatment with shilajit showed a decrease in macroscopic scores, LDH, MPO, LPO and elevation levels of GSH as compared to the indomethacin-treated group.Conclusion: The present study suggests that the protective effect of shilajit in indomethacin-induced enterocolitis might be attributed to its scavenging effect on oxygen-derived free radicals and may be beneficial in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Prevailing Weather Conditions During Summer Seasons Around Gangotri Glacier

Meteorological data collected near the snout of the Gangotri Glacier suggest that the study area receives less rainfall. The average seasonal rainfall is observed to be about 260 mm. The rainfall distribution does not show any monsoon impact. Amount of seasonal rainfall is highly variable (131.4-368.8 mm) from year to year, but, in general, August had the maximum rainfall. A verage daily maximum and minimum temperatures were 14.7 and 4.1°C respectively, whereas average mean temperature was 9.4°C. July was recorded as the warmest month. During daytime, wind speed was four times higher than that at night-time. The average daytime and night-time winds were 12.6 and 3.0 km/h respectively. Mean seasonal evaporation was 640.8 mm, which is high with respect to the high altitude. Average relative humidity and daily sunshine duration were also high throughout the melting season

PROFICIENT REPLACE PROTOCOLS FOR EQUIVALENT FILE SYSTEMS

When using the growing use of very network-attached storage systems, several works has focussed on scalable security. Our purpose ought to be to design ingenious in addition to secure techniques of authenticated key exchange which gets together particular needs of parallel Network File System.  Our work focuses on present Internet standards particularly parallel Network File System using Kerberos to begin parallel session keys among clients and storage products. We produce a study of impracticality of key establishment for efficient many-to-many communications. The recommended techniques can decrease workload of metadata server by means of about 50 % in comparison with provide Kerberos-based protocol, whereas achieving needed security characteristics in addition to keeping computational overhead at clients and storage products at practically low-level