Pelvic inflammatory disease and the risk factors

Background: Pelvic inflammatory disease is one of the most common gynecological disorders of women. It is a clinical condition where in the endometrial, fallopian tubes and the adjacent pelvic structures are infected due to the ascending infection from the lower genital tract such as vagina and cervix through the uterine cavity leading to severe morbidity.Methods: 150 non-pregnant women who came in with clinical symptoms suggestive of Pelvic inflammatory disease and diagnosed as acute pelvic infection or PID were included in the study. Demographic details such as age, weight, height, parity, socio-economic status, education levels etc were noted.Results: 54% of them belonged to 26-30 years age group, followed by 19.3% of women between 20-25 years. 35.3% of the patients were illiterate followed by primary school education in 29.3%. 74% of the patients belonged to the lower class while 24.7% were from the middle class. Condoms were the most common contraceptive method used in 32% of the cases, while 27.3% of the patients used intrauterine devices.Conclusions: Proper education must be given regarding the hazards of early marriages lack of hygiene, and to abstain from multiple partners, to the women especially those from the lower socioeconomic strata

Rigid rod spaced fullerene as building block for nanocluster

By using phenylacetylene based rigid-rod linkers (PhA), we have successfully synthesized two fullerene derivatives, C60-PhA and C60-PhA-C60.The absorption spectral features of C60, as well as that of the phenylacetylene moiety are retained in the monomeric forms of these fullerene derivatives, ruling out the possibility of any strong interaction between the two chromophores in the ground state. Both the fullerene derivatives form optically transparent clusters, absorbing in the UV-Vis region; this clustering leads to a significant increase in their molar extinction coefficients. TEM characterization of the C60-PhA showed large spherical clusters, with sizes ranging from 150-350 nm, while an elongated wire-type structure was observed for the bisfullerene derivative (C60-PhA-C60).AFM section analysis studies of isolated nanoclusters of C60-PhA-C60, deposited on mica, indicate that smaller clusters associate to form larger nanostructures

Clinical rabies: is cure possible?

Rabies is a fatal disease in humans and till date survivors of the disease after the clinical onset of the illness are rare. The approach to management of rabies is usually palliative. In rare cases of paralytic rabies a trial for cure has been tried. No single therapeutic agent is likely to be effective, but a combination of specific therapies could be considered, including rabies vaccine, rabies immunoglobulin, monoclonal antibodies, ribavirin, interferon alpha, ketamine etc. the only reported cases in literature were with rare success of the Milwaukee protocol. This is the case report of a 45 year old male who presented with clinical rabies and was started on the trial. Has the treatment had any benefit is to be debated and further options discussed

Testing a new analytic model for gravitational lensing probabilities

We study gravitational lensing with a multiple lens plane approach, proposing a simple analytical model for the probability distribution function (PDF) of the dark matter convergence, kappa, for the different lens planes in a given cosmology as a function of redshift and smoothing angle, theta. The model is fixed solely by the variance of kappa, which in turn is fixed by the amplitude of the power spectrum, sigma_8. We test the PDF against a high resolution Tree-Particle-Mesh simulation and find that it is far superior to the Gaussian or the lognormal, especially for small values of theta << 1 arcmin and at large values of kappa relevant to strong lensing. With this model, we predict the probabilities of strong lensing by a single plane or by multiple planes. We find that for theta ~ 10 arcsec, a single plane accounts for almost all (~ 98%) of the strong lensing cases for source redshift unity. However, for a more typical source redshift of 4, about 12% of the strong lensing cases will result from the contribution of a secondary clump of matter along the line of sight, introducing a systematic error in the determination of the surface density of clusters, typically overestimating it by about 2-5%. We also find that matter inhomogenieties introduce a dispersion in the value of the angular diameter distance about its cosmological mean. The probable error relative to the mean increases with redshift to a value of about 8% for z ~ 6 and theta ~ 10 arcsec.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 13 pages, 12 figures, revised version, references added, section 6 expande

Tunable monoenergetic electron beams from independently controllable laser-wakefield acceleration and injection

We report the results of experiments on laser-wakefield acceleration in a novel two-stage gas target with independently adjustable density and atomic-composition profiles.We were able to tailor these profiles in a way that led to the separation of the processes of electron injection and acceleration and permitted independent control of both. This resulted in the generation of stable, quasimonoenergetic electron beams with central energy tunable in 50–300 MeV range. For the first time, we are able to independently control the beam charge and energy spread over the entire tunability range

Study of Energetic Ion Generation from High-Intensity-Laser Dense-Plasma Interactions

We report on the characteristics of an ultrafast-laser driven proton beam from thinfilm targets. The difference in proton beam profiles, beam energies, and laser induced back ablation plumes between a dielectric (Mylar) and a conductor (aluminum) are discussed. Evidence for front-side acceleration and a method for beam manipulation are also presented

Tunable monoenergetic electron beams from independently controllable laser-wakefield acceleration and injection

We report the results of experiments on laser-wakefield acceleration in a novel two-stage gas target with independently adjustable density and atomic-composition profiles.We were able to tailor these profiles in a way that led to the separation of the processes of electron injection and acceleration and permitted independent control of both. This resulted in the generation of stable, quasimonoenergetic electron beams with central energy tunable in 50–300 MeV range. For the first time, we are able to independently control the beam charge and energy spread over the entire tunability range

Trapped fermions in a synthetic non-Abelian gauge field

On increasing the coupling strength ($\lambda$) of a non-Abelian gauge field that induces a generalized Rashba spin-orbit interaction, the topology of the Fermi surface of a homogeneous gas of noninteracting fermions of density \rho \sim \kf^3 undergoes a change at a critical value, \lambda_T \approx \kf [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 84}, 014512 (2011)]. In this paper we analyze how this phenomenon affects the size and shape of a cloud of spin-\half fermions trapped in a harmonic potential such as those used in cold atom experiments. We develop an adiabatic formulation, including the concomitant Pancharatnam-Berry phase effects, for the one particle states in the presence of a trapping potential and the gauge field, obtaining approximate analytical formulae for the energy levels for some high symmetry gauge field configurations of interest. An analysis based on the local density approximation reveals that, for a given number of particles, the cloud shrinks in a {\em characteristic fashion with increasing $\lambda$}. For an isotropic harmonic trap, the local density approximation predicts a spherical cloud for all gauge field configurations, which are anisotropic in general. We show, via a calculation of the cloud shape using exact eigenstates, that for certain gauge field configurations there is systematic and observable anisotropy in the cloud shape that increases with increasing gauge coupling $\lambda$. These results should be useful in the design of cold atom experiments with fermions in non-Abelian gauge fields. An important spin-off of our adiabatic formulation is that it reveals exciting possibilities for the cold-atom realization of interesting condensed matter Hamiltonians (eg. quantum hall spherical geometry) by using a non-Abelian gauge field in conjunction with another potential.Comment: 10 Pages, 4 figure

PSO and GSS algorithms are used to arrange DG optimally for voltage profile enhancement and loss reduction

This project looks at the best locations for Distributed Generation (DG) units in power distribution networks to reduce system losses and simultaneously enhance voltage profiles. The suggested methodology makes use of a hybrid optimization approach that blends fuzzy logic with the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Golden Section Search Algorithm (GSS). To evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of the suggested method, the study focuses on the IEEE-15 bus and IEEE-69 bus systems as test cases. This project thoroughly evaluates the suggested methodology on the IEEE-15 bus and IEEE-69 bus systems in order to validate and assess it. Comparative research indicates that fuzzy logic hybrid PSO and GSS are better than classical optimization techniques. The results demonstrate a noticeable improvement in loss reduction and voltage profile improvemen

Detection of the Power Spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope

We report the first detection of the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background through a measurement of the four-point correlation function in the temperature maps made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. We verify our detection by calculating the levels of potential contaminants and performing a number of null tests. The resulting convergence power spectrum at 2-degree angular scales measures the amplitude of matter density fluctuations on comoving length scales of around 100 Mpc at redshifts around 0.5 to 3. The measured amplitude of the signal agrees with Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmology predictions. Since the amplitude of the convergence power spectrum scales as the square of the amplitude of the density fluctuations, the 4-sigma detection of the lensing signal measures the amplitude of density fluctuations to 12%.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, replaced title and author list with version accepted by Physical Review Letters. Likelihood code can be downloaded from http://bccp.lbl.gov/~sudeep/ACTLensLike.htm