Treatment-seeking for febrile illness in north-east India: an epidemiological study in the malaria endemic zone

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper studies the determinants of utilization of health care services, especially for treatment of febrile illness in the malaria endemic area of north-east India.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An area served by two districts of Upper Assam representing people living in malaria endemic area was selected for household survey. A sample of 1,989 households, in which at least one member of household suffered from febrile illness during last three months and received treatment from health service providers, were selected randomly and interviewed by using the structured questionnaire. The individual characteristics of patients including social indicators, area of residence and distance of health service centers has been used to discriminate or group the patients with respect to their initial and final choice of service providers.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 1,989 surveyed households, initial choice of treatment-seeking for febrile illness was self-medication (17.8%), traditional healer <it>(Vaidya)</it>(39.2%), government (29.3%) and private (13.7%) health services. Multinomial logistic regression (MLR) analysis exhibits the influence of occupation, area of residence and ethnicity on choice of health service providers. The traditional system of medicine was commonly used by the people living in remote areas compared with towns. As all the febrile cases finally received treatment either from government or private health service providers, the odds (Multivariate Rate Ratio) was almost three-times higher in favour of government services for lower households income people compared to private.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study indicates the popular use of self-medication and traditional system especially in remote areas, which may be the main cause of delay in diagnosis of malaria. The malaria training given to the paramedical staff to assist the health care delivery needs to be intensified and expanded in north-east India. The people who are economically poor and living in remote areas mainly visit the government health service providers for seeking treatment. So, the improvement of quality health services in government health sector and provision of health education to people would increase the utilization of government health services and thereby improve the health quality of the people.</p

SU(7) Unification of SU(3)_C*SU(4)_W* U(1)_{B-L}

We propose the SUSY SU(7) unification of the SU(3)_C* SU(4)_W* U(1)_{B-L} model. Such unification scenario has rich symmetry breaking chains in a five-dimensional orbifold. We study in detail the SUSY SU(7) symmetry breaking into SU(3)_C* SU(4)_W* U(1)_{B-L} by boundary conditions in a Randall-Sundrum background and its AdS/CFT interpretation. We find that successful gauge coupling unification can be achieved in our scenario. Gauge unification favors low left-right and unification scales with tree-level \sin^2\theta_W=0.15. We use the AdS/CFT dual of the conformal supersymmetry breaking scenario to break the remaining N=1 supersymmetry. We employ AdS/CFT to reproduce the NSVZ formula and obtain the structure of the Seiberg duality in the strong coupling region for 3/2N_c<N_F<3N_C. We show that supersymmetry is indeed broken in the conformal supersymmetry breaking scenario with a vanishing singlet vacuum expectation value.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure

Quality control and beam test of GEM detectors for future upgrades of the CMS muon high rate region at the LHC

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) are a proven position sensitive gas detector technology which nowadays is becoming more widely used in High Energy Physics. GEMs offer an excellent spatial resolution and a high particle rate capability, with a close to 100% detection efficiency. In view of the high luminosity phase of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, these aforementioned features make GEMs suitable candidates for the future upgrades of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. In particular, the CMS GEM Collaboration proposes to cover the high-eta region of the muon system with large-area triple-GEM detectors, which have the ability to provide robust and redundant tracking and triggering functions. In this contribution, after a general introduction and overview of the project, the construction of full-size trapezoidal triple-GEM prototypes will be described in more detail. The procedures for the quality control of the GEM foils, including gain uniformity measurements with an x-ray source will be presented. In the past few years, several CMS triple-GEM prototype detectors were operated with test beams at the CERN SPS. The results of these test beam campaigns will be summarised

Search for rare quark-annihilation decays, B --> Ds(*) Phi

We report on searches for B- --> Ds- Phi and B- --> Ds*- Phi. In the context of the Standard Model, these decays are expected to be highly suppressed since they proceed through annihilation of the b and u-bar quarks in the B- meson. Our results are based on 234 million Upsilon(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected with the BABAR detector at SLAC. We find no evidence for these decays, and we set Bayesian 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions BF(B- --> Ds- Phi) Ds*- Phi)<1.2x10^(-5). These results are consistent with Standard Model expectations.Comment: 8 pages, 3 postscript figues, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal