Nutritional status and access to clean fuels: Evidence from South Asia

Indoor air pollution due to solid fuels is among the ten most important risk factors in global burden of disease leading to respiratory diseases, anaemia, blindness and other disorders. This study examines the correlations between fuel choice and the nutritional status of children. We also explore if factors such as income, kitchen location and education play any role in conditioning fuel choice. Our results suggest that the choice and use of fuel has long lasting effects on the growth and health of children. It is also associated with a higher frequency of respiratory disorders. We find that agricultural households predominantly use unclean fuels.malnutrition, stunting, indoor air pollution, fuel choice, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, International Development,

Risk of Hospitalization among Elderly Heart Failure Patients initiating Beta-Blockers or ACE-Inhibitors

Objective: For elderly(age≥65 years) Heart Failure(HF) patients an early initiation of Beta-Blockers(BBs) vs. Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitor(ACEIs) could have an impact on the risk of HF hospitalization. Thus the aim of this study is to estimate the determinants of initiating a therapy and their risk of first HF hospitalization, of recurrent HF hospitalization and composite outcome of HF hospitalization with death as the terminal event. Methods: Using 2008-2011 Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plan, elderly HF patients initiating ACEI or BBs, defined as category 1(BBc1 e.g. Metoprolol, Bisoprolol etc.) and category 3(BBc3 e.g. Carvedilol and Labetalol), were identified. The baseline determinants of initiating either of these drugs were identified by Multinomial logistic regression analysis. The survival probabilities of first HF hospitalization, recurrent HF hospitalization and of composite outcome were obtained by inverse probability weighted count process model, by stratified total time and gap model and by the marginal model respectively for a follow-up of a year using SAS 9.3 at the p-value of 0.05. Results: Of all 6430 eligible patients, there were 248(3.86%) events of first HF hospitalization with 55(0.86%) events of ≥2 recurrent hospitalization. Of these, ACEI, BBc1, BBc3 and a combination of ACEI with BBc1(ABC1) and with BBc3(ABC3) were initiated by 1194(18.57%), 1519(23.62%), 490(7.62%), 257(4.00%) and by 126(1.96%) patients respectively. This likelihood for initiating BBc1 compared to ACEI increased statistically significantly by atrial fibrillation/flutter(OR:1.348,95%CI:1.09-1.667), Age(OR:1.017,95%CI:1.005-1.028), with vasodilators(OR:1.373,95%CI:1.051-1.795) and with a missing BNP value(OR:1.97,95%CI:1.085-3.578). For initiating BBc3 compared to ACEI the likelihood increased statistically significantly for males(OR:1.294,95%CI:1.039-1.612), for patients with chronic atherosclerosis(OR:1.502,95%CI:1.12-2.015), for those taking vasodilators(OR:1.600,1.144-2.238) or Diuretics (OR:1.306,95%CI:1.05-1.625) or having an elevated BNP value(OR:2.465,95%CI:1.008-6.029). It decreased statistically significantly for patients taking Calcium Channel Blockers(OR:0.718,95%CI:0.547-0.942) in the washout period. The hazard ratio for 3 respective outcomes were 0.562(95%CI:0.28- 1.13), 0.969(95%CI: 0.47- 1.996) and 1.32(95%CI: 0.702- 2.483) for BBc1 as the initiation therapy. For BBc3, these were 1.242(95%CI:0.64- 2.43), 0.871(95%CI: 0.51- 1.48) and 1.41(95%CI: 0.84- 2.36) respectively. Conclusions: There is a statistically non-significant difference in the effect of an early initiated BB in comparison to ACEI for the risk of HF hospitalization.Pharmacy, College o

Image Compression Using Lossless Compression Techniques

Image compression is an application of data compression that encodes the original image with few bits. Data compression method reduces the size of data by reducing irrelevancy and redundancy of the image data, so data can store and transmit in an efficient form.. In this paper we discuss the basic introduction about image compression, various types of lossless image compression techniques

Effect of ecofriendly coating and treatment on mechanical, thermal and morphological properties of sisal fibre

The objective of the present work is to overcome the limitations of sisal fibre and to improve its performance byecofriendly treatment (sodium bicarbonate) and ecofriendly coating [poly lactic acid (PLA)]. Mechanical, thermal, andmorphological analyses of untreated, treated and treated + coated sisal fibres have been carried out and compared. Sisalfibres are treated with varying concentrations of sodium bicarbonate (5, 10, 15 and 20 % w/v) at varying soaking timeperiods (24, 48, 72, 96 and 120 h). PLA coating on sisal fibres is performed at a varying PLA concentrations (2, 4, 6 and 8%w/v). Scanning electron microscope and X-ray diffraction have been used for the examination of morphological andcrystalline analysis respectively of untreated, treated and treated + coated sisal fibres. It is observed that the combined effectof treatment and coating leads to improvement in crystallinity, water absorption resistance, and mechanical and thermalproperties of sisal fibres

Unilateral reexpansion pulmonary edema after tube thoracostomy: A case report

We report a case of unilateral reexpansion pulmonary edema (RPE) in a patient of secondary spontaneous pneumothorax of 2 day

A ruled residue theorem for function fields of conics

The ruled residue theorem characterises residue field extensions for valuations on a rational function field. Under the assumption that the characteristic of the residue field is different from $2$ this theorem is extended here to function fields of conics. The main result is that there is at most one extension of a valuation from on the base field to the function field of a conic for which the residue field extension is transcendental but not ruled. Furthermore the situation when this valuation is present is characterised.Comment: 14 page

Socio-demographic profile of reproductive tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases in reproductive aged women

Background: RTI including Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) are increasingly recognized as a major cause of morbidity in India. RTI have become widespread today because of the changing social fabric and unconventional sexual behaviors. The present study was done to assess the prevalence of RTI and STD in women aged 20-45 years and to correlate the socio-demographic factors with RTI & STD.Methods: Two hundred & fifty women in the age group of 20-45 years attending the outpatient department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of VPC & IMS, Lucknow were included in the study. Out of them 215 were symptomatic and 35 were asymptomatic. All of them were offered clinical and microbiological examinations. A pretested, semi-structured interview schedule was used.Results: In this study the prevalence of RTI/STD was higher among women aged 31-35years, rural population, illiterate & less educated (90.4-97%) females, in farm workers & in students. The females having toilet access in field & outside toilet and with poor personal and menstrual hygiene, had more prevalence of RTI/STD.Conclusions: Hence we as obstetricians should try to make public aware about the importance of RTI/STD prevention, early diagnosis and prompt and complete treatment to avoid long term squealae.

Approximate Data Mining Using Sketches for Massive Data

AbstractWith the popularity of the Web and Internet, massive data is generated.However, this enormous datasets present the challenge to apply data mining techniques in order to extract useful information. Dimensionality reduction can be used to improve both efficiency and effectiveness while extracting information from data. In this paper we have proposed an algorithm to reduce the dimensionality of the datasets such that after applying data mining techniques on reduced datasets we get almost same results as with the original datasets. Random Sketch is used to reduce the dimensions of the dataset

Splitting fields of differential symbol algebras

For $m\geq 2$, we study derivations on symbol algebras of degree $m$ over fields with characteristic not dividing $m$. A differential central simple algebra over a field $k$ is split by a finitely generated extension of $k$. For certain derivations on symbol algebras, we provide explicit construction of differential splitting fields and give bounds on their algebraic and transcendence degrees. We further analyze maximal subfields that split certain differential symbol algebras