Coping Ability of Medical and Nursing Students: A Cause of Concern

Background: Medical students today are subject to a variety of stress; academic, social, emotional or stress in the form of affliction of health during their stay at medical school. The physiological response to these depends on various factors including their inherent coping abilities. This study was designed to examine the coping ability of medical and nursing students at the time of admission to medical school. Materials and Methods: 42 medical and 34 nursing students volunteered for the study. They were administered the BAI questionnaire and classified as good and poor adjusters based on their score. Results: The study revealed an unsatisfactory overall coping ability to be prevalent among medical and nursing students. Conclusion: This study showed that there is a need for orientation and counselling of medical and nursing students at the start of college

The common and uncommon cestodal infestation encountered in routine histopathological practice from a semi-urban population in south India and their public health importance.

Parasites are encountered uncommonly in routine histopathologic practice. Among them, cestodes form a major bulk. Cysticercosis heads the list forming the bulk of cases followed by Hydatidosis and Sparganosis. Microscopic identification of inflammation with surrounding reactions along with other morphological features forms the mainstay of diagnosis of parasitic diseases on histopathology. Identification of the parasites on histopathological examination would reduce the cost-diagnosis ratio avoiding expensive serological investigation

Evaluation and expansion of an analytical model for fatigue of notched composite laminates

The analytical and experimental study performed to expand the existing static and fatigue failure analysis is described. The analytical effort extended the analysis to include interlaminar effects, while the experimental effort developed methods to obtain basic experimental data required as input to the analysis. The static failure analysis for notched laminates was modified to include interlaminar effects near the notch. Three dimensional elastic and two dimensional elasticplastic finite element analysis were performed for some notched laminates

Fishery and Exploitation of Malabar Grouper, Epinephelus malabaricus (Bloch & Schneider 1801) from Andaman Islands

The fishery and population dynamics of groupers from Andaman Islands were studied from Jan 2010 to Dec 2011 with a special emphasis on Malabar grouper, Epinephelus malabaricus (Bloch & Schneider 1801). The average annual catch of Malabar grouper was 1,296 tonnes contributing to 21.6% of annual grouper landings. Length-weight relationship of Malabar grouper showed that growth was allometric (b=2.96) and relative condition factor (Kn) was 1 and the growth parameters viz., L∞, K and t0 were 124.60 cm, 0.80 and -0.05 respectively. The recruitment pattern was unimodal with one major peak during April to July throughout the study period. The natural mortality (M), fishing mortality (F) and total mortality (Z) were 1.05, 1.48 and 2.53 respectively and exploitation rate (E) was 0.58. The M/K ratio (1.31) was found to be well within the normal range of 1to 2.5. Catch per unit effort varied from 4 to16.5 kg.h-1. The maximum sustainable yield (MSY) was 1,107 tonnes which was lower than the average annual catch (1,296 tonnes), indicating over exploitation. The current study calls for further research in identifying the grouper fishing and spawning aggregation grounds and introduce measures for reducing fishing efforts with input and output controls to sustain the Malabar grouper fishery in Andaman waters

Aquatic plant Azolla as the universal feedstock for biofuel production

Background: The quest for sustainable production of renewable and cheap biofuels has triggered an intensive search for domestication of the next generation of bioenergy crops. Aquatic plants which can rapidly colonize wetlands are attracting attention because of their ability to grow in wastewaters and produce large amounts of biomass. Representatives of Azolla species are some of the fastest growing plants, producing substantial biomass when growing in contaminated water and natural ecosystems. Together with their evolutional symbiont, the cyanobacterium Anabaena azollae, Azolla biomass has a unique chemical composition accumulating in each leaf including three major types of bioenergy molecules: cellulose/hemicellulose, starch and lipids, resembling combinations of terrestrial bioenergy crops and microalgae. Results: The growth of Azolla filiculoides in synthetic wastewater led up to 25, 69, 24 and 40 % reduction of NH4-N, NO3-N, PO4-P and selenium, respectively, after 5 days of treatment. This led to a 2.6-fold reduction in toxicity of the treated wastewater to shrimps, common inhabitants of wetlands. Two Azolla species, Azolla filiculoides and Azolla pinnata, were used as feedstock for the production of a range of functional hydrocarbons through hydrothermal liquefaction, bio-hydrogen and bio-ethanol. Given the high annual productivity of Azolla, hydrothermal liquefaction can lead to the theoretical production of 20.2 t/ha-year of bio-oil and 48 t/ha-year of bio-char. The ethanol production from Azolla filiculoides, 11.7 × 103 L/ha-year, is close to that from corn stover (13.3 × 103 L/ha-year), but higher than from miscanthus (2.3 × 103 L/ha-year) and woody plants, such as willow (0.3 × 103 L/ha-year) and poplar (1.3 × 103 L/ ha-year). With a high C/N ratio, fermentation of Azolla biomass generates 2.2 mol/mol glucose/xylose of hydrogen, making this species a competitive feedstock for hydrogen production compared with other bioenergy crops

Survival and growth of juvenile silver pompano Trachinotus blochii (Lacepède, 1801) at different salinities in tropical conditions

The objectives of the present study were to evaluate the tolerance of juvenile silver pompano to different salinity conditions in order to determine the minimum salinity required for survival and also to study the effect of different salinities on survival and growth. Wild caught juveniles of the silver pompano Trachinotus blochii (average initial length: 4.38±0.44 cm, average initial weight: 1.6±0.09 g) were used in the experiments. The experiments were conducted in triplicate with 15 fish per tank. Control groups were maintained at 34±1 ppt. Juvenile silver pompano reared at ambient salinity (34±1ppt) were transferred directly to lower salinities (25, 15, 10, 5, 4, 3 and 1 ppt) and monitored for survival. Results indicated that the minimum salinity required for the survival of juvenile T. blochii is 4 ppt and 100% mortality was observed within 7-8 h in 1 ppt salinity. In another experiment, three salinity reduction protocols were followed and the three treatment groups were exposed to 25, 15 and 5 ppt salinity for a period of 56 days and the growth and survival were monitored. Survival and growth in terms of weight was not significantly different in the treatments from the control group except in the case of 5 ppt, which showed comparatively lower survival and specific growth rate (SGR). The results indicate that the culture of juvenile pompano might be feasible in salinities up to 15 ppt in tropical conditions

Application of m- polar soft fuzzy bi- partite graph in residence selection process

An $m-$polar fuzzy set and soft sets are two different tools for representing uncertainty and vagueness. An $m-$polar soft fuzzy set is a mapping from parameter set to the $m-$polar fuzzy subsets of the universe. An $m-$polar soft fuzzy set theory provides a parameterized point of view for uncertainty modeling and soft computing model. In this paper, we have introduced the notions of $m-$polar soft fuzzy bipartite graph, size and degree of $m-$polar soft fuzzy bi-partite graph as well as an investigation on buying of residence by considering various parameters. People, while buying residence, have many options. So, to choose the best one, they have to consider many parameters. $m-$polar soft fuzzy graph is one of the major areas of graph theory, which finds a solution to this proble

Effect of quantum confinement on exciton-phonon interactions

We investigate the homogeneous linewidth of localized type-I excitons in type-II GaAs/AlAs superlattices. These localizing centers represent the intermediate case between quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D) and quasi-zero-dimensional localizations. The temperature dependence of the homogeneous linewidth is obtained with high precision from micro-photoluminescence spectra. We confirm the reduced interaction of the excitons with their environment with decreasing dimensionality except for the coupling to LO-phonons. The low-temperature limit for the linewidth of these localized excitons is five times smaller than that of Q2D excitons. The coefficient of exciton-acoustic-phonon interaction is 5 ~ 6 times smaller than that of Q2D excitons. An enhancement of the average exciton-LO-phonon interaction by localization is found in our sample. But this interaction is very sensitive to the detailed structure of the localizing centers.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Performance of a quantitative study of instability-related delamination growth

An experimental program was conducted to quantify instability-induced imbedded delamination growth. Static tests on double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens yielded the critical mode 1 strain energy release rate (G sub 1 C) for T300/5208 graphite/epoxy. Static tests on mixed mode cracked lap shear (CLS) specimens, and a nonlinear finite element analysis (NFEA) of the CLS specimen to separate mode 1 and mode 2 effects, yielded the critical mode 2 strain energy release rate (G sub 2 C) for T300/5208. Constant amplitude fatigue tests on DCB and CLS specimens, along with the NFEA results on CLS specimens, quantified mode 1 and mode 2 contributions to delamination growth rate. Fatigue tests were conducted at a frequency (omega) of 10 Hertz, maintaining the minimum to maximum cyclic load ratio (R) at 0.05. Static compression and constant amplitude compression fatigue tests were also conducted on specimens with imbedded through the width (ITTW) delaminations. Kapton imbeddments were located below 3, 4 or 6 plies in a 64-ply laminate, during layup, to simulate ITTW delaminations