Maternal Morbidity in Rural Andhra Pradesh

Pregnancy constitutes a high risk of morbidity and mortality due to associated physiological stress. Many women do not die of causes related to pregnancy but suffer severe morbidities. In developing countries, pregnancy and childbirth related complications are the leading cause of disability among women aged 15-44 years. The objective of the present paper is to assess the extent of maternal morbidity and assess the factors responsible for it in rural Andhra Pradesh. An attempt is also made to understand the treatment seeking behaviour of the women for the morbidities. The study revealed a high prevalence of maternal morbidity in rural areas of Andhra Pradesh. Especially in the less developed district, nearly 95 percent of the women experienced at least one of the morbidities and in the developed district it is 61 percent. 'Life threatening' and 'Serious' morbidities are experienced by 39 and 54 percent in the less developed; 15 and 46 percent of women in developed district respectively. High incidence of maternal morbidity in rural areas can be attributed to the combination of individual, household, community, medical as well as nutrition variables. Determinants of maternal morbidity at individual level are age, parity, education and work status; household variables are type of family, possession of land, availability of toilet with in the premises of house. In addition poor infrastructure facilities such as access to villages and non-availability of health care facilities further added to the level of maternal morbidity. Government's introduction of RCWHCs is not been effective in bringing down the morbidity levels due to lack of proper staff, particularly lady doctor. In spite of low levels of perception about maternal morbidities, relatively higher utilization of health services during antepartum period should be taken as an advantage for initiating complete antenatal services, i.e. beyond the coverage of women by TT injection and supply of IFA tablets. The governmental initiation of supplying protein-rich food to pregnant and lactating mothers through ICDS programme has significantly lowered the morbidity levels probably by lessening the levels of anaemia.Maternal Morbidity, rural, Andhra Pradesh

Symplectic Manifolds, Coherent States and Semiclassical Approximation

We describe the symplectic structure and Hamiltonian dynamics for a class of Grassmannian manifolds. Using the two dimensional sphere ($S^2$) and disc ($D^2$) as illustrative cases, we write their path integral representations using coherent state techniques. These path integrals can be evaluated exactly by semiclassical methods, thus providing examples of localisation formula. Along the way, we also give a local coordinate description for a class of Grassmannians.Comment: 17 pages, preprint TCD-4-93, UR-1324,ER40685-77

Correlations of projectile like fragments in heavy ion reactions at Fermi energy

Correlations between pairs of projectile-like fragments, emitted by the system ${^{16}O}+{^{197}Au}$ at the laboratory bombarding energy of 515 MeV, have been studied under two stipulated conditions: (1) at least one member of the pair is emitted at an angle less than the grazing angle for the system, (2) both the members of the pair are emitted at angles larger than the grazing angle. A surprisingly large difference, by more than an order of magnitude, is found between the correlations for the two cases. This observation could be explained on the basis of a simple semi-classical break up model. Further analysis of the variation of the charge correlation function with the difference in the nuclear charges of the correlated pair showed trends which are consistent with an "inelastic break up process", in which the projectile breaks up at the radius of contact, in such a way that, one fragment (preferably the lighter) is emitted to one side within the grazing angle, while the other orbits around the target nucleus for a while and emerges on the other side, at a negative scattering angle, much like in a deep inelastic scattering.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures accepted by Eurp. Physics Journal

On the Emergence of the Microcanonical Description from a Pure State

We study, in general terms, the process by which a pure state can ``self-thermalize'' and {\em appear} to be described by a microcanonical density matrix. This requires a quantum mechanical version of the Gibbsian coarse graining that conceptually underlies classical statistical mechanics. We introduce some extra degrees of freedom that are necessary for this. Interaction between these degrees and the system can be understood as a process of resonant absorption and emission of ``soft quanta''. This intuitive picture allows one to state a criterion for when self thermalization occurs. This paradigm also provides a method for calculating the thermalization rate using the usual formalism of atomic physics for calculating decay rates. We contrast our prescription for coarse graining, which is somewhat dynamical, with the earlier approaches that are intrinsically kinematical. An important motivation for this study is the black hole information paradox.Comment: 58 pages, 2 figures. A reference adde