Child Labor Among the Tribal's: a Study in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh

Children are the most precious human resource and hold the potential for future development of the nation. If children are deprived of their childhood, the social progress and economic development of the country would be adversely affected. Child labor is a global issue which is more common in the underdeveloped countries. Poor parents or parents under the poverty line are unable to afford the education expenses of their kids and they own unable to earn enough money for the family survival. Children are the new flowers with a powerful fragrance of any nation, however, some people are declining the power and destroying the future of the country just for earning small money by illegally involving the growing kids. They are playing with the moral of the innocent people and their kids

S5 0716+714 : GeV variability study

The GeV observations by Fermi-LAT give us the opportunity to characterize the high-energy emission (100 MeV - 300 GeV) variability properties of the BL Lac object S5 0716+714. In this study, we performed flux and spectral analysis of more than 3 year long (August 2008 to April 2012) Fermi-LAT data of the source. During this period, the source exhibits two different modes of flux variability with characteristic timescales of ~75 and ~140 days, respectively. We also notice that the flux variations are characterized by a weak spectral hardening. The GeV spectrum of the source shows a clear deviation from a simple power law, and is better explained by a broken power law. Similar to other bright Fermi blazars, the break energy does not vary with the source flux during the different activity states. We discuss several possible scenarios to explain the observed spectral break.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in Advances in Space Research journa

Comparison of oral and vaginal misoprostol after oral mifepristone in early medical abortion

Background: Abortions are still a major problem in developing countries contributing to significant maternal morbidity and mortality. WHO has reported that 53 million unplanned pregnancies result in termination each year. One third of these are performed under unsafe conditions. Deaths related to these accounts for up to about 20% of the maternal deaths that occur each year throughout the world. the main objective of the present study is to compare the efficacy, side effects and acceptability of oral and vaginal misoprostol after single oral dose of mifepristone in induction of abortion in pregnancy up to 63 days.Methods: It was a prospective randomized trial of 100 healthy women opting for termination of pregnancy with ultrasound confirmed intrauterine gestation of less than or equal to 9 weeks who were randomized in to two groups. Mifepristone 200mg was administered on day one followed by 800µg of misoprostol orally or vaginally 48 hours later. They were reviewed on day 7 and day 14 by ultrasound for completeness of abortion. If abortion was incomplete or bleeding was excessive, surgical evacuation was performed.Results: The two groups were comparable with respect to age, parity and gestational age. The mean induction abortion interval was 51.2 hours.98% of the women in both the groups had complete abortion.  Nausea (68%) and vomiting (58%) were more common in oral group. Diarrhoea (60%) was common in vaginal group. None of them had fever. Mean duration of bleeding was 9 days. 92% of the women found the procedure to be highly acceptable and would recommend it to others.Conclusions: Medical abortion with 200mg mifepristone in combination with 800µg of misoprostol either orally or vaginally 48 hours later was found to be safe, simple, effective, inexpensive, noninvasive and acceptable method

Connection between inner jet kinematics and broadband flux variability in the BL Lac object S5 0716+714

We present a high-frequency very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) kinematical study of the BL Lac object S5 0716+714 over the time period of September 2008 to October 2010. The aim of the study is to investigate the relation of the jet kinematics to the observed broadband flux variability. We find significant non-radial motions in the jet outflow of the source. In the radial direction, the highest measured apparent speed is \sim37 c, which is exceptionally high, especially for a BL Lac object. Patterns in the jet flow reveal a roughly stationary feature \sim0.15 mas downstream of the core. The long-term fits to the component trajectories reveal acceleration in the sub-mas region of the jet. The measured brightness temperature, T_{B}, follows a continuous trend of decline with distance, T_B \propto r_{jet}^{-(2.36\pm0.41)}, which suggests a gradient in Doppler factor along the jet axis. Our analysis suggest that a moving disturbance (or a shock wave) from the base of the jet produces the high-energy (optical to \gamma-ray) variations upstream of the 7 mm core, and then later causes an outburst in the core. Repetitive optical/\gamma-ray flares and the curved trajectories of the associated components suggest that the shock front propagates along a bent trajectory or helical path. Sharper \gamma-ray flares could be related to the passage of moving disturbances through the stationary feature. Our analysis suggests that the \gamma-ray and radio emission regions have different Doppler factors.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Development and In vivo evaluation of immediate release amlodipine besylate and nebivolol hydrochloride coated pellets using 32 full factorial design by novel liquid layering technology

The aim of the present investigation was to development of immediate release liquid coated pellets of poorly soluble drugs Amlodipine besylate (AMD) and Nebivolol HCl (NBV) by novel liquid layering technology to enhance solubility and bioavailability with HPC-EF as hydrophilic polymer and PVP K 30 as binder. A 32 full factorial design was employed to optimize the formulation of pellets. In order to optimize formulations, two polymers HPC-EF and PVP K 30 as factors and amount of polymers (three different concentrations), were taken as independent variables. All the formulations were evaluated for particle size, friability, moisture content, drug content, in vitro dissolution studies and in vivo bioavailability studies. All the formulations were found uniform with respect to all evaluation parameters. The optimized formulation (F5) showed highest % of drug release 99.59 by the end of 8 min for AMD and 99.21 % of drug release for NBV, when compared with the marketed product (NEBISTAR-AM) the percentage of AMD and NBV was 83.91 and 82.67 respectively within 8 min, by using 4% of HPC-EF and 1% of PVP K 30. SEM confirmed that F5 was spherical in shape with a smooth surface. In vivo studies indicated significant difference in the bioavailability between AMD and NBV coated pellets with pure drug. Clinical data confirmed that the optimized formulation (F5) by choosing immediate release drug coated pellet technology by liquid layering method could improve patient compliance and ensure better disease management when compared with the marketed product.

ANTIBACTERIAL CAPACITY AND IDENTIFICATION OF BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS BY GCMS OF ALLIUM CEPA

Objective: Plants offer a novel source for the isolation of a wide variety of medicinal agents. Allium cepa commonly known as onion is very well known medicinal plants and we investigated the antibacterial activity of different extracts and their phytochemical analysis by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS).Methods: The extracts of A. cepa prepared in six different solvents was analyzed for antibacterial activity against nine American type cell culture (ATCC) reference bacterial strains i.e. Shigella flexneri, Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococus aureus, Proteus mirabilis, Salmonella typhi, Serratia marcescens, Klebsiella pneumonia, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa by using the agar well diffusion method. GCMS analysis also has been carried out for their phytochemical analysis.Results: The results obtained from agar well diffusion assay showed the zone of inhibition range from 10±0.76 to 26±0.76 mm for different extracts. The methanol extract was found most potent against K. pneumonia and S. marcescens with the zone of inhibition of 26±0.76 mm for both strains. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values were in the range of 1.87 to 7.5 mg/ml and the MIC values for K. pneumonia and S. marcescens was 1.87 mg/ml. A total of 43 compounds were identified by GCMS analysis. Out of them dodecanoic acid was found common in all extracts.Conclusion: It is concluded that Allium cepa have good antibacterial activity so it can be used for the treatment of various infectious diseases

Systematic search for gamma-ray periodicity in active galactic nuclei detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope

We use nine years of gamma-ray data provided by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) to systematically study the light curves of more than two thousand active galactic nuclei (AGN) included in recent Fermi-LAT catalogs. Ten different techniques are used, which are organized in an automatic periodicity-search pipeline, in order to search for evidence of periodic emission in gamma rays. Understanding the processes behind this puzzling phenomenon will provide a better view about the astrophysical nature of these extragalactic sources. However, the observation of temporal patterns in gamma-ray light curves of AGN is still challenging. Despite the fact that there have been efforts on characterizing the temporal emission of some individual sources, a systematic search for periodicities by means of a full likelihood analysis applied to large samples of sources was missing. Our analysis finds 11 AGN, of which 9 are identified for the first time, showing periodicity at more than 4sigma in at least four algorithms. These findings will help in solving questions related to the astrophysical origin of this periodic behavior.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Accepted by Ap

Emotion classification in Parkinson's disease by higher-order spectra and power spectrum features using EEG signals: A comparative study

Deficits in the ability to process emotions characterize several neuropsychiatric disorders and are traits of Parkinson's disease (PD), and there is need for a method of quantifying emotion, which is currently performed by clinical diagnosis. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, being an activity of central nervous system (CNS), can reflect the underlying true emotional state of a person. This study applied machine-learning algorithms to categorize EEG emotional states in PD patients that would classify six basic emotions (happiness and sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust) in comparison with healthy controls (HC). Emotional EEG data were recorded from 20 PD patients and 20 healthy age-, education level- and sex-matched controls using multimodal (audio-visual) stimuli. The use of nonlinear features motivated by the higher-order spectra (HOS) has been reported to be a promising approach to classify the emotional states. In this work, we made the comparative study of the performance of k-nearest neighbor (kNN) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers using the features derived from HOS and from the power spectrum. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that power spectrum and HOS based features were statistically significant among the six emotional states (p < 0.0001). Classification results shows that using the selected HOS based features instead of power spectrum based features provided comparatively better accuracy for all the six classes with an overall accuracy of 70.10% ± 2.83% and 77.29% ± 1.73% for PD patients and HC in beta (13-30 Hz) band using SVM classifier. Besides, PD patients achieved less accuracy in the processing of negative emotions (sadness, fear, anger and disgust) than in processing of positive emotions (happiness, surprise) compared with HC. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of applying machine learning techniques to the classification of emotional states in PD patients in a user independent manner using EEG signals. The accuracy of the system can be improved by investigating the other HOS based features. This study might lead to a practical system for noninvasive assessment of the emotional impairments associated with neurological disorders

Jet outflow and gamma-ray emission correlations in S5 0716+714

Using millimeter-very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of the BL Lac object S5 0716+714 from August 2008 to September 2013, we investigate variations in the core flux density and orientation of the sub-parsec scale jet i.e. position angle. The gamma-ray data obtained by the Fermi-LAT (Large Area Telescope) are used to investigate the high-energy flux variations over the same time period. For the first time in any blazar, we report a significant correlation between the gamma-ray flux variations and the position angle (PA) variations in the VLBI jet. The cross-correlation analysis also indicates a positive correlation such that the mm-VLBI core flux density variations are delayed with respect to the gamma-ray flux by 82$\pm$32 days. This suggests that the high-energy emission is coming from a region located $\geq$(3.8$\pm$1.9) parsecs upstream of the mm-VLBI core (closer to the central black hole). These results imply that the observed inner jet morphology has a strong connection with the observed gamma-ray flares.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Letter

a perspective on materials, synthesis methods and applications

The oxides of copper (CuxO) are fascinating materials due to their remarkable optical, electrical, thermal and magnetic properties. Nanostructuring of CuxO can further enhance the performance of this important functional material and provide it with unique properties that do not exist in its bulk form. Three distinctly different phases of CuxO, mainly CuO, Cu2O and Cu4O3, can be prepared by numerous synthesis techniques including, vapour deposition and liquid phase chemical methods. In this article, we present a review of nanostructured CuxO focusing on their material properties, methods of synthesis and an overview of various applications that have been associated with nanostructured CuxO