A study of cytological pattern of cervical papanicolaou smears in western Rajasthan, India

Background: Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers of Indian females. Western Rajasthan differs a lot from rest of India in respect of geographical conditions, environment, culture, population density etc. and it also has relatively lower literacy rate which is one of the risk factor for many diseases. The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of cervical cytological pattern in females of western Rajasthan by using conventional Papanicolaou (Pap) smears for the screening of inflammatory, premalignant and malignant lesions of the cervix.Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted at tertiary care institute of western Rajasthan for 1.5 year duration, on 1768 females who were screened by Pap smear examination. After staining with conventional Papanicolaou technique, all smears were classified as per Bethesda nomenclature.Results: Out of 1768 smears 1039 (58.7%) were abnormal Pap smears, 445 (25.1%) were normal Pap smears while 284 (16.1%) smears had inadequate sample material to be examined. Out of 1039 abnormal smears, 956 (92.01%) smears reported to have inflammatory/reactive changes whereas 26 (2.50%) had atrophic changes in Pap smear and abnormality in epithelial cell was reported in 57(5.49%) smears.Conclusions: Pap smear examination is an effective screening procedure to detect cervical cytological abnormalities. Routine cytological screening by Pap smear should be offered to all women above 19 years or within 3 years of sexual activity. It is recommended to improve the awareness about the disease amongst females and skills of health care personal about proper preparation of Pap smear

Prevalence and pattern of anemia in the second and third trimester pregnancy in Western Rajasthan

Background: Anemia in pregnancy is related to maternal-fetal morbidity and mortality. In developing countries like India it is important to study prevalence and pattern of anemia in pregnancy especially in the region with higher maternal mortality rate like western Rajasthan. The main objective was to study the prevalence and pattern of anemia in second and third trimester pregnant females in western Rajasthan.Methods: In this cross sectional study females with second and third trimester pregnancy were evaluated for presence of anemia with its morphological type and severity.Results: 17,552 second and third trimester pregnant females were evaluated and prevalence of anemia was found 48.4%. The percentages of mild, moderate and severe anemia were 35.1%, 51.3% and 13.4% respectively. Most common morphological type was microcytic hypochromic anemia (51%) followed by normocytic normochromic anemia (32%), dimorphic anemia (13%) and macrocytic anemia (4%).  Conclusions: There is high prevalence of anemia in pregnant females. This warrants the need of proper prophylaxis and early diagnosis of anemia in pregnancy to minimize the maternal-fetal morbidity and mortality

Dry matter dynamics and carbon flux along riverine forests of Gori valley, Western Himalaya

IntroductionRiverine forests in the Himalaya represent a biodiverse, dynamic, and complex ecosystem that offers numerous ecosystem services to local and downstream communities and also contributes to the regional carbon cycle. However, these forests have not been assessed for their contribution to dry matter dynamics and carbon flux. We studied these parameters along three classes of riverine forests in eastern Uttarakhand, dominated by Macaranga, Alnus, and Quercus-Machilus forest.MethodsUsing volume equations, we assessed tree biomass, carbon storage, and sequestration in the study area.ResultsThe total standing tree biomass in Macaranga, Alnus, and Quercus-Machilus forest ranged from 256.6 to 558.1  Mg  ha−1, 460.7 to 485.8 Mg ha−1, and 508.6 to 692.1 Mg ha−1, respectively. A total of 77.6–79.6% of vegetation biomass was stored in the aboveground biomass and 20.4–22.4% in belowground plant parts across the riverine forests. The carbon stock in Macaranga forest ranged from 115.5 to 251.1 Mg ha−1, in Alnus forest from 207.3 to 218.6 Mg ha−1, and in Quercus-Machilus forest from 228.9 to 311.4 Mg ha−1. The mean annual litterfall was accounted maximum for Quercus-Machilus forest (5.94  ±  0.54 Mg ha−1 yr.−1), followed by Alnus (5.57  ±  0.31 Mg ha−1 yr.−1) and Macaranga forest (4.67  ±  0.39 Mg ha−1 yr.−1). The highest value of litterfall was recorded during summer (3.40  ±  0.01 Mg ha−1 yr.−1) and the lowest in winter (0.74  ±  0.01 Mg ha−1 yr.−1). The mean value of net primary productivity and carbon sequestration was estimated to be highest in Quercus-Machilus forest (15.8  ±  0.9 Mg ha−1 yr.−1 and 7.1  ±  0.9 Mg C ha−1 yr.−1, respectively) and lowest in Alnus forest (13.9  ±  0.3 Mg ha−1 yr.−1 and 6.1  ±  0.3 Mg C ha−1 yr.−1, respectively).DiscussionThe results highlight that riverine forests play a critical role in providing a large sink for atmospheric CO2. To improve sustainable ecosystem services and climate change mitigation, riverine forests must be effectively managed and conserved in the region

Multiferroicity and magnetoelastic coupling in alpha-Mn2O3: A binary perovskite

Multiferroics where at least two primary ferroic orders are present and coupled in a single system constitute an important class of materials. They attracted special consideration as they present both intriguing fundamental physics problems and technological importance for potential multifunctional devices. Here, we present the evidence of multiferroicity and magnetoelectric (ME) coupling in alpha-Mn2O3; a unique binary perovskite. Corresponding to the antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering around 80K, a clear frequency independent transition is observed in the dielectric permittivity. We showed that electric polarization emerges near AFM regime that can be modulated with magnetic field. The detailed structural analysis using synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction demonstrates the increase in structural distortion with decreasing temperature, as well as changes in the unit cell parameters and bond lengths across the ferroelectric and magnetic ordering temperatures. This observation of multiferroicity and magnetoelastic coupling in alpha-Mn2O3 provides insights for the exploration of ME coupling in related materials.Comment: Page 20 and 6 figure

Harvey: A Greybox Fuzzer for Smart Contracts

We present Harvey, an industrial greybox fuzzer for smart contracts, which are programs managing accounts on a blockchain. Greybox fuzzing is a lightweight test-generation approach that effectively detects bugs and security vulnerabilities. However, greybox fuzzers randomly mutate program inputs to exercise new paths; this makes it challenging to cover code that is guarded by narrow checks, which are satisfied by no more than a few input values. Moreover, most real-world smart contracts transition through many different states during their lifetime, e.g., for every bid in an auction. To explore these states and thereby detect deep vulnerabilities, a greybox fuzzer would need to generate sequences of contract transactions, e.g., by creating bids from multiple users, while at the same time keeping the search space and test suite tractable. In this experience paper, we explain how Harvey alleviates both challenges with two key fuzzing techniques and distill the main lessons learned. First, Harvey extends standard greybox fuzzing with a method for predicting new inputs that are more likely to cover new paths or reveal vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Second, it fuzzes transaction sequences in a targeted and demand-driven way. We have evaluated our approach on 27 real-world contracts. Our experiments show that the underlying techniques significantly increase Harvey's effectiveness in achieving high coverage and detecting vulnerabilities, in most cases orders-of-magnitude faster; they also reveal new insights about contract code.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1807.0787

Captive breeding of a near threatened fish, pengba Osteobrama belangeri (Valenciennes, 1844) using three different inducing agents

Farm reared pengba, Osteobrama belangeri were induced to spawn in captivity during August, 2012 by injecting three different synthetic hormones, Ovaprim, Ovatide and Gonopro-FH. Single dose (1 ml kg-1 body weight) of each hormone was administered and results were recorded. Spawning was observed within 8 h after injection. Hatching of eggs were observed after 22±2 h of incubation at 27±1OC. The mean fertilization rate was 84.05±0.36% for Ovaprim, 79.17±3.95% for Ovatide and 84.85±0.89% for Gonopro-FH treated fish. The mean hatching rate was 84.69±1.73% with Ovaprim, 75.01±1.92% with Ovatide and 86.52±0.88% with Gonopro-FH. Gonopro-FH and Ovaprim gave 5.67 and 4.88% higher fertilization rate as well as 11.5 and 9.69% more hatching rate of eggs respectively as compared to Ovatide. Ovaprim and Gonopro-FH were found to be more effective in induced breeding of O. belangeri

Incidencia de los hábitos de estudio y las estrategias de evaluación que implementan los docentes, en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de III y IV año de la carrera de Educación Comercial, en las asignaturas de Cálculo Mercantil I y Cálculo Mercantil II, en la Facultad de Educación e Idiomas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), durante el primer semestre del año 2016

La presente investigación tiene como propósito general analizar la Incidencia de los hábitos de estudio y las estrategias de evaluación que implementan los docentes, en el rendimiento académico de los alumnos de III y IV año de la carrera de Educación Comercial, en las asignaturas de Cálculo Mercantil I y Cálculo Mercantil II, en la Facultad de Educación e Idiomas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), durante el primer semestre del año 2016. La investigación está centrada en un enfoque sociológico cuantitativo, es de tipo ex post facto o no experimental, de corte transversal, descriptiva y correlacional. Tiene una cierta implicación cualitativa porque intenta comprender la realidad del fenómeno, desde la visión de alumnos y docentes que son las unidades de análisis involucradas. El alcance de este estudio considera dos grandes componentes relacionadas con el rendimiento académico, como son los hábitos de estudio y las formas de evaluación, en la revisión bibliográfica se encontró estudios que tratan una u otra componente, pero no las dos simultáneamente. La metodología utilizada consideró una muestra probabilística representativa de treinta y tres alumnos de III y IV año de la carrera de Educación Comercial, a los cuales se les aplicó un instrumento de medición acerca de sus hábitos de estudio, el que fue analizado con técnicas estadísticas descriptivas e inferenciales. También se realizaron dos grupos focales, el primero con una muestra intencional de doce alumnos y el segundo con ocho docentes que han impartido Cálculo Mercantil. Además de una entrevista dirigida al coordinador de la carrera. Entre los principales resultados obtenidos, se obtuvo que en general los alumnos no practican hábitos de estudio, y que estas prácticas tienen una mínima relación lineal con el rendimiento académico. Además que las formas tradicionales de evaluación inciden negativamente en los aprendizajes significativos de los alumno

A study of correlation of serum ferritin with glycated haemoglobin in diabetes mellitus type 2 patients: a case control study

Context: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide and it has dreadful complications. It is important to disclose every hidden aspect of the diseases to control it in better way. Aim: To find association of elevated serum ferritin level with Diabetes mellitus (DM type 2) with and its correlation with level of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c).Material and methods- The study population consisted of 108 individuals, out of them 53 were type 2 diabetic patients (case) and 55 were age and sex matched healthy individuals (control). Comparison of serum ferritin level was done between cases and controls. Correlation of serum ferritin level was seen with duration and severity of diabetes mellitus (DM type 2) and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c).Results: Serum ferritin level of case group was found significantly higher than the control group and there was significant positive correlation of serum ferritin level with duration and poor control of DM type 2 and HbA1c. Conclusion: There can be a role of ferritin level as an indicator of control of glycaemia as HbA1c and Serum ferritin level can also be used as a marker of insulin resistance and duration of the disease