An Assessment of Knowledge and Practices Regarding Tuberculosis in the Context of RNTCP Among Non Allopathic Practitioners in Gwalior District

Introduction: India has the highest TB burden accounting for one-fifth of the global incidence with an estimated 1.98 million cases. Non- allopathic practitioners are the major service providers especially in rural and peri-urban areas, treating not just patients of diarrhea, respiratory infections and abdominal Pain but also of tuberculosis. Objectives: To assess the knowledge of sign and symptoms of TB and its management as per the RNTCP guidelines and to assess the practicing pattern regarding tuberculosis. Material & Methods: The present was carried out among the registered non allopathic practitioners providing their services in Gwalior District during the study period. A total of 150 non allopathic practitioners of various methods from both government and private sectors were interviewed using a pre-designed, pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. The information was collected on the General profile of the participant, knowledge about signs and symptoms of TB and its management, practices commonly adopted in the management and their views on involvement of non allopathic practitioners in RNTCP programme. Result: The average score of government practitioners was 7.3 compared to 4.6 by private practitioners. There was a statistically significant difference between the two group on issue related to the management of TB patients as per the RNTCP guidelines. Government practitioners relied mostly on sputum examination for diagnosis and follow up compared to private practitioners who chose other modalities like X-ray, blood examination for this work. Conclusion: There is a gap in knowledge and practices of practitioners of both the sectors. Some serious efforts were required to upgrade the knowledge of non allopathic practitioners if the government is serious about controlling tuberculosis in India

A New Simulation Metric to Determine Safe Environments and Controllers for Systems with Unknown Dynamics

We consider the problem of extracting safe environments and controllers for reach-avoid objectives for systems with known state and control spaces, but unknown dynamics. In a given environment, a common approach is to synthesize a controller from an abstraction or a model of the system (potentially learned from data). However, in many situations, the relationship between the dynamics of the model and the \textit{actual system} is not known; and hence it is difficult to provide safety guarantees for the system. In such cases, the Standard Simulation Metric (SSM), defined as the worst-case norm distance between the model and the system output trajectories, can be used to modify a reach-avoid specification for the system into a more stringent specification for the abstraction. Nevertheless, the obtained distance, and hence the modified specification, can be quite conservative. This limits the set of environments for which a safe controller can be obtained. We propose SPEC, a specification-centric simulation metric, which overcomes these limitations by computing the distance using only the trajectories that violate the specification for the system. We show that modifying a reach-avoid specification with SPEC allows us to synthesize a safe controller for a larger set of environments compared to SSM. We also propose a probabilistic method to compute SPEC for a general class of systems. Case studies using simulators for quadrotors and autonomous cars illustrate the advantages of the proposed metric for determining safe environment sets and controllers.Comment: 22nd ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (2019

Skillful management of exodontia complication to prevent dreadful sequelae

Successful surgical treatments depend upon accurate diagnosis, judicious treatment planning, selection and execution of an appropriate surgical technique, and on a well monitored post-operative period. However, despite these precautions, extraction of teeth (particularly third molar) is exposed to the accidents and complications common to all buccomaxillary and facial interventions. A maxillary third molar may be displaced in maxillary sinus, nearby soft tissue, or may migrate in a superioposterior direction towards paraphyrangeal space, or infratemporal fossa. Dislocating the maxillary third molar in infratemporal fossa is one of the worst nightmare as this area has complex anatomy consisting of vital neurovascular tissues and complex fascial spaces. The extent of displacement depends upon anatomical conditions as well as direction and amount of force applied. Complication arises from error in judgment, improper use of instruments, the application of extreme force or failure to obtain full visualization before acting. Various researchers have given their opinion regarding immediate or delayed removal of tooth pushed in infratemporal fossa but almost all agree that each case should be weighed independently for risk and reward before attempting. Here we present a case in which intraoral approach was taken to retrieve the displaced tooth thus preventing potentially dreadful complications

Voltage modulated electro-luminescence spectroscopy and negative capacitance - the role of sub-bandgap states in light emitting devices

Voltage modulated electroluminescence spectra and low frequency ({\leq} 100 kHz) impedance characteristics of electroluminescent diodes are studied. Voltage modulated light emission tracks the onset of observed negative capacitance at a forward bias level for each modulation frequency. Active participation of sub-bandgap defect states in minority carrier recombination dynamics is sought to explain the results. Negative capacitance is understood as a necessary dielectric response to compensate any irreversible transient changes in the minority carrier reservoir due to radiative recombinations mediated by slowly responding sub-bandgap defects. Experimentally measured variations of the in-phase component of modulated electroluminescence spectra with forward bias levels and modulation frequencies support the dynamic influence of these states in the radiative recombination process. Predominant negative sign of the in-phase component of voltage modulated electroluminescence signal further confirms the bi-molecular nature of light emission. We also discuss how these states can actually affect the net density of minority carriers available for radiative recombination. Results indicate that these sub-bandgap states can suppress external quantum efficiency of such devices under high frequency operation commonly used in optical communication.Comment: 21 pages, 4 sets of figure

Extended excitons and compact heliumlike biexcitons in type-II quantum dots.

We have used magneto-photoluminescence measurements to establish that InP/GaAs quantum dots have a type-II band (staggered) alignment. The average excitonic Bohr radius and the binding energy are estimated to be 15 nm and 1.5 meV respectively. When compared to bulk InP, the excitonic binding is weaker due to the repulsive (type-II) potential at the hetero-interface. The measurements are extended to over almost six orders of magnitude of laser excitation powers and to magnetic fields of up to 50 tesla. It is shown that the excitation power can be used to tune the average hole occupancy of the quantum dots, and hence the strength of the electron-hole binding. The diamagnetic shift coe±cient is observed to drastically reduce as the quantum dot ensemble makes a gradual transition from a regime where the emission is from (hydrogen-like) two-particle excitonic states to a regime where the emission from (helium-like) four-particle biexcitonic states also become significant

RAPD-PCR based genomic characterization of two populations of Culex quinquefasciatus (Diptera : Culicidae)

The present paper deals with the RAPD-PCR based genomic characterization of Culex quinquefasciatus Say which is a major vector of filariasis in several parts of the Indian subcontinent. One population of the test organism used in the study was procured from Goa (pop.A) while the other (pop.B) was collected from a village Nadasahib (20 kms from Chandigarh). The RAPD-PCR amplification of whole body homogenate of freshly hatched individual specimens was carried out by using three random primers: primer I- 5’- GTCCCGACGA – 3’; primer II- 5’– TGATCCCTGG – 3’ and primer III- 5’- GTGACGTAGG – 3’. Primer I produced 5 distinct bands from the DNA of pop. A, whose base composition ranged from 200-1000 bp. Likewise, 7 bands ranging from 130-750 bp and 4 bands ranging from 270-950 bp were generated with primers II and III respectively. In case of pop.B, a total of 8 bands ranging from 200-1000 bp were generated with primer I. Similarly, a total of 6 bands ranging from 250-900 bp with primer II and 4 bands ranging from 180-950 bp with primer III were produced. Based on the bandsharing coefficient and the application of Nearest Neighbour Joining (NJ) analysis it was found that primer Iwas more suitable for detecting genomic differences at the species and generic levels while primer II was ideal for detecting variations in the number of bp in RAPD generated bands among different populations of Cx. quinquefasciatus

A study on clinical attachment loss and gingival inflammation as etiologic factors in pathologic tooth migration

Background: Several etiologic factors have been listed for pathologic migration of periodontally involved teeth based mainly on clinical observations with scarce scientific evidence. Present study was carried out to find out relationship of clinical attachment loss and gingival inflammation with pathologic tooth migration.Materials and Methods: A total of 37 patients having 50 pairs of migrated and non-migrated contralateral teeth were taken into consideration.Results: Mean total attachment loss per tooth in migrated and non migrated tooth is 13.32 ± 0.74 S.E. and 8.34 ± 0.58 S.E., respectively (P < 0.001), which reveals a positive correlation. There seems to be an association between frequency of migration and severity of attachment loss since highest percentage of migrations were seen in maximum total attachment loss group. Relationship could not be established between severity of attachment loss and severity of migration for which more data may be required. Also, it was seen that gingival index was significantly higher in migrated group.Conclusion: Findings suggest that there exists a direct relationship between pathologic migration and clinical attachment loss as well as gingival inflammation. Clinical relevance: Results emphasize the importance of early treatment of periodontitis to curb inflammation, which seems to be more important since it is completely reversible, and attachment loss also in order to prevent unaesthetic complications. Moreover bleeding along with recent change in position of teeth should be considered as important sign of active, moderate to severe periodontal disease by general dentists and hygienists so that they can refer for specialist consultation

Evolution of Genes Neighborhood Within Reconciled Phylogenies: An Ensemble Approach

Context The reconstruction of evolutionary scenarios for whole genomes in terms of genome rearrangements is a fundamental problem in evolutionary and comparative genomics. The DeCo algorithm, recently introduced by Bérard et al., computes parsimonious evolutionary scenarios for gene adjacencies, from pairs of reconciled gene trees. However, as for many combinatorial optimization algorithms, there can exist many co-optimal, or slightly sub-optimal, evolutionary scenarios that deserve to be considered. Contribution We extend the DeCo algorithm to sample evolutionary scenarios from the whole solution space under the Boltzmann distribution, and also to compute Boltzmann probabilities for specific ancestral adjacencies. Results We apply our algorithms to a dataset of mammalian gene trees and adjacencies, and observe a significant reduction of the number of syntenic conflicts observed in the resulting ancestral gene adjacencies