Effect of raja yoga meditation on glycaemic status in type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background: In this modern era stress is a commonly seen phenomenon. Stress affects physiological equilibrium leading to many pathologic conditions including endocrine disorders like diabetes mellitus. Physiological responses to stress including increased glucose production, glucose mobilisation and insulin resistance could partially mediate this risk. Meditation is a behavioural phenomenon which can be used to cause autonomic nervous system alterations and help in reducing stress and its effects.Methods: In this cross-sectional study 60 patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) were divided into 2 groups, 30 patients who are practicing Raja yoga meditation for more than 5 years and their glycemic status was compared with the glycemic status of 30 patients of T2DM who did not practice any form of yogic meditation.Results: Blood glucose level and glycated haemoglobin levels were significantly lower in yoga practitioners. Lipid profile showed significant reduction in total cholesterol and serum triglycerides.Conclusions: Thus, a better glycaemic control is achieved with regular practice of Raja yoga meditation which helps in maintaining optimal level of autonomic equilibrium at rest as well as during exposure to stress

Investigation of image enhancement techniques for the development of a self-contained airborne radar navigation system

This study was devoted to an investigation of the feasibility of applying advanced image processing techniques to enhance radar image characteristics that are pertinent to the pilot's navigation and guidance task. Millimeter (95 GHz) wave radar images for the overwater (i.e., offshore oil rigs) and overland (Heliport) scenario were used as a data base. The purpose of the study was to determine the applicability of image enhancement and scene analysis algorithms to detect and improve target characteristics (i.e., manmade objects such as buildings, parking lots, cars, roads, helicopters, towers, landing pads, etc.) that would be helpful to the pilot in determining his own position/orientation with respect to the outside world and assist him in the navigation task. Results of this study show that significant improvements in the raw radar image may be obtained using two dimensional image processing algorithms. In the overwater case, it is possible to remove the ocean clutter by thresholding the image data, and furthermore to extract the target boundary as well as the tower and catwalk locations using noise cleaning (e.g., median filter) and edge detection (e.g., Sobel operator) algorithms

Sensitivity analysis of helicopter IMC decelerating steep approach and landing performance to navigation system parameters

Results of a study to investigate, by means of a computer simulation, the performance sensitivity of helicopter IMC DSAL operations as a function of navigation system parameters are presented. A mathematical model representing generically a navigation system is formulated. The scenario simulated consists of a straight in helicopter approach to landing along a 6 deg glideslope. The deceleration magnitude chosen is 03g. The navigation model parameters are varied and the statistics of the total system errors (TSE) computed. These statistics are used to determine the critical navigation system parameters that affect the performance of the closed-loop navigation, guidance and control system of a UH-1H helicopter

VTOL shipboard letdown guidance system analysis

Alternative letdown guidance strategies are examined for landing of a VTOL aircraft onboard a small aviation ship under adverse environmental conditions. Off line computer simulation of shipboard landing task is utilized for assessing the relative merits of the proposed guidance schemes. The touchdown performance of a nominal constant rate of descent (CROD) letdown strategy serves as a benchmark for ranking the performance of the alternative letdown schemes. Analysis of ship motion time histories indicates the existence of an alternating sequence of quiescent and rough motions called lulls and swells. A real time algorithms lull/swell classification based upon ship motion pattern features is developed. The classification algorithm is used to command a go/no go signal to indicate the initiation and termination of an acceptable landing window. Simulation results show that such a go/no go pattern based letdown guidance strategy improves touchdown performance

Characterization of Jets in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Jet quenching is considered to be one of the signatures of the formation of quark gluon plasma. In order to investigate the jet quenching, it is necessary to detect jets produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions, determine their properties and compare those with the jets one obtains in hadron-hadron or $e^+-e^-$ collisions. In this work, we propose that calculation of flow parameters may be used to detect and characterize jets in relativistic heavy ion collisions.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, more discussions are added, to be published in Phys. Rev.

On the Limitations of Neutrino Emissivity Formula of Iwamoto

The neutrino emissivity from two and three flavour quark matter is numerically calculated and compared with Iwamoto's formula. We find that the calculated emissivity is smaller than Iwamoto's result by orders of magnitude when $p_{f}(u)+p_{f}(e)-p_{f}(d(s))$ is comparable with the temperature. We attribute it to the severe restriction imposed by momentum conservation on the phase space integral. We obtain an alternate formula for the neutrino emissivity which is valid when the quarks and electrons are degenerate and $p_{f}(u)~+~p_{f}(e)~-~p_{f}(d(s))$ is large compared to the temperature.Comment: Latex Version 2.09, 15 pages, 5 postscript figures available upon request, preprint No. IP/BBSR/93-6

Neutrino Emissivity of Dense Stars

The neutrino emissivity of compact stars is investigated in this work. We consider stars consisting of nuclear as well as quark matter for this purpose. Different models are used to calculate the composition of nuclear and quark matter and the neutrino emissivity. Depending on the model under consideration, the neutrino emissivity of nuclear as well as quark matter varies over a wide range. We find that for nuclear matter, the direct URCA processes are allowed for most of the relativistic models without and with strange baryons, whereas for the nonrelativistic models this shows a strong dependence on the type of nuclear interaction employed. When the direct URCA processes are allowed, the neutrino emissivity of hadronic matter is larger than that of the quark matter by several orders of magnitude. We also find that the neutrino emissivity departs from $T^6$ behavior when the temperature is larger than the difference in the Fermi momenta of the particles, participating in the neutrino-producing reactions.Comment: Latex file. 5 figures available on request. accepted in Int. J. Mod. Phys.