Coupled Evolutionary Behavioral and Disease Dynamics under Reinfection Risk

We study the interplay between epidemic dynamics and human decision making for epidemics that involve reinfection risk; in particular, the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) and the susceptible-infected-recovered-infected (SIRI) epidemic models. In the proposed game-theoretic setting, individuals choose whether to adopt protection or not based on the trade-off between the cost of adopting protection and the risk of infection; the latter depends on the current prevalence of the epidemic and the fraction of individuals who adopt protection in the entire population. We define the coupled epidemic-behavioral dynamics by modeling the evolution of individual protection adoption behavior according to the replicator dynamics. For the SIS epidemic, we fully characterize the equilibria and their stability properties. We further analyze the coupled dynamics under timescale separation when individual behavior evolves faster than the epidemic, and characterize the equilibria of the resulting discontinuous hybrid dynamical system for both SIS and SIRI models. Numerical results illustrate how the coupled dynamics exhibits oscillatory behavior and convergence to sliding mode solutions under suitable parameter regimes.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2203.1027

Pirometamorphism in cretaceous carbonates from the Jandaíra Formation, Potiguar Basin, Northeastern Brazil

Este trabalho enfoca o efeito termal provocado por intrusões básicas hipabissais encaixadas em rochas carbonáticas cretáceas da Formação Jandaíra, Bacia Potiguar emersa, NE do Brasil. Com tal objetivo, foram usados dados de campo, microscópicos, difração de raios X, microssonda eletrônica e litogeoquímica de rocha total dos calcários. Os calcários preservados, situados nas proximidades da área de estudo, são constituídos de grãos carbonáticos, matrizes, cimentos, poros, e, mineralogicamente, contêm calcita, ankerita, dolomita, pequena quantidade de argilas (montmorilonita) e traços de quartzo, microclina, pirita e limonita. Nos calcários pirometamorfizados ocorre aumento da granulação, desaparecem os componentes fossilíferos e a porosidade é insignificante. A composição modal dos carbonatos sugere como protólitos calcários calcíferos a dolomíticos. Nos carbonatos recristalizados, podem ser formados os minerais lizardita e espinélio nas amostras pouco e moderadamente afetadas, e espinélio, espurrita e forsterita nas fortemente afetadas. Considerando o contexto geológico, a composição mineralógica e diagramas petrológicos da literatura, sugerem-se temperaturas e pressões máximas de 1050 a 1200ºC e 0,5 a 1,0 kbar, respectivamente. Além da importância petrológica na caracterização do pirometamorfismo, as conclusões desta pesquisa deixam em aberto a possibilidade de modificação no sistema petrolífero em reservatórios de hidrocarbonetos na Bacia Potiguar e demais bacias sedimentares brasileiras com rochas magmáticas associadasThis work focuses on the thermal effects caused by hypabyssal basic intrusions hosted in cretaceous carbonatic rocks of the Jandaíra Formation, onshore Potiguar Basin, Northeastern Brazil. For this purpose, we used data from field work, microscopic, X-ray diffraction, electron microprobe, and whole rock lithogeochemistry of carbonates. The preserved limestones, located nearby the studied area, have carbonates grains, matrices, cements, pores, and, mineralogically, they have calcite, ankerite, dolomite, minor amount of clays (montmorillonite), and traces of quartz, microcline, pyrite and limonite. Pyrometamorphosed limestones are coarser, the fossiliferous components disappear, and the porosity is irrelevant. The modal composition of carbonates suggests as protoliths calciferous to dolomitc carbonates. Lizardite and spinel minerals can be formed within recrystallized carbonates in little to moderate affected samples, and spinel, spurrite and forsterite in strongly affected samples. Considering the geological context, the mineralogical composition and petrological diagrams from the literature, maximum temperatures and pressures of 1050 to 1200ºC and 0.5 to 1.0 kbar, respectively, are suggested. Besides the petrological importance for the characterization of the pyrometamorphism, the conclusions of this research open the possibility of changing the petroliferous system of hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Potiguar Basin and other Brazilian sedimentary basins with associated magmatic rock

Fabrication of α‑Fe2O3 Nanostructures: synthesis, characterization, and their promising application in the treatment of Carcinoma A549 Lung Cancer Cells

In the present work, iron nanoparticles were synthesized in the α-Fe2O3 phase with the reduction of potassium hexachloroferrate(III) by using l-ascorbic acid as a reducing agent in the presence of an amphiphilic non-ionic polyethylene glycol surfactant in an aqueous solution. The synthesized α-Fe2O3 NPs were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, dynamic light scattering, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometry. The powder X-ray diffraction analysis result confirmed the formation of α-Fe2O3 NPs, and the average crystallite size was found to be 45 nm. The other morphological studies suggested that α-Fe2O3 NPs were predominantly spherical in shape with a diameter ranges from 40 to 60 nm. The dynamic light scattering analysis revealed the zeta potential of α-Fe2O3 NPs as −28 ± 18 mV at maximum stability. The ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometry analysis shows an absorption peak at 394 nm, which is attributed to their surface plasmon vibration. The cytotoxicity test of synthesized α-Fe2O3 NPs was investigated against human carcinoma A549 lung cancer cells, and the biological adaptability exhibited by α-Fe2O3 NPs has opened a pathway to biomedical applications in the drug delivery system. Our investigation confirmed that l-ascorbic acid-coated α-Fe2O3 NPs with calculated IC50 ≤ 30 μg/mL are the best suited as an anticancer agent, showing the promising application in the treatment of carcinoma A549 lung cancer cells

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Prevalence of depression and anxiety among children in rural and suburban areas of Eastern Uttar Pradesh: A cross-sectional study

Background: Psychiatric morbidity in children and adolescents is a major concern as they become more complex and intense with children's transition into adolescence. Aim: The aim of this study is to assess and compare the prevalence of depression and anxiety among children residing in rural and suburban area of eastern Uttar Pradesh and understand the burden of these problems in our society. Materials and Methods: Children, in the age group 11–18 years, were divided into 2 groups: Group I – 100 children from rural area Tikri; Group II – 100 children from suburban area Sunderpur. Their sociodemographic details were recorded. Children's Depression Inventory and Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale were used to screen for depression and anxiety in children, respectively. The final diagnosis was done using present state examination in accordance with International Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders 10. Data were statistically analyzed using Chi-square test. Results: The prevalence of depression was found to be 14.5% while that of anxiety disorder was found to be 15%. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of depression or anxiety in rural and suburban areas (P > 0.05). Depression and anxiety were more prevalent in middle adolescence, in females, and in lower-middle socioeconomic group. Depression was more prevalent in the students of class 9th –12th, whereas anxiety was more in students of lower classes. Depression was more prevalent in joint families. These differences show some important trends regarding factors affecting these problems. Conclusion: This study yields useful information which could be of use in early management of psychiatric disorders present in the community and prevent their development into chronic disorders

Not Available

Not AvailableAn experiment was carried out at Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh to study the nature of gene action in field pea (Pisum sativum L. var. arvense) through diallel analysis among ten parents and their 45 crosses. Analysis of variance showed highly significant differences among the genotypes for all traits. Variances due to parents vs. F s were significant for days to flowering, plant height, internodes plant-1, pods plant-1 and 1000-grain weight. Significant additive variance for days to 50% flowering and maturity, primary branches plant-1 and internodes plant, plant height and pod length was observed.Dominance component was highly significant for all the traits, and the distribution of positive and negative alleles-1indicated asymmetry of loci showing dominance in all the traits. The number of gene groups controlling the attributes was <1, indicating complementary action. The estimates of heritability (h) and genetic advance both were high for plant height (86 and 70%) and internodes plant-12ns (34 and 46%). High heritability with low genetic advance was found for days to maturity (62 and %), moderate heritability with high genetic advance was found for primary branches plant-1 (19 and 35%) and grain yield plant (16 and 39%). Moderate heritability and moderate genetic advance was exhibited in pod length (27 and 15%) and low heritability with high genetic advance was found for pods plant-1 (9 and 40%).Not Availabl

An Investigation for Minimizing the Wear Loss of Microwave-Assisted Synthesized g-C₃N₄/MoS₂ Nanocomposite Coated Substrate

Mechanical components frequently come into contact against one another causing friction that produces heat at the contact area and wear of the components that shortens part life and increases energy consumption. In the current study, an attempt was made to optimize the parameters for the pin-on-disc wear tester. The experiments were carried out in ambient thermal conditions with varying sliding speeds (0.5 m/s, 0.75 m/s, and 1.0 m/s) and applied loads (5 N, 10 N, and 15 N) for pure molybdenum disulfide with 9% and 20% weight percentage of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) in molybdenum-disulfide (MoS2)-nanocomposite-coated steel substrate. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the outcome of interaction between various constraints. To identify the minimum wearing conditions, the objective was defined as the criterion ‘smaller is better’. The maximum impact of the applied load on the coefficient of friction and wear depth was estimated to be 59.6% and 41.4%, respectively, followed by sliding speed. The optimal condition for the minimum coefficient of friction and wear was determined to be 15 N for applied load, 0.75 m/s for sliding speed, and weight percentage of 9 for g-C3N4 in MoS2 nanocomposite. At the 95% confidence level, applied load was assessed to have the most significant effect on the coefficient of friction, followed by sliding speed and material composition, whereas material composition considerably impacts wear, followed by loading and sliding speed. These parameters show the effect of mutual interactions. Results from the Taguchi method and response surface methodology are in good agreement with the experimental results

Piriformospora indica: a Friend in Need is a Friend in Deed

Piriformospora indica is an endophytic root-colonizing fungal species classified in the genus Piriformospora of the order Sebacinales. The chlamydospores of P. indica has a typical pear-shape and it was first discovered from the orchid plants in the Thar desert in Rajasthan, India and thus named P. indica P. indica has shown to be very versatile as it is capable of colonizing a variety of different plants, but the research studies has been done so far to understand molecular mechanisms underlying symbiosis has basically on the agronomical important monocotyledonous crop plant barley (Hordeum vulgare) and the dicotyledonous genetic model plant Arabidopsis thalian