Comparison of chloroquine, sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine, mefloquine and mefloquine-artesunate for the treatment of falciparum malaria in Kachin State, North Myanmar.

Multi-drug resistant falciparum malaria is widespread in Asia. In Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam the national protocols have changed largely to artesunate combined treatment regimens but elsewhere in East and South Asia chloroquine (CQ) and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) are still widely recommended by national malaria control programmes. In Kachin State, northern Myanmar, an area of low seasonal malaria transmission, the efficacy of CQ (25 mg base/kg) and SP (1.25/25 mg/kg), the nationally recommended treatments at the time, were compared with mefloquine alone (M; 15 mg base/kg) and mefloquine combined with artesunate (MA; 15:4 mg/kg). An open randomized controlled trial enrolled 316 patients with uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria, stratified prospectively into three age-groups. Early treatment failures (ETF) occurred in 41% (32/78) of CQ treated patients and in 24% of patients treated with SP (18/75). In young children the ETF rates were 87% after CQ and 35% after SP. Four children (two CQ, two SP) developed symptoms of cerebral malaria within 3 days after treatment. By day 42, failure rates (uncorrected for reinfections) had increased to 79% for CQ and 81% for SP. ETF rates were 2.5% after treatment with M and 3.9% after treatment with MA (P > 0.2). Overall uncorrected treatment failure rates at day 42 following M and MA were 23% and 21%, respectively. Chloroquine and SP are completely ineffective for the treatment of falciparum malaria in northern Myanmar. Mefloquine treatment is much more effective, but three day combination regimens with artesunate will be needed for optimum efficacy and protection against resistance

Limit Analysis of Strain Softening Frames Allowing for Geometric Nonlinearity

This paper extends classical limit analysis to account for strain softening and 2nd-order geometric nonlinearity simultaneously. The formulation is an instance of the challenging class of socalled (nonconvex) mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPECs). A penalty algorithm is proposed to solve the MPEC. A practical frame example is provided to illustrate the approach

Bose-Einstein Condensates with Large Number of Vortices

We show that as the number of vortices in a three dimensional Bose-Einstein Condensate increases, the system reaches a "quantum Hall" regime where the density profile is a Gaussian in the xy-plane and an inverted parabolic profile along z. The angular momentum of the system increases as the vortex lattice shrinks. However, Coriolis force prevents the unit cell of the vortex lattice from shrinking beyond a minimum size. Although the recent MIT experiment is not exactly in the quantum Hall regime, it is close enough for the present results to be used as a guide. The quantum Hall regime can be easily reached by moderate changes of the current experimental parameters.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Penggunaan Model Inkuiri untuk Meningkatkan Kemampuan Berpikir Kritis Siswa dalam Pembelajaran IPS di SD

Pembelajaran di sekolah cenderung sangat teoritis dan terkait dengan kehidupan yang ada lingkungan nyata. Rumusan masalah, bagaimana meningkatkan kemampuan berpikir kritis siswa dengan menggunakan model Inkuiri dan bagaimana hasil belajar IPS dengan menggunakan Model Inkuiri. Proses penerapan model dalam pembelajaran ini berfokus kepada Penelitian Tindakan Kelas( PTK), model Kemmis dan McTaggart yang terdiri dari empat komponen, yaitu (1). Perencanaan (planning), (2). Tindakan (action) (3). Observasi (observation), dan (4). Refleksi (reflection). Peneltian tindakan ini dilakukan dalam tiga siklus, di mana setiap siklus materi dan tujuan pembelajaran yang berbeda. Hasil dari penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa model inkuri terbimbing merupakan salah satu model pembelajaran yang dapat mengembangkan kemampuan berpikir kritis siswa, sehingga proses dan hasil belajar siswa akan lebih baik. Pada akhir peneliti ini merekomendasikan bahwa untuk merangsang timbulnya masalah-masalah dari siswa, guru harus memikirkan suatu kegiatan eksplorasi yang akan dilakukan oleh siswa, agar siswa mempunyai gagasan untuk mengemukakan pendapat dan mengajukan pertanyaan terhadap materi yang diajarkan, menumbuhkan keberanian seluruh siswa dalam menggunggkapkan masalah, guru harus memberikan penguatan kepada siswa yang bertanya sehingga siswa lainnya termotivasi untuk bertanya

A node-to-node scheme for three-dimensional contact problems using the scaled boundary finite element method

A node-to-node (NTN) scheme for modeling three-dimensional contact problems within a scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) framework is proposed. Polyhedral elements with an arbitrary number of faces and nodes are constructed using the SBFEM. Only the boundary of the polyhedral element is discretized to accommodate a higher degree of flexibility in mesh transitioning. Nonmatching meshes can be simply converted into matching ones by appropriate node insertions, thereby allowing the use of a favorable NTN contact scheme. The general three-dimensional frictional contact is explicitly formulated as a mixed complementarity problem (MCP). The inherent nonlinearity in the three-dimensional friction condition is treated accurately without requiring piecewise linearization. Contact constraints for non-penetration and stick-slide are enforced directly in a complementarity format. Numerical examples with 1st and 2nd order elements demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed scheme

Quantum Criticality of 1D Attractive Fermi Gas

We obtain an analytical equation of state for one-dimensional strongly attractive Fermi gas for all parameter regime in current experiments. From the equation of state we derive universal scaling functions that control whole thermodynamical properties in quantum critical regimes and illustrate physical origin of quantum criticality. It turns out that the critical properties of the system are described by these of free fermions and those of mixtures of fermions with mass $m$ and $2m$. We also show how these critical properties of bulk systems can be revealed from the density profile of trapped Fermi gas at finite temperatures and can be used to determine the T=0 phase boundaries without any arbitrariness.Comment: extended version, 9 pages, 7 eps figures, corrections of few typo

Automatic Management of Parallel and Distributed System Resources

Viewgraphs on automatic management of parallel and distributed system resources are presented. Topics covered include: parallel applications; intelligent management of multiprocessing systems; performance evaluation of parallel architecture; dynamic concurrent programs; compiler-directed system approach; lattice gaseous cellular automata; and sparse matrix Cholesky factorization