Parallel h-p spectral element method for elliptic problems on polygonal domains

It is well known that elliptic problems when posed on non-smooth domains, develop singularities. We examine such problems within the framework of spectral element methods and resolve the singularities with exponential accuracy

System Dynamics Simulation Model for Cardiovascular Heart Disease Risk Factors - Smoking and Alcohol Intake

Detecting diseases at early stage can help to overcome and treat them accurately. Identifying the appropriate treatment depends on the method that is used in diagnosing the diseases. The incidence of cardiovascular heart disease (CVD) has been increasing steadily and so too its associated mortality. System Dynamics is appropriate methodology for Modelling and Simulation. The Expert knowledge about risk factors for CVD was elicited through interview and literature search. Two CVD risk factors Smoking and Alcohol Intake were analyzed by the proposed decision support system developed with System Dynamics Simulation software (iThink V9.0.2 ),used for the design, implementation and evaluation of the system. The proposed framework would be particularly useful for researchers in the field but also for medical practitioners and developers of medical decision support systems

Phenotypic characterization and susceptibility of gram negative bacteria from surgical site infections in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Gram negative bacteria are the common isolates among the cases of Surgical Site Infections (SSI). Resistant and specially Multi Drug Resistant (MDR) Gram negative isolates are a serious challenge for the treatment to clinicians. Present study was undertaken for phenotypic characterization and susceptibility pattern of Gram negative bacterial isolates from cases of surgical site infections in a tertiary care institute.Methods: This descriptive cross sectional hospital based study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital over a period of one and half year from January 2012 to June 2013. Centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) SSI case definitions were used to label a case as SSI. Only culture proven cases, out of clinically suspected was included in the study for evaluation.Results: During the study period a total of 5949 patients were operated and screened for SSI in the wards under surveillance. Out of which 556 were clinically suspected as a case of SSI. With 408 culture proven cases of SSI the rate of SSI in present study was (6.86%). Rates of SSI were more in dirty (22.54%) and contaminated (13.78%) type of wounds. Among Gram negative bacterial isolates (n=343) from SSI, E. coli (45.18%) was the commonest followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (16.03%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (13.42%). Unpleasant trend in antimicrobial resistance observed during study is a serious concern.Conclusions: The data presented in this study clearly indicate the continuous need of surveillance of SSI. This will clearly help health care personnel in curtailing down the incidences of SSI

Controlling the Error on Target Motion through Real-time Mesh Adaptation: Applications to Deep Brain Stimulation

We present an error-controlled mesh refinement procedure for needle insertion simulation and apply it to the simulation of electrode implantation for deep brain stimulation, including brain shift. Our approach enables to control the error in the computation of the displacement and stress fields around the needle tip and needle shaft by suitably refining the mesh, whilst maintaining a coarser mesh in other parts of the domain. We demonstrate through academic and practical examples that our approach increases the accuracy of the displacement and stress fields around the needle without increasing the computational expense. This enables real-time simulations. The proposed methodology has direct implications to increase the accuracy and control the computational expense of the simulation of percutaneous procedures such as biopsy, brachytherapy, regional anesthesia, or cryotherapy and can be essential to the development of robotic guidance.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figure

Conformal solids and holography

We argue that a $SO(d)$ magnetic monopole in an asymptotically AdS space-time is dual to a $d$-dimensional strongly coupled system in a solid state. In light of this, it would be remiss of us not to dub such a field configuration $solidon$. In the presence of mixed boundary conditions, a solidon spontaneously breaks translations (among many other symmetries) and gives rise to Goldstone excitations on the boundary$-$the phonons of the solid. We derive the quadratic action for the boundary phonons in the probe limit and show that, when the mixed boundary conditions preserve conformal symmetry, the longitudinal and transverse sound speeds are related to each other as expected from effective field theory arguments. We then include backreaction and calculate the free energy of the solidon for a particular choice of mixed boundary conditions, corresponding to a relevant multi-trace deformation of the boundary theory. We find such free energy to be lower than that of thermal AdS. This suggests that our solidon undergoes a solid-to-liquid first order phase transition by melting into a Schwarzschild-AdS black hole as the temperature is raised.Comment: 31 pages; v2: incorrect calculation in sec. 4 has been deleted; main results unchange

Awareness and sources of the digital transactions schemes: a cross sectional study in a rural block of Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

Background: India is a developing country and is on the road of rapid progress, in every aspect. So, to further boost the development process, India joined many other developing countries and showed an intent to promote a cashless economy. However, this penetration is not much in the rural areas which constitute the building blocks of the country. Awareness regarding digital transaction schemes of government of India is imperative to success of such schemes. Hence, the current study for assessing the awareness of the digital transaction schemes and finding out the sources in their implementation will help cater these issues.Methods: A  descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among 60 respondents belonging to different age groups, socio economic strata and with different education status, to explore the awareness and acceptance percentage of respondents in rural block Paragraph  in relation to digital transaction schemes and methods and the their sources of information. Study was done in three-month duration from1st July 2018 to 30th September 2018.Results: It was found that the awareness for mobile banking among all the age groups was  a massive 93.36% while that of the Digital Dakiya scheme is a meagre 8.30%.It was inferred from the study that social interaction  was the major information source (51%) and there was a significant association between the use of mobile banking and younger age of the individual.Conclusions: Awareness among the older population and rural females is lesser as compared to counterparts and was massive for mobile banking. Disparity about awareness the of schemes points that overall usage needs to be promoted.

A Posteriori Error Estimates for Nonconforming Approximations of Evolutionary Convection-Diffusion Problems

We derive computable upper bounds for the difference between an exact solution of the evolutionary convection-diffusion problem and an approximation of this solution. The estimates are obtained by certain transformations of the integral identity that defines the generalized solution. These estimates depend on neither special properties of the exact solution nor its approximation, and involve only global constants coming from embedding inequalities. The estimates are first derived for functions in the corresponding energy space, and then possible extensions to classes of piecewise continuous approximations are discussed.Comment: 10 page

Formulation and characterization of chewable tablets of paracetamol and metoclopramide hydrochloride

The present study was aimed to formulate and characterized chewable tablets of Paracetamol and Metoclopramide hydrochloride. Paracetamol and Metoclopramide hydrochloride is an oral fixed dose combination for the preparation of chewable tablets used to treat the symptoms of migraine as it comply with physicochemical properties require to improve the effectiveness of therapeutic agent, better bioavailability, improved patient acceptance (especially pediatrics) through pleasant taste, patient convenience; need no water for swallowing, fasten the absorption of drug and for rapid onset of action. The investigation was carried out to study the effect of different proportion of Avicel 101, Avicel 102 and moringa gum, which are superdisintegrating agents. The chewable tablets of Paracetamol and Metoclopramide hydrochloride were prepared by wet granulation method. Several physicochemical parameters like thickness, diameter, hardness, %weight variation, %loss in weight, drug content, disintegration time, in vitro dissolution studies, kinetics of drug release and stability studies for all the formulations were studied and were found within the acceptance limits. Formulation F7 (containing moringa gum 1%) showed the best cumulative drug release and disintegration time of 56 secs