A Comparative study of Insight in Schizophrenia and Mania.

Introduction: Impaired awareness of illness has been known for hundreds of years. In 1604 in his play, "the honest whore", thomas dekker has a character say: "that proves you mad because you know it not". Among neurologists, Unawareness of illness is well known since it also occurs in some individuals With stroke, brain tumors, alzheimer's disease and huntington's disease. The Term “anosognosia” was first used by a french neurologist in 1914 (prigatono And schacter, 1991). The oxford english dictionary defines insight as "an inner sight, a Discernment, a wisdom (or) glimpse of you beneath the surface”. To put it Simply, it means the capacity to understand the hidden truth. Insight, as a Concept of a symptom, got introduced during the later part of the 19th century By dagonet (1881). In 1934, aubrey lewis provided a temporary definition of insight: “a Correct attitude to morbid change in oneself”, but warned that the words ‘correct’, ‘attitude’, ‘morbid’ and ‘change’ each called for discussion. He also Said, “all questions of the judgment of reality, such as…. The consideration of Insight, go to the root of the psychopathology of different conditions” The usage of the word by gestalt psychologists for an “aha” experience (harre and lamb, 1983; conrad, 1958) and the psychoanalytic classification Into ‘emotional’ and ‘intellectual’ is avoided here (zilborg, 1952; sandler et al., 1973). Our study is restricted to the usage of the word for recognizing one’s Own mental disorder, medication effects, social consequences, awareness and Attribution of signs and symptoms. Even in our clinical setting, some patients with schizophrenia do accept That they have something wrong in them even though they decline to accept That they have a psychiatric illness. Probably their sociocultural and religious matrix colors their expression. At times even if the patient denies mental disorder, he accepts distress And accepts drugs without protesting. So, here is the question whether insight is An all (or) none phenomenon. Insight is a multidimensional and not an unitary phenomenon (amador, Et al., 1993). The component dimensions of insight are continuous rather than Dichotomous phenomena. In other words one can have partial insight. Insight into mental disorder may be modality specific i.e. The level of Insight can vary across the many manifestations of illness. For example a Patient may be aware of his flat affect, but he may be unaware of his asociality. Insight comprises of the processes of awareness and attribution. Awareness is the recognition of signs or symptoms of illness, while attribution Refers to explanations about the cause or source of the signs or symptoms. A patient may be aware of "alogia" but may not attribute the decrease in Verbal abilities to a mental disorder. A patient may deny that he is currently mentally ill, but may accept that He was mentally ill in the past. Again, a patient may deny having mental illness and still accept Treatment and vice versa

Surface structure of Quark stars with magnetic fields

We investigate the impact of magnetic fields on the electron distribution in the electrosphere of quark stars. For moderately strong magnetic fields $B\sim 10^{13}$G, quantization effects are generally weak due to the large number density of electrons at surface, but can nevertheless affect the spectral features of quark stars. We outline the main observational characteristics of quark stars as determined by their surface emission, and briefly discuss their formation in explosive events termed Quark-Novae, which may be connected to the $r$-process.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the IXth Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP-9), Bhubaneswar, India, 3-14 Jan. 200

Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Gene Polymorphism in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Several genetic investigations have been attempted to elucidate the association of gene polymorphism of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) in coronary artery disease. This study was conducted to investigate the role of gene polymorphism of ACE in patients with coronary artery disease. The study included fifty-six numbers of patients with atherosclerotic coronary artery disease where proven angiographically and fifty-six numbers of healthy individuals of sex matched as a control group. The patients and control group were subjected to routine investigations, assays like, serum cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density Lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C). Genomic DNA was extracted and analyzed for angiotensin-converting enzyme insertion/deletion polymorphism using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). When we compared the genotypes of patients with coronary artery disease and controls, it was observed that all three genotypes were not statistically different also no significant difference of alleles in ACE gene genotypes was found. Inpatient serum cholesterol, triglyceride and HDL-C (P <0.001, P <0.001 and P <0.001: respectively) showed a significant increase than the control group. In patients, LDL-C level was not more significant than controls. In the evaluated population, we conclude that the gene I/D polymorphism for ACE are not risk associated and may not be a useful marker for coronary artery disease

Caprellids (Crustacea: Amphipoda) from India

The caprellid fauna of India is investigated. A total of 538 samples (including algae, seagrasses, sponges, hydroids, ascidians, bryozoans, encrusted dead corals, coral rubble, fine and coarse sediments) were collected from 39 stations along the coast of India, covering a wide diversity of habitats from intertidal to 12 m water depth. A new species (Jigurru longimanus n.sp.) is described, and figures of the 11 valid species reported so far from India are given together with a key for their identification. No caprellids were found in sediments from the northeast (16–208N) coast of India while they were abundant in the southeast and west coast. Decreases in salinity due to river discharges associated with lower values of oxygen, higher water temperatures and lower nutrient inputs along the east coast could explain these differences in caprellid composition between the two coastlines. Significantly, lower abundance of caprellids in India, as in other tropical ecosystems, is probably related to the lack of species belonging to the genus Caprella, which reach very high abundances in temperate waters.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia de España y fondos FEDER de la Unión Europea. CGL2007-60044/ BOSConsejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía, España. P07-RNM-02524Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) de India. DOD/10-MLR/1/2002/DT 19.12.200

Neutrino emission in neutron matter from magnetic moment interactions

Neutrino emission drives neutron star cooling for the first several hundreds of years after its birth. Given the low energy ($\sim$ keV) nature of this process, one expects very few nonstandard particle physics contributions which could affect this rate. Requiring that any new physics contributions involve light degrees of freedom, one of the likely candidates which can affect the cooling process would be a nonzero magnetic moment for the neutrino. To illustrate, we compute the emission rate for neutrino pair bremsstrahlung in neutron-neutron scattering through photon-neutrino magnetic moment coupling. We also present analogous differential rates for neutrino scattering off nucleons and electrons that determine neutrino opacities in supernovae. Employing current upper bounds from collider experiments on the tau magnetic moment, we find that the neutrino emission rate can exceed the rate through neutral current electroweak interaction by a factor two, signalling the importance of new particle physics input to a standard calculation of relevance to neutron star cooling. However, astrophysical bounds on the neutrino magnetic moment imply smaller effects.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Influences of nano zero valent ion of kaolin and Fe2+ supported kaolin nanoparticles for metal ion separation thorough ultrafiltration

In this work, clay based nanocomposite material was synthesized by wet chemical route and nano zero valent ion of kaolin (nZVI:Kaolin) were prepared using sodium borohydride reduction method. The nZVI:Kaolin and Fe:Kaolin nanoparticles were characterized using XRD, FTIR and SEM and antimicrobial activity. The nZVI:Kaolin and Fe:Kaolin were incorporated into polyethersulfone (PES) membranes for metal ion separation through ultrafiltration. The influences of nZVI:Kaolin and Fe supported clay nanoparticles on PES membranes were characterized their modification in functional properties, hydrophilicity and morphological structure. The clean water flux was enhanced to PES membrane by addition of nZVI:Kaolin and Fe:Kaolin nanoparticles. The Cu (ii), Ni (ii) and Cd (ii) metal ions flux was increased for 0.15 wt% of nZVI and Fe:Kaolin nanoparticles in PES which is due to increase in hydrophilicity and change in morphological structure

Thermal Photons in Strong Interactions

A brief survey is given on the current status of evaluating thermal production of photons from a strongly interacting medium. Emphasis is put on recent progress in assessing equilibrium emission rates in both hadronic and quark-gluon matter. We also give an update on the status of comparing theoretical calculations with experimental data from heavy-ion collisions at the SPS, as well as prospects for RHIC. Finally, applications of photon rate calculations to colorsuperconducting quark matter are discussed.Comment: Brief Review for Mod. Phys. Lett A, 15 pages latex incl. 12 ps/eps figs and style file ws-mpla.cl

Photon emission from bare quark stars

We investigate the photon emission from the electrosphere of a quark star. It is shown that at temperatures T\sim 0.1-1 MeV the dominating mechanism is the bremsstrahlung due to bending of electron trajectories in the mean Coulomb field of the electrosphere. The radiated energy for this mechanism is much larger than that for the Bethe-Heitler bremsstrahlung. The energy flux from the mean field bremsstrahlung exceeds the one from the tunnel e^{+}e^{-} pair creation as well. We demonstrate that the LPM suppression of the photon emission is negligible.Comment: 35 pages, 5 figure

Sigma Terms of Light-Quark Hadrons

A calculation of the current-quark mass dependence of hadron masses can help in using observational data to place constraints on the variation of nature's fundamental parameters. A hadron's sigma-term is a measure of this dependence. The connection between a hadron's sigma-term and the Feynman-Hellmann theorem is illustrated with an explicit calculation for the pion using a rainbow-ladder truncation of the Dyson-Schwinger equations: in the vicinity of the chiral limit sigma_pi = m_pi/2. This truncation also provides a decent estimate of sigma_rho because the two dominant self-energy corrections to the rho-meson's mass largely cancel in their contribution to sigma_rho. The truncation is less accurate for the omega, however, because there is little to compete with an omega->rho+pi self-energy contribution that magnifies the value of sigma_omega by ~25%. A Poincare' covariant Faddeev equation, which describes baryons as composites of confined-quarks and -nonpointlike-diquarks, is solved to obtain the current-quark mass dependence of the masses of the nucleon and Delta, and thereby sigma_N and sigma_Delta. This "quark-core" piece is augmented by the "pion cloud" contribution, which is positive. The analysis yields sigma_N~60MeV and sigma_Delta~50MeV.Comment: 22 pages, reference list expande

Probing mSUGRA via the Extreme Universe Space Observatory

An analysis is carried out within mSUGRA of the estimated number of events originating from upward moving ultra-high energy neutralinos that could be detected by the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO). The analysis exploits a recently proposed technique that differentiates ultra-high energy neutralinos from ultra-high energy neutrinos using their different absorption lengths in the Earth's crust. It is shown that for a significant part of the parameter space, where the neutralino is mostly a Bino and with squark mass $\sim 1$ TeV, EUSO could see ultra-high energy neutralino events with essentially no background. In the energy range 10^9 GeV < E < 10^11 GeV, the unprecedented aperture of EUSO makes the telescope sensitive to neutralino fluxes as low as 1.1 \times 10^{-6} (E/GeV)^{-1.3} GeV^{-1} cm^{-2} yr^{-1} sr^{-1}, at the 95% CL. Such a hard spectrum is characteristic of supermassive particles' $N$-body hadronic decay. The case in which the flux of ultra-high energy neutralinos is produced via decay of metastable heavy particles with uniform distribution throughout the universe is analyzed in detail. The normalization of the ratio of the relics' density to their lifetime has been fixed so that the baryon flux produced in the supermassive particle decays contributes to about 1/3 of the events reported by the AGASA Collaboration below 10^{11} GeV, and hence the associated GeV gamma-ray flux is in complete agreement with EGRET data. For this particular case, EUSO will collect between 4 and 5 neutralino events (with 0.3 of background) in ~ 3 yr of running. NASA's planned mission, the Orbiting Wide-angle Light-collectors (OWL), is also briefly discussed in this context.Comment: Some discussion added, final version to be published in Physical Review