Meson PVV Interactions are determined by Quark Loops

We show that all abnormal parity three-body meson interactions can be adequately described by quark loops, evaluated at zero external momentum, with couplings determined by $U(N_f)$ symmetry. We focus primarily on radiative meson decays which involve one pseudoscalar. The agreement with experiment for non-rare decays is surprisingly good and requires very few parameters, namely the coupling constants $g_{\pi qq}$ and $g_{\rho qq}$ and some mixing angles. This agreement extends to some three-body decays that are dominated by pion pairs in a P-wave state.Comment: 21 pages, Revtex, one figur

AIR: A Light-Weight Yet High-Performance Dataflow Engine based on Asynchronous Iterative Routing

Distributed Stream Processing Systems (DSPSs) are among the currently most emerging topics in data management, with applications ranging from real-time event monitoring to processing complex dataflow programs and big data analytics. The major market players in this domain are clearly represented by Apache Spark and Flink, which provide a variety of frontend APIs for SQL, statistical inference, machine learning, stream processing, and many others. Yet rather few details are reported on the integration of these engines into the underlying High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure and the communication protocols they use. Spark and Flink, for example, are implemented in Java and still rely on a dedicated master node for managing their control flow among the worker nodes in a compute cluster. In this paper, we describe the architecture of our AIR engine, which is designed from scratch in C++ using the Message Passing Interface (MPI), pthreads for multithreading, and is directly deployed on top of a common HPC workload manager such as SLURM. AIR implements a light-weight, dynamic sharding protocol (referred to as "Asynchronous Iterative Routing"), which facilitates a direct and asynchronous communication among all client nodes and thereby completely avoids the overhead induced by the control flow with a master node that may otherwise form a performance bottleneck. Our experiments over a variety of benchmark settings confirm that AIR outperforms Spark and Flink in terms of latency and throughput by a factor of up to 15; moreover, we demonstrate that AIR scales out much better than existing DSPSs to clusters consisting of up to 8 nodes and 224 cores.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 15 plot

A clinical study on perianal abscess

BACKGROUND: A perianal abscess is an acute phase manifestation of a collection of pus that arises from infection of cryptoglandular epithelium lining the anal canal or from a skin infection. Surgical drainage is the cornerstone of treatment for perianal abscesses. They represent approximately 60% of reported anorectal abscesses. Although perianal abscess is common in healthy individuals there are other risk factors that are strongly associated such as diabetes , crohn’s disease, obesity, immunosuppression, anal fissure etc. Isolation of gut specific organisms from the pus from a perianal abscess would suggest that a fistula may be present and a careful review of the case is necessary. This study describes the incidence of perianal abscess in different sex and age groups, the complications and the risk factors associated. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is to identify the most common risk factor causing perianal abscess, to identify the most common age group involved, to identify the most common organism grown in culture and the sensitive antibiotic group and to study the most common complications associated. METHODS AND MATERIALS: 100 patients who present with perianal abscess in GovtKilpauk Medical College for a period of 7 months from Jan 2015 to July 2015 are included in the study. Patients under the age group of 10 yrs, recurrent perianal abscess and other types of anorectal abscess are excluded from the study. RESULTS: In this study 63% were males and 37% were females and the mean age of male and female patients was 42.3+11.8 yrs (range 21-80) and 37.6+7.4 yrs (range 19- 50) respectively.The most common presenting feature was pain which was present in all patients (100%) followed by swelling (78%), fever (23%) and discharge (6%). Majority of patients had abscesses in the lateral location with 34% of abscesses in the right lateral side and 31% of abscesses in the left lateral side, followed by 29% of abscesses in the posterior location and the least (6%) in the anterior relation of anal canal.Of the 100 specimens, all except 10 specimens yielded bacterial growth. Aerobic bacteria only were isolated in 80 patients (80%), anaerobic bacteria only in 4 patients (4%), mixed aerobic and anaerobic bacteria in 6 patients (6%). A total of 10 anaerobic and 86 aerobic isolates were recovered from 100 abscesses. The predominant isolates were Escherichia coli (n = 39),Staphylococcus aureus (n=16), Proteus mirabilis (n=12), Enterococcus spp. (n=11), Bacteroids fragilis (n=10), Klebsiella (n=9).An underlying condition was present in 34 patients out of 100 patients. A single condition was present in 24 patients, two comorbid conditions were present in 9, and three comorbidity were present in one. Diabetes mellitus (23%), hypertension (6%), and obesity (13%) were the most common conditions. One patient had AIDS and another one patient had HBsAg infection. The patients were followed for a period of three months. 94% of patients developed no complications. Complications occurred in six patients. Of these five patients developed fistula in ano and one presented with recurrent abscess. CONCLUSION: Perianal abscesses are more common in men than in women. Majority of the aerobic and anaerobic organisms cultured from the perianal abscesses are of GIT and skin flora origin. Isolation of gut specific organisms from the pus from a perianal abscess would suggest that a fistula may be present and a careful review of the case is necessary. Whereas if skin organisms are grown in culture further evaluation is unnecessary. Incision and drainage is the main treatment for perianal abscess. An anal fistula indicates a chronic phase of an unhealed abscess. Because of this after drainage of perianal abscesses it is advised to do careful examination under anaesthesia seven to ten days later when the results of culture and sensitivity are available to look for an underlying fistula

Moral and Cultural Awareness in Emerging Adulthood: Preparing for Multi-Faith Workplaces

The study evaluates a pilot course designed to respond to findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) and similar findings reporting changes in U.S. life course development and religious participation through an intervention based on sociological theories of morality. The purpose of the study is to investigate the impacts of a business course in a public university designed to prepare emerging adults for culturally and religiously diverse workplaces. The intended outcomes are for students to better identify their personal moral values, while also gaining cultural awareness of the moral values in six different value systems: five major world religions and secular humanism. The study response rate was 97 percent (n = 109). Pre- and post-test survey data analyze changes in the reports of students enrolled in the course (primary group) compared to students in similar courses but without an emphasis on morality (controls). Qualitative data include survey short answer questions, personal mission statements, and student essays describing course impacts. Quantitative and qualitative results indicate reported increases in identification of personal moral values and cultural awareness of other moral values, providing initial evidence that the course helps prepare emerging adults for multi-faith workplaces

Does playground improvement increase physical activity among children? A quasi-experimental study of a natural experiment

Outdoor recreational spaces have the potential to increase physical activity. This study used a quasi-experimental evaluation design to determine how a playground renovation impacts usage and physical activity of children and whether the visitations correlate with children’s physical activity levels and parental impressions of the playground. Observational data and intercept interviews were collected simultaneously on park use and park-based activity among playground visitors at pre- and postrenovation at an intervention and a comparison park during three 2-hour periods each day over two weeks. No detectable difference in use between parks was observed at followup. In the intervention park, attendance increased among boys, but decreased among girls although this (nonsignificant) decline was less marked than in the comparison park. Following renovation, there was no detectable difference between parks in the number of children engaged in MVPA (interaction between park and time: P=0.73). At the intervention park, there was a significant decline in girls engaging in MVPA at followup (P=0.04). Usage was correlated with parental/carer perceptions of playground features but not with physical activity levels. Renovations have limited the potential to increase physical activity until factors influencing usage and physical activity behavior are better understood

Validation of Visual Estimation of Portion Size Consumed as a Method for Estimating Food Intake by Young Indian Children

In this observational study, estimation of food intake was evaluated using recording of portion size consumed, instead of post-weighing, as a method. In total, 930 feeding episodes were observed among 128 children aged 12–24 months in which actual intake was available by pre- and post-weighing. For each offering and feeding episode, portion size consumed was recorded by an independent nutritionist—as none, less than half, half or more, and all. Using the pre-weighed offering, available intake was estimated by multiplying portion sizes by the estimated weight. The estimated mean intake was 510.4 kilojoules compared to actual intake of 510.7 kilojoules by weighing. Similar results were found with nestum (52.0 vs 56.2 g), bread (3.8 vs 3.7 g), puffed rice (1.7 vs 1.9 g), banana (31.3 vs 24.4 g), and milk (41.6 vs 44.2 mL). Recording portion size consumed and estimating food intake from that provides a good alternative to the time-consuming and often culturally-unacceptable method of post-weighing food each time after a feeding episode

Boosting and lassoing new prostate cancer SNP risk factors and their connection to selenium

We begin by arguing that the often used algorithm for the discovery and use of disease risk factors, stepwise logistic regression, is unstable. We then argue that there are other algorithms available that are much more stable and reliable (e.g. the lasso and gradient boosting). We then propose a protocol for the discovery and use of risk factors using lasso or boosting variable selection. We then illustrate the use of the protocol with a set of prostate cancer data and show that it recovers known risk factors. Finally, we use the protocol to identify new and important SNP based risk factors for prostate cancer and further seek evidence for or against the hypothesis of an anticancer function for Selenium in prostate cancer. We find that the anticancer effect may depend on the SNP-SNP interaction and, in particular, which alleles are present

Effect of Zinc Added to Multivitamin Supplementation Containing Low-dose Vitamin A on Plasma Retinol Level in Children—A Double-blind Randomized, Controlled Trial

In a community-based double-blind randomized trial in children aged 6–35 months, both intervention and control groups received a multi-vitamin syrup containing vitamin A, while the intervention group had zinc gluconate (equivalent to 10 mg of elemental zinc) additional in the syrup. There was a significant decrease in diarrhoea and pneumonia in the intervention group. This study was undertaken to investigate if addition of zinc to vitamin A had improved plasma retinol levels, which, in turn, was responsible for the effects observed in the intervention group. In a randomly-selected subsample of 200 children—100 each from the intervention and the control group, plasma retinol levels after 120 days of supplementation were measured. There was no difference in the mean plasma retinol levels [the difference in the mean 0.46 μg/dL (95% confidence interval -1.42–2.36)] between the two groups following supplementation. No difference in plasma retinol levels was observed in the subgroups based on baseline nutritional status and plasma zinc levels. Addition of zinc to low-dose vitamin A in this study did not improve the vitamin A status of children and cannot explain morbidity effects of the intervention