Role of Game Theory in Public Health

Game theory, a branch of applied mathematics has been utilized by researchers in various fields including health to arrive at practical solutions to contemporary challenges. The article aims to introduce the subject to medical fraternity in India and recommends that the theory should be included in the syllabus of post graduate students of community medicine so that future generations of public health experts are aware of the theory and its potential use to find tangible solutions to public health issues

Management of Tuberculosis - The Need to Enforce Proper Treatment Guidelines among Private Practitioners in India

Tuberculosis continues to be a daunting challenge for our healthcare system. Even after fifteen years of the much publicised Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme that envisages directly observed short course chemotherapy (DOTS), TB continues to spread and drug resistant strains, MDR and XDR, are also increasingly reported. More than 50% of TB patients seeking private health care, but the level of awareness regarding treatment of TB among private practitioners appears to be poor. All this call for an urgent revamp of TB control strategy in India

3D character of backward erosion piping

Backward erosion piping is an important failure mechanism for cohesive water-retaining structures which are founded on a sandy aquifer. Nowadays, piping research and safety assessments are often based on experimental or numerical modelling using arbitrary model widths or even two-dimensional (2D) assumptions. This technical note shows the influence of this limitation through a series of small-scale experiments with varying model widths. The flow pattern proves to be highly three-dimensional (3D), influencing both the pipe geometry and critical gradients leading to piping failure. A 2D model is unable to capture the important aspects of the erosion mechanism and a correction factor needs to be applied if the minimum width for correctly simulating a 3D situation is not accomplished

Annealing of isolated amorphous zones in silicon

In situ transmission electron microscopy has been used to observe the production and annealing of individual amorphous zones in silicon resulting from impacts of 200-keV Xe ions at room temperature. As has been observed previously, the total amorphous volume fraction decreases over a temperature range from room temperature to approximately 500 °C. When individual amorphous zones were monitored, however, there appeared to be no correlation of the annealing temperature with initial size: zones with similar starting sizes disappeared (crystallized) at temperatures anywhere from 70 °C to more than 400 °C. Frame-by-frame analysis of video recordings revealed that the recovery of individual zones is a two-step process that occurred in a stepwise manner with changes taking place over seconds, separated by longer periods of stability

Grain refinement efficiency of a new oxide-containing master alloy for aluminium casting alloys

In this study, grain refinement efficiency of a new oxide master alloy based on MgAl2O4 was demonstrated on an A357 alloy. The grain size of the reference alloy was reduced by 50-60% with the addition of the master alloy and introduction of ultrasonic cavitation. A higher addition of master alloy was found to be not benificial in further reducing the grain size.The ExoMet Project, which is co-funded by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Programme (contract FP7-NMP3-LA-2012-280421), by the European Space Agency and by the individual partner organisations

Validation of the polysemen admixture on viability and acrosomal morphology of boar spermatozoa

Semen were collected using artificial vagina (AV), from 5 large white boars aged 2-2.5 years twice a week for 16 weeks in each of the two seasons, early rainy (ER) and late rainy (LR) seasons, to determine the effects of multiple semen pool admixture on the viability and acrosomal morphology. The semen qualities studied were sperm motility, live sperm and sperm concentration, while the acrosomal parameters includes normal apical ridge (NAR), damaged apical ridge (DAR), missing apical ridge (MAR) and loose apical ridge (LAC). There were no significant (P>0.05) seasonal effects. Three-boar semen admixture gave the highest percentage NAR, motility, live sperm concentration and least DAR and LAC, although these were not significantly (P>0.05) different from the 2-boar semen admixture. The result of this study suggests that 3-boar semen admixture is most suitable for use in artificial insemination program

Observation of ion beam induced magnetic patterning using off-specular polarized neutron reflectometry

The long-range magnetic structure in Co/Pt multilayers magnetically patterned by ion irradiation is observed by off-specular polarized neutron reflectivity. While both specular and off-specular measurements indicate the formation of an artificial domain structure when the sample is in its remanent state, resonant peaks seen in the diffuse scatter reveal long-range magnetic ordering with periodicity in agreement with the design value. These peaks are completely suppressed when the sample is saturated in plane, confirming their origin in the magnetic patterning of the multilayer