Gibbs Dividing Surface and Helium Adsorption

All adsorption data is based on the definition of Gibbs dividing surface, which is a purely mathematical transformation. Adsorption measurements in microporous solids necessitate experimental determination of the dividing surface. An international protocol does not exist on how to perform this important measurement. Commonly, helium is assumed not to adsorb and used as a probe molecule for this measurement. Each experimentalist chooses an arbitrary set of conditions, often without even disclosing them, which adds to the confusion in adsorption literature. Here, a self-consistent method for the analysis of helium data is proposed which does not assume non-adsorbing helium. The method is compared to others using the extensive set of helium/silicalite data. The Gibbs dividing surface and hence the helium isotherms at all temperatures are determined

A prospective observational study of prescription pattern of topical steroids in dermatology OPD, BRIMS, Bidar, India

Background: In dermatology practice Glucocorticoids are the most commonly prescribed drugs. Steroids produce dramatic relief in inflammatory and pruritic skin conditions, if they are irrationally used they may lead to adverse effects. Hence this study was done to observe the prescription pattern of corticosteroids.Methods: It was a prospective observational study. The prescriptions of patient attending the dermatology OPD were screened for the usage of the corticosteroids. The demographic data, chief complaints, diagnosis and the details of the drugs were collected and analysed.Results: Out of 415 patients screened, 13.97% were prescribed corticosteroids. Corticosteroids prescribed by generic name were 26.01% and brand name was 82.05%. Corticosteroids alone were prescribed in 42.02% and along with antihistaminics/antibiotics/emollients in 66.04%. Corticosteroids were prescribed topically in 86.02% of patients and systemically in 22.04% of patients. Moderately potent steroids prescribed in 80.42% followed by potent (15.07%) and very potent steroids (12.56%). No fixed dose combination drugs were prescribed.Conclusions: The corticosteroids prescribed by brand names (82.05%) were more than generic names (26.01%), information about the strength of the steroid was not mentioned and usage of emollients was less. This indicates the need for continuous medical education for the clinicians

Drug pattern use during pregnancy: a prospective study at tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Pregnancy is a normal physiological state. It may be accompanied by some common conditions which may occur normally due to the physiological changes. For these, drug treatment may be necessary. Use of drug is of growing concern due to increased risk of teratogenicity. Hence use of safe drugs during pregnancy should be promoted. This study aims to study and evaluate the pattern of drug use in women attending the antenatal clinic.Methods: A prospective cross sectional study was conducted in Obstetrics & Gynecology out Patients department in BRIMS Teaching Hospital for a period of 3 months. All new antenatal cases reporting to outpatient department were included. Data were then analysed for drug use pattern, WHO core drug prescribing indicators and also according to FDA drug risk category and trimester wise drug use pattern.Results: It was observed that most common complaint was epigastric distress. Iron, calcium and Antacids were the most frequently prescribed drugs. 79% drugs were prescribed from essential drug list and 100% were given by generic name. Out of 3857 drugs prescribed 48.35% belonged to Cat A, 50.35% to Cat B and only 1.3% to Cat C and none of the drugs belonging to Cat D were prescribed.Conclusions: Overall drug use pattern is rational with few exceptions. Majority of the drugs prescribed are as per FDA category B. This type of study can help in evaluating the existing drug use pattern and in planning appropriate interventions to ensure rational drug therapy

Partial Replacement of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) with

Considering the need for low-cost construction materials in the rural areas in Sudan, especially in Darfur, this paper examines ordinary Portland cement (OPC). The use of as a replacement of Jebel Marrah volcanic ash in concrete. The ash is obtained from Jebel Marrah (mountains), west of Sudan. These materials have been chemically and physically characterized. Concrete cubes measuring 150mm*150mm*150mm were made from four different concrete mixes prepared by using pozzolana to replace 0%, 10%, 20% and 30% of OPC by weight. The workability of the fresh concrete mixes were evaluated using the slump test and compacting factor test while compressive strengths of concrete cubes were evaluated at 7, 28, and 90 days. The maximum compressive strength at all ages of testing was obtained at 20% replacement. Workability increased with an increase in replacement percentage and the strength of cement/ash concrete increased with curing period but decreased with increasing ash percentage. The results obtained showed that Pozzolana can be used to partially replace up to 20% of OPC in the production of concrete without compromising strength

Randomized controlled trial of rectal misoprostal and intramuscular oxytocin in the prevention of PPH

Background: PPH accounts for merely 23% of maternal mortality in developing countries.  Misoprostol is a uterotonic agent and is a PGE analogue commonly used in management of PPH. Oxytocin is another uterotonic agent which is now been introduced as intramuscularly effective agent to prevent PPH.This study aims to compare rectal misoprostol with intramuscular oxytocin in reducing blood loss in third stage of labor to prevent PPH. Objective of present study is to compare the clinical effect of rectal misoprostol with intramuscular oxytocin in prevention of PPH.Methods: A randomized study was conducted over duration of 3 months, at Department of OBG, BRIMS, Bidar, Karnataka, India. Patients with singleton pregnancy with the history of one previous LSCS and opting for elective LSCS were included in the study. Patients with risk pregnancy, such as pre eclampsia, cardiac disease and asthma or grand multipara were excluded from the study. Immediately after spinal anesthesia rectal misoprostol was given while oxytocin was administered after delivery of the baby. Incidence of PPH and amount of blood loss was observed and compared.Results: The difference in both the groups with regard to mean amount of blood loss, mean duration of the third stage of labor, and mean amount of fall in hemoglobin level was not statistically significant as P value was >0.05. The incidence of PPH and the need for additional oxytocic are slightly more in the misoprostol group. The incidence of shivering and pyrexia was more in the misoprostol group, but not so disturbing so as to lead to disuse of this drug.Conclusions: Oral misoprostol, though not a replacement of parenterally administered oxytocin, can be used safely in all deliveries for the prevention of postpartum hemorrhage

An Empirical Study of Leveraging Knowledge Distillation for Compressing Multilingual Neural Machine Translation Models

Knowledge distillation (KD) is a well-known method for compressing neural models. However, works focusing on distilling knowledge from large multilingual neural machine translation (MNMT) models into smaller ones are practically nonexistent, despite the popularity and superiority of MNMT. This paper bridges this gap by presenting an empirical investigation of knowledge distillation for compressing MNMT models. We take Indic to English translation as a case study and demonstrate that commonly used language-agnostic and language-aware KD approaches yield models that are 4-5x smaller but also suffer from performance drops of up to 3.5 BLEU. To mitigate this, we then experiment with design considerations such as shallower versus deeper models, heavy parameter sharing, multi-stage training, and adapters. We observe that deeper compact models tend to be as good as shallower non-compact ones, and that fine-tuning a distilled model on a High-Quality subset slightly boosts translation quality. Overall, we conclude that compressing MNMT models via KD is challenging, indicating immense scope for further research.Comment: accepted at EAMT 202

Study of patterns of prescribing antibiotics in geriatric patients admitted to the medical wards in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Evidence indicates high prevalence of inappropriate prescribing of medicines especially in the elderly. This can cause increased incidence of adverse drug reactions, morbidity, mortality and cost of treatment. Also inappropriate use of antibiotics promotes emergence of antimicrobial resistance. This study aims to study the prescribing patterns of antibiotics administered in geriatric patients, disease conditions for which the antibiotics were prescribed and adherence of these antibiotic prescriptions to the 18th WHO essential medicine list.Methods: A prospective study was undertaken, over duration of 4 months at the government teaching hospital, Bidar Institute of Medical sciences, Bidar. Patients of either sex above 65 years of age admitted to medicine wards due to infections or those who acquired infection due to hospitalization and were on antibiotic treatment / prophylaxis were included. Data collection was done by scrutinizing the inpatient case sheets and investigation reports. Individual data was collected on preformed performa.Results: Out of the 140 patients 44.2% patients were admitted for treatment of respiratory tract infections. 17.1% of the patients received antibiotics prophylactically. Cefotaxime was observed to be the most commonly prescribed antimicrobial agent. It was included in 50% of antibiotic prescriptions. It was observed that 90% of antibiotics prescribed were in adherence to the WHO essential drug list.Conclusions: Polypharmacy is commonly observed practice in geriatric patients. Apart from increasing the cost of treatment it also promotes irrational prescription of drugs. Most of the prescriptions were in adherence with the WHO’s Essential Medicine List but antibiotics were mainly prescribed empirically

Indo-Ganges River Basin Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) and Irrigated Area Mapping

This study was conducted to map detailed land use/land cover (LULC) and irrigated area categories in the Ganges and Indus River basins using near-continuous time-series 250 m resolution moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. The study used a unique data set—a stack of 46 images, 23 MODIS images each of 2-bands, compiled from MODIS terra images for the years 2013 and 2014. Field-plot data were gathered from 553 precise geographic locations covering about 8000 km in the basins. Spatial information on cropland and irrigated area distribution was restricted by the district-level crop statistics published by the state or national governments in India and Pakistan. Statistics were collected by irrigation and agriculture departments, but there was discrepancy in the irrigated area between departments. Water availability in major command areas varied frequently due to rainfall fluctuations, which leads to an inadequate water supply during critical crop growth stages. The study analyzed MODIS 16-day normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time-series data acquired for 2013 and 2014 using spectral matching techniques (SMTs). The map output accuracies were evaluated based on independent ground data and compared with subnational level statistics. The producer's and user's accuracies of the cropland classes were between 70% and 85%. The overall accuracy and the kappa coefficient estimated for irrigated areas were both 84%