Prevalence and presentation of cutaneous lesions in healthy neonates: A single-center study from Eastern India

Background: Skin lesions are much common and specific to neonates. They vary according to age, sex, and geographic region. Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of different cutaneous lesions in newborns and their association with the type of delivery, age, sex, and maturity. Materials and Methods: This study was done in neonatal follow-up clinic of department of Pediatrics, Maharaja Krushna Chandra Gajapati Medical College, Berhampur, Odisha. All the healthy newborns coming to the OPD from January 2015 to December 2016 were included in this prospective study, and their details were recorded in case recording format after taking informed consent from their guardians. Admitted patients were excluded from the study. Statistical assessments were the done by SPSS software. Results: Out of 500 neonates, skin lesionswere found in 366 (73.2%) patients. Physiological cutaneous lesions were most common, consisting 259 (70.7%) neonates. Out of the physiological lesions, benign transient lesions were seen in 163 (44.6%), out of which 95 (25.9%) had papulopustular dermatoses followed by erythema toxicum in 48 (13.1%) cases. Birthmarks were seen in 138 (37.8%) cases; pigmentary birthmarks 89 (24.5%) being the most common birthmarks followed by Mongolian spots in 71 (19.4%) cases. Pathological lesions were seen in 107 (29.3%) cases, of which nappy rash was detected in 65 (18.01%) cases. Term and male babies had a higher incidence of skin lesions. Conclusion: Benign lesions are the most common group of neonatal cutaneous manifestations which is followed by birthmarks. Conditions such as nappy rash and contact dermatitis are common pathological lesions andmajority of them are preventable. Differentiation of the physiologic skin lesions from the pathologic ones is essential to avoid unnecessary therapeutic interventions.&nbsp

Charge-transfer-driven enhanced room-temperature ferromagnetism in BiFeO3_3/Ag nanocomposite

We report observation of more than an order of magnitude jump in saturation magnetization in BiFeO$_3$/Ag nanocomposite at room temperature compared to what is observed in bare BiFeO$_3$ nanoparticles. Using transmission electron microscopy together with energy dispersive x-ray spectra (which maps the element concentration across the BiFeO$_3$/Ag interface) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we show that both the observed specific self-assembly pattern of BiFeO$_3$ and Ag nanoparticles and the charge transfer between Ag and O are responsible for such an enormous rise in room-temperature magnetization. The BiFeO$_3$/Ag nanocomposites, therefore, could prove to be extremely useful for a variety of applications including biomedical.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Nanotechnolog

Controlling Umklapp scattering in bilayer graphene moir'e superlattice

In this Letter, we present experimental findings on electron-electron scattering in a two-dimensional moir'e heterostructure with tunable Fermi wave vector, reciprocal lattice vector, and band gap. We achieve this in high-mobility aligned heterostructures of bilayer graphene (BLG) and hBN. Around half-filling, the primary contribution to the resistance of BLG/hBN aligned superlattices arises from electron-electron Umklapp (Uee) scattering, making the resistance of graphene/hBN moir'e devices significantly larger than that of non-aligned devices (where Uee is forbidden). We quantify the strength of the Uee scattering and find that it follows a universal scaling with Fermi energy and has a non-monotonic dependence on the charge carrier density. The Uee scattering is strongly electric field tunable and affected by layer-polarization of BLG. It has a strong particle-hole asymmetry - the resistance when the chemical potential is in the conduction band is significantly lesser than when it is in the valence band, making the electron-doped regime more practical for potential applications.Comment: Comments and suggestion are welcom

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Management of febrile seizure and differentiating it from epilepsy: A short review

Febrile seizure is the most common seizures seen in infancy and pre-school era. They are mostly benign in nature. There are two categories of febrile seizures, simple and complex. Both the International League against Epilepsy and the American academy of paediatrics have published definitions on the classification of febrile seizures. Simple febrile seizures are mostly benign, but a prolonged (complex) febrile seizure can have long term consequences. Most children who have a febrile seizure have normal health and development after the event, but recent evidence suggests a small subset of children presenting with seizures and fever may have recurrent seizure or develop epilepsy. Diagnosis is solely clinical. But other causes of fever and seizure must be ruled out. Electroencephalogram, lumbar puncture and neuroimaging, all are to be used for specific indications but not routinely. Treatment consists of acute management and prophylaxis for further attack. This review will give an overview of the definition of febrile seizures, epidemiology, evaluation, treatment, outcomes and recent research

Clinical Profile of Dengue Fever in Children: A Study from Southern Odisha, India

Background. In India, dengue epidemics are becoming more frequent (WHO, 2008). The majority of dengue viral infections are self-limiting, but complications may cause high morbidity and mortality. Objectives. To assess the clinical profile of the dengue infection in children less than 14 years of age and to evaluate the outcomes of dengue fever from September 2013 to August 2015 at the Pediatric Department of Maharaja Krishna Chandra Gajapati Medical College, the largest tertiary care hospital of southern Odisha. Results. A total of 97 cases were classified into 84 (86.59%) nonsevere and 13 (13.40%) severe dengue cases. The most common age of presentation was above 11 yrs. The mean age of admission was 8.7 yrs. The most common presenting symptom was fever seen in 100% and hepatomegaly (43.8%), the most common physical finding. Gastrointestinal bleeding was markedly seen in severe dengue (76.9%). Elevation in aspartate transaminase (SGOT) was found in 47.42% and thrombocytopenia in 27.5%. The correlation between hepatomegaly and elevated SGOT was significant (P value 0.0346). Case fatality rate (CFR) was 1.03%. The mean duration of hospitalisation was 3.8 days. Conclusion. In children, if symptoms like fever, pain, rashes, and vomiting are associated with hepatomegaly and elevated SGOT in context of low TPC, a strong possibility of dengue fever is present, especially in an epidemic setting. Early suspicion and effective management can reduce the severity

Large room-temperature magnetodielectric effect in polyvinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (0-3) nanocomposite thin films

We observe large room-temperature magnetodielectric effect (nearly 12% suppression of dielectric constant under similar to 20 kOe field) as well as its remarkable field-driven switch - from positive to negative - in polyvinyli-dene fluoride-trifluoroethylene/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (PVDF-TrFE/LSMO) thin films (0-3 connectivity) containing 7.5 volume% LSMO. The magnetodielectric effect is mapped with the volume fraction of the LSMO nanoparticle across 5-20 volume%. It reveals a close correlation among the LSMO nanoparticles volume fraction, their distribution pattern within the PVDF-TrFE matrix, uniformity in the magnetic domain size (imaged by magnetic force microscopy), and the magnetodielectric effect. The observed 20% jump in the intrinsic bulk capacitance at a critical magnetic field H, similar to 10 kOe can be exploited to develop smart nanoscale magnetoelectric devices

Effects of Ni doping at Co-site on dielectric, impedance spectroscopy and AC-conductivity in La2CoMnO6 double perovskites

Multifunctionalities of double perovskites depend strictly on the 3d/4d/5d-transition metals that can be purposefully tuned by doping effect at the transition metal-site. In the present study, the effects of Ni doping at the Co-site on the dielectric, magnetodielectric, complex impedance, complex modulus and ac-conductivity are investigated in detail for the La2Co1-xNixMnO6 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.5) double perovskites. At room temperature, all the compounds exhibited monoclinic crystal symmetry (space group P2(1)/n). No structural phase transition and/or impurity phases were observed after doping. The dielectric behavior is investigated over a wide frequency (100-1 MHz) and temperature (100-300 K) ranges, revealing an enhancement in the dielectric constant for the doped samples compared to parent La2CoMnO6. The magnetodielectric effect is also observed for x = 0 and x = 0.1 samples under 3 T magnetic field. The contributions of grain and grain boundaries at high and low frequencies become evident from the complex impedance spectroscopic and modulus studies. The corresponding carrier activation energies for all the samples are estimated from the Arrhenius fittings. The Nyquist plots are fitted well with an equivalent circuit consisting of two parallel resistance-capacitance elements connected in series, representing the grain and grain boundary effects. The behaviour of the temperature-dependent unitless exponent function predicts the Overlapping Large Polaron Tunneling mechanism in the parent system, while the non-overlapping Small Polaron Tunneling model best describes the doped x = 0.5 system. We confirmed by dc-conductivity study that the samples exhibited semiconductor-like nature in a wide temperature range. By revealing the dielectric, impedance and conductivity behaviours of Ni-doped La2CoMnO6, our study broadens the scope of further research on the doping effect at transition metal-sites in perovskites

Multiferroicity around Verwey transition in Fe3O4 thin films

We report observation of finite remanent polarization (∼10-80 nC/cm2) and reasonably strong magnetoelectric coupling in thin film of Fe3O4 within a temperature range from ∼40 K to Verwey transition temperature TCO ∼120 K. Both the intrinsic capacitance and remanent ferroelectric polarization decrease by ∼20-60% under 0-50 kOe field within this temperature range. The measurements using conventional techniques do not yield convincing results as the ferroelectric polarization is small and loss is large. However, use of more sophisticated protocol - which eliminates the contribution from loss and nonhysteretic polarization effectively - provides reliable information about remanent polarization and its change under magnetic field around the Verwey transition