Involving Nepali academics in health research

JMBTO SEE JHIn a world dominated by globalization and knowledge exchange conducting research and academic publishing has become increasingly important. In this light it is important to report the findings of research conducted in Nepal as it may be relevant and useful in North Korea as in Namibia. The editorial outlines some of the barriers and opportunities that exist for academics in Nepal

Optical Limiting in Single-walled Carbon Nanotube Suspensions

Optical limiting behaviour of suspensions of single-walled carbon nanotubes in water, ethanol and ethylene glycol is reported. Experiments with 532 nm, 15 nsec duration laser pulses show that optical limiting occurs mainly due to nonlinear scattering. The observed host liquid dependence of optical limiting in different suspensions suggests that the scattering originates from microbubbles formed due to absorption-induced heating.Comment: 10 pages, 5 eps figures, to appear in Chem. Phys. Let

Prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal: a systematic review and meta-analysis from 2000 to 2014

Background: Understanding the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal can help in planning for health services and recognising risk factors. This review aims to systematically identify and collate studies describing the prevalence of type 2 diabetes, to summarise the findings, and to explore selected factors that may influence prevalence estimates. Design: This systematic review was conducted in adherence to the MOOSE Guidelines for Meta-Analysis and Systematic Reviews of Observational Studies. Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLINE) database from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2014 was searched for the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among Nepalese populations with a combination of search terms. We exploded the search terms to include all possible synonyms and spellings obtained in the search strategy. Additionally, we performed a manual search for other articles and references of published articles. Results: We found 65 articles; ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were included in the analyses. These ten studies comprised a total of 30,218 subjects. The sample size ranged from 489 to 14,009. All the studies used participants older than age 15, of whom 41.5% were male and 58.5% female. All the studies were cross-sectional and two were hospital-based. Prevalence of type 2 diabetes ranged from a minimum of 1.4% to a maximum of 19.0% and pooled prevalence of type 2 diabetes was 8.4% (95% CI: 6.2 10.5%). Prevalence of type 2 diabetes in urban and rural populations was 8.1% (95% CI: 7.3 8.9%) and 1.0% (95% CI: 0.7 1.3%), respectively. Conclusions: This is, to our knowledge, the first study to systematically evaluate the literature of prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal. Results showed that type 2 diabetes is currently a high-burden disease in Nepal, suggesting a possible area to deliberately expand preventive interventions as well as efforts to control the disease

Gluon Condensates, Chiral Symmetry Breaking and Pion Wave Function

We consider here chiral symmetry breaking in quantum chromodynamics arising from gluon condensates in vacuum. Through coherent states of gluons simulating a mean field type of approximation, we show that the off-shell gluon condensates of vacuum generate a mass-like contribution for the quarks, giving rise to chiral symmetry breaking. We next note that spontaneous breaking of global chiral symmetry links the four component quark field operator to the pion wave function. This in turn yields many hadronic properties in the light quark sector in agreement with experiments, leading to the conclusion that low energy hadron properties are primarily driven by the vacuum structure of quantum chromodynamics.Comment: 25 pages, IP/BBSR/92-76, revte

Sommerfeld enhancement from Goldstone pseudo-scalar exchange

We point out that the exchange of a Goldstone pseudo-scalar can provide an enhancement in the dark matter annihilation rate capable of explaining the excess flux seen in high energy cosmic ray data. The mechanism of enhancement involves the coupling of s and d waves through the tensor force that is very strong and, in fact, singular at short distances. The results indicate that large enhancements require some amount of fine tuning. We also discuss the enhancement due to other singular attractive potentials, such as WIMP models with a permanent electric dipole.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, v2 includes contact informatio

Real measurements and Quantum Zeno effect

In 1977, Mishra and Sudarshan showed that an unstable particle would never be found decayed while it was continuously observed. They called this effect the quantum Zeno effect (or paradox). Later it was realized that the frequent measurements could also accelerate the decay (quantum anti-Zeno effect). In this paper we investigate the quantum Zeno effect using the definite model of the measurement. We take into account the finite duration and the finite accuracy of the measurement. A general equation for the jump probability during the measurement is derived. We find that the measurements can cause inhibition (quantum Zeno effect) or acceleration (quantum anti-Zeno effect) of the evolution, depending on the strength of the interaction with the measuring device and on the properties of the system. However, the evolution cannot be fully stopped.Comment: 3 figure

Pion Content of the Nucleon as seen in the NA51 Drell-Yan experiment

In a recent CERN Drell-Yan experiment the NA51 group found a strong asymmetry of $\bar u$ and $\bar d$ densities in the proton at $x\simeq0.18$. We interpret this result as a decisive confirmation of the pion-induced sea in the nucleon.Comment: 10 pages + 3 figures, Preprint KFA-IKP(TH)-1994-14 .tex file. After \enddocument a uu-encodeded Postscript file comprising the figures is appende

Heat Transfer in Viscous Free Convective Fluctuating MHD Flow Through Porous Media Past a Vertical Porous Plate with Variable Temperature

In this paper, free convective Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) flow of a viscous incompressible and electrically conducting fluid past a hot vertical porous plate embedded in a porous medium has been studied. The temperature of the plate varies both in space and time. The main objective of this paper is to study the effect of porosity of the medium coupled with the variation of plate temperature with regards to space and time. The effect of pertinent parameters characterizing the flow has been presented through the graph. The most interesting finding is that presence of porous media has no significant contribution to the flow characteristics. Further, heating and cooling of the plate due to convective current is compensated by the viscous dissipation.   Keywords: MHD flow/Span wise Co-sinusoidal/Free Convection /Heat transfer, porous mediu

Heat Transfer in Viscous Free Convective Fluctuating MHD Flow through Porous Media Past a Vertical Porous Plate with Variable Temperature

In this paper, free convective Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) flow of a viscous incompressible and electrically conducting fluid past a hot vertical porous plate embedded in a porous medium has been studied. The temperature of the plate varies both in space and time. The main objective of this paper is to study the effect of porosity of the medium coupled with the variation of plate temperature with regards to space and time. The effect of pertinent parameters characterizing the flow has been presented through the graph. The most interesting finding is that presence of porous media has no significant contribution to the flow characteristics. Further, heating and cooling of the plate due to convective current is compensated by the viscous dissipation. Keywords?MHD flow/Span wise Co-sinusoidal/Free Convection /Heat transfer, porous medium