27 research outputs found
The unusual case of child tantrum - a case report
No full textThis is an amazing case report about an eight years old child that displayed child tantrum more synonym of the younger age group. This case also entails how the author managed to uncover the true reasons for his tantrum that left his guardian truly amazed at the ability of physicians to solve a seemingly difficult behavioural problem
Randomized controlled trial about pain medication flupirtine ignores recent pharmacovigilance warnings
No full textLivia Puljak1,2 1Laboratory for Pain Research, University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia; 2Department for Development, Research and Health Technology Assessment, Agency for Quality and Accreditation in Health Care and Social Welfare, Zagreb, CroatiaOn October 16, 2017 in the Journal of Pain Research, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing efficacy and safety of flupirtine versus piroxicam in postoperative pain in patients undergoing lower limb surgery was published.1 However, this paper fails to report important information. Author’s reply Sowmya Chinnaiyan,1 Narayana Sarala,1 Heddur Shanthappa Arun21Department of Pharmacology, 2Department of Orthopedics, Sri Devaraj Urs Medical College, Sri Devaraj Urs Academy of Higher Education and Research, Kolar, Karnataka, India We thank Livia Puljak for the valuable insights on the article titled “A comparative study of efficacy and safety of flupirtine versus piroxicam in postoperative pain in patients undergoing lower limb surgery” published in the Journal of Pain Research. The concerns highlighted in the Letter to the Editor have been answered.View the original paper by Chinnaiyan and colleagues. 
THREE TANK MODEL: A Top down or bottom up dominance analysis
No full text<p>(An old paper published in the Journal of Theoretics)</p>
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<p>The author proposes a simple mechanical model of biomass flow in an ecosystem using a hydrological model. Three tanks representing three trophic levels to determine which form of control is predominantly effective and under what conditions. The model shows that in the question of which is the dominant control, the cascade processes of control from top (predator control) or from bottom (Prey control), Top down control is predominant when the system is predator efficient, where mortality due to intraspecific competition is steady and bottom up control is predominant in systems where the predators are inefficient and mortality due to intraspecific competition is varying dependent on resource levels. The behavior of trophic levels under each type of control is also discussed.</p
The association between dental health locus of control and sociodemographic factors among urban and rural people in Davangere, India
No full textIntroduction:Oral diseases have underlying socio-behavioral determinants. Oral health promotion programs aimed at behavior modification will be effective if the factors that motivate health behaviors are known. One of the constructs widely used to predict and analyze health behaviors is the health locus of control scale (HLOC). Aim: To determine the association between sociodemographic factors and dental HLOC among a selected sample of urban and rural people in Davangere district, Karnataka state, India. Materials and Methods: The study sample consisted of 300 people, 150 each from urban and rural area, aged 18 years and above. Sociodemographic data was collected by a self-administered questionnaire. Dental HLOC was assessed by a questionnaire prepared by the author in local language. The association between sociodemographic variables and dental HLOC was analyzed using Chi-square test. Results: Significantly more number of people in urban area had internal LOC when compared to rural people (P = 0.00). There was significant association between gender in rural areas (P < 0.001), education level (P < 0.001) and socioeconomic status (P < 0.001) with dental HLOC. There was no significant association between age, gender in urban areas and marital status with dental HLOC. Conclusions: Gender, education level and socioeconomic status were associated with dental HLOC beliefs. The findings can be useful in planning effective oral health promotion programs aimed at positive oral health behavior modification for people from varying sociodemographic backgrounds by modifying their health control beliefs
Growing bubbles and freezing drops: depletion effects and tip singularities
No full textIn this thesis, the author investigates the growth of gas bubbles in a supersaturated solution and the freezing of water drops when placed on a cold plate. Supersaturated solutions are common in nature and industry; perhaps the best know examples are carbonated drinks, such as beer or soda. These are bottled under pressure, and contain an amount of dissolved gas, which is in a saturated state. When opened, the pressure in the container decreases to the same level as atmospheric pressure. At that moment the solution is supersaturated, which means it contains more gas that what it would thermodynamically “want to”. Hence, the gas needs to escape from the liquid, and given the right conditions bubbles will form in this process, as we usually see them on the walls of our glass or bottle when having a drink. Besides this example, bubbles can grow for similar reasons in the blood of scuba divers with decompression sickens, volcanic magma, molten polymers and metals, and oil wells. Hence, understanding the basic physics of how bubbles grow can contribute to better understand (and perhaps control) some of these phenomena. The experimental study presented here focuses on bubbles that grow under a supersaturation ten times smaller than a normal carbonated drink, which is especially interesting for oil extraction processes. The freezing drop problem holds an analogy to the bubble growth in that both phenomena are driven by mass diffusion and heat conduction, respectively, which are physically analogous. Understanding the physics of solidification processes is crucial for 3D printing and other deposition processes. It is also a very important aspect in the preparation of ice before curling matches. In this case, the investigation focussed on the formation of the pointy tip that appears at the end of the freezing process. In this work it is experimentally and theoretically shown that for a wide temperature range the shape of this tip does not depend on the freezing dynamics
Advanced Methods in Post Cartesian Imaging
No full textabstract: Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging with data acquisition on a non-rectangular grid permits a variety of approaches to cover k-space. This flexibility can be exploited to achieve clinically relevant characteristics -- fast yet full coverage for short scan times, center out schemes for short Te, over-sampled k-space for robustness to motion, long acquisition time for improved signal-to-noise (SNR) performance and benign under-sampling (aliasing) artifact. This dissertation presents advances in Periodically Rotated Overlapping ParallEL Lines with Enhanced Reconstruction (PROPELLER) trajectory design and improved reconstruction for spiral imaging. Scan time in PROPELLER imaging can be reduced by tailoring the trajectory to the required Field-Of-View (FOV). A technique to design the PROPELLER trajectory for an elliptical FOV is described. The proposed solution is a set of empirically derived closed form equations that preserve the standard PROPELLER geometry and specify the minimum number of blades necessary. Reconstructing spiral scans requires accurate trajectory information. A simple method to measure the deviation from the designed trajectory due to gradient coupling is presented. A line phantom is used to force a uniform structure in a predetermined orientation in k-space. This uniformity permits measurements of zeroth order trajectory deviations due to gradient coupling. Spiral reconstruction is also sensitive to B0 inhomogeneities (variations in the external magnetic field). This sensitivity manifests itself as a spatially varying blur. An algorithm to correct for concomitant field and first order B0 inhomogeneity effects is developed based on de-blurring via convolution by separable kernels. To reduce computation time, an empirical equation for sufficient kernel length is derived. It is also necessary to know the noise characteristics of the proposed algorithm; this is investigated via Monte-Carlo simulations. The algorithm is further extended to correct for concomitant field artifacts by modeling these artifacts as blurring due to a temporally static field map. This approach has the potential for further reduction in computational cost by combining the B0 map with the concomitant field map to simultaneously correct for artifacts resulting from both field inhomogeneities and concomitant field map.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Electrical Engineering 201
Modeling and process innovation in nanowire fusion
No full textPrinted electronics are predominantly created by first fabricating circuits and then integrating them with functional devices using pick and place methods. A low-energy and inexpensive approach to creating the printed circuits is to deposit electrically conductive metallic nanoparticles in film or pattern form. Since the electrical resistivity after deposition is usually high, there is a need for post deposition sintering. During such sintering, the diffusion of atoms across the boundaries of the nanoparticles cause interparticle neck growth and leads to formation of electron flow paths. Previous work has shown that metallic nanowires (NWs) can achieve higher post-sintering conductivity at lower temperature than other nanoparticle shapes. The first major contribution of this dissertation is the development of the first atomistics motivated analytical model to predict thermally driven neck growth between NWs. Mechanistic observations from Molecular Dynamics simulations are combined with the fundamental equations of mass, energy and momentum balance to derive and validate analytical equations for neck growth between two NWs. This model can predict neck growth as a function of the NW radius, but importantly and uniquely it also incorporates the newly uncovered role of relative NW orientation on the sintering kinetics.
The second major contribution of this thesis is to extend the above model, which is limited to NW pairs, to multi-NW ensembles. This realizes a key advance by achieving a several orders of magnitude reduction in the computational time and effort, as compared to direct use of the NW pair model or of Molecular Dynamics simulations which are computationally intractable for experimentally relevant time scales. More importantly from a design and manufacturing point-of-view, this approach not only predicts the structure of the ensemble (i.e., neck growth) but also successfully predicts a key property (i.e., electrical resistivity). The predictions of both sintering temperature and resistivity agree well with experiments.
The third major contribution of this work is the creation of a new scalable process for fabrication of 3D circuits that conform to the surface of a targeted rigid 3D object. Existing processes suffer from one or more issues such as high electrical resistivity, low process throughput, poor repeatability, and poor conformance to complex surface geometries. The Form-Fuse process developed here is based on sequential vacuum-forming and Flash Light Sintering. It enables high throughput, robust integration with the target object, low electrical resistivity, and modular circuit fabrication. We experimentally examine the effect of the change in nanomaterial morphology during both the forming and the sintering stages. A combination of electron microscopy, temperature measurements, spectrophotometry, Molecular Dynamics simulations and Electromagnetic simulations is used to understand the effect of the part shape and the nanomaterial morphology on process performance. Further, the aforementioned NW sintering models are extended to the Form-Fuse to examine its applicability to designing the crucial Flash Light Sintering step. Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Decentralization and accountability : are voters more vigilant in local than in national elections ?
No full textDefining vigilance as retrospective voting - where voters evaluate incumbents on their performance during their entire term in office - the author compares voter behavior in local and national elections to make inferences about whether voters are more vigilant in monitoring government at the local level. Using data from 14 major states in India over the period 1960-92, she contrasts voters'behavior in state legislative assembly elections with their behavior in national legislative elections. In state assembly elections voter reward incumbents for local income growth, and punish them for a rise in inequality, over their entire term in office. But in national elections voters behave myopically, rewarding growth in national income and a fall in inflation and inequality only in the year preceding the election. The evidence is consistent with greater voter vigilance and government accountability in local than in national elections.National Governance,Election Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Parliamentary Government,Politics and Government
Photo-Induced Cytotoxicity and Anti-Metastatic Activity of Ruthenium(II)-Polypyridyl Complexes Functionalized with Tyrosine or Tryptophan
No full textThe synergistic effect of oxygen, light, and photosensitizer (PS) has found applications in medicine for the treatment of cancer through photodynamic therapy (PDT). Induction of apoptosis to cancerous cells will prevent tumor metastasis that spreads cancer cells to the neighboring organs/tissues. Herein, we report the two apoptotic Ru(II)–polypyridyl complexes that are functionalized with pendant amino acid moieties tyrosine (1) and tryptophan (2), respectively. These two water soluble complexes were found to interact strongly (K1a = (1.18 ± 0.28) × 105 M−1 and K2a = (1.57 ± 0.77) × 105 M−1) with CT-DNA. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) studies revealed that these complexes bind to CT-DNA through an entropically driven process. Both the complexes showed photo-induced cytotoxicity and exhibit apoptotic activity under photo-irradiation conditions. The comet assay indicated that these complexes can damage cellular DNA, which is attributed to the significant build-up of 1O2 level even on irradiation with low intensity light (10 J cm−2, λRange 450–480 nm). This photoinduced DNA damage and apoptosis in A549 cells was induced by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and occurred through up-regulation of apoptotic marker caspase-3. Control experiments under dark conditions revealed an insignificant cytotoxicity towards these cells for two photosensitive molecules
