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Background: COVID-19 caused havoc on the mankind. Post COVID-19 effects were also very painful. Post COVID-19 symptoms affected almost every organ system of the body not only physically, but also had a very profound effect on psyche of different individuals. We studied prevalence of anxiety and depression in post COVID-19 phase. Materials and methods: All patients attending various outpatient Departments, who had positive RTPCR for COVID-19, more than 3 months before the present symptoms, were included in this study. The patients were divided in two groups depending upon severity of the COVID-19 infection in past. Group-I patients were treated for COVID-19 on domiciliary basis while those required admission to hospital for treatment for COVID-19 were included in Group-II. Scoring system decided if the patient was normal or had anxiety or depression. Results: Both anxiety and depression were common in post COVID-19 phase. Group-II patients were affected more 38.65% (167 out of 432) as compared to only 10.13% (62 out of 612) of Group-I patients. Depression was seen in 52 out of 237 (22.94%) in males as compared to female 20 out of 195 (10.25%) in Group-II. Anxiety was also more common in males in Group-II, 62 out of 237 (26.18%) than females 33 out of 195 (16.92%). Conclusion: Both anxiety and depression were very common post COVID-19 infection. Hospitalized patients suffered more than those who had milder disease and were treated at home for COVID-19. Males suffered more than the females.

Background: Vaginal dryness is common during and after menopause due to declining oestrogen, vulvovaginal atrophy (VVA), up to about a year after delivery during breast feeding and in many other conditions. This can be distressing to painful for women and may cause discomfort and dyspareunia. This study was performed to evaluate the use and practicability of secretions of male bulbourethral glands (Cowper's glands) to alleviate the discomfort, dyspareunia or pain at sexual activity, because of inadequate lubrication of vagina. Method: When a healthy male is sexually aroused, Cowper's glands produce a mucous-like fluid called pre-ejaculate. This fluid is a clear, colourless, viscous, and salty liquid, which is emitted from the urethra of the penis. A lubrication free wet condom on penis during foreplay can prevent loss of these secretions during an extended foreplay and lubrication around penis due to these secretions can effectively serve as physiological lubricant during coitus. Result: This technique and secretion of Cowper’s glands are a good lubrication for dryness of vagina during coitus. Sexual function assessment revealed a marked improvement in all domains of sexual function to both partners. A physiological secretion being natural to the sexual act and providing motive for extending foreplay; it is arguably the best lubricant for coitus in situations of dry vagina. Conclusion: Supposedly the secretions may also help in reducing dose of HRT for menopause, extended foreplay adds to psychosexual benefits and a boost to sexual hormonal milieu.

Finite element method is used to investigate the free vibration and harmonic analysis of functionally graded plates. The material properties of the plates are assumed to vary continuously through their thickness direction according to a power-law distribution of the volume fractions of the plate constituents. The four noded shell 181 elements are used to analyse the functionally graded plates. The aim is to fill the void in the available literature with respect to the free vibration results of Functionally Graded plates. Convergence and Comparison studies with respect to the number of nodes has been carried out using FEM. The natural frequency, mode shape and harmonic analysis of FG plate has been determined using finite element package ANSYS.

We present a new open-source and modular instrumentation package composed of up to ten automatic infiltrometers connected to data acquisition systems for automatic recording of multiple infiltration experiments. The infiltrometers are equipped with differential transducers to monitor water level changes in a Mariotte reservoir, and, in turn, to quantify water infiltration rates. The data acquisition systems consist of low-cost components and operate on the open-source microcontroller platform Arduino. The devices were tested both in the laboratory and on different urban and agricultural soils in France and India. More specifically, we tested three procedures to treat the transducers readings, including a filtering algorithm that substantially improved the ability to determine cumulative infiltration from raw data. We combined these three procedures with four methods for estimating the soil parameters from infiltrometer data, showing pros and cons of each scenario. We also demonstrated advantages in using the automatic infiltrometers when infiltration measurements were hindered by: i) linearity in cumulative infiltration curves owing to gravity-driven flow, ii) an imprecise description of the transient state of infiltration, and iii) the occurrence of soil water repellency. The use of the automatic infiltrometers allows the user to obtain more accurate estimates of soil hydraulic parameters, while also reducing the amount of effort needed to run multiple experiments.

In winter, offices use heat pumps, electric heaters, and blowers to stay warm, but these use traditional energy that is not sustainable or eco‐friendly. To meet the requirements of thermal comfort, an environmentally friendly and self‐sustainable system was developed at Madhav Institute of Technology and Science in Gwalior, India. This system includes a heat exchanger, a flat plate collector, an evacuated tube collector, and a pump. Two versions of the system were tested: one with a heat exchanger and an evacuated tube collector (HEWETC) and another with a heat exchanger and a flat plate collector (HEWFPC). The results showed that the HEWETC system is better at heating the room and has higher efficiency compared to the HEWFPC system. The HEWFPC system is 12% efficient, while the HEWETC system is 21% efficient. The room stayed at a constant temperature of 26.3°C all day. The HEWETC and HEWFPC systems provided 0.46 and 0.55 MJ of heat to the room, respectively. During the heating season, the solar heat collected was 8030.38 kWh, and electricity used was 5229.7 kWh. The HEWETC system proved to be effective and suitable for heating the building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

© 2015 Ye et al.Background: We previously reported the generation of a reporter line of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) with enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) expression driven by the α-myosin heavy chain (αMHC) promoter. The GFP+/αMH

The PVC-PVDF-GO nanocomposites thin films were prepared by solution casting method. A thin film of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), PVC-PVDF-GO was uniformly irradiated with a carbon ion beam at 70 MeV over a surface of 1 cm2 in a vacuum of almost 5 × 10−7 torr with ion fluencies of 1 × 1012 and 2 × 1013 ions/cm2. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was observed to track changes in the β-content, represented as F(β)%, during the recrystallization of PVDF after irradiation. At ambient temperature, the variation of dielectric constant and dielectric loss has been studied for pristine and irradiated samples. Ion beam irradiation caused significant changes to the dielectric constant and dielectric loss. After irradiation, the dielectric constant (ϵ′) increases at lower fluence (1 × 1012 ions/cm2), but decreases at higher fluence (2 × 1013 ions/cm2) in comparison with the pristine polymer samples. In PVDF, free radicals are generated by chain scission and cross-linking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The PVC/PVDF@BaZrO3 nanohybrid thin films were prepared by solution grown method. The dielectric constant of the films was higher due to BaZrO3 incorporation in the PVC/PVDF matrix. The PVDF and PVC/PVDF nanohybrid films were irradiated with 105 MeV Au2+ ion beam under vacuum condition at room temperature with two ion fluence. The irradiated thin film of PVC/PVDF@BaZrO3 exhibits relatively low dielectric constant with low loss at different temperature because of thermodynamic stability of β-phase. However, almost complete amorphization was observed in BaZrO3 filler in PVC/PVDF@BaZrO3 nanohybrid samples. After being irradiated with a 105 MeV Au2+ ion beam, the (ϵ′) dielectric constant, FTIR and SEM parameters were used to evaluate changes in dielectric and structural properties for all the samples. In FTIR spectra, new peaks appeared at 1705 cm−1, disappeared or minutely shifted due to high energy of ion beam. It is interesting to note that BaZrO3 phase becomes amorphized through 105 MeV Au2+ ion irradiation that causes an increased dielectric constant along with cross-linking effect of nanohybrid films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]