Search

An energetic γ-ray burst (GRB), GRB 211211A, was observed on 11 December 20211,2. Despite its long duration, typically associated with bursts produced by the collapse of massive stars, the observation of an optical-infrared kilonova points to a compact binary merger origin3. Here we report observations of a significant (more than five sigma) transient-like emission in the high-energy γ-rays of GRB 211211A (more than 0.1 gigaelectronvolts) starting 103seconds after the burst. After an initial phase with a roughly constant flux (about 5 × 10−10erg per second per square centimetre) lasting about 2 × 104seconds, the flux started decreasing and soon went undetected. Our detailed modelling of public and dedicated multi-wavelength observations demonstrates that gigaelectronvolt emission from GRB 211211A is in excess with respect to the flux predicted by the state-of-the-art afterglow model at such late time. We explore the possibility that the gigaelectronvolt excess is inverse Compton emission owing to the interaction of a late-time, low-power jet with an external source of photons, and find that kilonova emission can provide the seed photons. Our results open perspectives for observing binary neutron star mergers.

AbstractThe study aims to evaluate the potency of two hundred natural antiviral phytocompounds against the active site of the Severe Acquired Respiratory Syndrome - Coronavirus − 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Main-Protease (Mpro) using AutoDock 4.2.6. The three- dimensional crystal structure of the Mpro(PDB Id: 6LU7) was retrieved from the Protein Data Bank (PDB), the active site was predicted using MetaPocket 2.0. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved viral protease inhibitors were used as standards for comparison of results. The compounds theaflavin-3-3’-digallate, rutin, hypericin, robustaflavone, and (-)-solenolide A with respective binding energy of −12.41 (Ki = 794.96 pM); −11.33 (Ki = 4.98 nM); −11.17 (Ki = 6.54 nM); −10.92 (Ki = 9.85 nM); and −10.82 kcal/mol (Ki = 11.88 nM) were ranked top as Coronavirus Disease − 2019 (COVID-19) Mproinhibitors. The interacting amino acid residues were visualized using Discovery Studio 3.5 to elucidate the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional interactions. The study was validated by i) re-docking the N3-peptide inhibitor-Mproand superimposing them onto co-crystallized complex and ii) docking decoy ligands to Mpro. The ligands that showed low binding energy were further predicted for and pharmacokinetic properties and Lipinski’s rule of 5 and the results are tabulated and discussed. Molecular dynamics simulations were performed for 50 ns for those compounds using the Desmond package, Schrödinger to assess the conformational stability and fluctuations of protein-ligand complexes during the simulation. Thus, the natural compounds could act as a lead for the COVID-19 regimen after in-vitroand in- vivoclinical trials.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Inhalational therapy, today, happens to be the mainstay of treatment in obstructive airway diseases (OADs), such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and is also in the present, used in a variety of other pulmonary and even non-pulmonary disorders. Hand-held inhalation devices may often be difficult to use, particularly for children, elderly, debilitated or distressed patients. Nebulization therapy emerges as a good option in these cases besides being useful in the home care, emergency room and critical care settings. With so many advancements taking place in nebulizer technology; availability of a plethora of drug formulations for its use, and the widening scope of this therapy; medical practitioners, respiratory therapists, and other health care personnel face the challenge of choosing appropriate inhalation devices and drug formulations, besides their rational application and use in different clinical situations. Adequate maintenance of nebulizer equipment including their disinfection and storage are the other relevant issues requiring guidance. Injudicious and improper use of nebulizers and their poor maintenance can sometimes lead to serious health hazards, nosocomial infections, transmission of infection, and other adverse outcomes. Thus, it is imperative to have a proper national guideline on nebulization practices to bridge the knowledge gaps amongst various health care personnel involved in this practice. It will also serve as an educational and scientific resource for healthcare professionals, as well as promote future research by identifying neglected and ignored areas in this field. Such comprehensive guidelines on this subject have not been available in the country and the only available proper international guidelines were released in 1997 which have not been updated for a noticeably long period of over two decades, though many changes and advancements have taken place in this technology in the recent past. Much of nebulization practices in the present may not be evidence-based and even some of these, the way they are currently used, may be ineffective or even harmful.

India as a country has 17.7% of the world’s population with the limited availability of land resource which is about only 2.4% of the world’s land. Being a developing nation and such huge population to accommodate, a number of problems can be seen on a daily basis such as high traffic congestion and unmanaged traffic on the roads. Irritating rush, wastage of time and fuel, are being severe hindrance to make the transportation comfortable. As a country, due to availability of limited lands, the only option is to manage the traffic smartly. Hitherto, a number of attempts have been made in this regard, still the statically managed traffic lights can be seen at the junction of roads. So in this work, it was tried to give an easy, but implementable method to manage traffic lights effectively. A hybrid approach based enhanced Convolution Neural Network model was used for the classification and have given the comparison with other model based technique i.e. Support Vector Machine. Our proposed enhanced model produced 91.01% accuracy and it is able to outperform the existing model.

The Mach number, angle of attack and altitude of operation for an interceptor vary widely during the course of its trajectory. As a result, the interceptor Center of Pressure (CP) locations move significantly around a given Center of Gravity (CG) location at these operating conditions. This results in an inevitable variation in aerodynamic static stability leading to stable and unstable operating regions. In order to ensure good speed of response during the interceptor homing phase, lesser static stability is desirable. Hence the requirement to handle aerodynamic instability at some other operating conditions in the interceptor envelope become inevitable. Since flexibility has a strong bearing on autopilot design, it becomes necessary to control unstable operating points in the presence of flexibility modes. Despite the static stability variation, aerodynamic design can control the level of maximum instability of the configuration. Hence the maximum static instability the autopilot can handle has to be specified for aerodynamic configuration design. This paper brings out the limitations of autopilot design in controlling an unstable interceptor with low bending mode frequencies in terms of maximum instability the autopilot design can handle, which serves as an important input for aerodynamic design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of topical nasal vasoconstrictor administration during flexible bronchoscopy is unclear.

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text

This technical note describes an application of nonlinear controllability theory to the problem of spacecraft attitude control using control moment gyroscopes (CMGs). Nonlinear controllability theory is used to show that a spacecraft carrying one or more CMGs is controllable on every angular momentum level set in spite of the presence of singular CMG configurations, that is, given any two states having the same angular momentum, any one of them can be reached from the other using suitably chosen motions of the CMG gimbals. This result is used to obtain sufficient conditions on the momentum volume of the CMG array that guarantee the existence of gimbal motions which steer the spacecraft to a desired spin state or rest attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right ventricle and left ventricle are physically coupled through the interventricular septum. Therefore, changes in the geometry and mechanics of one ventricle can directly affect the function of the other. In treatment of pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension, the left ventricle is often overlooked, with clinical focus primarily on improving right ventricular function. Pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension represents a disease distinct from adult pulmonary arterial hypertension based on etiology and survival rates. We aimed to assess left ventricular torsion rate in pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension and its role in right ventricular dysfunction. Cardiac magnetic resonance images with tissue tagging were prospectively acquired for 18 pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension (WHO class I) patients and 17 control subjects with no known cardiopulmonary disease. The pulmonary arterial hypertension cohort underwent cardiac magnetic resonance within 48 hours of clinically indicated right heart catheterization. Using right heart catheterization data, we computed single beat estimation of right ventricular end-systolic elastance (as a measure of right ventricular contractility) and ventricular vascular coupling ratio (end-systolic elastance/arterial afterload). Left ventricular torsion rate was quantified from harmonic phase analysis of tagged cardiac magnetic resonance images. Ventricular and pulmonary pressures and pulmonary vascular resistance were derived from right heart catheterization data. Right ventricular ejection fraction and interventricular septum curvature were derived from cardiac magnetic resonance. Left ventricular torsion rate was significantly reduced in pulmonary arterial hypertension patients compared to control subjects (1.40 ± 0.61° vs. 3.02 ± 1.47°, P< 0.001). A decrease in left ventricular torsion rate was significantly correlated with a decrease in right ventricular contractility (end-systolic elastance) (r= 0.61, P= 0.007), and an increase in right ventricular systolic pressure in pulmonary arterial hypertension kids (r= –0.54, P= 0.021). In both pulmonary arterial hypertension and control subjects, left ventricular torsion rate correlated with right ventricular ejection fraction (controls r= 0.45, P= 0.034) (pulmonary arterial hypertension r= 0.57, P= 0.032). In the pulmonary arterial hypertension group, interventricular septum curvature demonstrated a strong direct relationship with right ventricular systolic pressure (r= 0.7, P= 0.001) and inversely with left ventricular torsion rate (r= –0.57, P= 0.013). Left ventricular torsion rate showed a direct relationship with ventricular vascular coupling ratio (r= 0.54, P= 0.021), and an inverse relationship with mean pulmonary arterial pressure (r= –0.60, P= 0.008), and pulmonary vascular resistance (r= –0.47, P= 0.049). We conclude that in pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension, reduced right ventricular contractility is associated with decreased left ventricular torsion rate.