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Background: Depression, affecting 350 million globally, poses significant morbidity and mortality. The correlation between major depressive disorder (MDD) and obesity is noted, with studies indicating poorer treatment outcomes among obese individuals. Measuring weight and body mass index (BMI) could aid in predicting depression treatment outcomes, influencing drug efficacy due to their ease of measurement, amid the shared public health burden of MDD and obesity. Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives of the study are to evaluate baseline BMI's impact on antidepressant response in newly diagnosed outpatient department (OPD) patients at a tertiary care center. Materials and Methods: This longitudinal observational study was conducted with OPD patients at a tertiary care center, aged 18-65 years with newly diagnosed MDD. Assessment tools included the Diagnostic Criteria for Research accompanying the ICD-10, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, and physical measurement devices. Sample size determination considered BMI groups: Normal to underweight (N1=120), overweight (N2=120), and obese (N3=70). The methodology involved patient history, examination, and follow-up assessments after 6 weeks, analyzing antidepressant response statistically. Results: Obese patients exhibited reduced treatment response rates compared to normal and overweight counterparts. Responders had lower mean BMI. Gender disparities in obesity prevalence were noted. Limitations: The study's limitations include a small sample size of 310 cases, single-center design, and potential selection bias in a tertiary care setting. Conclusion: The findings underscore the complex relationship between BMI, depression severity, and treatment response. Obese individuals demonstrated higher initial depression scores and poorer treatment response, echoing previous research. The study highlights the need for personalized treatment approaches that consider individual BMI levels to optimize depression management strategies effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sensory processing (SP) indicates the ability of the nervous system to receive, analyze, process, and respond to external sensory input and coordinates motor movements accordingly. Children with various neurodevelopmental disorders, like autism spectrum disorder, have SP issues. However, studies regarding SP issues in attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to typically developing children are relatively less. Aims and Objectives: To study the SP pattern of children with ADHD, to compare with the control group, and to study the correlation of symptom severity with SP deficit in children with ADHD. Materials and Methods: All children attending the child guidance clinic at R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital were screened, and children with ADHD without any other comorbid disorder as diagnosed by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 were selected. Their ADHD symptom severity was assessed using the ADHD test, and SP was assessed using the Short Sensory Profile (SSP). Results: The SSP mean score of the children with ADHD was significantly different than the mean score of the control group, and the percentage of children having a definite difference in SP was significantly different in the ADHD children group compared to the control group. The severity of the SP deficit also correlates with the severity of ADHD symptoms, as found by the correlation study. Conclusion: Children with ADHD have shown a definite difference in SP compared to controls, and the severity of the sensory problem is proportionate to the severity of the symptoms of ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have estimated the rate of production of lepton pairs from a magnetised hot and dense QCD medium. We get rid of all kinds of previously considered approximations in terms of the strength of the magnetic field as well as the components of the momentum of the emitted lepton pairs. We find an enhancement in the rate in presence of an arbitrary strength of the magnetic field. With further consideration of an effective model scenario, we find the appearance of a gap in the rate. The implications of such a gap and other quasi-quark effects on the rate have been investigated in detail.

We present a calculation of the heavy quark momentum diffusion coefficients in a strongly magnetized medium, within the Lowest Landau Level (LLL) approximation. In particular, we use the Hard Thermal Loop (HTL) resummed effective gluon propagator, generalized for a hot and magnetized medium. Using this effective HTL gluon propagator along with the LLL quark propagator we analytically derive the full results for the longitudinal and transverse momentum diffusion coefficients for charm and bottom quarks beyond the static limit. Going beyond the static limit of the heavy quark, we also show numerical results for these coefficients in two special cases where the heavy quark is moving either parallel or perpendicular to the external magnetic field.

A Dual QCD formulation for S U (3) color gauge has been developed in terms of dual gauge potentials, building on our previously published study for the S U (2) case with zero bario-chemical potential [H. C. Chandola, G. Punetha and H. Dehnen, Nucl. Phys. A 945, 226 (2016).] and taking into account the local as well as topological structure of the color gauge group into its dynamics. For the purpose of examining the nonperturbative characteristics of QCD, the dynamical configuration of the resulting dual QCD vacuum and its flux tube configuration have been examined. The thermal behavior of the nonperturbative QCD vacuum has been investigated for exploring the dynamics of quark-hadron phase transition at finite chemical potential. Related thermodynamic quantities and equation of state (EoS) to characterize quark matter have also been discussed within the framework of dual QCD-based hadronic bag which guarantees the critical parameters and the associated critical points for quark-hadron phase transition. These thermodynamic quantities are expected to play important roles in understanding the order of quark-hadron phase transition and are likely to predict the features of a first-order quark-hadron phase transition for finite chemical potential. Moreover, we have investigated the bulk properties of quark matter by constructing the free energy change and the associated surface tension for quark-hadron phase transition. For consistency and compatibility check, we have also compared our results with state-of-the-art three-loop Hard Thermal Loop perturbative results and available lattice QCD results and in the process found reasonable agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the advances made in the literature to understand the phase transitions of quark matter in the presence of strong magnetic field and finite temperature (zero quark chemical potential) are reviewed. We start by discussing the physics behind the Magnetic catalysis (MC) at zero/finite temperature and then focus on the lattice predictions for inverse magnetic catalysis (IMC) at high temperature and strong magnetic fields. Possible explanations for the IMC are covered, as well. Finally, we discuss recent efforts to modify QCD (quantum chromodynamics) effective models to reproduce the IMC observed on the lattice simulations. We emphasize the fact that applying thermomagnetic effects on the coupling constant of the NJL model significantly improve the effectiveness of the NJL model to obtain a reasonable physical description of hot and magnetized quark matter being in agreement with lattice results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, there are 18 sections discussing various current topics in the field of relativistic heavy-ion collisions and related phenomena, which will serve as a snapshot of the current state of the art. Section 1 reviews experimental results of some recent light-flavored particle production data from ALICE collaboration. Other sections are mostly theoretical in nature. Very strong but transient magnetic field created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions could have important observational consequences. This has generated a lot of theoretical activity in the last decade. Sections 2, 7, 9, 10 and 11 deal with the effects of the magnetic field on the properties of the QCD matter. More specifically, Sec. 2 discusses mass of π 0 in the linear sigma model coupled to quarks at zero temperature. In Sec. 7, one-loop calculation of the anisotropic pressure are discussed in the presence of strong magnetic field. In Sec. 9, chiral transition and chiral susceptibility in the NJL model is discussed for a chirally imbalanced plasma in the presence of magnetic field using a Wigner function approach. Sections 10 discusses electrical conductivity and Hall conductivity of hot and dense hadron gas within Boltzmann approach and Sec. 11 deals with electrical resistivity of quark matter in presence of magnetic field. There are several unanswered questions about the QCD phase diagram. Sections 3, 11 and 18 discuss various aspects of the QCD phase diagram and phase transitions. Recent years have witnessed interesting developments in foundational aspects of hydrodynamics and their application to heavy-ion collisions. Sections 12 and 15–17 of this article probe some aspects of this exciting field. In Sec. 12, analytical solutions of viscous Landau hydrodynamics in 1+1D are discussed. Section 15 deals with derivation of hydrodynamics from effective covariant kinetic theory. Sections 16 and 17 discuss hydrodynamics with spin and analytical hydrodynamic attractors, respectively. Transport coefficients together with their temperature- and density-dependence are essential inputs in hydrodynamical calculations. Sections 5, 8 and 14 deal with calculation/estimation of various transport coefficients (shear and bulk viscosity, thermal conductivity, relaxation times, etc.) of quark matter and hadronic matter. Sections 4, 6 and 13 deal with interesting new developments in the field. Section 4 discusses color dipole gluon distribution function at small transverse momentum in the form of a series of Bells polynomials. Section 6 discusses the properties of Higgs boson in the quark–gluon plasma using Higgs–quark interaction and calculate the Higgs decays into quark and anti-quark, which shows a dominant on-shell contribution in the bottom-quark channel. Section 13 discusses modification of coalescence model to incorporate viscous corrections and application of this model to study hadron production from a dissipative quark–gluon plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Removal of impulse noise from corrupted digital images has been a hitch in the field of image processing. Random nature of impulse noise makes the task of noise removal more critical. Different filters have been designed for noise removal purpose and have shown formidable results mostly for low and medium level noise densities. In this paper, a new two-stage technique called k-means clustering identified fuzzy filter (KMCIFF) is proposed for de-noising gray-scale images. KMCIFF consists of a k-Means clustering-based high density impulse noise detection, followed by a fuzzy logic-oriented noise removal mechanism. In the detection process, a 5 x 5 window centering upon each pixel of the image is considered. K-Means clustering is applied on each 5 x 5 window to group the pixels into different clusters to detect whether the central pixel of each window is noisy or not. In the noise removal process, a 7 x 7 window centering upon each noisy pixel of the image, as detected by the clustering is considered. Fuzzy logic is used to find the nonnoisy pixel in each 7 x 7 window having the highest influence on the central noisy pixel of the window. Finally, that pixel is replaced by the approximated pixel intensity value calculated from the highest influencing non-noisy pixel. KMCIFF is evaluated upon seven different standard test images using peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index measurement (SSIM), Percentage of actual nonnoisy pixels detected as erroneous out of the total number of pixels (PDAE) and average run time (ART). It has been observed that KMCIFF shows significantly more competitive visual and quantitative performances vis-a-vis most of the extant traditional filters at high noise densities of up to 90%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We find a general expression for the one-loop self-energy function of neutral $$\rho $$ -meson due to $$\pi ^+\pi ^-$$ intermediate state in a background magnetic field. The pion propagator used in this expression was given by Schwinger; it is valid for arbitrary magnitudes of this field. Restricting our study to weak fields, we calculate the decay rate $$\Gamma (\rho ^0 \rightarrow \pi ^+ +\pi ^-)$$ , which changes negligibly from the vacuum value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Removal of random valued noisy pixel is extremely challenging when the noise density is above 50%. The existing filters are generally not capable of eliminating such noise when density is above 70%. In this paper a region wise density based detection algorithm for random valued impulse noise has been proposed. On the basis of the intensity values, the pixels of a particular window are sorted and then stored into four regions. The higher density based region is considered for stepwise detection of noisy pixels. As a result of this detection scheme a maximum of 75% of noisy pixels can be detected. For this purpose this paper proposes a unique noise removal algorithm. It was experimentally proved that the proposed algorithm not only performs exceptionally when it comes to visual qualitative judgment of standard images but also this filter combination outsmarts the existing algorithm in terms of MSE, PSNR and SSIM comparison even up to 70% noise density level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have pointed out the possibilities of quantum Hall effect (QHE) and Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillation in the transportation of strongly magnetized degenerate quark matter- expected inside the highly dense compact star, such as the neutron star. The anisotropic pattern of electrical conductivity and resistivity tensor is explored in classical to quantum cases by considering the Landau quantization of quarks in the presence of a finite magnetic field. With increasing magnetic field, classical to quantum transitions are realized through enhanced (reduced) resistivity (conductivity) with QHE/SdH type oscillatory patterns. Estimating QCD relaxation time for degenerate quark matter from Ref. [57] , e B ≈ (1 − 4) m π 2 can be considered a strong magnetic field for massless and degenerate quark matter with quark chemical potential μ ≈ 0.2 − 0.4 GeV. We discovered exotic quantum magnetic oscillating patterns associated with the QHE and SdH phenomena within the mentioned regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heavy quark momentum diffusion coefficient (κ) is one of the most essential ingredients for the Langevin description of heavy quark dynamics. In the temperature regime relevant to the heavy ion collision phenomenology, a substantial difference exists between the lattice estimations of κ and the corresponding leading order (LO) result from the hard thermal loop (HTL) perturbation theory. Moreover, the indication of poor convergence in the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative analysis has motivated the development of several approaches to incorporate the non-perturbative effects in the heavy quark phenomenology. In this work, we estimate the heavy quark diffusion coefficient based on the Gribov-Zwanziger prescription. In this framework, the gluon propagator depends on the temperature-dependent Gribov mass parameter, which has been obtained self-consistently from the one-loop gap equation. Incorporating this modified gluon propagator in the analysis, we find a reasonable agreement with the existing lattice estimations of κ within the model uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]