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The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially strained health systems across the globe. In particular, documented disruptions to voluntary family planning and reproductive health care due to competing health priorities, service disruptions, stockouts, and lockdowns are significantly impacting reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health. As governments and family planning programmes grapple with how best to respond to the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic on family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH), the implementation and adaptation of evidence-based practices is crucial. In this commentary, we outline applications of the High Impact Practices in Family Planning (HIPs) towards COVID-19 response efforts. The HIPs are a set of evidence-based family planning practices which reflect global expert consensus on what works in family planning programming. Drawing upon preliminary COVID-19 data, documented experiences from prior health emergencies, and recommended programme adaptations from a variety of global health partners, we outline situations where specific HIPs may assist family planning programme managers in developing context-specific and evidence-based responses to COVID-19-related impacts on FP/RH, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the accessibility, availability, and continuity of voluntary family planning services across the world.

The Joint Automated Repository for Various Integrated Simulations (JARVIS) is an integrated infrastructure to accelerate materials discovery and design using density functional theory (DFT), classical force-fields (FF), and machine learning (ML) techniques. JARVIS is motivated by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) principles of developing open-access databases and tools to reduce the cost and development time of materials discovery, optimization, and deployment. The major features of JARVIS are: JARVIS-DFT, JARVIS-FF, JARVIS-ML, and JARVIS-tools. To date, JARVIS consists of ≈40,000 materials and ≈1 million calculated properties in JARVIS-DFT, ≈500 materials and ≈110 force-fields in JARVIS-FF, and ≈25 ML models for material-property predictions in JARVIS-ML, all of which are continuously expanding. JARVIS-tools provides scripts and workflows for running and analyzing various simulations. We compare our computational data to experiments or high-fidelity computational methods wherever applicable to evaluate error/uncertainty in predictions. In addition to the existing workflows, the infrastructure can support a wide variety of other technologically important applications as part of the data-driven materials design paradigm. The JARVIS datasets and tools are publicly available at the website: https://jarvis.nist.gov.

Novel Coronavirus (nCoV-2019) is a highly infectious viral outbreak that has so far infected more than 110 million people worldwide. Fast viral transmission and high infection rates have severely affected the entire population, especially the old aged and comorbid individuals leaving significantly less time to find some effective treatment strategy. In these challenging times, convalescent plasma (CP) therapy came as a ray of hope to save humankind. It is a form of passive immunization that has been used to treat various infectious diseases since 1890, including the 1918 Spanish flu, 2002/03 SARS-CoV, 2009 H1N1, 2012 MERS-CoV, and 2014 Ebola outbreak. The transfusion includes administration of CP containing a high value of neutralizing antibodies against the virus in hospitalized patients. This chapter summarizes the potential outcome of CP therapy in the treatment of nCoV-2019 patients.

Pancreatic cancer has been identified as one of the deadliest malignancies because it remains asymptomatic and usually presents in the advanced stage. Tumor immune evasion is a well-known mechanism of tumorigenesis in various forms of human malignancies. Chronic inflammation via complex networking of various inflammatory cytokines in the local tissue microenvironment dysregulate the immune system and support tumor development. Pro-inflammatory mediators present in the tumor microenvironment increase the tumor burden by causing immune suppression through the generation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells and T regulatory cells. These cells, along-with myofibroblasts, create a highly immunosuppressive and resistant tumor microenvironment and are thus considered as one of the culprits for the failure of anti-cancer chemotherapies in pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients. Targeting these myeloid-derived suppressor cells using various combinatorial approaches might have the potential for abrogating the resistance and suppressive nature of the pancreatic tumor microenvironment. Therefore, there is more curiosity in studying the crosstalk of myeloid-derived suppressor cells with other immune cells during pathological conditions and the underlying mechanisms of immunosuppression in the current scenario. In this article, the possible role of myeloid-derived suppressor cells in inflammation-mediated tumor progression of pancreatic adenocarcinoma has been discussed.

Many technological applications depend on the response of materials to electric fields, but available databases of such responses are limited. Here, we explore the infrared, piezoelectric, and dielectric properties of inorganic materials by combining high-throughput density functional perturbation theory and machine learning approaches. We compute Γ-point phonons, infrared intensities, Born-effective charges, piezoelectric, and dielectric tensors for 5015 non-metallic materials in the JARVIS-DFT database. We find 3230 and 1943 materials with at least one far and mid-infrared mode, respectively. We identify 577 high-piezoelectric materials, using a threshold of 0.5 C/m2. Using a threshold of 20, we find 593 potential high-dielectric materials. Importantly, we analyze the chemistry, symmetry, dimensionality, and geometry of the materials to find features that help explain variations in our datasets. Finally, we develop high-accuracy regression models for the highest infrared frequency and maximum Born-effective charges, and classification models for maximum piezoelectric and average dielectric tensors to accelerate discovery.

Increasing evidence suggests a role of inflammation during the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis (OA). The local and systemic inflammation was studied in 33 patients of different KL grades, grade2 (n = 11), grade3 (n = 6) and grade4 (n = 16). The levels of cytokines, adipokines and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) were measured in serum and synovial fluid (SF) by flow cytometry and ELISA, respectively. The frequency of T cells and CD161 expression was measured by flow cytometry. The levels of IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-10 were significantly higher in sera and SF of patients with OA as compared to healthy control's serum. Higher levels of MMP9 and leptin and lower levels of adiponectin were observed in SF as compared to serum. The MMP9 in SF and MMP13 levels in serum and SF decreased in KL grade 4 cases. In these patients, higher levels of leptin and lower levels of adiponectin were observed in SF versus patients of lower grades. There was increased infiltration of CD8+ T cells in SF of OA cases with decreased frequency in grade 4 cases. The expression of CD161 on T cells was significantly higher in SF than peripheral blood with significant upregulation in grade 4 patients. The CD161 expression had significant positive correlation with IL-17 in the serum of patients. The ROC curves of CD161 expression significantly distinguished grade 2 and grade 4 patients. Collectively, an elevated CD161 expression on T cells in circulation and synovial compartment clearly distinguished lower and higher grade patients warranting studies to assess its role as a contributing factor towards OA progression.

Complex behavior poses challenges in extracting models from experiment. An example is spin liquid formation in frustrated magnets like Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$. Understanding has been hindered by issues including disorder, glass formation, and interpretation of scattering data. Here, we use a novel automated capability to extract model Hamiltonians from data, and to identify different magnetic regimes. This involves training an autoencoder to learn a compressed representation of three-dimensional diffuse scattering, over a wide range of spin Hamiltonians. The autoencoder finds optimal matches according to scattering and heat capacity data and provides confidence intervals. Validation tests indicate that our optimal Hamiltonian accurately predicts temperature and field dependence of both magnetic structure and magnetization, as well as glass formation and irreversibility in Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$. The autoencoder can also categorize different magnetic behaviors and eliminate background noise and artifacts in raw data. Our methodology is readily applicable to other materials and types of scattering problems., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures

Perovskite oxides are a promising material platform for use in a wide range of technological applications including electronics, sensors, fuel cells, and catalysis. This is owing to the extraordinary tunability of their physical and chemical properties via defect engineering. The feasibility and the stability of a defect, such as a substitutional dopant, in the host lattice is usually obtained via experiments and/or through detailed quantum mechanical calculations. Both of these conventional routes are expensive and time consuming. An alternative is a data-driven machine learning (ML)-based approach. In this work, we have applied ML techniques to identify the factors that influence defect formation energy, which is an important measure of the stability of the defects, in perovskite oxides. Using 13 elemental properties as features and random forest regression, we demonstrate a systematic approach to down-selecting from the larger set of features to those that are important, establishing a framework for accurate predictions of the defect formation energy. We quantitatively show that the most important factors that control the dopant stability are the dopant ionic size, heat of formation, effective tolerance factor, and oxidation state. Our work reveals previously unknown correlations, chemical trends, and the interplay between stability and underlying chemistries. Hence, these results showcase the efficacy of ML tools in identifying and quantifying different feature-dependencies and provide a promising route toward dopant selection in the perovskites. We have developed a framework that itself is general and can be potentially applied to other material classes.

The effects of strain and hydrogenation on the electronic and magnetic properties of monolayers of Ta based dichalcogenides (TaX2; X = S, Se, Te) are investigated using density-functional theo-ry. We predict a complex scenario of strain-dependent magnetic phase transitions involving par-amagnetic, ferromagnetic, and modulated antiferromagnetic states. Covering one of the two chalcogenide surfaces with hydrogen switches the antiferromagnetic/nonmagnetic TaX2 mono-layers to a semiconductor. Our research opens new pathways towards the manipulation of mag-netic properties for future optoelectronics and spintronics applications., 13 pages, 5 figures

The authors assessed the sexual behavior patterns of 368 unmarried sexually active adolescent boys (294 rural 74 urban) and their knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and correct use of condoms. The mean knowledge score for STDs was low and significantly associated with educational level (p < .0001). The mean awareness score for correct use of condoms was 0.42 on a scale of 10 and significantly associated with employment status and age at first coitus (p < .001). There was a negative correlation (-0.17) between literacy and knowledge of correct use of condoms. Selection of the first sexual partner usually a prostitute was influenced by employment status age at first coitus and literacy level. These data suggest that sexually active adolescent boys in Gujarat India are inadequately prepared to protect themselves against STDs and therefore that it is imperative to impart to them some knowledge of safe sex. (authors)

A study examines the sexual behavior and level of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) of unmarried adolescent boys from 8 randomly selected villages of the Anand taluka in Gujarat, India. A house to house survey was conducted on all unmarried and sexually active males who were interviewed with the help of structured and pretested questionnaires. These questionnaires consisted of questions on their sexual practices; awareness of STDs and AIDS; and knowledge of proper condom use. Results revealed that from a total sample of 178 adolescent boys the mean age at first coitus was 18.01 years, and in over 87% of the cases a prostitute was the first sexual contact. About 82 of the sample population (46%) had not heard of AIDS and 34% had no knowledge of other sexually transmitted diseases. About 67 boys (37.6%) had never seen a condom and only 9 (5.05%) had ever used one. The mean knowledge score about correct condom use was only 1.44 on a 10-point scale and was found to be associated with the economic status of the subject population, the type of sexual partner, and the educational status of the parents.

Among primitive tribal communities in India, girls are traditionally married immediately after attaining menarche. In the present study all adolescent girls in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy from 15 randomly selected villages of 4 tribal development blocks of Udaipur district (South Rajasthan State, India) were studied. The data were analyzed with reference to parity, anthropometry, anemia, and other dietary deficiencies. A total of 54 adolescent girls (13-19 years of age) were included in the present study. Of these, 59% (n = 32) were found to be primigravidas, 30% (n = 20) were pregnant for the second time, and 2 girls were pregnant for the third time. A majority were illiterate (n = 46), and almost all of them were found to be suffering from moderate-to-severe anaemia (n = 51). Similarly, a large majority (n = 46) had a body mass index (BMI) less than normal and body weight less than 42 kg. Two of the pregnant girls were also found to be suffering from pellagra, while approximately one-third of the girls had vitamin A deficiency. Only 2 had ever practiced family planning, consisting of some herbal preparations given to them by the folk doctor. Of the study participants, 19 girls (35.0%) were in the third trimester of pregnancy; of these, 7 had evidence of malpresentation or cephalopelvic disproportion. This study highlights the health profile and needs of pregnant adolescents among tribal populations in a drought-affected area in India.Among primitive tribal communities in India, girls are traditionally married immediately after attaining menarche. In the present study, all adolescent girls in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters of pregnancy from 15 randomly selected villages of 4 tribal development blocks of Udaipur district (South Rajasthan State, India) were studied. The data were analyzed with reference to parity, anthropometry, anemia, and other dietary deficiencies. A total of 54 adolescent girls (ages 13-19) were included in the present study. Of these, 59% (n = 32) were found to be primigravidas, 30% (n = 20) were pregnant for the 2nd time, and 2 girls were pregnant for the 3rd time. A majority were illiterate (n = 46), and almost all of them were found to be suffering from moderate-to-severe anemia (n = 51). Similarly, a large majority (n = 46) had a body mass index (BMI) less than normal and body weight less than 42 kg. 2 of the pregnant girls were also found to be suffering from pellagra, while approximately 1/3 of the girls had vitamin A deficiency. Only 2 had ever practiced family planning, consisting of some herbal preparations given to them by the folk doctor. Of the study participants, 19 girls (35.0%) were in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy; of these, 7 had evidence of malpresentation or cephalopelvic disproportion. This study highlights the health profile and needs of pregnant adolescents among tribal populations in a drought-affected area in India.

A study designed to determine the age at which children receive their first vaccinations in India revealed a wide disparity between male and female children a finding that goes along with other reports of the countrys gender-based discrimination. The study involved 1000 children who were brought by their parents to the immunization clinic of the general hospital in Udaipur city. The study sought to determine: 1) the childrens age at 1st vaccination; 2) their sex and nutritional status; 3) their socioeconomic status; and 4) maternal literacy. The study found the 48.8% of the children were brought for their 1st vaccination between the ages of 6-10 weeks the ideal age at which to begin immunization. 21% received their 1st vaccination after age 9 months. The mean age was 3.4 months for male children and 6.1 months for female children -- a statistically significant difference. 84.8% of children in the highest income group received their first vaccine between the ages of 6-10 weeks while only 52.5% of the children in the middle income group and 24.2% of the lowest income group received their vaccinations during the ideal period. The study also found a direct correlation between maternal literacy and the age at 1st vaccination. 79.5% of children with literate mothers received their 1st vaccine during the optimal period a figure that decreased to 20.5% for children with illiterate mothers. 25.5% of all the children were suffering from malnutrition; for males the rate of malnutrition was 15.8% and for females 36.6%. The study concludes that in order for India to have a successful immunization program (currently the immunization coverage is a dismal 58%) parents must be instructed on the optimal immunization age and gender biases must be abolished.

Worldwide, societal shifts and behavioural patterns exacerbated by unique developmental vulnerabilities create a confluence of factors that place today's adolescents at heightened risks for poor health outcomes. Country-level data show that continued investment in effective prevention and treatment strategies is essential to protect adolescents' sexual and reproductive health. Whereas strategies must be tailored to the developmental needs of this age group and their social contexts, effective approaches are multifaceted. All adolescents need access to quality youth-friendly services provided by clinicians trained to work with this population. Sex education programmes should offer accurate, comprehensive information while building skills for negotiating sexual behaviours. Girls and boys also need equal access to youth development programmes that connect them with supportive adults and with educational and economic opportunities. Although progress has been made since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, adolescents continue to be disproportionately burdened by threats to their sexual and reproductive health.

Using first-principles computations, we study the effect of epitaxial strains on electronic structure variations across ZnSe/ZnTe nano-heterostructures. Epitaxial strains of various types are modeled using pseudomorphic ZnSe/ZnTe heterostructures. We find that a wide range of band gaps (spanning the visible solar spectrum) and band offsets (0-1.5 eV) is accessible across the heterostructures in a controllable manner via reasonable levels of epitaxial strain. In addition to quantum confinement effects, strain in ZnSe/ZnTe heterostructures may thus be viewed as a powerful degree of freedom that can enable the rational design of optoelectronic devices.

Address for correspondence: Dr Moazzam Ali, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland Email: alimoa@who.int Despite extensive global efforts and investment to reduce the problem, maternal mortality remains high in many lowand middle-income countries.1 About 225 million women in lowand middle-income countries are thought to have an unmet need for a modern method of family planning.2 It has been estimated that up to one third of maternal deaths could be averted through the use of effective contraception by women wishing to postpone or limit further childbearing.3

The present study was undertaken to determine the incidence and related risk factors for coronary heart diseases and hypertension in the rural population of Kheda district, Gujarat (India). The observations from the first five years of this ongoing project (May 1987-May 1992) are described in this paper. Out of an initial sample of 750 individuals in the age group 30-62 years, who were selected by stratified random sampling, 714 persons (males = 429; females = 285) were actually studied, after excluding those suffering from coronary heart diseases (CHD). Initially, all the included subjects were examined clinically and appropriate laboratory investigations were done. A detailed socio-economic history was also obtained. Subsequently all of them were followed up and biannual clinical and laboratory investigations were performed. Cases of CHD were diagnosed according to the recommendations of the New York Heart Association. The overall five-year incidence of CHD was 25.17 per thousand persons. The incidence in males was 3 times higher than in females. More males suffered from myocardial infarction (MI), while in the females the incidence of sudden death was higher (33.3%). The average yearly mortality rate due to CHD was 2.46 per thousand persons. CHD was significantly associated with increased blood pressure (both diastolic and systolic), smoking, and family history of heart disease, and was weakly associated with body weight (p = 0.06).