Study of epidemiological behaviour of malaria and its control in the Purulia district of West Bengal, India (2016–2020)

Purulia is a malaria-prone district in West Bengal, India, with approximately half of the blocks defined as malaria endemic. We analyzed the malaria case in each block of the Purulia district from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2020. As per the API, 20 blocks of Purulia were assigned to four different categories (0–3) and mapped using ArcGIS software. An exponential decay model was fitted to forecast the trend of malaria cases for each block of Purulia (2021–2025). There was a sharp decrease in total malaria cases and API from 2016 to 2020 due to the mass distribution of LLINs. The majority of cases (72.63%) were found in ≥ 15-year age group. Males were more prone to malaria (60.09%). Malaria was highly prevalent among Scheduled Tribes (48.44%). Six blocks were reported in Category 3 (high risk) and none in Category 0 (no risk) in 2016, while no blocks were determined to be in Category 3, and three blocks were in Category 0 in 2020. The exponential decay model prediction is oriented towards gaining malaria-free status in thirteen blocks of Purulia by 2025. This study will incite the government to uphold and strengthen the current efforts to meet the malaria elimination goals.

Phenolic variability in fruit from the ‘Arbequina’ olive cultivar under Mediterranean and Subtropical climatic conditions

In the present work, we compared the phenol content and composition of fruit from the ‘Arbequina’ cultivar in four Mediterranean (in Andalucía, Southern Iberian Peninsula) and two Sub-Tropical (Canary Islands) locations throughout the harvest period. Two Mediterranean and two Sub-Tropical locations were maintained with drip irrigation, while the remaining two Mediterranean locations were in dry farming. Water availability and harvest date seemed to play more important roles than air temperature on the phenolic content and most of the studied components. The variability associated with location was a result of the high values observed in the two Mediterranean locations in dry farming, with respect to the other four maintained with drip irrigation. Few differences were found among the four drip-irrigated locations, despite the fact that two were Mediterranean and the other two Sub-Tropical. In addition, a sharp decrease was observed during the harvest period for phenolic content and most of the phenolic compounds.

The influence of methods of basic tillage and fertilizers on the content of basic nutrients in leached chernozem

Relevance. The preservation, reproduction and rational use of agricultural soil fertility is the main condition for the stable development of the agro-industrial complex. Mechanical tillage systems, the use of mineral and microbiological fertilizers are one of the main links in adaptive landscape farming systems. In the conditions of a sharp decrease in the rates of fertilizer application, an increase in the imbalance of elements of mineral nutrition of plants observed in recent years in agroecosystems, the function of improving the regimes of chernozems, preserving their fertility is designed to perform resource-saving technologies of soil cultivation in combination with effective methods of using agrochemicals that combine environmental and economic feasibility.Methods. The experiments were laid in 2017–2019 on chernozem heavy loamy soils typical for most farms in the Ulyanovsk region. The object of the study is spring wheat, the variety Ulyanovskaya 100. The subject of the study is the methods of tillage, doses of mineral fertilizers, the biological product "BisolbiFit". The following technological methods of using the biological product were studied: seed treatment before sowing, non-root treatment of vegetating plants and a combination of these methods. The experiment was carried out on three backgrounds: N0P0K0 (control); 2) N30P30K30; 3) N60P60K60.Results. It was found that the best nitrification ability was possessed by variants with fine combback and comb-back with soil-deepening treatment, in which the weighted average content of nitrate nitrogen was 3.29–3.33 mg/100 g, which is 35–36%; 26–28%; 43–44% more than with fine, conventional non-dump and dump treatment respectively. Plowing improved the conditions of phosphorus and potassium nutrition of plants by 25–37% and 6–14% compared to other treatments. When N30P30K30 and N60 P60 K60 were applied to the soil, the content of nitrate nitrogen increased by 46 and 91%, phosphorus — by 0–14% and potassium — by 6 and 21% compared to the nonfertilized background. More effective in terms of the effect on the productivity of spring wheat were comb-shaped treatments, where the average yield was 2.89–2.94 t/ha, which exceeded the usual plowing by 0.19–0.24 t/ha. The greatest increase in yield was obtained when combining the methodsseed treatment + spraying of vegetative plants with the biological preparation "BisolbiFit". On an unfertilized background, the increase in grain yield was -0.71, on the background of N30P30K30 — 1.04, on the background of N60P60K60 — 1.56 t/ha.

FIVE YEARS SURVIVAL AND QUALITY OF LIFE AFTER RADICAL NEPHRECTOMY: A DESCRIPTIVE SINGLE CENTER STUDY

Objective: This study aims to evaluate five years of survival rate, and quality of life of the patient after radical nephrectomy in our center. Material & Methods: This descriptive longitudinal study included thirty patients who were diagnosed as having renal mass in the Urology division H. Adam Malik General Hospital between January 2014 and December 2015. All patients were completely followed-up for 5 years or the patient died during the observation. We used a translated and validated Indonesian written European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Version 3.0 (EORTC QLQ-C30) questionnaire to assess the patient’s quality of life. Results: Overall 5-years survival of kidney tumor patients was 100%, 66.67%, 50%, 8.33%, respectively for stage 1 to 4. We found a sharp decrease in the cumulative survival rate of stage IV group in the first 24 months compared to the first 12 months, from 66.67% to 25%. This pattern of decrease was not found in the other group of stage. Overall, the quality of life of patients has increased in the first three years postoperatively and decreased in the two years afterward. These fluctuations consistently occur in all groups. All of the groups had reached the maximum quality of life at the third year postoperatively. Conclusion: Stage I renal cell carcinoma patient shown the best five-years survival rate and quality of life among others. The quality of life for all groups inclined for the first three years after surgery and decline consistently afterward. These findings are in accordance with many studies that have been published previously.

Assessing the impact of human mobility to predict regional excess death in Ecuador

COVID-19 outbreaks have had high mortality in low- and middle-income countries such as Ecuador. Human mobility is an important factor influencing the spread of diseases possibly leading to a high burden of disease at the country level. Drastic control measures, such as complete lockdown, are effective epidemic controls, yet in practice one hopes that a partial shutdown would suffice. It is an open problem to determine how much mobility can be allowed while controlling an outbreak. In this paper, we use statistical models to relate human mobility to the excess death in Ecuador while controlling for demographic factors. The mobility index provided by GRANDATA, based on mobile phone users, represents the change of number of out-of-home events with respect to a benchmark date (March 2nd, 2020). The study confirms the global trend that more men are dying than expected compared to women, and that people under 30 show less deaths than expected, particularly individuals younger than 20 with a death rate reduction between 22 and 27%. The weekly median mobility time series shows a sharp decrease in human mobility immediately after a national lockdown was declared on March 17, 2020 and a progressive increase towards the pre-lockdown level within two months. Relating median mobility to excess deaths shows a lag in its effect: first, a decrease in mobility in the previous two to three weeks decreases excess death and, more novel, we found an increase of mobility variability four weeks prior increases the number of excess deaths.

Assessment the impacts of climate change on drought in the Ba River basin, Central Vietnam using Landsat remote sensing data

Sustainable management of the river basin is a profound challenge for environmental management in the context of climate change. Drought situations in a basin occur in relation to meteorological, hydrological, agricultural factors and climate change as well. In this study, remote sensing technology was applied to assess the impacts of climate change on drought in the Ba River basin, Central Vietnam. Drought in the basin has been created by land use/land cover changes in recent years, which has resulted in a sharp decrease in forest area in the period 1989 to 2019 (-41.5%) and a significant increase of agricultural land with 38.2%. Following that, the area of drought agriculture rose by 28.8%. The remarkably high drought areas in agricultural land were in El Nino years, 2016 (99.2%) and 2019 (87.3%), which indicated that under climate change impacts, a drought occurred more severely. Moreover, drought also appeared in the forest. The forest area deceased but the drought levels in the forest increased slightly since 2005 and hit a peak drought value in 2016 with 97.0% of forest area. During El Niño years, the precipitation, atmospheric moisture, and water flow in the basin were all lower than in previous years.

Х-ray Study and Computer Simulation of the Structure of Amorphous-Crystalline Titanite

The structure of amorphous-crystalline titanite obtained by mechanical activation was studied by X-ray diffraction and simulation methods. The short-range order characteristics were calculated using Finbak-Warren's method. It was found that the coordination numbers of metal atoms decreased as the result of titanite grinding. The atomic configurations of short-range order of ground titanite were constructed by translation of titanite unit cell. The theoretical X-ray patterns were calculated using Debye's method and were compared with the experimental curves. The structure of ground titanite in the mill with centrifugal factor 40 g was described satisfactorily by the model of mechanical mixture of clusters containing 2016 atoms, disordered during the molecular dynamics with clusters containing 12096 atoms. The increase of grinding intensity led to the sharp decrease of sizes of small cluster.

Increasing the photoluminescence intensity of silicon nitride by forming K and N radioactive centres

Creating a light emitter to transfer an electrical signal by optical way has a great importance in development of optoelectronics. The silicon nitride films studied by photoluminescence techniques, and determined luminescence is associated with presence of an extended zone of tail states. Defects play the main role in radiative recombination for structures annealed at 600 °C and 1100 °C. Photoluminescence (Pl) intensity of obtained films by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition is increased after annealing at 600 °C which are related to increased concentration of defects as a result of broken Si–H and N–H bonds. Due to the formation of N-centers through the breaking of N–H bonds, annealing at 1100 °C led to sharp decrease in the luminescence intensity 5 and 3 times for SiN1.1 and SiN1.5 samples respectively. Replacement of Si-Si bonds by Si-N enhance Eg with increasing stoichiometric parameter, which leads to blue shift edge of photoluminescence maximum. Carbon implantation of silicon nitride films with extra Si obtained by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor deposition at 1x1014 cm‒2, 2x1015 cm‒2, and 1x1016 cm‒2 fluencies, in combination with prolonged annealing at 1100 °C temperature leads to the formation of additional K-centers.

Evaluation of Suppressiveness of chernozem upon the intake of organic fertilizers under the conditions of a model experiment

The problem of maintaining the sanitary function of soils of agroecosystems is one of the main ones, since it determines the danger for reproduction of various types of microorganisms, including human and animal pathogens. Within the study, the authors assessed the number of bacteria (Salmonella enterica and Escherichia coli) in samples of chernozem with introduction of organic fertilizers. The dynamics of the number of Salmonella enterica shows that organic matter in soils contributes to a sharp decrease in their number at the initial stages of biological pollution, and in the long term it contributes to total loss. By the 60th day, Salmonella was found only in the control option of the experiment, but continuation of the experiment showed their total loss on the 80th day. Introduction of organic ameliorants into the chernozem samples led to a decrease in the number of E. coli by the 80th day, but their total loss was not noted.

Development of Niederriter crypto-code design models on LDPC-codes

The development of mobile technologies and computing resources has expanded the range of digital services and practically outstripped the development of computer technologies. This approach ensures the use of mobile and wireless networks in almost all areas of smart technologies, provides a further synthesis of cyberspace and the mobile Internet. However, the absence of security service protocols: confidentiality and integrity, initially when they are formed in the structure of LTE technologies, provides cyber attackers with the opportunity to use mobile Internet channels to implement targeted (APT) attacks. The development and emergence of a full-scale quantum computer with Shor and Grover algorithms can lead to a sharp decrease in the level of security of cryptosystems based on symmetric and asymmetric cryptography (including cryptography on elliptic curves). In addition, modern cyber threats have signs of synergy and hybridity, and their integration with social engineering methods practically does not allow providing the required level of preventive measures (protection). The article proposes post-quantum cryptosystems based on the Niederreiter crypto-code construction on low-density parity-check codes (LDPC-codes). This approach makes it easy to integrate into wireless networks based on IEEE 802.16 and IEEE 802.15.4 standards, as well as LTE mobile technologies. At the same time, the required level of resistance to modern threats ensured.