Studying the diffuse Galactic synchrotron emission (hereafter, DGSE) at arc-minute angular scale is important to remove the foregrounds for the cosmological 21-cm observations. Statistical measurements of the large-scale DGSE can also be used to constrain the magnetic field and the cosmic ray electron density of our Galaxy’s interstellar medium. Here, we have used the Murchison Widefield Array drift scan observations at $154.2 \, \textrm{MHz}$ to measure the angular power spectrum $({\mathcal C}_{\ell})$ of the DGSE of a region of the sky from right ascension $349^{\circ}$ to $70.3^{\circ}$ at the fixed declination $-26.7^{\circ}$. In this RA range, we have chosen 24 pointing centers (PCs), for which we have removed all the bright point sources above $\sim430 \, \textrm{mJy}\,(3\sigma)$, and applied the Tapered Gridded Estimator on residual data to estimate the ${\mathcal C}_{\ell}$. We use the angular multipole range $65 \le \ell \le 650$ to fit the data with a model, ${\mathcal C}^M_{\ell}=A\times \left(\frac{1\,000}{\ell}\right)^{\beta}+C$, where we interpret the model as the combination of a power law $(\propto \ell^{-\beta})$ nature of the DGSE and a constant part due to the Poisson fluctuations of the residual point sources. We are able to fit the model ${\mathcal C}^M_{\ell}$ for six PCs centered at $\alpha=352.5^{\circ}, 353^{\circ}, 357^{\circ}, 4.5^{\circ}, 4^{\circ}$, and $1^{\circ}$. We run the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) ensemble sampler to get the best-fit values of the parameters $A, \beta$, and C for these PCs. We see that the values of A vary in the range 155–400 mK$^{2}$, whereas the $\beta$ varies in the range $0.9$–$1.7$. We find that the value of $\beta$ is consistent at $2-\sigma$ level with the earlier measurement of the DGSE at similar frequency and angular scales.

The interaction between the dynamics of a flame front and the acoustic field within a combustion chamber represents an aerothermochemical problem with the potential to generate hazardous instabilities, which limit burner performance by constraining design and operational parameters. The experimental configuration described here involves a laminar premixed flame burning in an open–closed slender tube, which can also be studied through simplified modelling. The constructive coupling of the chamber acoustic modes with the flame front can be affected via strategic placement of porous plugs, which serve to dissipate thermoacoustic instabilities. These plugs are lattice-based, 3-D-printed using low-force stereolithography, allowing for complex geometries and optimal material properties. A series of porous plugs was tested, with variations in their porous density and location, in order to assess the effects of these variables on viscous dissipation and acoustic eigenmode variation. Pressure transducers and high-speed cameras are used to measure oscillations of a stoichiometric methane–air flame ignited at the tube’s open end. The findings indicate that the porous medium is effective in dissipating both pressure amplitude and flame-front oscillations, contingent on the position of the plug. Specifically, the theoretical fluid mechanics model is developed to calculate frequency shifts and energy dissipation as a function of plug properties and positioning. The theoretical predictions show a high degree of agreement with the experimental results, thereby indicating the potential of the model for the design of dissipators of this nature and highlighting the first-order interactions of acoustics, viscous flow in porous media and heat transfer processes.

With the rapid expansion of the Infection Prevention Control/Healthcare Epidemiology (IPC/HE) fields over recent decades, the pivotal roles of IPC/HE in hospital regulation, quality improvement, patient safety, and healthcare finances have become increasingly apparent. Consequently, the demand for effective IPC/HE leaders has surged.1,2 Training in IPC/HE is essential for all infectious diseases (ID) fellows (both adult and pediatric), including those planning a career in hospital epidemiology as well as those planning to focus on general ID, transplant, HIV, etc. ID fellows, however, have historically felt ill-prepared in IPC/HE. Joiner et al’s survey highlighted this gap, revealing that only half of respondents felt adequately trained in infection control, despite half of them participating in infection control in their practice.3 IPC/HE fellow education is not currently standardized, and most IPC/HE training is led by individual mentors and healthcare facilities.

Till March 13th 2020, India's government was assuring citizens that the coronavirus disease was not a health emergency. Preparations soon proved inadequate. Bigotry, superstition, and poor governance worsened an increasingly bad situation in which government efforts to suppress unfavorable news censored information that would have been useful in containing the disease. A lockdown imposed without warning crashed the economy and caused immense suffering to millions. Poor internal migrant workers were worst affected. Many died trying to walk home hundreds of miles away in the punishing heat of India's summer. The lockdown was lifted with the COVID-19 curve heading sharply upward.

In binary mixtures, the lifetimes of surface bubbles can be five orders of magnitude longer than those in pure liquids because of slightly different compositions of the bulk and the surfaces, leading to a thickness-dependent surface tension of thin films. Taking advantage of the resulting simple surface rheology, we derive the equations describing the thickness, flow velocity and surface tension of a single liquid film, using thermodynamics of ideal solutions and thin film mechanics. Numerical resolution shows that, after a first step of tension equilibration, the Laplace-pressure-driven flow is associated with a flow at the interface driven by an induced Marangoni stress. The resulting parabolic flow with mobile interfaces in the film further leads to its pinching, eventually causing its rupture. Our model paves the way for a better understanding of the rupture dynamics of liquid films of binary mixtures.

Water is essential for sustaining life and required for carrying out basic daily activities. Even though water covers the vast majority of the earth’s surface, the availability of fresh water, which is necessary to maintain human activities, is limited, making it a scarce resource. Climate change, overexploitation of groundwater, and population growth are all putting significant pressure on natural water sources, which pose a serious threat to various sectors of society, especially in agriculture. Future projections of freshwater availability indicate agriculture production will suffer a significant shock globally, including in India, leading to a threat to food security and sustainability. To ensure the sustainability of this vital resource, it is crucial to use water sensibly. Moreover, it is essential to adopt certain strategies to manage agricultural water use effectively. This includes adopting various water-efficient techniques such as ‘micro-irrigation’, ‘irrigation scheduling’, ‘conservation agriculture’, ‘crop switching’ and so on. In this review, firstly, we discuss water scarcity and its types, causes, crisis for water shortages and hindrance to sustainable development from a global perspective emphasizing the Indian scenario as a developing nation. Secondly, we elaborated our discussion on water scarcity in agriculture including the impacts of water scarcity on agricultural production and its connection to climate change, population growth, and overexploitation of natural resources globally focusing on the Indian scenario. In addition, innovative water management practices and adaptation strategies to manage agricultural water use, constraints, and the need for further research are also covered. It is anticipated that this review will benefit researchers and policymakers by providing useful information on the impacts of water limitation and adoption strategies.

The flow near a moving contact line depends on the dynamic contact angle, viscosity ratio and capillary number. We report experiments involving immersing a plate into a liquid bath, concurrently measuring the interface shape, interfacial velocity and fluid flow using digital image processing and particle image velocimetry. All experiments were performed at low plate speeds to maintain small Reynolds and capillary numbers for comparison with viscous theories. The dynamic contact angle, measured in the viscous phase, was kept below $90^{\circ }$ and the viscosity ratio, $\lambda < 1$. This region of parameter space is largely unexplored for advancing contact lines. An important aim of the present study is to provide new experimental data against which new contact line models can be developed. The flow field is directly compared against the prediction from the viscous theory of Huh & Scriven (J. Colloid Interface Sci., vol. 35, issue 1, 1971, pp. 85–101) but with a slight modification involving the curved interface. Remarkable agreement is found between experiments and theory across a wide parameter range. The prediction for interfacial speed from Huh & Scriven is also in excellent agreement with experiments except in the vicinity of the contact line. Material points along the interface were found to rapidly slow down near the contact line, thus alleviating the singularity at the moving contact line. To the best of our knowledge, such a detailed test of theoretical models has not been performed before and we hope the present study will spur new modelling efforts in the field.

Objectives: Effectiveness of psychotherapy depends on patients’ adherence to between-session homework (HW) to practice therapeutic skills. mHealth apps can offer continuing reminders, although frequent reminders overwhelm or burden patients and therefore are ineffective. Predicting likelihood of completing daily HW and sending contextual reminders has the potential to improve HW adherence and therefore improvesymptoms.

Methods: Depressed older participants (N = 51) undergoing psychotherapy provided daily active ratings on mood, anhedonia, stress and pain via an mHealth app. Data on activity, mobilization, sociability and sleep passively were also recorded via device sensors (e.g., microphone, accelerometer, GPS etc.). Using active and passive mHealth data, we developed predictive models of daily home-work completion status using a naïve semi-supervised deep learning algorithm. Prediction accuracy was determined via time-dependent cross-validation.

Results: Study participants had a mean (SD) age of 71.4 (7.76) years, mean (SD) of 14.9 (2.93) years of education, mean (SD) BIS/BAS total of 22.6 (3.36), mean (SD) MADRS total score of20.4 (6.04) and 88.2% were of female gender, 29.4% were single, 83.8% were of non-Hispanic ethnicity, 58.8% belonged to Caucasian race and 38.2% practiced Catholic religion. With 4700 person-days HW completion response, our models show an AUC of 84.7% (sensitivity = 76.2%; specificity = 80%) estimated by cross-validation.

Conclusions: This paper demonstrates the feasibility of predicting adherence to psychotherapy in depressed older adults using actively and passively collected mHealth data. Digital interventions based on such predictive models can potentially increase adherence to psychotherapy and thereby improve its effectiveness without increasing the user notification burden.

In this study, we use an integrative taxonomic approach to redescribe Schyzocotyle nayarensis (Malhotra, 1983) (Cestoda: Bothriocephalidae), based on newly collected specimens from the type-host Raiamas bola (Hamilton, 1822) (Cypriniformes: Danionidae) in Fulbari, Siliguri, West Bengal, India. The detailed morphological assessment, from whole mounts, histology and scanning electron microscopy, offers additional insights into the scolex structure, vitelline follicles, and egg morphology. Molecular data from this and previous studies corroborate the identity and systematics of S. nayarensis as a bothriocephalid closely related to the Asian Fish Tapeworm, Schyzocotyle acheilognathi (Yamaguti, 1934). This study elucidates the historical context and taxonomic ambiguities surrounding S. nayarensis, emphasizing the key role of the scolex in both generic and species identification. Amendments to the diagnosis of Schyzocotyle Akhmerov, 1960 are proposed. A differential diagnosis of the two valid species within the genus, namely S. acheilognathi and S. nayarensis, is also provided. An evaluation of the taxonomic status of Bothriocephalus teleostei Malhotra, 1984, and Capooria barilii Malhotra, 1985 suggests that they may be S. nayarensis. Finally, we posit that none of the ten species of Ptychobothrium Lönnberg, 1889 described from Indian freshwater teleosts belong to this genus but instead appear to be a mix of species belonging to Schyzocotyle, Senga Dollfus, 1934, and possibly even Proteocephalidae La Rue, 1911; all require further study based on newly collected, properly fixed specimens and an integrated taxonomic approach. Finally, future survey studies may reveal hidden diversity of Schyzocotyle species in Indian cyprinoids.

Community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) relies on a food-based approach. However, a comprehensive assessment of their nutrient composition and its impact on treatment outcomes is currently lacking in the extant literature. This narrative review summarises recent evidence on the efficacy of formulations that contain dairy protein and maintain the density of essential nutrients (type I and type II) in managing uncomplicated acute malnutrition at the community level. The literature used for the evidence synthesis was identified using a two-stage screening process. An electronic search was run on PubMed and Cochrane Library, followed by a backward snowball search to identify efficacy studies. A total of twenty-six efficacy studies involving food formulations used to treat uncomplicated severe and moderate acute malnutrition were identified. The review found that, while more evidence favours the inclusion of dairy in formulations as efficacious in supporting recovery from malnutrition, ambiguity in the conclusive findings between dairy and non-dairy formulations remains due to the varied percentages of dairy protein in different formulations. The type of protein source used in a formulation matters, but other approaches, including fortification, can aid in maintaining the nutrient density of formulations, thereby improving the chances of recovery. However, the inclusion of high amounts of added sugar in therapeutic formulations exceeding the World Health Organization norms is a concern that warrants more attention. Future clinical research should assess outcomes such as lean or fat mass changes to confirm the benefits of using dairy or non-dairy formulations to treat moderate and severe acute malnutrition.

Drift scan observations provide the broad sky coverage and instrumental stability needed to measure the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) 21-cm signal. In such observations, the telescope’s pointing centre (PC) moves continuously on the sky. The Tracking Tapered Gridded Estimator (TTGE) combines observations from different PC to estimate $P(k_{\perp}, k_{\parallel})$ the 21-cm power spectrum, centred on a tracking centre (TC) which remains fixed on the sky. The tapering further restricts the sky response to a small angular region around TC, thereby mitigating wide-field foregrounds. Here we consider $154.2\,\mathrm{MHz}$ ($z = 8.2$) Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) drift scan observations. The periodic pattern of flagged channels, present in MWA data, is known to introduce artefacts which pose a challenge for estimating $P(k_{\perp}, k_{\parallel})$. Here we have validated the TTGE using simulated MWA drift scan observations which incorporate the flagged channels same as the data. We demonstrate that the TTGE is able to recover $P(k_{\perp}, k_{\parallel})$ without any artefacts and estimate $P(k)$ within $5 \%$ accuracy over a large $k$-range. We also present preliminary results for a single PC, combining 9 nights of observation $(17 \, \mathrm{min}$ total). We find that $P(k_{\perp}, k_{\parallel})$ exhibits streaks at a fixed interval of $k_{\parallel}=0.29 \, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, which matches $\Delta \nu_\mathrm{per}=1.28 \, \mathrm{MHz}$ that is the period of the flagged channels. Since the simulations demonstrate that the TTGE is impervious to the flagged channels, the streaks seen for the actual data are possibly caused by some systematic that has the same period as the flagged channels. These streaks are more than 3–4 orders of magnitude smaller than the peak foreground power $\mid P(k_{\perp}, k_{\parallel}) \mid \approx 10^{16} \, \mathrm{mK^2}\, \mathrm{Mpc^3}$ at $k_{\parallel}=0$. The streaks are not as pronounced at larger $k_{\parallel}$, and in some cases they do not appear to extend across the entire $k_{\perp}$ range. The rectangular region $0.05 \leq k_{\perp} \leq 0.16 \, \mathrm{Mpc^{-1}}$ and $0.9 \leq k_{\parallel}\leq 4.6 \, \mathrm{Mpc^{-1}}$ is found to be relatively free of foreground contamination and artefacts, and we have used this to place the $2\unicode{x03C3}$ upper limit $\Delta^2(k) < (1.85\times10^4)^2\, \mathrm{mK^2}$ on the EoR 21-cm mean squared brightness temperature fluctuations at $k=1 \,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$.

Scholarship largely holds that the “Persianate world”—a transregional sphere of cultural exchange mediated by an Indian Ocean lingua franca—was put paid to by a colonizing English East India Company. Against that historiography, this article reveals how colonial and Indo-Persian modern textual trends were coproduced. Reading a first-person account of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, written in 1815–17 by a prince from a Mughal successor state under Company rule, the article argues that the travelogue's unprecedented form of a diary, and its uncharacteristically affective contents for Indo-Persian prose, drew on emerging genres and Romantic ideologies in British India. But while this resulted in a new kind of Indo-Persian ego-document, this text of Indian Ocean travel remained, however, anchored in Mughal concepts of moods and manners. As such it betrayed transitional tensions that compel a reconsideration of how colonialism led ultimately to the passing of a precolonial Persianate Babel.