Background: Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis has emerged as a significant problem with the resurfacing of tuberculosis and thus the need to use the second line drugs with the resultant increased incidence of adverse effects. We discuss the effect of second line aminoglycoside antitubercular drugs on the hearing status of MDR-TB patients.

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The data on the elastic scattering cross-section (CS) and vector analyzing power (VAP ) of 6,7 Li incident on 12 C, 26 Mg, 58 Ni and 120 Sn nuclei are analyzed in terms of an optical model (OM) potential, the real part of which is generated from a realistic two-nucleon interaction using the energy-density functional (EDF) formalism. The EDF-generated real part of the potential is non-monotonic (NM) in nature. This NM real potential part, without any renormalization, along with an empirically determined imaginary part and spin-orbit potential, embodying the underlying physics of projectile excitation, can successfully account for both CS and VAP data in all four cases. This investigation, for the first time, using the simple OM analysis accounts well for the opposite signs of the VAP data of elastically scattered 6,7 Li by 58 Ni at E lab ≈ 20 MeV and by 120 Sn at E lab = 44 MeV. The ramification of successfully describing the data by the EDF-generated potential to the equation of state of nuclear matter is discussed.

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Background:HIV/AIDS pandemic is responsible for the resurgence of TB worldwide, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality. HIV and Mycobacterium tuberculosis have a synergistic interaction; each propagates progression of the other. Coinfection with HIV infection leads to difficulties in both the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, increase risk of death, treatment failure and relapse.Objective:The aim of the present study is to study the clinical, radiological profile of pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) in HIV-seropositive patients and their relationship to CD4 counts.Materials and Methods:It was a prospective study conducted over a period of 1 year in the department of medicine, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla. We examined 87 HIV-infected patients with associated tuberculosis recruited from the department of medicine and antiretroviral center and were subjected to thorough clinical examination, X-ray chest, tuberculin testing and sputum examination for AFB and necessary relevant investigations for EPTB.Results:Most common affected age group was 31-40 years. EPTB is the commonest form of TB in our study detected in 65 patients. Commonest EPTB was CNS tuberculosis. Disseminated tuberculosis was only found in patient with CD4 count less than 200/cmm. Majority of lymph node TB was diagnosed by fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) examination. All patients with AFB-positive lymph node had CD4 count below 200/cum.Conclusions:The results of this study provide information regarding the various forms of TB and their presentation in HIV-infected persons. Early diagnosis of tuberculosis and prompt institution of antitubercular treatment (ATT) reduces mortality and morbidity significantly. In resource-poor areas, the diagnosis can be established with cytological/biochemical analysis of fluid, histopathological examination and ZN staining of tissue coupled with radiological features and response to ATT. Therefore, adequate knowledge of the manifestations of tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients is absolutely necessary for optimal management and to reduce mortality and morbidity.

In this paper, we consider a cognitive relay assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication scenario through Rayleigh fading channel where multiple primary and secondary users wish to communicate with two different receivers in the presence of a cognitive relay. We assume that secondary users transmit simultaneously with the primary users over the same channel instead of waiting for an idle channel which is traditional for a cognitive radio. We consider both the cases when cognitive relay is present or not and derive the expressions for the mutual information received at the primary and secondary receivers. We also present the closed form expressions for the outage probabilities and complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDFs) of mutual information received at the primary and secondary receivers in the absence of cognitive relay. Our results show that with the help of a cognitive relay, not only both the primary and secondary users are able to communicate with their intended receivers compensating interferences created at their receivers, but also the outage performance of primary and secondary users are improved due to the additional diversity obtained via cognitive relaying.Index Terms-Cognitive relay, MIMO multiple access channel, outage probability and interference channel.