A clinical study of the involvement of cranial nerves in leprosy.

A clinical descriptive study was conducted to assess the frequency and pattern of involvement of cranial nerves in leprosy and to study the relationship of cranial nerve involvement with a leprosy patch or patches on facial skin. One hundred consecutive patients of leprosy, diagnosed by clinical features and/or slit skin smear and histopathology, were studied; of these, 22 patients had cranial nerve involvement. The mean age of patients with cranial nerve involvement was 41.2 years. 16 patients (72.7%) with cranial nerve involvement were in the age-group of 20-49 years. The male-to-female ratio was 3.4:1. The mean duration of the disease in these patients was 5.73 years. The duration of the disease in the majority of patients with cranial nerve involvement was less than 5 years. Impairment of cranial nerves was seen in 12 BT patients, 6 BL patients, and 4 LL patients. No significant difference was noted between involvement of cranial nerves in PB and MB patients. Among the cranial nerves, facial nerve was the most common nerve involved (10/22), followed by olfactory (9/22), trigeminal (7/22) and auditory (3/22) nerves. Among the risk factors, it was found that facial nerve impairment was significantly associated with facial patch(es) and also type 1 lepra reaction.

A simulator for training emergency response personnel

It is well recognized that periodic drills or exercises to train emergency personnel are essential for ensuring ready and effective implementation of emergency plans. Carrying out such exercises can often be difficult and costly. In this context, a suitably designed simulator could be an effective supplement to, or substitute for, the mock exercises. A code, STEREP (Simulator for Training Emergency Response Personnel), has been developed for this purpose. The major functions performed or simulated by the code are as follows: (1) It generates an accident scenario involving radioactivity release rate, height, duration, etc., are specified by input. The resulting dose/contamination profiles are calculated using simulated weather conditions. (2) The roles of various agencies and personnel for handling the emergency are also simulated. The user - the emergency director for instance- is expected to carry on a dialogue with the program and issue instructions to thevaious agencies for implementation fo certain tasks or to provide information regarding specific situations. (3) A logging routine keeps track of user actions and carries out a performance evaluation. At he end, a score sheet describing the desired and actual actions in presented for guidance. The software package has been developed for use with a microcomputer and a video console terminal. The current version has been written for a DEC PDP 11/23 microcomputer using RT 11 as the operating system. The bulk of the program is in Frotram IV. (AU)

Charged-particle transport in one-dimensional systems.

A semianalytical technique to study the charged-particle transport in one-dimensional finite media is developed. For this purpose, the transport equation is written in the form of coupled integral equations, separating the spatial and energy-angle transmissions. Legendre polynomial representation for the source, flux, and scattering kernel are used to solve the equations. For evaluation of the spatial transmission, discrete ordinate representation in space, energy, and direction cosine is used for the particle and source flux. The integral equations are then solved by the fast iteration technique. The computer code CHASFIT, written on the basis of the above formulation, is described. The fast convergence of the iteration process which is characteristic of charged-particle transport is demonstrated. Convergence studies are carried out with a number of mesh points and polynomial approximations. The method is applied to study the depth-dose distributions due to 140-, 200-, 300-, 400-, 600-, and 740-MeV protons incident normally on a 30-cm-thick tissue slab. The values of the quality factor at the surface and at 5 cm depth, as well as the total average quality factor, are calculated. The results thus obtained are compared with those predicted by the Monte Carlo method. This method can also be applied to multienergy, multiregion systems with arbitrary degree of anisotropy.