Investigation of HZE particle fluxes as a space radiation hazard for future Mars missions.

Manned Mars missions planned in the near future of very low solar activity period and hence higher than acceptable radiation doses due mainly to the Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR), would require special techniques and technological development for maintaining the good health of the astronauts. The present study is an attempt to make an assessment and characterise the coming years in terms of solar activity and space radiation environment especially due to the abundance of highly energetic heavy ions (known as HZE charged particles). These HZE particle fluxes constitute a major hazard to the astronauts and also to the critical electronic components of the spacecraft. Recent data on the HZE species (from B to Ni) obtained from ACE spacecraft shows a clear enhancement of the particle fluxes between the solar cycle 23 and solar cycle 24 (~between SSN peaks 2002 and 2014) due to the persisting low sunspot numbers of the latter cycle. The peak values of these cosmic ray fluxes occur with a time lag of about a year of the corresponding minimum value of the sunspots of a particular 11-year cycle which is pseudo-periodic in nature. This is demonstrated by the Fourier and Wavelet transform analyses of the long duration (1700-2018) yearly mean sunspot number data. The same time series data is also used to train a Hybrid Regression Neural Network (HRNN) model to generate the predicted yearly mean sunspot numbers for the solar cycle 25 (~2019-2031). The wavelet analysis of this new series of annual sunspot numbers including the predictions up to the end of 2031 shows a clear trend of continuation of the low solar activity and hence continuation of very high HZE fluxes prevailing in Solar cycle 24 into the solar cycle 25 and perhaps beyond.

Sarcoidosis in India.

Sarcoidosis in India frequently presents in elderly males with a dissociation between extensive radiological changes and scanty clinical signs in the chest. Clubbing is not infrequent. Erythema nodosum, generalized lymphadenopathy, eye changes, and bone cysts are uncommon. Spontaneous resolution or asymptomatic course is very rare. Follow-up reports, whenever available, show that patients have frequent relapses which respond well to short courses of steroids. This comparative study shows a few differences between this series (of 90 cases diagnosed from 1957 to 1982), two different Western series and the World series. Detection and documentation of cases of sarcoidosis in India have been on the increase during the last few decades. Whether that is due to increase in incidence or awareness is difficult to say. In two special centres in India, the frequency of detection of the disorder varied between 61.2 (in a chest hospital in Delhi during 1957-74) to over 150 per 100 000 patients (Calcutta) attending a general hospital with a sarcoidosis clinic (1980-82).

A cooperative study of sarcoidosis in Asia and Africa: descriptive epidemiology.

An eight-nation cooperative epidemiological study revealed the Asian and African features of sarcoidosis. Almost every country reported from several to less than 30 cases, except for Japan which had already collected over 3,000 cases. Not a single case was found in the mass x-ray surveys conducted by several countries on a large scale (Tables 1 and 2). Although the number of the cases included in this study were small, this information is the first of this kind for Asia and Africa.