Awareness about breast cancer in first-year junior residents at a tertiary care institute in India: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Primary physicians have a very important role in identifying early breast cancer, as well as promotion of awareness about breast cancer to general public. However, there is insufficient data about the knowledge of doctors, who have just finished their basic medical training, on breast cancer. METHODS: All the postgraduate residents who had joined within the last 3 months, irrespective of the department, were invited to take part in the study. After explaining the aims of the study telephonically, consent was taken through online signatures and the participants were asked to fill online proformas. Descriptive statistics were used, and chi-square test was used to compare groups. P value of less than 0.05 was considered as significant. RESULTS: A total of 106 participants took part in the study. Only 63 (59.4%) participants had satisfactory knowledge about the warning signs of breast cancer. Apart from question of ideal frequency of breast examination, which was answered by 59 (55.7%) participants, the rest of the questions were answered correctly by less than 50% of participants. On the questions on risk factors, 102 (96.5%) of the participants were assessed to have adequate knowledge. Overall only 51 (48.1%) participants were assessed to have satisfactory knowledge about warning signs, screening and risk factors related to breast cancer. CONCLUSIONS: The awareness about warning signs, risk factors and screening practices of breast cancer in newly joined residents was less than satisfactory. To improve this level of awareness, significant steps are needed at the level of undergraduate teaching.

Repeated palpatory training of medical students on the Virtual Haptic Back.

The effectiveness of simulation-based training has been accepted with great success in many fields including medicine. Most of the simulation research and development in medicine has focused on surgery. There has been some development of hardware based biomechanical models of sections of human anatomy, such as pelvic exam simulators. More recently, with the advances in haptics technology, software and hardware based simulators are being developed for the previously ignored area of palpatory diagnosis. The Virtual Haptic Back (VHB) is a simulator based on virtual reality and haptics that is currently being used to train medical students in palpatory diagnosis. This study examined the effect of repeating the training on the VHB.

Rayleigh-Bénard convection with rotation at small Prandtl numbers.

We present experimental and theoretical results near the onset of the Rayleigh-Bénard convection with rotation about a vertical axis in a fluid with a Prandtl number sigma close to 0.18. In the experiment we used a H2-Xe gas mixture with a separation ratio Psi=0.22 and a Lewis number L=1.22 at various pressures and dimensionless rotation rates Omega up to 400. On the basis of a standard weakly nonlinear stability analysis, we found a supercritical, stationary bifurcation for Omega < than approximately 13, which became subcritical over the range 13 < than approximately Omega < or approximately 160. For Omega > than approximately 160 a supercritical Hopf bifurcation precedes the stationary instability of the uniform state. Following the unstable straight-roll fixed point in the subcritical regime by Galerkin methods we determined the location of the saddlenode and the stability of the nonlinear two-dimensional straight-roll state. The rolls were found to be unstable to three-dimensional Küppers-Lortz perturbations for 3.8 < than approximately Omega < than approximately 160. Theoretical results for a pure fluid with the same sigma were qualitatively similar. Measurements using shadowgraph flow visualization yielded a bifurcation line and an Omega range of subcriticality, which agreed with the stability analysis. In the subcritical range the experiment revealed a discontinuity of the pattern amplitude at onset, but was unable to find any hysteresis. Patterns at onset fluctuated irregularly between the ground state and the finite-amplitude state. In this parameter range the convection pattern further above onset was chaotically time dependent. Investigation of the Hopf bifurcation line was difficult because of a wall mode that, for large Omega, preceded the bulk instability. For Omega approximately equal to 400, patterns were found in the sample interior only when the expected Hopf bifurcation was exceeded by about 10%. This is consistent with the convective nature of the bifurcation. However, the observed structure, although time periodic, was spatially disordered and had a frequency that was considerably larger than the expected Hopf frequency. In a separate sample cell with a radial ramp in the spacing no structure was observed at all in the cell interior until the expected stationary instability was reached.

Traveling concentric-roll patterns in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with modulated rotation.

We present experimental results for pattern formation in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with modulated rotation about a vertical axis. The dimensionless rotation rate Omega was varied as Omega(m)=Omega[1+delta cos(phi Omega t)] (time is scaled by the vertical viscous diffusion time of the cell). We used a cylindrical cell of aspect ratio (radius/height) Gamma=11.8 and varied Omega, delta, phi, and epsilon identical with R/R(c)(Omega)-1 (R is the Rayleigh number). The fluid was water with a Prandtl number of 4.5. Sufficiently far above onset even a small delta greater than approximately 0.02 stabilized a concentric-roll (target) pattern. Multiarmed spirals were observed close to onset. The rolls of the target patterns traveled radially inward independent of the sense of rotation. The radial speed v was nearly independent of epsilon for fixed Omega, delta, and phi. However, v increased with any one of Omega, delta, and phi when all the other parameters were held fixed.