The work of Jaffe, Jenkins and Kimchi [Phys. Rev. D79, 065014 (2009)] is revisited to see if indeed the region of congeniality found in their analysis survives further restrictions from nucleosynthesis. It is observed that much of their congenial region disappears when imposing conditions required to produce the correct and required abundances of the primordial elements as well as ensure that stars can continue to burn hydrogen nuclei to form helium as the first step in forming heavier elements in stellar nucleosynthesis. The remaining region is a very narrow slit reduced in width from around 29 MeV found by Jaffe et al. to only about 2.2 MeV in the difference of the nucleon/quark masses. Further bounds on δmq/mq seem to reduce even this narrow slit to the physical point itself.

Arsenic (As) is a phytotoxic element causing health hazards. This work investigates whether and how silicon (Si) alleviates As toxicity in wheat. The addition of Si under As-stress significantly improved morphophysiological characteristics, total protein, and membrane stability compared to As-stressed plants, suggesting that Si does have critical roles in As detoxification in wheat. Analysis of arsenate reductase activity and phytosiderophore (PS) release reveals their no involvement in the Si-mediated alleviation of As in wheat. Furthermore, Si supplementation in As-stressed plants showed a significant increase of As in roots but not in shoots compared with the plants grown under As stress. Further, gene expression analysis of two chelating molecules, TaPCS1 (phytochelatin synthase) and TaMT1 (metallothionein synthase) showed significant induction due to Si application under As stress compared with As-stressed plants. It is consistent with the physiological observations and suggests that alleviation of As toxicity in rice might be associated with As sequestration in roots leading to reduced As translocation in shoots. Furthermore, increased catalase, peroxidase, and glutathione reductase activities in roots imply the active involvement of reactive oxygen species scavenging for protecting wheat plants from As-induced oxidative injury. The study provides mechanistic evidence on the beneficial effect of Si on As toxicity in wheat plants.

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This study aimed to assess the knowledge and practice of caregivers and their relationship to the disease and nutritional status of children under 5 years of age in rural areas of Sylhet, Bangladesh. A total of 110 households with at least a child aged 6 to 59 months were selected by simple random method from 10 rural communities of three Upazila of Sylhet from September 2019 to February 2020. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the “Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene” (WASH) knowledge and practice, and multivariate chi-square analyses were performed to assess associations among diseases and nutritional status with WASH following a structured questionnaire. The study found a significant association between WASH with childhood disease and nutritional status, and 65% of children were found to be in a diseased state and 35% of children were found in a no exposure of disease state within the last 6 months. The findings sketched that mother with poor WASH knowledge and practice was at greater risk for disease outbreaks, disease frequency, and duration. The highest incidence of diarrhea was 17% in children aged 12 to 23 months. A significant effect of WASH was also found in children's nutritional status, which was reflected in the ratio of stunted, underweight, and wasted children. Integrated convergent work focusing on providing clean water within the household, stopping open defecation, promoting handwashing, behavior change, and poverty alleviation is needed to improve the situation. Health, nutrition, and livelihood programs should be uninterrupted, and mothers or caregivers should be encouraged to participate in these programs.

We consider the motion of a test particle orbiting around Reissner–Nordström (RN) black hole spacetime. The complete set of equations for radial motion and effective potential is derived. We also derive the radius of the different stable circular orbits of this particle corresponding to different label indexes like the Bohr atomic model. We also quantized the energy of this particle from the quantization of angular momentum and calculated the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy of RN black hole. We also investigate the change of entropy between two nearby states approaches to zero for large quantum numbers.