PECULIARITIES OF NUTRITION AMONG MEDICAL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Healthy nutrition helps to prevent development of chronic diseases and contributes to optimal functioning of the body. Dietary habits mainly are being established during the late adolescence and young adulthood. Aim - to study nutritional habits of the medical university students in Georgia. A questionnaire containing 73 questions was developed in English and Georgian. Sampling frame consisted of students of the 1st and 4th years of the Tbilisi State Medical University (TSMU). Random cluster sampling was used and total number of participants was 427 (34.4% male and 65.6% female). Mean age 20.6±1.9. Cross-sectional study was performed. The survey was anonymous and self-administered. Principles of Declaration of Helsinki were followed. Data analysis was done in Stata 14.0. Majority of the respondents have 3-4 meals a day and have hot meals several times or once a day. 193 (45.20%) refuse drinking alcohol at all. 112 (26.23%) almost never eat breakfast. 196 (45.67%) of the students get up at nights to eat. 233 (54.57%) do not consume meals at regular times. 183 (42.86%) do snack between the meals. 326 (76.35%) read or watch TV while eating. 190 (44.5%) eat white bread once a day or few times a day; 102 (23.89%) never eat buckwheat, oats. 326 (76.35%) add sugar to tea or coffee; 231 (54.10%) add salt to the already cooked food. 97 (22.71%) never eat fish. 166 (39.11%) and 172 (40.28%) correspondingly eat red meat and white meat 1-3 times per month or once a week. Only 159 (37.24%) eat fruits once a day or few times a day. 61 (14.29%) and 69 (16.16%) never eat correspondingly raw and cooked vegetables. Our findings are more or less in line with available international data. We think that the situation is similar in the non-medical students and the youth, in general. It might be advisable to perform additional investigations in this direction.

Coulomb explosion of uniformly charged spheroids

A simple, semianalytical model is proposed for nonrelativistic Coulomb explosion of a uniformly charged spheroid. This model allows us to derive the time-dependent particle energy distributions. Simple expressions are also given for the characteristic explosion time and maximum particle energies in the limits of extreme prolate and oblate spheroids as well as for the sphere. Results of particle simulations are found to be in remarkably good agreement with the model.

Dopant-induced ignition of helium nanodroplets in intense few-cycle laser pulses

We demonstrate ultrafast resonant energy absorption of rare-gas doped He nanodroplets from intense few-cycle (~10 fs) laser pulses. We find that less than 10 dopant atoms "ignite" the droplet to generate a nonspherical electronic nanoplasma resulting ultimately in complete ionization and disintegration of all atoms, although the pristine He droplet is transparent for the laser intensities applied. Our calculations at those intensities reveal that the minimal pulse length required for ignition is about 9 fs.