Search

In this study, the environmental damage of Euphrates water caused by the three main sources of wastewater (municipal wastewater and tar spring water) in the Hit sector was investigated. Surface water monitoring was performed by selecting four sampling points to describe the upstream, mixing zone, and downstream water systems of the Euphrates River. The physicochemical properties of water at wastewater confluence sites indicated a hydrochemical uni-intrusion vortex behavior that was detected and confirmed by spatial variation of important indicators related to environmental applications, including (K, Na, Ca, Mg, HCO3, SO4, Cl, NO3, PO4, Temp., DO, BOD5, NH4, Turb., EC, pH, HT, and TDS). The distribution of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the Euphrates River was governed by a spatial enrichment gradient of 0.04 to 0.06 mg/L m. The distribution behavior of the DO plumes depends on the re-aeration process (K2) at a rate ranging from 0.4 s–1 to 1.416 s–1 associated with the re-oxygenation process (K1) ranging from 0.172 to 0.82 s–1. Wastewater is considered to be a source of spot contamination with brackish water and emits chemical pollutants with a total dissolved discharge of 18,190 ton/y, which is the source of salinization in river water. The hydrochemical classification revealed the succession of different water facies developed by the intruding water of the Na-SO4-chloride type in the freshening phases. According to the Canadian water quality index, water in the Euphrates River has been categorized as good water for aquatic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The Laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) technique has been used recently for corpus callosotomy in patients with epilepsy, especially atonic seizures (drop attacks) and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS). However, there is little data on safety and outcomes. Therefore, the authors systematically studied and conducted a pooled analysis with special focus on feasibility, outcomes and complications.Methods: A systematic review was performed in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. A total of 10 retrospective studies were identified, comprising 58 cases of MRI-guided LITT treatment.Results: MRI-guided LITT was successfully performed in 57 cases while one case was aborted due to hemorrhage. The average duration of clinical follow-up following LITT callosotomy was 20 months. In the 57 LITT callosotomies, complete seizure freedom and excellent seizure control (Engel I and II) were achieved in 21.1% and 49.1% of patients, respectively. For atonic seizures, the rate of complete freedom and excellent control was 52.5% and 72.5%, respectively. The median length of stay at hospital was 2 days. No death was encountered. Common complications included: fiber-related hemorrhage (8.6%), inaccurate placement (6.9%) followed with transient hemiparesis/hemineglect and supplementary motor area (SMA) syndrome 5.2% each. The rate of disconnection syndrome was 3.4%.Conclusion: MRI-guided LITT for corpus callosotomy is feasible and safe, with low complication rates, short hospitalization and has comparable rates of seizure control to that of classic surgical callosotomy. The majority of patients with atonic seizures achieve complete seizure freedom and excellent control (Engel I and II). The risk for developing disconnection syndrome is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurosurgery requires the communication of radiological imaging. Smartphones are increasingly used for this purpose because of the efficiency and convenience of integrated cameras and native Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) functionality. There is inconsistency among hospitals regarding policies addressing this use as it relates to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. Some hospitals offer a HIPAA-compliant secure messaging application (SMA) as a substitute. The authors hypothesized that the use of smartphones for sharing radiological imaging would be commonplace among residents. We sought to characterize usage patterns, resident awareness of policies and HIPPA, and the effectiveness of SMAs as a means of avoiding HIPAA violations. An electronic dynamic questionnaire was sent to all 116 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education–accredited US neurosurgery residency program directors and coordinators to be forwarded to their residents. A total of 100 responses were received, representing 49 residency programs. Ninety-two (92%) residents reported using MMS to transmit radiological imaging. Twenty-six (26%) reported doing so with patient identifiers. Roughly half (48%) of residents were unaware of policies regarding imaging transmission via MMS at their institutions. Among the 17 (35%) programs providing SMAs, only 3 of 27 (11%) residents in these programs did not use MMS for image transmission. The data suggest that there is widespread resident use of MMS for image transmission, regardless of policy and the availability of alternative HIPAA-compliant applications. Knowledge of local institutional policies and HIPAA privacy rules is poor. Alternative strategies are needed to prevent HIPAA-noncompliant transmission of imaging by residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel two-bed adsorption thermo-physical battery (ATB) cycle with mass recovery has been suggested. • The performance of ATB is examined both with and without recovery mode. • Experimental results are theoretically validated. • Utilizing the recovery mode results in a 14 % increase in the coefficient of performance (COP). This paper developed a novel semi-continuous two-bed Adsorption Thermophysical Battery (ATB), utilizing silica gel RD/water as the adsorption pair. The Absorber Bed Unit (ABU) was designed and manufactured using finned tubes, while the condenser and evaporator are incorporated under a single Evaporator-Condenser Unit (ECU). The study investigated the impact of mass recovery, hot and cooled water temperature, and the chilled, cooled, and hot water flow rate on the system performance. The results of the study revealed that the ATB with mass recovery demonstrated a higher Coefficient of Performance (COP) and Refrigeration Capacity (RC) in comparison to the system without mass recovery. The average COP for the cycles with and without mass recovery were 0.228 and 0.2, respectively. The present study determined that the most favorable duration for mass recovery was 60 s. A substantial reduction in the COP can be observed as the hot and cooled water temperature increases. Also, the COP of the ATB was found to be directly related to the flow rates of chilled and cooled water but not to the flow rates of hot water. In addition, the COP of the two-bed ATB with mass recovery was improved by 14 % compared with the single-bed ATB. Finally, the adsorption uptake rose by 24 % when the cooled temperature was decreased from 313 K to 303 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E. coli is an Enterobacteriaceae that could develop resistance to various antibiotics and become a multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacterium. Options for treating MDR E. coli are limited and the pipeline is somewhat dry when it comes to antibiotics for MDR bacteria, so we aimed to explore more options to help in treating MDR E. coli. The purpose of this study is to examine the synergistic effect of a liposomal formulations of co-encapsulated azithromycin and N-acetylcysteine against E. coli. Liposomal azithromycin (LA) and liposomal azithromycin/N-acetylcysteine (LAN) were compared to free azithromycin. A broth dilution was used to measure the MIC and MBC of both formulations. The biofilm reduction activity, thermal stability measurements, stability studies, and cell toxicity analysis were performed. LA and LAN effectively reduced the MIC of E. coli SA10 strain, to 3 μg/ml and 2.5 μg/ml respectively. LAN at 1 × MIC recorded a 93.22% effectiveness in reducing an E. coli SA10 biofilm. The LA and LAN formulations were also structurally stable to 212 ± 2 °C and 198 ± 3 °C, respectively. In biological conditions, the formulations were largely stable in PBS conditions; however, they illustrated limited stability in sputum and plasma. We conclude that the formulation presented could be a promising therapy for E. coli resistance circumstances , providing the stability conditions have been enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New proposed pipeline of pre-processing step and CNN for retinal vessels segmentation. • A deep strided-CNN is proposed to better and faster segment retinal vessels. • Skip connections are used to generate sharper and well segmented vessels. • The selected loss function fulfils the problem requirement and the nature of the dataset. In this paper, a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed for accurate segmentation of retinal blood vessels. This method plays a significant role in observing many eye diseases. A strided-CNN model is proposed for accurate segmentation of retinal vessels, especially the tiny vessels. The model is a fully convolutional model consisting of an encoder part and a decoder part where the pooling layers are replaced with strided convolutional layers. The strided convolutional layer approach was chosen over the pooling layers approach as the former can be trained. The morphological mappings along with the Principal Component Analysis (PCA)- based pre-processing steps are used to generate contrast images for training dataset. Skip connections are implemented to concatenate features from the encoder part and the decoder part to enhance the vessels segmentation especially the tiny vessels and to make the vessel's edges sharper. We used a class balancing loss function to train and optimize the proposed model to improve vessel image quality. The impact of the proposed segmentation method is evaluated on four databases namely DRIVE, STARE, CHASE-DB1 and HRF. Overall model performance, particularly with respect to tiny vessels, is primarily influenced by sensitivity and accuracy metrics. We demonstrate that our model outperforms other models with a sensitivity of 0.87, 0.808, 0.886 and 0.829 on DRIVE, STARE, CHASE_DB1 and HRF respectively, along with respective accuracies of 0.956, 0.954, 0.976 and 0.962. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces design and FPGA implementation of sound encryption system based on a fractional-order chaotic system. Also, it presents the FPGA implementation of Tang, Yalcin, and Özoǧuz fractional order chaotic systems. The Grunwald-Letnikov (GL) definition is used to generalize the investigated systems into the fractional-order domain. Also, the variation of parameters for each system is investigated against the window size of the GL definition. Xilinx ISE 14.5 is used to simulate the proposed design. Also, some hardware reduction techniques are applied to decrease hardware utilization and increase throughput. Moreover, Yalcin system is employed as a chaotic generator in a speech encryption algorithm. Security analysis techniques are presented to show the robustness of the proposed algorithm. They include basic perceptual and statistical aspects, the NIST tests, key space analysis, mean square error (MSE) and key sensitivity. Statistical analyses including correlation, histogram, spectrogram, and entropy analysis are presented. The system is implemented on Artix-7 FPGA with one clock latency. Finally, experimental results are illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Experimental study on heat and moisture transport in pine using NMR. • One-dimensional transport during heating of exposed surface with halogen lamps. • Different principal transport directions have different transport characteristics. • Direct observation of a local peak in moisture content. • Transport characteristics captured by simple two-phase model with coupling term. Abstract The quantification of moisture transport in heated wood is relevant to several fields, e.g. for lumber drying and processing and for fire safety risk assessment. We present non-destructive and simultaneous measurements of the moisture content and temperature distributions in pine wood during unilateral exposure to a heat source. The moisture content is measured by a nuclear magnetic resonance setup specifically built for the evaluation of moisture transport in porous materials at elevated temperatures. Temperature profiles are obtained by thermocouples placed at different distances from the exposed surface. While the temperature rises, a peak in the moisture content is formed, which travels towards the unexposed surface. The velocity of the moisture content peak depends on the principal direction in which transport occurs, as confirmed by experiments. Numerical simulations of moisture transport are performed which can qualitatively reproduce the behavior observed in experiments. Moreover, several characteristics, such as the timescale and non-linearity of the moisture peak position, are well captured. The influence of several input parameters, such as the permeability and diffusion coefficient, on the moisture peak dynamics is elaborately explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Reviews show that exercise reduces many obesity-related physical health problems. However, it is unclear whether those benefits extend to psychosocial outcomes. The aim of this review was to evaluate the effect of exercise on psychosocial outcomes in adults with obesity. Method Seven databases (Pubmed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, CINAHL, Psyarticle, SportDiscus, Proquest) were searched until October 2017 to identify relevant studies published in peer-reviewed journals. Two reviewers independently screened articles against the following inclusion criteria: used an experimental or quasi-experimental design, involved adults with a body mass index ≥30 kg/m 2 , delivered an intervention consisting of supervised or semi-supervised exercise, and assessed quality of life (QoL), depression, anxiety, and/or body image as outcomes. Results Twenty two articles were included in this review; 16 were randomized controlled trials (RCT). Most interventions were supervised and lasted ≤16 weeks. Meta-analysis of RCTs with available data on QoL (k = 7) and depression (k = 4) did not show that exercise was significantly superior to control conditions for physical QoL ( g  = 0.16, 95%CI [-0.05,0.37]), mental QoL ( g  = 0.20, 95%CI [-0.09,0.48]), or depression ( g  = −0.26, 95%CI [-0.70,0.19]). Only three studies reported data on anxiety and body image. Conclusions Current evidence does not suggest exercise is successful in significantly enhancing psychosocial health in adults with obesity. Limitations associated with the reviewed studies could have biased the results toward a lack of effect. Additional high-quality RCTs are needed to improve evidence-based knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]