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Abstract Thermal power plants are the primary components of the electrical energy production industry. These plants come with certain challenges such as the production of harmful gases causing environmental pollution. This adds to global warming issues that are dangerous for the earth's ecosystem. Another crucial aim is the least cost operation of these power plants. Combining both of these results in the formulation of the Dynamic Economic Emission Dispatch (DEED). This is a multi‐objective, constrained, dynamic, complex, and non‐linear optimization problem. Traditional methods are insufficient to undertake the complexities of DEED due to challenges such as high computational requirements and local optimal solutions. Hence, for obtaining an optimal or near‐optimal solution to such a complex problem, a metaheuristic technique is greatly needed. Metaheuristic techniques offer several benefits to solving complex problems such as being robust, efficient, and overall, less affected by an increase in problem size. In this work, a novel hybrid Firefly Optimization Algorithm (FFA)—Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm (GWO) has been proposed to solve the DEED problem. The complexity of the DEED problem is undertaken by involving constraints like power limits, power balance, and transmission losses. FFA‐GWO was applied on 5, 10, and 15‐unit standard test systems to meet 24‐h load demands. The optimal costs obtained in 5, 10, and 15‐unit standard test systems are 32264$, 1394212.615$, and 465373.448$ respectively. The comparison of results shows that the proposed framework surpasses the other methodologies in terms of reduced fuel cost and emissions.

Problem: Suicide incidences among adolescents and youths during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdowns have been reported across the world. However, no studies have been carried out to investigate cumulative nature, patterns, and causative factors of such suicide incidences., Methods: A purposive sampling of Google news between 15 February and 6 July was performed. After excluding duplicate reports, the final list comprised a total of 37-suicide cases across 11 countries., Findings: More male suicides were reported (21-cases, i.e., 56.76%), and the mean age of the total victims was 16.6 ± 2.7 years (out of a total of 29 cases). About two-thirds of the suicides were from three countries named India (11-cases), UK (8-cases), and the USA (6-cases). Out of 23-student victims, 14 were school-going students. Hanging was the most common suicide method accounting in 51.4% of cases. The most common suicide causalities were related to mental sufferings such as depression, loneliness, psychological distress, and so forth, whereas either online schooling or overwhelming academic distress was placed as the second most suicide stressors followed by TikTok addiction-related psychological distress, and tested with the COVID-19., Conclusions: The finding of the temporal distribution of suicides concerning lockdowns may help in exploring and evolving public measures to prevent/decrease pandemic-related suicides in young people., (© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Background: Cryptosporidiosis is a disease that causes diarrhoea lasting about one to two weeks, sometimes extending up to 2.5 months among the immunocompetent and becoming a more severe life-threatening illness among immunocompromised individuals. Cryptosporidium is a common cause of gastroenteritis. Cryptosporidiosis is common in HIV-infected individuals., Objectives: The objective of the review was to assess the efficacy of interventions for the treatment and prevention of cryptosporidiosis among immunocompromised individuals., Search Strategy: We searched the following databases for randomised controlled trials up to August 2005: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, AIDSLINE, AIDSearch, EMBASE, CINAHL, Current Contents, Geobase, and the Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management., Selection Criteria: Randomised controlled trials that compared the use of any intervention to treat or prevent cryptosporidiosis in immunocompromised persons were included. The outcome measures for treatment studies included symptomatic diarrhoea and oocyst clearance., Data Collection and Analysis: Two reviewers independently assessed the trials for quality of randomisation, blinding, withdrawals, and adequacy of allocation concealment. The relative risk for each intervention was calculated using a random effects model., Main Results: Seven trials involving 169 participants were included. There were 130 adults with AIDS enrolled in five studies. Evidence of significant heterogeneity was present. There was no evidence for a reduction in the duration or frequency of diarrhoea by nitazoxanide (RR 0.83 (95% CI 0.36-1.94)) and paramomycin (RR 0.74 (95% CI 0.42-1.31)) compared with placebo. Nitazoxanide led to a significant evidence of oocyst clearance compared with placebo among all children with a relative risk of 0.52 (95% CI 0.30-0.91). The effect was not significant for HIV-seropositive participants (RR 0.71 (95% CI 0.36-1.37)). HIV-seronegative participants on nitazoxanide had a significantly higher relative risk of achieving parasitological clearance of 0.26 (95% CI 0.09-0.80) based on a single study. The single study comparing spiramycin with placebo found no significant difference in reduction of the duration of hospitalisation (mean difference -0.40 days (95% CI -6.62-5.82)) or in mortality between the two arms of the trial (RR 0.43 (95% CI 0.04-4.35)). One study assessed the role of bovine dialyzable leukocyte extract, reporting a relative risk for decreased stool frequency of 0.19 (95% CI 0.03-1.19), while another compared bovine hyperimmune colostrum with placebo and found no evidence for improvement of stool volume (RR 3.00 (95% CI 0.61-14.86)) or in oocyst concentration per ml of stool (RR 0.27 (95% CI 0.02-3.74)). No studies were found that assessed prevention., Authors' Conclusions: This review confirms the absence of evidence for effective agents in the management of cryptosporidiosis. The results indicate that nitaxozanide reduces the load of parasites and may be useful in immunocompetent individuals. Due to the seriousness of the potential outcomes of cryptosporidiosis, the use of nitaxozanide should be considered in immunocompromised patients. The absence of effective therapy highlights the need to ensure that infection is avoided. Unfortunately, evidence for the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of preventive interventions is also lacking.

The pharmacokinetics and tolerability of a chemically stabilized synthetic ribozyme (ANGIOZYME) targeting the Flt-1 VEGF receptor mRNA were evaluated in healthy volunteers. In a placebo-controlled, single-dose escalation study, ribozyme was administered as a 4-hour i.v. infusion of 10 or 30 mg/m2 or as a s.c. bolus of 20 mg/m2. Peak ribozyme plasma concentrations of 1.5 and 3.8 micrograms/mL were observed after the 10 and 30 mg/m2 i.v. infusions, respectively. When normalized to dose, AUC values as well as peak concentrations increased proportionally as the dose was increased from 10 to 30 mg/m2. Peak concentrations of 0.9 microgram/mL were observed approximately 3.25 hours after a 20 mg/m2 s.c. bolus of ribozyme. The dose-normalized AUCs obtained after s.c. dosing were compared to the mean dose-normalized AUC after i.v. dosing to estimate an absolute s.c. bioavailability (f) of approximately 69%. An average elimination half-life of 28 to 40 minutes was observed after i.v. administration, which increased to 209 minutes after s.c. administration. Only 4 of 12 reported adverse events were possibly related to administration of ribozyme (headache and somnolence). Thus, ribozyme administration was well tolerated after a single 4-hour i.v. infusion of up to 30 mg/m2 or a single s.c. bolus of 20 mg/m2.