γ-Resistant Microporous CAU-1 MOF for Selective Remediation of Thorium.

A simple solvothermal method was used to synthesize a metal-organic framework (MOF) with an Al metal entity, viz., CAU-1 NH2. The synthesized MOF was characterized using different techniques like X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), field emission SEM (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering, positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The radiation stability was evaluated by irradiating the material up to a cumulative dose of 2 MGy using 60Co for the first time. The studies showed a remarkable gamma irradiation stability of the material up to 1 MGy. The porosity and surface area of the synthesized MOF were determined by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller, which showed a high specific surface area of 550 m2/g. The pH dependence study of Th uptake from an aqueous solution was performed from pH 2-8, followed by adsorption isotherm and adsorption kinetics studies. These results revealed that the Langmuir and pseudo-second-order kinetic models can be well adapted for understanding the Th uptake and kinetics, respectively. The synthesized MOF exhibited an ∼404 mg/g thorium adsorption capacity. Selectivity studies of adsorption of Th w.r.t. to U and different metal ions such as Cu, Co, Ni, and Fe showed that Th gets adsorbed preferentially as compared to other metal ions. In addition, the MOF could be used multiple times without much deterioration.

Recommendations for Safely Performing Major Head and Neck Surgery During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experience with Implementation of a Workflow.

COVID 19 pandemic has affected the delivery of surgical services as a part of management of head and neck cancers all over the world. Since it may affect the overall cure as well as quality of life of these patients, it is necessary to continue providing surgical treatment but with minimal additional health hazards to the patient or the health care worker. For this, a workflow was formulated in a university teaching hospital in India with large head and neck cancer workload and implemented during the period of national lockdown. 125 major head and neck cancer cases were operated during this period out of which 25 patients were of high-risk status. Emergency (10%) and semi-emergency (83%) cases predominated with few electives. The number of noncancer reconstructive and craniomaxillofacial cases operated was 81, out of which 25% was of emergency in nature. When compared to the data of similar period in the previous year, 60% of the workload in the cancer-related cases could be offered surgical treatment, whereas the noncancer cases operated were only 25%. The workflow may be useful for all surgical departments in safely performing procedures during this pandemic or similar situations in future with suitable refinements.

Assessing mobile health applications with twitter analytics.

INTRODUCTION: Advancement in the field of information technology and rise in the use of Internet has changed the lives of people by enabling various services online. In recent times, healthcare sector which faces its service delivery challenges started promoting and using mobile health applications with the intention of cutting down the cost making it accessible and affordable to the people. OBJECTIVES: The objective of the study is to perform sentiment analysis using the Twitter data which measures the perception and use of various mobile health applications among the citizens. METHODS: The methodology followed in this research is qualitative with the data extracted from a social networking site "Twitter" through a tool RStudio. This tool with the help of Twitter Application Programming Interface requested one thousand tweets each for four different phrases of mobile health applications (apps) such as "fitness app", "diabetes app", "meditation app", and "cancer app". Depending on the tweets, sentiment analysis was carried out, and its polarity and emotions were measured. RESULTS: Except for cancer app there exists a positive polarity towards the fitness, diabetes, and meditation apps among the users. Following a system thinking approach for our results, this paper also explains the causal relationships between the accessibility and acceptability of mobile health applications which helps the healthcare facility and the application developers in understanding and analyzing the dynamics involved the adopting a new system or modifying an existing one.