Exorbitant signatures of pesticides and pharmaceuticals in municipal solid wastes (MSWs): Novel insights through risk analysis, dissolution dynamics, and model-based source identification.

Studies on the occurrence and fates of emerging organic micropollutants (EOMPs) like pharmaceuticals and pesticides in MSWs are scarce in the literature. Therefore, MSWs were sampled from 20 Indian landfills and characterized for five widely consumed EOMPs (chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin, carbofuran, carbamazepine, and sodium diclofenac), physicochemical, and biological properties. The pesticide (median: 0.17-0.44 mg kg-1) and pharmaceutical (median: 0.20-0.26 mg kg-1) concentrations significantly fluctuated based on landfill localities. Eventually, principal component and multi-factor (MFA) models demonstrated close interactions of EOMPs with biological (microbial biomass and humification rates) and chemical (N, P, K, Ca, S, etc.) properties of MSWs. At the same time, the MFA resolved that EOMPs' fates in MSWs significantly differ from bigger cosmopolitan cities to smaller rural townships. Correspondingly, the concentration-driven ecological risks were high in 15 MSWs with EOMP-toxicity ranks of diclofenac > carbofuran = chlorpyrifos > cypermethrin > carbamazepine. The EOMPs' dissolution dynamics and source apportionments were evaluated using the positive matrix factorization (PMF) model for the first time on experimental data, extracting four anthropogenic sources (households, heterogeneous business centers, agricultural, and open drains). The most significant contribution of EOMPs to MSWs was due to heterogeneous business activity. Notably, the aging of soluble chemical fractions seems to influence the source characteristics of EOMPs strongly.

Stability and numerical analysis of the generalised time-fractional Cattaneo model for heat conduction in porous media.

This work investigates the generalised time-fractional Cattaneo model. The homotopy perturbation transform technique is used to get the numerical solution of this model. The stability is analysed using the Lyapunov function, also the error analysis is discussed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed technique is illustrated by calculating the L 2 and L ∞ error and comparing it with the existing techniques.

Characterization of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) associated with fine aerosols in ambient atmosphere of high-altitude urban environment in Sikkim Himalaya.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) compounds are ubiquitous in ambient air due to their persistence, carcinogenicity, and mutagenicity. Gangtok being one of the cleanest cities in India located in Eastern Himalayan region, witnesses high developmental activities with enhanced urbanization affecting the ambient air quality. The present study aims to measure PM2.5 and PAHs in the ambient atmosphere of the Sikkim Himalaya to understand the influence of natural and anthropogenic activities on aerosol loading and their chemical characteristics. The PM2.5 samples were collected and analysed for the duration from Jan 2020 to Feb 2021.The seasonal mean concentrations of PM2.5 and PAHs were observed to be high during autumn and low during summer season. Overall, the annual mean concentration of PM2.5 was found higher than the prescribed limit of World Health Organization and National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The concentration of the 16 individual PAHs were found to be highest during autumn season (55.26 ± 37.15 ng/m3). Among the different PAHs, the annual mean concentration of fluorene (3.29 ± 4.07 ng/m3) and naphthalene (1.15 ± 3.76 ng/m3) were found to be the highest and lowest, respectively. The Molecular Diagnostic Ratio (MDR) test reveals higher contribution from heavy traffic activities throughout the winter and autumn seasons. The other possible sources identified over the region are fossil fuel combustion, and biomass burning. The multivariate statistical analysis (Multifactor Principal Component Analysis) also indicates a strong association between PM2.5 /PAHs and meteorological variables across the region in different seasons. The precipitation and wind pattern during the study period suggests that major contribution of the PM2.5 and PAHs were from local sources, with minimal contribution from long-range transport. The findings are important for comprehending the trends of PAH accumulation over a high-altitude urban area, and for developing sustainable air quality control methods in the Himalayan region.

Numerical analysis of fractional coronavirus model with Atangana-Baleanu derivative in Liouville-Caputo sense.

The novel coronavirus which emerged at the end of the year 2019 has made a huge impact on the population in all parts of the world. The causes of the outbreak of this deadliest virus in human beings are not yet known to the full extent. In this paper, an investigation is carried out for a new convergent solution of the time-fractional coronavirus model and a reliable homotopy perturbation transform method (HPTM) is used to explore the possible solution. In the presented model, the Atangana-Baleanu derivative in the Liouville-Caputo sense is used. The variations of the susceptible, the exposed, the infected, the quarantined susceptible (isolated and exposed), the hospitalized and the recovered population with time are presented through figures and are further discussed. The effects of selected parameters on the population with the time are also shown through figures. The convergence of solution by the HPTM is shown through tables. The results reveal that the HPTM is efficient, systematic, very effective, and easy to use in getting a solution to this new time-fractional mathematical model of coronavirus disease.

Corrigendum: Service evaluation of the impact of capnography on the safety of procedural sedation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2022.867536.].

Service Evaluation of the Impact of Capnography on the Safety of Procedural Sedation.

Background: Capnography has been associated with a reduced incidence of events related to respiratory compromise during procedural sedation. Methods: A prospective service evaluation was conducted at a large United Kingdom (UK) teaching hospital to assess the impact of capnography on patient safety within four speciality services: bronchoscopy, endoscopy, interventional cardiology, and interventional radiology. Events were defined as provided by the World Society of Intravenous Anaesthesia. One thousand four hundred one patients were enrolled in the evaluation, with 666 patients before and 735 after implementation of capnography. Data was entered as a convenience sample on site in an offline data-collection tool. Results were assessed for the relative reduction in the incidence and resulting adjusted odds ratio for the combined incidence of oxygen desaturation (75-90% for <60s), severe oxygen desaturation (<75% at any time) or prolonged oxygen desaturation (<90% for >60s), bradycardia (>25% from baseline) and tachycardia (>25% from baseline). The adjusted odds ratio was controlled for both procedure and patient characteristics. Results: After implementation of capnography, a significant reduction (43.2%, p ≤ 0.05) in adverse events was observed: 147 adverse events occurred during 666 procedures without capnography compared with 93 adverse events that occurred during 735 procedures with capnography. The adjusted odds ratio for the occurrence of the target adverse events was 0.57 (95% CI: 0.42-0.77). Multivariable linear regression indicated that capnography was a significant predictor (p 0.001) of reduced adverse events. Conclusion: These results suggest improved patient safety following capnography implementation.

Cephalometric evaluation of the cervical spine posture following fixed functional therapy with Forsus™ appliance.

Background: To investigate whether fixed functional therapy for mandibular advancement with the Forsus™ appliance would produce any changes in the cervical spine posture. Materials and Methods: This prospective clinical exploratory study was conducted on 12 patients (six females and six males) with a mean age of 15 ± 1.3 years, having mandibular retrusion, Class II malocclusion, who were treated with the Forsus™ appliance. Lateral cephalogram was taken twice, once at the baseline (T1) before the commencement of the treatment and once following termination of fixed functional treatment (T2). Eleven measurements representing the vertical and the sagittal craniofacial proportions, and the head posture, were taken into account. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22. The variations between before and after treatment measurements were collated using paired t-test. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: No significant differences were noticed in the angle linking the horizontal lines of the head and the superior crest of the spinal column before and after the treatment, with P = 0.73. The cervical curvature angle also failed to show any significant difference with P = 0.14. Conclusion: Fixed functional therapy with the Forsus™ device resulted in dentoalveolar and soft tissue alterations alone but did not alter the cervical spine posture.

Ecosystem-centric business continuity planning (eco-centric BCP): A post COVID19 new normal.

This article views the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity leading to a significant reduction in pollution levels, clean waters in rivers, improved visibility, and other tangible benefit to humanity and the environment. In Post-COVID scenario, to restore the margins and regain the lost production, industries are likely to increase their production leading to a quantum jump in the pollution levels. Having precedence of such a scenario in 2008-09, this article looks at what are the possible avenues to engage the city government and business houses through an a new normal ECO-BCP concept for long term sustainability. All economic stimulus needs to be tied down with the stringent reduction in the emission norms. The Ten Principles for the Eco-centric BCP guide the reopening of MSMEs after lockdown period called to check the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Eco-centric BCP model will help the MSMEs to adopt the new-normal business strategies to align with the country-specific commitments to SDGs, SFDRR and Paris declaration.

Rapidly Evolving Large Rhinolith: Cause of Recurrent Nasal Bleed.

Rhinoliths are a rare cause of nasal obstruction but may also present with other symptoms including nasal bleed. We report a case of a rapidly evolving rhinolith in a patient presenting with the complaint of recurrent epistaxis for 2 years. A high index of suspicion is needed for diagnosing this condition.

"Similar query was answered earlier": processing of patient authored text for retrieving relevant contents from health discussion forum.

Online remedy finders and health-related discussion forums have become increasingly popular in recent years. Common web users write their health problems there and request suggestion from experts or other users. As a result, these forums became a huge repository of information and discussions on various health issues. An intelligent information retrieval system can help to utilize this repository in various applications. In this paper, we propose a system for the automatic identification of existing similar forum posts given a new post. The system is based on computing similarity between two patient authored texts. For computing the similarity between the current post and existing posts, the system uses a hybrid strategy based on template information, topic modelling, and latent semantic indexing. The system is tested using a set of real questions collected from a homeopathy forum namely abchomeopathy.com. The relevance of the posts retrieved by the system is evaluated by human experts. The evaluation results demonstrate that the precision of the system is 88.87%.

A study on use of the web for automatic answering of remedy finding questions of common users.

BACKGROUND: The World Wide Web has become a huge repository of knowledge in many domains, including health problems and remedy. An intelligent system, having the capability of mining the relevant information from the web, can provide instant guidance in our basic health problems. OBJECTIVE: The first objective is to convert the free-form long user query into a structured summary. The second objective is to provide an advice for a health query posed by a user. The suggestion can be in the form of names of medicines and related information or a warning to indicate that the situation is a medical emergency. METHODS: First, a set of template information is extracted from the user question. A search query is formed to retrieve relevant pages from a set of trusted websites. The retrieved pages are processed in various levels to extract the remedy and related information. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The system is tested using a set of real questions collected from various relevant websites. The system generated suggestions are evaluated by experts. Evaluation results show that the system provides relevant results in 92.92% cases.

Chemical characterization and source apportionment of aerosol over mid Brahmaputra Valley, India.

Aerosol samples (as PM10, n = 250) were collected from three rural/remote receptor locations in the mid Brahmaputra plain region and were chemically characterized for metals (Al, Fe, Co, Cu, Cr, Cd, Mn, Ni, Pb), ions (Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+, K+, NH4+, F-, Cl-, NO3-, SO42-), and carbon. Vital ratios like NO3-/SO42-, EC/OC, K+/EC, K+/OC, enrichment factors and inter-species correlations were exploited to appreciate possible sources of aerosol. These empirical analyses pointed towards anthropogenic contributions of aerosol, particularly from biomass burning, vehicular emission, and road dust. The chemically characterized concentration data were subsequently fed into two receptor models viz. Principal Component Analysis-Multiple Linear Regression (PCA-MLR) and Chemical Mass Balance (CMB) for apportionment of sources of aerosol. The PCA-MLR estimates identified that the combustion sources together accounted for ∼42% of aerosol and the contribution of secondary formation to be 24%. Road and crustal dusts have been well apportioned by PCA-MLR, which together accounts for ∼26% of the aerosol. The CMB model estimates explained that the combustion sources taken together contributed ∼47% to the aerosol, which includes biomass burning (27%), vehicular emission (13%), coal (1%), kerosene (4%), and petroleum refining (2%). Other major sources that were apportioned were road dust (15%), crustal dust (26%), and construction dust (6%). There are inherent limitations in the source strength estimations because of uncertainty present in the source emission profiles that have been applied to the remote location of India. However, both the models (PCA-MLR and CMB) estimated the contribution of combustion sources to 42 and 47% respectively, which is comparable.

Percutaneous closure of a large patent ductus arteriosus in a preterm newborn weighing 1400 g without using arterial sheath: an innovative technique.

Percutaneous closure of patent ductus arteriosus is well established in infants weighing >5 kg, but data regarding outcome of preterm especially very low birth weight infants is minimal. Although surgical ligation of patent ductus arteriosus is the preferred and well-accepted modality of treatment after failure of drug therapy in preterm infants, it has also got its own demerits in such a small and fragile subset. Device closure in infants weighing <1.5 kg is rarely attempted because of high chances of complications, especially acute arterial injury due to the arterial sheath. We received a 1.4-kg ventilator-dependent infant for closure of large patent ductus arteriosus. Percutaneous closure of patent ductus arteriosus was done successfully and the infant was discharged on room air with a weight of 1.8 kg. We present here an innovative technique in which successful patent ductus arteriosus device closure was done in a 1.4-kg infant without using arterial sheath.

Understanding of multi-level resistive switching mechanism in GeOx through redox reaction in H2O2/sarcosine prostate cancer biomarker detection.

Formation-free multi-level resistive switching characteristics by using 10 nm-thick polycrystalline GeOx film in a simple W/GeOx/W structure and understanding of switching mechanism through redox reaction in H2O2/sarcosine sensing (or changing Ge°/Ge4+ oxidation states under external bias) have been reported for the first time. Oxidation states of Ge0/Ge4+ are confirmed by both XPS and H2O2 sensing of GeOx membrane in electrolyte-insulator-semiconductor structure. Highly repeatable 1000 dc cycles and stable program/erase (P/E) endurance of >106 cycles at a small pulse width of 100 ns are achieved at a low operation current of 0.1 µA. The thickness of GeOx layer is found to be increased to 12.5 nm with the reduction of polycrystalline grain size of <7 nm after P/E of 106 cycles, which is observed by high-resolution TEM. The switching mechanism is explored through redox reaction in GeOx membrane by sensing 1 nM H2O2, which is owing to the change of oxidation states from Ge0 to Ge4+ because of the enhanced O2- ions migration in memory device under external bias. In addition, sarcosine as a prostate cancer biomarker with low concentration of 50 pM to 10 µM is also detected.

Black Phosphorus N-Type Field-Effect Transistor with Ultrahigh Electron Mobility via Aluminum Adatoms Doping.

High-performance black phosphorus n-type field-effect transistors are realized using Al adatoms as effective electron donors, which achieved a record high mobility of >1495 cm2 V-1 s-1 at 260 K. The electron mobility is corroborated to charged-impurity scattering at low temperature, whilst metallic-like conduction is observed at high gate bias with increased carrier density due to enhanced electron-phonon interactions at high temperature.

The effectiveness of pendulum, K-loop, and distal jet distalization techniques in growing children and its effects on anchor unit: A comparative study.

BACKGROUND: A common strategy to correct Class II malocclusions using a nonextraction protocol in children is to move the maxillary molars distally using molar distalization appliances, which usually derive their anchorage from maxillary premolars, causing mesialization of premolars and protrusion of incisors. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the skeletal, dental and soft tissue changes produced by three different distalizing appliances, namely, pendulum, K-loop, and distal jet appliances. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty-six children of mean age 14.13 years requiring molar distalization were divided into three groups: Group I (pendulum appliance), Group II (K-loop), and Group III (distal jet). Lateral cephalometric films were taken before and after 5 months of molar distalization and following cephalometric parameters were used to assess the effects of maxillary molar distalization, namely, anteroposterior skeletal (SNA/SNB/ANB), vertical skeletal (face height ratio/Frankfort-mandibular plane [FMA]/angle formed between Maxillary plane & Mandibular plane (MM)), interdental (overjet/overbite), maxillary dentoalveolar, and soft tissue parameters. RESULTS: There was no significant age difference between the three groups. In overall treatment changes among the three groups, the Anteroposterior skeletal changes were not statistically significant, vertically FMA angle increased by 1.79° ± 2.25° and overbite reduced by 2.38 ± 1.83 mm. The maxillary first molars were distalized by an average of 4.70 ± 3.01 mm (Upper 6 [U6] to pterygoid vertical [PTV]). The maxillary central incisor labial tipping increased to an average of 1.61 ± 2.73 mm and cant of upper lip increased by 3.40° ± 5.88° are statistically significant (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: All three distalization techniques in growing children produced significant effects on anchor unit. There was an increase in FMA angle, significant bite opening, proclination of the maxillary incisors and increase in the cant of the upper lip.

Pendulum Therapy of Molar Distalization in Mixed Dentition.

Early and timely pedo-orthodontic treatment is aimed at eliminating the disturbances of skeletal or dentoalveolar development, to harmonize the stomatognathic system before the full eruption of all permanent teeth. The advantages of pendulum appliance are its minimal dependence on patient's compliance (child cooperation), ease of fabrication, onetime activation and adjustment of the springs if necessary to correct minor transverse and vertical molar positions. This article reports a successful treatment method of class II malocclusion with pendulum appliance in mixed dentition phase. Distalization of maxillary molar was done, followed by guidance of canine impaction orthodontically and other dental correction using 0.022 MBT appliances. Posttreatment results were stable and remarkable. How to cite this article: Patil RU, Prakash A, Agarwal A. Pendulum Therapy of Molar Distalization in Mixed Dentition. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2016;9(1):67-73.