What decides: high mortality in paediatric acute renal failure?

Forty paediatric cases of A.R.F. (Acute Renal Failure) of various aetiology were included in the study. 60% of patients were less than 4 years of age with male predominance. 80% cases reported to us very late with oligoanuria of more than 24 hours (2-7 days). Diarrhoea, vomiting and fever were other dominant symptoms. Maximum cases were severely anaemic (87.5%) with mean Hb 7.73 +/- 1.9 gm%. 40% cases were of underweight while only one case (2.5%) was of over weight, inspite of volume excess in 40% cases. All 24 cases, who were estimated for serum albumin, found to have marked hypoalbuminemia. Mortality was found to be as high as 65% inspite of effective peritoneal dialysis in all cases. High mortality seems to be due to profound anuria of many days (because of marked delay in reaching the hospital), fever and malnutrition besides other factors as aetiology.     

Distribution of Etoposide-Loaded Hydrophilic Albumin Microspheres in Mice

Hydrophilic albumin microspheres of etoposide were prepared by the emulsion polymerization technique using glutaraldehyde as the cross-linking agent. The microspheres prepared had a mean diameter of 1.5 μm. The microspheres were injected into mice by the intravenous route. In all, 12 mice were selected for the study, out of which 10 were given the drug-loaded microspheres and 2 were kept as solvent control. The mice were sacrificed after 24 hr and the accumulation of drug was determined in lungs, liver, and kidney.     

Esterification of acrylic acid with methanol by reactive chromatography: Experiments and simulations

The esterification of acrylic acid with methanol using Amberlyst 15 as a stationary phase has been investigated using a chromatographic reactor. Several experimental runs at various operating conditions have been conducted on a batch column. A classical reactive chromatography model including lumped kinetics, a linear driving force transport model and a heterogeneous kinetic model for the catalytic reaction has been developed. The additional dispersion of concentration fronts due to density gradient effects has been accounted for in the model. The model parameters have been determined in a fast and reliable way by directly fitting the batch column experiments. In general, a good agreement between experimental and calculated results is obtained. The evaluation of the covariance of the fitted model parameters reveals important insights about the system behavior.Based on the detailed batch column model, a complete model of a simulated-moving-bed reactor has been implemented and its optimal point of operation for the synthesis of methyl acrylate from acrylic acid has been determined. Particularly when considering the low-operating temperature, we can regard this process as a possible competition for current technologies.     

Effect of the polyelectrolyte coating on the photothermal efficiency of gold nanorods and the photothermal induced cancer cell damage

Coating gold nanorods (GNRs) with polyelectrolytes is an effective approach to make them biocompatible for potential use in photothermal treatment (PTT) of cancer. The authors report the effect of coating of the GNRs with polystyrene sulphonate (PSS‐GNRs) and PSS plus poly di‐allyl di‐methyl ammonium chloride (PDDAC‐GNRs) on its photothermal conversion efficiency (PTE), cellular uptake and subsequently the photothermal induced cytotoxicity in human oral cancer cells (NT8e). Coating of GNRs with PSS led to decrease in PTE by ∼30% and further coating it with PDDAC led to its increase to similar level, with respect to as‐ prepared GNRs. The cellular uptake of PDDAC‐GNRs in cancer cells was double than that for PSS‐GNRs. PTT of cancer cells after treatment with 60 pM of either PDDAC‐GNRs or PSS‐GNRs resulted in cytotoxicty of ∼90%. At higher concentration of 120 pM, while PSS‐GNRs showed no further change, for PDDAC‐GNR the photothermal induced cytotoxicity decreased to ∼50%. The broadening of longitudinal surface plasmon peak of PDDAC‐GNRs and appearance of dark clusters in cells under bright‐field microscope suggested intracellular clustering of PDDAC‐GNRs. In conclusion, despite high PTE and cellular uptake of PDDAC‐GNRs, its intracellular clustering (due to acidic pH) adversely affect the PTT of cancer cells.Inspec keywords: polymer electrolytes, gold, nanorods, cancer, nanomedicine, cellular biophysics, toxicology, radiation therapy, polymer filmsOther keywords: polyelectrolyte coating, photothermal efficiency, gold nanorods, photothermal induced cancer cell damage, cancer photothermal treatment, polystyrene sulphonate, poly di‐allyl di‐methyl ammonium chloride, photothermal conversion efficiency, cellular uptake, photothermal‐induced cytotoxicity, human oral cancer cells, dark clusters, bright‐field microscope, PDDAC‐GNR intracellular clustering, acidic pH, intracellular compartment, Au     

POEMS: end-to-end performance design of large parallel adaptive computational systems

The POEMS project is creating an environment for end-to-end performance modeling of complex parallel and distributed systems, spanning the domains of application software, runtime and operating system software, and hardware architecture. Toward this end, the POEMS framework supports composition of component models from these different domains into an end-to-end system model. This composition can be specified using a generalized graph model of a parallel system, together with interface specifications that carry information about component behaviors and evaluation methods. The POEMS Specification Language compiler will generate an end-to-end system model automatically from such a specification. The components of the target system may be modeled using different modeling paradigms and at various levels of detail. Therefore, evaluation of a POEMS end-to-end system model may require a variety of evaluation tools including specialized equation solvers, queuing network solvers, and discrete event simulators. A single application representation based on static and dynamic task graphs serves as a common workload representation for all these modeling approaches. Sophisticated parallelizing compiler techniques allow this representation to be generated automatically for a given parallel program. POEMS includes a library of predefined analytical and simulation component models of the different domains and a knowledge base that describes performance properties of widely used algorithms. The paper provides an overview of the POEMS methodology and illustrates several of its key components. The modeling capabilities are demonstrated by predicting the performance of alternative configurations of Sweep3D, a benchmark for evaluating wavefront application technologies and high-performance, parallel architectures.     

A New Synthetic Hydrocarbon Liquid Lubricant for Space Applications

Synthetic hydrocarbon liquid lubricants (based on polyalphaolefins) have been developed for use in space applications. These materials have been fully characterized and their physical properties reported which include: kinematic and absolute viscosity, viscosity index, vapor pressure, evaporation, specific gravity, pour point, coefficient of thermal expansion, refractive index, and flow activation energy. In addition, tribological properties under ultrahigh vacuum conditions have been determined. These include: lubricated lifetimes using a spiral orbit tribometer (SOT) and vacuum four-ball wear rates. These values are compared to existing state-of-the-art space lubricants.     

The history of urban growth management in South Africa: tracking the origin and current status of urban edge policies in three metropolitan municipalities

ABSTRACT

For many cities in the Global South, colonialism played a dominant role in shaping their urban form. The historical objective of planning in colonial mother-cities was dealing with poor health and living conditions, therefore a planning approach similar to that followed in post-war Britain would appear beneficial in post-colonial cities, characterized by environmental and physical infrastructure unable to cope with massive population growth. Urban growth management is a discourse born in an attempt to control the growing industrial city in the early twentieth century, and in recent years applied through instruments such as urban edges or growth boundaries to limit urban sprawl and encourage higher density urban development. In South Africa, the principles of compaction and urban growth management formed part of the post-apartheid planning agenda towards transforming the inefficient and fragmented landscape inherited from separate spatial development. Consequently, urban edges and urban growth boundaries formed key components of municipal spatial planning frameworks since the early 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to explore the origin and status of urban edges in three metropolitan municipalities in South Africa to aid in understanding of these spatial instruments in the south.     

Directly smelted lead-tin alloys: A historical perspective

This paper discusses evidence related to the genesis and occurrence of mixed lead-tin ore deposit consisting of cassiterite and the secondary minerals formed from galena. These evidences belong to a very long time period ranging from pre-historic to as late as the nineteenth century a.d. This type of mixed ore deposits was smelted to prepare lead-tin alloys. The composition of the alloy depended on the composition of the starting ore mixture. A nineteenth century evidence for the production of directly smelted lead-tin alloys in southern Thailand is discussed. A unique and rather uncommon metallurgical terminology in Sanskrit language—Nāgaja—was introduced in India for the tin recovered from impure lead. This suggests that Indians developed a process for recovering tin from lead-tin alloys, which in all probability was based on the general principle of fire refining. It has been shown that in the context of India the possibility of connection between the word Nāgaja and the directly smelted lead-tin alloys cannot be ruled out.