Hypokalemic nephropathy and nephrogenic diabetes insipidus due to excessive consumption of a soft drink

Chronic diarrhea commonly causes hypokalemia. However, life-threatening hypokalemia due to chronic diarrhea has not been reported in the adult caused by chronic ingestion of a fructose beverage. We report an adult patient who had severe hypokalemia from chronic osmotic diarrhea as a result of drinking 4 to 6 liters of Big Red daily for several months. This resulted in sustained hypokalemia, complicated by hypokalemic nephropathy and subsequent nephrogenic diabetes insipidus. All abnormalities cleared with potassium replacement, salt restriction, modest thiazide treatment, and abstinence from Big Red.     

Optimality of Jackson's permutations with respect to limited machine availability

This article deals with the scheduling problem of minimizing the makespan in a two‐machine job‐shop with given w intervals of machine non‐availability. It is known that this problem is binary (unary) NP‐hard if there is at least one non‐availability interval (if the number of non‐availability intervals may be arbitrarily large), and all the jobs have the same machine route. We find sufficient conditions when Jackson's pair of permutations remains optimal for the two‐machine job‐shop problem with w1 non‐availability intervals. Extensive computational studies show the effectiveness (in the number of problems solved) and efficiency (in computational time) of these conditions for the randomly generated instances with up to 10,000 jobs and w5000 non‐availability intervals.     

Physicomathematical Modeling of the Explosive Dispersion of Liquid by a Centrifugal Atomizer

High dispersiveness of an aerosol, short time for cloud generation, and uniform distribution in a room are substantial parameters that have to be taken into account in the development of disinfectant, decontaminating, and fire‐extinguishing aerosols. To obtain greater homogeneity of an aerosol cloud, it has been suggested to additionally employ a centrifugal atomizer, which enables a relatively wide spray angle, in the design of a pulsed‐type aerosol generator. A physicomathematical model for an explosive‐type centrifugal atomizer is suggested herein. Results of parametric studies of the model are summarized which establish dependences of the aerosol dispersiveness, spray angle, and mass flow rate upon dimensionless parameters characterizing geometric properties of the sprayer. The physicomathematical model allows the sprayer characteristics to be selected in order to obtain aerosol media with a priori specified parameters. Experimental results with respect to the dynamics of the filling of an experimental vessel with an aerosol produced by the explosive‐type centrifugal atomizer are presented. Comparison of the experimental and theoretical data indicates the adequacy of the physicomathematical model proposed.     

Nanoscale Surface Analysis Reveals Origins of Enhanced Interface Passivation in RbF Post Deposition Treated CIGSe Solar Cells

Alkali post deposition treatments (PDTs) of Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ absorbers have boosted the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the solar cell devices in the last years. A detailed model explaining how the PDTs impact the optoelectronic properties at the nanoscale is still lacking. Here, via various scanning probe techniques, X-Ray photo-electron spectroscopy and high resolution secondary ion mass spectroscopy it is shown that the RbF PDT treatments lead to a one to one exchange of Rb with Cu at the surface. This exchange takes place in the naturally occurring Cu-depleted CIGSe surface, known as the ordered vacancy compound. A detailed comparison between samples with different PDTs after various cleaning procedures furthermore highlights the necessity to perform all the measurements on NH₄OH cleaning surfaces only. After NH₄OH, no RbInSe₂ phase could be detected at the surface anymore and the surface bandgap, as measured with scanning tunneling spectroscopy is only 1.7 eV. The findings demonstrate that the existence of a RbInSe₂ phase is most likely not responsible for the recent improvements in power conversion efficiency for state of the art solar cells. The primary effect of the PDT treatment is a modification of the ordered vacancy compound, where Cu is exchanged with Rb.