Restless leg syndrome presenting as chronic severe limb pain in a dialysis patient

“Chronic pain” is a commonly reported symptom among hemodialysis patients. Despite its high prevalence and the poor health-related quality of life associated with it, chronic pain remains an ineffectively assessed and managed entity in dialysis patients. We report a case of a 55-year-old gentleman on maintenance hemodialysis who presented with 3 months history of “excruciating flitting and fleeting type” of pain largely involving both lower limbs and occasionally neck, shoulder, chest, and upper limbs. The pain was so intolerable that it even triggered suicidal intentions in the patient. Common causes of chronic pain in dialysis patients were considered, but the initial history and clinical examination remained elusive. The patient was empirically started on oral analgesics, benzodiazepines, calcitriol, and levocarnitine supplementation but had no significant effect on his symptoms. A comprehensive repeat clinical history revealed the nocturnal periodicity of symptoms, specific aggravation of pain with inactivity, and its temporary relief with movement. This helped us narrow down the diagnosis to restless leg syndrome (RLS) amidst the myriad causes of chronic pain in dialysis patients. The “constant urge to move the legs” which is the defining characteristic of RLS was inconspicuous in our patient and excruciating pain was the predominant manifestation. This atypical presentation of RLS with agonizing pain involving multiple sites of the body led to a delay in the diagnosis and initiation of appropriate therapeutic measures. The patient had a dramatic response to therapy with dopamine agonists and withdrawal of the drug led to reappearance of his symptoms which further confirmed the diagnosis of RLS. RLS should be considered in the evaluation of chronic pain in dialysis patients and renal health care providers should familiarize themselves with the varied atypical, forme fruste manifestations of RLS to avoid diagnostic delay of this disabling but treatable condition.     

Hybrid firefly bat algorithm (HFBA)–based network security policy enforcement for PSA

Network operators heavily depend on security services to secure their information technology infrastructures. On the other hand, due to the complexity of security policies, it is not appropriate to straightforwardly use previous pathwise enforcement approaches. In this paper, the enforcement problem of the security policy on middleboxes is formulated as a weighted K set covering problem that requires a policy space analysis tool. This tool is intended to be supported on range‐represented hyperrectangles, which are tagged using a prioritized R‐tree. This methodological work initially evaluates the topological features of diverse types of policies. Hybrid firefly bat algorithm–supported heuristic information shows the inherent difficulties of security policies and provides direction for the design of the enforcement algorithm. At the same time, a scopewise policy enforcement procedure is proposed, which requires a moderate number of enforcement network nodes for organizing the various policy subsets in a greedy manner. Our results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid firefly bat algorithm with policy space analysis offer greatly improved outcomes in terms of the rule overhead, network security, packet delivery ratio, packet loss ratio, and time efficiency above the set operations of the security policy.     

TG/DTA-based techniques for the determination of equilibrium vapour pressures of N,N′-propylenebis(2,4-pentanedion-iminoato)nickel(II) for CVD applications

The Schiff’s base complexes of nickel(II) prepared by condensing 1,2-diaminopropane (pn), 1,3-diaminopropane (trien), 1,4-diaminobutane (tren) or 1,2-diaminobenzene (opdn) with 2,4-pentanedione (acac) in a 1:2 mole ratio followed by chelation with nickel(II) were examined for their volatility/decomposition behaviour for CVD applications. Among the complexes screened, only one complex namely N,N′-propylenebis (2,4-pentanedion-iminoato) nickel(II) (designated as [Ni(acac)₂pn], Ni′) exhibited a single stepped volatilisation commencing from above its melting point (T_o) of 431.9 K and ending up with nil residue at about 570 K. Fast Atom Bombardment Mass Spectrometry was employed to determine the molecular mass of the vapour species to be 295 in accordance with the molecular mass for the monomeric Ni(C₁₃H₂₀O₂N₂). The equilibrium vapour pressure (p_e) of Ni′ over the range of 434–498 K was determined to be log p_e/Pa = 13.771 (±0.574)–4925.4 (±258.2) K/T by employing a TG-based transpiration technique, which yielded a value of 94.3±5.0 kJ mol⁻¹ for its standard enthalpy of vapourisation . The DTA-based melting point depression (T_o–T) studies were carried out on four mixtures of Ni′ (as a volatile solvent) with bis(2,4-pentanedionato)nickel(II) (designated as Ni(acac)₂ or Ni″) as the non-volatile solute. The dependence of log X_Ni′ against 1/T(K) for the four mixtures with the solvent mole fraction X_Ni′ = 0.910, 0.897, 0.881 or 0.849 exhibited near constant slope leading to an average value of 19.4±1.6 kJ mol⁻¹ for the standard enthalpy of fusion . Combining and , a value of 113.7 ± 6.6 kJ mol⁻¹ for standard enthalpy of sublimation was derived to facilitate the estimation of vapour pressures for solid/vapour equilibrium below the melting point.     

Kinetic and equilibrium studies on the biosorption of textile dyes onto Plantago ovata seeds

The powdered seeds of Plantago ovata (PSPO) were utilized for the removal of Malachite Green (MG) and Rose Bengal (RB) dyes from aqueous media by batch adsorption. The Fourier transform infra red spectroscopy (FTIR) results showed that both the dyes were adsorbed between the cellulose matrices, and this has been verified from the intensifying and narrowing aromatic C-H bending vibration. The morphology of the dye laden adsorbent was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which showed that the dyes were adsorbed between the cellulose matrices of the adsorbent. The PSPO was found to be very effective for the removal of MG and RB at pH 7, and equilibrium was attained within 200 min. The kinetic study indicated that the rate limiting step for MG and RB adsorption may be chemisorption and intraparticle diffusion. Adsorption equilibrium data were fitted to Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich-Peterson and Temkin adsorption isotherms. It is inferred from the equilibrium studies that the adsorption of MG follows the Freundlich isotherm and the adsorption of RB follows the Langmuir isotherm. The maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of the PSPO was found to be 86.23 mg/g for MG and 81.23 mg/g for RB, respectively.     

Multi-Objective Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm for Solving Real-World BLDC Motor Design Problem

The first step in the design phase of the Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motor is the formulation of the mathematical framework and is often used due to its analytical structure. Therefore, the BLDC motor design problem is considered to be an optimization problem. In this paper, the analytical model of the BLDC motor is presented, and it is considered to be a basis for emphasizing the optimization methods. The analytical model used for the experimentation has 78 non-linear equations, two objective functions, five design variables, and six non-linear constraints, so the BLDC motor design problem is considered as highly non-linear in electromagnetic optimization. Multi-objective optimization becomes the forefront of the current research to obtain the global best solution using metaheuristic techniques. The bio-inspired multi-objective grey wolf optimizer (MOGWO) is presented in this paper, and it is formulated based on Pareto optimality, dominance, and archiving external. The performance of the MOGWO is verified on standard multi-objective unconstraint benchmark functions and applied to the BLDC motor design problem. The results proved that the proposed MOGWO algorithm could handle nonlinear constraints in electromagnetic optimization problems. The performance comparison in terms of Generational Distance, inversion GD, Hypervolume-matrix, scattered-matrix, and coverage metrics proves that the MOGWO algorithm can provide the best solution compared to other selected algorithms. The source code of this paper is backed up with extra online support at and .     

Two step biodiesel production from Calophyllum inophyllum oil: Studies on thermodynamic and kinetic modelling of modified β‐zeolite catalysed pre‐treatment

Biodiesel is one of the alternative fuels that can help in reducing oil dependence. β‐Zeolite was modified with phosphoric acid and the modified β‐zeolite was used as catalyst for the esterification of free fatty acids (FFA) present in pinnai oil and its effect on esterification reaction was studied. Influence of catalyst amount, methanol to oil ratio and temperature on specific reaction rate was modelled using Langmuir–Hinshelwood (LH) kinetics, pseudo first order kinetics and Arrhenius equation, respectively. The kinetic constant values obtained in LH kinetics show that the adsorption capacity of FFA on catalyst surface was approximately 23 times higher than that of methanol. From pseudo first order kinetic modelling it is found that methanol to oil molar ratio of 9 gives the optimum k value. Thermodynamic studies were also performed to prove the endothermic nature of Pβ catalysed esterification reaction. © 2011 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering     

A learning resources centre: its utilization by medical students

The 17 described genomic species (DNA groups) of the genus Acinetobacter, including the type strains of the seven named species, were studied by using a multiplex PCR. The multiplex PCR assay combined two primer sets (rA1 and rA2 for recA gene target; rib1 and rib2 for 16S rDNA sequence) in a single reaction. Restriction analysis with two enzymes (Mbol and Hinfl) of the enzymatically amplified products allowed identification of all genospecies. This technique proved to be a rapid and reliable method for the identification of the Acinetobacter genomic species including the closely related DNA groups (1, 2, 3, 13). The results of this study suggest that the proposed method can be used for the identification of Acinetobacter spp. and as such may help to elucidate the ecology and clinical significance of the different species of this genus.     

Matching pursuit-based tap selection technique for UWB channel equalization

In this letter, matching pursuit (MP) based tap selection technique is proposed and applied to ultra wideband (UWB) indoor channel equalization in the presence of inter symbol interference (ISI) and multiple access interference (MAI). Given the limited training sample support, quadratic constraint is incorporated into MP algorithm to insure the robustness for tap selection. The proposed method is shown to outperform the conventional minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer significantly given the same amount of training symbols.     

Least squares-based receive antenna selection for MIMO spatial multiplexing systems with linear receivers

In this letter, a novel receive antenna selection technique is proposed for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing systems with linear receivers in the presence of unknown interference. This antenna selection technique is directly implemented based on training sample sequence under the least squares (LS) criterion. It avoids the channel estimation and retain the diversity benefit by antenna selection in the presence of unknown multiple access interference (MAI). In addition, practical implementation with manageable complexity is made possible by extending the fast backward greedy algorithm (BGA) into the proposed antenna selection algorithm.