Challenges of providing maintenance hemodialysis in a resource poor country: Experience from a single teaching hospital in Lagos,Southwest Nigeria

Providing maintenance hemodialysis is associated with high costs and poor outcomes. In Nigeria, more than 90% of the population lives below the poverty line, and patients with end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) pay out‐of‐pocket for maintenance hemodialysis. To highlight the challenges of providing maintenance hemodialysis for patients with ESRD in Nigeria, we reviewed records of all patients who joined the maintenance hemodialysis program of our dialysis unit over a 21‐month period. Information regarding frequency of hemodialysis, types of vascular access for dialysis, mode of anemia treatment and frequency of blood transfusion received were retrieved. One hundred and twenty patients joined the maintenance hemodialysis program of our unit during the period under review. Seventy‐two (60%) were males and the mean age of the study population was 47 + 14 years. The mean hemoglobin concentration at commencement of dialysis was 7.3 g/dL + 1.6 g/dL. The initial vascular access was femoral vein cannulation in all the patients. A total of 73.5% of the patients required blood transfusion at some point with 33% receiving five or more pints of blood. Only 3.3% of the patients had thrice weekly dialysis, 21.7% dialyzed twice weekly, 23.3% once weekly, 16.7% once in two weeks, 2.5% once in three weeks and 11.7% once monthly. At the time of review, 8.3% of the patients had died while 38.3% were lost to follow‐up. Majority of patients with ESRD on maintenance hemodialysis in our unit were poorly prepared for dialysis, were under‐dialyzed, and were frequently transfused with blood with resultant poor outcomes.     

Thin Layer Drying of African Breadfruit (Treculia africana) Seeds: Modeling and Rehydration Capacity

African breadfruit (ABF) seeds are underutilized plant resources, which have been reported to have high potential for novel food and industrial uses. The kinetics of moisture removal during air drying of the whole (WS) and dehulled (DS) seeds was studied at temperatures of 40–70 °C. Five empirical models were tested for predicting the experimental data. Drying of ABF seeds followed an exponential decay pattern, while drying predominantly took place during the falling rate periods. All the drying models predicted the experimental data above 90% accuracy while the Henderson–Pabis model gave the best fit (0.95 < r ² < 0.99) at most of the experimental conditions. Effective moisture diffusivity, D _eff, ranged from 3.65 to 7.15 × 10⁻⁹ m²/s and 3.95 to 6.10 × 10⁻⁹ m²/s for WS and DS, respectively. D _eff showed significant dependence on the moisture content (p < 0.01). Rehydration capacity of DS was not significantly affected by drying temperature while that of WS increased with drying temperature.     

Varying Heating Effect on Mixed Convection of Nanofluids in a Vented Horizontal Cavity with Injection or Suction

The problem of mixed convection heat transfer inside a horizontal vented enclosure through the lower and upper parts, respectively, of its left and right vertical walls is studied numerically using Al₂O₃-water nanofluid as working fluid. The bottom wall is subjected to a linearly varying (increasing or decreasing) heating temperature profiles, while the other boundaries are considered thermally insulated. The fresh fluid is admitted from the bottom part of the left vertical wall by injection or by the suction imposed on the opening of the right vertical wall. Based on numerical predictions, the conjugate effect of the Reynolds number and the nanoparticle concentration on fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics is studied. The obtained results demonstrate clearly the positive role of the nanoparticles addition on the improvement of the heat transfer rate and the mean temperature within the cavity. In addition, the flow structure and the temperature distribution inside the cavity are seen to be very sensitive to the variations of the Reynolds number, the imposed external flow mode, and the heating type. Results presented show that, in general, the decreasing heating mode is more favorable to the heat transfer in comparison with the case of the increasing heating mode. The cooling efficiency is found to be more pronounced by the injection/suction mode by applying the increasing/decreasing heating type.     

Cell Docking in Double Grooves in a Microfluidic Channel

Microstructures that generate shear‐protected regions in microchannels can rapidly immobilize cells for cell‐based biosensing and drug screening. Here, a two‐step fabrication method is used to generate double microgrooves with various depth ratios to achieve controlled double‐level cell patterning while still providing shear protection. Six microgroove geometries are fabricated with different groove widths and depth ratios. Two modes of cell docking are observed: cells docked upstream in sufficiently deep and narrow grooves, and downstream in shallow, wide grooves. Computational flow simulations link the groove geometry and bottom shear stress to the experimental cell docking patterns. Analysis of the experimental cell retention in the double grooves demonstrates its linear dependence on inlet flow speed, with slope inversely proportional to the sheltering provided by the groove geometry. Thus, double‐grooved microstructures in microfluidic channels provide shear‐protected regions for cell docking and immobilization and appear promising for cell‐based biosensing and drug discovery.     

Green synthesized N-doped graphitic carbon sheets coated carbon cloth as efficient metal free electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Heteroatom doped carbon structures received a great attention owing to its applications in catalysis, energy and optics. In this work, a simple hydrothermal approach for the synthesis of nitrogen doped graphitic carbon sheets (N-GCSs) is reported. Rubus parvifolius (R. parvifolius) fruit juice and aqueous ammonia are used as carbon precursor and nitrogen dopant, respectively. The synthesized N-GCSs are characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectrum (EDS). The presence of hydroxyl and carbonyl functionalities in the synthesized N-GCSs are confirmed by the FT-IR analysis. The doping of nitrogen in N-GCSs is revealed through the XPS spectrum. The XRD and Raman studies imply that the synthesized N-GCSs are moderate graphitic nature. The FE-SEM and HR-TEM images of N-GCSs exposed its sheet like porous morphology. The electrocatalytic activity of N-GCSs coated carbon cloth (N-GCSs/CC) are examined towards hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 0.50 M H₂SO₄ using linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), Tafel and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) studies. The onset potential of synthesized N-GCSs/CC is about ?0.25 V_RHE, which is lower than that of bare carbon cloth (CC) ?0.75 V_RHE. The Tafel slope of N-GCSs/CC is smaller (198 mV dec^?1) than that of bare CC (253 mV dec^?1), suggested fast kinetics of N-GCSs. Moreover, the N-GCSs/CC is attained ?10 mA cm^?2 of current density at very low over potential of ?0.320 V_RHE. The EIS studies also proved the excellent catalytic activity of N-GCSs/CC towards HER. Thus, the R. parvifolius derived N-GCSs is a better candidate for HER in acidic medium.     

A distributed deadlock detection and resolution algorithm and itscorrectness proof

The key idea of the algorithm is to let one transaction controller be in charge of all transactions in a set of interacting transactions. Two transactions are interacting if they are both interested in (accessing) the same resource. In addition, the controller is in charge of all the resources allocated to any of the transactions in the set. Having one controller in charge of all the transactions in a set of interacting transactions and all the resources allocated to them makes it easier to detect deadlocks and avoid them. The main problem dealt with is how a controller takes charge of another transaction when the transaction tries to access one of the resources currently in the control of the controller and how a controller releases a transaction back to its original controller when the transaction is no longer interested in any of the resources in which one or more of the other transactions are also interested. Communicating sequential processes (CSP) is used to code the algorithm. The correctness of the algorithm is proved in a semiformal manner