Severe hypercalcemia caused by Milk‐Alkali syndrome requiring urgent hemodialysis – Tums by the ton

An increased frequency of the Milk‐Alkali syndrome in the last several years has been noticed related to increasing use of calcium carbonate as a phosphate binder in CKD patients, as an antacid or as calcium supplementation. We present a case of severe hypercalcemia secondary to Milk‐Alkali syndrome that precipitated acute renal failure requiring urgent hemodialysis. A 59-year‐old male with history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and acid reflux presented to the ER with confusion, lethargy, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. His family relayed a history of recent indigestion and relief with Tums. He was taking several tablets at short intervals to self‐treat the indigestion. At the time of presentation, patient was confused and noted to be dehydrated. Lab findings were significant for elevated BUN/Cr‐ 121 mg/dl/11.1 mg/dl (baseline Cr 1.1 mg/dl few months ago), bicarbonate 38 mg/dl, calcium 16.7 mg/dl, ionized Ca of 1.76 mmol/L, iPTH 10 pg/ml, PTHrP 0.7 pg/ml. Medical management with intravenous fluids and furosemide showed no improvement in renal failure, or calcium level. Patient was then started on hemodialysis with 2.0 mmol/L calcium in the dialysate the next day. There was gradual improvement in patient's mental status, calcium values, and renal failure over the ensuing 2 weeks.
Discussion and Conclusions:  The diagnosis of Milk‐Alkali syndrome is made on the basis of history. Metabolic abnormalities involved in this syndrome are hypercalcemia with low to normal PTH and Vit. D levels, renal failure, and metabolic alkalosis. Failed medical management required acute dialysis in this patient. Acute hemodialysis in such a case could be life saving. Due to increasing use of calcium carbonate for dyspepsia and osteoporosis, patients should be made aware of these severe, potentially life-threatening adverse effects.     

Qualitative Evolution of Asymmetric Raman Line-Shape for NanoStructures

A qualitative evolution of an asymmetric Raman line-shape function from a Lorentzian line-shape is discussed here for application in low dimensional semiconductors. The step-by-step evolution reported here is based on the phonon confinement model which is successfully used in literature to explain the asymmetric Raman line-shape from semiconductor nanostructures. Physical significance of different terms in the theoretical asymmetric Raman line-shape has been explained here. Better understanding of theoretical reasoning behind each term allows one to use the theoretical Raman line-shape without going into the details of theory from first principle. This will enable one to empirically derive a theoretical Raman line-shape function for any material if information about its phonon dispersion relation, size dependence, etc., is known.     

Synthesis,structural, thermal and optical studies of rare earth coordinated complex: Tb(Sal)3Phen

Complexes of salicylic acid (Sal) and 1,10-phenanthroline (Phen) were synthesized coordinated with terbium ion (Tb³⁺) in crystalline phases. The structural characterizations of the lanthanide complex were made using FT-IR, NMR (¹H and ¹³C) and XRD techniques. These measurements confirm the formation of Tb(Sal)₃Phen complex structure. The thermal aspects of the complex were examined using DTA and TGA techniques. An enhancement in luminescence intensity of Tb³⁺ ion bands were observed in Tb(Sal)₃Phen complex as compared to TbCl₃ crystals on 355 nm laser excitation. Enhancement is reported due to the efficient energy transfer process from Sal to Tb³⁺ ions. This is also confirmed by the time resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy with increase in lifetime of Tb³⁺ ions due to encapsulation in Sal/Phen network. Our system in itself can be a deserving candidate for luminescent solar collector material when coupled with solar cells.     

Efficient removal of chromate and arsenate from individual and mixed system by malachite nanoparticles

Malachite nanoparticles of 100-150 nm have been efficiently and for the first time used as an adsorbent for the removal of toxic arsenate and chromate. We report a high adsorption capacity for chromate and arsenate on malachite nanoparticle from both individual and mixed solution in pH ～4-5. However, the adsorption efficiency decreases with the increase of solution pH. Batch studies revealed that initial pH, temperature, malachite nanoparticles dose and initial concentration of chromate and arsenate were important parameters for the adsorption process. Thermodynamic analysis showed that adsorption of chromate and arsenate on malachite nanoparticles is endothermic and spontaneous. The adsorption of these anions has also been investigated quantitatively with the help of adsorption kinetics, isotherm, and selectivity coefficient (K) analysis. The adsorption data for both chromate and arsenate were fitted well in Langmuir isotherm and preferentially followed the second order kinetics. The binding affinity of chromate is found to be slightly higher than arsenate in a competitive adsorption process which leads to the comparatively higher adsorption of chromate on malachite nanoparticles surface.     

Lactic acid bacteria isolated from ethnic preserved meat products of the Western Himalayas

We used culture- and molecular-biology-based methods to investigate the diversity of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in the ethnic chevon (goat) meat products chartayshya, jamma and arjia of the Western Himalayas. In six chartayshya, six jamma and four arjia samples, LAB were the predominant microbial component involved in the fermentation of these samples, and the total LAB population in arjia (7.8 ± 0.1 log cfu g⁻¹; mean ± SD) was significantly higher (P < 0.05) than in chartayshya (6.9 ± 0.1 log cfu g⁻¹) and jamma (7.5 ± 0.1 log cfu g⁻¹). We identified 53 LAB samples by 16S rRNA and phenylalanyl-tRNA synthase (pheS) genes sequencing. The LAB isolates were identified as Enterococcus durans, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, Enterococcus hirae, Leuconostoc citreum, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Pediococcus pentosaceus, and Weissella cibaria. These results revealed that there is a high level of diversity of LAB in the Himalayan ethnic preserved meat products.     

A DFT study of BeX (X = S,Se, Te) semiconductor: Modified Becke Johnson (mBJ) potential

The electronic, optical and elastic properties of BeX were performed within full potential liberalized augmented plane wave method based on density functional theory (DFT). Generalized gradient approximation (GGA) and modified Becke Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential were used for exchange correlation. The mBJ gives improved band gap as compare to GGA and in close agreement with the experimental results. The present band gaps of BeS, BeSe and BeTe calculated within mBJ are 4.40, 4.0 and 2.40 eV respectively.     

Analytical modeling of subthreshold current and subthreshold swing of Gaussiandoped strained-Si-on-insulator MOSFETs

This paper presents the analytical modeling of subthreshold current and subthreshold swing of short- channel fully-depleted （FD） strained-Si-on-insulator （SSOI） MOSFETs having vertical Gaussian-like doping pro- file in the channel. The subthreshold current and subthreshold swing have been derived using the parabolic approx- imation method. In addition to the effect of strain on silicon layer, various other device parameters such as channel length （L）, gate-oxide thickness （tox）, strained-Si channel thickness （ts_Si）, peak doping concentration （Np）, project range （Rp） and straggle （op） of the Gaussian profile have been considered while predicting the device characteris- tics. The present work may help to overcome the degradation in subthreshold characteristics with strain engineering. These subthreshold current and swing models provide valuable information for strained-Si MOSFET design. Ac- curacy of the proposed models is verified using the commercially available ATLASTM, a two-dimensional （2D） device simulator from SILVACO.     

Magnetic properties of directionally solidified Bi-Mn alloys

Microstructure, composition and magnetic property correlations have been attempted for directionally solidified dilute Bi-Mn alloys. The ingots exhibited predominantly acicular BiMn precipitate particles in a bismuth matrix, and showed magnetic anisotropy along the direction of solidification. The saturation magnetization has been found to increase linearly with the weight percentage of manganese over the entire composition range investigated, starting from the hypoeutectic (0.15% Mn) to the hypereutectic (6.6% Mn) region. The intrinsic coercivity has been observed to be a maximum along the direction of solidification, but it decreased with manganese content in both the as-cast and the directionally solidified alloys. The results are discussed in terms of the crystal anisotropy, shape anisotropy and packing factor of the magnetic particles.     

An evaluation of self-adjusting binary search tree techniques

Much has been said in praise of self-adjusting data structures, particularly self-adjusting binary search trees. Self-adjusting trees are most suited to skewed key-access distributions as the techniques attempt to place the most commonly accessed keys near the root of the tree. Theoretical bounds on worst-case and amortized performance (i.e. performance over a sequence of operations) have been derived which compare well with those for optimal binary search trees. In this paper, we compare the performance of three different techniques for self-adjusting trees with that of AVL and random binary search trees. Comparisons are made for various tree sizes, levels of key-access-frequency skewness and ratios of insertions and deletions to searches. The results show that, because of the high cost of maintaining self-adjusting trees, in almost all cases the AVL tree outperforms all the self-adjusting trees and in many cases even a random binary search tree has better performance, in terms of CPU time, than any of the self-adjusting trees. Self-adjusting trees seem to perform best in a highly dynamic environment, contrary to intuition.