Kinetics and leaching behaviors of aluminum from pharmaceutical blisters in sodium hydroxide solution

A hydrometallurgical process was developed for recycling pharmaceutical blisters.Leaching aluminum from pharmaceutical blisters using sodium hydroxide(NaOH) solutions was investigated with respect to leaching behaviors and kinetics.AL9(34) orthogonal design of experiments suggests that the most significant factor is NaOH concentration followed by temperature and leaching time.Factorial experiments demonstrate that the leaching rate of aluminum increases with increasing of the factors.The optimum conditions are temperature of 70 °C,leaching time of 20 min,NaOH concentration of 1.25 mol/L,liquid-to-solid mass ratio of 15:1 and agitation speed of 400 r/min.Under optimum conditions,the leaching rate is up to 100%,implying that aluminum and polyvinyl chloride(PVC) plastic in pharmaceutical blisters are separated completely.Kinetics of leaching aluminum is best described by the product layer diffusion control model,and the activation energy is calculated to be 19.26 kJ/mol.

Hemorrhagic blisters in fulminant Aeromonas hydrophila bacteremia: Case report and literature review

The Aeromonas species, belonging to the family Aeromonadaceae, are opportunistic pathogens found in humans with an incidence rate of 76 cases per million inhabitants in Southern Taiwan.The incidence of Aeromonas septicemia is relatively low, accounting for less than 15% of cases.Patients diagnosed with Aeromonas hydrophila bacteremia who were presented with skin blisters and septic shock have been reported to have a mortality rate of 100%.Aeromonas infection must be considered in the differential diagnosis of gangrene-like tissue damage or skin lesions in patients with end-stage renal disease, due to the potential sources of infections.A 49-year-old Taiwan Residents diabetic woman with end-stage renal disease had underwent regular hemodialysis.She was referred to our hospital due to a one-day course of fever, dyspnea, hypotension, and fulminant hemorrhagic blisters covering her whole body.A physical examination uncovered multiple hemorrhagic blisters, along with a ruptured blister over the lower left leg.Laboratory tests revealed an elevation of liver enzymes, impaired renal function, lactatemia, and high anion-gap metabolic acidosis.Cultures of both blood and hemorrhagic blister fluid grew Aeromonas hydrophila.However, she experienced persistent shock despite aggressive intravenous fluid, empiric antibiotics, and inotropic agents with norepinephrine and dopamine.Early diagnosis and prompt management using intravenous fluids, antibiotics and surgical debridement is recommended in order to improve a patient's survival rate.

Deuterium distribution and behavior of blisters in pre-damaged and undamaged tungsten

Tungsten(W),as a plasma-facing material,is subjected to high fluence plasma,resulting in both radiation damage and deuterium(D)retention.This study explores the blistering behavior and D supersaturated layers in both pre-damaged and undamaged W samples.To achieve a uniform damage profile similar to neutron irradiation,carbon(C)ions with multiple energies and angles were employed.The samples were further irradiated with low-energy D ions under two fluences at temperatures from~380 to 640 K.Using various experimental techniques,we found that pre-damaged W samples can effectively suppress the formation of blistering and lower the threshold temperature at which the surface remains free of blistering.We also observed the prominent D supersaturated peaks within the depth of 20 nm in both pre-damaged and undamaged W.Furthermore,a close correlation between blistering and the D supersaturation was investigated.The results suggest that neutron irradiation in the fusion reactors could increase the critical D concentration for blistering,while a greater depth of damage facilitated the inward diffusion of D,thereby reducing the D concentration gradient and alleviating surface blistering.

Forming conditions of blisters during solution heat treatment of Al–Si alloy semi-solid die castings

In the present study,numerical simulation method was used to analyze the conditions,resulting in the formation of blisters during solution heat treatment.Blister formation is considered to occur as the height of blister reaches 5μm.The effects of process parameters on the magnitude of the forming temperatures of blister(Tb)were discussed.Two kinds of Al-Si alloys were used to analyze the effect of mechanical properties of the alloys on blister forming conditions.Simulation results show that decreasing the initial pressure in gas hole,the long-short axial ratio of gas hole and the size of gas hole,as well as increasing the depth of gas hole and the strength of alloy are helpful to increase the critical temperature of forming blister.These conclusions are helpful for casters to understand the conditions controlling blister formation during solution heat treatment and take actions to avoid the blister defects.

DSN-BR-Based Online Inspection Method and Application for Surface Defects of Pharmaceutical Products in Aluminum-Plastic Blister Packages

Ensuring high product quality is of paramount importance in pharmaceutical drug manufacturing,as it is subject to rigorous regulatory practices.This study presents a research focused on the development of an on-line detection method and system for identifying surface defects in pharmaceutical products packaged in aluminum-plastic blisters.Firstly,the aluminum-plastic blister packages exhibit multi-scale features and inter-class indistinction.To address this,the deep semantic network with boundary refinement(DSN-BR)model is proposed,which leverages semantic segmentation domain knowledge,to accurately segment the defects in pixel level.Additionally,a specialized image acquisition module that minimizes the impact of ambient light is established,ensuring high-quality image capture.Finally,the image acquisition module,image detection module,and data management module are designed to construct a comprehensive online surface defect detection system.To validate the effectiveness of our approach,we employ a real dataset for instance verification on the implemented system.The experimental results substantiate the outstanding performance of the DSN-BR,achieving the mean intersection over union(MIoU)of 90.5%.Furthermore,the proposed system achieves an inference speed of up to 14.12 f/s,while attaining an F1-Score of 98.25%.These results demonstrate that the system meets the actual needs of the enterprise and provides theoretical and methodological support for intelligent inspection of product surface quality.By standardizing the control process of pharmaceutical manufacturing and improving the management capability of the manufacturing process,our approach holds significant market application prospects.

Blue rubber blister nevus syndrome: A case report

BACKGROUND Blue rubber blister nevus syndrome(BRBNS)is a congenital,rare disease charac-terized by venous malformations of the skin and internal organs,affecting all systems throughout the body.The pathogenesis is unknown.There is no con-sensus on the treatment of BRBNS.Most of the previously reported cases were mild to moderate with a good prognosis,and this case was a critically ill patient with severe gastrointestinal hemorrhage,disseminated intravascular coagulation(DIC),and severe joint fusion that was different from previously reported cases.CASE SUMMARY An 18-year-old man with early onset of BRBNS in early childhood is reported.He presented with recurrent melena and underwent malformed phlebectomy and partial jejunectomy and ileal resection.The patient had melena before and after surgery.After active treatment,the patient's gastrointestinal bleeding improved.This was a case of atypical BRBNS with severe gastrointestinal bleeding and severe joint fusion,which should be differentiated from other serious joint lesions and provide clinicians with better understanding of this rare disease.CONCLUSION This case of critical BRBNS with gastrointestinal hemorrhage,DIC and severe joint fusion provides further understanding of this rare disease.

Enhanced Disease Identification Model for Tea Plant Using Deep Learning

Tea plant cultivation plays a significant role in the Indian economy.The Tea board of India supports tea farmers to increase tea production by preventing various diseases in Tea Plant.Various climatic factors and other parameters cause these diseases.In this paper,the image retrieval model is developed to identify whether the given input tea leaf image has a disease or is healthy.Automation in image retrieval is a hot topic in the industry as it doesn’t require any form of metadata related to the images for storing or retrieval.Deep Hashing with Integrated Autoencoders is our proposed method for image retrieval in Tea Leaf images.It is an efficient andflexible way of retrieving Tea Leaf images.It has an integrated autoencoder which makes it better than the state-of-the-art methods giving better results for the MAP(mean average precision)scores,which is used as a parameter to judge the efficiency of the model.The autoencoders used with skip connections increase the weightage of the prominent features present in the previous tensor.This constitutes a hybrid model for hashing and retrieving images from a tea leaf data set.The proposed model will examine the input tea leaf image and identify the type of tea leaf disease.The relevant image will be retrieved based on the resulting type of disease.This model is only trained on scarce data as a real-life scenario,making it practical for many applications.

Cloning of cDNA Fragment of Chitinase Gene from the Mycoparasite Trichoderma atroviride on Armandii Pine Blister Rust

[Objective] The aim of this study was to isolate chitinase gene from Trichoderma atroviride strain SS003. [Method] With the aeciospore wall of armandii pine blister rust as inducer, chitinase gene was induced to express in Trichoderma atroviride cells. The cDNA fragment of chitinase gene was cloned by RT-PCR approach. [Result] The activity of chitinase induced reached 40.17 μg/10 min; and the specific fragment amplified was 834 bp in length and proved to be the fragment of chitinase gene by sequencing and sequence analysis. [Conclusion] The result showed the feasibility of isolating the full length of chitinase gene and its transformation, and further producing chitinase.

Determination of interfacial adhesive properties for polymeric film by blister test

The interfacial adhesive properties ofpolypropylene/stainless steel were studied by the blister test. The polypropylene film with a squared free-standing window was pressured by oil from one side of film. The corresponding deformation field was observed by a digital speckle correlation method. The experimental results show that the squared film deforms and debonds from stainless steel with the increase of pressure. The debonding of the squared film in initiates from the center of edge and extends to the comer, and then the deformation of film evolves from square to circle shape. The interfacial adhesive energy of polypropylene/stainless steel is （22.60±1.55） J/m2, which is in agreement with that measured by film with a circular window.

Notes on the genus Lytta(Coleoptera: Meloidae) from China

The subgeneric research history and present research status of Lytta are briefly introduced on a worldwide basis. A key to the subgenera and species of male Chinese Lytta is given. A newly recorded species for China, Lytta （Asiolytta） selanderi Saha is described. The subgeneric assignments for two species are proposed： Lytta （Lytta） battonii （Kaszab） and Lytta （Lytta） sifanica （Semenov）. 23 known species of Chinese Lytta are listed.

Effects of electromagnetic stirring on surface purity of IF steel slabs

In order to analyze the effect of electromagnetic stirring on the slab＇ s surface purity, the continuously cast slab surface inclusions and subsurface blisters have been investigated. The results indicate that the mold electromagnetic stirrer （M -EMS） is useful for the improvement of IF steel slabs＇ surface quality. The continuously cast slab surface inclusions and subsurface blisters have been significantly reduced. The distribution of bubbles in the slab is non-homogeneous in terms of both width and depth. The continuously cast slab surface inclusions tend to miniaturization through M-EMS and most of the inclusions are less than 10 μm in size.

Burn Management at the 37 Military Hospital—A Tertiary Hospital in Accra, Ghana

Burn injuries have been and remain a very significant source of mortality and morbidity in low- and middle-income countries. As a country in this category, Ghana, is not exempted. Ghana has a population of 31 Million with only 21 Plastic Reconstructive and Burn surgeons. Moreover, the country can boast of only 3 major Burn centres. This notwithstanding the country in particular and Africa, in general, carries an extraordinary burden of Burn injuries with devastating consequences. Burn data from the 37 Military Hospital were analyzed from March 2018 to September 2019—a period of 18 months. In all, 217 burn cases were seen representing about 2.1% of all trauma and surgical cases. Our burn data analyzed the peculiarities of epidemiology, types of burn, the pattern of injuries, and the outcome of burn care at the 37 Military Hospital. Flame is emerging as the predominant cause of burns, most frequently occurring from the use of Liquid Petroleum Gas. In the pediatric population, however, the most frequent cause of burns is hot water burns. The mortality rate among the burn population was 1.8% (4 mortalities). This paper aims to point out management methods adopted by our unit which helped to improve burn outcomes and to reduce mortality.

Supplementary description of a female and two newly-recorded species in the subfamily Oedemerinae(Coleoptera:Oedemeridae) from China

The female ofDiplectrus bistigmaeus Zhang, Ren et Ba, 2012 from Xizang was newly reported and supplementarily described. Two species of Oedemerinae were reported for the first time from China： Nacerdes （Xanthochroa） brendelli Svihla, 1987 and N. （Asiochroa） mimoncomeroides Svihla, 1998. The potential geographical distribution of these two species based on the known distribution was predicted by DIVA-GIS software.

Degradation research of protective coating on AZ91D Mg alloy components via simulated contamination

Accelerated environmental(hygrothermal)exposure experiments are performed on organic paints coated on commercial die-cast AZ91D Mg alloys to investigate the effects of contamination on blistering.Specifically,artificial human perspiration spray is used to contaminate the substrate surface.Blistering occurred only for paints that are spread on surfaces with the perspiration present.More blisters gradually form at longer test times,and the volume of blistering increases.Scanning electron microscopy indicates that blistering is initiated by contamination and/or substrate corrosion at the interface of the organic paints and the substrate.Blistering is characterized for two samples exposed to the hygrothermal environments for various times,and is found to be initially empty in the early stages.Hydrophilic chloride contaminants from the perspiration lead to in situ adhesion loss.Simultaneously,the paints volume expands,and the associated compressive stress causes it to bulge.After long-term test exposure,chloride anions corrode the substrate under the films,and MgO,Mg(OH)_(2),and Mg_(2)(OH)_(3)Cl corrosion products fill the blisters.Finally,a model of blistering evolution is discussed.

Rare case of dysphagia, skin blistering, missing nails in a young boy

Epidermolysis bullosa is a group of genetic disorders with an autosomal dominant or an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance and more than 300 mutations. The disorder is characterized by blistering mucocutaneous lesions and has several varying phenotypes due toanchoring defect between the epidermis and dermis. The variation in phenotypic expression depends on the involved structural protein that mediates cell adherence between different layers of the skin. Epidermolysis bullosa can also involve extra-cutaneous sites including eye, nose, ear, upper airway, genitourinary tract and gastrointestinal tract. The most prominent feature of the gastrointestinal tract involvement is development of esophageal stricture. The stricture results from recurrent esophageal mucosal blistering with consequent scarring and most commonly involves the upper esophagus. Here we present a case of a young boy with dominant subtype of dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa who presented with dysphagia, extensive skin blistering and missing nails. Management of an esophageal stricture eventually requires dilatation of the stricture or placement of a gastrostomy tube to keep up with the nutritional requirements. Gastrostomy tube also provides access for esophageal stricture dilatation in cases where antegrade approach through the mouth has failed.

A review on emerging smart technological innovations in healthcare sector for increasing patient's medication adherence

In this paper,we reviewed the various advanced technologies and methods that could help patients for measuring ad herence of patients.There exist intelligent technologies that are available for measuring medication adherence,including medication event monitoring system(MEMS@),smart blister packs,radio frequency identifcation(RFID)embedded smart drawers,and wisely aware RFID dosage(WARD)system,Utilization of these advanced technologies and systems have aided in enhancing the adherence to a greater extent.For example,MEMS@refers to the electronic cap that counts the number of bottles opened,but it can be employed only with bottles.Smart blisters are pharmaceutical packagings that possess the capability of monitoring when a pill or tablet is taken out of its packing.All those intelligent technologies can help in active monitoring of patients regarding adherence and capable of eradicating various medication errors due to which adherence is affected.

Influence of S Contents on the Hydrogen Blistering and Hydrogen Induced Cracking of A350LF2 Steel

In the present work, the effects of chemical compositions on the hydrogen blistering and hydrogen induced cracking of A350LF2 steel with different S contents were studied. Four types of A350LF2 steels were evaluated by immersing samples in H2S-saturated NACE solution. The hydrogen blistering, crack length rate(CLR), crack thickness rate(CTR) and crack sensitivity rate(CSR) were evaluated. The results show that there are many hydrogen blisters on the sample surface with S content of 0.021%, a few on the sample surface with S content of 0.019% and 0.012% and no one on the surface with S content of 0.002%. There were 12, 2 and 1 strips of cracks of longer than 0.3 mm on the evaluated cross sections with S content of 0.021%, 0.019% and 0.012%, respectively. There was no any crack in the sample with 0.002% S. The corrosion rate was also evaluated. The S content has no obvious influence on the corrosion rate.

Rectal perforation by inadvertent ingestion of a blister pack: A case report and review of literature

The accidental ingestion of a foreign body(FB) is a relatively common condition. In the present study, we report a peculiar case of rectal perforation, the first to our knowledge, caused by the inadvertent ingestion of a blister pill pack. The aim of this report is to illustrate the difficulties of the case from a diagnostic and therapeutic viewpoint as well as its unusual presentation. A 75-year-old woman, mentally impaired, arrived at our emergency department in critical condition. The computed tomography scan revealed a substantial abdominopelvic peritoneal effusion and free perigastric air. The patient was therefore submitted to an urgent exploratory laparotomy; a 2-cm long, full-thickness lesion was identified in the anterior distal part of the intraperitoneal rectum. Hence, we performed a Hartmann's procedure. Because of her critical condition, the patient was eventually transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, where she died after 10 d, showing no surgical complication. The ingestion of FBs is usually treated with observation or endoscopic removal. Less than 1% of FBs are likely to cause an intestinal perforation. The intestinal perforation resulting from the unintentional ingestion of an FB is often a difficult challenge when it comes to treatment, due to its late diagnosis and the patients' deteriorated clinical condition.

Blistering and Helium Retention of Tungsten and 5% Chromium Doped Tungsten Exposed to 60 keV Helium Ions Irradiation

Pure tungsten(W) and chromium doped W(W-5%Cr) are prepared by powder metallurgy. The microstructure,blistering and helium retention are investigated by x-ray diffraction,scanning electron microscopy,transmission electron microscopy and thermal desorption spectroscopy(TDS). These results show that the average size and density of helium blisters on the surface of pure W are much larger than those on the W-5%Cr alloy. Vacancyimpurity pairs can reduce the migration coefficients of vacancy and vacancy-helium complexes, and Cr may play a role of such an impurity. Moreover, the TDS result shows that the highest desorption peak moves to higher temperature, which is attributed to the HemCrkVncomplexes in the W-Cr alloy. In addition,the helium retention is found to be higher in W than in W-5%Cr.

Serum and Blister Fluid Pharmacokinetics of Amikacin in Severe Burn Patients

Objective: To characterize amikacin pharmacokinetics in serum and in blister fluid of severe burn patients to guide optimal treatment timing. Methods: Patients (N = 32) were divided into four groups based on amikacin administration timing and groups received drug minutes to hours after injury. In Groups A, B, C, and D, amikacin (400 mg, IV) was administered 3 - 4, 10, 20 and 30 h post burn injury, respectively (N = 8 for all groups). Next blister fluid and venous blood samples from 9 patients were obtained at 0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 h after drug infusion. Amikacin concentrations were measured with a fluorescent polarization immunoassay and pharmacokinetics was deduced using DAS3.2.5. Statistical analyses performed with SPSS13.0. Results: Compared with normal values, t1/2z of amikacin from burn patients was shortened in serum but amikacin half-lives in blister fluid was significantly greater than serum half-life values (p < 0.05). Groups A and B had greater pharmacokinetic values at each time point, and Group D did not achieve antibacterial concentrations of amikacin. Conclusion: Early amikacin administration in severe burn patients offers greater concentrations of drug in serum and blister fluids.