Current globalization trends and important breakthroughs globally need a complete study of heavy metal contamination, its causes, its impacts on human and environmental health, and different remediation strategies. He...Current globalization trends and important breakthroughs globally need a complete study of heavy metal contamination, its causes, its impacts on human and environmental health, and different remediation strategies. Heavy metal pollution is mostly produced by urbanization and industry, which threatens ecosystems and human health. Herein, we discuss a sustainable environmental restoration strategy employing phytoremediation for heavy metal pollution, the carcinogenic, mutagenic, and cytotoxic effects of heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, mercury, selenium, zinc, arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, and silver, which may be fatal. Phytoremediation, which was prioritized, uses plants to remove, accumulate, and depollute pollutants. This eco-friendly method may safely collect, accumulate, and detoxify toxins using plants, making it popular. This study covers phytostabilization, phytodegradation, rhizodegradation, phytoextraction, phytovolatilization, and rhizofiltration. A phytoremediation process’s efficiency in varied environmental circumstances depends on these components’ complex interplay. This paper also introduces developing phytoremediation approaches including microbe-assisted, chemical-assisted, and organic or bio-char use. These advancements attempt to overcome conventional phytoremediation’s limitations, such as limited suitable plant species, location problems, and sluggish remediation. Current research includes machine learning techniques and computer modeling, biostimulation, genetic engineering, bioaugmentation, and hybrid remediation. These front-line solutions show that phytoremediation research is developing towards transdisciplinary efficiency enhancement. We acknowledge phytoremediation’s promise but also its drawbacks, such as site-specific variables, biomass buildup, and sluggish remediation, as well as ongoing research to address them. In conclusion, heavy metal pollution threatens the ecology and public health and must be reduced. Phytoremediation treats heavy metal pollution in different ways. Over time, phytoremediation systems have developed unique ways that improve efficiency. Despite difficulties like site-specificity, sluggish remediation, and biomass buildup potential, phytoremediation is still a vital tool for environmental sustainability.展开更多
Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, providing humans with vitamins, phytonutrients, and minerals. They are significantly vulnerable, however, to post-harvest diseases caused by numerous fung...Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, providing humans with vitamins, phytonutrients, and minerals. They are significantly vulnerable, however, to post-harvest diseases caused by numerous fungal and bacterial pathogens. These pathogens can cause significant quantitative and qualitative losses from harvest to consumption during the handling and storage processes. Chemical fungicides are commonly used but are likely to leave residues on the produce, rendering short shelf-life produce, such as berries, unsuitable for human consumption. Identifying eco-friendly methods to control post-harvest disease is, therefore, of utmost importance. The presence of antifungal constituents in the roots of Poncirus trifoliata extracts was detected by thin layer chromatography-based bioautography. The active constituents were isolated and identified by bioautography assay-guided fractionation using flash chromatography followed by spectroscopic techniques. In this study, xanthoxyletin, demethylsuberosin, dentatin, nordentatin, ponfolin, and clausarin were isolated from the root extracts. The antifungal activity of these compounds was moderate to weak compared to the commercial fungicide captan. This study reports the isolation and identification of natural compounds from Poncirus trifoliata that exhibited antifungal activity against Colletotrichum fragariae and Botrytis cinerea, two major post-harvest pathogens.展开更多
In quantum optics, unitary transformations of arbitrary states are evaluated by using the Taylor series expansion. However, this traditional approach can become cumbersome for the transformations involving non-commuti...In quantum optics, unitary transformations of arbitrary states are evaluated by using the Taylor series expansion. However, this traditional approach can become cumbersome for the transformations involving non-commuting operators. Addressing this issue, a nonstandard unitary transformation technique is highlighted here with new perspective. In a spirit of “quantum” series expansions, the transition probabilities between initial and final states, such as displaced, squeezed and other nonlinearly transformed coherent states are obtained both numerically and analytically. This paper concludes that, although this technique is novel, its implementations for more extended systems are needed.展开更多
The traditional simulations may occasionally turn out to be challenging for the quantum dynamics, particularly those governed by the nonlinear Hamiltonians. In this work, we introduce a nonstandard iterative technique...The traditional simulations may occasionally turn out to be challenging for the quantum dynamics, particularly those governed by the nonlinear Hamiltonians. In this work, we introduce a nonstandard iterative technique where the Liouville space is briefly expanded with an additional (virtual) space only within ultrashort subintervals. This tremendously reduces the cost of time-consuming calculations. We implement our technique for an example of a charged particle in both harmonic and anharmonic potentials. The temporal evolutions of the probability for the particle being in the ground state are obtained numerically and compared to the analytical solutions. We further discuss the physics insight of this technique based on a thought-experiment. Successive processes intrinsically “hitchhiking” via virtual space in discrete ultrashort time duration, are the hallmark of our technique. We believe that this technique has potential for solving numerous problems which often pose a challenge when using the traditional approach based on time-ordered exponentials.展开更多
This paper studies the effect of breaking single-class building data into multi-class building data for semantic segmentation under end-to-end architecture such as UNet, UNet++, DeepLabV3, and DeepLabv3+. Although, th...This paper studies the effect of breaking single-class building data into multi-class building data for semantic segmentation under end-to-end architecture such as UNet, UNet++, DeepLabV3, and DeepLabv3+. Although, the already existing semantic segmentation methods for building detection work on the imagery of developed world, where the buildings are highly structured and there is a clearly distinguishable space present between the building instances, the same methods do not work as effectively on the developing world where there is often no clear differentiable spaces between instances of building thus reducing the number of detected instances. Hence as a noble approach, we have added building contours as new class along with building segmentation data, and detected the building contours and the inner building regions, hence giving the precise number of buildings existing in the input imagery especially in the convoluted areas where the boundary between the buildings are often hard to determine even for human eyes. Breaking down the building data into multi-class data increased the building detection precision and recall. This is useful in building detection where building instances are convoluted and are difficult for bare instance segmentation to detect all the instances.展开更多
Background: Although handgrip strength is a biomarker for morbidity/mor-tality, there is lack of evidence on the effects of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults of all ages. Objective: The aim of...Background: Although handgrip strength is a biomarker for morbidity/mor-tality, there is lack of evidence on the effects of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults of all ages. Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults. Methods: Five databases/search engines were searched. Studies comparing different types of resistance exercise interventions versus a non-exercised control group on handgrip strength were included. The available data did not allow us to conduct the pre-planned meta-analyses;therefore, only descriptive statistics were performed to summarize the data. Results: Twenty studies (17 randomized and three non-randomized controlled trials) were included, most of which were conducted in older adults. Twelve studies reported no significant difference in the change in handgrip strength between the resistance training and control groups. Two studies showed increases in handgrip strength in the resistance training group compared with the control group. Other studies included results for multi-training groups or left/right hands and found increasing handgrip strength compared to controls, but only in one training group or one hand. Overall, the randomized and non-ran-domized clinical trials presented moderate risk of bias. Conclusions: Due to the lack of low risk-of-bias randomized controlled trials of young and middle-aged adults, different training protocols, and small sample sizes, the existing evidence appears insufficient to support resistance training for increasing handgrip strength in healthy adults. Future studies may seek to discern the optimal way to develop and employ resistance training to improve hand-grip strength.展开更多
Purpose: Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome is an inflammatory disorder of the bladder, for which histamine has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the disease. The condition is often refractory to standar...Purpose: Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome is an inflammatory disorder of the bladder, for which histamine has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the disease. The condition is often refractory to standard-of-care medical treatments, including the antihistamines hydroxyzine or cimetidine, and procedures. Herein we report a physician-sponsored proof-of-principle case series of four adult female patients with chronic painful bladder and frequent urination, who were treated once daily with a low dose H1 + H2 histamine receptor antagonist combination. Materials and Methods: Four adult females with Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome were treated once daily with a compounded oral dosage form containing the H1 receptor antagonist-cetirizine 8 mg in combination with the H2 receptor antagonist-famotidine 22 mg. The case series consists of a retrospective review of the symptom severity prior to versus following H1 + H2 treatment. Results and Conclusions: The once daily dual histamine receptor antagonist therapy substantially reduced the pain and urination frequency, and prophylactically maintained all four patients long-term with substantially reduced disease severity. The reduction in symptom severity was achieved at amounts that do not exceed the US FDA approved and exceptionally safe daily doses for the two over-the-counter monotherapies. This case series provides proof-of-principle evidence that a dual antihistamine combination of cetirizine plus famotidine effectively treated and maintained female patients, who were previously refractory to standard-of-care medications and/or procedures.展开更多
Total scalp avulsion is a time-sensitive, catastrophic injury requiring quick, complex decision-making. Traditionally, these injuries were treated with split-thickness skin grafts. With advancements in microsurgery, t...Total scalp avulsion is a time-sensitive, catastrophic injury requiring quick, complex decision-making. Traditionally, these injuries were treated with split-thickness skin grafts. With advancements in microsurgery, treatments evolved to scalp replantation, becoming the standard of care in scalp reconstruction. Although the integrity of the scalp’s blood vessels is pivotal for successful replantation, the authors believe that scalp replantation should be considered at all costs. In the presented case, a 54-year-old female presented to the emergency room following an incident with an auger that completely avulsed her scalp. She was taken back to the operating room, where scalp replantation was performed. Following replantation, scalp necrosis led to serial debridings in the operating room, and eventually, all of the scalp was debrided down to healthy tissue. Surprisingly, the galea survived despite this, which provided a healthy base for skin grafts. Before definitive coverage was placed, it was decided to utilize a bilaminar acellular dermal matrix along with negative pressure wound therapy to create a more robust bed of granulation tissue. After three weeks of this treatment plan, the patient returned to the operating room, where a healthy, viable bed of granulating tissue was revealed beneath the dermal matrix. Split-thickness skin grafts were taken from her thighs bilaterally and sewn together in a quilt-like fashion to cover the wound bed. The entirety of the graft healed without complication except for one small area that required full-thickness skin grafting in an outpatient setting. Even though the replantation ultimately failed, it allowed the galea to survive, which saved the patient from undergoing a free tissue transfer and allowed her scalp to be reconstructed with split-thickness skin grafts. Even in the setting of polytrauma, the authors hope that anyone treating a scalp avulsion would consider scalp replantation at all costs.展开更多
Thumb reconstruction following a traumatic injury challenge depends on the extent of the injury. Ideally, reconstruction should restore thumb length and position and retain thumb stability, mobility, and strength, whi...Thumb reconstruction following a traumatic injury challenge depends on the extent of the injury. Ideally, reconstruction should restore thumb length and position and retain thumb stability, mobility, and strength, while preserving sensation and aesthetics. Achieving these outcomes can be especially challenging in severe cases of soft tissue and bony loss. The authors present a case of a 20-year-old right-hand dominant female involved in a motor vehicle accident who sustained severe crush injuries and burns to her right hand. Her injuries included soft tissue and bony defects extending from the thumb to the distal radius, namely avulsion of the thumb and significant loss of the distal radial and carpal column, resulting in severe wrist instability. We employed a three-segment vascularized osteocutaneous fibula flap to reconstruct the thumb and wrist to restore bony construct, carpal support, and soft tissue coverage. Thumb motion could not be achieved, but this technique offered a sensate, functional post for opposition and the appearance of an anatomic hand. Because of this surgery, the patient was enabled to graduate from college and pursue full-time employment. The authors hope that this report will add to the fund of knowledge and surgeon armamentarium for similar devastating injuries demanding thumb and wrist reconstruction.展开更多
Food based approach can prove effective in improving access and availability of nutrients from foods required for daily life where most of the people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. A study on feasibility ...Food based approach can prove effective in improving access and availability of nutrients from foods required for daily life where most of the people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. A study on feasibility of Farming Systems for Nutrition (FSN) approach was undertaken from 2013 to 2018 in a few villages of Koraput district, Odisha state and Wardha district, Maharashtra state in India. Interventions were done to increase crop diversity, intercropping of pulses and cereals, promotion of seasonal vegetables and fruits along </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">with </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">nutrition awareness. The endline survey showed increase in production diversity leading to improved household dietary diversity. This paper demonstrates the impact of FSN interventions on household nutrient intake. The results show that the intake of nutrients like protein, vitamin C, iron and calcium increased significantly in Koraput and all the nutrients including energy and vitamin A increased significantly in Wardha. The evidence shows that Farming System for Nutrition approach improves individual nutrient intake which in the long run can address the problem of undernutrition.展开更多
文摘Current globalization trends and important breakthroughs globally need a complete study of heavy metal contamination, its causes, its impacts on human and environmental health, and different remediation strategies. Heavy metal pollution is mostly produced by urbanization and industry, which threatens ecosystems and human health. Herein, we discuss a sustainable environmental restoration strategy employing phytoremediation for heavy metal pollution, the carcinogenic, mutagenic, and cytotoxic effects of heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, mercury, selenium, zinc, arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, and silver, which may be fatal. Phytoremediation, which was prioritized, uses plants to remove, accumulate, and depollute pollutants. This eco-friendly method may safely collect, accumulate, and detoxify toxins using plants, making it popular. This study covers phytostabilization, phytodegradation, rhizodegradation, phytoextraction, phytovolatilization, and rhizofiltration. A phytoremediation process’s efficiency in varied environmental circumstances depends on these components’ complex interplay. This paper also introduces developing phytoremediation approaches including microbe-assisted, chemical-assisted, and organic or bio-char use. These advancements attempt to overcome conventional phytoremediation’s limitations, such as limited suitable plant species, location problems, and sluggish remediation. Current research includes machine learning techniques and computer modeling, biostimulation, genetic engineering, bioaugmentation, and hybrid remediation. These front-line solutions show that phytoremediation research is developing towards transdisciplinary efficiency enhancement. We acknowledge phytoremediation’s promise but also its drawbacks, such as site-specific variables, biomass buildup, and sluggish remediation, as well as ongoing research to address them. In conclusion, heavy metal pollution threatens the ecology and public health and must be reduced. Phytoremediation treats heavy metal pollution in different ways. Over time, phytoremediation systems have developed unique ways that improve efficiency. Despite difficulties like site-specificity, sluggish remediation, and biomass buildup potential, phytoremediation is still a vital tool for environmental sustainability.
文摘Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, providing humans with vitamins, phytonutrients, and minerals. They are significantly vulnerable, however, to post-harvest diseases caused by numerous fungal and bacterial pathogens. These pathogens can cause significant quantitative and qualitative losses from harvest to consumption during the handling and storage processes. Chemical fungicides are commonly used but are likely to leave residues on the produce, rendering short shelf-life produce, such as berries, unsuitable for human consumption. Identifying eco-friendly methods to control post-harvest disease is, therefore, of utmost importance. The presence of antifungal constituents in the roots of Poncirus trifoliata extracts was detected by thin layer chromatography-based bioautography. The active constituents were isolated and identified by bioautography assay-guided fractionation using flash chromatography followed by spectroscopic techniques. In this study, xanthoxyletin, demethylsuberosin, dentatin, nordentatin, ponfolin, and clausarin were isolated from the root extracts. The antifungal activity of these compounds was moderate to weak compared to the commercial fungicide captan. This study reports the isolation and identification of natural compounds from Poncirus trifoliata that exhibited antifungal activity against Colletotrichum fragariae and Botrytis cinerea, two major post-harvest pathogens.
文摘In quantum optics, unitary transformations of arbitrary states are evaluated by using the Taylor series expansion. However, this traditional approach can become cumbersome for the transformations involving non-commuting operators. Addressing this issue, a nonstandard unitary transformation technique is highlighted here with new perspective. In a spirit of “quantum” series expansions, the transition probabilities between initial and final states, such as displaced, squeezed and other nonlinearly transformed coherent states are obtained both numerically and analytically. This paper concludes that, although this technique is novel, its implementations for more extended systems are needed.
文摘The traditional simulations may occasionally turn out to be challenging for the quantum dynamics, particularly those governed by the nonlinear Hamiltonians. In this work, we introduce a nonstandard iterative technique where the Liouville space is briefly expanded with an additional (virtual) space only within ultrashort subintervals. This tremendously reduces the cost of time-consuming calculations. We implement our technique for an example of a charged particle in both harmonic and anharmonic potentials. The temporal evolutions of the probability for the particle being in the ground state are obtained numerically and compared to the analytical solutions. We further discuss the physics insight of this technique based on a thought-experiment. Successive processes intrinsically “hitchhiking” via virtual space in discrete ultrashort time duration, are the hallmark of our technique. We believe that this technique has potential for solving numerous problems which often pose a challenge when using the traditional approach based on time-ordered exponentials.
文摘This paper studies the effect of breaking single-class building data into multi-class building data for semantic segmentation under end-to-end architecture such as UNet, UNet++, DeepLabV3, and DeepLabv3+. Although, the already existing semantic segmentation methods for building detection work on the imagery of developed world, where the buildings are highly structured and there is a clearly distinguishable space present between the building instances, the same methods do not work as effectively on the developing world where there is often no clear differentiable spaces between instances of building thus reducing the number of detected instances. Hence as a noble approach, we have added building contours as new class along with building segmentation data, and detected the building contours and the inner building regions, hence giving the precise number of buildings existing in the input imagery especially in the convoluted areas where the boundary between the buildings are often hard to determine even for human eyes. Breaking down the building data into multi-class data increased the building detection precision and recall. This is useful in building detection where building instances are convoluted and are difficult for bare instance segmentation to detect all the instances.
文摘Background: Although handgrip strength is a biomarker for morbidity/mor-tality, there is lack of evidence on the effects of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults of all ages. Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults. Methods: Five databases/search engines were searched. Studies comparing different types of resistance exercise interventions versus a non-exercised control group on handgrip strength were included. The available data did not allow us to conduct the pre-planned meta-analyses;therefore, only descriptive statistics were performed to summarize the data. Results: Twenty studies (17 randomized and three non-randomized controlled trials) were included, most of which were conducted in older adults. Twelve studies reported no significant difference in the change in handgrip strength between the resistance training and control groups. Two studies showed increases in handgrip strength in the resistance training group compared with the control group. Other studies included results for multi-training groups or left/right hands and found increasing handgrip strength compared to controls, but only in one training group or one hand. Overall, the randomized and non-ran-domized clinical trials presented moderate risk of bias. Conclusions: Due to the lack of low risk-of-bias randomized controlled trials of young and middle-aged adults, different training protocols, and small sample sizes, the existing evidence appears insufficient to support resistance training for increasing handgrip strength in healthy adults. Future studies may seek to discern the optimal way to develop and employ resistance training to improve hand-grip strength.
文摘Purpose: Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome is an inflammatory disorder of the bladder, for which histamine has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the disease. The condition is often refractory to standard-of-care medical treatments, including the antihistamines hydroxyzine or cimetidine, and procedures. Herein we report a physician-sponsored proof-of-principle case series of four adult female patients with chronic painful bladder and frequent urination, who were treated once daily with a low dose H1 + H2 histamine receptor antagonist combination. Materials and Methods: Four adult females with Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome were treated once daily with a compounded oral dosage form containing the H1 receptor antagonist-cetirizine 8 mg in combination with the H2 receptor antagonist-famotidine 22 mg. The case series consists of a retrospective review of the symptom severity prior to versus following H1 + H2 treatment. Results and Conclusions: The once daily dual histamine receptor antagonist therapy substantially reduced the pain and urination frequency, and prophylactically maintained all four patients long-term with substantially reduced disease severity. The reduction in symptom severity was achieved at amounts that do not exceed the US FDA approved and exceptionally safe daily doses for the two over-the-counter monotherapies. This case series provides proof-of-principle evidence that a dual antihistamine combination of cetirizine plus famotidine effectively treated and maintained female patients, who were previously refractory to standard-of-care medications and/or procedures.
文摘Total scalp avulsion is a time-sensitive, catastrophic injury requiring quick, complex decision-making. Traditionally, these injuries were treated with split-thickness skin grafts. With advancements in microsurgery, treatments evolved to scalp replantation, becoming the standard of care in scalp reconstruction. Although the integrity of the scalp’s blood vessels is pivotal for successful replantation, the authors believe that scalp replantation should be considered at all costs. In the presented case, a 54-year-old female presented to the emergency room following an incident with an auger that completely avulsed her scalp. She was taken back to the operating room, where scalp replantation was performed. Following replantation, scalp necrosis led to serial debridings in the operating room, and eventually, all of the scalp was debrided down to healthy tissue. Surprisingly, the galea survived despite this, which provided a healthy base for skin grafts. Before definitive coverage was placed, it was decided to utilize a bilaminar acellular dermal matrix along with negative pressure wound therapy to create a more robust bed of granulation tissue. After three weeks of this treatment plan, the patient returned to the operating room, where a healthy, viable bed of granulating tissue was revealed beneath the dermal matrix. Split-thickness skin grafts were taken from her thighs bilaterally and sewn together in a quilt-like fashion to cover the wound bed. The entirety of the graft healed without complication except for one small area that required full-thickness skin grafting in an outpatient setting. Even though the replantation ultimately failed, it allowed the galea to survive, which saved the patient from undergoing a free tissue transfer and allowed her scalp to be reconstructed with split-thickness skin grafts. Even in the setting of polytrauma, the authors hope that anyone treating a scalp avulsion would consider scalp replantation at all costs.
文摘Thumb reconstruction following a traumatic injury challenge depends on the extent of the injury. Ideally, reconstruction should restore thumb length and position and retain thumb stability, mobility, and strength, while preserving sensation and aesthetics. Achieving these outcomes can be especially challenging in severe cases of soft tissue and bony loss. The authors present a case of a 20-year-old right-hand dominant female involved in a motor vehicle accident who sustained severe crush injuries and burns to her right hand. Her injuries included soft tissue and bony defects extending from the thumb to the distal radius, namely avulsion of the thumb and significant loss of the distal radial and carpal column, resulting in severe wrist instability. We employed a three-segment vascularized osteocutaneous fibula flap to reconstruct the thumb and wrist to restore bony construct, carpal support, and soft tissue coverage. Thumb motion could not be achieved, but this technique offered a sensate, functional post for opposition and the appearance of an anatomic hand. Because of this surgery, the patient was enabled to graduate from college and pursue full-time employment. The authors hope that this report will add to the fund of knowledge and surgeon armamentarium for similar devastating injuries demanding thumb and wrist reconstruction.
文摘Food based approach can prove effective in improving access and availability of nutrients from foods required for daily life where most of the people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. A study on feasibility of Farming Systems for Nutrition (FSN) approach was undertaken from 2013 to 2018 in a few villages of Koraput district, Odisha state and Wardha district, Maharashtra state in India. Interventions were done to increase crop diversity, intercropping of pulses and cereals, promotion of seasonal vegetables and fruits along </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">with </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">nutrition awareness. The endline survey showed increase in production diversity leading to improved household dietary diversity. This paper demonstrates the impact of FSN interventions on household nutrient intake. The results show that the intake of nutrients like protein, vitamin C, iron and calcium increased significantly in Koraput and all the nutrients including energy and vitamin A increased significantly in Wardha. The evidence shows that Farming System for Nutrition approach improves individual nutrient intake which in the long run can address the problem of undernutrition.
