Phosphorus-Enriched Hemodialysis for the Treatment of Hypophosphatemia in a Patient with Severe Lithium Poisoning

Severe lithium poisoning requires intensive and prolonged hemodialysis (HD) treatment in addition to supportive therapy. Aggressive dialytic therapy can bring about hypophosphatemia, especially, in those patients who are normo‐ or hypophosphatemic to begin with. We report here the use of phosphorus (P)‐enriched HD in a hypophosphatemic patient with lithium poisoning. A 58‐year‐old woman with a long history of bipolar disorder treated with chronic lithium therapy presented with progressively worsening confusion and incoherent speech. She was noted to be confused with a labile mood. The serum levels were lithium 3.6 mM, creatinine 1.7 mg/dL, Na 136 mM , K 4.2 mM , CO₂ 21 mM , BUN 23 mg/dL, and P 2.1 mg/dL. After a conventional, 4‐h HD session, she became more hypophosphatemic with a P level of 1.8 mg/dL. A P‐enriched dialysate, prepared by adding a Fleet^® oral saline laxative preparation (containing NaH₂PO₄.H₂O and Na₂HPO₄.7H₂O) to the “base concentrate” of a dual concentrate, bicarbonate‐based dialysate generating system to obtain a final dialysate containing 3 mg (0.97 mM ) of P/dL was used. She underwent 3 subsequent HD sessions using this P‐enriched dialysate, followed by normalization of the serum levels of both lithium and P. Our data suggest that hypophosphatemic patients suffering from severe lithium poisoning requiring intensive HD therapy and becoming more hypophosphatemic as a result of the dialysis treatment can be further dialyzed with a P‐enriched dialysate both to treat the lithium poisoning and to rectify the hypophosphatemia. In general, the use of such dialysates can play an important role in the prevention and treatment of dialysis‐induced hypophosphatemia.

Kinetics of pyrolysis of pure and doped cobalt oxalate

The object of the present work was to illustrate the effect of impurities on the kinetics and energetics of the thermal decomposition of pure cobalt oxalate. Cationic impurities like Mg²⁺, Mn²⁺, Fe²⁺, Ni²⁺, Cu²⁺, Zn²⁺, Cd²⁺, Pb²⁺, Zr⁴⁺ have been introduced into pure cobalt oxalate dihydrate and differential thermal analysis has been used to determine the enthalpy and energy of activation for the decomposition reaction of pure and doped samples.     

Robust joint stem detection and crop‐weed classification using image sequences for plant‐specific treatment in precision farming

Conventional farming still relies on large quantities of agrochemicals for weed management which have several negative side‐effects on the environment. Autonomous robots offer the potential to reduce the amount of chemicals applied, as robots can monitor and treat each plant in the field individually and thereby circumventing the uniform chemical treatment of the whole field. Such agricultural robots need the ability to identify individual crops and weeds in the field using sensor data and must additionally select effective treatment methods based on the type of weed. For example, certain types of weeds can only be effectively treated mechanically due to their resistance to herbicides, whereas other types can be treated trough selective spraying. In this article, we present a novel system that provides the necessary information for effective plant‐specific treatment. It estimates the stem location for weeds, which enables the robots to perform precise mechanical treatment, and at the same time provides the pixel‐accurate area covered by weeds for treatment through selective spraying. The major challenge in developing such a system is the large variability in the visual appearance that occurs in different fields. Thus, an effective classification system has to robustly handle substantial environmental changes including varying weed pressure, various weed types, different growth stages, changing visual appearance of the plants and the soil. Our approach uses an end‐to‐end trainable fully convolutional network that simultaneously estimates plant stem positions as well as the spatial extent of crop plants and weeds. It jointly learns how to detect the stems and the pixel‐wise semantic segmentation and incorporates spatial information by considering image sequences of local field strips. The jointly learned feature representation for both tasks furthermore exploits the crop arrangement information that is often present in crop fields. This information is considered even if it is only observable from the image sequences and not a single image. Such image sequences, as typically provided by robots navigating over the field along crop rows, enable our approach to robustly estimate the semantic segmentation and stem positions despite the large variations encountered in different fields. We implemented and thoroughly tested our approach on images from multiple farms in different countries. The experiments show that our system generalizes well to previously unseen fields under varying environmental conditions—a key capability to deploy such systems in the real world. Compared to state‐of‐the‐art approaches, our approach generalizes well to unseen fields and not only substantially improves the stem detection accuracy, that is, distinguishing crop and weed stems, but also improves the semantic segmentation performance.     

A first report of the complexes of 5,11,17,23-tetra-tert-butyl-25,27-diethoxycarboxymethoxy-26,28-dihydroxycalix[4]arene with Mn(II), Fe(III), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II) and Zn(II)

Totally six dinuclear complexes of Mn(II), Fe(III), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II) and Zn(II) of calix[4]arene derivatized with two pendants possessing terminal –COOH functions at two of its alternate phenolic –OH groups were synthesized for the first time and were well characterized.     

Pyrophosphate sensing by a fluorescent Zn2+ bound triazole linked imino-thiophenyl conjugate of calix[4]arene in HEPES buffer medium: spectroscopy, microscopy, and cellular studies

An in situ prepared Zn(2+) complex of triazole linked imino-thiophenyl conjugate of calix[4]arene, [ZnL], was demonstrated to be highly fluorescent in HEPES buffer solution. [ZnL] has been used as a chemo-sensing ensemble for the recognition of phosphates in general and pyrophosphates in particular among the eighteen different anions studied. The chemo-sensing behavior of the [ZnL] has been demonstrated through fluorescence, absorption, visual fluorescent color changes, ESI MS, and (1)H NMR titrations. Variations in the microstructural features of L, its zinc complex and the complex upon addition of PPi have been demonstrated through atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Such studies have been extended to see the permeability of the conjugate into the HeLa cells by fluorescence microscopy. In accession, a reversible "write-read-erase-read" logic gate property of L has been demonstrated through a feedback loop in the presence of Zn(2+) and PPi.     

An improved sample preparation method for quantification of ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbic acid by HPLC

Ascorbic acid (AA) and dehydroascorbic acid (DHA) are reduced and oxidized forms of vitamin C, which are ubiquitously found in various fruits and vegetables. The present study has evaluated and optimized various factors responsible for AA and DHA stability in grapefruit samples. Furthermore, the optimized method was used to quantify these compounds in different fruits and vegetables. The AA stability in the samples was evaluated by extracting grapefruit juice using 1, 3 and 5 g/100 mL metaphosphoric acid (MPA) and trichloro acetic acid (TCA). The AA levels were stable in grapefruit samples extracted with 1, 3 and 5 g/100 mL MPA, whereas TCA extracts showed degradation in 48 h. Among the three reducing agents studied, tris(2-carboxy ethyl) phosphine hydrochloride (TCEP) has efficiently converted DHA at all concentrations and the samples were stable for 48 h at 2.5 mmol/L TCEP. Lower pH favored complete conversion of DHA by TCEP than dithiothreitol. Among various fruits and vegetables analyzed, the highest levels of AA (260.1 mg/100 g) were observed in guava and DHA (58.6 mg/100 g) in parsley samples. The current optimized method prevents the degradation of AA and DHA from fruit and vegetable samples stored at room temperature for two days.     

Phosphorus‐Enriched Hemodialysates: Formulations and Clinical Use

Although hyperphosphatemia is a cardinal feature of renal failure, the occasional patient suffering from end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) may present with hypophosphatemia. For example, hypophosphatemia can develop in ESRD patients if they suffer from malnutrition or if they are aggressively dialyzed. Hypophosphatemia is commonly prevented or treated with the oral or the intravenous administration of soluble phosphate salts; however, determination of the required oral or intravenous dose is difficult. Under appropriate circumstances, phosphorus‐enriched dialysates can also be employed for the purpose of phosphorus administration. Various preparations of soluble phosphate salts can be used to enrich hemodialysates.     

Bandwidth aggregation for real-time applications in heterogeneous wireless networks

A variety of wireless interfaces are available for today's mobile user to access Internet content. When coverage areas of these different technologies overlap, a terminal equipped with multiple interfaces can use them simultaneously to improve the performance of its applications. In this paper, we motivate the advantages that can be had through simultaneous use of multiple interfaces and present a network layer architecture that enables diverse multiaccess services. In particular, we explore in depth one such service provided by the architecture: Bandwidth Aggregation (BAG) for real-time applications. An important aspect of the architecture when providing BAG services for real-time applications is the scheduling algorithm that partitions the traffic onto different interfaces such that the QoS requirements of the application are met. We propose one such algorithm Earliest Delivery Path First (EDPF), that ensures packets meet their playback deadlines by scheduling packets based on the estimated delivery time of the packets. We show through analysis that EDPF performs close to an idealized Aggregated Single Link (ASL) discipline, where the multiple interfaces are replaced by a single interface with same aggregated bandwidth. A prototype implementation and extensive simulations carried using video and delay traces show the performance improvement BAG with EDPF scheduling offers over using just the Highest Bandwidth Interface (HBI) and other scheduling approaches based on weighted round robin.     

Prevalence of the type I complement C2 deficiency gene in Swedish systemic lupus erythematosus patients

The prevalence of type I complement C2 deficiency in Swedish systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients was investigated by DNA analysis. The characteristic 28 base pair deletion was determined by polymerase chain reaction analysis followed by gel electrophoresis. Five of the 86 patients (5.8%) retrieved from a defined population of 160,000 individuals were heterozygous for the C2Q0 gene compared with one heterozygote of 100 local blood donors (1%), the difference in prevalence not being significant. Among 26 other SLE patients, two patients who are siblings were C2Q0 homozygous. No distinctive clinical features among the patients with C2Q0 genes were obvious, although none had renal involvement.     

On the Feasibility of the Link Abstraction in Wireless Mesh Networks

Outdoor community mesh networks based on IEEE 802.11 have seen tremendous growth in the recent past. The current understanding is that wireless link performance in these settings is inherently unpredictable, due to multipath delay spread. Consequently, researchers have focused on developing intelligent routing techniques to achieve the best possible performance. In this paper, we are specifically interested in mesh networks in rural locations. We first present detailed measurements to show that the PHY layer in these settings is indeed stable and predictable. There is a strong correlation between the error rate and the received signal strength. We show that interference, and not multipath fading, is the primary cause of unpredictable performance. This is in sharp contrast with current widespread knowledge from prior studies. Furthermore, we corroborate our view with a fresh analysis of data presented in these prior studies. While our initial measurements focus on 802.11b, we then use two different PHY technologies as well, operating in the 2.4-GHz ISM band: 802.11g and 802.15.4. These show similar results too. Based on our results, we argue that outdoor rural mesh networks can indeed be built with the link abstraction being valid. This has several design implications, including at the MAC and routing layers, and opens up a fresh perspective on a wide range of technical issues in this domain.