Efficient adsorption of Rhodamine B using a composite of Fe3O4@zif-8: Synthesis, characterization, modeling analysis, statistical physics and mechanism of interaction

ABSTRACT. The utilization of a metal organic framework (ZIF-8) modified by Fe3O4 nanoparticles was used to accomplish adsorption of Rhodamine B (RB) from aqueous solutions. SEM, XRD, IR, and BET analyses were all used to characterize the composite (Fe3O4@ZIF-8). The surface area of this adsorbent was 478.4 m2/g. X-Ray diffraction spectroscopy was used to detect surface modification utilizing electron microscopy (SEM) scanning with 48 nm in diameter average particle size according to a statistical physics method. Fe3O4@ZIF-8 appears to have dispersive interactions and pore characteristics, according to quantum chemistry simulations. On the adsorption of RB, the influences of contact time, adsorbent quantity, dye concentration, and temperature were studied. The Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherm models were used to study the adsorption isotherms. Anticipated overall adsorption potential was 647.5 mg/g, with a zero-charge point (pHPZC) of 4.3. The adsorption isotherm was fitted using Langmuir whereas pseudo second order was used to match the kinetics. Energy of adsorption (Ea) is 28.7 kJ/mol, indicating a chemisorption phase. The adsorption process is endothermic and unpredictable, according to thermodynamic experiments. It was also looked into using ethanol as a solvent in the desorption of deposited cationic dye.   KEY WORDS: Fe3O4@ZIF-8, Rhodamine B, Adsorption models, Thermodynamics   Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2023, 37(1), 211-229.                                                                DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/bcse.v37i1.17                                                     &nbsp

Molecular and neurological characterizations of three Saudi families with lipoid proteinosis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lipoid proteinosis is a rare autosomal recessive disease characterized by cutaneous and mucosal lesions and hoarseness appearing in early childhood. It is caused by homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations in the <it>ECM1 </it>gene. The disease is largely uncharacterized in Arab population and the mutation(s) spectrum in the Arab population is largely unknown. We report the neurologic and neuroradiologic characteristics and <it>ECM1 </it>gene mutations of seven individuals with lipoid proteinosis (LP) from three unrelated consanguineous families.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Clinical, neurologic, and neuro-ophthalmologic examinations; skin histopathology; brain CT and MRI; and sequencing of the full<it>ECM1 </it>gene.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All seven affected individuals had skin scarring and hoarseness from early childhood. The two children in Family 1 had worse skin involvement and worse hoarseness than affected children of Families 2 and 3. Both children in Family 1 were modestly mentally retarded, and one had typical calcifications of the amygdalae on CT scan. Affected individuals in Families 2 and 3 had no grossneurologic, neurodevelopmental, or neuroimaging abnormalities. Skin histopathology was compatible with LP in all three families. Sequencing the full coding region of <it>ECM1 </it>gene revealed two novel mutationsin Family 1 (c.1300-1301delAA) and Family 2 (p.Cys269Tyr) and in Family 3 a previously described 1163 bp deletion starting 34 bp into intron 8.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These individuals illustrate the neurologic spectrum of LP, including variable mental retardation, personality changes, and mesial temporal calcificationand imply that significant neurologic involvement may be somewhat less common than previously thought. The cause of neurologic abnormalities was not clear from either neuroimaging or from what is known about <it>ECM1 </it>function. The severity of dermatologic abnormalities and hoarseness generally correlated with neurologic abnormalities, with Family 1 being somewhat more affected in all spheres than the other two families. Nevertheless, phenotype-genotype correlation was not obvious, possibly because of difficulty quantifying the neurologic phenotype and because of genetic complexity.</p

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Thyroid-Associated Orbitopathy*

Thyroid-associated orbitopathy (TAO) is usually diagnosed clinically. Early presentation of TAO such as ocular irritation, lid puffiness, and mild retraction may be overlooked and misdiagnosed. Careful clinical evaluation, laboratory investigations, and orbital imaging studies are needed for diagnosing early TAO. Knowing the pathogenesis will open the door for obtaining directed and effective treatment for the inflammatory process in TAO. Most patients with mild to moderate active TAO are treated with observation alone as the available treatment modalities effective in controlling the disease have many potential side effects. Severe active TAO, compressive optic neuropathy, and severe exposure keratopathy are the main indications for treatment with immunosuppressant agents, orbital radiotherapy, or orbital decompression. Surgery remains the final rehabilitation in TAO, which should be done during cicatricial (inactive) TAO when reliable and stable results can be obtained

Different Patterns of Orbital Roof Involvement by Cholesterol Granuloma

Two patients presented with cholesterol granuloma (CG), with completely different patterns of orbital roof involvement. One patient had a large intraorbital cystic CG, whereas the other had a very large intraosseous CG of the frontal bone. The presentation of CG with variable orbital roof involvement highlights the importance of being aware of the clinical characteristics and the imaging features of CG

Optimisation of GBFS, fly ash, and nano-silica contents in alkali-activated mortars

Although free-cement-based alkali-activated paste, mortar, and concrete have been recog-nised as sustainable and environmental-friendly materials, a considerable amount of effort is still being channeled to ascertain the best binary or ternary binders that would satisfy the requirements of strength and durability as well as environmental aspects. In this study, the mechanical properties of alkali-activated mortar (AAM) made with binary binders, involving fly ash (FA) and granulated blast-furnace slag (GBFS) as well as bottle glass waste nano-silica powder (BGWNP), were opti-mised using both experimentally and optimisation modelling through three scenarios. In the first scenario, the addition of BGWNP varied from 5% to 20%, while FA and GBFS were kept constant (30:70). In the second and third scenarios, BGWNP (5–20%) was added as the partial replacement of FA and GBFS, separately. The results show that the combination of binary binders (FA and GBFS) and BGWNP increased AAM’s strength compared to that of the control mixture for all scenarios. In addition, the findings also demonstrated that the replacement of FA by BGWNP was the most significant, while the effect of GBFS replacement by BGWNP was less significant. In particular, the highest improvement in compressive strength was recorded when FA, GBFS, and BGWNP were 61.6%, 30%, and 8.4%, respectively. Furthermore, the results of ANOVA (p values [removed] 0.9, RAE < 0.1, RSE < 0.013, and RRSE < 0.116) confirmed that all the models were robust, reliable, and significant. Similarly, the data variation was found to be less than 5%, and the difference between the predicted R2 and adj. R2 was very small (<0.2), thus confirming that the proposed non-linear quadratic equations had the capability to predict for further observation. In conclusion, the use of BGWNP in AAM could act as a beneficial and sustainable strategy, not only to address environmental issues (e.g., landfill) but to also enhance strength properties

Therapeutic potential of thymoquinone liposomes against the systemic infection of Candida albicans in diabetic mice.

The present study was aimed to develop a liposomal formulation of thymoquinone (Lip-TQ) to treat Candida albicans infection in diabetic mice. Streptozotocin (STZ) was injected to induce hyperglycemia and on day 3 post STZ administration, mice were intravenously infected with C. albicans. Various doses (2, 5 and 10 mg/kg) of Free or Lip-TQ were administered in C. albicans infected diabetic mice. The effect of Lip-TQ was also determined on the organ indices, liver and kidney function parameters. Lip-TQ at a dose of 10 mg/kg significantly reduced the level of the blood glucose and alleviated the systemic C. albicans infection in diabetic mice. C. albicans infected diabetic mice treated with Lip-TQ at a dose of 10 mg/kg showed the survival rate of 70% as compared to that of 20% in the group treated with free TQ. The treatment with Lip-TQ resulted in the recovery of the organ indices, liver inflammation, kidney functioning and pancreas regeneration in diabetic mice. Moreover, TQ formulations also showed the direct therapeutic effect against candidiasis in the untreated or metformin-treated diabetic mice. Therefore, the findings of the present study support the use of Lip-TQ in the treatment of candidiasis in the diabetic patients