Diabetic ketoacidosis

Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is the most common acute hyperglycaemic emergency in people with diabetes mellitus. A diagnosis of DKA is confirmed when all of the three criteria are present — ‘D’, either elevated blood glucose levels or a family history of diabetes mellitus; ‘K’, the presence of high urinary or blood ketoacids; and ‘A’, a high anion gap metabolic acidosis. Early diagnosis and management are paramount to improve patient outcomes. The mainstays of treatment include restoration of circulating volume, insulin therapy, electrolyte replacement and treatment of any underlying precipitating event. Without optimal treatment, DKA remains a condition with appreciable, although largely preventable, morbidity and mortality. In this Primer, we discuss the epidemiology, pathogenesis, risk factors and diagnosis of DKA and provide practical recommendations for the management of DKA in adults and children

Elongated Nanostructured Solar Cells with a Plasmonic Core

In this chapter the effects of the plasmonic response in an elongated nano-scale solar cell with a silver nanoneedle core are explored by measuring photocurrents. The silver nanoneedles formed the support of a conformally grown hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) n-i-p junction around it. A spherical morphology of the solar cell functions as a nano-lens, focusing incoming light directly on the plasmonic silver nanoneedle. We found that plasmonics, geometric optics, and Fresnel reflections affect the nanostructured solar cell performance, depending strongly on light incidence angle and polarization. Besides the plasmonic effects, nano-focusing, and orthogonalization of carrier and photon pathways are simultaneously present at illumination of this structure. In this chapter the photovoltaics characterization techniques and simulations are explained and discussed as well. This work provides valuable insight in solar cell processes in which novel concepts such as plasmonics, elongated nanostructures, and nanolenses are used

High Temperature conversion of fats: Cracking, gasification, esterification and transesterification

Burning fossil fuels increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Alternative sources of energy are necessary to control global warming. Diverse synthetic methods transform vegetable oils and animal fats, inexpensive carbon sources to biofuels. This chapter reviews the main chemical and thermal processes that transform triglycerides into fuels. We collected the most cited and recent scientific publications about transesterification, thermal and catalytic cracking, and gasification reactions and their respective technologies