Intragastric balloons for obesity: critical review of device design, efficacy, tolerability, and unmet clinical needs

Introduction Sustaining a healthy weight is a challenge and obesity, with associated risk of co-morbidities, is a major public health concern. Bariatric surgery has shown a great promise for many where pharmacological and lifestyle interventions failed to work. However, challenges and limitations associated with bariatric surgery has pushed the demand for less invasive, reversible (anatomically) interventions, such as intragastric balloons (IGBs). Areas covered This review critically appraises IGBs used in the past, present, and those in clinical trials, discussing the device designs, limitations, placement and removal techniques, patient eligibility, efficacy, and safety issues. Expert opinion Several intragastric balloons were developed over the years that brought excitement to patients and healthcare professionals alike. Albeit good efficacy, there had been several safety issues reported with IGBs such as spontaneous deflation, intestinal occlusion, gut perforation, and mucosal ulcerations. This led to evolution of IGBs design; device material, filling mechanism, fluid type, inflation volume, and further innovations to ease ingestion and removal of device. There are some IGB devices under development aimed to swallow like a conventional pill and excrete naturally through defecation, however, how successful they will be in clinical practice in terms of their efficacy and tolerability remains to be seen in the future

Voltammetry as a rapid screening method for NPS identification

Designer drugs, also commonly known as new psychoactive substances (NPS), are increasingly in their prevalence and a challenge to toxicologists and forensic chemists. Synthetic cannabinoids (SCs) are among the largest group of NPS that have emerged in the illicit drug market all over the world. SCs may consist of different chemicals prepared in laboratories and herbal mixtures that said to be incense and not-for-human-consumption. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the use of electrochemical based methods for screening some of the emerging types of SC. More specifically, the paper takes electrochemistry approach called voltammetry to perform the detection and analysis of SCs whereby the main subjects for screening include STS-135 and 5F-ADB-PINACA. The expected result is that those compounds that belong to the same class should indicate almost similar behaviour to help achieve its objective, the paper reviews a number of recent publications relating to forensic drug analysis and much attention to electrochemical sensor methods

Program Synthesis with Best-First Bottom-Up Search

Cost-guided bottom-up search (BUS) algorithms use a cost function to guide the search to solve program synthesis tasks. In this paper, we show that current state-of-the-art cost-guided BUS algorithms suffer from a common problem: they can lose useful information given by the model and fail to perform the search in a best-first order according to a cost function. We introduce a novel best-first bottom-up search algorithm, which we call Bee Search, that does not suffer information loss and is able to perform cost-guided bottom-up synthesis in a best-first manner. Importantly, Bee Search performs best-first search with respect to the generation of programs, i.e., it does not even create in memory programs that are more expensive than the solution program. It attains best-first ordering with respect to generation by performing a search in an abstract space of program costs. We also introduce a new cost function that better uses the information provided by an existing cost model. Empirical results on string manipulation and bit-vector tasks show that Bee Search can outperform existing cost-guided BUS approaches when employing more complex domain-specific languages (DSLs); Bee Search and previous approaches perform equally well with simpler DSLs. Furthermore, our new cost function with Bee Search outperforms previous cost functions on string manipulation tasks.Comment: Published at the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR

Robust Wilks' Statistic based on RMCD for One-Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA)

The classical Wilks' statistic is the most using for testing the hypotheses of equal mean vectors of several multivariate normal populations for one-way MANOVA. It is extremely sensitive to the influence of outliers. Therefore, the robust Wilks' statistic based on reweighted minimum covariance determinant (RMCD) estimator with Hampel weighted function has been proposed. The distribution of the proposed statistic differs from the classical one. Mont Carlo simulations are used to evaluate the performance of the test statistic under the normal and contaminated distribution for the data set. Moreover, the type I error rate and power of test have been considered as statistical measures to comparison between the classical and the robust statistics. The results show that, the robust Wilks' statistic based on RMCD is closely to the classical Wilks' statistic in case of normal distribution for the data set while in case of contaminated distribution the method in question is the best. Keywords: One-Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance, Wilks' Statistic, Outliers, Robustness, Minimum Covariance Determinant Estimator.

Copolymerization of Acrylamide with Acrylic acid

Low conversion copolymerization of acrylamide AM (monomer-1) have been conducted with acrylic acid AA in dry benzene at 70°C , using Benzoyl peroxide BPO as initiator . The copolymer composition has been determined by elemental analysis. The monomer reactivity ratios have been calculated by the Kelen-Tudos and Finman-Ross graphical procedures. The derived reactivity ratios (r1, r2) are: (0.620, 0.996) for (AM / AA) systems , and found that the reactivity of the monomer AA is more than the monomer AM in the copolymerization of (AA/AM) system. The reactivity ratios values were used for microstructures calculation

Security Enhancement of IoT and Fog Computing Via Blockchain Applications

Blockchain technology is now becoming highly appealing to the next generation because it is better tailored to the information age. Blockchain technologies can also be used in the Internet of Things (IoT) and fog computing. The development of IoT and Fog Computing technologies in different fields has resulted in a major improvement in distributed networks. Blockchain technology is now becoming highly appealing to the next generation because it is better tailored to the information age. Blockchain technologies can also be used in IoT and fog computing.  The blockchain principle necessitates a transparent data storage mechanism for storing and exchanging data and transactions throughout the network. In this paper, first, we explained Blockchain, its architecture, and its security. Then we view Blockchain application in IoT security. Then we explained Fog computing, Generic Security Requirements for Fog Computing, and we also discuss Blockchain applications that enhance Fog Computing Security. Finally, we conduct a review of some recent literature on using Blockchain applications to improve the security of IoT and fog computing and a comparison of the methods proposed in the literature

Linear Increasing in Radial Electronic Density Distribution for K and L Shells throughout Some Be-Like Ions

Maximum values of one particle radial electronic density distribution has been calculated by using Hartree-Fock (HF)wave function with data published by[A. Sarsa et al. Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables 88 (2004) 163–202] for K and L shells for some Be-like ions. The Results confirm that there is a linear behavior restricted the increasing of maximum points of one particle radial electronic density distribution for K and L shells throughout some Be-like ions. This linear behavior can be described by using the nth term formula of arithmetic sequence, that can be used to calculate the maximum radial electronic density distribution for any ion within Be like ions for