Coalescence of Water Drops in Water-ULSD Dispersions via Electrowetting

Coalescence of water droplets is an important phenomenon in many industrial applications. One approach for coalescing water droplets is by applying an external voltage across the drops. Coalescence occurs when spreading and motion of the drops due to the electrical field brings the drops into contact. Electrowettable surfaces were prepared with poly(styrene-co-methyl methacrylate) as the dielectric film and Fluropelâ„¢ as the hydrophobic surface layer. The surface of a stainless steel disk was coated in a way that the dielectric coating layer thickness varied with radial position with minimum thicknesses at the center and at the outer edge of the disk and a maximum at an intermediate radial position of the disk surface. The thickness gradient influenced the droplet movement and contributed to the coalescence. Two disks were assembled with a thin slit between the disks. Emulsions of water droplets in ultra low sulfur diesel fuel were pumped through the thin slit. Experiments showed significant increase in drop sizes when the disks were electrified compared to non-electrified disks

Speaking rate attention-based duration prediction for speed control TTS

With the advent of high-quality speech synthesis, there is a lot of interest in controlling various prosodic attributes of speech. Speaking rate is an essential attribute towards modelling the expressivity of speech. In this work, we propose a novel approach to control the speaking rate for non-autoregressive TTS. We achieve this by conditioning the speaking rate inside the duration predictor, allowing implicit speaking rate control. We show the benefits of this approach by synthesising audio at various speaking rate factors and measuring the quality of speaking rate-controlled synthesised speech. Further, we study the effect of the speaking rate distribution of the training data towards effective rate control. Finally, we fine-tune a baseline pretrained TTS model to obtain speaking rate control TTS. We provide various analyses to showcase the benefits of using this proposed approach, along with objective as well as subjective metrics. We find that the proposed methods have higher subjective scores and lower speaker rate errors across many speaking rate factors over the baseline.Comment: \c{opyright} 20XX IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other work

FLIBANSERIN: A Happy Ending Solution to Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) is a persistent or recurrent deficiency or absence of sexual desire. It can cause prominent distress and interpersonal difficulty of women. There have been drugs available to treat sexual disorders in men when there is no such drug for women. Nowadays, FDA approved Flibanserin to treat HSDD of premenopausal women. This drug Flibanserin has no novel mechanism of action but the possible mechanism of action is modulating serotonin and dopamine activity in brain parts as balance of these systems is significance for a normal sexual response. Keywords: Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, Premenopausal women, FlibanserinÂ

The Ratio 1660/1690 cm−1 Measured by Infrared Microspectroscopy Is Not Specific of Enzymatic Collagen Cross-Links in Bone Tissue

In postmenopausal osteoporosis, an impairment in enzymatic cross-links (ECL) occurs, leading in part to a decline in bone biomechanical properties. Biochemical methods by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are currently used to measure ECL. Another method has been proposed, by Fourier Transform InfraRed Imaging (FTIRI), to measure a mature PYD/immature DHLNL cross-links ratio, using the 1660/1690 cm−1 area ratio in the amide I band. However, in bone, the amide I band composition is complex (collagens, non-collagenous proteins, water vibrations) and the 1660/1690 cm−1 by FTIRI has never been directly correlated with the PYD/DHLNL by HPLC. A study design using lathyritic rats, characterized by a decrease in the formation of ECL due to the inhibition of lysyl oxidase, was used in order to determine the evolution of 1660/1690 cm−1 by FTIR Microspectroscopy in bone tissue and compare to the ECL quantified by HPLC. The actual amount of ECL was quantified by HPLC on cortical bone from control and lathyritic rats. The lathyritic group exhibited a decrease of 78% of pyridinoline content compared to the control group. The 1660/1690 cm−1 area ratio was increased within center bone compared to inner bone, and this was also correlated with an increase in both mineral maturity and mineralization index. However, no difference in the 1660/1690 cm−1 ratio was found between control and lathyritic rats. Those results were confirmed by principal component analysis performed on multispectral infrared images. In bovine bone, in which PYD was physically destructed by UV-photolysis, the PYD/DHLNL (measured by HPLC) was strongly decreased, whereas the 1660/1690 cm−1 was unmodified. In conclusion, the 1660/1690 cm−1 is not related to the PYD/DHLNL ratio, but increased with age of bone mineral, suggesting that a modification of this ratio could be mainly due to a modification of the collagen secondary structure related to the mineralization process

Potential impact of annual vaccination with reformulated COVID-19 vaccines: Lessons from the US COVID-19 scenario modeling hub

Background AU Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to cause :significant hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. Its continued burden and the impact of annually reformulated vaccines remain unclear. Here, we present projections of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the United States for the next 2 years under 2 plausible assumptions about immune escape (20% per year and 50% per year) and 3 possible CDC recommendations for the use of annually reformulated vaccines (no recommendation, vaccination for those aged 65 years and over, vaccination for all eligible age groups based on FDA approval). Methods and findings The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub solicited projections of COVID-19 hospitalization and deaths between April 15, 2023 and April 15, 2025 under 6 scenarios representing the intersection of considered levels of immune escape and vaccination. Annually reformulated vaccines are assumed to be 65% effective against symptomatic infection with strains circulating on June 15 of each year and to become available on September 1. Age- and state-specific coverage in recommended groups was assumed to match that seen for the first (fall 2021) COVID-19 booster. State and national projections from 8 modeling teams were ensembled to produce projections for each scenario and expected reductions in disease outcomes due to vaccination over the projection period. From April 15, 2023 to April 15, 2025, COVID-19 is projected to cause annual epidemics peaking November to January. In the most pessimistic scenario (high immune escape, no vaccination recommendation), we project 2.1 million (90% projection interval (PI) [1,438,000, 4,270,000]) hospitalizations and 209,000 (90% PI [139,000, 461,000]) deaths, exceeding pre-pandemic mortality of influenza and pneumonia. In high immune escape scenarios, vaccination of those aged 65+ results in 230,000 (95% confidence interval (CI) [104,000, 355,000]) fewer hospitalizations and 33,000 (95% CI [12,000, 54,000]) fewer deaths, while vaccination of all eligible individuals results in 431,000 (95% CI: 264,000–598,000) fewer hospitalizations and 49,000 (95% CI [29,000, 69,000]) fewer deaths. Conclusions COVID-19 is projected to be a significant public health threat over the coming 2 years. Broad vaccination has the potential to substantially reduce the burden of this disease, saving tens of thousands of lives each year

Isolation of bacteriophages to multi-drug resistant Enterococci obtained from diabetic foot: A novel antimicrobial agent waiting in the shelf?

Introduction: While foot infections in persons with diabetes are initially treated empirically, therapy directed at known causative organisms may improve the outcome. Many studies have reported on the bacteriology of diabetic foot infections (DFIs), but the results have varied and have often been contradictory. The purpose of the research work is to call attention to a frightening twist in the antibiotic-resistant Enterococci problem in diabetic foot that has not received adequate attention from the medical fraternity and also the pharmaceutical pipeline for new antibiotics is drying up. Materials and Methods: Adult diabetic patients admitted for lower extremity infections from July 2008 to December 2009 in the medical wards and intensive care unit of medical teaching hospitals were included in the study. The extent of the lower extremity infection on admission was assessed based on Wagner′s classification from grades I to V. Specimens were collected from the lesions upon admission prior to the initiation of antibiotic therapy or within the first 48 h of admission. Results: During the 18-month prospective study, 32 strains of Enterococcus spp. (26 Enterococcus faecalis and 06 E. faecium) were recovered. Antibiotic sensitivity testing was done by Kirby-Bauer′s disk diffusion method. Isolates were screened for high-level aminoglycoside resistance (HLAR). A total of 65.6% of Enterococcus species showed HLAR. Multidrug resistance and concomitant resistance of HLAR strains to other antibiotics were quite high. None of the Enterococcus species was resistant to vancomycin. Conclusion: Multidrug-resistant Enterococci are a real problem and continuous surveillance is necessary. Today, resistance has rendered most of the original antibiotics obsolete for many infections, mandating the development of alternative anti-infection modalities. One of such alternatives stemming up from an old idea is the bacteriophage therapy. In the present study, we could able to demonstrate the viable phages against MDR E. faecalis

Low-temperature Fourier transform infrared spectra and hydrogen bonding in polycrystalline l-alanine

The 400–4000 cm−1 FTIR spectra of pure NH and isotopically substituted (10 and 90% doped ND/NH) polycrystalline l-alanine were recorded in the temperature range 10–300 K. The observed temperature dependence and isotopic shifts behavior enabled to identify, in the spectra of the doped crystals, three well-separated bands ascribable to either the NH or ND stretching vibrations associated with the three different types of hydrogen bonds existing in the crystal. The observed red shifts of these bands relative to the frequency of a reference “free” NH (or ND) stretching mode were found to correlate well with the H-bond distances found in the crystal and provide an indirect way of estimating the enthalpies associated with each type of H-bond found in the crystal. In the low-frequency deformation and torsional spectral region (below 2000 cm−1), several bands, which were found to be affected by isotopic substitution, were identified as belonging to the NH3+ group. Several bands show splitting at low temperatures, indicating the occurrence of a significant reorganization in the crystal structure, which with all probability results mainly from changes in the proton positions. Finally, the literature assignments of the IR spectra of both crystalline NH3+ and ND3+l-alanine were revised taking into consideration their temperature dependence and behavior upon deuteration

Low temperature FTIR spectroscopy and hydrogen bonding in cytosine polycrystals

The FTIR spectra of both the pure NH and isotopically substituted ND (90% D) polycrystalline cytosine were recorded in the range 400-4000 cm-1 as a function of temperature (10-300 K). For the first time, uncoupled NH(D) stretching mode bands of amine and imine groups were observed in the spectra of isotopically diluted cytosine at low temperatures. These bands correspond to the three distinct H-bonds that are present in the crystal, in agreement with the available data obtained by structural methods. At least nine bands were observed below 1000 cm-1 and, in consonance with their temperature and isotopic exchange behavior, were assigned to the NH proton out-of-the-plane bending modes. Six of these bands were found to correspond to additional "disordered" H-bonds, which could not be observed by structural methods. Empirical correlations of spectral and thermodynamic parameters enabled to estimate the contribution of the H-bonds to the sublimation enthalpy of the crystal, in agreement with independent experimental data.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VNG-49H16R8-9/1/961dd78d9a0f897f58ef863e5767fbd