Oxidative Leaching Kinetics of Vanadium from Egyptian Boiler Ash under Acidic Oxidizing Conditions

Processing of Egyptian boiler ash in sulphuric acid solution using hydrogen peroxide as oxidant has been investigated. The results showed that leaching temperature, hydrogen peroxide, sulphuric acid concentration, leaching time, liquid-to-solid ratio and agitation speed, have significant effect; optimum process operating parameters were established as follows: temperature: 9

Validated Spectrophotometric Methods for the Determination of Nabumetone in Tablets Dosage Form Using Three Dinitrobenzene Reagents

ABSTRACT Three spectrophotometric methods have been described for the determination of nabumetone (NAB) in its tablets dosage form. The methods are based on the reaction of nabumetone with three dinitrobenzene reagents, namely, m-dinitrobenzene (DNB), 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) and 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (FDNB) in alkaline medium (alcoholic potassium hydroxide solution). The studied reactions depend on the tendency of these dinitrobenzene reagents to react with the active methylene adjacent to the carbonyl group of the drug. Illustrative proposed pathways showing the reaction of NAB with the three dinitrobenzene reagents were presented. Spectrophotometric measurements were achieved by recording the absorbances at 580, 573 and 574 nm for the reaction with DNB, CDNB and FDNB respectively. Different experimental parameters affecting development and stability of the produced colors were optimized. The three methods were validated with respect to linearity, ranges, precision, accuracy and limits of detection and quantification. Beer's law was obeyed in the concentration ranges of 2-10, 40-240 and 10-50 µg/mL for DNB, CDNB and FDNB methods respectively with correlation coefficient values not less than 0.9994. In addition, detection limits of NAB were 0.27, 8.54 and 2.04 µg/mL for DNB, CDNB and FDNB methods, respectively. The proposed methods were successfully applied for assay of the drug in its tablets dosage form. Recovery data obtained by the proposed methods were favorably compared with those obtained by a reported spectrophotometric method

Measuring Fatigue Using the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory-20: A Questionable Factor Structure in Haemodialysis Patients

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Fatigue is recognised as a common and burdensome symptom among dialysis patients. A growing body of research is devoted to understanding fatigue in advanced kidney disease, yet its measurement is challenging within this context. Our aim was to evaluate the factor structure underlying the multidimensional fatigue inventory (MFI-20) and to examine its associations with clinical factors and mood. METHODS: Data was evaluated for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) from the screening phase of a multicentre randomised placebo-controlled trial of sertraline in haemodialysis (HD) patients. Four hundred seventy patients completed the MFI-20, which purports to measure 5 components of fatigue (general fatigue, mental fatigue, physical fatigue, reduced motivation and reduced activity). CFA models were evaluated in MPlus 7.3 using the robust maximum likelihood (MLR) estimation. RESULTS: The evaluation of the original 5 factors revealed low internal reliability for the general factor and reduced activity, and high intercorrelations between all sum scores. CFA revealed poor model fit for the original 5-factor MFI-20 model (confirmatory fit index = 0.738; Tucker-Lewis index = 0.689; root mean squared error of approximation = 0.101). Alternative models, including 1, 3 and bi-factor models all demonstrated poor fit to the data. No reliable factor model was confirmed prohibiting the examination of factors associated with fatigue. CONCLUSIONS: We were not able to confirm the factor structure of the MFI-20 in a large sample of HD patients. Certain items may lack suitable face validity in this context

Differential Analysis of Ovarian and Endometrial Cancers Identifies a Methylator Phenotype

Despite improved outcomes in the past 30 years, less than half of all women diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer live five years beyond their diagnosis. Although typically treated as a single disease, epithelial ovarian cancer includes several distinct histological subtypes, such as papillary serous and endometrioid carcinomas. To address whether the morphological differences seen in these carcinomas represent distinct characteristics at the molecular level we analyzed DNA methylation patterns in 11 papillary serous tumors, 9 endometrioid ovarian tumors, 4 normal fallopian tube samples and 6 normal endometrial tissues, plus 8 normal fallopian tube and 4 serous samples from TCGA. For comparison within the endometrioid subtype we added 6 primary uterine endometrioid tumors and 5 endometrioid metastases from uterus to ovary. Data was obtained from 27,578 CpG dinucleotides occurring in or near promoter regions of 14,495 genes. We identified 36 locations with significant increases or decreases in methylation in comparisons of serous tumors and normal fallopian tube samples. Moreover, unsupervised clustering techniques applied to all samples showed three major profiles comprising mostly normal samples, serous tumors, and endometrioid tumors including ovarian, uterine and metastatic origins. The clustering analysis identified 60 differentially methylated sites between the serous group and the normal group. An unrelated set of 25 serous tumors validated the reproducibility of the methylation patterns. In contrast, >1,000 genes were differentially methylated between endometrioid tumors and normal samples. This finding is consistent with a generalized regulatory disruption caused by a methylator phenotype. Through DNA methylation analyses we have identified genes with known roles in ovarian carcinoma etiology, whereas pathway analyses provided biological insight to the role of novel genes. Our finding of differences between serous and endometrioid ovarian tumors indicates that intervention strategies could be developed to specifically address subtypes of epithelial ovarian cancer

The Shared Health Appointments and Reciprocal Enhanced Support (SHARES) study: study protocol for a randomized trial

Abstract Background Diabetes shared medical appointments (SMAs) and reciprocal peer support programs have been found in efficacy trials to help adults with diabetes improve their self-management and achieve short-term gains in clinical and patient-centered outcomes. In order to translate this evidence to system-level interventions, there is a need for large-scale, pragmatic trials that examine the effectiveness, implementation, and costs of SMAs and reciprocal peer support across diverse settings. Methods The Shared Health Appointments and Reciprocal Enhanced Support (SHARES) study is a multisite, cluster randomized trial that is evaluating the effectiveness and implementation of SMAs with and without an additional reciprocal Peer-to-Peer (P2P) support program, when compared to usual care. The P2P program comprises periodic peer support group sessions and telephone contact between SMA participant pairs to promote more effective diabetes self-management. We will examine outcomes across three different treatment groups: (1) SMAs, (2) SMAs plus P2P, and (3) usual care. We will collect and analyze data over a 2.5-year implementation period at five geographically diverse Veterans Affairs (VA) health systems. The primary outcome is the relative change in hemoglobin A1c over time. Secondary outcomes are changes in systolic blood pressure, antihypertensive medication use, statin use, and insulin initiation over the study period. The unit of analysis is the individual, adjusted by the individual’s SMA group (the cluster). We will use mixed methods to rigorously evaluate processes and costs of implementing these programs in each of the clinic settings. Discussion We hypothesize that patients will experience improved outcomes immediately following participation in SMAs and that augmenting SMAs with reciprocal peer support will help to maintain these gains over time. The results of this study will be among the first to examine the effects of diabetes SMAs alone and in conjunction with P2P in a range of real-life clinical settings. In addition, the study will provide important information on contextual factors associated with successful program implementation. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov, ID: NCT02132676 . Registered on 21 August 2013.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136794/1/13063_2017_Article_1959.pd

A qualitative study exploring perceptions and attitudes of community pharmacists about extended pharmacy services in Lahore, Pakistan

Background In recent decades, community pharmacies reported a change of business model, whereby a shift from traditional services to the provision of extended roles was observed. However, such delivery of extended pharmacy services (EPS) is reported from the developed world, and there is scarcity of information from the developing nations. Within this context, the present study was aimed to explore knowledge, perception and attitude of community pharmacists (CPs) about EPS and their readiness and acceptance for practice change in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Methods A qualitative approach was used to gain an in-depth knowledge of the issues. By using a semi-structured interview guide, 12 CPs practicing in the city of Lahore, Pakistan were conveniently selected. All interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and were then analyzed for thematic contents by the standard content analysis framework. Results Thematic content analysis yielded five major themes. (1) Familiarity with EPS, (2) current practice of EPS, (3) training needed to provide EPS, (4) acceptance of EPS and (5) barriers toward EPS. Majority of the CPs were unaware of EPS and only a handful had the concept of extended services. Although majority of our study respondents were unaware of pharmaceutical care, they were ready to accept practice change if provided with the required skills and training. Lack of personal knowledge, poor public awareness, inadequate physician-pharmacist collaboration and deprived salary structures were reported as barriers towards the provision of EPS at the practice settings. Conclusion Although the study reported poor awareness towards EPS, the findings indicated a number of key themes that can be used in establishing the concept of EPS in Pakistan. Over all, CPs reported a positive attitude toward practice change provided to the support and facilitation of health and community based agencies in Pakistan

Evaluation of code criteria for bridges with unequal pier heights

One of the challenges associated with Eurocode 8 and AASHTO-LRFD is predicting the failure of irregular bridges supported by piers of unequal heights. EC8 currently uses “moment demand-to-moment capacity” ratios to somewhat guarantee simultaneous failure of piers on bridges, while AASHTO-LRFD relies on the relative effective stiffness of the piers. These conditions are not entirely valid, in particular for piers with a relative height of 0.5 or less, where a possible combination of flexure and shear failure mode may occur. In this case, the shorter piers often result in brittle shear failure, while the longer piers are most likely to fail due to flexure, creating a combination of different failure modes experienced by the bridge. To evaluate the adequacy of EC8 design procedures for regular seismic behavior, various irregular bridges are simulated through a non-linear pushover analysis using shear-critical fiber-based beam-column elements. The paper investigates the behavior of irregular monolithic and bearing-type bridges experiencing different failure modes, and proposes different methods for regularizing the bridge performance to balance damage. The ultimate aim is to obtain a simultaneous or near-simultaneous failure of all piers irrespective of the different heights and failure mode experienced