Clinical efficacy and anti-recurrence effect of isatis root eye drops combined with ganciclovir eye drops in the treatment of Herpes simplex keratitis; a case report

Purpose: The rate of gastrointestinal adenomatous polyps, often regarded as precancerous lesions, developing into cancer is 40 – 70 %. Endoscopic resection has been the preferred method for treating gastric polyps since the late 1960s. Surgical removal of polyps continues to play an important role in the treatment of polyps; however, the efficacy of such treatment cannot be guaranteed, and polyps may recur.Case presentation: Here, we report a 44-year-old man suffering from gastrointestinal polyps who refused surgical treatment and instead was treated with traditional Chinese herbal medicine (TCHM) for approximately 1 year. The patient was diagnosed with “qi deficiency and dampness syndrome” based on traditional Chinese medicine theory and was treated with the TCHM “strengthen qi and remove dampness formula”, referred to as the shen-ling-bai-zhu powder/decoction.Conclusion: This case suggests that TCHM may play an important role in the treatment of gastrointestinal polyps. Relevant data are, however, limited and a randomized controlled trial is needed to confirm TCHM efficacy in a larger population

Combined Cooling Heating and Power System with Integration of Middle-and-low Temperature Solar Thermal Energy and Methanol Decomposition

AbstractIn this paper, a novel distributed energy system, which contains the process of mid-and-low temperature solar energy thermochemical hybridization with methanol is proposed. Through the solar energy receiver/reactor, solar thermal energy collected by a parabolic trough concentrator, at 250°C -300°C, drives the decomposition reaction of methanol into solar fuels of syngas, thus converts to chemical energy. The chemical energy of syngas releases in the combustion chamber of a micro gas turbine to drive the combined cooling heating and power systems. Extra produced solar fuel reserves a gas tank. Energy analysis and exergy analysis of the system are implemented, and the design and off-design performance of the system and the character of chemical energy storage under variable solar radiation are discussed. As a result, the primary energy ratio of the system is 76.40%, and the net solar-to-electricity rate reaches 22.56% much higher than the exited large-scale solar thermal power plant. As the solar thermochemical energy storage contained in the system, the generating efficiency becomes insensitive to the solar radiation, and thus the efficient and stable utilization of solar thermal energy is achieved at all work condition

Understanding big consumer opinion data for market-driven product design

Big consumer data provide new opportunities for business administrators to explore the value to fulfil customer requirements (CRs). Generally, they are presented as purchase records, online behaviour, etc. However, distinctive characteristics of big data, Volume, Variety, Velocity and Value or ‘4Vs’, lead to many conventional methods for customer understanding potentially fail to handle such data. A visible research gap with practical significance is to develop a framework to deal with big consumer data for CRs understanding. Accordingly, a research study is conducted to exploit the value of these data in the perspective of product designers. It starts with the identification of product features and sentiment polarities from big consumer opinion data. A Kalman filter method is then employed to forecast the trends of CRs and a Bayesian method is proposed to compare products. The objective is to help designers to understand the changes of CRs and their competitive advantages. Finally, using opinion data in Amazon.com, a case study is presented to illustrate how the proposed techniques are applied. This research is argued to incorporate an interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and engineering design. It aims to facilitate designers by exploiting valuable information from big consumer data for market-driven product design

Performance Analysis of a Polygeneration System for Methanol Production and Power Generation with Solar-biomass Thermal Gasification

AbstractBy using the cotton stalk as the feedstock, a polygeneration system for generating methanol and power with solar thermal gasification of biomass is proposed in this work. The endothermic reaction of biomass gasification is driven by the high temperature solar thermal energy with the range of 800∼1200°C. The flat-plate solar collector and the parabolic trough solar steam generator are used to preheat biomass and generate steam as gasification agent, respectively. The thermodynamic performance of the polygeneration system is investigated. The compressed syngas, produced by the biomass gasification, is used to produce methanol via the synthesis reactor. The un-reacted gas is used for power generation through a combine cycle power unit. The results indicate that the methanol output rate and the output power in steady operation condition is 41.56kg/s and 524.88 MW, respectively, and the maximum total exergy efficiency is 49.50% when the solar gasification temperature is 900°C. Furthermore, the highest exergy efficiency of the optimized scheme by recycling partial un-reacted syngas for methanol production reaches to 50.69%. The above studies provide a feasible way to exploit the abundant solar energy and biomass in the Western China

Thermodynamics Evaluation of a Solar-biomass Power Generation System Integrated a Two-stage Gasifier

AbstractA new solar-biomass power generation system that integrates a two-stage gasifier is proposed in this work, in which two types of solar collectors are used to provide solar thermal energy with different levels for driving the biomass pyrolysis (about 643K) and gasification (about 1150K), respectively. The qualified syngas produced is fed into the combined cycle system for power generation. The thermodynamic performances of the proposed system are improved with the overall energy efficiency of 26.72% and the net solar-to-electric efficiency of 15.93%. The exergy loss during the solar collection and gasification is reduced by 19.3% compared with the scheme of using one-stage gasifier

Apical conicity ratio: A new index on left ventricular apical geometry after myocardial infarction

ObjectiveOur objective was to introduce a new index to evaluate left ventricular aneurysm by quantitative analysis of left ventricular apical geometry.MethodsA total of 116 selected subjects underwent magnetic resonance imaging, 28 healthy volunteers, 29 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, and 59 patients with ischemic heart disease (26 with left ventricular aneurysm; 33 with no aneurysm). The apical conicity ratio was calculated as the ratio of left ventricular apical area over apical triangle.ResultsDiastolic apical conicity ratio of patients with left ventricular aneurysm was 1.62 ± 0.20 and systolic apical conicity ratio was 1.78 ± 0.43. After left ventricular reconstruction, the diastolic apical conicity ratio decreased to 1.47 ± 0.23 and the systolic ratio to 1.51 ± 0.21, which came close to the normal level, whereas other global indices remained. In patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, sphericity index and eccentricity index increased significantly without changes in the apical conicity ratio. Among patients with ischemic heart disease, the apical conicity ratio of the group with left ventricular aneurysm was significantly higher than that of the group without an aneurysm when the other indices between the 2 groups showed no statistically difference. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed only apical conicity ratio had high power of discriminating left ventricular aneurysm from no aneurysm.ConclusionsThe new index, apical conicity ratio, can be used to quantify the regional left ventricular deformation, especially in patients with left ventricular aneurysm resulting from myocardial infarction

AN INNOVATIVE GAS TURBINE CYCLE WITH METHANOL FUELLED CHEMICAL-LOOPING COMBUSTION

ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel gas turbine cycle integrating methanol decomposition and the chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is proposed. The system study on two methanol-fuelled power plants, the new gas turbine cycle with CLC combustion, and a chemically intercooled gas turbine cycle, has been investigated with the aid of the exergy analysis (EUD methodology). In the proposed system, methanol fuel is decomposed into syngas mainly containing H 2 and CO by recovering low-temperature thermal energy from an intercooler of the air compressor. After the decomposition of methanol, the resulting product of syngas is divided into two parts: the most part reacting with Fe 2 O 3 , is sent into the CLC subsystem, and the other part is introduced into a supplement combustor to enhance the inlet temperatures of turbine to 1100-1500 o C. As a result, the new methanol-fuelled gas turbine cycle with CLC had a breakthrough in performance, with at least about 10.7 percentage points higher efficiency compared to the chemically intercooled gas turbine cycle with recovery of CO 2 and is environmentally superior due to the recovery of CO 2 . This new system can achieve 60.6% net thermal efficiency with CO 2 separation. The promising results obtained here indicated that this novel gas turbine cycle with methanol-fuelled chemical looping combustion could provide a promising approach of both effective use of alternative fuel and recovering low-grade waste heat, and offer a technical probability for CLC in applying into the advanced gas turbine with high temperatures above 1300 o C. INTRODUCTION Currently, we face a potentially serious problem of rapid climate change due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g. CO 2 ). One of the options to control the greenhouse gas emission is the CO 2 capture technologies from flue gases. In a fossil fuel-fired power plant, CO 2 capture can be carried out mainly through three available technologies: "precombustion," "post-combustion" and "oxy-fuel combustion." The progress in this field has been addressed by Mazen [2] Chemical-looping combustion (CLC) with inherent separation of CO 2 is considered a promising technology proposed by Ishida and Jin in 1994 [4][5] . It is the most attractive energy efficient method for CO 2 capture from fuel conversion in combustion process. Compared to conventional combustion, the chemical-looping combustion involves the use of a metal oxide as an oxygen carrier, which transfers oxygen from the combustion air to the fuel, and the direct contact between fuel and combustion air is avoided. In this way, CO 2 and H 2 O are inherently separated from the other components of flue gases leading to no energy needed for CO 2 separation. It is worthy emphasized that this novel CO 2 capture technology simultaneously resolve both energy and environmental problems in a combustion processes, since the conversion of fuel-based chemical energy into chemical energy in th