The Use of Nebulizer Medications as a Possible Treatment for COVID-19

For the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the focal point in healthcare and research. This disease has permanently changed daily life and left a historic impact on the world. Most people have felt the effects of this pandemic either directly, via infection, or indirectly, via change in workflow, financial impact, etc. The main question for this virus still remains today; how do we treat this illness effectively? While many ideas are being tested and suggested, a definite answer has yet to be procured. Vaccine rates are climbing on a daily basis, serving as the first and most beneficial form of prevention when it comes to spread and severity of infection. However, as new variants continue to mutate into existence, we are left wondering how long this virus will be an active threat. For this purpose, nebulizer medications may serve as an effective and long-term option to treat positive patients both in healthcare settings and at home. The main medications of ipratropium bromide and albuterol sulfate and their premixed combination have shown benefit in patients with other respiratory conditions such as COPD and asthma. Given the correlation of symptoms between many of these diseases and COVID-19, there stands plausible support for the use of these medications for treatment of a viral SARS-CoV-2 infection. If these medications could sucessfully treat COVID symptoms, then perhaps these medications hold stake as a possible option. This would help to ease the strain on the healthcare system and bring peace of mind to those with growing concerns for their health and safety

Everything Old is New Again: How the Vaping Industry Borrowed Banned Practices of the Tobacco Industry

The key objective of this research is to determine if health regulators can prohibit marketing products to children based on likely health outcomes without specifying the exact product (i.e., e-cigarettes) and business activity (i.e., advertising). My thesis illustrates how the vaping industry took a tobacco-derived product, e-cigarettes, and employed the same banned marketing activities that helped create the traditional cigarette industry to harm today’s consumers. My analysis directly compares banned marketing practices for cigarettes with ecigarettes regarding advertising, packaging, flavorings, endorsements, marketing campaigns, and targeting of the vulnerable youth population. The thesis will conclude by providing recommendations based on this analysis of how product regulations should be crafted to increase the effectiveness of new regulations to curtail their introduction and dangerous marketing rather than the current post hoc practice of writing regulations to minimize the harm caused by products already on the market

Selective blockade of inhibitory Fcγ receptor enables human dendritic cell maturation with IL-12p70 production and immunity to antibody-coated tumor cells

he final differentiation or maturation of dendritic cells (DCs) in response to environmental stimuli influences their ability to both initiate immunity and determine the quality of the response to antigens. Circulating immune complexes and cell-bound immunoglobulins present in normal human sera represent a potential stimulus for inadvertent DC activation in the steady state and during autoimmunity. Here, we show that selective blockade of the inhibitory Fcγ receptor (FcγR) FcγRIIb with recently developed monoclonal antibodies leads to maturation of human monocyte-derived DCs, which depends on the presence of IgG in normal human plasma. Plasma, in the presence of an FcγRIIb blockade, caused the DCs to up-regulate the expression of costimulatory molecules and to produce the inflammatory mediator IL-12p70. FcγRIIb blockade of DCs loaded with tumor cells led to increased tumor-specific T cell immunity without the need for exogenous stimuli other than human plasma. Therefore, the activation status of DCs in the presence of normal human serum depends on the balance between activating and inhibitory FcγRs and can be enhanced by new antibodies that react selectively with FcγRIIb. These data suggest an approach for modifying this balance to enhance immunity to immune complexes and antibody-coated tumor cells and to silence DC activation by immune complexes in autoimmune states. © 2005 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA

Biomass burning emission inventory with daily resolution: Application to aircraft observations of Asian outflow

Asian outflo

AIAA Design Build Fly Humanitarian UAV

Every year AIAA issues a challenge to any undergraduate universities willing to meet it: to build an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to mission and product characteristics. This year the UAVs are to carry two different payloads in four missions with varying objectives, take-off distances, flight times and flight distances. The two payloads are large plunger syringes and mock vaccine vial packages. The Embry-Riddle Prescott team has decided that the best way to approach these competitions is to split responsibilities evenly between four integrated product teams (IPTs); Aerodynamics, Structures, Propulsion and Missions. In the early stages of the design process, Missions is responsible for deciding the objectives of the team’s design considering the mission constraints. This year Missions recommended the UAV carry 4 packages and 50 syringes due to energy constraints and to balance quantity against loading time. The Aerodynamics IPT is responsible for weighing the concerns of the Missions, Structures, and Propulsion teams to develop a configuration for the UAV. This year the Aerodynamics IPT decided on a high “Hershey bar” wing with an aspect ratio of 7, a conventional tail, and tricycle landing gear. While Structures is modeling and building the plane, Propulsion does research for their recommendation of the motors and propellers, which are then mounted on various prototypes to test their viability. This year Propulsion recommended Sunny Sky V4014 motors and 10x16E propellers. The team is currently refining the integrated prototypes, with delivery mechanisms built by the Missions IPT

Time-Dependent Physicochemical Changes of Carbonate Surfaces from SmartWater (Diluted Seawater) Flooding Processes for Improved Oil Recovery.

Over the past few decades, field- and laboratory-scale studies have shown enhancements in oil recovery when reservoirs, which contain high-salinity formation water (FW), are waterflooded with modified-salinity salt water (widely referred to as the low-salinity, dilution, or SmartWater effect for improved oil recovery). In this study, we investigated the time dependence of the physicochemical processes that occur during diluted seawater (i.e., SmartWater) waterflooding processes of specific relevance to carbonate oil reservoirs. We measured the changes to oil/water/rock wettability, surface roughness, and surface chemical composition during SmartWater flooding using 10-fold-diluted seawater under mimicked oil reservoir conditions with calcite and carbonate reservoir rocks. Distinct effects due to SmartWater flooding were observed and found to occur on two different timescales: (1) a rapid (<15 min) increase in the colloidal electrostatic double-layer repulsion between the rock and oil across the SmartWater, leading to a decreased oil/water/rock adhesion energy and thus increased water wetness and (2) slower (>12 h to complete) physicochemical changes of the calcite and carbonate reservoir rock surfaces, including surface roughening via the dissolution of rock and the reprecipitation of dissolved carbonate species after exchanging key ions (Ca2+, Mg2+, CO32-, and SO42- in carbonates) with those in the flooding SmartWater. Our experiments using crude oil from a carbonate reservoir reveal that these reservoir rock surfaces are covered with organic-ionic preadsorbed films (ad-layers), which the SmartWater removes (detaches) as flakes. Removal of the organic-ionic ad-layers by SmartWater flooding enhances oil release from the surfaces, which was found to be critical to increasing the water wetness and significantly improving oil removal from carbonates. Additionally, the increase in water wetness is further enhanced by roughening of the rock surfaces, which decreases the effective contact (interaction) area between the oil and rock interfaces. Furthermore, we found that the rate of these slower physicochemical changes to the carbonate rock surfaces increases with increasing temperature (at least up to an experimental temperature of 75 °C). Our results suggest that the effectiveness of improved oil recovery from SmartWater flooding depends strongly on the formation of the organic-ionic ad-layers. In oil reservoirs where the ad-layer is fully developed and robust, injecting SmartWater would lead to significant removal of the ad-layer and improved oil recovery

"My Children and I Will no Longer Suffer from Malaria": A Qualitative Study of the Acceptance and Rejection of Indoor Residual Spraying to Prevent Malaria in Tanzania.

The objective of this study was to identify attitudes and misconceptions related to acceptance or refusal of indoor residual spraying (IRS) in Tanzania for both the general population and among certain groups (e.g., farmers, fishermen, community leaders, and women). This study was a series of qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions conducted from October 2010 to March 2011 on Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. Three groups of participants were targeted: acceptors of IRS (those who have already had their homes sprayed), refusers (those whose communities have been sprayed, but refused to have their individual home sprayed), and those whose houses were about to be sprayed as part of IRS scale-up. Interviews were also conducted with farmers, fishermen, women, community leaders and members of non-government organizations responsible for community mobilization around IRS. Results showed refusers are a very small percentage of the population. They tend to be more knowledgeable people such as teachers, drivers, extension workers, and other civil servants who do not simply follow the orders of the local government or the sprayers, but are skeptical about the process until they see true results. Refusal took three forms: 1) refusing partially until thorough explanation is provided; 2) accepting spray to be done in a few rooms only; and 3) refusing outright. In most of the refusal interviews, refusers justified why their houses were not sprayed, often without admitting that they had refused. Reasons for refusal included initial ignorance about the reasons for IRS, uncertainty about its effectiveness, increased prevalence of other insects, potential physical side effects, odour, rumours about the chemical affecting fertility, embarrassment about moving poor quality possessions out of the house, and belief that the spray was politically motivated. To increase IRS acceptance, participants recommended more emphasis on providing thorough public education, ensuring the sprayers themselves are more knowledgeable about IRS, and asking that community leaders encourage participation by their constituents rather than threatening punishment for noncompliance. While there are several rumours and misconceptions concerning IRS in Tanzania, acceptance is very high and continues to increase as positive results become apparent

On the determination of a cloud condensation nuclei from satellite : Challenges and possibilities

We use aerosol size distributions measured in the size range from 0.01 to 10+ μm during Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-P) and Aerosol Characterization Experiment-Asia (ACE-Asia), results of chemical analysis, measured/modeled humidity growth, and stratification by air mass types to explore correlations between aerosol optical parameters and aerosol number concentration. Size distributions allow us to integrate aerosol number over any size range expected to be effective cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and to provide definition of a proxy for CCN (CCNproxy). Because of the internally mixed nature of most accumulation mode aerosol and the relationship between their measured volatility and solubility, this CCNproxy can be linked to the optical properties of these size distributions at ambient conditions. This allows examination of the relationship between CCNproxy and the aerosol spectral radiances detected by satellites. Relative increases in coarse aerosol (e.g., dust) generally add only a few particles to effective CCN but significantly increase the scattering detected by satellite and drive the Angstrom exponent (α) toward zero. This has prompted the use of a so-called aerosol index (AI) on the basis of the product of the aerosol optical depth and the nondimensional α, both of which can be inferred from satellite observations. This approach biases the AI to be closer to scattering values generated by particles in the accumulation mode that dominate particle number and is therefore dominated by sizes commonly effective as CCN. Our measurements demonstrate that AI does not generally relate well to a measured proxy for CCN unless the data are suitably stratified. Multiple layers, complex humidity profiles, dust with very low α mixed with pollution, and size distribution differences in pollution and biomass emissions appear to contribute most to method limitations. However, we demonstrate that these characteristic differences result in predictable influences on AI. These results suggest that inference of CCN from satellites will be challenging, but new satellite and model capabilities could possibly be integrated to improve this retrieval