Continuous saline bladder irrigation for two hours following transurethral resection of bladder tumors in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer does not prevent recurrence or progression compared with intravesical Mitomycin-C.

BackgroundIntravesical Mitomycin-C (MMC) following transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT), while efficacious, is associated with side effects and poor utilization. Continuous saline bladder irrigation (CSBI) has been examined as an alternative. In this study we sought to compare the rates of recurrence and/or progression in patients with NMIBC who were treated with either MMC or CSBI after TURBT.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed records of patients with NMIBC at our institution in 2012-2015. Perioperative use of MMC (40 mg in 20 mL), CSBI (two hours), or neither were recorded. Primary outcome was time to recurrence or progression. Descriptive statistics, chi-squared analysis, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, and Cox multivariable regression analyses were performed.Results205 patients met inclusion criteria. Forty-five (22.0%) patients received CSBI, 71 (34.6%) received MMC, and 89 (43.4%) received no perioperative therapy. On survival analysis, MMC was associated with improved DFS compared with CSBI (p = 0.001) and no treatment (p = 0.0009). On multivariable analysis, high risk disease was associated with increased risk of recurrence or progression (HR 2.77, 95% CI: 1.28-6.01), whereas adjuvant therapy (HR 0.35, 95% CI: 0.20-0.59) and MMC (HR 0.43, 95% CI: 0.25-0.75) were associated with decreased risk.ConclusionsPostoperative MMC was associated with improved DFS compared with CSBI and no treatment. The DFS benefit seen with CSBI in other studies may be limited to patients receiving prolonged irrigation. New intravesical agents being evaluated may consider saline as a control given our data demonstrating that short-term CSBI is not superior to TURBT alone

An Analysis Review: Optimal Trajectory for 6-DOF-based Intelligent Controller in Biomedical Application

With technological advancements and the development of robots have begun to be utilized in numerous sectors, including industrial, agricultural, and medical. Optimizing the path planning of robot manipulators is a fundamental aspect of robot research with promising future prospects. The precise robot manipulator tracks can enhance the efficacy of a variety of robot duties, such as workshop operations, crop harvesting, and medical procedures, among others. Trajectory planning for robot manipulators is one of the fundamental robot technologies, and manipulator trajectory accuracy can be enhanced by the design of their controllers. However, the majority of controllers devised up to this point were incapable of effectively resolving the nonlinearity and uncertainty issues of high-degree freedom manipulators in order to overcome these issues and enhance the track performance of high-degree freedom manipulators. Developing practical path-planning algorithms to efficiently complete robot functions in autonomous robotics is critical. In addition, designing a collision-free path in conjunction with the physical limitations of the robot is a very challenging challenge due to the complex environment surrounding the dynamics and kinetics of robots with different degrees of freedom (DoF) and/or multiple arms. The advantages and disadvantages of current robot motion planning methods, incompleteness, scalability, safety, stability, smoothness, accuracy, optimization, and efficiency are examined in this paper

Optical conductivity study of screening of many-body effects in graphene interfaces

Theoretical studies have shown that electron-electron (e-e) and electron-hole (e-h) interactions play important roles in many observed quantum properties of graphene making this an ideal system to study many body effects. In this report we show that spectroscopic ellipsometry can enable us to measure this interactions quantitatively. We present spectroscopic data in two extreme systems of graphene on quartz (GOQ), an insulator, and graphene on copper (GOC), a metal which show that for GOQ, both e-e and e-h interactions dominate while for GOC e-h interactions are screened. The data further enables the estimation of the strength of the many body interaction through the effective fine structure constant, $\alpha_{g}^{*}$. The $\alpha_{g}^{*}$ for GOQ indicates a strong correlation with an almost energy independent value of about 1.37. In contrast, $\alpha_{g}^{*}$ value of GOC is photon energy dependent, is almost two orders of magnitude lower at low energies indicating very weak correlation.Comment: Main Article (4 pages, 4 figures); Supporting Online Material (12 pages, 9 figures

Emission of short-lived halocarbons by three common tropical marine microalgae during batch culture

Very short-lived halocarbons of marine biogenic origin play an important role in affecting tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry. In recent years, more attention has been paid to tropical regions where the influence of strong convective forces is responsible for rapid uplifting of the volatile organohalogens from the open surface waters into the atmosphere. This laboratory-based study reports on three common tropical marine microalgae capable of emitting a range of short-lived halocarbons, namely, CH3I, CHBr3, CH2Br2, CHBr2Cl, and CHCl3. Chlorophyll a and cell density were highly correlated to the quantity of all five compounds emitted (p < 0.01). The diatom Amphora sp. UMACC 370 had a higher range of CH3I emission rate (10.55–64.18 pmol mg−1 chl a day−1, p < 0.01) than the cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. UMACC 371 and chlorophyte Parachlorella sp. UMACC 245 (1.04–3.86 pmol mg−1 chl a day−1 and 0–2.16 pmol mg−1 chl a day−1, p < 0.01, respectively). Furthermore, iodine was the dominant halogen emitted in terms of total combined halide mass of all three species. Overall, the emissions of short-lived halocarbons were both species- and growth phase-dependent, highlighting the importance of considering cell physiological conditions when determining gas emission rates

Factors influencing non-green consumers’ purchase intention: A partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach

The shift of consumers buying preference toward green beauty products can alleviate environmental degradation to a certain extent. This study investigated the factors that could affect non-green consumers purchase intention of green beauty products. Through the lens of non-green consumers of green beauty products, the norm activation theory was employed as the underpinning theory in this paper. A quantitative method, based on the partial least squares structural equation modelling, was used to verify the proposed hypotheses. The findings displayed that norm activation theory activators, such as ascription of responsibility, efficacy, social norm and environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) initiatives showed a significant impact on personal norm, while awareness of consequences had no influence on personal norm as an activator. Corresponding results disclosed that awareness of consequences, efficacy, social norm, ECSR initiatives, and personal norm exhibited a significant impact on the purchase intention of green beauty products. The study further assessed the effectiveness of personal norm as a mediator variable and found that personal norm mediated four out of five activators of nongreen consumers’ purchase intention of green beauty products. According to the research, a further inclusive analysis can be conducted in the future to evaluate the purchase intention of green beauty products among non-green consumers and existing consumers on the foundation of norm activation theory