Evaluation Of Accurate Dietary Supplement Product Labeling

Herbal supplement sales in the U.S. increased by 7.5% between 2014 and 2015, from $6.441 billion to$6.922 billion, according to newly released data from the Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ). Dietary supplements and over-the-counter medications (OTC’s) do not have to be proven safe or effective before being sold to consumers like prescription medications. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, manufacturers only have to prove their product causes no harm to consumers. Dietary supplement labels are not reliable, since they are not regulated. Without verification a consumer cannot be sure that what is stated on the label is what is actually in the bottle. Some dietary supplements are known to contain saw dusts, lead, pesticides, arsenic, glass particles, and insect parts. Consumer Reports found that an estimated 23,000 people every year end up in emergency rooms after taking supplements. A 2013 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that from 2008 through 2011, the FDA received 6,307 reports of health problems from dietary supplements, including 92 deaths, hundreds of lifethreatening conditions, and more than 1,000 serious injuries or illnesses. The GAO suggests that due to underreporting, the actual number of incidents may be much greater since there are not any concrete reporting policies for dietary supplements as they make their way to consumers and have the potential to cause many problems. They can be ineffective, contaminated with microbes or heavy metals, dangerously mislabeled, or intentionally spiked with illegal or prescription drugs. Shockingly, Consumer Reports also found that over 1,000 supplements have been found to contain prescription or experimental drugs. The specific aim of this study is to verify whether dietary supplements and OTC’s contain the amount of ingredients claimed on the label of a product by using ConsumerLab.com® and USP® verification systems. ConsumerLab.com® and the USP® are the leading providers of independent test results, which approve whether products are accurately labeled with the correct amount of active ingredients and whether they contain harmful ingredients.https://dune.une.edu/pharmprac_facpost/1006/thumbnail.jp

Measurement of the vertical non-uniformity of the plasma sheath in a complex plasma

Employing an attenuated oscillation method, the anisotropic interaction force between two vertically aligned dust particles located in the sheath of a complex plasma was measured experimentally based on a linear approximation to the interaction force. Experimental data shows that although both particles experience a repulsive interaction force, the upper particle experiences a stronger magnitude force than does the lower. This result can be explained by the ion wakefield since the lower particle resides within the ion wakefield generated by the streaming ions passing through the sheath and around the upper particle

Classification of Digital Chess Pieces and Board Position using SIFT

Assistive technology has been given more attention in recent years to help people with disabilities to perform common tasks. Rather than designing a specialised tool for the task, it is more cost-effective and less inhibitory to make use of existing hardware integrated with a smart interface. Towards this end goal, we present our work on assisting a visually impaired person playing an online chess game. We evaluated an invariant feature descriptor, i.e., SIFT, for the task of classifying individual chess pieces across multiple visual themes. We compared two strategies for building the visual codebook, i.e., k-means clustering vs. image blending. The proposed pipeline receives live screen feeds from the browser at a fixed interval and produces an output in the form of chess pieces’ label and board position. Our proposed pipeline, paired with a visual codebook built using k-means clustering, managed an average accuracy rate of 6/10

Acute Opioid Withdrawal Mimicking Postoperative Joint Infection Following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) Reconstruction: A Case Report.

BACKGROUND A short course of opioid narcotics is often prescribed for postoperative anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction pain management. Unfortunately, there is a well-documented incidence of opioid withdrawal syndrome (OWS) following short-term use of these medications. OWS can present with symptoms such as influenza-like illness. It is important to differentiate OWS from infectious illnesses, especially after surgery. CASE REPORT We present a case of OWS in a patient who underwent ACL reconstruction 7 days prior. The patient\u27s OWS symptoms were similar to symptoms of a postoperative infection. The knee was aspirated, and the analysis of the aspirate was not concerning for an infection. The patient\u27s symptoms spontaneously resolved on postoperative day 10. This is the first documented case of OWS mimicking ACL reconstruction joint infection. CONCLUSIONS OWS after surgery may present with symptoms similar to joint infection. It is important to consider OWS as a potential complication after surgery and differentiate it from infection to avoid any further unnecessary invasive treatments for the patient

Effects of Crumb Rubber on the Shear Strength of Sand: An Experimental Study

The application of waste rubber tires for ground improvement helps to improve the environment by recycling and reusing it as admixtures. This research aims to investigate the shear strength parameters of rubber-sand mixtures. By using crumb rubber with a constant size (425μm), the sand is replaced by different percentages (0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, and 10%) of crumb rubber by weight. A direct shear box test is used to determine the shear strength parameters of rubber-sand mixtures with two different controlled densities. The samples were loaded with normal stresses of 20, 40 and 80kPa and were sheared at a rate of 1mm/min. Although, this experiment discovered that crumb rubbers improve the shear strength parameters in loose sand, however, a reduction in shear strength parameters was found in dense sand. Moreover, it was observed that the inclusion of crumb rubbers into sand greatly improve the strain energy of both loose and dense sand. Likewise, rubber has a low unit weight which makes it suitable for lightweight backfill materials. The surface properties of rubber should be further studied to understand the contribution of shear strength in the rubber-sand mixture

Classification of autism spectrum disorder using electroencephalography in Chinese children: a cross-sectional retrospective study

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition characterized by diverse clinical features. EEG biomarkers such as spectral power and functional connectivity have emerged as potential tools for enhancing early diagnosis and understanding of the neural processes underlying ASD. However, existing studies yield conflicting results, necessitating a comprehensive, data-driven analysis. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study involving 246 children with ASD and 42 control children. EEG was collected, and diverse EEG features, including spectral power and spectral coherence were extracted. Statistical inference methods, coupled with machine learning models, were employed to identify differences in EEG features between ASD and control groups and develop classification models for diagnostic purposes. Our analysis revealed statistically significant differences in spectral coherence, particularly in gamma and beta frequency bands, indicating elevated long range functional connectivity between frontal and parietal regions in the ASD group. Machine learning models achieved modest classification performance of ROC-AUC at 0.65. While machine learning approaches offer some discriminative power classifying individuals with ASD from controls, they also indicate the need for further refinement

The influence of zinc electrode substrate, electrolyte flow rate and current density on zinc-nickel flow cell performance

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThis work aims to identify a suitable material for use as a zinc electrode substrate material in alkaline media, then employ this to study the effect of electrolyte flow rate and current density on zinc-nickel flow cell performance. Three metallic and four graphite composite materials are investigated, with the coulombic efficiency of zinc electrode charge / discharge cycling found to increase as hydrogen evolution onset potentials become more negative. A graphite / PVDF composite substrate demonstrates the highest coulombic efficiency at 96.7 % and the most negative hydrogen evolution onset potential at -1.595 V vs. Hg/HgO. Using this material, the effect of electrolyte flow rate and current density on a zinc-nickel flow cell is investigated. Zinc morphology and flow cell performance is related to the ratio of applied current density to limiting current density. At values between 0.47 and 1, boulder type zinc morphologies have been shown to occur, with smooth and compact zinc deposits resulting from current density ratios of 0.39 and below. Stable zinc-nickel flow cell performance is achieved over 200 cycles with coulombic, voltaic and energy efficiencies of 98.3, 88.1 and 86.6 % respectively, at a current density of 20 mA cm-2.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Berkeley Supernova Ia Program I: Observations, Data Reduction, and Spectroscopic Sample of 582 Low-Redshift Type Ia Supernovae

In this first paper in a series we present 1298 low-redshift (z\leq0.2) optical spectra of 582 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observed from 1989 through 2008 as part of the Berkeley SN Ia Program (BSNIP). 584 spectra of 199 SNe Ia have well-calibrated light curves with measured distance moduli, and many of the spectra have been corrected for host-galaxy contamination. Most of the data were obtained using the Kast double spectrograph mounted on the Shane 3 m telescope at Lick Observatory and have a typical wavelength range of 3300-10,400 Ang., roughly twice as wide as spectra from most previously published datasets. We present our observing and reduction procedures, and we describe the resulting SN Database (SNDB), which will be an online, public, searchable database containing all of our fully reduced spectra and companion photometry. In addition, we discuss our spectral classification scheme (using the SuperNova IDentification code, SNID; Blondin & Tonry 2007), utilising our newly constructed set of SNID spectral templates. These templates allow us to accurately classify our entire dataset, and by doing so we are able to reclassify a handful of objects as bona fide SNe Ia and a few other objects as members of some of the peculiar SN Ia subtypes. In fact, our dataset includes spectra of nearly 90 spectroscopically peculiar SNe Ia. We also present spectroscopic host-galaxy redshifts of some SNe Ia where these values were previously unknown. [Abridged]Comment: 34 pages, 11 figures, 11 tables, revised version, re-submitted to MNRAS. Spectra will be released in January 2013. The SN Database homepage (http://hercules.berkeley.edu/database/index_public.html) contains the full tables, plots of all spectra, and our new SNID template

Core-mantle differentiation in Mars

The physical and chemical conditions under which Martian core formation took place are not well constrained. We modeled the pressure, temperature, and oxygen fugacity conditions under which it would be possible to match the inferred depletions of moderately siderophile elements Ni, Co, W, Mo, Ga, P, and Ge in the Martian mantle, using new constraints on their metal-silicate partitioning behavior. Using literature metal-silicate partitioning data, we characterize the dependence of the metal-silicate partition coefficients (D) on the temperature, pressure, oxygen fugacity, and composition of the silicate melt and the metal using a uniform parameterization approach for each element. Our results show that it is impossible to simultaneously account for the Martian mantle depletions of moderately siderophile elements if the Martian core sulfur content exceeds 10.5 wt % at reducing conditions (1 log unit below the iron-wüstite (IW) buffer). At 10.5 wt % core S, the conditions that best satisfy Martian mantle abundances of the seven siderophile elements are a mean pressure of 13(±1) GPa at 2330 K, corresponding to the presence of a magma ocean at least 1000 km deep during Martian core formation. More oxidizing conditions than the iron-wüstite buffer as suggested by iron meteorites are inconsistent with mantle siderophile element abundances. Extension of our approach to the highly siderophile elements Ru, Pd, Re, Ir, and Pt shows that their Martian mantle abundances are orders of magnitude too high to be accounted for by metal-silicate equilibration at high pressure and high temperature in a magma ocean, requiring a “late veneer” stage after core formation

A Dominantly Inherited Progressive Deafness Affecting Distal Auditory Nerve and Hair Cells

We have studied 72 members belonging to a large kindred with a hearing disorder inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. We used audiological, physiological, and psychoacoustic measures to characterize the hearing disorders. The initial phenotypic features of the hearing loss are of an auditory neuropathy (AN) with abnormal auditory nerve and brainstem responses (ABRs) and normal outer hair cell functions [otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and cochlear microphonics (CMs)]. Psychoacoustic studies revealed profound abnormalities of auditory temporal processes (gap detection, amplitude modulation detection, speech discrimination) and frequency processes (difference limens) beyond that seen in hearing impairment accompanying cochlear sensory disorders. The hearing loss progresses over 10–20 years to also involve outer hair cells, producing a profound sensorineural hearing loss with absent ABRs and OAEs. Affected family members do not have evidence of other cranial or peripheral neuropathies. There was a marked improvement of auditory functions in three affected family members studied after cochlear implantation with return of electrically evoked auditory brainstem responses (EABRs), auditory temporal processes, and speech recognition. These findings are compatible with a distal auditory nerve disorder affecting one or all of the components in the auditory periphery including terminal auditory nerve dendrites, inner hair cells, and the synapses between inner hair cells and auditory nerve. There is relative sparing of auditory ganglion cells and their axons.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41385/1/10162_2004_Article_5014.pd