Diabetic retinopathy: history, modern approaches to management, prospective views of prevention and treatment

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a serious complication of diabetes mellitus (DM). As DR progresses, it could be complicated with a significant decrease or complete loss of vision. It is the leading cause of blindness in the working-age population and, according to global estimates, occurs in one in every three patients with diabetes. DR has been studied for more than 160 years, and the implementation of retinal laser coagulation into clinical practice in the 20th century, and then vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors in the 21th century, allowed us to influence vascular proliferation in DR and reduce the risk of vision loss from diabetic macular oedema (DME). However, these tools can only stop the progression of DR at the stages with risk of complications with vision loss, and prevention – screenings and the impact on risk factors (hyperglycaemia, arterial hypertension, and dyslipidemia) – remains as the main method of management of DR. Possible new risk factors (hypodynamy, obesity, body weight deficiency, and obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome) attract a lot of attention, and there is ongoing research for early markers of DR in the fundus, which could allow more active influence on the pathological process in its early stages. This review focuses on epidemiology, history of research, proven and possible risk factors, and current and promising approaches to the prevention and treatment of DR, including accurate, less traumatic laser techniques (PASCAL, NAVILAS, and D-MPL), and intravitreal antiangiogenic drugs in studies

On the issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of organic fuels

Relevance. Russia has ratified the Paris Climate Agreement. However, European legislation is ambiguously aimed at extracting its own benefits in the current international relations, especially during the period of sanctions against Russia. Expectation of introduction of a carbon tax on the products and services of industry organizations requires a comprehensive analysis of the situation in the field of technology and technologies that contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Aim. Study of approaches and technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that stimulate the environmentally friendly production of thermal and electrical energy; identification of promising and affordable greenhouse gas condensation technology for domestic energy and features of its application. Object. The list of greenhouse gases was established by the Kyoto Protocol in 1996. The main of greenhouse gases for the energy sector are emissions of carbon dioxide generated by burning fuel in generating heat and electricity. Methods. Analysis of literature data on technologies for utilization of greenhouse gases, the possibilities of its use and reduction of emissions. Analytical calculations were performed to assess the effectiveness of carbon dioxide condensation technology. Results. The authors have carried out the analysis of literature data on regulatory requirements, UN recommendations and aspects of greenhouse gas utilization. They established a promising and affordable technology of greenhouse gas condensation in order to capture and absorb carbon dioxide during fuel combustion when producing thermal and electrical energy. The paper introduces the economic assessment of the costs of purchasing sorbents and the possibility of their extraction and conclusions on the utopian of the tasks of the Paris Climate Agreement

Newer Approach to Create Flexible Business Architecture of Modern Enterprise

Abstract In this study we analyze co-adoption of several modern concepts of enterprise architecture creation and describe real-time business processes generation on global cloud-based self-generated business service basis to increase the agility of enterprise. We simulated the process of generating the business model started by particular business request with the support of subject-oriented business process management approach that results in particular business process architecture, which is approved or rejected/corrected by board of directors and architectural committee of the enterprise. During that generation all necessary requirements for supporting resources, such as information, know-how, intellectual and professional skills, inputs and outputs, quality and operational risk limitations, moderation, control and monitoring, are formed. On a next twist of the development all formed requirements are to be satisfied by appropriate selections from the cloud facilities and again approved. Finally after several iterations business model will be created in reality and could be executed with predicted results. Briefly that means that certain sets of valued and weighted business process replicas are located in Clouds. In addition to that, in this article we have provided the advanced view on the topic with attempt to install a virtual SOA torrent that catches services from the Internet and makes them available to customers and represents a business service basis for real-time business processes

Knowledge-driven adaptive production management based on real-time user feedback and ontology updates

Abstract-This paper presents the principles of the knowledgedriven adaptive management in manufacturing. The problems of real-time resource allocation, reaction to the unexpected events, on-the-fly update of the knowledge stored in ontology are considered. The possibilities of simultaneous change of the existing factory or workshop processes and schedules according to the information provided by the users are described. Finally, the possible ways of development of the presented approach and its application in production resource management are considered

Observation of the Cabibbo-suppressed decay Xi_c+ -> p K- pi+

We report the first observation of the Cabibbo-suppressed charm baryon decay Xi_c+ -> p K- pi+. We observe 150 +- 22 events for the signal. The data were accumulated using the SELEX spectrometer during the 1996-1997 fixed target run at Fermilab, chiefly from a 600 GeV/c Sigma- beam. The branching fractions of the decay relative to the Cabibbo-favored Xi_c+ -> Sigma+ K- pi+ and Xi_c+ -> X- pi+ pi+ are measured to be B(Xi_c+ -> p K- pi+)/B(Xi_c+ -> Sigma+ K- pi+) = 0.22 +- 0.06 +- 0.03 and B(Xi_c+ -> p K- pi+)/B(Xi_c+ -> X- pi+ pi+) = 0.20 +- 0.04 +- 0.02, respectively.Comment: 5 pages, RevTeX, 3 figures (postscript), Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Hydrophilic sulfonated bis-1,2,4-triazine ligands are highly effective reagents for separating actinides(iii) from lanthanides(iii) via selective formation of aqueous actinide complexes

We report the first examples of hydrophilic 6,6′-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-2,2′-bipyridine (BTBP) and 2,9-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-1,10-phenanthroline (BTPhen) ligands, and their applications as actinide(III) selective aqueous complexing agents. The combination of a hydrophobic diamide ligand in the organic phase and a hydrophilic tetrasulfonated bis-triazine ligand in the aqueous phase is able to separate Am(III) from Eu(III) by selective Am(III) complex formation across a range of nitric acid concentrations with very high selectivities, and without the use of buffers. In contrast, disulfonated bis-triazine ligands are unable to separate Am(III) from Eu(III) in this system. The greater ability of the tetrasulfonated ligands to retain Am(III) selectively in the aqueous phase than the corresponding disulfonated ligands appears to be due to the higher aqueous solubilities of the complexes of the tetrasulfonated ligands with Am(III). The selectivities for Am(III) complexation observed with hydrophilic tetrasulfonated bis-triazine ligands are in many cases far higher than those found with the polyaminocarboxylate ligands previously used as actinide-selective complexing agents, and are comparable to those found with the parent hydrophobic bis-triazine ligands. Thus we demonstrate a feasible alternative method to separate actinides from lanthanides than the widely studied approach of selective actinide extraction with hydrophobic bis-1,2,4-triazine ligands such as CyMe4-BTBP and CyMe4-BTPhen

Efficiency of Finding Muon Track Trigger Primitives in CMS Cathode Strip Chambers

In the CMS Experiment, muon detection in the forward direction is accomplished by cathode strip chambers~(CSC). These detectors identify muons, provide a fast muon trigger, and give a precise measurement of the muon trajectory. There are 468 six-plane CSCs in the system. The efficiency of finding muon trigger primitives (muon track segments) was studied using~36 CMS CSCs and cosmic ray muons during the Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge~(MTCC) exercise conducted by the~CMS experiment in~2006. In contrast to earlier studies that used muon beams to illuminate a very small chamber area ($< \! 0.01$~m$^2$), results presented in this paper were obtained by many installed CSCs operating {\em in situ} over an area of $\approx \! 23$~m$^2$ as a part of the~CMS experiment. The efficiency of finding 2-dimensional trigger primitives within 6-layer chambers was found to be~$99.93 \pm 0.03\%$. These segments, found by the CSC electronics within $800$~ns after the passing of a muon through the chambers, are the input information for the Level-1 muon trigger and, also, are a necessary condition for chambers to be read out by the Data Acquisition System