Novel polypropylene based microporous membranes via spherulitic deformation

A novel method for creating a microporous polypropylene membrane via spherulitic deformation is described. The microporous structure was generated by the combination of intra-spherulitic and inter-spherulitic deformations. Polypropylene was selected due to its unique cross-hatched lamellar morphology facilitating inter-spherulitic deformation. A precursor film with a spherulitic structure was made under low-stress melt processing condition. A tangential lamellae-rich spherulite was created and identified with a positive birefringence sign. A sequential annealing process improved the crystalline structure, and in particular the thickness of the tangential lamellae. The annealing process proved to be critical for initiating the inter-spherulitic deformation. The post-extrusion process conditions for initiating inter-spherulitic deformation to create microporous membranes by lamellar separation are delineated. The processing parameters are: annealing temperature, extension ratio, stretching rate, and stretching temperature. A fixed set of extrusion conditions was chosen for producing precursor films having similar spherulitic properties. A Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) examination provides a quick characterization method for the inter-spherulitic deformation. Membrane porosity measurements showed a consistent correlation with the observed ø-form orientation index. A highly interconnected solvent-resistant porous polypropylene membrane having a pore size in the range of 50-400 nm and a porosity of about 0.18 was thereby developed in this study. This concept can be further expanded by using an cc-nucleating agent to reduce spherulite sizes and utilizing interfacial debonding between two different phases to enhance permeability. A highly methanol permeable membrane with an estimated porosity of 0.29 was produced with the nucleated polypropylene samples, and a reasonable permeability was also observed in the membrane made from an immiscible blend. However, the occurrence of debonding can also compensate for the energy to create inter-spherulitic deformation. Increasing extension ratio did not change the microstructure in the non-annealed sample; however, the lamellae can be further oriented in the annealed samples. Inter-spherulitic deformation became obvious at slow stretching rates; intra-spherulitic deformation was more favored at a fast stretching rate. The DSC thermal analysis of the precursor films showed two significant endothermic discontinuities (T 1 at 0°C and T 2 at 40°C ) in the non-annealed or annealed precursor films; T1 is believed to be the conventional T g of polypropylene; T 2 appears to be the result of the rigid amorphous fraction trapped within lamellar wells where the amorphous phase is surrounded by R-lamellae and T-lamellae. The lamellae could break down or slip from the lamellar knots as stretching temperatures are high enough to minimize the effect of the rigid amorphous fraction, and the annealed lamellae can still be oriented without a catastrophic cold-drawn deformation

The feasibility of pelvic floor training to treat urinary incontinence in women with breast cancer : a telehealth intervention trial

Purpose: To investigate the feasibility of recruiting into a pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) program delivered via telehealth to treat urinary incontinence (UI) in women with breast cancer on aromatase inhibitors. Methods: We conducted a pre-post single cohort clinical trial with 54 women with breast cancer. Participants underwent a 12-week PFMT program using an intra-vaginal pressure biofeedback device: femfit®. The intervention included eight supervised individual PFMT sessions over Zoom™ and a 12-week home exercise program. The primary outcome of this study was feasibility, specifically consent rate. Secondary outcomes which included prevalence and burden of UI measured using the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire–Urinary Incontinence Short Form (ICIQ-UI SF), and pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength measured as intravaginal squeeze pressure were compared using McNemar’s and paired t tests. Results: The mean age of participants was 50 years (SD ± 7.3). All women who were eligible to participate in this study consented (n = 55/55, 100%). All participants reported that the program was beneficial and tailored to their needs. The results showed a statistically significant decline in the prevalence (percentage difference 42%, 95% CI 28, 57%) and burden (ICIQ-UI SF score mean change 9.4, 95% CI 8.5, 10.4) of UI post intervention. A significant increase in PFM strength was observed post-intervention (mean change 4.8 mmHg, 95% CI 3.9, 5.5). Conclusion: This study indicated that PFMT delivered via telehealth may be feasible and potentially beneficial in treating stress UI in women with breast cancer. Further studies such as randomized controlled trials are required to confirm these results. © 2022, The Author(s)

Influence of fertilizer and salicylic acid treatments on growth, physiological, and antioxidant characteristics in green and red Perilla frutescens varieties

Perilla is herbaceous plant, functional food, and nutraceutical product with antioxidant properties. The objective of this study was to investigate the growth, reflectance indices, and antioxidant properties of P. frutescens species in response to fertilizer and salicylic acid (SA) applications. Two independent experiments were carried out in an environmentally controlled greenhouse: (1) pots of red-leaf and green-leaf cultivars divided into four groups treated with 10-30-20 (10N-13.1P-16.6K), 15-10-30 (15N-4.4P-24.9K), 20-20-20 (20N-8.7P-16.6K), and 30-10-10 (30N-4.4P-8.3K) fertilizers for periods of 10 weeks, and (2) pots of red and green Perilla cultivars divided into five groups treated with 0 (control), 125, 250, 500, and 1,000 µM of SA for periods of 7 weeks. Wide variations occurred in the agronomic performance, soil-plant analysis development (SPAD) value, adjusted normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), maximal quantum yield of PSII photochemistry (Fv/Fm), and antioxidant activity of the two Perilla varieties. All the measured traits were higher in green than in red Perilla under identical fertilizing, and all agronomic traits in green and red Perilla plants subjected to 125 and 500 μM SA were better than in controls. The SPAD and NDVI values of all plants increased as N% increased, the lowest Fv/Fm values of all plants were observed under 15-10-30 fertilizer treatment, the lowest NDVI values were detected in controls, and the Fv/Fm values of all plants decreased under 1,000 μM SA treatment. These indices can be used as indicators to characterize the physiology of these plants and are suitable for evaluating their growth and development under specific fertilizer and SA treatments. Green Perilla leaf extract (PLE) contained higher rosmarinic acid (RA) concentration in each fertilizer treatment, and higher total phenolic (TP) and RA concentration in each SA treatment. However, red PLE contained higher caffeic acid (CA) concentration than green PLE in each fertilizer and SA treatment, implying that their two genotypes exhibited different abilities and specificities of photosynthetic metabolites, and that different varieties may prepare for 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity by up-regulating TP, RA, and CA concentration differently. Thus, Perilla plants can be used as health foods due to high TP, RA, and CA concentration. To produce Perilla efficiently in industrial applications, we undertook to determine the optimum N-P-K fertilizer ratio and SA application for maximizing the growth and accumulation of TP, RA, and CA in Perilla plants

Experiences of pelvic floor dysfunction and treatment in women with breast cancer: a qualitative study

Purpose To explore the experiences of women with breast cancer and pelvic floor (PF) dysfunction and the perceived enablers and barriers to uptake of treatment for PF dysfunction during their recovery. Method Purposive sampling was used to recruit 30 women with a past diagnosis of breast cancer and PF dysfunction. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and data were analysed inductively to identify new concepts in the experiences of PF dysfunction in women with breast cancer and deductively according to the capability, opportunity, motivation and behaviour (COM-B) framework to identify the enablers and barriers to the uptake of treatment for PF dysfunction in women with breast cancer. Results Participants were aged between 31 and 88 years, diagnosed with stages I–IV breast cancer and experienced either urinary incontinence ( n  = 24/30, 80%), faecal incontinence ( n  = 6/30, 20%) or sexual dysfunction ( n  = 20/30, 67%). They were either resigned to or bothered by their PF dysfunction bother was exacerbated by embarrassment from experiencing PF symptoms in public. Barriers to accessing treatment for PF dysfunction included a lack of awareness about PF dysfunction following breast cancer treatments and health care professionals not focussing on the management of PF symptoms during cancer treatment. An enabler was their motivation to resume their normal pre-cancer lives. Conclusion Participants in this study reported that there needs to be more awareness about PF dysfunction in women undergoing treatment for breast cancer. They would like to receive information about PF dysfunction prior to starting cancer treatment, be screened for PF dysfunction during cancer treatment and be offered therapies for their PF dysfunction after primary cancer treatment. Therefore, a greater focus on managing PF symptoms by clinicians may be warranted in women with breast cancer

Erratum to: Architectural Growth of Cu Nanoparticles Through Electrodeposition

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Effects of Yoga on Psychological Health, Quality of Life, and Physical Health of Patients with Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Yoga is one of the most widely used complementary and alternative medicine therapies to manage illness. This meta-analysis aimed to determine the effects of yoga on psychological health, quality of life, and physical health of patients with cancer. Studies were identified through a systematic search of seven electronic databases and were selected if they used a randomized controlled trial design to examine the effects of yoga in patients with cancer. The quality of each article was rated by two of the authors using the PEDro Scale. Ten articles were selected; their PEDro scores ranged from 4 to 7. The yoga groups compared to waitlist control groups or supportive therapy groups showed significantly greater improvements in psychological health: anxiety (P = .009), depression (P = .002), distress (P = .003), and stress (P = .006). However, due to the mixed and low to fair quality and small number of studies conducted, the findings are preliminary and limited and should be confirmed through higher-quality, randomized controlled trials

FreeControl: Training-Free Spatial Control of Any Text-to-Image Diffusion Model with Any Condition

Recent approaches such as ControlNet offer users fine-grained spatial control over text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models. However, auxiliary modules have to be trained for each type of spatial condition, model architecture, and checkpoint, putting them at odds with the diverse intents and preferences a human designer would like to convey to the AI models during the content creation process. In this work, we present FreeControl, a training-free approach for controllable T2I generation that supports multiple conditions, architectures, and checkpoints simultaneously. FreeControl designs structure guidance to facilitate the structure alignment with a guidance image, and appearance guidance to enable the appearance sharing between images generated using the same seed. Extensive qualitative and quantitative experiments demonstrate the superior performance of FreeControl across a variety of pre-trained T2I models. In particular, FreeControl facilitates convenient training-free control over many different architectures and checkpoints, allows the challenging input conditions on which most of the existing training-free methods fail, and achieves competitive synthesis quality with training-based approaches.Comment: Project Page: https://genforce.github.io/freecontrol

Effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine for Liver Protection and Chemotherapy Completion among Cancer Patients

While traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is widely used among Chinese patients with cancer, studies evaluating the effectiveness of TCM using objective indicators are rare. We examined the effectiveness of TCM for liver protection and completion of chemotherapy among patients with cancer receiving chemotherapy. We used a case-control design to examine the medical records of patients with cancer who received chemotherapy in a teaching hospital in Taipei in 2004. A total of 184 courses of chemotherapy among 89 patients were studied. Of the 184 courses, 42 used TCM jointly with chemotherapy served as cases, while the remaining 142 courses served as controls. Outcome variables included counts of cancelled or delayed chemotherapies and liver function (aspartate aminotransferase, AST and alanine aminotransferase, ALT) 1 week before, during and 2 weeks after chemotherapy. Generalized estimating equations were used to analyze the data. Patients who had concomitant TCM with chemotherapy had lower serum ALT and AST during chemotherapy than the controls given that the age, sex, cancer stage, radiotherapy sites, cancer diagnosis and potential hepatotoxicity of the chemotherapeutic drugs were controlled for in the model [β  = −3.48, 95% confidence interval (CI) −10.08 to 3.11 for AST; β  = −5.95, 95% CI: −11.47 to −0.44 for ALT]. There was no significant difference between the case and control groups for odds of completing one course of chemotherapy. Use of TCM with chemotherapy resulted in protection of the liver during chemotherapy, as manifested by lower serum AST and ALT levels