Feasibility of using low density polyethylene sheets to detect atmospheric organochlorine pesticides in Alexandria, Egypt

Egypt is a major agricultural country in Africa with a known past of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) application, yet data on atmospheric levels of OCPs in Egypt is sparse. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) passive samplers were therefore deployed for 3 weeks each at 11 locations in July, 2010 and January, 2011 in Alexandria to screen for gas-phase OCPs. Performance reference compounds were used to investigate the uptake kinetics. Field-derived sampler-air partitioning coefficients (KPE-As) for OCPs were significantly correlated against the compounds\u27 subcooled liquid vapor pressure (log PL): [log KPE-A = −0.77 ± 0.07*log PL + 6.35 ± 0.13 (R2 = 0.90; n = 17; SE = 0.19; p \u3c 0.001)]. Estimated and measured OCP concentrations in Alexandria agreed well (factor difference ≤ 2) indicating the feasibility of monitoring OCPs using LDPEs. OCP concentrations ranged from 3. Calculated isomeric ratios indicated recent usage of chlordanes and endosulfans

Matrix isolation studies of transition metal halides and main group Lewis acid‒base complexes

The main purpose of this work was to synthesise and study the binary fluorides of nickel, cobalt and chromium, and the binary halides of palladium and molybdenum in solid argon matrices. Both UV/vis spectroscopy and FTIR spectroscopy were employed to identify the products formed. Additionally, this work also investigated the reaction between SiF4 with alkyl phosphines.In the beginning, the work focused on isolation of atomic nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, and palladium in neat argon matrices. The FTIR data revealed the interaction of nickel and fluorine atoms in solid argon matrix and the formation of nickel fluoride molecules NiF, NiF2, and NiF4 and also provided evidence for the formation of NiF3 molecules. Moreover, cobalt atoms trapped in a matrix of argon doped with fluorine yielded the formation of CoF, CoF2, CoF3, CoF4, and Co2F2 molecules. Furthermore, molybdenum fluoride species in an argon matrix have been obtained, which is the first observation of the vibrational modes for MoF and MoF2 in matrices. The geometry of MoF2 species was assigned to be bent with a bond angle of 132°. In addition, FTIR data indicated the formation of matrix isolated chromium fluorides in solid argon matrix. The study succeeded in the characterisation of CrF and CrF6 molecules, as well as the previously identified CrF2, CrF3, CrF4 and CrF5. The IR band related to CrF6 is observed at 757 cm−1. A computational study suggested that PdCl2 is linear.The reaction between SiF4 and PMe3 at cryogenic temperatures led to the formation of a SiF4−PMe3 complex and indicated the formation of two different species. The reaction between SiF4 and PEt3 revealed the formation of a 1:1 adduct of trigonal bipyramid structure with axial PEt3 of SiF4.PEt3 and a 1:2 complex of trans–[SiF4.(PEt3)2] structure. The results were supported by computational data

Using Polyethylene Passive Samplers to Study the Partitioning and Fluxes of PBDEs in an Urban River

In the aquatic environment, the behavior of hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs), such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), depends on the congeners’ physicochemical properties, environmental conditions and the presence of competing natural sorbents, including particulate and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and black carbon (BC). Although BC is known as an important sedimentary sorbent for HOCs, its affinity for PBDEs has been poorly constrained. To better understand the biogeochemical controls on PBDEs, 12 PBDE congeners were measured in air, water, sediment and porewater of the lower Passaic River. BDE-47 and BDE-99 dominated in all media. In sediments and water, the dual OC + BC approach better predicted PBDE partitioning compared to the simple OC isotherm. Field-derived KBC for PBDEs were inverse correlated with aqueous solubility [log KBC sediments (water) = -log Cwsat * 0.95 (1.2) + 0.36 (-0.69)]; they reflected near background to highly contamination regions across the Passaic River. In the water column, PBDEs appeared at equilibrium partitioning between particles and colloids: OC + BC were responsible for the sorption of 65 % of the concentrations of PBDE, followed by colloids (30%); only 5 % of PDBEs were truly dissolved. Calculated sediment-water diffusive fluxes greatly overwhelmed the atmospheric depositional flux to the river

Source Apportionment and Risk Assessment of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in the Atmospheric Environment of Alexandria, Egypt

In this study, three receptor models [factor analysis/multiple linear regression (FA/MLR), positive matrix factorization (PMF) and UNMIX] were applied seasonally to investigate the source apportionment of PAHs in the atmospheric environment of Alexandria, and a lifetime cancer risk was assessed. ∑44 (gas+particle) PAH concentrations varied from 330 to 1770ngm(-3) and 170-1290ngm(-3) in the summer and winter seasons respectively. PAH concentrations at the industrial sites were significantly higher than at the traffic and residential sites during the winter season (

Assessing benthic bioaccumulation of polychlorinated dioxins/furans (PCDD/Fs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the lower Passaic River (NJ, USA) based on \u3cem\u3ein situ\u3c/em\u3e passive sampling

Passive sampling has emerged as a promising tool to assess the presence of hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOC) in water, sediment and biota, such as polychlorinated dibenzo‐p‐dioxins/furans (PCDD/Fs) or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Previous work evaluated the ability of passive samplers to predict bioavailability of sedimentary HOCs mostly in the laboratory, often for marine organisms. The current study assessed the use of low density polyethylene (LDPE) to derive freely dissolved concentrations of PCDD/Fs and PCBs in porewater in situ versus ex situ , and in river water. A LDPE‐based multisampler system was deployed at four locations along the lower Passaic River (NJ) in sediment and water column, where sediment and benthic species samples were also collected. Good agreement was generally observed for PCDD/F and PCB concentrations comparing in situ and ex situ approaches (within 0.30 – 39%). Significant linear relationships were derived between log LDPE based – log lipid‐based concentrations of PCDD/Fs and PCBs. The in situ multisampler system showed promise to derive HOC concentrations in porewater and riverwater, and to predict the bioaccumulation potential of HOCs in benthic biota

Bioaccumulation of PCBs, OCPs and PBDEs in Marine Mammals From West Antarctica

To understand the bioaccumulation and food web dynamics of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) as a function of species, age and sex in Antarctic mammals, blubber samples of 3 killer whales (Type C) and 77 pinnipeds (Weddell, Ross and crabeater seals) were collected from the Southern Ocean, Antarctica. They were analyzed for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). ΣDDTs, Σ29PCBs and chlordanes (12 – 4,600, 13 – 1,600, and \u3c 1.5 – 1,700 ng/g lipid, respectively) were the most abundant POPs. Killer whales typically displayed several times greater concentrations of POPs compared to seals, except for PBDEs. PCBs and PBDEs were consistently higher in adult crabeater and Weddell seal males, and in adult female Ross seals than in other sex and age groups reflecting an age accumulation and possible influence of segregated diet, foraging areas, and metabolic transformation rates. POPs concentrations significantly correlated with gene transcription of nuclear receptors involved in detoxification of contaminants and immune relevant cell mediators in the crabeater seals, indicating possible immunotoxic and deleterious health effects. This represents one of the largest studies on POPs in Antarctic marine predators and highlights the complexity of POPs bioaccumulation

Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy: Non‐Urological Indications and Recent Trends

Extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) was introduced in 1980 as the preferred tool by the urologist for the treatment of renal stones and or upper ureteral stones. ESWL is minimally invasive procedures, exposes patients to fewer anesthesias, and has equivalent stone‐free rates comparable to open surgery and endourology interventions for the treatment of renal stones. Urolithiasis is not the only application for extracorporeal shock waves but there are also other applications for it. Extracorporeal shock wave is used for the treatment of gall bladder stones, common bile duct stone clearance, pancreatic calculi, salivary stones, erectile dysfunction, and refractory angina pectoris chronic wound healing. This chapter gives full review about ESWL as minimally invasive procedures in the following items: (i) ESWL l in treatment of gall stones; (ii) ESWL for common bile duct (CBD) stones; (iii) ESWL for pancreatic stones associated with pancreatic pseudo cysts and chronic pancreatitis; (iv) ESWL in the treatment of salivary stones; (v) ESWL in the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED); (vi) Cardiac shock wave therapy (ESWL) in treatment of refractory angina (RA); (vii) ESWL and chronic wound healing; (viii) Recent trends in extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL); (ix) Post ESWL complementary therapy; and (x) The future of ESWL in the year 2038

Uptake of hydrophobic organic compounds, including OCPs and PBDEs, and perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in fish and blue crabs of the lower Passaic River (NJ, USA)

The bioavailability and bioaccumulation of sedimentary hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) is of concern at contaminated sites. Passive samplers have emerged as a promising tool to measure the bioavailability of sedimentary HOCs and possibly to estimate their bioaccumulation. We thus analyzed HOCs including organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzo‐p‐dioxins/furans (PCDD/Fs) in sediment, porewater and riverwater using low density polyethylene (LDPE) passive samplers, and in 11 different finfish species and blue crab from the lower Passaic River. Additionally, perfluorinated alkyl acids (PFAAs) were measured in grab water samples, sediment and fish. Best predictors of bioaccumulation in biota were either porewater concentrations (for PCBs and OCPs), or sediment organic carbon (PBDEs and PFAAs), including black carbon (OCPs, PCBs and some PCDD/F congeners) normalized concentrations. Measured lipid‐based concentrations of the majority of HOCs exceeded the chemicals\u27 activites in porewater by at least 2‐fold, suggesting dietary uptake. Trophic magnification factors were \u3e 1 for moderately hydrophobic analytes (log KOW = 6.5–8.2) with low metabolic transformation rates (\u3c 0.01 day−1), including longer alkyl chain PFAAs. For analytes with lower (4.5–6.5) and higher (\u3e8.2) KOWs, metabolic transformation was more important in reducing trophic magnification

Video assisted minimally invasive mitral valve replacement in rheumatic valve disease.

Objective: Assessment early outcome of video assisted minimally invasive mitral valve replacement, in rheumatic valve disease. Also, to evaluate early postoperative quality of life by SF 36 questionnaire. Methods: This is a prospective single center study which was conducted on 20 rheumatic heart patients, in Egypt; during the period from October 2015 to June 2018. The main pathological lesion was sever mitral regurgitation (MR), mitral stenosis (MS) or both. Patients underwent video assisted minimally invasive mitral valve replacement, through a right mini thoracotomy. 13 patients (65%) were via infra-mammary incision, 4 patients (20%) were via periareolar incision and 3 patients (15%) were via limited right anterolateral mini-thoracotomy. Results: Mean length of surgical incision was (6.60 ± 1.35 cm). Mean duration of operation, cardiopulmonary bypass, and cross clamp times were (4.32 ± 1.08 hr.), (2.85 ± 0.75 hr.) and (1.78 ± 0.47 hr.) respectively. ICU stay was 2.35 ± 1.14 days and Hospital stay was 6.45 ± 1.43 days. The mean amount of blood loss was 398.50 ± 245.79 ml with two patients of bleeding requiring re-opening. At discharge, all patients had normal mitral prosthetic valve function with no or trivial regurgitation, as shown by echocardiographic studies. The postoperative quality of life revealed faster recovery of usual activities. Conclusions: Video assisted minimally invasive mitral valve surgery in the surgically challenging rheumatic valve disease has less surgical trauma, blood loss and pain, which translates into short hospital stay, rapid return to normal activities, less use of resources

Local Phase Coherence Measurement for Image Analysis and Processing

The ability of humans to perceive significant pattern and structure of an image is something which humans take for granted. We can recognize objects and patterns independent of changes in image contrast and illumination. In the past decades, it has been widely recognized in both biology and computer vision that phase contains critical information in characterizing the structures in images. Despite the importance of local phase information and its significant success in many computer vision and image processing applications, the coherence behavior of local phases at scale-space is not well understood. This thesis concentrates on developing an invariant image representation method based on local phase information. In particular, considerable effort is devoted to study the coherence relationship between local phases at different scales in the vicinity of image features and to develop robust methods to measure the strength of this relationship. A computational framework that computes local phase coherence (LPC) intensity with arbitrary selections in the number of coefficients, scales, as well as the scale ratios between them has been developed. Particularly, we formulate local phase prediction as an optimization problem, where the objective function computes the closeness between true local phase and the predicted phase by LPC. The proposed framework not only facilitates flexible and reliable computation of LPC, but also broadens the potentials of LPC in many applications. We demonstrate the potentials of LPC in a number of image processing applications. Firstly, we have developed a novel sharpness assessment algorithm, identified as LPC-Sharpness Index (LPC-SI), without referencing the original image. LPC-SI is tested using four subject-rated publicly-available image databases, which demonstrates competitive performance when compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. Secondly, a new fusion quality assessment algorithm has been developed to objectively assess the performance of existing fusion algorithms. Validations over our subject-rated multi-exposure multi-focus image database show good correlations between subjective ranking score and the proposed image fusion quality index. Thirdly, the invariant properties of LPC measure have been employed to solve image registration problem where inconsistency in intensity or contrast patterns are the major challenges. LPC map has been utilized to estimate image plane transformation by maximizing weighted mutual information objective function over a range of possible transformations. Finally, the disruption of phase coherence due to blurring process is employed in a multi-focus image fusion algorithm. The algorithm utilizes two activity measures, LPC as sharpness activity measure along with local energy as contrast activity measure. We show that combining these two activity measures result in notable performance improvement in achieving both maximal contrast and maximal sharpness simultaneously at each spatial location