Future Trends in Pharmaceuticals: Investigation of the Role of AI in Drug Discovery, 3D Printing of Medications, and Nanomedicine

The pharmaceutical sector has to deal with issues like high costs, difficult diseases, and the demand for tailored therapy. The transformational potential of AI, 3D printing, and nanomedicine is examined in this paper. Drug development is revolutionized by AI, which also predicts effectiveness and personalizes therapies. Tailors, prescriptions, and complex documents can all be 3D printed to help with compliance. Nanoparticles are used in nanomedicine to deliver drugs more precisely and enhance solubility. Future themes include AI-driven target identification and individualized treatment; the effectiveness and role of 3D printing in personalized medicine; and improved medication delivery through nanomedicine. These developments promise to alter healthcare, which will help a lot of people. The study results offers a thorough examination of upcoming trends in the pharmaceutical industry and similarly discusses developments in 3D printing and nanomedicine

Past of a particle in an entangled state

Vaidman has proposed a controversial criterion for determining the past of a single quantum particle based on the "weak trace" it leaves. We here consider more general examples of entangled systems and analyze the past of single, as well as pairs of entangled pre- and postselected particles. Systems with non-trivial time evolution are also analyzed. We argue that in these cases, examining only the single-particle weak trace provides information which is insufficient for understanding the system as a whole. We therefore suggest to examine, alongside with the past of single particles, also the past of pairs, triplets and eventually the entire system, including higher-order, multipartite traces in the analysis. This resonates with a recently proposed top-down approach by Aharonov, Cohen and Tollaksen for understanding the structure of correlations in pre- and postselected systems.Comment: Added one reference and corrected a typo. Accepted to Int. J. Quantum In

Gender Bias and Organ Transplantation in Nepal

Women in Nepal are less likely to receive proper, high quality medical care than their male relatives. Live-donor kidney transplantation provides a compelling example of such disparities, as 84% of recipients are male, 75% of donors are female and most kidneys are transferred from mother to son and from wife to husband. In the case of transplantation, women are not just denied healthcare, they are also responsible for the health of their male kin. Based on semi-structured ethnographic interviews with transplant patients, organ donors, dialysis patients and relatives, this paper elaborates on the social and economic factors that have created an extreme gender bias in transplantation. We argue that women, whose livelihoods largely depend on their husbands, donate kidneys out of self-protection and a sense of duty. Conversely, men receive kidneys but rarely donate them to women, because the health of men is a more productive economic investment than the health of women. We reject the notion that wives are directly coerced or pressured into donating kidneys to their husbands. Rather, we argue that female kidney donors make thoughtful, independent decisions that serve their best interests, and allow them to assert some control over their lives. It is, however, Nepal’s patriarchal society that both necessitates and limits such assertions of power

MEASUREMENT OF THERMAL PROPERTIES AND POROSITY OF CONSOLIDATED SALT.

Salt formations may be used as repositories for long term isolation of nuclear waste. Excavating drifts in a subsurface salt formation produces granular salt spoils, which could be used as sealing material for boreholes and drifts. In drifts, the backfilled salt would conduct heat from the waste load to the host rock salt. The efficiency of heat dissipated from the backfill will depend on the thermal properties of the backfill. The results of this study show how these thermal properties evolve with the porosity of consolidating granular salt. Thermal properties and porosity of laboratory-consolidated salt and in situ partially consolidated salt were determined. The laboratory-consolidated salt was consolidated under a range of hydrostatic stresses with temperature and moisture conditions relevant to a potential repository environment. Additional measurements were made on an intact salt crystal and dilated polycrystalline host rock salt from the WIPP facility. Thermal properties in this study were measured using a transient plane source method at temperatures ranging from 50 ˚C to 250 ˚C. Porosity and grain density were measured using a porosimeter; granular salt porosities ranged from 0.005 to 0.33, with an average grain density of 2.161 g/cc. Thermal conductivity of granular salt was shown to be dependent on temperature as well as porosity; thermal conductivities decreased with increase in temperature and porosity. Thermal conductivity of dilated salt was lower than consolidated salt at comparable porosities. This is believed to be caused by the pervasive crack network present in the dilated salt which is expected to inhibit flow of heat more than the pores present in the consolidated salt. Specific heat of granular salt at lower temperatures decreased with increasing in porosity. At higher temperatures, porosity dependence was not apparent. The thermal conductivity and specific heat data were fit to empirical models and compared with results presented in literature. At comparable densities, the thermal conductivities of granular salt samples consolidated hydrostatically in this study were greater than those measured previously on samples formed by quasi-static pressing. Photomicrographs of thin sections suggested that the method of consolidation influenced the nature of the porosity of the samples (e.g., crack vs. pore), and this may account for the variation of measured thermal conductivities between the two consolidation methods

Efficiency fluctuations and noise induced refrigerator-to-heater transition in information engines

Understanding noisy information engines is a fundamental problem of non-equilibrium physics, particularly in biomolecular systems agitated by thermal and active fluctuations in the cell. By the generalized second law of thermodynamics, the efficiency of these engines is bounded by the mutual information passing through their noisy feedback loop. Yet, direct measurement of the interplay between mutual information and energy has so far been elusive. To allow such examination, we explore here the entire phase-space of a noisy colloidal information engine, and study efficiency fluctuations due to the stochasticity of the mutual information and extracted work. We find that the average efficiency is maximal for non-zero noise level, at which the distribution of efficiency switches from bimodal to unimodal, and the stochastic efficiency often exceeds unity. We identify a line of anomalous, noise-driven equilibrium states that defines a refrigerator-to-heater transition, and test the generalized integral fluctuation theorem for continuous engines

Automated Environmental Stewardship: A Ribbon-Cutting Robot with Machine Vision for Sustainable Operation

This paper provides a novel way for automating ribbon-cutting rituals that use a specifically constructed robot with superior computer vision capabilities. The system achieves an outstanding 92% accuracy rate when assessing picture data by using a servo motor for ribbon identification, a motor driver for robot movement control, and nichrome wire for precision cutting. The robot's ability to recognize and interact with the ribbon is greatly improved when it uses a Keras and TensorFlow-based red ribbon identification model which obtained accuracy of about 93% on testing set before deployment in system. Implemented within a Raspberry Pi robot, the method exhibits amazing success in automating ceremonial activities, removing the need for human intervention. This multidisciplinary method assures the precision and speed of ribbon-cutting events, representing a significant step forward in the merging of tradition and technology via the seamless integration of robots and computer vision

UK government's household energy efficiency incentives and social housing organizations' perspective on energy efficiency retrofit.

The research looked at Social Housing organization's (SHO) perspective on energy efficiency retrofit criteria/benefits. Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based questionnaire, research looked at importance given by SHO to overall criteria/benefits to energy efficiency. It was found that fuel poverty reduction, tenant health and environmental and climate change issue are given highest importance respectively by SHO while meeting government targets and financial benefit to SHO has been the least priority in comparison. Looking at the consistency line, fuel poverty reduction is given higher importance by SHO although there is inconsistency in importance given whereas financial benefit to the landlord is given lower importance and also has very high inconsistency in importance given. Better understanding SHO ranking on various retrofit benefit will help policy makers to deliver better energy efficiency retrofit incentives/policies. It will also help SHO to make informed decision on their own retrofit project by visualizing and quantifying their own qualitative ranking of various benefit priorities

Estimation of Zero-Inflated Population Mean: A Bootstrapping Approach

A mixture model was adopted from the maximum pseudo-likelihood approach under complex sampling designs to estimate the mean of zero-inflated population. To overcome the complexity and assumptions of asymptotic distribution, the maximum pseudo-likelihood function was used, but a bootstrapping procedure was proposed as an alternative. Bootstrap confidence intervals consistently capture the true means of zero-inflated populations of the simulation studies

Appraisal of energy efficiency retrofit: government incentives and social housing organizations' perspective.

From the Scottish Social Housing Organizations' (SHO) perspective there is a major challenge to be addressed - retrofitting their dwelling stock to meet the energy efficiency objectives of the UK and Scottish governments. This is particularly challenging when simultaneously retaining focus on their own priorities such as tenant health and wellbeing, and moreover doing so when there are limited resources and a lack of tailored funding mechanisms to help SHO accomplish all of this. The scope of this thesis is to determine problems and benefit criteria of social housing retrofit, and then identify and assess potential solutions. This research looked at the range of social housing retrofit incentives, the different levels of related policies, and archival data regarding the nature of social housing retrofit activity. The research considered the extent and nature of the problems from the SHO perspective, using interviews and questionnaires with a sample comprising academics, policymakers, directors, and professionals directly involved in social housing retrofit issues. Inductive thematic analysis (ITA) was used to analyze the data from the semi-structured interviews, while the questionnaire was designed and analyzed using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. The study determined three major problems of the social housing retrofit. Firstly, there is contrast between the government's policy focus and SHO priority for housing retrofit. Secondly, the ownership and control of energy efficiency retrofit is located in different places. Thirdly, there is insufficient participation in the design and delivery of the retrofit measures from the tenants, communities and private construction companies. The research suggested that the way forward would be to address these problems through three approaches. Firstly, by focusing on SHO priorities through localized retrofit incentives, giving the SHO or the local (rather than national) government full control and ownership of the social housing retrofit. Secondly, by exploring areas of collaboration with innovative private sector construction companies. Thirdly, by assuring the participation of tenants and communities at the design, delivery and post-retrofit project stages

Fuel poverty, UK's dilemma on climate change and Scotland's struggle for husing energy efficiency.

Recent growth of fuel poverty in Scotland suggests that UK and Scottish climate change strategies, energy policies and energy efficiency initiatives are not able to address fuel poverty related issues such as broader social justice, affordability of energy and equality in income distribution. The reasons behind ineffectiveness' are UK's dilemma on climate change and energy policy, inconsistency of energy efficiency initiatives, highly privatised and market-based energy initiatives, problematic relationship between UK and Scottish climate change policies and obscurities on how overlapping energy efficiency initiatives work together. The high level co-operation and discussion between UK government and Scottish Government and common forum of all stakeholders including private energy providers can help clear the obscurities and to achieve goal. More public participation, community ownership of the initiatives, public awareness and focus on behavioural change of consumer can be cost-effective alternative of privatisation of energy initiatives and help control fuel poverty sustainably