The concentration of three anti-seizure medications in hair: the effects of hair color, controlling for dose and age

BACKGROUND: This paper assess the relationship between the quantity of three anti-seizure medications in hair and the color of the analyzed hair, while controlling for the effects of dose, dose duration, and patient age for 140 clinical patients undergoing anti-seizure therapy. Three drugs are assessed: carbamazepine (40 patients), valproic acid (40 patients), and phenytoin (60 patients). The relationship between hair assay results, hair color, dose, dose duration, and age is modeled using an analysis of covariance. The covariance model posits the hair assay results as the dependent variable, the hair color as the qualitative categorical independent variable, and dose, dose duration, and age as covariates. The null hypothesis assessed is that there is a no relationship between hair color and the quantity of analyte determined by hair assay such that darker colored hair will demonstrate higher concentrations of analyte than lighter colored hair. RESULTS: The analysis reveals that there is a significant relationship between dose and concentration for all hair color categories independent of the other covariates or the categorical independent variable. CONCLUSION: There does not appear to be any relationship between carbamazepine concentration and hair color. There is a weak relationship between hair color and valproic acid concentration, which the data suggest may be mediated by age. There is a significant, moderate relationship between phenytoin concentration and hair color such that darker colored hair has greater concentration values than lighter colored hair

Removal of the endocrine disrupter butyl benzyl phthalate from the environment

Butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP), an aryl alkyl ester of 1,2-benzene dicarboxylic acid, is extensively used in vinyl tiles and as a plasticizer in PVC in many commonly used products. BBP, which readily leaches from these products, is one of the most important environmental contaminants, and the increased awareness of its adverse effects on human health has led to a dramatic increase in research aimed at removing BBP from the environment via bioremediation. This review highlights recent progress in the degradation of BBP by pure and mixed bacterial cultures, fungi, and in sludge, sediment, and wastewater. Sonochemical degradation, a unique abiotic remediation technique, and photocatalytic degradation are also discussed. The degradation pathways for BBP are described, and future research directions are considered

Coordinated Excitation and Static Var Compensator Control with Delayed Feedback Measurements in SGIB Power Systems

In this paper, we present a nonlinear coordinated excitation and static var compensator (SVC) control for regulating the output voltage and improving the transient stability of a synchronous generator infinite bus (SGIB) power system. In the first stage, advanced nonlinear methods are applied to regulate the SVC susceptance in a manner that can potentially improve the overall transient performance and stability. However, as distant from the generator measurements are needed, time delays are expected in the control loop. This fact substantially complicates the whole design. Therefore, a novel design is proposed that uses backstepping methodologies and feedback linearization techniques suitably modified to take into account the delayed measurement feedback laws in order to implement both the excitation voltage and the SVC compensator input. A detailed and rigorous Lyapunov stability analysis reveals that if the time delays do not exceed some specific limits, then all closed-loop signals remain bounded and the frequency deviations are effectively regulated to approach zero. Applying this control scheme, output voltage changes occur after the large power angle deviations have been eliminated. The scheme is thus completed, in a second stage, by a soft-switching mechanism employed on a classical proportional integral (PI) PI voltage controller acting on the excitation loop when the frequency deviations tend to zero in order to smoothly recover the output voltage level at its nominal value. Detailed simulation studies verify the effectiveness of the proposed design approach