Paspalum notatum Grass-waste-based Adsorbent for Rhodamine B Removal from Polluted Water

The potential of Paspalum notatum grass waste to adsorb Rhodamine B dye from aqueous phase is reported in this research. The grass waste was activated and characterized through various techniques to analyze the chemical (FTIR), morphological (SEMEDX), and thermal (TGA) changes incorporated through the activation process. The pollutant removal efficiency of the raw and modified adsorbents was studied by varying different process parameters in a batch process. The maximum capacity of adsorption which was observed for grass waste and activated grass waste was 54 mg g–1 and 72.4 mg g–1 respectively. Among the various kinetic models, the pseudo-second order model gives the best regression results. However, the intraparticle diffusion-adsorption model showed that the diffusion within pores controlled the adsorption rate. Thermodynamic analysis of this process revealed that Rhodamine B adsorption was endothermic and spontaneous in nature. The results of this study show that grass waste has the potential to be used as an adsorbent for the treatment of colored water. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Multiparametric MR imaging for detection of clinically significant prostate cancer: a validation cohort study with transperineal template prostate mapping as the reference standard.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of multiparametric (MP) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging for prostate cancer detection by using transperineal template prostate mapping (TTPM) biopsies as the reference standard and to determine the potential ability of MP MR imaging to identify clinically significant prostate cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Institutional review board exemption was granted by the local research ethics committee for this retrospective study. Included were 64 men (mean age, 62 years [range, 40-76]; mean prostate-specific antigen, 8.2 ng/mL [8.2 μg/L] [range, 2.1-43 ng/mL]), 51 with biopsy-proved cancer and 13 suspected of having clinically significant cancer that was biopsy negative or without prior biopsy. MP MR imaging included T2-weighted, dynamic contrast-enhanced and diffusion-weighted imaging (1.5 T, pelvic phased-array coil). Three radiologists independently reviewed images and were blinded to results of biopsy. Two-by-two tables were derived by using sectors of analysis of four quadrants, two lobes, and one whole prostate. Primary target definition for clinically significant disease necessary to be present within a sector of analysis on TTPM for that sector to be deemed positive was set at Gleason score of 3+4 or more and/or cancer core length involvement of 4 mm or more. Sensitivity, negative predictive value, and negative likelihood ratio were calculated to determine ability of MP MR imaging to rule out cancer. Specificity, positive predictive value, positive likelihood ratio, accuracy (overall fraction correct), and area under receiver operating characteristic curves were also calculated. RESULTS: Twenty-eight percent (71 of 256) of sectors had clinically significant cancer by primary endpoint definition. For primary endpoint definition (≥ 4 mm and/or Gleason score ≥ 3+4), sensitivity, negative predictive value, and negative likelihood ratios were 58%-73%, 84%-89%, and 0.3-0.5, respectively. Specificity, positive predictive value, and positive likelihood ratios were 71%-84%, 49%-63%, and 2.-3.44, respectively. Area under the curve values were 0.73-0.84. CONCLUSION: Results of this study indicate that MP MR imaging has a high negative predictive value to rule out clinically significant prostate cancer and may potentially have clinical use in diagnostic pathways of men at risk

RENAL CLEARANCE AND URINARY EXCRETION OF CIPROFLOXACIN IN GOATS

The renal clearance and urinary excretion of ciprofloxacin were investigated in eight healthy female goats. In each animal, ciprofloxacin was administered intramuscularly at the rate of 5 mg/kg body weight. Following drug administration, blood and urine samples were collected at different time intervals and analyzed for ciprofloxacin and creatinine. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to determine the drug concentration in the plasma and urine. The value of diuresis after single administration of ciprofloxacin was 0.073 ± 0.014 ml/min/kg. Mean (± SE) values for renal clearance of creatinine and ciprofloxacin were 1.870 ± 0.385 and 0.982 ± 0.166 ml/min/kg, respectively. The ratio between the renal clearance of ciprofloxacin and that of creatinine remained less than one, which was indicative of back diffusion. The mean (± SE) value for the cumulative percent of ciprofloxacin dose excreted at 10 hours following its intramuscular administration was 13.03 ± 2.07. Based on these results, it was evident that besides glomerular filtration, renal handling of drug involved back diffusion also. It was concluded that in local goats glomerular filtration rate (GFR) was lower than that reported for their foreign counterparts

Attitudes and practices of postgraduate medical trainees towards research--a snapshot from Faisalabad

Objective: To assess the attitudes and practices of postgraduate medical trainees towards research.Methods: It was a self-administered questionnaire based cross-sectional survey conducted on 55 conveniently selected trainees in Allied Hospital, Faisalabad.Results: Only 11 trainees read journals monthly, seven had written an article for a journal, 51 regarded reading literature important, 39 intended to engage in future research and 37 said they received inappropriate research training. The major reasons cited for poor research activity in Pakistan were poor research training and awareness.CONCLUSION: Though the attitudes towards research were positive, they were deficient practically in terms of reading and writing literature. There is an immediate need to improve research training in our educational institutes to facilitate the development of the local literature both in terms of research utilization and productio

Direction of Arrival Estimation in the presence of Scatterer in noisy environment

We present an algorithm to estimate direction of arrival (DOA) of an incoming wave received at an array antenna in the scenario where the incoming wave is contaminated by the additive white Gaussian noise and scattered by arbitrary shaped 3D scatterer(s). We present different simulation examples to show the validity of the proposed method. It is observed that the proposed algorithm is capable of closely estimating the DOA of an incoming wave irrespective of the shape of the scatterer provided the decision is made over multiple iterations. Moreover, presence of noise affects the estimate especially in the case of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that gives a relatively large estimation error. However, for larger SNR the DOA estimation is primarily dependent on the scatterer only

Complementarity of Semileptonic BB to K2∗(1430)K_2^*(1430) and K∗(892)K^*(892) Decays in the Standard Model with Fourth Generation

The $B\rightarrow K_{2}^{\ast}(1430)l^{+}l^{-}$ $(l=\mu,\tau)$ decays are analyzed in the Standard Model extended to fourth generation of quarks (SM4). The decay rate, forward-backward asymmetry, lepton polarization asymmetries and the helicity fractions of the final state $K^{*}_{2}(1430)$ meson are obtained using the form factors calculated in the light cone sum rules (LCSR) approach. We have utilized the constraints on different fourth generation parameters obtained from the experimental information on $K$, $B$ and $D$ decays and from the electroweak precision data to explore their impact on the $B\rightarrow K_{2}^{\ast}(1430)l^{+}l^{-}$ decay. We find that the values of above mentioned physical observables deviate deviate significantly from their minimal SM predications. We also identify a number of correlations between various observables in $B\rightarrow K_{2}^{\ast}(1430)l^{+}l^{-}$ and $B\rightarrow K^{\ast}(892)l^{+}l^{-}$ decays. Therefore a combined analysis of these two decays will compliment each other in the searches of SM4 effects in flavor physics.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure