A Medical Emergency: “Leukostasis”

Hyperleukocytosis is commonly defined as a white blood cell (WBC) count exceeding 50-100 x 109 L-1 in peripheral blood and can be seen in newly diagnosed leukemias. Increased WBC count can lead to increased blood viscosity, leukocyte aggregation, and consequently stasis in blood vessels. Hyperleukocytic leukemia is associated with a risk of organ failure and early death secondary to leukostasis. The main sites that tend to be injured are the central nervous system (CNS) and lungs. The goal of the treatment of hyperleukocytosis and/or leukostasis is to remove leukocytes or blasts from the peripheral circulation as soon as possible and to prevent or reduce acute symptoms of leukostasis. The cytoreduction can generally be achieved by leukapheresis and/or some chemotherapeutic agents before starting induction chemotherapy. Leukapheresis is an effective and safe procedure which can be used for symptomatic relief, some special and rare conditions (serious respiratory failure, CNS involvement, priapism), or prophylactically. The supportive care has to be a part of the treatment in order to prevent tumor lysis syndrome or coagulopathy. The difference of hyperleukocytosis and leukostasis, pathophysiology and clinical presentation of leukostasis, and treatment options of hyperleukocytosis and/or leukostasis in the light of the current literature will be discussed in this review

The Effect of Trichlia emetica Leaf Extract on the Flammability of Flexible Polyurethane Foam

Due to the health and environmental consequences of conventional flame retardants the incorporation of new plant based flame retardants becomes imperative. Hence the choice of the leaves of Trichlia emetica as a flame retardant on flexible polyurethane foam based on Hausa folklore tradition that it is used as a flame retardant. Analysis of the treated flexible polyurethane foam revealed that add on percentage ranged from 9-21%, Ignition time between ranged within 6-14 sec, flame propagation rate 0.42-0.22 cm/s, after glow time decreased from 12 sec to 2 sec and char formation increased from 18% to 26%. Which indicated a modification of the flammability characteristics of the flexible polyurethane foamKeywords: Add on, After glow, Char, Flame propagation rate, Flame retardants, Ignition time, Polyurethan

Evaluation of Physicochemical Properties of Biodiesel Produced From Some Vegetable Oils of Nigeria Origin

The non-edible vegetable oils of Jatropha curcas, neem, castor, rubber and edible oils of soyabean and cotton were investigated for their use as biodiesel feedstock. The analysis of different oil properties, fuel properties of non-edible and edible vegetable oils were investigated in detail. A two-step and transesterification process was used to produce biodiesel from high free fatty acid (FFA) non-edible oils and edible vegetable oils respectively. This process gives yields of 96.1 – 98.5 % of biodiesel using potassium hydroxide (KOH) as a catalyst. The fuel properties of biodiesel produced were compared with diesel. The properties of the oils analysed showed that biodiesel from non-edible and edible vegetable oil are comparable with ASTM biodiesel standards and is quiet suitable as an alternative to diesel. Keywords: Biodiesel, Edible oil, Non Edible oil, Transesterification

Re-factoring based program repair applied to programming assignments

Automated program repair has been used to provide feedback for incorrect student programming assignments, since program repair captures the code modification needed to make a given buggy program pass a given test-suite. Existing student feedback generation techniques are limited because they either require manual effort in the form of providing an error model, or require a large number of correct student submissions to learn from, or suffer from lack of scalability and accuracy. In this work, we propose a fully automated approach for generating student program repairs in real-time. This is achieved by first re-factoring all available correct solutions to semantically equivalent solutions. Given an incorrect program, we match the program with the closest matching refactored program based on its control flow structure. Subsequently, we infer the input-output specifications of the incorrect program's basic blocks from the executions of the correct program's aligned basic blocks. Finally, these specifications are used to modify the blocks of the incorrect program via search-based synthesis. Our dataset consists of almost 1,800 real-life incorrect Python program submissions from 361 students for an introductory programming course at a large public university. Our experimental results suggest that our method is more effective and efficient than recently proposed feedback generation approaches. About 30% of the patches produced by our tool Refactory are smaller than those produced by the state-of-art tool Clara, and can be produced given fewer correct solutions (often a single correct solution) and in a shorter time. We opine that our method is applicable not only to programming assignments, and could be seen as a general-purpose program repair method that can achieve good results with just a single correct reference solution

Hypophyseal Growth Hormone II. Interaction with Other Hormones

Growth hormone (GH) synthesis and release is controlled by hypothalamic GH releasing factor. Thyroid hormones, androgens and estrogens in physiologic concentrations enhance GH secretion but a controlling role for glucagon and vasopressin in GH release is not established. Under stress, ACTH directly facilitates GH release while the similar action of the catecholamines is mediated by the a-adrenergic receptors. Though physiologic doses of glucorticoids and progestins do not affect GH liberation, prolonged administration of medroxyprogesterone acetate or of glucocorticoids in high dosage will decrease blood levels or blunt Gti responsiveness. GH enhances the release of insulin. A shift in adrenal steroid biosynthesis from the glucocorticoid to the androgenic pathway may also be an effect of GH administration. Prolonged elevated GH levels decrease serum thyroid binding globulin but increase the turnover of free thyroxine. Decreased thyroidal iodine uptake is probably secondary to these changes in thyroxine metabolism. In hypothyroidism and severe Cushing\u27s syndrome GH release is blunted. In most cases of acromegaly as well as in hyperthyroidism GH is nonsuppressible, while in diabetes its response to stimuli other than hypoglycemia is exaggerated

The Effectiveness of Oxandrolone in Promoting Linear Growth in Growth Hormone Deficient Children

This two-year study consisted of a comparison of oxandrolone and growth hormone for the treatment of five children with documented growth hormone deficiency. Previously, androgens have been reported to be relatively ineffective in accelerating linear growth In growth hormone deficient children. Oxandrolone was administered for one year. Growth hormone was added in the second six months and then was given as a single agent in the third six months. Growth accelerated markedly in all patients. Only one child showed more rapid growth with the addition of growth hormone while two children actually grew more rapidly under the Influence of oxandrolone alone. Growth was poor and diminished when growth hormone was given as a single agent in the third six-month period for three children but improved when oxandrolone was re-instituted in a fourth six-month treatment period. These results suggest that oxandrolone may prove to be an effective and safe substitute for growth hormone in the management of selected cases of hypopituitarism

Neurovascular relationship between abducens nerve and anterior inferior cerebellar artery

We aimed to study the neurovascular relationships between the anterior inferior cerebellar artery (AICA) and the abducens nerve to help determine the pathogenesis of abducens nerve palsy which can be caused by arterial compression. Twenty-two cadaveric brains (44 hemispheres) were investigated after injected of coloured latex in to the arterial system. The anterior inferior cerebellar artery originated as a single branch in 75%, duplicate in 22.7%, and triplicate in 2.3% of the hemispheres. Abducens nerves were located between the AICAs in all hemispheres when the AICA duplicated or triplicated. Additionally, we noted that the AICA or its main branches pierced the abducens nerve in five hemispheres (11.4%). The anatomy of the AICA and its relationship with the abducens nerve is very important for diagnosis and treatment. (Folia Morphol 2010; 69, 4: 201-203

Zeolitization of Tuffaceous Rocks in the Kesan Region, Thrace, Turkey

A 33 metre thick pyroclastic-rich zone of the Mezardere formation of Oligocene age is exposed in the Kesan region of Thrace, Turkey. In this zone, vitreous tuffs of dacitic composition have altered primarily to zeolites, including mordenite, heulandite–clinoptilolite and analcime. Silicification and alteration to clay minerals are common. Zeolite minerals have developed from volcanic glass, whereas some mordenites have formed from dissolution of heulandite-group zeolites. Although authigenic mineral paragenesis does not vary laterally, there is a marked vertical variation, particularly in zeolites. Mordenite (+heulandite–clinoptilolite) and analcime do not coexist and have formed in different stratigraphic levels. This suggests that their chemical environment is controlled by different hydrologic systems. Whole rock composition shows the relationship between chemistry and secondary mineralogy. For example, whole rock trace element geochemistry indicates the natural selectivities of zeolites. There is also stratigraphic control on the chemistry and texture of mordenites. Specifically, (Na+K)/(Ca+Mg) ratios of mordenites decrease from the lower to the upper levels. Mordenites of the lower level show a fibrous habit while the upper level mordenites are needle-like in shape. The average Si/Al ratio in mordenites is 3.90, in heulandite-group minerals 3.95, and in analcimes 2.34

High frequency and mesoscale variability in SeaWiFS chlorophyll imagery and its relation to other remotely sensed oceanographic variables, Deep Sea Res

Abstract In its typical use for the study of large scale and relatively slow variability of phytoplankton biomass, ocean-color imagery is often binned in space and in time, and variability within the bin is discarded as noise. Since small-to mesoscale processes at time scales as short as a day may play a significant role in global cycles of carbon and nutrients, characterizing variability at these scales is necessary. With the first four years of nearly continuous daily imagery from the SeaWiFS instrument, we investigated patterns of variability at the mesoscales, operationally defined as that within a 2 Â 2-degree neighborhood. We show that mesoscale variability of chlorophyll concentration (Chl) is high near the coasts, in dynamically active areas, and at the oligotrophic centers of subtropical gyres. High apparent variability over the oligotrophic ocean is a surprising contrast to the low variability in composite imagery at the same locations and may be due to increased relative noise at low mean Chl. Low correlation between pairs of images as little as 1 day apart in the oligotrophic ocean is consistent with a noise artifact, or alternatively may indicate that the observed variability is due to high-frequency phenomena. Spatial patterns of variability observed when data are binned into narrow ranges of mean Chl, suggest oceanographic origins. Patterns of variability in Chl and in sea-surface height have little correlation, suggesting that eddy pumping or turbulent diffusion along temporarily slanted isopycnal surfaces are not the major sources of Chl variability. The correlation between mesoscale anomalies of Chl and sea-surface temperature is not always negative as would have been the case if anomalies were produced mainly by the entrainment of colder, nutrientrich thermocline waters into the euphotic layer. Instead, we find roughly zonal bands of alternating negative and positive correlations determined by the relative directions of the background gradients of Chl and SST. Thus the most obvious influence of mesoscale motion on the distribution of Chl is advection of the existing gradients. Both long-term means and local anomalies of scatterometric winds from QuikSCAT are also correlated with mean Chl. Much of this correlation appears to be due to changes in the relationship between surface roughness and wind speed, brought on by factors like surface films, thermal stability of the air column, and surface currents. Our analyses show the feasibility of using ocean-color imagery to study mesoscale variability but also identify areas where there is room for major improvements. Minimization of speckling due to imperfect atmospheric correction, in particular, would significantly enhance the utility of SeaWiFS data at mesoscales

A non destructive selection criterion for fibre content in jute. I. Geometrical approach

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