Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

A Novel Bio-Inspired Hybrid Algorithm (NBIHA) for Efficient Resource Management in Fog Computing

Fog computing has emerged as a revolutionary paradigm to serve massive data in the Internet of Things (IoT) environment. It is a derivative of cloud computing that provides cloud-like services at the edge of the network. Subsequently, it resolves the significant issue of higher delay faced in cloud-IoT paradigm. According to the literature, the inefficient scheduling of users tasks in fog computing may result in higher delays in comparison to cloud computing. Hence, the real benefits of fog computing can only be obtained by applying effective job scheduling strategies. In fact, task scheduling is an NP-hard problem that cannot be solved by any specific algorithm to reach an ideal solution. Hence, it requires the optimal and efficient techniques to cater to the issues of latency, response time and efficient resource utilization of the available fog resources at the edge of the network. Given this, we proposed a novel bioinspired hybrid algorithm (NBIHA) which is a hybrid of modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) and modified cat swarm optimization (MCSO). In the proposed scheme, MPSO is used to schedule the tasks among fog devices and the hybrid of MPSO and MCSO is used to manage resources at the fog device level. In the proposed approach, the resources are assigned and managed on the basis of the demand of incoming requests. The main objective of the proposed work is to reduce the average response time and to optimize resource utilization by efficiently scheduling the tasks and managing available fog resources. The simulations are carried out using iFogSim. The evaluation results show that the proposed approach (NBIHA) shows promising results in terms of energy consumption, execution time and average response time in comparison to the state-of-the-art scheduling techniques

Electronic supplementary materialUV, IR, NMR spectra etc. from Carbon nitride supported copper nanoparticles: light-induced electronic effect of the support for triazole synthesis

The composite framework of graphitic carbon nitride (<i>g</i>CN) supported copper nanoparticle can act as a high performance photoreactor for the synthesis of 1,2,3-triazole derivatives under light irradiation in the absence of alkaline condition. The photoactivity of <i>g</i>CN originates from an electron transition from the valence band to the conduction band, in the presence of photon energy, and the hot electron acts as a scavenger of the terminal proton of the alkyne molecule to facilitate the formation of copper acetanilide complex. In this study, we have performed the experiment under a different photonic environment, including dark condition, and in the presence and absence of base. A comparative study was also executed using Cu-TiO₂ system, as a reference material, in the support of our proposed mechanism. The recycling performance and the photocorrosion effect of the catalyst have also been reported in this study

Organic molecule functionalized lead sulfide hybrid system for energy storage and field dependent polarization performances

Abstract A wet chemical route is reported for synthesising organic molecule stabilized lead sulfide nanoparticles. The dielectric capacitance, energy storage performances and field-driven polarization of the organic–inorganic hybrid system are investigated in the form of a device under varying temperature and frequency conditions. The structural analysis confirmed the formation of the monoclinic phase of lead sulfide within the organic network. The band structure of lead sulfide was obtained by density functional theory calculation that supported the semiconductor nature of the material with a direct band gap of 2.27 eV. The dielectric performance of the lead sulfide originated due to the dipolar and the space charge polarization. The energy storage ability of the material was investigated under DC-bias conditions, and the device exhibited the power density values 30 W/g and 340 W/g at 100 Hz and 10 kHz, respectively. The electric field-induced polarization study exhibited a fatigue-free behaviour of the device for 10³ cycles with a stable dielectric strength. The study revealed that the lead sulfide-based system has potential in energy storage applications

Polymerization Assisted Reduction Reaction: A Sequential Electron–Proton Transfer Reaction Catalyzed by Gold Nanoparticle

During the polymerization process of aniline (and the derivatives of aniline), the released proton and electron initiate the reduction of 4-nitrophenolate through a proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) mechanism. In situ formation of gold nanoparticles during a similar polymerization process catalyze the reduction reaction

Inhibition of hepatitis B virus replication in vivo using lipoplexes containing altritol-modified antiviral siRNAs

Chronic infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) occurs in approximately 6% of the world's population and carriers of the virus are at risk for complicating hepatocellular carcinoma. Current treatment options have limited efficacy and chronic HBV infection is likely to remain a significant global medical problem for many years to come. Silencing HBV gene expression by harnessing RNA interference (RNAi) presents an attractive option for development of novel and effective anti HBV agents. However, despite significant and rapid progress, further refinement of existing technologies is necessary before clinical application of RNAi-based HBV therapies is realized. Limiting off target effects, improvement of delivery efficiency, dose regulation and preventing reactivation of viral replication are some of the hurdles that need to be overcome. To address this, we assessed the usefulness of the recently described class of altritol-containing synthetic siRNAs (ANA siRNAs), which were administered as lipoplexes and tested in vivo in a stringent HBV transgenic mouse model. Our observations show that ANA siRNAs are capable of silencing of HBV replication in vivo. Importantly, non specific immunostimulation was observed with unmodified siRNAs and this undesirable effect was significantly attenuated by ANA modification. Inhibition of HBV replication of approximately 50% was achieved without evidence for induction of toxicity. These results augur well for future application of ANA siRNA therapeutic lipoplexes