Solar energy technology and its roles in sustainable development.

Solar energy is environmentally friendly technology, a great energy supply and one of the most significant renewable and green energy sources. It plays a substantial role in achieving sustainable development energy solutions. Therefore, the massive amount of solar energy attainable daily makes it a very attractive resource for generating electricity. Both technologies, applications of concentrated solar power or solar photovoltaics, are always under continuous development to fulfil our energy needs. Hence, a large installed capacity of solar energy applications worldwide, in the same context, supports the energy sector and meets the employment market to gain sufficient development. This paper highlights solar energy applications and their role in sustainable development and considers renewable energy's overall employment potential. Thus, it provides insights and analysis on solar energy sustainability, including environmental and economic development. Furthermore, it has identified the contributions of solar energy applications in sustainable development by providing energy needs, creating jobs opportunities and enhancing environmental protection. Finally, the perspective of solar energy technology is drawn up in the application of the energy sector and affords a vision of future development in this domain

Off-pump coronary artery bypass graft vs. on-pump coronary artery bypass graft surgery : what matters---procedure volume or specificity/specialization?

Context: Existing research has associated higher provider volume with a lower rate of adverse patient outcomes after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). However, the relationship between surgical procedural volume and specialization and clinical outcomes has been understudied. Research Objectives: This research examined the effect of surgical procedural volume and specialization on patient outcomes for 119,559 patients undergoing CABG in Florida short-term acute hospitals from 2000-2006. Methods: Florida Hospital Discharge Data were linked with Practitioner Profile Database available from Florida Department of Health by using unique surgeon identifiers. Surgeon on-pump and off-pump CABG volume was assessed in quartiles. In-hospital complications were measured by using Patient Safety Indicators developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Analyses included chi-square, t-test, logistic regression and multilevel regression to adjust for nested surgeon and hospital effects. Results: In adjusted analyses stratified by on- and off-pump CABG, patients operated by surgeons with lower volume of a specific CABG type were more likely to have in-hospital mortality: for off-pump CABG quartile 1 OR=3.05, 95% CI: 1.68-5.53, quartile 2 OR=1.57, 95% CI: 1.10-2.26 and quartile 3 OR=1.35, 95% CI: 1.01-1.81, and for on-pump CABG quartile 2 OR=1.82, 95% CI: 1.34-2.47 and quartile 3 OR=1.51, 95% CI: 1.21-1.90. Surgeries performed by physicians in lower on-pump CABG quartiles were also significantly associated with increased odds of complications (quartile 1 OR=1.97, 95% CI: 1.19-3.26, quartile 2 OR=1.43, 95% CI: 1.14-1.80 and quartile 3 OR=1.33, 95% CI: 1.14-1.57). For off-pump CABG only quartile 2 physicians retained significance (OR=1.80, 95% CI: 1.29-2.51) for complications. Discussion: The volume/outcome relationship for CABG surgery is specific to the type of procedure, but not total (all procedures) volume. This finding may suggest the need of specialized and focused training of cardiac surgeons as well as development of specific CABG outcome reporting protocols to enable sufficient differentiation in outcomes of two different types of CABG

Peranan Kepolisian Sebagai Law Inforcement Dalam Perspektif Sosiologi Hukum

Indonesia merupakan negara yang taat hukum dengan beberapa lembaga penegak hukum yang memegang peranan penting sebagai negara yang taat hukum. Polisi merupakan salah satu lembaga penegak hukum yang memegang peranan penting dalam penegakan hukum di Indonesia. Secara konstitusional, Pasal 30 ayat (4) UUD 1945 menyatakan bahwa Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia mempunyai tugas penting perlindungan, pengayoman, pelayanan masyarakat dan penegakan hukum sebagai alat negara dalam memelihara keamanan dan ketertiban masyarakat. Kajian ini menggunakan jenis kajian normatif hukum dengan menghubungkan pokok bahasan dengan tema pokok kajian ini. Kajian ini menyajikan sejarah singkat lahirnya lembaga  kepolisian di Indonesia dan perannya sebagai lembaga penegak hukum yang mewujudkan keamanan dan ketertiban negara. Hasil kajian ini menunjukkan bahwa banyak dinamika dalam perkembangan kepolisian Indonesia, dan bahwa kepolisian memiliki peran penting dalam mewujudkan keamanan dan ketertiban nasional di Indonesia

Experimental and Performance Evaluation of the Soiling and Cooling Effect on the Solar Photovoltaic Modules

Solar photovoltaic (PV) system technology is a significant energy source that has no moving parts and can accomplish the desired work with less effort. The technology can help to alleviate the climate change phenomena and achieve sustainable development. One of the most important challenges to address before installing a solar PV system is dirt deposition, e.g., soil/sand/ash. The tiny debris particles accumulate on the top surface of the panel, which decreases the PV conversion efficiency and subsequently lowers the overall performance. This work aims to investigate the effect of soiling deposition (soil, sand, and ash) and surface temperature on the performance of PV modules. In this regard, the fabricated test rig was performed for experimental cleaning and cooling on the top of solar PV modules. Therefore, the module's performance in terms of the current produced, the voltage generated, and module efficiency is evaluated for different dust deposition volumes. The results indicate that the ash affects the PV performance badly, reducing 50 to 60 % of current production for only 50 mL volume, compared to sand and soil. Furthermore, the results also indicated that the efficiency of photovoltaic modules increases by 3-4% when water is used for cleaning and cooling purposes

Cortical Thickness Related to Compensatory Viewing Strategies in Patients With Macular Degeneration

Retinal diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or hereditary juvenile macular dystrophies (JMD) lead to a loss of central vision. Many patients compensate for this loss with a pseudo fovea in the intact peripheral retina, the so-called “preferred retinal locus” (PRL). How extensive eccentric viewing associated with central vision loss (CVL) affects brain structures responsible for visual perception and visually guided eye movements remains unknown. CVL results in a reduction of cortical gray matter in the “lesion projection zone” (LPZ) in early visual cortex, but the thickness of primary visual cortex appears to be largely preserved for eccentric-field representations. Here we explore how eccentric viewing strategies are related to cortical thickness (CT) measures in early visual cortex and in brain areas involved in the control of eye movements (frontal eye fields, FEF, supplementary eye fields, SEF, and premotor eye fields, PEF). We determined the projection zones (regions of interest, ROIs) of the PRL and of an equally peripheral area in the opposite hemifield (OppPRL) in early visual cortex (V1 and V2) in 32 patients with MD and 32 age-matched controls (19–84 years) by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subsequently, we calculated the CT in these ROIs and compared it between PRL and OppPRL as well as between groups. Additionally, we examined the CT of FEF, SEF, and PEF and correlated it with behavioral measures like reading speed and eccentric fixation stability at the PRL. We found a significant difference between PRL and OppPRL projection zones in V1 with increased CT at the PRL, that was more pronounced in the patients, but also visible in the controls. Although the mean CT of the eye fields did not differ significantly between patients and controls, we found a trend to a positive correlation between CT in the right FEF and SEF and fixation stability in the whole patient group and between CT in the right PEF and reading speed in the JMD subgroup. The results indicate a possible association between the compensatory strategies used by patients with CVL and structural brain properties in early visual cortex and cortical eye fields

A review of thermal impact of surface acoustic waves on microlitre droplets in medical applications

The surface acoustic waves (SAW) propagate inside the microdroplets resulting in kinetic and thermal impacts. The kinetic drives fluid particles inside the droplet while thermal impact increases the liquid’s temperature. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the research investigations related to internal kinetics and heating inside the microdroplet caused by the acoustic waves. The main factors that affect the kinetics and convection heat transfer are the piezoelectric materials, shape of the interdigital transducer (IDT) and mode of acoustic waves. Internal streaming (kinetic) leads to particle mixing, particle manipulation, cell sorting, cell patterning, cell separation, measuring the concentration of immunoglobulin and so forth. The effect of changing the mode of waves and the shape of IDT on the relevant applications are presented. Internal convection heat transfer is important where heating of the liquid is essential for many applications such as monitoring blood coagulation in the human plasma and an acoustic tweezer for particle trapping. Experimental methods developed by researchers to realise uniform temperature with constant heating and cooling cycles are also discussed. Such methods are widely used in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect COVID-19 infection. The heating of the droplet can be efficiently controlled by changing the input power and by varying the duty factor

Transcription factor Sox10 orchestrates activity of a neural crest-specific enhancer in the vicinity of its gene

The Sox10 transcription factor is a central regulator of vertebrate neural crest and nervous system development. Its expression is likely controlled by multiple enhancer elements, among them U3 (alternatively known as MCS4). Here we analyze U3 activity to obtain deeper insights into Sox10 function and expression in the neural crest and its derivatives. U3 activity strongly depends on the presence of Sox10 that regulates its own expression as commonly observed for important developmental regulators. Sox10 bound directly as monomer to at least three sites in U3, whereas a fourth site preferred dimers. Deletion of these sites efficiently reduced U3 activity in transfected cells and transgenic mice. In stimulating the U3 enhancer, Sox10 synergized with many other transcription factors present in neural crest and developing peripheral nervous system including Pax3, FoxD3, AP2α, Krox20 and Sox2. In case of FoxD3, synergism involved Sox10-dependent recruitment to the U3 enhancer, while Sox10 and AP2α each had to bind to the regulatory region. Our study points to the importance of autoregulatory activity and synergistic interactions for maintenance of Sox10 expression and functional activity of Sox10 in the neural crest regulatory network

Carbon dating cancer: defining the chronology of metastatic progression in colorectal cancer.

Background: Patients often ask oncologists how long a cancer has been present before causing symptoms or spreading to other organs. The evolutionary trajectory of cancers can be defined using phylogenetic approaches but lack of chronological references makes dating the exact onset of tumours very challenging. Patients and methods: Here, we describe the case of a colorectal cancer (CRC) patient presenting with synchronous lung metastasis and metachronous thyroid, chest wall and urinary tract metastases over the course of 5 years. The chest wall metastasis was caused by needle tract seeding, implying a known time of onset. Using whole genome sequencing data from primary and metastatic sites we inferred the complete chronology of the cancer by exploiting the time of needle tract seeding as an in vivo 'stopwatch'. This approach allowed us to follow the progression of the disease back in time, dating each ancestral node of the phylogenetic tree in the past history of the tumour. We used a Bayesian phylogenomic approach, which accounts for possible dynamic changes in mutational rate, to reconstruct the phylogenetic tree and effectively 'carbon date' the malignant progression. Results: The primary colon cancer emerged between 5 and 8 years before the clinical diagnosis. The primary tumour metastasized to the lung and the thyroid within a year from its onset. The thyroid lesion presented as a tumour-to-tumour deposit within a benign Hurthle adenoma. Despite rapid metastatic progression from the primary tumour, the patient showed an indolent disease course. Primary cancer and metastases were microsatellite stable and displayed low chromosomal instability. Neo-antigen analysis suggested minimal immunogenicity. Conclusion: Our data provide the first in vivo experimental evidence documenting the timing of metastatic progression in CRC and suggest that genomic instability might be more important than the metastatic potential of the primary cancer in dictating CRC fate