cost containment

Sodium-based dual ion batteries (SDIBs) have garnered significant attention as novel energy storage devices offering the advantages of high-voltage and low-cost. Nonetheless, conventional electrolytes exhibit low resistance to oxidation and poor compatibility with electrode materials, resulting in rapid battery failure. In this study, for the first time, we propose a chlorination design of electrolytes for SDIB. Using ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC) as a representative solvent, chlorine-substituted EMC (Cl-EMC) not only demonstrates increased oxidative stability ascribed to the electron-withdrawing characteristics of chlorine atom, electrolyte compatibility with both the cathode and anode have also been greatly improved by forming Cl-containing interface layers...

Amblyopia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of the visual system that impairs the vision of millions of children worldwide. Amblyopia is best treated within the sensitive period of visual development when a child is up to seven years of age. Currently, the gold standard for early treatment of childhood amblyopia is patching, with new treatments emerging in recent years. We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of these newly developed treatments for amblyopia in children aged seven years and younger while comparing them to the current industry standard of patching...

The escalating costs of healthcare services and a growing awareness of personal health responsibilities have led individuals to explore natural methods alongside conventional medicines for health improvement and disease prevention. The aging global population is experiencing increased health needs, notably related to conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. Lifestyle-related diseases, poor dietary habits, and sedentary lifestyles underscore the importance of foods containing nutrients that can aid in preventing and managing these diseases...

Diabetic retinopathy disease contains lesions (e.g., exudates, hemorrhages, and microaneurysms) that are minute to the naked eye. Determining the lesions at pixel level poses a challenge as each pixel does not reflect any semantic entities. Furthermore, the computational cost of inspecting each pixel is expensive because the number of pixels is high even at low resolution. In this work, we propose a hybrid image processing method. Simple Linear Iterative Clustering with Gaussian Filter (SLIC-G) for the purpose of overcoming pixel constraints...

The implementation of an original Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics module is presented, which is able to perform simulations of large and complex condensed phase systems for sufficiently long time scales at the level of density functional theory with hybrid functionals, in the microcanonical (NVE) and canonical (NVT) ensembles. The algorithm is fully integrated in the Crystal code, a program for quantum mechanical simulations of materials, whose peculiarity stems from the use of atom-centered basis functions within a linear combination of atomic orbitals to describe the wave function...

Blood-derived preparations, including autologous or allogenic serum, umbilical cord serum/plasma, and platelet-rich plasma eye drops, contain various growth factors, cytokines, and immunoglobulins that resemble natural tears. These components play important roles in corneal cell migration, proliferation, and wound healing. Blood-derived eye drops have demonstrated clinical effectiveness across a spectrum of ocular surface conditions, encompassing dry eye disease, Sjögren's syndrome, graft-versus-host disease, and neuropathic corneal pain (NCP)...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two 10% urea creams in patients with diabetic foot syndrome. METHODS: This was a prospective, longitudinal, single-center, randomized, double-blind, prospective clinical trial that evaluated the skin quality of 20 feet belonging to 10 patients with diabetic foot syndrome after the application of two 10% urea creams purchased from pharmacies and supermarkets. RESULTS: At follow-up, 19 (95%) of the participants' feet showed improved skin quality, irrespective of the cream applied...

Glycerol-assisted instant catapult steam explosion (ICSE) of lignocellulose is an effective pretreatment method for enhancing sugar production compared to glycerol-free ICSE. In this study, glycerol-assisted ICSE of corn stover was studied in order to understand the reaction mechanisms and further optimize the process. Results showed that water extraction of corn stover prior to ICSE reduced pseudo-lignin formation. The combination of water extraction and glycerol-assisted ICSE led to the formation of lignin with a lower molecular weight (Mw) of 2851 g/mol than 3521 g/mole of that from the combination of water extraction and glycerol-free ICSE...

Fish growth models are crucial for fisheries stock assessments and are commonly estimated using fish length-at-age data. This data is widely collected using length-stratified age sampling (LSAS), a cost-effective two-phase response-selective sampling method. The data may contain age measurement errors (MEs). We propose a methodology that accounts for both LSAS and age MEs to accurately estimate fish growth. The proposed methods use empirical proportion likelihood methodology for LSAS and the structural errors in variables methodology for age MEs...

Genome instability is a hallmark of cancer and are driven by mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Despite successes seen with select targeted therapeutics, this type of personalized medicine is only beneficial for a small subpopulation of cancer patients who have one of a few actionable genetic changes. Most tumors also contain hundreds of passenger mutations that offered no fitness advantage or disadvantage during tumor evolution. Mutations in known pharmacogenetic (PGx) loci for which germline variants encode variability in drug response can cause somatically acquired drug sensitivity...

In the leather manufacturing industry, the management of substantial quantities of solid waste containing chrome shavings remains a formidable challenge. Concurrently, there is a pressing need for the development of pH-universal and economically viable electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In response to these intertwined challenges, this study proposes an innovative approach wherein the amino groups present on the surface of chrome shavings are utilized to immobilize single ruthenium atoms during pyrolysis, thereby facilitating the synthesis of hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts...

Conventional diagnostic methods for lung cancer, based on breath analysis using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, have limitations for fast screening due to their limited availability, operational complexity, and high cost. As potential replacement, among several low-cost and portable methods, chemoresistive sensors for the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that represent biomarkers of lung cancer were explored as promising solutions, which unfortunately still face challenges. To address the key problems of these sensors, such as low sensitivity, high response time, and poor selectivity, this study presents the design of new chemoresistive sensors based on hybridised porous zeolitic imidazolate (ZIF-8) based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and laser-scribed graphene (LSG) structures, inspired by the architecture of the human lung...

Preparation of drug metabolites at the milligram scale is essential for determining the structure and toxicity of drug metabolites. However, their preparation using recombinant proteins and human liver microsomes (HLM) is often difficult because of technical and ethical issues. Reproducing human drug metabolism in food-derived microorganisms may be useful for overcoming these challenges. In this study, we identified an unknown metabolite of the anaesthetic drug lidocaine, which is metabolised by HLM. By screening for lidocaine metabolic activity in five types of foods (blue cheese, shiitake mushroom, natto, yoghurt, and dry yeast), we found that bacteria isolated from natto reproduced the lidocaine metabolic reaction that occurs in HLM...

Selective catalytic NH3 -to-N2 oxidation (NH3 -SCO) is highly promising for abating NH3 emissions slipped from stationary flue gas after-treatment devices. Its practical application, however, is limited by the non-availability of low-cost catalysts with high activity and N2 selectivity. Here, using defect-rich nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNT-AW) as the support, we developed a highly active and durable copper-based NH3 -SCO catalyst with a high abundance of cuprous (Cu+ ) sites. The obtained Cu/NCNT-AW catalyst demonstrated outstanding activity with a T50 (i...

The possibility of inclusion of agro-industrial by-products in the diet of small ruminants represents both an economical and an environmental strategy for reducing waste management by industries and the cost of feeding as well as the impact of livestock farming. Large amounts of wastes from the cocoa industry are annually produced with a considerable part represented by cocoa bean shells, considered a suitable ingredient to be included in the diet of ruminants within the limits established by European legislation...

This study aimed to evaluate effective treatment strategies for laboratory waste with an initial pH of 1.0, containing Cr6+ , Mn2+ , Co2+ , Fe3+ , Ni2+ , Cu2+ , Zn2+ , Sr2+ , Hg2+ , and Pb2+ ions, focusing on flocculation, precipitation, and adsorption techniques. The study utilized microparticles derived from Moringa oleifera seed husks (MS), cryogels of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), and hybrid cryogels combining CMC and MS (CMC-MS25 and CMC-MS50) as adsorbents. The optimal strategy involved raising the pH to 7 using NH4 OH, leading to the partial precipitation of metal ions...

Mining tailings containing large amounts of Pb and Cd cause severe regional ecosystem pollution. Soil microorganisms play a regulatory role in the restoration of degraded ecosystems. The remediation of heavy metal-contaminated tailings with amendments and economically valuable Eucalyptus camaldulensis is a research hotspot due to its cost-effectiveness and sustainability. However, the succession and co-occurrence patterns of these microbial communities in this context remain unclear. Tailing samples of five kinds of Cd and Pb were collected in E...

The rhythm of bonafide speech is often difficult to replicate, which causes that the fundamental frequency (F0) of synthetic speech is significantly different from that of real speech. It is expected that the F0 feature contains the discriminative information for the fake speech detection (FSD) task. In this paper, we propose a novel F0 subband for FSD. In addition, to effectively model the F0 subband so as to improve the performance of FSD, the spatial reconstructed local attention Res2Net (SR-LA Res2Net) is proposed...

BACKGROUND AIMS: The marketing authorization of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) in Brazil is recent. The features of these therapies impose specialized regulatory action and are consequently challenging for developers. The goal of this study was to identify the industry's experience in clinical development, marketing authorization and access to ATMPs through the Unified Health System (SUS, acronym in Portuguese), from a regulatory perspective. METHODS: A survey containing structured questions was conducted among research participants who work at companies that commercialize ATMPs...

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the major cause of death among Malaysians. Reduction of salt intake in populations is one of the most cost-effective strategies in the prevention of CVDs. It is very feasible as it requires low cost for implementation and yet could produce a positive impact on health. Thus, salt reduction initiatives have been initiated since 2010, and two series of strategies have been launched. However, there are issues on its delivery and outreach to the target audience. Further, strategies targeting out of home sectors are yet to be emphasized...