Renewable energy consumption has been promoted to mitigate climate change problems under various schemes, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. A country's choice of energy resources ...depends on the balancing of economic growth and environmental degradation, which will be closely related to its development stage. This study examines how the relationship between renewable energy consumption and carbon emissions is associated with the development stage by applying a panel cointegration analysis to 107 countries during the period from 1990 to 2013. The analysis shows the clear differences between the groups of low- and high-income countries. For low-income countries, renewable energy consumption is positively and negatively associated with carbon emissions and output, respectively. However, for high-income countries, renewable energy consumption is negatively and positively associated with carbon emissions and output, respectively. These results have important implications for policymakers, since the discrepancies in these relationships mean that a country's renewable energy policies should be highly compatible with its development stage.
•The long-run relationship among renewable energy consumption, output, and carbon emissions relates to the development stage.•Renewable energy consumption has the positive association with emissions and the negative association with output for low-income countries.•Renewable energy consumption has the negative association with emissions and the positive association with output for high-income countries.•The results are consistent with the environmental Kuznets curve argument.
Since the 2014 Ebola epidemic, key technical advances have been made. Yet mortality remains stubbornly high because the trust between the affected communities and international responders is breaking ...down. Medical innovations need social traction to deliver results.
Magnetic nanoparticles have been widely investigated for their great potential as mediators of heat for localised hyperthermia therapy. Nanocarriers have also attracted increasing attention due to ...the possibility of delivering drugs at specific locations, therefore limiting systematic effects. The enhancement of the anti-cancer effect of chemotherapy with application of concurrent hyperthermia was noticed more than thirty years ago. However, combining magnetic nanoparticles with molecules of drugs in the same nanoformulation has only recently emerged as a promising tool for the application of hyperthermia with combined chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer. The main feature of this review is to present the recent advances in the development of multifunctional therapeutic nanosystems incorporating both magnetic nanoparticles and drugs, and their superior efficacy in treating cancer compared to either hyperthermia or chemotherapy as standalone therapies. The principle of magnetic fluid hyperthermia is also presented.
Magnetic nanoparticles have great potential as mediators of localised heat as well as vehicles for drug delivery to have synergistic effect of thermo-chemotherapy for cancer treatment.
Summary
In efforts to treat diabetics, foods containing anti‐digestible ingredients are a promising approach. Resistant starch (RS) is one of the prebiotic ingredients that has the ability to resist ...digestion and pass through the colon, reducing fat accumulation. The production of RS from natural ingredients is of interest. The results of producing RS from jackfruit seeds show that the RS content increased from 25.97% to 52.26% by heat‐moisture treatment. After the modification process, the starch granules remained undeformed but exhibited agglomeration and the crystalline structure changed from type A to type C. The thermal properties of the starch were improved (85.16–90.42 °C), and higher gelatinisation temperature, around 2–7 °C. However, its swelling and solubility decreased by 35.32–72.59% and 15.83–79.10%, corresponding.
Two new oleanane saponins, hedyocoronin A (1) and hedyocoronin B (2), were isolated from the aerial parts of Hedyotis coronaria (Kurz) Craib, Rubiaceae, collected at Da Oai district, Lam Dong ...province in Vietnam. Their chemical structures were elucidated by HR-MS, 1D and 2D-NMR spectra, along with the comparison with those reported in the literature. Compounds 1 and 2 showed weak cytotoxicity against KB and HeLa-S3 cancer cell lines with IC
50
values of more than 54 µM.
Vietnam is a high-prevalence country for tuberculosis (TB). Xpert MTB/RIF is a novel PCR-based diagnostic test that is substantially more sensitive for detecting M. tuberculosis than traditional ...smear-based techniques. However, locally-derived evidence of Xpert MTB/RIF in HIV-infected people is limited. This study evaluates the performance of the Xpert MTB/RIF in HIV-infected patients with smear-negative pulmonary TB (SNTB). This was a cross-sectional study in 3 hospitals. The performance of Xpert MTB/RIF was compared with the reference standard of liquid culture and phenotypic drug-susceptibility testing for rifampicin (RIF) resistance. Out of 123 patients, the median age was 37.0 (IQR: 32.0-41.0) and 81.3% were male. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) of Xpert MTB/RIF for pulmonary TB diagnosis were 0.72 (95% confidence interval CI: 0.63-0.81), 66.7% (95%CI: 54.8-77.1) and 77.1% (95%CI: 62.7-88.0), respectively, while Se and Sp of Xpert MTB/RIF in detecting RIF resistance were 50.0 (11.8-88.2) and 86.4% (95%CI: 72.7-94.8). The performance of Xpert MTB/RIF in HIV-infected patients with SNTB for the diagnosis of TB and RIF-resistance was low. Further studies are required to evaluate the results of Xpert MTB/RIF assay in HIV-infected patients with SNTB and the role of Xpert repetition on the same specimens.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Global environments are threatened by intensively natural variation and continuously increased human-made disturbances. Assessment of the global eco-environment vulnerability (global EV or GEV) ...caused by both natural and human-induced disturbances plays a key role in providing valuable information about ecological and environmental background for designing suitable policy measures to improve and restore environment. We present the first global-scale map of quantified eco-environmental vulnerability by integrating remote sensing, GIS modelling, and global census datasets, employing 16 influential factors across five domains: socioeconomics, land resources, natural hazards, hydrometeorology, and topography. The GEV is classified into six levels, namely very low vulnerability, low vulnerability, medium vulnerability, medium high vulnerability, high vulnerability, and very high vulnerability. At global scale, a small fraction of the globe (10.1%) is strongly (high and very high vulnerability) affected by influential factors. Among continents, the largest fraction of very high vulnerability level is attributed to Asia (74.6%) followed by Africa (19.6%). National-scale analysis shows that China and India are the most vulnerable in Asia and in the world. Our study provides accumulative impacts of manmade and natural disturbances, which are vital for decision makers to set improvement targets on specific areas over local, regional, and global scales, and design and adopt new practices to lessen natural and manmade disturbances on environment, while keeping track of evolution of the other environmental aspects.
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•A global eco-environmental vulnerability map is generated by using a proposed assessment framework and essential datasets.•Significant eco-environmental vulnerability levels are widely attributed in Asia and Africa (China, India and Ethiopia).•Natural hazards and anthropogenic stress pose a threat on eco-environment and enhanced by climate change.•Advised eco-environmental protection zones provide critical information for environmental management and conservation.
Cardio-metabolic risk factors are of increasing concern in HIV-infected individuals, particularly with the advent of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and the subsequent rise in longevity. However, the ...prevalence of cardio-metabolic abnormalities in this population and the differential contribution, if any, of HIV specific factors to their distribution, are poorly understood. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the global prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) in HIV-infected populations, its variation by the different diagnostic criteria, severity of HIV infection, ART used and other major predictive characteristics.
We performed a comprehensive search on major databases for original research articles published between 1998 and 2015. The pooled overall prevalence as well as by specific groups and subgroups were computed using random effects models.
A total of 65 studies across five continents comprising 55094 HIV-infected participants aged 17-73 years (median age 41 years) were included in the final meta-analysis. The overall prevalence of MS according to the following criteria were: ATPIII-2001:16.7% (95%CI: 14.6-18.8), IDF-2005: 18% (95%CI: 14.0-22.4), ATPIII-2004-2005: 24.6% (95%CI: 20.6-28.8), Modified ATPIII-2005: 27.9% (95%CI: 6.7-56.5), JIS-2009: 29.6% (95%CI: 22.9-36.8), and EGIR: 31.3% (95%CI: 26.8-36.0). By some MS criteria, the prevalence was significantly higher in women than in men (IDF-2005: 23.2% vs. 13.4, p = 0.030), in ART compared to non-ART users (ATPIII-2001: 18.4% vs. 11.8%, p = 0.001), and varied significantly by participant age, duration of HIV diagnosis, severity of infection, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) use and date of study publication. Across criteria, there were significant differences in MS prevalence by sub-groups such as in men, the Americas, older publications, regional studies, younger adults, smokers, ART-naïve participants, NNRTIs users, participants with shorter duration of diagnosed infection and across the spectrum of HIV severity. Substantial heterogeneities across and within criteria were not fully explained by major study characteristics, while evidence of publication bias was marginal.
The similar range of MS prevalence in the HIV-infected and general populations highlights the common drivers of this condition. Thus, cardio-metabolic assessments need to be routinely included in the holistic management of the HIV-infected individual. Management strategies recommended for MS in the general population will likely provide similar benefits in the HIV-infected.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper leverages the predictor-based model reference adaptive control (PMRAC) architecture to develop an adaptive compensation scheme for uncertain nonlinear systems with multiple input and state ...delays. The controller is composed of a state predictor, an auxiliary system, and adaptive laws. The adaptive laws are designed through a Lyapunov function in such a way that the predictor state and the auxiliary state asymptotically converge to the system state given that a stability condition holds. Satisfying this delay-dependent stability condition, formulated in the form of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), also ensures the input-to-state stability of the closed-loop control system. Numerical case studies with a standard F-16 aircraft model are discussed to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed control framework.
Tecoma stans is a tropical plant that is widely used in folk medicine. Little is known about the chemical constituents of flowers of this plant. From flowers of the native plant in Vietnam, 12 ...compounds were isolated and elucidated, including one new compound tecomastane (1) and eleven known compounds, (3S,5R,6S,7E)-5,6-epoxy-3-hydroxy-7-megastigmane-9-one (2), bosciallin (3), chakyunglupulin B (4), (2S,6R)-2,6-dimethyloctane-1,8-diol (5), cleroindicin F (6), rengyoxide (7), 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid (8), methyl 3,4-dihydrobenzoate (9), 3,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid (10), luteolin (11), and indole-3-carboxylic acid (12). Compound 5 was a new natural product. The chemical structures of isolated compounds were identified by interpretation of their spectroscopic data (1D, 2D NMR, and HRESIMS) and by comparison with the literature. Compounds 1-7 and 10-12 were evaluated for alpha-glucosidase inhibition and antimicrobial activity against antibiotic-resistant, pathogenic bacteria Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, and Acinetobacter baumannii.
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