A new heterocyclic azo dye ligand (L) was synthesized by the combination of 4-amino antipyrine with 4-aminophenol. The new Cr(III), Mn(II), Fe(III), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II), Zn(II), and Cd(II) ...complexes were synthesized in excellent yields. The metal chelate structures were elucidated using elemental analyses, FT-IR,
H-NMR, mass, magnetic moment, diffused reflectance spectral and thermal analysis (TG-DTG), and molar conductivity measurement. According to the FT-IR study, the azo dye ligand exhibited neutral tri-dentate behavior, binding to the metal ions with the azo N, carbonyl O, and protonated phenolic OH. The
H-NMR spectral study of the Zn(II) complex supported the coordination of the zo dye ligand without proton displacement of the phenolic OH. Diffused reflectance and magnetic moment studies revealed the octahedral geometry of the complexes, as well as their good electrolytic nature, excepting the Zn(II) and Cd(II) complexes, which were nonelectrolytes, as deduced from the molar conductivity study. The theoretical calculations of optimized HOMO-LUMO energies, geometrical parameters, electronic spectra, natural atomic charges, 3D-plots of MEP, and vibrational wavenumbers were computed and elucidated using LANL2DZ and 6-311G (d, p) basis sets of density functional theory (DFT) with the approach of B3LYP DFT and TD-DFT methods. The ligand and complexes have been assayed for their antimicrobial activity and compared with the standard drugs. Most of the complexes have manifested excellent antimicrobial activity against various microbial strains. A molecular docking investigation was also performed, to acquire more information about the binding mode and energy of the ligand and its metal complexes to the
receptor using molecular docking. Altogether, the newly created ligand and complexes showed positive antibacterial effects and are worth future study.
•Iron-doped F400 exhibited faster ciprofloxacin uptake in a short period of time.•Energy consumption of electro-regeneration for spent carbon was < 4.8 kWh/kg.•Electro-regeneration efficiency ...consistent and sustained after several cycles.•Ciprofloxacin uptake decreased with an increasing flow rate.•Electro-regeneration efficiency of spent F400 in reverse osmosis concentrate was higher.
Electro-regeneration is emerging as a new technique to regenerate spent carbon adsorbents through an electrochemical process. In this study, sequential adsorption and electro-regeneration of ciprofloxacin (CIP)-laden carbon were investigated using both pristine and iron (Fe)-doped F400 activated carbon in distilled, deionized (DI) water and reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate water. The impact of reactor flow rate and sequential adsorption/electro-regeneration cycles on the regeneration efficiency were also evaluated. The results indicate that the breakthrough points for both adsorbents in DI water, where 100 % of the CIP molecules were adsorbed, occurred at around 7,800 bed volumes (BVs). Conversely, electro-regeneration for both adsorbents, where 94 % of the CIP molecules were desorbed, took place at 380 BVs. The main distinction between the two activated carbons lies in the initial range of BVs (<400 BVs).Fe doping on F400 appears to enhance its surface selectivity for CIP uptake, which can easily diffuse into the meso/macropore regions of Fe-doped F400. In contrast, pristine F400, being highly microporous, necessitated more contact time to fill its high-energy sites, resulting in a higher affinity for CIP adsorption. Over the four sequential adsorption/electro-regeneration cycles in DI water, a similar regeneration efficiency was observed at 190 BVs. As the flow rate increased from 2 to 6 mL/min, the CIP uptake on pristine F400 decreased in DI water, calculating 138, 74 and 57 mg/g for flow rates of 2, 4, and 6 mL/min, respectively. When the RO concentrate water was compared with DI water, the pristine F400 quickly reached saturation due to pore blockage caused by organic matter in RO concentrate. During electro-regeneration, up to 100 % of adsorbed CIP molecules were desorbed at around 120 BVs in RO concentrate, which is 3X faster than DI water. The effectiveness of this technology can be enhanced by implementing continuous flow systems, thereby improving the overall efficiency of CIP removal in RO concentrate.
Display omitted
To our knowledge, to report the first case of live birth of a child after uterine transposition (UT), pelvic radiotherapy, and subsequent uterine repositioning.
Case report.
Tertiary referral cancer ...hospital.
A 28-year-old nulligravid woman with left iliac and thoracic synchronous myxoid low-grade liposarcoma, which was resected with close margins.
The patient underwent UT before undergoing pelvic (60 Gy) and thoracic (60 Gy) radiation on October 25, 2018. After radiotherapy, her uterus was reimplanted in the pelvis on February 20, 2019.
The patient became pregnant in June 2021 and experienced an uneventful pregnancy until 36 weeks, when the patient started preterm labor and had a cesarean section delivery on January 26, 2022.
A boy was delivered after a gestation period of 36 weeks and 2 days (2686 g and 46.5 cm), with Apgar scores of 5 and 9, respectively; both mother and child were discharged the following day. After 1 year of follow-ups, the infant maintained normal development and the patient showed no signs of recurrence.
To our knowledge, this case of the first live birth after UT is a proof-of-concept for the viability of UT as a procedure to prevent infertility in patients requiring pelvic radiotherapy.
Chest X-ray is the first imaging technique that plays an important role in the diagnosis of COVID-19 disease. Due to the high availability of large-scale annotated image datasets, great success has ...been achieved using convolutional neural networks (
CNN
s) for image recognition and classification. However, due to the limited availability of annotated medical images, the classification of medical images remains the biggest challenge in medical diagnosis. Thanks to transfer learning, an effective mechanism that can provide a promising solution by transferring knowledge from generic object recognition tasks to domain-specific tasks. In this paper, we validate and a deep
CNN
, called Decompose, Transfer, and Compose (
DeTraC
), for the classification of COVID-19 chest X-ray images.
DeTraC
can deal with any irregularities in the image dataset by investigating its class boundaries using a class decomposition mechanism. The experimental results showed the capability of
DeTraC
in the detection of COVID-19 cases from a comprehensive image dataset collected from several hospitals around the world. High accuracy of 93.1% (with a sensitivity of 100%) was achieved by
DeTraC
in the detection of COVID-19 X-ray images from normal, and severe acute respiratory syndrome cases.
The purchase of medical equipment is a critical issue that should be planned properly. The selection of the most appropriate vendor impacts time, effort, and expenses. Therefore, the challenge is to ...strike a balance between the available budget and the required equipment. The study aims to select the best vendor for supplying medical equipment based on Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) standards. The multi-criteria decision-making approach has been adopted through three methods; Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis (MOORA), Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The criteria of selection are divided into general, technical, and financial. The criteria are weighted using three methods: CRITIC, entropy, and expert judgment. The Vendor Evaluation Program for Medical Equipment (VEPME) is designed to automatically select the best vendor. Medical imaging equipment is selected to test the program by four modalities: X-ray equipment, CT, MRI, and ultrasound. The best scenario was given by the entropy-TOPSIS. As a result, this methodology was adopted by the program. The results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed methodology by comparing the VEPME output to expert judgment.
The drastic effects of mercuric chloride and the protective efficiency of vitamin E and zinc chloride co-supplementation were clearly investigated in this study. Male rats were divided into four ...groups. The first was the control. The second received vitamin E (100 mg/kg) and zinc chloride (30 mg/kg) daily. In comparison, the third received mercuric chloride (1 mg/kg) daily, and the fourth received the same mercuric chloride dose supplemented with the same vitamin E and zinc chloride doses. Mercury promotes a significant decline in body weight. It causes a considerable reduction in total red blood cells (RBCs) count and hemoglobin concentration; however, white blood cells (WBCs) increased significantly. Significant mercury-induced elevations in hepatic and renal functions were observed. Mercury induced substantial reductions in catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD). Mercury caused apoptotic DNA fragmentation. It induced degeneration and necrosis in the liver and kidney. It induced necrosis, leukocyte infiltration and blood vessel congestion in the cerebral cortex. Shrinkage and deterioration of Purkinje cells of the cerebellum were observed in response to mercuric chloride toxicity. Mercuric chloride enhanced shrinking in seminiferous tubules and Leydig cells. It reduced sperm count, sperm motility, and testosterone concentration; however, it promoted abnormal sperm morphology. Administration of vitamin E and zinc chloride showed marked improvement in different parameters under investigation, however, further research is needed to determine fate of mercury.
•Mercuric chloride is a potentially hazardous toxin and is highly spread.•Mercury exposure induced lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress.•Mercuric chloride induces histopathological and physiological alterations in different body organs.•Combined vitamin E and zinc chloride supplementation reduce mercuric chloride toxicity.
Mercuric chloride; Vitamin E; Zinc chloride; Oxidative stress; Apoptosis.
In this work, a novel isatin-Schiff base L2 had been synthesized through a simple reaction between isatin and 2-amino-5-methylthio-1,3,4-thiadiazole. The produced Schiff base L2 was then subjected to ...a hydrothermal reaction with cerium chloride to produce the cerium (III)-Schiff base complex C2. Several spectroscopic methods, including mass spectra, FT-IR, elemental analysis, UV-vis,
C-NMR,
H-NMR, Thermogravimetric Analysis, HR-TEM, and FE-SEM/EDX, were used to completely characterize the produced L2 and C2. A computer simulation was performed using the MOE software program to find out the probable biological resistance of studied compounds against the proteins in some types of bacteria or fungi. To investigate the interaction between the ligand and its complex, we conducted molecular docking simulations using the molecular operating environment (MOE). The docking simulation findings revealed that the complex displayed greater efficacy and demonstrated a stronger affinity for Avr2 effector protein from the fungal plant pathogen Fusarium oxysporum (code 5OD4) than the original ligand. The antibacterial activity of the ligand and its Ce
complex were applied in vitro tests against different microorganism. The study showed that the complex was found to be more effective than the ligand.
Image segmentation is the process of separating pixels of an image into multiple classes, enabling the analysis of objects in the image. Multilevel thresholding (MTH) is a method used to perform this ...task, and the problem is to obtain an optimal threshold that properly segments each image. Methods such as the Kapur entropy or the Otsu method, which can be used as objective functions to determine the optimal threshold, are efficient in determining the best threshold for bi-level thresholding; however, they are not effective for MTH due to their high computational cost. This paper integrates an efficient method for MTH image segmentation called the heap-based optimizer (HBO) with opposition-based learning termed improved heap-based optimizer (IHBO) to solve the problem of high computational cost for MTH and overcome the weaknesses of the original HBO. The IHBO was proposed to improve the convergence rate and local search efficiency of search agents of the basic HBO, the IHBO is applied to solve the problem of MTH using the Otsu and Kapur methods as objective functions. The performance of the IHBO-based method was evaluated on the CEC'2020 test suite and compared against seven well-known metaheuristic algorithms including the basic HBO, salp swarm algorithm, moth flame optimization, gray wolf optimization, sine cosine algorithm, harmony search optimization, and electromagnetism optimization. The experimental results revealed that the proposed IHBO algorithm outperformed the counterparts in terms of the fitness values as well as other performance indicators, such as the structural similarity index (SSIM), feature similarity index (FSIM), peak signal-to-noise ratio. Therefore, the IHBO algorithm was found to be superior to other segmentation methods for MTH image segmentation.
Abstract
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death, which has attracted the attention of the scientific world to the search for efficient methods for treatment. With the great development and ...regeneration of nanotechnology over the last 25 years, various nanoparticles in different structures, shapes and composites provide good potential for cancer therapy. There are several drugs approved by FDA used in breast cancer treatment like Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin Hydrochloride, Femara, Herceptin, etc. Each has several side effects as well as treatment, which limits the use of drugs due to heart failure, pulmonary dysfunction, or immunodeficiency. Recently, such side effects are greatly reduced by using innovative delivery techniques. Some drugs have been approved for use in cancer treatment under the concept of drug delivery, such as Doxil (liposomal loaded doxorubicin). The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) as a drug model for cancer treatment, either in their free form or encapsulated in Soy lecithin liposomes (SLP) from plant origin as a cheap source of lipids. CuNPs were prepared by the chemical reduction method and loaded onto SLP through the thin film hydration method. The drug model Cu/SLP was successfully combined. The characteristics of the free CuNPs, liposomes, and the combined form, zeta potential, size distribution, drug encapsulation efficiency (EE%), drug release profile, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), were checked, followed by an in vitro study on the breast cancer cell line
Mcf-7
as a model for cytotoxicity evaluation. The optimal Cu/SLP had a particle mean size of 81.59 ± 14.93 nm, a negative zeta potential of − 50.7 ± 4.34 mV, loaded CuNPs showed an EE% of 78.9%, a drug release profile for about 50% of the drug was released after 6 h, and FTIR analysis was recorded. The cytotoxicity assay showed that the IC
50
of Cu/SLP is smaller than that of free CuNPs. These results give clear evidence of the efficacy of using the combined Cu/SLP rather than CuNPs alone as a model drug carrier prepared from plant origin against cancer, both medically and economically.
Abstract A new modified cellulose with diaminoguanidine (Cel-Gua) synthesized for specific recovery of Cu (II), Cd (II), and Hg (II) from the alum sample. Cellulose was silanized by ...3-chloropropyltrimethoxysilane and then was modified with diaminoguanidine to obtain N-donor chelating fibers. Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, zeta potential, electrons disperse X-ray analysis, elemental analyses (C, H and N), and thermogravimetric analysis were used for characterization. Factors influencing the adsorption were thoroughly examined. Under the optimal conditions, the Cel-Gua sorbent displayed maximum adsorption capacities of 94.33, 112.10 and 95.78 mg/g for Cu (II), Cd (II), and Hg (II), respectively. The sorption process of metal ions is equipped by kinetic model PSO and Langmuir adsorption isotherm. The calculated thermodynamic variables confirmed that the adsorption of Cu (II), Cd (II) and Hg (II) by Cel-Gua sorbent is a spontaneous and exothermic process. In our study, we used the molecular operating environment software to conduct molecular docking simulations on the Cel-Gua compound. The results of the docking simulations showed that the Cel-Gua compound displayed greater potency and a stronger affinity for the Avr2 effector protein derived from Fusarium oxysporum, a fungal plant pathogen (code 5OD4). The adsorbent was stable for 7 cycles, thus allowing its safe reutilization.
PDF
