Not Every Rise in Procalcitonin is Infection

Introduction
Procalcitonin (PCT) a peptide precursor of the hormone calcitonin, is produced by the parafollicular cells (C cells) of the thyroid and by the neuro-endocrine cells of the lung and the intestine. PCT level has been shown to rise in response to proinflammatory stimulus, especially of bacterial origin and in this case, it is produced mainly by the cells of the lung and the intestine. Measurement of PCT can be used as a marker of severe sepsis caused by bacteria and generally grades well with the degree of sepsis. Use of PCT has been advocated to assist in decisions about initiation of antibiotic therapy in patients with presumed infection. Currently, PCT assays are widely used in the clinical environment. However, every rise in PCT is not indicative of infection, and other non-infectious inflammatory causes should also be kept in mind. We report a case of highly elevated PCT that was not an infection.

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Unexplained severe lactic acidosis in emergency medicine

Abstract
Case report A 49-year-old previously healthy man was admitted to the ICU after cardiac arrest following a short history with headache, blurred speech and reduced consciousness. After cardiopulmonary resuscitation perfusion rhythm was regained, but the patient didn`t regain consciousness. The arterial blood gas analysis at the ICU revealed a severe metabolic acidosis with pH at 6.86 and lactate levels of 16 mmol/L. The white blood cells count was also markedly increased (312 * 109/L), and blood smear showed immature cells indicating acute leukemia. The severe metabolic acidosis, at first thought to be due to systemic hypoperfusion, did not improve in spite of fluid and vasopressor resuscitation. A CT scan of the head performed the next day, revealed massive cerebellar haemorrhage, edema in both hemispheres and signs of anoxic brain damage. Immunophenotyping of peripheral blood was consistent with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

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Understanding the Value of Case Reports and Studies in the Context of Clinical Research, Research Design, and Evidence-Based Practice

Introduction
Case reports and studies may be defined as the non-experimental description of an individual or a few of cases in terms of new or unusual presentation of the diseases, an unexpected disease course or pathophysiology, and new effects (either beneficial or detrimental) of existing medications or procedures. Although they suffer from the non-experimental nature and other potential bias and errors, case reports and studies have played and will continue to play an important part in the advancement of medicine. They often serve as "primers" leading to discoveries of new diseases/disease pathophysiology as well as development of new preventive and therapeutic measures. Case reports and case studies are also employed as a platform for the training of medical students and/or resident doctors in scientific writing and critical thinking. Although the significance of case reports and studies in medicine has being recognized since the early stage of development of clinical medicine, their value needs to be appreciated in the context of modern clinical research design and the hierarchy of strength of evidence for guiding patient care. This paper discusses case reports and studies within the big picture of clinical research, research design, and evidence-based practice.

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A New Platform for Sharing Research and Teaching Experience

Case reports are considered to be brief reports describing an episode of clinical case or a small number of cases. They may describe new or uncommon diagnoses, unusual outcomes or prognosis, new or unusual imaging findings, new or infrequently used therapies and side effects of therapy not previously discovered in clinical trials. Case reports may represent the first line of evidence leading to the evaluation, quantification, and confirmation of a clinical or an experimental observation. For many doctors and other healthcare professionals, writing a case report represents the first effort at getting papers published in medical journals and it is considered a useful exercise in learning how to write scientifically due to similarity of the basic methodology.

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Heart Rate Variability and Occupational Stress: Future Directions

Statistics across industrialised societies show that occupational stress results in social and financial costs for individuals, organisations, and economies. Occupational stress is prevalent in many different forms, for example, work intensification, dissatisfaction with current work schedules, feelings of job insecurity, more work being done at odd hours, the spread of new information and communication technologies, and long hours becoming more common. With this work intensity comes increasing physiological and psychological strain on employees. Indeed, it has long been established that prolonged exposure to stressors incurred at work is linked to a vast array of negative attitudinal, health and, in particular, cardiovascular outcomes for employees.

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Vocational Decision-Making and Rehabilitation Following Paediatric Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury: An Illustrative Case Study Analysis

Introduction
Within traumatic-injury populations, adjustment following the suffering of a permanent impairment such as a traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (tSCI) follows quite a different path (and has quite different longer term participation outcomes) when the individual involved is a child or adolescent, and not an adult. The most influential framework for understanding the factors influencing longer-term outcomes for those with an ill-health condition is a general model applicable to those of any age, and thus demographic factors such as "age at injury" or "age at disease onset" are not specifically depicted in the model of factors influencing injury sequelae, except that they are implicitly contained within one of the two sets of variables (one "Personal", one "Environmental") which are proposed to moderate the longer-term outcomes achieved following the suffering of an impairment of structure or function. While the ICF framework has been most useful to both health researchers and managers of health services, its influence on the particular set of services offered by health and human-service professionals has been weakened by the fact that, in its original publication of the model, both sets of moderating variables were just listed as blocks of variables with no detail about the major personal or environmental variables exerting most influence - and therefore, by implication, requiring focussed consideration by care planners and deliverers of health services. The case study below of an adolescent who suffered a paraplegia yet subsequently achieved a most successful rehabilitation outcome illustrates the key psychosocial factors (one "personal" and one "environmental") involved in adjusting successfully to major impairment and ultimately achieving a high post-injury quality of life.

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Law & Psychiatry in India: An Overview

Abstract
The application of legal knowledge to psychiatry and of psychiatric knowledge to the legal issues is the subspecialty of psychiatry known as forensic psychiatry. In India, forensic psychiatry is still in its infancy. The legal issues pertaining to the mental health care in India appeared only after British Rule, with very minimal changes occurring post independence. Currently, the training of psychiatry postgraduates to the idea of an interface between law and psychiatry is poor. It is neglected, ignored, misinterpreted and misunderstood. To meet the standards of the developed world and international covenants, there is a pressing need by psychiatric community in the region to understand the existing legislation and to initiate changes through various agencies and regulatory bodies. This paper attempts to elucidate the interface of law and psychiatry in India in a nutshell.
Keywords: Law; Psychiatry; India

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Improvement in Latent Fingermark Detection on Thermal Paper using 5,6-Dimethoxy-1,2-indandione/PVP

Abstract
A new method for improvement of 1,2-indandione-treated latent fingermarks on thermal paper will be described in this paper. Treatment with conventional techniques like ninhydrin in petroleum ether or DFO solution produces a black color on the thermosensitive side of thermal paper. The new method using 5,6-dimethoxy-1,2-indandione with polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) can reduce this dark staining without removing the thermosensitive layer and parts of the developed fingermarks. An advantage of this method is that the developed fluorescent fingermarks appear in sharp lines and high contrast . The developed fingermarks can be observed when excited in the 535 nm region and using an orange-red goggles. There is no background coloration in this method. In addition, some tests were performed, leading to an optimized working solution, which charges the paper with a minimum of chemicals, is cheap, and enables a large quantity of papers to be treated in a short time and without involving any pre- or post treatment.
Keywords: 5,6-Dimethoxy-1,2-indandione; Polyvinylpyrrolidones; Thermal paper; Latent fingerprint
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Legal Medical Age Estimation in Portuguese Adult Cadavers: Evaluation of the Accuracy of Forensic Dental Invasive and Non-Invasive Methods

Abstract
Age estimation of unknown human cadavers is important in setting a crime investigation, such as homicide, suicide or in mass disaster because it can guide forensic investigators to the correct identity among a large number of possible matches. More and more the courts ask for medico-legal age estimations of unknown human cadavers by forensic dentistry. This research project in establishing the applicability of radiographic and morphological parameter's used in forensic dentistry in a Portuguese adult population. The main goal is to compare the chronological age with the dental age estimation by radiographic and morphological parameters. To achieve this objective, thirty-five single-rooted teeth were analysed. Radiographic analysis was made through the program of digital radiology software Kodak RVG intra-oral 2200 with exposure factors 60-70 KVp and 7mA. The morphological parameter, translucent dentin was assessed in intact and sectioned tooth. The relationship between the coefficients was calculated between the age and the ratios with the level of inclusion, p< 0.05. There was no statistically significant difference between the chronological age and the age estimation by each method. The coefficient of Pearson for the direct measurements of the translucent dentin methodology for sectioned teeth gives the better correlation with the age estimate (r=0.86).
Keywords: Forensic dentistry; Forensic pathology; Human identification; Biological age estimation; Dental age estimation; Portuguese adult cadavers.

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The Impact of Advances in Post-Mortem Imaging on Forensic Practice

Post-mortem imaging in the form of plain X-ray films has been in use for many years as an adjunct or occasionally as a substitute for autopsy. However, in the last two decades there has been increasing interest and investigation into the use of advanced techniques such as Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in death investigation.

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The Infanticide: Some Forensic and Ethical Issues

Abstract
Forensic investigation and clinical treatment of infanticide mother is an occasion to reflect about the social stigma associated with this crime. The forensic-psychiatric assessment must be anchored on an authentic and meaningful clinical relationship to criminal mother, without misinterpretation and countertransferal dynamics, such as emotional reactions of mistrust and stigmatization of the offender. These prevent the evaluator from making a correct psychological and psychopathological diagnosis. There is evidence that diachronic, multidisciplinary diagnostic evaluation may lead to strategies for treatment and rehabilitation. These measures, which can allow the patient to regain his dignity, his working capacities and social role, and ensure that the penalty is rehabilitative and not only retributive.
Keywords: Infanticide; Psychodiagnosis; Rehabilitation; Stigmatization

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Toxicological Screening and Quantitation Using Liquid Chromatography/Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

In recent years, an increasing number of new designer-drugs have increased the demands for general toxicological screening. Limited screening based on immunoassays is commonly used in clinical toxicology, whereas more comprehensive approaches are common in forensic toxicology such as screening based on Gas or Liquid Chromatography (GC or LC) approaches. The classic approach has been gas chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) combined with LC-diode-array detection (DAD) for systematic toxicological analysis. This setup has the advantage of covering a very broad spectrum of drugs and illicit substances when combined with library search facilities. However, the analytical sensitivity and specificity of LC-DAD may not be optimal. Thus, more sensitive and specific screening techniques based exclusively on LC combined with mass spectrometry have gained popularity. Multi-target screening and quantitation methods based on LC-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) may provide detection of hundred or more compounds. Using ion-trap MSn detection, several hundred compounds can be detected. A more extended screening is possible using time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry, which is a high-resolution mass spectrometry technique that detects drugs on the basis of their exact mass. Using this technique, scanning is performed over all masses for low molecular drugs, and detected signals can be related to a library of exact drug masses. Retention time and fragmentation pattern contribute to the identification. In principle, it is possible to screen for thousands of compounds, although issues related to software capabilities may limit the number of compounds to several hundred in daily practice.

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Quantitative Analysis of 30 Drugs in Whole Blood by SPE and UHPLC-TOF-MS

Abstract
An Ultra-High Pressure Liquid Chromatography Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC-TOF-MS) method for quantitative analysis of 30 drugs in whole blood was developed and validated. The method was used for screening and quantification of common drugs and drugs of abuse in whole blood received from autopsy cases and living persons. The compounds included: alprazolam, amphetamine, benzoylecgonine, bromazepam, cathine, cathinone, chlordiazepoxide, cocaine, codeine, clonazepam, 7-aminoclonazepam, diazepam, nordiazepam, flunitrazepam, 7-aminoflunitrazepam, ketamine, ketobemidone, 3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), methamphetamine, methadone, morphine, 6-monoacetylmorphine, nitrazepam, 7-aminonitrazepam, oxazepam, temazepam, tramadol, O-desmethyltramadol, and zolpidem. Blood samples (200 μL) were subjected to Solid Phase Extraction (SPE). Target drugs were quantified using a Waters ACQUITY UPLC system coupled to a Waters SYNAPT G2 TOF-MS apparatus. Extraction recoveries ranged from 41% (7-aminoclonazepam) to 111% (ketamine) and matrix effects ranged from -13% (temazepam) to 50% (7-aminonitrazepam). For all compounds, a quadratic polynomial was applied for fitting the calibration curves. Lower Limits of Quantification (LOQ) ranged from 0.005 to 0.05 mg/kg. Satisfactory precisions below 15% and accuracies within 85-115% were obtained for all compounds at concentrations exceeding the LOQ. In conclusion, we present a validated UHPLC-TOF-MS method for simultaneous quantification of 30 drugs in whole blood with a run time of 15 min using 200 μL of whole blood.
Keywords: Drugs of abuse, UHPLC-TOF-MS, Whole blood, SPE, Quantification

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Liposphere: A Versatile Controlled Release Carrier for Hydrophobic Drugs

Researchers have been inventing new drugs since time immemorial. Of late it is established that the development of new drugs alone is not sufficient to ensure progress in drug therapy. The missing link is a potential strategy. It involves the apt selection of drug carrier systems. Lipid particles based on triglycerides, waxes or fatty acids as matrix lipids are being intensively investigated as potential carrier systems, in particular for lipophilic substances. The lipospheres system is a newly introduced lipid-based carrier system developed for parenteral and topical delivery of drugs. Lipospheres consist of water-dispersible solid microparticles of particle size between 0.2–500 μm in diameter and composed of a solid hydrophobic fat core stabilized by one monolayer of phospholipid molecules embedded in their surface. A new dimension in this area is delivery of peptides and oral delivery of drugs. The liposphere carrier system has several advantages over other delivery systems, including emulsions, liposomes and microspheres, such as: better physical stability, low cost of ingredients, ease of preparation and scale-up, high dispersibility in an aqueous medium, high entrapment of hydrophobic drugs, controlled particle size and extended release of entrapped drug.

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Perspectives and Potential Applications of Ruthenium-Based Nanocarriers for Cancer Therapy

Cancer is a highly heterogeneous disease characterized by continuous uncontrolled growth and expansion of abnormal cells. In general, in tumor cells the signaling pathways regulating cellular processes, as cell growth and division and cell-tocell communication result strongly altered. Furthermore, the cancer cells accumulate repeated mutations that provide a selective growth advantage over other cells. In addition, some cancer cells become invasive and then metastasize. This characteristic together with the genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity of the tumor cells makes cancer disease particularly difficult to treat and eradicate.

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Topical Delivery System for Phytochemicals: Capsaicin and Capsicum Tincture

Abstract
Capsaicin, an active ingredient of Capsicum fruit, is currently undergoing "revival" in the clinical management of pain. However, the choice of its formulation is rather limited to the use of "old-fashioned" tinctures and recently the patches. In an attempt to improve the therapeutic outcome and develop its skin-friendly formulation, we prepared the vesicle-based drug delivery system with capsaicin. Moreover, the use of standardized Capsicum extract, rather than a single active ingredient, is proposed to lead to simplified and more cost-effective formulations. Phospholipid-based vesicles, namely liposomes and ethosomes, were prepared with capsaicin, Capsicum tincture or Capsicum powder and characterized for particle size, entrapment efficiency and stability. The vesicular dispersions were incorporated in the hydrogels to increase the formulation stability, its retention time at the skin and overall acceptability. Both the standardized crude Capsicum powder and Capsicum tincture were successfully employed as sources of capsaicin which is, to the best of our knowledge, reported for the first time. The reported phospholipid-based delivery system for capsaicin could represent an improved topical treatment of arthritic pain.
Keywords: Capsaicin; Phytochemicals; Liposomes; Ethosomes; Arthritis; Pain

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New Adipocytokines

They are cytokines secreted by adipose tissue considered to be immunomodulating agents, however they can be more accurately put into the larger, growing list of adipose-derived hormones.
It includes:
  1. Chemerin
  2. Interleukin-6 (IL-6)
  3. Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1)
  4. Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1)
  5. Retinol binding protein 4 (RBP4)
  6. Tumor necrosis factor – Alpha (TNFα)
  7. Visfatin
  8. Leptin
  9. Adiponectin
  10. Apelin

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Treatments for Atopic Dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis, also known as eczema, affects about 10-20% of children in the UK and about 1-3% of adults. The incidence of atopic dermatitis has increased as much as 3 fold in the past 40 years. The disease is most common in children where it causes rashes, redness, sore skin, itching, dryness, blisters, bleeding, sleepless nights and more. As children become adults, many stop suffering from the disease or suffer from milder symptoms. It is rare for atopic dermatitis to first become evident in adulthood. Adults have the same symptoms as children and can also suffer from thickened, leathery skin, dry scaly patches and other problems. Children are most likely to have skin problems on the face, especially the cheeks. Adults are more likely to have skin problems on their hands, behind their elbows and knees. The skin can crack, ooze, bleed and become infected with Staphylococcus aureus and other bacteria. Healthcare professionals are especially prone to the disease. As many as 10 – 50% of healthcare professionals suffer from atopic dermatitis. The reasons for the increase in the prevalence of atopic dermatitis are not known. The reasons healthcare professionals suffer so much form atopic dermatitis are not known. In fact, the causes of atopic dermatitis are not known.

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Biocompatible Polymers and Processing Techniques in Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering

In recent years many progress has been achieved in the biomedical and biopharmaceutical fields particularly in drug delivery and regenerative medicine. This has been possible thanks to the increased expertise in polymers chemistry as well as the advent of innovative techniques of materials manipulation that have lead to the production of new “smart” polymeric devices with peculiar properties able to selectively reach almost all areas of the human body, in the case of drug delivery systems, or to reduce the chemical-physical gap between human tissues and synthetic devices, in the case of tissue engineering. A precise molecular composition results in the production of materials with optimal chemical and morphological characteristics that can be exploited for new diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

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Development of a Stability Indicating UPLC-MS/MS Method for Rapid and Reliable Determination of Fenofibrate in Marketed Product (Lypanthyl 200M) and Human Plasma

Abstract
A reliable, fast, sensitive and selective Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method has been developed and validated for the determination of fenofibrate in marketed product (Lipanthyl) and human plasma. The chromatographic separation was performed on a reversed-phase Acquity®BEH C18 column (1.7 μm particle size, 50 mm x 2.1 mm ID) with an isocratic elution profile and mobile phase consisting of methanol and water (80:20, %, v/v). To achieve optimum chromatographic condition the influence of mobile phase composition and flow rate was investigated. The total chromatographic analysis time was as short as 2 min. Detection and quantification of the analyzed drug sample were carried out with a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer using Electrospray Ionization (ESI) operating in positive ionization mode. The data acquisition was performed in Multiple Reactions Monitoring (MRM) mode. The method was validated over a concentration range of 0.5-200ng/mL (r2=0.993, n=6). The selectivity, matrix effect, recovery, accuracy, precision, and stabilities were validated for determination of fenofibrate in human plasma. Analytical recoveries of extracted fenofibrate from plasma were more than 92%. The validation results showed that the proposed method was sensitive, economical and less toxic and it could successfully be applied for evaluation of pharmacokinetics of fenofibrate in animals.
Keywords: Fenofibrate; UPLC-MS/MS; Lypanthyl 200M; Plasma; Method validation
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Drug Tolerability and Outcomes in Kidney Transplant Recipients Treated with Two Formulations of Mycophenolic Acid

Background
Mycophenolic Acid (MPA) is one of the most widely used immunosuppressive agents in kidney transplantation. This study was designed to compare the safety, tolerability and efficacy of two formulations of mycophenolic acid, Mycophenolate Mofetil (MMF) and Enteric-Coated Mycophenolate Sodium (EC-MPS), in renal transplant recipients.
Methods
This was an open label, prospective randomized clinical trial carried out in two medical centers (St. Vincent Medical Center and the University of Southern California) in a total of 137 patients.

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Sustainable Nanomaterials: A Greener Future Avenue?

The field of nanoscience has experienced a staggering number of advances in recent years with regards to a wide range of disciplines including physics, chemistry, materials science, biology and medicine. Although most of these are still closely related to laboratory practices and yet far from entrepreneurial activities, many of these nanomaterials are currently commercially available (e.g. silica nanowires, silicon wafers, carbon nanotubes, graphene and derivatives) and have paved the way to enormous developments in the preparation of functional nanomaterials for various applications.

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Estimation of the Thermodynamics of Ionic Materials

Thermodynamics provides the primary information regarding the feasibility of synthesis and stability of materials, principally through the quantities: heat capacity, Cp; entropy, S; enthalpy of formation, ΔfH; the Gibbs energy of formation, ΔfG, andamplified by lattice energy, ΔLU. Values of such properties for many materials are readily available from extensive tabulations, whether printed, online or from software. However, experimental thermodynamics is currently unfashionable because it is difficult and requires advanced technical skills for its performance, so that the growth of such published values falls far behind the preparation of materials. Furthermore, such tabulations can inherently not list the properties of as-yet unsynthesised and hypothesised materials. For these reasons, there is an important and permanent place for estimation methods.

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Polymeric Nano-Fibers and Modified Nano-Fibers Assembly in 3D Network for Different Potential Applications

Polymeric nano-fiber based materials and their application is one of the research areas in materials science and nanotechnology. Nano-fibrous materials are receiving extensive research interest for applications in diverse fields as biosensors, optical and chemical sensors, stimuli-responsive or "smart" materials, bioreactors, drug delivery carriers, antibacterial materials, tissue engineering scaffolds, clean energy, electronic and semi-conductive materials, reinforced nano-composites, affinity membranes, etc.

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The Shape Memory Phenomenon: An Intrinsic Feature of Materials after Programming

Naturally, all materials are able to response to some particular stimuli via changing their one or more chemical/physical properties accordingly. Among these properties, the ability for shape change can be harnessed for motion and/or force generation. There are two basic ways to response to the present of the right stimulus (such as heating/cooling, light, chemical/solvent etc), one is spontaneous (either instantly in an elastic manner or gradually in a viscous-elastic fashion, while the other requires additional driving force by means of applying the right external stimulus to trigger recovery back to the original shape. Correspondingly, the former phenomenon is called the shape change effect (SCE), while the latter is called the shape memory effect (SME).

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Synthesis and Characterization of Nanocomposites Using the Nanoscale Laser Soldering in Liquid Technique

We have synthesized Au/CuO and Au/ZnO nanocomposites using the laser soldering technique. The process was carried out by irradiating a solution containing Au-CuO and Au-ZnO nanoparticles using 532 nm laser pulses of 0.1 J/cm2 continuously for 20 minutes. The beam was focused using a 75 mm focal lens and the laser power near the focal region was estimated to be about 2.4 x 1012 W/m2. Their UV-VIS absorption and transmission were observed and the results indicated that the bandgap energies of the Au/CuO and Au/ZnO are significantly lower than those of pure CuO and ZnO. A theoretical model was developed and the calculation showed that the soldering process was due to the laser melting of the gold nanoparticles and the molten gold got soldered to the ZnO as well as CuO nanoparticles nearby.

Keywords: Nanocomposite, Laser nanosoldering

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Welcome to Journal of Materials Science and Nanotechnology

Why one more journal on materials and/or nanotechnology? Well, we all live in a nano-materials world. Trivially enough, each and every object, tool or device is made up of structured matter. At the same time, matter is intrinsically structured at the nanoscale level, via ions, atoms and molecules, and related assemblies (i.e. clusters, agglomerates and aggregates, difference see). For such a broad scope, room is there for much additional work and players, as we all think that materials science and nanotechnology both have a bright future. Shadows could come as well, first with the issue of health risks. Still we do not know much about the danger of the new possible products based on nanomaterials, due to the persistent lack of long-term experimentation data on animals and in real natural environments, and a high level of precautions should be maintained. For sure, sustainability is the keyword for science and technology development in the 21st century. In this respect, nanoscience poses new issues to be aware of, but also promises solutions like active and intelligent (smart) materials, and bio-degradable materials to reduce pollution.

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MAPK Pathway in Skeletal Muscle Diseases

Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) pathway is a signal transduction pathway that functions in a wide range of physiological and pathophysiological cellular events including cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, migration, inflammation, metabolic disorders and diseases. In skeletal muscle, it plays an essential role in muscle fiber specialization, muscle mass maintenance, damage induced muscle regeneration and muscle diseases. This review provides an overview of MAPK pathway and its pathophysiological role in skeletal muscle diseases with a primary focus on muscular dystrophy and atrophy.

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The End of the Golden Age of Antibiotics?

The discovery of a substance with antibacterial properties was expected to permanently diminish the occurrence of bacterial infections posing a threat to health and life. Since the discovery of penicillin many new groups of antibiotics have been introduced into treatment of disease in people and animals, but their excessive and frequently unjustified use, and most importantly, incorrect dosage, have led to numerous unanticipated problems in contemporary human and veterinary medicine. The most serious of these is the continually increasing number of bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics, including drugs of last resort.

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Thoroughbred Race Horses Management: A Key Role of the Veterinarian

The veterinarian must confront many situations when working with thoroughbred horses in which he must solve and make decisions that lead to balance between the animal and trainer / owner of the horse, the above should be resolved in an ethical and professional manner.

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The BMBL and Biosafety Levels

Scientists began developing and publishing a series of best practices to mitigate laboratory risks in the 1970’s. These biosafety guidelines are disseminated by the Department of Health and Human Services in the publication Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL). Now in its 5th edition, the BMBL publishes guidelines for appropriate laboratory biosafety and biosecurity.

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