bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Dielectrophoretic detection of electrical property changes of stored human red blood cells
Authors: Lavi Edwin D. , Crivellari Francesca , Gagnon Zachary 
Published: March 2022

AbstractThe ability to transport and store a large human blood inventory for transfusions is an essential requirement for medical institutions. Thus, there is an important need for rapid and low‐cost characterization tools for analyzing the properties of human red blood cells (RBCs) while in storage. In this study, we investigate the ability to use dielectrophoresis (DEP) for measuring the storage‐induced changes in RBC electrical properties. Fresh human blood was collected, suspended in K2‐EDTA anticoagulant, and stored in a blood bank refrigerator for a period of 20 days. Cells were removed from storage at 5‐day intervals and subjected to a glutaraldehyde crosslinking reaction to “freeze” cells at their ionic equilibrium at that point in time and prevent ion leakage during DEP analysis. The DEP behavior of RBCs was analyzed in a high permittivity DEP buffer using a three‐dimensional DEP chip (3DEP) and also compared to measurements taken with a 2D quadrupole electrode array. The DEP analysis confirms that RBC electrical property changes occur during storage and are only discernable with the use of the cell crosslinking reaction above a glutaraldehyde fixation concentration of 1.0 w/v%. In particular, cytoplasm conductivity was observed to decrease by more than 75% while the RBC membrane conductance was observed to increase by more than 1000% over a period of 20 days. These results show that the presented combination of chemical crosslinking and DEP can be used as rapid characterization tool for monitoring electrical properties changes of human RBCs while subjected to refrigeration in blood bank storage.
Diffusiophoresis in suspensions of highly charged soft particles
Authors: Fan Leia , Jian Elaine , Chang Wen‐Chun , Wu Yvonne , Lin Jason , Tseng Andy , Tseng Jessica , Wan Renee , Yu Annie , Lee Eric 
Published: March 2022

AbstractDiffusiophoresis phenomenon of aoft particles suspended in binary electrolyte solutions is explored theoretically in this study based on the spherical cell model, focusing on the chemiphoresis component in absence of diffusion potential. Both the electrostatic and hydrodynamic aspects of the boundary confinement, or steric effect, due to the presence of neighboring particles are examined extensively under various electrokinetic conditions. Significant local extrema are found in mobility profiles expressed as functions of the Debye length in general, synchronized with the strength of the motion‐inducing double layer polarization. Moreover, a seemingly peculiar phenomenon is observed that the soft particles may move faster in more concentrated suspensions. The competition between the simultaneous enhancement of the motion‐inducing electric driving force and the motion‐retarding hydrodynamic drag force from the boundary confinement effect of the neighboring particles is found to be responsible for it. The above findings are also demonstrated experimentally in a very recent study on the diffusiophoretic motion of soft particles through porous collagen hydrogels. The results presented here are useful in various practical applications of soft particles like drug delivery.
Trade‐off between energy density and fast‐charge capability of lithium‐ion batteries: A model‐based design study of cells with thick electrodes
Authors: Quarti Michael , Bayer Andreas , Bessler Wolfgang G. 
Published: March 2022

AbstractLithium‐ion batteries exhibit a well‐known trade‐off between energy and power, which is problematic for electric vehicles which require both high energy during discharge (high driving range) and high power during charge (fast‐charge capability). We use two commercial lithium‐ion cells (high‐energy [HE] and high‐power) to parameterize and validate physicochemical pseudo‐two‐dimensional models. In a systematic virtual design study, we vary electrode thicknesses, cell temperature, and the type of charging protocol. We are able to show that low anode potentials during charge, inducing lithium plating and cell aging, can be effectively avoided either by using high temperatures or by using a constant‐current/constant‐potential/constant‐voltage charge protocol which includes a constant anode potential phase. We introduce and quantify a specific charging power as the ratio of discharged energy (at slow discharge) and required charging time (at a fast charge). This value is shown to exhibit a distinct optimum with respect to electrode thickness. At 35°C, the optimum was achieved using an HE electrode design, yielding 23.8 Wh/(min L) volumetric charging power at 15.2 min charging time (10% to 80% state of charge) and 517 Wh/L discharge energy density. By analyzing the various overpotential contributions, we were able to show that electrolyte transport losses are dominantly responsible for the insufficient charge and discharge performance of cells with very thick electrodes.
Combining life cycle sustainability assessment and fuzzy multicriteria decision making method for prioritizing the flare technologies in the oil, gas, and chemical plants
Authors: Fetanat Abdolvahhab , Tayebi Mohsen , Mofid Hossein 
Published: March 2022

AbstractLife cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) of flare technologies can assist the stakeholders/decision‐makers to choose the most sustainable flare technology in life cycle outlook among multiple options. This article purposes in developing a framework of life cycle sustainability decision‐support for prioritizing the flare technologies by integrating the LCSA concepts and fuzzy multicriteria decision making (MCDM) method. A novel fuzzy MCDM (FMCDM) technique that can handle linguistic variables in the decision‐making matrix was progressed by integrating SWARA–WASPAS approach and fuzzy evaluation (fuzzy SWARA–fuzzy WASPAS). Using fuzzy SWARA is obtained the weights of the metrics for LCSA and then, fuzzy WASPAS is employed to prioritize the alternatives with considering the metrics. Finally, the findings of fuzzy SWARA show the “Production cost,” having the topmost weight with value of 0.5094, is the foremost metric that overshadows the choice of suitable and sustainable flare technology. The results obtained from the fuzzy WASPAS suggest that “Steam‐assisted flare,” is the highest prioritized and thus, the most significant alternative to employ flare technology in oil, gas, and chemical plants. The results indicate that combining LCSA and MCDM can effectively rank industrial systems and equipment under data uncertainties.
Experimental research of the effects of organic manganese‐added biodiesel produced from crambe orientalis oil on engine performance, combustion, and emissions
Authors: Uyaroğlu Ayhan , Gürü Metin , Uyumaz Ahmet , Kocakulak Tolga 
Published: March 2022

AbstractThe influences of organic manganese with crambe orientalis biodiesel on combustion, performance and emissions were researched experimentally. The measured in‐cylinder pressure data were handled in MATLAB/Simulink environment and obtained as a result of fuel combustion, heat release rate, start of combustion, indicated mean effective pressure, indicated thermal efficiency, maximum pressure rise rate and ignition delay. It has been concluded that indicated thermal efficiency increased 1.96% and 1.82% with CO B25 and CO B50 compared to pure diesel at 11.25 Nm. On the contrary, brake specific fuel consumption increased 0.96% and 8.2% with CO B25 and CO B50 according to pure diesel at 11.25 Nm. Besides, decreases were observed on carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon and smoke emissions with fuel blends compared that diesel.
Detailed analysis on engine operating in dual fuel mode with different energy fractions of sustainable HHO gas
Authors: Subramanian Balaji , Lakshmaiya Natrayan , Ramasamy Dhivagar , Devarajan Yuvarajan 
Published: March 2022

AbstractCarbon emission and problems associated with the world have been the major concerns for the past few decades. The world governments have implemented stringent emission norms to reduce the pollution created by hydrocarbon combustion in automobiles. The use of gaseous fuels in IC engines has gained interest among the research community. In the present research work, hydrogen, and oxygen (HHO gas) are produced together in an electrolyzer unit and is fed into the engine intake manifold before the carburetor. The electrolyzer consists of an anode, cathode and five neutral plates made of 316 L SS. Electrolyser production rate was tested with four different molarity conditions of NaOH electrolyte solution ranging from 0.24 to 1 N. It was noted that a maximum of 2 LPM of HHO gas was produced with the supply of 90 A‐h current at 1 N solution concentration. The performance and emission characters of the SI engine were conducted at six different load conditions and four flow rates of HHO gas. HHO gas induction has significantly increased the thermal brake efficiency by 8% and decreased the specific fuel consumption by 20%. With the supply of 2 LPM of HHO gas, CO2, HC, and NOx emissions were reduced by 67%, 59%, and 34%, respectively.
Optimized intellectual resource scheduling using deep reinforcement Q‐learning in cloud computing
Authors: Uma J. , Vivekanandan P. , Shankar S. 
Published: March 2022

AbstractCloud computing has recently attracted both academics and industrialists in the field of research. Virtualization allows cloud service providers (CSPs) with their own data centers to supply infrastructures, resources, and services to users by converting real servers into virtual machines (VMs). Profit‐driven CSPs charge users for VM leasing and service access while reducing energy consumption to increase profits. But CSPs even face challenges like minimizing the energy cost for the data center. Several different algorithms were introduced for minimizing the energy cost by using task scheduling (TS) and/or resource provisioning. However, scalability issues were encountered, or TS with task dependencies were not considered, which is a critical factor in assuring exact parallel execution of tasks in parallel. This article introduces a novel artificial algorithm, called deep reinforcement Q‐learning for resource scheduling which integrates the features of the Q‐learning and reinforcement learning approaches. The objective of this new approach is to provide a solution to the problem of handling energy consumption in a cloud computing environment. Based on advancements in WorkflowSim, experiments are carried out comparatively by considering the variance of make‐span, time, cost analysis, deadline overflow, and load balance in resource scheduling. The proposed method tends to be effective in terms of cost, energy consumption, resource utilization, and response time. The resource reuse capability of the proposed methodology is 63% higher when compared to the modified particle swarm optimization and modified cat swarm optimization technique. The task approval rate of the proposed methodology is 54% higher than the crow search‐based load balancing algorithm and 50% higher than the task duplication‐based scheduling algorithm.
Visible light communication performance using MIMO‐ADO‐OFDM system
Authors: Hameed Samir M. , Abdulsatar Sinan M. , Sabri Atheer A. 
Published: March 2022

AbstractVisible light communications (VLC) and optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (O‐OFDM) have recently been identified as hopeful wireless techniques. Asymmetrically clipped DC‐biased O‐OFDM (ADO‐OFDM) is a modern performance enhancement technology used in VLC. This article proposes a performance improvement model using a novel approach that collaborates with ADO‐OFDM and multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) in different design scenarios. In the first scenario, the bit‐error‐rate (BER) performance improvement is examined using different setups of MIMO‐ADO‐OFDM with maximal ratio combining (MRC). 8 × 8 MIMO good performance can be attained with about 15 dB signal‐to‐noise ratio for BER = 10−4. Another scenario is to boost the spectral efficiency of MIMO‐ADO‐OFDM by employing spatial multiplexing (SMX). However, 8 × 8 MIMO with SMX can improve spectral efficiency eight times that of single‐input single‐output ADO‐OFDM by fragmenting source data into numerous independent data streams. In the last scenario, multi‐user MIMO is developed by adopting ADO‐OFDM with zero‐forcing equalisers, allowing each user to consume all available bandwidth. The proposed technologies are evaluated by comparison with other MIMO systems, different O‐OFDM, and under a non‐linear LED model.
Current perspectives regarding SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccination in chronic lymphocytic leukemia
Authors: Molica Stefano , Tam Constantine , Polliack Aaron 
Published: March 2022

AbstractIn immunocompetent people, the mRNA vaccines BNT162b2 and mRNA‐1273 have been shown to be safe and effective against coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID‐19). However, results of cohort studies and meta‐analyses have indicated that the degree of humoral response to SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccines in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) appears to be lower than that observed in the general population. These inadequate responses are mainly related to the disease itself and to the immunosuppressive effect of therapies administered. In the specific context of CLL, enrolling patients with sub‐optimal vaccine‐response in pivotal vaccine trials could be considered as an appropriate approach to improve response to the COVID‐19 vaccine. These clinical trials should also address the issues of regularity and timing of vaccine booster doses or re‐vaccinations, especially in patients undergoing therapy with pathway‐targeting agents and anti‐CD20 monoclonal antibodies. However, since hypogammaglobulinemia is a serious consequence of CLL, patients who do not have a detectable antibody response should be natural candidates for preventive antibody therapy.
Controls on decadal, annual, and seasonal concentration‐discharge relationships in the Sleepers River Research Watershed, Vermont, northeastern United States
Authors: Porter Veronica M. , Shanley James B. , Sebestyen Stephen D. , Liu Fengjing 
Published: March 2022

AbstractPast studies on concentration‐discharge (C‐Q) relationships have focused on short‐term or low‐temporal resolution data. While advancing understanding of catchment processes, these studies provided limited insight on catchment response over time or to climate change. Using 15 solutes from 1992 to 2015 at Sleepers River Research Watershed, Vermont, we compared C‐Q relationships over decades, years, and seasons to elucidate controls on stream chemical variation. We applied end‐member mixing analysis (EMMA) to identify solute sources and flow path routing. EMMA identified three end‐members: near‐surface runoff (NSR), riparian groundwater, and hillslope hollow groundwater. Shifting mixing proportions of these end‐members accounted for the temporal variability of conservative (no chemical reaction en route from source to stream) solutes in streamflow. For example, an increase in NSR fraction, typical of high flow, caused flushing (increased concentrations) of NO3−, DOC, Al, and Fe, which were greatest in NSR, dilution of specific conductance and base cation, SO42−, Si, Sr, Ba, and Mn concentrations, which were greatest in the two groundwater end‐members. This behaviour is reflected in the b‐coefficient of the C‐Q relation (C = aQb), which indicates the strength of dilution (b < −0.1) and flushing (b > 0.1) effects. For conservative solutes, the b‐coefficient decreased significantly (p < 0.01) with an increase in the groundwater to NSR concentration ratio. Solutes that are conservative and have relatively constant concentrations in end‐members over time showed consistent annual C‐Q patterns over years and decades. Furthermore, the strength of dilution or flushing was stronger during the snowmelt period, when the NSR fraction peaked, than during the dormant and growing seasons. With shorter snowmelt periods and snow to rain shifts, the flushing or dilution power of snowmelt runoff will weaken and alter catchment response to climate change. These insights provide more tools for the interpretation of catchment processes and responses to climate change.
Patch‐based local deep feature extraction for automated skin cancer classification
Authors: Gajera Himanshu K. , Zaveri Mukesh A. , Nayak Deepak Ranjan 
Published: March 2022

AbstractSkin cancer detection through dermoscopy images has remained challenging due to higher inter‐class uniformity and intra‐class diversity. Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have recently obtained remarkable attention for automated skin cancer classification; however, most of these methods extract features from the global image of high resolution. One of the major drawbacks of these methods is the downscaling of input images to a low resolution, which leads to information loss. Moreover, the lack of a vast number of dermoscopy images is a concern. To overcome these issues and improve the classification accuracy, we propose a novel method using patch‐based local deep feature extraction. In the proposed method, the features are extracted from different patches of a dermoscopy image using a pre‐trained CNN model and are fused to preserve fine details. The kernel principal component analysis is then employed to select the prominent features, and a feed‐forward neural network is finally used to detect skin cancer. The approach is validated using two benchmark datasets: ISIC 2016 and ISIC 2017. The experimental results show that the suggested method achieves promising results in comparison with state‐of‐the‐art approaches. Moreover, a comparative analysis is made among contemporary pre‐trained CNN models.
A porcine cholecystic extracellular matrix conductive scaffold for cardiac tissue repair
Authors: Nair Reshma S. , Sobhan Praveen K. , Shenoy Sachin J. , Prabhu Mukund A. , Rema Aswathy M. , Ramachandran Surya , C. Geetha Surendran , V. Pratheesh Kanakarajan , Mony Manjula P. , Raj Reshmi , Anilkumar Thapasimuthu V. 
Published: March 2022

AbstractCardiac tissue engineering using cells, scaffolds or signaling molecules is a promising approach for replacement or repair of damaged myocardium. This study addressed the contemporary need for a conductive biomimetic nanocomposite scaffold for cardiac tissue engineering by examining the use of a gold nanoparticle‐incorporated porcine cholecystic extracellular matrix for the same. The scaffold had an electrical conductivity (0.74 ± 0.03 S/m) within the range of native myocardium. It was a suitable substrate for the growth and differentiation of cardiomyoblast (H9c2) as well as rat mesenchymal stem cells to cardiomyocyte‐like cells. Moreover, as an epicardial patch, the scaffold promoted neovascularisation and cell proliferation in infarcted myocardium of rats. It was concluded that the gold nanoparticle coated cholecystic extracellular matrix is a prospective biomaterial for cardiac tissue engineering.
Conquering multidrug resistant lung cancer by upconversion nanoparticles‐mediated photodynamic therapy and gene silencing
Authors: Kalluru Poliraju , Shanmugam Munusamy , Vankayala Raviraj , Chiang Chi‐Shiun , Hwang Kuo Chu 
Published: March 2022

AbstractMultidrug resistance (MDR) problem is a challenging task in cancer treatments. Among various types of cancers, lung cancer is considered incurable, as it is diagnosed very often at the advanced metastatic stage, where surgical operations and radiation treatments become highly ineffective. In addition, lung cancers are multidrug resistant either intrinsically or upon continuous administration and stimulation of chemotherapeutic drugs. To conquer the difficult MDR problem, in this study, we developed a simple and effective therapeutic strategy to achieve complete destruction of multidrug resistant lung cancer by an unprecedented upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs)‐mediated photodynamic therapy (PDT) combined with effective (~70%) superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene silencing using ultra‐low doses (320 mW/cm2) of NIR light (980 nm) excitation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful literature example in achieving complete destruction of multidrug resistant cancers. Overall, the current work points out a new direction to the clinicians for the therapeutic design and effective treatments of multidrug resistant cancers.
Association Between Systemic Corticosteroid Use and Mortality in Patients with Epiglottitis
Authors: Kimura Yuya , Jo Taisuke , Inoue Norihiko , Suzukawa Maho , Tanaka Goh , Kage Hidenori , Kumazawa Ryosuke , Matsui Hiroki , Fushimi Kiyohide , Yasunaga Hideo , Matsui Hirotoshi 
Published: March 2022

ObjectivesTo clarify whether treatment with systemic corticosteroids at a certain dose was associated with better outcomes in patients with epiglottitis requiring airway management (tracheotomy or airway intubation).MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study on patients hospitalized for epiglottitis requiring airway management from a nationwide inpatient database (between July 2010 and March 2019). Patients treated with systemic corticosteroids equivalent to methylprednisolone ≥40 mg/d within 2 days of admission and patients who were not treated with corticosteroids within 2 days of admission were compared after inverse probability of treatment weighting using covariate balancing propensity score. The primary outcome was all‐cause 30‐day in‐hospital mortality, and secondary outcomes included all‐cause 7‐day in‐hospital mortality, length of hospital stay, and total medical cost.ResultsThere were 1986 and 1771 patients in the corticosteroid and control groups, respectively. A total of 72 of 3757 (1.9%) patients died within 30 days of admission, including 17 of 1986 (0.9%) patients in the corticosteroid group and 55 of 1771 (3.1%) in the control group (weighted odds ratio, 0.28 [95% confidence interval, 0.11–0.70]; weighted risk difference, −2.2% [−3.2% to −1.3%]). Treatment with corticosteroids was associated with lower total medical costs (weighted median, $6,187 vs. $6,587; weighted difference, $‐1,123 [−2,238 to −8]) but not all‐cause 7‐day in‐hospital mortality (weighted odds ratio, 0.63 [0.22–1.82]; weighted risk difference, −0.3% [−0.9 to 0.2]) and length of hospital stay (weighted median, 13 vs. 13 days; weighted difference, −0.2 days [−2.1 to 1.8]).ConclusionsSystemic corticosteroids may be beneficial to patients with epiglottitis requiring airway management.Level of Evidence3 Laryngoscope, 133:344–349, 2023