Spinal intradural malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor at the foramen magnum in a non-neurofibromatosis child.

Primary spinal intradural malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs) are rare neoplasms, especially in children with a non-neurofibromatosis background. Scarce pediatric data exist with regard to such tumors. A 4-year-old child with a history of spastic limb weakness was operated for a foramen magnum spinal lesion (intradural and extradural) with imaging suggestive of schwannoma; the histopathology, however, was that of a MPNST.

Do weak institutions undermine global innovation production efficiency?

This paper focuses on institutional influences on innovation efficiency across countries. Whereas various causes and effects of technological change have been examined, empirical investigations of the efficiency involved in innovation production are relatively few. Using data on a large sample of nations over 2018-2020 and considering corruption, regulatory quality, and state fragility as alternative institutional dimensions, our results show that greater corruption facilitates ("greases") efficiency in the production of innovations.

Explaining vaccine hesitancy: A COVID-19 study of the United States.

Using recent data on the unvaccinated population across US states, this paper focuses on the determinants of vaccine hesitancy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings show that more prosperous states and states with more elderly residents and more physicians have lower vaccine hesitancy. There was some evidence of the significance of race, but internet access and history of other contagious diseases failed to make a difference.

Managing the risk of COVID-19 via vaccine passports: Modeling economic and policy implications.

The increasing use of vaccine passports (VPs) to certify immunity from the prevailing coronavirus has created positive and negative aspects that have shaken the workings of markets. The VPs are, however, not universally used and not required by all businesses and governments at this point. Given the newness associated with VPs and the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, full implications of VPs have not been considered.

Multi-step ahead prediction of hourly influent characteristics for wastewater treatment plants: a case study from North America.

Prediction of influent characteristics, before any treatment takes place, is of great importance to the operation and management of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In this study, four machine-learning models, including multilayer perceptron (MLP), long short-term memory network (LSTM), K-nearest neighbour (KNN), and random forest (RF), are introduced to utilize real-time wastewater data from three WWTPs in North America (i.e.

Death takes no bribes: Impact of perceived corruption on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions at combating COVID-19.

Corruption is considered in the literature as an activity with several externalities and spillover effects. Adding to the recent research on the corruption-COVID-19 nexus, we study the impact of corruption on coronavirus cases. High perceived levels of corruption have been proven to lead to lower institutional trust, and hence possibly to lower levels of citizen compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as lockdowns, imposed by the authorities during the first wave of the pandemic to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

The effect of sludge retention time (SRT) on the Nitrifier typical kinetics at ambient temperature under the low ammonia density.

Sludge retention time (SRT) regulation is one of the essential management techniques for refined control of the main-sidestream treatment process under the low ammonia density. It is indispensable to understand the effect of SRTs changes on the Nitrifier kinetics to obtain the functional separation of the Nitrifier and the refined control of the nitrification process. In this study, Nitrifier was cultured with conditions of 35 ± 0.

Do disease epidemics force economic activity underground? International evidence.

This article studies the impact of disease epidemics on the worldwide prevalence of the shadow or the underground economy. The informal sector has low entry barriers and provides an easy short-term option for the supply of goods and services during epidemics when traditional supply lines are cut or strained. Furthermore, the enforcement resources might be directed elsewhere during epidemics, lowering the expected costs of shadow operations.

Unmasking the demand for masks: Analytics of mandating coronavirus masks.

This paper analytically examines the demand for surgical masks following the recent health precautions due to coronavirus. Using a simple linear demand curve and alternatively examining the impacts of requirements that mandate (a) the wearing of masks by frontline workers; (b) suggested but not required masking by the whole public; and (c) compulsory masking by the whole public. The impacts of the different scenarios on the price elasticity of demand are determined along with the slope (or the rate of change) of elasticity.

Modeling the anaerobic digestion of wastewater sludge under sulfate-rich conditions.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a biological treatment process to stabilize organic solids and produce biogas. If present, sulfate is reduced to sulfide by anaerobic sulfate-reducing bacteria and the sulfide can be toxic to anaerobic microorganisms. Here, the effect of high initial sulfate concentration on AD of wastewater sludge was investigated using lab-scale batch experiments.

COVID-19 vaccine rollout-scale and speed carry different implications for corruption.

The sanctioning of different coronavirus vaccines (with some approved by regulators for public delivery, and others in the pipeline) has met with relief by many sections of the public and the government. However, partly due to the damages associated with the pandemic and the ensuing euphoria over vaccines' arrival, some of the challenges are mostly being ignored or are not recognized. This paper identifies some pitfalls and drawbacks in vaccine delivery.

Evaluating nitrite oxidizing organism survival under different nitrite concentrations.

The objective of this study is to explore the optimal pre-treatment procedures and statistics methods for live/dead bacterial staining using nitrite oxidizing organism (NOO) as the research aim. This staining method was developed and widely utilized to evaluate activated bacterial survival situation, because it is direct and convenience to count live and dead bacteria amount by colour distinguishes (green/red) from pictures taken by microscope. The living cell (green colour) percentage and initial bacterial chemical oxygen demand (COD) could be used for accurate reaction rate calculation at the beginning of tests.

Effects of low pH conditions on decay of methanogenic biomass.

Acidic failure is relatively common in anaerobic digesters that receive readily biodegradable food wastes at high loading. Under low pH conditions, the activity of methanogenic biomass decreases resulting in complete failure of the digestion process. In this experimental study, we demonstrated that one of the causes for the digester failure under low pH conditions is due to accelerated decay of methanogenic biomass.

Protection of sildenafil citrate hydrogel against radiation-induced skin wounds.

Radiation induced skin wound/dermatitis is one of the common side effects of radiotherapy or interventional radiobiology. In order to combat impaired healing of radiation wounds, alternative therapy to use sildenafil citrate (SC) topical hydrogel as a therapeutic option was proposed that has known to enhance nitric oxide in wounds. Our aim was to develop a radiation induced skin wound model and to investigate the wound healing efficacy of 5% SC hydrogel formulation in Sprague-Dawley rats.

Determination of optimal dose of allylthiourea (ATU) for the batch respirometric test of activated sludge.

Allylthiourea is a known specific inhibitor for ammonium oxidiser to suppress its oxygen uptake, and is commonly used for various kinds of batch respirometric tests to detect heterotrophic respiration in activated sludge. However, when high heterotrophs were present in the sample, it appeared the inhibitor was noticeably degraded and reached below the inhibition threshold after a couple of days, which resulted in overestimation of the heterotrophic respiration. The biological decomposition of the inhibitor was expressed with a Monod-type rate expression having a half-saturation coefficient of 980 mg-COD/L and maximum specific growth rate of 1.

High nitrite concentration accelerates nitrite oxidising organism's death.

High nitrite is a known operation parameter to inhibit the biological oxidation of nitrite to nitrate. The phenomenon is traditionally expressed using a Monod-type equation with non-competitive inhibition, in which the reaction associated with the biomass growth is reduced when high nitrite is present. On the other hand, very high nitrite is also known to slay nitrifiers.

Luminescence, circular dichroism and in silico studies of binding interaction of synthesized naphthylchalcone derivatives with bovine serum albumin.

Chalcones possess various biological properties, for example, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antimalarial, anticancer, antiprotozoal and antitubercular activity. In this study, naphthylchalcone derivatives were synthesized and characterized using H NMR C NMR, Fourier transform infrared and mass techniques. Yields for all derivatives were found to be >90%.

In vivo anti-arthritic efficacy of Camellia sinensis (L.) in collagen induced arthritis model.

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune inflammatory disorder with synovial hyperplasia, destruction of cartilage, bone damage is often associated with risk of infections. Such risk could be attributed towards usage of immunosuppressive agents. Thus, the present study was undertaken to evaluate the anti-arthritic efficacy of aquo-alcoholic extract of Camellia sinensis (L.

Ex-vivo complexation, skin permeation, interaction and cytodermal toxicity studies of p-tertbutylcalix[4]arene nanoemulsion for radiation decontamination.

Aims: p-tertbutylcalix[4]arene loaded nanoemulsion has been designed, characterized and evaluated for skin decontamination of radionuclides of interest in nuclear and radiological emergencies. Further, nanoemulsion was evaluated for Ex-vivo complexation, skin permeation, interaction and cytodermal toxicity.

Materials And Methods: Ex-vivo skin complexation studies were conducted using High-resolution sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (HR-SF-ICPMS).

Effect of Holarrhena antidysentrica (Ha) and Andrographis paniculata (Ap) on the biofilm formation and cell membrane integrity of opportunistic pathogen Salmonella typhimurium.

Increasing occurrence of gastroenteritis outbreaks caused by food borne opportunistic microorganisms has become a major problem in food industry as well as in immunocompromised host. Antimicrobial agents are losing their efficacy due to increase in the microbial resistance. For such reasons, conventional treatment has become limited to manage the infections state.

Augmenting the potency of third-line antibiotics with Berberis aristata: In vitro synergistic activity against carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli.

The aim of this study was to analyse the in vitro synergistic antibacterial potential of an aquoethanolic extract of the stem bark of Berberis aristata (PTRC-2111-A) with third-line antibiotics against carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli. PTRC-2111-A was prepared and was characterised using phytochemical- and bioactivity-based fingerprinting. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analyses were performed, and superoxide and hydroxyl scavenging activities were assessed in conjunction with in vitro antimicrobial efficacy testing against the test micro-organism.

In vitro bactericidal activity of Berberis aristata extract against clinical isolates of carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli.

Background: Berberis aristata is known to contain a variety of phenolic compounds, flavonoids such as quercetin attributing towards its holistic capability of mitigating multidrug resistance.

Methods: B. aristata stem bark extract was prepared and characterized using phytochemical and bioactivity-based fingerprinting.

In vitro bactericidal activity of promising nutraceuticals for targeting multidrug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Objective: We evaluated the bactericidal activity of nutraceuticals against multidrug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The nutritionally valued herbs were screened on the basis of a matrix modeling approach and molecular docking based validation analysis.

Methods: The database of 38 herbs developed earlier using fuzzy logic based scoring analysis was subjected to molecular docking based validation.

Anti-hemolytic, hemagglutination inhibition and bacterial membrane disruptive properties of selected herbal extracts attenuate virulence of Carbapenem Resistant Escherichia coli.

Expression of a multitude of virulence factors by multi-drug resistant microbial strains, e.g., Carbapenem Resistant Escherichia coli (Family: Enterobacteriaceae; Class: Gammaproteobacteria), is responsible for resistance against beta-lactam antibiotics.

Assessment of aquo-ethanolic extract of Camellia sinensis against Carbapenem Resistant Escherichia coli: In Vivo Trials in a Murine Model.

The prevalence of Carbapenem Resistant Escherichia coli (CRE) has increased considerably during the last decade, which can be ascribed to relative scarcity of effective non toxic antimicrobial agents. The present study was conducted to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of aquo-ethanolic (1:1) extract of leaves of Camellia sinensis (PTRC-31911-A) against Carbapenem Resistant Escherichia coli at preclinical level using peritonitis infection model in Sprague Dawley rats. Efficacy analysis of PTRC-31911-A involved enumeration of CRE colonies in blood and urine samples of test animals for a period of 5 days from infection.