• Energy Research
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To report the clinical efficiency and complications in patients treated with retrograde transvenous ethanol embolization of high-flow peripheral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). Retrograde transvenous ethanol embolization of high-flow AVMs is a technique that can be used to treat AVMs with a dominant outflow vein whenever conventional interventional procedures have proved insufficient.This is a retrospective study of the clinical effectiveness and complications of retrograde embolization in five patients who had previously undergone multiple arterial embolization procedures without clinical success.Clinical outcomes were good in all patients but were achieved at the cost of serious, although transient, complications in three patients.Retrograde transvenous ethanol embolization is a highly effective therapy for high-flow AVMs. However, because of the high complication rate, it should be reserved as a last resort, to be used after conventional treatment options have failed.

Deaths attributed to rising temperatures and heat waves represent a continuing public health concern. Climate change affects social determinants of health and local and global health inequities, especially those negatively impacted by high temperatures. Individuals with chronic health conditions have greater likelihood of mortality due to rising temperatures. Nurses witness the harmful effects of climate change but may not be aware that a patient's worsening symptoms can be due to heat. Nurses need to understand and then educate patients and communities about ways to reduce harm from heat, medication interactions with heat, and what safety measures to take in regions of high heat or during heat waves to best promote health equity and reduce mortality.[J Contin Educ Nurs. 2022;53(10):460–464.]

The formation and decay of excited states of light‐harvesting bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) molecules and primary charge separation in reaction centres (RCs) of pigment‐protein complex B890 of the purple bacterium Chromatium minutissimum were studied as a function of excitation wavelength by means of picosecond absorbance difference spectroscopy. Selective excitation in the RC absorption band (at 800 nm) induced rapid bleaching of the absorption band of the RC BChl dimer (τ ∼ 1 ps) without absorption changes due to excited light‐harvesting BChl. It is concluded that excitation energy transfer from the BChl dimer of the RC to light‐harvesting BChl molecules is considerably slower than RC charge separation. Therefore, energy transfer from the light‐harvesting antenna to the RC in bacterial photosynthesis may be described as a ‘migration‐limited model’.

The crucial role evaluation can play in the co-development of project design and its implementation will be addressed through the analysis of a case study, the Green Communities (GC) project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Environment within the EU Interregional Operational Program (2007-2013) "Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency". The project's broader goals included an attempt to trigger a change in Italian local development strategies, especially for mountain and inland areas, which would be tailored to the real needs of communities, and based on a sustainable exploitation and management of the territorial assets. The goal was not achieved, and this paper addresses the issues of how GC could have been more effective in fostering a vision of change, and which design adaptations and evaluation procedures would have allowed the project to better cope with the unexpected consequences and resistances it encountered. The conclusions drawn are that projects should be conceived, designed and carried out as dynamic systems, inclusive of a dynamic and engaged evaluation enabling the generation of feedbacks loops, iteratively interpreting the narratives and dynamics unfolding within the project, and actively monitoring the potential of various relationships among project participants for generating positive social change.

From its inception, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), which is part of the broader Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has contributed to the development of international radiological protection norms and standards. This continues today, in the form of studies and workshops to assist radiological protection policy makers, regulators and practitioners to develop concepts and approaches to help the international system of radiological protection, as recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), to evolve to better serve societal needs. The NEA's Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH), in providing this support, has collaborated closely with the ICRP and strongly supports the current ICRP recommendation development process. In particular, active dialogue with a broad range of stakeholders is contributing to the evolution of concepts towards consensus on new ICRP recommendations. The CRPPH, as a body of ICRP recommendation practitioners, feels that the public, workers and the environment are well protected by the current radiological protection system, but agrees that a new consolidation and clarification of ICRP recommendations would be of value. The intent of the CRPPH in collaborating with ICRP is to develop a system of radiological protection that is simplified, more coherent, firmly based upon science and more clearly presented than the current system. This paper summarises the more detailed views of the CRPPH on the evolution of the system of radiological protection.

The interaction of ethanol with drugs becomes more and more important because of a constant increase of the consumption of both. While most of the commonly used drugs do not alter the elimination of alcohol there exist a number of drugs which influence the degradation of ethanol by inhibition of the acetaldehyddehydrogenase. In combination with alcohol these drugs lead to an antabus-like reaction. In respect to the influence of ethanol on the metabolic degradation of drugs it must be destinguished between acute and chronic effects of alcohol. Upon acute influence of ethanol we observe an increased efficiency of many drugs. Chronical influence of ethanol on the other hand leads to a reduced action of drugs by enzyme inhibition. Besides the interaction on the level of biotransformation the interaction on the receptor-level is important. This mechanism especially leads to an increased efficiency of drugs which influence the central-nervous system.

N2 and O6 substituted guanine derivatives are well-known as potent and selective CDK2 inhibitors. The ability of molecular docking using the program AutoDock3 and the hybrid method ONIOM, to obtain some quantum chemical descriptors with the aim to successfully rank these inhibitors, was assessed. The quantum chemical descriptors were used to explain the affinity, of the series studied, by a model of the CDK2 binding site. The initial structures were obtained from docking studies and the ONIOM method was applied with only a single point energy calculation on the protein-ligand structure. We obtained a good correlation model between the ONIOM derived quantum chemical descriptor "H-bond interaction energy" and the experimental biological activity, with a correlation coefficient value of R = 0.80 for 75 compounds. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that both methodologies are used in conjunction in order to obtain a correlation model. The model suggests that electrostatic interactions are the principal driving force in this protein-ligand interaction. Overall, the approach was successful for the cases considered, and it suggests that could be useful for the design of inhibitors in the lead optimization phase of drug discovery.

Ethanol has been claimed to potentiate greatly the lethality of propoxyphene, although published clinical data suggest only an additive effect. Mice were treated intraperitoneally with various doses of propoxyphene hydrochloride and ethanol. Isobolograms of the data show the combination to be less-than-additive for lethality and loss of motor coordination and, at worst, simply additive for sedation.

Excessive ethanol ingestion causes gastric mucosal damage through the inflammatory and oxidative processes. The present study was aimed to evaluate the protective effect of thalidomide on ethanol-induced gastric mucosal damage in mice. The animals were pretreated with vehicle or thalidomide (30 or 60 mg/kg, orally), and one hour later, the gastric mucosal injury was induced by oral administration of acidified ethanol. The animals were euthanized one hour after ethanol ingestion, and gastric tissues were collected to biochemical analyzes. The gastric mucosal lesions were assessed by macroscopic and histopathological examinations. The results showed that treatment of mice with thalidomide prior to the administration of ethanol dose-dependently reduced the gastric ulcer index. Thalidomide pretreatment significantly reduced the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines [tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6], malondialdehyde (MDA) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity. In addition, thalidomide significantly inhibited ethanol-induced nitric oxide (NO) overproduction in gastric tissue. Histological observations showed that ethanol-induced gastric mucosal damage was attenuated by thalidomide pretreatment. It seems that thalidomide as an anti-inflammatory agent may have a protective effect against alcohol-induced mucosal damage by inhibition of neutrophil infiltration and reducing the production of nitric oxide and inflammatory cytokines in gastric tissue.