Bauxite residue (BR) is a highly alkaline type of solid waste generated by the aluminum industry that poses a significant environmental risk upon disposal. However, BR is abundant in metals, especially iron, that offer the desired catalytic activity for microwave pyrolysis. Thus, this study aimed to use BR as a low-cost microwave absorber and catalyst for biomass microwave pyrolysis to obtain higher quality bio-oil and biochar. The addition of BR to switchgrass, the representative biomass, did not facilitate microwave absorption because most of the iron in the BR was in the form of goethite and hematite. However, the addition of an efficient microwave-absorbing catalyst (e.g., K3PO4 or clinoptilolite) to the BR triggered synergistic effects, increasing the microwave heating rate by ~ 346% compared to K3PO4 or clinoptilolite alone, which was attributed to the reduction of hematite and goethite to maghemite and/or magnetite. The addition of 10% BR to a mixture of 10% K3PO4 and 10% bentonite further triggered synergistic effects that resulted in the highest microwave heating rate of 439 °C/min, which was a 211% increase compared to using 10% K3PO4 and 10% bentonite without BR, and doubled the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of the biochar, reduced the bio-oil acidity by up to 71% compared to that obtained using a single catalyst, and increased the alkylated phenols contents in the bio-oil by 339% compared to that produced without a catalyst. These results demonstrated that the synergistic effects of BR can only be triggered when mixed with another efficient microwave-absorbing catalyst.

BACKGROUND: Surgical management of breast cancer with gigantomastia can be challenging when planning breast conservation, as major breast reduction is required. Complex oncoplastic procedures can carry an additional surgical risk in this situation. We suggest batwing mammoplasty as a simple and safe oncoplastic procedure for those patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fourteen patients with gigantomastia diagnosed with breast cancer were included in this prospective cohort study. All underwent batwing mammoplasty and contralateral symmetrisation procedure between May 2016 and June 2018. Patient satisfaction assessed by the Breast-Q questionnaire.

RESULTS: All patients had a body mass index above 30 kg/m with a mean of 36.7 kg/m (range 31.6-44.9 kg/m). The mean distance from midclavicular point to nipple was 42 cm (range 38-50 cm). The mean operative time was 83 minutes for procedures done by a single surgeon. Mean specimen weight was 1.2 kg (ranging from 1.035-1.63 kg). Postoperative complications occurred in 14.2% of patients. Nipple-areola complex viability was not compromised nor sensation impaired. The mean Breast-Q score for patient satisfaction with breasts was 68.6 (range 61-74). The mean score for physiological wellbeing was 77.3 (range 64-84) and the mean score for physical wellbeing was 35 (range 31-40).

CONCLUSION: Batwing mammoplasty is a safe and simple oncoplastic procedure in patients who have breast cancer with gigantomastia. It has short operative time and low complications rate. In our cohort of patients, there was no delay in the delivery of adjuvant treatment. The cosmetic outcome was favourable with a high patient satisfaction.

Basic leucine zipper transcription factor 2 (Batf2) activation is detrimental in Type 1-controlled infectious diseases, demonstrated during infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and Listeria monocytogenes Lm. In Batf2-deficient mice (Batf2), infected with Mtb or Lm, mice survived and displayed reduced tissue pathology compared to infected control mice. Indeed, pulmonary inflammatory macrophage recruitment, pro-inflammatory cytokines and immune effectors were also decreased during tuberculosis. This explains that batf2 mRNA predictive early biomarker found in active TB patients is increased in peripheral blood. Similarly, Lm infection in human macrophages and mouse spleen and liver also increased Batf2 expression. In striking contrast, Type 2-controlled schistosomiasis exacerbates during infected Batf2 mice with increased intestinal fibro-granulomatous inflammation, pro-fibrotic immune cells, and elevated cytokine production leading to wasting disease and early death. Together, these data strongly indicate that Batf2 differentially regulates Type 1 and Type 2 immunity in infectious diseases.

Challenges of wireless sensor networks under-optimization in field of research have been globally concerned. Generally, lifetime extension is still considered to be the most dominant challenge for WSNs. Clustering and routing protocols have been proposed as optimization solutions to extend WSNs lifetime. In this paper, we introduce a newly meta-heuristic population based soft computing algorithm as an optimization technique to extend the WSNs lifetime. The proposed technique applies the population-based metaheuristic bat swarm optimization algorithm. It optimizes the network as a nonlinear problem to select the optimum cluster head nodes across number of generations. The objective; fitness function, employed to minimize the intra-cluster compactness with minimum distance between nodes in same cluster. The proposed technique is simulated and applied into four different wireless sensor networks deployments and compared with the LEACH hierarchal clustering and routing protocol. Results show that this proposed technique outperforms the classical LEACH. It efficiently optimizes the selection of cluster head nodes that ensure optimum coverage and connectivity based on intra-cluster distances. This reduces the energy consumption on each node level and hence increases the lifetime for each node, causing a significant extension in the wireless sensor network lifetime. The comparison between the hard or crisp LEACH routing and the soft or elastic proposed routing technique boasts the performance even more. The paper introduces a performance numerical analysis with the metrics of number of packets sent to sink, number of dead nodes, sum of WSN energy and the
network lifetime.