PURPOSE Acid neutralization during chemical clearance is significantly prolonged in children with cystic fibrosis, compared to symptomatic children without cystic fibrosis. The absence of available reference values impeded identification of abnormal findings within individual patients with and without cystic fibrosis. The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that significantly more childr...

Phagocytosis by innate immune cells is one of the most effective barriers against the multiplication and dissemination of microbes within the mammalian host. Candida albicans, a pathogenic yeast, has robust mechanisms that allow survival upon macrophage phagocytosis. C. albicans survives in part because it can utilize the alternative carbon sources available in the phagosome, including carboxyl...

In this work, the pH neutralization process is described by a neural network Wiener (NNW) model. A nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) is established for the considered process. The main difficulty that can be encountered in NMPC is solving the optimization problem at each sampling time to determine an optimal solution in finite time. The aim of this paper is the use of global optimizatio...

Modification of the pH of kaolin-serum treatment produces hemagglutination-inhibition test results comparable with the plaque neutralization test in duck embryo tissue culture; the standard treatment does not.

Biofilms are comprised of bacterial-clusters (microcolonies) enmeshed in an extracellular matrix. Streptococcus mutans can produce exopolysaccharides (EPS)-matrix and assemble microcolonies with acidic microenvironments that can cause tooth-decay despite the surrounding neutral-pH found in oral cavity. How the matrix influences the pH and bacterial activity locally remains unclear. Here, we sim...

This study investigated the potential for utilizing six treatment agents (two limestones, sand, starfish, black shale, and concrete as treatment agents for acid mine drainage (AMD) wastewater. These materials, with a high capacity for heavy metals, can be obtained and employed as alternative low-cost limiting substitutes. For investigating the neutralization capacity, the change in pH, Eh, and ...