Local Agents Research Articles

Efficacy of Cucurmin and Aloevera Extracts Gel as Local Drugs Delivery Agents.

The usage of antimicrobials as local drug delivery (LDD) agents in the treatment of periodontitis has posed limitations due to the development of bacterial resistance, high cost, and unavailability, thus indicating the need for safer and economic alternatives. A split-mouth randomized clinical trial was carried out on 10 patients. Three sites in different quadrants were assigned, treatment modality of scaling and root planing (SRP) alone, SRP with LDD of curcumin gel, and SRP with LDD of 99% pure aloe vera gel, respectively. Clinical parameters were recorded at baseline and on 30th day postoperatively. Curcumin and aloe vera in addition to SRP demonstrated improvements in clinical parameters, though 99% aloe vera extract produced more statistically significant results when used as an LDD agent, as shown in intergroup comparisons for changes in periodontal parameters. Curcumin 10mg (Curenext) and 99% aloe vera extract as LDD along with regular mechanical debridement is a promising therapy in the treatment of chronic periodontitis.

Output Synchronization of Linear Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems With Periodic Event-Triggered Output Communication

This paper addresses an event-triggered output synchronization problem of linear heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) under directed graphs, where only the outputs not the internal information of the agents are allowed to be transmitted in the network. The event-triggered output synchronization problem is divided into two subproblems, the event-triggered consensus problem of a group of reference systems and the sampled-data output regulation problem of the local agent viewing its reference system as the exosystem. Under the intermittent output communication, these two subproblems are coupled with each other and need to be solved concurrently. By an event-triggered control law with a periodic ETM, cyclic small gain conditions are derived to guarantee the event-triggered output synchronization of the linear heterogeneous MASs. Two simulation examples presented finally show the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

EXPLORING POLITICALLY HISTORIC ALLEGORY IN MOHSIN HAMID’S MOTH SMOKE

The present research paper has analyzed Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke by treating history of India and Pakistan allegorically. Through the selected characters the writer has made satire on the Mughal Empire as well as the political leaders of the time who have ruined the resources of country and subjugated people for the celebration of their power. The writer discusses the global issues through the discussion of local issues in the selected novel. This qualitative research based on anticolonial literary theory as counter narrative. The study concluded that history of colonization and subjugation transfers from foreign to local agents who prove to be worse than the actual colonizers. Keywords. History, politics, allegory, colonial.

Review of socio-residential vulnerability identification methodologies. Application to the cities of Bilbao and Barcelona

This article presents the most widely used methodologies to measure, analyse and assess the state of the building stock and the life conditions of people living in vulnerable neighbourhoods, in an attempt to identify limitations and opportunities within the design of more suitable instruments that will allow us to identify residential communities in a vulnerable situation, residential exclusion or at difficulty to access rehabilitation subsidies or allowances. The methodology adopted is based on the obtention of a first vulnerability index constructed from quantitative data that allows us to focus on the most vulnerable areas of the cities under study. Later, it is complemented with qualitative analysis, interviews to technical officers, entities’ representatives, and site visits and observations. The main obtained results consist of different methodological approaches and analytic and geospatial measurements of the residential vulnerability in the cities of Barcelona and Bilbao: from quantitative large-scale multicriterial analysis, geospatial analysis on specific aspects, to small-scale qualitative study cases, fieldwork and interviews to different actors. In conclusion, by applying those different methodologies in the same specific areas, we were able to determine how data disaggregation and specificity in relation to urban and building form and location provide relevant differential results that help to qualify certain patterns that can be detected but not explained by quantitative larger-scale integrative analysis. Besides, the qualitative information provided by key local agents of different networks was crucial to explain and understand the nature of geographical and time-changing patterns of residential vulnerability.

VLTinT: Visual-Linguistic Transformer-in-Transformer for Coherent Video Paragraph Captioning

Video Paragraph Captioning aims to generate a multi-sentence description of an untrimmed video with multiple temporal event locations in a coherent storytelling. Following the human perception process, where the scene is effectively understood by decomposing it into visual (e.g. human, animal) and non-visual components (e.g. action, relations) under the mutual influence of vision and language, we first propose a visual-linguistic (VL) feature. In the proposed VL feature, the scene is modeled by three modalities including (i) a global visual environment; (ii) local visual main agents; (iii) linguistic scene elements. We then introduce an autoregressive Transformer-in-Transformer (TinT) to simultaneously capture the semantic coherence of intra- and inter-event contents within a video. Finally, we present a new VL contrastive loss function to guarantee the learnt embedding features are consistent with the captions semantics. Comprehensive experiments and extensive ablation studies on the ActivityNet Captions and YouCookII datasets show that the proposed Visual-Linguistic Transformer-in-Transform (VLTinT) outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods in terms of accuracy and diversity. The source code is made publicly available at: https://github.com/UARK-AICV/VLTinT.

The Treatment of Severe Periodontitis Using a Local Antiseptic Desiccant and Subgingival Mechanical Instrumentation: A Pilot Study.

This randomized, split-mouth, controlled clinical study assessed the additional clinical benefits of a local desiccant antimicrobial agent (HY) combined with subgingival mechanical instrumentation (SRP) vs. SRP alone in treating severe periodontitis. Patients with stages III and IV periodontitis received full-mouth periodontal examinations at baseline and after a three-month follow-up. Two randomly selected hemiarches in each periodontitis patient were treated with SRP plus HY and were included in the test group, while the other two hemiarches received only SRP and were included in the control group. In thirty patients, the analyses of the evolution of the periodontal parameters over time showed statistically significant mean differences for the probing depths and clinical attachment level values resulting from all the examined sites, as well as from the interproximal sites (p < 0.001) in both the test and control groups. The intergroup comparisons of the same four parameters showed no significant differences (p = 0.322, p = 0.36, p = 0.516, and p = 0.509, respectively). Based on these study results, no additional benefits were obtained after HY subgingival applications.

Focal Cemento- Osseous Dysplasia - A Case Report

Cemento- osseous dysplasia is a reactive benign fibro-osseous lesion with the most commonly occurring type being Focal cemento-osseous dysplasia (FCOD). It is categorized by the replacement of normal bone with fibrous tissue along with calcification resembling cementum like structures. Most of the lesions were asymptomatic and no treatment was required. When the lesion is infected with any secondary local or systemic agent, it becomes symptomatic and intervention is required. Here, we report a case of asymptomatic FCOD of the mandible in a 29-year-old female patient. Histopathological evaluation of the biopsy specimen by decalcified sections aided in the final diagnosis of the case.

EVALUATION OF THE EFFICACY OF CHLORHEXIDINE-BASED MEDICATIONS IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC GENERALIZED PERIODONTITIS

The treatment of periodontal diseases remains a relevant issue today, as there is a wide range of therapeutic agents available for this pathology. Local therapeutic agents are commonly used in the oral cavity. Chlorhexidine is considered the gold standard in periodontology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of chlorhexidine-based medications in patients with chronic generalized periodontitis: Dentaid PerioAid Gel and Perio-Aid Protect. The study included 40 patients, with 20 diagnosed with chronic generalized periodontitis stage I-II and the other 20 with chronic generalized periodontitis stage II-III. All patients were further divided into 4 subgroups, with 10 patients in each subgroup.&#x0D; After 2 months of clinical research and patient examination, the following data were obtained for subgroup A1: the average plaque index (PI) was 31.82±0.96%, and the average bleeding on probing (BOP) was 18.67±2.47%. Among the patients in subgroup A1, the average depth of gingival sulcus was 96.41±0.76% for depths of 1-3 mm and 3.59±0.76% for periodontal pockets with depths of 4-5 mm.&#x0D; The measurements for subgroup A2 after 2 months of clinical research were as follows: the average PI was 32.16±1.10%, and the average BOP was 14.70±0.79%. Among the patients in subgroup A2, the average depth of gingival sulcus was 97.14±0.69% for depths of 1-3 mm and 2.74±0.68% for periodontal pockets with depths of 4-5 mm.&#x0D; The measurements for subgroup B1 after 2 months of clinical research were as follows: the average PI was 46.44±2.65, and the average BOP was 28.79±3.66%. Among the patients in subgroup B1, the average depth of gingival sulcus was 81.19±7.90% for depths of 1-3 mm, 14.06±5.50% for periodontal pockets with depths of 4-5 mm, and 4.55±3.13% for pockets with depths ≥ 6 mm.&#x0D; The measurements for subgroup B2 after 2 months of clinical research were as follows: the average PI was 44.09±1.00%, and the average BOP was 25.97±2.28%. Among the patients in subgroup B2, the average depth of gingival sulcus was 81.61±4.83% for depths of 1-3 mm, 15.96±4.90% for periodontal pockets with depths of 4-5 mm, and 1.18±0.52% for pockets with depths ≥ 6 mm.&#x0D; Comparing the obtained results of the clinical study in patients with chronic generalized periodontitis, it can be concluded that the treatment of this pathology with local application of chlorhexidine-based agents contributed to the improvement of clinical parameters after 2 months compared to the initial situation.

A distributed approach for solving AC–DC multi-objective OPF problem

This paper first proposes an optimization model for Multi-Objective Optimal Power Flow (MO-OPF) problem in AC–DC networks. The considered objective functions are the fuel cost, active power losses, and environmental emission. The AC and DC power flow equations, the converter operating limits, the voltage magnitude limits, and line capacity limits are considered in the proposed AC–DC MO-OPF model. Then an equivalent Gradient Dynamical System (GDS) for the AC–DC MO-OPF model is derived. Each equilibrium point of this GDS is a Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) point of the original AC–DC MO-OPF model. In Theorem 1, we derive condition under which this KKT point is a saddle point of the original AC–DC MO-OPF problem. The equivalent GDS has the property that it can be solved using a distributed solution algorithm. Every bus in the AC–DC power grid is considered as a local agent in the proposed distributed GDS algorithm, which only obtains information only from its neighbors. In Theorem 2, we prove that proposed distributed approach is locally convergent to the saddle point of the original AC–DC MO-OPF problem. To show the performance of our distributed approach to solve our developed AC–DC MO-OPF model, the simulation results based on several test systems are provided.

Right To Recall Political Representatives: Legal Audit of Article 85 Passage (1) Letter C Of Regulation Number 22 of 2003 And Article 12 Letter B Of Regulation Number 31 Of The Year 2002

The overall game plans for pardoning people from the DPR are contained in Article 22 B of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia read "Individuals from the DPR can be excused from office, the circumstances and systems for which are controlled in regulation" and afterward managed further in Regulation Number 17 of 2014 concerning Individuals' Consultative Get together, Individuals' Delegate Gathering, Territorial Agent Chamber, and Local Individuals' Agent Committee (MD3) and Regulation Number 2 of 2008 concerning Ideological groups. In the legal literature in Indonesia which regulates dismissal and replacement between members of the DPR, political parties have a great role in it. Where these guidelines are contained in Article 239 section (2) letter d of Regulation Number 17 of 2014 concerning Individuals' Consultative Gathering, Individuals' Agent Committee, the Territorial Agent Board, and the Local Nation's Agent Chamber expressed that ideological groups can choose individuals from Individuals' Agent Board who comes from the ideological group itself to be excused. Regarding legal regulations like this, it can be said that political parties have an active role in monitoring members of the DPR.

CARD29: Sodium Bicarbonate as an Adjunctive Local Anti-Thrombotic Agent for Cardiovascular Therapeutic Devices

Purpose: Despite clinical efficacy, mechanical circulatory support (MCS) systems remain challenged in maintaining physiologic hemostatic balance. The Impella heart pump is a micro-axial percutaneous MCS device that utilizes a purge flow for maintaining bearing lubrication, purge patency, and anti-thrombosis purposes, forming a purge gap micro-environment wherein purge fluid and blood may mix. During operation, a continuous 5% dextrose in water (D5W) + heparin purge solution flows through the Impella catheter to inhibit protein adsorption and thrombosis in internal purge gaps. This exogenous heparin can increase bleeding risk and complicate systemic heparin and anticoagulation management. Recent FDA approval has made available sodium bicarbonate (SB) as an alternative to purge heparin. Despite promising early clinical results, the influence of SB on blood platelets, central mediators of thrombosis and bleeding, remains unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of SB on human platelet function (adhesion, aggregation, activation) in vitro following incubation with relevant concentrations of heparin or SB. Methods: Human gel-filtered platelets (20,000/µL) or platelet rich plasma (100,000/µL) were obtained from ACD-A anticoagulated whole blood. Platelets were incubated (6:4 platelets: purge) at 37°C for 15 min with purge solutions (D5W; 50U/mL heparin + D5W; 25mEq/L SB + D5W; 50mEq/L SB + D5W; 100mEq/L SB + D5W). Platelet activation was measured as thrombin generation rate utilizing a previously-described modified prothrombinase assay. Platelet adhesion was measured via imaging (Nikon DS-Qi2; 100X) of fluorescent-labelled platelets (BioTracker490) adhered to glass. Platelet aggregation was quantified from agonist-mediated aggregation using a light-transmission aggregometer (PAP8E). All experiments were performed in duplicate with N≥3 donors. Results: SB altered overall platelet function in a concentration-dependent manner. 100mEq/L SB led to a significant decrease in platelet adhesion (0.11% decrease; Fig 1A), whereas only 25mEq/L SB led to a significant reduction in thrombin generation rate (14.0% decrease; Fig 1B). Collagen-mediated aggregation was significantly reduced after addition of 100mEq/L SB (42.2% decrease; Fig 1C). Traditional D5W+heparin solution significantly reduced platelet function, in all categories, to a greater degree than 25mEq/L SB, but had a similar effect to 50 or 100mEq/L SB when comparing platelet adhesion and activation metrics. Conclusion: SB in the concentrations tested led to altered platelet function, modulating surface adhesion, activation, and collagen-mediated aggregation –useful effects to limit device fouling and purge gap thrombosis. Use of SB as a localized anti-thrombotic agent, where its concentration and effect are not rapidly diluted, is promising for MCS such as the Impella system. SB use offers the potential for locally limiting thrombogenicity at the purge gap, while avoiding the need for exogenous heparin.

ID: 209893 The Effect of Local Anesthetics and Contrast Agents on Radiofrequency Ablation Lesion Size

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a validated treatment option for the treatment of chronic pain in patients with lumbar spondylosis. Lesion size is suggested to correlate with good clinical outcomes. This has created an abundance of scientific interest to develop products with larger lesion characteristics. Needle characteristics, energy transfer, and heat rate are known to modify lesion size. Here, we demonstrate that common intra-operative solutions such as Lidocaine, Iodine and Gadolinium-based products can also affect lesion shape.

Penerapan Pengendalian dengan Agens Hayati Lokal untuk Solusi Permasalahan Serangan OPT pada Tanaman Padi Organik di Desa Bumi Agung, Tegineneng, Pesawaran

OPT problems are still a major obstacle to organic rice cultivation due to limited understanding and control skills. The aim of implementing community service activities is to provide additional skills and insight regarding OPT control technology with local biological agents to solve the problem of organic rice farming in Bumiagung village, Tegineneng, Pesawaran. Technology transfer activities regarding the application of control with local biological agents to solve the problem of pest attacks on organic rice plants were carried out in Bumiagung Village, Tegineneng, Pesawaran which were carried out in June - October 2022 to the Progressive Organic Farmers Community. The stages of the activity are carried out in stages through conducting surveys, providing material, pre-testing, training and mentoring, post-testing, monitoring, and evaluation at the end of the activity. Before the activity begins, a survey is carried out to analyze conditions and problems and analyze the solutions needed for these problems. Farmers need to gain more knowledge and skills in managing pests that attack their land. The controls that are often used are vegetable pesticides and refugia. From the final evaluation results, the analysis shows that farmers realize that control with biological agents is effortless, inexpensive, and synergistic in supporting organic farming.

Studying the Efficacy of Local Hemostatic Agents In Vivo

Introduction: In modern clinical practice, there is no common and effective hemostatic agent for solid organs of the abdomen. Local agents such as hemostatic sponges, membranes, powders seem promising. The main advantages of hemostatic powders include relatively high efficacy, portability, versatility, as well as simplicity and low cost of manufacturing.Objective: To study the hemostatic efficacy of hemostatic powders’ samples based on the sodium salt of carboxymethylcellulose (Na-CMC) in an acute in vivo experiment.Materials and methods: The study was based at Kursk State Medical University. Fifty male Wistar rats (weighing 220-239 g) were selected as test animals. They were evenly divided into 5 groups: ARISTA AH, Cutanplast Powder, and Na-CMC hemostatic powders with 3 different dynamic viscosities: low (50-200 cP), medium (400-800 cP) and high (1500-3000 cP). Under general inhalation anesthesia, median laparotomy was performed in Wistar rats, the middle lobe of the liver was removed into the wound, and then marginal tangential resection was performed. We applied hemostatic powders of each group to the resulting wound, and then estimated the bleeding time and the volume of blood loss. We used the Mann-Whitney test (P ≤ .05) to assess the statistical significance of differences between the study groups.Results: We recorded the minimum bleeding time and the smallest volume of blood loss for the samples based on the Na-CMC and found no statistically significant differences between the viscosities groups.Conclusions: With Na-CMC hemostatic powder the bleeding time and the volume of blood loss were reduced by 3.6 and 2.2 times, respectively, comparing to the control group. These results were considered statistically significant (P ≤ .05).

Microgrid energy scheduling under uncertain extreme weather: Adaptation from parallelized reinforcement learning agents

Microgrids are useful solutions for integrating renewable energy resources and providing seamless green electricity to minimize carbon footprint. In recent years, extreme weather events happened often worldwide and caused significant economic and societal losses. Such events bring uncertainties to the microgrid energy scheduling problems and increase the challenges of microgrid operation. Traditional optimization approaches suffer from the inaccuracy of the uncertain microgrid model and the unseen events. Existing reinforcement learning (RL) - based approaches are also hampered by the limited generalization and the increasing computational burden when stochastic formulations are required to accommodate the uncertainties. This paper proposes a new parallelized reinforcement learning (PRL) method based on the probabilistic events to handle the microgrid energy uncertainties. Specifically, several local learning agents are employed to interact with pertinent microgrid environments in a distributed manner and report outcomes to the global agent, which will optimize microgrid energy resources online during extreme events. The stochastic microgrid energy optimization problem is reformulated to include all possible scenarios with probabilities. The advantage estimate functions of learning agents are designed with a backward sweep to transfer the outcomes to the value function updating process. Two simulation studies, stochastic optimization and online testing, are performed to compare with several existing RL approaches. Results substantiate that the proposed PRL method can achieve up to 20% optimization performance improvement with 4 and 28 times less computation cost than Q-learning with experience replay and multi-agent Q-learning approaches, respectively.

Application of Multilevel Thresholding and CNN for the Diagnosis of Skin Cancer Utilizing a Multi-Agent Fuzzy Buzzard Algorithm

This paper presents a novel methodology for skin cancer diagnosis based on deep learning and metaheuristics. The method combines a multi-level optimal thresholding segmentation technique based on the histogram of the input images with a new improved metaheuristic algorithm, based on Multi-agent Fuzzy Buzzard Algorithm (MAFBUZO) for this purpose. The MAFBUZO combines local search agents in multi-agent systems with the global search ability of the BUZO algorithm, enabling an appropriate balance of exploitation and exploration steps during optimization. To show the algorithm efficiency, it has been validated with four benchmark functions and its comparison with some other bio-inspired methods shows that using the proposed MAFBUZO, with 16.3459–16, 9.6538, 2.7412, and7.3258e-5 error provides the minimum error values during the minimization which shows its effectiveness to use in our application. After the region of interest segmentation, the images have been injected into an optimum convolutional neural network based on MAFBUZO for feature extraction and the final diagnosis. The technique is evaluated against Dermquest and DermIS datasets, and the obtained results are compared against those provided by other published techniques. The results show that using the proposed method with 0.95, 0.88, 0.94, and 0.93 values for NPV, PPV, Accuracy, and Specificity, provides the best outcomes against the other comparative approaches. The final results show that this method improves the results of the existing techniques in terms of overcoming weaknesses such as being trapped in local optimal points or having raw convergence issues.

Compared Policy Analysis of Intermunicipalities in France, the Comoros and Mali: The Role of African Diasporas in Translocal Policy Transfers

This article compares the adoption of intermunicipalities within ten years in Mali, France and the Comoros. Intermunicipalities are transferred from France through original cooperations between diasporas and local authorities. The translocal notion is a relevant way to compare territories with similar institutional frameworks but contrasted practices. A comprehensive approach based on comparative monographs and biographies analyzes how transfer agents operate simultaneously in French and African territories. The article shows new objectives and local agents at work in local-to-local transfers of policies. Opportunistic policy transfers are the result of strategic coalitions between transnational diasporas and local authorities with momentarily converging objectives.

Assessment of vulnerability to overheating at a regional scale through parametric simulation models and cooling degree-days analysis: The case of southern Spanish social housing stock

The urgent need to adapt urban environments to extreme weather conditions due to global warming has become a priority when allocating European funds. Current regional retrofitting plans focus on improving the well-being of the most vulnerable families by upgrading their homes. However, as there is no adequate characterization of the environmental behaviour of housing stock, local agents in charge of the management of social housing lack a procedure to identify the urban areas most urgently in need of retrofitting.This research aims to present a protocol for evaluating the vulnerability to overheating of social housing stock at a regional scale, as a prioritization decision support system. Parametric techniques for Building Stock Modelling were used in the development of 3000 models located in four climatic zones of southern Spain to assess their thermal behaviour considering adaptive comfort equations. Moreover, an index of vulnerability to overheating has been defined by normalizing comfort assessment through cooling degree-days. The comfort assessment outcome corresponds more closely with the analysis of cooling degree-days than with the Spanish regulations’ climatic zoning. According to the results, in the hottest climatic zone, occupants frequently endure discomfort up to 40% of the summertime, with hourly deviations of up to 7 °C above the indoor temperature comfort range.

Transitions in South Korean public food procurement policy: Landscape context, institutionalization, and local agents

The main objective of transformative food actions is to effect fundamental changes in the institutional structures that shape current food practices. For those actions to gain constant momentum, it is necessary to understand the types of operations and the mechanisms through which they can permanently impact conventional food systems. To provide an empirical operationalization of the Multi-level Perspective, a prominent framework in the sustainability transition literature, this study examines the decades-long evolution of South Korea’s public food procurement policy. Policy paradigm shifts in South Korea describe transitional processes in which accumulated dynamics between local actors and the incumbent regime achieve a tipping point at the juncture of niche movements, landscape pressure, and institutionalization. This paper argues that niche and regime are not inherently confrontational, as is frequently assumed in the broader literature, by highlighting the fact that niche innovations can continuously inform adaptations and additional shifts in policy paradigm.

Fragmented but Enduring Authoritarianism: Supply-side Reform and Subnational Entrepreneurialism in China's Rail Delivery Services

AbstractChina's economic reform since 1978 has turned a shortage economy into an economy of overcapacity. To curb the capacity surplus, the government put forward a sweeping proposal of “supply-side structural reform,” although without any specifics of implementation. This vagueness has resulted in fragmentation between China's central leadership and local agents. Based on two rail delivery services – China Railway Express Delivery (Zhongtie kuaiyun 中铁快运, CRED) and China–Europe Rail Freight (Zhong–Ou banlie 中欧班列, CERF) – this article argues that fragmentation in authority has allowed and even encouraged local actors to carve profit-making opportunities out of the excess capacities (including idle assets). In so doing, they give substance to what would otherwise be hollow policy rhetoric. Such subnational entrepreneurialism and the resulting tacit dynamics between state and local-level actors add another layer to the fine-grained theorization of fragmented authoritarianism in China: despite fragmentation, China's authoritarian governance endures, but with outcomes now shaped by a cyclical process of decentralization and re-centralization as well as continuous central–local interplay.