Pharmacokinetics, withdrawal period and risk assessment of enrofloxacin in the northern snakehead (Channa argus) following bath administration.

Enrofloxacin (ENR) is widely used in aquaculture practice, but little is known about its pharmacokinetic, withdrawal period and dietary risk in fish via bath administration. The purpose of this study was to provide data support for the use of ENR bath therapy in the northern snakehead (Channa argus). The pilot study was carried out to evaluate the therapy concentrations of ENR in northern snakehead with immersion concentrations ranged from 5 to 40 mg/L for 6 h. Based on results of the pilot study, an ENR immersion concentration of 20 mg/L was used for the formal experiment. At this dose, the peak concentrations of ENR in plasma, muscle plus skin, liver and kidney were 4.85, 4.55, 3.87 and 7.42 µg/mL (or g), respectively. According to the AUC0-∞ values, the distribution of ENR in northern snakehead followed the order of kidney > plasma > liver > muscle + skin. The elimination of ENR in northern snakehead was very slow, the half-lives (T1/2λz ) were up to 90.31, 85.5, 104.56 and 120.9 h in plasma, muscle plus skin, liver and kidney, respectively. Ciprofloxacin (CIP) was not detected in any samples in the pilot study and was only occasionally detected in muscle plus skin and liver samples in formal experiment. Based on the calculated PK/PD index AUC/MIC and Cmax /MIC, the current bath treatment regimen will have a good therapeutic effect on infections caused by bacteria with MIC below 0.6 µg/mL. The dietary risk assessment suggested that there was a dietary risk (Hazard Quotients > 10%) until day 6 after bath treatment. It is mandatory for ENR to maintain a withdrawal period of at least 450°C-day in northern snakehead after bath treatment ceased.

The toxicokinetics and risk assessment of pyrethroids pesticide in tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) upon short-term water exposure.

Pyrethroids pesticides (PPs) are the widely adopted synthetic pesticides for agriculture and fishery. The frequent use of these pesticides leads to the accumulation of residues in the freshwater environments in China, subsequently affecting aquatic organisms and ecosystems. However, there are few reports on the toxicological and risk assessment of aquaculture aquatic products. In this study, the uptake, depuration kinetics and potential risk to human health and ecology of fenpropathrin, cypermethrin, fenvalerate, and deltamethrin were assessed using tilapia. The results indicated that four PPs were readily accumulated by tilapia. The bioconcentration factors (BCF) of the PPs in plasma and muscle were between 71.3 and 2112.1 L/kg and 23.9-295.3 L/kg, respectively. The half-lives (t1/2) of muscle and plasma were 2.90-9.20 d and 2.57-8.15 d. The risks of PPs residues in the muscle of tilapia and exposed water were evaluated by hazard quotient (HQ) and risk quotient (RQ). Although PPs residues in tilapia had a low dietary risk to human health, the residues in the exposed water had a high ecological risk to fish, daphnia, and green algae. Therefore, assessing the PPs content in freshwater aquaculture and monitoring their dosages and frequencies are highly necessitated to avoid their adverse effect on the aquaculture environment.

Pharmacokinetics and Tissue Residue Profiles of Enrofloxacin in Crucian Carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) Following Single and Multiple Oral Administration.

The pharmacokinetics, tissue distribution, and elimination of enrofloxacin (ENR) and its metabolite ciprofloxacin (CIP) were investigated to the crucian carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) after single (20 mg/kg b. w.) and multiple oral administration (20 mg/kg b.w. one time daily for 5 days) at 28°C. The concentrations of ENR and CIP in the plasma and tested tissues (muscle/skin, liver, and kidney) were detected simultaneously by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and the pharmacokinetic data were analyzed with a non-compartmental model using WinNonLin 6.1 PK software (Pharsight Corporation, Mountain View, CA, USA). The pharmacokinetic characteristics of ENR in crucian carp exhibited slow absorption, wide tissue distribution, and long elimination half-life. In the single-dose group, the peak concentrations (Cmax) of ENR in the plasma, muscle/skin, liver, and kidney were 8.93 µg/mL, 13.9 µg/g, 31.2 µg/g, and 27.3 µg/g, respectively, observed at 3 h, 6 h, 1 h, and 3 h after dosing. The elimination half-lives (T1/2λz ) of ENR in plasma, muscle/skin, liver, and kidney were calculated to be 67.4, 82.8, 94.4, and 114 h, respectively. In the multiple-dose group, the Cmax of ENR in the plasma, muscle/skin, liver, and kidney were 18.4 µg/mL, 26.8 µg/g, 82.8 µg/g, and 74.5 µg/g, respectively, achieved at 3 h, 6 h, 1 h, and 1 h after the last dose. The T1/2λz of ENR in the plasma, muscle/skin, liver, and kidney were calculated to be 76.4 h, 91.5 h, 114 h, and 148 h, respectively. During the multiple-dose administration, significant accumulations of ENR and CIP were observed in the plasma and tissues of crucian carp, possibly due to their long elimination half-lives. In both dose groups, the AUC0-∞ for both ENR and CIP followed the order of liver > kidney > muscle/skin > plasma. The finding suggested that the liver may play an important role in the metabolism of ENR. According to the calculated PK/PD indices of Cmax/minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) and AUC24h/MIC, the multiple-dose regimen would be highly effective against pathogenic bacteria with a MIC value of ≤ 1.84 µg/ml. Depletion studies indicated that a withdrawal period of at least 29 or 32 days was necessary to guarantee food security after single or multiple oral gavage administration at 28°C.

A CMM-Based Method of Control Point Position Calibration for Light Pen Coordinate Measuring System.

A light pen coordinate measuring system (LPCMS) is a kind of vision-based portable coordinate measuring technique. It implements coordinate measurement by analyzing the image of a light pen, which has several control points and a probe. The relative positions of control points need to be determined before measurement and serve as the measuring basis in LPCMS. How to accurately calibrate the relative positions of control points is the most important issue in system calibration. In this paper, a new method of control point position calibration based on a traditional coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is proposed. A light pen is fastened to the measuring arm of a CMM and performs accurate translational movement driven by the CMM. A camera is used to capture the images of control points at different positions, and the corresponding readings of the CMM are recorded at the same time. By establishing a separate coordinate system for each control point, the relative positions of the control points can be transformed to the differences of a series of translation vectors. Experiments show that the calibration repeatability of control point positions can reach 10 µm and the standard deviation of measurement of the whole LPCMS can reach 30 µm. A CMM is used to generate accurate translation, which provides a high accuracy basis of calibration. Through certain mathematical treatment, tremendous data acquired by moving the light pen to tens of thousands of different positions can be processed in a simple way, which can reduce the influence of random error. Therefore, the proposed method provides a high-accuracy solution of control point position calibration for LPCMS.

Wavelet-Based Kalman Smoothing Method for Uncertain Parameters Processing: Applications in Oil Well-Testing Data Denoising and Prediction.

The low-distortion processing of well-testing geological parameters is a key way to provide decision-making support for oil and gas field development. However, the classical processing methods face many problems, such as the stochastic nature of the data, the randomness of initial parameters, poor denoising ability, and the lack of data compression and prediction mechanisms. These problems result in poor real-time predictability of oil operation status and difficulty in offline interpreting the played back data. Given these, we propose a wavelet-based Kalman smoothing method for processing uncertain oil well-testing data. First, we use correlation and reconstruction errors as analysis indicators and determine the optimal combination of decomposition scale and vanishing moments suitable for wavelet analysis of oil data. Second, we build a ground pressure measuring platform and use the pressure gauge equipped with the optimal combination parameters to complete the downhole online wavelet decomposition, filtering, Kalman prediction, and data storage. After the storage data are played back, the optimal Kalman parameters obtained by particle swarm optimization are used to complete the data smoothing for each sample. The experiments compare the signal-to-noise ratio and the root mean square error before and after using different classical processing models. In addition, robustness analysis is added. The proposed method, on the one hand, has the features of decorrelation and compressing data, which provide technical support for real-time uploading of downhole data; on the other hand, it can perform minimal variance unbiased estimates of the data, filter out the interference and noise, reduce the reconstruction error, and make the data have a high resolution and strong robustness.

Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic relationship of enrofloxacin against Aeromonas hydrophila in crucian carp (Carassius auratus gibelio).

The pharmacokinetic (PK) properties of enrofloxacin (ENR) and its metabolite ciprofloxacin (CIP) were investigated in crucian carp following oral administration at different dose levels (5, 10, 20, 40 mg/kg body weight). The disposition kinetics of ENR was found to be linear over the dose range studied. Serum half-lives ranged from 64.56 to 72.68 hr. The in vitro and ex vivo activities of ENR in serum against a pathogenic strain of Aeromonas hydrophila were determined. In vitro and ex vivo bactericidal activity of ENR was concentration dependent. Dosing of 10 mg/kg resulted in an AUC/minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) ratio of 368.92 hr and a Cmax /MIC ratio of 7.23, respectively, against A. hydrophila 147 (MIC = 0.48 µg/ml), indicating a likely high level of effectiveness in clinical infections caused by A. hydrophila with MIC value ≤ 0.48 µg/ml. Modeling of ex vivo growth inhibition data to the sigmoid Emax equation provided the values of AUC24 hr /MIC required to produce bacteriostasis, bactericidal activity, and elimination of bacteria, these values were 21.70, 53.01, and 125.21 hr, respectively. These findings in conjunction with MIC90 data suggested that ENR at the dose of 7.81 mg/kg predicted a positive clinical outcome and minimize the risk of emergence of resistance.

Surface Fitting for Quasi Scattered Data from Coordinate Measuring Systems.

Non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) surface fitting from data points is wildly used in the fields of computer aided design (CAD), medical imaging, cultural relic representation and object-shape detection. Usually, the measured data acquired from coordinate measuring systems is neither gridded nor completely scattered. The distribution of this kind of data is scattered in physical space, but the data points are stored in a way consistent with the order of measurement, so it is named quasi scattered data in this paper. Therefore they can be organized into rows easily but the number of points in each row is random. In order to overcome the difficulty of surface fitting from this kind of data, a new method based on resampling is proposed. It consists of three major steps: (1) NURBS curve fitting for each row, (2) resampling on the fitted curve and (3) surface fitting from the resampled data. Iterative projection optimization scheme is applied in the first and third step to yield advisable parameterization and reduce the time cost of projection. A resampling approach based on parameters, local peaks and contour curvature is proposed to overcome the problems of nodes redundancy and high time consumption in the fitting of this kind of scattered data. Numerical experiments are conducted with both simulation and practical data, and the results show that the proposed method is fast, effective and robust. What's more, by analyzing the fitting results acquired form data with different degrees of scatterness it can be demonstrated that the error introduced by resampling is negligible and therefore it is feasible.

Investigation of the interaction between the fate of antibiotics in aquafarms and their level in the environment.

China is the largest freshwater aquaculture producer and antibiotics consumer in the world, and rivers in China are generally polluted by antibiotics. However, there is little information available regarding the linkage of antibiotics in aquaculture and the aquatic environment. Therefore, this study investigated the fate of antibiotics in several open water culture-based freshwater aquafarms, including integrated livestock/fish systems and non-integrated fish ponds, and explored the contamination profiles of antibiotics in the Beijiang River. Then the study tried to clarify the two-way interaction of antibiotics in aquaculture and the environment. The results showed that, when compared with the effluent from livestock farms and wastewater treatment plants, the contribution of antibiotics from non-integrated fish pond water without livestock sewage input was limited, while that of effluent from the integrated livestock/fish system was quite high. The total concentrations of antibiotics detected in the aquafarm source water were similar to those in the upper river water and generally higher than those in the corresponding fish pond water, implying that the occurrence of antibiotics in intensive aquafarms can mainly be attributed to the antibiotic residues in nearby river water. Overall, the results underscore the need to develop a sewage infrastructure for the treatment of effluent from integrated livestock/fish aquafarms, and suggest that open water culture-based fish farms should be located far from seriously contaminated sections of rivers.

Stylus Tip Center Position Self-Calibration Based on Invariable Distances in Light-Pen Systems.

The light-pen coordinate measuring machine (LPCMM for short) is portable and flexible to measure features including invisible ones in-situ. Since different styluses are needed to measure different features and even during the process of measuring a single workpiece with complicated configurations, to improve the system measurement accuracy it is beneficial to calibrate the stylus tip center position after it is mounted to the light-pen before measurement in an industrial field. A novel and simple method aiming at self-calibrating the position of the tip center based on invariable distances is presented. The distinguishing feature of the proposed method is that the center position of the tip can be calibrated by using a kinematic seat with an inverted cone hole without any external reference and auxiliary devices. Calibration is based on that the distance between the tip center and that of any LED is invariable when the light-pen is swung smoothly with its spherical tip firmly touching the fixed cone seat. To ensure the repeatability of the algorithm some error constraint parameters are given. Based on invariable distances, the tip center position in the light-pen coordinate system can be obtained. Experiment results show that the self-calibration method has the advantage of good repeatability, with standard deviations 0.027, 0.023 and 0.014 mm in U, V and W directions, respectively. Experimental results of measuring a circle and a gauge block indirectly demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed self-calibration method.

Analysis of azole fungicides in fish muscle tissues: Multi-factor optimization and application to environmental samples.

Azole fungicides have been reported to be accumulated in fish tissue. In this study, a sensitive and robust method using high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry combined with ultrasonic extraction, solid-liquid clean-up, liquid-liquid extraction and solid-phase extraction (SPE) for enrichment and purification have been proposed for determination of azole fungicides in fish muscle samples. According to the results of non-statistical analysis and statistical analysis, ethyl acetate, primary secondary amine (PSA) and mixed-mode cation exchange cartridge (MCX) were confirmed as the best extraction solvent, clean-up sorbent and SPE cartridge, respectively. The satisfied recoveries (81.7-104%) and matrix effects (-6.34-7.16%), both corrected by internal standards, were performed in various species of fish muscle matrices. Method quantification limits of all azoles were in the range of 0.07-2.83ng/g. This optimized method was successfully applied for determination of the target analytes in muscle samples of field fish from Beijiang River and its tributaries. Three azole fungicides including climbazole, clotrimazole and carbendazim were detected at ppb levels in fish muscle tissues. Therefore, this analytical method is practical and suitable for further clarifying the contamination profiles of azole fungicides in wild fish species.

3D shape reconstruction of large specular surface.

A novel three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction method based on fringe reflection technique for shape measurement of large specular surfaces is presented in this paper, which effectively integrates path integration technique with zonal wavefront reconstruction algorithm. The height information of specular surface obtained from cross-path integration can then be used as the initial value in a zonal wavefront reconstruction algorithm. This method not only has the advantages of global integration, but also enables user-friendly, high-speed operation. A specific iterative algorithm is adopted to improve the antinoise capability of the measuring system, which accelerates the rate of convergence significantly and even improves the accuracy of the reconstructed 3D surface. Moreover, the proper use of boundary contour extraction of the acquired images reduces the computational load of 3D reconstruction dramatically and hence achieves high reconstruction accuracy and enhances the surface integrity at the boundary. An ultraprecision, diamond-turned planar mirror with diameter of 150 mm has been employed to implement the system calibration. The reconstruction results of simulated and actual hyperbolic surfaces and the gauge blocks identify the validity of this new method. It is demonstrated that the measurement error is about 50 µm with reconstruction points of 150×560 pixels of gauge blocks.

Three-dimensional shape measurement of a highly reflected, specular surface with structured light method.

This paper proposes a mathematical measurement model of a highly reflected, specular surface with structured light method. In the measurement, an auxiliary fringe pattern named amplitude perturbation is adopted to be projected onto the measured surface. The amplitude perturbation can ease the procedure of searching the corresponding points between the phase map of the measured surface and that of the reference plane by locking up the most reliable point as the starting unwrapping point whose true phase can be calculated accurately. The proposed method is also suitable for measuring the step surfaces such as gauge blocks with different heights. Furthermore, the image segmentation technology is introduced in the phase unwrapping procedure to increase the speed. Based on the unwrapped phase map, zonal wave-front reconstruction algorithm is implemented to realize three-dimensional, highly reflected, specular surface reconstruction. Experimental studies show that the developed methodology displays accuracy and high stability for highly reflected, specular surface measurement.