Antioxidant Status, C-Reactive Protein and Iron Status in Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of acute pulmonary tuberculosis and the effect of drug therapy on markers of oxidative stress (malondialdehyde [MDA] and total antioxidant status [TAS]), C-reactive protein (CRP) and iron body status indices. Methods:Forty patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis from the Advisory Clinic for Chest and Respiratory Diseases in Mosul City, Iraq,were included in this study, with fifty healthy age and sex matched subjects as controls. Assessment of serum concentrations of MDA, TAS, CRP, serum iron, total iron binding capacity, transferring saturation percent and ferritin were done for both patients and controls. After two months of therapy with a daily dose of isoniazid 75 mg, rifampicin 150mg, pyraziamide 400 mg, and ethambutol 275 mg, the same parameters were reassessed for the patients. Results: After two months of therapy, there was a significant reduction in the levels of MDA, CRP, and ferritin, with a significant increase in the TAS, serum iron, and transferring saturation percentage with an insignificant effect on the total iron binding capacity in comparison with the patients’ pre-therapy values. Conclusion: Active pulmonary tuberculosis is associated with oxidative stress; the increase in the levels of CRP indicated that pulmonary tuberculosis is associated with an inflammatory response. The initial two months therapy led to significant improvement in oxidative stress and suppression of inflammatory responses. Newly diagnosed cases of pulmonary tuberculosis often had chronic anaemia of inflammation, but this therapy resulted in a significant correction of such anaemia

A Miniaturized Printed Circuit CRLH Antenna-based Hilbert Metamaterial Array

With the development of communication systems and antennas, various challenges arise that require antennas of small size with enhanced performance. Metamaterials (MTM) defects introduced a considerable solution to such a challenge. Therefore, in this paper, a lightweight with low profile antenna is designed based on a novel design of a Composite Right/Left-Handed CRLH-MTM Hilbert array. The proposed CRLH-MTM unit cell consists of a T-symmetric CRLH unit cell conjugated to the 3rd-order Hilbert on the ground plane through a T-stub structure to enhance the gain-bandwidth product. CST-MWS is used to stimulate and design the proposed antenna structure. The antenna parameters are optimized to evaluate the antenna performance in gain and S11. As a result, the antenna can operate forward and backwards with a large scanning angle ranging from +34o to -134o with changing frequency, and dual-band extended from 3.3GHz to 4.2GHz 4.86GHz 5.98GHz with a maximum gain of 7.24dBi and 3.74dBi, respectively. The beam steering is achieved by trough controlling the switching operation of PIN diodes. As a result, the antenna can scan up to 8° from 34° to 42° at 3.5GHz with constant gain along with the operating range

Effect of Arabidopsis extracts on the Status of Liver Histology of Alloxan-induced Diabetic Mice

Arabidopsis is a member of the Brassicaceae family, which includes important crops. It has no agronomic significance, but offers important advantages for basic research in genetics and molecular biology . Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), known as “somatomedin C”,” found in Arabidopsis thaliana seeds. Anti-diabetic medical plants are general known to exert their beneficial effects on diabetes via various modes and mechanism depending on the phytochemicals and bioactive agents endowed in such plants. In this study the Arabidopsis thaliana ethanolic seed extract has hyperglycemic. In conclusion, the present results showed that Arabidopsis consumption reversed most of the histological changes in the diabetic mice. This effect was due to the hypoglycemic effect of the Arabidopsis and improving the insulin resistance. In addition, in diabetes there was an increase in the oxidative stress which was significantly reduced by Arabidopsis consumption owing to its antioxidant effect. Key words: Arabidopsis thaliana, Brassicaceae family, ethanolic seed extract, Insulin-like, hyperglycemic

A note on the integrable discretization of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation

We revisit integrable discretizations for the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation due to Ablowitz and Ladik. We demonstrate how their main drawback, the non-locality, can be overcome. Namely, we factorize the non-local difference scheme into the product of local ones. This must improve the performance of the scheme in the numerical computations dramatically. Using the equivalence of the Ablowitz--Ladik and the relativistic Toda hierarchies, we find the interpolating Hamiltonians for the local schemes and show how to solve them in terms of matrix factorizations.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, revised and extended versio

Interaction of Nonlinear Schr\"odinger Solitons with an External Potential

Employing a particularly suitable higher order symplectic integration algorithm, we integrate the 1-$d$ nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation numerically for solitons moving in external potentials. In particular, we study the scattering off an interface separating two regions of constant potential. We find that the soliton can break up into two solitons, eventually accompanied by radiation of non-solitary waves. Reflection coefficients and inelasticities are computed as functions of the height of the potential step and of its steepness.Comment: 14 pages, uuencoded PS-file including 10 figure

Von Bertalanffy's dynamics under a polynomial correction: Allee effect and big bang bifurcation

In this work we consider new one-dimensional populational discrete dynamical systems in which the growth of the population is described by a family of von Bertalanffy's functions, as a dynamical approach to von Bertalanffy's growth equation. The purpose of introducing Allee effect in those models is satisfied under a correction factor of polynomial type. We study classes of von Bertalanffy's functions with different types of Allee effect: strong and weak Allee's functions. Dependent on the variation of four parameters, von Bertalanffy's functions also includes another class of important functions: functions with no Allee effect. The complex bifurcation structures of these von Bertalanffy's functions is investigated in detail. We verified that this family of functions has particular bifurcation structures: the big bang bifurcation of the so-called "box-within-a-box" type. The big bang bifurcation is associated to the asymptotic weight or carrying capacity. This work is a contribution to the study of the big bang bifurcation analysis for continuous maps and their relationship with explosion birth and extinction phenomena.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Degradation of crude oil and pure hydrocarbon fractions by some wild bacterial and fungal species

The use of biodegradation as a method for cleaning up soil that has been contaminated by spilt petroleum can be an effective strategy. So, this study investigated the existence of the wild microorganism in soil contaminated with oil and study their ability to degrade petroleum in vitro. Nineteen samples were collected from various locations near Taq Taq (TTOPCO) natural seeps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Morphological, cultural, biochemical tests and molecular identification were used to identify the microbial communities, in addition, spore texture and the colour of the fungal isolates were investigated on the fungal isolates. Out of the19 samples, 17 indigenous bacterial strains and 5 fungal strains were successfully isolated. From the absorption spectrophotometry, Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus cereus, Achromobacter sp. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa for the bacterial isolates grew well on a minimal salt medium supplemented with 1% crude oil. Results showed that these isolates mentioned above had a strong ability to degrade crude oil by reducing the colour of 2,6-dichlorophenol indophenol (DCPIP) from deep blue to colourless. However, for the fractions of hydrocarbon, the bacterial isolates failed and did not affect the colour of any of the fractions. The results for fungi showed that Aspergillus lentulus and Rhizopus arrhizus had a strong ability to degrade both crude oil and fraction F1 by reducing the colour of DCPIP. Each fungal isolates also had a great tolerance to different concentrations of crude oil when grown on solid MSM. This study showed these microorganisms have a strong ability to degrade crude oil and can be used to clean up soil and the environment

Decolorization of Phenol Red Dye by Immobilized Laccase in Chitosan Beads Using Laccase - Mediator - System Model

 يصف هدا العمل قصر الصبغة الحمراء من خلال تقييد  انزيم اللاكييز بالكايتوسان.  يتكون انزيم اللاكييزالتجاري من فطر العفن الابيض (Tvlac) حيث  يقيد بطريقة سهلة التحضير بحبيبات الكايتوسان المنشط  بالكلوترالديهايد . لقد تم تعزيز  توصيف الكايتوسان المحضر باستخدام تقنيات الـ  FTIR وال .SEMلقد قيد (46.2  وحدة/ مل) من انزيم  Laccase تماما في حبيبات الكايتوسان المحضره   بنسبة 0.8%  (v:v) من الكلوترالدهيد خلال (24) ساعة, استخدمت العوامل الوسطية الصناعية(HBT) والطبيعيةvanillin) ) لتعزيز عملية قصر  صبغة الفينول الاحمر من خلال انزيم اللاكييز المقيد. حيث وجد ان عملية القصر لحبيبات الكايتوسان تصل الى قيمتها العظمى %89 خلال180  دقيقة في حين تصل عملية القصر لحبيبات الانزيم المقيد بلكايتوسان الى(100%) خلال 120 دقيقة ولكن باستخدام HBT  وال vanillin  كمواد وسطية تصل عملية القصر 100% في 25 دقيقة و50 دقيقة على التوالي .ومن ناحية اخرى اعادة استخدام حبيبات  الانزيم المقيد بلكايتوسان  اعطت   نتيجة قصر 100% عند اول دورة ومن ثم بدت تتناقص تدريجيا النتائج مع عدد الدورات الى ان تصل الى فعالية 70% بعد 9 مرات للإعادة الاستخدام في عميلة قصر الصيغة.This work describes the enhancement of phenol red decolorization through immobilizing of laccase in chitosan and enzyme recycling. Commercial laccase from white rot fungus, Trametesversicolor (Tvlac), was immobilizedin to freshly prepared chitosan beads by using glutaraldehyde as a cross linker. Characterization of prepared chitosan was confirmed by FTIR and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Tvlac (46.2 U/mL) immobilized into chitosan beads at 0.8 % glutaraldehyde (v/v) within 24 hrs. Synthetic (HBT) and natural (vanillin) mediators were used to enhance dye decolorizoation. It was found that 89 % of phenol red was decolorized by chitosan beads within 180 min. in the absence of enzyme and mediator, while decolorization percentage of the dye was completed (100%) at 120 min. when chitosan immobilizedlaccase was applied. Moreover, the decolorization was completed within 25 and 50 min. in the presence of chitosan immobilized laccase and of HBT or vanillin respectively. On the other hand, the recycling of chitosan immobilized laccase was still decolorize phenol red and continued up to ninth cycle to reach  70% of dye decolorization

Pattern of Anorectal malformations in Gzira National Center for Pediatric Surgery (GNCPS)

Background: Anorectal malformations (ARM) are one of the common clinically and socially demanding problems in the world especially in the poorly resourced countries. Patients and Methods: It is a cross-sectional descriptive hospital based study, in the period from June 2009 to December 2011 of 80 patients of ARM in Gezira National Center for Pediatric Surgery (GNCPS). History and examination in addition to invertogram and distal loopogram were the tools of assessment. Results: Eighty children with ARM were studied, 64 males and 16 females. Sixty six patients have delayed presentation. More than 61% presented from rural areas. Twenty-one (26%) patients had one or more associated congenital anomalies, with cardiac and limb anomalies being the most common associated malformation. High anomaly was found in 48.75% of patients, intermediate type was found in 5%, while 43.75% of patients had low anomaly. Conclusion: Delayed presentation entails suboptimal training of midwives and resident doctors in obstetric hospitals and nurseries to evaluate congenital defects in the newborn

Reconnection and acoustic emission of quantized vortices in superfluid by the numerical analysis of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation

We study numerically the reconnection of quantized vortices and the concurrent acoustic emission by the analysis of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Two quantized vortices reconnect following the process similar to classical vortices; they approach, twist themselves locally so that they become anti-parallel at the closest place, reconnect and leave separately.The investigation of the motion of the singular lines where the amplitude of the wave function vanishes in the vortex cores confirms that they follow the above scenario by reconnecting at a point. This reconnection is not contradictory to the Kelvin's circulation theorem, because the potential of the superflow field becomes undefined at the reconnection point. When the locally anti-parallel part of the vortices becomes closer than the healing length, it moves with the velocity comparable to the sound velocity, emits the sound waves and leads to the pair annihilation or reconnection; this phenomena is concerned with the Cherenkov resonance. The vortices are broken up to smaller vortex loops through a series of reconnection, eventually disappearing with the acoustic emission. This may correspond to the final stage of the vortex cascade process proposed by Feynman. The change in energy components, such as the quantum, the compressible and incompressible kinetic energy is analyzed for each dynamics. The propagation of the sound waves not only appears in the profile of the amplitude of the wave function but also affects the field of its phase, transforming the quantum energy due to the vortex cores to the kinetic energy of the phase field.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figures, LaTe