Fatty acid profiling of benthic harpacticoid (Pararobertsonia sp.) exposed to environmental stresses

Effect of various environmental stresses on the fatty acid (FA) profile of benthic harpacticoid copepod (Pararobertsonia sp.) was checked In vitro. Samples were exposed to different pH (5, 7 and 9) and salinity (15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 ppt) at constant temperature 25ºC for 30 days. After the treatment, different fatty acid levels were determined using Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Results clearly indicated the positive influence of the combined effect of environmental parameter on the fatty acid content in experimental samples. The detected FAs were ranging from C5-24. Palmetic and oleic acids were in higher percentage in all the experiments. Results clearly indicated that pH7:25ppt & 35ppt at 25ºC ambient water temperature would help in producing copepods (Pararobertsonia sp.) that expresses rich fatty acid profile with high EPA/DHA ratio

Congenital Long QT Syndrome: An Update and Present Perspective in Saudi Arabia

Primary cardiac arrhythmias are often caused by defects, predominantly in the genes responsible for generation of cardiac electrical potential, i.e., cardiac rhythm generation. Due to the variability in underlying genetic defects, type, and location of the mutations and putative modifiers, clinical phenotypes could be moderate to severe, even absent in many individuals. Clinical presentation and severity could be quite variable, syncope, or sudden cardiac death could also be the first and the only manifestation in a patient who had previously no symptoms at all. Despite usual familial occurrence of such cardiac arrhythmias, disease causal genetic defects could also be de novo in significant number of patients. Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is the most eloquently investigated primary cardiac rhythm disorder. A genetic defect can be identified in ∼70% of definitive LQTS patients, followed by Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia (CPVT) and Brugada syndrome (BrS), where a genetic defect is found in <40% cases. In addition to these widely investigated hereditary arrhythmia syndromes, there remain many other relatively less common arrhythmia syndromes, where researchers also have unraveled the genetic etiology, e.g., short QT syndrome (SQTS), sick sinus syndrome (SSS), cardiac conduction defect (CCD), idiopathic ventricular fibrillation (IVF), early repolarization syndrome (ERS). There exist also various other ill-defined primary cardiac rhythm disorders with strong genetic and familial predisposition. In the present review we will focus on the genetic basis of LQTS and its clinical management. We will also discuss the presently available genetic insight in this context from Saudi Arabia

Role of Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Gene Polymorphisms (Glu298Asp) in Egyptian Patients with Recurrent Spontaneous Abortion

Background: Previous studies indicated an association between endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) activity and maintenance of pregnancy, but it is rather controversial whether polymorphisms of the gene encoding for eNOS are associated with recurrent spontaneous abortions (RSAs). Aim: The aim was to investigate whether the presence of maternal polymorphism Glu298Asp in exon seven of the eNOS gene increase the risk of RSA in Egyptian women.Subjects and Methods: Hundreds women were randomly selected as the case group. They had at least three RSA before 20th weeks of gestation, same partner and at least one live birth and compared with 100 women, same age range, with no history of abortions or complicated pregnancy as control group. All were investigated for the polymorphism using the polymerase chain reaction‑restriction fragment length polymorphisms method. Data were expressed descriptively as percentages for qualitative values and mean ± standard deviation for quantitative parametric data and comparison of qualitative data was done. Results: Frequency of GG genotype 50/100% in cases and 67/100% in control group. Heterozygous GT frequency was 46/100% in cases and 26/100% in control (P ≤ 0.01, odds ratio [OR] =2.37, and 95% confidence interval [CI] =1.30–4.34). Homozygous TT was 4/100% in the cases and at 7/100% in control (P = 0.68, OR = 0.77, and 95% CI = 0.21–2.76). GG genotype versus GT and GG (P = 0.01, OR = 2.03, and 95% CI = 1.15–3.60). Cases with TT genotype were more susceptible to abortion at an older age with a mean of 29 (4.76) (P = 0.02). Conclusion: In conclusion, (eNOS) Glu298Asp polymorphism was found to be associated with increased risk of RSA in this sample of Egyptian women.KEY WORDS: Endothelial nitric oxide, polymorphism, recurrent spontaneous abortions, synthas

Training autoencoder using three different reversed color models for anomaly detection

Autoencoders (AEs) have been applied in several applications such as anomaly detectors and object recognition systems. However, although the recent neural networks have relatively high accuracy but sometimes false detection may occur. This paper introduces AE as an anomaly detector. The proposed AE is trained using both normal and anomalous data based on convolutional neural network with three different color models Hue Saturation Value (HSV), Red Green Blue (RGB), and our own model (TUV). As a result, the trained AE reconstruct the normal images without change, whereas the anomalous image would be reconstructed reversely. The training and testing of the AE in case of RGB, HSV, and TUV color models were demonstrated and Cifar-10 dataset had been used for the evaluation process. It can be noticed that HSV color model has been more effective and achievable as an anomaly detector rather than other color models based on Z- and F-test analyses

Factors considered by undergraduate medical students when selecting specialty of their future careers

Introduction: medical students are the source of a country's physicians. Determining how medical students select their areas of specialization isthe key to achieve a balanced distribution of doctors among all specialties. The objective is to identify the number of medical students who havedecided their postgraduate specialty career, their career specialties preference, and factors that may influence their decision to select a particular specialty.Methods: a facility based cross-sectional study was conducted in  September 2013 at Faculty of Medicine, University of Medical Sciences and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan. A self-administered semi-structured  questionnaire comprising demographic data and questions about future specialties preferences and factors influencing those preferences was  distributed to 887 male and female students, (from first to fifth academicyears) recruited in the study.Results: response rate was 73% with 647 questionnaires collected, out of 887 eligible medical students. Of the returned questionnaires, 604 were valid. The majority of students (541, 89.6%) have chosen a specialty. Surgery, medicine, paediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology were the most selected specialties. The least selected specialty was  anaesthesiology. A significant association was found between gender and specialty choice using Chi-square test (p=0.00). There was no association between undergraduate level and specialty choice (p=0.633). The most common reason for choosing a specific specialty was "Personal Interest" (215, 39.7 %) followed by being "Helpful to the community" (144, 26.6%). Conclusion: surgery, medicine, paediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology were the most selected specialties

Up-scaling, formative phases, and learning in the historical diffusion of energy technologies

The 20th century has witnessed wholesale transformation in the energy system marked by the pervasive diffusion of both energy supply and end-use technologies. Just as whole industries have grown, so too have unit sizes or capacities. Analysed in combination, these unit level and industry level growth patterns reveal some consistencies across very different energy technologies. First, the up-scaling or increase in unit size of an energy technology comes after an often prolonged period of experimentation with many smaller-scale units. Second, the peak growth phase of an industry can lag these increases in unit size by up to 20 years. Third, the rate and timing of up-scaling at the unit level is subject to countervailing influences of scale economies and heterogeneous market demand. These observed patterns have important implications for experience curve analyses based on time series data covering the up-scaling phases of energy technologies, as these are likely to conflate industry level learning effects with unit level scale effects. The historical diffusion of energy technologies also suggests that low carbon technology policies pushing for significant jumps in unit size before a ‘formative phase’ of experimentation with smaller-scale units are risky

Decellularised extracellular matrix-derived peptides from neural retina and retinal pigment epithelium enhance the expression of synaptic markers and light responsiveness of human pluripotent stem cell derived retinal organoids

Tissue specific extracellular matrices (ECM) provide structural support and enable access to molecular signals and metabolites, which are essential for directing stem cell renewal and differentiation. To mimic this phenomenon in vitro, tissue decellularisation approaches have been developed, resulting in the generation of natural ECM scaffolds that have comparable physical and biochemical properties of the natural tissues and are currently gaining traction in tissue engineering and regenerative therapies due to the ease of standardised production, and constant availability. In this manuscript we report the successful generation of decellularised ECM-derived peptides from neural retina (decel NR) and retinal pigment epithelium (decel RPE), and their impact on differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) to retinal organoids. We show that culture media supplementation with decel RPE and RPE-conditioned media (CM RPE) significantly increases the generation of rod photoreceptors, whilst addition of decel NR and decel RPE significantly enhances ribbon synapse marker expression and the light responsiveness of retinal organoids. Photoreceptor maturation, formation of correct synapses between retinal cells and recording of robust light responses from hPSC-derived retinal organoids remain unresolved challenges for the field of regenerative medicine. Enhanced rod photoreceptor differentiation, synaptogenesis and light response in response to addition of decellularised matrices from RPE and neural retina as shown herein provide a novel and substantial advance in generation of retinal organoids for drug screening, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

IGFBPs mediate IGF-1's functions in retinal lamination and photoreceptor development during pluripotent stem cell differentiation to retinal organoids

Abstract Development of the retina is regulated by growth factors, such as insulin-like growth factors 1 and 2 (IGF-1/2), which coordinate proliferation, differentiation, and maturation of the neuroepithelial precursors cells. In the circulation, IGF-1/2 are transported by the insulin growth factor binding proteins (IGFBPs) family members. IGFBPs can impact positively and negatively on IGF-1, by making it available or sequestering IGF-1 to or from its receptor. In this study, we investigated the expression of IGFBPs and their role in the generation of human retinal organoids from human pluripotent stem cells, showing a dynamic expression pattern suggestive of different IGFBPs being used in a stage-specific manner to mediate IGF-1 functions. Our data show that IGF-1 addition to culture media facilitated the generation of retinal organoids displaying the typical laminated structure and photoreceptor maturation. The organoids cultured in the absence of IGF-1, lacked the typical laminated structure at the early stages of differentiation and contained significantly less photoreceptors and more retinal ganglion cells at the later stages of differentiation, confirming the positive effects of IGF-1 on retinal lamination and photoreceptor development. The organoids cultured with the IGFBP inhibitor (NBI-31772) and IGF-1 showed lack of retinal lamination at the early stages of differentiation, an increased propensity to generate horizontal cells at mid-stages of differentiation and reduced photoreceptor development at the later stages of differentiation. Together these data suggest that IGFBPs enable IGF-1's role in retinal lamination and photoreceptor development in a stage-specific manner

The Impact of Unemployment, Inflation, and Participation Rate of Women in Labor Market on Divorce Process in Iran

Introduction: The decrease in the marriage rate and the increase in the divorce rate in the last few decades are among the changes in the family institution. The growth of the divorce rate is considered as one of the severe harms of the change in the family institution, which brings with it the expansion of numerous social problems. The status of the economic factor is an influencing factor in divorce because economic disturbances cause quarrels and conflicts between the spouses, other effective factors are social and culture status, etc. There is a parallel relationship between the trends of macroeconomic developments in Iran and the trend of divorce. On the one hand, the unfavorable situation of Iran's macroeconomic variables and on the other hand, the significant increase in the number of divorces in Iran for the past few decades, make it important and necessary to examine the impact of macroeconomic indicators on divorce. Method: The two-stage least squares method has been used to investigate the effect of economic variables on the divorce process in Iran (1370-1400; 1991-2021). The estimation of the equations has been done in a systematic way. This issue has been analyzed with the help of simultaneity bias and diagonality test. From identification problem over specified equations are confirmed. Findings: The results show that the effect of unemployment and inflation on divorce is likely to be significant, their coefficients are equal to 0.70 and 0.14. There is a direct relationship between women's participation in the market and the divorce rate; its coefficient is 0.74. Also, there is a simultaneous relationship between the average age of women at first marriage, this variable, and the divorce rate. Discussion: The economy is an influential factor in couples' decision to get divorced. Therefore, to reduce its rate, the unfavorable situation of economic variables should be improved. The role of women's participation rate in the labor market is significant, but it should be noted that part of it can be due to the previous context. That is, couples have decided to divorce, due to bad economic conditions, social disturbances, personal factors, etc., but women's lack of independence has been an obstacle to divorce, with the woman's employment, ultimately, divorce takes place