Analisis Perbandingan Kinerja Keuangan Bank Syariah Mandiri Dengan Bank Muamalat.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meneliti dan membuktikan secara empiris tentang perbedaan kinerja keuangan antara PT. Syariah Mandiri dan PT. Bank Muamalat Indonesia selama periode 2010-2016. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif komparasi. Data yang digunakan adalah data sekunder yang berupa laporan keuangan dari perusahaan yang diperoleh dari laporan keuangan publikasi Bank Indonesia melalui situs www.bi.go.id serta dari situs resmi masing masing bank. Analisis data dilakukan dengan menggunakan analisis rasio keuangan yang terdiri dari CAR, NPM, ROA, BOPO, FDR. Dan teknik analisis yang digunakan untuk melihat perbandingan kinerja keuangan Bank Syariah Mandiri dengan Bank Muamalat Indonesia adalah metode Independent sample t-test. Analisis yang dilakukan menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan untuk rasio CAR, BOPO, ROA. Sedangkan pada rasio NPM dan FDR tidak terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan. Kinerja keuangan Bank Syariah Mandiri lebih baik dari segi Permodalan terhadap CAR dan Rasio Efisiensi terhadap BOPO sedangkan Bank Muamalat Indonesia lebih baik kinerjanya dari segi Rentabilitas terhadap ROA, NPM dan Rasio Likuiditas terhadap FDR

Physico-Chemical and Microbiological Studies on Jordanian Honey and Propolis as Potential Self-Preserving Pharmaceutical Systems

The aim of this project was to study the physico-chemical and antimicrobial properties of Jordanian honey and propolis in order to determine their potential as pharmaceutical preservation systems. This study undertook a physico-chemical analysis of several Jordanian honeys and one propolis type, in order to evaluate several physico-chemical properties including, pH and free acidity, moisture content, ash content and HydroxyMethylFurfural content in three honey samples, and total flavonoid content in the propolis sample. The antimicrobial activity of honey and propolis samples was then evaluated by determining the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, Escherichia coli ATCC 8739, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027 and Candida albicans ATCC 10231. Subsequently, Honey 1 (H1) was selected for further study and combined with propolis to test their potential synergistic activity. Finally, a preservative effectiveness test was conducted in order to assess the possibility of using honey and propolis as natural preservatives in aqueous dosage forms, such as syrups. The results of this study showed that all the tested honey samples and propolis possessed significant antimicrobial activity against the standard test microorganisms, and that honey with propolis exhibited synergistic activity that enhanced their antimicrobial activity and resulted in up to 90% reduction in their MIC values. This study also confirmed that honey and propolis could be used as a natural preservative system for pharmaceutical formulae. Our results reveal the possibility of using honey-propolis mixtures as natural preservatives in oral aqueous pharmaceutical dosage forms and other local application products

Electrophysiological Assessment of Primary Cortical Neurons Genetically Engineered using Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

The development of safe technologies to genetically modify neurons is of great interest in regenerative neurology, for both translational and basic science applications. Such approaches have conventionally been heavily reliant on viral transduction methods, which have safety and production limitations. Magnetofection (magnet-assisted gene transfer using iron oxide nanoparticles as vectors) has emerged as a highly promising non-viral alternative for safe and reproducible genetic modification of neurons. Despite the high potential of this technology, there is an important gap in our knowledge of the safety of this approach, namely, whether it alters neuronal function in adverse ways, such as by altering neuronal excitability and signaling. We have investigated the effects of magnetofection in primary cortical neurons by examining neuronal excitability using the whole cell patch clamp technique. We found no evidence that magnetofection alters the voltage-dependent sodium and potassium ionic currents that underpin excitability. Our study provides important new data supporting magnetofection as a safe technology for bioengineering of neuronal cell populations

Secure Wireless Communication via Movable-Antenna Array

Movable antenna (MA) array is a novel technology recently developed where positions of transmit/receive antennas can be flexibly adjusted in the specified region to reconfigure the wireless channel and achieve a higher capacity. In this letter, we, for the first time, investigate the MA array-assisted physical-layer security where the confidential information is transmitted from a MA array-enabled Alice to a single-antenna Bob, in the presence of multiple single-antenna and colluding eavesdroppers. We aim to maximize the achievable secrecy rate by jointly designing the transmit beamforming and positions of all antennas at Alice subject to the transmit power budget and specified regions for positions of all transmit antennas. The resulting problem is highly non-convex, for which the projected gradient ascent (PGA) and the alternating optimization methods are utilized to obtain a high-quality suboptimal solution. Simulation results demonstrate that since the additional spatial degree of freedom (DoF) can be fully exploited, the MA array significantly enhances the secrecy rate compared to the conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA) array

What is the Way Allah's Word Manifests Itself in Yemeni Arabic?

In this paper, the author shows how ‘Allah’ is used in daily Yemeni Arabic conversations. The term Allah has a variety of meanings in Yemeni Arabic, as it does in the Arab world, reflecting the belief that Allah alone is in charge of all the affairs, grants blessings, and either encourages or criticizes someone to do something. The result of this is that the term Allah appears in several expressions when the term is part of a sentence containing the word. For example, there are expressions that have over one meaning, such as Allah alaik, which signifies two literal meanings. The word Allah can also be found in other expressions, but with entirely different meanings, including moaning or aiming for guidance. I conducted a study looking at the occurrences of social life contact, reactions, and the cultural influence of native Yemenis. The rest of this paper explores some of the other most common expressions used in Yemeni society, which shows the word is heavily influenced by religion and culture in its use in Yemeni society

A review of the antimicrobial activity of thermodynamically stable microemulsions

Microemulsions are thermodynamically stable, transparent, isotropic mixtures of oil, water and surfactant (and sometimes a co-surfactant), which have shown potential for widespread application in disinfection and self-preservation. This is thought to be due to an innate antimicrobial effect. It is suggested that the antimicrobial nature of microemulsions is the result of a combination of their inherent kinetic energy and their containing surfactants, which are known to aid the disruption of bacterial membranes. This review examines the contemporary evidence in support of this theory.</p

Estimating Loop Length from CryoEM Images at Medium Resolutions

Background: De novo protein modeling approaches utilize 3-dimensional (3D) images derived from electron cryomicroscopy (CryoEM) experiments. The skeleton connecting two secondary structures such as α-helices represent the loop in the 3D image. The accuracy of the skeleton and of the detected secondary structures are critical in De novo modeling. It is important to measure the length along the skeleton accurately since the length can be used as a constraint in modeling the protein. Results: We have developed a novel computational geometric approach to derive a simplified curve in order to estimate the loop length along the skeleton. The method was tested using fifty simulated density images of helix-loop-helix segments of atomic structures and eighteen experimentally derived density data from Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB). The test using simulated density maps shows that it is possible to estimate within 0.5 angstrom of the expected length for 48 of the 50 cases. The experiments, involving eighteen experimentally derived CryoEM images, show that twelve cases have error within 2 angstrom. Conclusions:The tests using both simulated and experimentally derived images show that it is possible for our proposed method to estimate the loop length along the skeleton if the secondary structure elements, such as α-helices, can be detected accurately, and there is a continuous skeleton linking the α-helices

Estimating loop length from CryoEM images at medium resolutions

Background: De novo protein modeling approaches utilize 3-dimensional (3D) images derived from electron cryomicroscopy (CryoEM) experiments. The skeleton connecting two secondary structures such as α-helices represent the loop in the 3D image. The accuracy of the skeleton and of the detected secondary structures are critical in De novo modeling. It is important to measure the length along the skeleton accurately since the length can be used as a constraint in modeling the protein. Results: We have developed a novel computational geometric approach to derive a simplified curve in order to estimate the loop length along the skeleton. The method was tested using fifty simulated density images of helix-loop-helix segments of atomic structures and eighteen experimentally derived density data from Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB). The test using simulated density maps shows that it is possible to estimate within 0.5 angstrom of the expected length for 48 of the 50 cases. The experiments, involving eighteen experimentally derived CryoEM images, show that twelve cases have error within 2 angstrom. Conclusions:The tests using both simulated and experimentally derived images show that it is possible for our proposed method to estimate the loop length along the skeleton if the secondary structure elements, such as α-helices, can be detected accurately, and there is a continuous skeleton linking the α-helices