CARDIOVASCULAR RISK SCREENING SERVICES IN SUDANESE COMMUNITY PHARMACIES

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the Sudanese community pharmacists' knowledge and practice of cardiovascular disease risk assessment services.Methods: The study was conducted as a non-interventional, descriptive, cross sectional community-pharmacy based survey.Results: The Response rate was 91%. The obese and the elderly received the highest ratings for cardiovascular disease risk assessment. Hypertension, type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus and ages >55 and 36-55 years were mostly targeted for screening. Variable responses were reported regarding the type of fasting lipid profile that is screened. One third of the participants claimed to have screening evaluation forms. Most participants had the appropriate equipment for screening but only a few had cholesterol measures. Only 27% reported the use of cardiovascular risk charts or calculator for the evaluation. Overwhelming majority had no documentation records and the most available reference was the BNF.Conclusion: The current knowledge and practice of cardiovascular disease risk assessment is poor and need fundamental development. Community pharmacy practice in the Sudan is still product oriented. These services were provided by respondents on voluntary bases without full knowledge or appropriate training on proper assessment and evaluation of the risks that they measured. This needs to change if pharmacy's potential is to be reached. Collaboration between health authorities and universities is essential to acknowledge the new roles of the pharmacist and provide the appropriate knowledge and training needed to promote and implement the change process that is required

Increased Mortality Amongst Patients Sustaining Neck of Femur Fractures as In-Patients in a Trauma Centre.

PurposeNeck of Femur (NOF) fracture is a common injury with high mortality that all orthopaedic departments must contend with [1]. The aim of this study was to report incidence and mortality of NOF fractures occurring while patients were being admitted to hospital for other conditions.MethodsA retrospective review was performed of all NOF fracture admissions between 1(st) of Jan 2010 to 31(st) of Dec 2012 at a University Hospital trauma centre. Fractures were divided according to the location where the fracture occurred, either in the community (acute NOF) or in-hospital (in-hospital NOF).ResultsIn-hospital mortality, 30-day, 90-day and 1 year mortality were recorded. There were 1086 patients in the acute NOF fracture group (93.9%) and 70 patients in the in-hospital group (6.1%) over three years. The odds of inpatient death was 2.25 times higher for inpatient NOFs (p=0.012). 86% of all in-hospital NOF fractures occurred on medical and rehabilitation wards. NOF fractures result in increased mortality and morbidity.ConclusionAll patients in hospital should be assessed to identify those at high risk of falls and implemented measures should be taken to reduce this

Energy Effective Routing Protocol for Maximizing Network Lifetime of WSN

ABSTRACT: Efficiency is the keynote factor going to be addressed in this paper. Considering the fact that there are relatively very few wireless sensor networks and hardly any efficient ones, EMBA (Efficient Multihop Broadcast Asynchronous), a duty-scheduled asynchronous wireless sensor networks is being proposed that carries the ability to wake up according to its own schedule. This is accomplished by the forwarders' guidance and the overhearing of broadcast messages and ACK. A forwarders' guidance is when a node transmits broadcast messages to its neighbour nodes by using unicast transmissions thereby reducing redundant transmissions and arising collisions. The active time of nodes is considerably decreased by the overhearing of broadcast messages and ACKs by keeping a thorough check on the number of transmissions and reducing them. In this paper, we put the EMBA and conventional protocols of ADB and RI-MAC broadcast to test in both sparse and dense networks. And, in the end, results exhibit that EMBA achieve a lower message cost due to higher efficiency and lower energy consumption than the conventional protocols

Experimental investigation of heat transfer in a packed bed of iron ore particles

Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.Packed bed studies have been carried out to estimate effective thermal conductivity and wall-to-bed interfacial heat transfer coefficient using comparative method. Heat transfer in packed bed has contributions from conduction, convection from gas phase and interparticle radiation. To separate the effect of convection, experiments have been carried out in air as well as in vacuum. The convective contribution to the effective thermal conductivity has been found to vary little with average bed temperature. The variation of convective heat transfer coefficient with effective temperature difference between the wall and the particle at the vicinity of the wall found to follow a power law relation.cs201

Expression and possible role of stress-responsive proteins in Anabaena

Nitrogen-fixing Anabaena strains offer appropriate model systems to study the cellular and molecular responses to agriculturally important environmental stresses, such as salinity, drought and temperature upshift. Sensitivity to stresses results primarily from reduced synthesis of vital cellular proteins such as phycocyanin and dinitrogenase reductase leading to impairment of photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation. Exposure to stresses induces the synthesis of a large number of general stress proteins and a few unique stress-specific proteins through transcriptional activation of stress-responsive genes. Using a subtractive RNA hybridization approach a large number of osmoresponsive genes have been cloned fromAnabaena torulosa. The expression of general stress proteins has been shown to form the basis of adaptation and cross-protection against various stresses inAnabaena. Prominent among such proteins are the K+-scavenging enzyme, KdpATPase, and the molecular chaperone, GroEL. Unlike heterotrophs, carbon starvation does not appear to evoke a global stress response inAnabaena. Supplementation of combined nitrogen or K+ improves inherent tolerance ofAnabaena strains to many environmental stresses

Antimicrobial activity, toxicity and accumulated hard-tissue debris (AHTD) removal efficacy of several chelating agents

Aim: To evaluate the antimicrobial, toxicity and cleaning effectiveness of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and maleic acid (MA) alone and combined with cetrimide (CTR). Methodology: Cytotoxic and genotoxic effects were assessed on Chinese hamster cells V79 using the MTT, clonogenic and micronucleus assays, respectively. The bacterial inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations (MIC and MBC, respectively) were determined on a strain of Enterococcus faecalis. Antimicrobial tests were performed on a biofilm model after treatment with the chelating agents by using a biofilm eradication concentration (MBEC) and confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) assays. Quantification of cell biomass and percentage of live and dead cells in the biomass were assessed for each group. The percentage reduction of accumulated hard-tissue debris (AHTD) after root canal preparation and final irrigation protocols was evaluated by micro-CT. Statistical tests of one-way analysis of variance (anova), Bonferroni test, Kruskal\u2013Wallis test, Dunn\u2019s multiple comparison test and Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank tests were used. Results: Cetrimide alone as well as in combination with EDTA and MA at dilutions of 1/10 and 1/100 was significantly more toxic as compared to untreated controls (P < 0.001). All tested mixtures were nontoxic at a dilution of 1/1000. EDTA retained a weak inhibitory and bactericidal effect against planktonic cells, whilst MA inhibited cells growth and killed 99.9% of the cells when diluted. CTR revealed the most prominent effect, being inhibitory and bactericidal, also when diluted. Cetrimide alone or combined with EDTA was able to remove, respectively, 40% (P < 0.01) and 60% (P < 0.001) of the entire biomass after 1 min. Conversely, MA alone and in combination with CTR did not have a significant effect on biomass reduction. After final irrigation, the AHTD volume was significantly decreased in all groups (P < 0.05). EDTA + CTR and MA + CTR were associated with a significant reduction in the percentage of AHTD on the entire root canal compared to the same solutions without surfactant. Conclusions: 7% MA was less cytotoxic in comparison with 17% EDTA. The addition of cetrimide to EDTA and MA removed accumulated hard-tissue debris effectively from the canal walls and increased their antimicrobial activity when compared to the same solutions without detergents

A MUSCULOSKELETAL INJURY PROFILE OF ATHLETES AT A NATIONAL INTER-UNIVERSITY ATHLETIC MEET IN MANIPAL, KARNATAKA, INDIA

ABSTRAC

Geometric Mixing, Peristalsis, and the Geometric Phase of the Stomach

Mixing fluid in a container at low Reynolds number - in an inertialess environment - is not a trivial task. Reciprocating motions merely lead to cycles of mixing and unmixing, so continuous rotation, as used in many technological applications, would appear to be necessary. However, there is another solution: movement of the walls in a cyclical fashion to introduce a geometric phase. We show using journal-bearing flow as a model that such geometric mixing is a general tool for using deformable boundaries that return to the same position to mix fluid at low Reynolds number. We then simulate a biological example: we show that mixing in the stomach functions because of the "belly phase": peristaltic movement of the walls in a cyclical fashion introduces a geometric phase that avoids unmixing.Comment: Revised, published versio

Studying vapor-liquid transition using a generalized ensemble

Homogeneous vapor-liquid nucleation is studied using the generalized Replica Exchange Method (gREM). The generalized ensemble allows the study of unstable states that cannot directly be studied in the canonical ensemble. Along with replica exchange, this allows for efficient sampling of the multiple states in a single simulation. Statistical Temperature Weighted Histogram Analysis Method is used for postprocessing to get a continuous free energy curve from bulk vapor to bulk liquid. gREM allows the study of planar, cylindrical, and spherical interfaces in a single simulation. The excess Gibbs free energy for the formation of a spherical liquid droplet in vapor for a Lennard-Jones system is calculated from the free energy curve and compared against the umbrella sampling results. The nucleation free energy barrier obtained from gREM is then used to calculate the nucleation rate without relying on any classification scheme for separating the vapor and liquid

Purification and characterization of prophenoloxidase from cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera

Phenoloxidases are oxidative enzymes, which play an important role in both cell mediated and humoral immunity. Purification and biochemical characterization of prophenoloxidase from cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) were carried out to study its biochemical properties. Prophenoloxidase consists of a single polypeptide chain with a relative molecular weight of 85 kDa as determined by SDS–PAGE, MALDI–TOF MS and LC–ESI MS. After the final step, the enzyme showed 71.7 fold of purification with a recovery of 49.2%. Purified prophenoloxidase showed high specific activity and homology with phenoloxidase subunit-1 of Bombyx mori and the conserved regions of copper binding (B) site of phenoloxidase. Purified prophenoloxidase has pH optima of 6.8 and has high catalytic efficiency towards the dopamine as a substrate in comparison to catechol and L-Dopa. The PO activity was strongly inhibited by phenylthiourea, thiourea, dithiothreitol and kojic acid