Spousal Concordance of Diabetes Mellitus among Women in Ajman, United Arab Emirates

Objectives: Spousal concordance is defined as similar behaviours and associated health statuses between spouses. This study aimed to identify the concordance of diabetes mellitus (DM) and related variables among genetically unrelated couples in Ajman, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Methods: This cross-sectional study included 270 married women attending either the Mushairef Health Center or the Gulf Medical College Hospital in Ajman between May and November 2012. A validated questionnaire was designed to determine sociodemographic characteristics and a history or family history of DM, hypertension, coronary artery disease or dyslipidaemia among the women and their husbands. The weight, height, body mass index, waist circumference, fasting blood sugar and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels of all women were measured. Results: Of the women, 39.3% of those with diabetic husbands and 39.9% of those with non-diabetic husbands were diabetic themselves (P >0.050). The prevalence of DM spousal concordance was 17.8%. A history of hypertension, coronary artery disease and dyslipidaemia was significantly more frequent among women whose husbands had a history of the same conditions (P = 0.001, 0.040 and 0.002, respectively). Spousal concordance of abnormal glycaemia among non-diabetic women with diabetic husbands was significant (P = 0.001). Having a diabetic husband (P = 0.006) and being obese (P = 0.009) were the only significant predictors of hyperglycaemia among non-diabetic women after controlling for confounding factors. Conclusion: There was significant concordance of abnormal glycaemia among non-diabetic women with diabetic husbands. The spouses of diabetic patients may therefore be a target population for regular hyperglycaemia and DM screening

Spousal Concordance of Diabetes Mellitus among Women in Ajman, United Arab Emirates

Objectives: Spousal concordance is defined as similar behaviours and associated health statuses between spouses. This study aimed to identify the concordance of diabetes mellitus (DM) and related variables among genetically unrelated couples in Ajman, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Methods: This cross-sectional study included 270 married women attending either the Mushairef Health Center or the Gulf Medical College Hospital in Ajman between May and November 2012. A validated questionnaire was designed to determine sociodemographic characteristics and a history or family history of DM, hypertension, coronary artery disease or dyslipidaemia among the women and their husbands. The weight, height, body mass index, waist circumference, fasting blood sugar and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels of all women were measured. Results: Of the women, 39.3% of those with diabetic husbands and 39.9% of those with non-diabetic husbands were diabetic themselves (P >0.050). The prevalence of DM spousal concordance was 17.8%. A history of hypertension, coronary artery disease and dyslipidaemia was significantly more frequent among women whose husbands had a history of the same conditions (P = 0.001, 0.040 and 0.002, respectively). Spousal concordance of abnormal glycaemia among non-diabetic women with diabetic husbands was significant (P = 0.001). Having a diabetic husband (P = 0.006) and being obese (P = 0.009) were the only significant predictors of hyperglycaemia among non-diabetic women after controlling for confounding factors. Conclusion: There was significant concordance of abnormal glycaemia among non-diabetic women with diabetic husbands. The spouses of diabetic patients may therefore be a target population for regular hyperglycaemia and DM screening

Wound healing activity of topical application of Aloe vera gel in experimental animal models

Aloe vera gel of 50% and 96.4% were tested for its wound healing activity by topical application in experimental rats. The effect of Aloe vera gel on wound healing was evaluated by wound excision model and histopathology was used to study the effect on wound healing. The effect produced by Aloe vera gel with reference to wound contraction, wound closure, decrease in surface area of wound, tissue regeneration at the wound site and histopathological characteristics were significant in treated rats. The effect of Aloe vera gel on biochemical studies revealed significant increase in collagen and decreased hexosamine content and malondialdehyde levels when compared with control. The present study thus provided scientific rationale for the traditional use of Aloe vera gel for management of wounds

User defined nodal displacement of numerical mesh for analysis of screw machines in FLUENT

Growing demands to reduce energy consumption are driving researchers towards in-depth analysis of positive displacement machines. Twin screw compressors are amongst the most common types of positive displacement machines. These machines have inherently complex geometry due to intricate rotor profiles used. As the details of the internal flows are difficult to obtain experimentally, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) offers a good alternative for evaluation of internal flow patterns. However, implementation of CFD is challenging due complex deforming geometries. In this paper, a customised grid generator SCORGTM developed by authors is used to generate numerical meshes for commercially available solver ANSYS FLUENT. FLUENT is an unstructured solver which offers flexibility of using both segregated and coupled solution algorithms. Segregated algorithms are generally faster which results in shorter product development time. Interface with FLUENT is implemented by performing User Defined Nodal Displacements (UDND) of grids generated by SCORG in a parallel framework. For this purpose, SCORG and UDND are coupled and extended to work with FLUENT's parallel architecture. The developed code is compiled within the solver. The oil free air screw compressor with 'N' profile rotors and 3/5 lobe combination is modelled for 8000 RPM and 6000 RPM. Finally, the predicted performance values with FLUENT are compared to previously calculated CFX predictions and experimental results. FLUENT requires shorter solution time to obtain same accuracy of CFX

The landscape of molecular chaperones across human tissues reveals a layered architecture of core and variable chaperones

The sensitivity of the protein-folding environment to chaperone disruption can be highly tissue-specific. Yet, the organization of the chaperone system across physiological human tissues has received little attention. Through computational analyses of large-scale tissue transcriptomes, we unveil that the chaperone system is composed of core elements that are uniformly expressed across tissues, and variable elements that are differentially expressed to fit with tissue-specific requirements. We demonstrate via a proteomic analysis that the muscle-specific signature is functional and conserved. Core chaperones are significantly more abundant across tissues and more important for cell survival than variable chaperones. Together with variable chaperones, they form tissue-specific functional networks. Analysis of human organ development and aging brain transcriptomes reveals that these functional networks are established in development and decline with age. In this work, we expand the known functional organization of de novo versus stress-inducible eukaryotic chaperones into a layered core-variable architecture in multi-cellular organisms

Multivalued SK-contractions with respect to b-generalized pseudodistances

A new class of multivalued non-self-mappings, called SK-contractions with respect to b-generalized pseudodistances, is introduced and used to investigate the existence of best proximity points by using an appropriate geometric property. Some new fixed point results in b-metric spaces are also obtained. Examples are given to support the usability of our main result

Co-pyrolysis of rubberwood sawdust (RWS) and polypropylene (PP) in a fixed bed pyrolyzer

Co-pyrolysis of rubberwood sawdust (RWS) waste and polypropylene (PP) was carried out at different temperatures (450,500,550, and 600°C) with biomass to plastics ratio 1:1 by using fixed bed drop-type pyrolyzer. The yield of pyrolysis oil has an increasing trend as the temperature increased from 450°C to 550°C. However, the pyrolysis oil yield dropped at a temperature of 600°C. Co-pyrolysis of RWS and PP generated maximum pyrolysis oil with 36.47 wt.% at 550°C. The result is compared with the pyrolysis of RWS only without plastics, with the same feedstock, and the maximum pyrolysis oil yield obtained was 33.3 wt.%. The water content in pyrolysis oil of co-pyrolysis RWS with PP is lower than RWS only with 54.2 wt.% and 62 wt.% respectively. Hydrocarbons, acyclic olefin, alkyl, and aromatic groups are the major compound in the pyrolysis oil from the co-pyrolysis process. Carbon monoxide (52.2 vol.%) and carbon dioxide (38.2 vol.%) are the major gas components

Performance of aquatic plant species for phytoremediation of arsenic-contaminated water

This study investigates the effectiveness of aquatic macrophyte and microphyte for phytoremediation of water bodies contaminated with high arsenic concentration. Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and two algae (Chlorodesmis sp. and Cladophora sp.) found near arsenic-enriched water bodies were used to determine their tolerance toward arsenic and their effectiveness to uptake arsenic thereby reducing organic pollution in arsenic-enriched wastewater of different concentrations. Parameters like pH, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and arsenic concentration were monitored. The pH of wastewater during the course of phytoremediation remained constant in the range of 7.3–8.4, whereas COD reduced by 50–65 % in a period of 15 days. Cladophora sp. was found to survive up to an arsenic concentration of 6 mg/L, whereas water hyacinth and Chlorodesmis sp. could survive up to arsenic concentrations of 2 and 4 mg/L, respectively. It was also found that during a retention period of 10 days under ambient temperature conditions, Cladophora sp. could bring down arsenic concentration from 6 to <0.1 mg/L, Chlorodesmis sp. was able to reduce arsenic by 40−50 %; whereas, water hyacinth could reduce arsenic by only 20 %. Cladophora sp. is thus suitable for co-treatment of sewage and arsenic-enriched brine in an algal pond having a retention time of 10 days. The identified plant species provides a simple and cost-effective method for application in rural areas affected with arsenic problem. The treated water can be used for irrigation

Optimal coincidence point results in partially ordered non-Archimedean fuzzy metric spaces

In this paper, we introduce best proximal contractions in complete ordered non-Archimedean fuzzy metric space and obtain some proximal results. The obtained results unify, extend, and generalize some comparable results in the existing literature.M De la Sen thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for partial support of this work through Grant DPI2012-30651. He also thanks the Basque Government for its support through Grant IT378-10, and the University of Basque Country for its support through Grant UFI 11/07.http://link.springer.com/journal/11784am2016Mathematics and Applied Mathematic