Post-Chikungunya Joint Pain Sequelae: A Sudanese Single-Center Study

Background: Chikungunya has recently been reported by the WHO to account for many cases in Sudan. The infection is extremely symptomatic, with fever, skin rash, and incapacitating arthralgia, which can promote chronic arthritis and rheumatism in older patients. A few studies on chronic pain owing to the Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infection have been issued. The aim of this study was to outline the laboratory findings and the physical symptom frequency of joint pain of the current Sudanese CHIKV outbreak, and evaluate its impact on the individual. Methods:  This cross–sectional study included 23 CHIKV-confirmed patients attending a Sudanese single private medical center between March and September 2019. The included patients were checked for rheumatoid factor (RF) value, C-reactive protein (CRP) titer, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) value, and uric acid (UA) level. Physical scrutiny was conducted and persistent symptoms were registered. Results: The significant rheumatologic conditions were polyarthralgia (39.1%), polyarthritis (21.7%), arthralgia (17.4%), arthritis (13%), and osteoarthritis (8.8%). Swelling signs were noted in 21.9% of the patients. Joints implicated were knees (59.4%), wrists (56.3%), fingers (50%), shoulders (37.5%), feet (34.4%), ankles (31.3%), spine (18.8%), and elbow (9.4%). CRP, RF, and ESR were significantly increased in patients with persistent joints pain versus nonpersistent joint pain patients (P = 0.000, 0.002, 0.008, respectively). However, the UA was insignificant (P = 0.920).    Conclusions:  Knee joint pain remarks a significant dilemma post-CHIKV. It is noted that these remarks were linked with the risk of subsequently creating chronic sequelae. Polyarthralgia was the dominant inflammatory sequel post-Chikungunya infection.   Keywords: CHIKV, arthritis, arthralgia, polyarthralgia, polyarthritis, Suda

The portrayal of local and the international cultures in the Sudanese English Language Syllabus (Spine)

This paper explores issues related to the portrayal of the local culture as well as international culture in the English Language materials used in Sudanese schools The researcher then intends to venture into a thorough evaluation of the elements of different cultures in SPINE syllabus Sudan Practical Integrated national English series book 1to6 This study employs a set of checklist which has been used as a guideline to analyze the cultural aspects in a curriculum in order to examine English Language textbooks used in schools in Sudan The findings show that there was insufficient incorporation of cultural aspects into the English materials Many of the available cultural elements were presented at a superficial level and not discussed within the holistic cultural experience The findings suggest that the absence and the lack of certain cultural aspects in the materials may be due to the fact some cultural topics are avoided fearing sensitivity and that they may be implicitly portrayed through for example value integration moral and educational emphasis This study recommends that language learning materials must be able to present the language learners own culture and all the cultures that surround them and the materials must be useful and effective both as English learning materials as well as a tool for promoting cultural knowledge and understanding among Sudanese student

Assessment of the myelination of cerebral tissue using MRI

The aim of this study was to assess the myelination process of cerebral tissue in vivo using different Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques at high field strength and to suggest the optimum MRI technique for the correlation of myelination with the gestational age in the rat brain. Several different techniques have been implemented in order to assess brain maturation. The first approach has been to quantitatively measure the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Ti and T2 relaxation times of brain gray and white matter which is shown to provide a certain degree of tissue characterization (Davis et al 1981). The second approach has been to measure the Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) which has proven to be of value in cerebral white matter which has been shown to demonstrate anisotropy of water diffusion (Chevert et al 1990). Sprague Dawley (S/D) rats with different age groups ranging from 7 days to adult were used for this study. Studies were carried out in a 7T, 20 cm clear bore magnet (Bruker Biospec). Data were acquired using two different diameter inductively coupled saddle coils. Imaging pulse sequences used were the Spin Echo (SE) and the Stimulated Echo (STEAM). Images were obtained with sufficient resolution to permit clear delineation of selected regions of interest in both gray and white matter. T1 values did not show any significant difference with age in the selected regions of interest whereas T2 and ADC values showed a marked change in signal intensity as the animals age increase. The results obtained have demonstrated the feasibility of accurate high resolution quantitative MRI measurements in S/D rat brain. These techniques may be applied in the assessment of myelin related or white matter pathologies

New Distance Measures for Arabic Handwritten Text Recognition

recent years, optical character recognition has attracted scientists and researchers. Latin, Chinese, Korean and Thai characters have been researched more thoroughly than Arabic characters. The research has concentrated firstly on printed and typeset characters until acceptable recognition accuracy has been achieved. Nowadays, most of the researches have gone towards handwritten character recognition. Arabic text is cursive as characters in a sub-word are connected to each other. This makes the recognition process more complex and a segmentation procedure is required to separate the connected characters from each other before they can be recognized. Features extracted have to be chosen carefully since it has a very important role in the segmentation and recognition process. The recognition accuracy mostly depends on the classifier applied and the segmentation procedure. In this research work, a framework for recognizing the Arabic handwriting is presented. Two approaches have been proposed. The first approach has been designed to recognize the word as a whole to fit applications such as sorting postal mails and bank checks where the number of words or digits that need to be recognized is limited. The words may include country and city names written on postal mails, or some reserved words or amounts used on bank checks. The second approach represents the general case where any type of documents or handwritten text can be recognized by this approach. In both approaches, a preprocessing stage including image enhancement and normalization. The most significant features are extracted by implementing the Principal Components Analysis. A new segmentation-based approach is designed and implemented for the second approach to segment the text into characters, while no or simple segmentation procedure is performed in the first approach. The recognition step is performed by applying the nearest neighbor algorithm. Four different distance measures are used with the nearest neighbor, the first norm, second norm (Euclidean), and two new norms proposed called ENorm, EEuclidean. The two new norms proposed (ENorm, EEuclidean) are derived from the first and second norm respectively. The recognition accuracy is enhanced by using the two new norms proposed. The approaches have been tested as well, and a number of experiments have been discussed more thoroughly. The first approach is experimented by four datasets, which are sub-words containing two characters, sub-words containing three characters, Latin letters and Hindi digits which are used with Arabic language nowadays. The recognition accuracy is the attribute used for measurement, and an 8-fold cross validation technique is used to test this attribute. The average recognition accuracy is 94.8% for the digits, 78% for the three-character sub-words, 77% for the two-character sub-words and 67% for Latin letters. The second approach has achieved recognition accuracy of 73% without detecting dots and 77% with dot detection

Commutative zeropotent semigroups with few invariant congruences

summary:Commutative semigroups satisfying the equation $2x+y=2x$ and having only two $G$-invariant congruences for an automorphism group $G$ are considered. Some classes of these semigroups are characterized and some other examples are constructed

Notes on slender prime rings

summary:If $R$ is a prime ring such that $R$ is not completely reducible and the additive group $R(+)$ is not complete, then $R$ is slender

Transverse Takahashi Identities and Their Implications for Gauge Independent Dynamical Chiral Symmetry Breaking

In this article, we employ transverse Takahashi identities to impose valuable non-perturbative constraints on the transverse part of the fermion-photon vertex in terms of new form factors, the so called $Y_i$ functions. We show that the implementation of these identities is crucial in ensuring the correct local gauge transformation of the fermion propagator and its multiplicative renormalizability. Our construction incorporates the correct symmetry properties of the $Y_i$ under charge conjugation operation as well as their well-known one-loop expansion in the asymptotic configuration of incoming and outgoing momenta. Furthermore, we make an explicit analysis of various existing constructions of this vertex against the demands of transverse Takahashi identities and the previously established key features of quantum electrodynamics, such as gauge invariance of the critical coupling above which chiral symmetry is dynamically broken. We construct a simple example in its quenched version and compute the mass function as we vary the coupling strength and also calculate the corresponding anomalous dimensions $\gamma_m$. There is an excellent fit to the Miransky scalling law and we find $\gamma_m=1$ rather naturally in accordance with some earlier results in literature, using arguments based on Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis effective potential technique. Moreover, we numerically confirm the gauge invariance of this critical coupling.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure