A Study on the Ability of the Second Year Students of Sman 15 Pekanbaru in Comprehending Narrative Texts

This descriptive research was aimed to find out the ability of the second year students of SMAN 15 Pekanbaru in comprehending narrative texts. The subject of this research was class XI IPS 1 which consisted of 32 students. The data were collected by administering a test to the students in the form of multiple choice test. The findings of the research are as following: finding the main idea (75.00), finding the factual information in complication (65.63), finding the factual information in resolution (70.63), finding the meaning of vocabulary (67.50), finding references (71.88), finding inference (51.25), finding social function (73.13). As a conclusion, the highest score was in finding the main ideas (75.00) which categorized into good level, and the lowest score was in finding inference (51.25) which categorized into mediocre level. The implication of the finding is that the second year students of SMAN 15 Pekanbaru should improve their reading skills in order to reach excellent level

IMMUNOMODULATORY EFFECT TEST FROM MORINGA LEAF EXTRACT (MORINGA OLEIFERA L.) WITH CARBON CLEARANCE METHOD IN MALE WHITE MICE

Objective: Moringa oleifera leaf has chemical compounds that have been utilized by the community to cure health problems. One of its activities is an immunomodulator. The aim of this study is to determine the immunomodulatory effect from M. oleifera leaf using a carbon clearance method to measure the activity of phagocytic cells in exterminating pathogens that enter the body then followed by calculating the total leukocyte cells. The parameters of this test are phagocytosis index and total leukocyte cells.Methods: Twenty white male mice were divided into four groups. Group I (vehicle control) was treated with sodium-carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) 0.5%, Group II-IV were treated by M. oleifera leaf extract given to the mice for six consecutive days orally in doses of 10, 30, 100 mg/kg. On the seventh day, white male mice were given with intravenous carbon suspension through their tails. The value of phagocytosis index (PI > 1) indicated immunostimulant activity. The data were analyzed by using one-way analysis of variance and Duncan test.Results: The analysis of variance results showed that the groups treated with Moringa leaf extract are significantly different with the vehicle groups (NaCMC 0.5%) (p<0.05). Increased doses of Moringa leaf extract are effective to improve the immunomodulator effect. It was included that Moringa leaf extract had the immunomodulatory capabilities as an immunostimulant.Conclusion: Immunomodulatory effect test of M. oleifera Lam. Based on the result of the research about immunomodulatory effect test from Moringa leaf extract (Moringa Oleifera L.) with carbon clearance method in male white mice, it can be concluded that Moringa leaf extract (Moringa Oleifera L.) has effect as an Immunomodulator

The identification of RFID signal using k-means for pallet-level tagging

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) applications are becoming increasingly popular in a myriad of areas, and therefore, an effective RFID technology-based location would offer a much-needed additional in tracking system. This research focuses on the identification of the location of passive RFID at the pallet-level, which uses the RFID signal strength to cluster the pallet level tagging through k-means. A comparison between the actual and the predicted level attained via the k-means clustering is evaluated through a multi-class performance metrics. It was demonstrated from the investigation that the k-means model is capable of achieving a classification accuracy of 69% and 67% for the train and test data, respectively

Functional Changes of T-Cell Subsets with Age and CMV Infection

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) latent infection and aging contribute to alterations in the function and phenotype of the T-cell pool. We have demonstrated that CMV-seropositivity is associated with the expansion of polyfunctional CD57+ T-cells in young and middle-aged individuals in response to different stimuli. Here, we expand our results on the effects of age and CMV infection on T-cell functionality in a cohort of healthy middle-aged and older individuals stratified by CMV serostatus. Specifically, we studied the polyfunctional responses (degranulation, IFN-γ and TNF-α production) of CD4+, CD8+, CD8+CD56+ (NKT-like), and CD4-CD8- (DN) T-cells according to CD57 expression in response to Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B (SEB). Our results show that CD57 expression by T-cells is not only a hallmark of CMV infection in young individuals but also at older ages. CD57+ T-cells are more polyfunctional than CD57− T-cells regardless of age. CMV-seronegative individuals have no or a very low percentages of cytotoxic CD4+ T-cells (CD1017a+) and CD4+CD57+ T-cells, supporting the notion that the expansion of these T-cells only occurs in the context of CMV infection. There was a functional shift in T-cells associated with CMV seropositivity, except in the NKT-like subset. Here, we show that the effect of CMV infection and age differ among T-cell subsets and that CMV is the major driving force for the expansion of highly polyfunctional CD57+ T-cells, emphasizing the necessity of considering CMV serology in any study of immunosenescence

Observation on the ultrastructure morphology of HeLa cells treated with ethanol: Statistical analysis.

It is estimated that 5.9% of all human deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption and that the harmful use of ethanol ranks among the top five risk factors for causing disease, disability, and death worldwide. Ethanol is known to disrupt phospholipid packing and promote membrane hemifusion at lipid bilayers. With the exception of mitochondria involved in hormone synthesis, the sterol content of mitochondrial membranes is low. As membranes that are low in cholesterol have increased membrane fluidity and are the most easily disordered by ethanol, we hypothesize that mitochondria are sensitive targets for ethanol damage. HeLa cells were exposed to 50 mM ethanol and the direct effects of ethanol on cellular ultrastructure were examined utilizing transmission electron microscopy. Our ultramicroscopic analysis revealed that cells exposed to ethanol harbor fewer incidence of apoptotic morphology; however, significant alterations to mitochondria and to nuclei occurred. We observed statistical increases in the amount of irregular cells and cells with multiple nuclei, nuclei harboring indentations, and nuclei with multiple nucleolus-like bodies. Indeed, our analysis revealed that mitochondrial damage is the most extensive type of cellular damage. Rupturing of cristae was the most prominent damage followed by mitochondrial swelling. Ethanol exposure also resulted in increased amounts of mitochondrial rupturing, organelles with linked membranes, and mitochondria localizing to indentations of nuclear membranes. We theorize that these alterations could contribute to cellular defects in oxidative phosphorylation and, by extension, the inability to generate regular levels of cellular adenosine triphosphate

Dry Taps? A Synthesis of Alternative “Wash” Methods in the Absence of Water and Sanitizers in the Prevention of Coronavirus in Low-Resource Settings

Objective: Social distancing and hand washing with soap and water have been advocated as the main proactive measures against the spread of coronavirus. We sought to find out what other alternative materials and methods would be used among populations without running water and who may not afford alcohol-based sanitizers. Results: We reviewed studies that reported use of sand, soil, ash, soda ash, seawater, alkaline materials, and sunlight as possible alternatives to handwashing with soap and water. We identified the documented mechanism of actions of these alternative wash methods on both inanimate surfaces and at cellular levels. The consideration of use of these alternative locally available in situations of unavailability of soap and water and alcohol-based sanitizers is timely in the face of coronavirus pandemic. Further randomized studies need to be carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of these alternatives in management of SARS-Cov-2

Effect of image compression using fast fourier transformation and discrete wavelet transformation on transfer learning wafer defect image classification

Automated inspection machines for wafer defects usually captured thousands of images on a large scale to preserve the detail of defect features. However, most transfer learning architecture requires smaller images as input images. Thus, proper compression is required to preserve the defect features whilst maintaining an acceptable classification accuracy. This paper reports on the effect of image compression using Fast Fourier Transformation and Discrete Wavelet Transformation on transfer learning wafer defect image classification. A total of 500 images with 5 classes with 4 defect classes and 1 non-defect class were split to 60:20:20 ratio for training, validating and testing using InceptionV3 and Logistic Regression classifier. However, the input images were compressed using Fast Fourier Transformation and Discrete Wavelet Transformation using 4 level decomposition and Debauchies 4 wavelet family. The images were compressed by 50%, 75%, 90%, 95%, and 99%. As a result, the Fast Fourier Transformation compression show an increase from 89% to 94% in classification accuracy up to 95% compression, while Discrete Wavelet Transformation shows consistent classification accuracy throughout albeit diminishing image quality. From the experiment, it can be concluded that FFT and DWT image compression can be a reliable method for image compression for grayscale image classification as the image memory space drop 56.1% while classification accuracy increased by 5.6% with 95% FFT compression and memory space drop 55.6% while classification accuracy increased 2.2% with 50% DWT compression

The condition based monitoring for bearing health

Bearing is a small component that widely uses in industries, either in rotary machines or shafts. Faulty in bearing might cause massive downtime in the industries, which lead to loss of revenue. This paper intends to find the consequential statistical time-domain-based features that can be used in classification from accelerometry signals for the bearing condition. An accelerometer was used as the data logger device to attain the condition signals from the bearing. Machinery Failure Prevention Technology (MFPT) online dataset has three different bearing conditions: baseline condition, inner faulty condition, and outer faulty condition. Extraction of eight statistical time-domain features was done, which is root-mean-square (RMS), minimum (Min), maximum (Max), mean, median, standard deviation, variance, and skewness. The identification of informative attributes was made using a filter-based method, in which the scoring is done by using the Information gain ratio. For the extracted features, the data splitting of training data to testing data was set to the ratio of 70% and 30%, respectively. The selected feature for classification is then fed into various types of classifiers to observe the effect of this feature selection method on the classification performance. From this research, six features were identified as the significant features: variance, standard deviation, Min, Max, mean, and RMS. It is said that the classification accuracy of the training data and the testing data using the filter-based feature selection method is equivalent to the classification accuracy of all the features selected

The Pattern Recognition Receptor (RAGE) Is a Counterreceptor for Leukocyte Integrins: A Novel Pathway for Inflammatory Cell Recruitment

The pattern recognition receptor, RAGE (receptor for advanced glycation endproducts), propagates cellular dysfunction in several inflammatory disorders and diabetes. Here we show that RAGE functions as an endothelial adhesion receptor promoting leukocyte recruitment. In an animal model of thioglycollate-induced acute peritonitis, leukocyte recruitment was significantly impaired in RAGE-deficient mice as opposed to wild-type mice. In diabetic wild-type mice we observed enhanced leukocyte recruitment to the inflamed peritoneum as compared with nondiabetic wild-type mice; this phenomenon was attributed to RAGE as it was abrogated in the presence of soluble RAGE and was absent in diabetic RAGE-deficient mice. In vitro, RAGE-dependent leukocyte adhesion to endothelial cells was mediated by a direct interaction of RAGE with the β2-integrin Mac-1 and, to a lower extent, with p150,95 but not with LFA-1 or with β1-integrins. The RAGE–Mac-1 interaction was augmented by the proinflammatory RAGE-ligand, S100-protein. These results were corroborated by analysis of cells transfected with different heterodimeric β2-integrins, by using RAGE-transfected cells, and by using purified proteins. The RAGE–Mac-1 interaction defines a novel pathway of leukocyte recruitment relevant in inflammatory disorders associated with increased RAGE expression, such as in diabetes, and could provide the basis for the development of novel therapeutic applications