Regeneration of Amman center — social acceptance of Syrian migrants in downtown Amman

Several studies discussed attitudes towards migrants; some of the issues pointed out are integration that requires interaction between migrants and the host society. Homogenous social groupings produce stronger communities. As the conflict in Syria entered its fifth year, Jordan hosted about 1.4 million registered Syrians, of whom 646,700 are informal refugees. Eighty-five percent of the refugees live outside camps in some of the poorest areas of Jordan. Consequently, new household’s typologies pressured the supply side. Such non-camp refugees’ migration patterns and housing market conditions formed ethnic homogeneous enclaves in different locations in Amman. Accordingly, non-camp refugees occupied and rented the upper floors of mixed used commercial buildings in downtown Amman. The present study investigated social acceptance of Syrian migrants residing in upper floors of commercial mixed used buildings located in the city center of Amman. The primary purpose of this research is to study how social acceptance of Syrian migrants is influenced by social gating. The hypothesis of the present study states that social acceptance of Syrian migrants in downtown Amman is influenced by sense of merchants’ sense of social gating. The significance of the study stems from that the development of downtown Amman with such rich social context can be informative and useful for strategic planners, local governments, NGO’s, social workers, and psychologists. This paper offers such an opportunity to reflect on an unfolding crisis that is of major social concern with changing urban demographics. The study was conducted using a quantitative and qualitative research strategy; an embedded research design was used. The quantitative method was conducted using a survey with downtown merchants, in addition to supportive qualitative methods of face-to-face interviews. The study was conducted in the central part of Amman, known locally as Wast Al-balad, which is considered the old commercial area that dates back to the second quarter of the twentieth century. Some of these secondary residential units became spaces (enclaves) for migrants that formed ethnic low-income enclaves. In the last five years, low-income Syrian migrants started to rent these units in Amman’s urban center. Outcomes indicated that social cohesion is the strongest motivator for acceptance of outsiders by the local merchants to reside in the upper floors of the commercial buildings of Downtown Amman area

Real-Time PCR Quantification of Metallothionein Gene Expression in Sprague–Dawley Rats Chronically Exposed to Cd

Toxicologic impact of Cd leads to multiple human pathologic conditions, and its effect on humans and animals has been extensively studied. Physiologic function of metallothionein (MT1) is not completely understood, but it is mainly associated with detoxification of Cd and Hg. Elevated synthesis of MT1 exposed to metals has been observed but data on quantitation in various tissues is limited. We measured MT1 levels in peripheral blood and tissue samples of rats exposed to CdCl2. The objective is to investigate the effect of chronic exposure of Cd on peripheral blood and tissue-specific expression of MT1. This will provide information of MT1 gene transcription regulation and its impact on the heavy metal detoxification process. Rats raised in our animal facility were assigned to 8 experimental groups. Daily dose of 15 mg/ kg body weight CdCl2 in drinking water was administered for 8 wk. The control group received tap water free of Cd. Peripheral blood samples collected at 4 occasions (week 2, 4, 6, and 8) in EDTA tubes by retroorbital bleeding procedure. Liver and kidney tissue samples were collected and weighed. Total RNA/cDNA was prepared and quantified according to manufacturer’s protocol. Premade MT1 gene expression assay was used while β-actin gene was the endogeneous control. Results from week 2 and 4 showed the trend of upregulation of MT1 gene (fold increase) while the sample from all the other occasions showed downregulated response of MT1. Week 4 sample showed the fold increase of 1.11 times compared to week 2 increase of 1.04. Though the recorded 1.1-fold difference in the gene expression is not high, it gives an indication that there was an induction of MT1 gene. The downregulated pattern of MT1 gene might be due to the overaccumulation of repressor apothionein protein which stops MT1 transcription. When the metal binds to the promoter region of the MT1 gene-repressor protein, it becomes inactive and increases the MT1 transcription, but at the same time accumulation of repressor protein downregulates MT1 gene. Our observations suggest that chronic Cd exposure elicits an elevated MT1 gene expression which in turn leads to detoxification. More elaborative study is warranted for further understanding of MT1 gene expression

On Load balancing in distributed systems with large time delays: Theory and experiment

In a distributed computing environment with a high communication cost, limiting the number of balancing instants results in a better performance than the case where load balancing is executed continuously. Therefore, finding the optimal number of balancing instants and optimizing the performance over the interbalancing time and over the load-balancing gain becomes an important problem. In this paper we discuss the performance of a previously reported, control-theoretic motivated single load-balancing strategy on a distributed physical system and the performance is compared to our simulation predictions. Based on the concept of regeneration, we also present a mathematical model for the distributed system with two nodes where a one-shot balancing is done. We obtain a system of four difference-differential equations characterizing the mean of the overall completion time. and compare its predictive capabilities via simulation to the physical system

Evidence supporting the use of peptides and peptidomimetics as potential SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) therapeutics

© 2020 Newlands Press. During a disease outbreak/pandemic situation such as COVID-19, researchers are in a prime position to identify and develop peptide-based therapies, which could be more rapidly and cost-effectively advanced into a clinical setting. One drawback of natural peptide drugs, however, is their proteolytic instability; peptidomimetics can help to overcome this caveat. In this review, we summarize peptide and peptide-based therapeutics that target one main entry pathway of SARS-CoV-2, which involves the host ACE2 receptor and viral spike (S) protein interaction. Furthermore, we discuss the advantages of peptidomimetics and other potential targets that have been studied using peptide-based therapeutics for COVID-19

Shape-induced anisotropy in antidot arrays from self-assembled templates

Using self-assembly of polystyrene spheres, well-ordered templates have been prepared on glass and silicon substrates. Strong guiding of self-assembly is obtained on photolithographically structured silicon substrates. Magnetic antidot arrays with three-dimensional architecture have been prepared by electrodeposition in the pores of these templates. The shape anisotropy demonstrates a crucial impact on magnetization reversal processes

Towards interpretable deep local learning with successive gradient reconciliation

Relieving the reliance of neural network training on a global back-propagation (BP) has emerged as a notable research topic due to the biological implausibility and huge memory consumption caused by BP. Among the existing solutions, local learning optimizes gradient-isolated modules of a neural network with local errors and has been proved to be effective even on large-scale datasets. However, the reconciliation among local errors has never been investigated. In this paper, we first theoretically study non-greedy layer-wise training and show that the convergence cannot be assured when the local gradient in a module w.r.t. its input is not reconciled with the local gradient in the previous module w.r.t. its output. Inspired by the theoretical result, we further propose a local training strategy that successively regularizes the gradient reconciliation between neighboring modules without breaking gradient isolation or introducing any learnable parameters. Our method can be integrated into both local-BP and BP-free settings. In experiments, we achieve significant performance improvements compared to previous methods. Particularly, our method for CNN and Transformer architectures on ImageNet is able to attain a competitive performance with global BP, saving more than 40% memory consumption

Aceites esenciales de plantas aromáticas egipcias como novedosos agentes anticancerígenos y antioxidantes en líneas celulares de cáncer humano

Inhibitors of tumor growth using extracts from aromatic plants are rapidly emerging as important new drug candidates for cancer therapy. The cytotoxicity and in vitro anticancer evaluation of the essential oils from thyme, juniper and clove has been assessed against five different human cancer cell lines (liver HepG2, breast MCF-7, prostate PC3, colon HCT116 and lung A549). A GC/MS analysis revealed that α-pinene, thymol and eugenol are the major components of Egyptian juniper, thyme and clove oils with concentrations of 31.19%, 79.15% and 82.71%, respectively. Strong antioxidant profiles of all the oils are revealed in vitro by DPPH and β-carotene bleaching assays. The results showed that clove oil was similarly potent to the reference drug, doxorubicin in prostate, colon and lung cell lines. Thyme oil was more effective than the doxorubicin in breast and lung cell lines while juniper oil was more effective than the doxorubicin in all the tested cancer cell lines except prostate cancer. In conclusion, the essential oils from Egyptian aromatic plants can be used as good candidates for novel therapeutic strategies for cancer as they possess significant anticancer activity.Los inhibidores de crecimiento de tumores usando extractos de plantas aromáticas están emergiendo con rapidez como nuevos e importantes medicamentos para el tratamiento del cáncer. La citotoxicidad y la acción anticancerígena in vitro de aceites esenciales de tomillo, enebro y clavo han sido evaluadas en cinco líneas celulares de cáncer humano (hígado HepG2, mama MCF-7, próstata PC3, colon HCT116 y pulmón A549). Los análisis de GC/MS mostraron que α-pineno, timol y eugenol son los principales componentes de los aceites egipcios de enebro, tomillo y clavo, con concentraciones de 31,19%, 79,15% y 82,71%, respectivamente. Se demuestra, mediante ensayos in vitro de blanqueo de DPPH y β-caroteno, el enérgico perfil antioxidante de todos los aceites. Los resultados mostraron que el aceite de clavo fue similar de potente al fármaco de referencia, doxorrubicina en las líneas celulares de próstata, colon y pulmón. El aceite de tomillo fue más efectivo que la doxorrubicina en las líneas celulares de mama y de pulmón, mientras que el aceite de enebro fue más eficaz que la doxorrubicina en todas las líneas celulares de cáncer ensayados, excepto en la de cáncer de próstata. En conclusión, los aceites esenciales de plantas aromáticas egipcias se pueden utilizar como buenos candidatos para nuevas estrategias terapéuticas para el cáncer al poseer una significativa actividad anticancerígena

High Cyclin E Staining Index in Blastemal, Stromal or Epithelial Cells Is Correlated with Tumor Aggressiveness in Patients with Nephroblastoma

PURPOSE: Identifying among nephroblastoma those with a high propensity for distant metastases using cell cycle markers: cyclin E as a regulator of progression through the cell cycle and Ki-67 as a tumor proliferation marker, since both are often deregulated in many human malignancies. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A staining index (SI) was obtained by immunohistochemistry using anti-cyclin E and anti-Ki-67 antibodies in paraffin sections of 54 postchemotherapy nephroblastoma including 42 nephroblastoma without metastasis and 12 with metastases. Median cyclin E and Ki-67 SI were 46% and 33% in blastemal cells, 30% and 10% in stromal cells, 37% and 29.5% in epithelial cells. The highest values were found for anaplastic nephroblastoma. A correlation between cyclin E and Ki-67 SI was found for the blastemal component and for the epithelial component. Univariate analysis showed prognostic significance for metastases with cyclin E SI in stromal cells, epithelial cells and blastemal cells (p = 0.03, p = 0.01 and p = 0.002, respectively) as well as with Ki-67 SI in blastema (p<10(-4)). The most striking data were that both cyclin E SI and blastemal Ki-67 SI discriminated between patients with metastases and patients without metastasis among intermediate-risk nephroblastoma. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that a high cyclin E SI in all components of nephroblastoma is correlated with tumor aggressiveness and metastases, and that assessment of its expression may have prognostic value in the categorization of nephroblastoma

Karhunen-Loeve Representation of Periodic Second-Order Autoregressive Processes

Abstract. In dynamic data driven applications modeling accurately the uncertainty of various inputs is a key step of the process. In this paper, we first review the basics of the Karhunen-Loève decomposition as a means for representing stochastic inputs. Then, we derive explicit ex-pressions of one-dimensional covariance kernels associated with periodic spatial second-order autoregressive processes. We also construct numer-ically those kernels by employing the Karhunen-Loève expansion and making use of Fourier representation in order to solve efficiently the as-sociated eigenvalue problem. Convergence and accuracy of the numerical procedure are checked by comparing the covariance kernels obtained from the Karhunen-Loève expansions against theoretical solutions.