Synthesis and characterization of a novel series of benzenesulfonylurea and thiourea derivatives of 2H-pyran and 2H-pyridine-2-ones as antibacterial, antimycobacterial and antifungal agents

Arylhydrazines reacted with dehydroacetic acid (1) to give the corresponding 2H-pyran-2-one hydrazones (2), which on treatment with hydrazine hydrate afforded the corresponding 1-amino-2H-pyridin-2-ones (3). Reaction of 3 with nitrous acid, aromatic aldehyde and substituted benzenesulfonyl chlorides yielded the corresponding 2H-pyridine-2-one derivatives. A series of urea and thiourea derivatives were also prepared. Some of these compounds have shown significant antibacterial and mild to moderate antimycobacterial and antifungal activities

A space-time pseudospectral discretization method for solving diffusion optimal control problems with two-sided fractional derivatives

We propose a direct numerical method for the solution of an optimal control problem governed by a two-side space-fractional diffusion equation. The presented method contains two main steps. In the first step, the space variable is discretized by using the Jacobi-Gauss pseudospectral discretization and, in this way, the original problem is transformed into a classical integer-order optimal control problem. The main challenge, which we faced in this step, is to derive the left and right fractional differentiation matrices. In this respect, novel techniques for derivation of these matrices are presented. In the second step, the Legendre-Gauss-Radau pseudospectral method is employed. With these two steps, the original problem is converted into a convex quadratic optimization problem, which can be solved efficiently by available methods. Our approach can be easily implemented and extended to cover fractional optimal control problems with state constraints. Five test examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency and validity of the presented method. The results show that our method reaches the solutions with good accuracy and a low CPU time.Comment: This is a preprint of a paper whose final and definite form is with 'Journal of Vibration and Control', available from [http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jvc]. Submitted 02-June-2018; Revised 03-Sept-2018; Accepted 12-Oct-201

Patterns of Faculty Participation in the Areas of Social Responsibility

The study aimed to identify the patterns of participation of faculty members in the areas of social responsibility. To achieve the objectives of the study, the social survey method was relied on the sample. The study sample consisted of (136) faculty members in a university in the Saudi higher education sector. The questionnaire was used to collect data. Its stability coefficient was (0.830) and it was applied electronically to the study sample. The results of the study revealed that there is daily interaction between a faculty member, students and community institutions to contribute to all areas of responsibility and spread its culture, in addition to the tendency of the educational institution (the field of study) to achieve balance and harmony between its fields (teaching, community service / scientific research) so that the faculty member can participate in all the desired activities and events and adapt to the requirements of the institution and society, there are also some obstacles such as lack of funding for research and studies Common and directed by the faculty member towards the community, the imposition of routine procedures from the university that hinder the faculty member from participating in community initiatives, the lack of opportunities for community partnerships between the university and the private and public sectors of the state and NGOs

Prevalence of Cigarette Smoking in Schizophrenic Patients Compared to Other Hospital Admitted Psychiatric Patients

Abstract Background: This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of cigarette smoking and some of the related factors among schizophrenic and other hospitalized psychiatric patients. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study on 120 patients hospitalized in Shahid Beheshti hospital in Kerman in 2005. Patients were equally devided in two groups of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Sampling was based on statistical census and data were collected using a questionnaire including 27 questions on demographic data, psychiatric disorder, smoking cigarettes and other substances, and Fagerstrom test. Data were analyzed by Chi-square and ANOVA tests using SPSS software. Findings: Prevalence and severity of cigarette smoking was 71.6% and 6.47% among schizophrenic and 51.6% and 6.40% among other psychiatric patients, respectively and the difference was not significant. History of withdrawal was 25.6% and 58.1% in the schizophrenia and other disorders respectively and the difference was significant (P < 0.05). Addiction to other substances was 51.6% in schizophrenic and 45% in the other patients and the most prevalent substances in both groups were opium and alcohol. The severity of smoking cigarettes was 6.9 along with other drug abuses and 5.1 in cases with just smoking based on Fagerstrom test and the difference was significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The prevalence of cigarette smoking in both schizophrenia and other psychiatric patients is higher than normal population, but there is no significant difference between these two groups. Schizophrenic patients need persistent supportive and supervising programs for cigarette smoking abuse treatment because of their cognitive, motivate and social problems. Keywords: Cigarettes, Schizophrenia, Psychiatric disorder

Overview of convolutional neural networks architectures for brain tumor segmentation

Due to the paramount importance of the medical field in the lives of people, researchers and experts exploited advancements in computer techniques to solve many diagnostic and analytical medical problems. Brain tumor diagnosis is one of the most important computational problems that has been studied and focused on. The brain tumor is determined by segmentation of brain images using many techniques based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Brain tumor segmentation methods have been developed since a long time and are still evolving, but the current trend is to use deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) due to its many breakthroughs and unprecedented results that have been achieved in various applications and their capacity to learn a hierarchy of progressively complicated characteristics from input without requiring manual feature extraction. Considering these unprecedented results, we present this paper as a brief review for main CNNs architecture types used in brain tumor segmentation. Specifically, we focus on researcher works that used the well-known brain tumor segmentation (BraTS) dataset

Synthesis, characterization and catalytic activity of Cu(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Mn(II) and Fe(III) complexes of 4-((3-formyl-4-hydroxyphenyl)diazenyl)-N-(4-methyloxazol-2-yl) benzenesulfonamide

The sulfonamide derivative, 4-((3-formyl-4-hydroxyphenyl)diazenyl)-N-(4-methyloxazol-2-yl) benzenesulfonamide (FDMB), was synthesized and characterized. Additionally, its Cu(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Mn(II) and Fe(III) complexes were prepared and their structures were investigated by elemental analysis, thermal analysis and (IR, electronic and EPR) spectroscopy. The mode of binding indicates that the ligand binds to the metal ion through carbonyl oxygen and OH phenolic with displacement of its proton. The Co(II) complex was applied for the hydrolysis of nerve agent-like compound, bis-(p-nitrophenyl) phosphate (BNPP). The results showed a significant rate enhancement of 2.5 million fold with respect to the auto-hydrolysis of BNPP under the same conditions

Investigation of Rutting Performance of WMA Mixtures Containing Copper Slag

Abstract: Copper slag (CS) is an abrasive blasting grit made of granulated slag from metal smelting processes. As copper slags are known to be waste material and cause a lot of environmental problems, it would be a good idea to use them in different sections of industry such as pavement construction. On the other hand, in order to save energy and reduce the amount of pollutants released during the construction of asphalt pavements, the technology of Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) is developing considerably. A very high amount of copper slag is produced in south of Iran where the weather is considered to be hot and rutting is the most important distress of asphalt concretes. This paper presents the influence of utilization of copper slag as fine material on the rutting performance of warm mixed asphalt. A laboratory study has been conducted on five asphalt mixtures with various CS contents, namely; 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% by weight of total aggregates. The amount of optimum bitumen and the value of Marshall Stability (MS) were determined with MS test for the samples. Then creep test and wheel track tests were conducted on the produced samples. The results indicated that the use of 20% CS in WMA enhances the marshal stability and rutting performance of WMA mixtures. However, the resistance of mixtures against rutting falls substantially by adding more than 20% CS

mmWave polarization diversity wideband multiple-input/multiple-output antenna system with symmetrical geometry for future compact devices

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks is a significant technological advancement in telecommunications that provides faster data speeds, lower latency, and greater network capacity. One of the key technologies that enables 5G is multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems, which allow for the transmission and reception of multiple data streams simultaneously, improving network performance and efficiency. MIMO is essential to meeting the demand for higher data rates and improved network performance in 5G networks. This work presents a four-element MIMO antenna system dedicated to the upper 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum. The suggested antenna system is designed using an ultra-thin RO5880 substrate having total dimensions of 20 x 20 x 0.254 mm(3) with symmetrical geometry. The proposed antenna covers a fractional bandwidth of 46.875% (25-38 GHz), covering potential 5G bands of 26, 28, and 32 GHz, and offers isolation of >18 dB. The proposed MIMO system is fabricated and tested in-house. The antenna showed efficiency >88% at the potential band of interest and a peak gain of 3.5 dBi. The orthogonal arrangement of the resonating elements provides polarization diversity. Also, the MIMO parameters obtained, such as mean effective gain (MEG), envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), channel capacity loss (CCL), and total active reflection coefficient (TARC), are found to have good performance. The measured results obtained are found to be in good agreement with simulations, hence making the proposed MIMO antenna suitable for handheld mmWave 5G devices.Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabi