Mineral Changes in the Blood of Ovariectomized Mice after Treatment with β-Sitosterol

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Priprava nekoliko novih piridina, tienopiridina i pirido[2,3:4\u27,5\u27]tieno[3\u27,2\u27-d]pirimidin-8-ona iz 2-acetilbenzoimidazola

Reaction of 2-acetylbenzoimidazole 1 with some arylaldehydes under different conditions gave chalcones, 1,5-pentanediones and pyridines. Treatment of chalcones with various types of reagents gave the corresponding new pyridines, thienopyridines, pyrido[2,3:4\u27,5\u27]thieno[3\u27,2\u27-d]- pyrimidin-8-ones via initial addition of active methylene or amino group to the double bond followed by cyclization.Reakcija 2-acetilbenzoimidazola s nekim arilaldehidima pod razli~itim uvjetima daje halkon, 1,5-pentandione i piridine. Obrada halkona s razli~itim reagensima daje nove piridine, tienopiridine i pirido[2,3:4\u27,5\u27]ti -eno[3\u27,2\u27-d]pirimidin-8-one preko po~etne adicije metilena ili amino grupe na dvostruku vezu i nakon toga slijedi ciklizacija

Preoperative evaluation of patients with ovarian masses using the risk of malignancy index 4 model

Objective: To evaluate the performance of the RMI 4 in discriminating benign from malignant ovarian masses. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Assiut Women Health Hospital- Egypt. Materials and methods: This was an observational cross-sectional study involving 91 patients at Women\u27s Health Hospital, Assiut University, Egypt during the period between January, 2016 and January, 2017. Women with ovarian masses planned for surgical management were recruited from the outpatient gynecology clinic of the hospital. Risk of malignancy index (RMI 4) was calculated for all study participants. Biopsies obtained from the ovarian masses after surgical intervention were sent to the pathology lab for histopathological examination. The histopathologic diagnosis of the ovarian masses is considered the gold standard for diagnosis. Results: The mean age of patients in the benign group was 34.83±16.28 years versus 43.43±15.91 in the malignant group. There were 12 postmenopausal patients (15.6%) in the benign group versus 4 postmenopausal patients (28.6%) in the malignant group (p=0.0001). An ultrasound score of 4 was recorded in 85.7% of patients in the malignant group versus only 6.5% in the benign group (p=0.0001). Additionally, tumor size ≥ 7 cm was observed in 85.7% of patients in the malignant group versus 55.8% in the benign group (p=0.0001). The mean value of CA-125 was significantly higher in malignant group than the benign group (142.09±41.50 versus 54.51±32.86 ml, respectively) with p=0.01. RMI 4 had a sensitivity of 75%, specificity of 97.3%, PPV of 85.7%, NPV of 94.8 % and an overall accuracy of 93.4%. Conclusions: RMI 4 is a simple and reliable tool in the primary evaluation of patients with ovarian masses. It can further be used to discriminate benign from malignant ovarian masses with high sensitivity and accuracy

Broadband laser polarization control with aligned carbon nanotubes

We introduce a simple approach to fabricate aligned carbon nanotube (ACNT) device for broadband polarization control in fiber laser systems. The ACNT device was fabricated by pulling from as-fabricated vertically-aligned carbon nanotube arrays. Their anisotropic property is confirmed with optical and scanning electron microscopy, and with polarized Raman and absorption spectroscopy. The device was then integrated into fiber laser systems (at two technologically important wavelengths of 1 and 1.5 um) for polarization control. We obtained a linearly-polarized light output with the maximum extinction ratio of ~12 dB. The output polarization direction could be fully controlled by the ACNT alignment direction in both lasers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that ACNT device is applied to polarization control in laser systems. Our results exhibit that the ACNT device is a simple, low-cost, and broadband polarizer to control laser polarization dynamics, for various photonic applications (such as material processing, polarization diversity detection in communications), where the linear polarization control is necessary.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Representative Set of Objects in Rough Sets Based on Galois Connections

This paper introduces a novel definition, called representative set of objects of a decision class, in the framework of decision systems based on rough sets. The idea behind such a notion is to consider subsets of objects that characterize the different classes given by a decision system. Besides the formal definition of representative set of objects of a decision class, we present different mathematical properties of such sets and a relationship with classification tasks based on rough sets. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Prospects for the Improvement of Energy Performance in Agroindustry Using Phase Change Materials

This work was partially supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, UIDB/00066/2020 (CTS – Center of Technology and Systems).The use of Phase Change Materials (PCMs), able to store latent heat, represents an opportunity to improve energy efficiency in the agroindustry by means of thermal energy storage. PCMs provide higher energy density then sensible heat storage mediums, thus paving the way to multiple applications, like supporting the integration of renewables or allowing for new storage architectures, decentralized and directly installed in the chain production equipment, creating e.g. the opportunity to recover and value low-grade operational heat sub-products. Such new and decentralized architecture, not currently applied in agroindustry, is proposed in this work. A chocolate tempering machine using an organic PCM is conceived and analyzed using ANSYS Fluent software for computational fluid dynamics simulations, comparing the main aspects in the storage capacity and discharging process with a conventional sensitive heat storage solution that uses water. PCMs allows improving the stored energy, keeping the chocolate in the working temperature after being tempered for more than four times longer than using only hot water. If the PCMs are charged by renewables, the self-consumption ratio can be improved while providing energy flexibility to the user.authorsversionpublishe