Williams-Beuren syndrome: a rare presentation of aortic hypoplasia

William-Beuren syndrome (WBS) is a rare genetic disorder resulting from a micro-deletion of the elastin gene located on the long arm of chromosome 7 (7q11.23). Characterized by typical elfin facies, mental deficiency, overfriendly personality and occasionally infantile hypercalcemia together with various eye, teeth, cardiovascular, renal and skeletal abnormalities. Herein, we describe two cases of diffuse narrowing of the entire aorta, with associated pulmonary artery narrowing. To the best of our knowledge, these two cases of aortic hypoplasia associated with WBS are the first to be reported in the region

Efficient Toxicity Prediction via Simple Features Using Shallow Neural Networks and Decision Trees

Toxicity prediction of chemical compounds is a grand challenge. Lately, it achieved significant progress in accuracy but using a huge set of features, implementing a complex blackbox technique such as a deep neural network, and exploiting enormous computational resources. In this paper, we strongly argue for the models and methods that are simple in machine learning characteristics, efficient in computing resource usage, and powerful to achieve very high accuracy levels. To demonstrate this, we develop a single task-based chemical toxicity prediction framework using only 2D features that are less compute intensive. We effectively use a decision tree to obtain an optimum number of features from a collection of thousands of them. We use a shallow neural network and jointly optimize it with decision tree taking both network parameters and input features into account. Our model needs only a minute on a single CPU for its training while existing methods using deep neural networks need about 10 min on NVidia Tesla K40 GPU. However, we obtain similar or better performance on several toxicity benchmark tasks. We also develop a cumulative feature ranking method which enables us to identify features that can help chemists perform prescreening of toxic compounds effectively

“Factors Influencing Consumer Purchase Intentions in buying Honda City in Karachi, Pakistan”

The essential objective of this research is to demonstrate such factors that have adverse effect on consumer purchase intentions in buying Honda City and to analyze the consumer perceptions in considering alternate brands or imported cars. This research emphasizes the impact of seven independent variables acquire mainly from the literature which include brand loyalty, fuel efficiency, aesthetics, after sales service, attitude and perception, social image, and pricing. The consumer’s purchase intention towards buying Honda City in Karachi, Pakistan is the dependent variable. The following study used the questionnaire-based survey and the respondent’s point of view evaluated on the 5 points Likert scale ranging from 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree. The questionnaire designed on google forms and filled online due to the issues related to the pandemic of covid-19. As the concerned issue for this research is the difficulty to reach Honda City users in Karachi, Pakistan which are the target audience of this study. There are 162 respondents who filled out the questionnaire for the following research. However, in this research we have used convenience-based sampling technique for analyzation of the research due to the limitation of time and resources. The questionnaire is filled out by the respondents having different age group and gender although they possessed the similarity in the behavior by analyzing their feedback from different factors and data collected from respondents review that the factors discussed in this research influence consumer purchase intentions. The key recommendation for the research is for the brand to keep building innovative techniques and providing its customer competitive advantage to standout in the market and evidently establish superior brand equity in the market

Empirical study on use of online social networking sites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Online Social Networking sites (OSNs) provide Internet users with a useful medium for communication, interaction and collaboration. Reported usage of OSN has pervaded all segments of society irrespective of gender, age, nationality, or educational level. This study provides analysis of how demographic factors affect OSN adoption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The data represent a nationwide face-to-face survey of over 3000 respondents. Data stratification based on the population distribution across the Kingdom was used to select a portion of the samples from the provinces of the Kingdom. Statistical methods, including descriptive statistical analysis, logistic regression, the measure of association, and chi-square tests, were applied to analyze the data (Haight et al., 2014). OSN variables considered include the extent of usage by younger adults, usage by females, the role of education in the use of OSNs, and the dependence on the use of OSNs on the availability of technology such as mobile Internet. Findings show that education level plays a considerable role for OSN usage, teenagers and young adults use OSN more than others, Saudi nationals use OSN more than expatriates in the Kingdom, and OSN usage depends heavily on the availability of the mobile Internet

Steady MHD Free Convection Flow with Thermal Radiation past a Vertical Porous Plate Immersed in a Porous Medium

Abstract: The present study is concerned with thermal radiation in a steady two-dimensional MHD free convection flow through a porous vertical flat plate immersed in a porous medium. In the analysis a DarcyForchhemier model is considered while the fluid is taken to be gray, absorbing-emitting radiation. The nonlinear governing equations have been transformed by the usual similarity transformation to a system of ordinary differential equations. These dimensionless similar equations are then solved numerically employing the Nachtsheim-Swigert shooting iteration technique along with sixth order Runge-Kutta integration scheme. Finally the effects of the pertinent parameters are examined

Treatment of Municipal Wastewater Through Horizontal Flow Constructed Wetland

Highly contaminated municipal wastewater is being disposed of into land and rivers without any prior treatment has severe side effects on human and marine animals. This research focused on the treatment of Majeed Keerio village municipal wastewater through horizontal flow constructed wetland system. The experimental study was evaluated and monitored timely over a year. The overall treatment efficiency performance of the wetland system was determined by considering organic pollutants removal efficiency. This study emphasized on the design of horizontal flow constructed wetland for the effective treatment of municipal wastewater of village Majeed Keerio, Sakrand, Sindh. The constructed wetland efficiently reduced COD, BOD5, TSS, turbidity, total phosphate, total nitrogen pollutants of wastewater, which was about 92.3%, 93%, 96%, 96.4% and 74%, respectively. This method reduced all thermotolerant coliforms. Constructed wetland system was found most economical and effective for the treatment of domestic wastewater. The effect of different hydraulic loading rates under varying hydraulic retention times within the constructed wetland was examined. The higher hydraulic retention times resulted in improved pollutants removal efficiency

Apocynin and catalase prevent hypertension and kidney injury in Cyclosporine A-induced nephrotoxicity in rats.

Oxidative stress is involved in the pathogenesis of a number of diseases including hypertension and renal failure. There is enhanced expression of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADPH oxidase) and therefore production of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) during renal disease progression. This study investigated the effect of apocynin, an NADPH oxidase inhibitor and catalase, an H2O2 scavenger on Cyclosporine A (CsA) nephrotoxicity in Wistar-Kyoto rats. Rats received CsA (25mg/kg/day via gavage) and were assigned to vehicle, apocynin (2.5mmol/L p.o.), catalase (10,000U/kg/day i.p.) or apocynin plus catalase for 14 days. Renal functional and hemodynamic parameters were measured every week, and kidneys were harvested at the end of the study for histological and NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4) assessment. Oxidative stress markers and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) were measured. CsA rats had higher plasma malondialdehyde (by 340%) and BUN (by 125%), but lower superoxide dismutase and total antioxidant capacity (by 40%, all P<0.05) compared to control. CsA increased blood pressure (by 46mmHg) and decreased creatinine clearance (by 49%, all P<0.05). Treatment of CsA rats with apocynin, catalase, and their combination decreased blood pressure to near control values (all P<0.05). NOX4 mRNA activity was higher in the renal tissue of CsA rats by approximately 63% (P<0.05) compared to controls but was reduced in apocynin (by 64%), catalase (by 33%) and combined treatment with apocynin and catalase (by 84%) compared to untreated CsA rats. Treatment of CsA rats with apocynin, catalase, and their combination prevented hypertension and restored renal functional parameters and tissue Nox4 expression in this model. NADPH inhibition and H2O2 scavenging is an important therapeutic strategy during CsA nephrotoxicity and hypertension