Performance Evaluation of IFAS System Using Honeycomb PVC Media

Recently, Egypt is facing serious problems caused by the deterioration of effluent quality of many wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) especially in rural areas. Unexpected rapid increase in population associated with the increase of organic loading are the main factors causing the failure in operation for many WWTPs. Absence of periodic maintenance and lack of operators’ experience in these rural areas make the situation worse. Many WWTP are recently under rehabilitation and upgrading for the above reasons, however decision makers are facing a real challenge due to the space-limit in many cases. The integrated fixed film activated sludge (IFAS) system has recently proved to be an effective choice to expand the WWTP capacity for growing communities, enhance nitrogen removal and comply with more stringent effluent limits with small footprint. In this research, an IFAS pilot-scale reactor is constructed to optimize its application in upgrading conventional activated sludge (CAS) plants. The effect of carrier position, hydraulic retention time (HRT) and organic loading rate (OLR) on the biological treatment efficiency and nutrient removal compared to CAS process are studied. IFAS configurations with no media, vertical position and cross flow media position are tested with 4, 8 and 12 hours retention times and organic loading rates of 0.84 and 1.44 Kg COD/m3.day. Keywords: Integrated fixed film IFAS, biological nitrogen removal, honeycomb PVC media DOI: 10.7176/CER/11-2-06 Publication date:March 31st 2019

PERCEPTION OF NARRATIVE MEDICINE AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS IN LEBANON

The physician-patient relationship has evolved over the years. A good relationship necessitates mutual commitment from both parties, and narrative medicine can be considered as a tool that can aid in improving this relationship, as it helps to improve listening to patients’ stories and turning the patients’ subjective words into objective information, which help physicians to understand the nature of patients’ illnesses, improve the quality of patient care and leads to a better therapeutic effect. A descriptive cross-sectional study was planned. Data collection was done via convenience sampling. Beirut Arab University medical students were asked to fill a paper-based questionnaire between ­­­­­August 2019 and February 2020. The study collected demographic information about the participants including the age, the gender, current academic year, and the cumulative grade point average, and assessed their knowledge about narrative medicine and its importance to be implemented in the medical school curriculum. Data were collected, entered, and analyzed on SPSS software version 23.1. 361 medical students participated. Around 60% thought that narrative medicine helps to promote reflection and empathy, and 80% thought that narrative medicine is essential for enhancing the quality of patient care and that listening to patients’ stories would enhance physician-patient communication. Females tended to have a better understanding of narrative medicine’s importance. The majority agreed that narrative medicine should be an integral part of the medical school curriculum. Medical students were found to be lacking adequate knowledge about narrative medicine. However, the majority agreed on the need for implementation of humanity courses in the current curriculum

The Ishraq Program for out-of-school girls: From pilot to scale-up

In response to the needs of adolescent girls in Egypt for improved schooling, health, and livelihood prospects, Ishraq (sunrise)—a multidimensional program for 12–15-year-old out-of-school girls—was launched in 2001 by the Population Council in collaboration with CEDPA, Save the Children, Caritas, and local nongovernmental organizations. The program combined traditional tested program elements (literacy, life skills, nutrition) with more innovative ones (sports, financial education). It focused on building a multilayered platform to support and institutionalize the program by educating and mobilizing communities around issues of importance to adolescent girls; forging partnerships between international NGOs, government institutions, and local NGOs; and building capacities of local facilitators and partners to implement the program. This report identifies ways to continue expanding Ishraq, for which community demand remains high, including a new generation of girls’ programs to support graduates in exercising their rights and becoming active members of the community; and notes many important lessons on recruitment strategy, program structure and implementation, capacity-building, and partnerships

Determination of metformin hydrochloride in human plasma by UPLC/MS/MS: Application in bioequivalence study

Metformin hydrochloride was quantified in human plasma by Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography with Tandem Mass spectrometric determination (UPLC-MS/MS). The mobile phase used was (Water + 0.1% Formic acid) and (Acetonitrile + 0.1% Formic acid) in the ratio of 80:20 (v:v). An Acquity UPLC HSS T3 1.8 um 2.1×50 mm column was used. The detection was performed on a mass spectrometer (ESI+) using chlorpheniramine as an internal standard. The method was fully validated and it was applied to bioequivalence study of metformin hydrochloride in two brands of the drug with relative bioequivalence of 94.7%

EFFECT OF SODIUM NITRITE EXPOSURE ON THE IMMUNE RESPONSES AGAINST OF RIFT VALLEY FEVER VACCINE IN MICE

Objective: Daily exposure to food preservatives constitutes a major crisis to children especially during vaccination so; the aim of the study is to assess the effect of sodium nitrite on the immune responses against Rift Valley fever vaccine (RVFV) in Swiss mice. Methods: Mice were divided into four equal groups: group 1 (control) was orally administrated with distilled water (2 ml/kg b. wt.); group 2 was orally administrated with the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of sodium nitrite 0.07 mg/kg b. wt. daily for 21 d, group 3 was vaccinated with inactivated RVFV two times and group 4 was orally given sodium nitrite and vaccinated as group 3. Blood samples were collected from all groups two weeks after booster vaccination. The leucocytic indices and the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were determined to assess the cell-mediated immunity. The humoral immunity was evaluated using direct enzyme-linked immune-sorbent assay (ELISA) test and serum neutralization test (SNT). Results: Sodium nitrite significantly increased the neutrophil index and the NLR whereas; it decreased the total leucocytic count and lymphocyte index in both non-vaccinated and vaccinated mice. Moreover, sodium nitrite significantly decreased both the IgG titer and the efficiency of vaccination through increasing the ED50 value. Conclusion: Sodium nitrite existed an immune-suppressive effect on both cellular and humoral immune responses in mice

Utilization of Some Fruits and Vegetables By-Products to Produce High Dietary Fiber Jam

The present study aimed to investigate the chemical composition, antioxidant activity, total phenolic compounds and ?-carotene of carrot peels, apple pomace, banana peels and mandarin peels and their quality in preparing jam. Mandarin and banana peels characterized by its higher crude fiber (12.16 and 5.25%) and vitamin C (68 and 16.6 mg/100g) compared to carrot peels (3.91%) and apple pomace (3.65%). Banana peels contained higher amount of magnesium, potassium, calcium and iron compared to other peels samples. Therefore, jam of banana peels characterized by its higher content in magnesium (758 mg/100g), potassium (779 mg/100g), calcium (191 mg/100g) and iron (59.15 mg/100g). Jam of apple pomace characterized by its higher phosphorus contents (220 mg/100g) followed by jam of banana peels (138 mg/100g), mandarin peels (128 mg/100g) and carrot peels (53 mg/100g). Jam of carrot peels characterized by its higher phenolics content as gallic acid equivalent (87.4 mg/100g) followed by jams of apple pomace (82.5 mg/100g), banana peels (42.7 mg/100g) and mandarin peels (34.6 mg/100g). The same trend was observed in total flavonoids as catechen equivalent (mg CAT/100g) in jams of carrot peels, apple pomace, banana peels and mandarin peels, where they were 35.9, 30.1, 23.5 and 21.7, respectively. Furthermore, jam of carrot peels had higher antioxidant activity, where its DPPH radical, had lower DPPH based IC50 (1.8 ?g/ml) while jam of apple pomace, banana peels and mandarin peels had higher DPPH based IC50 reached to 2.04, 2.21 and 3.34 µg/ml, respectively. The same trend was observed for the ?-carotene radical in tested jam samples. Hunter color parameter showed that jam of mandarin peels had highest lightness (L* = 39.8), followed by jam of carrot peels (29.46), apple pomace (18.27) and banana peels (15.19). Therefore, jam of banana peels was darker than other tested peels samples. Sensory evaluation showed that jam of apple pomace characterized by its higher taste and odor, followed by jam of mandarin peels, banana peels and carrot peels. Color of tested jam of carrot, banana or mandarin peels was darker than apple pomace jam. Also, jam of apple pomace gave higher scores in appearance and overall acceptability. Keywords: Jam – Peels – antioxidant activity – Total phenolics– Total Flavonoid

Quorum sensing inhibitory activity of sub-inhibitory concentrations of β-lactams

Introduction: The virulence factors of Pseudomonas aeruginosa are under the control of quorum sensing (QS) signals. Hence, interference with QS prevents its pathogenesis.Objective: The aim of the present research is to assess the influence of some β-lactam antibiotics on cell communication and the release of different virulence factors.Methods: The minimal inhibitory concentrations of ceftazidime, cefepime and imipenem were evaluated by microbroth dilution method. The effect of sub-inhibitory concentration of the tested antibiotics on QS signals was investigated using reporter strain assay. In addition, different virulence factors (elastase, protease, pyocyanin and hemolysin) were estimated in the presence of their sub-inhibitory concentrations.Results: Low concentrations of ceftazidime, cefepime and imipenem caused significant elimination of the QS signals 3OHC12- HSL and C4-HSL up to 1/20 MIC. Furthermore, low concentrations of the tested antimicrobials suppressed virulence factors elastase and hemolysin. Moreover, 1/20 of their MICs reduced elastase, protease, pyocyanin and hemolysin.Conclusion: Utilization of β-lactam antibiotics at low concentrations could be an effective approach for prevention and treatment of P. aeruginosa infection.Keywords: Quorum sensing inhibition, β-lactams, Pseudomonas aeruginos

Comparative Acute Toxicity of Certain Pesticides Against Daphnia Longispina

Some of commercial pesticides used in Egypt were examined in laboratory against first generation of Daphnia longispina. The tested animals were collected from Kafr El-zayat district, Egypt and acclimatized in laboratory until used. The examined compounds were imidaclopride, indoxcarb and pyriproxyfen. It is evident from LC50 (96 hrs) values of the compounds that, indoxcarb is highly toxic, while pyriproxyfen is the lowest one. On the other hand, imidacloprid induced LC50 (3.4 ppm; 24 hrs) and decreased to 104 ppm after 96 hrs. The obtained data declared that, Daphnia is a very useful tool for screening pesticides pollution and evaluate their acute toxicity

Intelligent Neurtosophic Diagnostic System for Cardiotcography data

Cardiotocography data uncertainty is a critical task for the classification in biomedical field. Constructing good and efficient classifier via machine learning algorithms is necessary to help doctors in diagnosing the state of fetus heart rate. *e proposed neutrosophic diagnostic system is an Interval Neutrosophic Rough Neural Network framework based on the backpropagation algorithm. It benefits from the advantages of neutrosophic set theory not only to improve the performance of rough neural networks but also to achieve a better performance than the other algorithms. *e experimental results visualize the data using the boxplot for better understanding of attribute distribution. *e performance measurement of the confusion matrix for the proposed framework is 95.1, 94.95, 95.2, and 95.1 concerning accuracy rate, precision, recall, and F1-score, respectively. WEKA application is used to analyse cardiotocography data performance measurement of different algorithms, e.g., neural network, decision table, the nearest neighbor, and rough neural network. *e comparison with other algorithms shows that the proposed framework is both feasible and efficient classifier. Additionally, the receiver operation characteristic curve displays the proposed framework classifications of the pathologic, normal, and suspicious states by 0.93, 0.90, and 0.85 areas that are considered high and acceptable under the curve, respectively. Improving the performance measurements of the proposed framework by removing ineffective attributes via feature selection would be suitable advancement in the future. Moreover, the proposed framework can also be used in various real-life problems such as classification of coronavirus, social media, and satellite image