Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Regulatory Landscape: Unravelling the Future Challenges in the High Sky

The individuals on the ground nowadays often observe objects distantly hover over the sky, which raises the question of who might be operating the object or what the object might record. Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or Drones today have quickly penetrated civilian, military, and commercial sectors. The drones or UAS, with the advancement of technology, are now capable of traversing long distances, having long endurance, and having multipurpose functionality. The UAS industry is fast expanding, with trade investment touching the billion-dollar mark in flourishing economies. The advent of the Covid 19 pandemic saw a steep rise in the use of UAS across the world. The world is moving towards a liberalized regulatory approach to promote and accelerate the UAS within the aviation ecosystem. The UAS ecosystem provides access to advanced aircraft technology coupled with vast economic opportunity, but the same is not devoid of challenges. The study looks at aspects of privacy, persistence surveillance, data protection, and safety that have emerged as pertinent challenges to the UAS ecosystem. The study has analyzed the case laws that have influenced the regulatory approach, policy initiatives. The study has also looked at stakeholders’ initiatives to navigate the challenges to strengthen the UAS ecosystem

DECIPHERING THE SIGNALING MECHANISM OF ENHANCED TRAIL SENSITIZATION BY LY303511

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Patient-Reported Value of a Standardized Welcome Letter for Huntington Disease Clinic

Communication is an essential component of patient satisfaction, which can be especially challenging in patients with neurobehavioral symptoms. As an effective form of communication, Patient Welcome Letter (PWL) should be designed in a way to cover a wide range of literacy. We designed a PWL for our Huntington Disease (HD) clinic using readability and suitability measures. Of the 80 patients that received the PWL, 47 filled out the survey. A majority of patients (\u3e90%) found the PWL clear, understandable, and well-organized. The PWL was deemed valuable overall by 91.4% of participants

Static fracture and modal analysis simulation of a gas turbine compressor blade and bladed disk system

This paper presents a methodology for conducting a 3-D static fracture analysis with applications to a gas turbine compressor blade. An open crack model is considered in the study and crack-tip driving parameters are estimated by using 3-D singular crack-tip elements in ANSYS. The static fracture analysis is verified with a special purpose fracture code (FRANC3D). Once the crack front is perfectly defined and validated, a free vibration study is conducted by analyzing the natural frequencies and modeshapes for both a single blade and bladed disk system. Taking advantage of high performance computing resources, a high fidelity finite element model is considered in the parametric investigation. In the fracture simulation, the influence of the size of a single edged crack as well as the rotational velocity on fracture parameters (stress intensity factors and J-Integral) are evaluated. Results demonstrate that for the applied loading condition, a mixed mode crack propagation is expected. In the modal analysis study, increasing the depth of the crack leads to a decrease in the natural frequencies of both the single blade and bladed disk system, while increasing the rotational velocity increases the natural frequencies. The presence of a crack also leads to mode localization for all mode families, a phenomenon that cannot be captured by a single blade analysis.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Qatar National Research Fund through Grant number NPRP 7-1153-2-432. The authors also thank Texas A&M at Qatar?s Advanced Scientific Computing (TASC) for access to the RAAD Supercomputer.Scopu

Thymoquinone Induces Telomere Shortening, DNA Damage and Apoptosis in Human Glioblastoma Cells

Background: A major concern of cancer chemotherapy is the side effects caused by the non-specific targeting of both normal and cancerous cells by therapeutic drugs. Much emphasis has been placed on discovering new compounds that target tumour cells more efficiently and selectively with minimal toxic effects on normal cells. Methodology/Principal Findings: The cytotoxic effect of thymoquinone, a component derived from the plant Nigella sativa, was tested on human glioblastoma and normal cells. Our findings demonstrated that glioblastoma cells were more sensitive to thymoquinone-induced antiproliferative effects. Thymoquinone induced DNA damage, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in the glioblastoma cells. It was also observed that thymoquinone facilitated telomere attrition by inhibiting the activity of telomerase. In addition to these, we investigated the role of DNA-PKcs on thymoquinone mediated changes in telomere length. Telomeres in glioblastoma cells with DNA-PKcs were more sensitive to thymoquinone mediated effects as compared to those cells deficient in DNA-PKcs. Conclusions/Significance: Our results indicate that thymoquinone induces DNA damage, telomere attrition by inhibiting telomerase and cell death in glioblastoma cells. Telomere shortening was found to be dependent on the status of DNA-PKcs. Collectively, these data suggest that thymoquinone could be useful as a potential chemotherapeutic agent in th

Efficacy of iron treatments on hemoglobin and ferritin levels in iron deficient pregnant women: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of oral iron and intravenous iron therapy on the hemoglobin and ferritin levels in pregnant women with iron deficiency anemia. Method: Using PubMed, ProQuest and Google Scholar data-base, literature search was carried out and RCT studies comparing Oral vs IV iron in pregnancy published between 2012 and 2022 was selected. Use of intramuscular iron than Intravenous iron, studies comparing two IV and two Oral therapies, studies where only postpartum women received iron treatment were excluded. The risk of bias was assessed by using Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Data were combine to pooled mean difference and 95% confidence interval using random effects model. Results: 17 Articles were analyzed and included in the systematic review; all 17 were included in the meta-analysis for the hemoglobin, and nine were included for the ferritin. The hemoglobin and ferritin level increase after four weeks of treatment was statistically significant (p < 0.001). Cumulative results for both parameters indicate that there is little difference between the two groups, although both groups demonstrated positive effects. The pooled mean difference with 95% CI of hemoglobin and ferritin levels between the two groups was 1.01 [0.76, 1.26] and 58.84 [36.67, 81.00], respectively. Conclusions: In the meta-analysis, we found that intravenous iron is as effective as oral iron for treating iron deficiency anemia in pregnancy if only the increase in hemoglobin and ferritin is considered

Back to the Commons: Introducing Regenerative Agricultural Networks in Northwestern Europe

For the last decades, technologies, new agricultural trade policies, environmental restrictions, high pressure through economic competition in combination with a sharp competition of land lead to the development of intensive farming. As a result, patchy landscapes have been replaced by monofunctional, homogeneous agricultural landscapes that fragment natural landscapes and take away natural and cultural diversity. The consequences of the processes of fragmentation and homogenization are both socio-economic and landscape-ecological and cause biodiversity loss and social injustice among farmers. Through changing existing paradigms about nature conservation, this project suggests an alternative approach for understanding possible interrelations between nature and agricultural practices. By reintroducing concepts about commons, a synergy can be found that compliments natural connectivity and agricultural landscapes through the establishment of a regenerative agro-ecological network that connects biotopes in a multi-functional way using current agricultural parcels and natural zones. This newly introduced Common Ground network produces a new farming method in which agricultural practice has a temporal character and is a continuous modifiable process. In this way, the vision makes use of the dual crisis as a solution rather than seeing it as the source of the problems. The Commons also resemble a new way of practising agriculture, in which land, knowledge, resources and financial risks are shared among farmers in a socially just way. In addition, these shared landscapes reflect on the social context in which farmers are considered as environmental stewards who share some of the responsibility for an ecologically balanced system.AR2U086 R&D Studio – Spatial Strategies for the Global MetropolisArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Urbanis

Thymoquinone treatment produces apoptosis in human glioblastoma cells.

<p>(<b>A</b>) Morphological appearance of cells treated with TQ (50 µM) for 24 hours. (<b>B</b>) Changes in the level pro-apoptotic proteins Bax and cytochrome <i>c</i> in different cell types used in the study. (<b>C</b>) FACS profiles of staining for Annexin V and propidium iodide to determine apoptosis and necrosis. (<b>l</b>) M059K (untreated) (<b>ll</b>) M059K (TQ treated) (<b>lll</b>) M059J (untreated) and (<b>IV</b>) M059J (TQ treated).</p

Thymoquinone induces cell death in human glioblastoma cells.

<p>(<b>A</b>) Cell viability of the various cell types after 24 hour treatment with TQ at the different concentrations is shown. The percentage cell viability was normalised against the DMSO controls (0 µM) for each cell type. Mean and standard deviations of the three independent experiments are shown. (<b>B</b>) Cell cycle profiles of the IMR 90, hTERT-BJ1 and glioblastoma cells without (0 µM) or with TQ (50 µM) treatment as measured by propidium iodide staining. (<b>C</b>) Changes in level of cell cycle regulatory proteins in the cell lines tested. Whole cells were lysed and equal amounts of proteins were separated using 4–20% SDS-PAGE, transferred to PVDF membrane and immunoreacted with antibodies against p53 and p21. β-actin was used as loading control.</p

Thymoquinone treatment causes telomere attrition in glioblastoma cells.

<p>(<b>A</b>) Basal telomerase activity level in IMR90, hTERT-BJ1, M059K and M059J cells. (B) Percentage change in telomerase activity relative to their respective untreated controls following exposure to 50 µM TQ for 24 hours. (<b>C</b>) Expression of hTERT following TQ treatment (50 µM) for 24 hours. Telomere restriction fragment analysis for telomere length measurement in glioblastoma cells following 4 days (D) and 15 days (<b>E</b>) treatment with 25 µM TQ. Changes in telomere length are expressed as percentage with respect to its controls. Graph shows mean and standard error from three independent experiments and TRF blot shown is a representative from three independent experiments. (_*) indicates statistical significance, p<0.05.</p