Appendicitis in Children: Audit of outcome in Kosti-Teaching Hospital

Introduction: Appendicitis is the most common cause of the acute surgical abdomen in children. It accounts for approximately one-third of childhood hospital admissions for abdominal pain. Objectives: To audit the outcome of management of children presenting with abdominal pain suspicious of acute appendicitis. Patients and Methods: This is a retrospective study of 67 children admitted and treated for acute appendicitis in Kosti Teaching Hospital from January 2005 to December 2007. Symptoms, signs, details of management and results of follow up were studied. Results: Boys comprised 45 (67.16%). Age ranged from 4 – 15 years (mean 11.13± 2.59) years. 44(65.67%) of children had acute, 16(23.88%) perforated appendicitis, 3(4.48%) appendiceal mass,appendix single patient (1.49%) had appendiceal abscess and 3(4.48%) normal. Five patients (7.46%) developed postoperative complications but no mortality was encountered.Conclusion: In spite of advances in means of diagnosis appendicitis remains a clinical diagnosis with excellent outcome if diagnosed and treated promptly.Key words: Appendicitis, appendicular abscess, appendicular mass

Women directors and audit fees: Empirical evidence from Malaysia

This study investigates board diversity and its effects on audit fee in case of Malaysia. The main aim of this study is to examine whether bumiputera women on board, numbers of women on board, women on board’s independent and women on board’s expertise are influence the audit fee in the non-financial listed companies of Malaysia. Data for the 250 companies for the year 2014 were collected. The reported results of correlation analysis show that all the variables are correlated in the given time period. Furthermore, data set pass the entire preliminary test such as outliers, linearity, normality, multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity for regression analysis namely Ordinary Least Square (OLS). The results of OLS shows that the no relationship between bumiputera women on board, numbers of women on board, women on board’s independent and women on board’s expertise and audit fee. The results are not surprising since only 11 percent total women and 5.1 percent bumiputera women are on board in the listed nonfinancial companies in Malaysia. Although there is little improvement in the number of women on board in listed non-financial companies but there is still need to increase the numbers till 30 percent. The findings of this study are very important for the Malaysian companies to improve the performance

DFPI-based Control of the DC-bus Voltage and the AC-side Current of a Shunt Active Power Filter

The current paper presents a continuation of an earlier research and purposes to enhance the performances of the studied system. While the double fuzzy PI (DFPI) control was applied only on the DC capacitor bus in a previous work it is applied here also on the output current of shunt active power filter (SAPF). The nonlinear load disrupts the electrical distribution system by the generation of harmonics, which requires an efficient SAPF intervention to minimize the effects of harmonics on the network and provide electrical energy conforms to international standards. The design and simulation of this work were performed under MATLAB/Simulink environment. The carried-out simulation results demonstrate a satisfactory regulation both for the output current of the SAPF and the DC bus voltage. Furthermore the power quality is improved since a near-unity power factor and very low rates of imbalance of both source voltages and currents are obtained

DFPI-based Control of the DC-bus Voltage and the AC-side Current of a Shunt Active Power Filter

The current paper presents a continuation of an earlier research and purposes to enhance the performances of the studied system. While the double fuzzy PI (DFPI) control was applied only on the DC capacitor bus in a previous work it is applied here also on the output current of shunt active power filter (SAPF). The nonlinear load disrupts the electrical distribution system by the generation of harmonics, which requires an efficient SAPF intervention to minimize the effects of harmonics on the network and provide electrical energy conforms to International standards. The design and simulation of this work were performed under MATLAB/Simulink environment. The carried-out simulation results demonstrate a satisfactory regulation both for the output current of the SAPF and the DC bus voltage. Furthermore the power quality is improved since a near-unity power factor and very low rates of imbalance of both source voltages and currents are obtained

Occult Hepatitis B Virus in Gezira State Sudan

Background: Occult hepatitis B infection (OBI) is simply defined as serologically undetectable hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg-ve), despite the presence of circulating HBV DNA.Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of occult HBV among Screened HBsAg subjects in Gezira State, Sudan.Materials and Methods: A total of 176 subjects including cancer patients, hospital based controls and health care workers were screened for HBsAg by ELISA, and their DNA was extracted by using polymerase chain reaction.Results: 49/176 (27.8%) were positive for occult HBV as follows: cancer patients had 31/81 (38.2%) cases, while 18.9% were reported among hospital based controls. 11.2%, 2.2% were positive for both HBsAg and DNA respectively. Ten out of the 50 (20%) healthcare workers, who were negative for HBsAg, were found to be positive for HBV DNA, while one out of the 19, who were positive for HBsAg, was found to be positive for HBV DNA. Occult HBV among this study groups showed an approximately equal distribution among males and females 18.2% and 20.5 %, respectively.Conclusion: This study concluded that the prevalence of OBI among healthcare workers, hospital based controls and cancer patients, is remarkably increasing compared with the prevalence of the disease. More molecular epidemiological studies are needed to delineate a link between OBI and cancer. Proper HBV screening should be carried out to avoid occult hepatitis B infection transmission.Keywords: Hepatitis B virus, Gezira State, cancer, healthcare workers, Suda

Feature selection using information gain for improved structural-based alert correlation

Grouping and clustering alerts for intrusion detection based on the similarity of features is referred to as structurally base alert correlation and can discover a list of attack steps. Previous researchers selected different features and data sources manually based on their knowledge and experience, which lead to the less accurate identification of attack steps and inconsistent performance of clustering accuracy. Furthermore, the existing alert correlation systems deal with a huge amount of data that contains null values, incomplete information, and irrelevant features causing the analysis of the alerts to be tedious, time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, this paper focuses on selecting accurate and significant features of alerts that are appropriate to represent the attack steps, thus, enhancing the structural-based alert correlation model. A two-tier feature selection method is proposed to obtain the significant features. The first tier aims at ranking the subset of features based on high information gain entropy in decreasing order. The second tier extends additional features with a better discriminative ability than the initially ranked features. Performance analysis results show the significance of the selected features in terms of the clustering accuracy using 2000 DARPA intrusion detection scenario-specific dataset

Hypolipidemic Effect of Hyphaene thebaica (Doum-palm) in Induced Hypercholestrolemic Wistar Albino Rats

Abstract This study is designed to investigate the effect of feeding the whole bulb (mesocarp) of Hyphaene thebaica fruit, as 3% of the diet, on lipid profile in Diet-induced hypercholesterolemic Wistar albino rats. Various dietary rations were prepared by addition of H. thepaica, to assess their impact on the serum triglycerides, total cholesterol and its fractions the LDL-C, HDL-C and VLDL-C in normal and induced hypercholestrolemic rats. The rats were divided into four groups and fed for three-weeks as follows: Group 1 fed basal rat diet, group 2 fed the basal rat diet mixed with H. thebaica, group 3 fed high fat diet (the basal rat diet mixed with, calculated amount of, egg yolk to formulate a diet of 1% cholesterol) and group 4 fed the high fat diet mixed with H. thebaica. By the end of the experiment a significant (P=0.03) increase in serum triglycerides and the VLDL-C was observed in groups (3 and 4) compared to the control group. Also the level of LDL-C increased significantly (P=0.04) in group 3 but decreased numerically in group 4. Moreover, the lowest level of the total cholesterol was recorded in group 2 compared to the other groups. However, feeding H. thebaica when mixed with high fat in the diet, resulted in significantly (P=0.02) decreased HDL-C levels. In conclusion this study suggested that H. thebaica contains active ingredients that can manipulate blood lipids and can protect from an increase of the bad cholesterol in the blood, even if a high fat diet is consumed. The present experiment also showed that, the increase of serum triglycerides and VLDL-C levels due to feeding high fat diet in group 3, was augmented by adding H. thebaica to the diet in group 4, so the study of the fatty acid composition of these lipid fractions is recommended

Linear forced-rotordynamics analysis for optimizing the performance factors of machine motorized spindle using design explorer method

A machine-tool structure optimization is an important technique that improves the machining efficiency and saves materials and the energy resource. In this work, dynamic design optimization method for Machine-Motorized-Spindle (MMS) subjected to a number of rotating unbalanced forces effects is presented. Linear forced-Rotordynamic analysis with design explorer method has been used to simulate the output response. The Design Variables (DVs) and their limits were carefully chosen and applied to develop the Design-of-Experiment (DOE). The Box-Behnken Design (BBD) method, because of its good organization in providing much information in a minor number of required statistical experiments was used to generate the DOE. The influences of DVs on the dynamic of MMS and their levels optimization were evaluated by utilizing the Response-Surface (RS) method. The results showed that the spindle shaft inner diameter of the motor-rotor seat and its rotating unbalanced mass, and modulus of elasticity have the highest contribution in effect on the dynamic of MMHS. As well, it is found that the proposed optimization method not only improves the structural weight of MMS, but also the potential saving can be achieved in term material and energy resource

Histopathological Features of Whipple Pancreaticoduodenectomy in Sudan: A Single-center Experience

Background: Periampullary tumors (PATs) are rare and Whipple pancreaticoduodenectomy is the commonest surgical approach for its management. The aim of this study was to analyze the histopathological features of Whipple-resected periampullary tumors in Sudanese patients.Methods: This retrospective descriptive study included 62 cases of Whipple resection seen in a center in Khartoum, Sudan from January 2016 to June 2021. The specimens were assessed for nine features of the tumor: site of the tumor (whether within the periampullary region), size of the tumor, histological type of the tumor, grade, perineural invasion, lymph vascular invasion, surgical margin status, lymph node metastasis status, and the pathological stage (pTNM).Results: In total, 62 cases, 40 (64.5%) males and 22 (35.5%) females, were included. Age ranged from 20 to 90 years with a mean age of 56.08 years (±12.98 SD). Of the 62 cases, 58 were malignant (93.5%), while 4 cases were benign (6.5%). The pancreas was the commonest site for malignant tumors (53.4%), followed by the ampulla (24.1%), duodenum (15.5%), and distal common bile duct tumors (DCBD) (7%). The maximum tumor size was 8 cm, and the number of lymph nodes resected ranged from 3 to 33. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDACs) showed the highest percentage of perineural (62.1%) and lymphovascular (55.2%) invasions, and a positive margin was seen in four cases. The most common tumor stage was pT3pN1pMx.Conclusion: PATs in the Sudanese population showed histological diversity regarding subtyping, grading, and staging. Further studies involving molecular prognostic features will support improving patient management. Keywords: periampullary tumors; Whipple pancreaticoduodenectomy; resection; histological features; Suda