The Use of Palliative Performance Score in Patients with End-Stage Liver Disease

● Palliative Care services are often underutilized in patients with End-Stage Liver Disease (ESLD) and often only initiated at the end of life ● The Palliative Performance Score (PPS) is an important tool used in Palliative Care to assess functional status ● PPS has five functional dimensions: ambulation, activity level and evidence of disease, self-care, oral intake, and level of consciousness ● The aim of this study is to determine if there is a correlation between Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score and PPS in ESLD patients ● MELD is used to predict mortality and to prioritize liver transplant allocation in ESLD patientshttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/medposters/1011/thumbnail.jp

Improving the Patient Colonoscopy Prep Experience

AIM: To improve patient prep compliance, prep quality, and an overall better experience by designing a prep specific website that will address the most common prep questions and concerns Once launched, the website address will be placed on printed colonoscopy prep instructions and stated on the after hours GI clinic voicemail as an additional patient resourcehttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1049/thumbnail.jp

DINACHARYA MODALITIES - A REVIEW ON EVIDENCE BASED RESEARCH W. S. R TO ORAL HYGIENE

Ayurveda recognizes oral cavity as one of the nine openings of physical body and also stressed that these openings are full of blemishes with their secretions throughout day and night, hence it suggests cleaning these openings frequently and regularly. Oral cavity being the chief entrance of the main gateway, as it were to the body, should be kept healthy from the attack of enemies of health. Ayurveda prescribes Dinacharya modalities like brushing the tooth (Dantadhavana), gargling (Kavala and Gandoosha) to keep up the health of the oral cavity, prevention and treatment of diseases of the oral cavity. Researchers have shown that all kinds of chewing sticks (Dantadhavanakashta) and gargling especially with sesame oil (oil pulling) described in Ayurveda texts have anti- plaque and antimicrobial activity thus promote oral hygiene. Use of safe, quality products and practice must be ensured, based on available evidence and traditional medicine has to be acknowledged as part of primary health care. It is also required to ensure patient safety by upgrading the skills and knowledge of the traditional medicine providers. Scientific validation of the Ayurveda oral health practices given above could justify their incorporation in to modern oral health care. Publicity of these techniques using appropriate media would benefit the general population by giving more confidence in ancient practices, thus preventing the decay and loss. The preparation of standard protocol for implementation of these modalities in the community is need of the hour

INVESTIGATION OF CHEMICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF ESSENTIAL OILS FROM TWO SYZYGIUM SPECIES OF ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA

Objective: The present investigation is carried out to study the chemical composition, antimicrobial and antioxidant activity of essential oils of two Syzygium species i.e. Syzygium alternifolium (SA) and S. samarangense (SS) leaves.Methods: The essential oils from S. alternifolium (SA) and S. samarangense (SS) leaves were obtained by hydro-distillation and analyzed by GC and GC-MS. The oils were subjected to antimicrobial and antioxidant activities by using in vitro methods.Results: Essential oils (EOs) obtained by hydro distillation were analyzed through GC and GC-MS and resulted 25 compounds from each sample. SA leaf oil was dominated by monoterpene hydrocarbons (53.53%) of which, β-mercene (24.04%), β-pinene (9.23%), β-trans-ocimene (9.2%), cyclofenchene (7.21%) and β-cis-ocimene (2.1%). Whereas SS leaf oil was dominated by sesquiterpene components i.e. viridiflorol (15.05%) α-cubebene (7.71%) and monoterpenes, i.e. β-pinene (11.64%), α-pinene (9.61%) and α-terpineol (5.19%). Both essential oils exhibited strong and broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity. The antimicrobial results showed that SA-leaf oil strongly inhibited Candida rugosa (CR), Bacillus subtilis (BS) and Staphyloccus aureus (ST), whereas SS-leaf oil strongly inhibited CR and Escherichia coli (EC). Among the test organisms, CR was strongly inhibited by both oils by expression of the lowest minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC). Further, both the test EOs exhibited concentration dependent DPPH scavenging activity indicating the significant antioxidant property.Conclusion: Syzygium alternifolium and S. samarangense leaf essential oils are the good source of natural antimicrobial and antioxidant compounds, which can be used as natural therapeutic agents against human pathogenic organisms.Â

A Comparative Survey on Symmetric Key Encryption Techniques

Nowadays, the use of internet are growing increasingly across the world, security becomes a prime concern of issue for the society. Earlier security was a major issue for military applications but now the area of applications has been enhanced since most of the communication takes place over the web. Cryptography is an area of computer science which is developed to provide security for the senders and receivers to transmit and receive confidential data through an insecure channel by a means of process called Encryption/ Decryption. Cryptography ensures that the message should be sent without any alterations and only the authorized person can be able to open and read the message. A number of cryptographic techniques are developed for achieving secure communication. There are basically two techniques of cryptography- Symmetric and Asymmetric. This paper presents a detailed study of most of the symmetric encryption techniques with their advantages and limitations over each other

The effect of irrigating solutions on the hydration of tricalcium silicate cements: an in vitro study

Background: Calcium silicate cements are hydraulic cements, routinely used for perforation repairs. During such repairs, these cements are invariably exposed to irrigating solutions. Aim: This study aimed to understand the effect of irrigating solutions on the hydration of calcium silicate cements.  Materials and Methods: Sixty extracted teeth were taken and horizontal sections of 2mm were obtained. These samples were randomly divided into two groups viz. Biodentine and BioMTA Plus groups later these cements were condensed into the canal spaces and allowed to set until their setting time. These samples were further subdivided and allowed to encounter three irrigating solutions viz. Normal saline, 17% EDTA, and 2% Chlorhexidine for 5 minutes. These were allowed to mature in an incubator for seven days and subjected to Scanning Electron Microscopy and Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis. Results: The SEM analysis of the Biodentine/control group displayed a petal-like appearance, with a Ca/Si ratio of 2. Whereas, the Biodentine/Normal saline, Biodentine/17% EDTA and Biodentine/2% Chlorhexidine group displayed crumbled paper-like appearance. The Ca/Si ratios for the Biodentine/Normal saline, Biodentine/17% EDTA and Biodentine/2% Chlorhexidine were 2.72, 1.6, and 4.21, respectively. In the BioMTA Plus group, all the SEM analyses displayed round crystalline structures in all groups. The Ca/Si ratio of BioMTA Plus/Control, BioMTA Plus/17% EDTA and BioMTA Plus/2% Chlorhexidine were 25.5, 17.42, 24.1, and 39.4, respectively. Conclusion: The study concluded that the irrigating solutions did not affect the hydration mechanism of Biodentine and BioMTA Plus despite the variations in the Ca/Si ratios and surface morphology

Unsteady reactive magnetic radiative micropolar flow, heat and mass transfer from an inclined plate with joule heating: a model for magnetic polymer processing

Magnetic polymer materials processing involves many multi-physical and chemical effects. Motivated by such applications, in the present work a theoretical analysis is conducted of combined heat and mass transfer in unsteady mixed convection flow of micropolar fluid over an oscillatory inclined porous plate in a homogenous porous medium with heat source, radiation absorption and Joule dissipation. A first order homogenous chemical reaction model is used. The transformed non-dimensional boundary value problem is solved using a perturbation method and Runge-Kutta fourth order numerical quadrature (shooting technique). The emerging parameters dictating the transport phenomena are shown to be the gyro-viscosity micropolar material parameter, magnetic field parameter, permeability of the porous medium, Prandtl number, Schmidt number, thermal Grashof number, species Grashof number, thermal radiation-conduction parameter, heat absorption parameter, radiation absorption parameter, Eckert number, chemical reaction parameter and Eringen coupling number (vortex viscosity ratio parameter). The impact of these parameters on linear velocity, microrotation (angular velocity), temperature and concentration are evaluated in detail. Results for skin friction coefficient, couple stress coefficient, Nusselt number and Sherwood number are also included. Couple stress is observed to be reduced with stronger magnetic field. Verification of solutions is achieved with earlier published analytical results

The effect of tourism investment on tourism development and CO2 emissions:Empirical evidence from the EU nations

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of tourism investment on tourism development and CO2 emissions in a panel of 28 EU countries using annual data from 1990-2013. The empirical results from a panel cointegration test confirm the presence of long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The long-run elasticities indicate that tourism investment has a significant positive and negative impact on tourism development and CO2 emissions, respectively. Finally, the short-run heterogeneous panel non-causality test results show the evidence of bidirectional causality between tourism investment and tourism revenue. These results therefore suggest that tourism investments not only increase tourism revenue but also reduce CO2 emissions. Given these findings, we suggest the policy makers of the EU nations to initiate more effective policies to increase the tourism investments. The increasing tourism investments will allow the industry to grow further by ensuring sustainable tourism development across the EU member countries