My case with Egyptian balady dogs

This audio piece covers when I was doing my daily fitness routine, and found a dog that kept looking to me with eerie gazes. Knowing my experience with street dogs I wasn’t relieved, especially when I found out that it kept stalking me from a distance. However, At an old construction site that I pass by, I found like 12 to 14 dogs that started attacking me and then ……… (Listen to the feature to know what happened in this fearful personal experience.) - Interview with Professor / Ronnie Close, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication in the American University In Cairo. - No animals were hurt in the making of this audio piece. - All music rights are royalty free except for (Gheorghe Zamfir - The Lonely Shepard), all rights go to Gheorghe Zamfir

Importance and Applications of Ultrasonic Technology to Improve Food Quality

Nutritional value and quality of food products are very important for a healthy life of human beings. Various modern thermal and nonthermal application technologies such as pulsed light, pulsed electric field, high and low hydrostatic pressure, microwave, and ohmic heating have been used to improve food products characteristics. In recent years, ultrasonic applications have been used for food processing. The ultrasonic is defined as sound waves with a frequency exceeding the human hearing limit. Based on the frequency range of ultrasonic waves, it can be used in many industrial applications including the processing of food. Applications of high-power ultrasonic with low frequency aim to improve the quality of food products. Low-power ultrasonic with high-frequency applications are used for nondestructive quality evaluation of physicochemical properties of food. The most important advantages of ultrasonic technologies are the low cost of food processing, low power consumption, simplicity compared to other technologies, suitability for the treatment of solid and liquid food, and environmental safeness and friendliness, thus becoming a promising technology for monitoring and improving quality of food products. The main objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the principal and recent applications of ultrasonic waves to improve food product quality

Influence of maternal age on intracytoplasmic sperm injection outcome and global deoxyribonucleic acid methylation in women undergoing intracytoplasmic sperm injection cycle

Background: Intracytoplasmic sperm injection needs sufficient oocytes of high quality in order to increase the rate of fertilization and pregnancy. This study was designed to investigate the influence of maternal age on the ICSI outcomes in women undergoing to first ICSI cycle and to evaluate the influence of maternal age on global DNA methylation.Methods: A total of 242 females were included in this study with a mean age of 30.5±7.3 years. The participants were divided into three groups depending on women's age≤25, N=70; 26-35, N=102 and>35, N=70). The genomic DNA was isolated from the blood samples, then the global DNA methylation was evaluated using ELISA.Results: A significant reduction has been found in the level of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), total number of the collected oocyte, mature oocytes, fertilized oocytes and number of embryos transferred in the older females compared to the younger group (p<0.001). While a significant increase has been found in global DNA methylation level in the older females compared to the younger group (p<0.001). A positive significant correlation has been found between global DNA methylation level and maternal age (p<0.001). In contrast, a negative significant correlation has been shown between AMH level, mature oocytes and maternal age (p<0.001).Conclusions: Maternal age has a significant influence on the number of mature oocytes, number of embryos transferred and global DNA methylation. The pregnancy chance is more in the age group less than 35 years

Evaluation of Adding Desmopressin to Alpha Blockers in Treatment of Nocturia in Cases of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia: A Prospective Randomized Clinical Study

Background: Nocturia is one of the most bothersome symptom of lower urinary tract symptoms in males with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH). Alpha blockers has good effect in relieving bladder outlet obstruction.Objective: The aim of the present study was to provide best available medical treatment for nocturia in patients of BPH.Patients and methods: This prospective study was carried out on 44 male patients complaining of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) of BPH with nocturia, were enrolled in this prospective randomized study for 12 weeks. They were divided randomly into 2 groups, each group included 22 patients. Group A: the patient received oral desmopressin added to tamsulosin once daily. Group B, the patient received oral tamsulosin daily.Results: The mean serum Na of patients at group A was 142.35. No significant difference regarding in-between groups before treatment but at after&nbsp; 12 week of treatment; group A was (mean of Na=137.68±2.033) significantly lower than&nbsp; group B and significantly decreased from before to after treatment. There was no significant difference between groups in both nocturnal void and nocturnal volume before treatment and after treatment as group A was significantly lower and both groups significantly changed and improved from before to after treatment. No significant difference was found at before treatment regarding total International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) but group A was significantly lower regarding total IPSS after treatment and both groups significantly decreased after treatment (6.36±2.59 in group A and 10.55±4.13 in group B).Conclusion: Addition of desmopressin to α-blockers is an active therapy for men with BPH and suffering nocturia and is preferred than α-blockers therapy alone

Molecular similarity searching based on deep learning for feature reduction

The concept of molecular similarity has been widely used in rational drug design, where structurally similar molecules are explored in molecular databases for retrieving functionally similar molecules. The most used conventional similarity methods are two-dimensional (2D) fingerprints to evaluate the similarity of molecules towards a target query. However, these descriptors include redundant and irrelevant features that might impact the effectiveness of similarity searching methods. Moreover, the majority of existing similarity searching methods often disregard the importance of some features over others and assume all features are equally important. Thus, this study proposed three approaches for identifying the important features of molecules in chemical datasets. The first approach was based on the representation of the molecular features using Autoencoder (AE), which removes irrelevant and redundant features. The second approach was the feature selection model based on Deep Belief Networks (DBN), which are used to select only the important features. In this approach, the DBN is used to find subset of features that represent the important ones. The third approach was conducted to include descriptors that complement to each other. Different important features from many descriptors were filtered through DBN and combined to form a new descriptor used for molecular similarity searching. The proposed approaches were experimented on the MDL Data Drug Report standard dataset (MDDR). Based on the test results, the three proposed approaches overcame some of the existing benchmark similarity methods, such as Bayesian Inference Networks (BIN), Tanimoto Similarity Method (TAN), Adapted Similarity Measure of Text Processing (ASMTP) and Quantum-Based Similarity Method (SQB). The results showed that the performance of the three proposed approaches proved to be better in term of average recall values, especially with the use of structurally heterogeneous datasets that could produce results than other methods used previously to improve molecular similarity searching

Like a Prayer? Applying Conflicts with Religious Dimensions Theory to the Muezzin Law Conflict

What is the nature of the dispute around an Israeli law that proposes restricting how Muslim followers are called for prayer? And, why does the nature of this dispute hold any importance? LeBaron and Senbel have developed a theory differentiating conflicts with religious dimensions (CRDs) from other types of conflicts. The importance of this distinction stems from and highlights the unique role that religion plays in conflicts, which liberal, rational, and individualistic orientations to conflict management fail to address. This article offers a trial run of LeBaron and Senbel’s innovative theoretical framework. We apply CRD theory to conduct an analysis of a legislative attempt to amend an environmental law in Israel. The proposed amendment would limit the use of public address (PA) systems to amplify the Mouzins’ calls for prayer. Proposed limitations on this Islamic practice triggered a public outcry and a sharp societal dispute in Israel. The analysis in this article exposes the real conflict over the proposed amendment to be a CRD, rather than what it seemed on its face: an environmental regulation conflict. This article also contributes to further developing CRD theory. We elaborate on the combined effects of the conflict’s intensity, its duration, and the proximity of its subject to the core values of a religion. We suggest that identifying the unique amalgam of these aspects in a CRD is important to its effective management

Optimization of PID for industrial electro-hydraulic actuator using PSOGSA

The Electro-hydraulic actuator (EHA) systems known to be extremely nonlinear due to its dynamic characteristics and these existing nonlinearities and uncertainties yield to the constraint in the control of EHA system, which influences the position tracking accuracy and affect the occurrences of leakage and friction in the system. The purpose of this work is to develop the mathematical model for the industrial electrohydraulic actuator, then to design a controller by proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and optimize the parameters using Particle Swarm Optimization - Gravitational Search Algorithm (PSOGSA). A few controllers such as conventional PID (CPID) and model reference adaptive control (MRAC) designed for comparison. The performance of PID, PID-PSOGSA and modern controller MRAC will be compared in order to determine the most efficient controller. Despite all controllers are capable to provide good performance, PID-PSOGSA control methods generate good response compared to PID and MRAC in term of positioning

Impact of Age on Ovarian Response and IVF Outcome during Controlled Ovarian Hyperstimulation in Women from Gaza Strip

Background: Although age is an important factor in female fertility, not much date were focused on the relationship between age and ovarian response and in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcome. However, the female reproductive capacity varies with age. Objective: To assess the impact of age on ovarian response and IVF outcome during controlled ovarian hyperstimulation in women from Gaza Strip. Methods: This prospective cohort study consisted of 75 women attending IVF at Al-Basma Fertility Center in Gaza City. The number of oocytes and embryos were recorded for each female and the occurrence of pregnancy was followed for three months. The obtained data were computer analyzed using SPSS statistical package version 18. Results: The mean age of the study population was 29.2±5.9 years. The total number of oocytes was significantly decreased with increasing age (F= 3.932 and P= 0.024). In this context Pearson correlation test exhibited negative significant correlation between women age and the number of mature oocyte (r=-0.276, P= 0.017). There was an inverse relationship between age and ovarian response (F= 6.773 and P= 0.001), showing good response (9-16 oocytes) at mean age of 26.7±5.0 years. When related to women age, IVF outcome showed that the chance of getting pregnant increased with decreased age (F= 4.278 and p= 0.018). Conclusion: The ovarian response and the chance of getting pregnancy were diminishing with ageing, implying that maternal age should by consider during IVF program