Cystathione gamma lyase/hydrogen sulphide pathway up regulation enhances the responsiveness of ?1A and ?1B-adrenoreceptors in the kidney of rats with left ventricular hypertrophy

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the interaction between H2S and NO (nitric oxide) in the kidney and to evaluate its impact on the functional contribution of ?1A and ?1B-adrenoreceptors subtypes mediating the renal vasoconstriction in the kidney of rats with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). In rats the LVH induction was by isoprenaline administration and caffeine in the drinking water together with intraperitoneal administration of H2S. The responsiveness of ?1A and ?1B to exogenous noradrenaline, phenylephrine and methoxaminein the absence and presence of 5-methylurapidil (5-MeU) and chloroethylclonidine (CEC) was studied. Cystathione gamma lyase (CSE), cystathione ? synthase (CBS), 3-mercaptopyruvate sulphar transferase (3-MST) and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) were quantified. There was significant up regulation of CSE and eNOS in the LVH-H2S compared to the LVH group (P<0.05). Baseline renal cortical blood perfusion (RCBP) was increased (P<0.05) in the LVH-H2S compared to the LVH group. The responsiveness of ?1A-adrenergic receptors to adrenergic agonists was increased (P<0.05) after administration of low dose 5-Methylurapidil in the LVH-H2S group while ?1B-adrenergic receptors responsiveness to adrenergic agonists were increased (P<0.05) by both low and high dose chloroethylclonidine in the LVH-H2S group. Treatment of LVH with H2S resulted in up-regulation of CSE/H2S, CBS, and 3-MST and eNOS/NO/cGMP pathways in the kidney. These up regulation of CSE/H2S, CBS, and 3-MST and eNOS/NO/cGMP pathways enhanced the responsiveness of ?1A and ?1B-adrenoreceptors subtypes to adrenergic agonists in LVH-H2S. These findings indicate an important role for H2S in modulating deranged signalling in the renal vasculature resulting from LVH development

Determinants of Halal Business Practices in Muslim Minority Countries: Evidence from Finland

Halal business practices are developing in majority-Muslim countries and within companies in Muslim minority countries such as Finland. It consistently shows an interest in developing the halal industry, as evidenced by the development of companies that practice halal business in these countries. This study examines the factors influencing halal company practices while offering halal goods or services in Finland, a nation with a large Muslim population. The surveys were given online and offline to Finnish businesses that have achieved halal certification as a data collection strategy. PLS-SEM, or partial least square-structural equation modeling, was used to analyze data from 32 replies. This study found that halal values and the spirit of innovation encourage Finnish companies to enter the halal business. In addition, companies' halal business practices in Finland are strongly influenced by the interaction between internal and external driving factors. Businesses in nations where Muslims make up the minority can be encouraged to engage in halal commerce in several ways. Individuals who are aware of halal's advantages, are drawn to innovation, are under external pressure to conduct halal business and have internal circumstances that allow them to view the halal business phenomena as a chance to advance their nation's commercial interests

Determinants of Halal Business Practices in Muslim Minority Countries: Evidence from Finland

Halal business practices are developing in majority-Muslim countries and within companies in Muslim minority countries such as Finland. It consistently shows an interest in developing the halal industry, as evidenced by the development of companies that practice halal business in these countries. This study examines the factors influencing halal company practices while offering halal goods or services in Finland, a nation with a large Muslim population. The surveys were given online and offline to Finnish businesses that have achieved halal certification as a data collection strategy. PLS-SEM, or partial least square-structural equation modeling, was used to analyze data from 32 replies. This study found that halal values and the spirit of innovation encourage Finnish companies to enter the halal business. In addition, companies' halal business practices in Finland are strongly influenced by the interaction between internal and external driving factors. Businesses in nations where Muslims make up the minority can be encouraged to engage in halal commerce in several ways. Individuals who are aware of halal's advantages, are drawn to innovation, are under external pressure to conduct halal business and have internal circumstances that allow them to view the halal business phenomena as a chance to advance their nation's commercial interests

Lipoprotein(a) and SYNTAX Score Association with Severity of Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis in North India

Objectives: This cross-sectional study investigated the association of lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] levels  as an atherosclerosis predictor and their relationship to the severity of coronary artery disease (CAD). Methods: 360 consecutive patients at Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences and King George’s Medical University hospitals, Lucknow, North India, with chest pains, CAD symptoms and on lipid-lowering therapy were enrolled between June 2009 and October 2011. Before coronary artery angiography (CAG), a fasting blood sample was assessed for lipid and Lp(a) levels. The synergy between percutaneous coronary intervention with taxus and cardiac surgery (SYNTAX) score was calculated according to the CAG results. Patients were divided into 3 groups based on CAD severity and SYNTAX scores. Results: Angiography revealed CAD in 270 patients. Lp(a) levels were higher in CAD compared to non-CAD patients (48.7 ± 23.8 mg/dl versus 18.9 ± 11.1 mg/dl [P &lt;0.0001]). The levels of Lp(a)were lower in single than in double and triple vessels (39.3 ± 18.4 mg/dl versus 58.0 ± 23.0 mg/dl, and 69.2 ± 24.1 mg/dl, [P &lt;0.05]). Lp(a) levels were significantly higher in severe CAD with SYNTAX score &gt;30 (88.0±24.0 mg/dl). Lp(a) levels correlated significantly with SYNTAX scores (r = 0.70, P &lt;0.0001). Conclusion: In this study, Lp(a) levels were positively associated with a patient’s SYNTAX score in diseased vessels. Furthermore, an elevated Lp(a) level was a causal, independent risk factor of CAD. Lowering Lp(a) levels would reduce CAD in primary and secondary prevention settings. There is an urgent need to define more precisely which patients to treat and which to target for earlier interventions.

Determinants of Muslim’s intention to boycott Israel-affiliated products: Evidence from Indonesia

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence the intention to boycott products made or affiliated with Israel among Muslims in Indonesia. This study is grounded in the context of ongoing wars and conflicts in the Middle East, specifically in Palestine. Methodology – This research uses primary data collected from 412 respondents and the partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) method for data analysis. Findings – The main results show that animosity, intrinsic religious motivation, self-enhancement, product judgment, and attitude toward the boycott influence the intention to boycott. However, brand distrust does not determine the intention to boycott products affiliated with Israel. Implications – Indonesia is one of the largest markets for Muslims worldwide. Understanding the purchasing behavior of Muslim consumers in Indonesia can help marketers and multinational companies anticipate and strategically respond to potential boycotts, minimising financial losses. This is important because Muslim consumers in Indonesia often opt for alternative products when choosing to avoid those affiliated with Israel. Originality – Animosity was the most influential variable in this study. This reflects deep-seated resentment among Muslim consumers toward Israel, leading to a reluctance to purchase Israeli-affiliated products. They directly targeted Israeli-affiliated companies or products for boycotting as a form of expression of their anger and disapproval of Israel's invasion of Palestine. Interestingly, Muslim consumers in Indonesia still positively and favourably view products affiliated with Israel, even though they are reluctant to buy them

Quality control and beam test of GEM detectors for future upgrades of the CMS muon high rate region at the LHC

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) are a proven position sensitive gas detector technology which nowadays is becoming more widely used in High Energy Physics. GEMs offer an excellent spatial resolution and a high particle rate capability, with a close to 100% detection efficiency. In view of the high luminosity phase of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, these aforementioned features make GEMs suitable candidates for the future upgrades of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. In particular, the CMS GEM Collaboration proposes to cover the high-eta region of the muon system with large-area triple-GEM detectors, which have the ability to provide robust and redundant tracking and triggering functions. In this contribution, after a general introduction and overview of the project, the construction of full-size trapezoidal triple-GEM prototypes will be described in more detail. The procedures for the quality control of the GEM foils, including gain uniformity measurements with an x-ray source will be presented. In the past few years, several CMS triple-GEM prototype detectors were operated with test beams at the CERN SPS. The results of these test beam campaigns will be summarised

Diagnostic Accuracy and Agreement between Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Ultrasound Finding for the Diagnosis of Rotator Cuff Tears

Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy and agreement between ultrasound and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in determining rotator cuff tears. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of the Study: Armed Forces Institute of Radiology and Imaging, Pak Emirates Military Hospital,Rawalpindi Pakistan, from Jul 2018 to Jan 2019. Methodology: Patients of either gender with a traumatic shoulder injury duration of less than 15 days were consecutively included. Rotator cuff tear on ultrasonography was diagnosed on the presence of a hypoechoic discontinuity in the tendon and accentuation of cartilage shadow, giving a 'double cortex' view while on MRI, the hyper-intense signal area within the tendon on T2W, fat-suppressed and GRE sequences, corresponding to fluid signal seen. Results: Of 88 patients, the mean age was 54.022±5.19 years. Ultrasound diagnosed rotator cuff tears in 42(47.7%) patients, and MRI diagnosed rotator cuff tears in 44(50.0%) patients. Diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound taking MR imaging as the gold standard showed sensitivity as 81.82%, specificity as 77.27%, negative predicted value as 78.26%, positive predicted value as 80.95%, and overall diagnostic accuracy as 79.55%. A moderate agreement was found between ultrasound and MRI findings (p-value=0.591). Conclusion: The findings of the current study showed significant moderate agreement between ultrasound and MR imaging in the determination of rotator-cuff tears

Support vector machine and neural network for enhanced classification algorithm in ecological data

The current economic scale is bigger and bigger, the social material living standard also along is also getting higher and higher with the rapid economic growth. However, the problems caused by economic development are also increasing, on the one hand, there is the contradiction between supply and demand caused by resource consumption and shortage of resources; on the other hand, there also is contradiction between the great pollution and destruction in the ecological environment and the public’s increasingly demanding ecological environment. Especially, the contradiction between the ecological environment and the social environment has become the focus of attention of the Chinese public. Therefore, the ecological environment protection becomes the current consensus either from the national level or the social level, how to manage and protect the ecological environment is also a question of the current social thinking. The common practice of ecological environment protection is to control and protect, at the same time, governance is to restore the damaged environment. There are many means for protection, such as energy conservation, emission reduction, monitoring and so on. Energy saving and emission reduction not only mean that the consumption of resources is reduced, but also mean that the discharge of pollutants and destroy the ecological environment are reduced. And monitoring refers to the existing ecological environment monitoring; the change of ecological environment is detected by real-time observation, so that counter measures are made according to the changes

Effective corporate governance and the cost of capital and financial performance: An empirical investigation into the peculiar link in Saudi stock market listed firms

Recent decades have experienced a trend in companies implementing scrupulous structures of corporate governance in response to various infamous commercial failings. It is vital that such structures are in place that would enable companies to operate openly and without the danger of being accused of inefficient management. This will help encourage foreign investors in addition to ensuring a healthy and efficient business environment. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of ensuring effective corporate governance mechanisms on the cost of capital and financial performance, focusing on non-financial companies registered with the Saudi Arabia Stock Exchange. Saudi Arabia is a developing market in the Gulf region where block-holding ownership dominates the business world. With this peculiar ownership structure, Saudi Arabia was relatively unaffected by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) a quality that allows local companies, with limited influences from the external business world, to be subjected to a deeper analyses with regard to their corporate governance mechanisms and their impact on the cost of capital and financial performance. The agency theory was the primary model used in the development of the conceptual framework for this study with some borrowings from resource dependence and stewardship theories. The outcomes of existing studies in this field are largely inconclusive, with no ongoing research on the relationship between the cost of capital and corporate governance in Saudi Arabia and the limited number of studies examining this relationship between corporate governance and financial performance in the Kingdom. Thus, there is a gap in the research, which this study has aimed to fill. The findings of the current study, in addition to filling the void in the literature, are expected to influence policy-makers, practitioners, and those looking to invest in Saudi Arabian companies by equipping investors with more awareness about the information and security protection provided by the structure of corporate governance in Saudi Arabia. The current study used 84 non-finance companies registered in Saudi Arabia between 2006 and 2014. Two prominent issues have been examined in this study: the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and the cost of capital, and the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and firm performance. This study employed three regression techniques examine the relationship between corporate governance variables (measured as board structure, audit committees structure, ownership structure) and the cost of capital measured as weighted average cost of capital (WACC) in Saudi Arabia Stock Exchange listed non-finance firms. The three methods of regression included: First the, hypotheses being investigated using a pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. This was followed by panel data models, both random and fixed effects, to control for any unnoticed heterogeneity. Lastly, a generalised least square (GLS) is used to investigate the hypotheses further, this time focusing on the peculiar problems of causality and endogeneity. The results showed that corporate governance mechanisms, such as board size and block ownership, have a significant positive effect on the cost of capital. Nevertheless, board independence has a significant negative effect on the cost of capital, which indicates that these findings align closely with the theoretical underpinnings of agency theory. The financial performance of a company is expressed in this study via return on assets (ROA) and Tobin's Q. The same three aforementioned methods of regression are adopted here to examine the relationship between the implementation of corporate governance mechanisms and firms’ performance. Results indicated that the governance mechanisms, including foreign ownership, government ownership, board meeting, and audit committee independence have significant positive effects on firm performance. On the other hand, board size, audit committee size and audit committee meetings have a significant negative effect on firm performance. The current study’s findings showed, as suggested by the agency theory, that corporate governance mechanisms and firm performance are clearly interlinked in the context of the emerging market of Saudi Arabia. The findings of the current study are largely aligned with the theoretical underpinnings of agency theory and with the findings of the existing literature in varying world contexts. These findings, due to their close touch with the practical world and relevance to the country’s current business scenario, are expected to be relevant and beneficial for managers, investors, policy-makers and other stakeholders considering involvement with Saudi Arabian companies

Novel Interpretable and Robust Web-based AI Platform for Phishing Email Detection

Phishing emails continue to pose a significant threat, causing financial losses and security breaches. This study addresses limitations in existing research, such as reliance on proprietary datasets and lack of real-world application, by proposing a high-performance machine learning model for email classification. Utilizing a comprehensive and largest available public dataset, the model achieves a f1 score of 0.99 and is designed for deployment within relevant applications. Additionally, Explainable AI (XAI) is integrated to enhance user trust. This research offers a practical and highly accurate solution, contributing to the fight against phishing by empowering users with a real-time web-based application for phishing email detection.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, dataset link: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/naserabdullahalam/phishing-email-dataset