409 research outputs found
Compton Profile and Electron Momentum Density Study of (CdS)
The objective of this paper is to study theoretically the electron momentum density (EMD) of (CdS) using (FA, FE, RFA and superposition) models to the Compton profiles J(PZ) for Cd metal are calculated depending on several theoretical models by selecting different electronic arrangements (4d10-x 5s1+x) where (x=0.1,0.2,0.3,……,1) . The obtained theoretical Compton profile for (CdS) is found to be in good agreement with the recent experimental isotropic profile . Charge transfer for the compound has been estimated by ionic model for number of arrangement of (Cd+x)(S-x). This model suggests a charge transfer of 0.8 electrons per Cd atom from 4d state to 3p state of S atom. Keywords: EMD, CdS, Compton profile (CP), Renormalized Free Atom (RFA) model, Free Electron (FE) model, Superposition model, Ionic model, charge transfer
An assessment of the nutritional status of students in governmental primary schools in U.A.Q.
Aim: To provide a summary of the recent data on the nutritional status of school-aged children in developing countries and countries in transition and identify issues of public health concern. An assessment of the nutritional status of students in governmental primary schools in U.A.Q.
Methods: A retrospective study was conducted from 2016 to 2017 on the nutrition status of Grade 1 school children in Government primary schools. The data was collected from questionnaires that were distributed routinely.
Results: A total of 317 students from 7 different primary public schools in UAQ, with an age range from 5-7 years. Students with Chronic diseases, congenital anomalies, and hereditary diseases were excluded. The available data indicate that the nutritional status of the students in the reviewed schools is adequate. Where it has shown that mean body mass index (BMI) was 15.2. Underweight, Overweight obesity was not prominent with a percentage of 12% and 10 % respectively. As for anemia, only 7% were diagnosed biochemically. With the mean hemoglobin of 12.1 mg/dl overall.
Conclusions. The available data indicate that malnutrition is not a health issue in primary students in UAQ primary public schools. These findings emphasize the impact of the school health program on primary students
New Approaches for Competing Microbial Resistance and Virulence
The spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens together with the development of fatal cases of infectious microorganisms is on the rise. Therefore, there must be new approaches for combating pathogenic microorganisms, either by overcoming antibiotic resistance or via inhibiting their virulence factors. Several virulence factors extremely increase the antimicrobial resistance of various species of pathogens; as a result, the screening of antivirulence agents has gained more and more attention recently. In this aspect, non-traditional strategies that are considered promising in overcoming virulence and pathogenicity of microorganisms will be discussed including; quorum sensing inhibition, antibiofilm, control of the global regulators, bacteriocins and bacteriophages. Applying these methods could provide innovative approaches for competing microbial resistance and virulence
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSLATED ENGLISH VIDEOS INTO ARABIC ON ENHANCING AL-AZHAR UNIVERSITY (AUG) ENGLISH MAJORS' LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS
This study investigated the effectiveness of translated English videos into Arabic on enhancing Al-Azhar University-Gaza (AUG) English majors' listening comprehension skills. To achieve the aim of the study, the researchers adopted a quasi-experimental research design which focused on enhancing three main listening skills: getting the main idea, getting details and note taking skills by using translated English videos into Arabic. Twenty female English majors who were enrolled in a listening course during the first semester of the academic year 2016/2017 were the one group sample of the study. They attended the ten classes of the experiment and did a pre and post listening comprehension test. To analyze the data which the tool of the study provided, the researchers used Wilcoxon Test to compare the participants’ performance in the listening comprehension pre and posttests and Eta Square to measure the effect size of the study strategy. By the end of the semester, the sample of the study completed a listening comprehension test which consisted of (20) questions focused on getting the main idea, getting details and note taking skills. Results revealed that translated English videos into Arabic have a large effect on enhancing AUG English majors' listening comprehension skills. Article visualizations
The effect of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues on the preservation of ovarian function against cyclophosphamide-induced damage in adult mice
Objective:
To assess the effect of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) on the preservation of ovarian function against cyclophosphamide-induced gonadal toxicity.
Materials and Methods:
In a controlled, experimental study, 64 female mice were divided into four groups: control (C), triptorelin acetate (T), cyclophosphamide (CY), and triptorelin plus cyclophosphamide (T+CY) groups. Mice in the group (T) were subcutaneously injected with GnRHa (triptorelin acetate) in a dose of 0.5 mg/kg daily for 21 days. In contrast, mice in the (CY) group and (T+CY) group were injected intraperitoneally with 75 mg/kg of CY on day 15. After 21 days, half of the mice in each group were sacrificed, and their ovaries were removed. The rest of the mice in each group were left without any intervention for an additional 21 days, and the same procedures were repeated to assess the ovarian follicles.
Results:
There was significant depletion of ovarian follicles in the CY group compared to the control group (p<0.05). There were significant decreases in the number of secondary and antral follicles at late stage as compared to early stage in the CY group (p<0.05). There was also a significant increase in the number of primordial and primary follicles in the T+CY group as compared with the CY group early post-treatment, while the increase was significant in all follicles after 42 days (p<0.05).
Conclusion:
Cyclophosphamide destroys primordial and primary follicles at an early stage while damage in secondary and antral follicles was prominent after 42 days. Triptorelin acetate reduces the toxic effect of CY; it has early and late protective effects and preserves ovarian function in mice
Methods of curing geopolymer concrete: a review
Geopolymer concrete is a new approach of concrete production by exclusion of ordinary Portland cement entirely with pozzolanic material. Beside water, concrete is the largest consumed substances, which demand huge portion of Portland cement. During Portland cement manufacturing process, high emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) is produced which results in polluting the surrounding environment. Moreover, a lot of energy is expended during cement production. Based on manufacturing situations, geopolymer concrete displays different behaviors and attributes. This paper succinctly discusses the different methods of curing of geopolymer concrete and figures out the best method of curing. Experimental findings revealed that condition of curing has a good influence on the mechanical properties of geopolymer concrete. Conventionally, ambience temperature curing of geopolymer concrete result in low strength development at an early age, while higher temperature curing results in significant strength improvement. Similarly, extended curing time enhanced the geopolymerisation mechanism and achieved greater strength. However, longer duration of curing at an elevated temperature result in failure of the sample
Location-aware deep learning-based framework for optimizing cloud consumer quality of service-based service composition
The expanding propensity of organization users to utilize cloud services urges to deliver services in a service pool with a variety of functional and non-functional attributes from online service providers. brokers of cloud services must intense rivalry competing with one another to provide quality of service (QoS) enhancements. Such rivalry prompts a troublesome and muddled providing composite services on the cloud using a simple service selection and composition approach. Therefore, cloud composition is considered a non-deterministic polynomial (NP-hard) and economically motivated problem. Hence, developing a reliable economic model for composition is of tremendous interest and to have importance for the cloud consumer. This paper provides “A location-aware deep learning framework for improving the QoS-based service composition for cloud consumers”. The proposed framework is firstly reducing the dimensions of data. Secondly, it applies a combination of the deep learning long short-term memory network and particle swarm optimization algorithm additionally to considering the location parameter to correctly forecast the QoS provisioned values. Finally, it composes the ideal services need to reduce the customer cost function. The suggested framework's performance has been demonstrated using a real dataset, proving that it superior the current models in terms of prediction and composition accuracy
Superior control of inflammatory pain by corticotropin-releasing factor receptor 1 via opioid peptides in distinct pain-relevant brain areas
Background: Under inflammatory conditions, the activation of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) receptor has been shown to inhibit pain through opioid peptide release from immune cells or neurons. CRF's effects on human and animal pain modulation depend, however, on the distribution of its receptor subtypes 1 and 2 (CRF-R1 and CRF-R2) along the neuraxis of pain transmission. The objective of this study is to investigate the respective role of each CRF receptor subtype on centrally administered CRF-induced antinociception during inflammatory pain.
Methods: The present study investigated the role of intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) CRF receptor agonists on nociception and the contribution of cerebral CRF-R1 and/or CRF-R2 subtypes in an animal model of Freund's complete adjuvant (FCA)-induced hind paw inflammation. Methods used included behavioral experiments, immunofluorescence confocal analysis, and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction.
Results: Intracerebroventricular, but systemically inactive, doses of CRF elicited potent, dose-dependent antinociceptive effects in inflammatory pain which were significantly antagonized by i.c.v. CRF-R1-selective antagonist NBI 27914 (by approximately 60%) but less by CRF-R2-selective antagonist K41498 (by only 20%). In line with these findings, i.c.v. administration of CRF-R1 agonist stressin I produced superior control of inflammatory pain over CRF-R2 agonist urocortin-2. Intriguingly, i.c.v. opioid antagonist naloxone significantly reversed the CRF as well as CRF-R1 agonist-elicited pain inhibition. Consistent with existing evidence of high CRF concentrations in brain areas such as the thalamus, hypothalamus, locus coeruleus, and periaqueductal gray following its i.c.v. administration, double-immunofluorescence confocal microscopy demonstrated primarily CRF-R1-positive neurons that expressed opioid peptides in these pain-relevant brain areas. Finally, PCR analysis confirmed the predominant expression of the CRF-R1 over CRF-R2 in representative brain areas such as the hypothalamus.
Conclusion: Taken together, these findings suggest that CRF-R1 in opioid-peptide-containing brain areas plays an important role in the modulation of inflammatory pain and may be a useful therapeutic target for inflammatory pain control
Nosocomial blood stream infection in intensive care units at Assiut University Hospitals (Upper Egypt) with special reference to extended spectrum β-lactamase producing organisms
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>This study investigated the nosocomial blood stream infection (BSI) in the adult ICUs in Assiut university hospitals to evaluate the rate of infection in different ICUs, causative microorganisms, antimicrobial resistance, outcome of infection, risk factors, prevalence of extended spectrum B-lactamase producing organisms and molecular typing of <it>Klebsiella pneumoniae </it>strains to highlight the role of environment as a potential source of nosocomial BSI.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study was conducted over a period of 12 months from January 2006 to December 2006. All Patients admitted to the different adult ICUs were monitored daily by attending physicians for subsequent development of nosocomial BSI. Blood cultures were collected from suspected patients to detect the causative organisms. After antimicrobial susceptibility testing, detection of ESBLs was conducted among gram negative isolates. Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates were tested by PCR to determine the most common group of B-lactamase genes responsible for resistance. Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from infected patients and those isolated from the environment were typed by RAPD technique to investigate the role of environment in transmission of infection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The study included 2095 patients who were admitted to different ICUs at Assiut University Hospitals from January 2006 to December 2006. Blood samples were collected from infected patients for blood cultures. The colonies were identified and antibiotic sensitivities were performed. This study showed that the rate of nosocomial BSI was 75 per 1000 ICU admissions with the highest percentages in Trauma ICU (17%). Out of 159 patients with primary bloodstream infection, 61 patients died representing a crude mortality rate of 38%. Analysis of the organisms causing BSI showed that Gram positive organisms were reported in 69.1% (n = 121); MRSA was the most prevalent (18.9%), followed by methicillin resistant coagulase negative Staphylococci (16%). Gram negative bacilli were reported in 29.1% (n = 51). In this case, <it>Klebsiella pneumoniae </it>was the most common (10.3%) followed <it>E coli </it>(8.6%). <it>Candida spp</it>. was reported only in (1.7%) of isolates. Antibiotics sensitivities of Gram positive organisms showed that these organisms were mostly sensitive to vancomycin (90.1%), while Gram negative organisms were mostly sensitive to imipenem (90.2%). In this study we tested Gram negative isolates for the production of the ESBL enzyme and concluded that 64.7% (33/51) of patients' isolates and 20/135 (14.8%) environmental isolates were confirmed to be ESBL producers. The type of β-lactamase gene was determined by polymerase chain reaction which showed that SHV was the main type. Molecular typing was done for 18 Klebsiella pneumoniae strains that caused nosocomial BSI and for the 36 Klebsiella pneumoniae strains which were isolated from the environmental samples by the RAPD method. The two environmental strains were identical, with one isolated from a patient, which confirms the serious role of the hospital environment in the spread of infections.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Nosocomial BSI represents a current problem in Assiut University Hospitals, Egypt. Problems associated with BSI include infection with multidrug resistant pathogens (especially ESBLs) which are difficult to treat and are associated with increased mortality. Of all available anti-microbial agents, carbapenems are the most active and reliable treatment options for infections caused by ESBL isolates. However, overuse of carbapenems may lead to resistance of other Gram-negative organisms.</p
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