Dietary levels of pure flavonoids improve spatial memory performance and increase hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

Evidence suggests that flavonoid-rich foods are capable of inducing improvements in memory and cognition in animals and humans. However, there is a lack of clarity concerning whether flavonoids are the causal agents in inducing such behavioral responses. Here we show that supplementation with pure anthocyanins or pure flavanols for 6 weeks, at levels similar to that found in blueberry (2% w/w), results in an enhancement of spatial memory in 18 month old rats. Pure flavanols and pure anthocyanins were observed to induce significant improvements in spatial working memory (p = 0.002 and p = 0.006 respectively), to a similar extent to that following blueberry supplementation (p = 0.002). These behavioral changes were paralleled by increases in hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (R = 0.46, p<0.01), suggesting a common mechanism for the enhancement of memory. However, unlike protein levels of BDNF, the regional enhancement of BDNF mRNA expression in the hippocampus appeared to be predominantly enhanced by anthocyanins. Our data support the claim that flavonoids are likely causal agents in mediating the cognitive effects of flavonoid-rich foods

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10&nbsp;years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37&nbsp;years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Towards strategic planning for knowledge management in organizations "Scientific Review"

The present study focused on the strategic planning of knowledge managementin organizations using the documentary approach. It aims at explaining the concept ofstrategic planning and its importance in making and decision making, setting goals andprograms, then identifying the characteristics and advantages of strategic planning oforganizations, Strategic planning of knowledge management in organizations, and then thefactors of success of strategic planning in organizations, identify some strategic planningmodels that can be applied in organizations, as well as identify the requirements Strategicplanning in organizations, the concept of knowledge management, its objectives and thebenefits of its application, and then identify the knowledge management requirements oforganizations and knowledge management processes, the key benefits of knowledgemanagement in strategic planning, and finally the success factors in applying knowledgemanagement in organizations. The study proposed several recommendations andrecommendations, the most important of which was the development of the strategic planof the organizations and their periodic review with the leaders, the inclusion of knowledgemanagement within the organizational units or departments of the organization and itssupport of specialized human competencies, the establishment of a supportiveorganizational culture for knowledge sharing and exchange, And develop a system ofincentives to encourage individuals to exchange and share their knowledge and skills, andto create a climate conducive to the application of organizational knowledge management

Eco-friendly one-pot synthesis of some new pyrazolo[1,2-b]phthalazinediones with antiproliferative efficacy on human hepatic cancer cell lines

This work focuses the light on some remarkable achievements in clean and efficient green experimental synthesis, characterization and evaluation of the pharmaceutical and biochemical importance of new series of pyrazolo[1,2-b]phthalazinediones which synthesized through one-pot three-component condensation reaction of the appropriate of 1,2,3-triazolyl-pyrazole-carbaldehydes with active methylene compounds (as malononitriles or ethyl cyanoacetate) and 6-nitrophthalhydrazide using the grinding method in the presence of sodium hydroxide under solvent-free condition at room temperature, in very excellent yields. All the newly synthesized compounds were characterized by physical and chemical tools (FT-IR, 1H NMR and mass spectrometry). In addition, all the new synthesized derivatives were screened for their anticancer activity against hepatic cancer cell lines to evaluate their pharmaceutical importance

Increasing the productivity of the wire-cut electrical discharge machine associated with sustainable production

Wire-cut electric discharge machining is a nontraditional technique by which the required profile is acquired using sparks energy. Concerning Wire-cut electric discharge machining, high cutting rates and precision machining is necessary to improve productivity and achieve high quality of machined workpieces. In this research work, an experimental investigation was introduced to achieve higher productivity of the wire electrode associated with sustainable production in terms of product quality and less heat-affected zone. For this purpose, the effects of machining parameters including peak current, pulse on time and wire preloading were investigated using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system along with the Taguchi method. From this study, the optimal setting of machining parameters to achieve higher productivity and sustainability was identified. Moreover, Neuro-fuzzy modelling was successfully used to build an empirical model for the selection of machining parameters to achieve higher productivity at highest possible surface quality and minimum cost for sustainable production

Cytokeratin 18 as a non invasive marker in diagnosis of NASH and its usefulness in correlation with disease severity in Egyptian patients

Background: A simple noninvasive test that accurately distinguishes NASH from NAFL as well as determines the disease severity is urgently needed. Recently, it was found that determination of cytokeratin-18 (CK-18) fragments in the blood, predicts and correlates with histological NASH in which there is development of lobular inflammation, cell ballooning and fibrosis, supporting its usefulness in clinical practice. Aims: To evaluate the role of CK-18 as a non invasive marker in diagnosis of NASH and its usefulness in correlation with disease severity in Egyptian patients. Patients and methods: 90 subjects were divided into 3 groups: group I: including 30 patients with NASH, group II: including 30 patients with NAFL, and group III: including 30 healthy subjects as control. Diagnosis of NASH and its discrimination from NAFL was done by liver biopsy. CK-18 level in plasma was measured for all subjects using ELISA. Results: CK-18 was significantly elevated in patients of group I in comparison to group II and III patients, with mean ± SD: 460 ± 279, 167 ± 56 and 149 ± 57, respectively, and P value: 0.001. The (ROC) curve diagnostic performance of CK18 in diagnosis of NASH shows: cutoff value of >240 U/L, with sensitivity 76.7%, specificity 95.0%. Ck-18 was found to correlate with disease severity assessed by NAS scoring system with P value: 0.001. Conclusion: Measurement of CK18 in NASH is a useful screening, diagnostic and staging biomarker

Karotis İNtima Media Kal�Nl���� Ya��l� Diyabetik Hastalarda Koroner Atherosklerozu ÖNg�Rebilir

Aim: To evaluate the relationship between coronary risk and carotid vessels as revealed by duplex study in diabetic elderly patients. Method: Case control study was designed. Participants were recruited from Geriatric department Ain Shams University Hospital, Cairo-Egypt. The cases were subdivided into two groups (group 1: diabetic with coronary artery diseases (CAD), group 2: diabetic without CAD). The diabetic group (cases) included 60 patients (25 males and 35 females). The control group included 30 elderly subjects matched for age and sex. All groups were subjected to: comprehensive geriatric assessment, laboratory measurements including: fasting blood sugar, lipid profile, lipoprotein (a), and carotid duplex for measurement of the intima-media thickness and the degree of stenosis. Result: On analysis of the collected data, diabetic patients did have atherosclerosis in the carotid arteries more than the non diabetic subjects, and among the diabetic patients group, it was revealed that those who had CAD, had their carotid arteries more atherosclerotic than the others without CAD. Multinomial logistic regression done showed significant independent association between the presence of thickened carotid intima-media and coronary artery disease among diabetic patients (p=0.042, OR 1.71(0.52-5.6) Conclusion: Thickened carotid intima-media can predict risk to have coronary artery disease among elderly diabetic patients.Amaç: Yaşlı diyabetik hastalarda doppler ultrason ile değerlendirilen karotid arterler ile koroner risk arasındaki ilişkilerin değerlendirilmesi. Metod: Çalışma vaka-kontrol şeklinde dizayn edildi. Katılımcılar Ain Shams Universitesi Kahire, Mısır Hastanesinden çalışmaya alındılar. Vakalar iki alt gruba ayrıldılar (Grup 1: Koroner arter hastalığı (KAH) olan diyabetikler, Grup 2: KAH olmayan diyabetikler). Diyabetik grupta 60 hasta mevcuttu (25 erkek, 35 kadın). Kontrol grubu olarak yaş ve cinsiyet açısından eş, 30 yaşlı kişi çalışmaya dahil edildi. Tüm gruplarda kapsamlı geriatrik değerlendirme, açlık kan şekeri, lipid profili, lipoprotein a&apos; yıda içeren laboratuvar incelemeleri yapıldı ve carotis doppler ultrasonu ile intima media kalınlığı ve stenoz derecesi değerlendirildi. Bulgular: Toplanmış verilerin analizinde diyabetik hastalarde diyabetik olmayanlara göre daha atherosklerotik olduğu, Diyabetik grupta KAH olan grupta KAH olmayanlara göre karotis arterlerinin daha aterosklerotik olduğu gözlemlendi. Multinominal logistic regresyon analizinde diyabetik hastalarda karotid arter intima media kalınlığı ile koroner arter hastalığı arasında bağımsız bir ilişki olduğu tespit edildi (p=0.042, OR 1.71 (0.52-5.6)). Sonuç: Kalınlaşmış carotis intima media yaşlı diabetik hastalarda KAH&apos;a sahip olma riskini öngörebilmektedir

White layer thickness prediction in WEDM-ANFIS modeling

<p>Wire Electric Discharge Machining (WEDM) is a nontraditional technique by which the required profile is acquired using spark energy. Regarding wire cutting, precision machining is necessary to achieve high product quality. White Layer Thickness (WLT) is one of the most important factors for assessing superior surface finish. In this research, Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) was used to predict the WLT in WEDM using coated wire electrode. The predicted data were compared with measured values, and the average prediction error for WLT was 2.61 %.</p