In Vitro Assessment of Antioxidant, Anticancer and Antimicrobial Activity of Wheat Sprouts Extracts

Cancer is a major public health problem. Researches show that tens of millions of people around the world suffer from cancer, and almost all ultimately die from it. Cancer is often thought of as an untreatable and painful disease. Although the development of cancer increases with age, people may develop cancer due to lifestyle, genetic mutations, or cell damage. Nevertheless, environmental effects may act as factors that lead to the development of cancer. Treatment of cancer is still being studied. The only choice for treating cancer patients nowadays is anticancer drugs and chemotherapy. The side effects may damage the whole body since anticancer drugs affect not only cancer cells, but also normal healthy cells. As a result, this leads to immunosuppression of the body. The inhibition of the immune system allows bacteria to infect the body, so the patients require antibiotics which are the first defense line against bacterial infections. Cancer patient will suffer more with the side effects of antibiotics along with anticancer drugs and chemotherapy. Accordingly, researches are trying to find alternative treatments that are less toxic than chemicals, like natural plants. Researches began using plant extracts which have always been rich sources for many compounds that are useful for producing drugs. In this study, specific plant sprouts will be used, which are wheat sprouts. This is because they have many nutrients that improve metabolism, keep normal blood sugar levels, and eliminate toxins by neutralizing them. After planting the wheat seeds, the sprouts will be dried in shade, and the anticancer and antimicrobial extracts will be obtained. Specific techniques will be used in order to examine the biological activity of these antioxidants, including the anticancer and the antimicrobial agents. Agar diffusion method will be used for evaluating the width of the inhibition zone. Later, the minimal inhibitory concentration of the antimicrobial extracts will be determined. In addition, the anticancer extracts will be experimentally used on different cancer cell lines, and by counting the floating cells, the number of dead cells will be compared with that of live cells. Afterwards, according to the results, wheat sprouts will be evaluated and tested if they can be used as antimicrobial and anticancer agents or not, by using different concentrations

ENERGY DRINKS: FACTORS THAT INFLUNCE COLLEGE STUDENTS\u27 CONSUMPTION

The purposes of this study were: To assess factors that influence energy drink consumptions among college students. To analyze the reasons behind consuming energy drinks as well as the reasons for not consuming them. And to evaluate the participants\u27 knowledge regarding energy drinks\u27 ingredients, safety, and side effects. A total of 417 undergraduate students who registered in 101 general education classes during the Fall 2013 semester at the departments of Health Education, Kinesiology, and Nutrition at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale participated in the study. Energy drink use was associated with the number of the paid employment hours (p= .000). Gender also played a significant role, with a larger proportion of females than males drinking them mixed with alcohol (p= .005). Of students who consumed energy drinks, a substantial number drank them without alcohol before age 17 (32.8 percent; n= 39) and 82.4 percent (n= 96) before age 19 drank them with alcohol. Energy drink consumers were more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as smoking and drinking alcohol (p =.000). Also, the consumers perceived them as safer than those who did not use them (p= .000), and were less knowledgeable about side effects (p= .000). The study\u27s findings suggest directions for health education and policymaking regarding energy drinks. Key words: Energy drinks, Energy drinks\u27 safety, and energy drinks risk awarenes

The behavior of tapered one-way continuous two-span reinforced concrete slabs under repeated load

The scope of this study is to look at the effect of supplying a non-prismatic cross-section on the flexural strength of one-way continuous slabs reinforced concrete (RC) with two spans under repeated load. The research aims to study the ability of non-prismatic slabs to increase flexural stiffness which leads to saving construction costs. For this purpose, experimental investigations were carried out; the work consisted of fabrication and testing six two-span RC slabs with the same volume of concrete. Two of them were prismatic with a constant depth, while all the others were non-prismatic with tapered cross-sections having varying depth. Prismatic slabs were stiffer than non-prismatic slabs in all support settings, according to the findings. It is found that providing a tapered slab with a positive or a negative haunch has an insignificant effect on the bearing capacity for a prismatic slab. On the other hand, the tapered slab led to increase the deflection at service load compared to the prismatic slab

The clinico-demographic and etiologic profile of lower limb cellulitis in non-diabetics: a hospital based study

Aim: studied the clinico-demographic-etiologic profile of lower limb cellulitis in non-diabetics.Materials and Methods: This prospective study was conducted among 41 non-diabetic patients with lower limb cellulitis attended theDepartment of General Surgery of IGIMS, Patna, Biharfrom January 2015 to Dec 2015.The severity of cellulitis was graded as per the CREST guidelines. Results:Mean age of the study population was 45.01 years. Cellulitis was more common in females (53.6%) and old age group. It was more unilateral (70.7%) and resulted more from post bite wounds (39.0%). 43.9% of the patients required wound debridement alone followed by of them wound debridementwith fasciotomy (21.9%), while (4.7%) of patients required amputation.Conclusions:Non-diabetic elderly patients are at higher risk of development of cellulites. Recognition of cellulites in early stages can minimize hospital admission and expenditure. Keywords: Cellulitis, Lower limb, Non-diabeti

Light-modulated ion binding: towards calibrationless sensors

Emerging technologies create new application fields but few of them require that we completely rethink our approach in preparation and characterization of sensors. The vision of internet scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) requires the deployment of enormous numbers of sensors. This necessarily means that the cost of each sensor must be brought down significantly if this vision is to be realized. An ideal solution for this problem would be a sensor that does not interact with its environment in any way until there is a need for measurement. Upon the measurement, the sensor’s surface is completely regenerated and returned into the state as before the measurement. This step is critical as it ensures that the measurement did not any effect on the sensor hence no calibration is necessary. In our work, we use compounds that indeed can be switched between the active and passive state using light. Most commonly used compounds are so called spiropyrans (SP) and spirooxazines (SO). Here we show the recent advance in preparation of reversible, light-modulated sensors using surface immobilised SP/SO derivatives. A further attractive property of these materials is that they are inherently self-indicating through striking colour changes that enable the state to be easily determined (active vs. passive), and the presence of a bound guest to be detected. These spectral changes enable a range of self-diagnostic tests to be incorporated that enable binding events to be controlled at the surface interface, and for real binding events to be distinguished from artefacts arsing from changes in light intensity, or photobleaching of the active component. We have identified most notable problems for utilization of these compounds in “calibrationless” sensors such as relatively weak binding constants, photodegradation, and unfavourable kinetics of switching between the active and passive state and we demonstrate our approach in solving these problems

MODIFIED MULTI-LEVEL STEGANOGRAPHY TO ENHANCE DATA SECURITY

Data-hiding using steganography algorithm becomes an important technique to prevent unauthorized users to have access to a secret data.  In this paper, steganography algorithm has been constructed to hide a secret data in a gray and a color images, this algorithm is named deep hiding/extraction algorithm (DHEA) to modify multi-level steganography (MLS). The suggested hiding algorithm is based on modified least significant bit (MDLSB) to scatter data in a cover-image and it utilizes a number of levels; where each level perform hiding data on a gray image except the last level that applies a color image to keep secret data. Furthermore, proper randomization approach with two layers is implemented; the first layer uses random pixels selection for hiding a secret data at each level, while the second layer implements at the last level to move randomly from segment to the others. In addition, the proposed hiding algorithm implements an effective lossless image compression using DEFLATE algorithm to make it possible to hide data into a next level. Dynamic encryption algorithm based on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is applied at each level by changing cipher keys (Ck) from level to the next, this approach has been applied to increase the security and working against attackers. Soft computing using a meta-heuristic approach based on artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm has been introduced to achieve smoothing on pixels of stego-image, this approach is effective to reduce the noise caused by a hidden large amount of data and to increase a stego-image quality on the last level. The experimental result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with bee colony DHA-ABC to show high-performing to hide a large amount of data up to four bits per pixel (bpp) with high security in terms of hard extraction of a secret message and noise reduction of the stego-image. Moreover, using deep hiding with unlimited levels is promising to confuse attackers and to compress a deep sequence of images into one image

Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Hybrid Trapezoidal Box Girders Using Ordinary and Highly Strength Concrete

تم في هذا البحث دراسة التصرف العام للروافد الخرسانية المسلحة ذات المقطع الصندوقي والمصنوعة من الخرسانة الهجينة (نوعين مختلفين من الخرسانة تصب ككتلة واحدة) عمليا ونظريا. تضمن الجزء العملي انشاء وفحص خمسة نماذج من الروافد الصندوقية مع مقطع شبه منحرف تحث تأثير فحص نقطي ثنائي التحميل. نموذجان من المقاطع الصندوقية تم صبهما من الخرسانة المتجانسة (احدهما من خرسانة عادية المقاومة (35 MPa) والاخر من خرسانة عالية المقاومة ( MPa55)) وثلاثة نماذج من الخرسانة الهجينة (خرسانة عالية المقاومة في: الشفة العليا فقط, الشفة العليا ونصف عمق الوترة, و الشفة السفلى والعمق الكلي للوترة). بينت نتائج الدراسة العملية وجود تأثيرات مهمة لتهجين الخرسانة على التصرف الإنشائي لنماذج الروافد الصندوقية من حيث: احمال التشقق, نمط التشقق, المقاومات القصوى, و اشكال الفشل. المقاومة القصوى للروافد الصندوقية ذات الخرسانة الهجينة ازدادت  بنسبة حوالي  23% كمعدل بالمقارنة مع الروافد الصندوقية ذات الخرسانة  المتجانسة (خرسانة عادية المقاومة) وقلت بنسبة حوالي 9% فقط. في الجزء النظري من الدراسة تم تمثيل وتحليل النماذج المفحوصة بشكل رقمي باستخدام طريقة العناصر المحددة. النماذج الرقمية تم تكوينها بثلاثة أبعاد باستخدام برنامج إلكتروني  (ANSYS الإصدار 16.1). أظهرت النتائج النظرية (التحليلية) توافقا معقولا مع النتائج العملية بنسبة اختلاف (3.12% و 9.588%) كمعدل بالنسبة للحمل الاقصى والهطول, على التوالي.In this paper, the general behavior of reinforced concrete hybrid box girders is studied by experimental and numerical investigation. Experimental work is included casting monolithically five specimens of box girders with trapezoidal cross section and testing it as simply supported under two point loading. Two specimens were cast as homogenous box girders (full normal strength concrete (NSC) (about 35 MPa) and full high strength concrete (HSC) (about 55 MPa)) and three specimens were cast as hybrid box girders (HSC in upper flange only, HSC in upper flange and half depth of webs, and HSC in bottom flange and total depth of webs). Experimental results showed significant effects of concrete hybridization on the structural behavior of box girders specimens such as: cracking loads, cracking patterns, ultimate strengths, and failure modes. The ultimate strength of Hybrid box girders increased by 23% as average when compared with the homogenous box girder (full NSC) and decreased by 9% as average when compared with homogenous box girder (full HSC). In numerical investigation, the tested specimens were modeled and analyzed using three dimensional non-linear finite element analysis. The analysis was carried out by using a computer program (ANSYS V16.1). The numerical results showed an acceptable agreement with the experimental work with difference about (3.12% and 9.588%) as average for ultimate load and deflection, respectively

Measuring the Comparative and Competitive Advantage of Iraqi Dates Production Using the Policy Analysis Matrix

Purpose: This study came to analyze the impact of government intervention in the production of this important crop and to determine the extent of its global competition and whether it has a comparative advantage in its production or not.   Theoretical framework: Dates are the most prominent representative of Iraq's foreign trade of commodities and agricultural products, which requires attention to that identity of Iraqi agriculture abroad. Interest in producing dates and improving their performance at the local and international levels is a necessity to revive the national economy and the agricultural economy alike.   Design/Methodology/Approach: The research aimed to measure the impact of agricultural government intervention in the production and export of Iraqi dates through the study of the Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) and protection coefficients, and some macro policies related to the subject of the study.   Findings: The key finding of this research was the results of the policy analysis matrix for one acre of dates both showed that the selling prices of dates at the local level are lower than their prices at the global level, and this is what prompts farmers to export dates. It appeared through the commodity system has the ability to compete locally, but at lower levels than what is achieved at the level of social prices. Research, practical and social implications: This study contributes to analysis the impact of government intervention in the production of IRAQI DATES crop and to determine the extent of its global competition.   Originality/Value: The study recommends that the state should support the producers of dates and provides them with the necessary production requirements such as fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and others, and encourage the cultivation of high-quality and abundantly produced varieties and the introduction of modern technologies in this field. This maintains price stability