Hepato- and nephrotoxicity in male albino rats exposed to malathion and spinosad in stored wheat grains

Adult male albino rats were fed on stored wheat grains (Triticum aestivum L.) treated with malathion and spinosad at both 8 and 16 ppm for 90 consecutive days to evaluate their hepatic and renal toxicity. The activity of serum acetylcholinesterase (AChE) was decreased in rats treated with the higher concentration of both tested pesticides. Biochemical parameters of liver functions [i.e., aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), acid phosphatase (ACP) activity, as well as total protein, albumin, bilirubin and cholesterol levels] were severely affected especially at higher concentration. Malathion and spinosad elevated the activity of ALT, AST, ALP and ACP in rats treated with the higher concentration. Also, total and direct bilirubin levels increased in rats treated with the higher concentration of both pesticides. On the contrary, both pesticides decreased total protein and albumin levels in treated rats in a concentration-dependent manner. Furthermore, malathion was found to be hyperglycemic. Kidney function parameters (i.e., urea and creatinine levels) were increased in treated rats in a concentration-dependent manner. The above mentioned effects were supported by histopathological examination of liver and kidney tissues. The obtained results indicated also that malathion was able to cause a more pronounced hepato- and renal toxicity in rats than spinosad

Mismatch Repair Proteins (MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, and PMS2) Immunohistochemical Expression and Microsatellite Instability in Endometrial Carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Endometrial cancer (EC) is the fourth most common female cancer worldwide constituting 7% of cancer in women. It is a disease of older, postmenopausal women. The most of these patients have an identifiable source of excess estrogen, while in a small subset the pathogenesis is related to mismatch repair abnormality and lynch syndrome (LC). Mismatch repair behave as tumor suppressors and the most clinically relevant include MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, and PMS2. mutations in mismatch repair (MMR) results in a strong mutator phenotype known as microsatellite instability, which is a hallmark of LC-associated cancers. AIM: The aim of the study was to study microsatellite instability in endometrial cancer using the immunohistochemical expression of mismatch repair proteins (MLH1, MSH2, MSH6 and PMS2). MATERIAL AND METHODS: Sixty EC cases were studied using MLH-1, MSH-2, MSH-6, and PMS-2 immunohistochemistry and their expression was correlated with different clinicopathologic parameters. RESULTS: A statistically significant relationship exists between MMR immunohistochemistry (IHC) proteins and tumor grade. Intact MMR proteins profile was associated with the lower tumor grade (31.3% were Grade 1 and 46.9% were Grade 2). Combined loss of MLH1/PMS2, combined loss of MSH2/MSH6, and isolated loss of PMS2 were also associated with the lower tumor grade while isolated loss of MSH6 was associated with the high tumor grade. However, no statistically significant correlation was found between MMR IHC proteins expression and the age of patients; tumor histopathological types, or FIGO stage. CONCLUSION: A statistically significant correlation between the tumor grade of EC cases and the MMR IHC proteins was found. Further studies are recommended to assess correlation between MMR proteins defect and different clinicopathological parameters of endometrial carcinoma

MEES-WuR: Minimum Energy Coding with Early Shutdown for Wake-up Receivers

International audienceOne of the main challenges of wireless sensor networks is to maintain sensor nodes alive as long as possible, and a lot of efforts are dedicated to enable energy efficient communications. Wake-Up Receivers (WuRs) represent a promising solution for reducing the power consumption of nodes by enabling asynchronous communications. However, to achieve an ultra-low power consumption, WuRs circuits are kept as simple as possible, inducing a low sensitivity and thus a short range communication. As channel coding improves sensitivity, we propose to take advantage of the computing capability of the WuRs to apply a specific channel coding. The novelty resides in applying Minimum Energy coding with an Early Shutdown (MEES) of WuRs based on On-Off Keying (OOK) detectors. Both theoretical derivations and Monte-Carlo simulations show that the proposed coding scheme improves the reliability. Moreover, Moreover, MEES has been implemented on a non-coherent WuR prototype, and it is shown through experimentation that WuR reliability can be raised up to 22% compared to uncoded communications. Moreover, both the energy consumption and the latency can be significantly decreased thanks to the shutdown mechanism of MEES

Implémentation du codage à minimum d'énergie pour les wake-up radios

National audienceWake-up Radios (WuRs) represent one of the most promising solutions for allowing an ultra-low power consumption in wireless sensor networks. However, WuRs have several limitations such as low sensitivity, inducing a miss-interpret of the wake-up signal, and thus a performance degradation of the whole system. This work introduces the use of minimum energy coding in order to enhance the WuR reliability while being energy efficient. The decoding is implemented on the micro-controller of the used WuR platform. It is shown, by combining analytical models and experimental measurements, an enhancement on the reliability up to 22% and a total energy saving of 42% while applying minimum energy coding.Les Wake-up Radios (WuR) sont une des solutions les plus prometteuses pour permettre une consommation d'énergie ultra faible dans les réseaux de capteurs sans fil. Cependant, les WuR ont plusieurs limitations telles que leur faible sensibilité, induisant une mauvaise réception du signal de réveil, et donc une dégradation des performances de l'ensemble du système. Ce travail introduit l'utilisation d'un codage à minimum d'énergie afin d'améliorer la fiabilité des WuR tout en étant économe en énergie. Le décodage est implémenté sur le micro-contrôleur faible consommation de la WuR utilisée. Il est démontré, en combinant des modèles analytiques et des mesures expérimentales, une amélioration de la fiabilité jusqu'à 22% et une économie d'énergie totale de 42% lorsque le codage à minimum d'énergie est utilisé

Enhancing Wake-Up Radio Range Through Minimum Energy Coding

International audienceA substantial part of the research on wireless sensor networks is focused on the optimization of the energy consumption through either hardware or protocol communication stacks. Wake-up Receivers (WuRs) represent a new paradigm that offers both ultra low power consumption and low latency through asynchronous communications. However, WuRs have a low sensitivity and thus can misinterpret the received signal inducing a performance degradation of the whole communicating system. To tackle this issue, low power channel coding techniques can be used and we propose in this work to apply Hamming coding and Minimum Energy Coding (ME) to enhance WuR range. A performance study of these two types of coding shows that ME coding outperforms Hamming code in reducing both bit error rate and energy consumption. At a range of 28 m, ME coding saves about 3 times the energy at a bit error rate of $10^{−3}$ compared to uncoded scheme. Furthermore, experimentation on the missed wake-ups when applying ME coding was done, showing a gain of 22% in reliability compared to uncoded scheme

Role of Cardiac Myocytes Heart Fatty Acid Binding Protein Depletion (H-FABP) in Early Myocardial Infarction in Human Heart (Autopsy Study)

BACKGROUND: Many immunohistochemical markers have been used in the postmortem detection of early myocardial infarction.AIM: In the present study we examined the role of Heart-type fatty acid binding protein (H-FABP), in the detection of early myocardial infarction.MATERIAL AND METHODS: We obtained samples from 40 human autopsy hearts with/ without histopathological signs of ischemia.RESULTS: All cases of definite and probable myocardial infarction showed a well-defined area of H-FABP depletion. All of the control cases showed strong H-FABP expression, except two markedly autolysed myocardial samples that showed affected antigenicity.CONCLUSION: Thus, we suggest H-FABP as being one of the valuable tools facing the problem of postmortem detection of early myocardial infarction/ischemia, but not in autolysis

Assessment and Spatial Analysis of Sensitivity to Desertification in Wadi El Natrun, Northwestern Egypt using MEDLAUS model

Land degradation is a global environmental issue, given the various negative impact on socio-economic and ecological implications. It leads to reduced production capacity in addition to soil erosion, physical /chemical /biological /economic land deterioration, and long-term loss (or degradation) of vegetation. When a severe deterioration in drought areas called the process of desertification i.e. arid, dry sub-humid and semi-arid areas. Desertification processes reduces the productivity of the soil and as a result effect on food stocks. The main objective of this study is integrating remote sensing data and a geographic information system (GIS) to evaluate the environmental sensitivity for desertification in Wadi El Natrun, Egypt based on the Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use (MEDALUS) approach. The collected soil data; from description of represented soil profiles and analysis of soil samples, in addition to climate, plant cover, and management data were considered for assessing the sensitivity of desertification. The obtained results showed that 10.4 % of Wadi El Natrun area is considered severe sensitivity to desertification as a result of alkalinity and salinity, while the moderately sensitive area occupies approximately 10.93 % of the study area. The low sensitive one exhibits 76.3 %. This area is described by high soil quality because of the study area is one of the new development areas which were not affected by the factors of desertification. It can be concluded that the desert extension of El-Beheira Governorate (i.e. Wadi El Rayan) is one of the areas that possess valuable land resources which should be considered for future land reclamation projects. Similar international studies are recommended to be achieved with the use of multi-criteria GIS modeling (i.e. MEDALUS) which considered all relevant factors in the form of thematic layers for easier implementation and assessments. Present study represents one of the initial attempts to use the MEDALUS model for desertification assessment in the desert extension of El-Beheira Governorate

Mismatch Repair Proteins and Microsatellite Instability in Colorectal Carcinoma (MLH1, MSH2, MSH6 and PMS2): Histopathological and Immunohistochemical Study

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide. Microsatellite instability (MSI) is detected in about 15% of all colorectal cancers. CRC with MSI has particular characteristics such as improved survival rates and better prognosis. They also have a distinct sensitivity to the action of chemotherapy.AIM: The aim of the study was to detect microsatellite instability in a cohort of colorectal cancer Egyptian patients using the immunohistochemical expression of mismatch repair proteins (MLH1, MSH2, MSH6 and PMS2).MATERIAL AND METHODS: Cases were divided into Microsatellite stable (MSS), Microsatellite unstable low (MSI-L) and Microsatellite unstable high (MSI-H). This Microsatellite stability status was correlated with different clinicopathological parameters.RESULTS: There was a statistically significant correlation between the age of cases, tumor site & grade and the microsatellite stability status. There was no statistically significant correlation between the gender of patients, tumor subtype, stage, mucoid change, necrosis, tumor borders, lymphocytic response, lymphovascular emboli and the microsatellite stability status.CONCLUSION: Testing for MSI should be done for all colorectal cancer patients, especially those younger than 50 years old, right sided and high-grade CRCs

The revenge of asynchronous protocols: Wake-up Radio-based Multi-hop Multi-channel MAC protocol for WSN

International audienceSynchronized MAC protocols are now considered as the ultimate solution to access the medium in wireless sensor networks. They guarantee both high throughout and constant latency and achieve reasonable energy consumption performance. However, synchronization is achieved at the cost of a complex framework with low flexibility on its parameters that is not suitable for some network topologies or application requirements. By contrast, asynchronous MAC protocols are versatile by nature but suffer from the tradeoff between energy consumption and latency. However, the addition of Wake-up Radio (WuR) can reduce the energy consumption of such protocols while maintaining very low latency thanks to its always-on feature and ultra-low power consumption. In this article, we present WuR- based Multi-hop Multi-channel (W2M), an asynchronous MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. We also provide a fair comparison with Time Synchronized Channel Hopping (TSCH) through an extensive simulation campaign based on Contiki-NG and Cooja. Our results show that in low traffic scenarios, W2M outperforms TSCH in reducing both the energy consumption and the latency (at least 68% of energy is saved), but at the cost of slightly lower reliability