First report of the ticks Haemaphysalis punctata Canestrini et Fanzago, 1878, Haemaphysalis parva (Neumann, 1897) and Dermacentor marginatus (Sulzer, 1776) (Acari, Amblyommidae) from humans in Lebanon

Purpose: Knowledge on ticks infesting humans is scarce for the middle East. In this work, tick specimens (Acari: Amblyommidae) infesting humans in Lebanon were identified. Methods: Ticks that were found on humans were received in the Lebanese University, Faculty of Sciences. The specimens were preserved in alcohol for their further morphological identification morphological identification. Results: Three tick species were identified: a red sheep tick Haemaphysalis punctata Canestrini et Fanzago, 1878, a Mediterranean ear tick H. parva (Neumann, 1897), and an ornate sheep tick Dermacentor marginatus (Sulzer, 1776); all isolated from human hosts. Conclusion: This is the 1st report of Haemaphysalis punctata, H. parva and Dermacentor marginatus from central and North Lebanon infesting humans

A wideband F-shaped patch antenna for S-band CubeSats communications

A wideband S-band F-shaped patch antenna is proposed for CubeSats communications. To broaden bandwidth, it uses two arms with different lengths to generate a second resonant frequency. The effect of the arm length and width on the return loss, resonant frequency and impedance bandwidth on a 3U CubeSat is studied. The simulation results show that the antenna achieves a wideband of 1121 MHz (1.606-2.727 GHz) with a return loss below −10 dB over the entire frequency band from 1.606 to 2.727 GHz. The antenna has a high gain of 8.51 dB and a small return loss of −32.85 dB at 2.45 GHz

Effect of Reaction Time on the Blue Shift of Chemically Created Silver Nanoparticles

The structural properties of (Ag-NPs) nanoparticles prepared by the chemical method were examined using (XRD) diffraction. Additionally, the optical properties were tested using a UV-Vis spectroscopy instrument, and a scanning electron microscope was used to analyze the surface morphology, We found that (Ag-NPs) nanoparticles have the highest absorbance at wavelengths of (400)nm and that the granular size of these material ranges between (29 – 89)nm. And The morphology analysis further revealed that (Ag-NPs) particles are spherical in shape

Effect of Zataria multiflora Boiss Essential Oil and Grape Seed Extract on the Shelf Life of Raw Buffalo Patty and Fate of Inoculated Listeria monocytogenes

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of Zataria multiflora Boiss essential oil (ZEO) and grape seed extract (GSE) on microbial and chemical changes in raw buffalo patty at a temperature of 8C. First, chemical composition and minimum inhibitory concentration of oil against Listeria monocytogenes were identified. Then, ZEO and GSE were added in raw buffalo patties and analyzed for spoilage microorganism count, lipid oxidation, pH, sensory attributes and inoculated L.monocytogenes survival at 8C for 9 days. Results revealed that samples containing 0.1 ZEO+0.2 GSE showed significant decrease in the growth of all tested microbial groups as well as the most decrease in the level of lipid oxidation at the end of storage period. Control and samples with 0.1 ZEO were the most preferred samples by sensory panelist, indicating that ZEO and GSE can be practically applied in food systems especially in meat in order to extend the shelf life. Practical Applications: Buffalo meat is highly prone to microbial and chemical spoilage as they are rich in essential nutrients and putrefying in nature. The adverse effects of various chemical preservatives caused to attract the consumer's attention to natural alternatives. Therefore, in order to increase the shelf life and quality characteristics of meat, new processing technologies and new ingredient systems that are associated with natural and organic foods are applied. These results demonstrate the potential combined use of grape seed extract and Zataria multiflora Boiss essential oil to the meat industry in the development of novel healthy meat products with improved shelf life and superior product quality. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Effective lock handling in stateless model checking.

Stateless Model Checking (SMC) is a verification technique for concurrent programs that checks for safety violations by exploring all possible thread interleavings. SMC is usually coupled with Partial Order Reduction (POR), which exploits the independence of instructions to avoid redundant explorations when an equivalent one has already been considered. While effective POR techniques have been developed for many different memory models, they are only able to exploit independence at the instruction level, which makes them unsuitable for programs with coarse-grained synchronization mechanisms such as locks. We present a lock-aware POR algorithm, LAPOR, that exploits independence at both instruction and critical section levels. This enables LAPOR to explore exponentially fewer interleavings than the state-of-the-art techniques for programs that use locks conservatively. Our algorithm is sound, complete, and optimal, and can be used for verifying programs under several different memory models. We implement LAPOR in a tool and show that it can be exponentially faster than the state-of-the-art model checkers

On the solution of Fredholm-Volterra integral equation with discontinuous kernel in time.

The existence of a unique solution of Fredholm-Volterra integral equation (F-VIE) under certain conditions, are discussed and proved. The Fredholm integral term (FIT)  is considered in position with continuous kernel, while the Volterra integral term (VIT) in time with singular kernel. Using a numerical method, the F-VIE is transformed to a linear system of Volterra integral equations (LSVIEs). Then after using Toeplitz matrix method (TMM), we have a linear algebraic system (LAS). Finally, two applications are given, numerical results are obtained, and the error, in each case, is calculated

EFFECT OF VITAMIN D SUPPLEMENTATION ON INSULIN SENSITIVITY AND ANDROGEN LEVEL IN VITAMIN D-DEFICIENT POLYCYSTIC OVARY SYNDROME PATIENTS

Objectives: There is limited evidence that giving Vitamin D supplementation had a beneficial effect on insulin resistance and dysfunction of the menstrual cycle in females with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Thus, the aim of the present study is to evaluate the effect of Vitamin D supplementation on insulin sensitivity and androgen level in Iraqi females with PCOS.Methods: A randomized, blinded clinical trial design studied 60 Iraqi females with PCOS referring to the women's counseling, outpatients at maternity and pediatrics teaching hospital in AL-Qadisiyah city, Iraq, and private clinic. Non-probabilistic sampling involved women aged from 18 to 45 years established on inclusion criteria. The patients' basic data have been recorded. Then, we measured Vitamin D, testosterone level, and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) test to all females. After the diagnosis of Vitamin D deficiency, Vitamin D was administering at 5000 units daily for 8 weeks. All data were remeasured after 2 months.Result: A total of 60 patients with polycystic syndrome enrolled in the study, age range from 18 to 39 years, mean age 27.48±5.95 years. The metabolic parameter have been checked at the beginning of the study, which include Vitamin D level 16.1±5.6, impaired glucose test reading 8.8±0.7 and testosterone level 4.5±0.64.. After 2 months of supplementation, there were 83.7% of patients reach the normal level of Vitamin D and 16.3% still had a low level of Vitamin D (p≤0.002) between two groups. In regard to IGT test after 2 months of supplementation, there were 51.6% of patients still who had impaired test while 48.4% reach the normal reading (p≤0.001).Conclusions: Women with PCOS have a statically significant low level of Vitamin D in mean, IGT test in the mean, and high level of testosterone, and there were inverse correlations between Vitamin D with IGT and testosterone

PerSeVerE: persistency semantics for verification under ext4.

Although ubiquitous, modern filesystems have rather complex behaviours that are hardly understood by programmers and lead to severe software bugs such as data corruption. As a first step to ensure correctness of software performing file I/O, we formalize the semantics of the Linux ext4 filesystem, which we integrate with the weak memory consistency semantics of C/C++. We further develop an effective model checking approach for verifying programs that use the filesystem. In doing so, we discover and report bugs in commonly-used text editors such as vim, emacs and nano

Optical and structure Characteristics of diamond like-carbon thin films produced by PLD.

تم استخدام ليزرND: YAG الطول الموجي ١٠٦٤ نانومتر  في الترسيب بالليزر النبضي  PLD لتكوين غشاء الماس شبيه الكاربون DLC على اساس زجاجي في درجة حرارة الغرفة. التركيب ومورفولوجيا السطح بالفحص بمجهر القوى الذرية  AFM لدراسة الغشاء  وتحويل فورييه لأطياف الأشعة تحت الحمراء FTIR للماس شبيه الكاربون DLC المستخدمة لمعرفة وجود الروابط وكذلك خصائص المجهر الالكتروني الماسح SEM وتشتيت الطاقة بالأشعة السينية EDX . يحتوي غشاء الماس شبيه الكاربون DLC المرسب على بنية مدمجة من الحبيبات المتراصة ويحتوي الغشاء على جسيمات غير منتظمة الشكل ( عناقيد) منDLC واكدت أطياف FTIR ان غشاء DLCيحتوي على ذرات كاربون مع تهجينsp3  وتم التحقيق في الخواص البصرية مع النتائج المتعلقة مثل النفاذية ومعامل الامتصاص وفجوة الطاقة البصرية والانعكاس R ومعامل الخمودKومعامل الانكسارn .     The utilizing of Nd: YAG laser (wave length-1064 nm) in the pulsed laser-deposition-PLD for placing diamond-like carbon DLC-film on glass substratum at the normal temperature of room. The composition and morphology of the surface for the atomic force microscopy (AFM), synthesized film and Fourier transform infrared FTIR-spectra for DLC utilized to know the presence of bonding were characterized by scanning electron microscopy-SEM and energy dispersive x-ray -EDX. Deposited DLC-film has a compact structure of dense grains, and the film contained irregular shape particles (clusters) of DLC. FTIR-spectra confirmed that the DLC-film contains carbon atoms with sp3-hybridization.Were investigated in optical properties with the results concerning the transmittance, absorption coefficient-(α), optical energy-gap, reflectance-R, extinction coefficient-k and refractive index-n