A review on antidepressant effect of medicinal plants

Depression is a life-threatening, debilitating, and common disease affecting different segments of community. Chemical and synthetic drugs available to treat this disease cause many adverse effects and may lead to complete recovery in only 50% of patients. At the same time, medicinal plants have been reported to exert optimal pharmacological effects in treating depression in different models. In this review, the relevant articles indexed in the reliable databases PubMed, PubMed central, Scopus and Web of Science were review-ed. The review indicated that most medicinal plants exerted antidepressant effects through synaptic regulation of serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine, regulating activity of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, reinfor-cing anti-oxidant defense system, and decreasing inflammatory mediators. The medicinal plants and their active compounds can relieve depression through different pathways and hence are considered a new source to produce antidepressants

Quantitative evaluation of composite bone graft healing in rabbits

Abstract no. 328published_or_final_versio

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine

The editors introduce this special issue of settler colonial studies focusing on settler colonialism in Palestine

Prevalence, Types and Determinants of Complementary and Alternative Medications among Health Clinic Clients

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) covers a wide range of over 100 healing approaches, philosophies and therapeutic modalities that are not provided by conventional medicine. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) covers a wide range of healing approaches not provided by conventional medicine. Objectives: The study was aimed at identifying the prevalence , types and determinants of CAM use,  sources of information about CAM that patients usually depend upon and  reasons of using CAM, Methods: : A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from random consecutive patients attending  two PHC centres out of ten which was selected randomly in Abha city. All the patients more than 18 years attended to the clinic during two months (March & April) /2014 was included in the study. Results: The present study included 504 patients attending the PHC centres. The mean age of the participants was  47.6 ± 10.2 years. 232(46.0%)  were Males and 272(54.0%) were females. The majority of participants were Saudi ((88.7%)) and Muslims (96.4%). Most of the participants were Illiterate or school level (82.1%) and less than half of them (42.9%) had  enough family income > 10,000 SR. About three fourths of the participants were born in city, most of them were non smokers (81.9%) and about one third of them had self-perceived stress level more than 5. About one third  (36.9%) of participants reported using CAM during the 12 months preceded the study. About half of the participants used CAM due to the personal and family beliefs and because of friends advice ( 63.4% & 46.8% ) respectively. More than half of CAM users used it regularly. 58.6% of CAM users Feeling physically & psychologically better after using it and most of them did not reported any side effects after using CAM.  Conclusions: Use of CAM is prevalent among patients attending  health clinics in Abha City. CAM is commonly used by all age groups. The significant factors found to increase the likelihood of CAM use were Saudi nationality, Illiterate and the place of birth, there were a statistical significant increase  of using CAM among participants born in village. However, factors like age, gender, income, religion, smoking and perceived stress level did not prove to be statistically significant and thus did not affect CAM prevalence significantly. Most families has strong personal belief on CAM Because of the Belief that CAM builds up the body’s own defenses and promotes self-healing and has less side effects. Key words: Prevalence, Determinants, Complementary,  Alternative Medications, Client

A window into a public programme for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV: evidence from a prospective clinical trial

Objectives. To evaluate efficacy of the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal antiretroviral components of a public service prevention of mother-to-child (PMTCT) programme in infants.Design. Analysis of prospectively collected screening data of demographic and MTCT-related interventions and HIV infection status of infants identified through HIV-specific DNA polymerase chain reaction.Setting. Tygerberg Children’s Hospital, Western Cape, South Africa.Subjects. HIV-infected women and their infants identified through participation in a public service PMTCT programme were referred for possible participation in a prospective study of isoniazid prophylaxis.Interventions. Key components of the programme include voluntary counselling and testing, administration of zidovudine to the mother from between 28 and 34 weeks’ gestation and to the newborn infant for the firstweek, single-dose nevirapine to the mother in labour and to the newborn shortly after birth, and free formula for 6 months.Main outcome measures. Number and percentage of HIV-infected infants and extent of exposure to antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal antiretrovirals.Results. Of 656 infants with a median age of 12.6 weeks, screened between 1 April 2005 through May 2006, 39 were HIV-infected, giving a transmission rate of 5.9% (95% confidence interval (CI) 4.4 - 8.0%). Antenatal prophylaxis was significantly associated with reduced transmission (odds ratio (OR) 0.43 (95% CI 0.21 - 0.94)) as opposed to intrapartum and postpartum components (p=0.85 and p=0.84, respectively). In multivariable analysis the antenatal component remained significant (OR=0.40 (95% CI 0.19 - 0.90)).Conclusions. The antenatal phase is the most important antiretroviral component of the PMTCT programme, allowing most opportunity for intervention

Data Mining for Enhanced Security: A Transformative Framework for Smart Grid Protection

Smart grids fall at the intersection of conventional energy systems and modern informatics in the present digitalized energy environment. The growing number of linked devices and sensors in these networks leads to the generation of complex structures and vast quantities of data, presenting benefits and challenges. Safeguarding these complex structures against malicious intrusions and illegal activities is an important problem. The paper's main objective is to enhance smart grid security by utilizing the data mining and Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches. As huge amounts of data are collected from the smart grids based on tiny and smart internet of things (IoT) devices, this data poses challenges as well as provides opportunities. The challenges come from analyzing this huge data, especially in real-time. At the same time, it provides opportunities to enhance the smart grid services and protection. Therefore, to overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a feedforward deep learning approach for data mining to secure the smart grid from different anomalies and allow the system to adapt to any risk it might face. Deep learning will allow the system to adjust dynamically to emerging risks. The proposed system has been examined using Power System Attack Datasets sourced from the Mississippi State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The results show a detection accuracy of 91% just using 50% of the dataset features. Different percentages of the features are examined as well. However, we concluded that 50% of the features are enough for identifying the smart grid risks based on the given dataset

MOLD-SHAPED, NANOFIBER SCAFFOLD-BASED CARTILAGE ENGINEERING USING HUMAN MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS AND BIOREACTOR

Background Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-based tissue engineering is a promising future alternative to autologous cartilage grafting. This study evaluates the potential of using MSCs, seeded into electrospun, biodegradable polymeric nanofibrous scaffolds, to engineer cartilage with defined dimensions and shape, similar to grafts used for subcutaneous implantation in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Materials and methods Human bone marrow derived MSCs seeded onto nanofibrous scaffolds and placed in custom-designed molds were cultured for up to 42 days in bioreactors. Chondrogenesis was induced with either transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) alone or in combination with insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I). Results Constructs exhibited hyaline cartilage histology with desired thickness and shape as well as favorable tissue integrity and shape retention, suggesting the presence of elastic tissue. Time-dependent increase in cartilage matrix gene expression was seen in both types of culture; at Day 42, TGF-β1/IGF-I treated cultures showed higher collagen type II and aggrecan expression. Both culture conditions showed significant time-dependent increase in sulfated glycosaminoglycan and hydroxyproline contents. TGF-β1/IGF-I treated samples were significantly stiffer; with equilibrium compressive Young’s modulus values reaching 17 kPa by Day 42. Conclusions The successful ex vivo development of geometrically defined cartilaginous construct using customized molding suggests the potential of cell-based cartilage tissue for reconstructive surgery

RESPONSE OF SOYBEAN YIELD TO LATE SOWING DATES

This work conducted on the research farm of Mallawi Agricultural Research Station, El-Minia Province, Egypt, during two successive seasons of 2004 and 2005 to study the role of the late plant-ings on the productivity of soybean. Three out of four genotypes selected to achieve that goal were new released cultivars, Giza-22; Giza-35; and Gi-za-111, and the commercial one, Crawford, the common parent of the three genotypes, as control. Three planting dates started on June 1st, June 15th for the second date of sowing and ended on June 30th for the third sowing date in both seasons. The package of the recommendations of soybean cul-ture carefully applied to get the best results of each sowing date. The results showed that all of the morphological, yield and productivity traits highly significantly affected by genotype and three out of five morphological traits, number of days to both flowering and maturity and plant height, also high-ly significantly affected by late sowing date. The other two traits, number of branches and leaf area at 75 days just significantly affected by late sow-ing date. In terms of yield and its components traits, only seed index highly significantly affected by late sowing date and yield per plot significantly affected by sowing time. All productivity traits were significantly affected by late sowing date specially the content of both oil and protein. Alt-hough yield per plot was significantly affected by late sowing date, the yield per plant was not af-fected by late sowing date indicating that the fac-tor of time of sowing may affect the rate of the germination and control the stand of the plots. Number of active nodules considered as produc-tivity trait because of the residual nitrogen that remain in the soil after harvest for the next crop. This number was significantly affected by sowing time and reached the highest values in the second date of June 15th that may due to the high tempera-ture at this time which lead to increasing the inter-action between soybean roots and the nodule bac-teria

Wireless Power Transfer in Cooperative DF Relaying Networks with Log-Normal Fading

Energy-harvesting (EH) and wireless power transfer in cooperative relaying networks have recently attracted a considerable amount of research attention. Most of the existing work on this topic however focuses on Rayleigh fading channels which represents outdoor environments. Unlike these studies, in this paper we analyze the performance of wireless power transfer in two-hop decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative relaying systems in indoor channels characterized by log-normal fading. Three well-known EH protocols are considered in our evaluations: a) time switching relaying (TSR), b) power splitting relaying (PSR) and c) ideal relaying receiver (IRR). The performance is evaluated in terms of the ergodic outage probability for which we derive accurate analytical expressions for the three systems under consideration. Results reveal that careful selection of the EH time and power splitting factors in the TSR- and PSR-based system are important to optimize performance. It is also presented that the optimized PSR system has near-ideal performance and that increasing the source transmit power and/or the energy harvester efficiency can further improve performance