The antimicrobial activity of oil-in-water microemulsions is predicted by their position within the microemulsion stability zone

It has been shown previously that thermodynamically stable oil-in-water microemulsions have significant antimicrobial activity against planktonic cells and biofilm cells over short periods of exposure. It was the aim of this study to identify whether the position of the microemulsion within the microemulsion stability zone of the pseudo-ternary phase structure predicts the efficiency of the antimicrobial action of the microemulsion. Microemulsions were formulated at different points within the microemulsion stability zone. Experiments were performed to observe the kinetics of killing of these microemulsions against selected test microorganisms (Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027, Candida albicans ATCC 10231, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538 and Aspergillus niger ATCC 16404). The results indicated that the antimicrobial activity of the microemulsion is dependant upon its position within the zone of stability and is greater nearer the centre of that zone. The results indicate that significant antimicrobial activity can be observed at all points within the zone of microemulsion stability, but that maximal activity is to be found at the centre of that area

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus: current situation and travel-associated concerns

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.The emergence of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012 brought back memories of the occurrence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2002. More than 1500 MERS-CoV cases were recorded in 42 months with a case fatality rate (CFR) of 40%. Meanwhile, 8000 cases of SARS-CoV were confirmed in six months with a CFR of 10%. The clinical presentation of MERS-CoV ranges from mild and non-specific presentation to progressive and severe pneumonia. No predictive signs or symptoms exist to differentiate MERS-CoV from community-acquired pneumonia in hospitalized patients. An apparent heterogeneity was observed in transmission. Most MERS-CoV cases were secondary to large outbreaks in healthcare settings. These cases were secondary to community-acquired cases, which may also cause family outbreaks. Travel-associated MERS infection remains low. However, the virus exhibited a clear tendency to cause large outbreaks outside the Arabian Peninsula as exemplified by the outbreak in the Republic of Korea. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge about MERS-CoV and highlight travel-related issues

The Genetic Association between Baldness, Coronary Heart Diseases and ABO Blood Group System in Men in Baqubah City-Diyala Province in Iraq

Background and objectives: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a major cause of death and disability worldwide. This study designed to determine the correlation of ABO histo-blood groups with baldness and susceptibility to cardiac diseases in Baqubah city, Diyala province in Iraq .Patients and methods: In this cross sectional, hospital based case control study, 68 male were enrolled .Group (A) include 34 males with CHD, ages ranged ( 45 – 55) year old. Group (B), include 34 healthy males, age range (45 – 55) years old. Coronary artery diseases diagnosis based on laboratory investigation of complete lipid profile analysis(LDL, triglyceride, HDL),Echocardiography and history of cardiac catheterization .ABO Histo-blood groups determined using commercial kits. Results: In healthy men , the ratio of individuals with normal hair to bald one was 1:1 . Regarding to patients group, 32% of CHD patient with normal hair and 68% bald with statistical significant difference (p ? 0.01). The frequency distribution of blood group type O between healthy people and CHD patients was 50% and 62%, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (p ? 0.05).The frequency of histo-blood group of B type within bald healthy group was more than that reported in patients with normal hair. On the contrary, the frequency of histo-blood group of O type reported among patient with normal hair than bald CHD with statistical significant difference (p ? 0.05).Conclusion: people with hereditary baldness may have a predisposition to heart disease compared with people with natural hair. Blood groups distribution may affect indirectly on rates of heart disease difference Keywords: Coronary heart disease; ABO blood group; Baldness, Ira

Factors Influencing Teachers Attrition in the United Arab Emirates

Factors Influencing Teacher AttritionIn the United Arab EmiratesAli S. Al Kaabi, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2005The purpose of this study was to examine the factors associated with high attrition rate among the UAE citizen teachers who teach in public schools grades 1-12. The factors that this study investigated are: personal factors, economic factors, teacher preparation, employment factors, and social-cultural factors. The study was guided by five research questions. Data for this study was collected through two methods: a survey questionnaire that was sent to the sample of this study was 594 UAE citizen teachers in the public schools, and a constructed interview with five educational zone directors. To analyze the quantitative data descriptive statistics (means, percentage, and standard deviations), and Chi-Square Test were applied to examine the relation between the most important factors and teachers gender, qualifications, and years of experience. Qualitative analysis was applied to interpret the data obtained from the interviews with five educational zone directors and open-ended questions from the last part of the questionnaire.The result of this study indicated that the most important factors associated with teacher attrition are: (a) The personal factors that have the highest effect on teacher attrition are "stress" with mean (3.31), and "accountability" with mean (3.19). (b) The economic factor that has the highest effect on teacher attrition is "incentives" with mean (3.23). (c) The employment factor that has the highest effect on teacher attrition is "paperwork" with mean (3.07). (d) The social-cultural factor that has the highest effect on teacher attrition is "social appreciation" with mean (3.07). The result indicated that teacher preparation factors are the least important factors associated with teacher attrition with a very low mean (2.10)

Making a Case for New Directions in English Language Teaching Research at an Omani University: A Critical Qualitative Content Analysis Report

Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) has been the sole English Language Teaching (ELT) research enterprise in the Sultanate of Oman through the Master of Education (M.Ed.) in Curriculum and Methods of Teaching English degree program it launched in the early 1990s. Eighty-two theses have been completed so far about topics pertinent to ELT in the Sultanate of Oman. However, a review of those theses has shown that the discussion of these topics lacks a critical dimension that can advance Omani ELT at the micro and macro levels. This critical qualitative study, therefore, sets out to make a case for new directions in ELT research at the M.Ed. in ELT program at SQU. The discussion should lead to better understanding of the multiple ELT problems in the Sultanate of Oman and have implications for other similar contexts

The Effects Of Green Colour On Patients Under Recovering According To Noble Alquran

This study focuses on the effect of green color specifically in acceleration recovering of patients under treatment in treatment centers and its impact on the psychological aspect of the treatment, in particular, which is one of the stages of complementary and important in treatment as in cases of post-surgical and other cases which have been based on this study, the green color had ever been in the noble ALQURAN many times and places and focus on how the color calls for calm and balance, growth and peace of mind as well as based on scientific studies took the green color as a main subject to study and its effects on the psychological aspect of human. This study is simple but it comes as part of what’s called now days the science of Quranic miracle which to utilize what is stated in the noble ALQURAN in all aspects of life, including scientific, legal, legislative, and life sciences, mathematics, and many other issues .This study is an approach according to our perception humble as stated in the noble ALQURAN, because the reality is out of our thinking Border and what we want to reach is access to its virtual image simple signals colorimetric contained in the noble ALQURAN, which could use them to find the determinants or guide or standard of design according to researchers, architects and specialists in find a comfortable designs and commensurate with the requirements of users

Development of a convolutional neural network joint detector for non-orthogonal multiple access uplink receivers

We present a novel approach to signal detection for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) uplink receivers using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in a single-shot fashion. The defacto NOMA detection method is the so-called Successive Interference Cancellation which requires precise channel estimation and accurate successive detection of the user equipment with the higher powers. It is proposed converting incoming packets into 2D image-like streams. These images are fed to a CNN-based deep learning network commonly used in the image processing literature for image classification. The classification label for each packet converted to an image is the transmitted symbols by all user equipment joined together. CNN network is trained using uniformly distributed samples of incoming packets at different signals to noise ratios. Furthermore, let’s performed hyperparameter optimization using the exhaustive search method. Our approach is tested using a modeled system of two user equipment systems in a 64-subcarrier Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Rayleigh channel. It is found that a three-layer CNN with 32 filters of size 7×7 has registered the highest training and testing accuracy of about 81. In addition, our result showed significant improvement in Symbol Error Rate (SER) vs. Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) compared to other state-of-the-art approaches such as least square, minimum mean square error, and maximum likelihood under various channel conditions. When the channel length is fixed at 20, our approach is at least one significant Figure better than the maximum likelihood method at (SNR) of 2 dB. Finally, the channel length to 12 is varied and it is registered about the same performance. Hence, our approach is more robust to joint detection in NOMA receivers, particularly in low signal-to-noise environment

Effect of natural and chemical insecticides on Hyalopterus pruni and Armeniaca vulgaris

Experiments were carried out to evaluate the effect of water extracts of Fagonia arabica, Salix alba and Anthmis pseudocotula and their mixtures with chemical insecticide (Malathion) on growth ofHyalopterus pruni and characters of Armeniaca vulgaris plants and their soils. The data revealed that F.arabica extract at 20% concentration was the most effective followed by S. alba which recorded 62.66and 56.16% reduction in H. pruni population density, respectively. While the mixture of Malathion with F.arabica or S. alba or A. pseudocotula extracts (each one at half concentration) results in 57.88, 57.42 and 60.86% reduction in aphid population, respectively. The plant extracts treatment resulted in significant increase in chlorophyll pigments and total carbohydrates in A. vulgaris whereas carotenoids and total protein content decreased (except S. alba extract treatment which increased total protein content). Soil cations; Ca++, Na+, Mg++, K+ and anions; SO4 2-, HCO3 -, Cl- increased with all plant extracts treatment with exception of A. pseudocotula extract treatment that decreased HCO3 - concentrations. This study recommended that natural insecticides were more effective and safe than chemical ones in pest control

Mapping geographical inequalities in access to drinking water and sanitation facilities in low-income and middle-income countries, 2000-17

Background: Universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities is an essential human right, recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals as crucial for preventing disease and improving human wellbeing. Comprehensive, high-resolution estimates are important to inform progress towards achieving this goal. We aimed to produce high-resolution geospatial estimates of access to drinking water and sanitation facilities. Methods: We used a Bayesian geostatistical model and data from 600 sources across more than 88 low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) to estimate access to drinking water and sanitation facilities on continuous continent-wide surfaces from 2000 to 2017, and aggregated results to policy-relevant administrative units. We estimated mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subcategories of facilities for drinking water (piped water on or off premises, other improved facilities, unimproved, and surface water) and sanitation facilities (septic or sewer sanitation, other improved, unimproved, and open defecation) with use of ordinal regression. We also estimated the number of diarrhoeal deaths in children younger than 5 years attributed to unsafe facilities and estimated deaths that were averted by increased access to safe facilities in 2017, and analysed geographical inequality in access within LMICs. Findings: Across LMICs, access to both piped water and improved water overall increased between 2000 and 2017, with progress varying spatially. For piped water, the safest water facility type, access increased from 40·0% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 39·4–40·7) to 50·3% (50·0–50·5), but was lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, where access to piped water was mostly concentrated in urban centres. Access to both sewer or septic sanitation and improved sanitation overall also increased across all LMICs during the study period. For sewer or septic sanitation, access was 46·3% (95% UI 46·1–46·5) in 2017, compared with 28·7% (28·5–29·0) in 2000. Although some units improved access to the safest drinking water or sanitation facilities since 2000, a large absolute number of people continued to not have access in several units with high access to such facilities (\u3e80%) in 2017. More than 253 000 people did not have access to sewer or septic sanitation facilities in the city of Harare, Zimbabwe, despite 88·6% (95% UI 87·2–89·7) access overall. Many units were able to transition from the least safe facilities in 2000 to safe facilities by 2017; for units in which populations primarily practised open defecation in 2000, 686 (95% UI 664–711) of the 1830 (1797–1863) units transitioned to the use of improved sanitation. Geographical disparities in access to improved water across units decreased in 76·1% (95% UI 71·6–80·7) of countries from 2000 to 2017, and in 53·9% (50·6–59·6) of countries for access to improved sanitation, but remained evident subnationally in most countries in 2017. Interpretation: Our estimates, combined with geospatial trends in diarrhoeal burden, identify where efforts to increase access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities are most needed. By highlighting areas with successful approaches or in need of targeted interventions, our estimates can enable precision public health to effectively progress towards universal access to safe water and sanitation. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation