Optic Nerve Hypoplasia - A Review and Investigational Studies

The literature concerning optic nerve hypoplasia (OBH) is reviewed, and a number of investigations have been carried out for patients with this disorder. The studies described in this thesis are aimed at gathering information regarding the maternal history during pregnancy and at finding the results of a number of tests which have no hitherto been performed on a group of patients with ONH

Sclerosing peritonitis presenting as complete mechanical bowel obstruction: A case report

Introduction: Sclerosing peritonitis or abdominal cocoon syndrome is characterized by small bowel loops completely encapsulated by a fibrocollagenous membrane in the center of the abdomen. Although cocooning of the abdomen is mostly seen in patients on peritoneal dialysis, it can occur de novo; it very rarely manifests as complete mechanical bowel obstruction.Case Presentation: A 46-year-old Asian man presented with complete mechanical bowel obstruction. He had previous attacks of partial bowel obstruction during the past 6 to 8 months, which was misdiagnosed as abdominal tuberculosis because tuberculosis is very prevalent in the region in which he lives. He took anti-tuberculosis therapy for 3 months but this did not result in resolution of his symptoms. This time he had diagnostic laparoscopy followed by laparotomy in which a fibrocollagenous membrane, resulting in entrapment of his bowel, was excised and his entire small bowel was freed. Postoperatively he again had a mild episode of partial bowel obstruction but this was relieved with a short course of steroids.Discussion: Sclerosing peritonitis is a rare benign etiology of complete mechanical bowel obstruction. Patients might have suffered recurrent attacks of partial bowel obstruction in the past that were falsely managed on lines of other conditions such as tuberculosis, especially in endemic areas like Pakistan or India.Conclusion: Sclerosing peritonitis is a rare benign diagnosis which can manifest as complete bowel obstruction and a high index of suspicion is required to diagnose it. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography of the abdomen is a useful radiological tool to aid in preoperative diagnosis. Diagnostic laparoscopy is usually confirmatory. Peritoneal sac excision and adhesiolysis is the treatment and a short course of steroids in relapsing symptoms

Intriguing Properties and Applications of Functional Magnetic Materials

Functional magnetic materials, also called the smart materials of the future, are a group of materials having important and interesting physical properties, which can be affected when an external magnetic field is applied. They are intriguing models that have a strong impact on improving different technologies. Their magnetic response to an external magnetic field can be represented as paramagnetic, diamagnetic, ferromagnetic, or antiferromagnetic. Compared with bulk materials, they show uncommon magnetic behavior as a result of their surface/interface effects, electronic charge transfer, and magnetic interactions. They can be used in different vital applications like data storage systems, refrigeration, magnetic recording, and medical studies. In this chapter, essential attractive magnetic properties that are relevant to different applications will be explained

Detection of Three Novel Mutations in Exon 7 of FGFR3 Gene in Iraqi Patients with Bladder Cancer

The present study was carried out in Genetic Engineering and biotechnology Institute –Baghdad University during a period from October 2013 to October 2014, for detecting the role of genetic alterations of FGFR3 gene in Iraqi patients with bladder cancer. 50 patients with bladder cancer who admitted to Ghazi AlHariri Hospital in Baghdad and 25 healthy persons (age between 30 to 86 years) were included in this study. Total genomic DNA was isolated from blood samples for molecular analysis using specific primers for exon 7 of the gene FGFR3. The PCR amplified regions of the FGFR3 exon 7 of healthy and patients showed a molecular weight of about 120 bp. The analysis of mutation using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was performed on PCR products of FGFR3 exon 7 using Hae II and TseI enzymes. These results showed that the PCR amplified regions of the FGFR3 exon 7 has only one restriction site for each enzymes. The REFLP molecular analysis of FGFR3 exon 7 of patient samples for both enzymes revealed one mutation in one patient include FGFR3 Arginine 248 Cysteine  mutation. The DNA sequencing analysis of the exon 7 PCR products revealed that among 50 patients included in this study, 51 mutations were detected in exon 7. The mutations detected in exon 7 include three types, g.13515 del C , g.13510 del A and g.13529 ins A. The more frequent mutation was g.13515 del C which detected in 34 patients followed by g.13510 del A and g.13529 ins A mutations which detected in 12 and 1 patients respectively. The A insertion mutation (13529) were included in the Hae II restriction site which explain the single mutation detected in patients. The results showed that the exon 7,  g.1315 delC mutation is a correlated with the initiation of tumor since it detected in all grads and consist of the majority of detected mutations (36/81, 44.4%). On the other hand, exons 7 mutations, g.13529 ins A, g.13510 del A, showed to have importance in cancer initiation and development since they are detected in the early grade (G1) and in 38(80.9%) patients of 47. Key words: Bladder carcinoma, FGFR3, RFLP, g.1315 delC, g.13529 ins A, g.13510 del

ACOUSTIC BUILDING UNITS FOR FORMANT SYNTHESIS TEXT-TO-SPEECH CONVERTER SYSTEM FOR MODERN STANDARD ARABIC

In this paper an inventory of acoustic building units (ABUs) used for the synthesis of Arabic speech is presented. The ABUs are generated for the free programmable PCF-8200 formant synthesizer chip which has been used in the development of the real time text-to-speech multilingual system, the MULTIVOX. To utilize these ABUs for the synthesis of Arabic speech a set of 36 Arabic sounds and all their possible combinations are defined. The inventory of 255 ABUs is designed that each sound combination can be built up by using some of those ABUs. A grapheme-to-phone-code converter is designed so to convert the written input text into its equivalent phone-codes. Furthermore, it contains solutions for the difficult phonetic problems in the Arabic input text