P-selectin in preterm infants suffering necrotizing enterocolitis

Background: Platelet selectin (P-selectin), an adhesion molecule expressed by activated endothelial cells, mediates the early phases of leukocyte adherence to the endothelium. Expression of P-selectin has been shown to be crucial to neutrophil recruitment in many human inflammatory processes as well as in animal models of intestinal ischemia-reperfusion, intestinal transplantation, and sepsis, but its role in NEC is unknown. Objective: To study P-selectin, a possible cause of NEC, in the blood of preterm infants. Study design: Twenty-four consecutive preterms, clinically suspected or proven to have NEC, were enrolled in this pilot study. Their weight ranged from 1 to 2.3 Kg (mean ±SD: 1.7±0.5 Kg), age ranged from 2 to 21 days (mean ±SD: 12±3.5 days) and their gestational age (GA) ranged from 29 to 33 weeks (mean ±SD: 31±3 weeks). In addition, 12 age- and weight-matched apparently healthy preterm infants served as a control group. Written consents were obtained from the parents of infants included in the study. All neonates were subjected to perinatal history, clinical examination, routine investigations (CBC, plain X-ray and abdominal ultrasonography (US), arterial blood gases and serum bicarbonate, serum sodium, CRP and blood culture), and measurement of blood P-selectin by direct immunofluorescent staining. Results: Infants with NEC clinically presented with significant PROM, gastric residual, abdominal distensions, hypoperfusion, hematochezia and evidence of NEC in abdominal X-ray and/or US, compared to control infants. Significant abnormal laboratory investigations in NEC cases included high CRP, hyponatremia, bandemia, thrombocytopenia, metabolic acidosis, and blood culture-proven neonatal sepsis. Abnormal blood P-selectin (>20 units) was detected in 21 (87.5%) infants with NEC, with a mean level of 51±12.4 units that was significantly higher than that of control infants, P < 0.001. A strong significant negative correlation was observed between blood P-selectin and each of GA, body weight, platelet count, arterial blood pH and bicarbonate, while it was a significant positive correlation with each of CRP and band cell count. Conclusion: P-selectin may have a role in the pathogenesis of NEC in preterm infants and may be used as a diagnostic tool. Keywords: Prematurity -abdominal distension-hematocheziaEgypt J Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2010;8(2):61-6

Prenatal genotyping of Gaucher disease in Egypt

Objective: To use chorionic villi sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis to determine the genotyping of Gaucher Disease (GD) of fetuses of pregnant mothers who had a previous child affected by GD.Methods: The study was conducted between January 2009 and December 2012. It included 42 pregnant women that gave informed written consent. Thirty mothers presented early so they underwent CVS at 10–12 weeks of pregnancy while 12 mothers presented later and underwent amniocentesis at 14–16 weeks. Strip assay for the identification of Glucocerebrosidase (GBA) gene mutations in the samples of chrorionic villi and amniotic fluid was based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse hybridization.Results: The age of the studied pregnant women ranged from 19 to 26 years. Consanguinity was present in 38 cases. Eighteen women were pregnant in affected fetuses. The results of genotyping revealed 15 cases were homozygous L444P/L444P and one case homozygous (N370s/N370s) while two cases were heterogeneous (L444P/D409H). Twenty-four pregnant women had carrier fetuses which were all heterozygous L444P.Conclusion: This study highlights the findings of an extended gene mutation examination for prenatal diagnosis of Guacher Disease. The study found out that the most common mutation was L444P/L444P.Keywords: Gaucher diseases; Prenatal diagnosis; Egypt; Gene; Mutatio

Assessment of plasma and urinary transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) in children with lupus nephritis

Background: Kidney disease is one of the most serious manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Despite the improvement in the medical care of SLE in the past two decades, the prognosis of lupus nephritis remains unsatisfactory. Transforming growth factor- β1 (TGF-β1) is an immunosuppressive cytokine, as it inhibits T and B cell proliferation and NK cell cytotoxic activity . Objective: The aim of this study was to assess serum and urinary TGF- β1 levels in children with SLE and their possible role in the renal involvement and activity of the disease. Study design: This cross sectional study was conducted in Nephrology Unit of Pediatric Department, plus Outpatient Clinic of Rheumatology Department, Zagazig University Hospital during the year of 2010. Methods: Twenty-five pediatric patients with SLE were randomly selected and classified according to into 2 groups: Group (Ι): included 13 patients presented with urinary abnormalities and/or disturbed renal function(active nephritis): 5 males, 8 females. Their mean age was 9.7±2.53 years and the mean disease duration was 2.46±1.4 years. Group (ΙΙ): included 12 patients presented by lupus without nephritis : 5 males,7 females. Their mean age was 9.9±2.1 years and the mean disease duration was 2.41±0.9 years. Control group(group ΙΙΙ): Twenty healthy children of matched age and sex served as a control group included 8 males ,12 females. Their mean age was 10.0±2.3 years. Results: There was no significant difference among studied patients groups regarding age, sex , disease duration and lupus therapy (p>0.05). There was a significant difference between both groups regarding urinary albumin and serum creatinine (2.76±0.97 and 1.96±0.84 mg/dl respectively), while there was a high significant difference between them regarding C3 (47.3±12.5 and 76.6±6.6 mg/ml respectively) and anti double stranded DNA (anti-dsDNA) (80.7±32.8 and 26.8±4.5 IU/ml respectively). Plasma TGF- β1 showed significantly lower levels in patients with active nephritis relative to other groups, while urinary TGF- β1 levels were significantly high in SLE patients either with active or silent nephritis when compared with the control group. Plasma TGF- β1 showed a highly significant positive correlation with C3 and a highly significant negative correlation with serum creatinine, urinary albumin, anti dsDNA and SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) score. While, urinary TGF- β1 had a significant negative correlation with C3 and a high significant positive correlation with anti-dsDNA and SLEDAI score. Conclusion: Low plasma TGF β1 level and increased urinary TGF β1 excretion denotes active renal affection in children with SLE.Keywords: SLE , nephritis , TGF- β1Egypt J Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2011;9(1):21-2

S3M: Scalable Statistical Shape Modeling through Unsupervised Correspondences

Statistical shape models (SSMs) are an established way to represent the anatomy of a population with various clinically relevant applications. However, they typically require domain expertise, and labor-intensive landmark annotations to construct. We address these shortcomings by proposing an unsupervised method that leverages deep geometric features and functional correspondences to simultaneously learn local and global shape structures across population anatomies. Our pipeline significantly improves unsupervised correspondence estimation for SSMs compared to baseline methods, even on highly irregular surface topologies. We demonstrate this for two different anatomical structures: the thyroid and a multi-chamber heart dataset. Furthermore, our method is robust enough to learn from noisy neural network predictions, potentially enabling scaling SSMs to larger patient populations without manual segmentation annotation.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 2023. 13 pages, 6 figure

اختلاف دلالة المفردات والتعبيرات السياقية في ترجمة أحاديث الأربعين النووية في اللغة الإنجليزية = THE DIFFERENCE IN THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VOCABULARY AND CONTEXTUAL EXPRESSIONS IN TRANSLATING THE FORTY HADITHS OF AL-NAWAWI IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE[

يهدف هذا البحث إلى بيان مفهوم الدلالة والسياق، وذكر المراد بالترجمة، وتوضيح آثار ترجمة المفردات أو التعبيرات في فهم الأحاديث النبوية واختلافها، وتتجلى أهمية هذا البحث تقديم وجوه التعبير والسياق، ومعرفة اختلاف المفردات المستخدمة أو تعبير السياق بين الكتب المترجمة، وإدراك أمثلة طرائق الترجمة، ويركز هذا البحث على تأثير اختلاف المفردات المستخدمة أو التعبيرات السياقية في الدلالة بين ثلاثة كتب في ترجمة أحاديث الأربعين النووية، واتبعت الدراسة المنهج الوصفي التحليلي، وتوصلت الدراسة إلى نتائج مهمة، ومنها: تعد دراسة المفردات سياقياً مهمة في الترجمة لفهم مفردات الحديث النبوي الشريف، وأن هناك ترجمات مختلفة لمفردة معينة تختلف من كتاب إلى آخر، مع اختلاف وجيز في المعنى، وأن مفهوم المفردة في المصدر واللغة المترجمة؛ من حيث المصطلحات أو التركيب وغير ذلك أهمية في فهم الحديث النبوي ومقصوده. This research aims to clarify the concept of significance and context, mention what is meant by translation, and clarify the effects of translating vocabulary or expressions in understanding the Prophetic hadiths and their differences. This research focuses on the impact of the difference in used vocabulary or contextual expressions on the significance between three books in translating the forty hadiths of al-Nawawi. And that there are different translations of a specific vocabulary that differ from one book to another, with a brief difference in meaning, and that the concept of the word in the source and the translated language in terms of terms or structure and other things is important in understanding the prophetic hadith and its purpose

Various heat-treated nickel–titanium rotary instruments evaluated in S-shaped simulated resin canals

AbstractBackground/purposeHeat treatment of nickel–titanium (NiTi) alloy produces a better arrangement of the crystal structure, thereby leading to increased flexibility and improved fatigue resistance or plastic behavior. This study aimed to assess the performance of various heat-treated NiTi rotary instruments in S-shaped resin canals.Materials and methodsForty S-shaped resin canals were instrumented (10/group) with either Twisted Files (R-phase), WaveOne (M-wire), Hyflex CM, or V Taper 2H (CM-wire) with the same apical size and taper (25/0.08). Each S-shaped resin canal was scanned both before and after instrumentation with microcomputed tomography. Changes in canal volume and transportation were evaluated at regular intervals (0.5 mm). Differences between instruments at the apical curve, coronal curve, and straight portion of the canals were analyzed statistically.ResultsAll tested instruments caused more transportation at the coronal rather than apical curvatures, with the exception of Twisted Files for which apical transportation was the highest for any instrument or location (P<0.05). The transportation was mostly influenced by the alloy type rather than their cross-sectional characteristics (P<0.05). The volumetric increase after instrumentation was similar for all tested instruments at the apical curve (P>0.05), whereas Hyflex CM created the most conservative preparations at the coronal curve (P<0.05). At the straight portion, volumetric changes were largest for Twisted Files and smallest for V Taper 2H (P<0.05).ConclusionAmongst heat-treated NiTi instruments, the CM-wire based instruments created the most favorable preparations in S-shaped resin canals

DNA mechanics as a tool to probe helicase and translocase activity

Helicases and translocases are proteins that use the energy derived from ATP hydrolysis to move along or pump nucleic acid substrates. Single molecule manipulation has proved to be a powerful tool to investigate the mechanochemistry of these motors. Here we first describe the basic mechanical properties of DNA unraveled by single molecule manipulation techniques. Then we demonstrate how the knowledge of these properties has been used to design single molecule assays to address the enzymatic mechanisms of different translocases. We report on four single molecule manipulation systems addressing the mechanism of different helicases using specifically designed DNA substrates: UvrD enzyme activity detection on a stretched nicked DNA molecule, HCV NS3 helicase unwinding of a RNA hairpin under tension, the observation of RecBCD helicase/nuclease forward and backward motion, and T7 gp4 helicase mediated opening of a synthetic DNA replication fork. We then discuss experiments on two dsDNA translocases: the RuvAB motor studied on its natural substrate, the Holliday junction, and the chromosome-segregation motor FtsK, showing its unusual coupling to DNA supercoiling

Graphene Photonics and Optoelectronics

The richness of optical and electronic properties of graphene attracts enormous interest. Graphene has high mobility and optical transparency, in addition to flexibility, robustness and environmental stability. So far, the main focus has been on fundamental physics and electronic devices. However, we believe its true potential to be in photonics and optoelectronics, where the combination of its unique optical and electronic properties can be fully exploited, even in the absence of a bandgap, and the linear dispersion of the Dirac electrons enables ultra-wide-band tunability. The rise of graphene in photonics and optoelectronics is shown by several recent results, ranging from solar cells and light emitting devices, to touch screens, photodetectors and ultrafast lasers. Here we review the state of the art in this emerging field.Comment: Review Nature Photonics, in pres