Prevalence of dental caries and gingivitis among children with type 1 diabetes mellitus attending an outpatient clinic at Kenyatta National Hospital in Kenya

Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) has previously been associated with affluence, but currently its prevalence has been rising at an alarming rate in all populations worldwide. The reduced salivary secretions associated with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) can predispose the children to dental caries and gingivitis.Objective of the study: To determine the prevalence of dental caries and gingivitis among a cohort of 3-18 year-old children diagnosed with T1DM attending Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) paediatric outpatient clinic.Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study using a purposive sampling method.Setting: KNH paediatric outpatient clinic.Subjects: A total of 82 patients with T1DM and who attended the diabetic outpatient clinic at KNH during the months of January to May 2015 were studied. The diagnostic tests, duration since diagnosis of the disease and level of control of T1DM were obtained from the participants’ hospital records. An oral examination was undertaken under field conditions. Dental caries was determined using the WHO criteria 2005 and gingivitis scored using the gingival index by Loe and Silness 1963. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 computer software. Fisher’s exact test, Pearson’s Chi Square and regression models were used to test significant relationships (p<0.05) between the variables.Results: The mean age of the participants was 11.6 ±4.1 SD, with the duration of having T1DM ranging from one month to six years. Seventy-two percent of the children had poorly controlled T1DM. While the prevalence of dental caries among the children was 78% and for gingivitis was 100%, there were no statistically significant relationships between T1DM and dental caries (p>0.05) and gingivitis (p>0.05)Conclusion: The prevalence of dental caries and gingivitis was high, perhaps as a result of the high level of uncontrolled T1DM (72%) and the lack of oral health education among the patients in the study

Silica-based chelating resin bearing dual 8-Hydroxyquinoline moieties and its applications for solid phase extraction of trace metals from seawater prior to their analysis by ICP-MS

Solid phase extraction (SPE) using chelating resins has been established as a convenient technique for samples pretreatment prior to trace metal analysis from complex matrices. Oxine chelating agents (e.g., 8-Hydroxyquinoline (8-HQ)) are popular moieties in the synthesis of chelating resins, due to their characteristic coordination chemistry. So far most of the reported silica-oxine chelators encompasses a single oxine molecule per spacer arm. In this work, two 8-HQ ligands have been covalently attached onto silica surface throughout a single linkage. The synthesized resin characterized with FTIR, elemental analysis and SEM. The main parameters affecting SPE procedures, such as pH, and sorption kinetics, investigated using batch experiments. The capacity exchange of the produced resin under optimized conditions was 0.219 and 0.161 mmol g−1 for Cu(II) and Mn(II) respectively. The resin packed into 10 ml standard cartridges and used with a typical SPE manifold for matrix removal prior to an ICP-MS analysis of transition metals (i.e., Cu, Cd, Ni, Pb, Zn, and Co) in seawater certified reference material samples and real samples from high saline seawater near the discharge zone of Yanbu desalination plant. The obtained results confirm the usefulness of the method.The authors are grateful for the Scientific Research Deanship, Taibah University for the generous financial support, grant No. 766/432

Monitoring the adulteration of virgin coconut oil by selected vegetable oils using differential scanning calorimetry.

The crystallization and melting enthalpy of virgin coconut oil adulterated with palm kernel oil (PKO) and soybean oil (SBO) were studied by using differential scanning calorimetry. Virgin coconut oil was spiked separately with PKO and SBO from 2% to 40% (w/w) of adulterant oils. Fatty acids of all oils were determined to complement the differential scanning calorimetry data. The heating curve of SBO-adulterated samples showed the adulteration peak appearing at the lower temperature region at 10% adulteration level. Regression analyses using stepwise multiple linear regression were used to predict the percentage adulterant with R2 of 0.9490. PKO-adulterated oils did not show any adulteration peak but demonstrated a gradual decrease in the peak height of the major exothermic peak

Microstructure and Interface Characterization of CP-Mg and AZ91 Composite Alloys

Commercial pure magnesium and magnesium-9 aluminum-1 zinc (CP-Mg and AZ91) and their composites were prepared by using flux cover. Magnesium composite alloys containing Al2O3 or SiC particulates of different volume fractions (7-15% Vf) were successfully produced using stir-casting technique. The fabrication processes and controlling parameters of Mg composites produced by this technique were investigated. AZ91 and its composite alloys were solution treated at 420 °C for 20 hrs and aged at 170 °C for 30 hrs. Addition of 2 wt.% mish metal (MM) was also studied in this work. Addition of either reinforcements or MM to these alloys resulted to a considerable grain refinement of the matrix alloys and the degree of refinement increases as the volume fractions of reinforcement increased. The microstructure was investigated by optical microscope. The interface reaction was analyzed using EDS and X-ray diffraction. The results of the X-ray diffraction reveal the presence of MgO and Mg2Si in the CP-Mg besides Mg17Al12 in the AZ91 alloy

Preliminary study of Hepatitis B surface antigen on mental health care workers at federal neuropsychiatric hospital Barnawa, Kaduna Nigeria

Background: This study was designed to determine retrospectively, HBsAg status, marker of HBV infection, among Mental Health Care Workers (MHCWs) at Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital (FNPH), Barnawa Kaduna, North West, Nigeria. Two hundred and fifty one, apparently healthy HBV vaccine naïve, MHCWs, who voluntarily participate prior to HBV-vaccination. Materials and Methods: The screening was carried out using atlas latex haemagglutination test kit, between the months of December, 2000 through March, 2001. The MHCWs were categorized into senior and junior staff. Their ages, years of service, occupation, and department were obtained from year 2000 staff nominal roll. Prior to the study ethical approval was obtained from the hospital ethical committee. Two hundred and fifty one, participant were tested for HBsAg in a pre-HBV-vaccination exercise. Results: The number and percentages of participants by gender were 127 (50.6%) males and 124 (49.4%) females, respectively. The age range was 19-60 years with a mean age of 37 ± 2 years. The Number and percentages of junior and senior staff were 163 (65.0%) and 88 (35.0%), respectively. The incidence of HBsAg was 72 (28.7%). Incidence rates was highest among the males 41 (32.3%) compared to females 31(25.0%) and51-60yrs (50.0%), the incidence among Junior Staff was 52 (31.9%), while in Senior staff was 20 (22.7%) respectively. MHCWs who served between 26-30 years were 2 (66.7%) and those within 21-25 years were 6 (26.1%). Medical Record Staff were 3 (60.0%) and staff from other departments were Pharmacy 3 (50.0%), Artisans 7 (46.7%), Security 15(42.9%), Occupational Therapy Staff 2 (40.0%), Account Staff 6 (30.0%), Social Welfare 1 (25.0%), Hospital Maids 14 (23.7%), Administration Staff 11 (23.4%), Nurses 8 (17.0%), Medical Laboratory Staff 0 (0.0%), respectively. Statistical analysis obtained using Chisquare (x2) test showed no statistically significant association (p >0.05) between incidence of HBV-infection and years of service, Sex, Age, Cadre and Occupation. Conclusions: Due to a high prevalence of HbsAg, a marker of HBV infection, among MHCWs, Pre-vaccination screening should be instituted in Nigeria’s mental health facilities for early detection of HBV-infection and selective treatment. Key words: Hepatitis B virus; HbsAg; neuropsychiatric; vaccination; screening; Barnawa; Kaduna; Nigeria

Supergravity Description of the Large N Noncommutative Dipole Field Theories

We consider system of Dp-branes in the presence of a nonzero B field with one leg along brane worldvolume and the other transverse to it. We study the corresponding supergravity solutions and show that the worldvolume theories decouple from gravity for $p\leq 5$. Therefore these solutions provide dual description of large N noncommutative dipole field theories. We shall only consider those systems which preserve 8 supercharges in the branes worldvolume. We analyze the system of M5-branes and NS5-branes in the presence of nonzero C field and RR field with one leg along the transverse direction and the others along the worldvolume of the brane, respectively. This could provide a new deformation of (2,0) and little string field theories. Finally, we study the Wilson loops using the dual gravity descriptions.Comment: 24 pages, Latex fil

Cold Plasma Dispersion Relations in the Vicinity of a Schwarzschild Black Hole Horizon

We apply the ADM 3+1 formalism to derive the general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic equations for cold plasma in spatially flat Schwarzschild metric. Respective perturbed equations are linearized for non-magnetized and magnetized plasmas both in non-rotating and rotating backgrounds. These are then Fourier analyzed and the corresponding dispersion relations are obtained. These relations are discussed for the existence of waves with positive angular frequency in the region near the horizon. Our results support the fact that no information can be extracted from the Schwarzschild black hole. It is concluded that negative phase velocity propagates in the rotating background whether the black hole is rotating or non-rotating.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures accepted for publication in Gen. Relat. & Gravi

Image Quality Assessment Using Spatial Frequency Component

Image quality assessment (IQA) is a crucial technique in perceptual image/video coding, because it is not only a ruler for performance evaluation of coding algorithms but also a metric for ratio-distortion optimization in coding. In this paper, inspired by the fact that distortions of both global and local information influence the perceptual image quality, we propose a novel IQA method that inspects these information in the spatial frequency components of the image. The distortion of the global information mostly existing in low spatial frequency is measured by a rectified mean absolute difference metric, and the distortion of the local information mostly existing in high spatial frequency is measured by SSIM. These two measurements are combined using a newly proposed abruptness weighting that describes the uniformity of the residual image. Experimental results on LIVE database show that the proposed metric outperforms the SSIM and achieves performance competitive with the state-of-the-art metrics. ? 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.EI

The fuzzy S^2 structure of M2-M5 systems in ABJM membrane theories

We analyse the fluctuations of the ground-state/funnel solutions proposed to describe M2-M5 systems in the level-k mass-deformed/pure Chern-Simons-matter ABJM theory of multiple membranes. We show that in the large N limit the fluctuations approach the space of functions on the 2-sphere rather than the naively expected 3-sphere. This is a novel realisation of the fuzzy 2-sphere in the context of Matrix Theories, which uses bifundamental instead of adjoint scalars. Starting from the multiple M2-brane action, a U(1) Yang-Mills theory on R^{2,1} x S^2 is recovered at large N, which is consistent with a single D4-brane interpretation in Type IIA string theory. This is as expected at large k, where the semiclassical analysis is valid. Several aspects of the fluctuation analysis, the ground-state/funnel solutions and the mass-deformed/pure ABJM equations can be understood in terms of a discrete noncommutative realisation of the Hopf fibration. We discuss the implications for the possibility of finding an M2-brane worldvolume derivation of the classical S^3 geometry of the M2-M5 system. Using a rewriting of the equations of the SO(4)-covariant fuzzy 3-sphere construction, we also directly compare this fuzzy 3-sphere against the ABJM ground-state/funnel solutions and show them to be different.Comment: 60 pages, Latex; v2: references added; v3: typos corrected and references adde