ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF THREE MEDICINAL PLANTS

Background: Medicinal plants have been traditionally used for different kinds of ailments including infectious diseases. Objectives: The present work was undertaken to investigate the antimicrobial activity of three plants used in folk medicine. Methods: Plant extracts of (Quercus infectoria, Glycyrrhiza glabra and Lepidium virginicum) were in vitro tested against four bacterial strains and one type of fungi for their antimicrobial activities by using well diffusion techniques. Results: The ethanolic extracts of these plants showed varying results. Quercus infectoria was found to possess the highly marked antibacterial activity against both E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus while Glycyrrhiza glabra exhibited a significant antibacterial effect against Pseudomonas aurginosa. Lepidium virginicum produced antibacterial activity against E.coli. Both Quercus infectoria and Lepidium virginicum caused a considerable antifungal effect, while Glycyrrhiza glabra devoid of such antifungal activity. Conclusion: The three tested plant extracts could be considered as potential sources of new antimicrobial agents. Further researches should be made to isolate compounds responsible for antimicrobial activities

Medications package inserts’ usefulness to doctors and patients: Sudanese doctors perspective

Background: Written medication information is important for both doctors and patients. In the developing countries, the medication package inserts (PIs) represent the most available and easily accessible source of written medication information. The main objective of the present study was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of Sudanese doctors toward written medication information in the PIs, and its usefulness for both doctors and patients.Methods: Four hundred (n=400) doctors were randomly selected and addressed with an open to answer the questionnaire composed of fifteen questions (n=15).Results: A big majority (95.7%) of the respondents considered the medications’ PIs, which they regularly read (93.2%), as a reliable and useful source of medication information in their prescribing. Only a minority of the respondent doctors (43.6%) used to advise their patients to read the PIs, whereas a majority (62.4%) of respondents believed that patients might find difficulty in understanding written medication information in the PI. The majority (61.3%) of respondent used to rely on pharmacists to provide patients with the needed medication information. The majority of the respondents (82.2%) used to inform their patients about the possible medication side effects. Respondents ranked medications’ dose (79.5%), how to use it (77.3%) and information about side effects (73%) on top of patients’ medication information most needed particulars.Conclusion: Doctors should give more attention to their patients’ medication information specific needs, advice and motivate them to read the PIs before using their medications

Experimental investigation of a multistage evacuated solar still

A new concept of a multistage evacuated solar still was developed; a full size prototype was constructed and tested. The amounts or condensate produced generated from each stage was collected separately and measured frequently. The overall results showed that the productivity of the new concept is highly better under the cloudy low solar radiation conditions

CFD analysis of an evacuated solar still

A mathematical model for an evacuated solar still is presented in this work. Fluent software is used to model and simulate the evaporation and condensation processes inside the solar still. The simulation results showed the transient state of the evaporation and condensation inside the still and the vapour stream lines inside the solar still. Simulation results showed vapour path lines patterns similar to those visualized experimentally in previous literature

The effect of the operating conditions on the apparent viscosity of crude palm oil during separation

This paper discusses the apparent viscosity of crude palm oil, using rotary viscometer, under different boundary conditions. It was experimentally shown that the apparent viscosity of palm oil drops with increasing shear rate and temperature. However, the effect of temperature on the viscosity tends to fade at temperatures beyond 80"C. A correlation between the apparent viscosity of crude palm oil and the operating conditions was developed. The derived correlation represents well the experimental data. This correlation can be used in design of crude palm oil settlers and in determining the optimum operating conditions

Developments on solar operated water desalination

Various designs of solar stills ranging from minimal to technically advanced have been overviewed. Solar thermal systems that produce potable water from salty water have been studied for the last five years. The limitations of some types of solar stills have been pointed out. The multistage evacuated solar still was found to be of better output rate than the normal multistage systems. There is a great need to improve the design in order to utilise the multistage evacuated solar still concept

Validation of the Arabic Version of General Medication Adherence Scale (GMAS) in Sudanese Patients with Diabetes Mellitus

Objective: The aim of this study was to validate the Arabic version of General Medication Adherence Scale (GMAS) in Sudanese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods: A 3-month cross-sectional study was conducted among patients with T2DM at Al- Daraja Health Center, located in Wad Medani, Sudan. A convenient sample of patients was selected, and the study sample size was calculated using the item response ratio. Factorial, known group, and construct validities were determined. Internal consistency and reliability were also determined. Results: Responses were provided by 500 patients. The average medication adherence score was 30 (median 31). The normed fit index (NFI) was 0.950, the comparative fit index (CFI) was 0.963, the incremental fit index (IFI) was 0.963, and the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.071. The results from these fit indices indicated a good model. Factorial, known group and construct validities were all established. A significant association was found between adherence score and age (P = 0.03) since a larger proportion of older patients were found to have high adherence compared to patients in other age groups. The reliability (α) of the questionnaire was 0.834. Conclusion: The Arabic version of GMAS was validated in Sudanese patients with T2DM making it a suitable scale to be used in this population

Experimental and numerical analysis of electronics heat sink

Cooling of electronic components continues to attract many research and development activities towards achieving an effective way of cooling. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools may be considered as a cheap substitute for expensive experimental testing methods. In this work the cooling of a simulated electronic board was modeled using FLUENTTM CFD software, and experimental procedures were followed to validate the estimated results, and to understand the factors that would affect the software capability to predict the actual measured values. Results showed good agreement between the simulation and experimental results. The software was found to be capable to predict the exact values at the locations where the temperature values were similar to the board mean temperature. The maximum percentage error was found to be limited to 4.7%, and the capability of the software to estimate the exact measured values was found to be affected by the function of thermal wake generation

Modelling of electronics heat sink – influence of the wake function generation on the accuracy of CFD analysis

Cooling of electronic components continues to attract many research & development activities towards achieving an effective way of cooling. On this work, an analytic analysis of the cooling process was conducted to calculate the rcquired cooling rate. A Fluent CFD model was developed to model and simulate the system. Experimental results were then used to test and evaluate the conditions at which the software results are approaching the exact measured values. A relation was discovered between the thermal wake function and capability of the software to give better estimations of the circuit board temperatures. The obtained results generally showed good agreement between the simulation and the experimental results