Extrapancreatic actions of incretin-based therapies on bone in diabetes mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is correlated with modifications in bone microarchitectural and mechanical strength, leading to increased bone fragility. The incretin hormones, with a classical effect to increase insulin secretion following food ingestion, are now postulated to have important direct effects on bone. As such, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) has dual actions on bone cells; enhancing bone�forming activity of osteoblasts and suppressing bone resorption by osteoclasts. The sister incretin of GIP, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), is also suspected to directly influence bone health in a beneficial manner, although mechanism are less clear at present. The physiological actions of incretins are attenuated by dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP-4) activity and it is speculated that introduction of DPP-4 inhibitor may also positively affect quality of the skeleton. As such, this thesis evaluates the potential beneficial effects of a DPP-4 resistant GIP analogue, namely [D-Ala2 ]GIP, on osteoblastic-derived, SaOS-2 cells, and also preliminary in vivo studies on the impact of genetic deficiencies of GIPRs and GLP-1Rs on bone mineral density and content. Further studies characterised the beneficial effects of incretin-based therapies on metabolic control, bone microstructure and bone mechanical integrity in animal models of pharmacologically-, genetically- and environmentally-induced diabetes. GIP and related stable analogue increased bone-forming biomarkers in SaOS-2 cells and importantly, [D-Ala2 ]GIP was shown to be more potent than native GIP. Knockout mouse studies revealed that both GIPR and GLP-1R signaling are important for optimum bone mass. All diabetic mouse models displayed reduced bone mass, altered bone micromorphology and impairment of bone mechanical strength, similar to the human situation, confirming their appropriateness. The incretin-based therapeutics, [D-Ala2 ]GIP and Liraglutide, in streptozotocin-diabetic significantly increased bone matrix properties, indicating recovery of bone strength at the tissue level. The beneficial effects of administration of [D-Ala2 ]GIP�oxyntomodulin on bone health in db/db mice were more prominent as the Oxm analogue did not only improve bone strength at tissue level, but also at whole-bone level. These modifications were independent of metabolic status. Twice-daily Exendin-4 therapy improved glycaemic control and increased work required to resist bone fracture in high-fat fed mice. It was also established that Sitagliptin had neutral effects on bone microstructure and mechanical strength in high-fat mice. In summary, these data demonstrate the negative impact of diabetes mellitus on normal skeleton development and bone quality. Moreover, this thesis highlights the growing potential of incretin-based therapies for ameliorating bone defects and improving the increased fragility fracture risk associated with diabete

TAWASSUL DALAM PERSPEKTIF HADIS NABI SAW

Skripsi ini berjudul: “TAWASSUL DALAM PERSPEKTIF HADIS NABI SAW.”. Judul ini diangkat karena penulis melihat kondisi masyarakat umat Islam hari ini berpecah belah dan berkelahi sesama sendiri karena berbeda pemikiran dan pendapat tentang tawassul. Permusuhan terjadi sesama umat Islam hanya karena ketaksuban mereka terhadap satu pendapat saja tanpa menerima pendapat lain yang tidak sependapat dengan pendapat mereka, sehingga mereka menyesatkan bahkan lebih parah sehingga mengkafirkan orang yang melakukan tawassul. Setelah mencari hadits-hadits tentang tawassul, penulis membagikan kepada empat bentuk hadits tentang tawassul, diantaranya: Pertama hadits tentang bertawassul dengan Asma’ Allah, diriwayatkan oleh at-Tirdmizi dengan kualitas hadits hasan gharib, Ibnu Majah dan Ahmad bin Hanbal dengan kualitas shahih. Kedua hadits tawassul dengan amalan soleh, diriwayatkan Bukhari, Muslim dengan kualitas shahih dan yang diriwayatkan Ahmad bin Hanbal mempunyai kedhaifan pada sanadnya. Ketiga hadits tawassul dengan orang soleh ketika hidup. Tawassul dengan orang soleh ketika hidup penulis ketemukan tiga hadits yang berbeda-beda. Pertama hadits sahabat bertawassul kepada Nabi saw. agar memohon hujan (solat al-Istisqa’), diriwayatkan Bukhari, an-Nasa’i, Muslim dan Ahmad bin Hanbal dengan kualitas hadits shahih. Kedua hadits seorang buta bertawassul kepada Nabi saw. agar memohon kesembuhan matanya, diriwayatkan Ibnu Majah, at-Tirdmizi dan Ahmad bin Hanbal degan kualitas shahih. Ketiga hadits Umar al-Khattab bertawassul kepada Saidina Abbas ra., diriwayatkan Bukhari dengan kualitas shahih. Keempat hadits tawassul kepada orang yang telah meninggal, hadits Nabi saw. bertawassul kepada nabi-nabi sebelum beliau diriwayatkan oleh at-Thabrani dengan kualitas shahih menurut iman at-Thabrani, al-Hakim dan Ibnu Hibban, dan laki-laki bertawassul kepada Nabi saw. setelah kewafatan beliau diriwayatkan oleh at-Thabrani berkualitas shahih. Penelitian ini adalah para ulama bersepakat berpendapat bahwa tawassul dengan asma’ Allah, tawassul dengan amalan soleh, dan tawassul dengan orang soleh itu tidak dipermasalahkan. Dan yang menjadi perselisihan dalam tawassul adalah bertawassul kepada orang yang telah meninggal. Tetapi mayoritas ulama membolehkan tawassul kepada orang yang telah meninggal, dan ulama yang melarang bertawassul kepada orang yang telah meninggal adalah Imam Ibnu Taimiyyah dan para pengikutnya yang keras dalam berfatwa dan memberi pendapat ataupun pandangan. Maka dari hasil penelitian penulis, tawassul kepada orang yang telah meninggal adalah masalah yang diperselisihkan para ulama, masalah yang diperselisihkan tidak harus diperbesarkan agar tidak terjadi permusuhan karena ketaksuban dalam pendapat yang dipegang

Crash helmet – the harbinger of death: a case report

In one of the rarest form of freak accident, a young woman surrendered to her death in a manner that belie the reality only to be played back in a slow motion sequence. History is replete of instances in which death struck individuals in otherwise innocent forms. In this case – elaborated below – a helmet tucked under the crook of an elbow became the undoing causing the woman to topple backward in a slow-motion, the head striking the hard surface of the road and precipitating her death later in a hospital

The effect of haze attenuation on Free Space Optics Communication (FSO) at two wavelengths under Malaysia weather

Free Space Optical FSO is a promising optical technology that has a great chance of complementing the traditional wireless communication. It offers unlicensed, higher speed, broader, unlimited bandwidth and excellent security. However, the quality of FSO links is greatly affected by weather conditions and link distance. In the tropical regions, the quality of the FSO links is affected mainly by rain attenuation while the air quality is presumed to have little or no impact. However, a state of emergency has consecutively been declared in some part of Malaysia during the past three years due to high air pollution index (API). Since the range of FSO link is limited by air pollution, haze attenuation must be considered as one of the important factors in FSO link design. The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis and simulation of the FSO link with real data from Meteorological Malaysia department (MMD) on haze weather under two different wavelengths 850nm and 1550nm. This paper will discuss the different rate of attenuation operating in the medium between transmitter and receiver and their impact on the link margin calculation. In addition, it will evaluate the maximum distance link for wavelengths and consider the different visibility under the attenuated weather

Comparative evaluation of doxofylline and theophylline in patients of mild bronchial asthma

Background: Asthma is common chronic disease worldwide. Methylxanthines has been used in the treatment of asthma. The study was undertaken to compare two Methylxanthines theophylline and doxofylline at doses recommended and commonly used in clinical practice in Mild Bronchial Asthma Patients.Methods: Study was conducted in patients of Mild Bronchial Asthma in TB and chest disease department of a medical college hospital. It was randomized, prospective and open label. A total of 107 patients were divided in two group .Group I was administered 400 mg theophylline SR once daily and group II was administered doxofylline 400 mg twice a day orally. Spirometric variables symptom score, and adverse effects were recorded on day 0, 7 and 21 of therapy. Data were compared and analysed using SPSS version 16.Results: Results of the study showed that there was significant improvement in spirometric variables and clinical symptom score compared to pretreatment values after medication in both groups on 7th and 21st days of treatment. But there was no statistically significant difference between improvement in theophylline and doxofylline groups with respect to spirometric variables and symptom score. There was no significant difference in two groups with respect to side effects (p>0.05).Conclusions: It is concluded in Patients of mild Bronchial Asthma Theophylline and doxofylline improve the spirometric and clinical symptoms and doxofylline has no advantage over theophylline in terms of either efficacy or safety on the doses commonly used in current clinical practice

Development of an Airflow Monitoring System for Air Handling Unit using IoT

This paper presents the development of an airflow monitoring system for air handling units using NodeMCU ESP32. The main purpose of this project is to improvise the use of microcontroller with on-par performance for industrial applications. This proposed system consists of two sensors that measure airflow from the air handling unit. The first sensor is an airflow speed, which measures the airflow speed from the air handling unit. The second sensor detects and indicates the temperature and humidity of the airflow. The testing parameters show very good correlations among variables, indicating the efficiency of the system to monitor the airflow. Keywords: Airflow, IoT, Temperature, Humidity, Air Handling Unit eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by E-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC  BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behavior Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioral Researchers on Asians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behavior Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia

Effect of seeding time on the formation of gold nanoplates

Metallic nanostructures, such as gold, is very sensitive to the dielectric environment of the materials due to strong dependency of plasmon on shapes and sizes. Thus, its unique properties are very good and can be used as sensing material in plasmonic sensor. This paper reports a study on the surface density on the formation of gold nanoplates with variation of seeding time. The gold nanoplates have been grown on a quartz substrate using seed mediated growth method. In this study, the seeding time was varied from one to three hours and labelled as MP1, MP2 and MP3. The XRD analysis shows two peaks of the diffraction angle occurs at the plane (111) in position ~ 38.2º and plane (200) at ~ 44.20º. Through variation of the seeding time, the optimum surface density is 61.8 % with a total of 43.7 % of the nanoplates shape from sample MP2. The optical absorption spectrum of the sample shows two resonance peaks, ~ 550 nm and 660 nm, which are corresponding to the transverse surface plasmon resonance (t-SPR) and the longitudinal surface plasmon resonance (l-SPR) respectively. Thus, in this study, it is found that the seeding time affected the growth of the gold nanostructures with optimum seeding time of two hours. Longer seeding time caused the growth of stacking nanogold and it is not suitable to be used in sensing application because of its broad and wider optical spectrum

Turbulence effect of urban-canopy flow on indoor velocity fields under sheltered and cross-ventilation conditions

Understanding the characteristics of natural, wind-induced ventilation of buildings is essential for accurate predictions of ventilation flow rates; however, indoor ventilation is significantly influenced by surrounding buildings. Therefore, a series of wind-tunnel experiments were performed to clarify the relationship between outdoor and indoor air flows around and within a target cube model with several openings. Two surrounding building arrangements, namely square (SQ) and staggered (ST), were placed under the condition of a building coverage ratio of 25%. The results indicated that the wind speed near the windward openings on the streamwise faces showed 0.3 to the reference wind speed, whereas those on the lateral faces were less than 0.1; these numbers indicate that the opening positions significantly affect the mean indoor wind speed. Furthermore, the temporal fluctuations of velocities near the opening demonstrated that the introduction of the flow is significantly affected by turbulent flow due to the surrounding buildings. In addition, correlation between the outdoor and indoor air flows was observed. The highest correlations were obtained for both opening conditions with a certain temporal delay. This result indicates that indoor air flows become turbulent because of the turbulent flows generated by the surrounding outdoor buildings; however, slight temporal delays could occur between indoor and outdoor air flows. Although the present study focuses on the fundamental turbulent characteristics of indoor and outdoor air flows, such findings are essential for accurately predicting the ventilation flow rate due to turbulent air flows for sheltered buildings

Numerical simulation on the elucidation of wake flow structure behind a single Quarter Elliptic-Wedge Spire

The urban heat island phenomenon has become a significant concern worldwide and its impact can be devastated. One of the most common factors of the UHI is poor ventilation i.e. the incapability of airflow to reduce the temperature in an urban area due to velocity deficit from a poorly designed city layout. Hence, a good understanding of the interaction between the wake flow behind a building and the urban boundary layer is necessary. Therefore, a study investigates the wake flow structure behind a single spire, which imitates a skyscraper, and its aerodynamic interaction with the smooth wall boundary layer based on CFD by utilising OpenFOAM® with the k-ε turbulence model has been conducted. The lateral velocity profile was extracted and analysed to observe the velocity deficit profile. It was found that the lateral velocity profile of the current study is aligned with the previous WT experimental data. The turbulence generated by the spire has the capability to preserve the wake flow against the recovery process both in vertical and streamwise directions. Furthermore, the distance required by the wake flow to be fully recovered is estimated to be around 40S in the streamwise direction. Finally, based on the wake flow and gradient diffusion model relation, it can be concluded that the flow structure above the BLH is specified as a typical 2D wake of a bluff body in a free stream for the near wake region only

Effect of mesh refinement on vertical and lateral velocity profiles of the wake flow behind a spire based on cfd

The application of CFD to simulate the phenomenon based on a wind tunnel experiment has been widely studied. A large number of cells may produce accurate results but requires a high computational load. In this study, the effect of mesh refinement on the vertical and lateral velocity profiles of the wake flow behind a single spire is discussed. Three different mesh refinement levels, i.e. coarse, medium and fine, each with 9 million, 12.7 million, and 16.9 million cells, respectively, were applied to the computational domain. The standard k-ε model was used for CFD simulations. The variable mesh was generated by using blockMesh and snappyHexMesh features in the OpenFoam® software. The result shows no significant difference between the various mesh refinement levels for the velocity profiles. However, there is a significant difference in the time needed to complete the iteration for each case whereby the shortest duration was taken for the coarse mesh