MINI-REVIEW The Fructose mystery: How bad or good is it?

Abstract: This review article endeavoured to ascertain the facts about fructose, a mono-saccharide sugar being increasingly used in daily diet. Human and animal studies suggest that fructose ingestion produces deleterious effects on the cardiovascular system, such as increase in blood pressure and also has adverse metabolic effects, for example insulin resistance and hypertriglyceridaemia. On the other hand it has also been determined that fructose, especially that is contained in natural sources as apples, dates and honey may produce beneficial effects on human health; smaller amounts of fructose may even help improve diabetic control and that adequate seminal fructose concentrations help promote male fertility. In conclusion, fructose appears to be not all that bad; is essential for male fertility, small amounts of fructose, specifically which comes from dietary sources appears to be beneficial for health

A Bicentric Study of Psychiatric Illness among Pediatric Population Patients with a History of Sexual Abuse

Background:  The present study assessed the psychiatric diseases in victims of childhood sexual abuse from intact and broken families. Methodology:  A cross-sectional study was conducted at the PMC hospital, Nawabshah and Pir Abdul Qadir Shah Jeelani Institute of Medical Sciences, GAMBAT between February 2020 to January 2022. 60 (30 in each group) children were included with the ages of 5-16 years,. Non-probability convenience sampling technique was used. Children with reported sexual abuse who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were included in this study. All children included in the study were screened for psychological disturbances through the Urdu version of SDQ. The severity of symptoms was assessed based on ICD-10 criteria. Results:  There was a significant relationship between the identity of the perpetrator with the stability of the family. In victims belonging to the intact family system, the perpetrator was mostly an outsider while, in cases of broken families, oftentimes, the abuser was a relative or known to the victim. 44.44% of individuals belonging to broken families were abused within the confinements of the home. 17.8% of children from unstable families had mixed anxiety and depression disorder, while the rate was lower among children who had intact families. Surprisingly, only five children altogether had post-traumatic stress disorder. Hyperkinetic disorder and conduct disorder was significantly more prevalent in victims belonging to a broken family system. Conclusion:  Childhood sexual abuse and its resultant psychiatric morbidity are equally common in children from intact and broken families. However further research with a greater sample size from multiple centers is needed. Keywords:  Childhood sexual abuse, Psychiatric morbidity, Broken family

Cardiovascular effect of physiological and dietary interventions in healthy males

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Improving Efficiency of Passive RFID Tag Anti-Collision Protocol Using Dynamic Frame Adjustment and Optimal Splitting

Radio frequency identification is a wireless communication technology, which enables data gathering and identifies recognition from any tagged object. The number of collisions produced during wireless communication would lead to a variety of problems including unwanted number of iterations and reader-induced idle slots, computational complexity in terms of estimation as well as recognition of the number of tags. In this work, dynamic frame adjustment and optimal splitting are employed together in the proposed algorithm. In the dynamic frame adjustment method, the length of frames is based on the quantity of tags to yield optimal efficiency. The optimal splitting method is conceived with smaller duration of idle slots using an optimal value for splitting level M o p t , where (M > 2), to vary slot sizes to get the minimal identification time for the idle slots. The application of the proposed algorithm offers the advantages of not going for the cumbersome estimation of the quantity of tags incurred and the size (number) of tags has no effect on its performance efficiency. Our experiment results show that using the proposed algorithm, the efficiency curve remains constant as the number of tags varies from 50 to 450, resulting in an overall theoretical gain in the efficiency of 0.032 compared to system efficiency of 0.441 and thus outperforming both dynamic binary tree slotted ALOHA (DBTSA) and binary splitting protocols

Short Term Traffic State Prediction via Hyperparameter Optimization Based Classifiers

Short-term traffic state prediction has become an integral component of an advanced traveler information system (ATIS) in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Accurate modeling and short-term traffic prediction are quite challenging due to its intricate characteristics, stochastic, and dynamic traffic processes. Existing works in this area follow different modeling approaches that are focused to fit speed, density, or the volume data. However, the accuracy of such modeling approaches has been frequently questioned, thereby traffic state prediction over the short-term from such methods inflicts an overfitting issue. We address this issue to accurately model short-term future traffic state prediction using state-of-the-art models via hyperparameter optimization. To do so, we focused on different machine learning classifiers such as local deep support vector machine (LD-SVM), decision jungles, multi-layers perceptron (MLP), and CN2 rule induction. Moreover, traffic states are evaluated using traffic attributes such as level of service (LOS) horizons and simple if–then rules at different time intervals. Our findings show that hyperparameter optimization via random sweep yielded superior results. The overall prediction performances obtained an average improvement by over 95%, such that the decision jungle and LD-SVM achieved an accuracy of 0.982 and 0.975, respectively. The experimental results show the robustness and superior performances of decision jungles (DJ) over other methods

Effect of fructose and sucralose on flow-mediated vasodilatation in healthy, white European males

Objective: To assess how acute consumption of fructose affects flow-mediated dilatation in brachial artery. Methods: The randomised cross-over study was conducted at the University of Nottingham's Medical School, Nottingham, United Kingdom in July 2009. Ten healthy, white European males visited the laboratory twice, on separate mornings. On each visit, the volunteers consumed water (3ml/kg bodyweight) and rested semi-supine on the bed. After 30 minutes, baseline diastolic brachial artery diameter and blood velocity was measured. At 60 minutes, blood velocity and five scans of brachial artery diameter were recorded before a blood pressure cuff was inflated on the forearm for 5 minutes and at 50-60-70-80 and 90 sec after cuff deflation. Fifteen minutes later, the volunteers consumed 500ml of test-drink containing either fructose (0.75 g/kg bodyweight) or sucralose (sweetness-matched with fructose drink); 45 minutes later, baseline and flow-mediated dilatation was re-measured. Results: Pre-drink and post-drink baseline values were similar on two occasions (p> 0.05). Brachial artery diameter increased (p < 0.05) by 7±3% pre-fructose and by 6.9±3% above baseline values post-fructose with no significant difference in these responses (p < 0.15). It increased (p < 0.05) by 5.9±3% above baseline before and by 6.7±2% (p < 0.01) after sucralose; a significant difference was noted in these flow-mediated dilatation responses (p < 0.02). Responses before and after sucralose were not different from those before and after fructose (p < 0.294). Conclusion: Acute ingestion of fructose or sucralose had no effect on flow-mediated dilatation measured at brachial artery

Does the Impact of Technology Sustain Students&rsquo; Satisfaction, Academic and Functional Performance: An Analysis via Interactive and Self-Regulated Learning?

High-quality academic outcomes are required for students&rsquo; educational attainment and promote their desire to learn. However, not all educational sectors boast of the same, leading students to attain inferior outcome performances. The current study examines the impact of technology on student satisfaction, academic, and functional performance via the mediating factors of interactive and self-regulated learning. However, existing works focused less on technology and more on psychological learning factors, rendering mere acceptance of technology, proved to be useless. The present research investigates such mediators with existing technology resources and their impact on students&rsquo; overall growth. Research hypotheses are tested through structural equation modeling and applied to the data collected from 302 respondents via a structured questionnaire. In addition, the present study considers the collection of each student&rsquo;s data across different universities, colleges, vocational and education institutions, mainly where students are involved in/using the technology when it comes to satisfaction, academic, and functional performance. The results indicated that the impact of technology via interactive learning has a significant influence on students&rsquo; satisfaction (&beta; = 0.238, p &lt; 0.05), academic performance (&beta; = 0.194, p &lt; 0.05), and functional performance (&beta; = 0.188, p &lt; 0.05). It is also noted that the impact of technology via self-regulated learning has positively contributed to satisfaction, academic, and functional performance. Our findings support the hypothesis and encourage students&rsquo; adaptability, engagement, and behavioral interactions stimulating the performance outcomes. The performance outcome of this research presents valuable information for decision-makers to articulate sustainable strategies and tactics in educational sectors

Synthesis, Characterization and Biological Activity of Mn(II)-Morin Complex

The article illustrates about the synthesis of Mn(II)-Morin complex in methanol solvent. The characterization of the complex was carried out using UV-visible, IR, 1H NMR spectroscopic techniques and thermal (i.e. TGA, DSC) techniques. The complex formation was deduced by UV-visible spectra showing the successive Mn-Morin complex formation occurring at 1:1 (metal/ligand) ratio stoichiometrically. The antioxidant capacity of the complex has also been evaluated using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging method. The work describes that flavonoids complexed with metal ions are more free radical scavengers than the free molecules

Phytochemical and antibacterial assessment of essential oils extracted from aerial parts of cordia dichotoma G. Forst

ABSTRACTThis study involved the exploration of hydro-distilled essential oil (EsO) from the aerial parts of Cordia dichotoma fruits, stems, seeds and leaves via gas chromatography‒mass spectrometry. Approximately 33 volatile components were detected throughout the study. Almost 27 and 23 compounds (comprising 64.83% and 31.55%, respectively, of the total components) were detected in the fruits and stems, whereas 25 compounds (57.12% of the total components) were detected in the seeds, and 25 compounds (52.48% of the total components) were found in the leaves. The main components of the fruit oil were Nonanal (5.77%), Oleic acid (4.30%), β-Damascenone (4.12%), 3, 4-Dehydro-β-ionone (4.06%), Methyl jasmonate (3.32%), Sabinene (3.31%), Phytol (3.22%) and Vitispirane (3.11%). From stem oil, the major components were Nonanal (6.52%), Nonadecane (3.22%) and 2, 3-Octanedione (2.16%). Whereas, the major components of the seed oils were Nonanal (12.14%), Oleic acid (5.13%), Dihydroactindiolide (3.35%), 2-Methoxy-4-vinylphenol (3.18%), Dodecanoic acid (3.16%) and Methyl jasmonate (3.11%). Similarly, the major components of the leaf oils were 2, 4-di-t-Butylphenol (10.25%), 3-Methylnonane (4.73%), 2-Undecanol (4.64%), 3, 4-Dehydro-β-ionone (3.52%) and Nonanal (3.16%). These EsO were used for antibacterial activity against two bacteria i.e. E. coli (G-ve) and the S. aureus (G+ve) by disc diffusion method to determine the MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) and MBC (maximum bactericidal concentration). However, among the four parts of C. dichotoma, fruit and seed EsO were highly effective against E. coli (MIC and MBC were 125 μg/mL, 1000 μg/mL respectively) compared to S. aureus (MICs of 250 and 500 μg/mL with an MBC of 1000 μg/mL

An Efficient Trust-Based Scheme for Secure and Quality of Service Routing in MANETs

Due to the dynamism of topology, sharing of bandwidth and constraint of resources in wireless nodes, the provision of quality of service (QoS) for routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) presents a great challenge. Security is another crucial aspect of providing QoS since the existence of malicious nodes present all kinds of threats to MANETs. Although a number of mechanisms have been proposed for protecting MANETs, most of the solutions are only effective for a particular kind of attacks or provide security at the cost of sacrificing QoS. In this paper, we propose a trust-based secure QoS routing scheme by combining social and QoS trust. The primary approach of the proposed scheme relies on mitigating nodes that exhibit various packet forwarding misbehavior and on discovering the path that ensures reliable communication through the trust mechanism. The scheme would select the best forwarding node based on packet forwarding behavior as well as capability in terms of QoS parameters, such as residual energy, channel quality, link quality, etc. We will present an adversary model for packet dropping attack against which we evaluate the proposed scheme. Simulation experiment using Network Simulator-2 (NS2) and under various network conditions show that mixing social and QoS trust parameters can greatly improve security and quality of service routing in terms of overhead, packet delivery ratio and energy consumption