SCI

In response to increasing natural surfactant demand and environmental concerns, natural plant-based surfactants have been replacing synthetic ones. Saponins belong to a class of plant metabolites with surfactant properties that are widely distributed in nature. They are eco-friendly because of their natural origin and biodegradable. To date, many plant-based saponins have been investigated for their surface activity. An overview of saponins with a particular focus on their surface-active properties is presented in this article. For this purpose, works published in the past few decades, which report better surfactant relevant properties of saponins than synthetic ones, were extensively studied. The investigations on the potential surfactant application of saponins are also documented. Moreover, some biological activities of saponins such as antimicrobial activity, antidiabetic activity, adjuvant potentials, anticancer activity, and others are reported. Plants rich in saponins are wid...

A three-part mechanism is proposed for the induction of Alzheimer’s disease: (1) decreased blood lactic acid; (2) increased blood ceramide and adipokines; (3) decreased blood folic acid. The age-related nature of these mechanisms comes from age-associated decreased muscle mass, increased visceral fat and changes in diet. This mechanism also explains why many people do not develop Alzheimer’s disease. Simple changes in lifestyle and diet can prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a cascade of events that culminates in damage to the blood–brain barrier and damage to neurons. The blood–brain barrier keeps toxic molecules out of the brain and retains essential molecules in the brain. Lactic acid is a nutrient to the brain and is produced by exercise. Damage to endothelial cells and pericytes by inadequate lactic acid leads to blood–brain barrier damage and brain damage. Inadequate folate intake and oxidative stress induced by activation of transient receptor poten...

Permeable pavements have been the subject of numerous studies in recent decades. The possibility of dissipating stormwater more smoothly and generating numerous benefits to the environment and users makes the use of permeable pavements an excellent possibility of integration into sustainable and resilient water management systems in cities. In Brazil, numerous studies on the quantity and quality of infiltrated water, permeability of the coating, clogging, environmental burden, feasibility, among other characteristics, have been researched. Within this theme, the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) has contributed with ten papers in the research of permeable pavements in the last six years, which address various topics about the effectiveness and applicability of permeable pavements. This paper reviews the studies conducted at UFSC on permeable pavements and discusses the different results within the main issues found. In general, the selected documents addressed seven themes...

In 1993 Cray Research shipped its first T3D Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) and set high standards for Gigabit/s SAN (System Area Network) interconnects of microprocessor based MPP systems sustaining 1 Gigabit/s per link in many common applications. Today, in 1999, the communication speed is still at one Gigabit/s, but major advances in technology managed to drastically lower costs and to bring such interconnects to the mainstream market of PCI based commodity personal computers. Two products based on two completely different technologies are readily available: the Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) implementation by Dolphin Interconnect Solutions and a Myrinet implementation by Myricom Inc. Both networking technologies include cabling for System Area Networking (SAN) and Local Area Networking (LAN) distances and adapter cards that connect to the standard I/O bus of a high end PC. Both technologies can incorporate crossbar switches to extend point to point links into an entire network fabric. Myrinet links are strictly point to point while SCI links can be rings of multiple nodes that are possibly connected to a switch for expansion. In the mean time two Internet technologies emerging from the inter-networking world also arrived at Gigabit speeds—ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and Gigabit Ethernet. Based on the specification and their history those two alternatives are related to the evaluated technologies Myrinet and SCI.

LC–NMR combines the advantage of the outstanding separation power of liquid chromatography (LC) and the superior structural elucidating capability of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). NMR has proved that it is a standout detector for LC by providing maximum structural information about plant originated extracts particularly in its isolating ability of isomeric (same molecular formula) and/or isobaric (same molecular weight) compounds as compared to other detectors. The present review provides an overview of the LC–NMR developmental trends and its application in natural products analysis. The different LC–NMR operational modes are described, as well as how technical improvements assist in establishing this powerful technique as an important analytical tool in the analysis of complex plant-derived compounds. On-flow, stop-flow and loop-storage modes, as well as the new offline mode LC–SPE–NMR and capLC-NMR configurations that avoid the ingestion of expensive deuterated solvents throug...

Biodiversity conservation planning is highly important in the current context of global change. Biodiversity conservation can be achieved by understanding changes in land use at the landscape scale. Such understanding is needed to reverse the unprecedented pressure on natural resources that has been reported by many studies conducted on biodiversity conservation within the Oti-Keran-Mandouri protected areas. Land cover maps reflecting different dates (1987, 2000, and 2013) and depicting different management systems, with overall accuracy ranging from 73% to 79%, were analyzed to understand the processes that lead to habitat degradation within these protected areas. The nature of change, within a given land cover class, was determined by comparing land cover maps on different dates using a decision tree algorithm that compares the number of patches, their areas, and their perimeters at different time periods (T1 and T2). Specifically, two time-periods were considered for this analysi...

Nucleolin is an RNA binding protein that is involved in many post-transcriptional regulation steps of messenger RNAs in addition to its nucleolar role in ribosomal RNA transcription and assembly in pre-ribosomes. Acetylated nucleolin was found to be associated with nuclear speckles and to co-localize with the splicing factor SC35. Previous nuclear pull down of nucleolin identified several splicing components and factors involved in RNA polymerase II transcription associated with nucleolin. In this report, we show that these splicing components are specifics of the pre-catalytic A and B spliceosomes, while proteins recruited in the Bact, C and P complexes are absent from the nucleolin interacting proteins. Furthermore, we show that acetylated nucleolin co-localized with P-SF3B1, a marker of co-transcriptional active spliceosomes. P-SF3B1 complexes can be pulled down with nucleolin specific antibodies. Interestingly, the alternative splicing of Fibronectin at the IIICS and EDB sites w...

E-commerce and m-commerce have dramatically boosted the demand for services which enable ubiquitous access. Ubiquity with its anytime/anywhere/anymedia nature requiring context- aware computing and personalisation calls for new engineering techniques supporting these kind of services. In this paper, we propose the notion of customisation as the uniform mechanism to provide the necessary flexibility with respect to both context- aware computing

We address the need for a model by considering two competing theories regarding the origin of life: (i) the Metabolism First theory, and (ii) the RNA World theory. We discuss two interrelated points, namely: (i) Models are valuable tools for understanding both the processes and intricacies of origin-of-life issues, and (ii) Insights from models also help us to evaluate the core objection to origin-of-life theories, called “the inefficiency objection”, which is commonly raised by proponents of both the Metabolism First theory and the RNA World theory against each other. We use Simpson’s Paradox (SP) as a tool for challenging this objection. We will use models in various senses, ranging from taking them as representations of reality to treating them as theories/accounts that provide heuristics for probing reality. In this paper, we will frequently use models and theories interchangeably. Additionally, we investigate Conway’s Game of Life and contrast it with our SP-based approach to e...

Although Support Vector Machines (SVM) are widely used for classifying human motion patterns, their application in the automatic recognition of dynamic and static activities of daily life in the elderly is limited. Using a body mounted wireless inertial measurement unit (IMU), this paper explores the use of an SVM approach for classifying dynamic (walking) and static (sitting, standing and lying) activities of the elderly. Specifically, data formatting and feature extraction methods associated with IMU signals are discussed. To evaluate the performance of the SVM algorithm, the effects of two parameters involved in SVM algorithm—the soft margin constant C and the kernel function parameter —are investigated. The changes associated with adding white-noise and pink-noise on these two parameters along with adding different sources of movement variations (i.e., localized muscle fatigue and mixed activities) are further discussed. The results indicate that the SVM algorithm is capable of ...

Many applications in the context of Industry 4.0 require precise localization. However, indoor localization remains an open problem, especially in complex environments such as industrial environments. In recent years, we have seen the emergence of Ultra WideBand (UWB) localization systems. The aim of this article is to evaluate the performance of a UWB system to estimate the position of a person moving in an indoor environment. To do so, we implemented an experimental protocol to evaluate the accuracy of the UWB system both statically and dynamically. The UWB system is compared to a ground truth obtained by a motion capture system with a millimetric accuracy.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has been strongly associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TCF7L2 gene. This study investigated the association between rs12255372, rs7903146 in the TCF7L2 gene and T2DM in a Ghanaian population. A case-control study design was used for this study. A total of 106 T2DM patients and 110 control participants were selected. Basic data collected included body mass index, blood pressure and socio-demographics. Fasting blood samples were collected and processed for: serum lipid analysis, plasma glucose estimation and plasma HbA1c estimation. Parts of the whole blood samples were used for DNA extraction using a modified salting-out method. Common and allele-specific primers were designed for genotyping using the Modified Tetra-Primer Amplification assay. Associations were evaluated using logistic regression models. The rs7903146 risk variant was significantly associated with 2.16 vs. 4.06 increased odds for T2DM in patients <60 years v...

The coordination polymer [Fe(NH2trz)3](2ns)2 exhibits the rare phenomenon of spin crossover in an attractive temperature range, i.e., somewhat above room temperature. Spin crossover in [Fe(NH2trz)3](2ns)2 is manifest by thermochromism, which is accompanied by a magnetic transition from diamagnetism to paramagnetism. However, [Fe(NH2trz)3](2ns)2 is brittle and difficult to process, which limits its use. In this study, we show that [Fe(NH2trz)3](2ns)2 can be co-processed with ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), which possesses outstanding mechanical properties, particularly when tensile drawn. Therefore, [Fe(NH2trz)3](2ns)2–UHMWPE blends were gel-processed by extrusion, employing a relatively poor solvent, which has recently been shown to offer advantages compared to good solvents. Uniform and flexible films, ribbons and fibers with [Fe(NH2trz)3](2ns)2 fractions as high as 33.3% m/m were obtained that could be readily drawn. Spin crossover in the coordination polymer is ...

Sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) such as swales are designed to collect, store and infiltrate a large amount of surface runoff water during heavy rainfall. Stormwater is known to transport pollutants, such as particle-bound Potential Toxic Elements (PTE), which are known to often accumulate in the topsoil. A portable XRF instrument (pXRF) is used to provide in situ spatial characterization of soil pollutants, specifically lead (Pb), zink (Zn) and copper (Cu). The method uses pXRF measurements of PTE along profiles with set intervals (1 m) to cover the swale with cross-sections, across the inlet, the deepest point and the outlet. Soil samples are collected, and the In-Situ measurements are verified by the results from laboratory analyses. Stormwater is here shown to be the transporting media for the pollutants, so it is of importance to investigate areas most prone to flooding and infiltration. This quick scan method is time and cost-efficient, easy to execute and the result...

Nizatidine is a gastroprotective drug with a short biological half-life and narrow absorption window. This study aimed at developing floating tablets of nizatidine using various HPMC viscosity grades, namely K4M, E4M, K15 and K200M. Directly compressed tablets revealed an excellent uniformity in hardness, thickness and weight and nizatidine was evenly distributed within the matrix floating tablets. Buoyancy study revealed floating lag time as low as 18–38 s, and tablets remain buoyant for upto 24 h. However, the later depended upon viscosity grade of HPMC and that the higher the viscosity, the less was the total floating time. In vitro dissolution indicated viscosity dependent nizatidine release from the floating tablets. HPMC K4M and E4M based floating tablets released almost 100% drug in 12 h, whilst higher viscosity polymers such as K15 and K200M only released 81.88% and 75.81% drug, respectively. The drug release followed non-Fickian diffusion from tablets formulated with K4M, K...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is at the crossroads. It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the ACA in order to make rational decisions about the ongoing healthcare reform, but existing research into its effect on health insurance status in the United States is insufficient and descriptive. Using data from the National Health Interview Surveys from 2009 to 2015, this study examines changes in health insurance status and its determinants before the ACA in 2009, during its partial implementation in 2010–2013, and after its full implementation in 2014 and 2015. The results of trend analysis indicate a significant increase in national health insurance rate from 82.2% in 2009 to 89.4% in 2015. Logistic regression analyses confirm the similar impact of age, gender, race, marital status, nativity, citizenship, education, and poverty on health insurance status before and after the ACA. Despite similar effects across years, controlling for other variables, youth aged 26 or below, th...

In this work, we pursued the biological characterization of the venom of Montivipera bornmuelleri, a viper from the Lebanese mountains. In relation to its antibacterial potential, the inhibitory effect of this venom on the F1F0-ATPase enzymes of Gram-positive Staphylocoocus epidermidis and Gram-negative Escherichia coli bacteria was examined. In order to determine the degree of cytotoxicity of the venom on the HCT116 human colon cancer cell lines, the biological MTT proliferation and cell viability test were implemented. After validation of the enzymatic F1F0-ATPase model by the spectrophotometric method, using quercetin as the reference ligand, results revealed that M. bornmuelleri venom is able to inhibit the activity of the enzyme of these two bacteria with a concentration of the order of 100–150 µg/mL. In addition, a venom concentration of 10 µg/mL was sufficient to kill the totality of HCT116 cell lines cultivated in vitro. These data show that M. bornmuelleri venom is a mixtur...

In this paper, our goal is to perform a virtual restoration of an ancient coin from its image. The present work is the first one to propose this problem, and it is motivated by two key promising applications. The first of these emerges from the recently recognised dependence of automatic image based coin type matching on the condition of the imaged coins; the algorithm introduced herein could be used as a pre-processing step, aimed at overcoming the aforementioned weakness. The second application concerns the utility both to professional and hobby numismatists of being able to visualise and study an ancient coin in a state closer to its original (minted) appearance. To address the conceptual problem at hand, we introduce a framework which comprises a deep learning based method using Generative Adversarial Networks, capable of learning the range of appearance variation of different semantic elements artistically depicted on coins, and a complementary algorithm used to collect, correc...

Toll-like receptor 5 ligand, flagellin, and Vascular Adhesion Protein-1 (VAP-1) are involved in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This study aimed to determine whether VAP-1 mediates flagellin-induced hepatic fat accumulation. The effects of flagellin on adipocyte VAP-1 expression were first studied in vitro. Then, flagellin (100 ng/mouse) or saline was intraperitoneally injected to C57BL/6J WT and C57BL/6-Aoc3-/- (VAP-1 KO) mice on high-fat diet twice a week every two weeks for 10-weeks. After that, the effects on inflammation, insulin signaling, and metabolism were studied in liver and adipose tissues. Hepatic fat was quantified histologically and biochemically. Because flagellin challenge increased VAP-1 expression in human adipocytes, we used VAP-1 KO mice to determine whether VAP-1 regulates the inflammatory and metabolic effects of flagellin in vivo. In mice, VAP-1 mediated flagellin-induced inflammation, leukocyte infiltration and lipolysis in visceral adipose tissue...

The clinical characterization of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) lesions in the liver and differentiation from heterogeneous inflammatory or fibrotic background is important for early detection and treatment. Metabolic monitoring of hyperpolarized 13C-labeled substrates has been suggested as a new avenue for diagnostic magnetic resonance. The metabolism of hyperpolarized [1-13C]pyruvate was monitored in mouse precision-cut liver slices (PCLS) of aged MDR2-KO mice, which served as a model for heterogeneous liver and HCC that develops similarly to the human disease. The relative in-cell activities of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) to alanine transaminase (ALT) were found to be 0.40 ± 0.06 (n = 3) in healthy livers (from healthy mice), 0.90 ± 0.27 (n = 3) in heterogeneously inflamed liver, and 1.84 ± 0.46 (n = 3) in HCC. Thus, the in-cell LDH/ALT activities ratio was found to correlate with the progression of the disease. The results suggest that the LDH/ALT activities ratio may be u...

Since people spend most of their time in indoor environments, the objective of this work was to study indoor air quality perception and its effects on users’ thermal comfort. Based on previous data from a building with a central air-conditioning system and two mixed-mode buildings located in the humid subtropical climate of Florianópolis, southern Brazil, statistical analyses were performed. Each user subjective answer obtained through a questionnaire was combined with the corresponding environmental conditions – measured using microclimate stations, a portable thermo-anemometer and a CO2 analyser. Results showed that improvement in air quality was associated with the reduction of air temperature and humidity ratio. Also, there was a significant influence of thermal, air movement and humidity sensation and acceptability of air quality perception. Users felt more satisfied or neutral with air quality for being in thermal comfort, and not because of the CO2 level – which means that ai...

With the increase in the availability of annotated X-ray image data, there has been an accompanying and consequent increase in research on machine-learning-based, and ion particular deep-learning-based, X-ray image analysis. A major problem with this body of work lies in how newly proposed algorithms are evaluated. Usually, comparative analysis is reduced to the presentation of a single metric, often the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), which does not provide much clinical value or insight and thus fails to communicate the applicability of proposed models. In the present paper, we address this limitation of previous work by presenting a thorough analysis of a state-of-the-art learning approach and hence illuminate various weaknesses of similar algorithms in the literature, which have not yet been fully acknowledged and appreciated. Our analysis was performed on the ChestX-ray14 dataset, which has 14 lung disease labels and metainfo such as patient age,...

In underwater optical wireless communications (UOWC), scattering of the propagating light beam results in both intensity and phase variations, which limit the transmission link range and channel bandwidth, respectively. Scattering of photons while propagating through the channel is a random process, which results in the channel-dependent scattering noise. In this work, we introduce for the first time an analytical model for this noise and investigate its effect on the bit error rate performance of the UOWC system for three types of waters and a range of transmission link spans. We show that, for a short range of un-clear water or a longer range of clear water, the number of photons experiencing scattering is high, thus leading to the increased scattering noise. The results demonstrate that the FEC limit of 3×10−3 and considering the scattering noise, the maximum link spans are 51.5, 20, and 4.6 m for the clear, coastal, and harbor waters, respectively.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited disorder and a major health challenge in Nigeria. Micronutrient deficiencies often associated with the disorder may cause inflammation and abnormal metabolism in the body. The copper-to-zinc ratio is a more relevant diagnostic measure than the concentration of either metal alone in clinical practice. This study seeks to evaluate serum levels of c-reactive protein (CRP), copper, zinc and the copper-to-zinc ratio, and to correlate the latter with CRP in adult subjects with SCD. Serum copper, zinc, CRP and plasma fibrinogen were assayed in 100 confirmed SCD patients in steady clinical state and 100 age- and sex-matched subjects with normal hemoglobin. Serum copper and zinc were assayed by the colorimetric method using reagents supplied by Centronic, Germany, while CRP and fibrinogen were assayed using reagents supplied by Sigma (St. Louis, MO, USA) and Anogen (Ontario, Canada), respectively. The copper-to-zinc ratio was calculated from serum le...

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited disorder of major health challenge in Nigeria. Micronutrients deficiencies often associated with the disorder may cause inflammation and abnormal metabolisms in the body. The copper-to-zinc ratio is a more important assessment than the concentrations of either of the metals in clinical practice. This study seeks to evaluate serum levels of c-reactive protein (CRP), copper, zinc and copper-to-zinc ratio and to correlate copper-to-zinc ratio with CRP in adult subjects with SCD. Serum copper, zinc, CRP and plasma fibrinogen were assayed in 100 confirmed SCD patients in steady clinical state and 100 age and sex matched subjects with normal haemoglobin. Serum copper and zinc were assayed by colorimetric method using reagents supplied by Centronic, Germany while CRP and fibrinogen were assayed using reagents supplied by Sigma (St. Louis, MO, USA) and Anogen (Ontario, Canada), respectively. The copper to zinc ratio was calculated from serum levels ...

The world is currently facing a serious pandemic of Coronavirus (COVID 19) which started in Wuhan, China, and was then transmitted rapidly to other countries. These countries applied different methods and procedures in an attempt to prevent or reduce and/or control the incident cases and manage prevalent cases. This paper discusses the methods and procedures applied in the State of Kuwait to control this epidemic, and how effective they have been. The State of Kuwait followed the WHO, European CDC, US CDC, and/or other countries’ institutional guidelines, and is still working on containing the disease, given the rising number of cases among Kuwaitis returning from affected areas such as the UK and USA, and migrant workers who bear the highest burden, given their cramped living conditions.

We tested the hypothesis that concatemers of ancestral tRNAs gave rise to the 16S ribosomal RNA. We built an ancestral sequence of proto-tRNAs that showed a significant identity of 51.69% and a percentage of structural identity of 0.941 with the 16S ribosomal molecule. We also propose a hypothesis for the emergence of translation.

One of the most basic pieces of information gained from dynamic electromyography is accurately defining muscle action and phase timing within the gait cycle. The human gait relies on selective timing and the intensity of appropriate muscle activations for stability, loading, and progression over the supporting foot during stance, and further to advance the limb in the swing phase. A common clinical practice is utilizing a low-pass filter to denoise integrated electromyogram (EMG) signals and to determine onset and cessation events using a predefined threshold. However, the accuracy of the defining period of significant muscle activations via EMG varies with the temporal shift involved in filtering the signals; thus, the low-pass filtering method with a fixed order and cut-off frequency will introduce a time delay depending on the frequency of the signal. In order to precisely identify muscle activation and to determine the onset and cessation times of the muscles, we have explored h...

As there is lack of understanding about the effect of transitioning between different flooring materials on the gait of older adults, this study investigated the effect of transitioning between a carpeted floor and a vinyl floor on the gait characteristics of older adults. Fourteen older (65 years old and over) and 14 younger (18 to 35 years old) adults walked on different transitional floors by measuring various gait parameters. While the older participants had greater toe clearance than their younger counterparts, the older participants had smaller toe clearance on a carpeted floor than on a vinyl floor, which would increase the probability of a trip-induced fall. Further, the study found the slower transitional acceleration of the whole body COM and the increased friction demand, especially during the toe-off phase, rather than heel contact phase, which will lead to a slip-induced fall on a vinyl floor shortly after transitioning from a carpeted floor to a vinyl floor. Although t...

Khechechuri is an endemic species of a pear spread over one region of Western Georgia, called Adjara. Pears are a dietary source of bioactive components such as polyphenols and triterpenic acid. In addition to highlighting its gastronomic value, the aim of the article was to examine and compare phenolic compounds, flavonoids, catechins, phenolic acids, and antioxidant activities in Khechechuri collected from various villages in the Adjara region, namely Adjaristskali, Merisi, Dandalo, Shuakhevi, and Khulo. Five parts of the fruit, the skin, edible pulp, whole pear (skin + pulp), juice, and pomace, were analyzed and the results compared. Our study indicated that the highest total phenolic content was found in the skin of West Georgian pear types (4650 mg/kg.) Moreover, the pomace showed significant amounts of total phenolic content in each of the Khechechuri samples analyzed. Flavonoids were found in each part of the Khechechuri pears, with the notable exception of the fruit juice. A...

Ukiyo-e is a traditional Japanese painting style most commonly printed using wood blocks. Ukiyo-e prints feature distinct line work, bright colours, and a non-perspective projection. Most previous research on ukiyo-e styled computer graphics has been focused on creation of 2D images. In this paper we propose a framework for rendering interactive 3D scenes with ukiyo-e style. The rendering techniques use standard 3D models as input and require minimal additional information to automatically render scenes in a ukiyo-e style. The described techniques are evaluated based on their ability to emulate ukiyo-e prints, performance, and temporal coherence.

When a mobile node moves and changes its connectivity from one RER to another, the new RER does not have the context unless it is transferred from the old RER. We conducted a study considering a diffserv domain where RERs run TSW scheme to meter the flows and mark the packets. In this paper we present the results of this

Rapid peri-urbanization has resulted in increasing demand for and pressure on peri-urban lands at the expense of agricultural lands. Households’ decision to convert from agricultural land uses to residential and commercial land uses is driven by a myriad of factors, ranging from social to economic, in the Asante-Akim South district of the Asante region, Ghana. The paper examined the effects of agricultural land use trade-off on food production in the district. Using a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods, 115 household respondents were proportionately sampled from three selected communities in the district, for the collection of data through the administration of questionnaires. The data were subjected to the Pearson’s chi-square, embedded in the SPSS V.16, to test for association among the variables. We report that the increasing rate of agricultural land uses conversions was as a result of increasing demand for residential and commercial land usage at the expense ...

Injuries to the ligaments of the knee are extremely common among athletes who participate in high-risk sports, or any sport that requires frequent cutting motions, jumping, or contact. In order to determine the best way to heal these injuries, it is important to understand not just the pathology of the injury, but also the biomechanical factors that are affected, including stability and steadiness. While many studies have been done to examine the stability of healthy knees, there is little to no existing literature on stability of knees afflicted by injury. In order to surpass this obstacle, static steadiness and dynamic stability data was collected using the Lockhart Monitor phone application and Xsens accelerometers, respectively, both before and after completion of a course of physical therapy in a patient with a grade 2 medial collateral ligament (MCL) tear. These results were then used to determine the degree to which the prescribed physical therapy protocol was effective in he...

Abstract. This paper briefly reviews the dermatological diagnosis, the examination of skin scrapings, as well as the interpretations of some molecular methods. The aim of the paper is to assess the value of the diagnosis methods and to establish whether correlating the ...

In Electrified Vehicles, the cost, efficiency, and durability of electrified vehicles are dependent on the energy storage system (ESS) components, configuration and its performance. This paper, pursuing a minimal size tactic, describes a methodology for quantitatively and qualitatively investigating the impacts of a full bandwidth load on the ESS in the HEV. However, the methodology can be extended to other electrified vehicles. The full bandwidth load, up to the operating frequency of the electric motor drive (20 kHz), is empirically measured which includes a frequency range beyond the usually covered frequency range by published standard drive cycles (up to 0.5 Hz). The higher frequency band is shown to be more efficiently covered by a Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) which in this paper is defined as combination of a high energy density battery, an Ultra-Capacitor (UC), an electrolytic capacitor, and a film capacitor. In this paper, the harmonic and dc currents and voltages ar...

Background and Aim: Spine trauma is an important health problem. Traumatic Spinal Cord
Injury (SCI) due to Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) might have a different epidemiologic pattern
in Guilan province of Iran owing to its geographical characteristics. Therefore, the present study
was conducted to the study epidemiology of SCI injuries due to road accidents in a trauma referral
center in Guilan.
Methods and Materials/Patients: In this cross-sectional study, we used data SCI registry of Poursina
Hospital. All the patients with spine trauma, due to MVA, hospitalized in the trauma center of
Poursina Hospital, Rasht, Guilan, Iran between March 2015 and March 2018 were studied.
Results: A total of 127 patients with spine trauma due to MVA were reviewed. The Mean±SD age of
patients was 38.27±16.22 years. We observed that 93.7%, 1.6%, and 4.7% of the patients had initial
Glasgow Comma Scale (GCS ≥13, 9 ≤GCS ≤12, and GCS<9, respectively). SCIs were found several
anatomical regions including cervical (n=54, 42.5%), lumbar (n=39, 30.7%), thoracic (n=23, 18.1%),
thoracic and lumbar (n=7, 5.5%), thoracic and cervical (n=3, 2.4%), and lumbar and cervical (n=1,
0.8%) regions. Evaluated by Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS), good recovery, moderate disability,
severe disability, vegetative state, and death were found in 114(91.2%), 4 (3.1%), 4(3.1%), 1(0.8%),
2(1.6%) of the patients, respectively. Two patients were discharged by their personal contest.
Conclusion: Spine trauma due to MVA is mostly seen in the young. SCI due to such trauma is
mostly found in the cervical region. Good recovery was seen in most of the subjects.

Nizatidine is a gastroprotective drug with a short biological half-life and narrow absorption window. This study aimed at developing floating tablets of nizatidine using various HPMC viscosity grades, namely K4M, E4M, K15 and K200M. Directly compressed tablets revealed an excellent uniformity in hardness, thickness and weight and nizatidine was evenly distributed within the matrix floating tablets. Buoyancy study revealed floating lag time as low as 18–38 s, and tablets remain buoyant for upto 24 h. However, the later depended upon viscosity grade of HPMC and that the higher the viscosity, the less was the total floating time. In vitro dissolution indicated viscosity dependent nizatidine release from the floating tablets. HPMC K4M and E4M based floating tablets released almost 100% drug in 12 h, whilst higher viscosity polymers such as K15 and K200M only released 81.88% and 75.81% drug, respectively. The drug release followed non-Fickian diffusion from tablets formulated with K4M, K...

We describe how a real application, the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) program, is parallelized and run on a cluster of PCs connected by SCI. We have a prototype SCI switch that uses the serial IEEE 1355 HIC technology in its switching fabric. The prototype switch can not keep up with the speed of the SCI interconnect, and we analyze and discuss how switch performance in uence the execution time of our parallelized application Keywords:

Plant breeding improvement and using conventional methods is difficult and relatively time consuming. Biotechnological methods, especially tissue culture and cell suspension culture can be used to transfer desirable traits such as salt resistance to forage plants such as Medicago. Stem, leaf and root explants belonging to three Medicago species: rigidula, scutellata and sativa, were initially cultured on MS (Murashige and Skoog, 1962) medium containing 2 mg/L yeast extract, 2mg/L 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), 2 mg/L anaphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), 1.5 mg/L benzyladenine (BA), 0.5 mg/L Thiodizuron (TDZ) and 2 mg/L Kinetin. Only M. sativa produced callus and was able to produce cell suspension in liquid medium. Viable cells were then transferred to the same liquid medium with 0, 30, 60, 90, 120 mM NaCl and finally, tolerant cell lines were selected at 90 mM NaCl according to packed cell volume (PCV).

Cyclic dimers and trimers of tetra-substituted benzenes, ((HOOC)2-C6H2-(NHI)2), are selected as convenient model systems for investigating NI…O=C halogen bond strength and cooperativity. The four substituents in benzene are chosen so that two of them act as halogen bond acceptors (COOH) and two act as halogen bond donors (NHI), as shown in the graphical abstract below. The potential for metal ion binding by each of the halogen-bonded aggregates is also investigated using the monoatomic sodium ion, Na+. Density functional theory calculations performed using the wB97XD functional and the DGDZVP basis set confirmed the ability of halogen bonding to drive the formation of the cyclic dimers and trimers of the model system chosen for this study. Evidence of halogen bond cooperativity is seen, for example, in a 9% shortening of each NI…O=C halogen bond distance with a corresponding 53% increase in the respective critical point density value, ρNI…O=C. Cooperativity also results in a 36% inc...