Search

Introduction Abdominal wall dehiscence is one of the critical postoperative complications following abdominal surgeries. Emergency surgery highly contributes to the incidence of a burst abdomen due to a lack of proper preoperative preparation and the presence of intraabdominal sepsis. Anterior component separation was primarily evolved in abdominal wall reconstruction in the open abdomen and huge ventral hernia repair. Methods This prospective study included 50 patients operated by midline laparotomy for non-traumatic abdominal emergencies. Anterior component separation technique was randomly applied in 25 patients before laparotomy closure, the other 25 patients were closed using the traditional midline closure method. Preoperative patient's demographics, operative time, and different postoperative complications were reported. Incidence of burst abdomen in both groups was reported. Results Preoperative patient's demographic data showed no significant difference between both groups; the mean age of the patients was 53.69±7.34. Operative time was significantly longer in the Anterior Components Separation (ACS) group (P<0.001). The incidence of abdominal wall dehiscence after ACS technique (4.3%) was significantly less than after traditional technique (24%). Postoperative seroma and hematoma were the common postoperative complications after ACS however the incidence was not statistically significant. Incisional hernia was detected in (13.04%) in ACS group and in (32%) in traditional group. Conclusion Application of ACS technique during laparotomy closure in abdominal emergencies seems to lower the incidence of abdominal wall dehiscence with no increase in different postoperative complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Egypt is facing water shortage due to limitation in the freshwater resources and the increased population growth. Thus, there is a need for developing new water resources such as the expansion in building large-scale reverse osmosis (RO) seawater desalination plants. Oil spill in the marine environment can cause severe fouling problems and make damage to the RO membranes, which increases the operating cost. The current study focuses on oil removal from water using agricultural-based adsorbents to reduce the membrane fouling in the RO systems. Three adsorbents namely: rice husk (RH), sawdust (SD) and sugarcane bagasse (SCB) were tested to remove used motor oil (UMO) and crude oil (CO) from distilled and raw seawater. Activated carbon (AC) was included in the measurements to be used as a reference case to compare with. The oil sorption removal and adsorption capacity were determined experimentally for the four tested adsorbents. The experimental parameters included: initial oil concentration (2-40 g/L), adsorbent dose (2-30 g/L), contact time (5-120 min), agitation time (0-60 min), chemical modification (acid vs. base treatment), water salinity (up to 35 g/L). The effect of the presence of other heavy metals on oil sorption removal and adsorption capacity was also investigated. The characteristics of the adsorbents surface were studied using the Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis. The results demonstrated that the adsorption removal of UMO with higher viscosity is higher than CO and always the RH exhibited the highest adsorption capacity compared to SD and SCB but about 30% less than AC. Precaution should be taken when distilled water is used rather than raw seawater because the difference could reach about 50% but it depends on the type of oil and adsorbing material. Additionally, the oil sorption removal in seawater is about 20% higher in raw seawater compared to distilled water. The oil sorption removal increased with an increase in contact time, adsorbent dosage, agitation time, and salinity, and decrease in initial oil concentration. The effect of presence of metals ions concentration in raw seawater can be neglected with the adsorbent used in the current study. The adsorption isotherm models by Langmuir described the experimental data very well while the pseudo-second-order described the kinetics data very well. The small difference in performance between RH and AC indicates that RH is very promising low-cost adsorbents for oil removal in RO desalination systems. The Gibbs free energy (ΔG) was calculated and the values were negative, indicating that the sorption process was spontaneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trigonellafoenum-graecum L. is enriched with many active ingredients. TFG oil was evaluated for its protective effect against deltamethrin toxicity in rats. Rats of the control group were administered saline. The 2nd group was administered deltamethrin (DLM) orally at a concentration of 15 mg/kg body mass. The 3rd and 4th groups were administered DLM at a concentration of 15 mg/kg body mass and were fed diets containing 2.5% and 5% TFG oil, respectively. DLM intoxication reduced red blood cell and platelet counts, hemoglobin concentration, and hematocrit value while it induced leucocytosis. Furthermore, it increased serum levels of lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, [gamma]-glutamyltransferase, triglycerides, cholesterol, uric acid, urea, and creatinine; increased hepatic, renal, and brain lipid peroxidation; decreased serum acetylcholine esterase level; and decreased hepatic, renal, and brain antioxidant markers' activities. However, TFG oil kept the studied hematological and biochemical parameters within normal ranges. In addition, it prevented lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress induced by DLM intoxication in a dose-dependent manner. Therefore, these results indicated that TFG oil inhibited the toxic effects of DLM on hematological and biochemical parameters as well as oxidative status by its free radical scavenging and potent antioxidant activities, and it appeared to be a promising protective agent against DLM-induced toxicity. Key words: deltamethrin, Trigonellafoenum-graecum, haematological changes, biochemical changes, oxidative stress parameters. Trigonellafoenum-graecum L. est riche en plusieurs ingredients actifs. L'huile de TFG a ete evaluee sur le plan de son effet protecteur envers la toxicite de la deltamethrine (DLM) chez le rat. Les rats du groupe controle ont recu de la saline. Le deuxieme groupe a recu 15 mg/kg (poids corporel) de DLM par voie orale. Les troisieme et quatrieme groupes ont recu 15 mg/kg (poids corporel) de DLM et ils ont ete nourris avec des dietes comportant 2,5% et 5% d'huile de TFG, respectivement. L'intoxication a la DLM reduisait le decompte en erythrocytes et en plaquettes, la concentration d'hemoglobine et l'hematocrite alors qu'elle induisaitune leucocytose. De plus, elle accroissait les niveaux seriques de lactase deshydrogenase, d'aspartate aminotransferase, d'alanine aminotransferase, de phosphatase alcaline, de [gamma]-glutamyltransferase, de triglycerides, de cholesterol, d'acide urique, d'uree et de creatine, ainsi que la peroxydation lipidique hepatique, renale et cerebrale, alors qu'elle diminuait les niveaux d'acetylcholine esterase et l'activite de marqueurs antioxydants hepatiques, renaux et cerebraux. Cependant, l'huile de TFG maintenait les parametres hematologiques et biochimiques etudies dans les limites normales. De plus, elle prevenait la peroxydation lipidique et le stress oxydant induits par l'intoxication a la DLM en fonction de sa concentration. Ainsi, ces resultats ont indique que l'huile de TFG inhibait les effets toxiques de la DLM sur les parametres hematologiques et biochimiques ainsi que sur l'etat oxydant, grace a ses activites de piegeage de radicaux libres et anti-oxydantes. Elle semble etre un agent protecteur prometteur contre la toxicite induite par la DLM. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: deltamethrine, Trigonellafoenum-graecum, changements hematologiques, changements biochimiques, parametres du stress oxydant., Introduction Deltamethrin (DLM) is a synthetic pyrethroid and is effectively used against a wide range of insects that are harmful for plants and animals, including ants, mites, beetles, weevils, ticks, [...]

This study presents the single-phase heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of R1233zd(e) in a Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger (BPHE). Experiments on single-phase, water-to-water, were initially conducted and a correlation for the convective heat transfer coefficient of the hot water side was derived by applying the modified Wilson plot method. The experiments covered a range of Reynolds number from 80 to 1600 and Prandtl number from 2.8 to 7.0. Subsequent experiments were conducted with water-to-R1233zd(e) covering a refrigerant range of Reynolds number from 700 to 1450 and Prandtl number from 4.5 to 4.9. The results were used to assess existing correlations in the literature predicting the Nusselt number and Fanning friction factor in BPHEs. Finally, new correlations for both the hot (water) and cold (refrigerant) sides are proposed for single-phase heat transfer for this geometry covering the conditions above. The proposed refrigerant heat transfer correlation predicted 97% of all data within the ± 10% error bands at a mean absolute error value of 5.7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid emergence of smart grids, charging coordination is considered the intrinsic actor that merges energy storage units (ESUs) into the grid in addition to its substantial role in boosting the resiliency and efficiency of the grid. However, it suffers from several challenges beginning with dependency on the energy service provider (ESP) as a single entity to manage the charging process, which makes the grid susceptible to several types of attacks such as a single point of failure or a denial-of-service attack (DoS). In addition, to schedule charging, the ESUs should submit charging requests including time to complete charging (TCC) and battery state of charge (SoC), which may disclose serious information relevant to the consumers. The analysis of this data could reveal the daily activities of those consumers. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preservation charging coordination scheme using a blockchain. The blockchain achieves decentralization and transparency to defeat the security issues related to centralized architectures. The privacy preservation will be fulfilled using a verifiable aggregation mechanism integrated with an aggregated signing technique to identify the untrusted aggregator and assure the data source and the identity of the sender. Security and performance evaluations are performed, including off-chain and on-chain experiments and simulations, to assess the security and efficiency of the scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study used correlational analysis and step-wise multiple regression to build mathematical models representing the dynamics of student evaluation of courses and teachers. The resulting models were very strong and were subsequently used to improve academic programs in Kuwait's Institute of Banking Studies. (Author/MSE)

Several schemes have been proposed to enable cloud servers to search encrypted medical data to preserve patients’ privacy. However, the existing schemes use inefficient attribute-based encryption (ABE) approaches for access control. Also, servers cannot learn whether a doctor can achieve the access policy of a document and this check is done by doctors, so unrelated documents are outsourced. Moreover, the existing schemes only support single data-owner setting, where a doctor needs to share a key with each patient. To address these limitations, we develop an efficient ABE approach. Patients use it to encrypt the symmetric key (that encrypted a document), so that only authorized doctors can obtain the key and decrypt the document. Patients also send to the server the encryptions of an access policy and the document’s keywords. Doctors send the encryptions of the keywords, and their attributes. Then, the server returns the documents the doctor is authorized to access without being able to learn the keywords, the access policy, and the doctor’s attributes to preserve privacy. Our analysis indicates that our scheme can preserve privacy, and our experimental results demonstrate that our scheme requires less communication/computation overhead compared to the existing schemes. Also, the number of keys in the system are significantly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Egypt during 2022, many FMD outbreaks were reported due to serotype O topotype EA3 and serotype A African topotype of genotype IV (unpublished data). Molecular characterization of circulating Foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) serotype O topotype EA-3 and serotype A (African topotype) genotype IV in Egypt, 2016. Egypt is an endemic foot and mouth disease country, with three foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) serotypes present: O, A and SAT2. [Extracted from the article]

Despite being equipped with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), utility companies are subjected to electricity theft cyber-attacks. The existing machine learning-based detectors do not capture well the complex patterns and the temporal correlation present in the time-series profile of energy consumption data. This article proposes a deep recurrent vector embedding model to identify electricity theft cyber-attacks. Vector embedding is a data representation method that we use to express energy consumption profiles as vectors of real numbers. Since the reported electricity readings may be benign or malicious, vector embedding algorithms help in analyzing the relationships and capturing the patterns within the customer's reported readings. Furthermore, our model captures well the time-series nature of the data due to the adoption of gated recurrent units. We implement a sequential grid-search hyperparameter optimization algorithm to further improve the models detection performance. We test our model against two real datasets of benign and malicious readings. Results are $\text{95.8}\%$ in detection rate (DR), $\text{2.1}\%$ in false alarm (FA), and $\text{93.7}\%$ in highest difference (HD). Our model outperforms shallow detectors by $\text{3.5\%--9.7\%}$ in DR, $\text{3.1\%--10\%}$ in FA, and $\text{8.7\%--21.8\%}$ in HD. It also outperforms deep detectors by $\text{1.5\%--3.2\%}$ in DR, $\text{2\%--4.3\%}$ in FA, and $\text{5.6\%--9.6\%}$ in HD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An energy trading system is essential for the successful integration of Electric Vehicles (EVs) into the smart grid. In this paper, leveraging blockchain technology, we first propose a privacy-preserving charging-station-to-vehicle (CS2V) energy trading scheme. The CS2V scheme is useful in crowded cities where there is a need for a charging infrastructure that can charge many EVs daily. We also propose a privacy-preserving vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) energy trading scheme. The V2V scheme is useful when charging stations are not available or far and cheaper prices can be offered from EVs, e.g., if they charge from renewable energy sources. In the V2V scheme, the privacy of both charging and discharging EVs including location, time, and amount of power are preserved. To preserve privacy in both schemes, EVs are anonymous, however, a malicious EV may abuse the anonymity to launch Sybil attacks by pretending as multiple non-exiting EVs to launch powerful attacks such as Denial of Service (DoS) by submitting multiple reservations/offers without committing to them, to prevent other EVs from charging and make the trading system unreliable. To thwart the Sybil attacks, we use a common prefix linkable anonymous authentication scheme, so that if an EV submits multiple reservations/offers at the same timeslot, the blockchain can identify such submissions. To further protect the privacy of EV drivers, we introduce an anonymous and efficient blockchain-based payment system that cannot link individual drivers to specific charging locations. Our experimental results indicate that our schemes are secure and privacy-preserving with low communication and computation overheads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Brachial artery injury is one of the commonest vascular injuries occurring in pediatric age group with supracondylar fractures of the humerous (SCHF) with an incidence of 3-14 % of cases as a result of falling on out stretched hand. The aim of the present study was to prevent all disabilities resulting from improper vascular intervention with SCHF affecting brachial artery by clearing the vision on the set point. Patients and methods: A study included 18 pediatric patients with SCHF and pulseless perfused upper limb were studied. They admitted to ZUH 12 cases were females (66.7%) and 6 were males (33.3%) with age5.5±1.72 (mean±SD).Patients were followed up for a period of 24 hours after bone fixation. Results: Time interval mean from accident to presentation was 7.44±4.85 and Time interval from presentation to orthopedic intervention was 1.44±0.41. No cases had Limb ischemia or Nerve injury and only 4 cases (22.2%) had Rupture brachialis muscle. About 14 cases (77.8%) had no vascular injury as they spontaneously regained pulse after bone fixation with follow up in the ward, while three cases (16.6%) had Entrapped brachial artery in fracture site and contused segment and only one case (5.6%) had Contused segment. Majority of cases had no vascular intervention 14 cases (77.8%) while 2 cases (11.1%) underwent excision of contused part, thrombectomy and 1ry repair. 2 cases (11.1%) underwent excision of contused segment, thrombectomy and repair by reversed saphenous graft. Post fixation 14 cases (77.8%) had success of spontaneous pulse regaining at different times of follow up with a mean of 2.92 ±1.23hours with minimum 0.5 and maximum 8 mostly due to relief of arterial spasm of brachial artery. 22.2% (4 cases) failed to regain pulse spontaneously at 24 hours of follow up so they underwent vascular exploration. Conclusion: Patients with SCHF and absent peripheral pulsation while the hand is perfused and pulse was not regained after satisfactory bone reduction, immediate vascular exploration is not necessary and it is better to follow up the patient up to 24 hours as long as the hand remains perfused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An assessment of the susceptibility of Alexandria coastal zone, Egypt, to sea-level rise has been conducted. Alexandria has a vast population and vital activities (industry, fishery, and agriculture) along its coastal zones. Further reasons for such an assessment is the great historical significance of Alexandria and its lowland relief. The evaluation was implemented through examining land elevation datasets, to a sea-level rise scenario of 1 m. The materials and methods used chart the way forward to predict the hazards by integrating available different datasets using accessible analytical tools. Concerning the inundation scenario, the submergence would take place in the east and middle of Alexandria, but natural and artificial barriers would restrain the flooding to penetrate so far. While western Alexandria is relatively preserved by coastal sand dunes and ridges, and steep land slope. In the case of a tsunami hit, as has happened in later eras, there would be severe consequences, and no obstacles will be able to stop it. However, sea inundation will influence inhabitants and economy (educational facilities, Alexandria port, and railway). Therefore, an Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan that includes upgrading awareness, urban growth planning, and executing regulations is recommended. Moreover, tolerable response plans and adaptation options are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the experimental results of flow boiling of water in single rectangular microchannels. Three rectangular copper microchannels having the same hydraulic diameter (0.56 mm) and length (62 mm) but different aspect ratios (width/height, 0.5, 2.56, and 4.94) were investigated using de-ionized water as the working fluid. The experiments were conducted over the experimental range of mass flux 200–800 kg/(m2s), heat flux 4–1350 kW/m2 and inlet subcooling of ∼14 K. The results showed that the channel with smaller aspect ratio exhibited better heat transfer performance up to certain heat fluxes (∼480–500 kW/m2), whilst the effect of channel aspect ratio became insignificant for higher heat fluxes. The flow boiling patterns were observed and the main flow regimes were bubbly, slug, churn, and annular flow. Flow reversal was also observed that caused a periodic flow in the two microchannels having smaller aspect ratio. A comparison of the experimental results with widely used macro and micro-scale heat transfer correlations is presented. The macro-scale correlations failed to predict the experimental data while some micro-scale correlations could predict the data reasonably well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose privacy-preserving route reporting schemes for traffic management for both infrastructure-supported and self-organizing vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Using only pseudonyms and anonymous authentication to conceal the real identity of the drivers cannot fully preserve the drivers' privacy because the reported future positions can be used to link pseudonyms and identify the drivers, e.g., from the locations they visit. Motivated by the fact that traffic management systems do not need to know the vehicles' individual routes and the total number of vehicles in each road segment would suffice, the proposed schemes aggregate the vehicles' routes. Countering the collusion attacks is usually hard, particularly in a self-organizing setting. The concept we use to mitigate the attack is that one vehicle is not trusted to run the scheme because it can be curious to know the drivers' routes, but these schemes are run by multiple vehicles. Our ns-2 simulation results and analysis have demonstrated that our schemes can preserve the drivers' privacy with acceptable overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Flow boiling characteristics of de-ionized water were tested experimentally in a rectangular copper single microchannel of 1 mm width, 0.39 mm height and 62 mm length. De-ionized water was supplied to the microchannel at constant inlet temperature (89°C) and constant inlet pressure (115 kPa). The mass flux ranged from 200 to 800 kg/m²s and the heat flux from 56 to 865 kW/m². The heat transfer rate data are presented as plots of local heat transfer coefficient versus vapour quality and distance along the channel. Flow visualization was also conducted using a high-speed, high-resolution camera. The results indicate that unstable flow boiling occurred starting at boiling incipience for all mass flux values. The local heat transfer coefficient depends on heat flux only at very low heat and mass fluxes. At high mass flux, there is no heat flux effect with little dependence on vapour quality after the entry region. The mass flux effect was more complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vehicular ad hoc networks, vehicles should report events to warn the drivers of unexpected hazards on the roads. While these reports can contribute to safer driving, vehicular ad hoc networks suffer from various security threats; a major one is Sybil attacks. In these attacks, an individual attacker can pretend as several vehicles that report a false event. In this paper, we propose a secure event-reporting scheme that is resilient to Sybil attacks and preserves the privacy of drivers. Instead of using asymmetric key cryptography, we use symmetric key cryptography to decrease the computation overhead. We propose an efficient pseudonym generation technique. The vehicles receive a small number of long-term secrets to compute pseudonyms/keys to be used in reporting the events without leaking private information about the drivers. In addition, we propose a scheme to identify the vehicles that use their pool of pseudonyms to launch Sybil attacks without leaking private information to road side units. We also study a strong adversary model assuming that attackers can share their pool of pseudonyms to launch colluding Sybil attacks. Our security analysis and simulation results demonstrate that our scheme can detect Sybil attackers effectively with low communication and computation overhead. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose E-STAR for establishing stable and reliable routes in heterogeneous multihop wireless networks. E-STAR combines payment and trust systems with a trust-based and energy-aware routing protocol. The payment system rewards the nodes that relay others’ packets and charges those that send packets. The trust system evaluates the nodes’ competence and reliability in relaying packets in terms of multi-dimensional trust values. The trust values are attached to the nodes’ public-key certificates to be used in making routing decisions. We develop two routing protocols to direct traffic through those highly-trusted nodes having sufficient energy to minimize the probability of breaking the route. By this way, E-STAR can stimulate the nodes not only to relay packets, but also to maintain route stability and report correct battery energy capability. This is because any loss of trust will result in loss of future earnings. Moreover, for the efficient implementation of the trust system, the trust values are computed by processing the payment receipts. Analytical results demonstrate that E-STAR can secure the payment and trust calculation without false accusations. Simulation results demonstrate that our routing protocols can improve the packet delivery ratio and route stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose lightweight protocol for securing communication and preserving users' anonymity and location privacy in hybrid ad hoc networks. Symmetric-key-cryptography operations and payment system are used to secure route discovery and data transmission. To reduce the overhead, the payment can be secured without submitting or processing payment proofs (receipts). To preserve users' anonymity with low overhead, we develop efficient pseudonym generation and trapdoor techniques that do not use the resource-consuming asymmetric-key cryptography. Pseudonyms do not require large storage area or frequently contacting a central unit for refilling. Our trapdoor technique uses only lightweight hashing operations. This is important because trapdoors may be processed by a large number of nodes. Developing low-overhead secure and privacy-preserving protocol is a real challenge due to the inherent contradictions: 1) securing the protocol requires each node to use one authenticated identity, but a permanent identity should not be used for privacy preservation; and 2) the low overhead requirement contradicts with the large overhead usually needed for preserving privacy and securing the communication. Our analysis and simulation results demonstrate that our protocol can preserve privacy and secure the communication with low overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Physiology & Pharmacology is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Marine Sciences is the property of King Abdulaziz University, Scientific Publishing Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Creating central stocking facilities by consolidating isolated ones is a powerful economic force in the strategic planning of logistics systems. In this paper, the Portfolio Effect Function was expanded and generalized to measure the percent reduction in aggregate safety stock made possible by the consolidation of inventories from any number of facilities into one centralized facility. A numerical example based on empirical data was used to demonstrate the insufficiency of the Portfolio Effect measure in defaming the optimal consolidation scheme. As an alternative, the paper introduced the Portfolio Quantity Effect model, which measures the quantity reduction in safety stock due to centralization. It also has shown that total centralization of all facilities is not necessarily better than several sub-consolidations in terms of the portfolio quantity effect. The decomposability of a network of locations into several sub-consolidations was shown to depend largely on the relative value of the intra-correlation coefficients to the inter-correlation coefficients within and between sub-consolidations. The paper also introduced the Portfolio Cost Effect measure, which consists of several cost-saving elements (holding, transportation, investment, and procurement). The measure of Portfolio Cost Effect allows for the consideration of the location of the centralized facilities. Using the measure of Portfolio Cost Effect, the paper introduced mathematical models for the selection of the optimal consolidation scheme. The general case of the optimal consolidation scheme model was shown to be similar in structure to the Set-Partitioning and the p-median models. If consolidations are restricted to include two facilities at most, the problem lends itself to the Network Weighted Matching Problem. Numerical examples were given to illustrate the structure and solution of each model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under production economies of scale, the trade-off between production and transportation costs will create a tendency towards a decentralized decision-making process. First, reviews previous approaches suggested in the literature for solving the production-distribution problem. Then offers a non-linear programming model of the transportation problem under production economies of scale to illustrate the computational complexity of the problem. Discusses and proves the convergence of the "tangent line approximation procedure". Finally, introduces and solves a numerical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Bubble size in nucleate boiling region increased with decreasing aspect ratio. • Wall heat transfer rates increases at high aspect ratio. • Base heat flux increases with decreasing aspect ratio. • The pressure drop increased with increasing aspect ratio. • Effect of aspect ratio on pumping power was not significant. The effect of channel aspect ratio on flow boiling characteristics (flow patterns, heat transfer and pressure drop) of HFE-7100 in copper multi-microchannel heat sinks was investigated experimentally. Three heat sinks with base area 500 mm2, channel hydraulic diameter 0.46 mm and channel aspect ratio (ratio of channel width to channel height) of 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 were tested. The average surface roughness of the channel bottom surface was nearly the same in the three heat sinks and the measured values were 0.271, 0.286 and 0.304 µm. The local heat transfer rates were determined simultaneously with flow visualisation at mass flux ranging from 50 to 250 kg/m2s, wall heat flux from 9.6 to 191.6 kW/m2, system pressure of 1 bar and low inlet sub-cooling of 5 K. The results showed that, when the channel aspect ratio increased, the heat transfer coefficient increased, while the flow boiling pressure drop decreased. However, the heat transfer rate calculated using the heat sink base area was higher in the heat sink with the smallest channel aspect ratio, indicating an enhancement due to the largest surface area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trypanosomosis and babesiosis are economically important vector-borne diseases for animal health and productivity in developing countries. In Egypt, molecular epidemiological surveys on such diseases are scarce. In the present study, we examined 475 healthy and 25 clinically diagnosed cattle from three provinces in Lower Egypt, for Trypanosoma (T.) and Babesia (B.) infections using an ITS1 PCR assay that confirmed Trypanosoma species presence and an 18S rRNA assay that detected B. bigemina. Results confirmed Trypanosoma spp. and B. bigemina presence in 30.4% and 11% individuals, respectively, with eight animals (1.6%) being co-infected with both hemoparasites. Subsequent type-specific PCRs revealed that all Trypanosoma PCR positive samples corresponded to T. evansi and that none of the animals harboured T. brucei gambiense or T. brucei rhodesiense. Nucleotide sequencing of the variable surface glycoprotein revealed the T. evansi cattle strain to be most closely related (99% nucleotide sequence identity) to strains previously detected in dromedary camels in Egypt, while the 18S rRNA gene phylogeny confirmed the presence of a unique B. bigemina haplotype closely related to strains from Turkey and Brazil. Statistically significant differences in PCR prevalence were noted with respect to gender, clinical status and locality. These results confirm the presence of high numbers of carrier animals and signal the need for expanded surveillance and control efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Our model was conducted from Kuwaiti payer's perspective to provide evidence on the cost-effectiveness of Sodium zirconium cyclosilicate (SZC) versus patiromer to correct and maintain serum potassium (K+) in combination with renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitors (RAASis) with different dose titration in patients with chronic kidney disease/heart failure (CKD/HF) with/without renal replacement therapy (RRT)., Methodology: The model was developed as a patient-level, fixed-time increment stochastic simulation to simulate the complexity of disease, including multiple coexisting and competing conditional risks. This model was established to compare SZC versus patiromer as a treatment for hyperkalemia (HK) among adult populations with underlying conditions of advanced CKD stages 3a-5 or HF to correct and maintain serum K + over a lifetime horizon. The clinical outcomes of SZC and patiromer were demonstrated through arm-specific K + trajectories extracted from the HARMONIZE trial and OPAL-HK trial, respectively. The utility data was captured from different studies. Direct medical cost was captured from local data from Kuwaiti hospitals. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the uncertainty in the model., Results: Within different scenarios of CKD/HF, SZC was a cost-saving option, with/without RRT, whether one-off administration or repeated administration, except for one-off treatment administration among the HF cohort, which generated an incremental cost effectiveness ratio of KWD 331/quality adjusted life year (QALY). The incremental QALY of SZC ranged from 0.007 to 0.202. In addition, the savings observed with SZC fall within a range of KWD -60 to KWD -1,235 at serum K+ ≥ 5.1 mmol/L., Conclusion: The evidence generated by our model recommends the inclusion of SZC as a treatment option to correct HK and maintain normal serum K + level for CKD/HF patients within the Kuwaiti healthcare system. The costs saved from reducing frequent HK episodes, RAASis discontinuation/down titration, major cardiovascular events, and hospitalization offset the drug acquisition cost of SZC.

Background: Adjustable sutures increase the success rate of strabismus surgery. However, the optimal timing of postoperative suture adjustment remains controversial. This trial was aimed at comparing the surgical outcomes and pain scores of early or 2 - 4 h and delayed or 24 h postoperative suture adjustment in adult patients undergoing strabismus surgery., Methods: An open-label, prospective, randomized, comparative interventional study was performed in consecutive adult patients scheduled for eye muscle surgery. Patients were randomized into two groups: the early group, with suture adjustment 2 - 4 h postoperatively, and the delayed group, with suture adjustment 24 h postoperatively. Subjective pain scores during the adjustment were also analyzed. The angles of misalignment at 1 and 3 months and the success rate at 3 months postoperatively were compared., Results: Forty-five (90%) patients completed the follow-up, including 23 (92%) in the early adjustment group and 22 (88%) in the delayed adjustment group, with a mean (standard deviation) age of 25.6 (9.5) years and a male-to-female ratio of 46.7:53.3. Thirty patients (66.7%) had exotropia, and 15 (33.3%) patients had esotropia. Both groups had comparable baseline characteristics (all P > 0.05). The mean pain scores during adjustment did not differ significantly between groups ( P > 0.05). The postoperative angles of alignment were comparable between the groups before suture adjustment and at the 1- and 3-month follow-ups (all P > 0.05). The success rate in the early adjustment group was slightly higher (87.0% versus 63.6%), but the difference was not statistically significant ( P > 0.05). The success rate was comparable between the groups in patients with esotropia or exotropia (both P > 0.05)., Conclusions: Although the early adjustment group had a slightly higher success rate, the difference was not significant. Both groups had comparable subjective pain scores during adjustment, final motor alignment, or success rate. Future clinical trials should be performed different time intervals for postoperative suture adjustment, and subjective and objective outcomes, such as diplopia and stereopsis, should be compared between patients with a first strabismus surgery and those who underwent reoperation. This could better resolve the persistent controversy related to the optimal time for suture adjustment., Competing Interests: None., (© Author(s).)

Antifungal activity of extracts of cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum), ginger (Zingiber officinale) and turmeric (Curcuma longa) were evaluated in vitro against 17 Penicillium spp . Seed disease and rotten fruit caused by these species cause considerable loss of quality for different agricultural products. Isolates of Penicillium spp. were screened for production of patulin an important serious mycotoxin. About 70.59% of Penicillium spp. produced this toxin in concentrations ranging from 4 to 31 ppb. The response of Penicillium spp. to plant extracts differed according to the plant extract and concentration. Cinnamon extract showed the greatest effect on P. asperosporum, P. aurintogriseum and P. brevicompactum , and cloves extract produced the greatest effect on P. chermesinum and P. duclauxii . Turmeric extract had less effect on P. duclauxii . Cloves extract was the most effective in reducing the growth of Penicillium spp . On the other hand, ginger extract with all concentrations used had less effect against most Penicillium spp in the laboratory. Plant extracts are promising as natural sources of environmentally friendly compounds in laboratory studies., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.)

Quadruplex DNA, which is a relevant target for anticancer therapies, may alter its conformation because of interactions with interfaces. In pursuit of a versatile methodology to probe adsorption-induced conformational changes, the interaction between a fluorescent [2.2.2]heptamethinecyanine dye and quadruplex DNA (G4-DNA) was studied in solution and on surfaces. In solution, the cyanine dye exhibits a strong light-up effect upon the association with G4-DNA without interference from double-stranded DNA. In addition, a terminal π-stacking as a binding mode between the cyanine dye and G4-DNA is concluded using NMR spectroscopy. To unravel the effects of adsorption on the conformation of quadruplex-DNA, G4-DNA, and double-stranded and single-stranded DNA were adsorbed to positively charged poly(allylamine) hydrochloride (PAH) surfaces, both in planar and in constrained 55 nm diameter aluminum oxide nanopore formats. All DNA forms showed a very strong affinity to the PAH surfaces as shown by surface plasmon resonance and reflectometric interference spectroscopy. The significant increase of the fluorescence emission intensity of the cyanine light-up probe observed exclusively for surface immobilized G4-DNA affords evidence for the adsorption of G4-DNA on PAH with retained quadruplex conformation.