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Background : Fracture resistance is a mechanical property that describes the resistance of brittle materials to the catastrophic propagation of flaws under an applied load. Therefore any material that can compensate for this weakening effect could be useful. Thus to reinforce the instrumented teeth against fracture; sealers are used in conjugation with a core filling material. Material and Methods: One hundred and twenty extracted caries-free and visually assessed fracture-free, human single rooted mandibular premolar teeth were selected for the study. The prepared teeth were randomly divided into four experimental groups and two control group of 20 teeth each. One control group of 20 teeth where access opened and left unistrumented and unobturated.Group- I: Teeth obturated with gutta percha and epoxy resin based sealer;Group- II: Teeth obturated with polymer based core and methacrylate based Sealer;Group- III: Teeth obturated with gutta percha and calcium silicate based sealer. ;Group IV: Teeth obturated with gutta percha and zinc oxide eugenol based sealer.;Group V: Teeth instrumented and obturated with gutta percha without use of sealer (Positive control).;Group VI – Teeth with no instrumentation or obturation (Negative control).

Aims and objective: Viral Hepatitis is a major global health problem affecting millions of people worldwide. The endemicity of hepatitis B virus infection believed high in Yemen. Data for prevalence of hepatitis B virus in Jiblah town in Yemen are rare and inadequate. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the seroprevalence of Hepatitis B virus and associated risk factors aming the general population of Jiblah town, Yemen. Methods: A total of 100 participated included in this study. Serum samples were collected and assayed for HBsAg using the ELISA quantitative technique. A structured questionnaire was used to collect behavioral and sociodemographic data. Results: the results revealed that, the seroprevalence of hepatitis B virus was 3.33%. There was statistically significant differences between hepatitis B virus infection and monthly income. Conclusion: The finding of this study indicated that the magnitude of hepatitis B virus infection among the general population was intermediate level. Modifiable risk factor, monthly income was identified. Peer Review History: Received: 19 February 2023; Revised: 8 March; Accepted: 26 April 2023, Available online: 15 May 2023 Academic Editor: Dr. Rola Jadallah, Arab American University, Palestine, rola@aauj.edu Received file: Reviewer's Comments: Average Peer review marks at initial stage: 5.5/10 Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 7.0/10 Reviewers: Prof. Hassan A.H. Al-Shamahy, Sana'a University, Yemen, shmahe@yemen.net.ye Dr. Wadhah Hassan Ali Edrees, Hajja University, Yemen, edress2020@gmail.com

Introduction: The aim of this study was to assess whether various formulations of chlorhexidine mouth rinses had an effect on force characteristics of the elastomeric chains. Methods: The sample consisted commercially available elastomeric chain of 3M Unitek with five commercially used chlorhexidine mouth rinses of different formulations. The e chain were stretched on artificial saliva .30 sec everyday exposure to different chlorhexidine formulation was tested by digital dynamometer and was statisticaly evaluated using ANOVA test. Conclusion: mouthwashes does not accelerate force degradation of elastomeric chains which could clinically affect their effectiveness. However, the results could be variable in the presence of other biological factors in the oral environment and their interactions between oral microorganisms with the host.

Introduction Mitral Valve Prolapse (MVP) is associated with complex ventricular arrythmia (VA) and sudden cardiac death but risk stratification remains unclear. Exercise induces an hyperadrenergic state and could trigger VA, however, data on exercise-induced VA (EIVA) in MVP patients are scarce. Objective To describe EIVA prevalence, origin, characteristics and associated features in MVP patients. Methods In this observational prospective study, 64 MVP asymptomatic patients (58±14 years, 41 men) with mild to severe mitral regurgitation (MR) and without left ventricular (LV) dysfunction, underwent echocardiography and symptom-limited exercise testing. Continuous 12-lead ECG monitoring was performed throughout testing. Severe EIVA was defined as ventricular triplets, sustained or non-sustained ventricular tachycardia (NSVT) or ventricular fibrillation. Results All patients exercised at maximal intensity until exhaustion. EIVA was observed in 54 (84%) subjects including 12 (19%) patients with severe EIVA (7 triplets, 5 NSVT). Severe EIVA originated mainly from the mitral apparatus (all but one) and occurred at high exercise intensity (median 90% of predicted workload) or during early recovery phase. Compared to the rest of the cohort the patients with severe EIVA had similar resting ECG characteristics, similar LV dimension and function, similar degree of MR and mitral apparatus morphology. Finally, severe EIVA was not associated with an alteration of exercise tolerance. Conclusion Exercise frequently unmasks ventricular arrythmia in patients with MVP. EIVA appears not linked to MVP features nor to exercise tolerance and seems to provide additional phenotyping information that could be linked to prognosis. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is common in older people and is associated with lacunar stroke, white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and vascular cognitive impairment. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is reduced in SVD, particularly within white matter.Here we quantified test–retest reliability in CBF measurements using pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling (pCASL) in older adults with clinical and radiological evidence of SVD (N=54, mean (SD): 66.9 (8.7) years, 15 females/39 males). We generated whole-brain CBF maps on two visits at least 7 days apart (mean (SD): 20 (19), range 7-117 days).Test–retest reliability for CBF was high in all tissue types, with intra-class correlation coefficient [95%CI]: 0.758 [0.616, 0.852] for whole brain, 0.842 [0.743, 0.905] for total grey matter, 0.771 [0.636, 0.861] for deep grey matter (caudate-putamen and thalamus), 0.872 [0.790, 0.923] for normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) and 0.780 [0.650, 0.866] for WMH (all pWe conclude that pCASL has high test–retest reliability as a quantitative measure of CBF in older adults with SVD. These findings support the use of pCASL in routine clinical imaging and as a clinical trial endpoint.All data come from the PASTIS trial, prospectively registered at: https://eudract.ema.europa.eu (2015-001235-20, registered 13/05/2015), http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02450253, registered 21/05/2015).

The carrageenans with high molecular weight, crude and dialysed polysaccharide fractions obtained from Hypnea musciformis red algae of Karachi coast in Pakistan. The elemental composition was determined by using SEM-EDX technique which is one of the modern, reliable and accurate techniques. After analyzing multiple mineral elements were detected in different quantities. The numbers of elements found in crude extracts were greater than that in the dialysed extracts. All extracts contained the higher concentrations of C followed by O (except dialysed acidic extract). Among other elements, Cl and K were present in the highest amounts (25.0%) in dialysed acidic extracts. However, Al was detected in low concentrations in only crude aqueous and acidic extracts. The mineral concentrations ranges were 30.34-52.46%, 17.00-43.46%, 0.63-4.05%, 0.49-3.35%, 0-0.33%, 0.74-17.92%, 0.59-25.31%, 0.58-25.46%, 1.10-6.72%, 0-2.60% for C, O, Na, Mg, Al, S, Cl, K, Ca and Zn in these crude and dialyzed extracts respectively. The study confirmed the presence of major elements such that Na, Mg, Ca, K and Zn in high quantities. However, there was no toxic element identified like Cd, Hg and Pb which show that these carrageenans are safer to utilize in food and pharmaceutical industries.

Compressive sensing is an approach to reduce the acquired signal dimension with a sampling rate lower than the Nyquist rate. This is achieved by incorporating suitable quantization techniques, such as scalar quantization, to compensate for the low sampling rate. However, quantization of small compressive sensing measurements does not perform well in terms of rate-distortion. This paper presents an adaptive variant of differential pulse code modulation coupled with scalar quantization for quantizing and de-quantizing the compressive sensing measurements of videos. The proposed adaptive approach along with scalar quantization allows reduction of the necessary bandwidth and provides a higher prediction gain than the conventional differential pulse code modulation. The performance of the proposed approach is validated by integrating with various compressive sensing reconstruction schemes and compared with the conventional video codec approach. The reconstructed video frames' visual quality using the proposed approach was also tested based on SSIM metric. The experimental result shows that the proposed scheme provides substantial gain over uniform scalar quantization, and scalar quantization with differential pulse code modulation at various compressive sensing measurements bitrates for different video sequences. When compared with conventional video compression schemes (containing side information at the encoder), the proposed Quantized CS approach shows notable improvements in reconstruction quality when compared with conventional video codecs at lower bitrates. In sum, the proposed methodology could contribute to benefit various battery powered application of visual sensor network in terms of low data processing, less power consumption and minimum memory utilization etc.

Introduction\ud There are few randomized clinical trials in vascular cognitive impairment (VCI). This trial tested the hypothesis that the PDE5 inhibitor tadalafil, a widely used vasodilator, increases cerebral blood flow (CBF) in older people with symptomatic small vessel disease, the main cause of VCI.\ud \ud Methods\ud In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial, participants received tadalafil (20 mg) and placebo on two visits ≥7 days apart (randomized to order of treatment). The primary endpoint, change in subcortical CBF, was measured by arterial spin labelling.\ud \ud Results\ud Tadalafil increased CBF non-significantly in all subcortical areas (N = 55, age: 66.8 (8.6) years) with greatest treatment effect within white matter hyperintensities (+9.8%, P = .0960). There were incidental treatment effects on systolic and diastolic blood pressure (–7.8, –4.9 mmHg; P < .001). No serious adverse events were observed.\ud \ud Discussion\ud This trial did not identify a significant treatment effect of single-administration tadalafil on subcortical CBF. To detect treatment effects may require different dosing regimens.