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Aim: To investigate the effects of low-level laser therapy (LLLT) on pain reduction in orthodontic patients during molar distalization. Materials and methods: Twenty patients requiring bilateral maxillary first molar distalization were randomly assigned to two groups: the intervention group (mean age 15.61 ± 1.03 years) received multiple LLLT after every activation of the distalizing appliance (immediately and on the 3rd, 7th, and 14th days) and the control group (mean age 15.64 ± 1.08 years) who did not receive LLLT. Patients reported pain levels every day for 7 days following activation of the appliance using an 11-point numeric rating scale (NRS), then the pain experience of both the intervention and control groups was compared using Mann-Whitney U test. Results: The mean pain scores on the 1st day were higher in the intervention group (9.27 ± 1.01) compared to that of the control group (8.80 ± 1.03). However, the mean pain scores of the intervention group (6.55 ± 1.29, 4.00 ± 1.26, 2.55 ± 1.29, 0.91 ± 1.04, 0.00 ± 0.00 and 0.00 ± 0.00, respectively) were lower than the control group (7.40 ± 1.90, 5.60 ± 2.07, 4.20 ± 1.99, 2.80 ± 1.93, 1.60 ± 1.58 and 0.40 ± 0.84, respectively) from the 2nd to the 7th day. All the differences were not statistically significant except on the 6th day (P-value = 0.003). The peak pain level was experienced by both groups on the 1st day, followed by a statistically significant gradual decrease in pain levels. Patients in the intervention group reported a shorter overall duration of pain. Conclusion: Although LLLT, with the used parameters, reduced the overall duration of pain experience following maxillary first molar distalization, it was not effective during peak pain levels.

Energy saving is a major requirement in the design of routing algorithms to maximize the throughput and lifetime of wireless sensor networks. To address this requirement, this work proposes a routing algorithm based on a novel Reposition Particle Swarm Optimization (RPSO) algorithm and a new fitness function. The role of the RPSO algorithm is to salvage particles that may have fallen into local minima, if any. The algorithm is evaluated using three types of benchmark functions, namely unimodal, multimodal, and rotated multimodal. The evaluation results demonstrate that RPSO outperforms native Particle Swarm Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization with Levy Flight in terms of convergence speed and global optimum identification. The proposed RPSO is then employed to develop an efficient routing algorithm. The routing algorithm is tested in terms network lifetime, number of dead sensor nodes, energy consumption, and number of packets delivered to base station, against four competitive Meta-Heuristic algorithms. The test results clearly indicate that the routing algorithm outperforms all the competitive algorithms for all the performance metrics. In particular, it achieves 14% to 29% higher network lifetime, 52% to 58% less dead sensor nodes, 61% to 70% less energy consumption, and 13% to 36% more throughput.

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is a common environmental pollutant that poses a major hazard to both humans and animals. Acacia senegal (Gum) is well-known for having antioxidant and anti-inflammatory bioactive compounds. Our study aimed to scout the nephroprotective effects of Acacia gum (Gum) against AFB1-induced renal damage. Four groups of rats were designed: Control, Gum (7.5 mg/kg), AFB1 (200 µg/kg b.w) and AFB1-Gum, rats were co-treated with both Gum and AFB1. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis was done to determine the phytochemical constituents in Gum. AFB1 triggered profound alterations in kidney function parameters (urea, creatinine, uric acid, and alkaline phosphatase) and renal histological architecture. Additionally, AFB1 exposure evoked up-regulation of mRNA expression levels of inflammatory cytokines, including interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), and nuclear factor kB p65 (NF-κB/P65) in renal tissue. The oxidative distress and apoptotic cascade are also instigated by AFB1 intoxication as depicted in down-regulated protein expression of the nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2 (Nrf2) and superoxide dismutase type 1 (SOD1) along with upregulation of cytochrome c (Cyto c), and cleaved Caspase3 (Casp3–17 and 19) in renal tissue. In conclusion, current study obviously confirms the alleviating effects of Gum supplementation against AFB1-induced renal dysfunction, oxidative harm, inflammation, and cell death. These mitigating effects are suggested to be attributed to Gum's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Our results recommend Gum supplementation as add-on agents to food that might aid in protection from AFB1-induced nephrotoxicity.

Most existing applications have a large number of evolving data streams. Clustering data streams is still a critical problem for these applications as the data are evolving and changes over time. Most existing algorithms are unsupervised learning in which background information is useless. This paper proposes an active clustering algorithm for data stream based on the affinity propagation method, referred to as AAPStream. The affinity propagation aims to identify exemplars and create clusters based on these exemplars. Thus, the objective is to get the most informative exemplars to create the streaming model and predict the new arrival data. We conduct a set of experiments on real-world datasets to compare our algorithm with a state-of-the-art algorithm, and the experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Diversity and abundance of mosquito larvae have significant impact on the dynamics of disease transmission. In the present study, remote sensing (RS) technology integrated with field survey and spatial analyses were utilized to map mosquito breeding habitats and assess areas vulnerable to disease transmission in the Nile Valley of Giza governorate. An entomological survey was carried out to 20 accessible breeding sites at the study area during the period 6th–9th December 2019. Mosquito larvae were collected and transferred to the laboratory for density calculation and species identifications. A calibrated Landsat OLI image was processed to produce Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Built-Up Index (NDBI), Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Normalized Difference Salinity Index (NDSI), and Land Surface Temperature (LST). Results revealed that Culex pipiens was the most dominant species in the study region with a total percentage of 95.04%. High density of mosquito larvae was characterized by NDVI 0.12 to 0.39, NDBI − 0.20 to 0.05, NDMI − 0.05 to 0.20, NDWI − 0.34 to − 0.10, NDSI − 0.39 to − 0.12, and LST 19.30 to 24.82 ℃ which represents the optimal conditions for mosquito breeding. It could be concluded that Giza region, particularly Agouza, Kerdasa, Dokki, Bulaq Dakror and Omrania, is highly affected by Cx. pipiens, with a high potentiality of filariasis disease transmission.

Summary: Ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM) is the leading cause of heart failure worldwide, yet the cellular and molecular signature of this disease is largely unclear. Using single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) and integrated computational analyses, we profile the transcriptomes of over 99,000 human cardiac nuclei from the non-infarct region of the left ventricle of 7 ICM transplant recipients and 8 non-failing (NF) controls. We find the cellular composition of the ischemic heart is significantly altered, with decreased cardiomyocytes and increased proportions of lymphatic, angiogenic, and arterial endothelial cells in patients with ICM. We show that there is increased LAMININ signaling from endothelial cells to other cell types in ICM compared with NF. Finally, we find that the transcriptional changes that occur in ICM are similar to those in hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathies and that the mining of these combined datasets can identify druggable genes that could be used to target end-stage heart failure.

Recently, Yu et al. (2014) proposed a new model in generalized thermoelasticity based on heat conduction with the memory-dependent derivative. The magneto–thermoelastic responses in a perfectly conducting thermoelastic solid half-space is investigated in the context of the above new theory. Normal mode analysis together with an eigenvalue expansion technique is used to solve the resulting non-dimensional coupled governing equations. The obtained solutions are then applied to a specific problem for thermoelastic half-space whose boundary is subjected to a time-dependent thermal shock and zero stress. The effects of the kernel function, time-delay parameter, magnetic field and thermoelastic coupling parameter on the variations of different field quantities inside the half-space are analyzed graphically. The results show that these parameters has significant influence on the variations of the considered variables. Keywords: Magneto–thermoelasticity, Memory-dependent derivative, Time-delay, Normal mode analysis

Regular blood transfusion therapy remains the primary treatment in thalassemia major (TM). Transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) and iron overload are considered to be the major drawbacks of this therapy. This cross-sectional study aimed to update the prevalence of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody, PCR-confirmed HCV, hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody among TM children. Clinical and epidemiological factors that can affect HCV infection prevalence rate were studied. This study evaluated 121 children with βTM, including 61 males and 60 females with a mean age of 7.99 ± 3.57 years. Patients were evaluated for the HCV, HBsAg, and HIV-1 & 2 antibodies. All tests were performed using ELISA. HCV positive cases were confirmed by RT-PCR. Twenty-five patients were positive for the HCV antibody (20.7%); 22 were confirmed positive by PCR. Six patients (5%) were HBsAg-positive. No patients were HIV-positive. Older age were associated with an increased frequency of HCV positive infection (P

Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the following: (1) the effects of chewing honey on plaque formation in orthodontic patients, (2) the effect of chewing honey on dental plaque bacterial counts, (3) determine if honey possesses antibacterial effects on bacteria recovered from plaques. Methods: Female orthodontic patients (n = 20, 12–18 years of age) participated in this randomized controlled study. The effects of honey were compared to treatment with either 10% sucrose or 10% sorbitol that served as positive and negative controls, respectively. The pH of plaque was measured using a digital pH meter prior to baseline and at 2, 5, 10, 20, and 30 min after chewing honey or rinsing with control solutions and the numbers of Streptococcus mutans, Lactobacilli, and Prophymonas gingivalis in respective plaques were determined. The antibacterial activity of honey was tested against commonly used antibiotics using the disk diffusion method. Results: Significant differences in pH were observed in the honey and sucrose groups compared to the pH observed in the sorbitol group (p ⩽ 0.001). The maximum pH drop occurred at 5 min in both the honey and sucrose groups; however the pH in the honey group rapidly recovered 10–20 min after exposure and did not drop below the critical decalcification pH of 5.5. On the other hand, the pH following sucrose exposure fell