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In this study, a series of novel Schiff bases (4a-4h) containing 1,2,4-triazole structure were synthesized through a condensation reaction of 3-alkyl(aryl)-4-amino-4,5-dihydro-1H-1,2,4-triazol-5-ones with 3-(4-methylbenzenesulfonyloxy)-benzaldehyde. The structures of 3-alkyl(aryl)-4-[3-(4-methylsulfonyloxy)-benzylidenamino]-4,5-dihydro-1H-1,2,4-triazol-5-ones (4a-h) were determined through a range of spectroscopic techniques (FT-IR, H-1 NMR, C-13 NMR, and elemental analysis). In addition, enzyme inhibitory properties of the newly synthesized Schiff bases were determined against acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Their K-i values were calculated in the range of 0.70 +/- 0.07-8.65 +/- 5.6 mu M. Besides, their IC50 values were calculated in the range of 0.43-3.87 mu M. Finally, in silico molecular docking interactions of the compounds with AChE target enzyme (PDB ID:4EY7) were evaluated using Chimera and AutoDock Vina softwares. The lowest binding energy levels (-12.0 kcal/mol) of the compounds 4e and 4g with AChE target enzyme were verified the best binding affinities and molecular interactions. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma Research Foundation of Kafkas University [2018-FM-18] The authors are grateful to the Research Foundation of Kafkas University for financial support under project 2018-FM-18.

Aims Overactive bladder (OAB) syndrome has been associated with core muscles weakness, which is important in aetiology of low back pain (LBP) and affects general well-being. This study aimed to compare the lumbopelvic stability, LBP and well-being of women with OAB to asymptomatic controls and to determine the cut-off points. Methods Women with (OAB group, n = 36) and without OAB syndrome (control group, n = 36) were included. The lumbopelvic stability with the Sahrmann and McGill trunk muscle endurance tests, LBP intensity with the Visual Analogue Scale were assessed. As for general well-being, sleep quality with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), fatigue severity with the Fatigue Severity Index (FSI), anxiety and depression levels with the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS-A, HADS-D) were evaluated. Results In the OAB group compared to the control group, the lumbopelvic stability scores were lower (p < 0.001) while LBP prevalence (p < 0.001), pain intensity (p = 0.020), and PSQI, FSI, HADS-A, and HADS-D scores (p < 0.001) were higher. The cut-off points for trunk extension, flexion, right and left lateral flexion endurance tests and Sahrmann test were 5, >5.22, >6 and >6 scores, respectively. Conclusions Women with OAB syndrome had lower lumbopelvic stability, higher LBP prevalence and intensity, lower sleep quality, and more fatigue, anxiety, and depression levels compared to asymptomatic women. The cut-off values were detected between the occurrence of OAB and lumbopelvic stability and general well-being parameters.

Social network sites are used by consumers to search for information before making purchase decisions. While most research has investigated what motivates consumers to share their experiences with ...

In this paper, an autonomous Toda jerk oscillator is proposed and analysed. The autonomous Toda jerk oscillator is obtained by converting an autonomous two-dimensional Toda oscillator with an exponential nonlinear term to a jerk oscillator. The existence of Hopf bifurcation is established during the stability analysis of the unique equilibrium point. For a suitable choice of the parameters, the proposed autonomous Toda jerk oscillator can generate antimonotonicity, periodic oscillations, chaotic oscillations and bubbles. By introducing two additional parameters in the proposed autonomous Toda jerk oscillator, it is possible to control partially or totally the amplitude of its signals. In addition, electronic circuit realization of the proposed Toda jerk oscillator is carried out to confirm results found during numerical simulations. The commensurate fractional-order version of the proposed autonomous chaotic Toda jerk oscillator is studied using the stability theorem of fractional-order oscillators and numerical simulations. It is found that periodic oscillations and chaos exist in the fractional-order form of the proposed Toda jerk oscillator with order less than three. Finally, combination synchronization of two fractional-order proposed autonomous chaotic Toda jerk oscillators with another fractional-order proposed autonomous chaotic Toda jerk oscillator is analysed using the nonlinear feedback control method.

Small dose of hCG (1500 IU) on the day of oocyte retrieval, followed by daily progesterone administration, is currently the preferred way to secure adequate luteal support following GnRH agonist trigger. In the current proof-of-concept study, we explored the possibility that a bolus of 1500 IU hCG, given two days after oocyte retrieval, may be sufficient to sustain adequate luteal support without additional progesterone treatment. From February 2015 to August 2016, we obtained 44 pregnancies following GnRHa trigger followed by day 2 hCG (1500 IU) support only (study group). Data from these 44 cycles were compared with the latest 44 pregnancies obtained following hCG (6500 IU) trigger followed by conventional progesterone luteal documented (control group). Mean progesterone levels (14 days postoocyte retrieval) in the study and control groups were 197 nmol/l and 173 nmol/l, respectively (NS). Mean E

The use of GnRH agonist to trigger final oocyte maturation in GnRH-antagonist in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles has been shown to significantly reduce or even eliminate the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) by inducing rapid luteolysis early in the luteal phase. The exact mechanism of this early luteolysis is still widely unknown. Since luteinizing hormone (LH) has a major role in corpus luteum support, we sought to explore the pattern of LH secretion early in the luteal phase. Ten high risk patients for developing OHSS and triggered with GnRH agonist were included. Frequent blood sampling (every 20 min for 6 h) to measure LH, estradiol and progesterone was done on the day of oocyte collection (n = 5, Group 1) and on the day of embryo transfer, 48 h after oocyte collection (n = 5, Group 2). We found that the mean LH concentration and its secretion rate decreased significantly in Group 2 compared to Group 1. Both groups had similar number of LH pulses characterized by very small amplitude. In Group 2, there was a steady significant decrease in estradiol and progesterone over time. The results of this study show that LH secretion deviates significantly from normal physiologic pattern, which can explain, at least in part, the post-GnRH-agonist trigger early luteolysis mechanism.

WOS: 000336396600011, Objectives: Chronic knee pain is a clinical problem that causes inconvenience in social, familial, and business environments. In clinic, while etiologies of chronic knee pain are generally known, its effects on cognitive functions are not fully understood. This study aims to measure and evaluate the relationship between cognitive function and chronic knee pain. Methods: Ninety-eight patients between 18 and 70 years of age having knee pain for at least 6 months were included in the study. Two groups were divided between A1 and A2, both patients of chronic knee pain. Cognitive functions were evaluated in the A1 group before treatment and in the A2 group after taking treatment. Both groups had the same number of patients [N = 98]. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment [MOCA] was applied to the patients before and after treatment. The patients with a MOCA score 26 and over were accepted as normal in terms of cognitive functions. Results: The MOCA score of the A2 group was significantly higher than that of A1 group. Visual analog scale values in group A2 were significantly decreased compared to A1. Although orientation scores were decreased, patients in group A2 showed a statistically significant increase in cognitive functional indicators like visual functions, language, abstract thinking, and delayed recall compared with group A1. Conclusions: The chronic knee pains might lead to cognitive function disorders in the long term. This can be prevented with the effective treatment of pain so that quality of life of patients can be increased. Moreover, the use of costly diagnosis and treatment methods can be prevented.

In this paper, the dynamics of the optical field in the whispering-gallery-mode resonator described by the Lugiato–Lefever equation is studied by means of the variational method. For some special cases, exact explicit family of analytical breather-type solitons, such as time-periodic breather and space-time periodic breather are obtained. It is found that the pumping parameter, the detuning parameter and the dispersion coefficient, influences the nature of the optical field in the whispering-gallery-mode resonators.

The aim of this study, is to describe the effects of adhesives (PVAc-Desmodur VTKA and Urea formaldehyde) on wooden materials (walnut and poplar) cut tangentially and radially impregnated with Protim Solignum, CCA and Celcure AC 500 and exposed to: humid–water–heat resistance; heating; and cooling tests. All these tests show a decreased in bonding strength. The conclusion is that poplar wood cut tangentially and impregnated with CCA, bonded with D-VTKA adhesive can be used as a material in damp conditions where good bond strength is required.

Thermal conductivity is a very important parameter in determining heat transfer rate and is required for the development of drying models and for the industrial operations such as adhesive cure rate. The objective of this research was to investigate the effects of impregnation on the thermal conductivity of six-layered laminated veneer lumber (LVL) made of beech and pine. Boric acid, zinc chloride, and ammonium sulfate were used as impregnation chemicals and poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) and melamine-formaldehyde (MF) adhesives as bonding agent were used to produce LVLs. The veneers were impregnated by using the vacuum-pressure method. The thermal conductivity test was performed based on ASTM C 1113-99 hot-wire method. Results showed that the impregnation chemicals increase the thermal conductivity. As impregnation chemicals the highest values were obtained with boric acid and zinc chloride. In addition, the thermal conductivity of LVL made of beech was higher than that of LVL made of pine. The thermal condu...

Ninety-seven subjects belonging to 40 families in a village in Cambodia were examined in a health camp where all the cases with skin disease assembled. These people had evidences of chronic arsenic exposure from reports of testing of water samples and of hair and/or nail studied. Seventy cases were diagnosed to be suffering from arsenicosis (Clinically and laboratory confirmed according to WHO criteria) as all these cases had evidences of pigmentation and/or keratosis characteristic of arsenicosis and history of exposure of arsenic contaminated water and/or elevated level of arsenic in hair and/or in nail. Highest number of cases belonged to age group of 31 to 45 yrs, both the sexes are more or less affected equally. Evidence of both pigmentation and keratosis were found in 60 cases (85.7%) while only pigmentation and only keratosis was found in 6 (8.5%) and 4 (5.7%) cases respectively. It was interesting to find 37.04% of children below the age of 16 years had skin lesions of arsenicosis. The youngest child having definite evidence of keratosis and pigmentation was aged 8 years, though two children aged 4 and 5 yrs had feature of redness and mild thickening of the palms. The minimum and maximum arsenic values detected in the nails were 1.06 and 69.48 mg/Kg respectively and the minimum and maximum arsenic values in hair were 0.92 and 25.6 mg/Kg respectively. No correlation was observed between arsenic concentration in drinking water and arsenic level in nail and hair. This is the first report of clinical and laboratory confirmed cases of arsenicosis in Cambodia.

This paper aims to explore the transnational aspects that have influenced ideological and organizational changes of Islam within Malawi. It is impossible to review these changes from an isolated position, like the national context. In order to truly understand the reasons and elements of change, the national situation of Islamic reformation in Malawi has to be placed within the context of worldwide Islamic reformation. Changes within the transnational arena have affected and influenced financial, social, political, ideological and cultural processes and organization in local situations. This paper presents an analysis of the Muslim community in Malawi beginning from a historical perspective working towards the economical, social and political situation of Muslims in Malawi today. It focuses on the transnational influences that have affected these changes in religious and social identification of a small group of reformist Muslims in Malawi.

In 1983, in the face of mounting evidence of excess leukemia among workers at Shell Oil's Wood River (IL) and Deer Park (TX) petroleum refineries, Shell initiated the Benzene Historical Exposure Study (BHES). Shell's prior research had implicated occupational exposure to benzene as the source of the excess leukemia. The BHES report submission, which ultimately found no link between exposure and the excess morbidity, coincided with OSHA's planned hearings over a new regulatory standard for benzene. Over the next two decades, Shell published several papers based on or expanding the BHES data, all of which concluded that the excess of leukemia was unrelated to benzene. A review of the raw data on which Shell and its consultants relied reveals that Shell manipulated and omitted data in order to reach conclusions that exculpated it from liability and helped delay stricter benzene regulation.

This article examines the categories and concepts through which the Tibetan social world has been represented, prior to and during the Mao era (1949-1976). The categories typical of the pre-Communist Tibetan polity are first described, with emphasis on the close connections between politics and religion. With the advent of Chinese Communist rule in Tibet, a new account of social identity was introduced where, as a key Marxist concept, "class" became the decisive factor for identifying people. The article describes how the "class" system was put into practice in the Tibetan areas of China and how the introduction of "class" categories provided an account of social identity that paved the way for radical social transformations that were subsequently launched by the Chinese authorities.

We anticipated that the universal use of a standard magnesium sulfate infusion to prevent eclamptic convulsions in preeclamptic patients would result in alterations in circulating magnesium levels that were negatively correlated with the patient's body mass index. We postulated that the highest failure rate with seizure prophylaxis would occur in patients with the highest body mass index.After discarding 6 patients, this study was performed in 194 of 200 preeclamptic patients admitted to our high risk pregnancy unit between February 2000 and August 2000, who were divided into four groups determined by body mass indices. A standard magnesium sulfate infusion protocol (loading dose 4.5 g/15 minutes followed by 1.8 g/hour) was administered to 194 preeclamptic patients. One hundred and thirty-eight severe preeclamptic patients received magnesium sulfate during both antepartum and postpartum periods. The remaining 56 patients only received the therapy during the postpartum period. Serial serum magnesium levels of each groups were recorded and compared.The 1.8 g infusion rate produced acceptable magnesium levels in the majority of patients but most were in the lower 50% of the therapeutic range. Levels were lowest in patients with high body mass indices (this group recorded most of the subtherapeutic levels, particularly when patient were infused antepartum). Apart from 13 referred patients who had convulsed prior to admission no eclampsia occurred during the antepartum period while seizures occurred in nine women during the postpartum period. Two hours after the initiation of the therapy, magnesium levels were inversely related to the body mass index (BMI) both during the ante- and postpartum periods (Prepartum; group I: 5.97 mg/dl, group II: 4.90 mg/dl, group III: 4.35 mg/dl, group IV: 3.88 mg/dl; Postpartum; group I: 5.89 mg/dl, group II: 5.71 mg/dl, group III: 4.82 mg/dl and group IV: 4.61 mg/dl, Table 4). Although the lowest levels were detected in patients with high body mass indices, in contrast to our hypothesis, eclamptic seizures occurred in four patients with low body mass indices. Furthermore therapeutic serum magnesium levels were detected in three of these patients. There was no association between treatment failures and body mass or with magnesium levels.The infusion regimen described herein resulted in therapeutic levels in the majority of patients that correlated inversely with body mass index. However most levels fell within the lower range of what many studies consider "therapeutic" suggesting that maintenance infusion rates of at least 2-2.5 g/hour would be more appropriate. This would be particularly true in patients with body mass indices exceeding 30, where subtherapeutic levels occurred most frequently. The study's limited power prevents conclusions on outcomes but what is of interest is that eclamptic convulsions did not correlate with either body mass index or circulating plasma magnesium levels.

A new oleanane saponin, named Herniaria saponin A, was isolated from the aerial part of Herniaria fontanesii and identified as the 28-O-[-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl(1→2)-[α-L-rhamnopyranosyl(1→3)]-β-D-xylopyranosyl(1→2)-β-D-fucopyranosyl] ester of 3-O-[β-D-glucopyranosyluronic(1→4)-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl]-2β,3β-dihydroxy-olean-12-en-23,28-dioic acid. The structure was established on the basis of spectral and chemical evidence.

Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) remains a potential severe complication of the use of gonadotropin therapy in ovulation induction and assisted reproduction technologies. In 1988, we reported preliminary results which demonstrated the ability of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs (GnRH-a) to trigger ovulation, and to prevent subsequent OHSS. In this report, we summarize our experience of 73 treatment cycles involving 44 high responders (i.e. patients with a previous history of severe OHSS, or with high estradiol levels (> 13 200 pmol/l) on the day of triggering the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge).In spite of the high estradiol levels (mean 24 202 pmol/l) and the large number of oocytes (mean 32.4), none of our patients developed severe OHSS. Luteal support with progesterone and estradiol valerate was necessary to maintain adequate serum levels of these hormones. Without such support, a precipitous decline in levels of estradiol and progesterone was observed. We believe that the use of GnRH-a i...

An accurate analysis of planar aperture sectoral horns is presented. It is based on a simple adaptation of the mode matching technique, which allows for the inclusion of the aperture effect in the analysis without resorting to the conventional integral equations formulation. This technique provides accurate results, which are confronted with experiments and then used in a parametric study of the sectoral horns, aimed at achieving a constant beamwidth over an octave bandwidth or more. It is concluded that for the narrow E- plane aperture horn this objective is hard to attain, hence a different, convex aperture antenna is used. Experimental design of this configuration leads to the desired performance of a nearly constant beamwidth over more than an octave.

Recent studies point to the naturally occurring molecules in expression of radiation damage and in protection. DNA repair was shown to be one of the parameters that can be modified to attain improved protection. The need for a natural compound that can enhance DNA repair in order to improve cellular protection focused our attention on nicotinamide (NA). The effects of addition of NA, a precursor for NAD+ synthesis, on the DNA repair capacity following gamma and ultraviolet irradiations were studied in several repair-proficient and repair-deficient cell lines. The addition of low concentrations of NA (less than 3 mM) resulted in increased repair synthesis in the repair-proficient cells. Addition to repair-deficient cells resulted in decreased repair synthesis. Cells which repair damage from one type of radiation, and not from another, responded accordingly to the presence of NA. However, addition of high concentrations of NA to repair-proficient cells resulted in decreased repair synthesis. Thus, nicotinamide can improve the repair capacity in a concentration-dependent manner, but it clearly requires the existence of functional repair processes.