A positive diversity–productivity relationship has been demonstrated in planned experiments, but the evidence from field studies of natural forests is contradictory. We studied aboveground forest productivity in 28 subtropical montane forests on Mt. Fanjingshan and assessed the relationship between productivity and tree diversity, as well as climatic, edaphic, topography, and stand structural factors likely to influence productivity. The main determinants of aboveground net primary productivity (NPP) were climate factors and stand properties. They explained 35% of the variance in NPP. The percentage of the variance in NPP explained by stand properties, climate, soil properties, topography, and species richness were 55%, 30%, 7%, 5%, and 3%, respectively. Topography had no direct effect on production, but they had a significant indirect effect. Elevation had an indirect effect on production via tree height, and slope steepness had a significant indirect effect through climate factors. However, tree diversity had nonsignificant direct and indirect effects on productivity. We concluded that the productivity of highly diverse montane forests is primarily controlled by climate factors and stand structural properties rather than species diversity.

Objectives: to determine the Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) over-expression in laryngeal carcinoma primary tumor and in first echelon node in N0 neck. Design: A Cross sectional retrospective study. Setting: Otolaryngology and Pathology Departments, Suez Canal University Hospital (Ismailia, Egypt). Participants: Twenty five patients. Main outcome measures: EGFR expression is linked to early neoplastic transformation, cellular proliferation, and the metastatic process in laryngeal cancer. Twenty paraffin preserved primary laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) and their cervical lymph nodes stained with hematoxylin & eosin and EGFR using immunohistochemical technique with scoring system. Results: EGFR expression in occult metastasis was associated with higher T stage (p=<0.001) and higher tumor grade (p=0.001). EGFR expression in occult metastasis was correlated with primary LSCC cartilage invasion (p=0.05), lymphovascular invasion (p=0.028) & muscle invasion (p=0.05). Laryngeal expression of EGFR and cervical lymph node metastasis as evidenced by EGFR immunohistochemical staining (p=0.001). Conclusion: EGFR immunohistopathological analysis of the lymph nodes and the primary tumour is a highly valuable tool for the detection of the cervical metastatic status and the N stage. Key words: Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR), Larynx, N0, Squamous cell Carcinoma, Metastasis

Abstract Objective: To analyse the role of surgery along with antimicrobials to improve clinical outcomes in treating refractory cases of skull base osteomyelitis (SBO). Study design and setting: A prospective comparative study in a tertiary care centre with 70 SBO patients meeting eligibility criteria. Participants: The study population comprised 35 patients refractory to systemic antimicrobials of at least four weeks duration who later underwent surgery in addition to medication (surgical group). They were compared with a medical group that responded to medications alone. Main outcome measures: The outcome variables studied were the resolution of clinical features (pain, discharge, radiology, and inflammatory markers), culture yield, and total duration of treatment. Results: According to our study, relief of pain was faster in the surgical group(1.66 against 4.57 months) with statistical significance (p< 0. 001). Relief of symptoms (p< 0.001), radiological improvement (p= 0.001), and normalizing of inflammatory markers (p<0.001) were better in the surgical group than in the medical group. The duration of treatment was an average of 9. 2 months in the surgical group compared to 11.3 months in the medical group (p= 0.019). Microbial culture from deep tissue sampling was positive in 24 surgical patients (68.57%). Conclusion: The treatment response to surgery and antimicrobials in treating refractory cases of SBO was better than the group who responded to antimicrobials alone. Surgery provided higher microbial yield resulting in culture-specific antimicrobials. The surgical group observed faster relief of symptoms, reduced hospital stay, and total treatment duration.

This cross-sectional study examined COVID-19 attitudes and vaccine hesitancy among African American and Nigerian college students ( N = 189). African American and Nigerian college students were sampled from regional universities within the United States and Nigeria. Participants completed the World Health Organization (WHO) Vaccine Hesitancy Scale (VHS; 2014) and sociodemographic questions to assess attitudes, primarily vaccination hesitancy, toward COVID-19 vaccination. Independent t tests revealed no significant differences between the nationalities and any hesitancy in taking the COVID-19 vaccine ( t(167) = .334, p = .739). However, there was a significant effect for trust in the COVID-19 vaccine ( t(174) = -3.42, p = <.001), with American students ( M = 0.59; SD = 0.50) showing more trust than Nigerian students ( M = 0.34; SD = 0.48). In addition, there was a significant effect for the overall general support of vaccines, t(176) = 2.43 p = .016, with Nigerian students ( M = 0.86; SD = 0.35) showing more favor than American students ( M = 0.71; SD = 0.46). Additional analyses associated with the cross-cultural comparisons were conducted and discussed.

Reinforced concrete Structures are subjected to temperature changes daily and seasonal this is besides the live and dead loads applied to the building the changes in the temperature consequently produce temperature loads due to their interaction with the surrounding environment as well as the solar radiation exposure of the building. Such temperature loadings consequently lead to thermal stresses in most structural elements. These thermal loads will produce thermal stresses that can be considered comparable to or sometimes exceed the stresses of the dead and live loading due to insufficient thermal insulation which may lead to severe structural elements damage if it is not considered in the design phase. This paper presents a study of the effect of thermal loads on multi-story RC. buildings in Saudi Arabia with fixed and hinged support constraints with and without bracing system under seismic loads on sloped terrain. RC. buildings have a high vulnerability when designed on sloped terrains due to the mass and vertical irregularity that will increase the values of shear forces and torsional moments on the building. This work attempts to study the building's behavior on sloped terrain under the effect of thermal loads using ETABS V18.1. Etabs Models were analyzed to present the effect of thermal loads concentrating on the displacement, drift, deformations, and base shear.

Precise assessment of water footprint to enhance water consumption and crop yields for irrigated agricultural efficiency is required in order to achieve water management sustainability. Although Penman-Monteith is more successful than others and is the most frequently used technique to calculate water footprint it requires a significant number of meteorological parameters at different spatio-temporal scales, sometimes inaccessible in many of the poor nations. Due to the greatest performance in the non-linear relations of inputs and output of the model, the complex hydrological phenomena are frequently described in machine learning models. Therefore, the objective of this research is to 1) develop and compare between the four-machine learning: Support Vector Regression (SVR), Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boost (XGB) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) over three potato’s governorates (Al-Gharbia, Al-Dakahlia, and Al-Beheira) in Delta, Egypt and 2) select the best model in the best combination of climate input variables, which achieves high precision and low error in forecasting potato blue WF. The available variables for this study are maximum temperature (T max), minimum temperature (T min), average temperature (T ave), wind speed (WS), relative humidity (RH), precipitation (P), vapor pressure deficit (VPD), solar radiation (SR), Sown area (SA), and crop coefficient (Kc) to predict potato BWFP during (1990 -2016). Six scenarios of input variables were used to test the weight of each variable in for four applied models. Different statistical indicators have been used to assess applied model performance (NSE, RMSE, MAE, MBE, A, R2, SI and MAPE). The results demonstrated that Sc5 with the XGB and ANN model is competent enough to evaluate BWF only if there are just vapor pressure deficit, precipitation, solar radiation, crop coefficient data followed by Sc1. The created models produced comparatively superior outcomes and can contribute to the decision-making process for water management and development planners.

The information exchange methods currently used in the field of vehicle inspection are not in harmony with the social information construction environment, which hinders the interaction and flow of information. On the other hand, because a large amount of data collected by different types of sensors must be transmitted to edge computing nodes, dynamic vehicle detection will lead to network congestion and affect the calculation of edge computing nodes. Therefore, optimizing the data transmission between vehicles and edge computing nodes is a new challenge, which needs to be solved in the practical application of dynamic vehicle detection architecture based on edge computing. In this paper, we have considered the data requirements of dynamic vehicle detection in different environments, analyzed the optimization objectives and constraints, and proposed deviation detection and greedy algorithms to solve the problem of MILP solving the problem of long time and insufficient practical application, and evaluated the performance of the algorithm through simulation experiments using SUMO, a traffic flow simulation tool, and PreScan, a vehicle simulation test software. The results show that greedy algorithm is more suitable for practical application than deviation detection algorithm. The implementation of this system can improve the efficiency of vehicle detection and management, and has good application value.

Over the last three to four decades, Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) has shaped itself as therapeutic drug management (TDM), an integral component of precision medicine. The practice of TDM is not extensive in India, despite being one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It is currently limited to a few academic medical centers and teaching hospitals. Apart from the immunosuppressive drugs, several other therapeutic areas like anticancer, antifungals, antibiotics and antitubercular have demonstrated great potential to improve the patient outcomes in the Indian settings. Factors like higher prevalence of nutritional deficiencies, tropical diseases, widespread use of alternative medicines, unalike pharmacogenomics, and sparse population specific data available on therapeutic ranges of several drugs, makes in the population of this subcontinent unique regarding the relevance of TDM. Despite the impact of TDM in clinical science and it’s widespread application, TDM has failed to receive the attention it deserves in India. This review intends to bring out a strength-weakness-opportunity and threats (SWOT) analysis for TDM in India so that appropriate steps for fostering growth of TDM could be envisioned. The need of the hour is creation of a cooperative group including all the stake holders like TDM professionals, clinicians and the government and devising a National Action Plan to strengthen TDM. Nodal TDM centres should be established and pilot programs should be rolled out for identifying the thrust areas for TDM in the country, capacity building and creating awareness to integrate TDM into mainstream clinical medicine.

Adenosine has been getting increasing attention due to its positive role in immunomodulation, anti-inflammation, and anti-cancer, etc.. The low production of Ganoderma adenosine is a bottleneck for clinical trials and commercial applications. Regulating the expression of key biosynthetic gene is an optimized way to increase the adenosine production in submerged culture of Ganoderma lucidum. In this study, we correlated the expression of adenosine synthase genes (including GlATIC, GlPNP, GlADK) with the adenosine content. The results showed that GlPNP was positively correlated with Ganoderma adenosine contents. Then the key biosynthetic gene GlPNP was cloned, characterized and overexpressed in G. lucidum. The cDNA of GlPNP gene was 969-bp in length, with a predicted molecular weight of 34.6 kDa. The GlPNP displayed a trimeric quaternary structure. The transcript levels of GlPNP overexpression transformants were approximately 2.9-3.9-fold higher than those of the WT strains on day 4, while the adenosine contents were increased by 78% and 63%, respectively, by compared with vector-containing strain. The GlPNP overexpression strains showed decreased colony growth and reduced biomass. In conclusion, GlPNP gene overexpression is an effective strategy to improve the production of adenosine. This study is the first report about the manipulation of adenosine biosynthesis in medicinal fungi.

The theoretical capability of modular robot to organize the overall robot into different structures with different functions has broad prospects in space exploration. Therefore, we develop a novel modular space robot named Space Module, and inspired by biological cooperative and mutual assistance behaviors, a novel self-assembly method is proposed for it.To solve the mobility problem of non-mobile modules, a new meta-modules design for Space Module is presented, based on which the concept of mutual assistance is utilized to achieve position and posture reachability of assembled unit while minimizing the effect of meta-modules on granularity. Then, an assembly planner is designed to obtain the assembly sequences according to the unique motion characteristics of meta-module and mutual assistance to realize the self-manufacturing of desired configurations. Finally, several demonstrations are given to verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed assembly method.Corresponding author(s) Email:   yhzhu@hit.edu.cn

The pandemic of antimicrobial resistance with the paucity of new classes of antibiotics is one of the global threats warranting immediately actionable strategies. The widespread and inappropriate use of broad-spectrum and last-resort antibiotics during the first, second and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic require a multidisciplinary approach to address this issue. The current pipeline has only 43 antibiotic candidates targeting the WHO priority pathogens and the majority are modifications of previously known classes with already existing cross-resistance. Preserving the power of existing antibiotics by their regulated use and prevention of the spread of pathogens through infection prevention and control seems the only possible solution to defer the AMR crisis. Meanwhile, numerous alternative avenues are present like antimicrobial peptides, phage therapy, probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics, eligo-biotics, phage-endolysins, anti-virulence therapy, targeting pattern recognition receptors, phytochemicals, antimicrobial enzymes CRISPR-Cas mediated gene disruption, efflux pump inhibitor, vaccines, monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies are currently available to fight antibiotics resistance and reduce dependence on antibiotics. These alternatives must satisfy the criteria for safety, efficacy and affordability for translation in clinical use. This review provides an overview of various promising, potential and under investigative strategies, as alternatives to antibiotics, their mechanism of action, current status, challenges in their commercialization and future scope. Keywords: COVID-19, antimicrobial resistance, antibiotics, antibiotics alternatives.

We report a case of cerebral fat embolism (CFE) that could be identified only by susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI). Collection and analysis of previous case reports of CFE revealed utilization of SWI in less than one third of suspected cases, despite its known diagnostic ability for CFE.

We present the case of a 70-year-old man diagnosed with acute myelomonocytic leukemia, albeit that his leukemic blasts at initial presentation had scant cytoplasm, inconspicuous cytoplasmic granules, and morphologically mimicked lymphoblasts. We would like to raise the recognition that acute myelomonocytic leukemia can actually present with atypical blast morphology.

In this paper, motivated by [Y. Wang and Z. Zhang, Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré C Anal. Non Linéaire, 38(2021), 1989-2004], we study the global C ∞ regularity of the two-dimensional steady compressible Prandtl equations in the case of the favorable pressure gradient. The proof is based on the maximum principle and interior a priori estimates.

Background and purpose: health tourism not only leads to the strengthening of the scientific, political, social and regional sector, it has many economic benefits. Therefore, in order to increase the economic prosperity of the country and increase the health tourism industry in Iran and to achieve a suitable position among the countries of the region, the identification of value-creating factors in the tourism industry was determined with a mixed exploratory approach. Research method: This research was conducted in the year 2022 using a mixed exploratory method. In the first stage, key indicators were identified and categorized through interviews with experts in the field of health tourism. Then, based on hierarchical analysis, priority and weights were calculated. Then, in the second stage, a questionnaire was designed, after validation by 384 of foreign national parents who had a sick child and referred to the children’s medical health tourism department between 2015 and 2022, it was completed and the results were determined based on descriptive and analytical statistics. Findings: Key indicators were obtained from the results of interviews with experts, which were classified into 4 general categories and 16 components. The results showed that the financial dimension and the growth and learning dimension were the most effective indicators in health tourism with the highest average of 3.7524 and 3.7447, respectively, and internal processes with an average of 3.5784 were the least effective indicators from the point of view of the studied community. Also, the results of Harmesir’s t-test showed that 4 financial indicators, customer, internal processes and growth and learning have a significant relationship with creating value in health tourism. Conclusion: One of the important factors in medical tourism is the factors related to medical services. The financial aspect and the cost of treatment, the level of services and credibility of medical centers and treatment staff, and the existence of laws and government support in the destination country are important and decisive issues in attracting tourists. Therefore, it is recommended to create added value in health tourism by removing challenges such as the limitations of payment methods, the existence of middlemen between health tourists and medical centers.

The current study is important in informing clinicians about the possibility of concurrent oxalate nephropathy caused by Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, high oxalate materials, and high dosage vitamin C intake for COVID-19 prevention.

A 70-year-old female presented with a long history of HIV and five years of disturbing delusions of infestation that impaired her functioning. The delusion resolved with haloperidol but was followed by depressive symptoms. The case presents the complexity of managing neuropsychiatric manifestations of elderly patient with HIV/AIDS and medical comorbidities

Background. Despite the presence of robust evidence, very sparse data are available on the efficacy of allergen immunotherapy (AIT) on selected patients in  real-life. Moreover, the obtained data does not ever fit with the general population; thus, the translation and the use of data obtained from randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in  real-practice can be questionable. Accordingly, we aimed to evaluate in  real-life efficacy and perceived satisfaction of 3-year sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) in a pediatric population with with allergic rhinitis and/or asthma. Methods. A pilot, monocenter, retrospective cohort,  real-life study was performed. 153 children who fulfilled the criteria for allergic rhinitis and asthma and mono- or poly-sensitized were enrolled. A standardized questionnaire on perceived efficacy, rescue medication, disease control, number of exacerbations, quality of life, and perceived satisfaction was administered to each patient. Results. 70 patients (49 males, 21 females; mean age, 14.3±1.9 years) were included in the final analysis. All 70 patients received SLIT for up to three years, with 100% treatment adherence throughout the study duration. Significant improvement in symptoms and quality of life was reported (p<0.01). A significant decrease in disease severity, rescue medication use, and sleep disturbances was reported (p<0.01). A significant improvement was also recorded in school performance (p<0.01).  60/70 (85.7%) of all enrolled patients declared themselves  very  satisfied, 6/70 (8.57%)  much satisfied, and 4/60 (5.71%)  satisfied.  Conclusions. We firstly showed the efficacy and perceived satisfaction of 3-year SLIT in a paediatric population, with 100% treatment adherence throughout the study duration, in  real-life.

Traditional test suites for GUI applications do not cover all the functionalities of the graphical interfaces. Testing all the user interfaces in the GUI applications is a time consuming process. Use of machine learning to automate GUI testing process has increased the quality and the productivity of the software. This approach extracts the GUI controls and their properties using the GUIWT tool. Supervised J48 decision tree algorithm is applied for classifying the statements in to defect or no-defect category. The proposed work focuses on finding the logical defects in graphical user interfaces. Training data set is constructed from the various GUI applications. The defect prediction discover the logical errors in visual applications. The prediction model is empirically evaluated using various defect prediction metrics. The results show that prediction performance of J48 decision tree is better than the other defect detection techniques. This prediction model will help testers to produce defect free software.

Salivary glands are greatly responsible for maintaining oral tissue homeostasis by the secretion of saliva. This study was designed to investigate the changes of aquaporin 1 and 4, oxidative stress and autophagy in submandibular and parotid salivary glands of diabetic rats and the possible ameliorative effect of intermittent fasting on these changes. Fifty adult male rats were divided into control and experimental groups. Experimental diabetes was induced by a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin. After diabetic induction, the experimental group was divided into two groups (diabetic without intermittent fasting and diabetic with intermittent fasting). Animals were sacrificed two and four weeks after induction of diabetes. Intermittent fasting significantly decreased malondialdehyde and significantly elevated reduced glutathione (GSH) in the submandibular and parotid glands compared to those in diabetic rats. The salivary secretions were also significantly spared histologically in diabetics with intermittent fasting groups. As well, intermittent fasting up-regulated aquaporin 1 in both glands, while aquaporin 4 was only elevated in submandibular gland. Immunolocalization and gene expression of Lc3-II was higher in diabetic salivary glands than in fasting glands. In conclusion, these findings highlight the pathological role of autophagy in diabetic sub-mandibular and parotid glands and provide potential target for therapeutic role of intermittent fasting to ameliorate submandibular and parotid glands dysfunction in type I diabetes mellitus.

The present paper is devoted to the group classification of magnetogasdynamics equations in which dependent variables in Euler coordinates depend on time and two spatial coordinates. It is assumed that the continuum is inviscid and nonthermal polytropic gas with infinite electrical conductivity. The equations are considered in mass Lagrangian coordinates. Use of Lagrangian coordinates allows reducing number of dependent variables. The analysis presented in this article gives complete group classification of the studied equations. This analysis is necessary for constructing invariant solutions and conservation laws on the base of Noether’s theorem.

Survival from pediatric cancers in low-middle-income countries is often very low compared to that of high-income countries due to multifactorial etiologies, including late presentation, delayed diagnosis, difficulty with accessing health care, drug unavailability and treatment abandonment. The St. Jude Pediatric Oncology Facility Integrated Local Evaluation Tool (PrOFILE) was developed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of individual institutions, as well as whole countries. Following the completion of data analysis from Kenyan institutions, the first PrOFILE hybrid in-person and virtual workshop was held. Multi-disciplinary stakeholders prioritized recommendations for improving care and developed smart objectives to accomplish identified goals over the following 2 years. Strengths and weaknesses of conducting a hybrid global workshop were identified.

Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) is a rare genodermatosis characterized by defective DNA repair, leading to hypersensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) sunlight and predisposes to various cutaneous and non-cutaneous malignancies. Platinum compounds are used against cutaneous cancers as concurrent chemoradiotherapy. But the XP gene polymorphism has a potential role in metabolism of these agents and their susceptibility. Here, we report a case of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma in a patient with XP who had severe toxicity to chemotherapy. We also discuss other similar cases reported in literature of this entity, to highlight this potentially lethal pharmacogenomic association.

Usually, the aniline-based late-transition-metal catalysts often require bulky steric substituents on both sides of the ortho-aryl position to achieve efficient suppression of chain transfer in ethylene polymerization. In this contribution, we demonstrated that α-diimine catalysts based on naphthylamine with only one bulky ortho-aryl substituent also demonstrated excellent capabilities to suppress the chain transfer. Firstly, a class of α-diimine nickel and palladium complexes with only one o-aryl-dibenzhydryl or o-aryl-dibenzosuberyl substituent were synthesized and characterized. Secondly, the as-prepared naphthylamine-based nickel catalysts demonstrated outstanding activities and yielded lightly branched (16-40/1000C) polyethylenes with very high molecular weights (445.8-854.3 kg/mol) in ethylene polymerization. In comparison, the corresponding palladium catalysts showed moderate activities, generating moderately branched polyethylenes with moderate molecular weights (21.6-82.0 kg/mol). Moreover, the palladium catalysts could also copolymerize ethylene and methyl acrylate (MA), albeit in low activity (level of 103 g·mol-1·h-1)，providing E-MA copolymers with low to moderate molecular weight (1.4-16.3 kg/mol) and a moderate level of incorporation ratio (2.4-7.4 mol%) and branching density. As compared with aniline-based nickel and palladium catalysts, the naphthylamine-based catalysts displayed a superior ability to suppress the chain transfer reactions and could give access to (co)polymers with orders of magnitude higher molecular weight in ethylene (co)polymerization.