Assessment of Some Biochemical Oxidative Stress Markers in Male Smokers with Chronic Periodontitis

The present study aims to assess and compare the biochemical oxidative stress markers in male smokers and non-smokers with chronic periodontitis. One hundred thirty-four male chronic periodontitis patients and 64 apparently healthy male volunteers were recruited for the study. The periodontal status was evaluated by measuring gingival index, plaque index, papillary bleeding index and clinical attachment loss using UNC-15 probe. The biochemical markers estimated were total antioxidant capacity, RBC-superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, vitamin C, malondialdehyde and C-reactive protein. The obtained results indicate higher oxidative stress in chronic periodontitis. Smokers with chronic periodontitis show significantly higher periodontal clinical parameters and relatively higher systemic oxidative stress. Vitamin C estimation may be an important biochemical parameter in conjunction with clinical parameters for diagnosis of chronic periodontitis in smokers.     

The triad-iodine deficiency,hyperlipidaemia, high coronary risk— in a ‘maternal-neonate’ population of rural Africa

In order to see the pattern of changes in differential serum lipid and lipoprotein fractions as a risk marker of coronary complication in paired ‘maternal—neonate’ blood samples in an iodine deficient zone, 26 pregnant women and their corresponding new born infants at term delivery from the iodine deficient Bassa region of Plateau state, Nigeria were assessed and the results were compared with those seen in a similar 44 group of women and their newborns assessed in non lodine deficient region of Jos. The serum thyroid function and lipid and lipoprotein profiles were determined by ‘ELISA’ and ‘enzymatic’ methods respectively. Urinary iodide excretion level was also measured in 14 pregnant women in Bassa, 23 pregnant women in Jos and 16 non pregnant control from Jos. Results indicate that the pregnant women assessed in Bassa were iodine deficient (P<0.01) and their thyroid status was strikingly reduced as reflected by a drop in serum level of T4/TBG ratio (P<0.01) and a rise in TSH (P<0.005) in comparison to that seen in Jos. There was marked hypertriglyceridaemia and total hypercholesterolaemia (P<0.005), with differential significant rise in LDL cholestotol fraction (P<0.005) in the women assessed in Bassa as compared to Jos. The HDL cholesterol however dropped less significantly in the group (P<0.05) with a concurrent marked rise (P<0.001) in the serum ratio of LDL cholesterol/HDL cholesterol, total cholesterol/HDL cholesterol and triglycerides/HDL cholesterol in the lodine deficient group. A similar pattern of changes were seen in the corresponding neonates in the Bassa group as compared to Jos group. It is concluded that the pregnant women and their newborn offsprings living in a longstanding environmental iodine deficiency run a higher risk of developing coronary complications than those living in non endemic region. It is striking that such newborns surrounded by a continued state of lodine deficient may at a later adult-period of life develop marked risk of coronary complication and other features of hyperlipidaemias associated with varying thyroid insufficiency and accompanied iodine deficiency disorders. Prophylaxis measures as intervention has been highlighted.     

How to repair the Hill cipher

INTRODUCTION Owing to the advance in network technology, information security is an increasingly important problem. Popular application of multimedia tech- nology and increasingly transmission ability of net- work gradually leads us to acquire information di- rectly and clearly through images. Hence, data secu- rity has become a critical and imperative issue. Hill cipher is a block cipher that has several advantages such as disguising letter frequencies of the plaintext, its simplicity be…     

Gender and higher education in different national spaces: Female Palestinian students attending Israeli and Jordanian universities

This study examines the higher education experience among Palestinian Arab females in two national spaces and seeks to determine whether studying at an Arab institution of higher learning in a nearby Arab country can alleviate the emotional and economic difficulties that affect Palestinian women at Israeli universities. What can institutions of higher learning in Israel learn or derive from the proposed model to relieve the alienation and exclusion that their female Palestinian students experience? The study will compare two geographically distinct groups of women students. The first is a group of Palestinian women who attend university in Jordan, while the second consists of Palestinian women of Bedouin origin from southern Israel who study in the Jewish Israeli cultural space. The study seeks to shed light on the experience of Muslim students in Western and Muslim universities.     

Reduction of the non-uniform illumination using nonlocal variational models for document image analysis

In this paper, we investigate two new reflectance and illumination decomposition models based on a nonlocal partial differential equation (PDE) applied to text images. Taking into consideration the higher regularity level of the illumination compared to the reflectance, we propose a nonlocal PDE which deals with repetitive structures and textures that characterize the text image much better compared to the classical local PDEs. The aim of this approach is to use the repetitive features of the reflectance to efficiently extract it from the non-uniform illumination. This idea is motivated by extending the range of application of the nonlocal operators to such a problem. Numerical experiments on both grayscale and color text images show the performance and strength of the proposed nonlocal PDE.     

Attitudes and Cultural Background and Their Relationship to English in a Multicultural Social Context: the case of male and female Arab immigrants in Canada [1]

This study investigated the relationship between attitudes and cultural background of 52 eighth‐grade Arab students in Canada and their reading comprehension of texts with English and Arabic content. An attitudes questionnaire, semi‐structured interviews and stories with cultural content in Arabic and English were used. Contrary to predictions made by schema theory, students scored higher whenever they read texts in English, their second language, regardless of cultural content. The multicultural reality of Canada seems to have provided students from different ethnic background with wide‐ranging cultural knowledge to cope successfully with unfamiliar cultural stories presented to them in the English language. Furthermore, gender differences were found among the Canadian Arab students with regard to the type of attitudes that motivated them to study English: male students showed predominantly instrumental attitudes, while females showed predominantly integrative attitudes towards learning English and becoming integrated into Canadian society. It is concluded that sociopsychological models of second‐language (L2) learning should be expanded to take into consideration gender differences and the gains that females coming from conservative societies start to achieve by learning the language of the host country and by integrating into its society.

     

Parent-Infant Rough Play: Its Cultural Specificity

The salience of father-infant rough play in some industrialized and nonindustrialized countries around the world was reviewed, and data were presented on the physical play interactions of 34Indianmothers and fathers with their year-old infants in the home. Our review of the parent-infant physical play literature failed to show that fathers had a uniformly greater propensity to engage in vigorous rough activity with infants than mothers did. The data from the observational study suggest that Indian parents are not vigorous play partners to infants. Mothers were more likely to engage in object-mediated play than were fathers. In total, the data reviewed do not support the contention that rough play is a major activity between fathers and infants across cultures. Rather, the data from parent-infant play in the nonindustrialized countries suggest that rough play may be culture specific, casting doubts about its biological underpinnings.     

A comparative study of conventional and supercritical fluid extraction methods for the recovery of secondary metabolites from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Syzygium campanulatum</Emphasis> Korth

Syzygium campanulatum Korth is a plant, which is a rich source of secondary metabolites (especially flavanones, chalcone, and triterpenoids). In our present study, three conventional solvent extraction (CSE) techniques and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) techniques were performed to achieve a maximum recovery of two flavanones, chalcone, and two triterpenoids from S. campanulatum leaves. Furthermore, a Box-Behnken design was constructed for the SFE technique using pressure, temperature, and particle size as independent variables, and yields of crude extract, individual and total secondary metabolites as the dependent variables. In the CSE procedure, twenty extracts were produced using ten different solvents and three techniques (maceration, soxhletion, and reflux). An enriched extract of five secondary metabolites was collected using n-hexane:methanol (1:1) soxhletion. Using food-grade ethanol as a modifier, the SFE methods produced a higher recovery (25.5%?84.9%) of selected secondary metabolites as compared to the CSE techniques (0.92%?66.00%).