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Low-cost lightweight geopolymer mortars based on water-cooled slag, fly ash, and silica sand flour were prepared as a structural and thermally insulating material. The effect of chemical foaming agents such as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and sodium perborate tetrahydrate (NaBO3·4H2O) on thermal conductivity, bulk density, water absorption, porosity, and compressive strength was studied. FTIR, XRD, XRF, and SEM were used to investigate the raw materials and selected samples of prepared lightweight geopolymers. The prepared lightweight geopolymers were given a compressive strength of 1.05 to 17 MPa. The compressive strength, bulk density, and thermal conductivity values decrease with increasing foaming agent content due to the decomposition of its chemical structure and releasing of oxygen bubbles. The results show that hydrogen peroxide mixes have better performance in the physio-chemical and thermal properties than sodium perborate mixes to achieve low thermal conductivity (0.21–0.24 W/mK) with compressive strength values (1.18–3.45 MPa) for MS-H1 and MS-H2 mixes, respectively. According to the results of bulk density (454–800 kg/m3), MS-H1, MS-H2, MS-B3, and MS-B4 mixes can be considered ultra-lightweight. Using silica sand flour in powder form improves the physicochemical and thermal properties of the lightweight geopolymer and decreases the production cost of the lightweight geopolymers.

The BED-3 and BED-15 oil fields are situated in the northwestern portion of the Abu-Gharadig sedimentary basin. The Basin is an E–W trending intracratonic rift basin and ranges in age between the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous. Significant extension events, followed by subsidence, took place throughout the Middle Jurassic and continued to the Cretaceous. The relative movement of Africa toward Laurasia in the Jurassic changed from eastward to westward between the Early Cretaceous and the Santonian. Therefore, a compressive force due to the change in direction affected the African plate and gave rise to the reversal of basins (such as the Abu-Gharadig sedimentary basin). Inverted anticlines are important structural traps for hydrocarbons that were formed by the compressional forces acting on the Abu-Gharadig sedimentary basin. This study primarily focuses on understanding the BED-3 and BED-15 fileds' structural style, in addition to the subsurface structure that has participated in the petroleum accumulation in the Abu-Roash C Member (Abu-Roash Formation) in the oil fields, in order to maximize oil recovery in these two fields through new wells. The aim of this study was achieved based on information from 30 two-dimensional seismic profiles integrated with well log data from nine boreholes. The Abu-Roash C reservoir represented by two horizons, in addition to minor and major faults, are recognized and marked. Structural trend in the study area ranges from ESE–WNW to NW–SE, and structures consist of folds and faults, forming horsts, grabens, and half-grabens, all of which are favorable for hydrocarbon accumulation. The petrophysical analysis performed on the BED3-8 well shows approximately 87.4% hydrocarbon saturation within the reservoir rock, while the hydrocarbon saturation of the available wells in BED-15 is calculated to vary between 56.1 and 78.8%. Hence, this study suggests that BED-3 and BED-15 oilfields have an excellent chance of producing hydrocarbons.

This paper presents a spectral collocation technique to solve fractional stochastic Volterra integro-differential equations (FSV-IDEs). The algorithm is based on shifted fractional order Legendre orthogonal functions generated by Legendre polynomials. The shifted fractional order Legendre–Gauss–Radau collocation (SFL-GR-C) method is developed for approximating the FSV-IDEs, with the objective of obtaining a system of algebraic equations. For computational purposes, the Brownian motion function W(x) is discretized by Lagrange interpolation, while the integral terms are interpolated by Legendre–Gauss–Lobatto quadrature. Numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and applicability of the proposed technique, even when dealing with non-smooth solutions.

The current study was prepared to assess the underlying mechanism of diclofenac (Diclo)-stimulated renal oxidative damage (50 mg/kg/day for two consecutive days I.P) and antioxidative, and antiapoptotic effects of Thymoquinone (20 mg/kg/day for 21 days P.O). Exposure of rats to Diclo significantly increased serum urea and creatinine, decreased GSH, catalase, and total antioxidant capacity with a concomitant increase of lipid peroxidation. Diclo significantly decreased renal mitochondrial viability %, increased DNA fragmentation %, caspase 3 activity, and cytochrome C (Cyt C) concentration. Molecular investigations revealed that Diclo administration caused a significant reduction of mitofusin-2 (Mfn2) and increase of microRNA-34a (miR-34a) mRNA expressions with a concomitant decrease of Nrf2 and HO-1 mRNA expressions/protein levels and increase of NF-κB mRNA expressions. Thymoquinone restored renal oxidative/antioxidant redox. Thymoquinone significantly increased the renal mitochondrial viability % and reduced renal DNA fragmentation %, caspase 3 activity, and Cyt C. Moreover, thymoquinone modulated renal Mfn2 and miR-34a as compared to Diclo group. Our findings were confirmed by immunohistochemical assays for detecting the iNOS and NOX4 in renal tissue as well as histopathological investigations. Obtained results demonstrated that thymoquinone possess a potential antioxidant, antiapoptotic defense and exhibited a strong nephroprotective activity against Diclo-induced toxicity.

Online hate is a growing concern on many social media platforms, making them unwelcoming and unsafe. To combat this, technology companies are increasingly developing techniques to automatically identify and sanction hateful users. However, accurate detection of such users remains a challenge due to the contextual nature of speech, whose meaning depends on the social setting in which it is used. This contextual nature of speech has also led to minoritized users, especially African–Americans, to be unfairly detected as ‘hateful’ by the very algorithms designed to protect them. To resolve this problem of inaccurate and unfair hate detection, research has focused on developing machine learning (ML) systems that better understand textual context. Incorporating social networks of hateful users has not received as much attention, despite social science research suggesting it provides rich contextual information. We present a system for more accurately and fairly detecting hateful users by incorporating social network information through geometric deep learning. Geometric deep learning is a ML technique that dynamically learns information-rich network representations. We make two main contributions: first, we demonstrate that adding network information with geometric deep learning produces a more accurate classifier compared with other techniques that either exclude network information entirely or incorporate it through manual feature engineering. Our best performing model achieves an AUC score of 90.8% on a previously released hateful user dataset. Second, we show that such information also leads to fairer outcomes: using the ‘predictive equality’ fairness criteria, we compare the false positive rates of our geometric learning algorithm to other ML techniques and find that our best-performing classifier has no false positives among a subset of African–American users. A neural network without network information has the largest number of false positives at 26, while a neural network incorporating manual network features has 13 false positives among African–American users. The system we present highlights the importance of effectively incorporating social network features in automated hateful user detection, raising new opportunities to improve how online hate is tackled.

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is prevalent and associated with a substantial psychosocial burden and mortality. There are few prior studies of interventions for TRD in adolescents. This was the largest study to date examining the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of 10-Hz transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for adolescents with TRD. Adolescents with TRD (aged 12–21 years) were enrolled in a randomized, sham-controlled trial of TMS across 13 sites. Treatment resistance was defined as an antidepressant treatment record level of 1 to 4 in a current episode of depression. Intention-to-treat patients (n = 103) included those randomly assigned to active NeuroStar TMS monotherapy (n = 48) or sham TMS (n = 55) for 30 daily treatments over 6 weeks. The primary outcome measure was change in the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D-24) score. After 6 weeks of blinded treatment, improvement in the least-squares mean (SE) HAM-D-24 scores were similar between the active (−11.1 [2.03]) and sham groups (−10.6 [2.00]; P = 0.8; difference [95% CI], − 0.5 [−4.2 to 3.3]). Response rates were 41.7% in the active group and 36.4% in the sham group (P = 0.6). Remission rates were 29.2% in the active group and 29.0% in the sham group (P = 0.95). There were no new tolerability or safety signals in adolescents. Although TMS treatment produced a clinically meaningful change in depressive symptom severity, this did not differ from sham treatment. Future studies should focus on strategies to reduce the placebo response and examine the optimal dosing of TMS for adolescents with TRD.

Real-time, two (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound (US) has been investigated as a potential alternative to fluoroscopy imaging in various surgical and non-surgical orthopedic procedures. However, low signal to noise ratio, imaging artifacts and bone surfaces appearing several millimeters (mm) in thickness have hindered the wide spread adaptation of this safe imaging modality. Limited field of view and manual data collection cause additional problems during US-based orthopedic procedures. In order to overcome these limitations various bone segmentation and registration methods have been developed. Acoustic bone shadow is an important image artifact used to identify the presence of bone boundaries in the collected US data. Information about bone shadow region can be used (1) to guide the orthopedic surgeon or clinician to a standardized diagnostic viewing plane with minimal artifacts, (2) as a prior feature to improve bone segmentation and registration. In this work, we propose a computational method, based on a novel generative adversarial network (GAN) architecture, to segment bone shadow images from in vivo US scans in real-time. We also show how these segmented shadow images can be incorporated, as a proxy, to a multi-feature guided convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture for real-time and accurate bone surface segmentation. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation studies are performed on 1235 scans collected from 27 subjects using two different US machines. Finally, we provide qualitative and quantitative comparison results against state-of-the-art GANs. We have obtained mean dice coefficient (± standard deviation) of $$93\%$$ ( $$\pm \,0.02 $$ ) for bone shadow segmentation, showing that the method is in close range with manual expert annotation. Statistical significant improvements against state-of-the-art GAN methods (paired t-test $$p

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are essential molecular transducers of extracellular stimuli into intracellular responses. MAPKs are crucial in mediating actions of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS), in particular, functions mediated by Angiotensin (Ang) II, the main biological peptide produced by this system. We have shown that another biologically active heptapeptide Ang III also induces MAPKs in the central nervous system. The ability of Ang III to induce MAPKs in the periphery is unknown and was the focus of this study. We determined whether Ang III induced p38 MAPK in vascular smooth cells (VSMCs) isolated from Wistar and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) and compared these actions to those of Ang II. Further, the role of this MAPK in Ang III-mediated VSMC proliferation was also determined. Both Ang peptides similarly induced p38 MAPK phosphorylation in VSMCs of Wistar VSMCs in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. SHR VSMCs were less sensitive to Ang III, which caused less of an effect on p38 MAPK phosphorylation in these cells. The Ang III effect was specific and occurred by activation of the Ang type 1 (AT1) receptor. The p38 MAPK pathway was also involved in Ang III-induced VSMC growth, as measured by DNA synthesis. These findings suggest that the p38 MAPK signaling pathway is an important cascade in regulating the actions of Ang III in VSMCs. Most importantly, dysregulation of Ang III actions in these cells are apparent and may contribute to pathological conditions associated with dysfunctions in VSMCS.

Background The era of diagnosing pulmonary arterial hypertension is rapidly evolving. There are changes in the definition, screening, diagnostic modalities, and disease staging. Aim This study aims to assess pulmonary hypertension using computed tomography (CT) and echocardiography. Design This is a cross-sectional study. Participants and methods This study included 30 cases diagnosed with pulmonary artery hypertension according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All patients were subjected to a careful assessment of history, a skillful clinical examination, and investigations: (a) complete blood picture, liver kidney functions, bleeding profile, and arterial blood gases. (b) Spirometry. (c) Echocardiogram. (d) CT chest. Results The correlation between the ratio of main pulmonary artery and aorta to other study parameters was statistically significant. There was a negative statistically significant correlation between the mP/Ao ratio and oxygen saturation (P=0.001); however, we found a positive significant correlation between the mP/Ao ratio and ejection fraction (P=0.006), systolic pulmonary artery pressure (P0.05), and a nonsignificant correlation was also found between systolic pulmonary artery pressure and duration of dyspnea (P>0.05). Conclusion This study has shown that combining CT and echocardiography in the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension can be a reliable technique to measure mean pulmonary artery pressure than if any of both tests done separately.

In this paper, a new class of distributions called the odd log-logistic Lindley-G family is proposed. Several of its statistical and reliability properties are studied in-detail. One members of the proposed family can have symmetrical, right-skewed, leftt-skewed and reversed-J shaped densities, and decreasing, increasing, bathtub, unimodal and reversed-J shaped hazard rates. The model parameters are estimated using the maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods. Monte-Carlo simulation study is carried out to examine the bias and mean square error of maximum likelihood and Bayesian estimators. Finally, four real data sets are analyzed to show the flexibility of the new family.

In this research, a hybrid constrained permutation algorithm and genetic algorithm approach is proposed to solve the process planning problem and to facilitate the optimisation process. In this approach, the process planning problem is represented as a graph in which operations are clustered corresponding to their machine, tool, and tool access direction similarities. A constrained permutation algorithm (CPA) developed to generate a set of optimised feasible operations sequences based on the principles of minimising the number of setup changes and the number of tool changes. Due to its strong capability in global search through multiple optima, genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search for an optimal or near optimal process plan, in which the population is initialised according to the operations sequences generated by CPA. Furthermore, to prevent premature convergence to local optima, a mixed crossover operator is designed and equipped into GA. Four comparative case studies are carried out to evidence the feasibility and robustness of the proposed CPAGA approach against GA, simulated annealing, tabu search, ant colony optimisation, and particle swarm optimisation based approaches reported in the literature, and the results are promising.

Background Cough hypersensitivity is a major characteristic feature associated with several types of cough, including chronic cough, but its underlying mechanisms remain to be fully understood. Inflammatory mediators, such as prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), have been implicated in both peripheral induction and sensitization of the cough reflex. In this study, using a conscious guinea pig model of cough, we investigated whether PGE2 can sensitize the cough reflex via central actions and, if so, via which mechanisms. Methods All drugs were administered by intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) route and whole-body plethysmograph set-up was used for both induction, using aerosolized citric acid (0.2 M), and recording of cough. Immunohistochemistry was performed to confirm the expression of NaV 1.8 channels in the nucleus tractus solitarius (nTS). Results We show that both PGE2 and the non-selective EP1/EP3 agonist, sulprostone, dose-dependently enhanced the citric acid-induced cough (P ≤ 0.001, P ≤ 0.01, respectively). Pretreatment with the EP1 antagonist, ONO-8130, did not affect the sulprostone-induced cough sensitization, whilst the EP3 antagonist, L-798,106, dose-dependently inhibited this effect (P ≤ 0.05). Furthermore, treatment with either the EP2 agonist, butaprost or the EP4 agonist, L-902,688, had no effect on cough sensitization. Additionally, pretreatment with either the TRPV1 antagonist, JNJ-17203212 or the TRPA1 antagonist, HC-030031, alone or in combination, nor with the NaV 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.6 and 1.7 channel blocker, tetrodotoxin, had any effect on the cough. In contrast, pretreatment with the NaV 1.8 antagonist, A-803467, dose-dependently inhibited this effect (P ≤ 0.05). Furthermore, NaV 1.8 channels were shown to be expressed in the nTS. Conclusion Collectively, our findings show that PGE2 sensitizes the cough reflex centrally via EP3 receptor-dependent activation of NaV 1.8 but independently of TRPV1,TRPA1 and TTX-sensitive sodium channel activation. These results indicate that PGE2 plays an important role in central sensitization of the cough reflex and suggest that central EP3 receptors and/or NaVv 1.8 channels may represent novel antitussive molecular targets. Graphical Abstract

A new family of continuous distributions which ensure model flexiblity, is introduced based on the Frechet distribution and Topp Leone-G family. Two special sub-models of the new family are discussed. We provide some distributional properties of this family in the general setting such as the series expansions of density, moments, generating function, stress strength model, Renyi and Shannon entropies, probability weighted moments and order statistics. Certain characterizations of the proposed family are presented. The maximum likelihood estimates and the observed information matrix are obtained for the model parameters. We assess the performance of the maximum likelihood estimators by means of a graphical simulation study. The potentiality of the new class is shown via two applications to real data sets.