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Background: Corona virus disease is caused by the enveloped, single stranded RNA virus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) becoming the deadliest disease of the century. Its global outbreak has led researchers to develop drugs or vaccines to prevent the spread of the disease. Favipiravir is an approved orally administered antiviral drug that selectively inhibits RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, used off-label to treat COVID-19. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy and safety of this drug for severe COVID-19 infection. Methods: This was an observational retrospective study, carried out at the ICU of King Saud Medical City (KSMC) from June 2020 to August 2020. Including a total of one thousand six hundred and ninety-nine patients (n=1699). Categorized into a treatment group (193 patients) who received Favipiravir along with standard care, and non-treatment group (1506 patients) who received standard care only. Results: ICU all-cause mortality was similar in both groups i.e., (Treated group 38.3% Vs Untreated group 39.4%, 95% CI of difference: -6.6% to +8.4%; p = 0.8). The subgroup analysis of survivors as compared to deceased in the treatment group showed that survivors had significantly lower age, international normalising ratio (INR), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatinine. The mean ICU length of stay (LOS) was shorter for survivors compared to deceased (11.2± 8.03 Vs 16.7±9.8 days respectively), while hospital LOS was almost similar between the two groups. Advanced age (OR 1.03 [95% CI: 1.01--1.06]; p=0.004), higher INR and BUN were significantly associated with increased odds of mortality. Comparison of lab investigations at day 1 and day 10 in the treatment group (regardless of outcome) showed that there was a significant increase in Alanine transaminase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALK), and Bilirubin, while an insignificant trend of increase in Aspartate transaminase (AST) and creatinine was recorded. Conclusion: In this study, Favipiravir showed better therapeutic responses in patients with severe COVID-19 infection, in terms of average duration of stay in the intensive care unit and was well tolerated in the younger age, but showed no mortality benefit. However, elevated levels of inflammatory markers, including increased ALT, AST, BUN, bilirubin, and creatinine, needs to be carefully examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The infection of the Urinary tract (UTI) represents the most health problem in the world affecting millions of people every year. E. coli is the most bacterium that causes urinary tract infections in humans. E. coli can because transitory damage of DNA followed by incomplete DNA repair during cell division, so this finally leading to chromosome deflections. Samples of urines were gained from 58 patients with urinary tract infection (UTI) and diagnosed as infection with E. coli, also 35 control samples (noninfected patients). The samples undergrow to micronucleus assay in renal epithelial cells. Frequencies of cells with micronucleated (MN), binucleated (BN) Condensed chromatin (CC), karyorrhexis (KR), pyknosis (PN), karyolysis cells (KL) were computed in all groups (patients and controls) as parameters for the evaluation of the stability of the genome. So, the aim of this study to investigate the possibility of usage of renal epithelial cells from the urinary tract to identifying the genotoxicity and DNA damage effects of UTI patients. The present study showed that the micronucleus (MN) and karyorrhexis (KR) were higher percentages in males more than females in patients with UTI compared with healthy controls as 4.22%, 3.91%, respectively while in females as 3.86%, 2.97%, respectively. In micronucleus obtain p-value as (p>0,05). In our study observed that the E. coli associated with urinary tract infection can induce DNA damage for epithelial cells. So can be suggested if the patients administrated antibiotics in early infection, the level of DNA damage can be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV- 2) or Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has been involved in cases of moderate to severe respiratory system diseases. The World Health Organization “WHO” has reported that infections with COVID-19 are a global pandemic. Aim of our study was designed to study the relationship of some biochemical parameters with COVID-19 infection in Mosul City, Iraq. A cross-sectional study in a cohort of 240 (116 males and 124 females) individuals with positively COVID-19 and 112 healthy controls, which paid a visit Al-Salam Teaching hospital in Mosul city, Iraq from the date of 15th January to 15th March 2021. Their ages were ranging from 12- 61 years. All patients have already been diagnosed with COVID-19 and they have symptoms and signs. Whole blood samples were taken from each of the patients and healthy controls to analyze for; serum ferritin, GOT, GPT, LDH and D-dimer. Our study revealed that the majority of the COVID-19 patients showed increased levels of serum ferritin, LDH and D-dimer, while having a reverse effect with serum GOT and GPT that showed normal value in patients with COVID-19 compared to healthy controls. Infection with COVID-19 may be increase the levels of serum ferritin, LHD and D-dimer, and monitoring of these biochemical parameters is necessary especially in patients with severe illness of COVID-19 disease to help in the improvement of disease outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

They have conducted to test the efficiency of fat pomegranate extract supported by Silver nanoparticle (AgNp) to inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus aureus in the study, isolated from teeth decay from March to July 2020. Thirty isolates were purified and identified according to morphological, biochemical, Physiological tests and confirmed by the API32 ID Staph system. All the bacterial was isolates indicated that Impanel is highly effective against Staph. aureus and all were resistant to Furazolidone and their ability to produce the Biofilms at a rate of (100%). Still, the use of pomegranate fat extract showed a different inhibition, the highest at a concentration of (800 mg/ml) with an inhibition zone of (18) mm, but the lowest level of (100, mg / ml) with the inhibitory zone (9)mm. AgNp alone at a concentration of (1%, 2% 3% and 4%) led to highest bacterial inhibition at a concentration of (4%) with a diameter zone of inhibition (12-18) mm The effectiveness of the extract of pomegranate-fortified with AgNp increasing the inhibition of bacterial growth with different concentrations, the highest rate of inhibition at (40%) and the average inhibition diameter was (25) mm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the inefficient use of the licensed frequency spectrum, a significant portion of the spectrum is left unutilized. This has led to the emerging of the Cognitive Radio (CR) as new technology that can access the white spaces in the licensed spectrum for improved spectrum utilization efficiency. In this paper, we present a scheme for detecting cyclostationary feature embedded in multicarrier signals like Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Filter Bank Multicarrier (FBMC). The cyclostationary feature is generated due to the presence of pilot signals at certain subcarriers commonly used for channel estimation and frequency offset estimation. Therefore, no especial restrictions on the Primary User (PU) signal are imposed in order to generate the desired Cyclostationary Signature (CS). Both cases of scattered pilots and continuous pilots are considered. The algorithm is based on observing a periodic pattern in the cyclic autocorrelation function created by the pilot subcarriers, this periodic pattern is considered the cyclic signature and it can be extracted without prior knowledge of the signal parameters. The performance is evaluated under different impairments conditions like timing offset, frequency offset and multipath channel in addition to AWGN. Results show that FBMC has about 2-3dB signal-to-noise ration advantage over OFDM in continuous pilots mode and both modulations perform comparably in scattered pilots mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a silent self-stabilizing distributed algorithm computing a maximal |$\ p$| -star decomposition of the underlying communication network. Under the unfair distributed scheduler, the most general scheduler model, the algorithm converges in at most |$12\Delta m + \mathcal{O}(m+n)$| moves, where |$m$| is the number of edges, |$n$| is the number of nodes and |$\Delta $| is the maximum node degree. Regarding the time complexity, we obtain the following results: our algorithm outperforms the previously known best algorithm by a factor of |$\Delta $| with respect to the move complexity. While the round complexity for the previous algorithm was unknown, we show a |$5\big \lfloor \frac{n}{p+1} \big \rfloor +5$| bound for our algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]