Search

Background: Inflammation is a recognized factor in cancer progression and resistance to treatment. Several studies correlated inflammation-related peripheral blood indices (PBI) to disease progression and poor survival in various cancers and different populations. Nonetheless, inflammation is affected by the distinctive characteristics and environmental exposure of each population. There is no prior study addressing the association of pre-treatment inflammatory markers with outcomes in patients with BC from Saudi Arabia. In this study, we evaluated post-treatment response of LABC in relation to inflammation-related PBI. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the data of female patients with LABC undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT). Demographics, BMI, clinicopathologic characteristics and stage of the tumor, follow-up status and response to treatment were collected. Outcomes were evaluated in relation to pre-treatment PBI that were grouped based on the local laboratory cutoff values. Response rate (RR) and type was assessed according to post-NACT radiologic evaluation of the breast and subcategorized into complete response (CR), partial response (PR), stable disease (SD) and progressive disease (PD). Results: A total of 172 female patients with BC met the eligibility criteria from January 2014 to December 2019. The mean age at diagnosis was 53±11, and BMI was 31±6. Left BC accounted for 55% and the majority was invasive ductal carcinoma in 85.5%, moderately differentiated in 51%, stage III (AJCC 8th edition) in 73%, and HR-positive tumor in 79%. HER2-positive BC was reported in 32% and TNBC in 10%. Radiologic (CR) accounted for the majority of RR (71.5%). A higher percentage of patients with normal red cell distribution width (RDW) and low neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) had radiologic CR with a significant P-value of (0.003) and (0.014), respectively (Table 1). Conclusion: Among several peripheral blood indices, only RDW and NLR significantly influenced post-treatment response in this cohort. They can be explored further to potentially predict response after systemic therapy in patients with LABC. The great advantage of these biomarkers stems from their availability and affordability in routine clinical practice. Table 1.Post-treatment response type & distribution according to inflammation-related peripheral blood indicesVariablesCR(N=123)PR(N=20)SD(N=23)PD(N=6)P valueN=172N(%)N(%)N(%)N(%)NLR High >322(81%)2(7%)0(0%)3(11%)0.014Low ≤3101(70%)18(12%)23(15%)3(2%)RDW High >14.122(92%)2(8%)0(0%)0(0%)0.003Normal 11-14.1100(69%)18(12%)23(16%)5(3%)Low Citation Format: Atlal Abusanad, Abdullah M Alghamdi, Ahmed M Saggaf, Tala Gazzaz, Rival Brika. The influence of pre-treatment peripheral blood inflammatory markers on post-treatment response in patients with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) from Saudi Arabia [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P1-08-29.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, all the courses at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU) were delivered fully online, including field-training courses. Since there was no previous experience in offering field-training courses in a distance format, the current study aims to identify factors that could impact students’ behavioral intention to accept the e-training approach in teaching field training courses at IAU. In order to gather the data, the researchers designed a questionnaire based on the UTAUT model and they ensured the face, content, and construct validity of the questionnaire by sending it to five experts in the relevant field and by using exploratory factor analysis. Also, all the questionnaire’s items were reliable since the Cronbach’s alpha values were above 0.77 for all the items. A total of 397 participants provided valid responses. The result of this study indicated that Effort Expectancy (EE), Facilitating Condition (FC), Performance Expectancy (PE), and Social Influence (SI), respectively were the primary predictors for students’ intention to use e-training. These factors explained 32.1% of the variance in students’ behavioral intentions. As far as students’ gender is concerned, there were significant differences between students’ PE, FC, and SI. Based on these results, policymakers at IAU will have a clear image of the most essential factors that colleges should target to increase students’ acceptance of e-training.

Videos are considered the new era communication language between internet users due to the explosion of smart-phones usage and increase in internet bandwidth and storage space. This has fueled the need to develop robust video analysis techniques. Specifically, video classification presents a unique task for field researchers, as it has numerous critical applications, such as video indexing, searching, annotation and surveillance. Videos inherently embody static and dynamic information that is encoded in frames. The task is further prioritized due to the gigantic amounts of available videos in the digital world, which requires a robust way to organize these videos. Throughout literature, researchers have generally adopted three main techniques to classify videos, i.e., direct features matching, machine learning-based methods, and deep learning-based methods. Each of these methods is suitable for a specific application type. This paper is designed to assess which of the three common working approaches are better for video classification. Furthermore, the paper aims to examine whether and how these methods affect/improve video classification performance and key factors to constructing a robust video classification system. This novel research paper covers an important research gap by introducing a rigorous comparative analysis of the three methods highlighting their advantages and disadvantages and guiding field researchers. A comprehensive analysis brings the paper findings together using a benchmark group of challenging large-scale video datasets (~29k videos). This would provide field researchers with the necessary information to choose the best method for their video classification research work.

Contact dermatitis (CD) is usually the result of cumulative exposure to sensitive irritants and accounts for 80% of all contact dermatitis cases. ICD can coexist with atopic dermatitis (AD) and allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). Patients with Alzheimer's disease and ACD may also have a lower infection threshold for ICD. Therefore, it must stand out from EA and CAD lesions. People with ICD have experienced uncontrolled tingling and burning sensations. Itching is typically manifested in patients with AD and ACD. Compared with AD and ACD, ICD lesions are usually well described. The prognosis of ICD is based on the exclusion method. Monitor patients to rule out type 1 and type 4 hypersensitivity reactions. A negative result indicates the prognosis of ICD. Management includes identifying and avoiding irritants through the normal use of emollients. Although ICD is older, it is not uncommon in some majors, and genetics and environment play a vital role in its development.

Pediatric convulsive seizure is common and represents a source of major concern and anxiety for the parents. Seizures can have a broad spectrum of etiologies in children, including metabolic, traumatic, developmental, and infectious causes. Depending on the clinical presentation, laboratory testing and neuroimaging may be indicated in the workup of the first unprovoked afebrile seizure. We present a case of a six-year-old boy who was brought to the emergency department by his mother after an episode of convulsion. She reported that he had jerky repetitive movements of all extremities that lasted around two minutes with spontaneous termination. The child did not have a febrile illness. The mother reported no history of similar episodes. Upon examination, the child appeared alert and conscious. No dysmorphic features were evident. Initial laboratory investigations were within the normal limits. The child underwent magnetic resonance imaging for the brain, which demonstrated a large well-defined extra-axial cystic lesion occupying most of the left hemisphere that is connected to the ventricular system. The lesion had no grey-matter lining and it strictly followed the cerebrospinal fluid in all sequences. Such finding represented the diagnosis of a giant left porencephalic cyst. Porencephaly is an extremely rare neurological anomaly that may present with pediatric seizures. Magnetic resonance imaging is the gold standard modality for the diagnosis of porencephaly. The case demonstrated that porencephaly can have a massive size in a patient with normal psychoneurological development.

Human gender recognition is an essential demographic tool. This is reflected in forensic science, surveillance systems and targeted marketing applications. This research was always driven using standard face images and hand-crafted features. Such way has achieved good results, however, the reliability of the facial images had a great effect on the robustness of extracted features, where any small change in the query facial image could change the results. Nevertheless, the performance of current techniques in unconstrained environments is still inefficient, especially when contrasted against recent breakthroughs in different computer vision research. This paper introduces a novel technique for human gender recognition from non-standard selfie images using deep learning approaches. Selfie photos are uncontrolled partial or full-frontal body images that are usually taken by people themselves in real-life environment. As far as we know this is the first paper of its kind to identify gender from selfie photos, using deep learning approach. The experimental results on the selfie dataset emphasizes the proposed technique effectiveness in recognizing gender from such images with 89% accuracy. The performance is further consolidated by testing on numerous benchmark datasets that are widely used in the field, namely: Adience, LFW, FERET, NIVE, Caltech WebFaces andCAS-PEAL-R1.

The shortest path problem has many different versions. In this manuscript, we proposed a muti-constrained optimization method to find the shortest path in a computer network. In general, a genetic algorithm is one of the common heuristic algorithms. In this paper, we employed the genetic algorithm to find the solution of the shortest path multi-constrained problem. The proposed algorithm finds the best route for network packets with minimum total cost, delay, and hop count constrained with limited bandwidth. The new algorithm was implemented on four different capacity networks with random network parameters, the results showed that the shortest path under constraints can be found in a reasonable time. The experimental results showed that the algorithm always found the shortest path with minimal constraints.

We have synthesized nineteen (1–19) bisindolylmethane sulfonamide analogs, characterized by different spectroscopic techniques such as 1HNMR and EI-MS and tested for α-amylase inhibitory potential. All compounds showed excellent to moderate degree of α-amylase inhibitory potential with IC50 values ranging between 1.192 ± 0.51 to 3.057 ± 0.18 μM as equated with standard acarbose (IC50 values 0.83 ± 0.36 μM). Among the series, six analogs such as 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 14 showed potent α-amylase inhibition with IC50 values 1.747 ± 0.2, 1.208 ± 0.15, 1.192 ± 0.51, 1.858 ± 0.08, 1.358 ± 0.27 and 1.527 ± 0.17 μM, respectively, as equated with standard acarbose. The structure-activity relationship based upon different substituents on phenyl part. Molecular docking studies performed to recognize the binding interaction of the most active compounds.

Most retailers are integrating their practices with modern technologies to enhance the effectiveness of their operations. The adoption of technology aims to enable businesses to accurately meet customer needs and expectations. This study focused on examining the role of mobile application (app) acceptance in shaping customer electronic experience. A mixed method was adopted, in which qualitative data were collected using interviews, and quantitative data were gathered using the questionnaires. The results indicate that mobile app acceptance contributes to a positive customer experience while purchasing products and services from online retailers. Mobile apps are associated with benefits, such as convenience, ease of use, and the ability to access various products and services. With the rapid development in technology, e-commerce retailers should leverage such innovations to meet customer needs.

International audience; In this study, an efficient strategy for the synthesis of a new benzamide derivative N-hydroxy-2-(4-methylbenzamido)benzamide was reported by using readily available reagents, and its antibacterial activity against bacterial strains was investigated. This new compound crystallized in a monoclinic system with the P21/n space group. Its unit-cell parameters were a = 7.5103(2) Å, b = 11.7991(3) Å, c = 15.2645(4) Å, β = 91.907(2)° and Z = 4. Crystal packing was stabilized by hydrogen bonds and π-stacking interactions and van der Waals interactions. Hirshfeld surfaces and their associated two-dimensional fingerprint plots were utilized to analyze the intermolecular interactions in the crystal structure. In addition, electrostatic surface potential (ESP) was generated by the density functional theory.

The paper aims to provide a critical in-depth analysis of Mobile Phone Application's role in enhancing human interaction with E-Retailers, and more specifically, in the Middle East. First, the paper provides an outlook description of the definition and history of Mobile Phone Applications and human interaction and how the two complement each other. Next, the study outlines the various instances that human interaction with Mobile Phone Applications has led to E-retailer success and how it has come about. Then, the discourse provides an analytical look at the E-retailing Business in the Middle East while focusing on the history of E-retailing, business startups in the Middle East, and the revolution of E-retailing in the Middle East. Additionally, the research emphasizes the merits and demerits of using Mobile Phone Applications to promote and enhance E-commerce business in Middle East countries. Using relevant sources and credible references, the analysis will highlight the numerous instances Mobile Phone applications have been used by clients to connect with businesses that maintain an online presence. Using anthological, historical, and descriptive research methods, the arguments portrayed in this paper will heavily reflect on various case studies provided in the article. The case studies feature data representation from research conducted in the Middle East concerning Mobile Phone applications and E-commerce. Through focused approaches, this paper discerns, comprehend, and establishes the framework of the Middle East E-Commerce scene over the years, and outlines how far the industry has made progress through online platforms. Furthermore, emphasis will be laid on the market gaps left to fill in the E-commerce sector in the Middle East and the several approaches to better the industry. Lastly, this paper will conclude by providing my recommendations on the betterment of Mobile Phone Applications and how E-retailing can improve in the Middle East.

Modern day job roles require extensive collaboration and peer help among employees at workplace to optimally perform their duties. Inherently, the collaborative work requires extensive coordination mechanisms to improve the collaboration process. The diffusion of technologies in the collaboration process has improved the coordination among actors, however, it requires appropriated technological solutions which are aligned with the work practices of users. In this paper we explore the communication challenges in gender segregated work environments and discuss the design implications for technological systems to better support the collaborative process in such workplaces. Our study highlights how cultural implications, information security and trust are vital elements of effective communication in segregated work environments. Keeping this in view human computer interaction researchers need to design collaborative artifacts which can resolve these issues to enable better collaboration in such settings.

Aim: The aim of the study was to report our transrectal ultrasound (TRUS)-guided prostatic biopsy histopathological diagnoses and clinical findings in our prostate cancer patients in a tertiary care center. Methods: We have reviewed our TRUS biopsy series done in our department from January 2011 to December 2016. We reviewed our patient's prebiopsy prostate-specific antigen (PSA) findings and the histopathological diagnoses and determined the clinical and pathological features of prostate cancer patients in our series. Results: A total of 398 patients underwent 12 core TRUS biopsies. Benign prostatatic hyperplasia was found in 48.5% of the patients and prostate cancer was found in 113 patients (28.4%). Among them, metastatic prostate cancer was found in 51.7% of them. High Gleason score (8–10) was found in 56.6% and a PSA of more than 20 was found in 63.3% of the patients. Conclusion: We recommend a mass public awareness program to encourage our patients to seek early prostate cancer screening and to alert the medical community to encourage more awareness of prostate cancer screening.

Cigarette smoking (CS) continues to be a major health hazard, and it contributes significantly to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Cigarette smoking impacts all phases of atherosclerosis from endothelial dysfunction to acute clinical events, the latter being largely thrombotic. Both active and passive (environmental) cigarette smoke exposure predispose to cardiovascular events. To our knowledge, there have been no reports on the relationship between current cigarette smoking and clot features in subjects without any known cardiovascular risk factors. We sought to investigate whether plasma fibrin clot structure/function differ between healthy smokers and never-smokers. Key Words: Cigarette smoking (CS) - Platelets - plasma clot - Fibrinolysis - Red cell deformability - Blood viscosity - Plasma viscosity.

The higher number of high grade cancers noted in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial may have arisen due to a previously unknown association between prostate volume and sextant biopsy derived grade, rendering it more difficult to detect high grade cancer in men with a larger prostate (volume-grade bias). A basic tenet of measurement theory is that repeat measurement improves validity. We determined whether an extended pattern prostate biopsy technique could overcome this bias.We reviewed the record of 679 patients who underwent systematic extended (10 cores or greater) biopsy with isoechoic prostate transrectal ultrasound and prostate specific antigen less than 10 ng/ml. Since specimens were separately labeled, we were able to compare the grade of the first 6 cores vs that of the extended pattern. We determined the highest grade achieved using traditional sextant biopsy and the change induced by marginal samples across volume tertiles, hypothesizing that if upgrading did not occur by volume, additional biopsies would be ineffective for minimizing this bias.Prostate cancer detected using a 6-core technique revealed 179 of 679 cancers (26.4%) vs 240 of 679 (35.4%) using the extended core technique (p0.001). The marginal cancer detection rate increased significantly as prostate volume increased. Cancer detection rates for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd tertiles of prostate volume were increased by 16 of 227, 17 of 226 and 28 of 226 cases, respectively (p = 0.05). With respect to Gleason score, upgrading from Gleason 6 to 7 was observed in 14 patients (7.9%) due to the additional procured cores (p0.001). However there was no association among the various prostate volumes (p = 0.87).Although more high grade cancers are detected with extended pattern biopsy, there is no differential upgrading with respect to prostate volume. Based on these observations extended prostate sampling in trials of agents that decrease prostate volume would have minimal impact on volume-grade associations.

Background: In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the consanguineous marriage rate is high, premarital counseling is the service offered to young couples on their way to marriage to guide, educate, and prepare them for the establishment of a healthy family. Objective: To assess knowledge of premarital screening and their relation to socio-demographic background of male university students in Riyadh City. Materials and Methods: It was a cross-sectional study included a representative sample of male university students at King Saud University, Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. A multistage random sampling technique was applied in three stages. In the first stage, one student from literate collage and one from scientific college were selected by simple random method. In the second stage, three levels were selected by random sampling from each college. In the third stage, about 50 students were recruited from each of the classrooms. A self-administered questionnaire consisted of two main parts was used; the first part was based on socio-demographic data and the second part dealt with the students’ knowledge about the hereditary disorder in premarital screening program. Result: The study included 320 male students. Their age ranged between 18 and 30 years with a mean of 21.2 years and standard deviation of ±1.6 years. They were almost equally distributed between participated two colleges (Science and Arts). Almost a quarter of students (23.1%) reported family history of hereditary diseases, whereas 10.9% of them reported personal history of hereditary diseases. Their main sources of information about premarital screening were friends (60.8%), television (35.9%), and medical courses (22.2%). Older, science college students, those of higher academic level and having information about premarital screening from school and from friends showed significant higher level of knowledge. Conclusion: This study highlights that knowledge of male university students in King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia about the PMS program was insufficient in some areas such as transmission of hepatitis B and C viruses through sexual transmission and from mother to fetus. In light of our results, there is certainly a need for more information and education about the program.