Exploring and exploiting a historical corpus for Arabic

This paper presents a historical Arabic corpus named HAC. At this early embryonic stage of the project, we report about the design, the architecture and some of the experiments which we have conducted on HAC. The corpus, and accordingly the search results, will be represented using a primary XML exchange format. This will serve as an intermediate exchange tool within the project and will allow the user to process the results offline using some external tools. HAC is made up of Classical Arabic texts that cover 1600 years of language use; the Quranic text, Modern Standard Arabic texts, as well as a variety of monolingual Arabic dictionaries. The development of this historical corpus assists linguists and Arabic language learners to effectively explore, understand, and discover interesting knowledge hidden in millions of instances of language use. We used techniques from the field of natural language processing to process the data and a graph-based representation for the corpus. We provided researchers with an export facility to render further linguistic analysis possible.     

Cytotoxic T Cell Expression of Leukocyte-Associated Immunoglobulin-Like Receptor-1 (LAIR-1) in Viral Hepatitis C-Mediated Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) pathogenesis involves liver inflammation, therefore, despite successful treatment, hepatitis C virus (HCV) may progress to HCC from initiated liver cirrhosis. Cytotoxic T cells (Tcs) are known to be involved in HCV-related cirrhotic complications and HCC pathogenesis. The inhibitory checkpoint leukocyte-associated immunoglobulin-like receptor-1 (LAIR-1) is expressed on Tcs. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether the Tc expression level of LAIR-1 is associated with HCC progression and to evaluate LAIR-1 expression as a noninvasive biomarker for HCC progression in the context of liver cirrhosis related to HCV genotype 4 (G4) in Egyptian patients’ peripheral venous blood liquid biopsy. A total of 64 patients with HCC and 37 patients with liver cirrhosis were enrolled in this case-controlled study, and their LAIR-1 expression on Tc related to the progression of liver cirrhosis was examined and compared to that of the apparently healthy control group (n = 20). LAIR-1 expression was analyzed using flow cytometry. Results: The HCC group had significantly higher LAIR-1 expression on Tc and percentage of Tc positive for LAIR-1 (LAIR-1+Tc%) than the HCV G4-related liver cirrhosis group. LAIR-1+Tc% was correlated with the HCC surrogate tumor marker AFP (r = 0.367, p = 0.001) and insulin resistance and inflammation prognostic ratios/indices. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve revealed that adding LAIR-1+Tc% to AFP can distinguish HCC transformation in the Egyptian patients’ cohort. Upregulated LAIR-1 expression on Tc could be a potential screening noninvasive molecular marker for chronic inflammatory HCV G4 related liver cirrhosis. Moreover, LAIR-1 expression on Tc may be one of the players involved in the progression of liver cirrhosis to HCC.     

Facile development,characterization, and optimization of new metformin-loaded nanocarrier system for efficient colon cancer adjunct therapy

Purpose: Metformin hydrochloride (MF) repurposing as adjuvant anticancer therapy for colorectal cancer (CRC) proved effective. Several studies attempted to develop MF-loaded nanoparticles (NPs), however the entrapment efficiency (EE%) was poor. Thus, the present study aimed at the facile development of a new series of chitosan (CS)-based semi-interpenetrating network (semi-IPN) NPs incorporating Pluronic^® nanomicelles as nanocarriers for enhanced entrapment and sustained release of MF for efficient treatment of CRC.

Methods: The NPs were prepared by ionic gelation and subsequently characterized using FTIR, DSC, TEM, and DLS. A full factorial design was also adopted to study the effect of various formulation variables on EE%, particle size, and zeta-potential of NPs.

Results: NPs had a spherical shape and a mean particle size ranging between 135 and 220?nm. FTIR and DSC studies results were indicative of successful ionic gelation with the drug being dispersed in its amorphous form within CS-Pluronic^® matrix. Maximum EE% reaching 57.00?±?12.90% was achieved using Pluronic^®-123 based NPs. NPs exhibited a sustained release profile over 48?h. The MF-loaded NPs sensitized RKO CRC cells relative to drug alone.

Conclusion: The reported results highlighted the novel utility of the developed NPs in the arena of colon cancer treatment.     

Cycloadditions of 1-Aza-2-azoniaallene Salts derived from coumarin and camphor

The 1-aza-2-azoniaallene salt 8 prepared from 3-acetyl coumarin via the hydrazone 6 and the (chloroalkyl)azo derivative 7 reacts with nitriles to afford the 3-(3-chromenyl)-1,2,4-triazolium salts 11a–d . With diisopropylcarbodiimide the triazolium salt 13 and with norborene a tricyclic pyrazolium salt 14 are obtained. Concurrent to these cycloadditions the by-product 12 is formed by intramolecular cyclization of the cumulene 8 . Similarly, the intramolecular cyclization product 18 is isolated as the sole product when the 1-aza-2-azoniaallene salt 17a (prepared from the ethyl carbazone of camphor by chlorination and treatment of the product 16a with SbCl₅) was treated with nitriles, carbodiimides or alkenes. In contrast, 1,2,4-triazolium salts 20a–c , 23c , respectively pyrazolium salts 20d–f , and 1,3,4-thiadiazolium salts 23a,b are obtained by reaction of the 1-aza-2-azoniaallene salt 17b with nitriles, respectively alkenes, alkynes, diisopropylcarbodiimide, and isothiocyanates. The constitutions of two of these products ( 20e, 23a ) were secured by X-ray structural analysis.     

Family process in health research: Extending a family typology to a new cultural context.

To describe family context in health research, the authors tested a typology of families developed in California with a sample of families in Quebec, Canada. Family scales from the California study were submitted to focus groups, translated, and standardized on a sample of 209 parents. A panel of experts then revised the scales to make them relevant to Quebec families and to health promotion. Data from the new and revised scales were collected on 509 Quebec couples (1,018 spouses) and were clustered separately by gender, using K means. The procedure classified all respondents into family types that paralleled the original typology. Discriminant analyses indicated that family profile variables significantly distinguished family types. Comparisons with family, stress, and health variables further differentiated among the types and expanded their meaning. The study demonstrates a method for redefining and extending family data in health research with different cultural groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reputation management and signature delegation: A distributed approach

In this paper, we present a novel protocol, called Distributed Signcryption with Verifiable Partial Signature (DiSigncryption) protocol, to allow an agent owner to securely distribute his signing capability among a set of trusted third party hosts (TTP-hosts) via a mobile agent. The protocol incorporates three schemes: a novel Distributed Reputation Management scheme, a modified version of the Distributed Signcryption method proposed in [23], and an extended version of the Agent-based Threshold Proxy Signcryption (ATPS) protocol proposed in [2]. The security properties of the proposed protocol are analyzed, and the protocol is compared with the most related work. Omaima Bamasak received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Manchester, UK, in 2006. Her research interests are in designing protocols using cryptography for the provision of security in distributed systems, mobile agent security, electronic/mobile commerce, reputation management, and non-repudiation and fairness protocols. Ning Zhang received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1994, and is now a lecturer in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in computer security and applied cryptography, e.g., security and privacy in distributed systems, ubiquitous computing, and electronic commerce, with a focus on security protocol design, access control, and trust management.     

A system for human identification from X-ray dental radiographs

Forensic odontology is the branch of forensics that deals with human identification based on dental features. In this paper, we present a system for automating that process by identifying people from dental X-ray images. Given a dental image of a postmortem (PM), the proposed system retrieves the best matches from an antemortem (AM) database. The system automatically segments dental X-ray images into individual teeth and extracts the contour of each tooth. Features are extracted from each tooth and are used for retrieval. We developed a new method for teeth separation based on integral projection. We also developed a new method for representing and matching teeth contours using signature vectors obtained at salient points on the contours of the teeth. During retrieval, the AM radiographs that have signatures closer to the PM are found and presented to the user. Matching scores are generated based on the distance between the signature vectors of AM and PM teeth. Experimental results on a small database of dental radiographs are encouraging.     

Orthorhombic tantalum pentoxide nanorods for electrochemical applications

Water splitting is an important method for hydrogen production. Notably, tantalum oxide has the potential to employ extensive variety appliances because of its outstanding electrical and optical properties. Tantalum pentoxide (Ta₂O₅) nanopowders were produced using the sol–gel process. The effect of calcination time plays a main role on Ta₂O₅ crystal structure configuration. Transmission electron microscope images explored obtained Ta₂O₅ nanorod formation and investigated by electrochemical studies for its use in electrochemical water-splitting applications. The calculated specific capacitance values of Ta₂O₅ electrodes at different temperature conditions were 146.4, 191.7, and 221.7 F/g. Fabricated Ta₂O₅ electrodes showed overpotential of 304, 278, and 267 mV. Current densities of Ta₂O₅ electrodes at different calcinations times were 353, 419, and 461 mA/g. Ta₂O₅ powder calcined for 6 h revealed high specific capacitance and low overpotential, indicating better electrochemical reactivity suitable for water oxidation applications.     

Release of pentoxifylline from xanthan gum matrix tablets

Pentoxifylline-controlled release tablets were prepared using xanthan gum. The effects of polymer concentration, rotation speed, ionic strength, and pH of the dissolution medium on the release of the water-soluble pentoxifylline were studied. The release rate decreased with increasing polymer concentration in the tablet, which was reflected in the increase in the mean dissolution time. A higher rotation speed and increased ionic strength of the dissolution medium resulted in a higher rate of drug release of xanthan-based tablets. A higher release rate of pentoxifylline was also observed using acidic dissolution medium.