5324 research outputs found
Sort by
Outcomes of cesarean deliveries in a Palestinian governmental hospital : a prospective quantitative study
No full textResearchers in this study reviewed the medical records of all pregnant women admitted to give birth, to be observed or treated for pregnancy complications or complaining of signs of abortion/miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy including postpartum women with complications within seven days after giving birth. The data was collected daily for 3 consecutive months as part of a multi-country study on maternal and neonatal near-miss using the WHO standard form (Individual Form HRP A65661). They reviewed a total of 1,583 record. After excluding multiple births, a total of 1209 (77.6%) women gave birth; 916 (75.7%) vaginal birth and 293 (24.2%) CD. Researchers analyzed the data with IBM SPSS Statistics (version 20). The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the American University of Beirut and Birzeit Universities.Grant from the Implementation Research Platform managed by the World Health Organization (Implementation Research Protocol ID A65770) to the Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut for a four-country study on maternal near-miss in public hospitals in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria
Parkinson disease (PARK ) genes are somatically mutated in cutaneous melanoma
No full textAuthors include:Rivka Inzelberg,
Yardena Samuels,
Esther Azizi,
Nouar Qutob,
Lilah Inzelberg,
Eytan Domany,
Edna Schechtman,
Eitan Friedman,Objective: To assess whether Parkinson disease (PD) genes are somatically mutated in cutaneous
melanoma (CM) tissue, because CM occurs in patients with PD at higher rates than in the general
population and PD is more common than expected in CM cohorts.
Methods: We cross-referenced somatic mutations in metastatic CM detected by whole-exome
sequencing with the 15 known PD (PARK) genes. We computed the empirical distribution of
the sum of mutations in each gene (Smut) and of the number of tissue samples in which a given
gene was mutated at least once (SSampl) for each of the analyzable genes, determined the 90th
and 95th percentiles of the empirical distributions of these sums, and verified the location of
PARK genes in these distributions. Identical analyses were applied to adenocarcinoma of lung
(ADENOCA-LUNG) and squamous cell carcinoma of lung (SQUAMCA-LUNG). We also analyzed
the distribution of the number of mutated PARK genes in CM samples vs the 2 lung cancers.
Results: Somatic CM mutation analysis (n 5 246) detected 315,914 mutations in 18,758 genes.
Somatic CM mutations were found in 14 of 15 PARK genes. Forty-eight percent of CM samples
carried $1 PARK mutation and 25% carried multiple PARK mutations. PARK8 mutations
occurred above the 95th percentile of the empirical distribution for SMut and SSampl. Significantly
more CM samples harbored multiple PARK gene mutations compared with SQUAMCALUNG
(p 5 0.0026) and with ADENOCA-LUNG (p , 0.0001). Conclusions: The overrepresentation of somatic PARK mutations in CM suggests shared dysregulated
pathways for CM and PD
Use of HLA peptidomics and whole exome sequencing to identify human immunogenic neo-antigens
No full textAuthors include:Shelly Kalaora, Eilon Barnea, Efrat Merhavi-Shoham, Nouar Qutob, Jamie
K. Teer, Nilly Shimony, Jacob Schachter, Steven A. Rosenberg, Michal J.
Besser, Arie Admon and Yardena SamuelsThe antigenicity of cells is demarcated by the peptides bound by their Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) molecules. Through this antigen presentation, T cell specificity response is controlled. As a fraction of the expressed mutated peptides is presented on the HLA, these neo-epitopes could be immunogenic. Such neoantigens have recently been identified through screening for predicted mutated peptides, using synthetic peptides or ones expressed from minigenes, combined with screening of patient tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). Here we present a time and cost-effective method that combines whole-exome sequencing analysis with HLA peptidome mass spectrometry, to identify neo-antigens in a melanoma patient. Of the 1,019 amino acid changes identified through exome sequencing, two were confirmed by mass spectrometry to be presented by the cells. We then synthesized peptides and evaluated the two mutated neo-antigens for reactivity with autologous bulk TILs, and found that one yielded mutant-specific T-cell response. Our results demonstrate that this method can be used for immune response prediction and promise to provide an alternative approach for identifying immunogenic neo-epitopes in cancer
Food safety and sanitation in various kinds of restaurants salads in Ramallah Al-Bireh governorate, Palestine
No full textfood safety and sanitation is a major public health concern due to its importance to people’s
lives and their health; as many diseases are avoidable whenever food consumed was clean, safe,
and in a good quality free of pathogens. Our fast life enforces majority of people to consume fast
foods and meals outside homes, which if not appropriate, healthy and clean, will be a source of
avoidable series of illnesses. data were taken from the Central Laboratories in the Palestinian Ministry
of health; oPt, from the period (Jan, 2010- Sep, 2013). As excel data file, and we recoded variables
and analyzed through SPSS version 17.0. Data was collected from 1265 salad samples of
various kinds of salads among Ramallah-Al-Bireh district and examined for different indicators for
detection of degree of pathogenicity of eight major microorganisms. From 2010 to 2013, the number
of microorganisms samples graded as acceptable decreased for Fecal Coliforms, Mould, Salmonella,
Staphylococcus aureus, Total aerobic count, Total Coliforms and Yeast( N= 1265,
14.3%). All the examined samples tested negative for Listeria monocytogenes (X2
=0.75, P=0.386
>0.001, df=1). Among the various kinds of salads examined, Hummus was the most contaminated
kind of salad, followed by Arabic salad but luckily showed decrease in trend with time, and the
kinds that were clear and free of microorganism, continued to be clean, and the microorganismal
percentages also decreased with time. Healthy measurements and protocols seems to be applied,
good governmental supervision, and hygienic protocols are the much possible applied among restaurants.
Legislation and regulations are to be strict, clear and implemented to ensure a highest degree
of food safety and quality is being provided to people. Furthermore, regular check-ups and
monthly rather than yearly investigations should be done by responsible department
The change curve in body composition of female different classes in Palestine school
No full textThe purpose of this study was to investigate the change in body composition of female different classes in Palestinian school through determine (HT) height, weight (WT), fat, lean body weight LBW), the sample consist of all female different classes (180) students. We use anthropometric measurement to determine (Wt, kg), (Ht,m), muscle, fat, BMI=wt/(ht)2m. The researcher began to process the data through statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) and achieved to the result through the research hypothesis.The result showed that the average of fat mass according to the places measurement (13.4, 15.7, 24.8,20.9, 14.9)mm,the average of weight, tall, weight of muscle and BMI in certain group (24.64,1.44,43,19.5) and this study showed there were appositive relative between the variable
Co-simulation-based evaluation of Volt-VAR control
No full textThe emerging smart grid paradigm enables more efficient use of energy through optimizing the local grid operation. Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) is an application which aims at reducing the power consumption by decreasing the voltage level. Another important application is the Volt Ampere
Reactive (VAR) control which aims at flattening the voltage profile and improving the power factor, which reduces the losses and eventually reduces the demand. PV solar systems can provide not only active power but also reactive power and hence, they can be exploited by the VAR Control application. Optimized Volt- VAR Control (OVVC) is a combination of these two applications
that seeks an optimal coordination of different units to improve the performance of the power grid and save energy. In this paper, we use a co-simulation approach to explore closed-loop CVR
and OVVC smart grid applications in a distribution grid. SGsim is a co-simulation framework consisting mainly of the network simulator OMNeT++ and the power grid simulator OpenDSS
A Short Tutorial On Using SGsim Framework For Smart Grid Applications
No full textExtensive usage of information and communication technology (ICT) characterizes the next generation power grid. ICT supports diverse smart grid applications from the level of energy management, all the way down to control and protection approaches. The evaluation of a smart grid application requires multidisciplinary tools that capture its versatile nature. In this paper, we present a short tutorial on the use of the open source co-simulation framework SGsim for smart grid applications. The framework combines two main simulators. On the one hand, it uses OMNeT++ to simulate data communication networks and to control the operation of the components. On the other hand, it uses OpenDSS to
simulate the power gri