Ashraf Abu-Seida

Icariin (ICA), a main active compound of the Epimedium genus, is used as an aphrodisiac in traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Despite its therapeutic efficacy, ICA displays reduced oral absorption, and therefore, low bioavailability hindered its clinical application. Implementing nanotechnology in the field of formulation has been a focus to improve the efficacy of ICA. In this regard, polymeric nanoparticles find a potential application as drug delivery systems. A nanosphere formula was designed, aiming to improve the drug's efficacy. The proposed ICA nanosphere formula (tocozeinolate) was optimized using D-optimal response surface design. The concentrations of ICA (X), D-α-tocopherol polyethylene glycol 1000 succinate (TPGS, X), zein (X), and sodium deoxycholate (SDC, X) expressed as percentages were investigated as quantitative independent variables. As per the experimental design, 23 formulations were developed, which were investigated for particle size (PS, nm), zeta potential (ZP, mV), and entrapment efficiency (EE, %) as response parameters. Numerical optimization and desirability approach were employed to predict the optimized variable levels that, upon combination, could result in minimized size and maximized zeta potential and ICA entrapment. The optimized ICA-tocozeinolate nanospheres showed a particle size of 224.45 nm, zeta potential of 0.961 mV, and drug entrapment of 65.29% that coincide well with the predicted values. The optimized ICA-tocozeinolate nanospheres were evaluated for sexual behavior in Wistar male rats compared to raw ICA at equivalent doses (20 mg/kg). In vivo assessment results showed significant sexual behavior enhancement by the optimized formulation, as evidenced by decreased average time of both mount latency (ML) and ejaculation latency (EL) to almost half those of raw ICA. Additionally, intromission latency (IL) time was reduced by 41% compared to the raw ICA. These results highlighted the potential of the proposed ICA-tocozeinolate nanospheres as a promising platform for improving the delivery and efficacy of therapeutic agents.

Visual Question Answering is an extremely active research area in which the computer is given an image, a question in natural language, and it is required to give a correct answer to the question according to the semantics of the input image. The ability of VQA system to answer new questions about unseen images during training process is one main measure of effectiveness of the VQA model and this capability is called Zero-Shot VQA, but VQA datasets suffer from some problems that hinder good evaluation on models trained on these datasets. Firstly, Testing instances are not chosen perfectly to address how much the trained model accomplish the task of asking about new concepts that is not presented during training process. Secondly, most of visual question answering datasets suffer from problems in their contents such as small dataset size, leakiness of explicitly defined question types, and question types have abused evaluation scores that makes it difficult to evaluate algorithms on them. So models are not perfectly evaluated on such datasets. In order to avoid those evaluation obstacles, experiment is done on TDIUC dataset which has explicitly defined 12 question types, data are redistributed for zero shot task by re-splitting it to new training, val, and test instances such that test instances contains new concepts that is not presented in training data. Evaluation is done using methods that give a more representative measure of accuracy over all question types( Simple Accuracy, AMPT, HMPT) and one more evaluation schema(GMPT) is proposed for evaluating accuracy which is more expressive. Experiment shows that evaluation results on TDIUC dataset before redistributing train, val, and test sets for Zero Shot purpose gives inaccurate indicator of model performance (around 20% higher performance)

UNLABELLED: Zirconia ceramic (ZC) implants are becoming more common, but comparisons between preclinical histology and long-term clinical trials are rare. This investigation comprised (1) 8-year clinical follow-up of one-piece ZC or titanium (Ti) implants supporting full overdentures and (2) histomorphometric analysis of the same implants in an animal model, comparing implants with various surface treatments.

METHODS: (1) Clinical trial: 24 completely edentulous participants (2 groups of N = 12) received 7 implants (one-piece ball-abutment ZC or Ti; maxilla N = 4, mandible N = 3) restored with implant overdentures. Outcomes after 8-years included survival, peri-implant bone levels, soft-tissue responses, and prosthodontic issues. (2) Preclinical trial: 10 New Zealand sheep received 4 implants bilaterally in the femoral condyle: Southern Implants ZC or Ti one-piece implants, identical to the clinical trial, and controls: Southern ITC two-piece implants with the same surface or Nobel (NBC) anodised (TiUnite™) surface. %Bone-implant contact (%BIC) was measured after 12 weeks of unloaded healing.

RESULTS: 8 of 24 participants (33%) of an average age of 75 ± 8 years were recalled; 21% of original participants had died, and 46% could not be contacted. 80.4% of implants survived; excluding palatal sites, 87.5% of Ti and 79% of ZC implants survived. All failed implants were in the maxilla. Three ZC implants had fractured. Bone loss was similar for Ti vs. ZC; pocket depths ( = 0.04) and attachment levels ( = 0.02) were greater for Ti than ZC implants. (1.7 ± 1.6 mm vs. 1.6 ± 1.3 mm). All implants in sheep femurs survived. %BIC was not statistically different for one-piece blasted surface Ti (80 ± 19%) versus ZC (76 ± 20%) or ITC (75 ± 16 mm); NBC had significantly higher %BIC than ITC (84 ± 17%, = 0.4).

CONCLUSION: Short-term preclinical results for ZC and Ti one-piece implants showed excellent bone-implant contact in unloaded femoral sites. This differed from the long-term clinical results in older-aged, edentulous participants. While ZC and Ti implants showed equivalent performance, the risks of peri-implantitis and implant loss in older, completely edentulous patients remain a significant factor.

ABSTRACTLeafhoppers (family: Cicadellidae) are among the most common plant sap-sucking pests, causing damage to wild and agronomic plants worldwide. The current paper aims to assess the zoogeography, diversity and population dynamics of the leafhopper species in an agricultural land converted ecosystem. Twenty species (two identified only to the genus level) belonging to 17 genera, 10 tribes, and three subfamilies were collected from Toshka Region, Aswan Governorate, Egypt, in 2020. The most common cicadellid species was Orosius albicinctus, representing 46.7% of the total catch. Low values of species richness and diversity were measured for leafhopper species as compared with those reported in our recent study carried out in Alexandria and Qena governorates. In sum, conversion of any natural ecosystem to agricultural land uses may cause declines in insect diversity. However, desert conversion may increase the diversity pattern of some insect pests. Analysis of the zoogeographic affinities of the leafhopper species from Toshka Region indicated a closer affiliation to the Palaearctic Region (35%) than any other region. Most leafhopper populations exhibited a unimodal seasonal pattern and were abundant in hot and dry months (May–September). The abundance of some leafhopper species correlated positively with temperature (seven species) and negatively with relative humidity (nine species). Six of these species correlated with both variables. This study is the first to investigate leafhopper communities in a converted ecosystem of Toshka Depression, Western Desert.