Study of the therapeutic efficacy and safety of intralesional tranexamic acid (25 mg/ml) for the treatment of melasma in male patients: A single centered “before-after” observational study

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Melasma is a common and difficult to treat hypermelanosis of poorly understood etiopathogenesis with great tendency to relapse. Tranexamic acid (TA) has been used in various formulations for its treatment, but there is paucity of studies/data and no consensus on the optimum dosage of intradermal TA, especially among the male patients. To study the efficacy and safety of intralesional TA 25 mg/ml for the treatment of melasma in male patients.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods: </strong>Total 58 males were enrolled for study from July 2019 to June 2020. TA in 25 mg/ml strength injection and about 0.05 ml was injected intradermally at 1 cm apart on the entire melasma lesion, not exceeding 50 mg per visit and repeated every 4 weekly for 12 weeks. The percentage reduction in MASI was the primary outcome measure. It was determined every 4th week till 12 weeks and finally at 24 weeks for recurrence.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results: </strong>Mean MASI decreased from baseline score of 8.42±5.63 to 6.71±4.65, 5.09±3.59 and 3.41±3.06 at the follow up week 4, 8 and 12 respectively with a significant decrease from 8th week onwards. Majority of the patients were satisfied with their improvement after treatment (67.2%) without any significant adverse effects.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Conclusions:</strong> However, the TA was found to effective in all the three histopathological types of melasma but the dermal melasma was least responsive as well as earliest to relapse. We recommend monthly therapy at 25 mg/ml as more efficacious, time saving and cost effective to all the three types of melasma.</p><p class="abstract"> </p>

A Facile Synthesis of substituted Trifluoromethyl piperidines with diversify functionalization

: Piperidine-based alkaloids are undoubtedly an important class of biologically active natural products. When a unique group like trifluoromethyl (Tfm) is added to an active compound, it significantly ameliorates its bioactivity, bioavailability, physical and chemical properties. Many fluorination and trifluoromethylation methods have been reported. In the present paper, we have shown that among all other trifluoromethylation pathways, Mannich reaction also has the great tendency to introduce a Tfm group in a saturated or aromatic heterocyclic compound. Applications of this reaction are elaborated in preparing several derivatives of piperidine base alkaloids with trifluoromethyl at α-position. Furthermore, the substitution at C-4 and C-6 was successfully achieved with variety of saturated and aromatic groups.

Effect of Ionic Liquid on the Properties of Nanocomposites Based on Epoxy/CNT Hardened with MCDEA

Thermosetting systems based on epoxy resin (RE) with the dispersion of carbon nanotubes (CNT), have been extensively studied by the development of high-performance materials with interesting mechanical, thermal and electrical properties that the thermo-rigid system achieves with the addition of CNT, and thus contribute to obtain composites with excellent performance in low amounts of this filler. However, ensuring a good dispersion of these systems is not easy, as CNTs have a great tendency to cluster due to Van der Waals interactions. To assist in the dispersion of the systems, a phosphonium-based ionic liquid, tributyl (ethyl) -phosphonium diethyl phosphate, acted with a double role, as a dispersion agent and catalyst in systems hardened with MCDEA (4,4’-methylenebis (3 - chloro-2,6-diethylaniline), which is a solid compound giving the systems high viscosity, and with the addition of LI improved the dispersion of the systems, as well as the processability in the preparation of the nanocomposites.

Optimization of Energy Consumption in the Process of Dehumidification of Natural Gas

In recent years, there has been a great tendency to optimize energy consumption in the oil and gas industry’s upstream and downstream equipment. One of the most energy-intensive processes in natural gas refineries is the condensate stabilization unit (gas condensate). The main bottlenecks of energy consumption in the old units are condensated stabilization (dehumidification with ethylene glycol), heater reboiler, and air coolers (air coolers). Therefore, much attention should be paid to these applications and electricity and steam consumption in this unit. In this study, a simulated model based on the Gachsaran gas refinery’s new layout has been developed. Optimization of this part of the existing process is preheating the inlet flow to the reboiler by adding a two-stage shell-tube heat exchanger. This reduces the amount of steam needed to evaporate the inlet stream to the end of the tower. On the other hand, by pre-cooling the inlet currents to the air conditioners, the amount of electricity consumed to reach the outlet flows’ the desired temperature would be reduced. The results show an attractive return on investment for the remediation plan, a reduction in energy demand, and an increase in the unit’s productivity.

Numerical Study on the Behavior and Bearing Mechanism of Flat Slabs in Column Loss Events

This study investigates the behavior and the load-bearing mechanism of a typical flat slab with rectangular panels in several scenarios including the removal of a corner, penultimate, and internal columns. The scenarios are rather similar to those used in the conventional evaluation of the progressive collapse potential; however, application of the uniformly distributed loading over panels adjacent to the removed columns was not limited to twice the value of the initial load. Thus, load-deflection curves were drawn up to the point in which a great number of longitudinal slab bars ruptured. Introducing 5 stages on each curve, finite element outputs on concrete cracking pattern and rebar stress state were presented. A significant increase in the stresses along the diagonals of the slab panels accompanied by bar ruptures around columns adjacent to the removed column proved contribution of an important load-bearing mechanism in addition to the behavior called “quasiframe action.” Consecutive rupture of bars showed formation of a zipper-type collapse mode as well as a great tendency to transfer load share of missing column mainly along shorter direction of slab panels. Moreover, the findings indicated that the slab damaged zone could exceed the panels under uniform overloading.

AROGYA Intelligent Health Care Application

People of today pay less attention to their daily diet due to their busy lifestyles. Therefore, there is a great tendency to contract chronic non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, the lack of nutritious meals and daily exercise causes chronic non-communicable diseases in people with no age difference. In our first part, we developed to predict specialization in cardiology using symptoms. However, when we refer to a doctor, we must at least know what specialist should know based on their symptoms. In addition, there is a problem with the recipe. If the pharmacist has misread the prescription given by the doctor, patients can receive bad medications, leading to terrible side effects and even death due to careless writing by the doctor. As a solution, an application function can be proposed that will be developed in the project and the function should be able to improve the readability and intelligibility of the patient with prescription drugs. Therefore, the patient always knows the prescribed medications through the application to avoid the problem mentioned above. According to the 2016 pharmaceutical magazine, there are cholesterol and diabetic patients suffering mainly from chronic non-communicable diseases in Sri Lanka.

Maladaptive cue-controlled cocaine-seeking habits promote increased relapse severity in rats

The inflexible pursuit of drug-seeking and great tendency to relapse that characterize addiction has been associated with the recruitment of the dorsolateral striatum-dependent habit system. However, the mechanisms by which maladaptive drug-seeking habits influence subsequent relapse are obscure. Here, we show that rats with a long history of cocaine-seeking, controlled by drug-paired cues and mediated by the habit system, show highly exacerbated drug-seeking at relapse that is not mediated by cocaine withdrawal. This heightened tendency to relapse is underpinned by transient engagement of the dorsomedial striatum goal-directed system and reflects emergent negative urgency resulting from the prevention of enacting the seeking habit during abstinence. These results reveal a novel mechanism underlying the pressure to relapse and indicate a target for preventing it.One Sentence SummaryInstrumental deprivation triggers flexibility in the well-established cue-controlled cocaine-seeking behaviour.

DOES SIZE OF THE FIRM MATTER IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREIGN OWNERSHIP AND DIVIDEND POLICY?

Prior studies have revealed that foreign shareholders have a greater influence on dividend policy. However, it is unclear how foreign owners in large firms affect the propensity to pay dividends. This paper is aimed at exploring the relationship between the propensity to pay dividends and foreign ownership. It also examined the moderating role of firm size on the relationship between the decision to pay cash dividend and foreign ownership. The study uses pooled logistic regression on a data set of non-financial listed firms on the Nigerian Stock Market from 2011 to 2015. The results showed that foreign ownership has a great tendency to influence the propensity of a firm to pay a cash dividend. The effect is more pronounced in larger firms, thus, indicating that in larger firms, foreign owners mitigate agency problems using dividends. Based on the findings, firms should be encouraged to pay a dividend to attract foreign investors and in return will help the firms to acquire the expertise of foreign owners.

Linguistic Politeness in Yemeni Arabic: The Use of Request Perspective

This article attempts to investigate the use of request perspectives in Yemeni Arabic. The sample of the current study consists of 336 undergraduate students, namely 168 male respondents and 168 female respondents. They were asked to respond in Yemeni Arabic to twelve different situations in which they carried out the speech act of request. The data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). They were analyzed according to the models proposed by Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989), whose analytical framework classified request perspective into four types: hearer-oriented request, speaker-oriented request, inclusive, and impersonal. The results of the study revealed that native speakers of Yemeni Arabic that used the direct head acts of requests were mostly from the hearer-oriented perspective. The respondents employed a hearer-oriented perspective either in the direct strategies or conventionally indirect strategies in order to show solidarity and paying attention to others. However, the indirect head act of request used various perspectives such as hearer-oriented, speaker-oriented, inclusive, or impersonal. The respondents employed speaker-oriented perspective, inclusive or impersonal in order to be free from the imposition of others and to show that they respected the rights of others to their own autonomy and freedom of movement or choice. Furthermore, the results revealed that in general, the respondents in M-M and F-F interactions and M-F and F-M interactions employed hearer-oriented and speaker-oriented perspective more than other perspectives. In particular, the results revealed that the respondents in M-M and F-F interactions and M-F and F-M interactions had a great tendency to use hearer-oriented perspective only in direct requests.

Growing Trends of Using Mobile in English Language Learning

The study explores growing trends of using mobile in English language learning among higher secondary school learners in Pakistan. A survey is conducted to collect data from randomly selected students in district Okara (Punjab), Pakistan. Questionnaire based on five likert scale used to collect quantitative data. Analysis done on SPSS, to acquire mean score and frequency analysis reveals that higher secondary school students of English have great tendency for using mobile to learn English. Besides Students’ perception as obtained from survey prove that using mobile for English language learning makes their job easy and they are able to develop their listening and communicative habits. Findings of this study also reveal that using mobile for English language learning makes the students, independent and self-evaluator.