Proanthocyanidin-Rich Date Seed Extract Protects Against Chemically Induced Hepatorenal Toxicity

Atallah F. Ahmed,Jawaher H. Al-Qahtani,Hanan M. Al-Yousef,Mansour S. Al-Said,AbdelKader E. Ashour,Mohammed Al-Sohaibani,Syed Rafatullah 한국식품영양과학회 2015 Journal of medicinal food Vol.18 No.3

A hydroacetone extract was prepared from seeds of Phoenix dactylifera L. var. Khalas, which is an industrial by-product of date processing. The proanthocyanidin nature of the extract (coded as DTX) was characterized by phytochemical and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyses. The total phenol/proanthocyanidin content and antioxidant activity of DTX were estimated by Folin–Ciocalteu, vanillin-sulfuric acid, and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays, respectively. The hepatorenal protective activity of DTX was evaluated using CCl4-induced toxicity model in rats, in comparison with silymarin (SYL). Results of the histopathological examination and measurements of various hepatorenal serum indices and tissue biochemical markers demonstrated that DTX displayed marked protective potential against CCl4-induced liver and kidney injury at 100 mg/kg/rat. Relative to the control CCl4-intoxicated group, pretreatment with DTX significantly (P<.001) suppressed the elevated serum levels of alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase (ALT and AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), γ-glutamyl transferase (GGT), total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), bilirubin, creatinine, and calcium, whereas it significantly (P<.001) increased the diminished serum levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and total protein (TP). Moreover, DTX significantly decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) formation and increased TP synthesis in hepatorenal tissues compared with the intoxicated control. The improvement in biochemical parameters by DTX was observed in a dose-dependent manner and confirmed by restoration of normal histological features. The acute toxicity test of DTX in rats revealed safety of the extract. This study reveals that DTX enhances the recovery from xenobiotics-induced toxicity initiated by free radicals.

Multi-Firm Mergers with Leaders and Followers

Gamal Atallah 서울대학교 경제연구소 2015 Seoul journal of economics Vol.28 No.4

This paper analyzes mergers involving several leaders and followers in Stackelberg models, with the merged entity acting as a leader. Adding a follower to a merger increases its profitability, and a merger between one leader and any number of followers is always profitable. When a merger involves two leaders, a sufficiently large proportion of followers is required for it to be profitable. A merger is less likely to be profitable when the number of participating leaders is intermediate and the number of participating followers is small. That is, merger profitability is monotonic in the number of followers but not in the number of leaders. All mergers involving leaders and followers are welfare-reducing. Overall, Stackelberg leadership partially alleviates the merger paradox.

Opportunity Costs, Competition, and Firm Selection

Gamal Atallah 한국국제경제학회 2006 International Economic Journal Vol.20 No.4

Machine Learning for Benchmarking Critical Care Outcomes

Louis Atallah,Mohsen Nabian,Ludmila Brochini,Pamela J. Amelung 대한의료정보학회 2023 Healthcare Informatics Research Vol.29 No.4

Objectives: Enhancing critical care efficacy involves evaluating and improving system functioning. Benchmarking, a retrospectivecomparison of results against standards, aids risk-adjusted assessment and helps healthcare providers identify areasfor improvement based on observed and predicted outcomes. The last two decades have seen the development of severalmodels using machine learning (ML) for clinical outcome prediction. ML is a field of artificial intelligence focused on creatingalgorithms that enable computers to learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. This narrative reviewcenters on key discoveries and outcomes to aid clinicians and researchers in selecting the optimal methodology for criticalcare benchmarking using ML. Methods: We used PubMed to search the literature from 2003 to 2023 regarding predictivemodels utilizing ML for mortality (592 articles), length of stay (143 articles), or mechanical ventilation (195 articles). Wesupplemented the PubMed search with Google Scholar, making sure relevant articles were included. Given the narrative style,papers in the cohort were manually curated for a comprehensive reader perspective. Results: Our report presents comparativeresults for benchmarked outcomes and emphasizes advancements in feature types, preprocessing, model selection, andvalidation. It showcases instances where ML effectively tackled critical care outcome-prediction challenges, including nonlinearrelationships, class imbalances, missing data, and documentation variability, leading to enhanced results. Conclusions:Although ML has provided novel tools to improve the benchmarking of critical care outcomes, areas that require further researchinclude class imbalance, fairness, improved calibration, generalizability, and long-term validation of published models.

R&D and Merger Profitability

Gamal Atallah 서울대학교 경제연구소 2005 Seoul journal of economics Vol.18 No.4

This paper analyzes the interaction between R&D and merger profitability. The industry is composed of symmetric firms who undertake cost-reducing R&D and compete in output. A subgroup of firms merge, and all firms adjust their R&D investments to the new market structure. It is found that in most cases R&D has a negligible impact on merger profitability, and does not change the critical number of firms required to make a merger profitable. However, when firms are indifferent toward a merger in the absence of R&D, R&D has an effect on merger profitability. Noncooperative R&D makes such mergers profitable for low and high levels of spillovers, and unprofitable for intermediate levels of spillovers; moreover, the range of spillovers such that a merger is unprofitable due to R&D increases with concentration. Cooperative R&D without information sharing makes such mergers profitable for low spillovers, but unprofitable for high spillovers. Cooperative R&D with information sharing makes such mergers unprofitable.

Pectin Structure and Normal Iron Absorption Determined by Erythrocyte Incorporation of Ingested Stable Iron in Rats

MEE HYE KIM and MOKHTAR T . ATALLAH 한국영양학회 1995 춘계심포지움 및 발표논문 초록 Vol.1995 No.-

Modifying the aggregated wind farm model with a controller

Badr, Mohammed. A.,Atallah, Ahmed. M.,Bayoumi, Mona A. Techno-Press 2015 Advances in energy research Vol.3 No.3

A large wind farm can be simplified by the aggregated wind farm models for load flow, steady and transient stability studies. When a fault (such as a short circuit) happens in a large wind farm, some of wind turbines trip while others do not. This paper is to design a controller to modify the aggregated wind farm model in the case of one or more unit removed or added from the complete model. This is without stopping the simulation process during performing the steady state and transient analysis of the whole system. This controller can modulate the status of the wind turbines in the aggregated model in a given farm according to any change in this farm. By this controller, we save effort and time to change the status of wind turbines in the aggregated model. The proposed wind farm is composed of some smaller farms of permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) and others of squirrel cage induction generators (SCIGs).

PHOTON-ASSISTED TRANSPORT CHARACTERISTICS THROUGH QUANTUM DOT COUPLED TO SUPERCONDUCTING RESERVOIRS

A. H. PHILLIPS,A. S. ATALLAH,A. F. AMIN,M. A. SEMARY 성균관대학교(자연과학캠퍼스) 성균나노과학기술원 2006 NANO Vol.1 No.3

The influence of time-varying fields on the transport through a mesoscopic device has been investigated. This mesoscopic device is modeled as a quantum dot coupled to superconducting reservoirs via quantum point contact. The effect of a magnetic field and the Andreev reflection process were taken into account. The conductance was deduced by using Landuaer–Buttiker equation. A numerical calculation has been performed that shows a resonant tunneling behavior. Such investigation is important for fabricating photoelectron mesoscopic devices.

Extratropical cyclone climatology across eastern Canada

Plante, Mathieu,Son, Seok‐,Woo,Atallah, Eyad,Gyakum, John,Grise, Kevin John Wiley Sons, Ltd 2015 International journal of climatology Vol.35 No.10

<P><B>ABSTRACT</B></P><P>Extratropical cyclone (ETC) tracks across eastern Canada are examined by applying a Lagrangian tracking algorithm to the lower‐tropospheric relative vorticity field of reanalysis data. Both the seasonal cycle and the interannual variability of ETCs are quantified in terms of overall cyclone frequency, intensity, and regions of development and decay. We find that ETCs travelling to eastern Canada tend to develop over the Rockies, the Great Lakes and the US East Coast. The ETCs are most intense over Newfoundland and the North Atlantic Ocean, confirming previous findings. While ETCs at cities along the Atlantic coastline (e.g. St. John's) are dominated by East Coast cyclones (which are intense in winter), those inland (e.g. Toronto) track primarily from the Great Lakes. ETCs that develop over the Gulf of Mexico affect eastern Canada infrequently, but those that do tend to be intense. The interannual variability of the wintertime ETCs is influenced by the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Significant ENSO‐related variability is found over most regions of southern Canada, except on the east coast. Although ETCs at Toronto are significantly modulated by ENSO, no visible changes are found at St. John's. These ENSO‐related ETC changes are mostly due to the shifts in ETC development regions, with minor changes in the travelling direction of ETCs.</P>

Cell type??specific channelrhodopsin-2 transgenic mice for optogenetic dissection of neural circuitry function

Zhao, Shengli,Ting, Jonathan T,Atallah, Hisham E,Qiu, Li,Tan, Jie,Gloss, Bernd,Augustine, George J,Deisseroth, Karl,Luo, Minmin,Graybiel, Ann M,Feng, Guoping Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan P 2011 Nature methods Vol.8 No.9

Optogenetic methods have emerged as powerful tools for dissecting neural circuit connectivity, function and dysfunction. We used a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) transgenic strategy to express the H134R variant of channelrhodopsin-2, ChR2(H134R), under the control of cell type??specific promoter elements. We performed an extensive functional characterization of the newly established VGAT-ChR2(H134R)-EYFP, ChAT-ChR2(H134R)-EYFP, Tph2-ChR2(H134R)-EYFP and Pvalb(H134R)-ChR2-EYFP BAC transgenic mouse lines and demonstrate the utility of these lines for precisely controlling action-potential firing of GABAergic, cholinergic, serotonergic and parvalbumin-expressing neuron subsets using blue light. This resource of cell type??specific ChR2(H134R) mouse lines will facilitate the precise mapping of neuronal connectivity and the dissection of the neural basis of behavior.