Scientific Research Publishing

Ceramic water filtration is the process that makes use of a porous ceramic (fired clay) medium to filter microbes or other contaminants from water. Ceramic water filtration has been greatly improved upon such that it takes care of most microbial contamination in water. However, the ceramic filter is not known to treat chemical contaminants in water. Therefore this project was aimed at developing a ceramic filter that could treat certain chemical contamination in water at the household level. Porous ceramic bodies were formulated and constituted from various materials such as kaolin, laterite, bonechar and charcoal. Bone char was added as a defluoridation agent while the charcoal doubled as the pore-creating combustible material and as an Activated Carbon media in the ceramic body for the adsorption of metals from water. The formulated ceramic bodies were shaped into filters (pot) using the slip casting technique and fired bisque (850˚C - 900˚C). The developed filter samples were subje...

Affirmative action, also known as equal opportunity, is a federal agenda designed to counteract historic discrimination faced by ethnic minorities, women and other underrepresented groups. It is an outcome of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement and initially focused on improving opportunities for African Americans in employment and education. African Americans refer to the people whose ancestors were involuntarily brought from West Africa to the United States by means of the historic Atlantic slave trade. They have made a lot of efforts to obtain the equal human rights in the United States. And they are different from the African immigrants, who immigrate legally to the United States from almost all regions in Africa. And many reports have showed that first- and second-generation black immigrants were more educated and economically successful than African Americans.  In this paper, the author examined the extent to which the black immigrant success story was di...

Transducer is a device that converts one form of energy to another. It is also the collective term used for both sensors which can be used to sense a wide range of different energy forms such as movement, electrical signals, radiant energy, thermal or magnetic energy etc., and actuators which can be used to switch voltages or currents. Transducer is often employed at the boundaries of automation, measurement, and control systems. In this paper, the author focused on the characterization and validation of a force transducer which converted force into frequency by photo-elastic effect in a solid-state laser. And the basic information about mass standard used in mass metrology and low-force measurements was introduced, which showed that in mass metrology, the most sensitive transducers had a limited range of linearity and could only be used to measure small differences among artifacts of nearly equal mass. The author conducted a prospective study by using a monolithic Nd:YAG lase...

Stroke, also known as cerebrovascular disease, is a sudden interruption of the blood supply to the brain for a blood vessel bursts or is blocked by a clot, which cuts off the supply of oxygen and nutrients, causing damage to the brain tissue. And its most common symptoms include sudden weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg, most often on one side of the body, sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding, and so on. The effects of a stroke depend on the severity and which area of the brain is injured. And there are two types of stroke: ischemic stroke, which is most common and caused by an abrupt blockage of an artery and hemorrhagic stroke, which is caused by bleeding into brain tissue when a blood vessel bursts. According to the data from World Heart Federation, stroke is the second leading cause of disability, after dementia and every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. And globally, stroke is the second leading cause of death above the age of 60...

Religion has a significant impact on the spiritual awareness and ideas of believers such as values as an important dimension of social culture. Studies have shown that the proportion of religious believers in China showed a clear upward trend in recent years, and the number of religious believers in private entrepreneurs has gradually increased. Current scholars have begun to pay attention to the role of religious beliefs on corporate behavior, and initially carried out the relevant research. However, we can see from the existing research that scholars have not paid full attention to the relationship between entrepreneurs’ religious beliefs and corporate R&D investment, and the related research literatures are rare. R&D investment requires a lot of money and staff input, and it’ payback period is quite long, coupled with the possibility of failure in the R&D, so it is full of great risks. Of course, once the R&D investment activities were succeeded, it will bring g...

Emotional intelligence (EI) usually refers to not only the ability to express and control one’s own emotions, but also the ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. It is a concept that becomes popular from 1995 by psychologist and behavioral science journalist Dr. Daniel Goleman in his first book, Emotional Intelligence , and has been studied by experts from different aspects and in different fields. It Ethics is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. Through some literature research, it has been shown that EI and Ethics are determinant on rationalized and emotional integration of human behavior, and inherently in society and in organizational world and are also important in the attenuation of dramatic and unb alanced wills that tend to persist. In this paper, the authors aimed to explore the role of Emotional Intelligence on Individual Ethics, Perceptions of Other...

Rhinosporidiosis is a rare chronic granulomatous infectious disease caused by Rhinosporidium seeberi and it usually presents as a granulose growth, most often in the nasal cavity or the area around the eye. This disease can be transmitted by direct contact with spores through dust, infected clothing and swimming in stagnant water. It is mainly endemic in India, Srilanka, Bangladesh; and sporadic cases have been reported from United States of America, Italy Brazil, Argentina and Africa. Based on some literature research, it can be found that few cases of nasal rhinosporidiosis have been reported in Nigeria. So in this paper, the authors reported a rare case of nasal rhinosporidiosis in a 13-year-old male patient from Sokoto, North Western Nigeria and aimed to caution otorhinolaryngologists to have a high index of suspicion of this emerging disease entity in the management of patient with nasal mass. The patient was presented at the ENT clinic of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teachin...

For a geologist, his main work is to study Earth processes, Earth materials and Earth history, which will help people to understand our planet better. And there are many more detailed fields in geology that different geologists focus on in the same place. Dahomey Basin is an arcuate coastal basin, the onshore parts of which underlie the coastal plains of southwest Nigeria, Benin and Togo. In this paper, the study area is located in Ibese, southwestern Nigeria about 40 km southwest of Abeokuta. And the authors focused on the distribution of diverse lithofacies, genetic description of the Ewekoro Formation with emphasis on the limestone and what characterize the environment of its deposition, the extent of diagenesis, biological influence on the chemistry of the units, major elemental composition, post depositional processes and their viability in determining its economic values. The field mapping was carried out in order to determine different rock units and their association ...

One of the difficulties presented in teaching mechanical vector is the visualization and interactivity issue. The use of static resources, such as lecture classes and the traditional media used, most often, does not allow a satisfactory teaching and learning of the content. An effective learning of the content is important for the engineers during the training, but the methodological alternatives that can provide the assimilation of the content in the easiest way, in most of the times are not available in the courses for teachers. GeoGeabra software, which is a dynamic geometric environment that allows the interactive exploration of algebraic and geometric concepts, was used in the development and proposal of didactic solutions for disciplines in General Mechanical Engineering courses, developing activities in the form of computation tools, so-called potentially meaningful material. It was observed as necessary conditions in MLT―Meaningful Learning Theory, theoretical basis that c...

Nurses compose over a third of the workforce in hospitals, providing clinical and nursing care around the clock often in a collaborative multidisciplinary approach. The competence of nursing students is related to the quality of nursing care they provide, their cooperation with individuals from other disciplines and services, and, ultimately, patient health and safety. Inasmuch the professional standards of nurses rely on their competency, evaluating nurses’ competence is an important and fundamental issue in healthcare. The research developed and validated a 70-item scale that quantifies core competences of graduating baccalaureate nurses in Korea. Each item was rated on a 5-point Likert scale. The strengths of the KNCCS are its conformity to the standards and criteria for the accreditation of baccalaureate nursing education programs proposed by the Korean Accreditation Board of Nursing; its contemporary and perspective content; and its congruence with the core competencies value...

Cervical cancer, a type of cancer that develops in a woman’s cervix, is one of the most common malignancy in women and remains a leading cause of cancer-related death for women worldwide, especially in developing countries. It is usually caused by a virus called human papillomavirus (HPV) and the virus spreads through sexual contact. Due to cervical cancer often has no symptoms in its early stages, it is important and necessary to use screening for cervical cancer to help detect early cases and save thousands of lives. In fact, nowadays, cervical cancer is highly preventable in most Western countries because screening tests and a vaccine to prevent human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are available. And it can be one of the most successfully treatable cancers if detected early. And Pap smear is one of the screening tests. In this paper, the authors conducted a prospective study on the cyto-colpohistological comparison of inflammatory Pap smear screening tests performed in pat...

Wastewater  is a term applied to any type of water that negatively impacts the quality of the water. It includes all effluent from household, commercial establishments and institutions, hospitals, industries and so on. It also includes stormwater and urban runoff, agricultural, horticultural and aquaculture effluent. Due to its negative impact can finally influence human’s health and the balance of ecosystems, wastewater treatment and disposal is an important part of protecting and preserving water resources.  Urban wastewater usually refers to domestic waste water (from residential settlements) or a mixture of domestic waste water with industrial waste water (from premises used for trade or industry) and/or run-off rain water. It’s one of the main city pollution, which also needs to be treated properly and timely. In this paper, to give an answer to the choice of methods of treatment of raw sewage and to raise awareness of the pollution of the river R’dom w...

Gout, one of the most painful form of inflammatory arthritis, is characterized by sudden, severe attacks of pain, redness and tenderness in joints, often the joint at the base of the big toe. It’s reported that gout is one of the most frequently referenced medical disorders in the history of mankind and its cases have increased in recent years because of an aging population, the rise in obesity, increasing numbers of people who also have other conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease, and/or diabetes. And it’s the result of too much uric acid in the blood, which is called hyperuricemia . According to some literature, it has been proved that hyperuricemia is associated to the development of high blood pressure, type II diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events and it seems that this relationship is based on oxidative stress , which is essentially an imbalance between the production of free radicals and the ability of...

Forkhead box P3 (FOXP3) has been found to be overexpressed by a range of cancer cells and correlated with prognosis of tumors. This finding raises the possibility that the development of anti-FOXP3 antibody test may be useful for clinical application. The present work was designed to test whether circulating autoantibody to FOXP3 was altered in lung cancer. 271 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 227 in control subjects matched in age, gender and smoking history were recruited. Circulating antiFOXP3 IgG antibody was tested using an inhouse enzymelinked immunosorbent assay. Student’s t-test showed that the levels of IgG autoantibody to FOXP3 were significantly higher in patients with NSCLC than control subjects (t = 7.67, P < 0.0001). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.70 (95% CI 0.65 - 0.75, SE ± 0.024), in which patients at stage 2 had the highest AUC of 0.75 (95%CI 0.67 - 0.81, SE ± 0.037...

Gout is the leading cause of microcrystalline arthritis worldwide and the most common cause of arthritis in adult men. The prevalence of cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome is high among gout patients; one of the current hypotheses that may explain this relationship is based on oxidative stress; however, few studies have sought to investigate this relationship. The aim of this study was to determine the oxidative status of patients with gout attack. We conducted a case-control study over a 4 months period at the Rheumatology service of the Yaoundé Central Hospital. Cases were patients with an acute gout attack and controls were healthy subjects matched for sex and age. We evaluated uricemia, serum levels of Superoxide Dismutase (SOD), Glutathione Peroxidase (GPx), Catalase and Malondialdehyde (MDA). Oxidative stress was defined by an increase in MDA and/or a decrease in SOD, Catalase and GPx. Statistical analysis was performed by the S.P.S.S. 21.0 softw...

In recent studies, reversible logic has emerged as a great scene of research, having applications in low power CMOS circuits, optical computing, quantum computing and nanotechnology. The classical logic gates such as AND, OR, EXOR and EXNOR are not reversible. In the existing literature, reversible sequential circuits designs are offered that are improved for the number of the garbage outputs and reversible gates. Minimizing the number of garbage is very noticeable. In the present paper, we show a design of the reversible comparator based on the quantum gates implementation of the reversible DG gate. The reversible DG gate is designed by using 3 × 3 quantum gates such as NOT, CNOT, Controlled-V and Controlled-V+ gates. Also, we have used the TR gate and various types of quantum gates in the implementation results. Low power three-bit comparator is designed using DG Gate, New Gate and Fredkin Gate. In order to evaluate the benefit of using the DG gate proposed in this paper, one-bit co...

Fibromyalgia, a long-term or chronic disorder, is not well understood by the medical community until now. Its symptoms include chronic muscle pain, fatigue, sleep problems, and painful tender points or trigger points, which often overlap with other diseases. Due to the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, there isn’t a very effective way to cure this disease though a variety of medications can help control symptoms. In this paper, the authors introduced a forgiveness education in patients with fibromyalgia based on Worthington and Scherer’s view that forgiveness was an emotion-focused coping strategy that may promote health. First, the authors hypothesized that forgiveness could potentially be a useful coping strategy in patients with fibromyalgia. Then a qualitative study was conducted in a workshop setting. The authors identified a random sample of patients with fibromyalgia who completed the Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Clinic Treatment Program in 2010. And the participants we...

Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments, both salty and fresh. And there are a variety of phytoplankton, varying from photosynthesizing bacteria (cyanobacteria), to plant-like diatoms, to armor-plated coccolithophores (drawings not to scale).  Phytoplankton have chlorophyll to capture sunlight, and they use photosynthesis to turn it into chemical energy. They consume carbon dioxide, and release oxygen. Due to the functions, phytoplankton are of extreme importance in the ocean environment and it is necessary to track their existence and monitor their population distribution in the ocean environment. However, because the phytoplankton are similar to other non-algae carbon rich particles, it is difficult to measure their distribution, so scientists focus on their photosynthetic pigment content, chlorophyll. They can monitor and predict the abundance of the phytoplankton via determining the concentration of ocean chlorophyll. Blending tech...

An impacted tooth means that it is stuck and cannot erupt into function. And the maxillary cuspid , namely maxillary canine, is the second most common tooth to become impacted. Actually, there are four canines: two maxillary canines and two mandibular canines and the canines are critical teeth in the dental arch and play an important role to the dentofacial aesthetics and function. Considering the importance of canines and due to the impacted maxillary canines is a frequently encountered clinical problem, many studies evaluated the prevalence of impacted canines among various populations and reported vast differences in their findings. In this paper, a retrospective, descriptive, cross-sectional study of 1321 digital panoramic radiographs was conducted and the authors aimed to estimate the prevalence of impacted maxillary canines in the general population of the city of Nablus, Palestine. The radiographs were obtained from the records of a private dental clinic from the year 2...

As an animal essential amino acid in the daily diet, methionine possesses high nutritional value and important physiological functions, such as growth promotion, detoxification, antitumor and anticancer, resistance for coccidium infection, involved in methyl transfer and synthesis of protein  and so on. What’s more, methionine is closely related to the immune function of livestock and poultry, which is not only has effects on the growth and development of immune organs, but also on the specific and nonspecific immune function of organism. In addition, methionine plays a key role in protein synthesis and catabolism of the immune system. On the other hand, the excessive methionine can also cause negative effects on animals, it is suggested that the methionine is the most toxic member of the amino acid family. this review aims to clarify the effects of methionine on immune function in the aspects of growth and development immune organs, the histological structure of the immune organs...