The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) complex consists of the condyle, articular eminence, and articular disc. This disc divides the intracapsular components of the joint into upper and lower joint ...spaces. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered the reference standard for soft tissue diagnosis of the TMJ. One aim of the study was to identify if an association exists between arthralgia of the TMJ and MRI identified joint effusion. The clinical significance of identifying the presence of TMJ effusion on MRI lies in its potential association with inflammation, clinically assessed as pain at the lateral TMJ pole or around the pole area. Unfortunately the literature has been divided in asserting whether pain in the joint area is associated with the presence of MRI assessed effusion. A systematic review of the literature was unable to provide conclusive evidence for or against an association between TMJ pain and effusion. Materials and methods: Clinical and imaging findings from 336 joints were obtained from a historical cohort involving individuals with temporomandibular disorders. Two by two tables of association were used to determine if clinical signs associated with arthralgia were associated with the presence of ipsilateral effusion in the TMJ. These clinical signs included pain on range of motion (maximum unassisted and assisted opening as well as excursive movements), TMJ manipulation (compression and translation), and palpation of the lateral pole of the TMJ and around the TMJ pole. In addition, a total pain score (range 0-7) was created which represented the sum of positive responses to pain on any of the clinical range of motion tests. Statistical testing included the T-test to test for possible association of joint effusion with any pain to these clinical measures. Results: Statistical tests of association between joint effusion and range of motion, excursions, protrusion, joint manipulation and palpation all had p values > .05. Conclusion: The results suggest that there is no statistically significant association between an MRI diagnosis of joint effusion and TMJ arthralgia.
BACKGROUNDThe term "spot sign" was coined by Wada et al in 2007 and thought to be due to ongoing arterial bleeding in primary intraparenchymal haemorrhage (IPH).1 Spot sign has also been described in ...the context of intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH).2 Over the years arterial spot signs have been found to correlate with intraparenchymal hematoma expansion, worse clinical outcomes and increased risk of surgical intervention.3 We are describing a unique instance of a spot sign in venous sinus thrombosis that initially misled the clinical diagnosis. CASE PRESENTATIONAn 83-year-old woman on dual antiplatelet therapy, with a history of minor stroke, presented with sudden right-sided weakness and dysarthria. Serial CT brain imaging revealed rapidly enlarging intraparenchymal haemorrhage (IPH). Contrast enhanced CT displayed multiple spot signs typically associated with arterial bleeding pattern. Initially possibility of antithrombotic related IPH was kept, however venogram confirmed venous pathology with focal superior sagittal sinus thrombosis (SSS). Unfortunately, the patient deteriorated and eventually succumbed to the illness before the diagnosis could be made. CONCLUSIONThe case exemplifies the potential of venous sinus thrombosis to manifest as a spot sign, thereby emphasizing the need for a broader differential diagnosis. The rarity of venous spot signs may be attributed to patient-specific venous anatomy and poor collateralization in the occluded sinus territory.
The purpose of this study is to examine the association between intellectual capital efficiency and firms’ financial performance and market value. The study employs the value-added intellectual ...coefficient (VAIC) model to measure intellectual capital efficiency. This model consists of three elements: human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency, and capital employed efficiency. The study uses the return on assets (ROA) ratio to measure firms' financial performance and the market-to-book value (MBV) ratio as a measure of market value. Data for a sample of 113 manufacturing and service companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange for 2014 to 2018 were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results indicate that VAIC has a significant positive relationship with a firm’s financial performance, while it is unrelated to a firm’s market value. Human and structural capital also have a positive influence on financial performance, but they have no relationship with market valuation. Capital employed is positively related to both financial performance and market value. The findings of this study would enable companies to better understand the role of intellectual capital in adding value for all stakeholders of the company. They may also bring standard setters’ attention to the need for recognizing or disclosing intellectual capital either quantitatively or qualitatively within the accounting financial reports, which may have the potential to increase the credibility of financial reporting.
Background:
Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has been recently adopted into the practice of thyroidology in the United States, although its use as an alternative to traditional thyroid surgery in Asia ...and Europe came near the turn of the 21st century. In the United States, only a few studies with small sample sizes have been published to date. We examined outcomes of benign thyroid nodules treated with RFA from 2 North American institutions.
Methods:
We performed a prospective, multi-institutional cohort study of thyroid nodules treated with RFA between July 2019 and January 2022. Demographics, sonographic characteristics of thyroid nodules, thyroid function profiles, procedural details, complications, and nodule volume measurements at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months follow-up were evaluated. Adjusted multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to identify sonographic features associated with treatment failure.
Results:
A total of 233 nodules were included. The median and interquartile range of volume reduction rate (VRR) at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months were 54% interquartile range (IQR): 36%–73%, 58% (IQR: 37%–80%), 73% (IQR: 51%–90%), and 76% (IQR: 52%–90%), respectively (
P
<0.001). Four patients presented with toxic adenomas. All patients were confirmed euthyroid at 3-month postprocedure follow-up. Two patients developed temporary hoarseness of voice, but no hematoma or nodular rupture occurred postprocedure. Elastography was significantly associated with VRR. Compared with soft nodules, stiff nodules were more likely to have a lower VRR (odds ratio: 11.64, 95% confidence interval: 3.81–35.53,
P
<0.05), and mixed elasticity was also more likely to have a lower VRR (odds ratio: 4.9; 95% confidence interval: 1.62–14.85,
P
<0.05).
Conclusions:
This is the largest multi-institutional North American study examining thyroid nodule treatment response to RFA. RFA is a safe and effective treatment option that allows preservation of thyroid function with minimal risk of procedural complications.
Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) stands as a critical tool for understanding the evolutionary and functional relationships among biological sequences. Obtaining an exact solution for MSA, termed ...exact-MSA, is a significant challenge due to the combinatorial nature of the problem. Using the dynamic programming technique to solve MSA is recognized as a highly computationally complex algorithm. To cope with the computational demands of MSA, parallel computing offers the potential for significant speedup in MSA. In this study, we investigated the utilization of parallelization to solve the exact-MSA using three proposed novel approaches. In these approaches, we used multi-threading techniques to improve the performance of the dynamic programming algorithms in solving the exact-MSA. We developed and employed three parallel approaches, named diagonal traversing, blocking, and slicing, to improve MSA performance. The proposed method accelerated the exact-MSA algorithm by around 4×. The suggested approaches could be basic approaches to be combined with many existing techniques. These proposed approaches could serve as foundational elements, offering potential integration with existing techniques for comprehensive MSA enhancement.
In this paper, we present the first work on unsupervised dialectal Neural Machine Translation (NMT), where the source dialect is not represented in the parallel training corpus. Two systems are ...proposed for this problem. The first one is the Dialectal to Standard Language Translation (D2SLT) system, which is based on the standard attentional sequence-to-sequence model while introducing two novel ideas leveraging similarities among dialects: using common words as anchor points when learning word embeddings and a decoder scoring mechanism that depends on cosine similarity and language models. The second system is based on the celebrated Google NMT (GNMT) system. We first evaluate these systems in a supervised setting (where the training and testing are done using our parallel corpus of Jordanian dialect and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)) before going into the unsupervised setting (where we train each system once on a Saudi-MSA parallel corpus and once on an Egyptian-MSA parallel corpus and test them on the Jordanian-MSA parallel corpus). The highest BLEU score obtained in the unsupervised setting is 32.14 (by D2SLT trained on Saudi-MSA data), which is remarkably high compared with the highest BLEU score obtained in the supervised setting, which is 48.25.
Solid dispersions have achieved significant interest as an effective means of enhancing the dissolution rate and thus the bioavailability of a range of weakly water-soluble drugs. Solid dispersions ...of weakly water-soluble drugs with water-soluble carriers have lowered the frequency of these problems and improved dissolution. Solid dispersion is a solubilization technology emphasizing mainly on, drug-polymer two-component systems in which drug dispersion and its stabilization is the key to formulation development. Therefore, this technology is recognized as an exceptionally useful means of improving the dissolution properties of poorly water-soluble drugs and in the latest years, a big deal of understanding has been accumulated about solid dispersion, however, their commercial application is limited. In this review article, emphasis is placed on solubility, BCS classification, and carriers. Moreover, this article presents the diverse preparation techniques for solid dispersion and gathers some of the recent technological transfers. The different types of solid dispersions based on the carrier used and molecular arrangement were underlined. Additionally, it summarizes the mechanisms, the methods of preparing solid dispersions, and the marketed drugs that are available using solid dispersion approaches.
Oral manifestations and lesions could adversely impact the quality of people's lives. COVID-19 infection may interact with smoking and the impact on oral manifestations is yet to be discovered.
The ...aim of this study was to assess the self-reported presence of oral lesions by COVID-19-infected young adults and the differences in the association between oral lesions and COVID-19 infection in smokers and non-smokers.
This cross-sectional multi-country study recruited 18-to-23-year-old adults. A validated questionnaire was used to collect data on COVID-19-infection status, smoking and the presence of oral lesions (dry mouth, change in taste, and others) using an online platform. Multi-level logistic regression was used to assess the associations between the oral lesions and COVID-19 infection; the modifying effect of smoking on the associations.
Data was available from 5,342 respondents from 43 countries. Of these, 8.1% reported COVID-19-infection, 42.7% had oral manifestations and 12.3% were smokers. A significantly greater percentage of participants with COVID-19-infection reported dry mouth and change in taste than non-infected participants. Dry mouth (AOR=, 9=xxx) and changed taste (AOR=, 9=xxx) were associated with COVID-19- infection. The association between COVID-19-infection and dry mouth was stronger among smokers than non-smokers (AOR = 1.26 and 1.03,
= 0.09) while the association with change in taste was stronger among non-smokers (AOR = 1.22 and 1.13,
= 0.86).
Dry mouth and changed taste may be used as an indicator for COVID-19 infection in low COVID-19-testing environments. Smoking may modify the association between some oral lesions and COVID-19-infection.
Currently, the Jordanian economy needs more investment due to the growing financial deficit facing the Jordanian state. Therefore, this study came to increase investors' trust in financial reports ...issued by Jordanian companies to attract more investments. Based on that, this study will investigate the impact of audit committee dimensions on the efficiency of financial reports of limited partnership companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. The data were collected from financial reports issued by 52 limited partnership companies for the year 2021. The study used multiple regression to test the hypotheses. Based on the findings, audit committee dimensions explained the variation in financial reports' efficiency which reached 0.629. The audit committee members' size does not significantly affect the financial reports' efficiency. The significance reached 0.287. However, the knowledge of financial management has a significant positive effect on financial report efficiency; the significance reached 0.000 and the effect volume arrived at 0.699. Also, the findings showed that audit committee meetings have a greater effect on financial reporting efficiency than financial management knowledge. The impact was significantly positive, arriving at 0.790, while the significance reached 0.000. The main research conclusion is that limited partnership companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange adopt corporate governance to achieve control effectiveness of audit committees to increase financial reporting efficiency to achieve more investments. AcknowledgmentThe publication of this research has been supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research and Graduate Studies at Philadelphia University – Jordan.
In this research, the application of home composting system as an alternative approach for household organic waste management was investigated. A rotary drum home composter made of galvanized steel ...was designed and used for the composting process. It consists of two chambers of about 170 L each, and is equipped with sufficient holes to ensure aerobic conditions as well as valves for leachate drainage. Different parameters, including using waste to bulking agent ratio, co-composting using animal manure and introducing charcoal with the feedstock were investigated. The designed reactor proved its efficiency for composting purposes, according to the obtained results regarding the degradation of the organic waste with ease operation and monitoring. The highest reduction volume (85%) in the composted materials was in treatment of 1:0.5 waste to bulking agent, whereas co-composting using animal manure better enhanced the organic matter degradation, as the highest decrease in the C/N ratio (about 62%) was observed in this treatment. No significant effect of the charcoal war recorded regarding the degradation process, but was clear in reducing odors.
