Chronic moderate alcohol consumption has been implicated in promoting bone health in acyclic (postmenopausal) women via increasing bone mineral density. To our knowledge, no studies investigated the potential effects of ethanol on the bone-specific markers osteocalcin and RANKL which are important in regulating osteoblast - osteoclast activity and bone metabolism. Therefore, the aim of the study was to look into RANKL expression in serum and RANKL and osteocalcin expression in the femoral neck following chronic alcohol consumption of 12% v/v ethanol in water in acyclic C57BL/6 mice. Female ...

Ceratitis capitata or the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) is a highly invasive and destructive pest due to its tolerance of various climatic and environmental conditions as well as broad host range, including hundreds of fruits and vegetables. Medfly has a great economic impact on fruit production, national market and world trade. The population in Lebanon has been on the rise since 2007 due to several factors including optimal climate and host conditions, insecticide resistance, and negligent regulatory and detection measures during fruit harvest and transportation. Medfly infestation in Lebanon ...

In this work, Silver Nanoparticles (AgNPs) were synthesized in water using either polymer assisted chemical reduction synthesis method or green synthesis. The obtained AgNPs were characterized by Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), and further tested for antibacterial activity to evaluate their potential use in wound healing. At first polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP 10 KD) and Low-Molecular Weight Chitosan were used as coating agents during the reduction of silver nitrate with a strong reducing agent sodium borohydride (NaBH4). Our DLS results demonstrated that ...

Yerba Mate (Ilex paraguariensis) is a beverage that is highly consumed by certain communities in Lebanon. Several studies have shown the benefits of yerba mate consumption on one's health. Also, Lebanese add to their hot drink some medicinal plants that have been acquired by the society from the Arabian folk medicine. Many studies have been conducted, yet little is known about its effect on the Lebanese health, as they have been consuming it for almost 100 years. Therefore, this study was done to assess the use of yerba mate and medicinal plants. A questionnaire was distributed among 200 local ...

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequent cancer malignancy among men and the third leading cause of cancer death in the developed world. To date, the exact molecular mechanism underlying the role of caffeine one of the major coffee constituents on PCa prognosis is not yet unraveled. Caffeine has many antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti carcinogenic properties through the modulation of certain inflammatory markers such as IL-6 and TNF-α. The present study was carried out to evaluate the effect of caffeine on PCa cell lines viability, namely PC3 and PC3-PSMA and assessing as well their ...

Quantum Computers, the next wave of computing, and an emerging field in computer science have brought numerous advancements to problem solving and a quantum approach to programming a certain machine. This thesis tackles three main areas in the approach to quantum computers. First, the thesis provides a state-of-the-art review to Quantum computers/ Second it proposes a timeline for the progress of the technology and highlights the importance of early action. Finally, it focuses on the implications of such advancements on the current standards of network security. Specifically, it proposes ...

Eggs are one of nature’s most nutritious and economical foods. Besides their nutritional value, antioxidant, anti‐cancerous, antihypertensive activity, and immunomodulatory effects, chemical and microbial contamination of eggs pose a risk on human health. Chemical contamination is due to the abuse of antibiotics in poultry. Microbial contamination can be through horizontal or vertical transmission. Microbial contamination accompanies a high risk of spread of antibiotic resistance. Microbial contamination can be controlled by choosing the egg source wisely and by storing eggs carefully. A lot of ...

Herein, we describe, a simple method for the synthesis of dendrigraft poly-L-lysine (d-PLL) coated gold nanoparticles in water (AuNPs-d-PLL) as potential vehicles of siRNA delivery to prostate cancer cells, PC3-PSMA. AuNPs-d-PLL with diameters ranging between 50 ̶ 130 nm have been synthesized in aqueous solutions using d-PLL (7 KD) as a capping ligand and L-ascorbic acid as a reducing agent. The size of the resulting AuNPs was found to depend on several parameters, such as the concentrations of gold salt, reducing agent, and d-PLL. The obtained AuNPs-d-PLL were characterized using UV-visible ...

Bitcoin is the most popular purely digital cryptocurrency nowadays. It started in 2009 as a peer to peer payment system, decentralized, pseudo-anonymous and secure system of money. The main objective of this study is to estimate and predict the weekly close bitcoin price by including other variables like commodities, indexes and demand / supply variables through different kind of machine learning and deep learning such as multiple regression, time series ARIMA model, artificial neural network, combination of multiple regression and ARIMA model, and finally combination of multiple regression, ...

Fuzzy measure theory is a generalization of classical measure theory. It was first introduced by Lotfi Zadeh in 1965 in his famous paper ”Fuzzy Sets”. After more than 50 years of the existence and development of classical measure theory, mathematicians felt that the additivity property is, in some applications, too restrictive. It is also unrealistic under real and physical conditions where measurement errors are unavoidable. According to Sugeno, fuzzy measures are obtained by replacing the additivity condition of classical measures with weaker conditions of monotonicity and continuity. Chapter ...