Alice Walker (1944) ranks among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. Through her novels Meridian and the color Purple, Alice outlines many issues concerning the effect of authoritarian thinking upon its often innocent victims, and the possibility of meaningful, productive resistance. Walker's texts aim at giving a voice to those who have no voice especially those poor, rural black women who are robbed of power and the right to make decisions about their own lives by a range of forces standing against them. These texts also aim at clarifying how Walker's female protagonists, Meridian and Celia try to free themselves from oppression, misery , fear and underestimation

Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease initiated by dysbiotic biofilms and sustained by an altered host response, resulting in progressive destruction of the tooth-supporting tissues. Alongside immune-mediated damage, epithelial–mesenchymal transition has been proposed as a contributing mechanism in gingival barrier disruption and periodontal tissue remodeling. This narrative review examines the roles of the EMT-related transcription factors Snail1 and Twist1 in periodontitis, with particular focus on their involvement in epithelial junction loss, mesenchymal activation, and disease-associated tissue change. Relevant literature was identified through targeted searches of PubMed/MEDLINE and Google Scholar using terms relat

Background: This clinical trial aims to evaluate the color changes of direct resin composite veneer (DCV) restorations based on spectrophotometric analysis of 4 different types of resin composites between the baseline immediately after polishing and after one year of follow-up. Materials and methods: 28 patients were assessed for eligibility for participation, aged between 18 and 38 years old, who indicated for DCV restorations in anterior maxillary teeth were considered for participation in this study. In total, 25 patients who met the inclusion criteria were selected (6 males and 19 females, mean age: 20.9 at the time of restoration placement), and 3 patients were excluded. Partic

KE Sharquie, KI Al-Hamdi, AA Noaimi, AA Al-Mohammadi, J Clin Exp Invest www. clinexpinvest. org Vol, 2011 - Cited by 1

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the outcomes of 2 different anesthetic techniques (local infiltration vs infraorbital nerve block) for eliminating pain during apical surgeries that are associated with extensive periapical pathology in the anterior maxilla. Materials and Methods: Patients were randomly divided into 2 groups: patients in group I were anesthetized labially by local infiltration injections, whereas those in group II received a single infraorbital nerve block. Palatal injections were given for the 2 groups. Once the pain was initiated during surgery, the procedure was discontinued until profound anesthesia was secured. The studied variables were age, gender, onset of anesthesia, operative time, and intraoperati

Secondary trigeminal neuralgia (STN) results from an identifiable underlying pathology, including tumor compression, multiple sclerosis, arteriovenous malformations, hypertension, structural lesions, inflammation, trauma, or familial genetic conditions. This study, through a comprehensive review of the literature in PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library, explores the multifaceted aspects of STN. This study delves into the diverse etiological factors, focusing on the pathophysiological mechanisms that lead to trigeminal nerve dysfunction. The clinical manifestations of STN often overlap with those of primary trigeminal neuralgia, creating diagnostic challenges and necessitating a thorough evaluation that in

The content of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) is a crucial property of biodiesel and serves as an indicator of the transesterification reaction that converts vegetable oil into biodiesel. To facilitate the rapid estimation of FAME quickly in the biodiesel industries, simple methods such as measuring refractive index, density, and dynamic viscosity measurements were employed to monitor the progress of transesterification of castor oil to biodiesel. Blends of castor oil and biodiesel were mixed at different weights to find correlations between FAME content and refractive index, density, and dynamic viscosity measurements. The transesterification of castor oil with methanol was carried out to examine how the refractive index, density,

Ghrelin and leptin are hunger hormones related to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and the pathogenesis of T2DM is the abnormality in insulin secretion and insulin resistance (IR). The aim of this study is to evaluate ghrelin and leptin concentrations in blood and to specify the relationship of these hormones as dependent variables with some biochemical and clinical measurements in T2DM patients. In this study, forty one T2DM and forty three non-diabetes mellitus (non-DM) subjects, aged between 40-60 years and with normal weight, were enrolled. Fasting serum ghrelin and leptin were estimated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In our results ghrelin was significantly increased, and leptin was significantly decreased, in T2DM pa

Topic management is the awareness of how speakers deal with initiating, developing, changing, and ending a topic and how they fix the relationship when a misunderstanding occurs. It is such an important unit of conversation as it includes the transition from one strategy to the other to be accomplished in a systematic and orderly manner. These strategies are impaired in dementia patients thus lead to communication breakdown. This study aims at detecting the dementia patients' topic management strategies in selected speeches and answering the questions of which of these strategies are fully or partially detected in these speeches. The researchers use a qualitative method to examine the speeches of those patients and they adopt an eclectic