Background: Quality of life in brain tumor patients is an emerging issue and has prompted neurosurgeons to recon¬sider the need for cognitive assessment in the course of treatment. To date there has been a lack of comprehensive neuropsychological assessment performed preoperatively and in the acute postoperative period in our hospitals.Objectives: to establish the effects of tumors and their surgical treatment, from a neuropsychological perspective, on cognitive functioning in patients with cerebral Gliomas. Methods: This is a prospective study conducted in the Neurosurgical Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, during the period from January 1999 to January 2001. Any patient admitted during the period of the study with clinical history, signs, symptoms, and contrast enhanced MRI suggesting a cerebral glioma and confirmed by postoperative histopathological results of glioma has been included in this study. While multifocal lesions, long-lasting epilepsy, use of antiepileptic therapy, multiple cranial lesions, previous cranial surgery, any chronic illness, and histopathological result of other tumors were exclusion criteria. All patients were at their first operation for brain tumors. Patients were examined by analyzing several functional domains (intelligence, executive functions, memory, language, praxis, gnosis and mood state) in order to establish the effect of tumor and surgery on cognition.Results: 29 patients who fulfilled the selection criteria were included. Mean duration of clinical history was 5 months (range 1–9 months). At baseline, using test- and domain-based criteria, 79% and 38% of patients, respectively, were impaired, the former related to tumor factors such as edema (P < 0.05), larger size (P < 0.05) and higher grade (P = 0.001). Verbal memory, visuospatial memory and word fluency were the most frequently affected functions, partly associated with depression. Postoperatively, 38% and 55% of patients, respectively, were unchanged, 24% and 21% improved, and 38% and 24% worsened; 24% and 62% of patients were intact, respec-tively.Conclusions: The extent of removal did not influence the outcome. Improvement involved previously impaired functions and was correlated with high-grade tumors. Worsening regar¬ded executive functions was related to tumor size and was partly explained by radiological findings on postoperative MRI. This prospective study, focusing on the effects of tumor and surgery, showed that tumor significantly affects cognitive func¬tions, mainly due to the mass effect and higher grading. Surgical treatment improved the functions most frequently affected preoperatively and caused worsening of execu¬tive functions soon after operation, leaving the overall cognitive burden unchanged and capable of improvement prospectively.
Bis-anthraquinones with a unique molecular backbone, (+)-2,2’-epicytoskyrin A (epi) and (+)-1,1′-bislunatin (bis), was produced by endophytic fungi Diaporthe sp GNBP-10 associated with Gambir plant (Uncaria gambier). Epi and bis possess robust antimicrobial activity toward various pathogens. This study focus on knowing the optimum condition of epi and bis production from Diaporthe sp GNBP-10. A series of culture media with various nutrient compositions was investigated in epi and bis production. The content of epi and bis was determined by measuring the area under the curve from TLC-densitometric (scanner) experiment. The linear regression analysis was then applied to obtain the results. The optimi
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A Longitudinal opening is used to construct hollow core beam is a cast in site or precast or pre stressed concrete member with continuous voids provided to reduce weight, cost and, as a side benefit, to use for concealed electrical or mechanical runs. Primarily is used as floor beams or roof deck systems. This study investigate the behavior of six beams (solid or with opening) of dimension (length 1000 x height 180 x width120mm) simply support under partial uniformly distributed load, four of these beam contain long opening of varied section (40x40mm) or (80x40mm). The effect of vertical steel reinforcing, opening size and orientations are investigated to evaluate the response of beams. The experimental behavior based on load-deflection
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Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used to evaluate the capability of Glutamine (Gln) and its derivative chemicals as inhibitors for the anti-corrosive behavior of iron. The current work is devoted to scrutinizing reactivity descriptors (both local and global) of Gln, two states of neutral and protonated. Also, the change of Gln upon the incorporation into dipeptides was investigated. Since the number of reaction centers has increased, an enhancement in dipeptides’ inhibitory effect was observed. Thus, the adsorption of small-scale peptides and glutamine amino acids on Fe surfaces (1 1 1) was performed, and characteristics such as adsorption energies and the configuration with the highest stability and lowest energy were ca
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In this paper, analyzing the non-dimensional Magnesium-hydrodynamics problem Using nanoparticles in Jeffrey-Hamel flow (JHF) has been studied. The fundamental equations for this issue are reduced to a three-order ordinary differential equation. The current project investigated the effect of the angles between the plates, Reynolds number, nanoparticles volume fraction parameter, and magnetic number on the velocity distribution by using analytical technique known as a perturbation iteration scheme (PIS). The effect of these parameters is similar in the converging and diverging channels except magnetic number that it is different in the divergent channel. Furthermore, the resulting solutions with good convergence and high accuracy for the d
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Alumina thin films have significant applications in the areas of optoelectronics, optics, electrical insulators, sensors and tribology. The novel aspect of this work is that the homogeneous alumina thin films were prepared in several stages to generate a plasma jet. In this paper, aluminium nanoparticles suspended in vinyl alcohol were prepared using exploding wire plasma. TEM analysis was used to determine the size and shape of particles in aluminium and vinyl alcohol suspensions; the TEM images showed that the particle size is 17.2 nm. Aluminium/poly vinyl alcohol (Al/PVA) thin films were prepared using this suspension on quartz substrate by plasma jet technique at room temperature with an argon gas flow rate of 1 L/min. The Al/PV
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Increasing the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of silicon solar cells by improving their junction properties or minimizing light reflection losses remains a major challenge. Extensive studies were carried out in order to develop an effective antireflection coating for monocrystalline solar cells. Here we report on the preparation of a nanostructured cerium oxide thin film by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) as an antireflection coating for silicon solar cell. The structural, optical, and electrical properties of a cerium oxide nanostructure film are investigated as a function of the number of laser pulses. The X-ray diffraction results reveal that the deposited cerium oxide films are crystalline in nature and have a cubic fluorite. The field
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