A retrospective analysis of oral and maxillofacial pathological lesions in a group of Egyptian children over 21 years

Objectives The goal of the current study was to evaluate the relative frequency of oral and maxillofacial pathological lesions among Egyptian children. Materials and methods Records of biopsies submitted to the department of oral and maxillofacial pathology from the year 1999 to 2019 were retrieved and reassessed for all cases under the age of 18 years. Information on age, sex, location of the lesion, and the histopathologic diagnosis was analyzed. Results Over the course of twenty-one years, 1108 specimens were analyzed where reactive soft tissue lesions, which accounted for 397 (35.8%) of all cases ranked the highest presented category, followed by inflammatory odontogenic cysts, which accounted for 213 cases (19.2%). With 208 cases, the inflammatory radicular cyst was on the top of the most common 20 lesions, followed by pyogenic granuloma (160 cases). Malignancy was found in 19 cases, with soft tissue tumors (10 cases) being the most common, followed by salivary gland (5 cases) and bone pathologies (4 cases). Conclusions The frequency of oral and maxillofacial pathological lesions among Egyptian children increased over the years but remained consistent with global trends. Clinical relevance This is the first study evaluating the relative frequency of oral and maxillofacial pathological lesions among Egyptian children and provides an insight into the most commonly encountered pediatric pathologies. This may aid in the understanding of the most prevalent oral lesions that impact the pediatric population, as well as providing the key to early detection of lesions.

Spatial pattern dynamics of Cyclobalanopsis myrsinifolia in mixed broad-leaved forests on Tianmu Mountain, eastern China, 1996–2012

Studies of the spatial patterns of dominant plant species may provide significant insights into processes and mechanisms that maintain stand stability. This study was performed in a permanent 1 ha plot in evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved mixed forests on Tianmu Mountain. Based on two surveys (1996 and 2012), the dynamics of the spatial distribution pattern of the dominant population ( (Blume) Oersted) and the intra- and interspecific relationships between and other dominant species populations were analyzed using Ripley’s () function. We identified the importance value of a species in a community, which is the sum of the relative density, relative frequency, and relative dominance. The drivers of spatial distribution variation and the maintenance mechanisms of the forest were discussed. The results showed that the importance value of within the community decreased over the past 16 years. The population exhibited a significantly aggregated distribution within a spatial scale of 0–25 m in 1996 whereas it changed to a random distribution at scales larger than 5.5 m in 2012. From 1996 to 2012, the spatial distribution patterns between and (Batal.) Iljinsk. and between and (Lamb.) Hook did not change significantly. In 1996, and Miq. were positively associated at the scale of 0–25 m; this relationship was strongly significant at the scale of 6–10 m. However, there was no association between the populations of two species in terms of the spatial distribution at the scale of 0–25 m in 2012. Our findings indicate that the drivers of variation in the spatial distribution of the population were intra- and interspecific mutual relationships as well the seed-spreading mechanism of this species.Cyclobalanopsis myrsinifoliaC. myrsinifoliaKrC. myrsinifoliaC. myrsinifoliaC. myrsinifoliaCyclocarya paliurusC. myrsinifoliaCunninghamia lanceolataC. myrsinifoliaDaphniphyllum macropodumC. myrsinifolia

Vitreoretinal Surgery in the Treatment of Dislocations of Intraocular Lens and Nucleus-Lens Particules into the Vitreous Cavity

Drops of lens nucleus/cortex particles into the vitreous cavity or dislocations of intraocular lenses (IOLs) are one of the serious complications of cataract surgery with an increasing relative frequency with the increase in the number of cataract surgeries. In addition, spontaneous and traumatic dislocations are other common case groups that should be treated. In this article, the vitreous dislocations of nucleus/cortex residues or IOL dislocations are discussed with different vitreoretinal surgical techniques.

Antimicrobial Activities and Molecular Signature of Endophytic Fungi of Opuntia ficus-Indica Cacti and the Cactus-Like Plant Aloe vera

Endophytes are fungi that colonize the internal tissues of plants without causing immediate adverse effects. Saudi Arabia (SA) is rich in Opuntia ficus-indica cacti and the cactus-like plant Aloe vera, which grow in the southern and western areas of SA. This study aimed to isolate and identify endophytic fungi from cacti and cactus-like plants in the Jeddah, Taif, and Al Baha regions KSA and then determine their effects on pathogenic fungal and bacterial growth. The isolates were groupedAloe Vera; Opuntia Ficus-Indica; Endophytic Fungi; Antimicrobial Activities; Pathogenic Bacteria. into 16 distinct operational taxonomic units based on the sequence of the internal transcribed spacer in the rDNA gene with the primers ITS1 and ITS4. Mucor circinelloides was the endophytic fungus found most frequently, with a relative frequency of 20.43%, followed by Talaromyces funiculosus, with a relative frequency of 16.12% when isolated from Opuntia ficus-indica and Aloe vera. Nine out of sixteen endophytic fungi exhibited strong antifungal activity against all the tested pathogens. P. funiculosum, Aspergillus versicolor, Penicillium janthinellum, and Fusarium oxysporum showed vigorous antimicrobial activities against the human pathogenic bacteria Escherichia coli, Shigella sp., and Salmonella typhimurium.

Pattern of Malignant Tumors in Najran, Saudi Arabia: A 5-year Retrospective Study

Background: The relative frequency of malignant tumors has been reported to have an association with age, gender, and location. The current study is a retrospective study to assess the pattern and relative frequency of different malignant tumors in Najran, Saudi Arabia. Methods and Results: All patients from both genders were included in the study from June 2014 to May 2019, and data were retrieved from the records of confirmed cancer cases at the departments of pathology. For 5 years, a total of 763 cases [325(42.6%) men and 438(57.4%) women] and 37 types of malignant tumors were diagnosed in Najran. According to the histopathological diagnosis, carcinomas were the most frequent tumors (n=564, 73.9%). According to the affected organ/body system, tumors of the gastrointestinal system were the commonest malignancy, observed in 156 (20.4%) of the patients (91 men and 65 women). Finally, the chi-square test revealed that the frequency of malignant tumors climbed as age increased (P=0.0005). Conclusion: The relative frequency of several cancers in Najran showed that the most common cancers in both genders are in the following order: gastrointestinal, thyroid, breast, skin and soft tissue cancers, and lymphoma. In addition, women are more affected than men, and increasing age is a risk factor to develop a malignancy.

What Do Introduction to Psychology Textbooks Have to Say About Older Adults?

Introduction to Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate courses, an entry course for psychology majors and also popular with students from other disciplines. Consequently, the content in introductory psychology textbooks has the potential to influence undergraduates’ knowledge, attitudes, and interests, including those related to aging. The purpose of this study was to analyze aging-related content in introductory psychology textbooks to understand the topics to which students are exposed in this important course. We analyzed the indices of 21 best-selling Introduction to Psychology textbooks for both advanced and intermediate audiences, published between 2018 and 2020. We extracted and aggregated 275 unique, aging-specific index terms from the textbooks and analyzed their relative frequency. We identified 61 superordinate index terms corresponding to general terms (e.g., “aging,” “death”). The indices also included 214 unique subordinate terms that were more specific (e.g., “aging, and cognition”). Across textbooks, the most frequent topics reflected negative consequences of aging (e.g., “Alzheimer disease” = appeared in 100% of textbooks, “death” in 52%). In contrast, positive aspects of aging appeared less often (e.g., “generativity” in 47%, “longevity” in 10%). Terms describing career opportunities were rare (e.g., “gerontology” in 5%, “geropsychology” in 5%), as were modern theories (e.g., “socioemotional selectivity theory” in 28%). Advocacy for comprehensive and balanced representation of aging in introductory psychology textbooks is critical for educating students and promoting interest in the field.

A generic hidden Markov model for multi-parent populations

A common step in the analysis of multi-parent populations is genotype reconstruction: identifying the founder origin of haplotypes from dense marker data. This process often makes use of a probability model for the pattern of founder alleles along chromosomes, including the relative frequency of founder alleles and the probability of exchanges among them, which depend on a model for meiotic recombination and on the mating design for the population. While the precise experimental design used to generate the population may be used to derive a precise characterization of the model for exchanges among founder alleles, this can be tedious, particularly given the great variety of experimental designs that have been proposed. We describe an approximate model that can be applied for a variety of multi-parent populations. We have implemented the approach in the R/qtl2 software, and we illustrate its use in applications to publicly-available data on Diversity Outbred and Collaborative Cross mice.

Gender asymmetries in ellipsis: An experimental comparison of markedness and frequency accounts in English

Bobaljik & Zocca (2011) argue that ellipsis reveals the existence of (at least) two classes of gender-paired nouns: in the actor/actress class, the grammatically feminine form is specified for conceptual gender, while the unaffixed form is unspecified, exemplifying the classic markedness asymmetry (Jakobson 1932); in the prince/princess class, both forms are specified for conceptual gender. Here we test two theories of this asymmetry: one that encodes markedness in the linguistic representation (e.g. Merchant 2014, Sudo & Spathas 2016, and Saab 2019), and one that traces the asymmetry to differences in the relative frequency of the forms in each pair (Haspelmath 2006). The frequency approach predicts that the size of the asymmetries (as quantified by acceptability judgments) will correlate with the size of the relative frequency ratio for each pair. We test this prediction in two experiments: the first is a curated set of 16 pairs in English, and the second is a test of 58 pairs that nearly exhausts such pairs in English. We use frequencies from COCA (Davies 2008) to test the prediction of the frequency approach. Our results suggest that the relative frequency hypothesis is not an empirically adequate competitor for the explanation of gender asymmetries.

Variability in Global Prevalence of Interstitial Lung Disease

There are limited epidemiologic studies describing the global burden and geographic heterogeneity of interstitial lung disease (ILD) subtypes. We found that among seventeen methodologically heterogenous studies that examined the incidence, prevalence and relative frequencies of ILDs, the incidence of ILD ranged from 1 to 31.5 per 100,000 person-years and prevalence ranged from 6.3 to 71 per 100,000 people. In North America and Europe, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and sarcoidosis were the most prevalent ILDs while the relative frequency of hypersensitivity pneumonitis was higher in Asia, particularly in India (10.7–47.3%) and Pakistan (12.6%). The relative frequency of connective tissue disease ILD demonstrated the greatest geographic variability, ranging from 7.5% of cases in Belgium to 33.3% of cases in Canada and 34.8% of cases in Saudi Arabia. These differences may represent true differences based on underlying characteristics of the source populations or methodological differences in disease classification and patient recruitment (registry vs. population-based cohorts). There are three areas where we feel addition work is needed to better understand the global burden of ILD. First, a standard ontology with diagnostic confidence thresholds for comparative epidemiology studies of ILD is needed. Second, more globally representative data should be published in English language journals as current literature has largely focused on Europe and North America with little data from South America, Africa and Asia. Third, the inclusion of community-based cohorts that leverage the strength of large databases can help better estimate population burden of disease. These large, community-based longitudinal cohorts would also allow for tracking of global trends and be a valuable resource for collective study. We believe the ILD research community should organize to define a shared ontology for disease classification and commit to conducting global claims and electronic health record based epidemiologic studies in a standardized fashion. Aggregating and sharing this type of data would provide a unique opportunity for international collaboration as our understanding of ILD continues to grow and evolve. Better understanding the geographic and temporal patterns of disease prevalence and identifying clusters of ILD subtypes will facilitate improved understanding of emerging risk factors and help identify targets for future intervention.