Jordan University of Science and Technology

About: Jordan University of Science and Technology is a education organization based out in Irbid, Irbid, Jordan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 7582 authors who have published 13166 publications receiving 298158 citations. The organization is also known as: JUST.

Overweight and obesity among school children in Jordan: prevalence and associated factors.

Abstract: Objectives To estimate the prevalence of overweight and obesity and determine their associated factors among school children aged 6–12 years in the north of Jordan. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among school children in the north of Jordan in the period between March 2006 and May 2006. A total of 2,131 children (1,052 boys and 1,079 girls) were selected at random using multistage cluster sampling method. The first part of the questionnaire was completed by pupils in schools and the second part was completed by their parents at home. The researchers measured height, weight, waist circumference, hip circumference, and mid upper arm circumference of each student in the class. Overweight and obesity were defined according to the international cut-off points of body mass index for boys and girls between 2 and 18 years of age. Results Of the total 2,131 children, 19.4% were overweight (18.8% of boys and 19.9% of girls) and 5.6% were obese (5.6% of boys and 5.5% of girls). Watching television >2 h/day, daily pocket money >20 piasters (1 piaster = 1.42 cents), having overweight or obese mother/father were significantly associated with increased odds of both overweight and obesity. Age ≥ 10 years, female gender, and family size of ≤4 were significantly associated with being overweight and total monthly family income >300 Jordanian Dinars (JDs), (1 JD = $1.42) was associated with obesity. Conclusions While the prevalence of overweight was high among Jordanian children compared with that in the neighboring countries, the prevalence of obesity was lower.

The use of shredded waste tires to improve the geotechnical engineering properties of sands

Abstract: A new geo-environmental approach was proposed to use waste tires in certain engineering applications and thereby reduce the potential impact on the environment. This paper presents a laboratory study on the effect of shredded tires on the physical properties of some sands. Shredded tires were passed through US sieve size 4 and mixed with three different types of sands with varying gradations. Each type of sand was mixed with four different percentages of shredded tires: 10, 20, 30 and 40% by dry weight. Direct shear tests were conducted to study the effect of the shredded tires on the shear strength properties of sands, such as angle of internal friction and shear strength. The addition of shredded waste tires increased both the angle of internal friction and the shear strength of the sands. Additionally, a prediction model was developed to calculate the shear strength of sand due to increasing shredded tire content. The shredded tires improved some engineering properties of sand.

Immunohistochemical evaluation of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 and estrogen and progesterone receptors in breast carcinoma in Jordan.

Abstract: Although breast carcinoma (BC) is the most common malignancy affecting Jordanian females and the affected population in Jordan is younger than that in the West, no information is available on its biological characteristics. Our aims in this study are to evaluate the expression of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) and Her-2/neu overexpression in BC in Jordan, and to compare the expression of these with other prognostic parameters for BC such as histological type, histological grade, tumor size, patients' age, and number of lymph node metastases. This is a retrospective study conducted in the Department of Pathology at Jordan University of Science and Technology. A confirmed 91 cases of BC diagnosed in the period 1995 to 1998 were reviewed and graded. We used immunohistochemistry to evaluate the expression of ER, PR, and Her-2. Immunohistochemical findings were correlated with age, tumor size, grade and axillary lymph node status. Her-2 was overexpressed in 24% of the cases. The mean age of Her-2 positive cases was 42 years as opposed to 53 years among Her-2 negative cases (p = 0.0001). Her-2 expression was inversely related to ER and PR expression. Her-2 positive tumors tended to be larger than Her-2 negative tumors with 35% overexpression among T3 tumors as opposed to 22% among T2 tumors (p = 0.13). Her-2 positive cases tended to have higher rates of axillary metastases, but this did not reach statistical significance. ER and PR positive cases were seen in older patients with smaller tumor sizes. Her-2 overexpression was seen in 24% of BC affecting Jordanian females. Her-2 overexpression was associated with young age at presentation, larger tumor size, and was inversely related to ER and PR expression. One-fifth of the carcinomas were Her-2 positive and ER negative. This group appears to represent an aggressive form of BC presenting at a young age with large primary tumors and a high rate of four or more axillary lymph node metastases.

Olive phenolics as c-Met inhibitors: (-)-Oleocanthal attenuates cell proliferation, invasiveness, and tumor growth in breast cancer models.

Abstract: Dysregulation of the Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF)/c-Met signaling axis upregulates diverse tumor cell functions, including cell proliferation, survival, scattering and motility, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis. (-)-Oleocanthal is a naturally occurring secoiridoid from extra-virgin olive oil, which showed antiproliferative and antimigratory activity against different cancer cell lines. The aim of this study was to characterize the intracellular mechanisms involved in mediating the anticancer effects of (-)-oleocanthal treatment and the potential involvement of c-Met receptor signaling components in breast cancer. Results showed that (-)-oleocanthal inhibits the growth of human breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231, MCF-7 and BT-474 while similar treatment doses were found to have no effect on normal human MCF10A cell growth. In addition, (-)-oleocanthal treatment caused a dose-dependent inhibition of HGF-induced cell migration, invasion and G1/S cell cycle progression in breast cancer cell lines. Moreover, (-)-oleocanthal treatment effects were found to be mediated via inhibition of HGF-induced c-Met activation and its downstream mitogenic signaling pathways. This growth inhibitory effect is associated with blockade of EMT and reduction in cellular motility. Further results from in vivo studies showed that (-)-oleocanthal treatment suppressed tumor cell growth in an orthotopic model of breast cancer in athymic nude mice. Collectively, the findings of this study suggest that (-)-oleocanthal is a promising dietary supplement lead with potential for therapeutic use to control malignancies with aberrant c-Met activity.

An Adaptive Multipopulation Differential Evolution With Dynamic Population Reduction

Abstract: Developing efficient evolutionary algorithms attracts many researchers due to the existence of optimization problems in numerous real-world applications. A new differential evolution algorithm, ${s}$ TDE- ${d}\text{R}$ , is proposed to improve the search quality, avoid premature convergence, and stagnation. The population is clustered in multiple tribes and utilizes an ensemble of different mutation and crossover strategies. In this algorithm, a competitive success-based scheme is introduced to determine the life cycle of each tribe and its participation ratio for the next generation. In each tribe, a different adaptive scheme is used to control the scaling factor and crossover rate. The mean success of each subgroup is used to calculate the ratio of its participation for the next generation. This guarantees that successful tribes with the best adaptive schemes are only the ones that guide the search toward the optimal solution. The population size is dynamically reduced using a dynamic reduction method. Comprehensive comparison of the proposed heuristic over a challenging set of benchmarks from the CEC2014 real parameter single objective competition against several state-of-the-art algorithms is performed. The results affirm robustness of the proposed approach compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms.