This paper presents a systematic study of the MgO-CaO-Na(2)O-P(2)O(5) glass system, which has great potential to be used as temporary hard and soft tissue implant materials. An overall study of solubility behavior of ternary and quaternary-based phosphate glass system have been carried out in order to understand the out-leaching progress of different ions and to determine their effect on cell proliferation. Originally, soluble phosphate based glasses within the ternary glass system of Na(2)O-CaO-P(2)O(5) have been developed to create a simple baseline system. This paper, however, presents the development of this system by introducing magnesium oxide as a partial calcium oxide substitute and solubility behaviors as well as cell studies have been carried out to check the effect on magnesium ions. Glasses have been prepared via standard glass melting techniques and their solubility behavior has been tested in distilled water via simple weight loss, pH and ion measurements. The way the glasses dissolve is an inverse exponential behavior which is mirrored by the calcium ion release. Other ions show a less exponential behavior. The MTT test has been used to check preliminary in vitro studies on a human MG63 cell line and the result indicates that cell proliferation is increased for glasses with minimal CaO substitution.

Background: Medical students have different perception of symptoms and illness. Moreover, medical students report barriers to seeking help about their health, and are more likely to seek advice informally from friends and/or family. It is important to identify health seeking behaviors among medical students to be able to modify and interfere accordingly. Objectives: To describe the health seeking behavior of medical students in UOS and identify the factors affecting those behaviors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the University of Sharjah during the spring semester of the academic year 2012-2013. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to all medical students from all 5 years. Questions were related to physical health seeking behaviors only. Data was analyzed using the SPSS21 software. Results: We have found that self-prescription was the most common practiced health seeking behavior among 91.8%-96.6% of UOS medical students (CI of 95%) followed by the order ignoring a health problem, seeking immediate care, using the internet, reading more about the problem and self diagnosis & management. All are practiced by more than 50% of the students. A set of other behaviors was identified as well. Factors affecting these behaviors mainly included: self-care orientation & medical education. Other factors that had a role as well were: gender, stage of studying, having a chronic illness and lack of knowledge about the health services available. Conclusions: Medical students in the University of Sharjah have a high level of self-care orientation and accordingly, tend to react to their illness in a variety of ways. The most common of these is self-prescription. Studying medicine is the 2nd major factor that influences their health seeking behaviors. Sufficient guidance about the consequences associated with certain behaviors may be required.

Therapeutic ultrasound (US) is a widely used form of biophysical stimulation that is increasingly applied to promote fracture healing. Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β), which is encoded by three related but different genes, is known to play a major part in bone growth and repair. However, the effects of US on the expression of the TGF-β genes and the physical acoustic mechanisms involved in initiating changes in gene expression in vitro,are not yet known. The present study demonstrates that US had a differential effect on these TGF-β isoforms in a human osteoblast cell line, with the highest dose eliciting the most pronounced up-regulation of both TGF-β1 and TGF-β3 at 1 hour after treatment and thereafter declining. In contrast, US had no effect on TGF-β2 expression. Fluid streaming rather than thermal effects or cavitation was found to be the most likely explanation for the gene responses observed in vitro.

Composites materials are widely used in all industries all over the world, replacing many other engineering materials. Reasons for such popularity are many, among such, are their physical and mechanical properties in addition to the simplicity of their manufacturing processes. Machine elements that are made of polymeric materials are usually exposed to different causes of failure such as wear. The time effect on the wear behaviour of some composite materials (polyester-commercially fiber reinforcement named (E-glass) was studied. In this study four type of composite different in number of layers, it had (3-6-9-12) layers (Wear volume 0.48, 0.41, 0.71 and 0.78 respectively). All experiments were conducted under dry condition. Preliminary results show the wear volume increases for all examined composites, as the statically applied load increases. Fourth type has the highest wear resistance, then third type and lastly first type. The wear volume increases for all examined composites, varied of time increases