Restoration Ability Research Articles

Towards coding for VoD application: An enhanced video compression system with a content-fitted recursive restoration network

The video on demand (VoD) applications require real-time decoding for customers while pursuing a better compression performance. Recent work has demonstrated the great potential of deep learning techniques in video compression. Building a generic model to accommodate various videos and meet the real-time decoding is an arduous task currently. However, the ground truth, i.e. raw video herein, is available during the video encoding process in practice, which means generalization is unnecessary. Inspired by this, we propose an enhanced video compression system (EVCS) using a content-fitted recursive restoration network (CRRN) for VoD. On the encoder side, a lightweight CRRN adopting the recursive restoration strategy is trained for a group of consecutive frames to be well-fitted to this group and achieve a strong restoration ability. After that, the learned parameters of CRRN are transmitted to the decoder with the encoded bitstream. On the decoder side, CRRN can perform the same robust restoration operation on the decoded frames. The proposed framework can be compatible with all of the existing video coding systems. Experimental results show that the compression performance can be significantly improved in terms of 5.938% - 24.413% BD-BR reduction by integrating CRRN with VTM, HM, X265, X264, NVENC, and two end-to-end DNN codecs DVC, M-LVC. This allows the H.264 and H.265 codec IPs developed with a lot of effort to be reused. Compared with other DNN based restoration works over HM, this work achieves the best compression performance improvement with fewer FLOPs for DNN computation. EVCS can satisfy the real-time decoding for 1080p 30fps videos on the AI edge platform.

Multiscale residual fusion network for image denoising

Deep-learning methods have been developed in recent years and have achieved dramatic improvements for image denoising. The existing deep-learning methods can be conducted using two major models: Encoder–decoder and high-resolution, where the high-resolution model has superior resolution ability for detail description and restoration. In this study, a high-resolution-based network called multiscale residual fusion network (MRF-Net) is proposed, which employed the spatial and contextual information of images. In detail, dilated convolution layers are used to enlarge the network's receptive field and learned sufficient features in a multiscale feature extracting module. The function of dilated convolution is reinterpreted here and it is viewed as a complex downsampling operation. Therefore, multiscale feature analysis could be performed in the proposed network by dilated convolution. Multilevel feature maps are sequentially obtained through a residual projection module, where considerable contextual and spatial information was collected from the multiscale features. In a residual fusion module, all maps were aggregated to generate a residual image effectively for noise removal. Experiments demonstrated that the MRF-Net outperformed several state-of-the-art model-based and deep-learning methods in both blind and non-blind image denoising tests. Meanwhile, ablation studies were executed to verify the denoising performance of each module. Moreover, this method exhibited high computational efficiency, thus demonstrating its practicability.

Improved phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils by Miscanthus floridulus under a varied rhizosphere ecological characteristic

Miscanthus floridulus is a plant with high biomass and heavy metal tolerance, which is a good candidate for phytoremediation. It is essential to explore how to improve its remediation ability, especially the rhizosphere ecological characteristics which are significant for phytoremediation efficiency. Therefore, the heavy metals accumulation of M. floridulus, rhizosphere soil physicochemical properties, enzyme activities, and bacterial community of different distances from the tailing were measured, focusing on the relationship between phytoremediation ability and rhizosphere ecological characteristics.The results show that the stronger the phytoremediation ability is, the better is the soil environment, and the higher the coverage with plants. Soil rhizosphere environment and the phytoremediation ability are shaped by heavy metals. Rhizosphere microecology may regulate phytoremediation by improving soil nutrients and enzyme activities, alleviating heavy metal toxicity, changing rhizosphere microbial community structure, increasing beneficial microbial abundance, promoting heavy metals accumulation by plants. This study not only clarified the relationship between rhizosphere ecological factors, but also elucidated the phytoremediation regulatory mechanism. Some of microbial taxa might developed as biological bioinoculants, providing the possibility to promote the growth of plants with ecological restoration ability and improve the phytoremediation efficiency.

Ion‐exchange synthesis of microporous Co 3 S 4 for enhanced electrochemical energy storage

Replacing oxygen in an oxide-based material with sulfur can produce improved flexibility and more efficient electron transport in its structure leading to enhanced electrical performance. Herein, facile template-free growth of free-standing cobalt (II, III) oxide (Co3O4) on Ni foam via a mild hydrothermal technique followed by its transformation to cobalt (II, III) sulfide (Co3S4) via an ion-exchange is reported. The microstructural morphology, phase, and porosity of the prepared Co3O4 and Co3S4 are characterized by FESEM, XRD, Raman, XPS, TEM, and BET analyses. The electrochemical performance of the Co3S4 film with a microporous morphology is considerably superior to that of Co3O4, exhibiting a high specific capacitance of 1604 F g−1 (905 F g−1 for Co3O4), the excellent restorative ability of ~99% at 1 A g−1 (~96% for Co3O4), and good retention of 98% at 10 A g−1 (~70% for Co3O4). The Co3S4 electrode shows excellent capacitance endurance even after 10 000 charge/discharge cycles and a high energy density of 128.32 Wh kg−1 at 0.72 kW kg−1. A fabricated symmetric Co3S4 supercapacitor device also reveals superior charge/discharge, restorative, and retention performances compared to a Co3O4 one. The excellent supercapacitive performance of phase-transformed Co3S4 electrode is due its large electrochemically active surface area along with synergetic effect of small charge transfer resistance and high relative diffusion coefficient.

Iterative differential autoregressive spectrum estimation for Raman spectrum denoising

AbstractAlthough ultraviolet (UV) laser Raman spectroscopy offers the benefits of stronger signals, partial separation of fluorescence and Raman spectra, and increased eye safety, it suffers from excessive noise, poor resolution, low maturity level, and small intensities of remotely acquired signals and therefore needs to be used in combination with effective denoising techniques. Herein, a denoising approach denoted as iterative differential autoregressive spectrum estimation was developed relying on the assumption that more detailed Raman peaks can be obtained by dividing the Raman spectrum into multiple layers with different intensity levels and estimating the energy distribution of each layer. Specifically, each layer was computed from the difference between the upper layer spectrum and its autoregressive model estimation spectrum, and the energy distribution at progressively lower intensity levels was considered. Compared with traditional techniques, our method exhibited good noise suppression performance and an excellent Raman peak restoration ability while offering the advantages of decreased spectral resolution loss and stable robustness. Cutoff optimization strategies were proposed to improve convergence and noise suppression ability and thus decrease the calculation time to 0.18 s and meet the needs of remote Raman spectrometers for real‐time denoising under the condition of long integration. The developed technique paves the way to Raman spectrum denoising based on power spectrum estimation, has a strong adaptive potential, and can be extended to other applications.

Ocular Therapeutics and Molecular Delivery Strategies for Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration (nAMD).

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss in geriatric population. Intravitreal (IVT) injections are popular clinical option. Biologics and small molecules offer efficacy but relatively shorter half-life after intravitreal injections. To address these challenges, numerous technologies and therapies are under development. Most of these strategies aim to reduce the frequency of injections, thereby increasing patient compliance and reducing patient-associated burden. Unlike IVT frequent injections, molecular therapies such as cell therapy and gene therapy offer restoration ability hence gained a lot of traction. The recent approval of ocular gene therapy for inherited disease offers new hope in this direction. However, until such breakthrough therapies are available to the majority of patients, antibody therapeutics will be on the shelf, continuing to provide therapeutic benefits. The present review aims to highlight the status of pre-clinical and clinical studies of neovascular AMD treatment modalities including Anti-VEGF therapy, upcoming bispecific antibodies, small molecules, port delivery systems, photodynamic therapy, radiation therapy, gene therapy, cell therapy, and combination therapies.

The Thickness and Opacity of Aesthetic Materials Influence the Restoration of Discolored Teeth.

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of thickness and opacity on the ability of composite resin and ceramic veneer restorations to mask discolored teeth. Ninety veneers were made of lithium disilicate ceramic, shades BL1 and 0 (IPS e.max Press, Ivoclar Vivadent), and 60 were made of composite resin, shade BL-L (IPS Empress Direct, Ivoclar Vivadent). The veneers measured 4 mm in width x 4 mm in length and had a thickness of 0.7, 1.0, or 1.2 mm. One hundred and fifty human premolars were selected to obtain 150 dental fragments with the following dimensions: 4 mm x 4 mm x 3 mm (width x length x thickness). The fragments were discolored, submitted to color measurement and randomly assigned to 15 groups (n=10) according to the type and opacity of the restorative material (IPS e.max Press: high translucency [HT], low translucency [LT], and medium opacity [MO]; IPS Empress Direct: dentin and enamel) and thickness of the veneers (0.7, 1.0, and 1.2 mm). After cementation of the ceramic or composite resin veneers using a translucent resin cement (RelyX veneer, 3M), a final color measurement was taken from each specimen and the total color variation (ΔE) was calculated by subtracting the initial and the final color measurement. The final lightness (L*) of the restored dental fragments was also calculated. The highest ΔE values were observed for the LT and MO ceramic groups, followed by dentin composite resin. Regarding the different thicknesses of ceramic veneers, every 1.2-mm-thick group had higher values of ΔE, considering their respective opacities (p<0.05). The highest lightness values were found for the LT and MO ceramic veneers (thickness of 1.2 mm). Dentin-shade composite resins showed similar lightness values in all groups. The best thickness/opacity combinations for masking discolored dental substrates were LT and MO ceramic veneers with 1.2-mm thickness. Dentin-shade composite resin veneers with a thickness of 0.7-1.0 mm showed good ability to mask discolored dental substrates.

Spatial Pattern of Soil Fertility and its Influencing Factors in Longquan Mountain Urban Forest Park, Chengdu City

Exploring the spatial pattern and impact factors of soil fertility in Longquan Mountain Urban Forest Park can better guide the planning and management of the park, and provide scientific basis for ecological restoration and landscape configuration in this area. In this study, the spatial pattern of soil fertility in Longquan Mountain Urban Forest Park and its influencing factors were investigated and analyzed by sampling grid distribution points and combining the modified Nemerow formula as a quantitative calculation model of soil fertility. Our results were as follows: (1) The average content of available P was at the first level of the soil nutrient classification standard in the second national soil survey of China, while the average content of available K reached the forth level. The average content of soil organic matter and alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen were both at the fifth level. (2) From the spatial pattern, the regions with good soil fertility were mainly distributed in the north of the study area, while that the poor soil fertility was mainly distributed in the central and southern part of the park. (3) The order of the soil comprehensive fertility index of different topography and land use types was plain > hill > low mountain, flat slope > gentle slope>slope > steep slope; for slope, the order was northwest > west > east > south > north > southwest > northwest > no slope direction > southeast; for slope position, the order was lower > middle=upper > valley department > the ground > the back; for land uses pattern, the order was cultivated land > orchard > bamboo land > mixed forest > pure forest > abandoned land > homestead land. Based on the soil comprehensive soil fertility status of Longquan Mountain Urban Forest Park, the areas with the soil fertility index of “good” should be protected, the areas with the soil fertility index of “medium” should be monitored and the natural restoration ability should be improved, the areas with the soil fertility index of “poor” should be mightily improved.

Study on the Predictive Algorithm of Plant Restoration under Heavy Metals

Heavy metal pollution of soil is becoming a more serious issue globally. Heavy metal contamination of the soil environment is inevitable as a result of the rapid and extensive growth of industry and agriculture, resulting in unfavorable environmental circumstances for both the flora and fauna. Traditional approaches for collecting field sampling with laboratory testing of soil heavy metals are restricted not only by their time and cost but also by their inability to gather sufficient information about the spatial distribution characteristics of heavy metals in soil over a vast area. The continuous development of the urban industrial processes leads to the degree of heavy metal pollution in urban gardens. For soil monitoring and cleanup, having quick and accurate access to heavy metal concentration data is very crucial and critical. In order to improve the restoration ability of garden heavy metal pollution, a new algorithm to predict plant restoration ability under the garden heavy metal pollution environment is put forward in this study. Firstly, we analyzed the composition of garden heavy metal pollution and the harm of garden heavy metal pollution. Secondly, we identified the restoration technology of garden heavy metal pollution to plants, determine the level of garden heavy metal pollution with the help of the land accumulation index method, and reflect the average pollution water level of garden heavy metal elements with the help of Numero comprehensive pollution heatstroke. On this basis, the plant repairability prediction model was constructed with the help of wavelet function, to predict the plant repairability under garden heavy metal pollution environment and to complete the prediction of plant repairability under garden heavy metal pollution environment. The experimental results show that the proposed method was better than the traditional approaches in terms of prediction accuracy and is also less time-consuming.

A Low Distortion Audio Self-Recovery Algorithm Robust to Discordant Size Content Replacement Attack

Although the development of watermarking techniques has enabled designers to tackle normal processing attacks (e.g., amplitude scaling, noise addition, re-compression), robustness against malicious attacks remains a challenge. The discordant size content replacement attack is an attack against watermarking schemes which performs content replacement that increases or reduces the number of samples in the signal. This attack modifies the content and length of the signal, as well as desynchronizes the position of the watermark and its removal. In this paper, a source-channel coding approach for protecting an audio signal against this attack was applied. Before applying the source-channel encoding, a decimation technique was performed to reduce by one-half the number of samples in the original signal. This technique allowed compressing at a bit rate of 64 kbps and obtaining a watermarked audio signal with an excellent quality scale. In the watermark restoration, an interpolation was applied after the source-channel decoding to recover the content and the length. The procedure of decimation–interpolation was taken because it is a linear and time-invariant operation and is useful in digital audio. A synchronization strategy was designed to detect the positions where the number of samples in the signal was increased or reduced. The restoration ability of the proposed scheme was tested with a mathematical model of the discordant size content replacement attack. The attack model confirmed that it is necessary to design a synchronizing strategy to correctly extract the watermark and to recover the tampered signal. Experimental results show that the scheme has better restoration ability than state-of-the-art schemes. The scheme was able to restore a tampered area of around 20% with very good quality, and up to 58.3% with acceptable quality. The robustness against the discordant size content replacement attack was achieved with a transparency threshold above −2.

Geographic patterns of genetic diversity and fertility restoration ability of Asian and African origin pearl millet populations

A set of 45 diverse Asian and African origin/bred populations of pearl millet were investigated multi-locationally for morphological traits including grain yield and assessed for their fertility restoration ability on three cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) systems in two contrasting seasons. Significant genetic variation was found for all the yield linked traits. Multivariate analysis for grain yield and its component traits grouped these populations into five clusters. Most of the Asian origin populations grouped into single cluster (Cluster III) and separated from the rest of the African origin populations indicating the presence of correspondence between clustering pattern and geographical origin of the populations. Clusters dominated with Asian populations (As-As) had linkages with early flowering, short plant height, more number of tillers, small and thin panicles, small seeded and low grain yield compared to the clusters dominated by African populations (Af-Af) or African origin and Asian bred (Af-As) populations. Genetically related populations having common parentage were found grouped in same clusters. Fertility restoration/maintainer frequency of 45 populations on three diverse CMS systems revealed that overall fertility restoration frequency was highest for A1 (86%) followed by A4 (37%) and for A5 (7%) CMS system. Five populations were identified as potential sources for developing maintainer lines for all three CMS systems and eight populations were identified specifically for A4 and A5 CMS systems. A set of 11 and four populations were identified for restorer line development exclusively for A1 and A5 CMS system, respectively. Six populations were identified for the development of dual restorers for both A1 and A4 CMS system.

RestoreNet-Plus: Image restoration via deep learning in optical synthetic aperture imaging system

The synthetic aperture technology can improve the resolution effectively in the optical imaging system. In fact, the imaging blur, turbulence aberration and noise can affect the imaging quality of optical synthetic aperture imaging system seriously. Several non-blind methods are applied generally to recover the degraded maps with the prior information. However, the restoration effect is not stable enough and satisfactory. As a data-driven approach, the deep learning framework possesses advantages in solving this problem. In this paper we propose an improved network, RestoreNet-Plus, for the image restoration of optical synthetic aperture imaging system. After the proofs of numerical simulation and experiment results, RestoreNet-Plus is a better alternative compared with other methods, owing to its better restoration ability, strong denoising ability and capacity for turbulence correction error.

Effects of Land Use Changes on Soil Fungal Community Structure and Function in the Riparian Wetland Along the Downstream of the Songhua River

The aim of this study was to provide a reference for wetland resource management and ecological restoration by analyzing the influence of land use changes on the soil fungal community and its function and to identify the potential natural restoration ability of degraded riverside wetlands in the Songhua River. In July 2018, soil fungi in a natural wetland, paddy field, sand mining slash, and restoration wetland along the downstream of the Songhua River were amplified by PCR. PCR products were sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq PE300 high-throughput sequencing platform. The differences in the soil fungal community composition and function and its influencing factors were analyzed. The results showed that the α-diversity indexes of soil fungi were significantly reduced by sand mining or cultivation in the natural wetland (P<0.05). The ACE index and Chao1 index of soil fungi in the sand mining slash were significantly improved after the sand mining area was restored to a constructed wetland (P<0.05). There were significant differences in the soil fungal community structure between the paddy field and other land use types (P<0.05). The soil fungi in the riparian wetland could be divided into 16 phyla. Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Mortierellomycota, and Rozellomycota were the dominant phyla (relative abundance>1%). Ectomycorrhizal was the main functional fungus in the natural wetland and restoration wetland with the supplementation of bryophyte parasites and lichen parasites. Litter saprotrophs and soil saprotrophs were the main functional groups of fungi in the paddy field and sand mining slash, and the relative abundances of animal pathogens and plant pathogens increased significantly in the paddy field. The diversity of the soil fungal community was significantly influenced by the soil pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus contents. Thus, resource development in the natural riparian wetlands reduced the ecosystem stability and increased the potential ecological risks.

Medical image super-resolution via deep residual neural network in the shearlet domain

This paper proposes aconvolutional neural network (CNN)-based efficient medical image super-resolution (SR) method in the shearlet domain. Because of differences between imaging mechanisms optimized for natural images and medical images, the design begins with building a medical image dataset for medical image SR and extracting effective areas to remarkably enhance the training effects of the CNN-based method. Then, a new medical image SR network structure—deep medical super-resolution network (DMSRN)—has been designed in which local residual learning is implemented through a recursive network and combined with global residual learning to heighten the depth of the network on the ground with no parameter increase. This effectively fixes the long-term dependency problem, which causes the prior state layers to barely have any effect on the following state layers. Last, the design addresses the problem of too-smooth reconstruction effects in the CNN-based method in the image space domain; shearlet transform is introduced to DMSRN to restore global topology through low-frequency sub-bands and restore local edge detail information through high-frequency sub-bands. Experimental results show that the proposed method is better than other state-of-the-art methods for medical image SR, which significantly promotes the restoration ability of texture structure and edge details.

Chemical characteristics of degraded soils in Uzbekistan and remediation by cyanobacteria

Precipitation in Uzbekistan is limited, so irrigation must be used widely in local agriculture. However, irrigation is carried out with inadequate drainage systems that result in salt damage, as the re-accumulation of salt from irrigation water on the soil surface; thus, soil salinization becomes severe in irrigated agricultural areas. To address this problem, leaching has been recommended locally. Nevertheless, local farmers input excessive irrigation water, and inadequate drainage systems are attributed to salt damage. Cyanobacteria are salt-tolerant microorganisms with photosynthetic and N2-fixing abilities, so inoculation of cyanobacteria into salt-affected soil would be effective for its bioremediation. In this study, we isolated cyanobacteria from several local soils in Uzbekistan and evaluated their salt tolerance. The soil electrical conductivity (EC) ranged from 19 to 1970 mS m−1, and most of the soil had a high EC. Cyanobacteria isolated from Navoi in north-western Uzbekistan grew better under NaCl conditions than under conditions without NaCl. This result indicated that Navoi strains were able to grow under high EC conditions and could be used for salt-affected soil remediation. A pot experiment using the cyanobacterium Navoi strain was conducted to evaluate its restoration abilities in degraded salt-affected soil. Inoculating with the Navoi strain reduced salt stress to the same extent as leaching by decreasing soil Na+ and EC, which increased inorganic soil nitrogen by increasing soluble organic nitrogen from decomposed cyanobacteria in soil and fixing atmospheric nitrogen by cyanobacteria. These results suggested that cyanobacterial application might be effective for salt-affected soil remediation in Uzbekistan.

Assessment and abatement of the eco-risk caused by mine spoils in the dry subtropical climate

The highly rugged mountainous land topography of the Novorossiysk industrial agglomeration (NW Caucasus, Krasnodar Krai, Russia) and arid climate limit the restoration abilities of disturbed mine lands. Abandoned waste-rock dumps of a marl quarry occupy an area of ca. 150,000 m2 next to the cement plant, residential districts, and a commercial seaport. To assess the eco-risk, topsoil horizons of urban and mine-site Technosols and background Rendzinas were sampled and analyzed; measurements of particulate matter fractions PM1, PM2.5, PM4, and PM10 were conducted throughout the agglomeration. Fugitive dust emission from the unreclaimed marl dumps raises the PM2.5 content in the air by a factor of 2.68 on average. The high sorption capacity of the fine eluvium results in the accumulation of urban emissions by the dust and contributes to the subsequent soil pollution; the Cumulative Pollution Index of pedochemical anomalies reaches the high-risk level over the areas of up to 5 km2. Environmental threats caused by the mine dumps can be assessed more reliably by means of land zoning based on accumulated environmental damage indicators and the debris flow and waterspout risk calculation. To abate the technogenic impact caused by the mine spoils, reclamation actions must be taken including soil stabilization on sensitive sites by application of geosynthetic cover, hydroseeding of the mixture of soil improvers and seeds of herbaceous plants on the slopes, and anti-erosion plantation of cades (Juniperus oxycedrus L.) and smoke trees (Cotinus coggygria Scop.) at subhorizontal surfaces.

A watermarking scheme for source authentication, ownership identification, tamper detection and restoration for color medical images

This paper proposes a blind watermarking scheme that has ability of confidentiality, source authentication, ownership identification, integrity, tampering detection and restoration of the medical images. It embeds the hospital logo, electronic patient record and perceptual hash value of region of interest in the mid-frequency coefficients of discrete cosine transform of the region of non-interest of medical image. The region of interest of the image is restored against attacks including the desynchronization attacks and impulse noise attack, and the severity of tampering due to any attack is measured by comparing the difference between the original perceptual hash value of the region of interest and the extracted perceptual hash value of region of interest of watermarked image. Restoration is done that tampers the region of interest of the images. Number of medical image watermarking schemes that show resilient to many different types of singular and hybrid attacks is very few. The proposed method has inbuilt restoration schemes against different attacks such as rotation, scaling, translation, shearing, horizontal reflection, vertical reflection and impulse noise attacks. Comparison with the latest and state-of-art medical image watermarking schemes shows that the performance of the proposed method is superior to other methods.

Effect of Mo addition on the pitting resistance of TiMn alloys in Hanks’ solution

A family of TiMn alloys having a comparable mechanical property to Ti6Al4V alloy was developed for biomedical applications. Addition of 3–4 wt% Mo was found to improve corrosion resistance of the alloys to a level of that of commercial pure Ti. The effect of Mo to the electrochemical parameters of the passive film was not yet clarified. This work evaluated the effect of Mo on pitting resistance of Ti6Mn4Mo (TiMnMo) alloy in Hanks’ solution using electrochemical techniques combined with SEM, AFM and XPS analyses. Electrochemically, the TiMnMo demonstrated a higher resistance to uniform corrosion than Ti6Mn (TiMn) with a re-passivation and restoration ability against pitting corrosion which was not observed on TiMn. The TiMnMo showed a non-diffusional corrosion characteristic due to a denser passive film than that of TiMn. The SEM and AFM observation revealed a more severe pitting formation on TiMn than on TiMnMo. The XPS analysis confirmed the presence of Mo and Mn oxides that reinforced the TiO2 matrix. The mechanism of the different passivation behaviors of the two alloys is described according to the point defect model that based on the balance of kinetics of the oxide layer growth and dissolution reactions.

СПІВВІДНОШЕННЯ КАТЕГОРІЙ «ВІЛЬНИЙ ЧАС» ТА «ДОЗВІЛЛЯ» ЯК ВАЖЛИВИХ ПЕДАГОГІЧНИХ ДЕФІНІЦІЙ

In the article the author reveals the essence of the concepts of «free time» and «leisure», substantiating them as important pedagogical definitions. He interprets free time as a space for human development, which is not directly absorbed by productive labor, but remains free for pleasure, for leisure, for free activity and development. Substantiates the social conditionality of free time, characterized by the spirituality of the individual, depends on the value of the individual and the social conditions of life. Indicates the components of free time: time used for necessary social, creative and other activities; own leisure. Emphasizing that leisure is a certain semantic dimension of free time in general in the process of which the consumption of culture is carried out, not its creation: a person seeks to satisfy their needs for pleasure, satisfaction, entertainment. Represents the following generalization: free time is space, and leisure – its content. Leisure is defined as an independent branch of knowledge that studies the importance of free time in human life, its content, the development of the individual when included in leisure activities. He notes the orientation of the individual to realize himself in productive activities that are interesting and valuable to him, characterizing leisure as a specific aspect of human leisure, which expands opportunities for intellectual, spiritual, creative and physical development of the individual, satisfies his personal interests and inclinations, needs for communication and personal-individual self-expression are provided. While arguing that leisure has significant potential, opportunities for the formation of various personal needs: moral, intellectual, physical, where in contrast to the natural basis of recovery of human strength, leisure is characterized by a specific, social way of regenerating these forces, providing recreational and restorative ability. Given the specifics of leisure, the author identifies its features (freedom of choice, without regulation and mentoring; voluntary participation; desire to enjoy, satisfaction with the process and the joy of success in the result (compensation); independence combined with responsibility; creativity and self-disclosure).

Hepato-Renal-Curative Effect of the Herbal Supplement of Aloe vera Linn Gel versus Moringa oleifera on Acetaminophen-Induced Damage on the Liver and Kidney of Wistar Rats (Rattus novergicus)

Background: Acetaminophen (APAP, paracetamol) is the most frequently used over-the counter analgesic and antipyretic drug. Conversely, its overdose leads to both liver and kidney damage. Several scientific reports have focused majorly on protective effects of medicinal plants on APAP –induced hepato-renal-toxicity. actually, there is a dearth of work on the hepato-renal-curative effects of the herbal drugs supplements on APAP induced toxicity.&#x0D; Aims: In the present study, Aloe vera (ALOV) gel versus Moringa oleifera (MORN) leaf supplement effects was evaluated curatively against Acetaminophen (APAP) induced hepato- renal-toxicity. &#x0D; Study Design: This study was an experimental study in the Animal House of the Department of Pharmacology University of Port Harcourt. The work lasted for 7 days.&#x0D; Methodology: Twenty adult wistar rats weighing 185-220 g were divided into four (4) groups of five (5) animals each and treated orally as follows: group 1(normal control) received distilled water (7days), group 2 received 1 g/kg acetaminophen (APAP) (2 days), whereas group 3-4 received APAP (2 days) followed by 500 mg/kg of ALOV and MORN supplements respectively for 5 days. At the end of the experiment, animals from different groups were anaesthesized, the liver and kidney tissues were dissected and blood collected subjected to different biochemical, antioxidants, and histopathological test.&#x0D; Statistical Analysis: was done using One-Way Anova followed by Tukey’s Post-hoc Test.&#x0D; Results: APAP caused significant (P&lt;0.05) decrease in creatinine with significant (P&lt;0.01) increase and decrease in liver enzymes and renal catalase levels respectively in relation to normal control. Treatment of rats with the ALOV and MORN supplements attenuated the elevated liver and kidney biochemistry as well as improved histopathological alterations by APAP treatment.&#x0D; Conclusion: The supplements demonstrated restorative ability. MORN and ALOV supplements extract can be suggested as a convincing remedy against APAP-induced hepato-renal-toxicity.