Altered pituitary hormone secretion in male rats exposed to Bisphenol A

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a xenobiotic estrogenic compound. This compound has been suspected to have estrogenic effects on reproductive system of males and females. In this present study we investigated possible low-dose effects of BPAon Luteinizing Hormone in rats. Male Wistar rats (12-13 weeks old) were administrated a daily intra peritoneal 10 μg/kgbw/day, 50 μg/kgbw/day, 100 μg/kgbw/ day dose of BPA for 6, 6, and 12 days, and one day after last injection, serum level of Luteinizing Hormone was examined by ELISA method. All data were expressed as means ± SE. Two-way ANOVA was performed. Analysis of data showed that in all dose groups, plasma level of Luteinizing Hormone significantly decreased compared to control group. The present study showed that BPA at low doses affects Luteinizing Hormone, one of main hormones in spermatogenesis in the adult Wistar rats, and subsequently alters the steroidgenesis in testicular Leydig cells

Optimizing Fenton-like process, homogeneous at neutral pH for ciprofloxacin degradation: Comparing RSM-CCD and ANN-GA

Author's accepted manuscriptAntibiotics are considered among the most non-biodegradable environmental contaminants due to their genetic resistance. Considering the importance of antibiotics removal, this study was aimed at multi-objective modeling and optimization of the Fenton-like process, homogeneous at initial circumneutral pH. Two main issues, including maximizing Ciprofloxacin (CIP) removal and minimizing sludge to iron ratio (SIR), were modeled by comparing central composite design (CCD) based on Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and hybrid Artificial Neural Network-Genetic Algorithm (ANN-GA). Results of simultaneous optimization using ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) revealed that at pH ≅ 7, optimal conditions for initial CIP concentration, Fe2+ concentration, [H2O2]/[Fe2+] molar ratio, initial EDTA concentration, and reaction time were 14.9 mg/L, 9.2 mM, 3.2, 0.6 mM, and 25 min, respectively. Under these optimal conditions, CIP removal and SIR were predicted at 85.2% and 2.24 (gr/M). In the next step, multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function (RBF) artificial neural networks (ANN) were developed to model CIP and SIR. It was concluded that ANN, especially multilayer perceptron (MLP-ANN) has a decent performance in predicting response values. Additionally, multi-objective optimization of the process was performed using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) to maximize CIP removal efficiencies while minimizing SIR. NSGA-II optimization algorithm showed a reliable performance in the interaction between conflicting goals and yielded a better result than the GA algorithm. Finally, TOPSIS method with equal weights of the criteria was applied to choose the best alternative on the Pareto optimal solutions of the NSGA-II. Comparing the optimal values obtained by the multi-objective response surface optimization models (RSM-CCD) with the NSGA-II algorithm showed that the optimal variables in both models were close and, according to the absolute relative error criterion, possessed almost the same performance in the prediction of variables.acceptedVersio

Social Alignment Contagion in Online Social Networks

Researchers have already observed social contagion effects in both in-person and online interactions. However, such studies have primarily focused on users’ beliefs, mental states, and interests. In this article, we expand the state of the art by exploring the impact of social contagion on social alignment, i.e., whether the decision to socially align oneself with the general opinion of the users on the social network is contagious to one’s connections on the network or not. The novelty of our work in this article includes: 1) unlike earlier work, this article is among the first to explore the contagiousness of the concept of social alignment on social networks; 2) our work adopts an instrumental variable approach to determine reliable causal relations between observed social contagion effects on the social network; and 3) our work expands beyond the mere presence of contagion in social alignment and also explores the role of population heterogeneity on social alignment contagion. Based on the systematic collection and analysis of data from two large social network platforms, namely, Twitter and Foursquare, we find that a user’s decision to socially align or distance from social topics and sentiments influences the social alignment decisions of their connections on the social network. We further find that such social alignment decisions are significantly impacted by population heterogeneity

Iris Recognition System Using Convolutional Neural Network

Identification system is one of the important parts in security domains of the present time. The traditional protection methods considered to be inefficient and unreliable as they are subjected to the theft, imitation or forgetfulness. In contrast, biometrics such as facial recognition, fingerprints and the retina have emerged as modern protection methods, but still also suffer from some defects and violations. However, Iris recognition is an automated method that considered as a promising biometric identification due to the stability and the uniqueness of its patterns. In this paper, an iris recognition system based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model was proposed. CNN is used to perform the required processes of feature extraction and classification. The proposed system was evaluated through CASIA-V1 and ATVS datasets, after the required pre-processing steps taken place, and achieved 98% and 97.83% as a result, respectively

MENA-SINO Consensus Statement on Implementing Care Pathways for Acute Neurovascular Emergencies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the unprecedented current era of the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges have arisen in the management and interventional care of patients with acute stroke and large vessel occlusion, aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, and ruptured vascular malformations. There are several challenges facing endovascular therapy for stroke, including shortages of medical staff who may be deployed for COVID-19 coverage or who may have contracted the infection and are thus quarantined, patients avoiding early medical care, a lack of personal protective equipment, delays in door-to-puncture time, anesthesia challenges, and a lack of high-intensity intensive care unit and stroke ward beds. As a leading regional neurovascular organization, the Middle East North Africa Stroke and Interventional Neurotherapies Organization (MENA-SINO) has established a task force composed of medical staff and physicians from different disciplines to establish guiding recommendations for the implementation of acute care pathways for various neurovascular emergencies during the current COVID-19 pandemic. This consensus recommendation was achieved through a series of meetings to finalize the recommendation. © Copyright © 2020 Al-Jehani, John, Hussain, Al Hashmi, Alhamid, Amr, Ozdemir, Shuaib, Alhazzani, Ghorbani, Mansour and Saqqur

Investigating the Willingness to Pay for a Contributory National Health Insurance Scheme in Saudi Arabia:A Cross-sectional Stated Preference Approach

Background: The Saudi Healthcare System is universal, financed entirely from government revenue principally derived from oil, and is ‘free at the point of delivery’ (non-contributory). However, this system is unlikely to be sustainable in the medium to long term. This study investigates the feasibility and acceptability of healthcare financing reform by examining households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a contributory national health insurance scheme. Methods: Using the contingent valuation method, a pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 1187 heads of household in Jeddah province over a 5-month period. Multi-stage sampling was employed to select the study sample. Using a double-bounded dichotomous choice with the follow-up elicitation method, respondents were asked to state their WTP for a hypothetical contributory national health insurance scheme. Tobit regression analysis was used to examine the factors associated with WTP and assess the construct validity of elicited WTP. Results: Over two-thirds (69.6%) indicated that they were willing to participate in and pay for a contributory national health insurance scheme. The mean WTP was 50 Saudi Riyal (US$13.33) per household member per month. Tobit regression analysis showed that household size, satisfaction with the quality of public healthcare services, perceptions about financing healthcare, education and income were the main determinants of WTP. Conclusions: This study demonstrates a theoretically valid WTP for a contributory national health insurance scheme by Saudi people. The research shows that willingness to participate in and pay for a contributory national health insurance scheme depends on participant characteristics. Identifying and understanding the main influencing factors associated with WTP are important to help facilitate establishing and implementing the national health insurance scheme. The results could assist policy-makers to develop and set insurance premiums, thus providing an additional source of healthcare financing

Approximate Solutions to Fractional Subdiffusion Equations: The heat-balance integral method

The work presents integral solutions of the fractional subdiffusion equation by an integral method, as an alternative approach to the solutions employing hypergeometric functions. The integral solution suggests a preliminary defined profile with unknown coefficients and the concept of penetration (boundary layer). The prescribed profile satisfies the boundary conditions imposed by the boundary layer that allows its coefficients to be expressed through its depth as unique parameter. The integral approach to the fractional subdiffusion equation suggests a replacement of the real distribution function by the approximate profile. The solution was performed with Riemann -Liouville time-fractional derivative since the integral approach avoids the definition of the initial value of the time-derivative required by the Laplace transformed equations and leading to a transition to Caputo derivatives. The method is demonstrated by solutions to two simple fractional subdiffusion equations (Dirichlet problems): 1) Time-Fractional Diffusion Equation, and 2) Time-Fractional Drift Equation, both of them having fundamental solutions expressed through the M-Write function. The solutions demonstrate some basic issues of the suggested integral approach, among them: a) Choice of the profile, b) Integration problem emerging when the distribution (profile) is replaced by a prescribed one with unknown coefficients; c) Optimization of the profile in view to minimize the average error of approximations; d) Numerical results allowing comparisons to the known solutions expressed to the M-Write function and error estimations.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, 3 table