Evaluating Gender Based Behavior in Historical Urban Public Place Case study: Grand Bazaar, Kerman, Iran

The study evaluates the spatial behaviors of women in urban public place through ‘fear of crime’ and ‘public place functionality’ factors; by using direct observations and questionnaire within the Grand Bazaar as a historical urban public place in the center of Kerman, which is located in the Southwest part of Iran. The study provides a particular perspective to the analysis and understanding of how women make decisions and behave in a spatial setting based on environmental psychology studies. This study applies combinational research methods including qualitative and quantitative approach, including analytical, descriptive, correlation, and logical reasoning methods. This study also conducts direct observation in order to search the strengths and weaknesses of Grand Bazaar as a public place. The results of the study reveal that there is a significant correlation between fear of crime and women’s environmental perception of Grand Bazaar. Furthermore, the research findings indicate that the anxiety of being in less crowded parts of Bazaar is more tangible among women than men. On the other hand, the results show there is a significant correlation between time periods and women’s activities in Grand Bazaar

Impact of exercise endurance training on pur gene expression and cardiac function

Introduction: Endurance training has significant effects on the renewal of heart tissue, including myosin heavy chain (MHC) proteins. On the other side, Purine-rich element-binding protein β (pur) decreases the αMHC gene expression. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of exercise endurance training on pur gene expression in the heart of Wistar rats. Methods: Fourteen rats have been kept under controlled conditions and after familiarizing with training protocol, they were divided into control groups and experimental groups. The experimental group performed a 10-week treadmill running program for 30 min/day, 5 days/week. 48 hours after the last training session, the rats were anesthetized and the heart and their left ventricle were taken out and pur expression was measured using real time PCR method. All data were analyzed using t test. Results: In this study, the results of M-mode echocardiography showed that endurance training led to cardiac hypertrophy. After endurance training, the heart weight, especially the left ventricular weight significantly increased. The pur gene expression significantly decreased in the left ventricular tissue of endurance-trained rats. Conclusion: The results of this study revealed that endurance training has considerable effects on heart size and pur gene expression. The pur gene also repressed MHC gene expression; it seems that the changes in heart structure related to MHC gene expression

Efficient and transparent virtualization mechanism for volunteer computing

Virtualization is a technology that introduced long time ago but it has emerged in the last decade as a viable and novel solution for assembling a complete operating system (guest OS) on top of hosting machine (host OS). It has changed computing in many aspects with its unique features like easy deployment of guest OSes, migration, checkpointing and sanboxing. Public resource computing project like SETI@home, Roesetta@home and others that are powered by volunteer resources can benefit from virtualization characteristics in both project developing and volunteers points of view. However wide-scale deployment of virtualized environment for desktop grids impacts on the host performance as virtualization functionalities imposes Central Processing Unit (CPU) and memory overhead into the host environment. Virtualization adoption imposes additional download bandwidth on volunteers machine. This thesis aims to propose an efficient approach to adapt virtualization into volunteer computing platform. The proposed virtualization mechanism is implemented on BOINC. It uses VirtualBox to establish virtualized environment. In order to reduce resource overhead, a centralized virtual machine undertakes the execution process which is created by a symlink virtual machine image file. Evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed virtualization approach, improves BOINC performance in terms of CPU and memory overhead both Random Access Memory (RAM) and storage notions. The proposed mechanism reduced the CPU overhead by 96.17%, 206.5%, 316.85, and 429.47% when executed single job, two jobs, three jobs and four jobs in parallel respectively. In the case of memory overhead, the proposed virtualization mechanism improved the storage overhead by 95.5%, 194.60%, 220.75%, and 286.43%, and declined the RAM overhead by 0.00% , 100%, 200%, and 300% when scaled up from executing single job to four jobs respectively. The proposed virtualization mechanism reduced considerably resources overhead which were occupied by virtual machine environment and depicts the possibility of adapting virtualization functionality into the volunteer computing environments with the acceptable additional overhead

Biological effects of cell-phone radiofrequency waves exposure on fertilization in mice; an in vivo and in vitro study

Increasing use of cell-phone is one of the most important risk factors for population health. We designed an experimental study aimed at evaluating the effects of cell-phone radiofrequency (RF) waves exposure on fertilization in mice. Two hundred male and female NMRI-mice were used. One hundred males divided in five groups (n = 20) as control and exposed groups. Those irradiated with cell-phone RF in ‘‘Standby-mode” 1, 5 and 10 h daily named groups II, III and IV; respectively. Group V irradiated with cell-phone on ‘‘Active-mode” one hour daily. After 30 days irradiation, 50 males and 50 females were kept 24 h to assess their embryos. Fifty males were scarified to evaluate both in vitro and in vivo parameters, and 50 females received PMSG & HCG for both quantitative and qualitative evaluation. Comparing groups III, IV and V with control-group showed significantly decreased in the number of two-cell embryos (p = .000); however, a significant increase was found in the number of dead embryos (p = .000). Furthermore, 5 h daily irradiation significantly decreased grade-A embryos (p = .015); while, it significantly increased grade-B, C and D embryos (p-values = 0.026, 0.007, 0.006; respectively). Moreover, comparing groups IV and V to control-group, significant increase was found in pregnancy duration (p = .005, p = .009; respectively). However, in the mentioned groups a significant decrease was seen in number of newborn mice (p = .001, p = .004; respectively). In conclusion our findings showed that the cell-phone radiation can affect development of embryos as well as the number of newborn and pregnancy duration in NMRI-mouse, which might be a significant cause of reproductive failur

Clinical and pharmacological applications of silymarin components at cellular and molecular level: A review

Silymarin, a flavonolignan from ‘milk thistle’ (Silybum marianum) plant is used almost exclusively for hepatoprotection and amounts to 180 million US dollars business in Germany alone. In this review, we discuss about its safety, efficacy and future uses in liver diseases. The use of silymarin may replace the polyherbal formulations and will avoid the major problems of standardization, quality control and contamination with heavy metals or bacterial toxins. Silymarin consists of four flavonolignan isomers namely; silybin, isosilybin, silydianin and silychristin. Among them, silybin being the most active and commonly used. Silymarin is orally absorbed and is excreted mainly through bile as sulphates and conjugates. Silymarin offers good protection in various toxic models of experimental liver diseases in laboratory animals. It acts by antioxidative, anti-lipid peroxidative, antifibrotic, anti-inflammatory, membrane stabilizing, immunomodulatory and liver regenerating mechanisms. Silymarin has clinical applications in alcoholic liver diseases, liver cirrhosis, Amanita mushroom poisoning, viral hepatitis, toxic and drug induced liver diseases and in diabetic patients. Though silymarin does not have antiviral properties against hepatitis virus, it promotes protein synthesis, helps in regenerating liver tissue, controls inflammation, enhances glucuronidation and protects against glutathione depletion. Silymarin may prove to be a useful drug for hepatoprotection in hepatobiliary diseases and in hepatotoxicity due to drugs. The non-traditional use of silymarin may make a breakthrough as a new approach to protect other organs in addition to liver. As it is having a good safety profile, better patient tolerability and an effective drug at an affordable price in near future new derivatives or new combinations of this drug may prove to be useful. © Medwell Journals, 2016

Effects of gamma rays on rat testis tissue according to the morphological parameters and immunohistochemistry: radioprotective role of silymarin.

OBJECTIVE To determine the radioprotective effects of Silymarin in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats irradiated with γ-rays. METHODS The present experimental study was performed in Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran from December 2009 to March 2010. The study was performed on 40 rats, which were randomly and equally divided into four groups: 1) control group: neither received Silymarin nor irradiated with γ-rays; 2) γ-irradiation group: testis region exposed to 2Gy of γ-rays; 3) Silymarin & γ-irradiation: rats received 100 mg/kg of Silymarin 24hrs before exposure to 2Gy of γ-rays; 4) Silymarin & γ-irradiation: rats received 200 mg/kg of Silymarin 24hrs before exposure to 2Gy of γ-rays. After animal experiments and preparing the tissue sections, different histological and histomorphological parameters of seminiferous tubules and the biological characteristics of Leydig cells were evaluated applying quantitative assessment, Johnson scoring, and Leydig cell apoptosis assay by TUNEL method. The data were analyzed applying ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc test, using SPSS software (V.19). RESULTS Irradiation of 2 Gy γ-rays to the testis of the rats significantly affected the frequency of spermatogonia, primary spermatocyte, round spermatid, spermatozoa, seminiferous tube and lumen diameters, thickness of the epithelium, Leydig cell nuclear diameter and volume, epithelium height, and apoptotic cells (p<0.05). However, administration of Silymarin improved the mentioned parameters specifically in 200 mg/kg of dosage. CONCLUSION Silymarin could act as a potent radioprotector and it can be used in modulation as well as improvement to radiation therapy to prevent male reproductive function, specifically seminiferous tubules in an animal model; however, its molecular mechanism is still not clear and needs more molecular researches

Evaluation of mouse embryos produced in vitro after electromagnetic waves exposure; Morphometric study.

INTRODUCTION Today, the use of electromagnetic waves in medical diagnostic devices, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has increased, and many of its biological effects have been reported. The aim of the present study was to assess the biological effects of 1.5 Tesla (T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on fertility and reproductive parameters. METHODS Eighty adult male and female NMRI mice (NMRI: Naval Medical Research Institute) of age 6-8 weeks were studied and randomly divided into two study and control groups. After confirmation of pregnancy, the mice in the study group were exposed to the MRI (1.5 T) machine's waves over the next three weeks, once a week for 36 minutes. One day and thirty-five days after the last radiation, the mice were killed in order to do the in vitro fertilization (IVF) by neck beads' displacement and the impact on the evolution of embryos, and its quality was studied. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 and the significance level of less than 0.05 was considered. RESULTS Embryo morphometry showed that the total diameter and the cytoplasm diameter of the study group embryos suffered significant reduction compared to the control group, 1 day after the last irradiation (p < 0.05), but the diameter of the perivitelline space of this group's embryos had a significant increase (p < 0.05). The qualitative results during 35 days after irradiation showed that morphologically parameters of the embryos in the study group had no significant differences from the control group. CONCLUSION Exposure to MRI irradiation can transiently disturb the development of mouse embryos and fertility, but these effects are reversible 35 days after the last irradiation

The Application of Social Cognitive Theory on Mothers’ Feeding Practices for Children Aged 6 to 24 Months old in Iran

Background Complementary Feeding between 6 and 24 months of age underlies nutritional habits in adulthood which can be formed by mothers through these habits. This study was conducted in Kerman aiming to apply the social cognitive theory (SCT) in feeding practices of mothers for their children aged 6 to 24 months. Materials and Methods This quasi-experimental study, controlled before and after, was conducted in Kerman health centers on 170 mothers with children aged 6 to 24 months, who were selected by multistage random sampling. The data collection tool was a valid and reliable questionnaire which was completed by mothers before and one month after the intervention. Interventions were implemented for 45 days through four sessions. In the intervention program; presentations, booklets, pamphlets, focus group discussions, role playing, demonstrations, and self-control cards were used. Also, bean sprouts were given to mothers and individual counseling was provided. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 22.0. Results: Social cognitive theory constructs including knowledge, outcome expectations, outcome expectancies, situational perception, the environment, self-efficacy and self-control could have significant effect on feeding practices of mothers for children (