The effect of 12 weeks Anethum graveolens (dill) on metabolic markers in patients with metabolic syndrome; A randomized double blind controlled trial

Background: The clustering of metabolic abnormalities defined as metabolic syndrome is now both a public health and a clinical problem .While interest in herbal medicine has greatly increased, lack of human evidence to support efficacies shown in animals does exist. This clinical trial study designed to investigate whether herbal medicine, Anethum graveolens (dill) extract, could improve metabolic components in patients with metabolic syndrome. Methods: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial using a parallel design was conducted. 24 subjects who had metabolic syndrome diagnostic criteria (update of ATP III) were randomly assigned to either dill extract (n = 12) or placebo (n = 12) for 3 months. Results: Across lipid component of metabolic syndrome, no significant differences in triglyceride (TG) concentration and high density lipoprotein cholesterol were seen between the two groups. However TG improved significantly from baseline (257.0 vs. 201.5p = 0.01) with dill treatment but such a significant effect was not observed in placebo group. Moreover, no significant differences in waist circumference, blood pressure and fasting blood sugar were seen between two groups after 3 months follow up period. Conclusion: In this small clinical trial in patients with metabolic syndrome, 12 weeks of dill extract treatment had a beneficial effect in terms of reducing TG from baseline. However dill treatment was not associated with a significant improvement in metabolic syndrome related markers compared to control group. Larger studies might be required to prove the efficacy and safety of long-Term administration of dill to resolve metabolic syndrome components. © 2012 Mansouri et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

On the prevalence of hierarchies in social networks

In this paper, we introduce two novel evolutionary processes for hierarchical networks referred to as dominance- and prestige-based evolution models, i.e., DBEM and PBEM, respectively. Our models are deterministic in nature which allows for closed-form derivation of equilibrium points for such type of networks, for the special case of complete networks. After deriving these equilibrium points, we are somewhat surprised in recovering the exponential and power-law strength distribution as the shared property of the resulting hierarchal networks. Additionally, we compute the network properties, Geodesic distance distribution and centrality closeness, for each model in closed form. Interestingly, these results demonstrate very different roles of hubs for each model, shedding the light on the evolutionary advantages of hierarchies in social networks: in short, hierarchies can lead to efficient sharing of resources and robustness to random failures. For the general case of any hierarchical network, we compare the estimations of tie intensities and node strengths using the proposed models to open-source real-world data. The prediction results are statistically compared using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test with the original data

Epidemiological Aspects of Canine Dirofilariasis in the North of Iran

Background: Dirofilaria immitis is an important parasite in dog and other carnivores. Our objec­tive was study on incidence and periodicity of heartworm in north of Iran and using other meth­ods for its diagnosis in addition to Parasitology exam.Methods: This survey spanned two years, between 2006 and 2008. Blood samples were collected from 431 stray dogs distributed along north of Iran, the coastal areas of the Caspian Sea. The Knott's modified test was used for diagnosis of D. immitis and other filariae. Meanwhile, the periodic­ity of microfilaria in peripheral blood circulation was calculated and the imaging diagno­sis techniques of four dogs that had positive results were done.Result: Diagnostic parasitology results indicated that 16.01% of stray dogs were microfilaremic. Two different microfilariae were diagnosed: D. immitis in 13.69%, Dipetalonema reconditum in 1.86% and in 0.46% both of them. There was no statistically significant between infection to fiariae with sex and age of dogs. Also study on the periodicity of the presence of microfilaria in peripheral circulation showed that the highest rate of those was at 1 am and the lowest rate at 12 pm. Radiographic study showed distinctive signs with varied degrees of severity included: Tortu­ous and enlargement of main and lobar pulmonary artery, pulmonary parenchymal lesions and Right side heart enlargement that confirmed in electrocardiography. Also in echocardiographic images observed short parallel-sided images with the appearance of equal signs that indicated the pres­ence of the heartworm.Conclusion: These results showed that to obtain a reliable diagnosis of heartworm infection, imag­ing tests could support parasitological exams

Impact of Salinity Stress on Photochemical Efficiency of Photosystem II, Chlorophyll Content and Nutrient Elements of Nitere Bush (Nitraria schoberi L.) Plants

Abstract. Salinity is one of major stresses which can severely limit plant production, especially in the arid and semi-arid regions. The present study was carried out to evaluate the impact of salinity stress on some physio-biochemical parameters in nitre bush plants (Nitraria schoberi). Thus, an experiment was carried out under natural conditions and salinity stress was induced by a combination of different salts (NaCl, MgCl 2 and CaCl 2 ) at four levels. The salinity treatments were: Control (Ctrl), Low Salinity (LS), Medium Salinity (MS) and High Salinity (HS) of the combined salts. In this study, photosynthetic apparatus of N. schoberi was damaged to a certain extent as it has been observed from leaf chlorophyll fluorescence parameters (Chl. FPs) such as minimal fluorescence (F 0 ), maximal fluorescence (F m ) and maximal photochemical efficiency (F v / F m ). A significant alteration in chlorophyll content of leaf was not noticed with the increased soil salt content up MS and thereafter, it significantly declined at HS. The reduced level of total chlorophyll content under salt stress conditions can be attributed to chloroplastid membrane deterioration leading to lesser accumulation of chlorophyll. The amount of inorganic ions in nitre bush plant leaves altered with an increase in salinity stress. The concentration of Na + and Cl -steadily increased and on the contrary, the concentrations of K + , Ca 2+ and Mg + showed significant decreases only at HS. This phenomenon is explainable by the inhibition of K + uptake by high Na + levels because these cations are transported by the same proteins. In our experiments, we did not observe significant differences between control plants and those grown in presence of 300 mMol salt kg -1 dry soil (DS). Thus, nitre bush is considered to be a salt tolerant species

The clinical and environmental spread and diversity of toxigenic Clostridium difficile diarrhea in the region of the Middle East.

Stool samples of 1822 hospitalized patients with nosocomial diarrhea and 100 environmental samples were collected at three teaching hospitals and PCR amplification of rRNA intergenic spacer regions (ISR) was conducted. Bacterial cytotoxicity was assayed by conducting three assays namely toxigenic culture on vero cells, stool cytotoxin, and enzyme immunoassay. ISR was carried out using two universal primers complementary to conserved regions in the 16S and 23S rRNA genes. It was found that the toxigenic culture, stool cytotoxin and enzyme immunoassay showed close rates of detection of toxigenic C. difficile, 124, 121, and 122 /1822 (6.8, 6.64., and 6.7%) respectively. In addition, 32 different ribotypes for toxigenic C. difficile were detected, 28 in clinical and 6 in environmental isolates. The predominant ribotypes from the clinical isolates were 13-15, 35.6%, of isolates. Ribotypes were associated with age, location of isolation, and severity of symptoms of clostridial diarrhea (P<0.05). Ribotypes 6-9 affected children only. The most common ribotype of C. difficile , no. 13, as well as ribotypes 16, 20, and 4 covered almost the whole range of severity of symptoms. Ribotypes 21-27, 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, and 19 caused mild-moderate CDAD symptoms while ribotypes 5, 10 8, 12, 15, 17, and 28 were dominantly of severe symptoms (P<0.05). Environmental isolates showed 17% toxigenic strains composed of 4 different ribotypes while ribotypes 5 was shared with clinical isolates. These findings showed that C. difficile associated with diarrhea were genetically diverse and linked to environmental strains

An image-based modeling framework for predicting spatiotemporal brain cancer biology within individual patients

Imaging is central to the clinical surveillance of brain tumors yet it provides limited insight into a tumor\u27s underlying biology. Machine learning and other mathematical modeling approaches can leverage paired magnetic resonance images and image-localized tissue samples to predict almost any characteristic of a tumor. Image-based modeling takes advantage of the spatial resolution of routine clinical scans and can be applied to measure biological differences within a tumor, changes over time, as well as the variance between patients. This approach is non-invasive and circumvents the intrinsic challenges of inter- and intratumoral heterogeneity that have historically hindered the complete assessment of tumor biology and treatment responsiveness. It can also reveal tumor characteristics that may guide both surgical and medical decision-making in real-time. Here we describe a general framework for the acquisition of image-localized biopsies and the construction of spatiotemporal radiomics models, as well as case examples of how this approach may be used to address clinically relevant questions

Should cross-border banking benefit from the financial safety net?

Using bank-level data from 84 countries, we find that a higher degree of bank internationalization is associated with higher interest expenses. Internationalization is proxied by a bank's share of foreign liabilities in total liabilities or a Herfindahl index of international liability concentration. Bank interest expenses rise relatively more with internationalization if the bank is underperforming or headquartered in a country with weak public finances, and especially at times of weak world output growth. These results suggest that liability holders of distressed internationalized banks expect less from the financial safety net since lack of an efficient recovery and resolution regime for international banks can make their insolvency very costly to deal with.post-prin

Some ecobiological parameters of Indo-Pacific Bottlenose (Tursiops aduncus) dolphin in Qeahm-Hengam Islands waters (Persian Gulf)

To investigate some bioecological parameters of dolphins between Qeshm and Hengam Islands waters, the present field study was started on November 2014 and finished on May 2015. During this study morphological features of individuals, within dolphin groups, distribution and reproduction of the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) and their activities at the sea surface were registered using camera systems. At the same time a field questioner form was design to collect the local fisherman information regarding to dolphins’ behaviors in the region. During this study one dolphin species namely Tursiops aduncus (Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin) was identified. The breeding period of Indo-Pacific Bottlenose dolphin was in spring season and a newborns were observed in April 2015. According to field observations, the mean number of Indopacific Bottlenose dolphin groups was 23/13±5/49 with 2 newborns in April 2015