Determination of some physical and mechanical properties of Barkat variety of broad bean

In this research the effect of moisture at three levels (57, 67, and 77 %) on the physical properties of the Barkat bean variety including, including dimensions, geometric mean diameter, volume, sphericity index and the surface area was determined. And the influence of different moisture content levels (67,57 and 77%), in two loading orientation (longitudinal and transverse) and three loading speed (8,6 and 10 mm min-1) on the mechanical properties of the maximum deformation, rupture force, rupture energy, toughness and the power to break the broad bean was investigated. It was observed in the mechanical properties that moisture changes and loading speed were affective at 1% on rupture force, rupture energy, and toughness. Loading orientation was affective on deformation, rupture power at 1%. The interaction between speed and orientation were effective at 1% on power. The interaction between moisture and speed on deformation, rupture power, rupture energy, toughness was effective at 1% probability. The interaction between orientation and moisture on rupture force and energy was affective 1%.

Medicinal plants and phytotherapy in Iran: Glorious history, current status and future prospects

This study is an endeavour to analyse the status of medicinal plants research in Iran. Because of its exceptional phytogeography, Iran has a unique and diverse flora. It is estimated that, 8167 species of vascular plants are present in Iran of which about 2075 have medicinal importance. Situated at the heart of the Silk Road, Iran enjoys a mix of cultures providing a rich backbone for the development of traditional herbal medicine practices. Notwithstanding the brilliant history in traditional medicine and success of investigation to produce herbal medicines, attempts in recent decades, face many challenges. Many text and paper about these concerns were never translated in English. Strong need was felt to record such data of medicinal plants of Iran, their conservation status and related information. The scattered literature over medicinal plants of Iran were collected, analysed and presented in this review, highlighting not only their therapeutic potential but also concerns about product authenticity, quality, safety and efficacy. This will provide ways for future scientific research in this area. Awareness of critical issues in traditional medicinal herbs can play a pivotal role in the discovery and development of plant based drugs and to sustain consumer confidence

Image quality enhancement in digital panoramic radiograph

One of the most common positioning errors in panoramic radiography is palatoglossal air space above the apices of the root of maxillary teeth. It causes a radiolucency obscuring the apices of maxillary teeth. In the case of this positioning error, the imaging should be repeated. This causes the patient be exposed to radiation again. To avoid the repetition of exposing harmful X-rays to the patient, it is necessary to improve the panoramic images. This paper presents a new automatic panoramic image enhancement method to reduce the effect of this positioning error. Experimental results indicate that the enhanced panoramic images provide with adequate diagnostic information specially in maxilla sinusoid region. Hence, this technique dispenses the need for repetition of X-ray imaging

Lost Ethnic Borders in Ethnopharmacological Research

No Abstract

Impacts of Forest Road on Plant Species Diversity in a Hyrcanian Forest, Iran

Forest roads facilitate various activities such as forest management, tending of forest, timber logging, and fire and pest control, but the fact remains that roads can interrupt the natural function of forest ecosystem. They divert water flow and increase the amount of sediment. They can also alter plant species composition. Furthermore, the network structure of roads divides the land to small patches, which ends in habitat fragmentation. In this study, which was carried out in the Hyrcanian Forest in the north of Iran, effects of a forest road on plant species diversity (including trees, saplings and herbs) was investigated on both cut and fill slopes. At 10 points along the road, toward the fill slope and cut slope, ten 100 meter transects perpendicular to the road were established. Within each transect, ten 10×10 m plots were sampled to record the tree and sapling species and ten 2 × 2 m plots to record the herbal species. Results showed that road segment had no significant effects on plant species diversity. Since the studied road is constructed using environmentally sound techniques and criteria, unnecessary cut and fill operations were avoided. The other factor is the width of the road, which is as narrow as possible, so the habitat fragmentation is not so considerable. The traffic on this road is also limited; therefore soil pollution does not affect plant composition. These items together with the ability of the Hyrcanian ecosystem to repair itself can mitigate negative effects of this road

Submodularity in Action: From Machine Learning to Signal Processing Applications

Submodularity is a discrete domain functional property that can be interpreted as mimicking the role of the well-known convexity/concavity properties in the continuous domain. Submodular functions exhibit strong structure that lead to efficient optimization algorithms with provable near-optimality guarantees. These characteristics, namely, efficiency and provable performance bounds, are of particular interest for signal processing (SP) and machine learning (ML) practitioners as a variety of discrete optimization problems are encountered in a wide range of applications. Conventionally, two general approaches exist to solve discrete problems: $(i)$ relaxation into the continuous domain to obtain an approximate solution, or $(ii)$ development of a tailored algorithm that applies directly in the discrete domain. In both approaches, worst-case performance guarantees are often hard to establish. Furthermore, they are often complex, thus not practical for large-scale problems. In this paper, we show how certain scenarios lend themselves to exploiting submodularity so as to construct scalable solutions with provable worst-case performance guarantees. We introduce a variety of submodular-friendly applications, and elucidate the relation of submodularity to convexity and concavity which enables efficient optimization. With a mixture of theory and practice, we present different flavors of submodularity accompanying illustrative real-world case studies from modern SP and ML. In all cases, optimization algorithms are presented, along with hints on how optimality guarantees can be established

Bis[1-(2-eth­oxy­phen­yl)-3-(4-nitro­phen­yl)triazenido]mercury(II)

In the title compound, [Hg(C14H13N4O3)2], the central Hg atom (site symmetry 2) is six-coordinated by two tridentate 1-(2-eth­oxy­phen­yl)-3-(4-nitro­phen­yl)triazenide ligands through two N and one O atoms. The mononuclear complex mol­ecules are connected into two parallel chains by inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions. These chains are connected to each other by face-to-edge C—H⋯π inter­actions between the CH of the ethoxy groups and the aromatic rings, resulting in a two-dimensional architecture in the ac plane

Improved Artificial Neural Network with High Precision for Predicting Burnout among Managers and Employees of Start-Ups during COVID-19 Pandemic

Notwithstanding the impact that the Coronavirus pandemic has had on the physical and psychological wellness of people, it has also caused a change in the psychological conditions of many employees, particularly among organizations and privately owned businesses, which confronted numerous limitations because of the unique states of the pandemic. Accordingly, the current review expected to implement an RBF neural network to dissect the connection between demographic variables, resilience, Coronavirus, and burnout in start-ups. The examination technique was quantitative. The statistical populace of the review is directors and representatives of start-ups. In view of the statistical sample size of the limitless community, 384 of them were investigated. For information gathering, standard polls incorporating MBI-GS and BRCS and specialist-made surveys of pressure brought about by Coronavirus were utilized. The validity of the polls was affirmed by a board of specialists and their reliability was affirmed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The designed network structure had ten neurons in the input layer, forty neurons in the hidden layer, and one neuron in the output layer. The amount of training and test data were 70% and 30%, respectively. The output of the neural network and the collected results were compared with each other, and the designed network was able to classify all the data correctly. Using the method presented in this research can greatly help the sustainability of companies

Evaluation of Complications of Peritoneal Dialysis Catheter in Children: A Retrospective Single Center Study

Introduction:Peritoneal dialysis is a long-term method of dialysis for children. Peritoneal dialysis, when performed effectively, saves valuable time for children with advanced kidney transplant, till they reach the appropriate age for the kidney transplant. In children, due to their rapid physical growth and the large catheter size, as well as the thin and weak abdominal wall, especially before the age of 4, the complications of catheterization such as catheter leak and incisional hernia are higher than that of adult population. In this study we aim to evaluatethedysfunction and complications of the cathetersof peritoneal dialysis in children. Materials and Methods:We assessedmedical records of all patients, who underwent peritoneal dialysis since 2006 till 2015 at Mofid hospital, Tehran, Iran. Total number of 41 records were evaluated, of which 11 cases were excluded dueto incomplete data and 30 patients were analyzed eventually.Complications of catheter were recorded. Results:We studied 30 patients, 14 males and 16 females; the mean age of the children was 72.6 months(5 to 12 years old). The leading cause of end stage renal disease(ESRD) were primary glomerulopathies. There were total of 3 catheterreplacements,mostly due to peritonitis and catheter obstruction. The incidence of infectious complications was 40.3%. The incidence of all complications was 1 out of 6.4 patients/month. Conclusion: Regarding the high prevalence of catheter-related complications in children undergoing chronic peritoneal dialysis, especially infectious complications, adopting standard surgical technique of catheter insertion accompanied bywell trained peritoneal dialysis team isessential to prevent the complications and to increase the functional life span of the catheter and to enhance the quality of life of the patient