Comparison of sarcopenia and cachexia in men with chronic heart failure: Results from the Studies Investigating Co-morbidities Aggravating Heart Failure (SICA-HF)

Muscle wasting is acknowledged as a co-morbidity of heart failure (HF) and is associated with poor prognosis (ESC 2016). Cardiac cachexia is known to cause reduced functional capacity, more frequent hospitalization, and decreased survival rate (ESC 2016). This study aimed to compare the impacts of sarcopenia, cachexia, and their overlap on exercise tolerance and quality of life (QOL) in chronic HF patients.  We included retrospectively 207 outpatients with chronic HF into a cross-sectional study based on the Studies Investigating Co-morbidities Aggravating Heart Failure (SICA-HF) database. Body composition was measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Functional performance was assessed with peak oxygen uptake (peakVO2), 6-minute-walk-test (6MWT), and short physical performance battery (SPPB) test. The handgrip and quadriceps strength were measured using isokinetic dynamometry. Quality of life (QOL) was evaluated using the EuroQol-5-Dimension (EQ-5D) questionnaire to calculate the EQ-5D index score.   Sarcopenia was present in 21.3% of our HF patients. In this context, 14.5% fulfilled sarcopenia's definition without associated cachexia (sarcopenic HF group). 12.1% presented with cachexia without concomitant sarcopenia (cachectic HF group). Furthermore, 6.8% of patients demonstrated the characteristics of both cachexia and sarcopenia (overlap group).  The lowest results for functional capacity, muscle strength, and QOL were observed in patients with sarcopenia. Both of the overlap and sarcopenic HF groups showed the lowest values for muscle strength, 6MWT distance, peakVO2, SPPB score, and EQ-5D index score vs. control group (all p < 0.05). The overlap group showed the weakest quadriceps strength vs. all other groups (p < 0.05). We found significantly lower results for peakVO2 and quadriceps strength among the cachectic HF group vs. the control group, but this effect was not constant in other functional tests. The cachectic HF could not demonstrate significantly lower QOL indices.  Male HF patients with sarcopenia seem to have significantly lower functional performance and QOL. These effects remain constant with/or without associated cachexia. Our study highlights the importance of early screening for sarcopenia among HF patients. In this regard, BMI cannot be a reliable representative of patients' body composition.2021-05-2

Citizen Participation and Framing Effects: An Empirical Study in Tehran Municipality Expert Idea Bank

Nowadays the societies which are confronted with significant challenges that dealing with them have become the most important concern of the urban managers Although the managers are considered to be responsible in this regard citizens might be able to play an even better role by presenting their ideas for cities problems Tehran as a metropolis is an example of those cities on their ways to modernization facing with emerging problems and issues From 2009 a system for accumulation and surveillance of these ideas is nominated Idea Bank is implemented The Idea Bank is introduced and the impact of the framing effects on experts judgment and decision making would be analyzed in this research A sample of 202 expert members of the system is investigated Based on the obtained results idea generation resembles expenditure of money in order to buy a good or use a service and from the mental accounting point of view it creates a mental account In this research we have indicated that how the conflicts arising from framing effects in people s decision making could influence experts decision and judgment for prevention of closing the accounts containing loss therefore hazards concerning these effects should be considered as a critical factor for effectiveness of the idea ban

Variations to the Groundwater Seepage Face on Meso-tidal Dissipative Beaches

Groundwater seeping from the beachface can induce erosion and so may play a role in controlling the development of beach morphology. This research answers some fundamental questions about the processes that control the groundwater seepage line position on a dissipative beach. For instance: What is the relationship between the observed groundwater seepage line and the intertidal beachface volume? What is the best statistical model, which can describe the importance of the groundwater seepage line and surfzone morphology in changing the beachface volume? How well can video images be used for extracting groundwater seepage lines and shorelines at a dissipative meso-tidal beach? How does the groundwater seepage line on a dissipative meso-tidal beach change over the tidal cycle? What are the main parameters controlling the groundwater seepage line on a dissipative, meso-tidal beach and which driver is the most important in explaining changes to the seepage line? Can numerical models (both linear and non-linear) accurately predict the tidal groundwater changes across the beachface and determine the position of the groundwater exit point? The processes that are explored are rip currents, characterized by the observed variations in the surfzone morphology, as well as beach slope, hydraulic conductivity, wave set-up, tidal variations and water table variations. Specifically, changes to the alongshore variation and decoupling of the seepage line from the shoreline are studied along two gently-sloping beaches in the west cost of New Zealand using video images, field measurements and a 2D non-linear Boussinesq model. Finally the advantages and disadvantages of applying the linear versus the non-linear Boussinesq equations to beach groundwater modelling are discussed. The thesis also demonstrates the accuracy of using video images for extracting the seepage line and shoreline. The statistical study conducted using video imagery and surveys of the seepage line at Muriwai Beach showed that the variation of the beach volume can be related to the seepage line and surfzone morphology, (which was measured using the pixel intensity extracted from the time-averaged video images). My results showed that in most regions of the beach, there is a clear correlation between the beachface volume and the seepage line, with an elevated seepage line causing a reduction of volume. This inverse correlation occurred in all datasets. The seasonal analysis showed that the seepage line in winter is more correlated with volume than summer. The field results also indicated that the beachface volume is more correlated with the seepage line at low tide rather than high tide. Hence, the seepage line has a greater effect lower on the beach, and beachface volume reduction is more influenced by the low tide seepage line. This study also showed that the seepage line was less clearly related to changes in the surfzone morphology. One of the shortcomings of the study at Muriwai Beach was the lack of survey data and the inability to use the video imagery more effectively because of the lack of ground truthing. Therefore images collected at Ngarunui Beach, where cameras were still operating, were used to study the application of the time-averaged images in extracting the seepage line and variance images in detecting the shoreline. The comparison between the extracted shoreline and beach survey data showed that the difference between the surveyed data and video based data in upper intertidal beach is much lower than lower part of the beach indicating that the video extracting algorithm works better at the high tide rather than the low tide. On the other hand, both seepage line and shoreline showed the decoupling process very well in both incoming and outgoing tides. During the rising tide, the infiltration from the tidal wave causes the water table rise, although beach groundwater level increases much more quickly than rising tide. An hourly comparison of the decoupling process showed that the seepage line decouples from the shoreline more quickly on the lower part (less steep intertidal beachface) rather than the steeper upper part of the beach profile. This decoupling process showed that Ngarunui Beach fills more rapidly than the tide rises, and drains more slowly than tide falls. This finding was tested using my field data collected using Solinst piezometers -Solinst is the brand name of the piezometers which were used at Ngarunui Beach- and manual water detectors at the beach. The decoupling between the seepage line and the shoreline extracted from video images also showed that the seepage face width is much greater in north and middle of the beach rather than south part. The rip current in south of the beach may have an effect on lowering the groundwater exit point elevation and shortening the seepage face width. Although according to the data from the current meters deployed in the beach, it seems that the rips may have a small effect on changing the groundwater seepage line rather than sediment properties and beach topography. Modelling using a 2D non-linear Boussinesq model, which I developed during the research, showed that the seepage line calculated by my model is compatible with the surveyed seepage line. The non-linearity effect of the hydraulic conductivity and the groundwater depth may play an important role in accuracy of the results. The non-linear model also showed the same pattern of the decoupling between the seepage line and the shoreline as the video images showed. Similar to the result of my 1D numerical model at Muriwai beach, the numerical model results at Ngarunui beach also showed that the seepage line elevation decreases with increasing the hydraulic conductivity and intertidal beachface slope. The model successfully replicated the wider seepage face in middle and north of the beach rather the south (also shown in the video image analysis)

Parallel implementations for solving matrix factorization problems with optimization

During recent years, the exponential increase in data sets' sizes and the need for fast and accurate tools which can operate on these huge data sets in applications such as recommendation systems has led to an ever growing attention towards devising novel methods which can incorporate all the available resources to execute desired operations in the least possible time. In this work, we provide a framework for parallelized large-scale matrix factoriza- tion problems. One of the most successful and used methods to solve these problems is solving them via optimization techniques. Optimization methods require gradient vectors to update the iterates. The time spent to solve such a problem is mostly spent on calls to gradient and function value evaluations. In this work, we have used a recent method, which has not been used before for matrix factorization. When it comes to parallelization, we present both CPU and GPU implementations. As our experiments show, the proposed parallelization scales quite well. We report our results on Movie- Lens data set. Our results show that the new method is quite successful in reducing the number of iterations. We obtain very good RMSE values with signi cant promising scaling gures

Tertiary-Tree 12-GHz 32-bit Adder in 65nm Technology

This paper presents a new 32-bit adder structure with 12 GHz low-power operation in 65nm technology. The Fast Conditional Sparse-Tree Logic (FCSL) is based on modifying the initial Sparse-Tree architecture [1] to enhance its speed using tertiary trees and applying a carry-select scheme in some of the more significant bits. This design has been compared with the Sparse-Tree adder and the Low-Voltage Swing adder in terms of speed and power. It has been shown that speed can be improved using FCSL architecture while keeping the power at a comparable level

Degree of innovation and the entrepreneurs’ intention to create value:a comparative study of experienced and novice entrepreneurs

A vital aspect of entrepreneurial action is the translation of entrepreneur’s opportunity into new value creation. This paper examines the moderating roles of the founder’s experience and innovation degree on the relationship between opportunity confidence and new value creation intention (NVCI) at the pre-founding stage of a business. For this purpose, it uses survey data from 157 prospective entrepreneurs in the ICT industry from university incubators in Iran. Using SEM, we find that experience, alone, does not moderate the relationship between opportunity confidence and NVCI. However, if entrepreneurs have required opportunity confidence, then medium and high-level innovation can increase the likelihood of acting on the opportunity for novice and experienced entrepreneurs, respectively. For novice entrepreneurs, the innovation variance from low to medium moderates the relationship between opportunity confidence and intent. In fact, this relationship is strengthened by the medium novelty level. Whereas, for experienced entrepreneurs, the variance from medium to high, moderates the relationship that is strengthened by the high novelty level.</p

Clinical Features of Patients with Probable 2019 Novel Coronavirus Infected Pneumonia in Rasht, Iran: A Retrospective Case Series

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) is the first pandemic infectious disease caused by a novel coronavirus. Viral pneumonia is a severe complication of COVID-19. AIM: Due to the high prevalence of this disease globally, especially in Iran, the aim of this study was to determine the clinical features of seven patients with probable COVID-19 infected pneumonia in Rasht, North Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this retrospective case series study, we described the clinical, laboratory, and radiological features of seven patients with probable COVID-19 infected pneumonia at Razi Hospital, Rasht, north of Iran, from February 27 to March 16, 2020. RESULTS: In this study, the most common clinical symptoms during hospitalization in patients with COVID-19 were poor appetite (seven cases), dehydration (seven cases), cough (six cases), dyspnea (six cases), fatigue (six cases), fever above 38°C (five cases), myalgia (five cases), Chills (five cases), feeling fever (five cases), sore throat (five cases), and nausea (five cases), respectively. The average body temperature in these patients was 39.32°C. In laboratory findings, erythrocyte sedimentation rate was elevated in three patients. Contrary to most of the evidence, C-reactive protein was not elevated in five patients. All patients received antibiotic and antiviral medications and received symptomatic treatment. Finally, four patients responded to the treatments and were discharged from the hospital; two patients were still hospitalized and only one patient died. CONCLUSION: Patients with COVID-19 associated pneumonia can be treated by evaluating and implementing appropriate therapeutic management. However, at the moment the disease progression for patients with COVID-19 cannot be accurately predicted

High Deformable Anchorage System in Slabs-on-Grade in Hydraulic Structures

Severe local differential displacements and the resulting high stresses in the slabs-on-grade in hydraulic structures are often caused by the displacement of bottom layers with cracks and joints or the presence of swollen soils. In addition to the above factors, the uplift due to hydrostatic and hydrodynamic pressure due to water flow under the slabs can also cause differential displacements. In this research, a ductile anchorage system with high deformable concrete element is introduced and using the designed setup, its effectiveness in comparison with conventional elastic anchorage system in the slabs under a wide uniform uplift load has been studied. High deformable concrete elements have the same strength as ordinary concrete but their compressive strain can reach 60%. These types of concrete elements are in the form of precast elements, which have many applications in structures. At first, to obtain a proper high deformable concrete element, several tests were carried out on various samples and compositions, and the behavior of the high deformable elements was studied and achieved. Experimental and numerical results show that the rate of energy absorption in deformable anchorage systems is 4 times that of conventional elastic anchors, and the use of ductile supports can prevent cracking of slabs in hydraulic structures

Psychometric properties of the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure in an Iranian hospital setting

Background: Students’ perceptions of the educational environment are an important construct in assessing and enhancing the quality of medical training programs. Reliable and valid measurement, however, can be problematic – especially as instruments developed and tested in one culture are translated for use in another. Materials and method: This study sought to explore the psychometric properties of the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) for use in an Iranian hospital training setting. We translated the instrument into Persian and ensured its content validity by back translation and expert review prior to administering it to 127 residents of Urmia University of Medical Science. Results: Overall internal consistency of the translated measure was good (a=0.94). Principal components analysis revealed five factors accounting for 52.8% of the variance. Conclusion: The Persian version of the PHEEM appears to be a reliable and potentially valid instrument for use in Iranian medical schools and may find favor in evaluating the educational environments of residency programs nationwide