Effect of drying process on antioxidant properties of date palm fruits

Aim. In order to identify antioxidant activities and phenolic compound, two varieties of date palm (Mazfati and Kalute varieties) (Phoenix dactylifera) fruits (DPF) from Iran systematically evaluated. Methods. Antioxidant activity determined using typical methods such as DPPH, reducing power and total antioxidant method. The total phenolic content of the dates was measured using Folin-Ciocalteau method. The included samples were gathered at three stages of khalaal, rutab, tamr and dried date from Sam and Jiroft date. The total phenolic content ranged from 1074, 856.4 and 723.8 in Mozafati variety and 921.5, 723.5 and 785.3 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE/100-g-dw sample) in Kalute variety for khalal, rutab and tamr stage, respectively. Results. In both varieties antioxidant activities and total phenolic content decreased by ripening stages. Result of drying process showed that total phenolic content and antioxidant activities varied from temperature and decreased by increase of drying temperature. Conclusion. This research demonstrates Iranian dates could be potential rich resources of natural antioxidants, and could be developed into functional foods or drug for the prevention and treatment of diseases caused by oxidative stress

Prevalence of Non-Thromboembolic Incidental Findings on Computed Tomography-Pulmonary Angiography for Pulmonary

Introduction: Computed Tomography-Pulmonary Angiography (CTPA) is a noninvasive imaging modality for direct diagnosis of pulmonary thromboembolism. The potential advantage of CTPA is possible alternative and incidental findings in cases that PTE is ruled out. This study was performed to determine the prevalence of incidental findings in CTPA in patients suspected to have PTE.Methods: This cross-sectional retrospective study was performed in patients with suspected PTE admitted to Shohada-e-Tajrish Hospital in 2014 and 2015 and underwent CTPA for final diagnosis. Incidental findings in CTPA and associated clinical symptoms were assessed.Results: According to CTPA performed in 188 patients, PTE was diagnosed in 61 cases (32.4%). Prevalence of incidental abnormal findings in the two groups with and without PTE were 93.7% and 90.9%, respectively. The most common incidental finding was pleural effusion (42%). There was no significant association between clinical symptoms and incidental findings in CTPA in patients with suspected pulmonary embolism (P > 0.05). The only significant finding was association between lung mass and tachypnea (P=0.007).Conclusion: In patients with primary clinical symptoms of suspected pulmonary embolism, in most cases there was a wide range of incidental findings and simultaneous pathologies in CTPA mimicking the primary symptoms of pulmonary embolism. However, in this study there was no significant association between clinical symptoms and incidental findings. Determination of definite indications of CTPA in patients with suspected pulmonary embolism is necessary

Ergonomic Assessment of Workstations and Musculoskeletal Disorders Risk Assessment in the Central Oil Refinery Workshop of Hormozgan Province

Background: Working station includes the physical environment and arrangement of all equipment in the work place. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are among the most common occupational injuries. The purpose of this study was ergonomic assessment of workstations, determining the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and assessing the physical condition of the workers. Methods: This descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study was conducted on 40 workers of the Central Workshop Oil refinery in Hormozgan. Worker postures were evaluated by Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) method. Finnish checklist was used to analyse workstation condition and Nordic Questionnaire was used to estimate the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Logistic regression through SPSS16. Results: In 5% of cases, work environment condition was poor, in 5% of the cases, the pressures applied to the elbow and wrist, were severe and legs and buttocks were in poor condition.The prevalences of musculoskeletal disorders of waist (55%), back (52/5%) and neck (40%) were more than those of other parts of the body. There were significant relationships between age and back disorders, job experience and back and waist disorders, and finally, weight and shoulders and knees disorders. Conclusion: The results of this study showed the high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and poor work conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent these problems through appropriate designing of workstations based on ergonomics principles and training workers in identifying risk factors

Earthquake risk modeling for the evaluation of losses to property owners in the metropolitan area of Shiraz

Natural disasters can cause huge human and economic losses, and subsequent operation efforts in disaster relief, recovery and construction by the government, the private sector stakeholders as well as international donors can significantly drain their resources from other non-disaster related pre-planned investments. As a consequence, there is now a paradigm shift for dealing with extremes from after the event approaches to more pro-active ones, the later one including risk reduction and risk financing options. However, reliable and quantitative up-to-date estimation of the underlying risks is of outmost importance towards developing effective risk management strategies as well as risk reduction activities. This is even more so the case for countries that are highly exposed to natural hazards, such as earthquake risk in Iran. This paper focuses on earthquake risk for Shiraz, the 4th largest city in Iran located in a high seismic active hazard zone with high socio-economic and historical importance for the country. It is for the first time that such an assessment for the region is performed and therefore the results should shed some light on potential risks with a probability based setting which could guide current earthquake related policy processes in the region. A catastrophe modeling approach is adopted to assess risk and a detailed analysis of potential economic losses as well as vulnerability assessments for assets within district 1 is performed. Via combining the hazard, exposure and vulnerability an Exceedance Probability (EP) curve for assets as well as human losses are constructed. The EP curve represents a powerful tool for the assessment of feasible risk reduction strategies as well as cost-benefit analysis for these strategies. An approach is suggested how this could be achieved within an integrative framework

Evaluation of the antibacterial effect of nickel oxide nanoparticles against bacteria involved in dental caries

Tooth decay is one of the most common diseases in the oral cavity and is one of the most widespread diseases in the human population. This study aimed to determine the antibacterial effect of nickel oxide nanoparticles against bacteria involved in tooth decay. In this study, the disk diffusion method was used to determine the antibiotic susceptibility and the microdilution broth method was used to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Nanoparticles were also synthesized in two molecular size (A: 8.1 and B: 12 nm) by the sol-gel method. The MIC of the first nanoparticle for Streptococcus sanguinis and Streptococcus mutans was 31.25 and 125 μg/ml, respectively. The MIC of the second nanoparticle for S. sanguinis was 125 μg/ml. In the case of S. mutans up to a concentration of 500 μg/ml, no growth inhibition was observed. The results showed that nickel oxide nanoparticles have acceptable antibacterial properties against S. mutans and S. sanguinis, which can be used in dental materials to prevent dental caries. However, this requires the determination of cellular toxicity and its side effects in future studies.

The Effect of Start Triage Education on Knowledge and Practice of Emergency Medical Technicians in Disasters

Introduction: Pre-hospital triage is one of the most fundamental concepts in emergency management. Limited human resource changes triage to an inevitable solution in the management of disasters. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of education of simple triage and rapid treatment (START) in the knowledge and practice of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) employees of Eastern Azerbaijan. Methods: This is a pre-and post-intervention study conducted on two hundred and five (205) of employees of EMS sector, in the disaster and emergency management center of Eastern Azerbaijan Province, 2015. The utilized tool is a questionnaire of the knowledge and practice of individuals regarding START triage. The questionnaire was filled by the participants pre- and post-education; thereafter the data were analyzed using SPSS 13 software. Results: The total score of the participants increased from 22.02 (4.49) to 28.54 (3.47). Moreover, the score of sections related to knowledge of the triage was a necessity and the mean score of the section related to the practice increased from 11.47 (2.15) to 13.63 (1.38), and 10.73 (3.57) to 14.93 (2.78), respectively, which were statistically significant. Conclusion: In this study, it was found that holding the educational classes of pre-hospital triage before the disasters is effective in improving the knowledge and practice of employees such as EMS technicians and this resulted to decreased error in performing this process as well as reduced overload in hospitals

Shape optimisation of the sharp-heeled Kaplan draft tube: Performance evaluation using Computational Fluid Dynamics

A methodology to assess the performance of an elbow-type draft tube is outlined. This was achieved using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to evaluate the pressure recovery and mechanical energylosses along a draft tube design, while using open-source and commercial software to parameterise and regenerate the geometry and CFD grid. An initial validation study of the elbow-type draft tube is carriedout, focusing on the grid-regeneration methodology, steady-state assumption, and turbulence modelling approach for evaluating the design’s efficiency. The Grid Convergence Index (GCI) technique was used to assess the uncertainty of the pressure recovery to the grid resolution. It was found that estimating the pressure recovery through area-weighted averaging significantly reduced the uncertainty due to the grid. Simultaneously, it was found that this uncertainty fluctuated with the local cross-sectional area along the geometry. Subsequently, a study of the inflow cone and outer-heel designs on the flowfield and pressure recovery was carried out. Catmull-Rom splines were used to parameterise these components, so as torecreate a number of proposed designs from the literature. GCI analysis is also applied to these designs,demonstrating the robustness of the grid-regeneration methodology

COVIDiSTRESS diverse dataset on psychological and behavioural outcomes one year into the COVID-19 pandemic

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVIDiSTRESS Consortium launched an open-access global survey to understand and improve individuals’ experiences related to the crisis. A year later, we extended this line of research by launching a new survey to address the dynamic landscape of the pandemic. This survey was released with the goal of addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion by working with over 150 researchers across the globe who collected data in 48 languages and dialects across 137 countries. The resulting cleaned dataset described here includes 15,740 of over 20,000 responses. The dataset allows cross-cultural study of psychological wellbeing and behaviours a year into the pandemic. It includes measures of stress, resilience, vaccine attitudes, trust in government and scientists, compliance, and information acquisition and misperceptions regarding COVID-19. Open-access raw and cleaned datasets with computed scores are available. Just as our initial COVIDiSTRESS dataset has facilitated government policy decisions regarding health crises, this dataset can be used by researchers and policy makers to inform research, decisions, and policy. © 2022, The Author(s).U.S. Department of Education, ED: P031S190304; Texas A and M International University, TAMIU; National Research University Higher School of Economics, ВШЭThe COVIDiSTRESS Consortium would like to acknowledge the contributions of friends and collaborators in translating and sharing the COVIDiSTRESS survey, as well as the study participants. Data analysis was supported by Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) Research Grant, TAMIU Act on Ideas, and the TAMIU Advancing Research and Curriculum Initiative (TAMIU ARC) awarded by the US Department of Education Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (Award # P031S190304). Data collection by Dmitrii Dubrov was supported within the framework of the Basic Research Program at HSE University, RF

Hur ser grönsaksintaget ut bland unga vuxna 18-30 år i Sverige? : En kvantitativ tvärsnittsstudie

Sammanfattning Bakgrund: Bland unga vuxna mellan 18-30 år har skillnader i grönsaksintag observerats mellan könen och tidigare forskning visar att det finns starka bevis på att mer grönsaker i maten ger positiva hälsoeffekter samt minskar risken för olika folksjukdomar.    Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka intaget av och attityderna kring grönsaker bland 18-30 åringar, främst studenter, i Sverige.   Metod: Studien som genomfördes är en kvantitativ tvärsnittstudie med en webbaserad enkät som genomfördes på Biomedicinskt centrum vid Uppsala Universitet. Totalt 118 svar samlades in varav 16 svar blev bortfallet och totalt 102 deltagare ingick därmed i studien. Data bearbetades och analyserades med tillämpning av statistikprogrammet Jamovi.    Resultat: Det framkom en skillnad mellan män och kvinnors intag av grönsaker där kvinnor åt grönsaker med högre frekvens. Andelen av respondenterna som nådde till rekommenderat intag av grönsaker, vilket motsvarar en konsumtionsfrekvens om 2 eller fler gånger per dag var 42 %  medan 8 % av deltagarna äter 1-2 gånger per vecka eller mer sällan. Uppdelat på kön hade kvinnor en uppnåendeandel på 54,1 % medan för män var den siffran 24,4 %. Majoriteten av respondenterna hade kännedom om Livsmedelsverkets kostråd (53%) och 25 % hade både kännedom om rådet och kunde ange den korrekta rekommenderade mängden. En majoritet av respondenterna var missnöjda med sitt intag och ville öka det.   Slutsats:  Även fast majoriteten av respondenterna hade kännedom kring kostrådet kring grönsaker och frukt enligt Livsmedelsverket, nådde de inte rekommendationen. Studien visade att kvinnorna hade en högre konsumtionsfrekvens av grönsaker än män. Resultaten visar att större insatser krävs för att öka både kunskapen och intaget av grönsaker samt undersöka varför denna målgrupp inte intar grönsaker med den frekvens de önskar