The effect of combination of Zingeber and Althea officinalis extracts in acute bronchitis-induced cough

Background and aim: Cough is a normal mechanism of respiratory system that clears the tracheobronchial tree from respiratory secretions and foreign bodies. It sometimes causes discomforts and problems in social activity of the people. One of the reasons of cough is acute bronchitis that causes inflammation of respiratory tract and persists for a few weeks. The aim of this study was to evaluate the combination effect of Zingeber and Althea officinalis to cure cough in acute bronchitis Method: In this double blind clinical trial study, we selected 60 patients who have been suffering from acute bronchitis following respiratory infections. They were divided into two groups by using a simple random sampling method. Beside their routine medications, one group (case group) was given 15 drops of both Zingeber (300 mg) and Althea officinalis (40 mg) hydro-alcoholic extracts, every 6 hours for 10 days. The second group (control group), was given placebo. After 10 days, all patients were evaluated by a questionnaire, designed by the authors, for the number of cough, night cough scores, chest pain, myalgia and retrosternal pain. Data were statistically analyzed by using t-test, χ2 and McNemar's tests. Result: A significant reduction was seen in the number of cough in both case and control groups (80% and 60%, respectively). Chest pain reports were 7.2% in case group, compared to 50% in control group (P0.05). Conclusion: Hydro-alcoholic extracts of Althea offisinalis and Zingeber decrease inflammation in patient with acute bronchitis and decrease cough and acute tracheitis-induced chest pain

The impacts of Mnemiopsis leidyi on kilka resources in the southern Caspian Sea

There are 3 species of kilka in the Caspian Sea consist Of: Clupeonella engrauliformis, C. grimmi and C. cultriventris. These species are caught by fishing method of tunnel net with underwater light in the inshore waters (depths of 40-100m). The maximum recorded catch for three species in the Iranian waters had been 85000 tons per year during period of 1998-99. In the next years (2000-2001) despite of increasing the effort, the amount catch was dropped drastically. The result or collected commercial catch data showed that there are some changes in kilka catch compositions and also the frequency of common kilka has been increased since 1998. On the other hand, this species was a main part of commercial catch composition during all months. Meanwhile in the previous years, they were observed only during warm seasons (spring and summer). Based on fishermen and personal observations, the transparency of sea Water Was decreased rapidly during the years of 1999-2000 and at that time there were found a high abundance of Mnemiopsis leidyi in commercial catches. Simultaneously, with an increase in the mass of Mnemiopsis leidyi, the amount of catch and CPLUE or kilka have been sharply decreased

Transparency effect in the emergence of monopolies in social networks

Power law degree distribution was shown in many complex networks. However, in most real systems, deviation from power-law behavior is observed in social and economical networks and emergence of giant hubs is obvious in real network structures far from the tail of power law. We propose a model based on the information transparency (transparency means how much the information is obvious to others). This model can explain power structure in societies with non-transparency in information delivery. The emergence of ultra powerful nodes is explained as a direct result of censorship. Based on these assumptions, we define four distinct transparency regions: perfect non-transparent, low transparent, perfect transparent and exaggerated regions. We observe the emergence of some ultra powerful (very high degree) nodes in low transparent networks, in accordance with the economical and social systems. We show that the low transparent networks are more vulnerable to attacks and the controllability of low transparent networks is harder than the others. Also, the ultra powerful nodes in the low transparent networks have a smaller mean length and higher clustering coefficients than the other regions.Comment: 14 Pages, 3 figure

Comparative study on lipid quality of distribution and abundance of Mnemiopsis leidyi in the eastern Iranian coasts of Caspian Sea

The alien ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi which was transported from the Black Sea into the Caspian Sea at the end of 1990s has been negatively affecting ecosystem in this new environment. In this study, spatial and temporal distribution of M.leidyi were studied from a total of stations located along three transects (Amirabad, Babolsar and Nowshar) in the Eeastern Iranian coasts of the Caspian Sea (Mazandaran province) during July 2001 to November 2002. M. leidyi acheived maximum biomass 1024.5 g/m^2 in August-October 2002. Minimum biomass (1.5 g/m^2 of ctenophore were measured in December-Jaunuary 2001. The highest biomass was at the stations with 10m bottom depth (570.7 g/m^2 in autumn and lowest biomass (75.9 g/m^2) was obtained at a station with a 50 m bottom depth in winter. The highest average biomass (641.2 g/m^2) were measured in ~irabad region and the lowest biomass (207.5 g/m^2) observed in Nowshar region. The young specimens (<5 mm) contributed about 90% to the total abundance of the population. The maximum length was 51-55mm which was measured in August. The factors affecting the distribution of M. leidyi in the study area were discussed

Occurrence and intensity of parasites in Prussian carp, Carassius gibelio from Anzali wetland, southwest Caspian Sea

The aim of this study was to detect the occurrence of parasites in Prussian carp, Carassius gibelio as the most important alien fish in Anzali international wetland. This undesirable fish was introduced accidentally to Iran with Chinese carp fries which imported to the country during the last decades and then acceded to Anzali wetland. Today this fish has significant stocks in Anzali wetland but there have been limited studies about the parasites of this fish in Anzali wetland. During this study a total of 90 Prussian carp were collected by electrofishing and gillnets from April through July 2012. After recording biometric characteristics, common necropsy and parasitology methods were used. A total of 2715 individuals out of 11 parasite species were recovered. Parasitofauna consisted of: two protozoans, Ichthyophthirius multifiliis and Trichodina sp.; one nematode, Raphidascaris acus; one trematode, Diplostomum spathaceum; six monogeneans, Dactylogyrus formosus, Dactylogyrus dulkeiti, Dactylogyrus baueri, Dactylogyrus arquatus, Dactylogyrus inexpectatus and Gyrodactylus kobayashii; and one crustacean, copepodid stage of Lernaea cyprinacea. The monogeneans had the highest prevalence values (88.89%). The occurrence of D. inexpectatus in C. gibelio is reported for the first time in Iran

Enabling Intelligent IoTs for Histopathology Image Analysis Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Medical imaging is an essential data source that has been leveraged worldwide in healthcare systems. In pathology, histopathology images are used for cancer diagnosis, whereas these images are very complex and their analyses by pathologists require large amounts of time and effort. On the other hand, although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have produced near-human results in image processing tasks, their processing time is becoming longer and they need higher computational power. In this paper, we implement a quantized ResNet model on two histopathology image datasets to optimize the inference power consumption. We analyze classification accuracy, energy estimation, and hardware utilization metrics to evaluate our method. First, the original RGBcolored images are utilized for the training phase, and then compression methods such as channel reduction and sparsity are applied. Our results show an accuracy increase of 6% from RGB on 32-bit (baseline) to the optimized representation of sparsity on RGB with a lower bit-width, i.e., \u3c8:8\u3e. For energy estimation on the used CNN model, we found that the energy used in RGB color mode with 32-bit is considerably higher than the other lower bit-width and compressed color modes. Moreover, we show that lower bit-width implementations yield higher resource utilization and a lower memory bottleneck ratio. This work is suitable for inference on energy-limited devices, which are increasingly being used in the Internet of Things (IoT) systems that facilitate healthcare systems

Effect of pioglitazone therapy on high sensitive C-reactive protein and lipid profile in diabetic patients with renal transplantation; a randomize clinical trial

Background: Inflammation has a major role in disease lead to renal failure and diabetes mellitus, controlling inflammation in diabetic kidney receivers could decrease morbidity and mortality. Objectives: This study designed for evaluating the efficacy of pioglitazone on C-reactive protein and lipid profile in diabetic kidney transplant receivers. Patients and Methods: In this double blinded clinical trial, 58 diabetic renal transplant receivers, in first month after transplantation, randomized into two groups; receiving insulin and pioglitazone (15 mg tablet daily, group A); and insulin and placebo (group B). Blood pressure, weight, body mass index (BMI) and laboratory data compared in before and after 4-month treatment in two groups by SPSS. Results: Fifty-eight patients with mean age of 44.15 ± 2 years included. There were no significant difference between groups in demographic data and other baseline measured variables (P > 0.05).The mean weigh and BMI were slightly increased in group A and decreased in group B. The mean hs-CRP was decreased 4.82 mg/dL in group A and 1.93 mg/dL in group B (P = 0.007). The mean total serum cholesterol was significantly decreased 34 mg/dL in group A and 18.07 mg/dL in group B (P = 0.027). The mean serum HDL-C was significantly increased 13.31 mg/dL in group A and 5.89 mg/dl in group B (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Pioglitazone seems to be a safe drug for reducing serum lipids and CRP in kidney transplant receivers with diabetes mellitus in short term. Long term effect of this drug could be evaluated in future studies. Copyright © 2015 The Author(s)

Seasonal and regional distribution of phytoplankton in the southern Caspian Sea

Seasonal distribution of species composition, cell abundance and biomass of phytoplankton of the Caspian Sea were investigated in 2005. This survey were fulfilled in 6 transects and 26 stations A total of 260 samples were collected during winter to autumn in the southern part of Caspian Sea. Totally, 163 species of phytoplankton were identified (71 species Bacillariophyta, 31 species Chlorophyta, 27 species Cyanophyta, 21 species Pyrrophyta, and 13 species Euglenophyta). Cell abundance and biomass of Bacillariophyta were high in centre, while biomass and cell abundance of Pyrrophyta were dominant in the middle as well as parts of the Sea, respectively. The overall total average of cell abundance and biomass of phytoplankton were 56.30± 30.97 ×106cells/m3 and 221.70±75.87 mg/m3, respectively. Bacillariophyta accounted for 47% in cell abundance, and Pyrrophyta consisted of 53% of the phytoplankton biomass. Maximum phytoplankton population was recorded in winter due to Bacillariophyta and the maximum biomass in spring due to Pyrrophyta. The maximum density of Bacillariophyta was in winter and autumn while maximum biomass was observed in spring due to bigger size of Bacillariophyta such as Rhizosolenia calcar avis and Nitzschia sigmoidea followed by Pyrrophyta with high cell abundance throughout the year

Assessment of gait symmetry improvements in national athletes after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction during rehabilitation

This study aimed to quantify changes in gait parameters and their symmetries among athletes with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructions during a rehabilitation program. Twenty-two national players with ACL reconstructions and 15 healthy athletes were recruited. The gait data were collected between postoperative weeks 4-5, 8-9 and 12-13 using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The spatio-temporal gait parameters and symmetry indexes (SIs) were evaluated for the patients and the control group. One-way and repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance were used to analyse the data. The results demonstrated significant differences among spatio-temporal (P0.05). The rehabilitation program allowed national athletes to restore symmetry in spatio-temporal gait parameters toward the control group's range 12-13 weeks post-reconstruction

Quantitative assessment of the impact of Mnemiopsis leidyi on the southern Caspian zooplankton structure during 1996-2010

After the arrival of the invasive species (Mnemiopsis leidyi) in the Caspian Sea (in 1999) significant changes have been occurred in the ecosystem. In the present study, the data concerning the period 1996 to 2010 (extracted from the relevant research projects) were analyzed. The period was classified into two phases, before and after the species invasion (1996 and 2001-2010). In our study, the impact of the invasive species on the structure of southern Caspian zooplankton communities was assessed during the period 2001-2010, quantitatively. The combination of abundance and distribution range of the species (ADR) during the period 2001-2009 and the year 2010 were evaluated as E (occurrence in high numbers in all localities) and D (occurrence in moderate numbers in all localities), respectively. Considering the obtained results, the year 2001, in which the relative biomass was more than 90 percent, could be considered as the expansion phase and the following years (2002-2010) as the adjustment phase. With regards to the loss of the keystone and some other native species after the invasion of M. leidyi (2001 to 2010), the impact of the invasive species on the structure of southern Caspian zooplankton communities was assessed as massive (C4)