Effect of Probiotics on Infantile Colic in Breast-Fed Infants: A Randomized Single-Blind Clinical Trial

Aim: This study examined the impact of probiotics on children's colic in breast-fed infants. Methods: This study was a randomized single-blind clinical trial. 100 infants were referred to pediatric gastroenterology clinic of Avicenna diagnosed by gastroenterologist of children who suffered from infantile colic and they were qualified after justifying parents and obtaining written consent. (IRCT registration number: IRCT2016082829573N1). Results: Results showed that there was a statistically significant difference in terms of crying time (p = 0.000) and the arrival and departure of the group. (p = 0.000). Conclusion: The outcomes indicated that using probiotics could reduce colic in infants and improve the quality of life in this grou

Serum iron level in patients with COVID-19: a case report study

Coronavirus disease emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and led to worldwide pandemic in March 2020. Due to early diagnose, treatment and prevent transmission of COVID-19 disease, we need rapid laboratory tests and develop them. This paper focuses on serum Iron level in patients with COVID-19. We assess the serum Iron level due to the following reasons: I. Iron is a key part of hemoglobin structure in which is essential for providing Oxygen to the body organs, particularly for the patients with pulmonary involvement such as COVID-19. II. Iron deficiency can contribute to muscle weakness and reduction of respiratory capacity, at which increases the risk of deterioration of COVID-19 patients. III. Elevation in Hepcidin level (due to the increase in IL-6 level) in COVID-19 patients inhibits Iron absorption from intestinal lumen and blocks the Iron release from macrophages. IV. Iron is an essential element in infectious suppress and inflammatory process. We noticed that most of the patients, especially admitted to hospital due to the respiratory symptoms, have lower serum Iron level

A simple approach to the two-dimensional guillotine cutting stock problem

Cutting stock problems are within knapsack optimization problems and are considered as a non-deterministic polynomial-time (NP)-hard problem. In this paper, two-dimensional cutting stock problems were presented in which items and stocks were rectangular and cuttings were guillotine. First, a new, practical, rapid, and heuristic method was proposed for such problems. Then, the software implementation and architecture specifications were explained in order to solve guillotine cutting stock problems. This software was implemented by C++ language in a way that, while running the program, the operation report of all the functions was recorded and, at the end, the user had access to all the information related to cutting which included order, dimension and number of cutting pieces, dimension and number of waste pieces, and waste percentage. Finally, the proposed method was evaluated using examples and methods available in the literature. The results showed that the calculation speed of the proposed method was better than that of the other methods and, in some cases, it was much faster. Moreover, it was observed that increasing the size of problems did not cause a considerable increase in calculation time. In another section of the paper, the matter of selecting the appropriate size of sheets was investigated; this subject has been less considered by far. In the solved example, it was observed that incorrect selection from among the available options increased the amount of waste by more than four times. Therefore, it can be concluded that correct selection of stocks for a set of received orders plays a significant role in reducing waste

Impact of Urban Growth on Groundwater Levels using Remote Sensing - Case Study: Erbil City, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been broadly used to detect and analyze urban expansion that is one of the most significant issues facing researchers of urban issues. In the current paper, setting out to examine the applicability of remote sensing and GIS to detect urbanization and its effect on quantities of groundwater spatio-temporal data, Landsat image 5-TM and 8-OLI were utilized. The images were classified into urban and non-urban through supervised classification (maximum likelihood logarithm) to provide an urban growth map over a period of ten years. Regression analysis was utilized to identify the relationship between urbanization and groundwater level. In addition, the Markov and the CA- models were used to forecast an urban growth map. The study points out that Erbil city has experienced remarkable changes to its urban areas which have increased by 278% between 2004 and 2014.  In contrast, the level of groundwater has declined by more than 54%. The prediction model result of the CA-Markov also indicated that built up areas would continue to increase by 37% to 64% between 2020 and 2025; the average of groundwater depth therefore will continue to decrease by 23% in 2025, depending on regression analysis. Keywords: groundwater level, urbanization, remote sensing, prediction groundwater depth, regression analysi

Do not Forget People’s Mental Health

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has changed the typical lifestyle of people worldwide for nearly two years. Maybe before the onset of this pandemic, no one believed that a virus could change all aspects of life. COVID-19 has had a catastrophic effect worldwide, and it has led to more than 5 million deaths.1Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, different factors such as emotional and exaggerated images and news, rumors, and misinformation about the origins and causes of the disease, have affected the lifestyle of the people, and many people have lost their family or friends., all leading to increased anxiety.2 The results of studies in the previous pandemics have shown that one of the most critical domains of harm is the mental health of people and the significant point is that the mental health of infected individuals was less affected than non-infected individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, different studies have evaluated the mental health of people. Fear and anxiety are common feelings that are experienced by patients with or suspected of COVID-19. A study published in 2020 showed that fear of illness results in increased anxiety and stress levels in patients, healthy individuals or health workers

Effects of medium range order on propagon thermal conductivity in amorphous silicon

We discuss the dependence of the propagon contribution to thermal conductivity on the medium range order (MRO) in amorphous silicon. Three different amorphous structures with the same size of 3.28 nm were studied. Among these three structures, two structures were constructed with experimentally observed MRO [Treacy and Borisenko, Science. 335, 6071 (2012)] and the other structure is from continuous random network (CRN), which lacks MRO and thus represents a randomized amorphous structure [Barkema and Mousseau, Physical Review B, 62, 8 (2000)]. Using the simulated fluctuation electron microscopy and dihedral angle distribution, we confirm that the first two structures contain MRO in the length scale of 10-20 Å while the CRN structure does not. The transport of propagons in the MRO and CRN structures are compared using the dynamic structural factor calculation and normal mode decomposition of the molecular dynamics simulation data, showing noticeably longer lifetime of propagons in the MRO structures than in the CRN structure. The propagon thermal conductivity in the MRO structures is estimated 50% larger than that in the CRN structure

Generation of truncated recombinant form of tumor necrosis factor receptor-1 to produce cancer vaccine

Purpose: To produce truncated recombinant form of tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1), cysteine-rich domain 2 (CRD2) and CRD3 regions of the receptor were generated using pET28a and E. coli/BL21.Methods: DNA coding sequence of CRD2 and CRD3 was cloned into pET28a vector and the corresponding protein was expressed under induction of isopropyl β-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) as 6×His tagged using E.coli BL21 (DE3) expression system. The protein was then purified by Ni-NTA affinity chromatography. The fragment insertion, expression of recombinant protein and the yield of expression were evaluated.Results: Protein expression was achieved by identifying a band with molecular weight of 1488.3 Da. The recombinant protein of CRD2 and CRD3 was most efficiently expressed in 0.5 mM IPTG and 3 h of incubation at 37 °C with high yield equal to 0.3 μg/μl. Also, the highest concentration of imidazole for purification of the recombinant protein was 250 mM.Conclusion: A truncated form of TNFR-1 has been successfully expressed in a bacterial expression system and purified on affinity column. The purified protein can be used in in vivo experiments to prepare specified agonist antibodies for TNFR-1.Keywords: Tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR-1), Cysteine rich domain 2 (CRD2), Cysteine rich domain (CRD3), Apoptosis, Cancer vaccine, Antibodies, Recombinant protein, pET28

PERIODONTITIS AND BIRTH OF PRETERM INFANTS WITH LOW WEIGHT: A REVIEW ARTICLE

Abstract. About 9.6% of infants are born prematurely around the world. In addition to infection of reproductive system, inflammation and infection of distant organs are one of the risk factors for preterm low birth weight (PTLBW). Since periodontitis is a prevalent disease and also premature labor is a common complication with high treatment cost, it is important to elucidate the relationship between these two conditions. Such a knowledge could be helpful to prioritize the preventive interventions for reduction of adverse pregnancy outcome. Epidemiologic studies , as the first line of evidence,showed the higher prevalence of PTLBW among women with periodontitis. When a condition is being proposed as a risk factor, it is necessary to explain the biologic mechanisms underlying such a relationship. The relationship between periodontitis and PTLBW is biologically plausible. Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease in which anaerobic bacteria being colonized in deep pathologic pockets and produce large amount of inflammatory mediators. Perio-pathogens and their products enter the placenta and amniotic fluids. They could activate the inflammatory signaling pathways and induce the PTLBW. Despite the large number of randomized control trial (RCT) studies, the effect of periodontal treatmenton the incidence of PTLBW is not well understood. Although the periodontal treatment could not necessarily reduce the incidence of PTLBW, but oral hygiene, is a pivotal compartment of health care during pregnancy. The aim of this article was to review the current evidences about different aspects of the relationship between periodontitis and PTLBW.Key words: periodontitis, periodontal diseases, pregnancy, preterm birth, low birth weight

Study of the GSM with frequency of 950 MHz on the memory of male mice

Background and aims: The increasing use of productive machines with electromagnetic waves of different frequency and severity has led to perform many studies about the possible impact of the waves on the health of living creatures. The aim of this study was to investigate memory function and reminding in mice, exposed to microwave radiation with a frequency of 950 MHz (GSM signal). Methods: In this experimental study, 120 male mices were divided into 10 groups of 12 animals in each group. The exposed 9 groups were under microwave radiation at the power densities of 0.02, 1.3 and 8.6 mW/ cm2 and the time intervals of 2, 4 and 6 hours and one group was considered as control. The analysis of mice’s memory was done with the passive avoidance trial test and by measuring the frequency of animals entering the dark compartment of shuttle box and their entrance latency time in 6, 12, 24, 48 h, 1 and 2 weeks after the last learning stage. Results: The results showed no significant changes among the latency time of animals in entrance to the dark side of compartment, but the frequency of entrance showed significant difference among the exposure groups with the potent of 0, 0.02, 1.3 and 8.6 mW/cm2. Conclusion: Memory function and analysis of animals exposed to mobile radiation show a decrease depending on exposure time and power. The increasing frequency of animal in entrance to the dark field with the memory of electrical shock should be a sign of animal memory impairment with the exposure to the microwave mobile radiation