Evaluation of Suspended Matter less than 10 µm and Cardiovascular and Respiratory Diseases: in Urmia City, 2015

Introduction: Air pollution induced by human activities is one of major challenges faced by Iran, as well as the world . The AirQ model was used to evaluate the cardiovascular and respiratory diseases attributable to the exposure to suspended particles of less than 10 µm in Urmia city of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran, in 2015. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was conducted in Urmia in 2015. The hourly data of the PM10 (particle matter up to 10 µm) pollutant were extracted as the raw material from the Environmental Health Center. The health effects of suspended particles of less than 10 µm were estimated by statistical analysis using the World Health Organization’s AirQ model.Results:  According to the results concentration of PM10 was higher in the cold seasons compared with the warm seasons. The annual average of PM10 concentration was 3.9 times higher than that prescribed as per the standards of clean air in Iran. In addition, the cumulative numbers of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in the city of Urmia in the median estimate were 287 and 744 cases, respectively. Conclusion: As a consequently, air pollution in the Urmia city has contributed significantly to the rate of hospitalizations and deaths of people in 2015. Therefore, authorities should make appropriate, sustainable, and applicable strategies based on comprehensive research to control the Urmia air pollution crisis

Insulin Can Improve the Normal Function of the Brain by Preventing the Loss of the Neurons

Background: Insulin promotes the expression of genes related to brain function, thus preventing the neurodegeneration process. The present study was designed to find the neuroprotective effect of insulin by reducing neuron loss in the brain. Materials and Methods: In this study, 20 adult male NMRI mice were divided into two groups: control and insulin. The control group was intact, and the insulin group received 100 µL of insulin at a 72-hour interval by intraperitoneal (I.P.) injection for 30 days. At the end of the study, the brain was removed. The volume of the brain and the total number of neurons and glia were estimated by stereological techniques, and also the gene expression of NSR, PI3K, AKT, IGF-1, and FOXO-1 was measured using real-time PCR. Results: The results showed that the total number of neurons decreased in the control group compared to the experimental group. Furthermore, the expression of NSR, PI3K, AKT, IGF-1, and FOXO-1 genes was lower in the control group than in the insulin group. Conclusion: The results showed that treating mice with insulin prevented reducing the number of neurons and gene expression related to normal brain function. So, insulin could have neuroprotective effects against neuron loss. Insulin may be beneficial as a new approach to avoiding neuron loss in regenerative medicine

Sama: A Scalable Group Communication Mechanism for Mobile Agents

Abstract. Provision of fast and scalable group communication for mobile agents can considerably improve their efficiency. Unfortunately, most of the existing approaches do not scale well when the number of agents grows. In this paper, we propose Sama, a new group communication mechanism, to speed up message delivery to a group of mobile agents. The main contribution of Sama is distribution and parallelization of message propagation in an efficient way to achieve scalability and speed up message delivery to the group members. Sama uses Message Dispatcher Objects (MDOs), which are stationary agents on each host, to propagate messages in a parallel manner. The proposed mechanism is independent of agent locations and transparently delivers messages to the group using a constant number of remote messages. Experimental results show that message delivery time is significantly reduced in Sama compared to the previously proposed methods