Homeostatic generative design process: Emergence of the adaptive architectural form and skin to excessive solar radiation

Natural organisms through their evolutionary developments, acquire adaptive morphological and behavioural characteristics within their environmental contexts. Through homeostatic behaviours, organisms, individually and collectively, will sustain internal and external equilibrium in face of environmental fluctuations. There is a wide range of morphological and behavioural traits across multiple species that are rooted in their homeostatic mechanisms throughout their lives. This paper presents an evolutionary design workflow with embedded homeostatic principles to generate a building cluster that is adapted to the contexts with extreme solar radiation

Short view of leukemia diagnosis and treatment in Iran

Background: Early diagnosis and treatment of leukemia patients remains a fundamental aim in clinical oncology, especially in developing country. Present study highlights the basic requirements of these patients in Iran. Better understanding of these issues may lead to improve the healthcare standards toward leukemia diagnosis and treatment. Methods: This descriptive study included 101 specialists in hematology-oncology and pathology serving in oncology centers. The participants were then asked to fill out a standard questionnaire on the issues around diagnosis and treatment of blood malignancies. Results: According to specialists, unfair distribution of facilities across the country, delayed diagnosis of disease, absence of psychological support for patients, and insufficient financial support were the main reasons of inappropriate diagnosis and treatment in leukemia patients. Conclusions: Our results show that making an amendment to health policies by preparing well-equipped medical centers in all provinces, improving the morale of patients through consultation during the process of treatment, and above all, subsiding leukemia patients' financial problems will promote the health standard regarding the leukemia diagnosis and treatment in Iran. © 2015, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). All rights reserved

The southern Zagros collisional orogen: new insights from transdimensional‐trees inversion of seismic noise

Imaging and resolving the lateral continuity of 3‐D crustal structures enhances our ability to interpret seismicity, and to understand how orogens are created. We apply a Bayesian, hierarchical inversion approach based on a transdimensional trees‐structured wavelet parameterisation to recover phase‐velocity maps at 2‐40 second periods. We then invert phase‐velocity dispersion to constrain a 3‐D shear‐velocity model of the crust beneath south‐central Iran. Together with accurate earthquake centroid depths and focal mechanisms, the pattern of 3‐D velocity variations supports recent suggestions that most large earthquakes in the Zagros occur within the lower sedimentary cover, or close to the sediment‐basement interface. Furthermore, we find evidence for Arabian basement underthrusting beneath central Iran, although only in one location does it appear to generate earthquakes. Our new 3‐D tomographic model clarifies and throws new light on the crustal structure of the SE Zagros and its relation to seismicity and active faulting

The Southern Zagros Collisional Orogen: New Insights From Transdimensional Trees Inversion of Seismic Noise

Imaging and resolving the lateral continuity of 3-D crustal structures enhances our ability to interpret seismicity, and to understand how orogens are created. We apply a Bayesian, hierarchical inversion approach based on a transdimensional trees-structured wavelet parameterisation to recover phase-velocity maps at 2-40 second periods. We then invert phase-velocity dispersion to constrain a 3-D shear-velocity model of the crust beneath south-central Iran. Together with accurate earthquake centroid depths and focal mechanisms, the pattern of 3-D velocity variations supports recent suggestions that most large earthquakes in the Zagros occur within the lower sedimentary cover, or close to the sediment-basement interface. Furthermore, we fi nd evidence for Arabian basement underthrusting beneath central Iran, although only in one location does it appear to generate earthquakes. Our new 3-D tomographic model clarifi es and throws new light on the crustal structure of the SE Zagros and its relation to seismicity and active faulting.NERC Horizon 2020 Petroleum Institute Research Centr

Loop expansion in Yang-Mills thermodynamics

We argue that a selfconsistent spatial coarse-graining, which involves interacting (anti)calorons of unit topological charge modulus, implies that real-time loop expansions of thermodynamical quantities in the deconfining phase of SU(2) and SU(3) Yang-Mills thermodynamics are, modulo 1PI resummations, determined by a finite number of connected bubble diagrams.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, v5: discussion of much more severely constrained nonplanar situation included in Sec.

Occult Hepatitis B Infection in Patients With Cryptogenic Liver Cirrhosis in Southwest of Iran

Background: Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has a broad spectrum of manifestation, ranging from silent carrier state to advanced cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The persistence of HBV DNA in serum and hepatocytes of the cirrhotic patient could be detected by molecular techniques in spite of negative HBV serologic markers. Objectives: This case-control study was designed to evaluate the prevalence of occult HBV infection (OBI) in patients with cryptogenic liver cirrhosis in comparison with healthy subjects. Patients and Methods: Of 165 patients with liver cirrhosis, 50 consecutive patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis and 80 healthy individual without any risk factors as a control group were enrolled in this study. Their sera were tested for HBV DNA using nested PCR method. Results: Of 50 patients with cryptogenic cirrhotic, 36 (72%) were male. The mean age of patients was 53.34 ± 14.73 years; 80 healthy subjects were selected as control group with mean age of 32.65 ± 8.51 years; 7 (14%) of the patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis showed positive HBV DNA by PCR, while HBV DNA was negative for the control group (P = 0.0001); 4 (57%) cases with positive HBV shown by PCR were negative for anti-HBc and anti-HBs tests. The mean level of transaminases was significantly higher in patients with cirrhosis. There were no significant differences in demographic parameters, transaminases level and degree of hepatic failure among cirrhotic patients with and without OBI. Conclusions: The prevalence of OBI was relatively high in patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis. OBI was found among the patients above 40 years old. Prospective cohort studies are needed to evaluate the clinical significance of OBI

AzTEC Millimetre Survey of the COSMOS Field - II. Source Count Overdensity and Correlations with Large-Scale Structure

We report an over-density of bright sub-millimetre galaxies (SMGs) in the 0.15 sq. deg. AzTEC/COSMOS survey and a spatial correlation between the SMGs and the optical-IR galaxy density at z <~ 1.1. This portion of the COSMOS field shows a ~ 3-sigma over-density of robust SMG detections when compared to a background, or "blankfield", population model that is consistent with SMG surveys of fields with no extragalactic bias. The SMG over-density is most significant in the number of very bright detections (14 sources with measured fluxes S(1.1mm) > 6 mJy), which is entirely incompatible with sample variance within our adopted blank-field number densities and infers an over-density significance of >> 4. We find that the over-density and spatial correlation to optical-IR galaxy density are most consistent with lensing of a background SMG population by foreground mass structures along the line of sight, rather than physical association of the SMGs with the z <~ 1.1 galaxies/clusters. The SMG positions are only weakly correlated with weak-lensing maps, suggesting that the dominant sources of correlation are individual galaxies and the more tenuous structures in the region and not the massive and compact clusters. These results highlight the important roles cosmic variance and large-scale structure can play in the study of SMGs.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA