Bilateral Facial Paralysis Caused by Temporal Bone Fracture: A Case Report

Introduction: Although bilateral facial nerve palsy is a rare condition, its etiology is more detectable than the unilateral type. A temporal bone fracture is one cause of bilateral facial nerve palsy, contributing in 3% of the cases. Case Presentation: Here, we report the case of a 35-year-old man complaining of bilateral incomplete eye closure, two weeks after a closed head injury caused by a motor vehicle accident. Conclusions: The high resolution computed tomography findings revealed a bilateral temporal bone fracture line, which extended to the fallopian canal. With regard to treatment, near complete recovery was obvious after two weeks of treatment with oral corticosteroids. Overall, bilateral facial palsy is hard to diagnose; therefore, clinical suspicion and the early detection of facial nerve injuries is necessary for good nerve recovery in temporal bone fractures

Association of Serum Uric Acid Level with the Severity of Brain Injury and Patient's Outcome in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Introduction: The prognostic value of serum Uric Acid (UA) levels in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is unclear. Aim: To investigate the relationship between serum UA levels and prognosis of patients with TBI when in hospital and at six months after discharge. Materials and Methods: All patients attended our emergency department during July 2014 and December 2015 and were consecutively entered into the study and among 890 evaluated candidates based on inclusion criteria we finally investigated the serum UA levels of 725 TBI patients. Computed Tomography (CT) images of the brain were obtained within the first 24 hours of hospitalization. Outcome was assessed using the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) score at discharge and at six months after discharge. Results: Data of 725 patients (42.89 men; mean age: 54.69+/-12.37 years) were analyzed. Mean+/-Standard Deviation (SD) of Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores was 4.65+/-1.76. Serum levels of UA, when in hospital and at six months after discharge, among those who died were lower than those who survived (in hospital: 0.126+/-0.026 vs. 0.243+/-0.942 mmol/l, p = 0.000; 6 months post-discharge: 0.130+/-0.044 vs. 0.286+/-0.069 mmol/l, p<0.001). The mean UA plasma was significantly different between deceased and alive patients according to GOS scores (p<0.001 and p=0.030, respectively). The UA levels showed a significant relationship with GCS scores and severity of brain injury assessed using the Marshall Classification Score (p=0.005). Conclusion: Our results showed a strong relationship between UA levels and patients' outcomes either in hospital or at six months after discharge. Serum UA level could be considered as a valuable marker for evaluating the severity of brain injury and outcomes of TBI

ICNet for Real-Time Semantic Segmentation on High-Resolution Images

We focus on the challenging task of real-time semantic segmentation in this paper. It finds many practical applications and yet is with fundamental difficulty of reducing a large portion of computation for pixel-wise label inference. We propose an image cascade network (ICNet) that incorporates multi-resolution branches under proper label guidance to address this challenge. We provide in-depth analysis of our framework and introduce the cascade feature fusion unit to quickly achieve high-quality segmentation. Our system yields real-time inference on a single GPU card with decent quality results evaluated on challenging datasets like Cityscapes, CamVid and COCO-Stuff.Comment: ECCV 201

In vitro inhibition of growth in Saprolegnia sp. isolated from the eggs of Persian sturgeon Acipenser persicus (Pisces: Acipenseriformes) by Pseudomonas aeroginosa (PTCC:1430)

Saprolegnia is one of the most important agents decreasing the eggs survival rate in sturgeon hatcheries.There are some chemical substances for controlling the fungal infection of eggs. In this study, an attempt was made to introduce a germ negative bacterium, Pseudomonas aeroginosa (PTCC1430)(Persian Type Culture Collection) as a biocontrolling agent of water mold. Saprolegnia was isolated from the eggs of some infected Persian sturgeon, Acipenser persicus in a sturgeon hatchery and then was purified. P.aeroginosa was cultured in Potato dextrose Agar (PDB) media and then was prepared in 5 concentrations (103,104,105,106and107cfu.ml-1) while challenging with fungi in petri dishes under laboratory conditions.The results showed that by increasing the concentration of the bacteria in plates, hyphal growth of the fungi was reduced. The highest concentration of P. aeroginosa concentration (107) roughly stopped the -fungi growth and the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) was 104cfu.m-l. Results in this study implied the potential of P. aeroginosa (PTCC1430) as a biological agent in controlling saprolegniosis

INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHASE ANGLE AND MICRO-ALBUMINURIA IN TYPE 2 DIABETIC PATIENTS WITH A HISTORY OF MORE THAN 5 YEARS OF THE DISEASE IN ILAM PROVINCE, IRAN

Introduction: Phase angle is the ratio between cell mass and fat-free tissue and a cell health indicator which is measurable through bio-impedance analysis with 50 KHZ alternating current and can be interpreted as a voltage and a wave-form current. Diabetes mellitus contains a group of metabolic disorders that are in common in terms of appearance characteristic of hyperglycemia. Micro-albuminuria of urine albumin amounts 30-300mg/24h and the higher values are for diagnostic diabetic nephropathy. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between Phase angle and micro-albuminuria in type 2 diabetic patients with a history of more than 5 years of the disease in the city of Ilam. Materials and methods: This is an analytical-practical case-control study and statistical society includes two case and control groups with an average age 52.06 +/- 6.69 years in case group and 50.02 +/- 5.42 years in the control group. The sample size in each group has been designated equal to 50 and data analysis is performed using SPSS and parametric and Non-parametric statistical methods and the related tests. Conclusion: The average Ph. A was obtained equal to 5.87 +/- 1.42 in the case group and 7.29 +/- 0.355 in the control group which statistically significant relationship exists between the two groups in Ph. A value (P<0.000). Average micro-albuminuria was 67.32 +/- 75.92 in the case group and 0.276 +/- 0.147 in the control group which there was a significant relationship statistically between the amount of micro-albuminuria within the both groups (P< 0.000). Discussion: By investigation of the relationship between ph. Angle and micro-albuminuria in diabetic patients it can be concluded that the amount Ph. A reduces with the increase of micro-albuminuria and by increasing micro-albuminuria, the variables of overall body water volume, intracellular water and extracellular water relatively increase and fat mass relatively decreases

First isolation and identification of Vibrio vulnificus (biotype 2) from cultured beluga, huso huso in Iran

By decreasing sturgeon stocks in the Caspian Sea, rearing different sturgeon species especially Huso huso was increased in Iran. Under stress conditions the sturgeon can easily be infected by several opportunistic pathogens. In June 2011, mortality happened in 25 - 28°C water temperature, in one of the most important cultured sturgeon farms in Mazandaran province, north of Iran. The mortality rate was 15%. The first clinical signs in moribund fish were lethargy and anorexia. A total of 20 moribund fish was transferred to a central laboratory for more bacteriological examination. Clinical signs including several deep ulcers on body surface, around the head, under operculum, ulcers at the base of the pectoral fins, hemorrhage around the anus, operculum, and pale gills were observed in moribund fish. The main internal signs were hepatomegaly and splenomegaly, liquid accumulation in the intestine and diffuse visceral hemorrhage. The results of morphology and microscopic characterizations and also biochemical tests indicated that Vibrio vulnificus (biotype 2) was the etiological agent of mortality in infected fish. This study was the first report of V. vulnificus in cultured H. huso in Iran

Implementing decision tree-based algorithms in medical diagnostic decision support systems

As a branch of healthcare, medical diagnosis can be defined as finding the disease based on the signs and symptoms of the patient. To this end, the required information is gathered from different sources like physical examination, medical history and general information of the patient. Development of smart classification models for medical diagnosis is of great interest amongst the researchers. This is mainly owing to the fact that the machine learning and data mining algorithms are capable of detecting the hidden trends between features of a database. Hence, classifying the medical datasets using smart techniques paves the way to design more efficient medical diagnostic decision support systems. Several databases have been provided in the literature to investigate different aspects of diseases. As an alternative to the available diagnosis tools/methods, this research involves machine learning algorithms called Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Random Forest (RF) and Extremely Randomized Trees or Extra Trees (ET) for the development of classification models that can be implemented in computer-aided diagnosis systems. As a decision tree (DT), CART is fast to create, and it applies to both the quantitative and qualitative data. For classification problems, RF and ET employ a number of weak learners like CART to develop models for classification tasks. We employed Wisconsin Breast Cancer Database (WBCD), Z-Alizadeh Sani dataset for coronary artery disease (CAD) and the databanks gathered in Ghaem Hospital’s dermatology clinic for the response of patients having common and/or plantar warts to the cryotherapy and/or immunotherapy methods. To classify the breast cancer type based on the WBCD, the RF and ET methods were employed. It was found that the developed RF and ET models forecast the WBCD type with 100% accuracy in all cases. To choose the proper treatment approach for warts as well as the CAD diagnosis, the CART methodology was employed. The findings of the error analysis revealed that the proposed CART models for the applications of interest attain the highest precision and no literature model can rival it. The outcome of this study supports the idea that methods like CART, RF and ET not only improve the diagnosis precision, but also reduce the time and expense needed to reach a diagnosis. However, since these strategies are highly sensitive to the quality and quantity of the introduced data, more extensive databases with a greater number of independent parameters might be required for further practical implications of the developed models

Energy usage and drying capacity of flat-bed and inclined-bed dryers for rough rice drying

The evaluation of a dryer performance in terms of energy consumption, drying capacity and quality of final product is the main concern of rice milling industry at any time. A study was implemented to investigate on the benefits of common drying practices by studying the drying performances of flat-bed and inclined-bed dryers which are popular in rice industry in Malaysia and neighbouring countries. For this purpose, flat-bed dryer (FBD) and inclined-bed dryer (IBD) were designed, fabricated and operated in the laboratory based on actual industrial drying conditions. The results revealed that inclined-bed drying significantly increased drying capacity (ton m-2 h-1) of up to 25 % at drying temperature of 42-43°C and almost 29 % at 38-39°C drying air temperature compared to flat-bed drying. Furthermore, overall drying energy consumption in IBD was found to vary between 78.6 to 91.97 kW.h ton-1, while for FBD the energy consumption was more than 200 kW.h ton-1 for both levels of drying air temperatures. Both dryers were found to produce rice with desired/ acceptable commercial quality index, even though the head rice yields of FBD were higher than that of IBDs