The Role of Microgravity in Cancer: A Dual-edge Sword

Since human beings could travel beyond the earth atmosphere, scientists started to investigate the effect of microgravity on human cells. Microgravity has different effects on normal and cancer cells, but the related mechanisms are not well-known till now. The aim of the present review is to focus on the consequences of exposing the cancer cells to reduced gravity. Some cancer cells organize three-dimensional structures under microgravity. Obviously, microgravity is an external stress, which can affect cell proliferation, apoptosis, cytoskeleton and signaling pathways. In addition, it touches immune-related components, regulates immune responses, and implicates immune cell activation. Low mutation aggregation and cancer rate in astronauts may lead to use microgravity as a therapeutic approach. However, it reduces the invasion and migration in some types of cancer cells, triggers the oncogenic signaling pathways including KRAS, and inhibits proliferation in normal lymphocytes. In conclusion, using microgravity as a therapeutic method in cancer treatment needs to be more investigated on both cancer and normal cells, and might not become true in the near future

Extension of Marriage Benefit to Long-Distance Relationship: Comparative Evidence from East Asia

Background: Being married is related to better physical and mental health compared to being single or in an unmarried relationship. For those in long-distance relationship (LDR), there are mixed findings in psychological and physical health outcomes when compared to individuals in proximal relationship (PR). Objective: To explore the health differences between those in LDRs and PRs in a larger and non-Western sample with more health behaviors than had been previously assessed. Materials and Methods: The present study analyzed the data from the East Asian Social Survey (EASS) comparing health variables and health habits between LDR and PR participants. There were 7,145 respondents including 2,750 in LDR and 4,395 in PR. Physical and mental health were measured using SF-12 version 2, while, the frequency of smoking, drinking alcohol, and engaging in physical activity were used to assess health habits. Univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to control the confounding effect. Results: The results suggested that PR participants reported better overall mental health, while those in LDRs were healthier in terms of less alcohol use. The overall physical health did not differ across the groups. Moreover, the present study uncovered an unexpected number of LDR couples in China compared to the other countries assessed. Conclusion: The present study provided further understanding of the connection between LDR and health in a large sample across the countries

Molecular Epidemiology of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Strains in the North‑West and West of Iran

Background: Identifying Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) transmission type is a key step in the control of this disease. Aim: This study aimed to determine the path and transmission type of MTB and the insertion sequence IS6110 band number and verify their relationship to demographic and clinical risk factors. Subjects and Methods: In this cross‑sectional study, 64 MTB patients from three border provinces of Iran were selected after full clinical history and physical evaluation design. The drug susceptibility testing was carried out using the standard proportion technique on sputum samples. Isolates tested with restriction fragment length polymorphism technique used IS6110. Results: Recent transmission of disease was 33/50 (66%) based on clustering rate. The IS6110 band number had a significant relationship with drug resistance detected in proportion method tested by univariate linear regression (P < 0.01). Furthermore, the IS6110 band number had association with Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccination history (P = 0.02), sex (P < 0.01), and purified protein derivative (PPD) reaction size (P < 0.01) tested by multiple analysis. The risk of recent transmission inferred from the clustering rate was significantly higher in patients from Western provinces compared to those from the North‑West province (P = 0.048). However, age (P = 0.39), gender (P = 0.16), vaccination history (P = 0.57), drug susceptibility, and PPD (P = 0.6) were independent of clustering. The largest cluster of up to six subjects was found in the Western provinces.Conclusion: Recent MTB transmission was much more common in the West compared to the North‑West of Iran. Large MTB clusters with strong epidemiological links may be reflective of a disease outbreak. Correlation noted between the IS6110 band number and vaccination history; PPD size and female gender necessitates further studies.Keywords: Molecular epidemiology, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Polymorphism, Restriction fragment lengt

Rumor Stance Classification in Online Social Networks: A Survey on the State-of-the-Art, Prospects, and Future Challenges

The emergence of the Internet as a ubiquitous technology has facilitated the rapid evolution of social media as the leading virtual platform for communication, content sharing, and information dissemination. In spite of revolutionizing the way news used to be delivered to people, this technology has also brought along with itself inevitable demerits. One such drawback is the spread of rumors facilitated by social media platforms which may provoke doubt and fear upon people. Therefore, the need to debunk rumors before their wide spread has become essential all the more. Over the years, many studies have been conducted to develop effective rumor verification systems. One aspect of such studies focuses on rumor stance classification, which concerns the task of utilizing users' viewpoints about a rumorous post to better predict the veracity of a rumor. Relying on users' stances in rumor verification task has gained great importance, for it has shown significant improvements in the model performances. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive literature review on rumor stance classification in complex social networks. In particular, we present a thorough description of the approaches and mark the top performances. Moreover, we introduce multiple datasets available for this purpose and highlight their limitations. Finally, some challenges and future directions are discussed to stimulate further relevant research efforts.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, journa

The effects of vitamin D supplementation on indices of glycemic control in Iranian diabetics: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background and purpose: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the effects of vitamin D supplements on indices of glycemic control [homeostatic model assessment-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C), fasting blood glucose (FBG), and quantitative insulin-sensitivity check index (QUICKI) and lipid profile in diabetic patients. Methods: Eight databases were searched, for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or cross-sectional and cohort studies that have been published up to December 2017. We used the comprehensive meta-analysis (CMA) software for all statistical analysis and used the I2 index for assessing heterogeneity. A p value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: We found 621 articles, and after the exclusion of ineligible publications, 82 studies remained to be assessed of which 37 were used for meta-analysis. Vitamin D supplementation was associated with a significant improvement in FBG (p = 0.001 and 95% CI: −0.526 to −0.136) and HbA1C (p = 0.003 and 95% CI: 1.719 to −0.361) in individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM); while in women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) the reduction in FBG (p = 0.071 and 95% CI: −0.873 to −0.035) and HbA1C (p = 0.199 and 95% CI: 3.270 to 0.681) failed to reach statistical significance. Treatment with vitamin D supplements was associated with an improvement in HOMA-IR in pregnant diabetic women (p = 0.028 and 95% CI: 0.924 to −0.053) and for individuals with diabetes mellitus (p = 0.005 and 95% CI: 1.772 to −0.319). The pooled result of the cross-sectional meta-analysis indicated that serum vitamin D concentrations were significantly lower in diabetic patients than in healthy controls (p = 0.018 and 95% CI: 0.587 to −0.054). Conclusion: This meta-analysis suggests that vitamin D supplementation improves indices of glycemic control (FBG, HOMA-IR, and HbA1C) in patients with diabetes mellitus. Hence, vitamin D supplements may be of potential therapeutic value in diabetic patients, as an adjuvant therapy along with other treatment

Linc-ROR and its spliced variants 2 and 4 are significantly up-regulated in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Objective(s): Similar characteristics of molecular pathways between cellular reprogramming events and tumorigenesis have been accentuated in recent years. Reprogramming-related transcription factors, also known as Yamanaka factors (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and c-MYC), are also well-known oncogenes promoting cancer initiation, progression, and cellular transformation into cancer stem cells. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a major class of RNA molecules with emerging roles in stem cell pluripotency, cellular reprogramming, cellular transformation, and tumorigenesis. The long intergenic non-coding RNA ROR (lincRNA-ROR, linc-ROR) acts as a regulator of cellular reprograming through sponging miR-145 that normally negatively regulates the expression of the stemness factors NANOG, OCT4, and SOX2. Materials and Methods: Here, we employed a real-time PCR approach to determine the expression patterns of linc-ROR and its two novel spliced variants (variants 2 and 4) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Results: The quantitative real-time RT-PCR results revealed a significant up-regulation of linc-ROR (P=0.0098) and its variants 2 (P=0.0250) and 4 (P=0.0002) in tumor samples of ESCC, compared to their matched non-tumor tissues obtained from the margin of same tumors. Our data also demonstrated a significant up-regulation of variant 4 in high-grade tumor samples, in comparison to the low-grade ones (P=0.04). Moreover, the ROC curve analysis demonstrated that the variant 4 of ROR has a potential to discriminate between tumor and non-tumor samples (AUC=0.66, P<0.05). Conclusion: Our data suggest a significant up-regulation of linc-ROR and its variants 2 and 4 in ESCC tissue samples. � 2016, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Waste sludge from shipping docks as a catalyst to remove amoxicillin in water with hydrogen peroxide and ultrasound

The waste sludge from shipping docks contains important elements that can be used as a catalyst after proper processing. The purpose of this study was to remove of amoxicillin (AMX) from the aquatic environment using waste sludge from shipping docks as catalyst in the presence of hydrogen peroxide/ultrasound waves. The catalyst was produced by treating waste sludge at 400 °C for 2 h. N2 adsorption, SEM, XRD, XRF, and FTIR techniques characterized the structural and physical properties of the catalyst. The BET-specific surface area of the catalyst reduced after AMX removal from 4.4 m2/g to 3.6 m2/g. To determine the optimal removal conditions, the parameters of the design of experiments were pH (5–9), contaminant concentration (5–100 mg/L), catalyst dosage (0.5–6 g/L), and concentration of hydrogen peroxide (10–100 mM). The maximum removal of AMX (98%) was obtained in the catalyst/hydrogen peroxide/ultrasound system at pH 5, catalyst dose of 4.5 g/L, H2O2 concentration of 50 mM, AMX concentration of 5 mg/L, and contact time of 60 min. The kinetics of removal of AMX from urine (k = 0.026 1/min), hospital wastewater (k = 0.021 1/min), and distilled water (k = 0.067 1/min) followed a first-order kinetic model (R2>0.91). The catalyst was reused up to 8 times and the AMX removal decreased to 45% in the last use. The byproducts and reaction pathway of AMX degradation were also investigated. The results clearly show that to achieve high pollutant removal rate the H2O2/ultrasound and catalyst/ultrasound synergy plays a key role

Enhancing somatic embryogenesis of Malaysian rice cultivar MR219 using adjuvant materials in a high efficiency protocol

Enhancing of the efficient tissue culture protocol for somatic embryos would facilitate the engineered breeding plants program. In this report, we describe the reproducible protocol of Malaysian rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivar MR219 through somatic embryogenesis. Effect of a wide spectrum of exogenesis materials was assessed in three phases, namely callogenesis, proliferation and regeneration. Initially, rice seeds were subjected under various auxin treatments. Secondly, the effect of different concentrations of 2,4-D on callus induction was evaluated. In the next step, the efficiency of different explants was identified. Subsequently, the effects of different auxins, cytokinins, L-proline, casein hydrolysate and potassium metasilicate concentrations on the callus proliferation and regeneration were considered. For the callogenesis phase, 2 mg L-1 of 2,4-D and roots were chosen as the best auxin and explant. In the callus proliferation stage, the highest efficiency was observed at week eight in the MS media supplemented with 2 mg L-1 of 2,4-D, 2 mg L-1 of kinetin, 50 mg L-1 of L-proline, 100 mg L-1 of casein hydrolysate and 30 mg L-1 of potassium metasilicate. In the last phase of the research, the MS media added with 3 mg L-1 of kinetin, 30 mg L-1 of potassium metasilicate and 2 mg L-1 of NAA were selected. Meanwhile, to promote the roots of regenerated explants, 0.4 mg L-1 of IBA has shown potential as an appropriate activator

170: Long-Term Outcome of Nonmyeloalative Allografting from HLA-Identical Sibling for Multiple Myeloma (MM)

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