Sensitive Determination of Terazosin in Pharmaceutical Formulations and Biological Samples by Ionic-Liquid Microextraction Prior to Spectrofluorimetry

An efficient and environmentally friendly sample preparation method based on the application of hydrophobic 1-Hexylpyridinium hexafluorophosphate [Hpy][PF6] ionic liquid (IL) as a microextraction solvent was proposed to preconcentrate terazosin. The performance of the microextraction method was improved by introducing a common ion of pyridinium IL into the sample solution. Due to the presence of the common ion, the solubility of IL significantly decreased. As a result, the phase separation successfully occurred even at high ionic strength, and the volume of the settled IL-phase was not influenced by variations in the ionic strength (up to 30% w/v). After preconcentration step, the enriched phase was introduced to the spectrofluorimeter for the determination of terazosin. The obtained results revealed that this system did not suffer from the limitations of that in conventional ionic-liquid microextraction. Under optimum experimental conditions, the proposed method provided a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.027 μg L−1 and a relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) of 2.4%. The present method was successfully applied to terazosin determination in actual pharmaceutical formulations and biological samples. Considering the large variety of ionic liquids, the proposed microextraction method earns many merits, and will present a wide application in the future

Short-Term Effects of Glutamine Supplementation on Levels of Blood Lactate and Fatigue Index in Male Elite Swimmers

Food supplementations are public assistance for a variety of championships sports. Competitive and recreational athletes use the nutritional supplements to improve their performance in a long time. In this context, there is lack of information about whether glutamine supplementation has the potential to help improve the muscle recovery after a period of intense aerobic exercise to exhaustion. This study aimed to assess short-term effect of glutamine supplementation on the levels of lactate and fatigue index in male elite swimmers.  Research method was mid-experimental and research design was a pretest-posttest with control group that was administered as double-blind. Twenty swimmers with age range of 26-18 years were selected based on convenient sampling. Then, based on swimming record results of 50 and 100 m freestyle breasts  were randomly divided into glutamine and swimming training group (n = 10) or placebo and exercise swimming group (n=10 ). Then the glutamine was given to supplementation group and the placebo was given to the control group, both groups began to swim for 4 weeks. Studied variables including lactate levels, fatigue and athletic performance index were measured before and after the study.  The results showed that use of glutamine amino acids led to a significant reduction in the fatigue index and produced lactate in the supplementation group compared to the placebo group. The time of athletes' performance wasn’t significantly increased.  The results showed the glutamine supplementation in areas such as swimming where the athlete must take part in a day in several competition, has a significant impact on the reduction of blood lactate concentration and more endurance of athletes than accumulation of lactic acid and reduction of swimming athletes fatigue index . However, more research is needed in this area

Short-Term Effects of Glutamine Supplementation on Levels of Blood Lactate and Fatigue Index in Male Elite Swimmers

Food supplementations are public assistance for a variety of championships sports. Competitive and recreational athletes use the nutritional supplements to improve their performance in a long time. In this context, there is lack of information about whether glutamine supplementation has the potential to help improve the muscle recovery after a period of intense aerobic exercise to exhaustion. This study aimed to assess short-term effect of glutamine supplementation on the levels of lactate and fatigue index in male elite swimmers.  Research method was mid-experimental and research design was a pretest-posttest with control group that was administered as double-blind. Twenty swimmers with age range of 26-18 years were selected based on convenient sampling. Then, based on swimming record results of 50 and 100 m freestyle breasts  were randomly divided into glutamine and swimming training group (n = 10) or placebo and exercise swimming group (n=10 ). Then the glutamine was given to supplementation group and the placebo was given to the control group, both groups began to swim for 4 weeks. Studied variables including lactate levels, fatigue and athletic performance index were measured before and after the study.  The results showed that use of glutamine amino acids led to a significant reduction in the fatigue index and produced lactate in the supplementation group compared to the placebo group. The time of athletes' performance wasn’t significantly increased.  The results showed the glutamine supplementation in areas such as swimming where the athlete must take part in a day in several competition, has a significant impact on the reduction of blood lactate concentration and more endurance of athletes than accumulation of lactic acid and reduction of swimming athletes fatigue index . However, more research is needed in this area

Comparison of nuclear data of 64Cu production using an accelerator by TALYS 1.0 code

The extensive use of 64Cu (T1/2 = 12.7 h) as a positron and electron emitter radioisotope in recent years has ensured its potential to serve a dual role in the development of molecular agents in PET and radioimmunotheraphy drugs in oncology. The TALYS 1.0 code was used to calculate excitation functions for induced proton, deuteron and alfa-particles on 64Zn, 66Zn, 67Zn, 68Zn, 70Zn, 62Ni, and 64Ni up to 50 MeV. According to the data acquired by the TALYS 1.0 code, thick-target integral yield of the induced charged particles on the enriched targets was achieved

Assessment of hospitals medical waste management in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province in Iran

The hospital wastes could threaten the surface waters, ground waters, soil, air environment and humans’ health. This study was intended to investigate the management of medical waste generated in hospitals of Charharmahal and Bakhtiari province, located in south west of Iran. The samples came from all 9 province’s hospitals with 1156 beds. The data forms and questionnaires were completed. The questionnaire contained questions about the generation of waste and practices related to separation, collection, storage, transport, treatment and final disposal, and training and awareness. The highest generation rate on a bed basis of 3.22±0.4 kg/bed/day was found in Shohada hospital, and the lowest rate was 1.37±0.2 kg/bed/day for Sina hospital. There was significant variation (P<0.05). The average general waste production rate was 2.12±0.37 kg/bed/day at all the surveyed hospitals. The highest percentage (63%) of total medical wastes were general, 36.05% were infectious wastes. About 44.44% of the hospitals have used autoclave to disinfect their infectious medical waste prior to disposal, while incineration is used in 33.33% of the hospitals. All hospitals (100%) indicated their needs and willingness to participate in future specialized training programs in medical waste management. It has been suggested that enhancing the education, awareness and promoting programs about medical waste management for cleaning workers, doctors, nurses, and technicians

Gestalt Perception of Biological motion with a Generative Artificial Neural Network Model

In cognitive modelling understanding of biological motion by inference of own sensorimotor skills is extremely valued and is known as a fundamental element of social intelligence. It has been suggested that a proper Gestalt perception depends on suitably binding visual features, decently adapting the matching perspective, and mapping the bound features onto the correct Gestalt templates. This thesis introduces a generative artificial neural network model, which implements such Gestalt perception mechanisms proposing an algorithmic explanation. The architectural design of the model is an extension, modification and further investigation of previous work by Fabian Schrodt \cite{Schrodt:2018} which relies on the principle of active inference and predictive coding, coupled with suitable inductive learning and processing biases. At first we train the model to learn sufficiently accurate generative models of dynamic biological, or other harmonic, motion patterns. Afterwards we scramble the input and vary the perspective onto it. To be able to properly route the input and adapt the internal perspective onto a known frame of reference, the suggested modularized architecture propagates the prediction error back onto a binding matrix which consists of hidden neural states that determine feature binding, and further back onto perspective taking neurons, which rotate and translate the input features. The resulting process ensures that various types of biological motion are inferred upon observation, resolving the challenges of (I) feature binding into Gestalten, (II) perspective taking, and (III) behavior interpretation. Ablation studies underline that, 1.~the separation of spatial input encodings into relative positional, directional, and motion magnitude pathways boost the quality of Gestalt perception, 2.~population encodings implicitly enable the parallel testing of alternative interpretation hypotheses and therefore further improve accurate inference, 3.~a temporal predictive processing module of the autoencoder-based compressed stimuli enables the retrospective inference of the unfolding behavior. I believe that similar components should be employed in other architectures where temporal bindings of information sources are beneficial. Moreover, given that binding, perspective taking, and intention interpretation are universal problems in cognitive science, our introduced mechanisms may be very useful for addressing similar challenges in other domains beyond biological motion patterns