Collecting and Integrating National Laws and Regulations on Construction in Coastal Areas

Instructions for designing coastal structures in order to create coordination and uniformity in the criteria for designing, constructing, supervising and executing coastal structures and projects subject to that instruction, as well as observing the principles, methods and technologies appropriate to the applied equipment and compatible with the conditions and requirements. So present study aimed to collecting and integrating national laws and regulations on construction in coastal areas was performed. Descriptive and analytical method is a suitable method for the present study. The study method in the research is library method and is a tool for collecting information from valid domestic and foreign sources.Also, the publication has been tried to be compiled in such a way that due to the limited access to the texts of standards and regulations and in order to expand the culture of technical knowledge and transfer it to the design and implementation factors of projects, the content of applicable instructions and technical criteria to be available to users as much as possible. Compilation of comprehensive instructions for designing coastal structures with all its positive features seems necessary to design specific instructions for Iran in accordance with environmental conditions. However, in the current situation where other guidelines are used as a basis, it is necessary for the academic education system to move in this direction and identify the shortcomings and deficiencies of this foreign guideline and rewrite it based on local characteristics

Assessing the risk perception of COVID-19 among non-infected people attending emergency departments of selected hospitals in western Iran

Objective: It is important to know people’s perceptions of the risks related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) for controlling the pandemic. This study aims to assess the risk perception of COVID-19 among non-infected people referred to emergency departments (ED) of hospitals in Khorramabad, Iran during the pandemic and its related demographic factors. Methods: This is descriptive/analytical study with a cross-sectional design. Participants were 380 adults referred to the ED of four hospitals (Shohadaye Ashayer, Shahid Rahimi, Asali, and Shahid Madani) in Khorramabad city in 2021 who were not infected by COVID-19. For data collection, the risk perception of COVID-19 questionnaire was used. Data were described using mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage. Chi-squared test was used in SPSS v.22 software to find the related demographic factors. Results: It was found that 5 people (1.3%) had a moderate perception, 206 (54.2%) had good perception, and 169 (44.5%) had high perception. No one had poor risk perception. According to them, “own knowledge and experience” was the most effective factor in preventing COVID-19 followed by “the advice of experts in the media” and “the advice of friends and family”. Chi-squared test results showed a significant difference in risk perception among people in terms of age (P=0.002) and marital status (P=0.001); the age group <25 years and single people had lower risk perceptions. Conclusion: The risk perception of COVID-19 in people referred to the EDs in western Iran is at good level but is not high. It is necessary to improve their risk perception by education and increasing awareness on social media

Evaluation of clinical and laboratory causes of burns in pre-school children

We investigate characteristics of burns in children aged up to seven years and hospitalized at Velayat burn center unit for two years to evaluate clinical and laboratory causes of burns in pre-school children. In a retrospective study, all patients under 6 years who were admitted to Velayat hospital due to burn injuries between 20 march 2016 and 20 march 2017 participated in this study. Baseline data and information collected from hospital HIS system and patient records. The burn-injured children were 283 patients, of which 54.1% were male and 45.9% were female. These injuries mostly were caused by hot liquid (78.7%). The greatest number of burn victims were boys between one and two years old. Almost all the accidents occurred in the home environment (90.1%). A significant correlation was observed between contact burns, serum albumin level, and serum C-reactive protein (CRP) levels with burn severity. Our data demonstrate the importance of developing a program for the prevention of pediatric scalds with the education of family members to be aware of the danger. This knowledge may contribute. the most important and major discovery in our studies so far has been the hypothesis of estimating Albumin 1b peptides (A1b) and CRP laboratory factors during the initial week of hospitalization in the prognosis of children and its constant relation with the severity level of the burns

Learning to regulate homeostatic brain networks

Eine dynamische Balance der physiologischen Gegebenheiten wie Körpertemperatur, Blutdruck, Blut-PH-Wert, Hormonspiegel, Blutzucker und Insulinkonzentration ist für die Gesundheit und das Überleben unverzichtbar. Viele Krankheiten haben eine Störung der Homöostase zur Folge. Vor allem das Nerven- und das Hormonsystem steuern Regulationsmechanismen und sobald diese ein Ungleichgewicht feststellen, gibt es passende biochemische oder physiologische Feedback-Kreisläufe, die den Gesamtzustand in die Balance zurückführen. Diese Dissertation untersucht neuartige Methoden des Echtzeit-Neurofeedbacks, das auf funktioneller Magnetre-sonanztomographie basiert (Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging – rt-fMRI-NF), um es gesunden Probanden und Patienten zu ermöglichen, homöostatische Netzwerke des Gehirns zu regulieren. Die erste Studie hatte zum Ziel, die Auswirkungen der Hochregulierung der funktionellen Konnektivität durch rt-fMRI-NF-Training (engl. Functional connectivity – FC) zwischen Beloh-nungs- und impulsivitätsregulierenden Gehirnarealen auf das Essverhalten zu untersuchen. Diese Studie war ein Pilotexperiment im Pre-Post-Schema. Die zweite Studie untersuchte die Möglichkeit, die funktionelle Konnektivität zwischen der anterioren Insula (AIC) und dem soma-tosensorischen Kortex (SC) durch Belohnung von gleichzeitiger Aktivität dieser Regionen zu be-einflussen. AIC und SC sind Gehirnregionen, die physiologische Zustandsinformationen von Kör-pergewebe und großflächigen Hautsegmenten erhalten. Wir nahmen an, dass die funktionelle Verbindung zwischen diesen Regionen die Verarbeitung dieser Signale der inneren Organe und Körpergewebe übernimmt. Dies stellt einen Kernbereich des Gefühlskonzeptes von James-Lang dar. In der dritten Studie untersuchten wir, ob Patienten mit kontaminationsbezogenen Zwangsgedanken und Waschzwang lernen können, ihre BOLD-Aktivität in der Insula herunterzu-regulieren, wenn sie mit ekelerregenden oder Angst hervorrufenden Stimuli konfrontiert wer-den. Die Ergebnisse der ersten Studie zeigten, dass die willentliche Hochregulierung der Korrela-tion zu einer erhöhten funktionellen Konnektivität zwischen dem dorsolateralen präfrontalen Kortex (dlPFC) und dem ventromedialen präfrontalen Kortex (vmPFC) führt. Diese Konnektivität betrifft Selbstkontrolle und die Entscheidung für gesunde Nahrungsmittel. Die Verhaltenstests deuten darauf hin, dass die Probanden sich in der Transfersitzung (nach der Intervention) für weniger ungesunde Nahrungsmittel entscheiden als in der Sitzung vor der Intervention. Die zweite Studie bestätigte unsere Hypothese, dass die willentliche Hochregulierung von gleichzei-tiger BOLD-Aktivität von AIC und SC deren funktionale Konnektivität erhöht. Diese Verbindung ermöglicht eine verstärkte Körperwahrnehmung und ein verändertes subjektives Gefühlserle-ben. Wir beobachteten, dass die Veränderung der funktionellen Konnektivität zwischen AIC und SC die Leistung der Probanden in der Aufgabe (Wahrnehmung des Herzschlags) verbesserte. In der dritten Studie fanden wir heraus, dass Patienten mit Zwangsstörungen (OCD) nach einigen Trainingseinheiten die Selbstkontrolle der BOLD-Aktivität der Insula erreichen konnten. Fasst man die Ergebnisse der drei Studien zusammen, konnten wir zeigen, dass die Fähigkeit des Ge-hirns zur homöostatischen Selbstregulierung durch die Verwendung von rt-FMRI-Training ver-bessert werden kann. Zudem ist nun klarer, dass die Veränderung und die Modulation von neu-ronalen Pfaden in Gehirnnetzwerken, die der Selbstkontrolle, der Entscheidungsfindung und der Gefühlswahrnehmung zugrunde liegen, zu vielversprechenden Verhaltensveränderungen führt

Physiological regulation of chronic tinnitus: A new methodological approach

Decrease of auditory alpha-rhythm might lead to tinnitus which it calls a rehabilitation strategy using training to increase auditory alpha in chronic tinnitus patients. A novel auditory alpha monitoring method was devised to circumvent the inverse problem of standard EEG source localization methods. To prevent projection of alpha from somatosensory and occipital cortex, alpha-blockade of these two regions using tactile and visual stimulations is integrated in an EEG neurofeedback set-up. The monitoring online source method’s results showed rigorous tracking of auditory alpha activity purely from the sensor-level while the up-regulation of auditory alpha activity was very difficult for tinnitus patients. Therefore, only contingent feedback was applied instead of using a control condition or control group. Although the neurofeedback training exerted a positive effect on the tinnitus symptoms, this effect was not a consequence of neurophysiological changes, but it was probably the effect of positive expectancy and the reduction of cognitive dissonance related to the attribution of concentration and effort. Different reasons could be responsible for this lack of covariation between neurophysiology and behavior like short training time for up-regulation of alpha activity or permanent neuronal reorganization. However, the developed on-line neurofeedback of localized alpha allows systematic replication and variation of the determining variables of neurofeedback training in tinnitus in future larger clinical trials

On the Optimal Node Ratio between Hidden Layers: A Probabilistic Study

Two-hidden layer feedforward neural networks (TLFNs) have been shown to outperform single-hidden-layer neural networks (SLFNs) for function approximation in many cases. However, their added complexity makes them more difficult to find. Given a constant number of hidden nodes nh, this paper investigates how their allocation between the first and second hidden layers (n h = n1 + n2 ) affects the likelihood of finding the best generaliser. The experiments were carried out over a total of ten public domain datasets with nh = 8 and 16. The findings were that the heuristic n1 = 0.5nh + 1 has an average probability of at least 0.85 of finding a network with a generalisation error within 0.18% of the best generaliser. Furthermore, the worst case over all data sets was within 0.23% for nh = 8, and within 0.15% for nh = 16. These findings could be used to reduce the complexity of the search for TLFNs from quadratic to linear, or alternatively for ‘topology mapping’ between TLFNs and SLFNs, given the same number of hidden nodes, to compare their performance

Inclined Surface Locomotion Strategies for Spherical Tensegrity Robots

This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates robust climbing on inclined surfaces in hardware experiments and speeds significantly faster than previous spherical tensegrity models. This robot is an improvement over other iterations in the TT-series and the first tensegrity to achieve reliable locomotion on inclined surfaces of up to 24\degree. We analyze locomotion in simulation and hardware under single and multi-cable actuation, and introduce two novel multi-cable actuation policies, suited for steep incline climbing and speed, respectively. We propose compelling justifications for the increased dynamic ability of the robot and motivate development of optimization algorithms able to take advantage of the robot's increased control authority.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, IROS 201

Identification of Immunotopes against Mycobacterium leprae as Immune Targets Using PhDTm- 12mer Phage Display Peptide Library

Purpose: To determine the surface epitopes of Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae) and evaluate their efficacy in the production of anti-M. leprae antibodies in an animal model.Methods: Blood samples were obtained from 34 patients suffering from lepromatous leprosy. Antibodies were obtained from the samples, semi-purified and used to coat the wells of ELISA microplate, and M13 random-peptides library was added to the wells. After four rounds of panning, three clones were isolated and their peptide mimotopes were sequenced. Western blot was used to evaluate the interaction of the isolated mimotopes.Results: Three selective clones were tested by direct enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and western blot. anti-leprae antibodies in various dilutions and were found to be serological active. Sequencing of the isolated peptides showed identities between the two clones that were able to successfully induce anti-Leprae humoral response in mice.Conclusion: The findings indicate that the isolated peptides can potentially be used for early diagnosis. However, further research is required to improve their potency as new vaccines against leprosy.Keywords: Bacteriophage, Vaccine, Leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, Random Peptide Phage Display Librar

The effect of laser surface melting on the retained austenite and wear properties of AISI D2 tool steel

In this study the effect of laser surface melting (LSM) on the amount of retained austenite, hardness and wear resistance of AISI D2 steel was investigated utilizing hardness test, X-ray diffraction (XRD), pin on disk wear test and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In order to evaluate wear resistance, pin on disk tests at two different loads were carried out on surface treated samples including as received annealed and a quenched and tempered specimen. Surface treatment has been carried out in three different conditions; LSM, LSM with pre-heating at 300 °C and LSM with pre-cooling in liquid nitrogen which resulted in 64, 42% and 90% of retained austenite respectively, revealing that higher cooling rate led to a higher amount of retained austenite. The results showed that in spite of the presence of austenite as major phase in re-melted surface, the hardness reached to the values of up to 600 HV10 which is approximately two times of the as received steel having a lot of carbides dispersed in the ferrite matrix. In addition, at lower load, conventionally heat treated sample exhibited better wear resistance, whereas at higher load, the wear rate of laser melted specimen was the least as a result of the transformation of retained austenite into martensite. At lower load the dominant wear mechanism was abrasion while Adhesion was identified as the main wear mechanism at higher load.acceptedVersio