Some new Hermite–Hadamard type inequalities for functions whose nth derivatives are convex

We first create an integral identity for n-times differentiable functions. Relying on this identity, we establish some new Hermite–Hadamard type inequalities for functions whose nth derivatives are convex

Correlation between Visual Acuity and Optical Coherence Tomography-Measured Retinal Thickness in Diabetic Macular Edema

Background and Objective: Diabetic macular edema (DME) is one of the common complications of diabetes which significantly accounts for preventable visual impairment and blindness. Central macular thickness (CMT) is a feature found in DME patients. This study aims to determine the relationship between optical coherence tomography (OCT)-measured CMT and visual acuity (VA) in patients with DME before and after intravitreal injection of bevacizumab. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 patients with diabetic macular edema with involvement of both eyes referred to the Ophthalmology Department of Rouhani Hospital in Babol who underwent intravitreal injection of Bevacizumab. VA (measured by Snellen chart), CMT (measured by OCT), clinical and paraclinical factors (including the duration of diabetes, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), fasting blood sugar (FBS), hypertension, and smoking history data) were evaluated and compared among all patients just before and 45 days after Bevacizumab injection. Findings: Before the injection of Bevacizumab in 200 eyes, the mean value of VA (letter score) and mean value of CMT (µm) were 36.83±12.73 and 425.48±85.18 µm, respectively (p<0.001, 95% CI=12.5 – 17.5 and 95% CI=-71.5 – -55.5, respectively). 45 days after Bevacizumab injection, the mean value of absolute VA changes was 15.24±10.16, and the mean value of absolute CMT changes was -67.83±43.08 µm (coefficient=-0.18, 95% CI=-0.39 – 0.05). Conclusion: Although VA was correlated moderately with CMT and the polynomial regression model enhanced the predictive ability, it remains fully obvious that CMT and clinical factors could play an essential role as VA surrogates

Frequency of Cutaneous Manifestations in Diabetic Patients in Endocrinology Clinic of Babol University of Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Diabetes is the most common endocrine disorder in the world. Understanding the cutaneous manifestations associated with diabetes can help in choosing the appropriate treatment approach in these patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of cutaneous manifestations in diabetic patients referred to the endocrinology clinic of Babol University of Medical Sciences. METHODS: The present cross-sectional study was performed on 300 patients with diabetes referred to Rouhani Hospital in Babol in 2019. Age, gender, BMI, type and duration of diabetes, and patients’ diabetes control status (HbA1C) were recorded and patients were thoroughly examined by a dermatologist and divided into two groups of below and above 50 years. In terms of cutaneous manifestations, they were divided into two groups; with cutaneous manifestations and without cutaneous manifestations. FINDINGS: 293 patients (97.76%) had type 2 diabetes. The mean age of patients was 55±12 years and the mean duration of diabetes was 9.73±1.20 years. In this study, 130 patients (43%) had cutaneous lesions, of which 76 patients (58.5%) were female. Pruritus, acrochordon, cherry angioma, diabetic dermatopathy, fungal skin infections with frequencies of 25.7%, 21%, 14.3%, 6% and 5.7% were the most common skin disorders, respectively. 68 patients (69.4%) had skin manifestations and had diabetes for more than 10 years. There was a significant difference between the two groups of with and without cutaneous manifestations, gender and duration of diabetes (p<0.001). There was no significant difference between the mean age, BMI and HbA1C in the two groups (p=0.07, p=0.09 and p=0.11, respectively). CONCLUSION: The results of the study showed that pruritus and acrochordon are the most common cutaneous manifestations and long-term diabetes and female gender are the most important risk factors for cutaneous manifestations

WASTE HEAT RECOVERY IN HEAT PUMP SYSTEMS: SOLUTION TO REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING

Energy conversion technologies, where waste heat recovery systems are included, have received significant attention in recent years due to reasons that include depletion of fossil fuel, increasing oil prices, changes in climatic conditions, and global warming. For low temperature applications, there are many sources of thermal waste heat, and several recovery systems and potential useful applications have been proposed by researchers [1-4]. In addition, many types of equipment are used to recover waste thermal energy from different systems at low, medium, and high temperature applications, such as heat exchangers, waste heat recovery boiler, thermo-electric generators, and recuperators. In this paper, the focus is on waste heat recovery from air conditioners, and an efficient application of these energy resources. Integration of solar energy with heat pump technologies and major factors that affect the feasibility of heat recovery systems have been studied and reviewed as well.   KEYWORDS: waste heat recovery; heat pump

Tissue magnetic susceptibility mapping as a marker of tau pathology in Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease is connected to a number of other neurodegenerative conditions, known collectively as 'tauopathies', by the presence of aggregated tau protein in the brain. Neuroinflammation and oxidative stress in AD are associated with tau pathology and both the breakdown of axonal sheaths in white matter tracts and excess iron accumulation grey matter brain regions. Despite the identification of myelin and iron concentration as major sources of contrast in quantitative susceptibility maps of the brain, the sensitivity of this technique to tau pathology has yet to be explored. In this study, we perform Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) and T2* mapping in the rTg4510, a mouse model of tauopathy, both in vivo and ex vivo. Significant correlations were observed between histological measures of myelin content and both mean regional magnetic susceptibility and T2* values. These results suggest that magnetic susceptibility is sensitive to tissue myelin concentrations across different regions of the brain. Differences in magnetic susceptibility were detected in the corpus callosum, striatum, hippocampus and thalamus of the rTg4510 mice relative to wild type controls. The concentration of neurofibrillary tangles was found to be low to intermediate in these brain regions indicating that QSM may be a useful biomarker for early stage detection of tau pathology in neurodegenerative diseases

Creation of multiple nanodots by single ions

In the challenging search for tools that are able to modify surfaces on the nanometer scale, heavy ions with energies of several 10 MeV are becoming more and more attractive. In contrast to slow ions where nuclear stopping is important and the energy is dissipated into a large volume in the crystal, in the high energy regime the stopping is due to electronic excitations only. Because of the extremely local (< 1 nm) energy deposition with densities of up to 10E19 W/cm^2, nanoscaled hillocks can be created under normal incidence. Usually, each nanodot is due to the impact of a single ion and the dots are randomly distributed. We demonstrate that multiple periodically spaced dots separated by a few 10 nanometers can be created by a single ion if the sample is irradiated under grazing angles of incidence. By varying this angle the number of dots can be controlled.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Vortex phase diagram in BSCCO with damage tracks created by 30 MeV fullerene irradiation

Using 30 MeV C60 fullerene irradiation, we have produced latent tracks of diameter 20 nm and length 200 nm, near the surface of single crystalline BSCCO. A preliminary transmission electron microscopy study shows evidence for a very high density of deposited energy, and the ejection of material from the track core in very thin specimens. The latent tracks reveal themselves to be exceptionally strong pinning centers for vortices in the superconducting mixed state. Both the critical current density and magnetic irreversibility line are significantly enhanced. The irradiated crystals present salient features of the (B,T) phase diagram of vortex matter both of pristine crystals, such as the first order vortex phase transition, and the exponential Bose-glass line characteristic of heavy ion-irradiated crystals. We show that the latter is manifestly independent of the pinning potential.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figure

Is corporate environmental disclosure associated with firm value? A multi-country study of Gulf Cooperation Council firms

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.open access articleSeveral studies have found a relationship between corporate social and environmental disclosure and firm value or accounting profitability. Where environmental disclosure has been the focus, though, only single-country studies have been published; and most of the previous research concerns the developed world. This study examines the association between corporate environmental disclosure (CED) and firm value (FV) in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where CED has been increasing from its previous low base. Findings from a multi-country sample of 500 firm-year observations using a 55-item unweighted environmental disclosure index suggest that CED is significantly and positively related to FV as measured by Tobin’s Q (TBQ). The relationship is robust to using a weighted version of the disclosure index, individual countries and environmental disclosure sub-indices. Some evidence of a positive relationship between CED and return on assets (ROA) is also found, but even where statistically significant, the relationship is much weaker than in the case of TBQ. For empirical and theoretical reasons, we recommend that future studies pay greater attention to market-based proxies, if possible when investigating the value relevance of CED in both developed and developing countries. Our results suggest that both managers and policymakers in GCC countries should take a positive view of expanded CED