The effect of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of chamomile on the vital activity of peripheral blood leukocytes of patients with covid-19

Background and Objective: Numerous studies have shown the anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-allergic, anti-cancer, anti-spasm, analgesic and wound healing effects of chamomile (Matricaria chamomile). In this study, the effect of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of chamomile on the vital activity of cultured leukocytes of patients with covid-19 was investigated. Materials and Methods: After preparation of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of chamomile, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of patients with covid-19 with doses of 200, 300, 400 and 500 micrograms/ml of ethanolic extract of chamomile and doses of 400, 500, 600 and 700 µg/ml chamomile aqueous extract were treated. After 24 hours, the vital activity of PBMCs was measured by MTT method. To analyze the findings, one-way analysis of variance was used in SPSS software version 24. P<0.05 was considered significant. Results: In the current research, chamomile ethanol extract in doses of 500 micrograms/ml and aqueous extract in doses of 600 and 700 micrograms/ml led to a significant decrease in the vital activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells compared to the control group. Conclusion: Aqueous and ethanol extracts of chamomile significantly decrease the vital activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells; This decrease in vital activity is dose-dependent, and with increasing dose, a decrease in vital activity is observed

Morphological and molecular characteristics of spheroid formation in HT-29 and Caco-2 colorectal cancer cell lines

Background: Relapse and metastasis in colorectal cancer (CRC) are often attributed to cancer stem-like cells (CSCs), as small sub-population of tumor cells with ability of drug resistance. Accordingly, development of appropriate models to investigate CSCs biology and establishment of effective therapeutic strategies is warranted. Hence, we aimed to assess the capability of two widely used and important colorectal cancer cell lines, HT-29 and Caco-2, in generating spheroids and their detailed morphological and molecular characteristics. Methods: CRC spheroids were developed using hanging drop and forced floating in serum-free and non-attachment conditions and their morphological features were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Then, the potential of CSCs enrichment in spheroids was compared to their adherent counterparts by analysis of serial sphere formation capacity, real-time PCR of key stemness genes (KLF4, OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, C-MYC) and the expression of potential CRC-CSCs surface markers (CD166, CD44, and CD133) by flow cytometry. Finally, the expression level of some EMT-related (Vimentin, SNAIL1, TWIST1, N-cadherin, E-cadherin, ZEB1) and multi-drug resistant (ABCB1, ABCC1, ABCG2) genes was evaluated. Results: Although with different morphological features, both cell lines were formed CSCs-enriched spheroids, indicated by ability to serial sphere formation, significant up-regulation of stemness genes, SOX2, C-MYC, NANOG and OCT4 in HT-29 and SOX2, C-MYC and KLF4 in Caco-2 spheroids (p-value < 0.05) and increased expression of CRC-CSC markers compared to parental cells (p-value < 0.05). Additionally, HT-29 spheroids exhibited a significant higher expression of both ABCB1 and ABCG2 (p-value = 0.02). The significant up-regulation of promoting EMT genes, ZEB1, TWIST1, E-cadherin and SNAIL1 in HT-29 spheroids (p-value = 0.03), SNAIL1 and Vimentin in Caco-2 spheroids (p-value < 0.05) and N-cadherin down-regulation in both spheroids were observed. Conclusion: Enrichment of CSC-related features in HT-29 and Caco-2 (for the first time without applying special scaffold/biochemical) spheroids, suggests spheroid culture as robust, reproducible, simple and cost-effective model to imitate the complexity of in vivo tumors including self-renewal, drug resistance and invasion for in vitro research of CRC-CSCs. © 2021, The Author(s)

THE INFLUENCE OF SOIL FERTILITY ON SOIL FERTILITY FROM LEGUMES

&lt;p&gt;The article repeats legumes crop as Effect of sown bean varieties on soil fertility The soil is organic when crops are planted in cotton and other crops enriched with substances and creates an additional base of ozone. Bean grain crops only feed on livestock, increasing soil fertility substance is not only a means of producing, but is also harmful phytosanitary to remove insect and disease infections It also functions.&nbsp;&lt;/p&gt

A Computational Study of Visual Attention on Objects and Gestures during Infancy

Understanding the pathway to the development of visual attention and the role of vision in object name learning during infancy have been one of the focus of developmental studies over the years. Head cameras have been increasingly used in such studies as they provide a unique source of information about child's momentary visual experiences by approximating child's visual field and may yield new insights into what factors generate attention in infants. However, frame by frame analysis of such videos is cumbersome and time consuming and several parameters that impact child's visual attention such as constant motion of camera cannot be assessed by human analysis. In this thesis, we propose computer vision tools to help developmental scientists perform automated, fast and accurate analysis on videos collected from child-parent tabletop toy play. The computer vision tools in this thesis are used to further our understanding of the development of visual attention in children on objects and gestures. In the first stage of this thesis, we propose a semi-automated method for object segmentation in child's egocentric videos. The method is applied to large volume of videos and obtain binary masks of toy objects that are being used during child-parent toy play. Afterwards, the object masks are used to study how much of the time children visually attend to objects at progressive ages and the location of objects within their visual field. In the second stage, we propose an automated tool for analysis of motion patterns and parent's gestures in videos that are collected from child-parent toy play from third perspective and eye bird view. The proposed method employs an unsupervised clustering approach for clustering the videos into multiple groups by extracting dense trajectories from image sequences and using k-means clustering. Each motion group is further explored to study potential correlations of motion patterns in parent's gestures with object saliency in child's visual field. The proposed methods in this thesis, enable developmental scientists to explore unknown patterns in the development of child's visual by performing automated and accurate analysis on videos of child-parent toy play obtained from multiple views.Computer Science, Department o

The Evolution Path of Business Intelligence & social media Capabilities

The evolution of information technology, artificial intelligence, and large volumes of data in web2, led to the formation of a new approach from the convergence of two scientific fields of business intelligence (BI) and social media analysis (SMA), which is called social business intelligence (SBI) with some researchers. Growing the number of studies in BI and SMA and the explosion of information, required coherence, integration and summary to knowledge extraction. The purpose of this paper is to recognize the capabilities that are the result of the two scientific field convergence. The bibliometric methods have been used to analyze publications tile 2022 and map the topics trend, historical graph, co-occurrence network and knowledge map of social business intelligence capabilities. The results indicate that the nature of business intelligence studies changes toward the analysis of big social media data and integration of analytical and managerial capabilities in BI with the power of marketing, communication and networking in SM. Also, five clusters of social marketing capability, data analytic capability, knowledge capability, communication capability, and transformational capability have been identified for SBI. About the role of SBI in empowering organizations in the digital era, especially in business related to marketing and innovation goals, it is recommended to equip organizations with this technology and its capabilities

Tear and serum MMP-9 and serum TIMPs levels in the severe sulfur mustard eye injured exposed patients

Introduction: Sulfur mustard (SM) intoxication produces local and systemic changes in the human body. In this study, the relationship between tear and serum matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 and serum tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) are assessed in serious eye-injured SM-exposed casualties. Methods: A group of 128 SM-exposed patients with serious ocular injuries in three subgroups (19 mild, 31 moderate, and 78 severe cases) is compared with 31 healthy controls. Tear and ocular status and serum MMPs and MMP-9/TIMPs complex levels were evaluated using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results: Serum level of MMP-9 was significantly higher in the SM-exposed group compared to the control group (P = 0.009). Mean serum MMP-9 level in the SM-exposed group with ocular abnormalities was significantly higher than that in the SM-exposed group without ocular abnormalities. SM-exposed people with corneal calcification had significantly higher serum MMP-9/TIMP-1 level compared to the SM-exposed ones without this problem (P = 0.045), The SM-exposed group with severe ocular injuries had significantly higher MMP-9/TIMP-1 than the controls (P = 0.046). The SM-exposed group had significantly lower levels of MMP-9/TIMP-4 complex than the controls (P < 0.001). The SM-exposed group with tear meniscus and fundus abnormality had significantly higher MMP-9/TIMP-4 levels than the SM-exposed group without these problems (P = 0.009 and P = 0.020). Conclusion: Serum MMP-9 level had increased in SM-exposed groups with ocular problems, while TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 levels had remained unchanged. Serum TIMP-4 drastically decreased in SM-exposed group, which clearly explains the severity of the systemic and ocular damages