Ubiquinone Ameliorates Hippocampus Injury Induced by Cerebral Ischemia/Reperfusion

Background: Apoplexy is known as a critical issue all over the world and certain parts of the brain are more sensitive to Ischemia/cerebral reperfusion such as the hippocampus. Coenzyme Q10 is a powerful anti-oxidant, which helps in cells membrane durability. Aim: This study attempts to find the effect of coenzyme Q10 on the change of hippocampal area texture after cerebral reperfusion/Ischemia.                                                                                                                                Methods: Twenty-four male Wistar rats were organized into 4 groups of six including control, Ischemia, vehicle and experimental groups, with 100 mg /Kg of coenzyme Q10. Coenzyme Q10 was given to the rats 5 days before and 3 days after Ischemia/reperfusion induction. Ischemia was done for 20 minutes by reciprocal blocking of carotid arteries. The rat’s brains were removed and stained by applying the chrysalis fast violet method. The number of viable cells of the hippocampal regions of all 4 groups was counted by Imaging-Pro-Plus software. Statistical analysis of the data was then accomplished by one-way ANOVA and Tukey's test. Results: Findings revealed that the number of viable cells in CA2 and CA3 area reduced following ischemia induction. Whereas, there was no notable change between the control and experimental groups in terms of cells numbers. Besides, there was no remarkable change between the control, experimental and ischemia groups in terms of the number of cells within CA4 area. Conclusion: The results support the use of coenzyme Q10 as a neurotrophic substance and as an adjunctive therapy in patients at risk for ischemic stroke

Sound Source Localization in Wide-Range Outdoor Environment Using Distributed Sensor Network

Sound source localization has always been one of the most challenging subjects in different fields of engineering, one of the most important of which being tracking of flying objects. This article focuses on sound source localization using fuzzy fusion and a beamforming method. It proposes a new fuzzy-based algorithm for localizing a sound source using distributed sensor nodes. Eight low-cost sensor nodes have been constructed in this study each of which consists of a microphone array to capture sound waves. Each node is able to record audio signals synchronously on an SD card to evaluate different algorithms offline. However, the sensor nodes are designed to be able to estimate the location of the sound source in real-time. In the proposed algorithm, every node estimates the direction of the sound source. Moreover, a calibration algorithm is used for extracting the orientation of sensor nodes to calibrate the estimated directions. The calibrated directions are fuzzified and then used for localizing the sound source by fuzzy fusion. An experiment was designed based on localizing a flying quadcopter as a moving sound source to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The flying trajectory was then estimated and compared with the target trajectory extracted from the GPS module mounted on the quadcopter. Comparing the estimated sound source with the target location, a mean distance error of ${6.03}{m}$ was achieved in a wide-range outdoor environment with the size of ${240}\times {160}\times {80} \,\,{m}^{{3}}$. The achieved mean distance error is reasonable regarding the mean precision of the GPS module. The practical results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in localizing a sound source in a wide-range outdoor environment

Bio-Inspired Evolutionary Model of Spiking Neural Networks in Ionic Liquid Space

One of the biggest struggles while working with artificial neural networks is being able to come up with models which closely match biological observations. Biological neural networks seem to capable of creating and pruning dendritic spines, leading to synapses being changed, which results in higher learning capability. The latter forms the basis of the present study in which a new ionic model for reservoir-like networks, consisting of spiking neurons, is introduced. High plasticity of this model makes learning possible with a fewer number of neurons. In order to study the effect of the applied stimulus in an ionic liquid space through time, a diffusion operator is used which somehow compensates for the separation between spatial and temporal coding in spiking neural networks and therefore, makes the mentioned model suitable for spatiotemporal patterns. Inspired by partial structural changes in the human brain over the years, the proposed model evolves during the learning process. The effect of topological evolution on the proposed model’s performance for some classification problems is studied in this paper. Several datasets have been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed model compared to the original LSM. Classification results via separation and accuracy values have shown that the proposed ionic liquid outperforms the original LSMPeer reviewe

Anti-Aging Effects of Some Selected Iranian Folk Medicinal Herbs-Biochemical Evidences

Objective(s): In the current study, the effects of selected folk medicinal herbs were evaluated in D-galactose-induced aging in male mice.   Materials and Methods: Male BALB/c mice were randomly divided into 12 groups composing sham, control, and treated groups. Aging was induced by administration of D-galactose (500 mg/kg/day for 6 weeks). A positive control group was assigned that received vitamin E (200 mg/kg/day). The extract of herbs was prepared, lyophilized, and used in this study. The herbs were administered by gavage for 4 weeks to D-galactose-aged animals at the selected doses (mg/kg/day) as follows: Zingiber officinale (250), Glycyrrhiza glabra (150), Rosmarinus officinalis (300), Peganum harmala (50), Aloe vera (150), Satureja hortensis (200), Teucrium scordium (200), Hypericum perforatum (135) and Silybum marianum (150). One group of animals was assigned as sham and not given D-galactose. Results: At the end of treatment, pro-inflammatory markers including tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interlukine-1β (IL-β), interlukine-6 (IL-6), NF-kappaB (NF-κb), total antioxidant power (TAP), thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) as lipid peroxidation (LPO) marker and male sex hormones i.e. testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEA-S) were measured in the blood.   Conclusion: These data for the first time indicate significant anti-aging potential of examined herbs. Results showed that D-galactose induces a significant oxidative stress and promotes proinflammatory cascade of aging while all herbs more or less recovered these changes. Among 9 herbal extracts, Silybum marianum showed the best effect in restoring aging changes