An investigation into the relationship between parents’ attitudes towards gender roles and the social isolation of female adolescents

Background and aims: This study investigated the relationship between parents’ attitudes toward gender roles and the social isolation of female adolescents in Iran in 2021. Methods: This descriptive study of a correlational type and its statistical population included all female adolescents studying in secondary schools in the city of Isfahan in 2021, out of whom 133 were selected by convenience sampling. They answered the following questionnaires: the Homami et al Questionnaire on Attitudes toward Gender Roles in Family Life and the Modarresi Yazdi et al Social Isolation Questionnaire. Research data were analyzed through the independent t test, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), the Kruskal-Wallis test, and the Spearman correlation coefficient using SPSS-12 software. Results: An analysis of the present data showed that the mean score of social isolation was significantly lower in students whose parents had a justice-seeking attitude in the domain of parental roles than in students whose parents had a feminist attitude in this domain (P=0.005, t=-2.876). The mean scores of social isolation in the dimensions: of loneliness (P=0.040, t=-2.073) and social despair (P=0.036, t=-2.124) were also significantly lower in students whose parents had a justice-seeking attitude in the domain of parental roles than in students whose parents had a feminist attitude in this domain. The mean score of social isolation was significantly higher in students whose parents had a feminist attitude in the domain of general marital roles than in students whose parents had a justice-seeking or masculinist attitude. The mean score of loneliness was significantly higher in students whose parents had a feminist attitude in this domain than in students whose parents had a justice-seeking attitude. But no significant difference was observed between students whose parents had a feminist attitude and those with a masculinist attitude. Conclusion: Parents’ attitudes and behavior in gender behaviors are essential factors in mental health, especially social isolation in female adolescents. When parents’ attitudes towards their children’s gender roles are justice-seeking; they can better communicate with their children, so their children feel less lonely and socially isolated

The cancer angiogenesis co-culture assay:In vitro quantification of the angiogenic potential of tumoroids

The treatment response to anti-angiogenic agents varies among cancer patients and predictive biomarkers are needed to identify patients with resistant cancer or guide the choice of anti-angiogenic treatment. We present “the Cancer Angiogenesis Co-Culture (CACC) assay”, an in vitro Functional Precision Medicine assay which enables the study of tumouroid induced angiogenesis. This assay can quantify the ability of a patient-derived tumouroid to induce vascularization by measuring the induction of tube formation in a co-culture of vascular cells and tumoroids established from the primary colorectal tumour or a metastasis. Furthermore, the assay can quantify the sensitivity of patient-derived tumoroids to anti-angiogenic therapies. We observed that tube formation increased in a dose-dependent manner upon treatment with the pro-angiogenic factor vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A). When investigating the angiogenic potential of tumoroids from 12 patients we found that 9 tumoroid cultures induced a significant increase in tube formation compared to controls without tumoroids. In these 9 angiogenic tumoroid cultures the tube formation could be abolished by treatment with one or more of the investigated anti-angiogenic agents. The 3 non-angiogenic tumoroid cultures secreted VEGF-A but we observed no correlation between the amount of tube formation and tumoroid-secreted VEGF-A. Our data suggests that the CACC assay recapitulates the complexity of tumour angiogenesis, and when clinically verified, could prove a valuable tool to quantify sensitivity towards different anti-angiogenic agents

Increased bactericidal activity of colistin on <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa </i>biofilms in anaerobic conditions

Tolerance towards antibiotics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms is recognized as a major cause of therapeutic failure of chronic lung infection in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. This lung infection is characterized by antibiotic-tolerant biofilms in mucus with zones of O(2) depletion mainly due to polymorphonuclear leukocytic activity. In contrast to the main types of bactericidal antibiotics, it has not been possible to establish an association between the bactericidal effects of colistin and the production of detectable levels of OH ˙ on several strains of planktonic P. aeruginosa. Therefore, we propose that production of OH ˙ may not contribute significantly to the bactericidal activity of colistin on P. aeruginosa biofilm. Thus, we investigated the effect of colistin treatment on biofilm of wild-type PAO1, a catalase-deficient mutant (ΔkatA) and a colistin-resistant CF isolate cultured in microtiter plates in normoxic- or anoxic atmosphere with 1 mM nitrate. The killing of bacteria during colistin treatment was measured by CFU counts, and the OH⋅ formation was measured by 3(′)-(p-hydroxylphenyl fluorescein) fluorescein (HPF) fluorescence. Validation of the assay was done by hydrogen peroxide treatment. OH⋅ formation was undetectable in aerobic PAO1 biofilms during 3 h of colistin treatment. Interestingly, we demonstrate increased susceptibility of P. aeruginosa biofilms towards colistin during anaerobic conditions. In fact, the maximum enhancement of killing by anaerobic conditions exceeded 2 logs using 4 mg L(−1) of colistin compared to killing at aerobic conditions

Method development for determination of migrated phthalate acid esters from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging into traditional Iranian drinking beverage (Doogh) samples: a novel approach of MSPE-GC/MS technique

In the current study, a novel magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) technique combined with a gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) was developed to determine the phthalate ester content of bottled Doogh samples. Doogh is a yogurtbased drinking beverage, which is frequently consumed in Middle East and Balkans. It is produced by stirring yogurt in Chern separation machine and consists of substances such as water, yogurt, and salt in addition to aqueous extracts of native herbs. The magnetic multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT-Fe3O4) were used as adsorbents of phthalate acid esters (PAEs) due to a superior adsorption capability of hydrophobic compounds. In this context, the quantity of the extractable migrated phthalate esters (dibutyl phthalate (DBP), dimethyl phthalate (DMP), butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP), diethyl phthalate (DEP), di-N-octyl phthalate (DNOP), and bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP)) from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles into Doogh samples was measured. The correlation between the concentration of migrated PAEs and some factors such as the type of Doogh (gaseous and without gas), difference in brand (five brands), volume (1500 and 300 mL), and the storage time also was investigated. The migration level into Doogh samples was increased by incorporating of gas as well as increasing the volume of PET bottles. Also, with elaborating of storage time, the migration of some phthalates such as DEHP (the mean from 2419.85 ng L−1 in the first week to 2716.15 ng L−1 in the second month), DEP, and total phthalate was increased. However, no significant difference in concentrations of migrated phthalate esters among different examined brands was noted. Finally, the concentration of migrated PAEs from bottle into all the examined Doogh samples was below the defined standards by EPA; 6 μg/L for DEHP in drinking water

The effect of essential oil of Anethum graveolens L. seed and gallic acid (free and nano forms) on microbial, chemical and sensory characteristics in minced meat during storage at 4 °C

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of gallic acid (GA) and essential oil (EO) of Anethum graveolens L. seed (forms of nanoliposome and free) on bacteriological, chemical and sensory properties of minced meat during storage. In this research, Escherichia coli (gram negative) and Staphylococcus aureus (gram positive) were used to examine the effect of these compounds on meat. The particle sizes (z-average diameter) of prepared nanoliposomes of EO and GA were in the range of 141 to 165 nm and 146–160 nm, respectively and the efficiency of encapsulation (EE %) in the current research was 51.76–69.8% in nano EO (NEO) and 53.23–67.07% in nano gallic acid (N-GA). Also, the outcomes indicated the treatment containing nano-liposomes had a better antimicrobial effect in both of bacteria. In present study, the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of GA, N-GA, EO and NEO for S. aureus was 0.62 ± 0.01, 0.62 ± 0.02, 0.62 ± 0.01 and 0.62 ± 0.01 mg/mL, respectively, and for E. coli was 0.62 ± 0.01, 0.62 ± 0.01, 1.25 ± 0.1 and 1.25 ± 0.1 mg/mL, respectively. Also, the results showed MBC (The Minimum Bactericidal Concentration) of GA, N-GA, EO and NEO for S. aureus was 0.62 ± 0.02, 0.62 ± 0.03, 1.25 ± 0.1 and 1.25 ± 0.1 mg/mL, respectively, and for E. coli was0.62 ± 0.01, 1.25 ± 0.1, 2.5 ± 0.2, 2.5 ± 0.2 mg/mL, respectively. The highest and lowest of 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging were detected, in the Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) 200 and EO1%, respectively. Furthermore, after 18 day, minimum pH and Total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) value were related to the N-GA2% on S. aureus with pH = 6.5 and NEO group (27 mg N/100 g), respectively. Finally, the treatment of NEO showed a higher acceptance score of sensory evaluation after 18 days. According to the outcomes of current investigation, the use of nanocapsulated EO and GA are effective (as a coating for food storage) and can increase the shelf life of minced meat

Plug-and-play CNN for crowd motion analysis: An application in abnormal event detection

Most of the crowd abnormal event detection methods rely on complex hand-crafted features to represent the crowd motion and appearance. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have shown to be a powerful instrument with excellent representational capacities, which can leverage the need for hand-crafted features. In this paper, we show that keeping track of the changes in the CNN feature across time can be used to effectively detect local anomalies. Specifically, we propose to measure local abnormality by combining semantic information (inherited from existing CNN models) with low-level optical-flow. One of the advantages of this method is that it can be used without the fine-tuning phase. The proposed method is validated on challenging abnormality detection datasets and the results show the superiority of our approach compared with the state-of-the art methods