Biodiesel Production Potential from Native Tehran Oil Crops Using GIS

One of the main factors in the alternative fuel economy is the primary raw materials. Importing raw materials and preparation conditions for cultivation of non-native species require high expenditure. Therefore, using native species can greatly reduce production costs. Therefore in this paper, this is for the first time a comprehensive study indigenous oil plant of Tehran province and their suitable growth conditions is presented. Then three species non-edible rapeseed, cotton and barley were selected due to their feasibility of producing biodiesel. The purpose of this study is therefore to propel relevant policies in the country towards greater use of domestic raw materials and known potentials. Therefore, the potential for biodiesel production from plant sources, in this region was studied using GIS software. The present paper describes the zoning map and identifies the potential map of producing biodiesel from indigenous plant sources in Tehran province. According to the map, concentration of biodiesel production is in the central and western cities of province. This map shows that 116806.8665 hectare of land with the greatest potential to produce biodiesel. Also the potential of biodiesel production from introduced species, considering the yield per hectare and their oil content, was calculated. The results show that the potential of biodiesel production for the three species of rapeseed, cotton and barley are respectively 98117.77, 58403.43, 83516.91 tons in Tehran province. Non-edible rapeseed with the highest production potential has been introduced as a superior indigenous species for the future investments in biodiesel production in Tehran provinc

Health promoting Behaviors Among Adolescents: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: Health maintenance and promotion are the fundamental prerequisites to community development. The best time for establishing healthy lifestyle habits is during adolescence. Objectives: Due to importance of health promotion behaviors in adolescents, this study was conducted to investigate health-promoting behaviors and its associated factors among high school students in Rasht, Iran. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 424 students during the first semester of the year 2012. We employed the multistage sampling design to recruit from private and public high schools in Rasht, Iran. The data collection instrument was a self-report questionnaire consisting of two parts. The first part of instrument was consisted of demographic questionnaire and the second part was adolescent health promotion scale (AHPS) questionnaire. AHPS questionnaire was consisted of six dimensions (nutrition, social support, health responsibility, life appreciation, physical activity, and stress management) to measure health promoting lifestyles. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS 16 software employing ANOVA (analysis of variance) test, t-test, Mann-Whitney, and the Kruskal-Wallis. Results: The score of total Adolescent Health Promotion Scale were 3.58 ± 0.52 (possible range was 1-5). The highest score was in life appreciation dimension (3.99 ± 0.068) and the lowest score was in health responsibility dimension. Moreover, Significant associations were found between the adolescent health promotion Scale with age (P < 0.001), gender (P < 0.003), school grade (P < 0.011), father’s educational level (P < 0.045), mother’s educational level (P < 0.021), and mother’s occupation (P < 0.008). Conclusions: Female and older students are at higher risk of developing unhealthy lifestyle. Consequently, healthcare providers, health instructors, schoolteachers, and families must pay more attention to these students. Moreover, as most of lifelong healthy and unhealthy lifestyle habits are established during adolescence, developing effective health promotion and disease prevention strategies for adolescents seems crucial

Skin Lesion Segmentation Method for Dermoscopy Images Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

The occurrence rates of melanoma are rising rapidly, which are resulting in higher death rates. However, if the melanoma is diagnosed in Phase I, the survival rates increase. The segmentation of the melanoma is one of the largest tasks to undertake and achieve when considering both beneath and over the segmentation. In this work, a new approach based on the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is proposed for the detection of melanoma from digital images. This method is simple, fast, flexible, and requires fewer parameters compared with other algorithms. The proposed approach is applied on the PH2, ISBI 2016 challenge, the ISBI 2017 challenge, and Dermis datasets. These bases contained images are affected by different abnormalities. The formation of the databases consists of images collected from different sources; they are bases with different types of resolution, lighting, etc., so in the first step, the noise was removed from the images by using morphological filtering. In the next step, the ABC algorithm is used to find the optimum threshold value for the melanoma detection. The proposed approach achieved good results in the conditions of high specificity. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method accomplished higher performance compared to the ground truth images supported by a Dermatologist. For the melanoma detection, the method achieved an average accuracy and Jaccard&rsquo;s coefficient in the range of 95.24&ndash;97.61%, and 83.56&ndash;85.25% in these four databases. To show the robustness of this work, the results were compared to existing methods in the literature for melanoma detection. High values for estimation performance confirmed that the proposed melanoma detection is better than other algorithms, which demonstrates the highly differential power of the newly introduced features

A suite of automated tools to quantify hand and wrist motor function after cervical spinal cord injury

Abstract Background Cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI) often causes chronic upper extremity disability. Reliable measurement of arm function is critical for development of therapies to improve recovery after cSCI. In this study, we report a suite of automated rehabilitative tools to allow simple, quantitative assessment of hand and wrist motor function. Methods We measured range of motion and force production using these devices in cSCI participants with a range of upper limb disability and in neurologically intact participants at two time points separated by approximately 4 months. Additionally, we determined whether measures collected with the rehabilitative tools correlated with standard upper limb assessments, including the Graded Redefined Assessment of Strength, Sensibility, and Prehension (GRASSP) and the Jebsen Hand Function Test (JHFT). Results We find that the rehabilitative devices are useful to provide assessment of upper limb function in physical units over time in SCI participants and are well-correlated with standard assessments. Conclusions These results indicate that these tools represent a reliable system for longitudinal evaluation of upper extremity function after cSCI and may provide a framework to assess the efficacy of strategies aimed at improving recovery of upper limb function