Sensor Technology for Opening New Pathways in Diagnosis and Therapeutics of Breast, Lung, Colorectal and Prostate Cancer

This study analyzes the interaction between sensor research and technology and different types of cancer (breast, lung, colorectal, and prostate) with the goal of detecting new directions for improving diagnosis and therapeutics in medicine. This study develops an approach to computational scientometrics based on data from the Web of Science from the 1991 to 2021 period. The results of this analysis show the vital role of biosensors and electrochemical biosensors applied in breast cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer research. Instead, scientific research of optical sensors is developing main technological trajectories in breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer for improving diagnostics. Finally, oxygen sensor research has a main technological development in breast and lung cancer for new applications in breath analysis directed to treatment processes. Preliminary results presented here clearly illustrate the evolutionary paths of sensor research and technologies that have great potential for developing incremental and radical innovations in cancer diagnosis and therapies. These conclusions are, of course, tentative. There is a need for much more detailed research based on other aspects and factors for detecting stable technological trajectories that can foster the technology transfer of new sensor in cancer research for improving diagnosis and therapeutics, reducing, whenever possible, world-wide mortality of cancer in society.JEL Classification: I10, O30, O31, O32; O33. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2022-03-03-010 Full Text: PD

Size Reduction and Harmonics Suppression in Microwave Power Dividers: A Comprehensive Review

In this paper, several types of microstrip power divider are studied and compared in terms of harmonics suppression and size reductions. The importance of this research lies in the fact that power dividers are critical components in various communication systems, and their performance directly affects the overall system efficiency. The conventional structure of the power divider has an acceptable performance at operating frequency in terms of excellent output ports isolation, low insertion loss, and high return loss, but occupies large size and passes unwanted signals at higher frequencies along with desired signal without any suppression. Harmonics are popular distortion and has different distortion impacts in many different facilities. Recently, several techniques are introduced to overcome these drawbacks. Applied open stubs, applied resonators, lumped reactive components such as capacitors and inductors, coupled lines, defected ground structure (DGS), and electronic band gaps are common methods, which are widely used to overcome these drawbacks. Finally, the study results show that the resonator-based power dividers and coupled-line-based power dividers have good performances in terms of size reduction and harmonic suppression but increase insertion loss parameter. Furthermore, the lumped reactive component-based power dividers and applied DGS and electromagnetic bandgap cells suppress unwanted harmonics, but they need extra process to fabrication, which is undesirable. Moreover, the open-stub-based power dividers have moderate performance with simple structure, but size reduction and harmonics suppression are not so superior in this method

Design of a compact planar transmission line for miniaturized rat-race coupler with harmonics suppression

This paper presents an elegant yet straightforward design procedure for a compact rat-race coupler (RRC) with an extended harmonic suppression. The coupler’s conventional λ /4 transmission lines (TLs) are replaced by a specialized TL that offers significant size reduction and harmonic elimination capabilities in the proposed approach. The design procedure is verified through the theoretical, circuit, and electromagnetic (EM) analyses, showing excellent agreement among different analyses and the measured results. The circuit and EM results show that the proposed TL replicates the same frequency behaviour of the conventional one at the design frequency of 1.8 GHz while enables harmonic suppression up to the 7th harmonic and a size reduction of 74%. According to the measured results, the RRC has a fractional bandwidth of 20%, with input insertion losses of around 0.2 dB and isolation level better than 35 dB. Furthermore, the total footprint of the proposed RRC is only 31.7 mm ×15.9 mm, corresponding to 0.28λ×0.14λ , where λ is the guided wavelength at 1.8 GHz.This work was supported in part by the Icelandic Centre for Research (RANNIS) Grant 206606051, and in part by the National Science Centre of Poland Grant 2017/37/B/ST7/00563

The antibacterial activity of Iranian plants extracts against metallo beta-lactamase producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains

Metallo β-lactamases (MBLs) producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) isolates are becoming an escalating global threat. Among the antibiotics used to treat infections associated with P. aeruginosa, resistance to carbapenem is a serious therapeutic challenge. The aim of the present study was to detect MBL-producing P. aeruginosa and to evaluate the extracts of Urtica. dioica, Carum. copticum, and Zataria multiflora on these clinical pathogens. The study was performed on hospitalized burn patients during 2014. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was tested by broth micro dilution and disc diffusion methods. The MBLs were detected using combination disk diffusion test (CDDT) phenotypically. Then, PCR and sequencing methods were carried out to detect the MBL encoding genes. Among 83 imipenem resistant P. aeruginosa strains, 48 (57.9%) isolates were MBL-producing P. aeruginosa. PCR and sequencing methods confirmed that these strains were blaIMP-1positive genes, whereas none were positive for blaVIM genes. Hospitalized burn patients with MBL-producing P.aeruginosa infection had 4/48 (8.3%) mortality rate. It was demonstrated that C. copticum, U. dioica, and Z. multiflora extracts had significant antibacterial effects on regular and IMP-producing P. aeruginosa strains. The prevalence of MBL-producing P .aeruginosa isolates in burn patients is very high. In this study, all MBL-producing strains encode the blaIMP-1gene. Therefore, detection of MBL-producing strains has major importance in identifying drug resistance patterns in P. aeruginosa and in controlling of infections. In the current study, the extracts from C. copticum, U. dioica, and Z. multiflora had high antibacterial effects against β-lactamase producing P. aeruginosa isolates.

Artificial Intelligence and COVID-19: Deep Learning Approaches for Diagnosis and Treatment

COVID-19 outbreak has put the whole world in an unprecedented difficult situation bringing life around the world to a frightening halt and claiming thousands of lives. Due to COVID-19’s spread in 212 countries and territories and increasing numbers of infected cases and death tolls mounting to 5,212,172 and 334,915 (as of May 22 2020), it remains a real threat to the public health system. This paper renders a response to combat the virus through Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some Deep Learning (DL) methods have been illustrated to reach this goal, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Extreme Learning Machine (ELM), and Long/Short Term Memory (LSTM). It delineates an integrated bioinformatics approach in which different aspects of information from a continuum of structured and unstructured data sources are put together to form the user-friendly platforms for physicians and researchers. The main advantage of these AI-based platforms is to accelerate the process of diagnosis and treatment of the COVID-19 disease. The most recent related publications and medical reports were investigated with the purpose of choosing inputs and targets of the network that could facilitate reaching a reliable Artificial Neural Network-based tool for challenges associated with COVID-19. Furthermore, there are some specific inputs for each platform, including various forms of the data, such as clinical data and medical imaging which can improve the performance of the introduced approaches toward the best responses in practical applications

Inhibition of MicroRNA miR-222 with LNA Inhibitor Can Reduce Cell Proliferation in B Chronic Lymphoblastic Leukemia

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small regulatory molecules that negatively regulate gene expression by base-pairing with their target mRNAs. miRNAs have contribute significantly to cancer biology and recent studies have demonstrated the oncogenic or tumor-suppressing role in cancer cells. In many tumors up-regulation miRNAs has been reported especially miR-222 has been shown to be up-regulated in B chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL). In this study we assessed the effected inhibition of miR-222 in cell viability of B-CLL. We performed inhibition of mir-222 in B-CLL cell line (183-E95) using locked nucleic acid (LNA) antagomir. At different time points after LNA-anti-mir-222 transfection, miR-222 quantitation and cell viability were assessed by qRT-real time polymerase chain reaction and MTT assays. The data were analyzed by independent t test and one way ANOVA. Down-regulation of miR-222 in B-CLL cell line (183-E95) with LNA antagomir decreased cell viability in B-CLL. Cell viability gradually decreased over time as the viability of LNA-anti-mir transfected cells was <47 % of untreated cells at 72 h post-transfection. The difference in cell viability between LNA-anti-miR and control groups was statistically significant (p < 0.042). Based on our findings, the inhibition of miR-222 speculate represent a potential novel therapeutic approach for treatment of B-CLL

Mapping 123 million neonatal, infant and child deaths between 2000 and 2017

Since 2000, many countries have achieved considerable success in improving child survival, but localized progress remains unclear. To inform efforts towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.2—to end preventable child deaths by 2030—we need consistently estimated data at the subnational level regarding child mortality rates and trends. Here we quantified, for the period 2000–2017, the subnational variation in mortality rates and number of deaths of neonates, infants and children under 5 years of age within 99 low- and middle-income countries using a geostatistical survival model. We estimated that 32% of children under 5 in these countries lived in districts that had attained rates of 25 or fewer child deaths per 1,000 live births by 2017, and that 58% of child deaths between 2000 and 2017 in these countries could have been averted in the absence of geographical inequality. This study enables the identification of high-mortality clusters, patterns of progress and geographical inequalities to inform appropriate investments and implementations that will help to improve the health of all populations

Design of a Modified Compact Coupler with Unwanted Harmonics Suppression for L-Band Applications

This paper presents the design, analysis, and fabrication of a new miniaturized microstrip branch line coupler (BLC) with high harmonics suppression. The T-shaped resonators, open stubs cross-shaped resonators and radial stubs are used in the proposed coupler design. The designed BLC operates at 1 GHz frequency, which can suppress up to 5th spurious harmonics with a 20 dB level of attenuation. High miniaturization of about 86% is obtained for the proposed BLC, which is corresponding to the normalized size of 0.009 &lambda;g2. The measured values of isolation and return loss are obtained 28 dB and 29 dB, respectively, while the measured insertion loss of better than 0.2 dB is achieved at the operating frequency. Additionally, the operating bandwidth of the designed coupler ranges from 0.905 GHz up to 1.105 GHz, which shows a 200 MHz operating bandwidth or a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 20%. The presented BLC is fabricated and measured, where the measurements confirm the simulated results. The designed coupler shows desirable performance compared to the recent designed couplers

A Novel Method for Ion Track Counting in Polycarbonate Detector

A computer program for recognizing and counting the track of ions that are detected with polycarbonate detector has been written using MATLAB software. There are different programs for counting the track of ions in different detectors. Algorithm of this program specially has been written for polycarbonate detector and also for low magnification of optical microscope. Thus, with this method as per image of optical microscope, greater numbers of ions are visible and general distribution of ions can be better known. However, the accuracy of counting program is very high

Relationship between Communication Skills in Headnurses and Self-Efficacy in nurses in the Educational Hospitals of Sanandaj

Abstract Background: Providing convenience and comfort for patients is a nursing duty which is affected by different stressors. Therefore, Lack of attention to the communication skills of head nurses can cause increased stress in the workplace and has an adverse effect on the self-efficiency of nurses. This study aimed to determine the relationship between communication skills of head nurses and self-efficacy of nurses in the educational hospitals of Sanandaj. Methods: This Analytical Cross Sectional study was conducted in 2015 on 51 head nurses and 153 nurses in different wards of Sanandaj teaching hospitals (Besat, Tohid and Qods hospitals). Samples were selected through census for headnurses and random for nurses. Queendom Communication Skills Inventory and Sherer's self-efficacy questionnaire were used to collect the data. Finally, collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 22 by descriptive statistics and appropriate tests like independent t-test, one way ANOVA, Tukey test, and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Most head nurses were women, aged 30 to 54 years. They were married and had a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Communication skills, including the ability to receive and send messages, emotional control, listening, insight into the communication process in studied head nurses were higher than the average value (average value=3) and communication skills combined with the certainty which was less than the average value. There was no significant relationship between age, sex, education level, work experience, and communication skills of head nurses. Conclusion: There was a statistically significant relationship between communication skills of head nurses and self-efficacy of nurses. Therefore, the self-efficacy of nurses increased with the increasing communication skills of head nurses in the clinical activities. It led to job satisfaction and motivate the nurses to work in their current duty station and prevented job quitting. Keywords: communication skills, supervisor, nurse, educational hospita