Saliva Secretion and Efficacy of Helicobacter Pylori Eradication in Peptic Ulcer Patients

Objective: It has been noted that the presence of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)in the oral cavity may affect the outcome of eradication therapy. This condition is associated with the recurrence of gastric infection. The optimum secretion of salivapromotes oral health consequently influencing H. pylori eradication. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between salivary secretion and the efficacy of H. pylori eradication from the stomach.Materials and Methods: Forty five patients with gastric H. pylori infection were enrolled in this study. Diagnosis of H. pylori infection was confirmed by endoscopy,biopsy, urease test and histological examination. Salivary secretion of all participants was determined under standard condition before the beginning of antibacterial treatment. Then the patients were treated with a 14-day course anti-H. pylori regimen consisting of amoxicillin, omeprazole, metronidazole and bismuth. The efficacy of eradication therapy was evaluated 4 weeks after the end of the treatment course. Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the variables.Results: The median of salivary secretion among successful and unsuccessful H. pylori eradication groups was 0.48 ml/min and 0.24 ml/min, respectively (p=0.005).Conclusion: Although the type of drug regimens is challenging, the efficacy of H. pylori eradication from the stomach might be reduced by lower salivary secretion

Thermodynamic and Heat Transfer Evaluation of Pocket Drying Section in the Multi-Cylinder Dryers of Paper Machine

In this study a developed model has been used t

A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE PERTURBED-CHAIN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATING FLUID THEORY EQUATION OF STATE AND MACHINE LEARNING MODELING APPROACHES IN ASPHALTENE ONSET PRESSURE AND BUBBLE POINT PRESSURE PREDICTION DURING GAS INJECTION

Predicting asphaltene onset pressure (AOP) and bubble point pressure (Pb) is essential for optimization of gas injection for enhanced oil recovery. Pressure-Volume-Temperature or PVT studies along with equations of state (EoSs) are widely used to predict AOP and Pb. However, PVT experiments are costly and time-consuming. The perturbed-chain statistical associating fluid theory or PC-SAFT is a sophisticated EoS used for prediction of the AOP and Pb. However, this method is computationally complex and has high data requirements. Hence, developing precise and reliable smart models for prediction of the AOP and Pb is inevitable. In this paper, we used machine learning (ML) methods to develop predictive tools for the estimation of the AOP and Pb using experimental data (AOP data set: 170 samples; Pb data set: 146 samples). Extra trees (ET), support vector machine (SVM), decision tree, and k-nearest neighbors ML methods were used. Reservoir temperature, reservoir pressure, SARA fraction, API gravity, gas−oil ratio, fluid molecular weight, monophasic composition, and composition of gas injection are considered as input data. The ET (R2: 0.793, RMSE: 7.5) and the SVM models (R2: 0.988, RMSE: 0.76) attained more reliable results for estimation of the AOP and Pb, respectively. Generally, the accuracy of the PC-SAFT model is higher than that of the AI/ML models. However, our results confirm that the AI/ML approach is an acceptable alternative for the PC-SAFT model when we face lack of data and/or complex mathematical equations. The developed smart models are accurate and fast and produce reliable results with lower data requirements

Concurrent Learning Approach for Estimation of Pelvic Tilt from Anterior–Posterior Radiograph

Data Availability Statement: Dataset available on request from the authors.Accurate and reliable estimation of the pelvic tilt is one of the essential pre-planning factors for total hip arthroplasty to prevent common post-operative complications such as implant impingement and dislocation. Inspired by the latest advances in deep learning-based systems, our focus in this paper has been to present an innovative and accurate method for estimating the functional pelvic tilt (PT) from a standing anterior–posterior (AP) radiography image. We introduce an encoder–decoder-style network based on a concurrent learning approach called VGG-UNET (VGG embedded in U-NET), where a deep fully convolutional network known as VGG is embedded at the encoder part of an image segmentation network, i.e., U-NET. In the bottleneck of the VGG-UNET, in addition to the decoder path, we use another path utilizing light-weight convolutional and fully connected layers to combine all extracted feature maps from the final convolution layer of VGG and thus regress PT. In the test phase, we exclude the decoder path and consider only a single target task i.e., PT estimation. The absolute errors obtained using VGG-UNET, VGG, and Mask R-CNN are 3.04 ± 2.49, 3.92 ± 2.92, and 4.97 ± 3.87, respectively. It is observed that the VGG-UNET leads to a more accurate prediction with a lower standard deviation (STD). Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed multi-task network leads to a significantly improved performance compared to the best-reported results based on cascaded networks.This research received no external funding

Cage culture of tilapia in some water resources (farm and agriculture ponds) of Bafq, Iran

Tilapia is the second cultured fish in the world. Up to 135 countries produces tilapia. Intensive culture systems of tilapia such as cage culture are recently developed because of limitations of water resources. In Iran, studies about tilapia were started in National Research Center of Saline Water Aquatics from November 2008 and some aspects of tilapia aquaculture and culture systems are surveyed. Investigation about cage culture of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus was performed in two culture periods of 2012 and 2014 in fresh and brackish water conditions of Iran for the first time. Stocking densities of fish in the cages were 25, 50, 75, 100, 125 and 150 fish/m^3. 100g fish stocked reached 272-331 g during 80 days in the first study. However, 50g fish stocked reached 329-450 g during 145 days in the second study. Results of cage culture of tilapia in fresh and brackish water conditions showed ranges of FCR: 1.56-3.72 and 1.08-1.87, DGR: 1.63-2.91 and 2.14-2.92 g/day, SGR: 0.63-1.12 and 1.29-1.54, production: 5.98-38 and 7.17-41.6 kg/m^3, respectively. Stocking densities 75-125 fish/ m^3 were appropriate especially in fish reared in brackish water cages

Study on the prevalence and intensity of three parasites in sturgeon fingerlings cultured in earthen ponds

In 2001, we studied 2600 sturgeon fingerlings including: 2242 Acipenser persicus, 150 Acipenser stellatus, 150 Acipenser nudiventris and 58 Huso huso from Shahid Beheshti and Yousefpour hatcheries for parasitic infection. We found three parasites including Diplostomum spathaceum, Trichodina sp. and Gyrodactylus sp infesting the fish. The prevalence and average intensity of Diplostomum spathaceum was 5.49% and 1.66 for Acipenser persicus, 0.66% and I for Acipenser stellatus and, 22.41% and 5.38, for Huso huso fingerlings respectively. No Diplostomum infection was observed in Acipenser nudiventris. The prevalence and average infection intensity of Trichodina sp. was 45.05% and 76.14 for Acipenser persicus, 44% and 51.36 for Acipenser stellatus, 36% and 63.51 for Acipenser nudiventris, and 32.76% and 34.73 for Huso huso fingerlings, respectively. Totally, the prevalence of Gyrodactylus sp. was 0.46% in the two hatcheries. The prevalence of infection with Gyrodactylus sp. was 0.36% in Acipenser persicus and 2.66% in Acipenser stellatus

Using Data-mining Techniques for the prediction of the severity of road crashes in Cartagena, Colombia

Objective: Analyze the road crashes in Cartagena (Colombia) and the factors associated with the collision and severity. The aim is to establish a set of rules for defining countermeasures to improve road safety. Methods: Data mining and machine learning techniques were used in 7894 traffic accidents from 2016 to 2017. The severity was determined between low (84%) and high (16%). Five classification algorithms to predict the accident severity were applied with WEKA Software (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis). Including Decision Tree (DT-J48), Rule Induction (PART), Support Vector Machines (SVMs), Naïve Bayes (NB), and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). The effectiveness of each algorithm was implemented using cross-validation with 10-fold. Decision rules were defined from the results of the different methods. Results: The methods applied are consistent and similar in the overall results of precision, accuracy, recall, and area under the ROC curve. Conclusions: 12 decision rules were defined based on the methods applied. The rules defined show motorcyclists, cyclists, including pedestrians, as the most vulnerable road users. Men and women motorcyclists between 20–39 years are prone in accidents with high severity. When a motorcycle or cyclist is not involved in the accident, the probable severity is low

Consensus Middle East and North Africa Registry on Inborn Errors of Immunity

Background: Inborn errors of immunity (IEIs) are a heterogeneous group of genetic defects of immunity, which cause high rates of morbidity and mortality mainly among children due to infectious and non-infectious complications. The IEI burden has been critically underestimated in countries from middle- and low-income regions and the majority of patients with IEI in these regions lack a molecular diagnosis. Methods: We analyzed the clinical, immunologic, and genetic data of IEI patients from 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The data was collected from national registries and diverse databases such as the Asian Pacific Society for Immunodeficiencies (APSID) registry, African Society for Immunodeficiencies (ASID) registry, Jeffrey Modell Foundation (JMF) registry, J Project centers, and International Consortium on Immune Deficiency (ICID) centers. Results: We identified 17,120 patients with IEI, among which females represented 39.4%. Parental consanguinity was present in 60.5% of cases and 27.3% of the patients were from families with a confirmed previous family history of IEI. The median age of patients at the onset of disease was 36 months and the median delay in diagnosis was 41 months. The rate of registered IEI patients ranges between 0.02 and 7.58 per 100,000 population, and the lowest rates were in countries with the highest rates of disability-adjusted life years (DALY) and death rates for children. Predominantly antibody deficiencies were the most frequent IEI entities diagnosed in 41.2% of the cohort. Among 5871 patients genetically evaluated, the diagnostic yield was 83% with the majority (65.2%) having autosomal recessive defects. The mortality rate was the highest in patients with non-syndromic combined immunodeficiency (51.7%, median age: 3.5 years) and particularly in patients with mutations in specific genes associated with this phenotype (RFXANK, RAG1, and IL2RG). Conclusions: This comprehensive registry highlights the importance of a detailed investigation of IEI patients in the MENA region. The high yield of genetic diagnosis of IEI in this region has important implications for prevention, prognosis, treatment, and resource allocation

Selective phosphodiesterase inhibitors: a promising target for cognition enhancement

# The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Rationale One of the major complaints most people face during aging is an impairment in cognitive functioning. This has a negative impact on the quality of daily life and is even more prominent in patients suffering from neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression. So far, the majority of cognition enhancers are generally targeting one particular neurotransmitter system. However, recently phosphodiesterases (PDEs) have gained increased attention as a potential new target for cognition enhancement. Inhibition of PDEs increases the intracellular availability of the second messengers cGMP and/or cAMP. Objective The aim of this review was to provide an overvie