Relationship between metabolic syndrome and angiographic severity of coronary artery disease

BACKGROUND: There are a few literature data on the correlation between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and coronary disease among Iranian population. This study aimed to find relationship between MetS and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) in presence of diabetes. METHODS: Total of 192 patients were consecutively enrolled in the study who were admitted to coronary care unit because of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and then underwent coronary angiography. MetS was defined by Iranian criteria. A coronary atherosclerosis score was used to quantify the extent of atherosclerotic involvement. The relationship between MetS and angiographic coronary artery disease (CAD) severity or clinical presentation was compared between them after adjusting for diabetes. RESULTS: Individuals with MetS (n = 125) had a higher prevalence of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (71 vs 30, P < 0.001), multi-vessel disease (50 vs. 34, P = 0.003), decreased ejection fraction (P = 0.001) and more severe angiographic stenosis based on both modified Gensini (P = 0.081) and syntax (P = 0.008) scores, compared to those without MetS. Syntax score showed statistically significant difference between two groups before (P = 0.021) and after adjustment for diabetes (P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: MetS was related to the severity of CAD both clinically and by angiographic scores but diabetes was a challenging factor and may independently increase the severity of CAD. © 2016,.Isfahan University of Medical Sciences(IUMS). All rights reserved

An Investigation of the Application of Servqual in the Enhancement of Service Quality Among International Post- Graduate Students: Comparing Indonesia with Malaysia

Universities strive to deliver high-quality service throughout its educational curriculum and its administrative process. In order to do so, universities must view students as their primary clients and seek to maximize their satisfaction with the level of university offered.Using SERVQUAL model, this research has an objective to investigate the performance of services delivered by universities to the International post-graduate students Indonesia. As part of joint research commitment with Malaysian scholars, findings of this research will be compared with their findings.This research uses paired T-test sample and regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Students did not too satisfy with the performance of non-faculty staff but they were quite satisfied with general and faculty performances.However, universities still have to improve their performances in order to deliver service excellences to their students

Relationship between metabolic syndrome and angiographic severity of coronary artery disease

BACKGROUND: There are a few literature data on the correlation between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and coronary disease among Iranian population. This study aimed to find relationship between MetS and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) in presence of diabetes. METHODS: Total of 192 patients were consecutively enrolled in the study who were admitted to coronary care unit because of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and then underwent coronary angiography. MetS was defined by Iranian criteria. A coronary atherosclerosis score was used to quantify the extent of atherosclerotic involvement. The relationship between MetS and angiographic coronary artery disease (CAD) severity or clinical presentation was compared between them after adjusting for diabetes. RESULTS: Individuals with MetS (n = 125) had a higher prevalence of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (71 vs 30, P < 0.001), multi-vessel disease (50 vs. 34, P = 0.003), decreased ejection fraction (P = 0.001) and more severe angiographic stenosis based on both modified Gensini (P = 0.081) and syntax (P = 0.008) scores, compared to those without MetS. Syntax score showed statistically significant difference between two groups before (P = 0.021) and after adjustment for diabetes (P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: MetS was related to the severity of CAD both clinically and by angiographic scores but diabetes was a challenging factor and may independently increase the severity of CAD. © 2016,.Isfahan University of Medical Sciences(IUMS). All rights reserved

Approaches in biotechnological applications of natural polymers

Natural polymers, such as gums and mucilage, are biocompatible, cheap, easily available and non-toxic materials of native origin. These polymers are increasingly preferred over synthetic materials for industrial applications due to their intrinsic properties, as well as they are considered alternative sources of raw materials since they present characteristics of sustainability, biodegradability and biosafety. As definition, gums and mucilages are polysaccharides or complex carbohydrates consisting of one or more monosaccharides or their derivatives linked in bewildering variety of linkages and structures. Natural gums are considered polysaccharides naturally occurring in varieties of plant seeds and exudates, tree or shrub exudates, seaweed extracts, fungi, bacteria, and animal sources. Water-soluble gums, also known as hydrocolloids, are considered exudates and are pathological products; therefore, they do not form a part of cell wall. On the other hand, mucilages are part of cell and physiological products. It is important to highlight that gums represent the largest amounts of polymer materials derived from plants. Gums have enormously large and broad applications in both food and non-food industries, being commonly used as thickening, binding, emulsifying, suspending, stabilizing agents and matrices for drug release in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. In the food industry, their gelling properties and the ability to mold edible films and coatings are extensively studied. The use of gums depends on the intrinsic properties that they provide, often at costs below those of synthetic polymers. For upgrading the value of gums, they are being processed into various forms, including the most recent nanomaterials, for various biotechnological applications. Thus, the main natural polymers including galactomannans, cellulose, chitin, agar, carrageenan, alginate, cashew gum, pectin and starch, in addition to the current researches about them are reviewed in this article.. }To the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfíico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for fellowships (LCBBC and MGCC) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nvíel Superior (CAPES) (PBSA). This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit, the Project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462) and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) (JAT)

Parameter Identification and Investigating the Effect of Higher-order Inertia in a Gradient Elasticity Model of Metamaterials in Dynamic Loading

In metamaterials with a complex microstructure, the role of higher-gradient terms in the mechanical response is not negligible. Here, our goal is to identify the parameters of a homogenized model for a type of metamaterials known as pantographic structures. For the description of the pantographic structure, we employ a 2D non-linear second-gradient model which considers the complex structure as a homogenized plate [1]. The parameters of the model are identified for the corresponding structure through an automatized optimization algorithm [2]. We validate the identified parameters for the dynamic regime by comparing displacement plots with experiments [3]. Experimental results are obtained by applying forced oscillations to pantographic specimens made by 3D-printing technology. Qualitative and quantitative analyses for different frequency ranges show a good agreement far away from the eigenfrequencies while discrepancies are present close to the eigenfrequencies. To investigate the effect of microinertia, we include higher-order inertia in the model. As a result, the computations moved favorably toward predicting the mechanical behavior close to the eigenfrequencies. However, the experimental characterization of higher-order inertial terms that exist in theories is not yet understood, therefore there is no clear methodology for determining their values up to now. Further studies in this direction are encouraged

Developing an automatized optimization problem in FEniCS for parameter determination of metamaterials

In this work, a novel automatized optimization process is developed for the inverse analysis and pa- rameter determination of metamaterials. Metamaterials are the family of materials designed to have tai- lored material properties, such as high strength-to-weight ratio or extreme elasticity, by using an opti- mized topology. Due to metamaterials’ inner substructure, it is of interest to simulate their mechanical behaviour using reduced-order modelling utilizing the generalized mechanics. We determine the con- stitutive parameters of such models by developing an automatized optimization process in FEniCS. This process utilizes the Trust Region Reflective optimization method, from Scipy, for minimizing the deviation of the continuum model from a detailed micro-scale model. The parameter identification procedure proves to be robust and reliable by testing it for the pantographic structures as an example of metamaterials