Application of Spatial Structures in Bridges Deck

Spatial structure is a truss-like, lightweight and rigid structure with a regular geometric form. Usually from these structures is used in covering of long-span roofs. But these structures due to the lightness, ease and expedite of implementation are a suitable replacement for bridge deck. However steel and concrete is commonly used to build bridge deck, but heavy weight of steel and concrete decks and impossibility of making them as long-span bridge deck is caused engineers to thinks about new material that besides lightness and ease of implementation, provide an acceptable resistance against applied loads including both dead load and dynamic load caused by the passage of motor vehicles. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is design and analysis bridge deck that’s made of double-layer spatial frames compared with steel and concrete deck. Then allowable deflections due to dead and live loads, weight of bridge in any model and also economic and environmental aspects of this idea is checked. As a result, it can be said that the use of spatial structures in bridge deck is lead to build bridge with long spans, reducing the material and consequently reducing the structural weight and economic savings. For geometric shape of the spatial structure bridge is used of Formian 2.0 software and for analysis of bridges is used of SAP2000 with finite element method (FEM)

Comparison of stress dobutamine echocardiography and stress dobutamine gated myocardial SPECT for the detection of viable myocardium

BACKGROUND: We prospectively studied a group of patients with myocardial infarction (MI), who were candidates for surgical revascularization, to compare the efficacy of dobutamine gated myocardial SPECT with dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) for the detection of myocardial viability. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We investigated 224 segments from 14 patients with MI using resting echocardiography and low dose dobutamine stress echocardiography as well as resting, low and high dose dobutamine stress 99mTc-Sestamibi gated SPECT. RESULTS: In total, 13 men and 1 women with a mean age 54.57 years (range, 43 to 71 years) entered the study. Of the 125 dysfunctional segments, as assessed by ECG-gated examination, 53 (23.66% of total) were hypokinetic at rest, 64 (28.57% of total) were akinetic, and 8 (3.57% of total) were dyskinetic. The number of segments with resting wall motion abnormality (considered viable by low dose dobutamine ECG-gated examination) was significantly greater than those showing a contractile improvement in response to dobutamine in echocardiography (39.2% versus 32.8%, respectively, p < 0.05). In addition, in high dose ECG-gated examination, 42 of the 125 dysfunctional segments (33.6%) were viable. In general, the methods were well correlated. CONCLUSION: We found a good agreement between low dose dobutamine gated SPECT and stress dobutamine echocardiography for the detection of inotropic reserve in infarcted areas.

Speaker Direction Finding for Practical Systems: A Comparison of Different Approaches

Speaker direction finding techniques have aroused interests due to achieving the capability of receiving high-quality dis- tant signals. Interesting concepts can be achieved through the comparison of such techniques whereby importance is in achieving high quality signals at reasonable complexity rates. With this aim in mind, this paper presents a critical compari- son between two such traditional techniques; Time-Difference of Arrival (TDOA) estimation by Generalized Cross Correla- tion (GCC) and space scanning by Steered Response Power (SRP) of a beamformer. Each is analyzed under diverse con- ditions of noise and reverberation. Simulation results and experiments based on real data have been able to show that SRP with short data segments and due to its characteristic of averaging over the spatial dimension illustrate better accuracy results than that of GCC. These results have instigated a new method in the estimation of the source direction from a set of TDOAs based on spatial curvature collision. This paper dis- cusses how this procedure reduces the computational cost more than 50 times compared to the conventional method of Root Mean Square (RMS) error minimization over the candi- date locations

Parallel APSM for Fast and Adaptive Digital SIC in Full-Duplex Transceivers with Nonlinearity

This paper presents a kernel-based adaptive filter that is applied for the digital domain self-interference cancellation (SIC) in a transceiver operating in full-duplex (FD) mode. In FD, the benefit of simultaneous transmission and receiving of signals comes at the price of strong self-interference (SI). In this work, we are primarily interested in suppressing the SI using an adaptive filter namely adaptive projected subgradient method (APSM) in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) of functions. Using the projection concept as a powerful tool, APSM is used to model and consequently remove the SI. A low-complexity and fast-tracking algorithm is provided taking advantage of parallel projections as well as the kernel trick in RKHS. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on real measurement data. The method illustrates the good performance of the proposed adaptive filter, compared to the known popular benchmarks. They demonstrate that the kernel-based algorithm achieves a favorable level of digital SIC while enabling parallel computation-based implementation within a rich and nonlinear function space, thanks to the employed adaptive filtering method

Associations of Environmental Factors and Prevalence of Vitamin D Deficiency in Iran

Introduction: Vitamin D deficiency is a major health problem, which is unexpectedly prevalent in Iran. The ultraviolet (UV) rays of the sun are considered to be the foremost source of vitamin D in humans. In contrast, several environmental factors could decrease UV transmission to the earth, thereby reducing vitamin D absorption. Considering that the key role of environmental factors in vitamin deficiency has been neglected, the present study aimed to investigate the associations between environmental factors (e.g., geographical and air pollution parameters) with the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Iran. Methods: The duration of the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency were extracted from the previous studies conducted in different cities in Iran, where vitamin D deficiency was reported. Afterwards, the environmental factors that were reported to affect sunlight transmission through the atmosphere were collected based on the place and time of vitamin D deficiency as mentioned in the reviewed studies via different geographic databases. The associations between the environmental factors and prevalence of vitamin D deficiency were determined. In total, 35 studies were reviewed completely. Results: The results indicated significant correlations between the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and some environmental factors (e.g., cloudy and clear days). However, no significant association was observed between vitamin D deficiency and other environmental factors, such as geographical parameters (e.g., sunshine, longitude, latitude, elevation, humidity, and temperature) and air pollution (e.g., number of days with dust and visibility of ≤2 km). Conclusion: According to the results, there were significant associations between the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency andenvironmental factors, such as cloudy and clear days. Therefore, adequate exposure to sunlight for the absorption of vitamin D is strongly recommended

Investigating Dynamic Properties of Residues of Warfarin-Azapropazone Binding Site in Human Serum Albumin

Introduction: Human Serum Albumin is one of the most important proteins in blood that can bind a wide range of components and different drugs such as Warfarin. Therefore, studying human serum albumin is very significant in pharmacology. In this research, dynamic behavior of residues of Warfain binding site of human serum albumin was investigated. Method: First, three-dimensional format of human serum albumin (PDB ID: 4G04) was downloaded from RCSB. Then, using GROMACS package, molecular dynamics simulation has been done on chain A of crystallography structure during 30ns. Results: RMSD analysis on residues of binding site showed that Arginines 186 and 218 have wide fluctuations in their RMSD plot. Also, Lysines 185 and 190 have nearly wide fluctuations of RMSD; however, these fluctuations were less than Arginine's. Other residues such as Glycine 189 have few fluctuations. Fluctuations in RMSD have direct relationship with accessible surface area of the residues. Conclusion: The results show that Warfarin binding site in human serum albumin can have various conformational situations because of the dynamics of its residues. This can be important in drug design. Overall, according to the results of this study, residues are divided into 3 categories. Among them, Tryptophan 214, that is one of the most important residues according to different studies, was placed in the category of residues with the least mobility

Molecular investigation of extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) genes in the Salmonella isolates obtained from children with acute diarrhea

Salmonellosis is an important public health concern among children in worldwide. Extended-spectrum β-lactams (ESBLs) cause resistance to clinically important beta-lactams which are generally used to treat invasive Salmonella infections. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the presence of SHV, TEM and CTX-M genes in different strains of Salmonella isolated from children with acute diarrhea and to determine their resistance profile. In this cross-sectional study, 300 fecal samples were collected from children referred to the Amirkola Children's Hospital, Babol, Iran. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was done according to the CLSI guideline. ESBLs-producing strains were identified using double disk synergy test method on the Mueller-Hinton agar plates. Multiplex-PCR was performed using oligonucleotide specific primers to detect of SHV, TEM and CTX-M genes. In total, 7% (n; 21/300) salmonella were isolated, which 61.9%, 28.6% and 9.5% were Salmonella typhimurium, Salmonella enteritidis and Salmonella typhi, respectively. The prevalence of the ESBL-producing isolates were 52.4%. M-PCR results showed that 42.8%, 38.1% and 14.3% of isolates were carried CTX-M, TEM and SHV genes, respectively. Also, 18.2% of isolates harbored CTX-M, and TEM genes, simultaneously. The high rate of ESBLs-producing Salmonella strains in the pediatric patients is an alarm. It is also recommended that alternative drugs be used with less resistance, which requires further investigation

Efecto inhibidor de Lactobacillus aislado de la cavidad oral contra patógenos bacterianos y su efecto en la promoción de la salud

Aims: To determine the inhibitory effect of oral Lactobacillus against bacterial pathogens and investigate correlation between presence of Lactobacillus strains and health promotion. Method: One hundred saliva samples were collected from oral cavity of domestic dairy consumers and were investigated for the isolation and identification of Lactobacillus strain by conventional culture and sequencing of 16SrRNA. Furthermore, well diffusion assay was performed to determination of antibacterial activity of Lactobacillus strains against bacterial pathogens including Salmonella typhimurium, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Shigella sonnei, Shigella dysenteriae, Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium. Finally, association between health condition and isolation of Lactobacillus were investigated and obtained data using questionary form were analysed by chi-square test. Results: Thirty Lactobacillus strains recovered from 100 hundred saliva samples. The most common isolated strain was L. gasseri (n=18) and followed by L. vaginalis (n=3) and L. salivarius (n=3). All Lactobacillus strains demonstrated antibacterial activity against at least one of the investigated pathogens. However, the strongest results were obtained by L. vaginalis against K. pneumonia. The correlation between the presence of thirty Lactobacillus strains and health promotion not found. However, only L. gasseri species has significant positive impact on health in their hosts (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Only some Lactobacillus species have a positive impact on health promotion. Despite of weak activity against the investigated pathogens, L. gasseri has a positive impact on the mental problem (intense anger and depression) of their hosts.Objetivos: Determinar el efecto inhibidor del Lactobacillus aislado de la cavidad oral contra patógenos bacterianos e investigar la correlación entre la presencia de cepas de Lactobacillus y la promoción de la salud. Método: se recolectaron cien muestras de saliva de la cavidad oral de consumidores de productos lácteos y se investigó el aislamiento e identificación de la cepa de Lactobacillus mediante cultivo convencional y secuenciación de 16SrRNA. Además, se realizó un ensayo de difusión en pocillos para determinar la actividad antibacteriana de las cepas de Lactobacillus contra patógenos bacterianos que incluyen Salmonella typhimurium, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Shigella sonnei, Shigella dysenteriae, Enterococcus faecalis y Enterococcus faecium. Finalmente, se investigó la asociación entre el estado de salud y el aislamiento de Lactobacillus y se obtuvieron los datos utilizando el cuestionario mediante la prueba de chi-cuadrado. Resultados: Se aislaron treinta cepas de Lactobacillus de 100 muestras de saliva. La cepa aislada más común fue L. gasseri (n = 18), seguida por L. vaginalis (n = 3) y L. salivarius (n = 3). Todas las cepas de Lactobacillus demostraron actividad antibacteriana contra al menos uno de los patógenos investigados. Sin embargo, los resultados más fuertes fueron obtenidos por L. vaginalis contra K. pneumonia. No se encontraron correlación entre la presencia de algunas de las treinta cepas de Lactobacillus y la promoción de la salud. Sin embargo, solo la especie L. gasseri tuvo un impacto positivo significativo en la salud de sus hospedadores (P <0,05). Conclusión: solo algunas especies de Lactobacillus tienen un impacto positivo en la promoción de la salud. A pesar de la actividad débil contra los patógenos investigados, L. gasseri tiene un impacto positivo en el problema mental (ira intensa y depresión) de sus huéspedes