Prevalence of human respiratory syncytial virus circulating in Iran

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of acute respiratory infection during early childhood and is associated with a great burden on patients, parents, and society. While no treatment is yet available, results from recent phase 2 clinical trials of cell-entry inhibitors and RSV vaccines are promising. To prepare for introduction of these novel therapeutics, good understanding of its molecular epidemiology and continuous RSV surveillance data are necessary. This paper provides an overview of RSV prevalence and genotype distribution in Iran from 1996 to 2013. This meta-analysis includes 21 published studies. In total, 775 (18.7) of 4140 respiratory specimens were positive for RSV infection. The male-female ratio of RSV-positive patients was 1.5:1. Significant peaks of RSV infection were detected during the cold season (November-March). RSV infection was mainly observed in patients <2 years of age. Phylogenetic studies showed that genotypes GA1, GA2, GA5, and BA co-circulated in Iran in 2007-2013. This review highlights the necessity of introducing standard molecular surveillance programs to inform the epidemiological, clinical, and pathological characteristics of various RSV genotypes. Improved understanding of the molecular epidemiology will be useful for development of novel RSV therapeutics. © 2015 King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences

Opioids and viral infections: A double-edged sword

Opioids and their receptors have received remarkable attention because they have the ability to alter immune function, which affects disease progression. In vitro and in vivo findings as well as observations in humans indicate that opioids and their receptors positively or negatively affect viral replication and virus-mediated pathology. The present study reviews recent insights in the role of opioids and their receptors in viral infections and discusses possible therapeutic opportunities. This review supports the emerging concept that opioids and their receptors have both favorable and unfavorable effects on viral disease, depending on the type of virus. Targeting of the opioid system is a potential option for developing effective therapies; however caution is required in relation to the beneficial functions of opioid systems. © 2016 Tahamtan, Tavakoli-Yaraki, Mokhtari-Azad, Teymoori-Rad, Bont, Shokri and Salimi

Numerical analysis of shipping water impacting a step structure

Shipping water, the flow washing over and impacting the upper decks of ships and offshore structures, occurs frequently during their service life and often causes structural problems. For engineers to design safe floating structures subjected to shipping water it is essential to gain an in-depth understanding of its depth and flow field, and the resulting impact forces. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is applied to understand the physics of shipping water washing over a stepped platform. We find that the most accurate solutions are obtained with the turbulence closure. The hydrodynamic load generated by the shipping water is found to strongly depends on the kinematic energy of the water hitting the step. It is shown that with smaller values of the freeboard a more dynamic flow ensues, with a stronger vortex and larger velocity gradient resulting in deeper shipping water and a larger impact force

The Mineral Biochar Alters the Biochemical and Microbial Properties of the Soil and the Grain Yield of Hordeum vulgare L. under Drought Stress

Biochar improves soil physical, biochemical, and microbial properties, leading to the amelioration of soil fertility, which, in turn, results in better growth and yield in crop plants. The current study aimed to evaluate whether using different levels of biochar can enhance soil characteristics and plant attributes. Accordingly, an experimental study was conducted in 2022 using a randomized complete block design with four replications (n = 4) in the experimental glasshouse of the University of Zanjan, in which two regimes of irrigation (D0, full irrigation as the control; D1, water scarcity was applied immediately after the flowering stage for two weeks) and four levels of natural mineral biochar (0% as the control treatment, 0.25, 0.5, and 1% of soil weight) were applied. The results indicated that drought substantially decreased the organic carbon content of the soil and the grain yield while increasing the available phosphorous, soil carbohydrate content, and microbial biomass of the soil. Biochar could considerably alter the means of the studied soil quality parameters and the barley grain yield. Adding biochar could be considered a valid strategy to increase the resistance of plants to drought

Investigation of Natural Effective Gamma Dose Rates case study: Ardabil Province in Iran

Gamma rays pose enough energy to form charged particles and adversely affect human health. Since, the external exposure of human beings to natural environmental gamma radiation normally exceeds that from all man-made sources combined, natural background gamma dose rates and corresponding annual effective doses were determined for selected cities of Ardabil province from 2009 to 2010. Outdoor gamma dose rates were measured using an Ion Chamber Survey Meter in 105 locations in selected districts. Average absorbed dose for Ardabil, Sar-Ein, Germy, Neer, Shourabil Recreational Lake, and Kosar were determined as 265, 219, 344, 233, 352, and 358 nSvh-1, respectively. Although dose rates recorded for Germi and Kosar are comparable with some areas with high natural radiation background, however, the dose rates in other districts are well below the levels reported for such locations. Average annual effective dose due to indoor and outdoor gamma radiation for Ardabil province was estimated to be 1.73 (1.35-2.39) mSv, which is on average 2 times higher than the world population weighted average

The statistical analysis of acoustic phonetic data: exploring differences between spoken Romance languages

The historical and geographical spread from older to more modern languages has long been studied by examining textual changes and in terms of changes in phonetic transcriptions. However, it is more difficult to analyze language change from an acoustic point of view, although this is usually the dominant mode of transmission. We propose a novel analysis approach for acoustic phonetic data, where the aim will be to statistically model the acoustic properties of spoken words. We explore phonetic variation and change using a time-frequency representation, namely the log-spectrograms of speech recordings. We identify time and frequency covariance functions as a feature of the language; in contrast, mean spectrograms depend mostly on the particular word that has been uttered. We build models for the mean and covariances (taking into account the restrictions placed on the statistical analysis of such objects) and use these to define a phonetic transformation that models how an individual speaker would sound in a different language, allowing the exploration of phonetic differences between languages. Finally, we map back these transformations to the domain of sound recordings, allowing us to listen to the output of the statistical analysis. The proposed approach is demonstrated using recordings of the words corresponding to the numbers from ``one'' to ``ten'' as pronounced by speakers from five different Romance languages.John Coleman appreciates the support of UK Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/M002993/1, “Ancient Sounds: mixing acoustic phonetics, statistics and comparative philology to bring speech back from the past”. John Aston appreciates the support of UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant EP/K021672/2, “Functional Object Data Analysis and its Applications”

Community impacts of anthropogenic disturbance: natural enemies exploit multiple routes in pursuit of invading herbivore hosts.

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.BACKGROUND: Biological invasions provide a window on the process of community assembly. In particular, tracking natural enemy recruitment to invading hosts can reveal the relative roles of co-evolution (including local adaptation) and ecological sorting. We use molecular data to examine colonisation of northern Europe by the parasitoid Megastigmus stigmatizans following invasions of its herbivorous oak gallwasp hosts from the Balkans. Local host adaptation predicts that invading gallwasp populations will have been tracked primarily by sympatric Balkan populations of M. stigmatizans (Host Pursuit Hypothesis). Alternatively, ecological sorting allows parasitoid recruitment from geographically distinct populations with no recent experience of the invading hosts (Host Shift Hypothesis). Finally, we test for long-term persistence of parasitoids introduced via human trade of their hosts' galls (Introduction Hypothesis). RESULTS: Polymorphism diagnostic of different southern refugial regions was present in both mitochondrial and nuclear microsatellite markers, allowing us to identify the origins of northern European invaded range M. stigmatizans populations. As with their hosts, some invaded range populations showed genetic variation diagnostic of Balkan sources, supporting the Host Pursuit Hypothesis. In contrast, other invading populations had an Iberian origin, unlike their hosts in northern Europe, supporting the Host Shift Hypothesis. Finally, both British and Italian M. stigmatizans populations show signatures compatible with the Introduction Hypothesis from eastern Mediterranean sources. CONCLUSIONS: These data reveal the continental scale of multi-trophic impacts of anthropogenic disturbance and highlight the fact that herbivores and their natural enemies may face very different constraints on range expansion. The ability of natural enemies to exploit ecologically-similar hosts with which they have had no historical association supports a major role for ecological sorting processes in the recent assembly of these communities. The multitude of origins of invading natural enemy populations in this study emphasises the diversity of mechanisms requiring consideration when predicting consequences of other biological invasions or biological control introductions.Funding was provided by NERC grant NE/B504406/1 to GNS and KS and NE/E014453/1 to GNS and JAN

Background model systematics for the Fermi GeV excess

The possible gamma-ray excess in the inner Galaxy and the Galactic center (GC) suggested by Fermi-LAT observations has triggered a large number of studies. It has been interpreted as a variety of different phenomena such as a signal from WIMP dark matter annihilation, gamma-ray emission from a population of millisecond pulsars, or emission from cosmic rays injected in a sequence of burst-like events or continuously at the GC. We present the first comprehensive study of model systematics coming from the Galactic diffuse emission in the inner part of our Galaxy and their impact on the inferred properties of the excess emission at Galactic latitudes $2^\circ<|b|<20^\circ$ and 300 MeV to 500 GeV. We study both theoretical and empirical model systematics, which we deduce from a large range of Galactic diffuse emission models and a principal component analysis of residuals in numerous test regions along the Galactic plane. We show that the hypothesis of an extended spherical excess emission with a uniform energy spectrum is compatible with the Fermi-LAT data in our region of interest at $95\%$ CL. Assuming that this excess is the extended counterpart of the one seen in the inner few degrees of the Galaxy, we derive a lower limit of $10.0^\circ$ ($95\%$ CL) on its extension away from the GC. We show that, in light of the large correlated uncertainties that affect the subtraction of the Galactic diffuse emission in the relevant regions, the energy spectrum of the excess is equally compatible with both a simple broken power-law of break energy $2.1\pm0.2$ GeV, and with spectra predicted by the self-annihilation of dark matter, implying in the case of $\bar{b}b$ final states a dark matter mass of $49^{+6.4}_{-5.4}$ GeV.Comment: 65 pages, 28 figures, 7 table