Occurrence of parasites in selected fish species in Gandoman Lagoon, Iran

This study was carried out to investigate occurrence of parasite in selected cyprinid fish species in Gandoman Lagoon, in the vicinity of Gandoman City, Chaharmahal & Bakhtyari Province. A total of 90 fish specimens including Cyprinus carpio, Carassius auratus gibelio, Capoeta aculeata , C.damascina, Chondrostoma regium and Alburnus alburnus from Gandoman were examined during spring and summer 2007. Ten species of parasites were found, including Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, Trichodina sp. (Cilliophora), Myxobolus musayevi, Myxobolus sp. (Myxozoa), Dactylogyrus extensus, D.lenkorani (Monogenea), Diplostomum spathaceum, Tylodelphys clavata (Digenea). Argulus foliaceus and Lernea cyprinacea (Crustaceans). 77.7% of fishes were infected to parasites and 22.3 % did not show any infection. Chondrostoma regium and Alburnus alburnus are reported as new hosts for D. extensus

EFFECTIVE FACTORS IN THE QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES IN CHAHARMAHAL & BAKHTEYARI PROVINCE

Abstract: Background and objectives: Quality of life can be considered as a marker of the quality of health care and is a part of the patient's treatment plan. Its measurement in type 2 diabetic patients provides useful information to health authorities Material and Methods: This study is a descriptive-analytic cross–sectional study that has attempted to measure the quality of life in diabetic patients in Chaharmahal & Bakhteyari Province. The number of patients was 254 and they were selected randomly in two stages. Data were collected

Current data and modeling bottlenecks for predicting crop yields in the United Kingdom

Identifying and implementing management actions that can mitigate the impacts of climate change on domestically grown crops is crucial to maintaining future food security for the United Kingdom (UK). Crop models serve as critical tools for assessing the potential impacts of climate change and making decisions regarding crop management. However, there is often a gap between yields predicted by current modeling methods and observed yields. This has been linked to a sparsity of models that investigate crop yield beyond field scale or that include data on crop management or crop protection factors. It remains unclear whether the lack of available data imposes these limitations or if the currently available data presents untapped opportunities to extend models to better capture the complex ecosystem of factors affecting crop yield. In this paper, we synthesize available data on plant physiology, management, and protection practices for agricultural crops in the UK, as well as associated data on climate and soil conditions. We then compare the available data to the variables used to predict crop yield using current modeling methods. We find there is a lack of openly accessible crop management and crop plant physiology data, particularly for crops other than wheat, which could limit improvements in current crop models. Conversely, data that was found to be available at large scales on climate and soil conditions could be used to explore upscaling of current approaches beyond the field level, and available data on crop protection factors could be integrated into existing models to better account for how disease, insect pest and weed pressures may impact crop yield under different climate scenarios. We conclude that while a lack of available data on crop management, protection, physiology, at scales other than field level, and for species other than wheat currently hampers advancement of modeling methods for UK crops, future investment into data collection and management across a broader range of factors affecting crops, at larger scales and for a broader range of crop species could improve predictions of crop plant development and yield

Investigating Physical and Mechanical Properties of Bionanocomposite Film Based on Flaxseed Mucilage and Cellulose Nanocrystal

Introduction  Manufacturers are trying to replace plastic materials in the food packaging industry with biodegradable and edible films. Biodegradable edible films and coatings are mainly made from carbohydrates, lipids and proteins and their mixtures. In recent decades, various carbohydrates from plant sources have been investigated and introduced as new compounds for the preparation of these films. Flaxseed gum is a white to cream-colored powder that dissolves in water and produces a gel, and is a desirable compound for forming films and coatings. Recently, through the integration of reinforcements or fillers with at least one nanometer dimension in the substrate of one or more natural biopolymers, the physicochemical, mechanical, optical, thermal and barrier properties of pure biofilms have been improved. The use of cellulose nanoparticles in biofilms as a reinforcing agent for polymer materials leads to the creation of composite films with better quality characteristics and leads to the creation of functionalization activities in film production. Therefore, the aim of this research was to produce and characterize edible and biodegradable film based on the combination of flaxseed gum and cellulose nanocrystals.   Materials and Methods  Cellulose nanocrystals (Degree of crystallinity: 42% and average particle size: 58 nm) were extracted from cotton linters. Glycerol and other chemicals used for this research were obtained from Merck, Germany. Flaxseeds were purchased from the local market of Shiraz (Iran). Bionanocomposite films were prepared from different ratios (0:100, 30:70, 50:50, 70:30 and 100:0) of flaxseed mucilage (2% w/v) and cellulose nanocrystal (6% w/v) solutions. The prepared solutions were poured on a petri dish with a diameter of 15 cm and dried in an oven at 80°C for 4 hours. Their physical, color and mechanical properties were investigated and the best ratio was selected for the preparation of bionanocomposite film. The produced films were subjected to different analysis to determine thickness, solubility, water absorption capacity, permeability to water vapor, tensile strength, elongation at break point, and colorimetry. The microstructure of the produced film was studied using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM).The average data were analyzed by analysis of variance in a completely randomized design using SPSS 22.0 software. Differences between treatments were expressed in Duncan's multiple range test at the 95% probability level (p<0.05) and the corresponding graphs were drawn with Excel 2013.   Results and Discussion  The results of the film thickness test showed that the film containing 100% mucilage has the lowest thickness and with the addition of cellulose nanocrystals, the thickness increased significantly (p<0.05). The results of the water solubility and water absorption capacity of the film samples showed that the addition of cellulose nanocrystals to the flaxseed mucilage film initially led to a significant decrease in the water solubility and water absorption capacity (p<0.05), so that the lowest level ofthese two physical parameters were obtained in the film containing the combination of 70% flaxseed mucilage and 30% cellulose nanocrystal, and then with the increase of cellulose nanocrystals, an increase in water solubility and water absorption capacity of the films was observed. Nanocrystal cellulose at low levels (30%) acted as a filler and was uniformly dispersed in the network of the film and by filling the empty pores of the biopolymer film based on flaxseed mucilage, it caused the transfer of water vapor more complicated and reduced the permeability to water vapor. However, its higher amount increased the permeability of the film to water vapor.The results showed that by adding cellulose nanocrystal to the film based on flaxseed mucilage and increasing its amount, the brightness of the films decreased and the intensity of redness, yellowness and turbidity of the films increased significantly (p<0.05). By combining flaxseed mucilage and cellulose nanocrystals in a ratio of 30:70, the best film was produced in terms of mechanical strength and stability against moisture and water vapor. The SEM image of this film showed a smooth, even surface and a uniform distribution of cellulose nanocrystals in the film network.   Conclusion  The results finally showed that the combination of flaxseed mucilage and cellulose nanocrystals in a ratio of 30:70 was able to produce a biodegradable and edible film with favorable structural and barrier properties. The characteristics of this film include; thickness (0.313mm), solubility (53.42%), water absorption capacity (44.44%), permeability to water vapor (0.350 g.m-1s-1Pa-1 × 10 -10), tensile strength (0.973 MPa), elongation at break point (30.52%) were obtained. The colorimetric indices L*, a*, b* and turbidity were determined as 79.73, 1.95, 3.48 and 1.335 mm-1 respectively.   Acknowledgement  The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to Islamic Azad University, Sarvestan Branch

Topologically Massive Gravity and Ricci-Cotton Flow

We consider Topologically Massive Gravity (TMG), which is three dimensional general relativity with a cosmological constant and a gravitational Chern-Simons term. When the cosmological constant is negative the theory has two potential vacuum solutions: Anti-de Sitter space and Warped Anti-de Sitter space. The theory also contains a massive graviton state which renders these solutions unstable for certain values of the parameters and boundary conditions. We study the decay of these solutions due to the condensation of the massive graviton mode using Ricci-Cotton flow, which is the appropriate generalization of Ricci flow to TMG. When the Chern-Simons coupling is small the AdS solution flows to warped AdS by the condensation of the massive graviton mode. When the coupling is large the situation is reversed, and warped AdS flows to AdS. Minisuperspace models are constructed where these flows are studied explicitly

Influence of subretinal fluid in advanced stage retinopathy of prematurity on proangiogenic response and cell proliferation

Purpose The clinical phenotype of advanced stage retinopathy of prematurity (ROP, stages 4 and 5) cannot be replicated in an animal model. To dissect the molecular events that can lead up to advanced ROP, we examined subretinal fluid (SRF) and surgically dissected retrolental membranes from patients with advanced ROP to evaluate its influences on cell proliferation, angiogenic properties, and macrophage polarity. Methods: We compared our findings to SRF collected from patients with uncomplicated rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RD) without proliferative vitreoretinopathy and surgically dissected epiretinal membrane from eyes with macular pucker. All subretinal fluid samples were equalized for protein. The angiogenic potential of SRF from ROP eyes was measured using a combination of capillary cord formation in a fibrin clot assay, and its proliferative effect was tested with a DNA synthesis of human retinal microvascular endothelial cells. Findings were compared with SRF collected from participants with uncomplicated rhegmatogenous RD without proliferative vitreoretinopathy. The ability of SRF to induce nitric oxide production was measured in vitro using murine J774A.1 macrophages. Cytokine profiles of SRF from ROP and RD eyes were measured using a multienzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Fluorescent immunohistochemistry of retrolental membranes from ROP was performed to detect the presence of leukocytes and the composition of tissue macrophages using markers for M1 and M2 differentiation. Results: The cytokine composition in SRF revealed that in ROP, not only were several proangiogenic factors were preferentially elevated but also the profile of proinflammatory factors was also increased compared to the RD eyes. SRF from ROP eyes supported cell proliferation and endothelial cord formation while SRF from RD eyes had inhibitory effects. SRF from eyes with ROP but not RD robustly induced nitric oxide production in macrophages. Furthermore, fluorescent immunostaining revealed a preponderance of M1 over M2 macrophages in retrolental fibrous membranes from ROP eyes. The cytokine profile and biologic properties of SRF in ROP promote a proangiogenic environment, which supports the maintenance and proliferation of fibrous membranes associated with advanced stages of ROP. In contrast, SRF from RD eyes exhibits a suppressive environment for endothelial cell proliferation and angiogenesis. Conclusions: Our investigation demonstrates that the microenvironment in advanced ROP eyes is proangiogenic and proinflammatory. These findings suggest that management of advanced ROP should not be limited to the surgical removal of the fibrovascular membranes and antiangiogenic therapy but also directed to anti-inflammatory therapy and to promote M2 activation over M1 activity

Analytic System Matrix Resolution Modeling in PET: An Application to Rb-82 Cardiac Imaging

Abstract-An area of growing interest in PET imaging has been that of incorporating increasingly more accurate system matrix elements into the reconstruction task, thus arriving at images of higher quality. This work explores application of an analytic approach which individually models and combines the various resolution degrading phenomenon in PET (inter-crystal scattering, inter-crystal penetration, photon non-collinearity and positron range), and does not require extensive experimental measurements and/or simulations. The approach is able to produce considerable enhancements in image quality. The reconstructed resolution is seen to improve from 5.1mm-7.7mm across the field-of-view (FoV) to ≈3.5mm nearly uniformly across the FoV. Furthermore, phantom studies indicate clearly improved images, while similar significant improvements are seen for the particular task of Rb-82 cardiac imaging. Keywords: Positron emission tomography, Image reconstruction, Image enhancement, Positrons, Compton scattering. I. OVERVIEW AND MOTIVATION In PET imaging, four processes are responsible for degrading image resolution: positron range, photon non-collinearity, intercrystal scattering as well as penetration. Aside from improvements to PET detection (hardware), different reconstruction approaches have been proposed in the literature to model the aforementioned factors, with the aim of improving image resolution. First, let us consider an image with J basis functions (usually voxels) and a histogrammed dataset with I projection bins. We then denote the system matrix as P=(p ij ) I×J , where each element p ij models the probability that an event generated in voxel j is detected along line-of-response (LOR) i. Next, one may decompose [1] the system matrix into three components Here, the matrix B=(b ij ) J×J is used to account for imagebased blurring effects, while the matrix G=(g ij ) I×J contains the geometric probability terms relating each voxel j to an LOR i. In addition, the matrix W=(w ij ) I×I can be used to account for sensitivity variations (i.e. due to attenuation and normalization) as well inter-crystal blurring effects. An approach [2], [3] has been to model overall resolution blurring entirely into the image-space component B of the system matrix. This approach is very straight-forward to implement, and produces images of higher quality. However, the method is somewhat ad hoc and in particular does not model the varying degrees of inter-crystal blurring in the projection space. The method is thus not suited to model the parallax effect. An approach developed in A more accurate approach An alternative approach [5]- A new approach has been to make very accurate noncollimated A new approach is investigated in this work, which takes the approach of analytically modeling each of the resolution degrading phenomenon, followed by their combination in the overall system matrix, thus not requiring extensive simulations or experimental measurements, and producing significantly improved image qualities. We describe each of these next. II. DESCRIPTION OF METHOD A. Positron Range In the seminal work of Palmer and Brownel

Holographic Symmetry-Breaking Phases in AdS3_3/CFT2_2

In this note we study the symmetry-breaking phases of 3D gravity coupled to matter. In particular, we consider black holes with scalar hair as a model of symmetry-breaking phases of a strongly coupled 1+1 dimensional CFT. In the case of a discrete symmetry, we show that these theories admit metastable phases of broken symmetry and study the thermodynamics of these phases. We also demonstrate that the 3D Einstein-Maxwell theory shows continuous symmetry breaking at low temperature. The apparent contradiction with the Coleman-Mermin-Wagner theorem is discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figur