The effect of 12 weeks regular physical activity and vitamin E in the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: A pilot study

Background: Despite the prevalence of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), there was no treatment has been proven to be effective in these common diseases. Although many studies have shown that lifestyle modifications such as increasing physical activities and exercise could be effective in the treatment of these common diseases, the optimal strategy was still not determined. According to the beneficial effects of antioxidant agents in the treatment of NASH, vitamin E has been used for this purpose by some clinicians. We designed this study for assessing beneficial effects of regular physical activity on the biochemical and imaging responses in patients with NASH and comparing this with vitamin E as an accepted treatment for NASH. Materials and Methods: This study was Randomized and single-blind clinical trials were carried out in Gonbad-e Kavus through which a total of 30 consecutive patients with the ultra sonographic diagnosis of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)were enrolled and randomized to one of the three groups: Vitamin E 800 mg/day, regular physical activity, or both. Results: In all treatment groups improvement in liver transaminases level, serum lipids and ultrasonographic grading of fatty liver occurred after three months of treatment. When these decrement was compared between the treatment groups, there was no statistically significant difference in the value of improvement between the three groups (ANOVA: p>0.5). I.e. all three interventions improved the biochemical and ultrasonographic finding of fatty liver in the same way. Both groups with regular exercise had significant mean weight loss in comparison with the vitamin E group (a mean decrease of 3.0 kg in exercise group, 5.8 kg in subjects on regular exercise plus vitamin E and 0.2 kg in vitamin E group, ANOVA: p=0.04). Conclusion: There were no significant differences between exercise and vitamin E alone or in combination regarding the reduction in the level of liver enzymes and sonographic evidences of fatty liver although both resulted in significant improvements in biochemical endpoints. This implies that physical activity could be considered as effective as vitamin E in the improvement of biochemical and ultrasonographic presentations of NASH and the addition of Vitamin E does not offer any benefits. According to the findings of this pilot study a full-powered study with a control group should be designed. © 2015, Iranian Association of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. All rights reserved

The effect of 12 weeks regular physical activity and vitamin E in the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: A pilot study

Background: Despite the prevalence of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), there was no treatment has been proven to be effective in these common diseases. Although many studies have shown that lifestyle modifications such as increasing physical activities and exercise could be effective in the treatment of these common diseases, the optimal strategy was still not determined. According to the beneficial effects of antioxidant agents in the treatment of NASH, vitamin E has been used for this purpose by some clinicians. We designed this study for assessing beneficial effects of regular physical activity on the biochemical and imaging responses in patients with NASH and comparing this with vitamin E as an accepted treatment for NASH. Materials and Methods: This study was Randomized and single-blind clinical trials were carried out in Gonbad-e Kavus through which a total of 30 consecutive patients with the ultra sonographic diagnosis of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)were enrolled and randomized to one of the three groups: Vitamin E 800 mg/day, regular physical activity, or both. Results: In all treatment groups improvement in liver transaminases level, serum lipids and ultrasonographic grading of fatty liver occurred after three months of treatment. When these decrement was compared between the treatment groups, there was no statistically significant difference in the value of improvement between the three groups (ANOVA: p>0.5). I.e. all three interventions improved the biochemical and ultrasonographic finding of fatty liver in the same way. Both groups with regular exercise had significant mean weight loss in comparison with the vitamin E group (a mean decrease of 3.0 kg in exercise group, 5.8 kg in subjects on regular exercise plus vitamin E and 0.2 kg in vitamin E group, ANOVA: p=0.04). Conclusion: There were no significant differences between exercise and vitamin E alone or in combination regarding the reduction in the level of liver enzymes and sonographic evidences of fatty liver although both resulted in significant improvements in biochemical endpoints. This implies that physical activity could be considered as effective as vitamin E in the improvement of biochemical and ultrasonographic presentations of NASH and the addition of Vitamin E does not offer any benefits. According to the findings of this pilot study a full-powered study with a control group should be designed. © 2015, Iranian Association of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. All rights reserved

Compressed Sensing based Dynamic PSD Map Construction in Cognitive Radio Networks

In the context of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks, collaborative spectrum sensing has been proposed as a way to overcome multipath and shadowing, and hence increasing the reliability of the sensing. Due to the high amount of information to be transmitted, a dynamic compressive sensing approach is proposed to map the PSD estimate to a sparse domain which is then transmitted to the fusion center. In this regard, CRs send a compressed version of their estimated PSD to the fusion center, whose job is to reconstruct the PSD estimates of the CRs, fuse them, and make a global decision on the availability of the spectrum in space and frequency domains at a given time. The proposed compressive sensing based method considers the dynamic nature of the PSD map, and uses this dynamicity in order to decrease the amount of data needed to be transmitted between CR sensors’ and the fusion center. By using the proposed method, an acceptable PSD map for cognitive radio purposes can be achieved by only 20 % of full data transmission between sensors and master node. Also, simulation results show the robustness of the proposed method against the channel variations, diverse compression ratios and processing times in comparison with static methods

A Generative Model for Parts-based Object Segmentation

The Shape Boltzmann Machine (SBM) [1] has recently been introduced as a stateof-the-art model of foreground/background object shape. We extend the SBM to account for the foreground object’s parts. Our new model, the Multinomial SBM (MSBM), can capture both local and global statistics of part shapes accurately. We combine the MSBM with an appearance model to form a fully generative model of images of objects. Parts-based object segmentations are obtained simply by performing probabilistic inference in the model. We apply the model to two challenging datasets which exhibit significant shape and appearance variability, and find that it obtains results that are comparable to the state-of-the-art. There has been significant focus in computer vision on object recognition and detection e.g. [2], but a strong desire remains to obtain richer descriptions of objects than just their bounding boxes. One such description is a parts-based object segmentation, in which an image is partitioned into multiple sets of pixels, each belonging to either a part of the object of interest, or its background. The significance of parts in computer vision has been recognized since the earliest days of th

Stretching An Anisotropic DNA

We present a perturbation theory to find the response of an anisotropic DNA to the external tension. It is shown that the anisotropy has a nonzero but small contribution to the force-extension curve of the DNA. Thus an anisotropic DNA behaves like an isotropic one with an effective bending constant equal to the harmonic average of its soft and hard bending constants.Comment: 29 pages and 4 figure. To appear in J. Chem. Phy

Content validity of national post marriage educational program using mixed methods

Background: Although the validity of content of program is mostly conducted with qualitative methods, this study used both qualitative and quantitative methods for the validation of content of post marriage training program provid-ed for newly married couples. Content validity is a preliminary step of obtaining authorization required to install the program in country's health care system. Methods: This mixed methodological content validation study carried out in four steps with forming three expert panels. Altogether 24 expert panelists were involved in 3 qualitative and quantitative panels; 6 in the first item devel-opment one; 12 in the reduction kind, 4 of them were common with the first panel, and 10 executive experts in the last one organized to evaluate psychometric properties of CVR and CVI and Face validity of 57 educational objectives. Results: The raw data of post marriage program had been written by professional experts of Ministry of Health, using qualitative expert panel, the content was more developed by generating 3 topics and refining one topic and its respec-tive content. In the second panel, totally six other objectives were deleted, three for being out of agreement cut of point and three on experts' consensus. The validity of all items was above 0.8 and their content validity indices (0.8-1) were completely appropriate in quantitative assessment. Conclusion: This study provided a good evidence for validation and accreditation of national post marriage program planned for newly married couples in health centers of the country in the near future. © 2015, Iranian Journal of Public Health. All right reserved

Economic evaluation of municipal solid waste recycling in Yazd: Cost-benefit analysis

Background and aims: In every urban waste management plan, recycling and reuse is considered as an economic pattern. This study aimed to economic evaluation of municipal solid waste recycling in Yazd by cost-benefit analysis in 2015. Methods: This research is a descriptive–analytic study which in the data about quality and quantity of municipal solid waste in Yazd city were collected through the sampling and physical analysis and the data about total income and costs from the implementation of waste separation and recycling were collected by interview with recovery officials and field observations and were analyzed through the economic analysis of the cost-benefit. Results: The results indicated that the mean of waste produced annually in Yazd city was 109679.51 tons per years. The percentage of municipal waste components was organic matter (67%), plastics (7%), paper and cardboard (5%), metals (2%), wood (2%), glass (2%), leather and rubber (1%), textiles (1%) and PET containers (1%), respectively. Also, Only 2 percent of total daily production of waste were separated and recycled at source. The implementation a cost of waste separation at source on a monthly basis was 768,880,000 Rails and the benefits of it was 904,667,400 Rails and as a result, the amount of net benefit derived from the recycling scheme was 135,787,400 Rails. Conclusion: Considering the economic benefits of waste separation and recycling at source in the city of Yazd, can be in addition to compensate the many of the waste management sector costs and reduced waste disposal and management costs, Preventing environmental degradation and pollution of water, soil and air resources

Search Bias Quantification: Investigating Political Bias in Social Media and Web Search

Users frequently use search systems on the Web as well as online social media to learn about ongoing events and public opinion on personalities. Prior studies have shown that the top-ranked results returned by these search engines can shape user opinion about the topic (e.g., event or person) being searched. In case of polarizing topics like politics, where multiple competing perspectives exist, the political bias in the top search results can play a significant role in shaping public opinion towards (or away from) certain perspectives. Given the considerable impact that search bias can have on the user, we propose a generalizable search bias quantification framework that not only measures the political bias in ranked list output by the search system but also decouples the bias introduced by the different sources—input data and ranking system. We apply our framework to study the political bias in searches related to 2016 US Presidential primaries in Twitter social media search and find that both input data and ranking system matter in determining the final search output bias seen by the users. And finally, we use the framework to compare the relative bias for two popular search systems—Twitter social media search and Google web search—for queries related to politicians and political events. We end by discussing some potential solutions to signal the bias in the search results to make the users more aware of them.publishe