Drug utilization and evaluation of prophylactic antibiotics in CABG patients

Prophylactic intravenous antibiotics should be routinely administrated to patients undergoing cardiac surgery. After cardiac surgery the patients are routinely administrated with prophylactic intravenous antibiotics. The duration and doses of such antibiotics are still controversial and the wide spectrum of prophylactic antibiotics used across the planet. It is important to bear in mind the sensitivity of administrating post-surgical antibiotics, using guidelines for standard administration prescribing are either missing or not effectively treated in many countries. However antibiotic prophylaxis is not the only preventative measures. The most common antibiotics used in the management of CABG associated infections different antibiotics been investigated. Different generation of Cephalospurins are most important study groups of antibiotics. It is important to appreciate that this reduction is not refer as a primary goal for surgical prophylaxis. To compare the antibiotics prophylaxis utilization in Shahid Rajaei Heart Center, Tehran, Iran, with international recognized standards, we conducted an observational 6-month study at this center, by a sectional, descriptive and prospective study.This review including the antibiotics administrated to the patients during their hospitalization in ICU as well as CCU in Shahid Rajaei hospital. The data gathered was done on the bases of a questionnaire including the patients' history and the administrated antibiotics.. Each case is independently compared with the respective guideline in order to study its consistency (in dose, duration and frequency) to globally-applied guideline, i.e. ASHP, ACC/AHA, NHS ESC etc. The collected data have been analyzed by SPSS software, in order to figure out the descriptive report. As the background characteristics, 130 patients (37 women, 93 men) with mean age of 64±8 years participated. Most of the Antibiotics prescriptions did not follow the guidelines in proper manner. The most prevalent Antibiotics utilized is this center for reduction of SSI after CABG, are Vancomycin, Ceftriaxone, Cefazolin and Ciprofloxacin. The most prominent problem in Antibiotics prophylaxis utilization in the target medical center is the non-compliance of selection and duration of antibiotics to the applicable guidelines. © 2016, Oriental Scientific Publishing Company. All rights reserved

Prototyping of petalets for the Phase-II Upgrade of the silicon strip tracking detector of the ATLAS Experiment

In the high luminosity era of the Large Hadron Collider, the HL-LHC, the instantaneous luminosity is expected to reach unprecedented values, resulting in about 200 proton-proton interactions in a typical bunch crossing. To cope with the resultant increase in occupancy, bandwidth and radiation damage, the ATLAS Inner Detector will be replaced by an all-silicon system, the Inner Tracker (ITk). The ITk consists of a silicon pixel and a strip detector and exploits the concept of modularity. Prototyping and testing of various strip detector components has been carried out. This paper presents the developments and results obtained with reduced-size structures equivalent to those foreseen to be used in the forward region of the silicon strip detector. Referred to as petalets, these structures are built around a composite sandwich with embedded cooling pipes and electrical tapes for routing the signals and power. Detector modules built using electronic flex boards and silicon strip sensors are glued on both the front and back side surfaces of the carbon structure. Details are given on the assembly, testing and evaluation of several petalets. Measurement results of both mechanical and electrical quantities are shown. Moreover, an outlook is given for improved prototyping plans for large structures.Comment: 22 pages for submission for Journal of Instrumentatio

STAT3-mediated apoptotic-enhancing function of sclareol against breast cancer cells and cell sensitization to cyclophosphamide

Sclareol is an organic compound with potential anti-tumor effects against various cancer types. However, its precise molecular mechanism in the suppression of tumor growth has not been fully elucidated. In the present study, the anti-proliferative and apoptosis-inducing effects of sclareol with cyclophosphamide were investigated in breast cancer cells and the involvement of the JAK/ STAT pathway was evaluated. For this purpose, MCF-7 breast cancer cells were cultured and treated with various concentrations of sclareol to determine its IC50. Cell viability was measured by MTT assay and apoptosis was assessed by flow cytometric analysis of annexin V binding. Gene and protein expression were examined by real-time PCR and Western blotting, respectively. The activity of caspase enzymes was also measured. The results showed that sclareol significantly reduced cell viability and triggered cell death and its co-administration with cyclophosphamide enhanced its anti-cancer properties. Additionally, sclareol up-regulated the expression of p53 and BAX and reduced the expression of Bcl-2. Docking studies indicated an interaction between sclareol and STAT3 which was proved by attenuation of STAT3 phosphorylation after treatment of the cells with sclareol. Sclareol was also capable of suppressing the function of IL-6 in modulating the expression of apoptosis-associated genes. Altogether these data suggest the potential of sclareol as an anti-cancer agent and demonstrate that a combination of sclareol with cyclophosphamide might serve as an effective chemotherapeutic approach resulting in improvements in the treatment of breast cancer. © 2020, Iranian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research. All rights reserved

Cohort profile: The Golestan Cohort Study-a prospective study of oesophageal cancer in Northern Iran

[No abstract available

Enabling Technologies for Silicon Microstrip Tracking Detectors at the HL-LHC

While the tracking detectors of the ATLAS and CMS experiments have shown excellent performance in Run 1 of LHC data taking, and are expected to continue to do so during LHC operation at design luminosity, both experiments will have to exchange their tracking systems when the LHC is upgraded to the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) around the year 2024. The new tracking systems need to operate in an environment in which both the hit densities and the radiation damage will be about an order of magnitude higher than today. In addition, the new trackers need to contribute to the first level trigger in order to maintain a high data-taking efficiency for the interesting processes. Novel detector technologies have to be developed to meet these very challenging goals. The German groups active in the upgrades of the ATLAS and CMS tracking systems have formed a collaborative "Project on Enabling Technologies for Silicon Microstrip Tracking Detectors at the HL-LHC" (PETTL), which was supported by the Helmholtz Alliance "Physics at the Terascale" during the years 2013 and 2014. The aim of the project was to share experience and to work together on key areas of mutual interest during the R&D phase of these upgrades. The project concentrated on five areas, namely exchange of experience, radiation hardness of silicon sensors, low mass system design, automated precision assembly procedures, and irradiations. This report summarizes the main achievements

Bilateral myositis ossificans of the masseter muscle after chemoradiotherapy and critical illness neuropathy- report of a rare entity and review of literature

Myositis ossificans in the head and neck is a rare heterotropic bone formation within a muscle. Besides fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, traumatic and neurogenic forms are described in the literature

A mobile assisted coverage hole patching scheme based on particle swarm optimization for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have drawn much research attention in recent years due to the superior performance in multiple applications, such as military and industrial monitoring, smart home, disaster restoration etc. In such applications, massive sensor nodes are randomly deployed and they remain static after the deployment, to fully cover the target sensing area. This will usually cause coverage redundancy or coverage hole problem. In order to effectively deploy sensors to cover whole area, we present a novel node deployment algorithm based on mobile sensors. First, sensor nodes are randomly deployed in target area, and they remain static or switch to the sleep mode after deployment. Second, we partition the network into grids and calculate the coverage rate of each grid. We select grids with lower coverage rate as candidate grids. Finally, we awake mobile sensors from sleep mode to fix coverage hole, particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to calculate moving position of mobile sensors. Simulation results show that our algorithm can effectively improve the coverage rate of WSNs

A double-sided, shield-less stave prototype for the ATLAS upgrade strip tracker for the high luminosity LHC

A detailed description of the integration structures for the barrel region of the silicon strips tracker of the ATLAS Phase-II upgrade for the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider, the so-called High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), is presented. This paper focuses on one of the latest demonstrator prototypes recently assembled, with numerous unique features. It consists of a shortened, shield-less, and double sided stave, with two candidate power distributions implemented. Thermal and electrical performances of the prototype are presented, as well as a description of the assembly procedures and tools