Burn-induced Oxidative Stress and Serum Glutathione Depletion; a Cross Sectional Study

Introduction: Several studies have shown the role of oxidative stress in pathophysiology of burn injuries. This study aimed to evaluate the changes of oxidant-antioxidant levels during the week following burn injuries and its correlation with grade of burn. Methods: In this prospective cross-sectional study, changes of total glutathione, reduced glutathione (GSH), oxidized GSH (GSSG), GSH/GSSG ratio, as well as Pro-oxidant-antioxidant balance (PAB) were investigated on the 1st, 2nd and 7th days of admission in patients with > 15 % burns.Results: 40 patients with the mean age of 21.1 ± 14.5 were studied (47.5% male). More than 50% of patients were in the 18 – 55 years age range and over 70% had 20% – 60% grade of burn. Total serum glutathione level and GSH had significant decreasing trends (P < 0.001) and GSSG and GSH/GSSG ratio had increasing trends (p < 0.001). No significant correlation was observed between serum GSH level and the total body surface area (TBSA) of burn injury (r = 0.047; p = 0.779). The evaluation of PAB and its correlation with TBSA showed a significant and direct association between them on the 1st (coefficient = 0.516; p = 0.001), 2nd (coefficient = 0.62; p <0.001), and 3rd (coefficient = 0.471; p = 0.002) day of follow up.Conclusion: According to this study, the redox perturbation occurred in burn injury which was measured and proved by decreased GSH/GSSG ratio as well as the shift of PAB in favour of oxidants. Besides, since PAB positively correlated with the severity of dermal damage, it might suggest the application of antioxidants as a part of therapeutic protocol for which the dosage should be proportionate to the surface area of the damaged skin.

Prevalence of Common Aeroallergens in Patients with Allergic Rhinitis in Gorgan, North of Iran, Based on Skin Prick Test Reactivity

Background Allergic rhinitis is one of the most common types of rhinitis. Allergen avoidance is the most important way of preventing this disease. The present study is carried out to determine the frequency of common aeroallergens in patients with allergic rhinitis in Gorgan city by skin prick test (SPT) reactivity. Materials and Methods  In this cross-sectional study 270 patients referring to the Asthma and Allergic Center in Gorgan city, Iran, were enrolled. Diagnosis of allergic rhinitis was confirmed by specialist asthma and allergy. A questionnaire containing demographic data and patient’s history was completed. Skin prick test containing standard allergen extracts, histamine, and physiologic serum was performed on patients. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version16.0. Results: In the present study, 270 patients (113 males and 157 females) had perennial allergic rhinitis (PAR), seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR), and mixed allergic rhinitis (MAR) (n=166, 54, 47, receptivity). Out of these patients, the most common aeroallergens was a house dust mite called Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (43.7%), other common allergen were: weeds (40.7%), Dermatophagoides farinae (40.4%), grasses (32.5%), beetles (30%), trees (22.5%), and molds (16.3%). There was a significant relationship between prevalence of allergy to grasses and gender (P=0.016), weeds and age (

Global systematic review of primary immunodeficiency registries

Introduction During the last 4 decades, registration of patients with primary immunodeficiencies (PID) has played an essential role in different aspects of these diseases worldwide including epidemiological indexes, policymaking, quality controls of care/life, facilitation of genetic studies and clinical trials as well as improving our understanding about the natural history of the disease and the immune system function. However, due to the limitation of sustainable resources supporting these registries, inconsistency in diagnostic criteria and lack of molecular diagnosis as well as difficulties in the documentation and designing any universal platform, the global perspective of these diseases remains unclear. Areas covered Published and unpublished studies from January 1981 to June 2020 were systematically reviewed on PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus. Additionally, the reference list of all studies was hand-searched for additional studies. This effort identified a total of 104614 registered patients and suggests identification of at least 10590 additional PID patients, mainly from countries located in Asia and Africa. Molecular defects in genes known to cause PID were identified and reported in 13852 (13.2% of all registered) patients. Expert opinion Although these data suggest some progress in the identification and documentation of PID patients worldwide, achieving the basic requirement for the global PID burden estimation and registration of undiagnosed patients will require more reinforcement of the progress, involving both improved diagnostic facilities and neonatal screening.Peer reviewe

NeBula: Team CoSTAR's robotic autonomy solution that won phase II of DARPA Subterranean Challenge

This paper presents and discusses algorithms, hardware, and software architecture developed by the TEAM CoSTAR (Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots), competing in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Specifically, it presents the techniques utilized within the Tunnel (2019) and Urban (2020) competitions, where CoSTAR achieved second and first place, respectively. We also discuss CoSTAR¿s demonstrations in Martian-analog surface and subsurface (lava tubes) exploration. The paper introduces our autonomy solution, referred to as NeBula (Networked Belief-aware Perceptual Autonomy). NeBula is an uncertainty-aware framework that aims at enabling resilient and modular autonomy solutions by performing reasoning and decision making in the belief space (space of probability distributions over the robot and world states). We discuss various components of the NeBula framework, including (i) geometric and semantic environment mapping, (ii) a multi-modal positioning system, (iii) traversability analysis and local planning, (iv) global motion planning and exploration behavior, (v) risk-aware mission planning, (vi) networking and decentralized reasoning, and (vii) learning-enabled adaptation. We discuss the performance of NeBula on several robot types (e.g., wheeled, legged, flying), in various environments. We discuss the specific results and lessons learned from fielding this solution in the challenging courses of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge competition.The work is partially supported by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004), and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF MULTI-MODAL MOBILE ROBOTS

This thesis is focused on developing multi-modal mobile robots, i.e. robots that can operate in more than one domain. For decades, researchers have been trying to improve locomotion capabilities of robots that operate in a single domain: on the ground, on inclined surfaces, in the air, or in water. A prevailing approach in design of hybrid robots is to simply attach systems designed for a single domain together. In order to reduce the complexity of the hybrid robot, a different design approach is taken in this thesis by attempting to keep the hardware resources on the system as low as possible. To this end, two hybrid aerial and terrestrial platforms have been developed: the walking quadrotor and the HyTAQ, the Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor. In both platforms, ight is achieved through a quadrotor configuration; four actuators provide the required thrust. The walking quadrotor uses a single actuator set for both walking and ying by means of a unique compliant mechanism. This mechanism uses two separate linear movements to make walking possible. The horizontal movement of the leg is driven by running the propellers in reverse and the vertical movement is actuated by shape memory alloy (SMA) wires. An experimental prototype of this robot proves the functionality of the design. However, the experiments suggest that the application of the robot is efficient only where ground movement is a small portion of the whole mission. This is mainly due to the low efficiency of the propellers rotating in reverse and large time constant of the SMA wires, which makes walking slow. The terrestrial locomotion of HyTAQ has been made possible by adding a cylindrical cage, connected to the quadrotor through a revolute joint. This allows the cage to roll freely with respect to the body of the quadrotor, making the terrestrial locomotion possible. Moreover, the same ight actuators and control commands can be used to control terrestrial mode. An analysis of the system's energy consumption shows that the addition of the terrestrial locomotion improves the efficiency of the aerial-only quadrotor by increasing the overall operation range and time. This has been experimentally verified by showing that the HyTAQ's terrestrial range is 11 times greater compared to ight range of the quadrotor at the same speeds. Developing a hybrid aerial and scansorial robot is the next goal of this research. The first step toward this goal has been taken as part of this thesis by developing a method that enables a quadrotor to land and take-off from smooth vertical surfaces autonomously. A Microsoft Kinect sensor is used to localize the MAV and a PID controller is used to control the perching maneuver. A servo actuated gripper, mounted in front of the robot, makes attachment and detachment possible. The experimental results show that the robot can perch successfully in more than 90% of the experiments, which indicates the robustness of the proposed method.Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, May 201

Hybrid Aerial and Terrestrial Vehicle

A vehicle capable of both aerial and terrestrial locomotion. The terrestrial and aerial vehicle includes a flying device and a rolling cage connected to the flying device by at least one revolute joint. The rolling cage at least partially surrounds the flying device and is free-rolling and not separately powered.Sponsorship: Illinois Institute of TechnologyUnited States Paten

Hybrid Aerial and Terrestrial Vehicle

A vehicle capable of both aerial and terrestrial locomotion. The terrestrial and aerial vehicle includes a flying device and a rolling cage connected to the flying device by at least one revolute joint. The rolling cage at least partially surrounds the flying device and is free-rolling and is not separately powered.Sponsorship: Illinois Institute of TechnologyUnited States Paten