Association of single nucleotide polymorphisms in IGF-I, IGF-II and IGFBP-II with production traits in breeder hens of Mazandaran native fowls breeding station

The purpose of this study was to detect the polymorphism in IGF-I, IGF-II and IGFBP-II marker loci and their association with body weight at 8 weeks, average egg weight and total number of eggs laid during first 12 weeks after flocks maturity in breeder hens of native fowls. Blood samples were collected randomly from 160 individuals and genomic DNA was extracted using modified salting out method. A set of specific primer pairs were used for amplification of target genomic DNA at each marker loci and polymorphisms were detected using PCR-RFLP method. For IGF-I and IGFBP-II marker loci, allele B was the most frequent allele and ranged from 0.61 to 0.63 while, allele A was identified as a dominant allele in IGF-I marker site due to the highest frequency (0.57). The frequency of AA homozygous genotype was the lowest among all marker loci (0.08), whereas, AB genotype showed the highest frequency (0.61). Analysis of phenotypic data showed that the average egg weight and total number of eggs laid during first 12 weeks after flocks maturity were significantly affected by IGF-II and IGF-I marker loci respectively. No significant associations were observed between IGFBP-II genotypes and production traits. Comparison between detected alleles in the present study with reported allele by other research groups revealed a new allelic pattern for the analyzed marker loci in breeder hens of Mazandaran native fowls breeding station

Vector-Processing for Mobile Devices: Benchmark and Analysis

Vector processing has become commonplace in today's CPU microarchitectures. Vector instructions improve performance and energy which is crucial for resource-constraint mobile devices. The research community currently lacks a comprehensive benchmark suite to study the benefits of vector processing for mobile devices. This paper presents Swan-an extensive vector processing benchmark suite for mobile applications. Swan consists of a diverse set of data-parallel workloads from four commonly used mobile applications: operating system, web browser, audio/video messaging application, and PDF rendering engine. Using Swan benchmark suite, we conduct a detailed analysis of the performance, power, and energy consumption of vectorized workloads, and show that: (a) Vectorized kernels increase the pressure on cache hierarchy due to the higher rate of memory requests. (b) Vector processing is more beneficial for workloads with lower precision operations and higher cache hit rates. (c) Limited Instruction-Level Parallelism and strided memory accesses to multi-dimensional data structures prevent vector processing benefits from scaling with more SIMD functional units and wider registers. (d) Despite lower computation throughput than domain-specific accelerators, such as GPU, vector processing outperforms these accelerators for kernels with lower operation counts. Finally, we show five common computation patterns in mobile data-parallel workloads that dominate the execution time.Comment: 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC

Comparing APACHE II, APACHE IV, SAPS II, and SOFA Predictive Power in Poisoned Patients Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit

Background: This study aimed to assess the performance of the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II, APACHE IV, Simplified Acute Physiologic Score (SAPS) II, and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores in predicting mortality rate in poisoning patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU).Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on all admitted patients in the poisoning ICU of Imam Reza Hospital, Mashhad City, Iran. All patients were evaluated for three consecutive days since admission time and then every two days until discharge from ICU or death. The scoring systems mentioned above were calculated and analyzed by MedCalc statistical software version 18.9.1 and SPSS version 16.Results: Overall, 150 patients were studied, out of whom 67% (101) were male. Their mean±SD age was 41.6±18.9 years. In their whole hospitalization period, APACHE II (79.5%), SAPS II (78.7%), APACHE IV (78.4%), and SOFA (72.9%) were the most precise measures. On the first day of admission APACHE II (77.4%), on the second day, APACHE II (83.1%), on the third day, APACHE II (90.7%), and on the fifth day, SOFA (81.6%) were the most precise measures.Conclusion: All four systems have acceptable discriminatory power for poisoned patients. However, it seems that APACHE II can be used for mortality prediction, especially in the early days of admission.

Effect of cinnamon supplementation on blood glucose and lipid levels in type2 diabetic patients

   This study was planned to investigate the effects of supplementation of cinnamon on fasting blood glucose levels and lipid profiles among type2 diabetic patients. 60 subjects with type 2 diabetes from both sexes (30 males and 30 females) were allocated to the intervention and control groups (30 individuals per group). The doses of 1.5 g of cinnamon were equally administered orally in the form of cinnamon powder into 500 mg per capsule with breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 60 days. Control group received capsules of containing placebo. Blood samples were obtained on the beginning day of the experiment and at the end of 60 days. The fasting blood glucose levels and lipid profiles including total cholesterol, LDL-C, HDL-C and triglycerides of types 2 subjects were measured. Fasting blood glucose levels and lipid profiles in intervention group were significantly lower than control group (

Association of PICK1 and BDNF variations with increased risk of methamphetamine dependence among Iranian population : a case–control study

Funding Information: This study was financially supported by the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (Grant Number: 931681).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Novel models for chronic intestinal inflammation in chickens : intestinal inflammation pattern and biomarkers

For poultry producers, chronic low-grade intestinal inflammation has a negative impact on productivity by impairing nutrient absorption and allocation of nutrients for growth. Understanding the triggers of chronic intestinal inflammation and developing a non-invasive measurement is crucial to managing gut health in poultry. In this study, we developed two novel models of low-grade chronic intestinal inflammation in broiler chickens: a chemical model using dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) and a dietary model using a high non-starch polysaccharide diet (NSP). Further, we evaluated the potential of several proteins as biomarkers of gut inflammation. For these experiments, the chemical induction of inflammation consisted of two 5-day cycles of oral gavage of either 0.25mg DSS/ml or 0.35mg DSS/ml; whereas the NSP diet (30% rice bran) was fed throughout the experiment. At four times (14, 22, 28 and 36-d post-hatch), necropsies were performed to collect intestinal samples for histology, and feces and serum for biomarkers quantification. Neither DSS nor NSP treatments affected feed intake or livability. NSP-fed birds exhibited intestinal inflammation through 14-d, which stabilized by 36-d. On the other hand, the cyclic DSS-treatment produced inflammation throughout the entire experimental period. Histological examination of the intestine revealed that the inflammation induced by both models exhibited similar spatial and temporal patterns with the duodenum and jejunum affected early (at 14-d) whereas the ileum was compromised by 28-d. Calprotectin (CALP) was the only serum protein found to be increased due to inflammation. However, fecal CALP and Lipocalin-2 (LCN-2) concentrations were significantly greater in the induced inflammation groups at 28-d. This experiment demonstrated for the first time, two in vivo models of chronic gut inflammation in chickens, a DSS and a nutritional NSP protocols. Based on these models we observed that intestinal inflammation begins in the upper segments of small intestine and moved to the lower region over time. In the searching for a fecal biomarker for intestinal inflammation, LCN-2 showed promising results. More importantly, calprotectin has a great potential as a novel biomarker for poultry measured both in serum and feces.</jats:p

Global, regional, and national burden of colorectal cancer and its risk factors, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Funding: F Carvalho and E Fernandes acknowledge support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT), in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy i4HB; FCT/MCTES through the project UIDB/50006/2020. J Conde acknowledges the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-StG-2019-848325). V M Costa acknowledges the grant SFRH/BHD/110001/2015, received by Portuguese national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), IP, under the Norma Transitória DL57/2016/CP1334/CT0006.proofepub_ahead_of_prin