Spreading of Islam without any violence in Central, East and West Africa as a case study

This article studies the violence in the spreading of Islam by conquest and the factors that influenced the development of Islam in Central, East, West and Southeastern Africa. Although the spreading of Islam in these territories had not been done by Islamic conquests, as perpetrated in North Africa and other regions of the Islamic world, the majority of the population in the countries such as Sudan, Chad, Mali, Sierra Leone and Madagascar are Muslims. The results of this article show that the emigrations into these regions had an important role in introducing Islam to the native inhabitants. These emigrations had occurred either freely, through trading by Muslim traders and religious scholars, or forcefully by escaping the political and religious violence perpetrated by Eastern rulers in different areas in Central Africa. In this emigration process, the effect of Islamic scholars, missionaries and Islamic traders together with communication intermediaries among the natives is striking and as the natives became familiar with Islam and Islamic culture, Islam gradually developed after generations of integration between Muslims and native tribes.http://www.hts.org.zaScience of Religion and Missiolog

Luteinizing hormone changes in gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist protocol in in vitro fertilization cycles: A cross-sectional study

Background: Because of the unexpected and often dramatic inhibition of luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion related with the usage of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)-antagonist, there has been a probable need for exogenous LH supplementation. There is a basic and clinical evidences that show late development of follicle needs an LH but there is a threshold for LH requirements during folliculogenesis.Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the changes in serum LH and the identification of patients who benefit from the addition of LH.Materials and Methods: Seventy volunteers for antagonist protocol in IVF cycle were enrolled in this prospective cross-sectional study. The study was carried out in Reproductive Health Research Center, University of Medical Sciences between July 2016 and February 2016. Serum LH level was estimated 24 h before and after the first(GnRH) antagonist injection. The primary outcome was the serum level of LH and its change in the three groups and the secondary outcome was Egg and Embryo quality.Results: LH changes above or below 50% had no effect on the number of follicle, the number of oocyte, Germinal vesicle oocyte, metaphase 1 oocyte, metaphase 2 oocyte, endometrial thickness, and chemical and clinical pregnancy.Conclusion: We evaluated the changes of serum LH in the patients who were entered in the antagonist protocol. Our study showed no significant difference in LH levels 24h before and after the injection of the antagonist between the three groups, and LH changes did not affect the outcome of pregnancy

A Comparison of Mechanical Leg Impedance of Lower Limb Joint in Cerebral Palsy Crouch Gait Children with Healthy Match Group

Background and Objective: Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common form of upper motor neuron lesions in the children, leaded to joints deviation and different patterns of walking, like the crouch gait. Therefore, these joints devastation as well as the compensatory mechanisms were altered the mechanical impedance and gait insufficiency in these patients. The aim of this study was to compare mechanical impedance of joints and limb (skeletal and muscular components) at different sub phase of the stance phase of gait in Cerebral palsy crouch gait children. Methods: Twenty five children with spastic diplegia crouch gait Cerebral palsy and twenty five healthy controls walked at a self-selected comfortable speed. Kinetic and kinematic data were measured and analyzed during the loading response, the mid-stance, the terminal stance and the pre-swing sub phases of gait. Results: According to our study the Cerebral palsy crouch gait group showed a significant decrease in the leg impedance but increase in the joint impedance during the early to mid stance phase. However, during the terminal stance the leg impedance was increased as a result of more contribution of the muscular component to achieve sufficient impedance, which required increasing the muscular demands for keeping the body posture against collapse. Conclusion: The results of current study depicted that the Cerebral palsy crouch gait group relied more on the muscular than the skeletal components to achieve the required leg impedance. In addition, the more flexed hip and knee were increased the lever-arm length of the Ground Reaction Force (GRF) vector at the joint centers, thus increased the joint moments

Recombinant FSH Compared to Clomiphene Citrate as the First-Line in Ovulation Induction in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Using Newly Designed Pens: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective: Since there is still controversy regarding the best first-line choice for ovulation induction (OI) other than clomiphene citrate (CC) in infertile women diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), the aim of the present study was to compare recombinant human FSH with CC as the first course of OI in these women. Materials and methods: In this pilot randomized controlled trial, 104 infertile women diagnosed with PCOS were randomized in two groups to receive either CC with the dose of 100mg per day from day 3 of a spontaneous or progestin-induced menstruation for 5 days or rFSH with the starting dose of 50 IU daily {and weekly dose increment of as low as 12.5 IU}, on the day4 of the cycle. They were assessed during a single OI course. The pregnancy rate (PR) and live birth rate (LBR) were the primary outcomes. The follicular response, endometrial thickness, cancellation of the cycles and ovarian hyper stimulation (OHSS) rate were the secondary outcomes. Results: Analyzing data of 96 patients using Chi2 and Fischer’s Exact test (44 in rFSH group and 52 in CC group), both PR and LBR were comparable in the two groups {13.6% vs. 9.6% and 11.4% vs. 9.6% respectively}, with the difference not to be significant (p > 0.05). No cases of OHSS or multiple gestations happened during the treatment course. Conclusion: It seems that rFSH is as efficacious as CC while not with more complications for the first-line OI in infertile women with PCOS. However, due to the limitations of the present study including the small population and the single cycle of treatment, our results did not come out to prove this and more studies with larger study population are needed to compare the cumulative PR and LBR

Bio-Inspired Evolutionary Model of Spiking Neural Networks in Ionic Liquid Space

One of the biggest struggles while working with artificial neural networks is being able to come up with models which closely match biological observations. Biological neural networks seem to capable of creating and pruning dendritic spines, leading to synapses being changed, which results in higher learning capability. The latter forms the basis of the present study in which a new ionic model for reservoir-like networks, consisting of spiking neurons, is introduced. High plasticity of this model makes learning possible with a fewer number of neurons. In order to study the effect of the applied stimulus in an ionic liquid space through time, a diffusion operator is used which somehow compensates for the separation between spatial and temporal coding in spiking neural networks and therefore, makes the mentioned model suitable for spatiotemporal patterns. Inspired by partial structural changes in the human brain over the years, the proposed model evolves during the learning process. The effect of topological evolution on the proposed model’s performance for some classification problems is studied in this paper. Several datasets have been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed model compared to the original LSM. Classification results via separation and accuracy values have shown that the proposed ionic liquid outperforms the original LSMPeer reviewe

Comparison of pre-treatment with OCPs or estradiol valerate vs. no pre-treatment prior to GnRH antagonist used for IVF cycles: An RCT

Background: Both oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) and estradiol valerate (E2) have been used to schedule a gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles. Since the suppression of follicle-stimulating hormone by OCPs can stay 5-7 days after stopping the pills, it seems that starting the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) after 6 days of pre-treatment discontinuation may be important in IVF outcomes. Objective: The aim of the present study was to determine the number of mature oocyte and pregnancy rate of three pretreatment methods for fresh embryo transfer cycles. Materials and Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, two-hundred ten women (18-35 yr and less than 2 previous IVF attempts) undergoing IVF with the GnRH antagonist protocol were randomized to the OCP, E2, and no pretreatment arms. OCP group (n=53) received OCP (ethinyl estradiol30 μg and levonorgestrel150 μg), E2 group (n=63) received 4 mg/day oral E2 (17β‐E2) for 10 days from day 20 of the previous cycle and GnRH antagonist stimulation was started 6 days after the interruption of OCP and E2. The control group (n =70) did not receive any pretreatment. Results: No significant difference was observed in the mean number of the mature oocyte, endometrial thickness, and embryo quality. The pregnancy rate in E2 group was higher than the two other groups (42.9% vs 39.6% and 34.3% in OCP and control group, respectively), but the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.59). Conclusion: It seems OCP or E2 pretreatment could not improve the fresh IVF-embryo transfer outcome

GnRH antagonist versus agonist in normoresponders undergoing ICSI: a randomized clinical trial in Iran

Background: General concern is that the pregnancy rate is higher with GnRH-agonist as a protocol of pituitary suppression. GnRH-antagonist protocol provides a shorter period of administration and an easy flexible protocol. Objective: In this study, the outcomes of GnRH agonist and antagonist in ICSI cycles are compared in normo responder patients. Materials and Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 300 normoresponders undergoing ICSI were randomly divided to GnRh agonist (n=150) and GnRh antagonist (n=150) groups. The main outcome measurements were chemical, clinical and ongoing pregnancy rates (PR). Results: The mean duration of stimulation were 9.6±1.6 and 8.2±1.6 days in agonist and antagonist groups respectively (p=0.001). The mean number of MII oocyte retrieved in agonist and antagonist groups were 7.7±4.0 and 6.9±4.3 respectively (p=0.03). There was no significant difference between two groups regarding mean number of gonadotrophin ampoules, follicles, occytes, total embryos and good quality embryos, OHSS incidence, and abortion rate. Chemical pregnancy rate was 35.3% in agonist and 39.3% in antagonist group. Clinical pregnancy rate was 35.3% in agonist and 34% in antagonist group. Ongoing pregnancy rate was 45 (31.3%) in agonist and 44 (29.3%) in antagonist group. There was no significant difference between two groups in pregnancy rates. Conclusion: In this study antagonist protocol was shown to be an easy, safe and friendly protocol in Iranian normoresponder patients, having similar outcomes with standard agonist protocol but shorter period of stimulation