Mechanics of aeolian processes: Soil erosion and dust production

Aeolian (wind) processes occur as a result of atmosphere/land-surface system interactions. A thorough understanding of these processes and their physical/mechanical characterization on a global scale is essential to monitoring global change and, hence, is imperative to the fundamental goal of the Earth observing system (Eos) program. Soil erosion and dust production by wind are of consequence mainly in arid and semi arid regions which cover 36 percent of the Earth's land surface. Some recent models of dust production due to wind erosion of agricultural soils and the mechanics of wind erosion in deserts are reviewed and the difficulties of modeling the aeolian transport are discussed

Biochemical characterization of digestive amylase of wheat bug, Eurygaster maura (Hemiptera: Scutelleridae)

Biochemical characterization of  -amylase in the midgut and salivary glands of Eurygaster maura was conducted. Results showed that -amylase activities were present in the salivary glands and gut. The activity of -amylase in the midgut and in the salivary glands was 0.098 and 0.057 U/ml, respectively. The pH of salivary glands and the gut was determined to be in the range of 5- 5.5 (for the salivary glands) and in the range of 6-6.5 (for the gut), using staining indicator. The optimum pH and temperature for salivary glands and midgut amylase activity was 6-7 and 35-40ºC, respectively. The stability of amylase was highest in the acidic pH (4-5). Ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), urea, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and Mg2+ inhibited the enzyme activity but, NaCl and KCl enhanced enzyme activity. Based on linear regression analysis of reciprocal starch concentration versus reciprocal amylase activity Km and Vmax were 0.11% and 0.04 mM maltose/min for midgut amylase and 0.298% and 0.071 mM maltose/min for salivary amylase, respectively. Sodium dodecyl sulfate electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) showed that both midgut and salivary glands contain isozymes

Pulmonary Nocardiosis in Suspected Tuberculosis Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cross-Sectional Studies

Background: nocardiosis is an opportunistic infectious disease in immunocompromised patients. The most common form of nocardiosis infection in humans is pulmonary nocrdiosis caused by inhaling Nocardia species from the environment. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the pulmonary nocardiosis in patients with suspected tuberculosis using systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: We conducted a systematic search for cross-sectional studies focused on the pulmonary nocardiosis among patients with pulmonary tuberculosis based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) published from January 2001 to October 2019. The search was conducted in MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Science Direct databases, and Iranian databases. Medical subject headings (MeSH) and text words were searched: "pulmonary nocardiosis", "nocardiosis", OR "nocardial infection", "pulmonary nocardial infections/agents", AND "pulmonary tuberculosis", OR "pulmonary TB", AND "Iran". Two of the reviewers enrolled independently articles published in English and Persian languages according to the inclusion and the exclusion criteria. Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software (Version 3.3.070) was used for meta-analysis. Results: Only 4 studies met the eligibility criteria. The pulmonary nocardiosis prevalence varied from 1.7 to 6.7. The combined prevalence of nocardiosis among patients with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis in Iran was 4.8 (95 CI: 3-7.3, Q=5.8, Z=12.7). No heterogeneity was observed between studies because I2 was 48.3. N. cyriacigeorgica and N. asteroides were reported as the prevalent isolates, respectively. Conclusions: This review showed in patients suspected TB when they were negative in all diagnosis laboratory tests, nocardiosis cases which be considered. © 2020 Susan MM., et al

Prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in Helicobacter pylori isolates from Iran

Helicobacter pylori, a gram negative bacterium is capable of being resistant to a wide spectrum of antimicrobial drugs. The prevalence of antibiotic resistance in H. pylori strains differs amongst distinct geographical areas and has increased worldwide. Therefore, information concerning the prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant H. pylori strains is important in predicting therapeutic response. In this study, drug susceptibility of H. pylori in patients was investigated in Laleh hospital, Tehran, Iran from 2007 - 2008. 104 antral biopsies of patients with non ulcer dyspepsia and peptic ulcer were cultured. Susceptibility patterns were determined by disk diffusion method. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was performed for resistant isolates of H. pylori. In our study, 51.5% of clinical isolates showed resistance to metronidazole. All of the isolates were sensitive to other antibiotic disks including clarithromycin, amoxicillin, tetracycline and furazolidone. MIC was determined as 16 μg/ml in 5.8% and 32 μg/ml in 94.1% of isolates for metronidazole resistance isolates. The results indicated that the major drug resisted by H. pylori is metronidazole and it should be considered when recommending drugs to patients in this region.Keywords: Helicobacter pylori, antimicrobial resistance, MICAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 9(36), pp. 5962-5965, 6 September, 201

Caspase-10: a molecular switch from cell-autonomous apoptosis to communal cell death in response to chemotherapeutic drug treatment.

The mechanisms of how chemotherapeutic drugs lead to cell cycle checkpoint regulation and DNA damage repair are well understood, but how such signals are transmitted to the cellular apoptosis machinery is less clear. We identified a novel apoptosis-inducing complex, we termed FADDosome, which is driven by ATR-dependent caspase-10 upregulation. During FADDosome-induced apoptosis, cFLIPL is ubiquitinated by TRAF2, leading to its degradation and subsequent FADD-dependent caspase-8 activation. Cancer cells lacking caspase-10, TRAF2 or ATR switch from this cell-autonomous suicide to a more effective, autocrine/paracrine mode of apoptosis initiated by a different complex, the FLIPosome. It leads to processing of cFLIPL to cFLIPp43, TNF-α production and consequently, contrary to the FADDosome, p53-independent apoptosis. Thus, targeting the molecular levers that switch between these mechanisms can increase efficacy of treatment and overcome resistance in cancer cells.Cell Death and Differentiation advance online publication, 3 November 2017; doi:10.1038/cdd.2017.164

The effect of slow-stroke back message on the anxiety levels of Iranian women on the first postpartum day

Background: Anxiety disorder is common during the postpartum period. Back massage relaxation techniques are one of the most important nonpharmacological interventions to prevent and control postpartum-related anxiety. Objectives: To determine the effectiveness of slow-stroke back massage on the anxiety levels of primiparous mothers in the first days after delivery. Materials and Methods: This single-blind controlled clinical trial consisted of 100 primiparous mothers with normal deliveries. The mothers were randomly allocated to interventional (n = 50) or control (n = 50) groups using binary blocks. Both groups were followed up just before, immediately after, and the morning after the intervention. Data were collected using a demographic questionnaire and Spielberger�s state anxiety inventory (STAI) questionnaire. Results: Themeanage of the mothers was 22 years. There were no significant between-group differences in age (P = 0.333), education (P = 0.427), and medication during labor and the postpartum period (P = 0.412). There was no statistically significant difference between the mean anxiety scores of the experimental (6.66±35.48) and control groups (9.05±37.42) before the intervention (P = 0.268). Immediately after the massage and the next morning, there was a significant between-group difference in the anxiety scores (P < 0.001). Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that slow-stroke back massage is a simple, inexpensive, noninvasive, and effective method to reduce the anxiety levels of primiparous women during the first postpartum day. © 2016, Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal

GSR Analysis for Stress: Development and Validation of an Open Source Tool for Noisy Naturalistic GSR Data

The stress detection problem is receiving great attention in related research communities. This is due to its essential part in behavioral studies for many serious health problems and physical illnesses. There are different methods and algorithms for stress detection using different physiological signals. Previous studies have already shown that Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), also known as Electrodermal Activity (EDA), is one of the leading indicators for stress. However, the GSR signal itself is not trivial to analyze. Different features are extracted from GSR signals to detect stress in people like the number of peaks, max peak amplitude, etc. In this paper, we are proposing an open-source tool for GSR analysis, which uses deep learning algorithms alongside statistical algorithms to extract GSR features for stress detection. Then we use different machine learning algorithms and Wearable Stress and Affect Detection (WESAD) dataset to evaluate our results. The results show that we are capable of detecting stress with the accuracy of 92 percent using 10-fold cross-validation and using the features extracted from our tool.Comment: 6 pages and 5 figures. Link to the github of the tool: https://github.com/HealthSciTech/pyED

Detection of COVID-19 Using Heart Rate and Blood Pressure: Lessons Learned from Patients with ARDS

The world has been affected by COVID-19 coronavirus. At the time of this study, the number of infected people in the United States is the highest globally (7.9 million infections). Within the infected population, patients diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are in more life-threatening circumstances, resulting in severe respiratory system failure. Various studies have investigated the infections to COVID-19 and ARDS by monitoring laboratory metrics and symptoms. Unfortunately, these methods are merely limited to clinical settings, and symptom-based methods are shown to be ineffective. In contrast, vital signs (e.g., heart rate) have been utilized to early-detect different respiratory diseases in ubiquitous health monitoring. We posit that such biomarkers are informative in identifying ARDS patients infected with COVID-19. In this study, we investigate the behavior of COVID-19 on ARDS patients by utilizing simple vital signs. We analyze the long-term daily logs of blood pressure and heart rate associated with 70 ARDS patients admitted to five University of California academic health centers (containing 42506 samples for each vital sign) to distinguish subjects with COVID-19 positive and negative test results. In addition to the statistical analysis, we develop a deep neural network model to extract features from the longitudinal data. Using only the first eight days of the data, our deep learning model is able to achieve 78.79% accuracy to classify the vital signs of ARDS patients infected with COVID-19 versus other ARDS diagnosed patients