Protective effects of forced exercise against nicotine-induced anxiety, depression and cognition impairment in rat

Nicotine is one of the psychostimulant agents displaying parasympathomimetic activity; the chronic neurochemical and behavioral effects of nicotine remain unclear. Exercise lowers stress and anxiety and can act as a non-pharmacologic neuroprotective agent. In this study, the protective effects of exercise in nicotine withdrawal syndrome-induced anxiety, depression, and cognition impairment wereinvestigated. Methods: Seventy adult male rats were divided randomly into five groups. Group 1 served as negative control and received normal saline (0.2 mL/rat, i.p.) for 30 days, whereas group 2 (as positive control) received nicotine (6 mg/kg/day, s.c.) for the first 15 days. Groups 4, 5, and 6 were treated with nicotine (6 mg/kg/day, s.c.) for the first 15 days and then were treated with forced exercise, bupropion (20 mg/kg/day, i.p.), or a combination of the two for the following 15 days. Between day 25 and day 30, Morris water maze was used to evaluate spatial learning and memory. From days 31 to 35, the elevated plus maze (EPM), open field test (OFT), forced swim test (FST), and tail suspension test (TST) were used to investigate the level of anxiety and depression in the subjects. Results: Nicotine-dependent animals indicated a reflective depression and anxiety in a dose-dependent manner in FST, EPM, and TST, which were significantly different from the control group and also can significantly attenuate the motor activity and anxiety in OFT. Conclusions: Forced exercise, bupropion, or their combination can attenuate nicotine cessation-induced anxiety, depression, and motor activity in the mentioned behavioral assay. We conclude that forced exercise can protect the brain against nicotine withdrawal-induced anxiety, depression, and cognitive alteration. © 2016 by De Gruyter

Genetic Regulation of the Growth Plate

The epiphyseal growth plate consists of a layer of cartilage present only during the growth period and vanishes soon after puberty in long bones. It is divided to three well-defined zones, from epiphyses; resting, proliferative, and hypertrophic zones. Chondrocyte proliferation and differentiation and subsequent bone formation in this cartilage are controlled by various endocrine, autocrine, and paracrine factors which finally results into elimination of the cartilaginous tissue and promotion of the epiphyseal fusion. As chondrocytes differentiate from round, quiescent, and single structure to flatten and proliferative and then large and terminally differentiated, they experience changes in their gene expression pattern which allow them to transform from cartilaginous tissue to bone. This review summarizes the literature in this area and shortly describes different factors that affect growth plate cartilage both at the local and systemic levels. This may eventually help us to develop new treatment strategies of different growth disorders

Couplinator: A simple computational tool for synthesis of multi-section coupled-line filter based on MPCM-TLM technique

A new simple computational tool is proposed for the synthesis of multi-section coupled-line filters based on combined modified planar circuit method (MPCM) and transmission line method (TLM) analysis, referred to as MPCM-TLM. Due to its fundamentally simple architecture, the presented tool offers significantly faster optimization of coupled-line filters – for exactly the same initial simulation set-up – than other costly commercially-available tools, giving equally reliable results. Validity and accuracy of the proposed tool have been verified through the design of 3rd, 5th, and 7th order coupled-line filters and comparative analysis between results obtained from the proposed approach and the high-frequency structure simulator. A remarkable 99% time reduction in the analysis is recorded in the case of 7th order filter using the proposed tool, for almost identical results to HFSS. Therefore, it can be confidently claimed that the proposed technique can be used as a reliable alternative to existing complex, costly, processor-intensive CAD tools

Plantago: A plant for internists

Plantago belongs to the Plantaginaceae family, with two species known as Plantago ovate Forsk and Plantago psyllium L. In herbal medicine Plantago husk powder is commonly as laxative. Application of Psyllium husk as a hydrocolloid fiber has been almost confirmed in treatment of diabetes type 2. Recent researches on Plantago indicate the effect of its fibers on reducing cholesterol, blood lipid and blood glucose of people with diabetes and reducing the risk of colon cancer. There are no side effects reported for patients under treatment with Plantago fiber. Regarding the fact that Psyllium is widely used, different aspects of it is discussed in the present study

Motion correction of SPEC projection before reconstruction

In Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT), the data acquisition occurs over a relatively long time, typically in the range of 5-30 minutes. During this period, the patient must lie still to guarantee the image quality. Nevertheless, patient movement has frequently been reported in clinical applications. This movement causes misalignment of the projection frames, which degrades the reconstructed image and may introduce artifacts. However, the ability to detect and correct for the motion using a computational method is valuable for quality assurance of SPECT imaging. In this work a correlation function based on Linogram and Sinogram of the projection is evaluated in order to estimate the occurred motion and correct it for the best alignment. By our implemented method the motion artifacts of our cases reduced considerably and our results showed that the misalignment (motion) between the projections could be found with a small error depending on the resolution of the images (pixel size), and the time and duration of the applied motion during the course of projection acquisition

Evaluation of Classifiers in Software Fault-Proneness Prediction

Reliability of software counts on its fault-prone modules. This means that the less software consists of fault-prone units the more we may trust it. Therefore, if we are able to predict the number of fault-prone modules of software, it will be possible to judge the software reliability. In predicting software fault-prone modules, one of the contributing features is software metric by which one can classify software modules into fault-prone and non-fault-prone ones. To make such a classification, we investigated into 17 classifier methods whose features (attributes) are software metrics (39 metrics) and instances (software modules) of mining are instances of 13 datasets reported by NASA. However, there are two important issues influencing our prediction accuracy when we use data mining methods: (1) selecting the best/most influent features (i.e. software metrics) when there is a wide diversity of them and (2) instance sampling in order to balance the imbalanced instances of mining; we have two imbalanced classes when the classifier biases towards the majority class. Based on the feature selection and instance sampling, we considered 4 scenarios in appraisal of 17 classifier methods to predict software fault-prone modules. To select features, we used Correlation-based Feature Selection (CFS) and to sample instances we did Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE). Empirical results showed that suitable sampling software modules significantly influences on accuracy of predicting software reliability but metric selection has not considerable effect on the prediction

Intranasal administration of endometrial mesenchymal stem cells as a suitable approach for Parkinson�s disease therapy

This study aimed to investigate the therapeutic effects of intranasal administration of human endometrium-derived stem cells (HEDSCs) in the mouse model of Parkinson�s disease (PD). Thirty days after intrastriatal injection of 6-OHDA, HEDSCs were administrated intranasally in three doses (104, 5 � 104 and 105 cells µl�1). During 120 days after stem cell administration, behavioral tests were examined. Then the mice were sacrificed and the fresh section of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) was used for detection of HEDSCs-GFP labeled by fluorescence microscopy method. In addition, immunohistochemistry was used to assay GFP, human neural Nestin, and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) markers in the fixed brain tissue at the SNpc. Our data revealed that behavioral parameters were significantly improved after cell therapy. Fluorescence microscopy assay in fresh tissue and GFP analysis in fixed tissue were showed that the HEDSCs-GFP labeled migrated to SNpc. The data from immunohistochemistry revealed that the Nestin as a differential neuronal biomarker was expressed in SNpc. Also, TH as a dopaminergic neuron marker significantly increased after HEDSCs therapy in an optimized dose 5 � 104 cells µl�1. Our results suggest that intranasal administration of HEDSCs improve the PD symptoms in the mouse model of PD dose-dependent manner as a noninvasive method. © 2019, Springer Nature B.V

Accuracy of Dynamic Stall Response for Wind Turbine Airfoils Based On Semi-Empirical and Numerical Methods

The aim of the present study is to investigate the accuracy of two different dynamic stall approaches for wind-turbine airfoils. The first approach is the semi-empirical Leishman-Beddoes model (L-B), and the second is the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) results. National Renewable-Energy Laboratory (NREL) S series airfoils are used, and the simulations are performed in Re=106. For both approaches, aerodynamic coefficients are represented and compared to experimental data. Validation data refer to Ohio State University (OSU) experiments, which are for pitch oscillation. Results show that the accuracy of the L-B and CFD methods is dependent on mean angle of attack, reduced frequency and the phase of motion. The semi-empirical model has appropriate accuracy as well as low computational cost while the CFD unsteady simulation could be properly used to predict the drag coefficient

Gaining comprehensive data about sexual knowledge through surveys

Background: Delivery of sexual health services rely on rigorous facts extracted from surveys, but often those facts cannot be available due to the lack of culturally-sensitive questionnaires. Objective: our aim was to show the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Acquisition of Sexual Information Test (ASIT), a measure selected due to its assemblages with Iranian culture. Materials and Methods: Forward-backward procedure was applied to translate the questionnaire. Cross-sectional study was carried out and psychometric properties of the Iranian version were tested in a thirty sample of reproductive-age women. Face validity was assessed by qualitative and quantitative methods. Content validity was also assessed by calculating two quantitative indicators as content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR). Reliability was assessed by test-retest analyses. Results: Impact score was 1.5, the majority of participants (83.3%) stated that the overall level of questionnaire was high but some of the questions were irrelevant to sexual knowledge. Many questions (90%) gained a CVR less than 0.56, and all of them gained CVIs lower than 0.7. Correlation in test-retest reliability was 0.85

Immersed Boundary Method for the Solution of 2D Inviscid Compressible Flow Using Finite Volume Approach on Moving Cartesian Grid

In this study, two-dimensional inviscid compressible flow is solved around a moving solid body using Immersed Boundary Method (IBM) on a Cartesian grid. Translational motion is handled with a Cartesian grid generated around the body which moves with body on a background grid. In IBM, boundaries are immersed within the grid points. In this paper solution domain is discretized using finite volume approach. To implement boundary conditions on immersed boundaries, a set of Ghost finite volumes are defined along the wall boundaries. Boundary conditions are used to assign flow variables on these Ghost finite volumes. Governing equations are solved using dual time step method of Jameson. Finally, numerical results obtained from the present study are compared with the other numerical results to evaluate the correct performance of the present algorithm and its accuracy