Search

Niloufar Shashaani,1 Reza Shiari,2 Abdullah Karimi,3 Shima Salehi,4 Roxana Ghanaei,3 Mehrnoush Hassas Yeganeh,2 Sara Shiari,1 Khosro Rahmani,2 Vadood Javadi Parvaneh2 1Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 2Department of Pediatric Rheumatology, Mofid Children’s Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 3Department of Infectious Diseases, Mofid Children’s Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 4Faculty of Medicine, Ali Asghar Children’s Hospital, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IranCorrespondence: Reza Shiari Tel +98-21-22227033Email shiareza@yahoo.comIntroduction: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a systemic vasculitis that occurs mostly in children under five years old. Kawasaki affects the middle-size arteries, especially the coronary arteries. Therefore, without adequate treatment, it may cause coronary artery aneurysm in 25% of patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Kobayashi, Sano, and Egami criterions with coronary artery aneurysm in KD patients during the last ten years and to identify risk factors in patients with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG)-resistant and coronary artery aneurysms.Methodology: Medical records of 363 Kawasaki patients referred during 2008– 2017 were reviewed. Patients’ demographic data and Kobayashi, Sano, and Egami scores of each patient were calculated. Based on echocardiographic findings, cases of coronary artery aneurysm were determined. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value, and the accuracy of each criterion were determined to predicting IVIG resistance and detect coronary artery aneurysm.Results: There was a slight relationship between IVIG-resistance in Kawasaki children and its prediction based on the Kobayashi risk score, but no relationship was found between the Egami and Sano criteria. Sixty-three patients (17.4%) had coronary artery lesions (CALs) on time of diagnosis. There were no statistically significant differences between gender and mean age of children with and without CALs. Also, there was no significant relationship between coronary artery aneurysm in Kawasaki children and its prediction based on the above three risk factors. The area under the ROC-curve of all three risk measures of Kobayashi, Egami, and Sano indicated that all three criteria were not useful in predicting CALs.Conclusion: Despite the low accuracy of the three above criteria to predictive of patients with IVIG resistance, it seems that the variables of age, duration of fever, and C-reactive protein (CRP) are more useful than other variables and may be utilized to evaluate patients by establishing a more appropriate cut-off point.Keywords: Kawasaki disease, coronary artery aneurysm, IVIG-resistant, Kobayashi, Sano, Egami

Reduction of the transportation sector's air emissions has been an essential goal for decreasing the emissions' externalities and slowing climate change. This study evaluated the emission impacts of low-level automated vehicles (LAVs) in 86 metropolitan areas in the United States, based on county-specific emission costs of morbidity, mortality, and environmental damages. Twelve LAV technologies were investigated to estimate their impacts on CO2, CO, NOx, PM2.5, SOx, NH3, and VOC. The study analyzed the LAV technologies' direct and indirect emission impacts, including accident-related and non-accident-related congestion reductions, aerodynamic force reduction, the operational load of equipment, and traffic rebound. The results show that the LAV technologies could reduce the annual social costs of emissions by between 9 and 20 billion USD2019 in these metropolitan areas. This is equal to approximately 20% of the vehicles' emissions. A sensitivity analysis was performed on the technologies' market penetration rates (MPRs), demonstrating that the rate strongly influences the emission savings. This study revealed that LAVs' savings per vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) vary between areas, with the technologies performing differently in different areas due to both geographical factors (e.g., population) and technological factors (e.g., internal combustion engine performance). The study provides extensive resources for policymakers to develop targeted incentives and maximize the social benefits of the LAV technologies.

Jointly identifying a mixture of discrete and continuous factors of variability without supervision is a key problem in unraveling complex phenomena. Variational inference has emerged as a promising method to learn interpretable mixture representations. However, posterior approximation in high-dimensional latent spaces, particularly for discrete factors remains challenging. Here, we propose an unsupervised variational framework using multiple interacting networks called cpl-mixVAE that scales well to high-dimensional discrete settings. In this framework, the mixture representation of each network is regularized by imposing a consensus constraint on the discrete factor. We justify the use of this framework by providing both theoretical and experimental results. Finally, we use the proposed method to jointly uncover discrete and continuous factors of variability describing gene expression in a single-cell transcriptomic dataset profiling more than a hundred cortical neuron types., 10 pages, 6 figures, conference

Recursive Bayesian inference (RBI) provides optimal Bayesian latent variable estimates in real-time settings with streaming noisy observations. Active RBI attempts to effectively select queries that lead to more informative observations to rapidly reduce uncertainty until a confident decision is made. However, typically the optimality objectives of inference and query mechanisms are not jointly selected. Furthermore, conventional active querying methods stagger due to misleading prior information. Motivated by information theoretic approaches, we propose an active RBI framework with unified inference and query selection steps through Renyi entropy and $\alpha$-divergence. We also propose a new objective based on Renyi entropy and its changes called Momentum that encourages exploration for misleading prior cases. The proposed active RBI framework is applied to the trajectory of the posterior changes in the probability simplex that provides a coordinated active querying and decision making with specified confidence. Under certain assumptions, we analytically demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms conventional methods such as mutual information by allowing the selections of unlikely events. We present empirical and experimental performance evaluations on two applications: restaurant recommendation and brain-computer interface (BCI) typing systems., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, 1 table

Background: This study was conducted to evaluate the incidence of medication discrepancies and its related factors using medication reconciliation method in patients admitted to the emergency department of Tehran University of Medical Sciences hospitals. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 200 adult patients with at least one chronic disease that used two regular prescription medications were included in 2015. After 24 h of admission, demographic data and patient's home medications were collected. Medication discrepancies were assessed through comparison of a best possible medication history list with the physician's orders. Results: Out of 200 patients (mean age, 61.5 yr; 86 males, 114 women), 77.5% of patients had one or more medication discrepancies. The most common discrepancies were medication omission (35.49%), change (14.22%) and substitution (10.97%), respectively. The relationship between number of comorbid conditions (P=0.025), regular home medications (P=

Bu çalışma, 3-6 Ekim 2012'de Floransa[İtalya]'da düzenlenen 15. Biennial Meeting European-Society-for-Immunodeficiency (ESID)'de bildiri olarak sunulmuştur. European Soc Immunodeficiency (ESID) Int Nursing Grp Immunodeficiencies (INGID) Int Patient Org Primary Immunodeficiencies (IPOPI)

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common subtype of leukemia in children. Although ALL and type 1 diabetes appear to be biologically unrelated, there are common threads in both epidemiology and etiology. Rising incidence rates of both ALL (1) and type 1 diabetes (2) observed over recent decades in many Western countries seem to support common etiological factors (3). In the current study, we report on diabetes-related autoantibodies (Abs) in a group of patients with ALL. Thirty-four consecutive children (19 males and 15 females, mean age 6.2 ± 4.6 years) were referred to our institution in 2004 for newly diagnosed ALL. Patients were tested for Abs to islet and thyroid antigens. After the initial investigation and treatment, 31/34 (91%) patients (3 died in the mean time) were followedup for 6 years to evaluate the evolution of the autoimmune markers and progression toward type 1 diabetes. Glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) Abs by direct …

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of plasmin and heparin on in vitro ovine spermoocyte interaction. Different concentrations of plasmin (0, 1, 10, 100 ng/ml) and heparin (0, 5, 10 IU/ml) were added alone or simultaneously into fertilization medium. After sperm and oocyte co-culture, binding and penetration of sperm to zona pellucida (ZP) were assayed. Treatment with 1 and 10 ng/ml plasmin resulted in higher sperm binding to ZP than those in control. The rates of sperm binding to ZP were increased with highest heparin concentrations (10 IU/ml). Heparin had no effect on penetration rate of sperm to ZP. Simultaneously effects of plasmin and heparin were not significant on penetration rate of sperm to ZP. But, 5 or 10 IU/ml heparin in the present of 1 ng/ml plasmin had higher effect on sperm binding to ZP than that in the other groups. These results suggest that plasmin and heparin (alone/simultaneously) might play a role in events related to fertilization in ovine.

The UNESCO Chair in Health Education in TUMS (TUMS), Iran, was established in Immunology, Asthma and Allergy Research Institute in April 2004. The purpose of this chair is to promote an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation activities in the field of health education. The target group includes the public, health care workers, students, trainees and researchers. During its one year existing, the Chair has supported financially eleven admitted proposals and supported technically eight submitted proposals in divers fields regarding health issues with the cooperation of other research institutes in TUMS. It has made connections with most of the national research institutes and universities to establish multi-centric collaborations. The activities of the Chair are being directed towards the health priorities of the country and region. The Chair has contributed to an important international congress on immunodeficiency disorders as well as another meeting on Asthma in near future. The Chair is to publish several educational books, booklets and CDs related to health education; it is also going to prepare a thorough proposal on HIV/AIDS prevention with collaboration of other institutions, which could be applicable regionally, and in neighboring countries and states.

5% (molar ratio) Fe doped TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared by a sol gel method and the post annealing of the samples was carried out at 400 °C, 600 °C and 800 °C in air. Structural characterization of the samples was carried out using High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM). HRTEM images of the samples revealed that the mean size of the nanoparticles changed from ∼8 nm to ∼100 nm as the annealing temperature was increased. Experimental investigation of the electronic structure of TiO2:Fe nanoparticles is important in order to understand the correlation between electronic and optical properties in these samples. X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS) of the TiO2:Fe nanoparticles was performed to study the electronic structure. The results of XPS study confirmed the presence of Fe in all samples, which could not be detected by HRTEM and XRD, in spite of low doping levels, and revealed that Fe ions are predominantly in Fe3+ states. Photoluminescence (PL) measurements have been measured with an excitation energy of 250 nm to study optical properties of the TiO2:Fe nanoparticles. The active PL band at ∼440 nm has been observed.

Multilevel inverters (MLIs) have gained wide attention in industry and academia to provide higher voltage levels with lower harmonics, power losses, and cost. This study proposes a new asymmetrical MLI topology with reduced component count (RCC). The proposed topology can be extended in a three-phase structure and both modular and cascaded configurations to generate the required number of voltage levels for high-voltage applications. To minimize the power losses and the voltage stress on the switches, this configuration has the potential to produce negative polarity without an H-bridge configuration, thereby the active switches are reduced to only three switches in the conduction path. Due to the possibility of applying different switching patterns, this article proposes a new solution by employing particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to determine the optimized dc sources' magnitude. To improve the voltage quality and minimize the total harmonic distortion (THD), the optimal switching angle (OSA) modulation technique is applied to determine the optimum switching angles by the PSO algorithm. Moreover, the proposed topology's effectiveness compared to the conventional cascaded H-bridge (CHB) MLI with 15-levels is illustrated by providing comparative results that express fewer power losses. Finally, the proposed topology's feasibility and its optimization approach are validated by a single-phase prototype utilizing 15- and 25-levels.

Cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverters (CHB-MLIs) have a proper structure and significant advantages like filter-less topology due to their desired output voltage levels and being suitable for employing isolated DC voltage sources that have been utilized in multi-sources applications such as photovoltaic (PV) power generation. However, unbalanced DC voltage sources of the DC/DC output section or fast voltage variations can decrease the output voltage quality and make some undesired fluctuations and harmonics, affecting the load behavior in different applications. To overcome these problems, a new real-time voltage control technique has been proposed to regulate the output voltage magnitude properly. This aim can be obtained by employing the model reference adaptive control (MRAC) technique for voltage regulation to improve total harmonic distortion (THD), and to decrease some harmonic orders (HOs) magnitude, especially lower harmonics (3rd, 5th, and 7th). Therefore, the proposed solution is designed to stabilize the dynamic error originating from the DC side. At the same time, the DC voltage sources are interfaced with variations, where they do not have equal magnitudes with each other. The effectiveness of the proposed control technique has been verified by simulation in MATLAB/Simulink.

This study proposes an optimised controllable pulse‐width modulation (PWM) scheme suitable for multilevel inverters. Seeing the need for improving the output voltage characteristics such as total harmonic distortion, low‐order harmonic and distortion factor, an improved harmonic injection PWM variable frequency triangular carrier modulation technique is employed for off‐line mode. For this purpose, the carrier signal frequencies at each level (carrier‐based), and also amplitudes and orders of the harmonic‐injected signal (reference‐based) are considered as controllable parameters. The proposed technique benefits are operating with considerably fewer numbers of the pulses per cycle, low switching losses, and improvement in the output voltage characteristics. However, selective harmonic elimination and optimal switching angles are the most common modulation techniques, but they employ only one angle as a control parameter at each level of the output waveform. Hence, the modulation scheme can consider more angles at each level as controllable parameters by applying multi‐objective particle swarm optimisation and non‐dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA‐II). Simulations are conducted in 5‐, 7‐ and 9‐level inverter. Finally, the effectiveness of the studies is validated by obtaining experimental results on a single‐phase 1 kW 7‐level inverter prototype.

BACKGROUND: The hyper-IgE syndrome (HIES) is a primary immunodeficiency characterized by infections of the lung and skin, elevated serum IgE, and involvement of the soft and bony tissues. Recently, HIES has been associated with heterozygous dominant-negative mutations in the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and severe reductions of T(H)17 cells. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether there is a correlation between the genotype and the phenotype of patients with HIES and to establish diagnostic criteria to distinguish between STAT3 mutated and STAT3 wild-type patients. METHODS: We collected clinical data, determined T(H)17 cell numbers, and sequenced STAT3 in 100 patients with a strong clinical suspicion of HIES and serum IgE >1000 IU/mL. We explored diagnostic criteria by using a machine-learning approach to identify which features best predict a STAT3 mutation. RESULTS: In 64 patients, we identified 31 different STAT3 mutations, 18 of which were novel. These included mutations at splice sites and outside the previously implicated DNA-binding and Src homology 2 domains. A combination of 5 clinical features predicted STAT3 mutations with 85% accuracy. T(H)17 cells were profoundly reduced in patients harboring STAT3 mutations, whereas 10 of 13 patients without mutations had low (1000IU/mL plus a weighted score of clinical features >30 based on recurrent pneumonia, newborn rash, pathologic bone fractures, characteristic face, and high palate. Probable: These characteristics plus lack of T(H)17 cells or a family history for definitive HIES. Definitive: These characteristics plus a dominant-negative heterozygous mutation in STAT3.