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Background: Although investigating the probable side effects of post intraoperative radiotherapy wound fluid secretion (PIWFS) is crucial, especially in clinical cases, no report has been published on the effect of PIWFS on the remaining tumor cells (in the vital state) in cavity side margins or surrounding regions. These tumor cells might be directly/indirectly exposed to intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT). Here, for the first time, we investigated the effect of PIWFS on tumor cells of the same patient extracted from the excised tumor in the spheroid form. Methods: We generated 8 human-derived breast tumor spheroids from 4 patient specimens who received to IORT, dissociated and cultured them in microfluidic devices. The spheroids from each sample were treated with the patients’ PIWFS and DMEM medium separately. Two different parameters, called area and number of detached cells (NDCs), were determined and investigated to evaluate the spheroids’ vital and proliferative states. Results: The results showed severe transformation in tumor spheroids’ function into more invasive and proliferative functions after treatment with PIWFS. Conclusion: Although the radiation-induced bystander effect may have a role in this observation, further experiments must be done to better clarify the probable desired or non-desired effects of post-IORT secretion for both the remaining tumor cells and the surrounding immune cells.

In this study, an effective intelligent system based on artificial neural networks (ANN) and a new version of the sine cosine algorithm (SCA) is developed to evaluate and predict the FOS of homogenous slopes under static and dynamic loading. In the first step, an effective hybrid optimization algorithm based on the adaptive sine cosine algorithm (ASCA) and pattern search (PS), namely ASCPS, is proposed and verified using a set of benchmark test functions. Then, the new algorithm, along with the Morgenstern and Price method is applied for seismic slope stability evaluation. To provide a neural network training dataset, a set of 189 slopes with different values of slope height, slope angle, friction angle of soil, soil cohesion, and horizontal acceleration coefficient have been analyzed and their corresponding FOS have been recorded. In the next step, the proposed ASCPS algorithm is implemented for training the ANN model using the collected database. The performance and prediction capacity of the developed model are evaluated using root mean square error (RMSE) and correlation coefficient (R). According to the obtained results, the ANN model with the RMSE value of 0.023 and the R value of 0.984 is a reliable, simple, and valid computational model for estimating the FOS and evaluating the slope stability under static and earthquake loads. In addition, the developed ANN model is applied to a case study of slope stability from previous studies, and the results reveal that the proposed model may provide better optimal solutions and outperform existing methods.

Mulibrey Nanism is a rare multisystem disorder inherited in an autosomal recessive manner caused by mutations in the TRIM37 gene. Most of the reported cases are from Finland, but this condition has rarely occurred in other countries. Although the clinical diagnosis of Mulibrey nanism is a challenge during the first months of life, the disease can be suspected clinically due to the distinctive features of the patients. A 4-year-old female with pneumonia, cardiomyopathy, growth retardation, peripheral edema, and characteristic craniofacial features was referred to Tehran Hope Generation Foundation Genetic diagnosis Center, in October 2021. Genomic DNA was isolated from peripheral blood samples of the patient and her parents and Whole exome sequencing was performed for the patient. Whole exome sequencing revealed a homozygous G>A splice site variant (TRIM37; c.370-1G>A). Sanger sequencing confirmed the segregation of the variant with phenotype in this family. Whole exome sequencing can be helpful in the diagnosis of the patients suspecting to Mulibrey nanism and lacking sufficient clinical presentation according to the diagnostic algorithm.

The present study was carried out to examine first, if diets enriched with 320 g of the base diet with common dietary oils including fish oil, olive oil, hydrogenated sunflower seed (H-SFS) oil, flaxseed oil and sunflower seed oil (SFS) could induce weight gain and alter reproductive and metabolic characteristics of male mice. Second, whether the addition of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA, 10% of the diet) could ameliorate any negative effects. In this cross-sectional study, 90 four-week-old male NMRI mice were used in two consecutive experiments. A high level of dietary oils negatively affected some reproductive and metabolic characteristics of male mice (p 0.05), specifically, sunflower seed oil enrichment resulted in higher HDL levels and apoptosis of germinal epithelial cells. An olive oil-enriched diet caused an increase in plasma triglyceride concentrations and germinal cell apoptosis, as well as a decrease in sperm concentration and perturbed spermatogenesis. When CLA was fed in conjunction with dietary oils it successfully mitigated some of the negative reproductive and metabolic characteristics. We conclude that male reproductive processes are affected by high dietary oils, even before signs of obesity are evident. Inclusion of dietary CLA may provide some benefit to offset negative effects, although further studies are required.

The objectives of this study were to investigate the effect of a maximum recommended oil supplementation on growth performance, eating behavior, ruminal fermentation, and ruminal morphological characteristics in growing lambs during transition from a low- to a high-grain diet. A total of 21 Afshari male lambs with an initial body weight (BW) of 41.4 ± 9.1 kg (mean ± SD) and at 5–6 months of age were randomly assigned to one of three dietary treatments (n = 7 per group), including (1) a grain-based diet with no fat supplement (CON), (2) CON plus 80 g/d of prilled palm oil (PALM), and (3) CON plus 80 g/d soybean oil (SOY); oils were equivalent to 50 g/kg of dry matter based on initial dry matter intake (DMI). All lambs were adapted to the high-grain diet for 21 d. In the adaptation period, lambs were gradually transferred to a dietary forage-to-concentrate ratio of 20:80 by replacing 100 g/kg of the preceding diet every 3 d. Thereafter, lambs were fed experimental diets for another 22 days. Fat-supplemented lambs had greater DMI, body weight (BW), and average daily gain (ADG), with a lower feed to gain ratio (p < 0.05), compared to CON lambs. The highest differences of DMI between fat-supplemented and CON-lambs were observed in week 3 of the adaptation period (p = 0.010). PALM- or SOY-supplementation lowered DM and NDF digestibility compared with CON (p < 0.05), and SOY caused the lowest organic matter (OM) digestibility compared with CON and PALM lambs (62.0 vs. 67.6 and 66.9; p < 0.05). Ruminal pH was higher for PALM and SOY compared with CON (p = 0.018). Lambs in SOY tended to have the highest ammonia-N concentrations (p = 0.075), together with a trend for higher concentrations of propionic acid, at the expense of acetic acid in ruminal fluid, on the last day of the adaptation period (diet × time, p = 0.079). Fat-supplemented lambs had lower isovaleric and valeric acid concentrations compared with CON on d 40 (diet × time, p < 0.05). PALM and SOY-fed lambs had a longer eating time (min/d and min/kg of DMI), chewing activity (min/d), meal frequency (n), and duration of eating the first and second meals after morning feeding (p < 0.05), and the largest meal size (p < 0.001). Fat supplemented lambs had greater ruminal papillary length (p < 0.05) and width (p < 0.01), and thicker submucosal, epithelial, and muscle layers, compared with the CON (p < 0.01). Blood metabolites were not influenced by dietary treatments (p > 0.05). The results from this study suggest that fat supplementation to high-grain diets may improve the development of ruminal epithelia and modify ruminal fermentation via optimized eating behavior or the direct effect of oils on the ruminal environment, resulting in better growth performance in growing lambs.

In this article, optimum adaptive sliding mode controller (ASMC) optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is designed to solve the trajectory tracking control problems of a quadcopter with model parameter uncertainties. Quadcopters have nonlinear, multi-input multi-output, coupled and under-actuated dynamics. For comparison with the designed controller, an adaptive integral backstepping controller approach is applied to compensate mass and inertia uncertainties of the flying robot. These methods guarantee stability of closed-loop system and force the states to track desired reference signals. The performance of both controllers is evaluated by numerical simulations. The obtained results demonstrate the better effectiveness of the designed PSO ASMC in stabilization of tracking particularly with parameter uncertainties.

Background- Effective interventions to improve sexual dysfunction in breast cancer survivors need screening of these dysfunctions with a suitable instrument. The aim of present study was translation and identifying psychometric properties of FSFI-BC which has been specifically developed for breast cancer survivors. Method-Forward and backward method was used for translating of the scale from English into Persian. 200 breast cancer survivors in stage 1 or 2 completed the questionnaire. Reliability was assessed by Cronbach’s alfa and test re-test analysis and construct validity with confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis.Results-The mean age of participants was 48.91(SD=9.758). Most women were housewives (74%) and mastectomy had been performed for 58% of them. Reliability evaluation indicated high internal consistency and good test re-test reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable fitness for seven factor of FSFI-BC questionnaire (NFI= 0.9 for both groups, CFI= 0.93 and 0.92 , χ2/df= 1.68 and 1.71 for SA(Sexually Active) and NSA(No Sexually Active) individuals respectively) .Conclusion-Study findings suggest that Iranian version of FSFI-BC is a suitable instrument for sexual dysfunction screening in breast cancer survivors.

A low noise amplifier is designed and simulated for the frequency range of 3.1 to 10.6 GHz using CMOS 0.18 µm technology. In this design there is a common source stage with an inductor in the source in order to reduce the amount of noise. The second stage is a structure to reuse the current in order to increase the gain and decrease the power consumption. Moreover, an NMOS transistor is used to improve the linearity of the proposed circuit. The proposed design is then simulated using the 0.18 µm CMOS technology in ADS software. The results show a noise level of less than 3dB and a flat gain of 14dB, also the IIP3 factor of the circuit is measured to be 0.5dBm which indicates the high degree of linearity in the circuit. The circuit power consumption is 23 mw.

In this paper, a direct optimal adaptive nonlinear tracking control method for a class of uncertain Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) nonlinear systems with actuator amplitude constraints in presence of unknown disturbance is developed. In order to handle parametric model uncertainties and external disturbance, an adaptive controller is presented. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed to prevent constraints violation through determining the optimal adaptive controller parameters. The performance of this control approach is studied using a new index function in time-domain, and the stability analysis is conducted by Lyapunov theory. In addition, indicative robot examples are provided to illustrate how investigated method effectively stabilizes system and confines tracking error to prescribed bounds without control input saturation, particularly with large parametric uncertainties.

In this study, a simple, economical and efficient preionization system (2.45 GHz, 1 kW) was constructed to assist the current startup in Taban tokamak ( $B_{T}= 0.7$ T, $R = 0.45$ m, a = 0.15 m). Power pulse transformer is a part of the preionization circuit, and its removal from the system can have impact on the performance of microwave duration and plasma preionization. In the present system, the magnetron was connected directly to the capacitor using a triggered spark gap. This new preionization system allows studying the electron cyclotron emission (ECR) preionization phenomenon at different toroidal magnetic fields. The toroidal magnetic field ripple was also used to determine the entrance moment of the ECR layer into the chamber. As a result, the exact moment of sending microwave can be determined using the moment of the ECR layer formation inside the chamber for maximum absorption of wave power.

Background: The rate of recurrence and mortality in high-risk prostate cancer remains high. On the other hand, the use of chemotherapy in metastatic prostate cancer has improved overall survival of patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone on increasing survival of patients with high risk localized prostate cancer Methods: This is a systematic review study. Databases including Scopus, Medline, PubMed, Google Scholar, Cochrane, Embase were searched. The terms used include prostate cancer, adenocarcinoma, neoadjuvant, chemotherapy, chemotherapy alone, systemic therapy. Of the various types of articles, only oiginal research studies that specifically focused on neoadjuvant chemotherapy (not chemotherapy with target therapy, immunotherapy, or hormone therapy) were identified. Inclusion criteria included study type (original research studies) and sample type (high-risk localized prostate cancer patients) and outcome type (patient survival). Results: A total of 17 original research studies were identified. All of these studies were phase one or phase two. Docetaxel was the most commonly used chemotherapy drug. Also, the most common regimen used was the use of docetaxel alone. The rate of decrease in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) (>50%) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy was reported in 24 to 58% of patients. PSA declines of less than 50% after neoadjuvant chemotherapy occurred in 40 to 100% of patients. No studies reported a complete pathologic response following neoadjuvant chemotherapy. However, the relative pathologic response and reduced tumor volume were seen in the majority of patients. All of these studies showed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone, in high-risk prostate cancer patients, was almost well tolerated and that the complications were mostly mild (grade 1 and 2). Grade 3 and 4 complications were negligible. A 2-year recurrence-free survival of up to 68.5% and a 5-year recurrence-free survival of up to 49% were reported. The overall 5-year survival also ranged from 35 to 48%. Conclusion: The use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone has not clearly increased the survival of patients with high-risk localized prostate cancer, and there is controversy in studies.

The present study was intended to evaluate the effect of forage source (alfalfa hay; ALF vs. corn silage; CS) along with a supplemental fat source (soybean oil; SO vs. rumen-inert palm fatty acids; PF) on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and ruminal fermentation in dairy calves. Forty-eight new-born Holstein female calves (3 d old) were assigned to one of 4 treatments: (1) alfalfa hay with soybean oil (ALF-SO); (2) alfalfa hay with palm fatty acids (ALF-PF); (3) corn silage with soybean oil (CS-SO); (4) corn silage with palm fatty acids (CS-PF). Starter diets had equal amounts of forage (100 g/kg dry matter; DM) and fat source (30 g/kg DM). Calves were fed a constant amount of milk (d 1 to 63) and had ad libitum access to water and starters (d 1 to 83). The lowest and greatest starter intakes during the preweaning period occurred in ALF-SO and CS-PF, respectively. This coincided with forage × fat source interaction for average daily gain (ADG) during preweaning. The forage source affected total DM intake and ADG over the entire period, body weight (BW) at weaning, and final BW with greater values in calves that received CS compared with ALF. The concentrations of total short-chain fatty acids and butyrate were increased, whereas concentration of acetate and acetate:propionate ratio were decreased in the rumen of calves fed CS compared with ALF. Feeding CS increased urinary excretion of allantoin and, as a trend, total purine derivatives (PD) and estimated microbial protein synthesis in comparison with ALF. The fat source affected starter intake, ADG, and BW postweaning with the highest values in PF. The digestibility of neutral detergent fiber, crude protein and, as a trend, organic matter were higher in calves fed PF compared with SO. Calves fed PF had lower ruminal ammonia-N concentration and urinary N excretion and greater urinary excretion of allantoin and total PD. Calves receiving SO had a lower ruminal protozoa population. In conclusion, supplementing starter diets with CS and PF is superior to ALF and SO. Interaction of the positive effects of CS and PF on performance underlines that concurrent supplementation of CS with PF is especially recommendable in young calves before weaning.

The feeding of high-concentrate diets commonly results in lowered pH and ruminal dysbiosis which cause shifts in uptake dynamics of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and altered epithelial function. Therefore, the current study evaluated the effect of dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) on ruminal fermentation products, gene expression in the ruminal epithelium and the associated changes in ruminal microorganisms in lambs fed a high-concentrate diet. Twenty-six Afshari lambs adapted to a high-concentrate diet during a completely randomised design were fed with a basal diet supplemented with 100 g oil supplement (OS; 60 g sunflower oil and 40 g fish oil) for 10 (OS10), 20 (OS20) and 30 (OS30) d, respectively (

Tricuspid annular plane (TAP) systolic excursion (TAPSE) is a reproducible M-mode parameter for the measurement of longitudinal shortening of the right ventricle (RV). To date, all attention has been focused on the systolic excursion of TAP and the diastolic excursion of the annular plane back to the base has been ignored. This study aims to compare the quantitative (excursion, slope, and duration) and qualitative (velocity, acceleration, and indentation) characteristics of TAP systolic and diastolic excursion, using color tissue Doppler imaging, in three groups of children with normal RV (NORV), volume overloaded RV (VORV), and pressure overloaded RV (PORV) and normal pulmonary arterial pressure.A prospective case-control study was performed in three groups of children with normal heart, VORV and PORV. TAPSE and tricuspid annular plane diastolic excursion (TAPDE) were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed and compared between the three groups. Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows.TAPSE, TAPDE, TAPSE slope, TAPSE slope/TAPDE slope, TAPDE duration and TAPDE duration/RR interval were lower in PORV (TAPSE: PORV: 14.45 ± 4.30, NORV: 20.45 ± 5.46, P = .003, TAPDE:PORV: 14.39 ± 4.61, NORV: 20.28 ± 5.65, P = .004, TAPSE slope:PORV: 4.79 ± 1.40, NORV: 7.15 ± 1.98, P = .001, .001, TAPDE duration:PORV: 201.1 ± 87.9 ms, NORV: 292.1 ± 97.9, P = .006, TAPDE duration/RR interval: PORV: .37 ± .09, NORV: .48 ± .08, P = .0002).Pressure-overload on RV produced more impairment of TAPSE and TAPDE patterns than volume overload. Values of TAPSE and TAPDE in patients with VORV and PORV stay in two ends of the normal spectrum. The harmful impact of pre-tricuspid volume overload seems to be less than the post-tricuspid volume overload.

Breast cancer is among the most common malignancies in women around the world. There is evidence of high prevalence of serum/blood Vitamin D deficiency in Iranian women. Considering the multitude of factors that may be involved in the prognosis and lifespan of breast cancer patients, this study investigated the level of Vitamin D in Iranian patients with nonmetastatic breast cancer.This cross-sectional study was carried out on 214 women diagnosed with breast cancer, who were referred to the radio-oncology department. Serum Vitamin D level of the patients was measured. Prognostic factors were determined based on demographic and pathological characteristics. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics tests, Chi-square, one-way analysis of variance, Kaplan-Meier, and Cox regression model in SPSS v22. For all cases, the significance level was considered to beThe total mean of 25-hydroxyvitamin D serum level was 25.15 ± 17.68 ng/ml. There was no significant relationship between levels of Vitamin D with disease stage, tumor size, tumor grade, estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (No relationship was found between serum Vitamin D levels and the factors affecting the prognosis of nonmetastatic breast cancer. The Cox analysis showed that the survival time was not influenced by Vitamin D as a prognosis factor.

Background: Disease-related cancer pain is a multidimensional phenomenon. Psychological factors that may alter pain perception in cancer patients have not been well studied. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral stress therapy on distress in patients with cancer. Patients and Methods: In a cross-sectional study of consecutive patients (32-70 years), progression of their disease was at levels 1 to 3, high cycle education, and 3 months of chemotherapy, of which 40 were randomly available to the study and allocated to two groups (20 in experimental and 20 in control groups). The instrument was a McGill pain questionnaire (1997). Data were analyzed using two methods of Kolmogorov-Smirnov inferential statistics and multivariate analysis of covariance using SPSS Ver.17. Results: Correlation analysis showed that the experimental group had a significant reduction in perception of pain, in the posttest after the experiment compared with the control group. Conclusion: The short-term cognitive-behavioral stress management program could reduce the perception of pain in cancer patients.

In this paper, a lumped fractional order model (FOM) is developed for a lithiumion battery (LIB). Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is used to obtain the cell impedance at different temperatures and SOCs, and at a wide range of frequencies. This data is used for the model parameterization which is a complex nonlinear least squares problem. A modified Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is adopted to solve this problem. Two statistical measures, including sum of squares of residual and coefficient of determination are employed to incrementally build up on the integer order model (IOM) and obtain the final FOM. A derivative-based parameter sensitivity analysis is performed to study the influence of parameters on the model by considering their interactions. The terminal voltage of the FOM is simulated by mathematical approximation of the fractional derivative to study the model accuracy under temporal duty cycles. A comparative analysis between the fractional and integer order models is performed to gain insight on pros and cons of each model.

Background: Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) which has recently been renamed into Ductal Intraepithelial Neoplasia (DIN), is a malignant cell proliferation without invasion to basement membrane of ducts or lobules of breast. DCIS consists 20-30% of newly diagnosed breast cancers in some Western countries due to higher diagnosis resulting from screening by mammography. Relative Risk (RR) of invasive ductal carcinoma is 8-10 times in DCIS, although high grading lesions and positive or close surgical margins are two important predictive factors in DCIS recurrences. The adjuvant radiotherapy has decreased the rate of ipsilateral local recurrence about 60%. In this article, we evaluated the recurrence rate as DCIS as well as invasive breast cancer in patients with DCIS undergoing breast conserving surgery (BCS) and intraoperative electron radiotherapy (IOERT).Methods: Data were derived from Cancer Research Center database from 38 pure DCIS cases who had received intraoperative radiation therapy between 2012–2017. Intraoperative electron radiotherapy (IOERT) was performed according to Iran's intraoperative radiation therapy consensus.Results: The median age of the patients was 55 years and median histological lesion size was 1.8 centimeters. Number of extracted lymph nodes had a median of 1 and all extracted nodes were negative. Hormonal therapy was performed in 42.1% of patients. IOERT was done as radical full exposure for 86.9% of cases and as boost dose for 13.1% of cases, who needed to complete radiotherapy by external beam. One case in the group received boost dose and 4 cases in the group received full dose had recurrence. The median follow-up of patients was 31 months. Pathology of recurrence was reported as DCIS in 3 cases and invasive breast cancer in 2 of them.Conclusion: There is not a lot of data on the effectiveness of IOERT in DCIS management. Although there are not large number of cases in our study, the local recurrence (13.1%) was only event in our study with 31 months median follow up with no contralateral metastasis, distant metastasis, or death.

This paper aimed to evaluate Water Use Efficiency (WUE) indices for crops and horticulture productions. In doing so, after gathering data from 164 farmers, we investigated water withdrawal cost indices and monetary return per cubic meter of water through two econometric and managerial approaches. Besides, water shadow pricesand dry matters of per cub meter of water were calculated. The results revealed that the average monetary return per cubic metre of water is 3875.4 IRR1 (0.134 USD) and cost per cubic metre of well water equals 839.3 IRR (0.029 USD), four times more than the value of some current development projects of water resources. Finally, according to the findings, we suggested a corrected price trade term to adjust water monetary return indices. Control policies and government participation in funding of artificial recharge of undergorund aquifers projects were recommended as well.

Background: Breast cancer diagnosis always causes a great deal of stress and results in significant changes in the patient’s routine life, which—apart from physical injuries—can lead to loss of social functioning and increased risk of mental disorders. Psychological resilience may be a protective factor in dealing with stressful clinical situations. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of acceptance and commitment group therapy on the quality of life and resilience of women with breast cancer. Methods: This study had a quasi-experimental, pre-post intervention design with a control group. Twenty women with breast cancer (stages I or II) were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control group. The intervention consisted of eight weekly sessions of acceptance and commitment group therapy. Follow-up evaluations were carried out two months after the intervention. The Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 (QLQ-C30), Quality of Life Questionnaire-Breast Cancer (QLQ-BR23), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) were used in this study. Results: Sixteen patients completed the study. Compared with the control group, significant improvements were observed in the total and subscale scores on QLQ-C30 (partial ?2 = 0.40), QLQ-BR23 (partial ?2 = 0.73), and CD-RISC scores (partial ?2 = 0.94) and (P < 0.01) in the intervention group. Conclusion: Acceptance and commitment program appears to be an effective therapeutic intervention for improving quality of life and resilience of breast cancer patients. Therefore, we suggest that this intervention be provided along with medical treatments to improve quality of life and resilience of breast cancer patients.

Human hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most common recurrent malignancies since there is no effective therapy for it. Silibinin, a widely used drug and supplement for various liver disorders, demonstrated anti-cancer effects on human hepatocellular carcinoma, human prostate adenocarcinoma cells, human breast carcinoma cells, human ectocervical carcinoma cells, and human colon cancer cells. Considering the anti-hepatotoxic activity of silibinin and its strong preventive and anti-cancer efficacy against various epithelial cancers, we investigated the efficacy of silibinin against human HCC and HUVEC cell lines. Silibinin effects on the growth and mode of cell death of these two cell lines are presented in this paper. HepG2 and HUVEC cells were incubated with different doses of silibinin (12.5, 25, 50, 100, 150 and 200 μg/mL) at 24, 48, and 72 h. Cytotoxicity was assessed using MTT and Trypan blue assays. Mode of cell death induced by silibinin was investigated using LDH assay and acridine orange/PI double dye staining. The results showed that silibinin has dose-dependent inhibitory effect on the viability of HepG2 and HUVEC cells. However, Silibinin causes a more continuous dose-dependent cytotoxicity in HepG2 cells compared to the HUVEC cells in which some degrees of resistance is apparent at the beginning. The mode of cell death looks also different in these two cell lines with HepG2 cells being more in favor of apoptosis while necrosis is more evident for the HUVEC cells.

Introduction: Posttraumatic growth is defined as subjective positive psychological changes following the struggle with highly challenging life events. Objective: The aim of current study was to determine dimensions of posttraumatic growth in patients with cancer. Methods: This is cross-sectional descriptive study. Study population included all cancer patients of two main referral hospitals in Tehran and samples consisted of 402 patients who had the entrance criteria were chosen by convenience method. Instruments used included demographic characteristics questionnaire and Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. For data analysis, descriptive and analytical statistical tests (T-test and Variance analysis) were used. Results: Mean age of samples was 46/7 ± 14 and 60% were female, 38/5% had metastatic cancer. The mean Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) score of the participants was 68/68 ± 14/68. Among dimensions of post trauma, the dimension of "spiritual changes" and "communication with others" had the highest score (7/63±2/13 and 25/03±4/9 respectively). From different variables age (r= 0/193 P

The electron-spin magnetic resonance frequency of an electron-spin qubit structure that is proposed for the realization of a quantum computer is rigorously determined by a numerical method. The potential distribution inside the silicon qubit structure is accurately calculated by an electromagnetic simulation method, and the perturbation theory to the second order is formulated to obtain the magnetic resonance frequency of a phosphorus donor electron spin. Our results showed that, for the same qubit structure (Si:P), as originally proposed by Kane for a nuclear-spin qubit quantum computer, a smaller static magnetic field B is in favor of producing a wider tunable bandwidth for the magnetic resonance frequency of the electron spin. Our results also reveal that the use of SiGe as an alternative insulation material to the A-gate structure can improve the control efficiency of the A-gate voltage.

This paper aimed to evaluate Water Use Efficiency (WUE) indices for crops and horticulture productions. In doing so, after gathering data from 164 farmers, we investigated water withdrawal cost indices and monetary return per cubic meter of water through two econometric and managerial approaches. Besides, water shadow pricesand dry matters of per cub meter of water were calculated. The results revealed that the average monetary return per cubic metre of water is 3875.4 IRR 1 (0.134 USD) and cost per cubic metre of well water equals 839.3 IRR (0.029 USD), four times more than the value of some current development projects of water resources. Finally, according to the findings, we suggested a corrected price trade term to adjust water monetary return indices. Control policies and government participation in funding of artificial recharge of undergorund aquifers projects were recommended as well.

Metamer mismatching (the phenomena that two objects matching in color under one illuminant may not match under a different illuminant) potentially has important consequences for color-based machine vision. Logvinenko et al. [1] show that in theory the extent of metamer mismatching can be very significant. This paper examines metamer mismatching in practice by computing empirical metamer mismatch volumes. A set of more than 20 million unique reflectance spectra is assembled using datasets from several sources. For a given color signal (i.e., RGB or CIE XYZ) recorded under a given first illuminant, its empirical metamer mismatch volume for a change to a second illuminant is computed as follows: the reflectances having the same color signal when lit by the first illuminant (i.e., that are metamers) are computationally relit by the second illuminant and the convex hull of the resulting color signals then defines the empirical metamer mismatch volume. The volume of these volumes is shown to vary systematically with Munsell value and chroma. The centroid of the empirical metamer mismatch volume is also tested as a predictor of what a given color signal might become under a specified illuminant.

A robust and accurate hue descriptor that is useful in modeling human color perception and for computer vision applications is explored. The hue descriptor is based on the peak wavelength of a Gaussian-like function (called a wraparound Gaussian) and is shown to correlate as well as CIECAM02 hue to the hue designators of papers from the Munsell and Natural Color System color atlases and to the hue names found in Moroney's Color Thesaurus. The new hue descriptor is also shown to be significantly more stable under a variety of illuminants than CIECAM02. The use of wraparound Gaussians as a hue model is similar in spirit to the use of subtractive Gaussians proposed by Mizokami et al., but overcomes many of their limitations.

We propose an automatic lung tumor segmentation in dynamic CT images that incorporates the novel use of tumor tissue deformations. In contrast to elastography imaging techniques for measuring tumor tissue properties, which require mechanical compression and thereby interrupt normal breathing, we completely avoid the use of any external physical forces. Instead, we calculate the tissue deformations during normal respiration using deformable registration. We investigate machine learning methods in order to discover the spatio-temporal dynamics that would help distinguish tumor from normal tissue deformation patterns and integrate this information into the segmentation process. Our method adapts an ensemble of decision trees combined with a 3D graph-based optimization that takes into account spatio-temporal consistency. The experimental results on patients with large tumors achieved an average F-measure accuracy of 0.79.

Metamer mismatching (the phenomenon that two objects matching in color under one illuminant may not match under a different illuminant) potentially has important consequences for color perception. Logvinenko et al. [PLoS ONE 10, e0135029 (2015)] show that in theory the extent of metamer mismatching can be very significant. This paper examines metamer mismatching in practice by computing the volumes of the empirical metamer mismatch bodies and comparing them to the volumes of the theoretical mismatch bodies. A set of more than 25 million unique reflectance spectra is assembled using datasets from several sources. For a given color signal (e.g., CIE XYZ) recorded under a given first illuminant, its empirical metamer mismatch body for a change to a second illuminant is computed as follows: the reflectances having the same color signal when lit by the first illuminant (i.e., reflect metameric light) are computationally relit by the second illuminant, and the convex hull of the resulting color signals then defines the empirical metamer mismatch body. The volume of these bodies is shown to vary systematically with Munsell value and chroma. The empirical mismatch bodies are compared to the theoretical mismatch bodies computed using the algorithm of Logvinenko et al. [IEEE Trans. Image Process. 23, 34 (2014)]. There are three key findings: (1) the empirical bodies are found to be substantially smaller than the theoretical ones; (2) the sizes of both the empirical and theoretical bodies show a systematic variation with Munsell value and chroma; and (3) applied to the problem of color-signal prediction, the centroid of the empirical metamer mismatch body is shown to be a better predictor of what a given color signal might become under a specified illuminant than state-of-the-art methods.

The electron-spin magnetic resonance frequency of an electron-spin qubit structure proposed for the realization of a quantum computer is rigorously determined by a numerical method. The potential distribution inside the silicon qubit structure is accurately calculated by an electromagnetic simulation method and the perturbation theory to the second order is formulated to obtain the magnetic resonance frequency of the phosphorus donor electron spin.

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for extending the hierarchical clustering methods and introduce a Multi-View Agglomerative Clustering approach to handle multi-view represented objects. Experiments on real world datasets indicate that our algorithm considering the relationship among multiple views can provide a solution with improved quality in multi-view setting. We find empirically that the multi-view version of our Agglomerative Clustering, independent of linkage method and given any number of views, greatly improves on its single-view counterparts.

In this paper a new and robust approach of skin detection is proposed. In the previous proposed system, we introduced a method for skin detection based on RGB vector space. An extended and modified approach based on a mixed color space is presented. The new approach overcomes the shortcoming of the previous one on detecting complex image’s background. This has been achieved by using the HSV parameters to obtain accurate skin detection results. Furthermore an iterative technique is significantly useful for obtaining the more accurate and efficient method. This can be done by changing the vectors in two phases. Skin color has proven to be a useful cue for pre-process of face detection, localization and tracking. Image content filtering, content aware video compression and image color balancing applications can also benefit from automatic detection of skin in images. In order to evaluate our proposed approach we present the results of the experimental study. The results obtained are promising and show that our proposed approach is superior to the existing ones in terms of the number of pixels detected.

Vulnerabilities in common security components such as firewalls are inevitable. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are used as another wall to protect computer systems and to identify corresponding vulnerabilities. This paper presents a new ensemble-based method for intrusion detection. This method uses feature transformation to create the needed diversity between base classifiers. In other words, first different sets of features are created by mapping the original features into new spaces where the samples are well separated, and then each base classifier is trained on one of these newly created features sets. The proposed method for constructing an ensemble of classifiers is a general method which may be used in any classification problem. KDD-99 dataset is used to evaluate the proposed method and the results are compared with some recent works in the literature using the same dataset. The results of comparing the performance of the proposed method with other alternative classification methods are encouraging.

This paper describes a new method for skin detection based on RGB vector space. Skin color has proven to be a useful cue for pre-process of face detection, localization and tracking. Image content filtering, content aware video compression and image color balancing applications can also benefit from automatic detection of skin in images. Numerous works for skin color segmentation and detection have been reported in the literature in the last few years. In this paper first few pixel based methods are presented and then vector calculations as an efficient approach for determination of skin area based on implicit mathematical model is proposed. In order to evaluate our method we performed an experimental study. Results obtained are very promising and shows important advantages over other techniques.

This paper presents a new method for user identification based on hand images. Because in user identification the processing time is an important issue, we use only the hand boundary as a hand representation. Using this representation, an alignment technique is used to make the index of corresponding features of different hands get the same index in the feature vector. To improve the classification performance a new ensemble-based method is proposed. This method uses feature transformation to create the needed diversity between base classifiers. In other words, first different sets of features are created by transforming the original features into new spaces where the samples are well separated, and then each base classifier is trained on one of these newly created features sets. The proposed method for constructing an ensemble of classifiers is a general method which may be used in any classification problem. The results of experiments performed to assess the presented method and compare its performance with other alternative classification methods are encouraging.

This paper describes a new method for skin detection based on RGB vector space. Skin color has proven to be a useful cue for pre-process of face detection, localization and tracking. Image content filtering, content aware video compression and image color balancing applications can also benefit from automatic detection of skin in images. Numerous works for skin color segmentation and detection have been reported in the literature in the last few years. In this paper first few pixel based methods are presented and then Vector calculations as an efficient approach for determination of skin area based on implicit mathematical model is proposed. In order to evaluate our method we performed an experimental study. Results obtained are very promising and shows important advantages over other techniques.