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Salusin-β is a newly defined biomarker that plays a role in atherogenesis and in homeostasis. The study aimed to assess serum salusin-β level in relation to atherosclerosis and ventricular dysfunction in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients.Sixty T2DM patients and twenty-five age-matched healthy controls were included. Serum salusin-β was determined by ELISA. Echocardiography and carotid ultrasonography were carried out for all individuals.Serum salusin-β level was significantly elevated in patients with T2DM than in controls (P 0.001). It was positively correlated with obesity parameters, insulin resistance index (r = 0.280,P 0.001), atherogenic dyslipidemia and with carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) (r = 0.411, P 0.001). Echocardiographic findings showed a positive correlation between salusin-β and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) parameters and a negative correlation with left ventricular (LV) diastolic and systolic functions. Regression analysis showed that serum salusin-β level was a significant predictor of diastolic dysfunction.Serum salusin-β may be associated with atherosclerosis and LV dysfunction in T2DM.

Similarity metrics, kernels and similarity-based algorithms have gained much attention due to their increasing applications in information retrieval, data mining, pattern recognition and machine learning. Similarity Graphs are often adopted as the underlying representation of similarity matrices and are at the origin of known clustering algorithms such as spectral clustering. Similarity matrices offer the advantage of working in object–object (two-dimensional) space where visualization of clusters similarities is available instead of object-features (multi-dimensional) space. In this paper, sparse ϵ -similarity graphs are constructed and decomposed into strong components using appropriate methods such as Dulmage–Mendelsohn permutation (DMperm) and/or Reverse Cuthill–McKee (RCM) algorithms. The obtained strong components correspond to groups (clusters) in the input (feature) space. Parameter ϵ i is estimated locally, at each data point i from a corresponding narrow range of the number of nearest neighbors. Although more advanced clustering techniques are available, our method has the advantages of simplicity, better complexity and direct visualization of the clusters similarities in a two-dimensional space. Also, no prior information about the number of clusters is needed. We conducted our experiments on two and three dimensional, low and high-sized synthetic datasets as well as on an astronomical real-dataset. The results are verified graphically and analyzed using gap statistics over a range of neighbors to verify the robustness of the algorithm and the stability of the results. Combining the proposed algorithm with gap statistics provides a promising tool for solving clustering problems. An astronomical application is conducted for confirming the existence of 45 galaxy clusters around the X-ray positions of galaxy clusters in the redshift range [0.1..0.8]. We re-estimate the photometric redshifts of the identified galaxy clusters and obtain acceptable values compared to published spectroscopic redshifts with a 0.029 standard deviation of their differences.

We develop a galaxy cluster finding algorithm based on spectral clustering technique to identify optical counterparts and estimate optical redshifts for X-ray selected cluster candidates. As an application, we run our algorithm on a sample of X-ray cluster candidates selected from the third XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalog (3XMM-DR5) that are located in the Stripe 82 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Our method works on galaxies described in the color-magnitude feature space. We begin by examining 45 galaxy clusters with published spectroscopic redshifts in the range of 0.1 to 0.8 with a median of 0.36. As a result, we are able to identify their optical counterparts and estimate their photometric redshifts, which have a typical accuracy of 0.025 and agree with the published ones. Then, we investigate another 40 X-ray cluster candidates (from the same cluster survey) with no redshift information in the literature and found that 12 candidates are considered as galaxy clusters in the redshift range from 0.29 to 0.76 with a median of 0.57. These systems are newly discovered clusters in X-rays and optical data. Among them 7 clusters have spectroscopic redshifts for at least one member galaxy., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, 1 appendix, Accepted by Journal of "Astronomy and Computing"

Purpose To assess the role of MRI DWI in detection and characterization of ICH. Patients and methods 61 patients with intracranial hemorrhage who underwent MRI (including DWI, ADC, and GRE) and CT were retrospectively included in this study. MRI DWIs were analyzed for age, type, (primary parenchymal hemorrhage or hemorrhagic lesion) and location of the hemorrhage. The results were compared with conventional MRI sequences, GRE, and CT to assess the diagnostic accuracy of DWI in assessment of patients with intracranial hematoma. Results We had 61 patients with intracranial hemorrhage, six cases were missed by DWI. MRI DWI was accurate for the detection of hyperacute, medium, large sized acute, early and late sub acute, subdural, hemorrhagic components of arterial and venous infarction, intraventricular hemorrhage. DWI showed low sensitivity in detection of subarachnoid and small intraparenchymal hemorrhage The ADC measurements in hyperacute, acute, early and late subacute hematoma were statistically equivalent and were significantly less than the late subacute hematoma as well as the contralateral white matter. Conclusion MRI DWI was accurate in detection, characterization and staging hyperacute, acute, subacute hemorrhage as well as hemorrhagic components of arterial and venous infarctions and of low diagnostic accuracy in subarachnoid and small parenchymal hemorrhage.

The innervation of the camel epididymis was studied in 26 apparently healthy, sexually mature animals aged between 4 and 12 years. The material was collected during the different seasons of the year. Generally, five samples were taken from each epididymis. To demonstrate the general innervation pattern, immunohistochemical reactions to protein gene product-9.5, neurofilaments and neuron-specific enolase were used, in addition to acetylcholinesterase histochemistry. The nerve supply of the epididymis comes from two sources: (1) The majority of fibers come from the N. spermaticus inferior and accompany the deferent duct. (2) Another contribution stems from the N. spermaticus superior and enters the head region of the epididymis. From the exterior, the nerves penetrate the capsule of the organ to reach the interductular connective tissue. The terminal ramifications are observed directly within the wall of the duct and the wall of the epididymal arteries. The veins of the camel epididymis are not innervated. In the wall of the ductus epididymidis, the nerve fibers form plexuses at the subepithelial level and in the muscular coat. The amount of nerve fibers increases from the head to the tail, paralleling an increase in the intrinsic musculature. The intramural and interductular innervation of epididymal body and tail shows clear seasonal variations: More fibers and stronger reactions are observed during the winter season; the lowest density and the weakest reactions occur during the summer season. All epididymal nerves of the camel are unmyelinated. The majority of the intramural fibers and all in the arterial wall represent postjunctional sympathetic axons, but in the intramural plexuses of the duct a considerable number of cholinergic fibers are also present. Neuropeptide Y is the most frequent peptidergic transmitter and generally co-localized with dopamine-beta-hydroxylase in the sympathetic axons. Vasoactive intestinal polypeptide has a distribution similar to that of the cholinergic fibers. Calcitonin gene-related peptide-positive axons occur in moderate numbers, but never in the arterial innervation. Together with the relatively rare substance P-containing fibers, the calcitonin gene-related peptide-positive axons seem to represent the only sensory nerves in the camel epididymis.