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β-Ionone is the end-ring counterpart of β-carotenoids, which are widely found in fruits and vegetables. Recent studies have illustrated the antimetastatic, anti-proliferative, and apoptosis-inducing activities of β-ionone both in vitro and in vivo. We aimed to explore the anti-cancer potency of β-Ionone-derived ester, (E)-4-(2,6,6-trimethylcyclohex-1-enyl) but-3-en-2-ylpyrazine-2-carboxylate (4-TM.P). The cytotoxic effects of the compound on K562 cells were evaluated by MTT assay. The mechanisms of apoptosis induction were investigated by acridine orange/ethidium bromide (AO/EtBr) double staining, cell cycle analysis, and Annexin V/PI staining. Furthermore, the 4-TM.P-DNA interactions have been thoroughly elucidated by various methods, such as ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, fluorescence assays, viscosity measurements, molecular docking, and dynamic simulation. The MTT cytotoxicity assay revealed that the growth of K562 cells was inhibited by treatment with β-ionone-derived ester, with an IC50 of 25 ± 5.0 µM at 72 h. Morphological studies revealed the occurrence of apoptosis in treated cells, and G0/G1 cell cycle arrest was observed after treatment of the cells with the IC50 value of the compound. Analyses of multi-spectroscopy and viscosity assays revealed that 4-TM.P binds to DNA in the minor groove mode, which was supported by molecular docking studies. The dynamic stability of the complex was also confirmed using molecular dynamic simulation analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is estimated that cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide. The primary or secondary cause of cancer-related mortality for women is breast cancer. The main treatment method for different types of cancer is chemotherapy with drugs. Because of less water solubility of chemotherapy drugs or their inability to pass through membranes, their body absorbs them inadequately, which lowers the treatment's effectiveness. Drug specificity and pharmacokinetics can be changed by nanotechnology using nanoparticles. Instead, targeted drug delivery allows medications to be delivered to the targeted sites. In this review, we focused on nanoparticles as carriers in targeted drug delivery, their characteristics, structure, and the previous studies related to breast cancer. It was shown that nanoparticles could reduce the negative effects of chemotherapy drugs while increasing their effectiveness. Lipid-based nanocarriers demonstrated notable results in this instance, and some products that are undergoing various stages of clinical trials are among the examples. Nanoparticles based on metal or polymers demonstrated a comparable level of efficacy. With the number of cancer cases rising globally, many researchers are now looking into novel treatment approaches, particularly the use of nanotechnology and nanoparticles in the treatment of cancer. In order to help clinicians, this article aimed to gather more information about various areas of nanoparticle application in breast cancer therapy, such as modifying their synthesis and physicochemical characterization. It also sought to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying the interactions between nanoparticles and biologically normal or infected tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present research was to prepare an active electrospun nanofiber mat based on the blend of kafirin (Kaf) and polylactic acid (PLA) with clove essential oil (CEO) and to investigate its properties for the development of an antimicrobial nanofilm. For this purpose, ultrafine Kaf/PLA nanofibers with different proportions of Kaf/PLA (15:85%, 20:80%, 25:75%, and 50:50% (v/v)) were prepared using an electrospinning device at a voltage of 25–28 kV, a distance between the needle tip and the collector of 14 cm, and a flow rate of 1 ml/h and examined for their morphology. Then, the CEO was incorporated into the optimized Kaf/PLA nanofibers at different concentrations (3, 6, and 9% (v/v)). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) were used to investigate the properties of the nanofibers produced. The antimicrobial activity was also investigated. The results of the SEM examination showed that the produced ultrafine fibers had a uniform morphology with a cylindrical shape without beads, regardless of the amount of CEO. The FTIR test confirmed the formation of new chemical interactions between Kaf, PLA, and the CEO. According to the TGA results, the incorporated CEO increased the thermal stability of the nanofibers. The antimicrobial activity of CEO was confirmed by analyzing the minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration against Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli. The investigation of the antimicrobial activity of nanofibers also showed that nanofibers containing CEO have a good inhibitory effect against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The nanofibers produced with 9% (v/v) CEO were the most effective against all microorganisms tested. Finally, the release behavior of Kaf/PLA nanofibers loaded with CEO was investigated at three different temperatures (4, 25, and 37 °C) and two food simulants (50% and 95% ethanol). The release results showed that the release mechanism was consistent with Fick's model. The results showed that at all three temperatures, the release rate is higher in 98% ethanol than in 50% ethanol. The present study showed that active nanofibers containing CEO have high potential for use in the food packaging industry to reduce microbial contamination. Generally, this research proposed hopeful usage of CEO-loaded electrospun Kaf/PLA nanofibers for antimicrobial bioactive food packaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Discoidin domain receptor 1 (DDR1) is confirmed as a member of the transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) superfamily, which plays an influential role in various cancers. Increasing evidence has suggested that DDR1 is plays role in cancer progression and metastasis. However, DDR1 function and the underlying mechanism of DDR1 receptor signaling pathways is largely unknown, especially in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Methods and results. We obtained 42 paired samples of ESCC tumors (N = 21) and adjacent normal tissues (N = 21) from newly diagnosed ESCC patients. In this study, the expression of DDR1 in esophageal cancer was retrieved based on the GENT2, OncoDB databases. AlsoqRT-PCR experiments was used to measure DDR1 expression experimentally in ESCC tissues compared to adjacent non-tumor tissues (NTs). Moreover, the correlation between the expression of DDR1 and clinic pathologic factors was analyzed. The diagnostic significance of the results was subsequently evaluated utilizing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The result showed that mRNA expression of DDR1 was up-regulated in ESCC tissues compared with NTs (p = 0.0001). Statistical analysis revealed that DDR1 expression was significantly higher in samples with a tumor size of more than five centimeters (p = 0.02). The ROC curve analysis indicated that DDR1 expression level in tissue potentially have high accuracy for diagnosing ESCC compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues NTs (AUC = 0.92, Specificity = 84%, sensitivity = 96%). Conclusions. Our findings suggest that overexpression of the DDR1 might play a function in promoting cancer and tumor size. Moreover, DDR1 can potentially act as a novel biomarker for identifying ESCC patients, indicating the potential of this receptor for ESCC-targeted therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a detailed description of the Middle Miocene (Chokrakian and Karaganian) depositional environments of the Eastern Paratethys Sea in the southern Caspian Basin. The Chokrakian comprises a 500-m-thick succession of marls and sandstones, termed herein Javarem Formation, which formed in coastal marine environments. The lower Javarem Fm. Developed in calm lagoonal settings, indicating frequent exposure under a predominantly dry climate and occasional formation of evaporites. The upper part of the Javarem Fm. Is characterized by mixed siliciclastic-carbonatic sediments with ooids of agitated, warm, hypersaline tidal shoals. Above follows the about 500-m-thick Vashi Formation, which is correlated with the Karaganian regional stage. The formation is characterized by an alternation of reddish marls with thick sandstones and gravel beds with terrestrial gastropods, ubiquitous pedogenetic features and occasional root horizons. The depositional environment is interpreted as a floodplain with gravelly channels of an arid to semiarid climate. The successions of the Javarem and Vashi formations capture the transition from the shallow marine Iranian shelf into the northern Iranian coastal plain around 13.8 Ma, following the onset of the Miocene Climate Transition and the coinciding global sea level drop around the Langhian/Serravallian boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cyclic oligosaccharide β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) can be widely employed for the preparation of controlled drug delivery systems. Hence, we synthesized a novel β-CD-based magnetic nanocarrier with superparamagnetic and molecular recognition properties for the controlled release of doxorubicin (DOX) drug. The magnetic nanocarrier was prepared by using a facile ultrasonic-assisted method and through surface reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer copolymerization of core–shell Fe3O4@SiO2 nanoparticles onto vinylated β-CD. The spherical amino-functionalized Fe3O4@SiO2 nanomaterials were synthesized easily by a co-condensation green reaction between Fe3O4 nanoparticles with tetraethyl orthosilicate and (3-Aminopropyl) trimethoxysilane. In the next age, the structure and composition of the as-prepared magnetic drug delivery nanocarriers were studied by FTIR, SEM, TEM, XRD, and VSM analysis methods. Then, the loading and releasing behaviors of DOX drug have been investigated in detail. The loading of DOX was proved by UV–Vis, SEM, TEM, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analysis techniques. The results also exhibited that the drug loading efficiency is found to be dependent on initial drug concentration, β-CD content and temperature. Moreover, the drug loading capacity of magnetic nanocarrier was compared with pure β-CD. Further, it was found that the in vitro release rate of DOX depends on the pH of the physiological solution. In addition, the drug release kinetics data were well fitted to the Higuchi model. Finally, the biological characterizations were tested by MTT assay, which approved the high performance of the magnetic nanocarriers in killing cancerous cells. Due to its unique and distinct advantageous, the synthesized magnetic nanocarriers can be utilized as a potential and promising biodegradable drug carrier for controlled and sustained release of various drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the current study was to identify the authenticity of lime juice and its geographic origin using targeted approaches based on the AIJN guideline and machine learning. Iranian lime juice (Mexican and Persian), sampled from different regions of the country, was analyzed with chemical features for quality and authenticity. To improve the effectiveness of different machine learning techniques, the forward feature selection method was applied to evaluate the applicability of the chemical features in the classification of lime juice based on geographic region. The findings demonstrated that the samples complied with the AIJN standard in terms of the majority of these features, including density, brix, volatile acids, ethanol, HMF, volatile oils, heavy metals, acidity, citric acid, d-isocitric acid, formalin, glucose, fructose, sucrose, ash, NO3, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, copper, zinc, and iron. However, sodium (34.6 ± 14.5 mg/l) and malic acid (5.7 ± 2.3 g/l) contents were higher, and sugar-free extract (68 ± 9.9 g/l) was lower than the limit defined by the AIJN. The feature selection method led to SVM with 90%, kNN with 94%, and RF and DT with 100% accuracy in identifying the geographic region of lime juice samples. In all supervised learning techniques except kNN, copper, zinc, and iron were the most vital features in the geographical classification of samples. This is the first time that the authenticity and geographical origin of Iranian lime juice have been well determined using conventional analysis methods and machine learning as an accessible and straightforward identification scheme instead of modern analysis methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With technologies that have democratized the production and reproduction of information, a significant portion of daily interacted posts in social media has been infected by rumors. Despite the extensive research on rumor detection and verification, so far, the problem of calculating the spread power of rumors has not been considered. To address this research gap, the present study seeks a model to calculate the Spread Power of Rumor (SPR) as the function of content-based features in two categories: False Rumor (FR) and True Rumor (TR). For this purpose, the theory of Allport and Postman will be adopted, which it claims that importance and ambiguity are the key variables in rumor-mongering and the power of rumor. Totally 42 content features in two categories "importance" (28 features) and "ambiguity" (14 features) are introduced to compute SPR. The proposed model is evaluated on two datasets, Twitter and Telegram. The results showed that (i) the spread power of False Rumor documents is rarely more than True Rumors. (ii) there is a significant difference between the SPR means of two groups False Rumor and True Rumor. (iii) SPR as a criterion can have a positive impact on distinguishing False Rumors and True Rumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher agency is a pivotal element of professionalism and second/foreign language (L2) education. However, its role in L2 assessment has remained under-researched. Part of this negligence is due to the absence of a validated questionnaire to measure the construct and its underlying components. To address this gap, drawing on the ecological perspective, the present study developed a scale on teacher ecological assessment agency (TEAA) by gleaning data from 539 Iranian EFL teachers. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA, CFA) culminated in 5 components and 32 items in the scale. The components were labelled "Iterational", "Projective", "Teachers' Practical-Evaluative View", "Schools' Practical-Evaluative Effect", and "Professional/Democratic Community's Practical-Evaluative Effect". Furthermore, the convergent validity and reliability of the scale were statistically approved (p >.05). The study presents some implications for EFL teachers, teacher trainers, and assessment policy-makers in that they can understand and highlight the pivotal role of teacher agency in L2 assessment practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, sustainable mixture designs of three concrete types, including fly ash concrete, silica fume concrete, and ground granulated blast furnace slag concrete, were investigated. To this end, the compressive strength formulas of each concrete type made with supplementary cementitious materials were obtained by introducing a new machine learning algorithm, called coyote optimization programming. The accuracy of this algorithm proved to be greater than that of conventional and recently developed machine learning methods. An optimization problem is modeled, in which the compressive strengths, price, and environmental impact of the sustainable concrete mixture designs were estimated using global warming potential, energy consumption, and material consumption as the sustainability parameters. Results reveal that increasing the compressive strength reduces the sustainability of concrete, and thus, manufacturing concrete with a higher compressive strength than the one obtained from the design process contradicts the concrete's performance. Moreover, the 30-MPa sustainable fly ash concrete was proven to be the most sustainable mix with a gray relational grade of 1. This optimal mixture designed in this study can decrease the unit cost, global warming potential, energy consumption, and material consumption by 36.6%, 51%, 43%, and 11%, respectively. Research highlights: A novel machine learning method called coyote optimization programming was introduced in this study. Applying optimization techniques to design concrete mixture proportions can reduce the unit cost by 36.6%. The introduced approach can decrease the global warming potential, energy consumption, and material consumption by 51%, 43%, and 11%, respectively. The application of supplementary cementitious materials in the concrete mixtures significantly enhances sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experimental study examines the impacts of two macro synthetic fiber additives (i.e., polypropylene and polyolefin) on laboratory characteristics of roller compacted concrete pavement (RCCP). The mixtures were made at different dosages of 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 kg/m3. The compressive, splitting tensile, and flexural strengths of RCCP mixtures were determined at 7, 14, and 28 days. Evidently, the test results disclosed adding 2.0 and 3.0 kg/m3 fiber additives could improve the compressive strength of modified specimens although adding 4.0 kg/m3 lowered the compressive strength. In the meantime, the tensile and flexural strengths of RCCP mixtures were considerably improved due to fiber additives, especially at later ages. It is worth mentioning that specimens with polypropylene fiber could manifest higher tensile and flexural strengths compared to polyolefin fiber and any further increase up to 4.0 kg/m3 fiber additives reduced the strength of mixtures over time. Regardless of the fiber type, the toughness of mixtures containing 3.0 kg/m3 fibers outperformed plain concrete for enduring flexural loads. Noteworthy, the Vebe test outcomes revealed that adding synthetic fibers could increase the Vebe time significantly. Finally, the relationships between the splitting tensile strength, flexural strength, and compressive strength were obtained as f r = 0.60 f c ′ , and f t = 0.41 f c ′ , respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Current angiogenesis inhibitors target cellular vascularization processes, including proliferation, migration, and tube formation. In this study, we investigated the impact of Urtica dioica agglutinin (UDA) on the cellular vascularization process. Methods and Results: Various concentrations of UDA were applied to normal (HUVEC, MCF-10 A, and HDF from humans, and L-929 from mice) and cancer (A431 and U87 from humans, and 4T1 from mice) cell lines at different times. The MTT, cell migration assay, differentiation of endothelial cells, expression of VEGF-A/VEGF-R2, and integrin α2 were evaluated. The MTT results demonstrated that UDA was non-toxic to normal cells while inhibiting the growth of neoplastic cells. The migratory capacity of HUVECs and U87 glioblastoma cells was inhibited by UDA in the wound repair model. This lectin inhibited HUVEC-induced vessel sprouting in the collagen-cytodex matrix. In addition, UDA treatment reduced VEGF-integrin cross-talk in HUVECs, confirming the anti-angiogenic activity of this molecule. Conclusions: Based on our findings, UDA may have an effect on cancer cell proliferation and vascularization events while causing minimal toxicity to normal cells via binding glyco-conjugates containing GlcNAc/man oligomers like EGFR. This is a blue clue for the angiogenesis-related therapeutic importance of UDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a critical need for re-evaluation of electrochemical therapy (EChT) approaches of solid tumors to address the challenges of the currently used method: incomplete pathological response. The coexistence of anode and cathode in the tumor region resulted in acid–alkaline mixation (buffered pH) when the electrodes are so near each other (d < 1 cm), and in the non-affected lesions when the electrodes are far from each other (d > 1 cm), both have resulted in intact tumoral lesions in EChT field. Here, we presented a designation model study of EChT with an external anode out of the tumor and filled the tumor with dense distribution of cathode electrodes to completely destroy the tumoral lesions without any remaining vital tumoral residues. Anode was located in a biological ionic gel chamber (located on top of the skin) which mediates the ionic interface between the external anode and intratumoral cathode. Our newly reported method can solve the lack of a comprehensive therapeutic guideline for any solid tumors. A remarkable increase in the efficiency of EChT without any over-treating was achieved by alkaline therapy of the tumor (without any limitation in locating cathodic needles all over the tumor) and an external acidic region on top of the skin in a cylindrical gel chamber. We found that the destructive volumes and treating ability of mice tumors by this newly represented method were more significant than the conventional EChT method in fewer therapy sessions and no damage to the skin (both anode and cathode electrodes inside the tumor) (P < 0.05). Results of this study applied to mouse model tumors shed new light on returning attraction to EChT as a valuable complementary method for treating different types of solid breast tumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was conducted to compare generalized linear model (GLM), random forest (RF), and Cubist to produce available phosphorus (AP) and potassium (AK) maps and to identify the covariates that control mineral distribution in Lorestan Province, Iran. To this end, the locations for collecting 173 soil samples were determined through the conditioned Latin hypercube sampling (cLHS) method, at four different land-uses (orchards, paddy fields, agricultural, and abandoned fields). The performance of the models was assessed by coefficient of determination (R2), root-mean-square error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE) indices. The results showed that the RF model fitted better than GLM and Cubist models and could explain 40 and 57% of AP and AK distribution, respectively. The R2, RMSE, and MAE of the RF model were 0.4, 2.81, and 2.43 for predicting AP and equal to 0.57, 143.77, and 116.61 for predicting AK, respectively. The most important predictors selected by the RF model were valley depth and soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) for AP and AK, respectively. The maps showed higher AP and AK content in apricot orchards compared to other land-uses. No difference was observed between AP and AK content on paddy fields, agricultural, and abandoned areas. The higher AP and AK contents were related to orchard management practices, such as failure to dispose of plant residuals and fertilizer consumption. It can be concluded that the orchards (by increasing soil quality) was the best land-use in line with sustainable management for the study area. However, generalizing the results needs more detailed research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (ESCC) is a highly aggressive tumor with increased metastatic potential. Recent evidence suggests that esophageal CSCs have a crucial role in tumor initiation, progression, and resistance to conventional anti-cancer therapies. The study aimed to develop mouse model to mimic the late steps of the metastasis process using a tail-vein injection of esophageal CSCs. Methods and results: The sphere formation assay was used to enrich CSCs. For analysis of tumorigenicity, YM-1 adherent cells and enriched CSCs were injected subcutaneously into dorsal flank of nude mice. The expression of SLUG, E-cad, and CTHRC1 genes was examined by Real-Time qRT-PCR and immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods. To assess the metastatic potential of adherent YM-1 cells and their enriched CSCs, we injected the cells into the tail vein of nude mice. Our findings showed the up-regulation of SLUG and down-regulation of E-cad in the esophageal CSC-derived tumors (ECSCTs) compared to adherent cells-derived tumors. There was no statistically significant difference between CTHRC1 gene expressions in both groups of tumors. IHC staining confirmed the higher expression of SLUG protein in ECSCTs compared to adherent cell-derived tumors. Enriched CSCs were able to metastasize to the lungs and livers after three months, but, metastasis of adherent cells wasn't observed. Conclusion: Our study showed esophageal CSCs injected through the tail-vein injection can migrate and metastasize to the lung and liver after three months. The developed metastatic mouse model can be a valuable and relevant model to investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms of metastasis and develop successful targeted therapies against ESCC. The present study is one of the few studies that investigate the metastasis of esophageal cancer stem cells (ESCC type) through injection into the tail vein of nude mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the huge volume of opinion texts published on various social networks, it is extremely difficult to peruse and use these texts. The automatic creation of summaries can be a significant help for the users of such texts. The current paper employs manifold learning to mitigate the challenges of the complexity and high dimensionality of opinion texts and the K-Means algorithm for clustering. Furthermore, summarization based on the concepts of the texts can improve the performance of the summarization system. The proposed method is unsupervised extractive, and summarization is performed based on the concepts of the texts using the multi-objective pruning approach. The main parameters utilized to perform multi-objective pruning include relevancy, redundancy, and coverage. The simulation results show that the proposed method outperformed the MOOTweetSumm method while providing an improvement of 11% in terms of the ROGUE-1 measure and an improvement of 9% in terms of the ROGUE-L measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sequence of Lower Miocene (Aquitanian–Burdigalian) of the Qom Formation is a significant formation in the Central basin of Iran, which is equivalent to the oil-bearing Asmari Formation in southwestern Iran. Petrographic studies of this sequence in the Yortshah anticline have studied and revealed that dolomitization is one of the most important diagenetic processes, which was affected carbonates of the Qom Formation. Various studies have shown the existence of nine types of dolomite in this anticline, of which dolomicrosparite is the main type of dolomite. The dolomites of this formation formed in four mechanisms, including sabkha, reflux, burial, and mixing zones. The dolomites of the Qom Formation are not large-scale layered, and the limestones are incompletely dolomitized, due to the many burial effects and the longtime of this stage of diagenetic processes, the burial model is likely to have the biggest impact on the dolomitization process of the Qom Formation. The existence of a high percentage of evaporative minerals in the Upper Red Formation, which is located over the Qom Formation, also the presence of clay and marly layers inside of Qom Formation could be the main sources of Mg supply for burial dolomitization, however, may be Mg be provided from brine water in deep sediment. Based on geochemical study aragonite is the main composition of preexisting limestone from which dolomites were formed in the Yortshah anticline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human personality is significantly represented by those words which he/she uses in his/her speech or writing. As a consequence of spreading the information infrastructures (specifically the Internet and social media), human communications have reformed notably from face to face communication. Generally, Automatic Personality Prediction (or Perception) (APP) is the automated forecasting of the personality on different types of human generated/exchanged contents (like text, speech, image, video, etc.). The major objective of this study is to enhance the accuracy of APP from the text. To this end, we suggest five new APP methods including term frequency vector-based, ontology-based, enriched ontology-based, latent semantic analysis (LSA)-based, and deep learning-based (BiLSTM) methods. These methods as the base ones, contribute to each other to enhance the APP accuracy through ensemble modeling (stacking) based on a hierarchical attention network (HAN) as the meta-model. The results show that ensemble modeling enhances the accuracy of APP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many industrial processes, detection and evaluation of hidden corrosion, especially internal erosion, are still challenging task. This study introduces and evaluates the use of gray wolf optimizer (GWO), as a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm, for reconstructing the tomographic image of the inside of an object. For this purpose, a test object was located in front of a collimated 662 keV gamma ray beam (from Cs-137 isotope), and the scattered photons from the object were recorded by a NaI(Tl) detector. Then, the GWO algorithm was used to solve a set of nonlinear equations related to the Compton scatter imaging. Finally, to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, its results were compared to the results of the various meta-heuristic and mathematical algorithms. The obtained results indicate that this new method can be efficiently used to obtain tomographic images of objects inside and detect the inner corrosion with high speed and good precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cold plasma (CP) application has increasing interest due to its environmental-friendly, high efficient, and low cost aspects to mitigate deletion effects of heavy metals on plants. A pot experiment was carried out to evaluate the CP application on yield, physiological, and fatty acid profile of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in a completely randomized design (CRD) with five replicates. Cadmium (Cd) was applied at four levels (0, 50, 100, and 150 μM), and CP were used on germinated seeds at three levels (0, 60, and 120 s) in a hydroponic system. The results showed CP alleviated the Cd accumulation in roots, shoots, and grains. The significant reduction of grain yield (GY) and thousand grain yield (TGY) was observed in plants exposed to 100 and 150 μM compared with the control plants; however, CP improved GY and TGY particularly at severe Cd stress. The minimum chlorophyll (Chl) and relative water content (RWC) were observed in plants exposed in 100 μM Cd and non-CP treatments. Proline increased by Cd stress but decreased with CP in most treatments. Unlike proline, methionine showed significant reduction under Cd stress. The fatty acid profile of wheat represented that severe Cd stress decreased monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) but increased polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA). Heat map (HM) showed that GY and methionine were the most sensitive traits under treatments of Cd and CP. Totally, we suggest the use of 120 s of CP to mitigate Cd stress on wheat plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a scheme containing two qutrits (Λ-type three-level atoms) that interact with a two-mode quantized field using the Rabi model (i.e., without considering the rotating wave approximation (RWA)), where the dipole-dipole (D-D) interaction between the two atoms is also taken into account. At first, we transform the corresponding Rabi model Hamiltonian to the generalized Jaynes-Cummings model (JCM) i.e., with intensity-dependent atom-field coupling, via an approximate method. Afterwards, by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation and thus achieving the state vector of the system at arbitrary time, we readily arrive at the density matrix of the system. In this way, by attainment of the reduced density matrices for different constituents of the system, we are able to evaluate their entanglement between various system components via the calculation of linear entropy. By an overview of the numerical results, regular and irregular oscillations, collapse-revival (CR) phenomena, low and high, quasi-stable or even stable amount of entanglement can be observed. Also, the death and then sudden birth of entanglement are available in some cases. Among the above-mentioned consequences, stability and quasi-stability of entanglement (under the influence of both aforesaid effects, CRTs and D-D interaction) is practically remarkable due to its various usefulness in quantum information processing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concrete is the most utilized human-made material that has been used in the construction industry. The global concrete demand is rapidly increasing, and accordingly, designing green and sustainable concretes is of great concern. This study aims to optimize the mixture proportion of green and sustainable concretes. In this regard, concrete functional characteristics (i.e., compressive strength, slump, carbonation, and rapid chloride permeability test), unit cost, and environmental impacts (i.e., global warming potential, hazardous waste disposed, non-hazardous waste disposed, and radioactive waste disposed) are considered in the model to be optimized. Accordingly, a new prediction algorithm called "Marine predator programming" is introduced to model and predict concrete functional characteristics. Three prediction techniques, including artificial neural network, support vector machine, and 2nd polynomial regression, are employed to assess the performance of the introduced machine learning model. Consequently, a novel sustainability modeling is developed, and the mixture proportions of sustainable and green concretes are designed for different compressive strength classes. An optimization process is performed to find the optimal solutions to the mentioned sustainability model. The results indicate that Marine predator programming is highly qualified to estimate different concrete features. Green and sustainable mixtures can reduce the environmental index by 74.37% and 67.83%. The sustainability index of sustainable mixture proportions is up to 80.03% lower than the mixture proportion of mixtures designed by other conventional experimental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how land use and climate changes affect water yield ecosystem service (ES) in the Sirvan River basin, located in Iran's Kurdistan and Kermanshah provinces. By detecting land-use and climatic parameter changes in the past, their future evolution were modeled by scenario making. For this purpose, we developed two land-use scenarios (low and high urbanization) and two climatic scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6 and RCP 8.5). The implemented scenarios showed how the amount of water yield in the basin and sub-basins changes in the future based on climate and land-use changes. The results showed that, concerning land use, the forest has decreased from 2013 to 2019, and built-up areas have increased. Also, the results showed that precipitation has been declining in the long term, and the temperature has been rising. Finally, the Water yield in 2019 was higher than in 2013 and lower in the future based on forecast scenarios. This trend will continue until 2040. In addition, it was found that the t effects of these factors on water yield ES are a complex process, and based on the results, the impact of climatic factors is more significant than the one of land-use change. We could conclude that this region will face more environmental problems in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the influence of untreated coal waste (UCW) and treated coal waste (TCW) as supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) on the environmental, mechanical, durability, and microstructural characteristics of mortar mixes. UCW preparation procedure consists of sequential steps of crushing and grinding. Afterward, UCW is thermally activated through incinerating at 750 °C to be promoted to TCW. Experimental work includes mixing mortar mixtures by partially replacing cement with the coal waste binders (UCW and TCW) at different incorporation levels of 4, 8, 12, and 16% of cement weight. Toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) test was applied to investigate the environmental impacts of coal wastes. TCLP test results pointed out that heavy metals including manganese, cadmium, lead, and chromium could successfully entrap in the cement matrix. The compressive and flexural strengths as mechanical characteristics of mortar mixtures were determined at 3, 7, 28, 90, and 180 curing days. Moreover, the mortar specimens were immersed in 3% sulfuric acid (H2SO4) for 60 and 150 days. Durability results showed that the H2SO4 attack resistance of binary cement mortars containing 4% coal waste binders performed better than the plain mortar. Based on the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images, ettringite was found as the main hydration product of binary cement after 28 days; however, the existence of calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) and calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) in the cement matrix after 90 days explains the more compact microstructure attained by using coal waste as cement replacement materials compared to control mixtures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rumor is a collective attempt to interpret a vague but attractive situation by using the power of words. In social networks, false-rumors may have significantly different contextual characteristics from true-rumors at lexical, syntactic, semantic levels. Therefore, this study presents the BERT-SAWS semi-supervised learning model for early verification of Persian rumor by investigating content-based and context features at three views: Contextual Word Embeddings (CWE), speech act, and Writing Style (WS). This model is built by loading pre-trained Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) as an unsupervised language representation, fine-tuning it using a small Persian rumor dataset, and combining with a supervised learning model to provide an enriched text representation of the content of the rumor. This text representation enables the model to have a better comprehending of the rumor language to verify rumors better than baseline models for two reasons: (i) early rumor verification by focusing on content-based and context-based features of the source rumor. (ii) overcoming the problem of the shortcoming of the dataset in deep neural networks by loading pre-trained BERT, fine-tuning it using the Persian rumor dataset, and combining with speech act and WS-based features. The empirical results of applying the model on Twitter and Telegram datasets demonstrated that BERT-SAWS can enhance the performance of the classifier from 2% to 18%. It indicates that speech act and WS alongside semantic contextual vectors are helpful features in the rumor verification task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most important gynecological disorders of women in the age of reproduction. Different hormonal and inflammatory cross-talks may play in the appearance of its eventual complications as a leading cause of infertility. Excessive production of reactive oxygen species over the power of the antioxidant system as oxidative stress is known to contribute to a variety of diseases like PCOS. Thus, the utilization of antioxidants can be efficient in preventing or assistant in treating these diseases. In this review, we describe the clinical trial studies that have examined the efficiency of antioxidant strategies against PCOS and the possible underlying mechanisms. The investigations presented here lead us to consider that targeting oxidative stress pathways is probably a powerful promising therapeutic approach towards PCOS. There is preparatory evidence of the effectiveness of antioxidant interventions in ameliorating some of the PCOS complications, including metabolic and hormonal disorders. Due to limited data and relatively few clinical trials, many of these interventions need further investigation before they can be considered effective agents for routine clinical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most numerical simulation studies have focused on the effect of homogenous wettability on fluid flow dynamics; however, most rocks display spatially heterogeneous wettability. Therefore, we have used direct numerical simulations (DNS) to investigate wettability heterogeneity at pore-scale. We have built a quasi-3D pore-scale model and simulated two-phase flow in a homogenous porous media with homogenous and heterogeneous wettability distributions. Five different heterogeneous wettability patterns were used in this study. We observed that heterogenous wettability significantly affects the evolution of fluid interface, trapped saturation, and displacement patterns. Wettability heterogeneity results in fingering and specific trapping patterns which do not follow the flow behaviour characteristic of a porous medium with homogenous wettability. This flow behaviour indicates a different flow regime that cannot be estimated using homogenous wettability distributions represented by an average contact angle. Moreover, our simulation results show that certain spatial configurations of wettability heterogeneity at the microscale, e.g. being perpendicular to the flow direction, may assist the stability of the displacement and delay the breakthrough time. In contrast, other configurations such as being parallel to the flow direction promote flow instability for the same pore-scale geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies and climate models use 24-h time scales, while the atmospheric characteristics that determine the type of precipitation can change in less than 24 h. Accepting the average rainfall or 24-h temperature means accepting the stagnant atmospheric conditions in 24 h; however, it is not the case in reality. Therefore, the present study deals with the spatial-temporal trend and real slope of solid precipitation on hourly, daily, and annual scales in 19 stations in Northwestern Iran (1951–2018). In the first step, the solid precipitation codes were extracted from 3-h records from studied metrological stations, and then the variations of trend and the slope of solid precipitation line were calculated through Mann–Kendall (MK) test and the Sen's slope estimator. Some remarkable results indicated that 1) the solid precipitation trend in all three scales is declining; 2) the annual solid precipitation trend in all stations except Khoy and Parsabad is negative; 3) on an hourly scale, UTC 0.3.00 in Kaleybar and UTC 15:00 in other stations have the highest hourly declining trends; 4) in daily scale, data has almost declining trend and the difference in solid precipitation during night and day (except three stations) is negligible; 5) Tabriz, Ardabil, Urmia, Khoy, and Kaleybar are the stations with a significant difference in SYNOP solid precipitation rate, while in other 14 stations, this difference was not observed; 6) the correlation of height and the annual solid precipitation trend is about −0.46; and finally, 7) in the whole region, the annual solid precipitation trend values have the highest correlation with UTC 15:00. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, a novel functionalized magnetic Fe3O4@SiO2 core-shell nanoparticles grafted with carboxymethyl β-cyclodextrin (CM-β-CD) is utilized for adsorption of Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions. The grafting reaction was performed via carbodimide method by using 1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). The as-prepared nanoadsorbents were characterized by FTIR, SEM, TEM, XRD, TGA, and VSM. The grafting CM-β-CD on the Fe3O4@SiO2 core-shell nanoparticles enhances the ion adsorption capacity due to the strong abilities of the enormous –OH and –COOH functional groups in CM-β-CD to adsorb Pb(II) ions. The effects of factors such as the concentration of β-CD, contact time, initial ion concentration, adsorbent dosage, adsorption kinetics, and isotherms on the adsorption behavior were studied properly. The results depicted that the nanoadsorbents had good adsorption with the maximum adsorption capacity of 170 mg g−1 at 25 °C and pH 6.0. All the equilibrium adsorption kinetics of Pb(II) are fitted well to the pseudo-second-order model. The adsorption data were also found to follow the Langmuir adsorption isotherm model. In summary, the experimental Pb(II) ion adsorption data showed the prepared nanocomposites would be as promising adsorbents to remove various heavy metals from wastewater. Highlights: A magnetic nanocomposite adsorbent based on β-cyclodextrin was synthesized easily. The adsorbent was used for selective removal of Pb(II) ions from contaminated waters. The adsorbent exhibited high adsorption capacity of 170 mg g−1. Adsorption of Pb(II) followed by pseudo-second-order and Langmuir isotherm models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a retraction note from the journal Molecular Biology Reports regarding an article titled "The role of substance P/neurokinin 1 receptor in the pathogenesis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma through constitutively active PI3K/Akt/NF-κB signal transduction pathways." The article has been retracted due to concerns about the statistical results being based on low sample numbers and the majority of the results representing data from only two independent experiments. Additionally, some statements in the Results section lack supporting statistical analysis, and certain western blot bands in Figure 5 are cropped in a way that may misrepresent their sizes and shapes. The conclusions of the article are deemed unsupported by the presented data. [Extracted from the article]

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have received much attention in modern green chemistry as inexpensive and easy to handle analogous ionic liquids. This work employed molecular dynamics techniques to investigate the structure and dynamics of a DES system composed of choline chloride and phenyl propionic acid as a hydrogen bond donor and acceptor, respectively. Dynamical parameters such as mean square displacement, liquid phase self-diffusion coefficient and viscosity are calculated at the pressure of 0.1 MPa and temperatures 293, 321 and 400 K. The system size effect on the self-diffusion coefficient of DES species was also examined. Structural parameters such as liquid phase densities, hydrogen bonds, molecular dipole moment of species, and radial and spatial distribution functions (RDF and SDF) were investigated. The viscosity of the studied system was compared with the experimental values recently reported in the literature. A good agreement was observed between simulated and experimental values. The electrostatic and van der Waals nonbonding interaction energies between species were also evaluated and interpreted in terms of temperature. These investigations could play a vital role in the future development of these designer solvents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anesthetics are deemed necessary for all major surgical procedures. However, they have also been found to exert neurotoxic effects when tested on various experimental models, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Earlier studies have implicated mitochondrial fragmentation as a potential target of anesthetic-induced toxicity, although clinical strategies to protect their structure and function remain sparse. Here, we sought to determine if preserving mitochondrial networks with a non-toxic, short-life synthetic peptide—P110, would protect cortical neurons against both inhalational and intravenous anesthetic-induced neurotoxicity. This study provides the first direct and comparative account of three key anesthetics (desflurane, propofol, and ketamine) when used under identical conditions, and demonstrates their impact on neonatal, rat cortical neuronal viability, neurite outgrowth and synaptic assembly. Furthermore, we discovered that inhibiting Fis1-mediated mitochondrial fission reverses anesthetic-induced aberrations in an agent-specific manner. This study underscores the importance of designing mitigation strategies invoking mitochondria-mediated protection from anesthetic-induced toxicity in both animals and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this 2-year study was to investigate the effects of nitrogen resources (nitrogen-free, NO3−, NH4+, and NH4NO3 each 150% in modified Hoagland solution) and plant growth regulators (PGR-free (6-Benzylaminopurine (BAP, 200 µM), 1-Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA, 200 µM) and BAP + NAA each one 200 µM) on the absorption and transmission of elements from root to leaves and also study the biosynthesis of steviol glycosides in stevia leaves. The results demonstrated that the highest absorption of nutrient elements including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium was observed in the plant cultivated under NO3− and NAA treatment. However, the combination of NH4NO3 and BAP significantly increased the steviol glycosides more than that of other treatments. This suggests that stevia requires low amounts of nutrient uptake for the biosynthesis of steviol glycosides. The results also showed that the levels of free carbohydrate and starch were increased in root and leaf under NO3− and with BAP + NAA treatments. An increase in free carbohydrate biosynthesis and transferring it to the root is completely vital to prevent sodium uptake and assist in the absorption of essential nutrients. These results suggest that the application of NO3− could increase the nutrient uptake whereas the optimal uptake of the essential elements and the highest amounts of steviol glycosides occur in the treatment of NH4NO3 along with BAP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the microstructural and geotechnical properties, environmental impact, and economic benefit of cement kiln dust (CKD)-treated kaolinite clay with the addition of sodium chloride (NaCl). As a chemical admixture, NaCl is expected to enhance the strength properties of the clay soil stabilized by CKD. To verify this issue, the geotechnical characteristics of CKD-treated soils with different contents of NaCl (2.5, 5, and 10%) were examined. To this end, the Atterberg limits, standard Proctor, unconfined compressive strength and California bearing ratio (CBR) tests were conducted. Besides, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis was used to observe the microstructural changes resulting from using additives. It was found that the addition of NaCl to the CKD-stabilized clay caused the maximum dry density to increase and the optimum moisture content to decrease. 10% NaCl enhanced the unconfined compressive strength of the CKD-treated soil to 18.7% and 8% higher than that of the NaCl-free specimen during 7 and 28 days of curing, respectively. These results were in accordance with the consequences extracted from the CBR behavior diagram. Moreover, cementitious compounds products in the mixtures were presumed to be the significant factor contributing to strength improvements based on the SEM results. The stabilized clayey soil with 15% CKD and 10% NaCl as environment-friendly method could significantly reduce energy consumption, e-CO2 emission, and cost of soil stabilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acrylamide concentration in food products collected from the Tehran market was investigated by the aid of a dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) system coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Also, the dietary exposure distribution and related potential risk for acrylamide ingestion were estimated by the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). The highest and lowest mean concentration of acrylamide was detected in coffee and roasted nuts samples as 549 and 133 μg/kg, respectively. The mean acrylamide dietary exposure values for children (3–10 years), adolescents (11–17 years), adults (18–60 years), and seniors (61–96 years) were estimated to be 1.81, 1.02, 0.61, and 0.53 μg/kg body weight (BW)/day, respectively. In all age groups, except children, the estimated exposure in men and boys was higher than that in women and girls. Bread, despite containing low acrylamide content groups (157 μg/kg while compared with other, except roasted nuts), showed with the highest contribution rate in all age groups due to its high consumption rate. The estimated incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR) for all age groups was noted as greater than 10−4 indicating serious risk to the population. Moreover, the margin of exposure (MOE) values based on carcinogenicity showed health concern to all age groups (< 10,000). Regarding the non-carcinogenic risk, the target hazard quotient (THQ) was lower than 1, and MOE based on neurotoxicity was higher than 125 (safety thresholds), which represented negligible and ignorable risk in all age groups except in a small group of children and adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising cell candidates for cartilage regeneration. Furthermore, it is important to control the cell-matrix interactions that have a direct influence on cell functions. Providing an appropriate microenvironment for cell differentiation in response to exogenous stimuli is a critical step towards the clinical utilization of MSCs. In this study, hydrogels consisted of different proportions of alginates that were modified using gelatin, collagen type I and arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) and were evaluated regarding their effects on mesenchymal stem cells. The effect of applying hydrostatic pressure on MSCs encapsulated in collagen-modified alginate with and without chondrogenic medium was evaluated 7, 14 and 21 days after culture, which is a comprehensive evaluation of chondrogenesis in 3D hydrogels with mechanical and chemical stimulants. Alcian blue, safranin O and dimethyl methylene blue (DMMB) staining showed the chondrogenic phenotype of cells seeded in the collagen- and RGD-modified alginate hydrogels with the highest intensity after 21 days of culture. The results of real-time PCR for cartilage-specific extracellular matrix genes indicated the chondrogenic differentiation of MSCs in all hydrogels. Also, the synergic effects of chemical and mechanical stimuli are indicated. The highest expression levels of the studied genes were observed in the cells embedded in collagen-modified alginate by loading after 14 days of exposure to the chondrogenic medium. The effect of using IHP on encapsulated MSCs in modified alginate with collagen type I is equal or even higher than using TGF-beta on encapsulated cells. The results of immunohistochemical assessments also confirmed the real-time PCR data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because water resources for irrigation are limited worldwide, it is essential to embrace proper water-saving practices. Field studies were laid out as a factorial split experiment in a randomized complete block design with three replications in 2015 and 2016 to determine the effect of wheat straw mulch (0 and 7.5 tons ha−1) under different irrigation treatments (100%, 80%, 60%, and 40% of the required water) on the physiological characteristics, grain yield, and oil content of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) genotypes (Borazjan 2, Halil, and Jiroft). Seed yield, 1000-seed weight, seed number, and capsule number were decreased by 64%, 65%, 60%, 70%, and 66%, respectively, as a result of increments in water deficit (from 100 to 40%). However, the application of 7.5 tons ha−1 of mulch mitigated the negative effect of water stress as said factors decreased only by 42%, 40%, 46%, 44%, and 45% as a result of increments in water deficit (from 100 to 40%). Catalase activity (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, proline content, and water use efficiency (WUE) increased with increases in water deficiency, while relative water content (RWC), photosynthetic pigment, and leaf area index (LAI) decreased as water stress rose from 100 to 40%. Applying 7.5 tons ha−1 of straw mulch in 60% available water can be considered a promising management strategy due to both reduction in irrigation water requirements and improvement of low-yield sesame fields in water-deficient areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acrylamide is a probable human carcinogen which could produce during food processing via Maillard reaction between asparagine and reducing sugars at elevated temperatures. In this study, microextraction technique was developed for the quantitative analysis of acrylamide in 24 types of roasted nuts and seeds including almond, pistachio, peanut and hazelnut and roasted seeds including sunflower, pumpkin and watermelon. Dispersive liquid liquid microextraction coupled to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (DLLME–GC–MS) used for acrylamide determination in samples. Critical parameters in analysis step were studied and optimized using central composite design. The risk assessment estimation was done by Monte Carlo Simulation. The detection limit and quantitation limit of offered technique were calculated 0.6 and 2 µg/kg, respectively. The recovery percent for acrylamide in samples was higher than 95%. Relative standard deviation was obtained 8.9% (n = 6). The method was showed good linearity (R2 = 0.998) in the range of 5–500 µg/kg. According to the results, acrylamide level in roasted nuts and seeds is variable between 33.36 and 250.90 µg/kg. The highest mean value of acrylamide was found in roasted almond at concentration 176.88 µg/kg and the lowest amount of acrylamide was detected in roasted hazelnuts at concentration 90.61 µg/kg. Divergences in acrylamide amounts in samples were attributed to differences in their composition, roasting time and temperature used in their manufacture. Our results showed that dietary acrylamide exposure through intake of roasted nuts and seeds, is relatively low and the risk of carcinogenicity is considerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, studies have shown that Fucosylation plays an important role in the invasion and metastatic process of CSLCs. Understanding the expression pattern of fucosyltransferase (FUT) genes may help to suggest better-targeted therapy strategies for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). The study aimed to address the expression pattern of FUT gene variants in esophageal CSLCs and parental adherent cells. Sphere formation method was used to enrich CSLCs. Expression of FUT genes was examined in tumor sphere and parental adherent cells using the RT-PCR method and then relative expression of detected variants was performed by the Real-Time PCR method in both groups. The detected FUTs, also, were assessed in fresh ESCC tumors and the matched healthy controls. Analysis of The cell surface carbohydrate Lewis x (LeX, CD15) was performed by flow cytometry. Molecular analysis showed that the expression of FUT 3, 8 and POFUT1, 2 genes in tumorsphere were significantly higher than parental adherent cells. Analysis of fresh ESCC tumor tissues and the matched healthy controls showed that FUT8 and POFUT1, 2 genes in contrast to FUT 3 have higher expression in tumor tissues than controls. Flow cytometric analyses revealed that tumorsphere and their parent cells do not differ significantly in Lewis x surface marker. The present study showed that FUT 3, 8 and POFUT1, 2 genes upregulated in esophageal CSLCs in comparison to adherent cells. Understanding the expression pattern of FUT gene variants may help to suggest better-targeted therapy strategies for ESCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most prevalent malignancies is esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), which is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Substance P (SP), as one of the peptides released from sensory nerves, causes the enhancement of cellular excitability through the activation of the neurokinin-1 (NK1) receptor in several human tumor cells. Aprepitant, a specific, potent, and long-acting NK1 receptor antagonist, is considered as a novel agent to inhibit proliferation and induce apoptosis in malignant cells. Since the antitumor mechanism of aprepitant in ESCC is not completely understood, we conducted this study and found that aprepitant induced growth inhibition of KYSE-30 cells and arrested cells in the G2/M phase of the cell cycle. Aprepitant also caused apoptotic cell death and inhibited activation of the PI3K/Akt axis and its downstream effectors, including NF-κB in KYSE-30 cells. Besides, quantitative real-time (qRT)-PCR analysis showed a significant down-regulation of NF-κB target genes in KYSE-30 cells, indicating a probable NF-κB-dependent mechanism involved in aprepitant cytotoxicity. Thus, the present study recommends that SP/NK1R system might, therefore, be considered as an emerging and promising therapeutic strategy against ESCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dispersion of ferroelectric- and ferromagnetic nanoparticles in liquid crystals (LCs) is investigated in the last decades. Recently, doping multiferroic-BiFeO3 nanoparticles in the LCs has become of interest. These nanoparticles have coupled ferroelectric- and ferromagnetic properties at ambient temperature. In the present experiments, a nematic LC was doped with a low concentration of BiFeO3 nanoparticles, synthesized using a modified Pechini method. The particles were characterized and their dispersions in heptane with an added surfactant were used for doping of the LC. The measured dielectric constants in the doped LCs varied as compared to the pure LC. It was shown that the presence of a magnetic field in the cooling process (cooling down from isotropic to anisotropic phase) of the LC cells leads to a significant increase of dielectric anisotropy. Also, the transition temperature decreased in the nematic-isotropic transition temperature for the doped sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An imprinted electrochemical sensor was developed for the determination of the antibiotic oxacillin (OXC). A screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE) was modified with gold nanourchin and graphene oxide, and then aniline was electro-polymerized in the presence of OXC to obtain a molecular imprint on the SPCE. The morphologies in sequential modification processes and the electrochemical behavior of the modified SCPE were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy and cyclic voltammetry. The performance of the sensor was evaluated by differential pulse voltammetry. At a typical peak potential of 0.82 mV (vs. Ag/AgCl), response is linear in the 0.7–575 nM OXC concentration range. The electrochemical sensitivity is 97.6 nA nM −1 cm −2, and the detection limit is 0.2 nM. The relative of replicate assays is 2.6% (for n = 6) at an OXC concentration level of 200 nM. The sensor is sensitive and selective. It was successfully applied for the detection of OXC in spiked cow's milk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementing strategies for the efficient use of irrigation water is a priority in areas that encounter water shortage. Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) is an important medicinal plant grown in many semi-arid regions. A greenhouse study was conducted to investigate the influence of drought stress and the application of three plant growth regulators (PGRs) including jasmonic acid (JA), brassinosteroids (BRs), and putrescine (Put) on photosynthetic parameters, seed yield, essential oil content, essential oil yield, and water use efficiency of seed (WUEseed) of fennel. The results indicated that fennel leaves grown under mild drought stress maintained their relative water content by osmotic adjustment mainly through soluble sugars. Photosynthetic parameters, including leaf chlorophyll index, the maximal quantum yield of PSII photochemistry, net photosynthesis, and transpiration rate were similar in non-stressed plants and mildly-stressed plants prior to flowering. Essential oil content increased in stressed plants, but essential oil yield decreased. WUEseed slightly improved in plants under moderate drought stress. Regardless of the stress level, all three PGRs increased seed yield, primarily by increasing the seed number. Application of BRs, JA, and Put resulted in an approximately 4.2-, 3.5-, and 1.7-fold increase in essential oil yield, respectively. The highest WUEseed (0.82 g/L) was measured in plants that were grown under moderate stress and treated with BRs. Maximum seed yield (2.7 g/plant) was obtained from plants grown under non-stress conditions when treated with JA. It was concluded that spraying fennel plants with PGRs resulted in a considerable increase in essential oil yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of microdischarges and the inception dynamics of subsequent microdischarges in an electrode arrangement consisting of a metal pin and a hemispherical dielectric-covered electrode, operated in air with a small toluene admixture, is studied. The discharge is operated with sinusoidal high voltage. A gated ICCD camera and a current probe enable the recording of images and current pulses of the single microdischarges, respectively, while the spatio-temporally resolved development is measured with a multi-dimensional time-correlated single photon counting technique. The overall discharge dynamics changes significantly if a concentration of 35 ppm toluene is added to dry air. A lower high voltage amplitude than in dry air is needed for stable discharge operation. This can be explained by the lower ionization energy of toluene compared to molecular oxygen and nitrogen. The microdischarge development is the same with or without admixture, i.e. a positive (cathode directed) streamer mechanism is observed. Lower mean power is dissipated into the discharge when toluene is admixed. The main effect caused by toluene admixture is the suppression of high-energy microdischarges in case of the cathodic pin half-cycle of the sinusoidal high voltage. The influence on the inception voltage by additional ionization mechanisms and volume memory effects, the consumption of energetic electrons for toluene decomposition reactions, and the modification of the surface by plasma treatment are discussed as possible reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potential evapotranspiration (ET0) is one of the main elements when computing agricultural irrigation requirements and scheduling. All climatic parameters as well as ET0 are influenced by climate change. The aim of this study is trend analysis of monthly and annual ET0 time series in the west and NW of Iran. Values of ET0 are estimated at 36 selected stations, using the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith (FAO-56 PM) method. Then, the non-parametric Mann-Kendall (MK) method was used to detect trends. The slopes of trend lines are estimated using Sen's estimator approach. Results showed that about 86%of the monthly ET0 time series had upward trends of which 35.6 and 43% were significant at 0.01 and 0.05 levels, respectively, 47.4% exhibited a significant upward trend at the 10% level. In contrast, less than 0.7% of the whole monthly ET0 time series showed a significant downward trend (α < 0.01). Only 1.1% of the monthly ET0 time series had significant downward trends (α < 0.10). The strongest positive upward trend (significant at the 0.01 level) was detected in August at the Kermanshah station. However, the strongest negative downward trend belonged to the Khodabandeh station. The steepest upward and downward monthly ET0 slopes were observed at Maragheh and Khodabandeh stations. The magnitude of trends for these two stations are estimated as 2.33 and − 2.01 mm/year, respectively. On an annual timescale, above 94% of the stations had upward trend slopes. About 67% of the total stations exhibited significant trends at the 10% level. Very few sites (2.7%) showed downward annual ET0 trends (α < 0.10). At the annual scale, the first three strongest upward trends belonged to the Kermanshah, Urmia, and Tabriz stations, respectively (α < 0.01). It can be concluded that ET0 in the west and NW of Iran have an increasing trend for most of the stations. Therefore, it is important to use water in a prudent manner in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of various parameters on the welding process with high-velocity projectiles. For carrying out Impact Spot Welding tests, a single stage compressed gas gun impact test facility was used to launch flat- and conical-nosed projectiles within the velocity range from 100 to 150 m/s and performed. Different types of materials such as steel, copper, brass, and aluminum alloy were used. In the present experimental study, the steel plate with a thickness of 4 mm was considered as a back layer and the other plates made of copper, brass, and aluminum alloy were considered as front layers. Different gaps of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5 mm were considered between the layers. The shape of the welded interface was studied by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The depth of penetration in the specimen and the kinetic energy of the projectiles were calculated. The experimental results showed that a complete bonding has occurred in the collision zone, especially in the central areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Near Dochah, in the type area of the Qom Formation, Central Iran, the Miocene is partly developed in pelagic facies. From the 894.1 meter thick, 'a to e' members of this section, 152 samples were collected. Abundant planktonic foraminifera let us correlate the study section with the global planktonic foraminifera biozonations. High diversity of foraminifera in the study section allow us to adapt the study succession to global biozonations. Twenty-seven genera and thirty-four species are reported for the first time from the Dochah section. First reports of Praeorbulina sicana and Praeorbulina transitoria in the upper part of this section led to recognition of the Praeorbulina sicana lower occurrence subzone (M5a) biozone with a late Late Burdigalian age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalytic behavior was investigated for TiO-graphene nanocomposite in the degradation of acid orange 7 (AO7) as a model pollutant under ultraviolet light in aqueous solution. XRD, SEM, TEM, DRS, FT-IR and EDX techniques were used for the characterization of the prepared nanocomposite. The effect of synthesis variables such as weight ratio of TiO to graphene and operational key factors such as initial dye concentration, irradiation time, catalyst dosage and solution distance from UV lamp were studied in the photocatalytic degradation of AO7. This excellent catalytic ability is mainly attributed to the synergic effect of photocatalyst and adsorbent. The effect of operational variables was optimized for the photocatalytic degradation of AO7 as a pollutant model using the RSM technique. In this case, the amount of the determination coefficient (R = 0.97) shows that 97% of the variability in the response could be described by the model. The maximum degradation efficiency (96%) was achieved at the optimum operational conditions: catalyst dosage of 0.5 g L, the irradiation time of 50 min and distance the solution from UV lamp of 0.3 cm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]