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Background Staphylococcus aureus is one of the commensal bacteria and components of nose normal flora in 30–40% of people. The cellular phone is infected through the hands of a person who has already been infected with nasal discharge, in the hospital. Patients and family members with a weakened immune system are at high risk of contamination; the treatment procedure is difficult. Materials and methods 200 individuals who were working in the emergency departments of Ghaem were included in the study. Sampling was done by three sterile swabs; two swabs from the nose and one from the surface of the cellular phone. The diagnosis was done according to the staphylococcus biochemical tests. Beta-lactamase positive staphylococcus was identified by nitrocefin. MIC method was performed using E-test strips and agar dilution for detecting the MRSA. Results 86 out of 200 nasal, and 200 cellular phone samples were diagnosed as beta-lactamase positive staphylococci and sensitivity test was done. 17 out of 86 beta-lactamase positive Staphylococcus aureus samples were resistant to cefoxitin, piperacillin, ceftriaxone, and cefotaxime; just one of these 17 samples was resistant to vancomycin. 24 samples were contaminated with healthcare-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA). Totally, cellular phone and nasal discharge of 12% of studied individuals were infected with the HA-MRSA. Conclusion Cell phone usage should be prohibited in the hospital sections. Disinfection of the mobile phone should be taken when leaving the hospital, along with hand, face, and nose washing seriously. It is suggested to evaluate all persons working in hospitals regarding the contamination to MRSA.

Camera pose estimation in robotic applications is paramount. Most of recent algorithms based on convolutional neural networks demonstrate that they are able to predict the camera pose adequately. However, they usually suffer from the computational complexity which prevent them from running in real-time. Additionally, they are not robust to perturbations such as partial occlusion while they have not been trained on such cases beforehand. To study these limitations, this paper presents a fast and robust end-to-end Siamese convolutional model for robot-camera pose estimation. Two colored-frames are fed to the model at the same time, and the generic features are produced mainly based on the transfer learning. The extracted features are then concatenated, from which the relative pose is directly obtained at the output. Furthermore, a new dataset is generated, which includes several videos taken at various situations for the model evaluation. The proposed technique shows a robust performance even in challenging scenes, which have not been rehearsed during the training phase. Through the experiments conducted with an eye-in-hand KUKA robotic arm, the presented network renders fairly accurate results on camera pose estimation despite scene-illumination changes. Also, the pose estimation is conducted with reasonable accuracy in presence of partial camera occlusion. The results are enhanced by defining a new dynamic weighted loss function. The proposed method is further exploited in visual servoing scenario.

This paper presents a video object segmentation method which jointly uses motion boundary and convolutional neural network (CNN)-based class-level maps to carry out the co-segmentation of the frames. The key characteristic of the proposed approach is a combination of those two sources of information to create initial object and background regions. These regions are employed within the co-segmentation energy function. The motion boundary map detects the areas which contain the object movement, and the CNN-based class saliency map determines the regions with more impact on acquiring the correct network classification. The proposed approach can be implemented on unconstrained natural videos which include changes in an object’s appearance, rapidly moving background, object deformation in non-rigid moving, rapid camera motion and even the existence of a static object. Experimental results on two challenging datasets (i.e., Davis and SegTrackv2 datasets) demonstrate the competitive performance of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.

In this paper the attitude control of a spacecraft simulator using Reaction Wheels (RW) as the actuators is investigated. The main goal of the current study is to bring the RWs to the rest at the end of the maneuver without angular velocity measurement. A modified feedback linearization controller is applied by considering the Euler angles of the simulator as the output and the RWs angular momentums as the internal state variables. The stability of the proposed controller and the internal dynamics is analyzed using Lyapunov theory. Two modified sliding mode observers are designed to estimate the angular velocities of the spacecraft attitude control subsystem simulator. The proposed observers do not use the control input and the detailed knowledge of the model and thus it can be implemented easily. The global stability of the system is proved. The proposed controller and observers are finally evaluated numerically and experimentally on an attitude spacecraft simulator.

In recent years, abuse of synthetic cathinones, in particular, mephedrone, has increased among young adults worldwide. The study aim is to investigate the effects of mephedrone exposure during the gestational period on mice offspring outcomes, focusing on hippocampal neurotoxicity. The pregnant mice received mephedrone (50 mg/kg, sc) on a regular schedule (once daily on all days, from day 5 to 18 of gestation) or repeated schedule (thrice daily on day 5, 6, 11, 12, 17, and 18 of gestation) to simulate regular or recreational use of mephedrone, respectively. Results showed that the percentage of weight gain in pregnant mice was significantly lower in both regular and repeated schedule mephedrone groups (p 0.01). Also, mephedrone significantly reduced the number and weight of delivered pups and increased the rate of stillbirth (p 0.05). Immunohistochemistry and TUNEL assay showed an inhibition of cell proliferation (p 0.05) and an increase of apoptosis (p 0.05) in the hippocampus of delivered pups of the repeated schedule mephedrone group. This apoptotic effect was associated with enhanced expression of the pro-apoptotic Bax gene (p 0.05) and reduction of expression of the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 gene (p 0.05) as evaluated by real-time PCR. The Morris water maze showed an impairment of spatial learning (p 0.05) and reference memory (p 0.01) in offspring born from litters exposed to mephedrone (repeated schedule). In conclusion, the present study has shown that regular and repeated exposure to mephedrone during the gestational period increases the risk of low birth weight and stillbirth. Also, repeated use of mephedrone impairs learning and memory processes through hippocampal damage.

Cancer-targeted therapy is an expanding and successful approach in treatment of many types of cancers. One of the main categories of targeted therapy is use of small molecule inhibitors. 15-Lipoxygenase (15-LOX) is an enzyme which reacts with polyunsaturated fatty acids and produces metabolites that are implicated in many important human diseases, such as cancer. Considering the role of 15-LOX (mainly 15-LOX-1) in the progression of some cancers, the discovery of 15-LOX inhibitors could potentially lead to development of novel cancer therapeutics and it can be claimed that 15-LOX inhibitors might be suitable as chemotherapy agents in the near future. This article reviews relevant publications on 15-LOX inhibitors with focus on their anticancer activities in vitro and in vivo. Many 15-LOX inhibitors have been reported for which separate studies have shown their anticancer activities. This review paves the way to further explore the mechanism of their antiproliferative effects via 15-LOX inhibition.

Selective PDE3 inhibitors are considered as useful pharmacological agents with variety of inotropic, vasodilatory, anti-thrombotic, anti-inflammatory, and insulin secretory effects. Yet, metabolic effects of these agents have not been completely elucidated. In this work, the effects of seven new derivatives of cilostamide (a selective PDE3 inhibitor), MC1, MC2, MC3, MC4, MC5, MC6, and MC7, were studied on lipolysis in vitro and serum lipids levels in vivo. Retroperitoneal adipose tissue was excised from normal rat and incubated with cilostamide derivatives in the absence or presence of isoproterenol, a non-selective β-adrenergic agonist. MC5, MC6, and MC7, like cilostamide, could increase (p

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an eight-week combined resistance and endurance training program on the body composition (total body water percentage, fat free body mass and body fat percentage) and aerobic power of young men. Fifty young men students with the age mean of 21.18±2.1, height mean of 176.34±4.1 and weight mean of 70.1±5.4 were randomly divided to five combined endurance- resistance (n=10), combined resistance-endurance (n=10), resistance (n=10), endurance (n=10) and control (n=10) groups. In three sessions (week 0, week 4 and week 8), their aerobic power and body composition were measured in order to obtain their maximum oxygen consumption, total body water percentage, fat free body mass and body fat percentage. Then, the training groups performed their training programs for eight weeks, three sessions per week. The training program of the resistance group included circular resistance. The endurance group performed running with 70-80% maximum heart rate for 20-26 min. The program of the combined endurance-resistance group was composed of doing endurance training first and resistance training next and that of the combined resistance-endurance group included performing resistance training first and endurance training next. The control group did not participate in any training program during the research period. The research data were analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures along with dependent t test considering the Bonferroni's P correction for within group evaluation and one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) along with Tukey’s post hoc test for between group evaluation ( > α 0/05). The results showed that eight weeks of endurance training, combined endurance-resistance training and combined resistance-endurance training significantly increased the maximum oxygen consumption (P

In this paper the attitude control of a spacecraft simulator using Reaction Wheels (RW) as the actuators is investigated. The simulator attitude is controlled considering the saturation of RWs angular momentum and its angular rate. The main goal of the current study is to bring the RW s to the rest at the end of the maneuver without using extra actuators. A modified feedback linearization is applied to control the attitude of the system. To this end, the Euler angles of the simulator are considered as the output and the RWs angular momentums are assumed as the internal state variables. The internal dynamics stability is proved by rewriting the dynamics of the system in normal form. The stability of the proposed controller is analyzed using Lyapunov stability approach. The proposed algorithm is finally evaluated numerically and experimentally on an attitude spacecraft simulator.

In this paper, we analyze 48 signals of rest tremor velocity related to 12 distinct subjects affected by Parkinson's disease. The subjects belong to two different groups, formed by four and eight subjects with, respectively, high- and low-amplitude rest tremors. Each subject is tested in four settings, given by combining the use of deep brain stimulation and L-DOPA medication. We develop two main feature-based representations of such signals, which are obtained by considering (i) the long-term correlations and multifractal properties, and (ii) the power spectra. The feature-based representations are initially utilized for the purpose of characterizing the subjects under different settings. In agreement with previous studies, we show that deep brain stimulation does not significantly characterize neither of the two groups, regardless of the adopted representation. On the other hand, the medication effect yields statistically significant differences in both high- and low-amplitude tremor groups. We successively test several different instances of the two feature-based representations of the signals in the setting of supervised classification and (nonlinear) feature transformation. We consider three different classification problems, involving the recognition of (i) the presence of medication, (ii) the use of deep brain stimulation, and (iii) the membership to the high- and low-amplitude tremor groups. Classification results show that the use of medication can be discriminated with higher accuracy, considering many of the feature-based representations. Notably, we show that the best results are obtained with a parsimonious, two-dimensional representation encoding the long-term correlations and multifractal character of the signals., 10 pages, 41 references

The impedance control of dual-arm 7-DOF cooperative manipulators is considered in this paper. Global compliant behavior for the whole system is achieved using impedance at three levels, i.e. object, end-effector and body level. A centralized impedance control strategy is provided to confer a compliant behavior to the object, while an active decentralized impedance control with force tracking is enforced to the end-effectors to control the internal forces on the object. A compliant behavior for the body of the dual-arm system is obtained by means of null-space impedance control. The manipulability measure of the whole system is locally maximized within this algorithm. The developed control scheme is verified in a simulation environment composed of two cooperating 7-DOF KUKA lightweight arms carrying a common object.

Paraneoplastic neurological disorders (PNDs) are a rare and diverse group of neurological conditions that can involve any part of the nervous system. Diagnosis is facilitated by finding well-recognized autoantibodies directed against neural antigens in the sera and the cerebrospinal fluid. Identifying and eliminating the underlying malignancy is the mainstay of treatment. Immunomodulatory treatment is gaining more acceptance especially, where a malignancy could not be identified, oncology treatment is completed, or along with cancer treatment. Literature review shows only a handful of systematic prospective case series. Multicenter, prospective controlled clinical trials are needed for future therapeutic advances.

In this paper, the problem of controlling a robot manipulator in task space, while guaranteeing a compliant behavior for the redundant degrees of freedom, is considered. This issue may arise in the case where the robot experiences an interaction on its body, especially in the presence of humans. The proposed approach guarantees correct task execution and compliance of the robot's body during intentional or accidental interaction in the null space of the main task, simultaneously. The asymptotic stability of the task-space error is ensured by using suitable observers to estimate and compensate the generalized forces acting on the task variables, without using joint torque measurements. Two different controller--observer algorithms are designed, and they are based on the task-space error and on the generalized momentum of the robot, respectively. The performance of the proposed algorithms is verified in experiments on a 7R lightweight robot arm.

In this paper, the problem of controlling multiple different tasks in various points on the robot body is considered. The proposed approach guarantees the execution of multiple various tasks (force, position and orientation control) in the presence of intentional or accidental interaction with robot body. The control law distinguish between desired and accidental external forces. Magnitude and/or orientation of the forces in the contact points can be controlled while various tasks may be defined and controlled in other contact points in the robot body. Controller-observer algorithm is proposed based on the generalized momentum of the robot. Asymptotically stability of task space errors are proved while a proper estimation of the external torque on robot is available. Performance of the proposed algorithm is confirmed by simulations.

Background: Brucellosis still remains a major health problem with different symptoms and various diagnostic methods. Diagnostic methods of brucellosis are usually based on detecting specific antibodies in the patient’s serum. Nowadays, many serological tests are applied for the diagnosis of human brucellosis. Most routine tests are serum agglutination tests based on Wright and 2-Mercaptoethanol (2-ME). Objectives: The aim of this study (cross sectional study) was to evaluate the prevalence of brucellosis and assess the degree of agreement among serum samples of suspected brucellosis serological tests routinely performed in Mashhad, Iran. Patients and Methods: This study was conducted in Mashhad from August 2011 to September 2012. Sera (2 - 3 mL) were collected from 83 cases suspected of brucellosis among 594 patients. Ten serum samples were collected from healthy subjects as control sera. Rose Bengal test for initial screening and Wright and 2 ME as standard tests were conducted to determine antibody titers. Thereafter, IgG and IgM levels were determined by the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) method. Results: Among 83 serum samples, Rose Bengal test was able to identify 20 (12%) positive specimens; the standard tube agglutination test was able to detect 30 (18%) positive samples, and the ELISA IgG and ELISA IgM were able to trace 42 (21%) and 13 (6.5%) positive samples, respectively. Ten control samples had negative results for the ELISA method. The results were calculated by the Kappa formula. The highest level of agreement was among 1 = KRB-SAT tests and the lowest level of agreement was among tests K ELISA IgM-IgG = 0.30. Conclusions: According to the results, brucellosis has remained endemic in this region. Most cases were detected by ELISA IgG. The highest kappa agreements were between tests KRB-SAT, KRB-IgG and KSAT-IgG, while the lowest levels of agreement were between tests SAT-IgM and ELISA IgM-IgG. Considering that ELISA IgM results are covered by SAT and ELISA IgG test results, applications of this test do not seem necessary.

Background: Hepatitis delta virus (HDV) is dependent on the hepatitis B virus for transmission and propagation. Based on isolated HDV sequences from different parts of the world, at least three major different genotypes with different geographic distributions are suggested. Studies have shown that genotype 1 is the predominant genotype of HDV in different parts of Iran; however, the genotype distribution of this virus has not been identified in Mashhad, northeast Iran. Objectives: This current study determines the frequency of HDV major genotypes in Mashhad, Iran. Patients and Methods: Twenty-five participants were enrolled in this study. All samples were positive for HBsAg (determined by Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)) and anti-HDV. RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis was performed. Then, PCR was performed and HDV genotypes were determined by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Results: Of 25 patients, 12 (48%) were positive for HDV RNA. Genotype analysis of HDV RNA revealed that the prevalence of HDV genotypes I and II was 83.3% (n = 10) and 16.7% (n = 2), respectively. Conclusions: This study showed that the most prevalent genotype of HDV in Mashhad was genotype I. It was of interest that in contrast to other provinces of Iran, HDV genotype 2 was observed in Mashhad. Similar studies with larger sample sizes could provide valuable information regarding the molecular epidemiology and geographical distribution. It may also help control and prevent the spread of hepatitis D virus infections. In addition, the genotyping of HDV may predict the severity of the disease.

The problem of image based visual servoing for robots working in a cluttered dynamic environment is addressed in this paper. It is assumed that the environment is observed by depth sensors which allow to measure the distance between any moving obstacle and the robot. Also an eye-in-hand camera is used to extract image features. The main idea is to control suitable image moments and to relax a certain number of robot's degrees of freedom during the interaction phase. If an obstacle approaches the robot, the main visual servoing task is relaxed partially or completely, while the image features are kept in the camera field of view by controlling the image moments. Fuzzy rules are used to set the desired values of the image moments. Beside that, the relaxed redundancy of the robot is exploited to avoid collisions. After removing the risk of collision, the main visual servoing task is resumed. The effectiveness of the algorithm is shown by several case studies on a KUKA LWR 4 robot arm.

An estimator of external generalized forces (force plus moments) acting on aerial platforms, and based on the momentum of the mechanical system, is proposed for the control of VToL UAVs together with a hierarchical architecture separating the translational and rotational dynamics of the vehicle. The closed-loop system equations are shaped as mechanical impedances, programmable through the controller gains, and forced by the residuals given by the estimation error. This arrangement allows the VToL UAVs to perform hovering and tracking tasks without a precise knowledge of the vehicle dynamics and in presence of external disturbances and unmodeled aerodynamic effects. Experiments are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed control design.

In this paper new approaches for task space control during null space compliance control of a kinematically redundant robot are studied. The approaches are useful for the case where the robot experiences an external interaction on its body, especially in the human environments. The proposed algorithms guarantee safe reaction of the robot during intentional or accidental interaction by exploiting robot's redundancy through null space impedance control. The algorithms do not require joint torque measurements. The performances of the proposed controllers are verified through a variety of experiments on 7R KUKA lightweight robot arm.

In this paper a new approach for the null-space impedance control of a kinematically redundant robot is proposed. The approach is useful for the case where the robot experience an external interaction on the body, especially in the presence of humans. The proposed algorithm guarantees safe and dependable physical interaction of the robot body with the environment, thanks to the null-space impedance control. At the same time, the correct execution of the task assigned to the end effector is ensured by a disturbance observer. The algorithm does not require joint torque measurements. The performance of the proposed controller is verified through simulations on 7R KUKA lightweight robot arm.

This paper presents a dynamic level control algorithm to meet simultaneously multiple desired tasks based on allocated priorities for redundant robotic systems. It is shown that this algorithm can be treated as a general framework to achieve control over the whole body of the robot and some of the previously developed results are formalized using this approach. Null-space impedance control is proposed as one of the main results of using this method and is evaluated by means of computer simulation. © 2011 IEEE.

Purpose of review The objective of this review is to summarize recent advances in the treatment of various neuromuscular disorders including neuropathies, neuromuscular junction disorders, and myopathies. Recent findings Immunotherapy with sophisticated agents for myasthenia gravis and inflammatory myopathies, neuroprotection with vitamin E for chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, and promising gene transfer and exon-skipping therapies for muscular dystrophy are among the most exciting recent developments in the treatment of neuromuscular disorders. Summary In spite of significant advances, therapy in many neuromuscular diseases remains far from satisfactory. Better understanding of the underlying molecular and pathophysiologic processes for both hereditary and acquired disorders should lead to more refined and successful therapeutic approaches, reducing physical and other types of disability while posing fewer side effects.

Corrigendum Corrigendum to ‘‘Design, synthesis and SAR studies of 4-allyoxyaniline amides as potent 15-lipoxygensae inhibitors” [Bioorg. Med. Chem. 17 (2009) 1614] Seyed Mohammad Seyedi *, Hossein Eshghi , Zeinab Jafari , Neda Attaran , Hamid Sadeghian , Mohammad Reza Saberi , Mohammad Mahdi Riazi a Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad 917751436, Islamic Republic of Iran b School of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, BuAli Square, Mashhad 9196773117, Islamic Republic of Iran