Search

Objectives The authors sought to determine baseline neurocognition before transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and its correlations with pre-TAVR brain imaging. Background TAVR studies have not shown a correlation between diffusion-weighted image changes and neurocognition. The authors wanted to determine the extent to which there was already impairment at baseline that correlated with cerebrovascular disease. Methods SENTINEL (Cerebral Protection in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement) trial patients had cognitive assessments of attention, processing speed, executive function, and verbal and visual memory. Z-scores were based on normative means and SDs, combined into a primary composite z-score. Brain magnetic resonance images were obtained pre-TAVR on 3-T scanners with a T2 fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence. Scores ≤−1.5 SD below the normative mean (7th percentile) were considered impairment. Paired t tests compared within-subject scores, and chi-square goodness-of-fit compared the percentage of subjects below −1.5 SD. Correlation and regression analyses assessed the relationship between neurocognitive z-scores and T2 lesion volume. Results Among 234 patients tested, the mean composite z-score was −0.65 SD below the normative mean. Domain scores ranged from −0.15 SD for attention to −1.32 SD for executive function. On the basis of the ≥1.5 SD normative reference, there were significantly greater percentages of impaired scores in the composite z-score (13.2%; p = 0.019), executive function (41.9%; p Conclusions There was a significant proportion of aortic stenosis patients with impaired cognition before TAVR, with a relationship between baseline cognitive function and lesion burden likely attributable to longstanding cerebrovascular disease. These findings underscore the importance of pre-interventional testing and magnetic resonance imaging in any research investigating post-surgical cognitive outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease.

Objective(s): Due to the rapid increased drug resistance to Plasmodium parasites, an urgent need to achieve new antiplasmodial drugs is felt. Therefore, in this study, the new synthetic phenanthroline derivatives were synthesized with antiplasmodial activity. Materials and Methods: A series of 1,10-phenanthroline derivatives containing amino-alcohol and amino-ether substituents were synthesized via facile procedures, starting with 5,6-epoxy-1,10-phenanthroline. Their antiplasmodial activity was then evaluated using Peter’s 4-day suppressive test against Plasmodium berghei-infected mice (ANKA strain). Furthermore, the mean survival time of the mice treated with synthetic compounds was compared with the negative control group. Results: The results demonstrated that the compounds 6-(3-(dibutylamino)propylamino)-5,6-dihydro-1,10-phenanthroline-5-ol(7b) at the dose of 150 mg/kg/day and 4-(1,10-phenanthroline-5-yloxy)-N, N-dipropylbutan-1-amine (8b) at the dose of 15 mg/kg/day have 90.58% and 88.32% suppression, respectively. All synthetic compounds prolonged the mean survival time of treated mice in comparison with negative control groups, indicating the in vivo antiplasmodial activity of these new compounds. Conclusion: The present study is the first attempt to achieve new, effective synthetic compounds based on phenanthroline scaffold with the antiplasmodial activity. However, more research is needed to optimize their antimalarial activity.

The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of Plantago major (P. major) on cisplatin-induced kidney injury in the rat. Cisplatin was injected on the 6th day of the experiment. Animals were treated with P. major extract (300, 600, and 1200 mg/kg) and Vitamin E for five days before and two weeks after cisplatin administration. Cisplatin caused a significant decrease in glomerular filtration rate (GFR), urine osmolarity, and urinary excretion rate of potassium, but significant increase in the kidney index and histological damage compared with the control group. Administration of Vitamin E and P. major (300 and 600 mg/kg) significantly increased GFR compared to cisplatin group. Furthermore, urine osmolarity in Vitamin E and P. major (600 mg/kg) groups were significantly elevated compared to the cisplatin group. P. major (600 mg/kg) significantly increased the urinary excretion rate of potassium compared with cisplatin group. Furthermore, all doses of P. major and Vitamin E significantly attenuated the percentage of kidney tissue damage compared to the cisplatin group. However, only P. major (600 mg/kg) and Vitamin E treated rats showed a significant reduction in the kidney index. This study revealed that P. major extract in a dose-dependent manner provides protection against renal damage induced by cisplatin.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the possible protective effect of Plantago major (P. major) extract against doxorubicin (DXR)-induced renal inflammation in rats. Materials and Methods: 80 male albino rats were randomly divided into 8 groups as follows: control, DXR, Ext (extract) 600, Ext1200, dexamethasone+DXR, vitamin E+DXR, Ext600+DXR, and Ext1200+DXR. Duration of the study was 35 days and DXR was intravenously injected on the 7th day of the experiment. Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) production and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) expression levels were assessed in the left kidney. Serum creatinine concentration and osmolarity were determined on the 1st, 14th, 21st, 28th and 35th days of the experiment. Results: DXR caused a significant increase in renal expression of MCP-1 and TNF-α production compared to control animals. Administration of dexamethasone, vitamin E and P. major extract significantly improved the expression of these inflammatory mediators compared to DXR group. Compared to day 1 in DXR group, serum osmolarity showed a significant increase on days 21, 28 and 35. Also, on these days, serum osmolarity in DXR group was significantly higher than that on the same days in control group. In Vit E+DXR and Ext 1200+DXR groups, there was no significant changes in serum osmolarity among different days of the study. However, in these groups, serum osmolarity on days 21, 28 and 35 showed a significant decrease compared to the same days in DXR group. Conclusion: Present results suggest that hydroethanolic extract of P. major protected renal tissue against DXR–induced renal inflammation.

Trillions of cigarette butts (CBs) are released into the environment and the leached potentially toxic elements (PTEs) from CBs may contaminate the environments. In this study, the leaching of PTEs including both heavy metals and metalloids (metal(loid)s) from CBs into deionized water (DW), tap water (TW), and seawater (SW) was checked during the different contact times (from 60 min to 60 days). According to the results, PTEs were leached from CBs into different water samples. However, there were no significant differences between leachates in DW and TW samples (p > 0.05). The results of the distribution coefficient indicated the high tendency of most PTEs to enter the liquid phase. The levels of leached PTEs into DW and TW exceeded the standards of surface freshwater to maintain aquatic life. Although the maximum level of leached metal(loid)s into DW, TW, and SW occurred at different times, for each type of water sample no significant differences were found among the levels of most PTEs at various contact times. Based on the results, the levels of leached metal(loid)s from CBs in seawater peak soon after being released into the water, while for the freshwater, they occur after some days. This phenomenon could possibly have short-term and long-term effects on marine and freshwater organisms, respectively. Due to the ability of the dissolved PTEs to integrate into the aquatic/terrestrial food web and threaten human health, some control measures regarding the disposal of CBs are necessary.

A synthesis procedure for realizing a cosecant-squared pattern in leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) is presented. In this method, the antenna is divided into a number of sections, each with an appropriate phase constant, length and leakage rate. The phase constant of the radiating sections is obtained such that their beam pointing angles would arrange on an appropriate layout in the shaped region. The two latter parameters are determined such that the radiation intensity of each section would decay with a cosecant-squared profile. Finally, using an optimization algorithm, i.e., a genetic algorithm (GA) optimization, the initial values of the leakage rate are adjusted to achieve the desired shaped region. The synthesis procedure is applied to a slotted substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) LWA, and a prototype of the antenna is designed to achieve the cosecant-squared pattern within the range of 10° to 30°. The results show that the antenna has low ripples (≤2 dB) in the shaped region with a low level of sidelobes (≤-18 dB) outside the region. The antenna is fabricated and measured. Measurements show a good agreement with the simulation results. The obtained results reveal that the proposed synthesis procedure can be utilized in designing cosecant-squared pattern LWAs to use in air-surveillance radar systems.

In this research, an organo-metallic complex based on zinc ions (Znq2), which can be used in organic light-emitting diodes, was investigated. Nanoparticles of ZnO were produced and added to the Znq2 complex. By means of x-ray diffraction, the structure of Znq2 complex and ZnO nanoparticles and the energy levels of them were determined from cyclic-voltammetry analysis. From thermal gravimetric studies, it was found that the complexes have a high thermal stability in the air atmosphere. The purity of samples was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The maximum intensity of the photoluminescence spectrum of Znq2 occurred at 565 nm and showed a blue shift to 511 nm by adding ZnO nanoparticles to the Znq2 complex. The optical and electrical properties of the Znq2 and the mixture of Znq2 and ZnO nano powders were studied in order to find any possible applications in organic light emitting devices.

Background and Purpose: The World Health Organization declared violence against women a top priority for health and emphasized the importance of the world's attention to the prevention and control programs. This study was conducted aimed to identify the training needs of married women referring to health centers in Ahvaz with the objective of enabling the design of a program to prevent violence. Methodology: This sectional study consisted of two qualitative and quantitative studies. In qualitative study, the opinions of 30 married women residing in Ahvaz were collected and analyzed in four focus group discussions. using a validated and reliable questionnaire, the knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy and performance of 320 married women in area of domestic violence were identified Findings: 79% of the women surveyed had adequate awareness about violence against women. 34% of the target group in the field of domestic violence against women has had the right attitude and more than 80% of them stated that violence by men is considered inevitable and natural. 89% of the target group expressed lack of efficacy for the prevention of domestic violence against women. The findings also suggest that there is significant relationship between education and early marriage with violent behavior. Conclusion: providing proper education and awareness to women and group discussion and clarification in order to change attitudes and increase efficacy in abused women against domestic violence are the necessary strategies which result in changing attitudes of women and increasing empowerment of women against domestic violence.

One of the key elements in the organization of any piece of writing is its coherence. To date, many propositions have been given regarding the definition, analysis, and evaluation of text coherence. In the current study, Mann and Thompson's (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) was adopted as the method of text analysis to detect the coherence breaks in writing samples. In order to see what problems Iranian EFL learners have with regard to text coherence, 64 essays in descriptive and argumentative genres written by male students of a language institute in Shiraz were analyzed. The essays were analyzed for discourse errors using RST. The findings indicated that Iranian EFL learners committed eight different types of coherence errors, namely irrelevant content, violation of complet-edness, violation of connectedness, incorrect place, incorrect relation, crossed dependency, scattered units, and topic. The reason behind these errors partly came from the learners' tendency to write in an inductive order, and partly from their inability to coherently connect the constitu-ent parts of their texts together. Genre difference was also proved to be significant in the number of coherence relations and in the type and number of coherence errors. In general, descriptive writing samples were more coherent than argumentative ones.

Antimalarial drugs with the 4-aminoquinoline scaffold such as the important drugs, chloroquine (CQ) and amodiaquine (AQ), have been used to prevent and treat malaria for many years. The importance of these drugs is related to their simple usage, high efficacy, affordability, and cost-effectiveness of their synthesis. In recent years, with the spread of parasite resistance to CQ and cross-resistance to its other analogues have decreased their consumption in many geographical areas. On the other hand, AQ is an effective antimalarial drug which its usage has been restricted due to hepatic and hematological toxicities. The significance of the quinoline ring at quinoline-based antimalarial drugs has prompted research centers and pharmaceutical companies to focus on the design and synthesis of new analogues of these drugs, especially CQ and AQ analogues. Accordingly, various derivatives have been synthesized and evaluated in vitro and in vivo against the resistant strains of the malaria parasite to solve the problem of drug resistance. Also, the pharmacokinetic properties of these compounds have been evaluated to augment their efficacy and diminish their toxicity. Some of these analogues are currently in clinical and preclinical development. Consequently, the recent researches showed yet 4-aminoquinoline scaffold is active moiety in new compounds with antiplasmodial activity. Hence, the aim of this review article is to introduce of the novel synthetic analogues of CQ and AQ, which may constitute the next generation of antimalarial drugs with the 4-aminoquinoline scaffold.

Geochemical speciation of As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, V and Zn were determined in the surface sediments of the southern Caspian Sea. A five-step sequential extraction technique was used to determine the chemical forms of metals. Mean concentrations (ppm) of heavy metals were (mean ± S.D.) As: 9.94 ± 1.71, Cd: 0.87 ± 0.23, Co: 14.85 ± 2.80, Cr: 72.29 ± 19.48, Cu: 18.91 ± 4.48, Ni: 32.87 ± 5.25, Pb: 12.48 ± 3.22, V: 86.07 ± 20.71 and Zn: 66.85 ± 10.11. Among the metals, Cu, As, Pb and Zn exhibited relatively higher mobility, while Cd, Co, Cr, Ni and V were found mainly in the residual fractions. Cu and As showed the highest percentages in the exchangeable phase while Co and Cr had the lowest percentages in the phase. The Risk Assessment Code (RAC) values indicated that As, Cu and V had medium risk at some sampling sites. According to pollution load index (PLI), sediments from some sampling sites were polluted.

Neurological complications after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) may be reduced with transcatheter cerebral embolic protection (TCEP).This study evaluated the safety and efficacy of TCEP during TAVR.Nineteen centers randomized 363 patients undergoing TAVR to a safety arm (n = 123), device imaging (n = 121), and control imaging (n = 119). The primary safety endpoint consisted of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) at 30 days, and the primary efficacy endpoint was reduction in new lesion volume in protected brain territories on magnetic resonance imaging scans at 2 to 7 days. Patients underwent neurocognitive assessments, and the debris captured was analyzed.The rate of MACCE (7.3%) was noninferior to the performance goal (18.3%, pTCEP was safe, captured embolic debris in 99% of patients, and did not change neurocognitive function. Reduction in new lesion volume on magnetic resonance scans was not statistically significant. (Cerebral Protection in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement [SENTINEL]; NCT02214277).

High-speed digital boards should be able to have integrity validation credentials within the framework of the specified criteria. In order to improve the simulation results, the package designer should consider the management of the radiation level at the board, which will reduce the time and cost of implementing the design and manufacturing process. In order to achieve this goal, the integrity (signal, power, heat, and data) is of great importance. With the modeling and analysis of the transmission line in one of the near paths of the clock to reduce electromagnetic interference, good results can be obtained from the correct operation of the board. Due to the nature and location of the components and the complexity of the input signals, it also increases the reliability of components and the tolerance of electromagnetic interactions, to evaluate the performance of the subsystem under the influence of radiation, various practical tests on the range and results was recorded.

In this paper, we propose a method for applying the time and frequency domain's representation to multicomponent signals. Our discussion is based on the method of ridge detection extraction taking into account the time and frequency domain by following the demodulation method, and the numerical results obtained by applying this method are evident compared to other methods that do not use demodulation. The simulation carried out on the examine signals indicates that the signal estimation can be accessed by the initial estimation of the information carrier signals. In both noisy and noise-free environments, the frequency-time-based observation method is more accurate than the other methods.

The effect of the number of layers and annealing temperatures on the structural and morphological properties of Co-doped TiO2 thin films which were fabricated by solgel spin-coating method was explored. The spin-coating process was repeated up to 4 times to gain 1- to 4-layer films. The 2-coated layer films were annealed at 523 K and 723 K for 60 min. The XRD analysis showed the amorphous structures for as-deposited multilayer films, which could be suggested that cobalt ions do not lead to the formation of crystalline phase of TiO2 films without annealing process. Anatase phase of TiO2 with tetragonal crystal structure was observed for films annealed at 723 K. The FESEM results indicated spherical nanoparticles which were risen in density with increasing the number of layers and grew when the annealing temperature was enhanced. RMS roughness was calculated by AFM analysis. It was found that RMS roughness of the films was increased by increasing the number of coating layers and annealing temperatures. The increase in roughness is desirable for solar cell applications.

Spectrum efficiency of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based cognitive radio (CR) systems can be improved by adaptive resources allocation. In resources allocation, transmission resources such as modulation level and transmission power are adaptively assigned based on channel variations. The goal of this paper is maximize the total transmission rate of secondary user (SU). Hence, we investigate adaptive power and modulation allocation to achieve this purpose. For power allocation, we investigate optimal and conventional methods and then introduce a novel suboptimal algorithm to calculate the transmission power of each subcarrier. In addition, for adaptive modulation, we consider two kinds of modulations including multi-quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) and multi-phase-shift keying (MPSK). Also, simulation results are indicated the performance of our algorithm.

We investigate the impact of topology on the existence of impurity subgap states in a time-reversal-invariant superconductor with an extended $s$-wave pairing and strong spin-orbit coupling. By simply tuning the chemical potential we access three distinct phases: topologically trivial $s$-wave, topologically non-trivial $s_\pm$-wave, and nodal superconducting phase. For a single potential impurity we find subgap impurity bound states in the topological phase, but notably no subgap states in the trivial phase. These subgap impurity states have always finite energies for any strength of the potential scattering and subsequently, the superconducting gap in the topological $s_\pm$-wave phase survives but is attenuated in the presence of finite disorder. By creating islands of potential impurities we smoothly connect the single impurity results to topological edge states of impurity island. On the other hand, magnetic impurities lead to the formation of Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states in both the trivial and topological phases, which even reach zero energy at certain scattering strengths. We thus propose that potential impurities can be a very valuable tool to detect time-reversal-invariant topological superconductivity., 9 pages, 8figures: Fig.8 added to Sec.III and the references are updated

In this chapter, the engagement of 244 students is measured across three different types of mathematical problems (modelling problems, word problems, and mathematical exercises). We also investigate the potential of teaching modelling problems in changing students’ attitude towards mathematics. This research was conducted with a pre-test, followed by an educational intervention and a post-test. During the educational intervention, two groups of students with different instructional formats attended six sessions of modelling problem solving. The results of this study show that, although, there existed no significant difference in engagement existed between the three types of mathematical problems in the pre-test data, both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the post-test data showed that students generally experienced more engagement on word problems. Results also show that teaching modelling problems improved students’ attitudes towards mathematics in both groups.