Search

Background and purpose: Today, cancer is considered as the second cause of death in the world. Often, the treatment of all types of cancer is very complicated. The discovery of new anti-cancer drugs with high effectiveness, low toxicity, the ability to select normal cells from cancerous cells, and low cost is one of the concerns of the world's pharmaceutical communities. Nowadays, the use of natural compounds based on their synergistic effects has opened a new therapeutic horizon in the management of different types of cancers. The aim of this study was to investigate the synergistic effects of peiminine and hyperthermia therapy on the induction of apoptosis in MCF-7 cell line. Materials and methods: In the present experimental-laboratory study, after culturing MCF-7 cells in 96-well plates, they were treated with peiminine (5.12 µg/ml for 24 h) and hyperthermia (410C for 1 h) independently and simultaneously. Then the cell viability rate, apoptosis percentage, ROS production rate, LDH release rate, and caspase 8 and 9 activity level were measured. Results: The results of the present study showed that peiminine and hyperthermia therapy caused a significant decrease in cell viability as well as a significant increase in the percentage of apoptosis, ROS production, and LDH release compared with the control group. By measuring the activity of caspase 8 and 9, it was determined that peiminine induced apoptosis through both mitochondrial and extracellular pathways. It was also found that peiminine and hyperthermia therapy, in combination, had synergistic antiproliferative effects. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, it seems that peiminine, as a natural product, when used in combination with hyperthermia therapy has synergistic antiproliferative and apoptosis-inducing effects. This suggests that it can be used as a complementary method in cancer treatment.

Background: Postoperative blood pressure management has an important role in controlling postoperative complications. Local cold therapy and massage, in addition to pharmacotherapy is useful as a safe method to manage blood pressure.Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the effect of Local cold therapy versus hand and foot massage on blood pressure of the patients undergoing surgery.Methods: This Semi-experimental study with three-group, before- after design was conducted on 90 patients undergoing surgery in 2019 at Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Patients entered the study using convenience-sampling method and randomly allocated to intervention (local cold therapy and massage) and control groups. Local cold therapy and massage performed three times a day for 20 minutes for 48 hours. After the intervention, blood pressure changes re-measured by the researcher.Results: The mean differences of systolic blood pressure before and after the intervention in the massage (p=0.001) and local cold therapy (p=0.002) groups was significant, also mean differences of diastolic blood pressure before and after the intervention in the massage (P

Introduction: This study surveys the results obtained from a missing person (for 40 years) from the Iran-Iraq War in Majnoon Island. Case Report: Skeletal remains were examined by anthropometry. Parts of selected femur and tooth samples were sampled for genetic identification. DNA extraction from bone samples was performed using the QIAamp DNA Blood Mini Kit with a slight change. DNA was extracted using the Qiagen column, washing buffer, and bind-elute technology. Extracted DNA was quantitated by Quantifiler™ Trio DNA Quantification. According to DNA concentration, AmpFℓSTR Miniifiler PCR Amplification or AmpFℓSTR Identifiler PCR Amplification kits were used for genotyping. FTA cards were used to store and extract DNA samples from the person’s family. Genetic profiles were prepared using the AmpFℓSTR Identifiler Direct PCR Amplification Kit. The genetic matching of sex chromosomes was investigated with Yfiler™ PCR Amplification and Investigator Argus X-12 QS kits. Genetic matching and kinship calculations were done using Familias and NoorGIS applications. Results: The radiographic and genetic examinations ultimately confirmed that the dead body matched the relevant family. Despite the challenges with DNA-degraded samples, a good genetic profile was obtained for genetic identification. Conclusion: Anthropometric examination, especially post-mortem evidence (e.g. radiography) and genetic examination confirmed that the dead body matched the relevant family.

IntroductionThe molecular mechanism of chemotherapy resistance in breast cancer is not well understood. The identification of genes associated with chemoresistance is critical for a better understanding of the molecular processes driving resistance.MethodsThis study used a co-expression network analysis of Adriamycin (or doxorubicin)-resistant MCF-7 (MCF-7/ADR) and its parent MCF-7 cell lines to explore the mechanisms of drug resistance in breast cancer. Genes associated with doxorubicin resistance were extracted from two microarray datasets (GSE24460 and GSE76540) obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database using the GEO2R web tool. The candidate differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with the highest degree and/or betweenness in the co-expression network were selected for further analysis. The expression of major DEGs was validated experimentally using qRT–PCR.ResultsWe identified twelve DEGs in MCF-7/ADR compared with its parent MCF-7 cell line, including 10 upregulated and 2 downregulated DEGs. Functional enrichment suggests a key role for RNA binding by IGF2BPs and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition pathways in drug resistance in breast cancer.DiscussionOur findings suggested that MMP1, VIM, CNN3, LDHB, NEFH, PLS3, AKAP12, TCEAL2, and ABCB1 genes play an important role in doxorubicin resistance and could be targeted for developing novel therapies by chemical synthesis approaches.

Background and aims: Surgery is a main treatment for some illnesses. Postoperative pain (POP) is a major postoperative concern for patients and healthcare providers. The present study aimed at comparing the effects of cold therapy and foot and hand massage on POP among patients with major surgeries. Methods: This quality improvement study was conducted in 2019 on ninety patients who underwent thoracoabdominal surgeries in Kashani teaching hospital, Shahrekord, Iran. Participants were randomly assigned to a control, a cold therapy, and a foot and hand massage group through block randomization with a block size of six. Participants in the control group received routine care services, while participants in the cold therapy group received twenty-minute local cold therapy three times a day for 48 hours and participants in the massage group received twenty-minute hand and foot massage three times a day for 48 hours. POP was assessed before and 48 hours after the study intervention using the McGill Pain Questionnaire. The SPSS software was used to analyze the data through the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Fisher’s exact, chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis, paired-sample t, and Wilcoxon’s sign-ranked tests as well as the one-way analysis of variance. Results: There was no significant difference among the groups respecting the pretest mean score of POP (P > 0.05). The mean score of POP significantly decreased in all groups (P < 0.05) and the amount of decrease in the intervention groups was significantly more than the control group (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Cold therapy and foot and hand massage are effective in significantly reducing POP among patients with major thoracoabdominal surgeries.

We present a novel approach for timely classification and verification of network traffic using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). We generate a separate GMM for each class of applications using component-wise expectation-maximization (CEM) to match the network traffic distribution generated by these applications. We apply our models for both traffic classification, where the goal is to identify the source application from which the traffic originates, by evaluating the maximum posterior probability, and for traffic verification, where the goal is to verify whether the application that claims to be the source of the traffic is as expected, by likelihood testing. Our models use only the first initial packets of truncated flows in order to provide more efficient and timely traffic classification and verification. This allows for triggering timely countermeasures before the end of flows. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by experiments on a public dataset collected from a real network. Our traffic classification approach outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches that are based on machine learning, and achieves up to 97.7% flow classification accuracy when using only 9 first initial packets of flows. We show that 96.6% flow classification accuracy can still be obtained when training the GMMs using only 0.5% of all flows. Our traffic verification approach achieves a minimum Half Total Error Rate (HTER) of 7.65% when using only 6 first initial packets of flows.

As IoT devices’ adoption grows rapidly, security plays an important role in our daily lives. As part of the effort to counter these security threats in recent years, many IoT intrusion detection datasets were presented, such as TON_IoT, BoT-IoT, and Aposemat IoT-23. These datasets were used to build many machine learning-based IoT intrusion detection models. In this research, we present an explainable and efficient method for selecting the most effective universal features from IoT intrusion detection datasets that can help in producing highly-accurate and efficient machine learning-based intrusion detection systems. The proposed method was applied to TON_IoT, Aposemat IoT-23, and IoT-ID datasets and resulted in the selection of six universal network-flow features. The proposed method was tested and produced a high accuracy of 99.62% with a prediction time reduced by up to 70%. To provide better insight into the operation of the classifier, a Shapley additive explanation was used to explain the selected features and to prove the alignment of the explanation with current attack techniques.

Abstract Data center power consumption is among the largest commodity expenditures for many organizations. Reduction of power used in cloud data centres with heterogeneous physical resources can be achieved through Virtual-Machine (VM) consolidation which reduces the number of Physical Machines (PMs) used, subject to Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. This paper provides an in-depth survey of the most recent techniques and algorithms used in proactive dynamic VM consolidation focused on energy consumption. We present a general framework that can be used on multiple phases of a complete consolidation process.

Background: Consumption of healthy and hygienic foods is imperative to live a healthy life. This issue is of greater importance when obtaining foodstuff is relatively tough. The countries prone to natural disasters should always be prepared for a crisis. The present study aims to investigate awareness among the students in Azad University of Medical Sciences regarding nutrition and storing foodstuff in case of crisis. Materials and Methods: A descriptive-analytical method was used in the present study. The study participants included 1350 students in Azad University of Medical Science which were selected randomly from all students in the academic year 2015-2016. Experts confirmed the validity of the questionnaire and it was distributed among the students. The collected data was analyzed through SPSS version 16. Results: Given the results of the study, only 35% of the participants had a good level of awareness, 38.5% had moderate awareness, and 26.5% had low level of awareness about nutrition and how to store food during crisis. No significant gender and age (α=0.05) difference was observed. Conclusion: Health experts and authorities should be aware of nutrition safety and sampling risky foods. This process can be helpful in case of a crisis, especially during early hours of the crisis and after the settlement of the displaced population are essential. To that end, training the experts and authorities responsible for such situations can be helpful. Therefore, holding training courses and teaching for related authorities on how to prevent waterborne and foodborne disease can prevent from food poisoning outbreaks and high mortality rate.

Background: Given the importance of high-quality healthy food for humans, contamination control is the most important concern for healthy staff. Aim: To determine the attitudes of students at Islamic Azad University (Tehran Medical Branch) toward food safety. Methods: This cross-sectional and analytic-descriptive study was conducted on 326 students of Azad University of Medical Sciences in 2016. A self-made questionnaire consisting of 40 questions was used. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed using internal consistency method (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.80). After collecting data, we use descriptive statistical indexes (mean and standard deviation) among demographic variables and the level of knowledge to describe and analyze the data. The participants’ attitudes and operation are measured by Spearman tests, and the analytical results are given using SPSS version 20. Results: According to the findings, 55.3, 30 and 14.7 percent of students had high, moderate and low attitude scores toward food safety, respectively. In addition, male and female students had equal attitudes toward food safety, and no significant relationship between sex and attitude was observed a significant difference (p>0.05), but between educational levels (p=0.008) and ages (p=0.001) of students significance was a positive correlation. Conclusions: Due to the low attitudes score of about half of the students of Islamic Azad University Tehran Medical Branch toward food safety, it can be claimed, food safety training in this community is required.

Reducing energy consumption has become a critical issue in today data centers. Reducing the number of required physical and Virtual Machines results in energy-efficiency. In this paper, to avoid the disadvantages of VM migration, a static VM placement algorithm is proposed which places VMs on hosts in a Worst-Fit-Decreasing (WFD) fashion. To reduce energy consumption further, the effect of job scheduling policy on the number of VMs needed for maintaining QoS requirements is studied. Each VM is modeled by an M/M/* queue in space-shared, time-shared, and hybrid job scheduling policies, and energy consumption of real-time as well as non-real-time applications is analyzed. Numerical results show that the hybrid policy outperforms space-shared and time-shared policies, in terms of energy consumption as well as Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations. Moreover, our non-migration method outperforms three different algorithms which use VM migration, in terms of reducing both energy consumption and SLA Violations.

Rotavirus is associated with increased risk for severe diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide. This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to determine the prevalence rate of rotavirus from different parts of Iran and provide an overall relative frequency (RF) for Iran. We performed a systematic literature review from several databases including PubMed, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, OVID, MAG IRAN, IranMedex, and Iranian Scientific Information Database. We searched the following keywords: “rotavirus,” “rotavirus infection,” “acute gastroenteritis,” “diarrhea,” “children,” “infant,” and “Iran.” The purpose of this study was to report the prevalence of rotavirus with the application of meta-analysis. We selected 43 researches out of 1147 for our study. From all the samples, the pooled estimate of prevalence (95% confidence interval) =39.9% (0.396%–0.409%) were rotavirus positive. It should be noted that rotavirus infection's RF varied from 6.4% to 79.3% in Birjand and Tehran Provinces, respectively. Thereupon, it is divergent in different studies. According to our study result, rotavirus RF has a wide range in Iran and is associated with diarrhea in children. Thus, further researches should be taken to minimize the emergence and transmission of rotavirus.

Objectives: The purpose of this in vitro study was to compare the marginal adaptation and fracture resistance of a zirconia-based all-ceramic restoration with two preparation designs. Materials and Methods: Twenty-four mandibular premolars were randomly divided into two groups (n=12); the conventional group received a peripheral shoulder preparation and the modified group received a buccal shoulder and proximal/lingual chamfer preparation. The marginal fit of the zirconia crowns (Cercon) was evaluated using a stereomicroscope. After cementation, load was applied to the crowns. The mean fracture load and the mean marginal gap for each group were analyzed using t-test (P=0.05). Results: The mean marginal gap was 71±16µm in the conventional group and 80±10µm in the modified group, with no significant difference (P=0.161). The mean fracture strength was 830±153N for the conventional group and 775±125N for the modified group, with no significant difference (P=0.396). All but one fracture occurred in the veneering ceramic. Conclusion: Less aggressive preparation of proximal and lingual finish lines for the preservation of tooth structure in all-ceramic restorations does not adversely affect the marginal adaptation or fracture strength of the final restoration.

Aims: This study was conducted to determine the prevalence rate, virulence genes and antimicrobial resistance of Escherichia coli O157:H7/NM isolated from hamburger and chicken nugget in Isfahan, Iran. Material and Methods: From June 2013 to July 2013, a total of 190 hamburger (120) and chicken nugget (70), were collected from four randomly selected factories in Isfahan, Iran. They were evaluated for the presence of E. coli O157:H7/NM using microbiological culture and polymerase chain reaction. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software version 16.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago o, IL, USA). Results: From a total of 190 samples analyzed four samples (2.1%) were contaminated with E. coli O157. All of the E. coli O157 were isolated from hamburger samples (3.3%) and chicken nugget samples were negative. Of four E. coli O157 isolated, only one sample was serotype E. coli O157:H7 and others were serotype E. coli O157:NM. Among four E. coli O157:H7/NM isolates, one strain was positive for all stx1, stx2, eaeA and ehxA genes. One strain was positive for stx2 gene. The other two were negative for these genes. All isolates (100%) were resistant to one or more antimicrobial agents. Conclusions: The results of this study showed that hamburger could be a significant source of E. coli O157:H7 and E. coli O157:NM serotypes in Iran and multi-resistance was found in 27% of E. coli O157 strains and this is a major public health concern.