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Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) strains have emerged as important foodborne patho-gens of global public health concern, causing life-threatening diseases. Animals and their products have been documented as important reservoirs for STECs, especially E. coli O157. The aim of this study was to investigate STECs from healthy and diarrhoeic sheep in Sanandaj, Iran. In the current study, a total of 81 sheep faecal samples were taken (22 from diarrhoeic sheep and 59 from healthy sheep). E. coli and subsequently STEC strains was detected according to standard protocol (cultural characterisation and PCR assays). Finally, the frequency of Shiga-toxin producing gene(s) (stx1, stx2), intimin (eaeA) and enterohaemolysin (hlyA) was detected among STEC isolates using duplex PCR. Totally, 42 E. coli were isolated from 81 faecal samples (51.85% contamination). Of these, 34 isolates (80.9%) were identified as STEC patotypes based on Sorbitol-MacConkey (SMAC) medium culturing and also the presence of stx1 and/or stx2. Of these, only 3 isolates (7.1%) were identified as serotype O157:H7 based on PCR assay. In addition, the results showed that STEC bacteria were sig-nificantly more prevalent in diarrhoeic samples than in healthy samples (50% vs. 22.1%). Overall, the PCR results showed that 33 (97%), 12 (35.3%) and 8 (23.5%) isolates carried stx1, stx2 and hlyA, respectively. The eaeA gene was not found in any isolate. The number of isolated STEC bacteria in spring (10 isolates) and winter (14 isolates) were significantly higher than those in summer (4 iso-lates) and autumn (6 isolates) (P=0.039). Also, the number of STEC in diarrhoea samples was signifi-cantly higher compared to non-diarrhoea samples (P=0.032). In conclusion, the present study re-vealed high prevalence rate of STEC including serotype O157:H7 and non-O157:H7 in sheep faeces which highlights the importance of sheep as a reservoir of STEC pathogen in Sanandaj region. Therefore, additional control and preventive measures must be undertaken to control the contamination by this pathogen.

The use of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) is essential in daily life. Since 1970, concerns have grown about potential health hazards from EMF. Exposure to EMF can stimulate nerves and affect the central nervous system, leading to neurological and cognitive changes. However, current research results are often vague and contradictory. These effects include changes in memory and learning through changes in neuronal plasticity in the hippocampus, synapses and hippocampal neuritis, and changes in metabolism and neurotransmitter levels. Prenatal exposure to EMFs has negative effects on memory and learning, as well as changes in hippocampal neuron density and histomorphology of hippocampus. EMF exposure also affects the structure and function of glial cells, affecting gate dynamics, ion conduction, membrane concentration, and protein expression. EMF exposure affects gene expression and may change epigenetic regulation through effects on DNA methylation, histone modification, and microRNA biogenesis, and potentially leading to biological changes. Therefore, exposure to EMFs possibly leads to changes in cellular and molecular mechanisms in central nervous system and alter cognitive function.

Nanotechnology is rapidly developing in the fields of industry, medicine and nutrition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO Nps) toxicity on rats’ heart and brain. Eighty Wistar male rats were allotted into eight groups: control group, sham group receiving 0.9% normal saline and six treatment groups receiving ZnO Nps (4, 8, 25, 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg) intraperitoneally twice a week over 28 days. For behavioural evaluation, shuttle box and Y-maze tests were done. The heart and brain structures were obtained for bioaccumulation, histopathological exa¬mination and biochemical analysis. Histopathologic lesions in the heart structures of 200 mg/kg ZnO Nps group included necrosis, hyperaemia, and vacuolar degeneration. In brain structures, changes included necrosis, gliosis and spongiform change. Serum levels of creatine phosphokinase (CPK) in the treated groups showed an increase compared to the control group. The accumulation of nanoparti-cles has also shown a dose-dependent increase in the heart and brain. Moreover, there was a signifi-cant difference between the control group and the 200 mg/kg group (P

Objective: Attachments are used for connections between overdentures and dental implants. The maintenance of attachment components plays an important role in optimal clinical service of overdentures. This study aimed to compare the effects of overdenture insertion by hand pressure versus placement by clenching the jaws on the retention and diameter of resilient attachments.Methods: Thirty patients with mandibular overdentures participated in this study. First, the patients were instructed to insert the overdentures with hand pressure. After 6 months, patients were recalled, the nylon matrix components of the attachments were replaced, and the patients were instructed to place the overdentures by clenching for the next 6 months. The retention and internal diameter of matrices were measured at baseline and at 6 and 12 months later. A universal testing machine was used to measure the residual retention, and a coordinate measuring machine was used to assess the matrix diameter. The retention loss and changes in matrix diameter were compared between the two techniques, using paired samples t-test.Results: The results showed that retention loss was lower in the hand placement method than in the clenching method (P

Modern condition monitoring and industrial fault prediction have advanced to include intelligent techniques, aiming to improve reliability, productivity, and safety. The integration of ultrasonic signal processing with various machine learning (ML) models can significantly enhance the efficiency of industrial fault diagnosis. In this paper, ultrasonic data are analyzed and applied to ensemble ML algorithms. Four methods for reducing dimensionality are employed to illustrate differences among acoustic faults. Different features in the time domain are extracted, and predictive ensemble models including a gradient boosting classifier (GB), stacking classifier (Stacking), voting classifier (Voting), Adaboost, Logit boost (Logit), and bagging classifier (Bagging) are implemented. To assess the model’s performance on new data during experiments, k-fold cross-validation (CV) was employed. Based on the designed workflow, GB demonstrated the highest performance, with less variation over 5 cross-folds. Finally, the real-time capability of the model was evaluated by deployment on an ARM Cortex-M4F microcontroller (MCU).

Abstract Background The cancer genome is commonly altered with thousands of structural rearrangements including insertions, deletions, translocation, inversions, duplications, and copy number variations. Thus, structural variant (SV) characterization plays a paramount role in cancer target identification, oncology diagnostics, and personalized medicine. As part of the SEQC2 Consortium effort, the present study established and evaluated a consensus SV call set using a breast cancer reference cell line and matched normal control derived from the same donor, which were used in our companion benchmarking studies as reference samples. Results We systematically investigated somatic SVs in the reference cancer cell line by comparing to a matched normal cell line using multiple NGS platforms including Illumina short-read, 10X Genomics linked reads, PacBio long reads, Oxford Nanopore long reads, and high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C). We established a consensus SV call set of a total of 1788 SVs including 717 deletions, 230 duplications, 551 insertions, 133 inversions, 146 translocations, and 11 breakends for the reference cancer cell line. To independently evaluate and cross-validate the accuracy of our consensus SV call set, we used orthogonal methods including PCR-based validation, Affymetrix arrays, Bionano optical mapping, and identification of fusion genes detected from RNA-seq. We evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each NGS technology for SV determination, and our findings provide an actionable guide to improve cancer genome SV detection sensitivity and accuracy. Conclusions A high-confidence consensus SV call set was established for the reference cancer cell line. A large subset of the variants identified was validated by multiple orthogonal methods.

Ultrasonic diagnostics is the earliest way to predict industrial faults. Usually, a contact microphone is employed for detection, but the recording will be contaminated with noise. In this paper, a dataset that contains 10 main faults of pipelines and motors is analyzed from which 30 different features in the time and frequency domains are extracted. Afterward, for dimensionality reduction, principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) are performed. In the subsequent phase, recursive feature elimination (RFE) is employed as a strategic method to analyze and select the most relevant features for the classifiers. Next, predictive models consisting of k-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree (DT), Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are employed. Then, in order to solve the classification problem, a stacking classifier based on a meta-classifier which combines multiple classification models is introduced. Furthermore, the k-fold cross-validation technique is employed to assess the effectiveness of the model in handling new data for the evaluation of experimental results in ultrasonic fault detection. With the proposed method, the accuracy is around 5% higher over five cross folds with the least amount of variation. The timing evaluation of the meta model on the 64 MHz Cortex M4 microcontroller unit (MCU) revealed an execution time of 11 ms, indicating it could be a promising solution for real-time monitoring.

Addressing cognitive impairment (CI) represents a significant global challenge in health and social care. Evidence suggests that aging and metabolic disorders increase the risk of CI, yet promisingly, physical exercise has been identified as a potential ameliorative factor. Specifically, there is a growing understanding that exercise-induced cognitive improvement may be mediated by molecules known as exerkines. This review delves into the potential impact of aging and metabolic disorders on CI, elucidating the mechanisms through which various exerkines may bolster cognitive function in this context. Additionally, the discussion extends to the role of exerkines in facilitating stem cell mobilization, offering a potential avenue for improving cognitive impairment.

Background: Assembling an artificial ovary needs supporting the in vitro growth of cumulus cells, and finally, follicles. This study aimed to determine the appropriate cocktail for culture of cumulus cells (CCs).Methods: CCs were collected from healthy women and cultured with 9 cocktails of basal media, supplemented with 10% and 20% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 1% and 2% human serum albumin (HSA). Ovarian cells were isolated from cortex, medulla, and hilum, and their conditioned media (CM) were collected. Expression of GDF9 in ovarian cells was evaluated. CCs were treated with various concentrations of CMs from ovarian cells and mesenchymal stem cells. Also, they were cultured with various concentrations of supplements including L-Glutamine, bovine serum albumin (BSA), HSA, insulin transferrin selenium (ITS), Follitropin alfa, and Pregnyl. Also, they were treated with various concentrations of follicular fluids (FFs), collected from patients with different infertility etiologies. Finally, CCs proliferation and culture stability were evaluated.Results: All the ovarian cells expressed GDF9. DMEMF12 + 20% FBS was the most suitable cocktail for CCs. 20% FBS was superior to 10% FBS. HSA alone could not support the growth of CCs. The CMs of (cortical + hilar + medullar) cells and FFs from healthy women caused higher CCs proliferation. 17 mM/l L-Glutamine, 24 mg/ml BSA, 20 mg/ml HSA, 10 ng/ml ITS, 300 mIU/ml Follitropinα, and 3.5 IU/ml Pregnyl led to higher CCs proliferation.Conclusion: Supplementation of the basal medium with CMs, serums, FFs, hormones, ITS and L-Glutamine, can better support the culture of CCs.

Introduction Mentha is one of the most important genera of aromatic plants which belongs to the Lamiaceae family. The genus of Mentha is distributed across Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North America. Mentha longifolia L., also known as wild mint, is a fast-growing aromatic perennial herb. It is widely used as herbal medicine and is beneficial for the immune system and fighting with secondary infections. The essential oil of this plant is partly responsible for the decongestant, antispasmodic and antibiotic effects. Currently, much emphasis is being laid on conserving plant germplasm as valuable bio-resources. Selection between and within accessions for a high level of herbage yield and other characters requires an effective tool to be applied by mint breeders. Achieving to cultivars that are more capable of optimum producing is a breeding goal. The objectives of this study were to analyze the diversion of the agronomical traits of Mentha longifolia L. genotypes from different regions of Iran under a similar condition in order to find the superior genotypes and introduce for the domestication of this plant. Material and MethodThis research was performed at the research field of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The field is located at 36˚15' North latitude and 59˚38' East longitude, at an altitude of 985 meters. The information related to temperature and precipitation was obtained from climate station. Soil sampling was done in the depth of 0.3 meter and physical experiments on samples were done before starting the experiment. The field was fertilized by 25 kg/ha animal manure. Seeds of 20 genotypes of M. longifolia L. were prepared from Gene Bank of Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands and a view of the wild mint genotypes distribution was presented on the map. The experiment was performed in a field with 500m2 areas in 2015-2016 growing seasons. The experiment in form of compound analysis arranged in complete randomized design with three replicates of 20 wildmint's genotypes in every replication. In each furrow, fourteen bush was totally studied, in which the distance between the two plants was 20 cm. The plot was considered 1.2 by 3 m and the distance between rows was 0.50 m. The dimension in the plots for every replication area was 3.6 m2 and the distance between blocks were 1.5 and between experimental units were 0.5 meters. Picking up was done after elimination of 0.5 meters from every side of replication. The essential oil was extracted using Clevenger type apparatus and by hydrodistillation. Results and DiscussionAnalysis of variance showed that the effect of the diversity among the genotypes on morphological, agronomical and essential oil yield parameters of wild mint was significant (P≤0.01). The results of this study showed that Mentha longifolia L. herb has a high diversity under the same culture conditions among genotypes collected from 20 regions of Iran. Correlation result shows that vegetative organs have more effect on the essential oil content than the reproductive organs. This may be due to the distribution of essential oil accumulation and storage sites, which requires further research in this regard. The study of vegetative and reproductive characteristics suggests that the genotypes of the dry and semi-arid climates have different conditions, which may causes the separation of their genotypes compared with the other genotypes. The bi-plot, based on PC1 and PC2, reflects the relationships between the studied genotypes. The results of bi-plot of cluster analysis confirmed that genotypes were divided into two main groups based on agronomical and morphological traits. Conclusion Finally, plants of genotype G13 belongs to Hormozgan province and then G16 genotype belongs to Khuzestan province were selected because of more biomass, more aerial part volume and also the most essential oil performance compared to the other genotypes. Desirable traits for the aerial part such as the time of flowering, leaf length, leaf width, plant height, the highest number of leaves in the stem and internode distance are important traits that should be considered. In addition, the cultivation of these genotype in order to the further production can be the great help in the domestication of this species and, given the fact that the diversity is a precursor of breeding, this research can be an introduction for future breeding operations. However, further research is needed to confirm the phytochemical superior genotypes.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders which is characterized by progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra. Therefore, drugs or natural agents that have suppressive effects on dopaminergic cell death may reduce the progression of such disorder. Here, the effect of natural product alpha-pinene was evaluated on 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-induced damage in SH-SY5Y human dopaminergic cell line as an in vitro model of PD. Methods: The cells were incubated by 150 μM 6-OHDA alone or accompanied with different concentration of alpha-pinene (10–180 μM). Cell viability was determined by MTT assay. The amount of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondrial membrane potential were measured by fluorescence spectrophotometry. In addition, the components of molecular apoptotic pathway such as cytochrome c release, Bax, Bcl-2, and caspase-3 levels were measured by immunoblotting. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) antagonist, bicuculline, was used to find the role of GABA Type A (GABAA) receptors in the signaling of alpha-pinene. Results: The data showed that 6-OHDA produced cell damage, decreased mitochondrial membrane potential, increased intracellular ROS and cytochrome c release, as well as increased Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and caspase-3 activity. Moreover, alpha-pinene (70 μM) significantly inhibited cellular and molecular abnormalities. Blockage of GABAA receptor significantly suppressed the protective effect of alpha-pinene. Conclusion: The results suggest that alpha-pinene has a protective effect against dopaminergic toxicity, and at least in part, its antioxidant and antiapoptotic properties are probably involved in such protection.

Background: Placenta has a strategic role in fetal/maternal exchange. A healthy placenta is essential for normal fetal development. Avoiding consumption of some foods and vegetables is suggested during pregnancy due to the risk of placental disorders. Celery is a high consumed vegetable that some studies concern about its adverse effect on pregnancy. The present study focused on its consumption side effects in different trimesters of gestation on mouse placenta.Methods: Duration of pregnancy in mice is three weeks. Five groups of 5 mice were considered. Groups I, II and III received celery hydro-alcoholic extract only during the 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks of pregnancy, respectively and group IV received it during all the weeks of gestation. The 5th group was considered as control and just received placebo. The biometrical sizes of placenta (weight, length and diameter) were measured and histopathological analysis was done.Results: Celery consumption decreased the weight of placenta in groups II, III and IV. Also, placental length and diameter decreased in groups I and IV. Histopathological examination showed decrease of placenta trophoblastic giant cells and increase of trophoblast glycogen cells in the basal layer. Generally, morphological and pathological changes in the 4th group showed more deviations from the control group. Basal and Labyrinth layer thickness decreased in the experimental groups. Also, hyperaemia was observed in labyrinth layer of the experimental groups.Conclusion: Due to the decrease of placenta biometrical sizes and histo-pathological adverse effects, it is advised that celery should be used with more precaution, during pregnancy.

Introduction: In case of severe destruction or total coronal loss of tooth structure the retention of the core is achieved by embedding a post into the root canal. There are different prefabricated posts for buildup of coronal tooth structure. There is no same opinion about which post is more effective for root canal treatment (RCT) tooth. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of post material on the stress distribution of RCT maxillary canine by finite element analysis (FEA). Methods: A canine tooth was mounted inside a resin. A 3D scan of the mounted tooth was prepared by cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) method. The Mimics Medical and Solidworks software was applied to provide an appropriate 3D model of the canine tooth. Post core crown restorations with three different types of prefabricated post, glass fiber, zirconia, and titanium, were considered for the restoration. An oblique load of 100 N was applied on the cusp and then FEA was performed by ABAQUS software. Results: The results of FEA showed that in all models the maximum principal stress occurred at the crest area. The stress decreased in dentin and increased in the post and cement interface by increasing of post elastic modulus. Conclusion: In according to FEA results it could be deducted that the post stresses are increased, by increasing of post elastic modulus, as well as the post material has a small contribution to the stress of the cervical area.

Abstract Background: Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO 2 NPs) are widely used in many compounds. Recent evidence has displayed some cytotoxic effects of TiO 2 NPs on male reproduction. Objective: The effects of TiO 2 NP administration on sperm parameters and chromatin and seminiferous histopathology of male mice were investigated. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, 32 NMRI male mice (35 ± 3 gr, 8-12-week-old) were divided into four groups (n = 8/each): treated groups were fed orally with 2.5 (group I), 5 (group II) and 10 (group III) mg/kg/day TiO 2 NPs for 40 days and the control group received phosphate buffered saline. Sperm parameters, DNA integrity and chromatin quality were assessed using chromomycin A3, aniline blue, toluidine blue staining and TUNEL. Hematoxylin eosin staining was performed to measure spermatogenic cells and the total diameter of seminiferous tubules. Also, sex hormone and malondyaldehyde levels were measured. Results: Abnormal sperm tails rose in group III (28.87 ± 4.91) in comparison with the control group (12.75 ± 3.95). However, chromomycin A3 staining and TUNEL showed higher levels in group III in comparison with the control group, whereas aniline blue and toluidine blue staining showed no differences. A significantly lower spermatogenesis index and lumen parameters were observed in group III. Leydig cell numbers, cellular diameters and the area of the seminiferous tubules were lower in the treated groups. The testosterone level was also lower in these groups and the percentage of malondyaldehyde in the seminal fluid was higher. Conclusion: Exact mechanisms of TiO 2 NPs are not clear; however, cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of TiO 2 NPs may relate to oxidative stress. Given their widespread use, TiO 2 NPs should be a public health focus of attention.