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Aims The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), as a second epidemic of the 21st century, causes severe acute respiratory syndrome in patients. This study was designed to determine the causes of not vaccinating against COVID-19 in the eligible population of Fars province. Instruments & Methods This cross-sectional study was carried out in December 2021 to March 2022 on unvaccinated people of Fars province, Iran. The data of 12889 individuals were added to the study. The data collection tool was a researcher-made checklist with closed-ended questions that were completed through a telephone interview. Data were analyzed using SPSS 22 software through descriptive statistics and a Chi-square test. Findings The largest age group was 25 to 35 years old (19.8%). The percentage of unvaccinated females was significantly higher than males (p<0.001). Homemakers and college and school students were the occupational groups with the highest frequency of not receiving the vaccine. The considerable reasons for not being vaccinated are the side effects anxiety, and lack of belief in the vaccine conspiracy. Conclusioi The women of reproductive age and college and school students are the most frequent unvaccinated groups. Having an underlying disease and the lack of follow-up by the healthcare staff are the most frequent reason for not being vaccinated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Isoindolinedione-benzamide pyridinium derivatives were designed through a structure-based strategy and synthesized as novel multifunctional anti-Alzheimer agents. The inhibitory activities of all 17 derivatives against acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase were evaluated. Results exhibited that compound 7j displayed promising AChE inhibitory activity with an IC 50 value of 0.26 ± 0.07 μM, and compound 7c exhibited an IC 50 value of 0.08 ± 0.01 μM against BChE with 132-fold better inhibitory activity in comparison with positive control. Next, the enzyme kinetics studies and detailed binding mode via molecular docking were performed for the most potent compounds. Additionally, molecular dynamics simulations were accomplished to further investigate the potent compound's interaction, orientation, and conformation over the related enzymes. The neurotoxicity of the most potent derivative was executed against SH-SY5Y, and the mRNA levels of GSK-3α and GSK-3β after treatment with 7c on SH-SY5Y were evaluated. Results exhibited the mRNA levels of GSK-3β were decreased compared to the control group. All these results indicate that 7c is a good starting point for developing a multifunctional anti-Alzheimer compound., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS) is common for several occupations in construction, not only because of its presence in many handling materials but also in processes such as grinding and sawing. This study investigated workplace exposure to RCS as quartz in industries and occupations within road construction in Alberta through the RCS monitoring database provided by the Alberta Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Association (ARHCA) between 2007 and 2016. Descriptive statistics were calculated for exposure-related variables, and mixed model analysis was performed to determine factors affecting the exposure levels. Results showed that the highest exposed workers were in the sand and gravel industry (GM = 45 μg/m 3 ). For worker occupations, geometric means ranged from 78 μg/m 3 for crusher operators to 10 μg/m 3 for concrete truck operators. The maximum exposure severity was 33.3 times the occupational exposure limit (OEL) for the sand and gravel and 31 times the OEL for tower operators. The results also showed the effect of seasonal variability on RCS exposure levels. The heterogeneous exposure results indicated significant room for improvement and that controls should focus more on the activity performed than the occupation to lower exposure to RCS levels in industries.

The spin-dependent group delay time and Hartman effect as well as the valley/spin polarization in an 8- Pmmn borophene superlattice under Rashba interaction are investigated theoretically, by using the stationary phase and the transfer matrix approaches. The group delay time depends on the spin degree of freedoms, and can be effectively controlled by changing the direction of superlattice, incident electron angle and Rashba strength. Both the valley and spin polarization reveal a strong dependence on the number of the superlattice barriers. Furthermore, group delay time oscillates as the width of the potential barriers increases, but in special conditions, the dependence on the width of the potential barriers will disappear. Interestingly, by increasing the angle of the direction of the superlattice the Hartman effect can be observed for most electron incidence angles. Our study show that, the 8- Pmmn borophene superlattice can be useful for future electronics and spintronics applications., (© 2023 IOP Publishing Ltd.)

Introduction  One of the most observed diseases in the otorhinolaryngology emergency, compared with the other facial fractures, is related to nasal bone fractures (NBFs). The peak of incidence is seen in the age group ranging from 11 to 30 years old. Objective  The present evaluation was devoted to the etiology and epidemiological study of NBFs. Methods  In the present cross-sectional study, 376 patients with NBF were evaluated. The necessary information such as gender, age, education, job, causes of NBF, and clinical symptoms of patients have been recorded on the checklist. Results  The study revealed that 76.9% of the patients were male and 23.1% were female; 37.5% of all patients were self-employed, and most of them were from urban areas. Traffic accident (26.6%) and falling (25.5%) were the main reasons for NBF. The most common clinical symptoms for NBF were tenderness (96%; n  = 361), nasal swelling (90.4%; n  = 340), and deformity (89.4%; n  = 336). Conclusion  The results showed that the incidence of NBFs in young men without higher education level and self-employed were high which can be related to the traffic accidents and fights. Also, falls, beatings and accidental hit are the most common causes of NBFs among women. Therefore, to decrease the incidence of otorhinolaryngology trauma, training about the general life skill and providing awareness about using personal safety equipment and measures should be increased at the future., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interests The authors have no conflict of interests to declare., (Fundação Otorrinolaringologia. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).)

Using the transfer matrix approach, we investigate theoretically the absorbance, transmittance, and reflectance through one-dimensional CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 perovskite-based photonic crystal at room temperature. In our proposed structure, a monolayer MoS 2 film is embedded between two CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 layers. We found that, the presence of monolayer MoS 2 film increases the absorbance in longer wavelengths [Formula: see text] With increasing the number of periods, absorbance increases in most wavelengths of the incident light. It was shown that, by controlling the number of periods, the absorbance coefficient can be tuned according to the wavelength and angle of incident light. Furthermore, for incident light with longer wavelength, the absorbance, transmittance as well as reflectance versus thickness of the perovskite layer have an oscillatory behavior, and with increasing the number of periods this oscillatory behavior becomes more obvious and prominent. For the incident light in the infrared region, by increasing the number of periods the absorbance as opposed to the transmittance increases for different incidence angles. While, the reflectance coefficient first shows oscillatory behavior by increasing the number of periods, then with a further increase in the number of periods it reaches a constant value. The proposed structure can be useful for optoelectronic and optical devices. Such as improving the efficiency of solar cells based on the hybrid inorganic-organic perovskites and infrared sensor system., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The effect of the strain on the spin and valley dependent transport properties, including the conductance and polarization, through a monolayer MoS 2 superlattice under Rashba spin-orbit coupling is theoretically investigated. It is found that the conductance strongly depends on the spin and valley degrees of freedom, and spin-inversion can be achieved by MoS 2 superlattice. Also, the spin and valley dependent conductance in a monolayer MoS 2 superlattice can be efficiently adjusted via strain and the number of the superlattice barriers. Moreover, it is demonstrated that both the magnitude and sign of the spin and valley polarization depend on the strain strength, the number of barriers, and electrostatic barrier height. Both full spin and valley polarized current (with 100% or - 100% efficiency) can be realized in a MoS 2 superlattice under strain., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

The enzyme ficin, abundantly found in the leaves of the common Fig (Ficus carica. L), is a cysteine protease of the plant endopeptidase family. In terms of activity, this enzyme mimics the activity of the papain enzyme. However, the enzyme is more acidic than papain and binds with higher efficiency to its substrate. Ficin is widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industry along with the medical diagnosis. To date, there are no available data on cloning and recombinant production of various isoforms of ficin. In the present study, after the cloning process and optimized expression of ficin in E. coli BL21, by means of the central composite design (CCD) and approach-based response surface methodology (RSM), the recombinant protein was purified using the Ni-sepharose column and gel filtration. The activity of ficin was determined by its ability to hydrolyze the bovine casein enzyme as a substrate. These results showed the presence of different isoforms of ficin in this cultivar that they are distinct in terms of DNA coding sequences. The optimum conditions for maximum production of the recombinant ficin enzyme in E. coli were as follows; a cell density of 1.25, post-induction time 7 h, 10% (w/v) lactose concentration, and shaking at 115 rpm at 24 °C. The concentration of purified product was reported to be 0.27 mg/ml. The optimization procedures increased the amounts of ficin production by approximately 3 folds (0.67 mg/ml) compared with the expiration level (in the absence of optimization). Also, our findings showed that the recombinant ficin was able to hydrolyze casein, denoting the functionality of the enzyme when used in-vitro. The pitfall of cutting-off the young branches of the common fig tree to purify the enzyme from the young shoots was successfully solved in this study., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Aim: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is known as a barely curable malignancy. Particular mutations involved in apoptosis may have a main role in the onset of ALL in the pediatric patients. It has been proven that cycloxygenase-2 is capable of impairing the apoptosis pathway through mitochondria in tumor cells., Methodology: In this study, we investigated selective toxicity of a newly synthesized chalconeferrocenyl derivative as a selective cycloxygenase-2 inhibitor in ALL and healthy B-lymphocytes, and also isolated mitochondria obtained from them. For this purpose, we evaluated the cellar parameters like viability, apoptosis/necrosis, caspase-3 activation and ATP content, and also mitochondrial parameters like mitochondrial membrane potential decline, reactive oxygen species formation, cytochrome C release and mitochondrial swelling., Conclusion: Our results implied that this compound can selectively induce cellular and mitochondrial toxicity in cancerous ALL B-lymphocytes and obtained mitochondria from them without any detrimental effects on healthy subjects.

Background: Estrogens, as the main female steroid hormones have multiple proven effects on reproductive and non- reproductive systems. Expression of ERα and ERβ, two dominant estrogen receptors, in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in certain B-cell malignancies and the existence of estrogens receptors on mitochondria is open to question that estrogen likely has an impact on the cancerous lymphocytes life span. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is the frequent pediatric malignity which is recurrent and hardly curable in many cases. The malignant cells are generally resistant to apoptosis caused the severe lymphocytes accumulation in the peripheral blood., Methods: By focusing on mitochondria as a life/death center of the cell; in the current research we compared cytotoxicity effects of a new ferrocenyl derivative with raloxifene as well-known SERMs considering the apoptotic process and survival of cancerous lymphocytes., Results: We demonstrated that both ferrocenyl derivative and raloxifene could cause mitochondrial lesion and initiate the apoptosis process by caspase activation and cytochrome c release., Conclusion: In brief, the ferrocenyl derivative could induce estrogen-related selective apoptosis on cancerous lymphocytes by affecting mitochondrial receptors., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.)

Background: Considering the increasing trend of obesity, especially in developing countries such as Iran, and the role of inflammatory factors and insulin resistance (IR) in the occurrence of obesity-related complications as well as the safety of some agents such as folic acid and metformin, this clinical trial was designed to investigate the effect of metformin and folic acid on inflammatory factors and IR among obese children., Materials and Methods: In this randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial study, sixty obese children aged 6-12 years were enrolled. Selected obese children were randomly allocated in two interventional (1 mg/daily folic acid or 1000 mg metformin for 8 weeks) groups. Biochemical measurements including homeostasis model assessment of IR (HOMA-IR), homocysteine (Hcy), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interleukin-8 (IL-8) were measured between and within the groups before and after trial., Results: In each group, thirty obese children were studied. The groups were age- and sex-matched. After folic acid and metformin administration, mean of Hcy, HOMA-IR, TNF-α, and IL-8 decreased significantly ( P < 0.05). IL-6 decreased significantly after folic acid use ( P < 0.05)., Conclusion: The findings of this trial indicated that both metformin and folic acid could decrease IR and level of Hcy in obese children and adolescents. The effectiveness of metformin on IR was more significant than folic acid. Regarding the effectiveness of the two studied agents on inflammatory factors, it is suggested that the role of folic acid was superior to metformin. It is suggested that metformin is a proper agent for obese children with IR and folic acid is an appropriate supplement for obese children with increased inflammatory factors.

Background: Periodontitis is common in adults and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the most common cause of adult death in the world. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between CVD and periodontitis., Methods: Sixty patients with myocardial infarction (MI) as case and 63 subjects with periodontitis without MI as control were studied. Periodontitis was assessed according to Ramfjord periodontal diseases index and the number of missing teeth besides classic risk factors of MI were recorded., Results: The patients who lost more than 10 teeth were at more risk of myocardial infarction (OR=2.73). There was a significant relationship between mean attachment loss and MI (p=0.0001). There was also a relation between attachment loss more than 3 mm and MI with OR of 4. Significant difference between mean PDI (periodontal disease index) was seen in case and control groups (p=0.0001). Subjects with PDI>4 were at more risk of periodontal diseases (OR=7.87)., Conclusion: The results show the presence of significant relation between periodontitis and MI which could serve as an alarm to treat periodontitis carefully.

In the title compound, [Cu(NO(3))(2)(C(19)H(15)N(3)O(2))], the coordination geometry around the Cu(II) ion can be described as distorted square-pyramidal, with two N atoms and one O atom from an (E)-4-hy-droxy-N'-[phen-yl(pyridin-2-yl)methyl-ene]benzohydrazide ligand and one nitrate O atom in the basal plane and one nitrate O atom at the apical site. The other two nitrate O atoms also bind to the Cu atom with long Cu-O distances [2.607 (4) and 2.853 (5) Å]. The crystal packing is stabilized by inter-molecular N-H⋯O and O-H⋯O hydrogen bonds.

Objective: The aim of the study was to examine the awareness of Iranian pregnant women about the effects of drugs in pregnancy., Methods: Awareness of 400 women in postnatal and prenatal wards was assessed using self-completion questionnaire, which included demographic information, medication use, and the level of information regarding the safety of drugs during pregnancy and the most susceptible periods in pregnancy., Results: Out of 400 participants from prenatal and postnatal wards of two hospitals, 19.0% used medications other than vitamins and minerals supplements during pregnancy, and 7% believed in the safety of medications for mother and/or fetus during pregnancy. The first and second trimesters were believed to be the most and the least susceptible periods of pregnancy, respectively. Most information on drugs safety in pregnancy was obtained from physicians and health centers., Conclusions: Present study indicates weaknesses in the awareness of this population and weak role of pharmacists in informing this vulnerable population. This study shows the requirement of training of this group of people in order to enhance the health of our community.