Association between Pro-oxidant-Antioxidant balance and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in type 2 diabetes mellitus: A Study on Postmenopausal Women.

INTRODUCTION: Oxidative stress known as a predictive marker for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases could be measured through pro-oxidant antioxidant balance (PAB). The present study aimed to evaluate PAB and its association with high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) in the serum of postmenopausal women with diabetes mellitus. METHODS: In this case-control study, 99 diabetic and 100 healthy postmenopausal women without diabetes mellitus were recruited. Serum PAB values, hs-CRP, lipid profile, insulin, and vitamin D levels were measured. Moreover, insulin resistance (HOMA-IR, HOMA-ß and QUICKI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), and body mass index (BMI) were calculated. RESULTS: Serum PAB, hs-CRP, insulin resistance, HOMA-ß, QUICKI, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides (TG) levels were significantly higher in the postmenopausal women with diabetes mellitus, while there was no significant difference in the total cholesterol (TC), serum insulin, WC, WHR, WHtR and vitamin D levels between the groups. Pearson correlation coefficient showed that HDL-C and insulin levels were directly correlated with serum PAB. Also, there was a significant direct relationship between LDL-C and insulin levels and hs-CRP. There was no meaningful relationship between serum insulin and vitamin D levels and other assessed parameters. Backward logistic regression showed a positive relationship between diabetes mellitus and serum PAB and an inverse relationship with serum HDL levels. CONCLUSIONS: Serum PAB, hs-CRP concentration, and lipid profile were significantly different between postmenopausal women with and without diabetes mellitus. These differences may contribute to the development of coronary complications.

Effects of Air Pollutant Exposure on Acute Myocardial Infarction.

BACKGROUND: Air pollution is a consequence of industrial development that is exacerbated as a result of population growth, and urbanisation. AIM: The goal of the study is to investigate the effects of air pollution on the number of cases of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) according to gender using the Zero-inflated Poisson Regression model in Hamadan, Iran. METHODS: The study used an ecological design, and data collected from March 2016 to September 2020 in Hamadan were included. The intended response was the number of cases of AMI recorded in the investigated period. The time lag of the pollutants was used to investigate the effect of air pollution on the number of AMIs. RESULTS: The number of AMI recorded for men and women was 1,195 and 553, respectively. The average age (±SD) for men and women was 64.60 (±12.27) and 70.98 (±11.79) years, respectively. According to the air quality index in Hamadan, the values of particulate matter < 2.5 µm (PM2.5), SO2, O3, and CO were below moderate levels. Also, according to NO2 and particulate matter between 25 µm-10 µm (PM10), the air quality index of Hamadan was in the very unhealthy mode just for 2 and 3 days, respectively. The O3 and NO2 are significant positive effects on AMI among men. But, PM2.5, PM10, and SO2 are negative impacts on hospitalisation in men due to AMI. For women, PM2.5 and O3 had positive effects on AMI. But, NO2 and PM10 had a significant negative impact on hospitalisation in women during different time lags. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study showed that if the analyses are based on gender, the responses to pollutants are different and hence the stratified analysis is important.

Physical and chemical separation of Ti, rare earth elements, Fe, and Al from red mud by carbothermal reduction, magnetic separation, and leaching.

In this study, a combination of physical and chemical separation processes was used to recover the metallic components of red mud. At first, the impact of carbothermal reduction on magnetic separation of iron was studied. Low magnetic properties of iron minerals resulted in insignificant separation of iron from other components in the non-carbothermally reduced sample. Various carbothermal reduction parameters were optimized to maximize iron separation from other components. The optimum conditions were found T = 1350 °C, t = 120 min, coal/red mud ratio of 3, reaction time of 120 min, and the soda ash/red mud ratio of 0.2. Under the optimum condition, the iron recovery of the magnetic product was observed 91% with 81% Fe content, while the non-magnetic product has contained 90% of Ti and Al and 80% of rare earth elements (REEs). Following the physical separation of iron, the chemical separation of remaining red mud components was investigated using leaching with sulfuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acids. The leaching experiments were performed on two samples, treated red mud with carbothermal reduction and an untreated sample. The untreated sample had a higher dissolution efficiency for Ti and REEs than the carbothermally reduced sample. Different dissolution behavior of the red mud components was explained by samples' mineralogy. In the end, considering the obtained results, various scenarios for the recovery of red mud components were evaluated from technical and environmental aspects.

An experimental technique for evaluating viscoelastic damping using ultrasonic guided waves.

This work presents an innovative approach according to an experiment-based fitting method to determine the damping property of a viscoelastic coating layer, in a simple, low-cost, and time-effective manner. In this experiment, symmetric and asymmetric ultrasonic Lamb waves were applied to two coated plates with different thicknesses, and the waves were generated using piezo discs. A viscoelastic coating influences the signal amplitude as well as the wave phase. By comparing the amplitude ratio (AR) of the transmitting signals between the coated and bare plates, the damping property of the viscoelastic coating was experimentally determined. Similar to the experiments employing the finite element method (FEM) software, in this experiment, ABAQUS, was employed to verify the conformity between numerical and experimental AR. By selecting a non-dispersive Rayleigh damping ß for the coating layers at all frequencies, the computational cost reduced significantly to one-tenth the original cost. Apart from corroboration by AR matching, the numerical dispersion curves of the group velocity were also validated by experimental curves. The FEM dispersion curves in the frequency range of the tests were found to be highly reliable, with an average error of less than 1% for the first experimental setup and 10% for the second setup. Furthermore, in coated waveguides, the proposed technique could precisely estimate the damping property of the viscoelastic coating layers, where excitability in a wide range of frequencies is required. However, this precision strongly relies on the selected mode, frequency range, PZT quality, and waveguide thickness.

SaaSRec+: a new context-aware recommendation method for SaaS services.

Cloud computing is an attractive model that provides users with a variety of services. Thus, the number of cloud services on the market is growing rapidly. Therefore, choosing the proper cloud service is an important challenge. Another major challenge is the availability of diverse cloud services with similar performance, which makes it difficult for users to choose the cloud service that suits their needs. Therefore, the existing service selection approaches is not able to solve the problem, and cloud service recommendation has become an essential and important need. In this paper, we present a new way for context-aware cloud service recommendation. Our proposed method seeks to solve the weakness in user clustering, which itself is due to reasons such as 1) lack of full use of contextual information such as cloud service placement, and 2) inaccurate method of determining the similarity of two vectors. The evaluation conducted by the WSDream dataset indicates a reduction in the cloud service recommendation process error rate. The volume of data used in the evaluation of this paper is 5 times that of the basic method. Also, according to the T-test, the service recommendation performance in the proposed method is significant.

Effect of The Receptor Activator of Nuclear Factor кB and RANK Ligand on In Vitro Differentiation of Cord Blood CD133(+) Hematopoietic Stem Cells to Osteoclasts.

OBJECTIVE: Receptor activator of nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL) appears to be an osteoclast-activating factor, bearing an important role in the pathogenesis of multiple myeloma. Some studies demonstrated that U-266 myeloma cell line and primary myeloma cells expressed RANK and RANKL. It had been reported that the expression of myeloid and monocytoid markers was increased by co-culturing myeloma cells with hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). This study also attempted to show the molecular mechanism of RANK and RANKL on differentiation capability of human cord blood HSC to osteoclast, as well as expression of calcitonin receptor (CTR) on cord blood HSC surface. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this experimental study, CD133(+) hematopoietic stem cells were isolated from umbilical cord blood and cultured in the presence of macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) and RANKL. Osteoclast differentiation was characterized by using tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) staining, giemsa staining, immunophenotyping, and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay for specific genes. RESULTS: Hematopoietic stem cells expressed RANK before and after differentiation into osteoclast. Compared to control group, flow cytometric results showed an increased expression of RANK after differentiation. Expression of CTR mRNA showed TRAP reaction was positive in some differentiated cells, including osteoclast cells. CONCLUSION: Presence of RANKL and M-CSF in bone marrow could induce HSCs differentiation into osteoclast.