Impact of Pediatric Posterior Fossa Tumor Treatments on Working Memory Tracts Using Resting-State fMRI and Tractography.

Background And Purpose: Working memory, a primary cognitive domain, is often impaired in pediatric brain tumor survivors, affecting their attention and processing speed. This study investigated the long-term effects of treatments, including surgery, radiotherapy (RT), and chemotherapy (CT), on working memory tracts in children with posterior fossa tumors (PFTs) using resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) and diffusion MRI tractography.

Methods: This study included 16 medulloblastoma (MB) survivors treated with postoperative RT and CT, 14 pilocytic astrocytoma (PA) survivors treated with surgery alone, and 16 healthy controls from the Imaging Memory after Pediatric Cancer in children, adolescents, and young adults study (NCT04324450).

Improved activity and stability of cellulase by immobilization on FeO nanoparticles functionalized with Reactive Red 120.

Cellulase is extensively used in the biorefinery of cellulosic materials to fermentable sugars in bioethanol production. Application of cellulase in the free form has disadvantages in enzyme wastage and low stability. The results of the present work showed these drawbacks can be solved by cellulase immobilization on functionalized FeO magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) with reactive red 120 (RR120) as the affinity ligands.

Isolation and characterization of thermotolerant hydrocarbon degrading bacteria which sustained the activity at extreme salinity and high osmotic conditions.

The bioremediation method is considered an economical and environmentally friendly strategy for the remediation of oil-contaminated soils. However, some oil field areas have extreme environmental conditions that make it difficult to establish microbes for bioreme-diation. In this study, bacteria were isolated from oil-contaminated soils of the Dehloran oil fields, which have very harsh soil and weather conditions.

Designing and implementation of a mobile application for teaching population oral health needs assessment for dental students; a non-randomized trial.

Objective: This study investigates the effectiveness of a newly developed smartphone-based application for teaching population oral health needs assessment to undergraduate dental students.

Methods: Target population in this study consisted of all students of Shahid Beheshti School of dentistry in the 7 and 8 semesters in the year 2023. The intervention group (7 semester) received teaching about population oral health needs assessment based on the book "Oral health surveys; basic methods", by means of an application, while the control group (8 semester) received the same content through self-learning activity.