Assessing the effectiveness of EMG-biofeedback on an isometric strengthening program in individuals with multiple sclerosis.

The purpose of this randomized controlled experiment was to assess the efficacy of electromyographic biofeedback as an adjunct treatment to isometric exercise in MS patients. 20 patients took part in the research. Patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups: biofeedback (n = 10) or control (n = 10).

Association between maternal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and birth anthropometric outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Previous research has proposed that exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) during pregnancy could potentially lead to a higher risk of adverse birth anthropometric outcomes. However, the current evidence on this connection remains inconclusive, as various studies have presented conflicting results.

Objective: This systematic review and meta-analysis seeks to synthesize the available research on the potential link between maternal PAHs exposure and birth anthropometric outcomes.

Cost management analysis of Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE): guide to the universities of medical sciences.

Background: The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a crucial assessment tool for evaluating learners' ability to apply theoretical knowledge in practical clinical situations. It is widely accepted by both students and educators, and the costs associated with conducting OSCE assessments vary depending on the field of study, how it is implemented, staffing needs, standardized patients, and duration of the examination. This study examines the expenses related to administering OSCEs in medical universities.

Investigating the Effect of High-Dose Vitamin D3 Administration on Inflammatory Biomarkers in Patients with Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the most common neurological disorders worldwide. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of high-dose vitamin D3 on inflammatory biomarkers in patients with moderate to severe TBI.

Methods: Thirty-five moderate to severe TBI patients were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups.

A comprehensive study on the effects of electrocoagulation integrated in a membrane bioreactor treating sunflower oil refinery wastewater on treatment performance, biological properties, and fouling behavior.

This study evaluated the effects of electrocoagulation integrated in a laboratory-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR), namely EC-MBR, on the treatment performance, activated sludge morphological characterization, and membrane fouling of MBR treating actual sunflower oil refinery wastewater. The EC-MBR system exhibited significantly higher chemical oxygen demand (COD) and oil and grease (O&G) removal efficiency compared to the MBR system. Additionally, both systems achieved excellent turbidity removal, with a percentage above 99%.

Impact of PAHs compounds on air quality in Maragheh city: Probabilistic risk assessment and source apportionment.

This study explores the concentrations and spatial distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the ambient air of Maragheh city, Iran, while evaluating their potential health implications. PAHs levels were examined in PAHs-bound to particulate matter samples collected from diverse locations across the city. The results showed that in all sampling points, there was contamination by PAHs.

Nitrile Imine Cyclizations and Rearrangements: -Phenyl--styrylnitrile Imine and -Phenyl--phenylethynylnitrile Imine.

The formation and rearrangements of nitrile imines are of ongoing synthetic and theoretical interest. In this paper, we report a computational investigation at the M06/6-311 + G(d,p) level of the formation and rearrangement of propargylic phenylstyrylnitrile imine from 2-phenyl-5-styryltetrazole by flash vacuum pyrolysis (FVP). Nitrile imine cyclizes to 3a-3-styrylindazole , which is also generated by H-shifts in the FVP of 3-styrylindazole .

The regulating effect of curcumin on NF-κB pathway in neurodegenerative diseases: a review of the underlying mechanisms.

Neurodegenerative diseases are part of the central nervous system (CNS) disorders that indicate their presence with neuronal loss, neuroinflammation, and increased oxidative stress. Several pathophysiological factors and biomarkers are involved in this inflammatory process causing these neurological disorders. The nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) is an inflammation element, which induced transcription and appears to be one of the important players in physiological procedures, especially nervous disorders.

The Goldilocks principle of learning unitaries by interlacing fixed operators with programmable phase shifters on a photonic chip.

Programmable photonic integrated circuits represent an emerging technology that amalgamates photonics and electronics, paving the way for light-based information processing at high speeds and low power consumption. Programmable photonics provides a flexible platform that can be reconfigured to perform multiple tasks, thereby holding great promise for revolutionizing future optical networks and quantum computing systems. Over the past decade, there has been constant progress in developing several different architectures for realizing programmable photonic circuits that allow for realizing arbitrary discrete unitary operations with light.

Identification of miR-20a as A Potential Discerning Biomarker for Non-Invasive versus Invasive Retinoblastoma.

Objective: Intraocular retinoblastoma (RB) is common in kids. Although the cause of this disease is a mutation in the RB1 gene, the formed cancerous mass in different patients is seen in non-invasive states, limited to the ocular cavity or in invasive states distributed to other parts of the body. Because this tumor's aggressiveness cannot be predicted early, these patients receive systemic chemotherapy with multiple drugs.

In-Utero exposure to potential sources of indoor air pollution and umbilical cord blood leukocyte telomere length.

Indoor air pollution (IAP) has been associated with various adverse health effects. However, the evidence regarding such an association with leukocyte telomere length (LTL) in cord blood samples is still scarce. Therefore, the present study aimed to assess the relationship between exposure to indicators of IAP and LTL in umbilical cord blood samples.

Analytical formulation of spatiotemporal modulated graphene-based waveguides using Floquet-Bloch theory.

In this work, an analytical model to study graphene-based spatiotemporal modulated structures is developed and verified through comparison with full wave numerical simulations. Graphene is an ideal material for realizing spatiotemporal modulated structures at high frequencies of THz and optics. In this analysis, the electromagnetic response of studied structures is expressed in terms of weighted Floquet-Bloch modes supported by the structure, while graphene is modeled by a spatiotemporal modulated surface current that imposes certain boundary conditions on the modes.

The association of in-utero exposure to air pollution and atherogenic index of plasma in newborns.

Background: Prenatal exposure to particulate matter (PM) and traffic was associated with the programming of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in early life. However, the exact underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the association between in-utero exposure to PMs and traffic indicators with the atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) in newborns, which is a precise index reflecting an enhancement of lipid risk factors for CVDs.

Effect of calcitriol supplementation on infectious biomarkers in patients with positive systemic inflammatory response: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Sepsis is one of the common causes of hospitalization of patients in intensive care units. A significant role for vitamin D in sepsis has been proposed, which is due to its active metabolite, calcitriol.

Aims: Evaluate the effect of calcitriol supplementation on infectious biomarkers, including procalcitonin and presepsin.

Improving the mental health of working women with work-life conflict: A protocol development for an explanatory mixed method study.

Background: Today, one problem facing working women is the conflict between work and life, and the resultant stress has a great impact on their mental health. A well-known model for stress management is Lazarus and Folkman's model. The primary goal of the present study is to improve working women's mental health through stress management.

Cluster-based histopathology phenotype representation learning by self-supervised multi-class-token hierarchical ViT.

Developing a clinical AI model necessitates a significant amount of highly curated and carefully annotated dataset by multiple medical experts, which results in increased development time and costs. Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a method that enables AI models to leverage unlabelled data to acquire domain-specific background knowledge that can enhance their performance on various downstream tasks. In this work, we introduce CypherViT, a cluster-based histo-pathology phenotype representation learning by self-supervised multi-class-token hierarchical Vision Transformer (ViT).

Etiology, consequences, and solutions of working women's work-life conflict: a qualitative study.

Introduction: Work-life conflict (WLC) is important in organizational behavior research and human resource management. The present research aimed to investigate the underlying causes, consequences, and solutions to WLC in Iranian working women.

Materials And Methods: The present qualitative study was conducted through a content analysis method among 19 working married women in Birjand, a city in the east of Iran, from December 2021 to February 2022.

A comparative study of response surface methodology and artificial neural network based algorithm genetic for modeling and optimization of EP/US/GAC oxidation process in dexamethasone degradation: Application for real wastewater, electrical energy consumption.

Dexamethasone (DXM) is a broadly used drug, which is frequently identified in the water environments due to its improper disposal and incomplete removal in wastewater treatment plant. The inability of conventional treatment processes of wastewater causes that researchers pay a great attention to study and develop effective wastewater treatment systems. This work deals with the study of integrated electro-peroxone/granular activated carbon (EP/US/GAC) process in the degradation of dexamethasone (DXM) from a water environment and the remediation of real pharmaceutical wastewater.

Effect of High-dose Vitamin D on IL-1β Blood Level in Patients with Moderate Stroke: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background: Vitamin D has neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects in stroke patients, but its effect on pro-inflammatory and inflammatory cytokines, especially IL-1, has been investigated in a few trials.

Objectives: This study aimed to determine the effect of prescribing a high dose of vitamin D on the anti-inflammatory parameters, short-term and long-term prognosis of patients with ischemic stroke.

Methods: This randomized clinical trial was performed on 42 patients randomly divided into two equal groups of 21 in Imam Hussein Hospital.

Auto-calibrating universal programmable photonic circuits: hardware error-correction and defect resilience.

It is recently shown that discrete N × N linear unitary operators can be represented by interlacing N + 1 phase shift layers with a fixed intervening operator such as discrete fractional Fourier transform (DFrFT). Here, we show that introducing perturbations to the intervening operations does not compromise the universality of this architecture. Furthermore, we show that this architecture is resilient to defects in the phase shifters as long as no more than one faulty phase shifter is present in each layer.

Inverse design of omnidirectional coherent absorbers for optical power beaming applications.

An efficient photovoltaic power converter is a critical element in laser power beaming systems for maximizing the end-to-end power transfer efficiency while minimizing beam reflections from the receiver for safety considerations. We designed a multilayer absorber that can efficiently trap monochromatic light from broad incident angles. The proposed design is built on the concept of a one-way coherent absorber with inverse-designed aperiodic multilayer front- and back-reflectors that enable maximal optical absorption in a thin-film photovoltaic material for broad angles.

Development and validation of a nitrogen dioxide passive sampler.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO) is one of the main indicators of traffic-related air pollution in urban areas. Active sampling methods (common methods) are expensive and need advanced devices. While Passive sampling is a simple and low-cost method for measuring air pollutants, including NO.

The association between exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and birth outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies.

Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) has been linked to adverse birth outcomes; however, to date, the available studies on such relations, with the exception of birth weight, has not been systematically synthesized. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the available observational studies on the association of maternal exposure to PAHs and their metabolites during pregnancy with indicators of fetal growth and gestational age at delivery. We searched Web of Science, PubMed and Scopus systematically for all relevant published papers in English until 13 January 2023.