Loneliness and its correlation with self-care and activities of daily living among older adults: a partial least squares model.

Background: The growing elderly population worldwide is accompanied by an increased disrupting daily activities and self-care. Neglecting the multifaceted needs of the elderly can lead to detrimental effects such as loneliness or social isolation, threatening healthy aging. Self-care is a key strategy to enhance daily functioning and mitigate feelings of loneliness among the elderly.

Abnormal multisensory temporal discrimination in Parkinson's disease.

Cognitive deficits are prevalent in Parkinson's disease (PD), ranging from mild deficits in perception and executive function to severe dementia. Multisensory integration (MSI), the ability to pool information from different sensory modalities to form a combined, coherent perception of the environment, is known to be impaired in PD. This study investigated the disruption of audiovisual MSI in PD patients by evaluating temporal discrimination ability between auditory and visual stimuli with different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs).

The role of endothelial growth factor and tear levels in diabetic retinopathy in type 2 diabetes.

Purpose: To evaluate the tear level of VEGF and the quantity of tear film in type 2 diabetic patients.

Methods: Thirty patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR group) and 30 patients with no DR (NDR group), and 30 healthy subjects with age and gender matching were enrolled in this prospective comparative study. The tear samples were collected using the Schirmer strips, and the amount of moisture absorbed by the strips was used to determine the quantitative level of the tear film.

A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Rituximab-Associated Infections Among Children and Adolescents With Glomerular Disease: Focus on the Risk of Infections.

Objective: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to explore rituximab (RTX) associated infectious complications in children with glomerular disease.

Methods: We performed an electronic search of PubMed, International Scientific Information (ISI), Scopus, and EMBASE between January 2010 and July 2021. Infection rates and total drug-related adverse events were the outcomes.

Neural oscillatory characteristics of feedback-associated activity in globus pallidus interna.

Neural oscillatory activities in basal ganglia have prominent roles in cognitive processes. However, the characteristics of oscillatory activities during cognitive tasks have not been extensively explored in human Globus Pallidus internus (GPi). This study aimed to compare oscillatory characteristics of GPi between dystonia and Parkinson's Disease (PD).

Hybrid feature engineering of medical data via variational autoencoders with triplet loss: a COVID-19 prognosis study.

Medical machine learning frameworks have received much attention in recent years. The recent COVID-19 pandemic was also accompanied by a surge in proposed machine learning algorithms for tasks such as diagnosis and mortality prognosis. Machine learning frameworks can be helpful medical assistants by extracting data patterns that are otherwise hard to detect by humans.

Investigation of fused remote N-heterocyclic silylenes (frNHSis), at DFT.

We compared and contrasted the ΔΕ, band gap (ΔΕ), aromaticity, charge distribution, and reactivity of singlet (s) and triplet (t) benzopyridine-4-ylidene as the fused remote N-heterocyclic carbene (frNHC) and frNHSis with different fused aromatic rings, at (U)B3LYP/AUG-cc-pVTZ and (U)M06-2X/AUG-cc-pVTZ levels of theory. In this investigation, we found (1) all s and t divalent states appear as minimum structures, for having no negative force constant. Nonetheless, only singlets present more thermodynamic stability than their triplet analogous; (2) the trend of ΔΕ in kcal/mol is ortho-pyrrole (52.

Molecular mechanisms underlying curcumin-mediated microRNA regulation in carcinogenesis; Focused on gastrointestinal cancers.

Curcumin is a bioactive ingredient found in the Rhizomes of Curcuma longa. Curcumin is well known for its chemopreventive and anti-cancer properties. Recent findings have demonstrated several pharmacological and biological impacts of curcumin, related to the control and the management of gastrointestinal cancers.

A comparative review of immunoassays for COVID-19 detection.

: The gold standard for diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is detecting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which is expensive, time-consuming and may result in false-negative results. Serological tests can be employed for RT-PCR negative patients, contact tracing, determining the probability of protection against re-infection, and seroepidemiological studies.: The main methodologies of serology-based tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), chemiluminescent immunoassays (CLIAs) and lateral flow immunoassays (LFIAs) were reviewed and their diagnostic performances were compared.

Sex Difference in Trigeminal Neuropathic Pain Response to Exercise: Role of Oxidative Stress.

Aim: Orofacial chronic neuropathic pain commonly occurs following trigeminal nerve injuries. We investigated whether swimming exercise can reduce trigeminal neuropathic pain through improving antioxidant capacity.

Materials And Methods: Twenty-eight Wistar rats of either sex and 180-220 grams were divided into 4 groups as sham, neuropathy, neuropathy + single bout exercise, and neuropathy + 2 weeks of exercise.

Association of Vitamin D Status and Metabolic Syndrome Components in Iranian Children.

Background: Recently, it has been found that Vitamin D can affect cardiometabolic risk factors. However, these findings have not been confirmed in younger population. We aimed to assess the associations of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and metabolic syndrome (MetS) components in Iranian children.

A computational study on the endohedral alkali metal and ion B nanocluster.

Recent exploration of the boron fullerenes has raised exciting new prospects for boron applications. Here, the endohedral X/X@B complexes (X = Li, Na, and K) were explored by means of density functional theory calculations. By increasing the atomic number, the interaction of alkali metals with the B nanocage is unusually weakened.

Defects formation and spiral waves in a network of neurons in presence of electromagnetic induction.

Complex anatomical and physiological structure of an excitable tissue (e.g., cardiac tissue) in the body can represent different electrical activities through normal or abnormal behavior.

DFT results against experimental data for electronic properties of C and C fullerene derivatives.

Some electronic properties of different C and C derivatives were evaluated using 20 density functionals (the B3LYP, BHANDH, PBE0, HSE06, CAM-B3LYP, ωB97X-D, BMK, PBEPBE, M06-L, M06, M06-2X, M06-HF, PW91PW91, BLYP, B97D, HCT407, τ-HCTH, τ-HCTHhyb, TPSS, and LSDA), and some of the results were compared with the available experimental data. Unlike in Hartree-Fock (HF) method, the orbital relaxation is not the origin of the violation of DFT from the Koopmans' theorem. For most of functionals, the HOMO-LUMO gap (E) is more sensitive to the functional compared to the optical gap.

DFT study on the chemical sensing properties of BN nanocage toward formaldehyde.

It has been previously shown that the toxic formaldehyde gas (HCO) cannot be detected by pristine BCN, carbon, and BN nanotubes, BC nanosheet and graphene. Herein, density functional theory calculations were employed to investigate the electronic and structural behavior of a pristine BN nanocluster toward HCO molecules. It was found that [4,6] BN bonds of the nanocluster are the most favorable sites for the HCO adsorption, compared to the [4,8], and [6,8] ones.

N-H bond cleavage of ammonia on graphene-like B36 borophene: DFT studies.

Ammonia N-H bond cleavage at metal-free substrates has attracted great attention because of its industrial importance. Here, we investigate the dissociative adsorption of ammonia onto the surface of a B36 borophene sheet by means of density functional theory calculations. We show that the N-H bond may be broken at the edges of B36 even at room temperature, regarding the small energy barrier of 14.

Effect of motivational group interviewing-based safety education on Workers' safety behaviors in glass manufacturing.

Background: Worker safety education using models that identify and reinforce factors affecting behavior is essential. The present study aimed to determine the effect of safety education based on motivational interviewing on awareness of, attitudes toward, and engagement in worker safety in the glass production industry in Hamedan, Iran, in 2014.

Methods: This was a quasi-experimental interventional study including a total of 70 production line workers at glass production facilities in Hamedan.

Effects of "vitex agnus castus" extract and magnesium supplementation, alone and in combination, on osteogenic and angiogenic factors and fracture healing in women with long bone fracture.

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the combination of vitex agnus castus extract, as a source of phytoestrogens, plus magnesium supplementation on osteogenic and angiogenic factors and callus formation in women with long bone fracture.

Material And Methods: In a double-blind randomized placebo controlled trial, 64 women with long bone fracture, 20-45 years old, were randomly allocated to receive 1) one Agnugol tablet (4 mg dried fruit extract of vitex agnus castus) plus 250 mg magnesium oxide (VAC + Mg group (n = 10)), 2) one Agnugol tablet plus placebo (VAC group (n = 15)), 3) placebo plus 250 mg magnesium oxide (Mg group (n = 12)), or 4) placebo plus placebo (placebo group (n = 14)) per day for 8 weeks. At baseline and endpoint of the trial, serum alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) were measured together with radiological bone assessment.