Introduction: Exposure of grain products in polluted soil lead to adverse effects on human health. In this study, concentrations of HM (As-Cr-Hg) were analyzed in wheat grain cultured in ...Gonbad-e-Kavus City, Golestan province, Iran. Furthermore, its potential health risk was evaluated among residents.
Materials and Methods: The sampling sites were located in arable lands. After separating the wheat grains and cleaning them, the seeds were collected in plastic bags for analysis by ICP/MS method. Digestion of samples was performed with Multi wave PRO microwave apparatus.
Results: The mean concentrations of Arsenic (As), Chromium (Cr), Mercury (Hg), and Nickel in wheat seeds were 0.186 ± 0.08, 0.9 ± 0.07, 0.021 ± 0.019, and 0.5 ± 0.17, respectively. The results showed that concentrations of HM in wheat were as follow: Cr > Ni > As > Hg. The Hazard Quotient (HQ) was significantly different among various HMs. The largest HQ was related to As ranging from 0.33 to 13.3. The lowest HQ was attributed to Cr, which may be related to its high RfD = 1.5 mg kg−1.
Conclusion: Different HMs varied largely in terms of their HQ. Regarding the exposed people, As and Hg had the highest contributions to the aggregate risks of HMs, while Cr had the lowest contribution. Although the findings showed low environmental concentrations of the studied elements and implied no danger to human health, it should be considered that many non-cancerous conditions weaken the immune system and prone the human beings to cancerous diseases.
The issue of the nature of the state is one of the most important issues in political philosophy, and any interpretation of it will follow an interpretation of government ends, ideal government, and ...the necessity to obey the government, political legitimacy and freedom in its own way. The present study, which is theoretical in terms of its fundamental content, applies the theoretical framework of Mouffe's radical democracy, and focuses on one of the prominent figures of the political philosophy of public law in the 20th century, and finally attempted to answer the main question of what is the ideal government the type and the nature of it in the political theology of Karl Schmitt? The results illustrate that the understanding and interpretation of the nature of the state as well as the desired government in Schmitt's political philosophy and political theology in the light of understanding the fundamental concepts in his thought such as political theology is political matter, rule friend/enemy/independent dictatorship, sovereignty, the concept of exception in criticism of European liberal parliamentary system, negative anthropology, adaptation of citizenship to political nationality, criticism of the concept of majority in liberal democracy. The results also state that Schmidt's ideal government is compatible with the identity-oriented type of radical democracy. The significance of the study dates back to the growing criticism of liberal democracy and the emergence of radical democratic governments, especially in Latin America.
The hot line services were developed in response to the perceived need for 24-hour help services in crises ranging from suicide to unwanted pregnancy. This study is aimed at analyzing the strengths, ...weaknesses, challenges, and suggestions of improving the performance of the help centers from the perspective of key stakeholders.
We conducted a qualitative study to elicit the key informants' opinion regarding the performance of Iranian hot-lines. All the conversations were audio-recorded with the permission of the participants. To reach the saturation limit, the number of interviews was completed in the saturation of data. Data was gathered from 15 individual in-depth interviews. Collecting and analyses of data was based on content analysis through which simultaneously during texts open coding, main concepts were extracted and then in axial coding similar concepts were categorized.
According to the study results, there is no specific and independent system for assessing the hot- lines. One of the major weaknesses was the lack of standard protocols. Most participants believed that most of these guidelines came from the general principles of counseling and are not standard. As another point, the existence of referral services is one of the main problems of counseling lines. The most important suggestion from the majority of experts were the development of services and modification of their investments.
The findings, in addition to providing the applied data for policy-making in the health system, will significantly contribute to the creation of scientific, technical, and skillful personnel in the community of researchers.
Aims: This study designed to investigate the concentration of some heavy metals (HM) in the soil of agricultural land of Gonbad-e Kavus in Golestan province and relationship of these metals with ...esophageal cancer disease. Materials and Methods: For the investigation of pollution, especially HM in the soil, 5 points were randomly selected from each village (3 villages). The samples dried and screened by 200 mesh sieve.Then, the samples were analyzed for HM using ICP/MS. Results: The mean of Cadmium (Cd), Zinc, Cobalt, Chromium, Manganese, Nickel, Arsenic, Copper (Cu), Lead (Pb), and Iron (Fe) in soil was 0.5938 ± 1.7, 74.06 ± 18.9, 12.06 ± 1.28, 68.68 ± 5.85, 627.37 ± 53.3, 38.43 ± 4.4, 6.51 ± 1.21, 29.37 ± 4.3, 17.25 ± 3.5, and 27766.06 ± 2200 mg/kg, respectively. Conclusion: The concentration of metals except Cd and iron was less than the global standards. The concentration of some metals in the soil is almost high due to the high consumption of urea, phosphate, and nitrogen fertilizers. Therefore, it is recommended to educate farmers and use less chemical fertilizers.
Purpose: One of the promising radiosensitizers is the ultrasmall gold nanoparticle (GNP) with a hydrodynamic diameter <3 nm. We studied functionalized ultrasmall GNPs (1.8 nm diameter) coated by ...polyethylene glycol (PEG) and conjugated with cyclic RGDfK (2.6 nm hydrodynamic diameter) for targeting of alpha(v) beta(3) integrin (α
v
β
3
) in the murine ALTS1C1 glioma cell line.
Materials and methods: We investigated the uptake, toxicity and radiosensitivity of GNP-PEG-cRGDfKs in ALTS1C1 cells exposed to protons, kilovoltage photons and megavoltage photons. The in vitro uptake and toxicity of GNPs in the hepatocytes and Kupffer cells were assessed for murine AML12 hepatocyte and RAW 264.7 macrophage cell lines. The in vivo biodistribution of GNPs in the ALTS1C1 tumor model was tested using the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
Results: Results indicated GNPs accumulated in the cytoplasm with negligible toxicity for a moderate concentration of GNPs. Observed sensitizer enhancement ratios and dose enhancement factors are 1.21-1.66 and 1.14-1.33, respectively, for all radiations.
Conclusion: Ultrasmall GNP-PEG-cRGD can be considered as a radiosensitizer. For radiotherapy applications, the delivery method should be developed to increase the GNP uptake in the tumor and decrease the uptakes in undesirable organs.
Studies have shown a significant relationship between the width and thickness of keratinized gingiva around the implant and changes in marginal bone level, with a significant effect on the health and ...esthetic of tissues around the implant, especially in the anterior region of the maxilla, which is an esthetic area.
Ten patients referring to the Faculty of Dentistry seeking implant placement in the anterior maxilla were included in the study. The connective tissue of the palatal gingiva of the surgical site was folded to the buccal aspect with the buccal base, and the thickness and width of keratinized gingiva around the buccal surface of each implant were measured in three time intervals, including before surgery and 6 and 12 weeks after surgery. Based on the results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Friedman test and repeated-measures ANOVA were used to analyze the data.
The intervention significantly affected changes in the gingival thickness. After the intervention, gingival thickness significantly increased compared to the baseline (
<0.05). The results also showed that the intervention did not significantly affect the width of keratinized gingiva. The width of keratinized gingiva at baseline was not significantly different from the two time intervals after intervention (
>0.05).
Buccal-based modified palatal flap in anterior maxillary implants increased the thickness of keratinized gingiva, with no significant effect on the keratinized gingiva width.
Metal artifacts are one of the major issues encountered in computed tomography (CT) images since they may make distinguishing healthy and tumor organs and computing dose distribution through ...radiotherapy very difficult. Accordingly, designing generative adversarial neural networks (GANs) will help reduce metal artifacts.
Training and validating images with and without metal artifacts were simulated in MATLAB. Then, these images were used as the input data for the GAN, while CT images of 30 patients with head and neck cancer were used as testing data for the GAN. Finally, the quality metrics of denoised images were compared with those of the noisy images.
The images of patients with one dental implant have shown more improvement in the oral cavity area (16.81%), which is very important in treatment planning. Simulated images were used for the validation of the GAN's ability for metal artifact reduction. Moreover, the GAN was affected by the density and position of the metal artifacts in the CT images.
Corrected images allow us to improve the quality of the CT images of patients with metal artifacts.
•This study shows that GAN) Networks will give the best images by considering image quality metrics.•Simulated images of head and neck were our validation of GAN success in metal artifact reduction.•Quality image metrics were compared between noisy, healthy and denoised simulated images to show the image improvement.•Patients images with one dental implant have more improvement in oral cavity area which is very important in treatment planning.
To evaluate the clinical application of a robust semiautomatic image segmentation method to determine the brain target volumes in radiation therapy treatment planning.
A local robust region-based ...algorithm was used on MRI brain images to study the clinical target volume (CTV) of several patients. First, 3 oncologists delineated CTVs of 10 patients manually, and the process time for each patient was calculated. The averages of the oncologists' contours were evaluated and considered as reference contours. Then, to determine the CTV through the semiautomatic method, a fourth oncologist who was blind to all manual contours selected 4-8 points around the edema and defined the initial contour. The time to obtain the final contour was calculated again for each patient. Manual and semiautomatic segmentation were compared using 3 different metric criteria: Dice coefficient, Hausdorff distance, and mean absolute distance. A comparison also was performed between volumes obtained from semiautomatic and manual methods.
Manual delineation processing time of tumors for each patient was dependent on its size and complexity and had a mean (±SD) of 12.33 ± 2.47 minutes, whereas it was 3.254 ± 1.7507 minutes for the semiautomatic method. Means of Dice coefficient, Hausdorff distance, and mean absolute distance between manual contours were 0.84 ± 0.02, 2.05 ± 0.66 cm, and 0.78 ± 0.15 cm, and they were 0.82 ± 0.03, 1.91 ± 0.65 cm, and 0.7 ± 0.22 cm between manual and semiautomatic contours, respectively. Moreover, the mean volume ratio (=semiautomatic/manual) calculated for all samples was 0.87.
Given the deformability of this method, the results showed reasonable accuracy and similarity to the results of manual contouring by the oncologists. This study shows that the localized region-based algorithms can have great ability in determining the CTV and can be appropriate alternatives for manual approaches in brain cancer.
Introduction: The groundwater is the main resource of water. This study aimed to investigate water quality variations in the villages of AqQala in a eleven-year period as well as designing and ...implementing the Water Quality Index (WQI). Materials and Methods: In order to investigate water quality variations, the data in the villages of AqQala city was collected in an eleven-year period (2005-2015). Also, according to the research objectives, a sample period in year 2015 was carried out. Samples were measured according to the standard method for examination of water and wastewater. In order to calculate the Groundwater Water Quality Index (GWQI), the Iranian Water Quality Index Software (IWQIS) was used. Results: Some parameters of water quality, including pH, calcium, magnesium and potassium in all sources, were in standard limit. Some of the parameters were higher than the standard limit, which included turbidity, ammonium, phosphate in all sources and sulfate, chloride, sodium, iron and manganese, silicate and alkalinity in some resource. The results measured by the GWQI index in groundwater resources showed that the groundwater source was not with excellent water quality. About 19.3% of sources had poor qualities and the other sources had good qualities. Conclusion: The results of water quality over this period showed that some parameters were increased; which leads to water quality reduction. Therefore, comprehensive management of drinking water resources is essential for people's health.
Cu radioisotope is a beta particle-emitting nuclide used in radioimmunotherapy (RIT) as well as for imaging, tracer kinetic studies and dosimetry.
Cu can be produced by bombarding
Zn with deuterons. ...In this study, the physical yields of
Cu via
Zn(d,x)
Cu reaction channel as well as via subreactions of
Zn(d,2pn)
Cu,
Zn(d,2p)
Cu,
Zn(d,2p3n)
Cu,
Zn(d,x)
Ni(T
=21s)→
Cu and
Zn(d,x)
Ni(T
=21s)→
Cu in the
Zn target have been calculated by using the MCNPX-2.6, TALYS-1.8 and SRIM codes. Also, the total cross sections for production of
Cu from
Zn(d,x)
Cu reaction channel in the energy range of 15-45MeV have been estimated by TALYS code. The best reaction to produce
Cu radionuclide in a carrier free form was chosen with deuteron energy around 30MeV on
Zn thick target. Good agreement between the calculated results and the experimental values shows that the employed methods can be used for prediction and production estimation in cyclotron.
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