Rural out-migration is one of the most critical issues in all countries. This flow increases the rural decline, and in many cases, causes rural abandonment. But against our imaginations, there is ...also a reverse flow from cities to villages. In the Alamut region in central Alborz of Iran, some villages attract populations by the reverse migration flow. This temporary flow forms a new type of housing in the rural areas called “second home”. The analysis of second home appearance is the main issue in this article. We used surveys method from locals and field observation in eight villages of the eastern Alamut area. The QSPM (Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix) matrix is used for analyzing observation and side-effects of second homes in the short-term and long-term. The result showed that second homes in these rural areas have different side-effects. Low skill employment creation, temporary increase of local consumers, rural re-novation cost, and second home owner’s participation in agriculture activities are the positive effects. But there are also some negative impacts like; seasonal and low-income jobs, destructive impacts on the environment, erosion of natural resources, and increasing demographic instability. This phenomenon has positive impacts in the short-term and negative consequences in the long-term. The approaches for decreasing the expansion of second holiday home and using the positive implications of this phenomenon for developing the rural areas would be explained in this paper.
Background: Medicinal plants have been used for treatment of diseases and finding of new drugs. Botanical valuable traditional methods, offer finding new medicinal plants and herbal medicines. ...Objective: The aim of this study was the identification of important medicinal plants that widely were used by local inhabitants, in the treatment of skin diseases in the area of Alamut-Qazvin, Iran. Method: In this study, the questionnaire was included sections for demographic as well as the medicinal plants information such as local name, how to use, time of harvest and medicinal properties of the plants. The questionnaires were completed by through interviews with 42 traditional botanists and 18 old traditional healers. The data were analyzed by SPSS 20 software. Results: Seventy-five species of medicinal plant were used in the treatment of 9 skin diseases in the area of Alamut-Qazvin, Iran. The most drugs that effecting on 9 known skin diseases are Urtica dioica for corn and eczema, Terminalia chebula in Wart, Cassia fistula in skin leishmaniosis, Crocus sativus in freckles, Nasturtium officinale in Psoriasis, Trachyspermum ammi and Falcaria vulgaris in vitiligo, Matricaria chamomilla in acne and scald skins. In general, most herbal remedies impact on burn patients and the most used plant is Matricaria chamomilla. Ointment 2% was the most used dosage form. Average 2-4 g/day for more than 3 months duration was used for the treatments. Conclusion: The results of this research could be the basis for selection of useful medicinal plants for Phytochemical and pharmacological studies.
For centuries, Marco Polo's legends of the Old Man of the Mountain, his paradise garden, and his assembly of assassins have fascinated readers. Modern scholarship, however, has demonstrated that ...these are a fanciful history of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims of the state of Alamut. This article analyses the causes and motivations for the persistence of these tales and their trappings. The trope permeates popular culture ranging from medieval fables to the multi-billion dollar Assassin's Creed video game franchise. More surprising, the offensive "assassin" moniker and its associated images are strangely resilient within academia itself, long after Orientalist portrayals of the Muslim world stopped being fashionable. The study also introduces several little-known works, often newly discovered, which emanate from the state centred at Alamut. These allow us a rare glimpse into the community's self-perception. The steady recovery of such long-lost sources sheds new light on the Nizaris, revealing the life of a community that is equally fascinating, if less fantastic, than the "assassins" of Marco Polo's imagination.
Dramatically expanding our ability for clinical genetic testing for inherited conditions and complex diseases such as cancer, next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are allowing for rapid ...interrogation of thousands of genes and identification of millions of variants. Variant annotation, the process of assigning functional information to DNA variants based on the standardized Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) nomenclature, is a fundamental challenge in the analysis of NGS data that has led to the development of many bioinformatic algorithms. In this study, we evaluated the performance of 3 variant annotation tools: Alamut® Batch, Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor (VEP), and ANNOVAR, benchmarked by a manually curated ground-truth set of 298 variants from the medical exome database at the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at Lurie Children's Hospital. Of the 3 tools, VEP produces the most accurate variant annotations (HGVS nomenclature for 297 of the 298 variants) due to usage of updated gene transcript versions within the algorithm. Alamut® Batch called 296 of the 298 variants correctly; strikingly, ANNOVAR exhibited the greatest number of discrepancies (20 of the 298 variants, 93.3% concordance with ground-truth set). Adoption of validated methods of variant annotation is critical in post-analytical phases of clinical testing.
The aim of this study was to map the landslide risk at the Alamut watershed based on relative vulnerability and susceptibility. The potential of damage to the resources was considered landslide ...vulnerability. The fuzzy gamma operators were also used to assess landslide susceptibility. Thematic layers of 10 causal factors including slope, aspect, altitude, land use, lithology, distance to road, distance to stream, distance to fault, peak ground acceleration and mean annual precipitation were prepared. The landslide inventory map comprising 40 landslides covering 1417 hectares was partitioned into two subsets including 70% for training and 30% for testing. The Dr and Qs indices were applied to compare the validity of the landslide susceptibility maps. The spatial landslide risk was obtained by multiplying the landslide susceptibility and landslide vulnerability. The results show that the LSM derived by gamma of 0.95 has the most validity with Qs equal to 1.93. The ascending trend of the Dr index for low to high classes implies the correct classification of the LSM. The most important role in the occurrence of landslides has been related to lithology and land use factors. Although residential areas cover a small area of the watershed, 84.35% of the very high-risk class and 91.21% of the high-risk class are located in these areas. These results imply that in the Alamut watershed, the principles of land use planning have not been considered for landslide management. Therefore, the results of this study can be very useful for landslide risk management in the region.
Abstract Alamut Floristic Database collects information on the presence of plant species in different parts of Iran, and along with floristic data storage/retrieval, it has software to use the data. ...With the growth of data stored in the Alamut floristic database and the creation of new sectors, such as the climatic data segment, access to problem-based data has become important. Effective access to data is performed by SQL codes, which is often difficult for regular users. This paper introduces three new tools for the Alamut database. APL (Alamut Programmed Lists) compiler, the Command Line, both for extracting data as programmed lists, along with the List Maker Program, which is used for creating new species inventories without spelling errors and for automatically sorting the inventory according to APG IV classification. This paper also includes some example programs written by using APL.
•Sub-basin contributions to the < 37 & 37–63 µm fractions of sediments were ascribed.•Four different composite fingerprints were selected using statistical methods.•The modified MixSIR Bayesian model ...was used for source apportionment.•The source proportions were evaluated using virtual sediment mixtures.•Findings reveal the sensitivity of apportionments to the tracers for fractions.
Sediment fingerprinting in data sparse regions, such as the mountainous areas of Iran, is more suited to a confluence-based sample design wherein tributary sub-basins are characterised by sediment samples using different size fractions. Our objective was therefore to fingerprint spatial source contributions to the < 37 and 37–63 µm fractions of fine-grained channel bed sediment samples collected in a large erodible mountainous river basin in Iran based on a number of statistical and machine learning approaches. Geochemical elements were measured in channel bed surface drape sediments from seven sub-basins and in delivered sediments from the basin outlet. A Bayesian mass balance model (modified MixSIR) was applied to apportion sub-basin spatial sources with four composite signatures selected using the different statistical approaches. For the < 37 and 37–63 µm fractions, the signatures all indicated that sub-basins 3 (Andajroud; 46.7%) and 7 (Ninehroud; 36.8%) were the dominant spatial sources of the fine-grained bed drape sediment samples, respectively, identifying the most active erosional zones spatially. The statistical error between known and predicted spatial source contributions using virtual mixture tests for both size fractions demonstrated the importance of using multiple different composite fingerprints to decrease the model prediction uncertainties. Despite the difficult terrain in such data sparse areas, the source fingerprinting approach provides a basis for assembling new evidence which, in turn, is of interest to scientists and managers alike.
Khwajah Qasim Tushtari's recently discovered Recognizing God (Maʿrifat-i Khuday taʿala) is one of the only texts known to have survived from the early Alamut period of Ismaili Muslim history. It ...preserves evidence of the "new Invitation" (daʿwat-i jadid) to the Ismaili faith that al-Shahrastani (d. 548/1153) tells us was inaugurated by the Fatimid Imam al-Mustansir billah (d. 487/1094) and championed by Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 518/1124). The text emphasises that the ultimate purpose of human existence is to know God, and that the path to this knowledge is through the Imam of the Time. Likely composed between 525/1131 and 533/1139, the text contains near-contemporary references to Sanaʾi Ghaznawi (d. ca. 525/1131) and points to the very early development of Persian pious, devotional and homiletic poetry as well as the "mathnawi metre" in Ismaili environments. This metre was later famously used by Farid al-Din ʿAttar (d. ca. 618/1221) and Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 672/1273) in their mystical compositions. The article includes an introduction, critical edition and annotated translation to Qasim Tushtari's Recognizing God.
The ethnobotany of the medicinal plants of Alamut region is important in understanding the cultures and traditions of Alamut people. This study documents 16 medicinal plant species, most commonly ...used by the indigenous people of Alamut region (Ghazvin Province), northwest, Iran. The botanical name, family name, vernacular name, part used, and the application of the plants have been provided in this paper. Alamut region was divided into different villages with the aid of maps. We recorded traditional knowledge and use of medicinal plants from herbal practitioners and village seniors in Alamut. The plants were gathered from different sites. The fully dried specimens were then mounted on herbarium sheets. We found 16 medicinal plants belonging to 11 families which were traditionally used in Alamut. Finally, we describe traditional usages by the native people in the Alamut region. The obtained results were compared with data on the herb's clinical effects. A set of voucher specimens were deposited to the Institute of Medicinal Plants Herbarium (IMPH).
Background:
The purpose of this study is to determine the genetic association and compare the distribution of
ABCA4
gene variants in patients with various inherited retinal dystrophies, including ...autosomal recessive cone-rod dystrophy (AR-CRD) autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa (AR-RP) in the South Indian cohorts.
Methods:
This study included nineteen probands, ophthalmic examination of all the probands were carefully evaluated by the Paediatric Ophthalmologist. Eleven of the nineteen probands had the clinical phenotype of AR-CRD, eight showed AR-RP-like clinical phenotype. Genomic DNA was extracted from their peripheral blood, the exon and intronic boundaries of the
ABCA4
gene were screened using the Sanger sequencing to identify the genetic association of these two retinal dystrophies.
Results:
Sanger sequencing results revealed that only 18% (2/11) of AR-CRD probands had disease-causing
ABCA4
mutations, while the remaining 9 AR-CRD, 8 AR-RP were negative for the pathogenic variant associated with
ABCA4.
Furthermore, this study identified 18 common SNPs of the
ABCA4
(2 missense, 3 synonymous, 13 intronic variants) and found them associated with AR-CRD and AR-RP probands.
Conclusion:
This is the first study to show that two missense variants in the
ABCA4
(c.302T > C, c.1319A > G) are associated with AR-CRD probands and two rare NNCS variants (c.3191-10G > T, c.3814-5G > A) associated with AR-RP patients from the South Indian population.
