Background Alpha 1 Antitrypsin (AAT) plays a crucial role in protecting the lungs from the damage caused by excessive inflammation.It is known that intense inflammation manifests in COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia. The aim of this study was to measure AAT levels in COVID-19 pneumonia patients and to predict AAT treatment in these patients. Methods This cross-sectional, clinical study included 154(61 females, 93 males) COVID-19 pneumonia patients. The age, sex, biochemical parameters and survival information of the patients were recorded. The independent variables affecting the AAT level were examined by linear regression analysis, and the regression model was found to be statistically significant(F=3.051; p=0.001). Results There was no correlation between AAT mean values and survival (p=0.133). While the AAT level decreased by 0.003 units as the CRP value increased by 1 unit (p=0.003), AAT level decreased by 0.027 units as the lymphocyte value increased by 1 unit (p=0.001). As the neutrophil value increased by 1 unit, the AAT level decreased by 0.019 units (p=0.014). There was no statistically significant effect of other independent variables (p>0.050). Conclusion The negative correlation between rising inflammatory indicators and AAT levels in pneumonia patients shows that defense mechanisms got weakened. In patients with a viral infection, AAT may have an antiviral effect due to its regulatory and anti-replication effects on both inflammation and the immune system. Although there is no significant relationship between AAT level and survival, the negative correlation between AAT and inflammation indicators may suggest that AAT treatment may be effective in these patients.

Bihar and Jharkhand are the most important states in Eastern India in terms of rice production. It is essential to study the growth pattern of rice production in these states. Therefore the present study was conducted to examine the growth rate and instability in area, production and yield of rice in Bihar including Jharkhand state. The data was collected for the period 1980-81 to 2019-20 and divided into five periods for analysis. Compound annual growth rate and Cuddy-Della Valle Instability index have been computed for the five periods. The new approach has been proposed for classification of instability values under five classes. Highest growth rate for area and production was observed in Hazaribag district during period IV and for yield it was recorded in Begusarai district during the same period. During period I and II most of the districts recorded positive growth rate for production and yield. The instability varies from 2.76 to 99.62 percent for area, 13.24 to 119.98 percent for production and 9.34 to 173.28 percent for yield across the districts during five periods. For production and yield, most of the districts recorded medium instability during period I and period II; and high instability during period III, period IV and period V.

Air quality in Tirana (Albania) was assessed by daily measurements of PM2.5, Al, and Pb in June 2021. Al and Pb concentrations in PM2.5 samples were quantified on Teflon-coated glass fiber filter samplers along five monitoring sites in Tirana city. The measurements were carried out in three heavy traffic crossroads and two residential areas during a summer day with elevated air temperatures up to 23 ℃. The results of PM2.5, and Al and Pb in solid particles of PM2.5 were discussed through data treatment through statistical analysis. A moderate variation (25% < CV% < 75%) was found for all parameters under investigation. Site concentration data were compared with the respective recommended values of the European Directives for each parameter. The results showed higher concentration levels compared with the allowed data for rural and residential areas, but lower than the recommended values for urban and industrial areas, throughout all stations. Correlation analysis revealed high and significant correlations (r > 0.85, p < 0.05) between all concentration data (PM2.5-Al; PM2.5-Pb, and Al-Pb) indicating a high effect of particulate matter on airborne Al and Pb content. It may cause an increase in human exposure to harmful pollutants through inhalation and could lead to harmful health problems. Stronger mases and measures are proposed to improve air quality in Tirana city.

Due to rapid development of the internet technology and new scientific advances, the number of applications that model the data as graphs increases, because graphs have highly expressive power to model a complicated structure. Graph mining is a well-explored area of research which is gaining popularity in the data mining community. A graph is a general model to represent data and has been used in many domains such as cheminformatics, web information management system, computer Network and bioinformatics are some to name. In graph mining the frequent subgraph discovery is a challenging task. Frequent subgraph mining is concerned with discovery of those subgraphs from graph dataset which have frequent or multiple instances within the given graph dataset. In the literature a large number of frequent subgraph mining algorithms have been proposed; these included FSG, AGM, gSpan, CloseGraph, SPIN, Gaston, Mofa. The objective of this research work is to perform quantitative comparison of the above listed techniques. The performances of these techniques have been evaluated through a number of experiments based on three different graph datasets. We have concluded this study with some findings and recommendations.

ABSTRACT\nThe objective of this research is to study the impact of Intellectual Capital (IC) and its components on profit efficiency as a comprehensive criterion of financial performance. This research utilizes Pulic model in order to measure the IC of 23 companies in automobile and parts industry of Tehran Stock Exchange for the period of 2006-2009. It also uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique and truncated regression in order to calculate profit efficiency and examine its relationship with IC respectively. The results indicated that human capital efficiency (HCE), capital employed efficiency (CEE), and value added intellectual capital (VAIC) affect significantly and positively performance (profit efficiency) but structural capital efficiency (SCE) is not associated significantly with performance. Among IC components, the human capital has the most impact on performance. Therefore, it can be asserted that, in automobile and parts industry, IC is capable of having effective role in financial decisions. \nKeywords: intellectual capital, data envelopment analysis, profit efficiency and Tehran Stock Exchange.

This paper presents a novel approach for test generation and test scheduling for multi-clock domain SoCs. A concurrent hybrid BIST architecture is proposed for testing cores. Furthermore, a heuristic for selecting cores to be tested concurrently and order of applying test patterns is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed heuristics give us an optimized method for multi clock domain SoC testing in comparison with the previous works.

This paper presents a novel approach for test generation and test scheduling for multi-clock domain SoCs. A concurrent hybrid BIST architecture is proposed for testing cores. Furthermore, a heuristic for selecting cores to be tested concurrently and order of applying test patterns is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed heuristics give us an optimized method for multi clock domain SoC testing in comparison with the previous works.

In this paper, Chaos and its control is studied in fractional-order Lu system. Backstepping method is proposed to synchronize two identical fractional-order Lu systems. The simulation results show that this method can effectively synchronize two identical chaotic systems.

ABSTRACT:\n The purpose of this study is to investigate the protective effect of taurine against photochemical damage in rabbit retina. Twenty seven rabbits were divided into three groups control group (A), exposed to light without (B) and with taurine (C). Groups B and C were divided into four subgroups according to the time of exposure to white light (3, 6, 12 and 24 hr). Group C treated with taurine (4 g taurine /100 g diet) for 2 weeks before exposure to white light (2500± 100 lux). Retinal function was assessed by electroretinogram (ERG). The comet assay also was used to examine qualitative and quantitative aspects of DNA. Statistically significant reduction in a- and b - waves was apparent (p < 0.05) in group (B) that exposed to light to reach maximum reduction after 24 hr of exposure, the percentage difference was 81 % and 83 % for a-and b- waves respectively. The reduction of a-and b- wave amplitude after light exposure was attenuate by taurine intake. Also the extent of DNA damage increased proportionately with increasing time of exposure to white light that appear in elevated mean percentage tail DNA and tail moment reached to 6.16±0.4% and 14.2% respectively at 24 hr of exposure to white light. Taurine effect was appeared clearly by decrease this percentage to be 3.3±0.2% and 5.2% for the same group. Our results underscore the importance of taurine that played neuroprotective role in retina after exposed to white light.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of overload intensity on stress distribution in implant-bone interface. At the end of the bone remodeling process, frequently funnel-like collapses of the cortical bone (crestal bone losses) are clinically registered around the neck of dental implants. It is generally suspected that the overloading of the bone during the mastication is responsible for this phenomenon. From the results of this numerical simulation, we conclude that overloading might indeed be a major cause for these bone losses.

This study has been implemented with the aim of explaining the necessity and describing effective factors on Entrepreneurship education through poll from the graduates participating in Entrepreneurship education courses at Ilam department of labor and social affairs. This study is an applied(practical) and descriptive research. The main tools for data collecting were the questionnaire provided by the researcher, which its durability was calculated by Cronbach\'s Alpha coefficient at 86%. In order to data analyzing, Spearman\'s correlation coefficient was applied and for prioritizing the significance level of effective factors on Entrepreneurship education, Friedman\'s test was used. The analysis results indicate that according to degree of importance, effective factors on Entrepreneurship education include: government plans, personal factors, organizational factors, cultural factors, social factors, economic factors, and judicial factors.

According to environmental concerns and financial problems, natural fibers have been become interesting and fascinating nowadays to use as an industrial material like as structural material for rehabilitating of structures. Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch Fiber (OPF) is a natural fiber which is found in tropical area a lot. Scientists have used OPF fiber with many types of resins such as Epoxy, Polypropylene, Polyester, Phenol Formaldehyde and etc. Therefore, this paper focused on the properties of OPF fiber and gathered mechanical properties of OPF composites (OPF as reinforcement of polymer) reported by other researchers in terms of tensile and flexural properties. In addition, the results of hybrid composites of OPF were also discussed in this paper. Meanwhile, the results of composites were compared to pure resin properties and also the stress-strain diagram and internal strain energy of composites were considered. Besides, the effects of adding OPF to other composites to make a new hybrid composite were indicated. Finally, it is clear that the use of Oil palm fiber composites for structural elements for bearing loads are not recommended but the using of OPF composites for secondary structural elements maybe recommended due to future researches.

In this paper we calculate the band gap of ZnS nano particle and show that it increases with decreasing its size. The simplest way for discussing this phenomenon and finding the band gap for different sizes is effective mass approximation. We show, this method isn\'t accurate for particles smaller than 2.5 nm. This is due to the fact that the effective mass of particles at this size is dependent of size. To calculate the band gap of small size ZnS, the density functional theory was used. This theory has also used to determine the effective mass for various particle sizes. Our calculation indicates the appearance of blue shift by decreasing the size of particle.

The elastic, optical and effective mass properties of CrSb in Zinc Blende (ZB) phase were investigated. The calculations were carried out using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave plus local orbital according to the Density Functional Theory (DFT). The results of elastic calculations by GGA and LDA approximations indicate that ZB CrSb is a ductile material and its Debye temperature is rather low. Band structure and DOS calculations introduce the ZB CrSb as a half-metal with spin polarization of 100%. In metal state 16th and 17th bands cut off the Fermi level. Calculations study the effective mass, Fermi velocity and Fermi surface at 16th and 17th Bands. In continue, optical quantities such as dielectric function, energy loss function and optical conductivity have been investigated.

The method of periodic partial updates is evaluated. Cost, performance, portability and physical size considerations compel serious resource limitations on adaptive signal processing systems. Partial-Selective coefficient updates techniques can be used to reduce the resource utilization and hardware complexity in practical applications at the probable expense of higher steady-state MSE error and lower convergence speed. Periodic partial update is one of partial-selective coefficient update techniques by which, instead of updating the whole coefficients, a subset of the coefficients is updated at each iteration. The performance, convergence speed and MSE error of periodic partial updates is evaluated in the presence of white and colored Gaussian input. It is concluded that in some practical applications, this method could be used instead of full-update algorithm with some penalties in quality.

The studies on the integrating out of class materials with class materials mostly show the crucial role of this task for teachers and its benefits for students. This study investigated the effect of the integrating current issues of interest into class materials on students reading comprehension. The following question was proposed. Is relating current issues of interest to class materials useful on students achievement in reading comprehension? The study is performed at Islamic Azad University in Abhar with 60 participants--male and female-- who were majoring in ‘mechanical,’ ‘electrical’ and ‘industrial’ engineering. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups, each with 30 students. One of the groups was used as the experimental group (G1) and the other one as the control group (G2). The subjects were taught for two weeks and finally took an achievement test. After analyzing the results of the test, and by comparing the means of the scores using t-test, it was approved that integrating current out-of-class issues with class materials improves reading comprehension of students in English class at university.

In this study, two-dimensional model was developed for a single proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The model was used for a complete cell which includes the cathode gas diffusion layer (GDL), anode gas diffusion layer and membrane. This model Consists of mass transfer in the GDLs, electrochemistry reaction in catalyst layers, charge transfer and energy transport in all parts of the fuel cell. The spherical agglomerate approach was used to describe cathode catalyst layer. The governing equations were solved by finite element method. The mathematical model can predict the PEM fuel cell behavior in different conditions and configurations which is the advantage of this model. The Results show performance of fuel cell in interdigitated and parallel flow fields, in which best conditions and configurations were determined. In this work, better performance of fuel cell with interdigitated flow field was observed in comparison with in parallel flow field.