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The purpose of the recent project is giving empirical research of the dynamic properties along with measuring the damping ratio for different metal foam sandwich specimens, and mathematical modeling of these particular structures. Besides, the various specimens were modeled by employing ANSYS for the FEM analysis. Concerning to have a reliable result for two-phase sample the random noise outcomes have been applied and associated with the FE model. The final results depict an appropriate evaluation of the vibrational damping for two-phase specimens.

Background: The evolution of fertility treatment methods such as laparoscopic surgery and assisted reproductive technology (ART) leads to an increased chance for conception in women with endometriosis. However, it is still not clear which treatment is more likely to result in endometriosis recurrence. Objectives: The current study aimed at assessing the recurrence rate of endometriosis and its main determinants following fertility treatment with surgery or ART. Methods: The current historical cohort study was conducted on 51 consecutive women with endometriosis undergoing fertilization procedures, including laparoscopic surgery (n = 42) and ART (n = 9) in Tehran from 2006 to 2016. All patients with complete hospital records were enrolled in the study. The patients in the two groups were followed up for five years for endometriosis recurrence. Results: Within the follow-up time, the rate of endometriosis recurrence in patients of the surgery and ART groups was 28.6% and 44.4%, respectively, indicating no significant difference between the groups (P = 0.436). In this regard, the 1-, 2-, and 3-year recurrence-free survival rate in the ART group was 87.5%, 50.0%, and 50.0%, and in the surgery group was 96.9%, 90.6%, and 70.5%, respectively. Using the Cox proportional hazard modeling adjusted for baseline variables, the method of fertilization (ART or surgery) could not affect the rate of long-term recurrence of endometriosis (odds ratio = 1.428, 95% confidence interval: 0.177 - 9.900, P = 0.784). Conclusions: The method of fertilization treatment-e g, surgery, and ART- may not affect the rate of endometriosis recurrence in women with subfertility caused by endometriosis.

The cracks naturally exist in concrete and make it weak to the deleterious environment, ending with structure degradation. According to this fact, concrete requires to be improved and remediated. Self-healing methods are considered as a helpful way to mitigate the propagation and development of the cracks in the concrete. Bio-mineralization methods can heal the concrete by using bacteria suchlike Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus pasteurii, which can seal the cracks by CaCO3 precipitation. The literature represents the MICP method of using bacteria in concrete, which can improve the concrete durability by increasing the compressive strength. Furthermore, the different kinds of bacteria used in the concrete structure and the methods of employing as a self-healing agent review. Moreover, it illustrates B. Pasteurii and B. Sphaericus has more efficient results between other bacteria due to increasing the compressive strength and lifespan of the concrete.

Stem cells are promising therapeutics for cardiovascular diseases, and i.v. injection is the most desirable route of administration clinically. Subsequent homing of exogenous stem cells to pathological loci is frequently required for therapeutic efficacy and is mediated by chemoattractants (cell adhesion molecules, cytokines, and growth factors). Homing processes are inefficient and depend on short-lived pathological inflammation that limits the window of opportunity for cell injections. Noninvasive pulsed focused ultrasound (pFUS), which emphasizes mechanical ultrasound–tissue interactions, can be precisely targeted in the body and is a promising approach to target and maximize stem cell delivery by stimulating chemoattractant expression in pFUS-treated tissue prior to cell infusions. We demonstrate that pFUS is nondestructive to murine skeletal muscle tissue (no necrosis, hemorrhage, or muscle stem cell activation) and initiates a largely M2-type macrophage response. We also demonstrate that local upregulation of chemoattractants in pFUS-treated skeletal muscle leads to enhance homing, permeability, and retention of human mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and human endothelial precursor cells (EPC). Furthermore, the magnitude of MSC or EPC homing was increased when pFUS treatments and cell infusions were repeated daily. This study demonstrates that pFUS defines transient “molecular zip codes” of elevated chemoattractants in targeted muscle tissue, which effectively provides spatiotemporal control and tunability of the homing process for multiple stem cell types. pFUS is a clinically translatable modality that may ultimately improve homing efficiency and flexibility of cell therapies for cardiovascular diseases.

Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) have shown significant promise in the treatment of disease, but their therapeutic efficacy is often limited by inefficient homing of systemically administered cells, which results in low number of cells accumulating at sites of pathology. BMSC home to areas of inflammation where local expression of integrins and chemokine gradients is present. We demonstrated that nondestructive pulsed focused ultrasound (pFUS) exposures that emphasize the mechanical effects of ultrasound-tissue interactions induced local and transient elevations of chemoattractants (i.e., cytokines, integrins, and growth factors) in the murine kidney. pFUS-induced upregulation of cytokines occurred through approximately 1 day post-treatment and returned to contralateral kidney levels by day 3. This window of significant increases in cytokine expression was accompanied by local increases of other trophic factors and integrins that have been shown to promote BMSC homing. When BMSCs were intravenously administered following pFUS treatment to a single kidney, enhanced homing, permeability, and retention of BMSC was observed in the treated kidney versus the contralateral kidney. Histological analysis revealed up to eight times more BMSC in the peritubular regions of the treated kidneys on days 1 and 3 post-treatment. Furthermore, cytokine levels in pFUS-treated kidneys following BMSC administration were found to be similar to controls, suggesting modulation of cytokine levels by BMSC. pFUS could potentially improve cell-based therapies as a noninvasive modality to target homing by establishing local chemoattractant gradients and increasing expression of integrins to enhance tropism of cells toward treated tissues. Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.

Animal studies have shown that mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) infusions improve acute kidney injury (AKI) outcomes when administered early after ischemic/reperfusion injury or within 24 hours after cisplatin administration. These findings have spurred several human clinical trials to prevent AKI. However, no specific therapy effectively treats clinically obvious AKI or rescues renal function once advanced injury is established. We investigated if noninvasive image-guided pulsed focused ultrasound (pFUS) could alter the kidney microenvironment to enhance homing of subsequently infused MSC. To examine the efficacy of pFUS-enhanced cell homing in disease, we targeted pFUS to kidneys to enhance MSC homing after cisplatin-induced AKI. We found that pFUS enhanced MSC homing at 1 day post-cisplatin, prior to renal functional deficits, and that enhanced homing improved outcomes of renal function, tubular cell death, and regeneration at 5 days post-cisplatin compared to MSC alone. We then investigated whether pFUS+MSC therapy could rescue established AKI. MSC alone at 3 days post-cisplatin, after renal functional deficits were obvious, significantly improved 7-day survival of animals. Survival was further improved by pFUS and MSC. pFUS prior to MSC injections increased IL-10 production by MSC that homed to kidneys and generated an anti-inflammatory immune cell profile in treated kidneys. This study shows pFUS is a neoadjuvant approach to improve MSC homing to diseased organs. pFUS with MSC better prevents AKI than MSC alone and allows rescue therapy in established AKI, which currently has no meaningful therapeutic options. Stem Cells 2015;33:1241–1253

Purpose: To investigate whether diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures of anisotropy in breast tumors are different from normal breast tissue and can improve the discrimination between benign and malignant lesions. Materials and Methods: The study included 81 women with 105 breast lesions (76 malignant, 29 benign). DTI was performed during breast MRI examinations, and fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values were measured for breast lesions and normal tissue in each subject. FA and ADC were compared between cancers, benign lesions, and normal tissue by univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: The FA of carcinomas (mean ± SD: 0.24 ± 0.07) was significantly lower than normal breast tissue in the same subjects (0.29 ± 0.07; P < 0.0001). Multiple logistic regression showed that FA and ADC were each independent discriminators of malignancy (P < 0.0001), and that FA improved discrimination between cancer and normal tissue over ADC alone. However, there was no difference in FA between malignant and benign lesions (P = 0.98). Conclusion: Diffusion anisotropy is significantly lower in breast cancers than normal tissue, which may reflect alterations in tissue organization. Our preliminary results suggest that FA adds incremental value over ADC alone for discriminating malignant from normal tissue but does not help with distinguishing benign from malignant lesions. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2010; 31: 339–347. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The objective of this study was to evaluate diffusion anisotropy of the breast parenchyma and assess the range and repeatability of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) parameters in normal breast tissue.The study was approved by our institutional review board and included 12 healthy females (median age, 36 years). Diffusion tensor imaging was performed at 1.5 T using a diffusion-weighted echo planar imaging sequence. Diffusion tensor imaging parameters including tensor eigenvalues (lambda(1), lambda(2), lambda(3)), fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) were measured for anterior, central and posterior breast regions.Mean normal breast DTI measures were lambda(1)=2.51 x 10(-3) mm(2)/s, lambda(2)=1.89 x 10(-3) mm(2)/s, lambda(3)=1.39 x 10(-3) mm(2)/s, ADC=1.95+/-0.24 x 10(-3) mm(2)/s and FA=0.29+/-0.05 for b=600 s/mm(2). Significant regional differences were observed for both FA and ADC (P.05), with higher ADC in the central breast and higher FA in the posterior breast. Comparison of DTI values calculated using b=0, 600 s/mm(2) vs. b=0, 1000 s/mm(2), showed significant differences in ADC (P.001), but not FA. Repeatability assessment produced within-subject coefficient of variations of 4.5% for ADC and 11.4% for FA measures.This study demonstrates anisotropy of water diffusion in normal breast tissue and establishes a normative range of breast FA values. Attention to the influence of breast region and b value on breast DTI measurements may be important for clinical interpretation and standardization of techniques.

In multi-agent negotiation the difficulty of the problem depends on how many issues are under negotiation and how complex agents' utility functions are. In this paper we propose a framework for evaluating different techniques for solving negotiation problems and used it to show how hard a negotiation problem can become. We used mediated single text negotiation protocol with genetic algorithms mediator and hill climber agents. Negotiations were conducted over deals with binary issues presented as binary strings. Utility functions with binary and higher levels of dependency between issues were used. Our results show that size of problem does not affect performance, until higher levels of dependency between issues are presented in utility functions. Genetic algorithm method was able to solve the problem with relatively good performance in all levels of dependency that we tested.

Multi-objective optimization algorithms are designed to find Pareto frontier set. This set plays a major role in multi-agent systems' negotiations. Different applications might be interested in different parts of Pareto frontier. In this paper we present a framework to show how a multi-objective optimization algorithm is evaluated against others. We used eleven algorithms implemented in MOMHLib++ library to test our framework on a two agent negotiation of binary issues and binary dependency. But our framework is easily expandable to higher number of objectives and all types of negotiations. Our analysis shows that a single scalarization value of Pareto frontier is not enough to compare multi-objective optimization algorithms, as it is done in most cases.

Real-time three-dimensional ultrasound imaging (4D US) was utilized to monitor the treatment site during high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment. To obtain real-time monitoring during HIFU sonication, a 4D US imaging system and HIFU were synchronized and interference on the US image adjusted so that the region of interest was visible during treatment. The system was tested using tissue mimicking phantom gels and chicken breast tissue. The 4D US showed hyperechoic spots at the focal region of the HIFU transducer which then slowly faded after HIFU treatment. The hyperechoic regions were used as an indication of coagulative necrosis which occurs at temperatures higher than 60 degrees C. Different intensities of HIFU were applied to observe the difference in lesion formation and to determine the threshold intensity that produced hyperechoic regions due to the thermal and mechanical effects of focused ultrasound waves. The position, orientation, and shape of various lesions were examined in the three dimensional ultrasound images, and the volume of the lesions was measured. These volumes were compared to the volume measurements obtained from dissection of the tissue and phantom gels.

The application of aluminum foam materials is increasing rapidly due to the high demand during the last decades. This research presents an overview of the characteristics and architectural applications of aluminum foam materials. Moreover, it represents the most relevant properties, in particular, physical and mechanical aspects and figures out the prospects and growth rate of these materials in architectures by considering the economic benefits. Besides, based on these specific characterizations, the most valuable applications along with advantageous in architectural works are discussed.