Different Tissues Of Human Body Research Articles

Performance evaluation of spatial fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm on GPU for image segmentation.

Image processing by segmentation technique is an important phase in medical imaging such as MRI. Its objective is to analyze the different tissues in human body. In research area, Fuzzy set is one of the most successful techniques that guarantees a robust classification. Spatial FCM (SFCM); one of the fuzzy c-means variants; considers spatial information to deal with the noisy images. To reduce this iterative algorithm’s execution time, a hard SIMD architecture has been planted named the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). In this work, a great contribution has been done to diagnose, confront and implement three different parallel implementations on GPU. A parallel implementations’ extensive study of SFCM entitled PSFCM using 3 × 3 window is presented, and the experiments illustrate a significant decrease in terms of running time of this algorithm known by its high complexity. The experimental results indicate that the parallel version’s execution time is about 9.46 times faster than the sequential implementation on image segmentation. This gain in terms of speed-up is achieved on the Nvidia GeForce GT 740 m GPU.

Organochlorine pesticides in follicular fluid of women undergoing assisted reproductive technologies from central China

Female infertility rates have increased by approximately 4% since the 1980s. There is evidence of adverse effects on female fertility in relation to exposure of chemical pollution in recent years. Follicular fluid samples were collected from 127 woman patients (aged 20–35) who underwent assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and had no records indicating occupational exposure to OCPs. Seventeen OCPs were analyzed in this study. The results showed that methoxychlor was dominant, accounted for 13.4% of total OCPs with a mean concentration of 167.9 ± 33.9 ng/g lipid weight (lw), followed by heptachlor-epoxide, hexachlorocyclohexanes, endrin and DDT. The concentrations of OCPs in the follicular fluid samples in the present study were moderate in comparison with those reported from developed or industrialized countries. All these pollutants can accumulate in different tissues of human body through diet, drinking water and respiration. No correlation between patient age and OCP concentrations was observed in this study.

Structure-Functional Insight into Transmembrane Helix Dimerization by Protein Engineering, Molecular Modeling and Heteronuclear NMR Spectroscopy

The interaction between transmembrane helices is of a great interest because it directly determines biological activity of membrane proteins. Either destroying or enhancing such interactions can result in many diseases related to dysfunction of different tissues in human body. One of the most common forms of membrane proteins is a dimer containing two membrane-spanning helices associating laterally to form a tight complex. Development of new types of drugs targeting membrane proteins requires precise structural information about this class of objects. Recent development of protein engineering, optical spectroscopy, molecular modeling and heteronuclear NMR techniques made it possible studies of the nature and mechanisms of important helix-helix interactions inside the membrane mimicking supramolecular complexes. Using a robust strategy we investigated recombinant transmembrane fragments from different families of bitopic membrane proteins including receptor tyrosine kinases, amyloid precursor and pro-apoptotic proteins, which play important roles in normal and pathological conditions of human organism by providing cell signaling, maintaining cellular homeostasis and controlling cell fate. We characterized thermodynamics of transmembrane helix association, diverse helix-helix packing interfaces and obtained detailed atomistic picture of the intra- and intermolecular (protein-protein, protein-lipid and protein-water) interactions, that along with the available biochemical data provided useful insights into the membrane protein functioning in norma and pathology.This work was supported by RFBR, the Program of RAS “MCB”, the Federal Target Programs “Scientific and Pedagogical Specialists of Innovation Russia (2009-2013)” and “Research and development in priority fields of Russian scientific and technological complex in 2007-2012”.

Study of the effect of iron overload on the function of endocrine glands in male thalassemia patients

Background:Iron overload is an important issue in the state of thalassemic patients due to the harmful effect of high concentration of iron deposited in different tissues in human body including endocrine glands. In the present work, an attempt is carried out to estimate the effect of iron overload in thalassemic patients on the function of endocrine glands through the estimation of their ability to secrete adequate amounts of certain hormones.Materials and Methods:Seventy eight male children with beta-thalassemia, in the age-group of 4–11 years, were enrolled for this research. These children were being treated with frequent transfusions and long-term iron chelation therapy. Thirty age and sex matched children without thalassemia constituted the control group. Ferritin and different hormones were estimated by ELISA technique.Results:The results showed a mild reduction in the function of endocrine glands through the decrease in the level of some hormones. These changes due mainly to the hypoxia and precipitation of iron in certain glands and overlapping with the synthesis or secretion of the hormones.Conclusion:There is a different hormonal disturbances in beta thalassemia patients. Reduction of total body iron store is an important goal of the treatment of thalassemia and measuring the hormones concentration is necessary for the follow up of the thalassemic patients especially during puberty.