BACKGROUNDS:\nTo investigate renal papillae attenuation value differences between control and stone former (SF) patients and to evaluate the impact of Hounsfield Unit (HU) measurements on the predictivity of stone development.\n\nMETHODS:\nWe compared papillae attenuation values in SF groups and a healthy stone-free control group. 88 primary and 98 recurrent SF patients whose metabolic evaluation had been carried out and 94 age-matched control patients were included to the study. Papillae tip attenuation was measured using non-enhanced computed tomography (CT) scans in HU for an area with a mean size of 0.2 cm2. Inclusion criteria to the study was determined as known stone composition (CaOx), unilaterality and radiological examination underwent in our own center.\n\nRESULTS:\n186 patients who met the criteria and 94 age-matched control patients were mainly divided into three groups such as primary SF (Group 1), recurrent SF group (Group 2) and control group (Group 3). Metabolic laboratuary variables which were compared between primary and recurrent SF did not show any significant difference, except urinary volume and phosphorus. Median (IQR) value of papilla HU density for control group is 26.23, for primary SF group is 26.50 and for recurrent SF group is 29. A significant difference in papilla HU levels for each group was found (p=0.008) (Table 2). \n\nCONCLUSIONS:\nThis study implies that HU values reflect the severity of the stone disease, although they could not discriminate controls from primary stone formers whose stone forming risk is low compared to recurrent stone formers.

OBJECTIVE:\nWe aimed to compare the protective effects of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and vitamin E on ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury and to validate these effects with positron emission tomography. (PET).\nMATERIALS AND METHODS:\n56 male rats were randomly divided into 7 groups with 8 rats in each group. Group 1 was sham; group 2, I/R was induced; group 3, vitamin E (100 mg / kg) was administered in addition to I/R; In group 4, vitamin E was administered (no I/R); group 5, CoQ10 (10 mg / kg) was administered in addition to I/R; group 6, CoQ10 was administered (no I/R); group 7, vitamin E and CoQ10 were administered along with I/R.\nRESULTS\nThe increase in the grade score was statistically significant between Group 1 and Groups 2, 3, 5, 7 (p <0.05). Also statistically significant differences between Group 2 and Groups 4,6, 7; Group 3 and Group 4, 6; Group 4 and Group 5,7; Group 5 and 6 and between Group 6 and 7 (p < 0.05).\nThe decrease in the diameter of the seminiferous tubules (STD) was statistically significant when Group 1 was compared with Groups 2,3,5 and 7(p <0.05). \nBiochemical examination in terms of catalaz (CAT), statistically significant differences were found between Group 1 and Groups 2,3,4,5; Group 2 and Groups 3,4,5,6; Group 3 and Group 4,5,6; Group 4 and 7 and between Group 5 and 7 (p <0.05). \nCONCLUSION\nAlthough the antioxidants showed positive and consistent effects on histopathological and biochemical examinations, the SUV max. results did not significantly reflect these protective activities.

Objective: Our study aimed to contribute, to the limited number of studies comparing tamsulosin and silodosin in the treatment of distal ureteral Stones, with a higher patient population. \nMaterial and Methods: Between January 2010 and January 2016, patients with renal colic at the urology emergency clinic who were diagnosed with ureteral stones and followed up with conservative treatment were retrospectively screened. According to the inclusion-exclusion criteria patients were divided into three groups. Group 1: 150 patients followed with watchfull waiting; Group 2: 156 patients who received 0.4 mg of tamsulosin daily; Group 3: 159 patients who received 8mg of silodosin daily. The side effects of drugs used in the treatment, the duration of stone reduction and expulsion rates were evaluated and compared separately. \nResults: A total of 465 patients were included to the study. No statistically significant difference was found in terms of age, gender and stone size among the groups. Patient characteristics and results are shown in Table 1. Differences of stone expulsion rate between the groups at the first week werefound non-significant using the Chi-square test (p = 0.155). The stone expulsion rates after two weeks were found significantly different between Group 1 vs. Group 2 and Group 1 vs. Group 3. Stone expulsion rate after three weeks were found significantly different between Group 1 vs. Group 2 and Group 1 vs. Group 3. \nConclusion: According to our results, no statistically significant superiority between tamsulosin and silodosin was shown in the treatment of distal ureteral stones in the Turkish population.

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L., AABBDD) is an allohexaploid (AABBDD, 2n=6x=42) originated from hybridization about 8000 years BC between a cultivated tetraploid wheat Triticum turgidum L. (AABB, 2n=4x=28) and the wild goat grass Aegilops tauschii (DD, 2n=2x=14). In order to synthesize bread wheat, crosses were carried out between 7 genotypes of durum wheat and 13 ecotypes of Aegilops tauschii of various origin. The production of synthetic hybrids was made with and without the implementation of embryo rescue technique. Four genotypes of durum wheat, which carry genes for the production of unreduced gametes, yielded partially fertile hybrids after cross with ecotypes of Aegilops tauschii. The percentage of germination of the grains harvested on these hybrids varied between 22.2% and 65.2%. Growth abnormalities were observed on hybrid plants. The barriers of incompatibility between the two species were manifested by leaf chlorosis and lethal necrosis of hybrid plants.

Abstract: An Epilepsy Seizure-detection system that can be utilized long-term and in-home situations for early interference and prevention of seizure associated with side effects became a need. In this paper, feature selection and classifier parameters estimation approach based on LOA are proposed as a framework for epilepsy detection on EEG signals. The proposed approach attempts to find the best integration of all the available features that offers typical epilepsy detection and a high classification rate. In this paper, the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) was utilized to decompose EEG signals into five sub-band components. Nonlinear parameters were extracted and employed as the features to train the support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Lion Optimization Algorithm (LOA) was applied for selecting the effective feature subset and optimizing the SVM parameters. The overall experimental results shows an improvement with 96.78% for accuracy, 92.49% for sensitivity, 98.45% for specificity, 91.31% for F-Measure and 92.28% for precision, using the LOA-SVM classifier compare with SVM that have obtained the following results; 80.05% for accuracy, 72.47% for sensitivity, 95.66% for specificity, 73.37% for F-Measure and 83.72% for precision. These findings are presented as an example of a method for training, testing and validating a seizure prediction technique on data from individual patients.

Our study analyzes certain species and varieties of fruit trees under climate change and applied crop technology. The aim is to extend crop varieties that are productive, resistant to diseases and pests, in order to obtain superior productions. The researches were carried out on an orchard in the N-W Romania (surface of 8.59 ha) cultivated in intensive system with apple, plum, and almond species. For the years 2009 and 2016 it was compared the behavior of species and varieties on different vegetation phases, as well as the tolerance of the trees to the main diseases and pests, respectively the changes that occured at the recommended pesticide treatment. We have found that climate changes influences the annual biological cycle of the trees, with direct repercussions on the quality and quantity of production. From the producer\'s point of view, it is imperative to ensure good management of the risks related to climate changes, the rational application of chemical fertilizers, and the use of physico-mechanical and agro-technical methods in the fruit trees growing. This perspective allows an ecological remodeling of current progress in orchard development, including all aspects of environmental protection and impacts on population health.

The study of some bio-ecological parameters of Virachola livia (Klug) and the evaluation of her damages on pomegranate (Punica granatum) were the aim of this work in the area of Djanet (South-eastern of Algeria). The rate of infestation is 78.7% according the penetration holes, however depending on the number of eggs, it was 69.3 %. The number of penetration holes and eggs by fruit vary between 1 to 24 (7.8 ± 5.7) holes/fruit and 1 to 15 (4.2 ± 3) eggs/fruit respectively. The pupal stage lasts from 5 to 8 days (6.9 ± 1.2 days). The females can live between 8 and 16 days (10.9 ± 2.5 days), whereas the longevity of males varies between 4 and 11 days (8.8 ± 2.9 days). Virgin females can lay 95 eggs/female (38.4 ± 25.2).