We evaluate the putative introduction of the yellowfin shiner, Notropis lutipinnis, in the Little Tennessee river basin. This species has only been noted in the Little Tennessee in the past several decades and appears to be expanding its range, even though there have been many potential historical pathways for dispersal from native drainages in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. We us...

Quantifying spatial genetic structure can reveal the relative influences of contemporary and historic factors underlying localized and regional patterns of genetic diversity and gene flow - important considerations for the development of effective conservation efforts. Using 10 polymorphic microsatellite loci, we characterize genetic variation among populations across the range of the Eastern S...

Owing to the lack of information about the distribution patterns of many taxonomic groups, biodiversity conservation strategies commonly rely on a surrogate taxa approach for identifying areas of maximum conservation potential. Macroinvertebrates or fish are the most likely candidates for such a role in many freshwater systems. The usefulness of the surrogate taxa depends largely on community c...

We investigated the role of culture in processing hierarchical syntactic structures in music. We examined whether violation of non-local dependencies manifest in event related potentials (ERP) for Western and Iranian excerpts by recording EEG while participants passively listened to sequences of modified/original excerpts. We also investigated oscillatory and synchronization properties of brain...

BACKGROUND The WHOQOL-BREF is one of the best-known instruments that have been developed for cross-cultural comparisons of quality of life and currently it is available in more than 40 languages. Current study was done to provide: (1) the psychometrics properties of the Iranian version of WHOQOL-BREF and (2) the norm scores for satisfaction with life overall and satisfaction with specific Life ...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to survey the Iranian Parasitology researchers' performance, and analyse and visualize the scientific outputs of their co-authorship network. METHODS This study was conducted using scientometric method and social network analysis (SNA). The data extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) databases in July 10th 2014. Totally, 1048 documents of all types in res...

BACKGROUND Hand Eczema (HE) is a dermatological disorder with frequent relapses and multiple causes such as atopic, allergic and irritant contact dermatitis. The management is complex because of the wide range of different pathogenesis. Efficacy of some of available treatments is not well established and it can affect patients' quality of life significantly. METHODS Reports on HE such as diag...

Many species of tea (Camellia sinensis) and cowslip (Echium amoenum) are used in Iranian traditional medicine. The aim of this study was to conduct the survey on the ability of Iranian black tea and cowslip extracts on secretion of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) by non-infected and infected mouse macrophages. A macrophage infection model with Legionella pneumophila and enzyme linked im...

Hemodialysis (HD) patients are recognized as one of the high-risk groups for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The prevalence of HCV infection varies widely between 5.5% and 24% among different Iranian populations. Preventive programs for reducing HCV infection prevalence in these patients require accurate information. In the present study, we estimated HCV infection prevalence in Iranian HD p...

BACKGROUND Inequality in households' payments on food and health expenditures presents the accessibility and utilization patterns between them. This study investigated the Iranian rural and urban households' inequality in payments on food and Out-of-Pocket health expenditures from 1998 to 2012. METHODS This descriptive study was conducted through the analysis of Iranian Statistics Centre data...