A new species of tooth-carp, Aphanius arakensis sp. n., is described from the Namak Lake basin in Iran. The new species is distinguished by the congeners distributed in Iran by the following combination of characters: 10–12 anal fin rays, 28–32 lateral line scales, 10–13 caudal peduncle scales, 8–10 gill rakers, 12–19, commonly 15–16, clearly defined flank bars in males, a more prominent pigmentation along the flank added by relatively big blotches in the middle and posterior flank segments in females, a short but high antirostrum of the otolith that has a wide excisura, and a ventral rim with some small, drop-like processes, and 19 molecular apomorphies (17 transitions, two transversions) in the cytochrome b gene. It was suggested based on the phylogenetic analysis that the new species is sister to Aphanius sophiae from the Kor River and that Aphanius farsicus from the Maharlu Lake basin is sister to Aphanius arakensis plus Aphanius sophiae. A noticeable feature of the Aphanius diversity in Iran is the conservatism of the external morphology as well as morphometric and meristic characters, while distinctive differences are present in genetic characters, otolith morphology, and male color pattern. Transformation of the latter was probably driven by sexual selection.

Aphanius pluristriatus (Jenkins, 1910) (Cyprinodontidae) is a poorly known species from Fasa, located in the Mond Riverdrainage system, east of Shiraz, southern Iran. It has not been investigated since its first description, its validity has beenquestioned and a synonymy with A. sophiae (Heckel, 1849) has been suggested. In this study, we describe a new collectionof Aphanius specimens from the Zarjan spring system, which is probably the same spring system from where Jenkins(1910) collected the type specimens of A. pluristriatus. The morphological characters of our new series of specimens areconsistent with those of A. pluristriatus as originally described by Jenkins (1910). We emend the original description ofA. pluristriatus and add morphometric and meristic data. A comparison with the related taxa A. sophiae, A. farsicus (for-mer A. persicus) and A. isfahanensis reveals that A. pluristriatus can be separated from them by a smaller caudal peduncleindex, higher number of flank bars, lower number of gill rakers, and higher J scale index. Therefore A. pluristriatus rep-resents a valid species, which is at present restricted to the drainage system of the Mond River. We suggest that A. pluris-triatus originated from an ancient A. sophiae population in the Kor River Basin during the Quaternary. At that time, theKor River was draining to the Persian Gulf by the “Paleo-Kor River” and the Mond River. During the Late Quaternary orHolocene, the connection between the Kor River and the Persian Gulf has been blocked as a result of tectonic uplift (theKor River Basin is endorheic today). Thus, A. pluristriatus most likely is the relict of an ancient Aphanius population from the Quaternary “Paleo-Kor River” drainage system.

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Bioinformatic methods could effectively select potential epitopes of FZD7 protein and suggest that epitope designing by bioinformatic methods could contribute to the selection of key antigens for cancer immunotherapy. The selected scFvs, especially scFv-I, with high antiproliferative and apoptotic effects could be considered as effective agents for immunotherapy of cancers expressing FZD7 receptor including triple negative breast cancer.

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Background: Discovery of non-invasive methods for acute rejection in liver transplant patients would contribute to preservation of liver function in the graft. Recently, however, outcome prediction based on biostatistical models like artificial neural networks (ANNs) is increasingly becoming impressive in medicine. Objectives: The aim of this study was to obtain a predictive model based on ANN technique and to figure out the best time for early prediction of acute allograft rejection after transplantation in liver transplant recipients. Methods: Feed-forward, back-propagation neural network was developed to predict acute rejection in liver transplant recipients using clinical and biochemical data from 148 liver transplant recipients over days 3, 7, and 14 post-transplantation. Sensitivity and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis were done to reveal the importance of input variables and the performance of the neural network. Results:The results were compared with a logistic regression (LR) model using the same data. Our results showed that the data related to day 7 gave the best results in terms of ANN performance; and the most important factors in the predictive model were aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT). The ANN's accuracy was 90%, sensitivity was 87%, specificity was 90% in the testing set, and the performance of the ANN was better than that of the LR model. The ANN recognized correctly eight out of ten acute rejection patients and 34 out of 36 non-rejection ones in the testing set. Conclusions: This study suggests that ANN could be a valuable adjunct to conventional liver function tests for monitoring liver transplant recipients in the early postoperative period.

Introduction Patients with COVID-19 infection may present a wide range of symptoms that make its diagnosis challenging, especially in patients with underlying conditions. Presentation of case A 30-year-old postpartum woman presented to the Emergency Department (ED) of Arash Women Hospital with right flank pain. Physical examination revealed tachycardia and decreased sounds in the base of the lung. Chest CT scan demonstrated patchy consolidations in bases of the lungs in favor of COVID-19 infection. The patient underwent pharmacotherapy with Remdesivir, steroid, and interferon beta-1a for eight days and was discharged in a good condition. Discussion This study suggests that involvement of lungs' bases may be associated with gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal or flank pain in the COVID-19 patients. It makes the diagnosis difficult in a scenario such as the described patient in our study where there may be other differential diagnoses correlating with the patient’s clinical course. Conclusion COVID-19 should be in the differential diagnosis of any patient presenting to ED with relevant complaints. Correct and immediate diagnosis is critical for proper treatment and isolation of patients with COVID-19.