Introduction: The discussion of this topic hinges necessarily on the question “What is self-sufficiency?” It is our experience that the use of this term many times is used to satisfy political rather than clinical needs.According to the Economics Dictionary Self-sufficiency means: “the ability of a household or a country to exist on products produced by itself without the need to purchase supplies from elsewhere”[1] The question one might ask is whether it is advisable to create a state of national self-sufficiency for plasma protein therapies.

Animal husbandry, one of the main components of the agricultural sector, is one of the basic sources of human nutrition and plays a significant role in the economic development of the country. Regarding increasing needs of the country for the sufficient food which stems from the population growth, and in view of the low production capacities, the need for ore utilization of food resources has become more acute especially in the case of livestock products.In addition to the important share of the red meat in the total value of imports as well as employment activities, it should he noted that every year huge amount of foreign exchange resources is allocated for the import of this product from abroad. Thus study the ways and means of achieving self- sufficiency in production of this product is of great significance. The following are some of the results of this study: 1. Of the total domestic livestock, 81 percent is at the disposal of the rural dwellers, the number of whom amount to 2.4 million producers. 2. In 1370 the share of value added of the animal husbandry sub - sector in the value added of the agricultural sector was 43.4 percent. 3. Iran was in a favourable condition as regards the number of livestock. 4. Total areas of the country's pastures and range lands which was 90 million hectares during the last three decades has been depleted and is 88 million hectares at the present. 5. Production of animal fodder from the domestic pastures and range lands has been decreased from 4 million T.D.N to 3.5 million T.D.N during the last three decades. 6. Existing pastures can satisfy only 12.8 percent of the animal fodder requirement of the country. 7. Number of domestic livestock is not in commensurate with the areas of pastures and range lands in different provinces. 8. Domestic livestock suffer from fodder deficiency, thus they are not able to gain proper weight during a specified period of time. 

Background: The nervous, endocrine, and immune systems contribute to the response and dynamic adaption to various stresses. Activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis has been demonstrated in various active critical illnesses. Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a disease with age and gender disparities. Materials and Methods: In this study, a total of 125 consecutive inpatients with COVID-19 admitted to Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex from February 12, 2020, to April 4, 2020, were enrolled. The severity of patients was classified into three subgroups based on the types of oxygen therapies. Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate (DHEA-S) and cortisol levels were measured in serum of inpatients with Siemens kit. Results: While the increase in cortisol level was not significant in COVID-19 patients, the DHEA-S level and DHEA-S/cortisol ratio significantly decreased in the patients with the increase in severity of the disease. Conclusion: We proposed that the supplementation of DHEA, the precursor of both androgens and steroids, may ameliorate adverse outcomes of COVID-19 disease and improve COVID-19 patients’ ability to survive.

Seismic design philosophy is based on this principal that destructive earthquakes have a low probability of occurrence, and it is not economical to design structures to perform elastically during such rare events. Therefore structures are designed and constructed with much less strength than their elastic demand imposed by destructive earthquakes. This imposes nonlinear deformations and consequently damages to structures. However, preventing collapse necessitates that structures must be able to undergo such a large deformations without any significant reduction in strength and stiffness. This characteristic is referred as a ductility capacity of structures. Since ductility capacity, in design procedure proposed by seismic codes, is implicitly addressed by satisfying some prescriptive requirements, the fundamental question is: do these provisions ensure adequate ductility capacity to avoid collapse during a destructive earthquake? Answer to this question makes the cornerstone of our study. To this end, the present study examines three intermediate steel moment frames of 4, 5, and 7 stories designed according to Iran's national building regulations. Next, the lateral yield strength and ductility capacity of the designed buildings are estimated by performing a nonlinear static analysis. By applying a set of destructive earthquakes and developing corresponding acceleration response spectrum, the maximum elastic strength demand is estimated. The force-reduction factor defined as a ratio of the maximum elastic strength demand to the actual lateral yield strength of the structures is then computed for each of the selected earthquakes. According to the computed force-reduction factors, ductility demands imposed by each of the selected destructive. . .