Estimation of life expectancy changes in Chaharmahal va Bakhtiyary Province, Iran, during 2005-2009

زمینه و هدف: امید زندگی یکی از اندازه های خلاصه، برای سلامت جمعیت است که مقادیر و روند تغییرات آن در طول زمان، نتیجه اصلی عملکرد نظام سلامت را نشان می دهد. این مطالعه با هدف برآورد تغییرات امید زندگی در طی سالهای 1384 تا 1388 در استان چهارمحال و بختیاری انجام گردید. روش بررسی: این مطالعه توصیفی اپیدمیولوژیک که به بررسی امید زندگی با استفاده از اطلاعات جمعیتی (آمار موجود در مرکز بهداشت استان) و مرگ و میر (بر اساس داده های کشوری ثبت مرگ) بر حسب سن و جنس در سال های 1384، 1385، 1386 و 1388 در استان چهارمحال و بختیاری می پردازد. اطلاعات با استفاده از فرمول های آماری و جمعیت شناسی و ساخت جدول عمر با توجه به دستورالعمل سازمان جهانی بهداشت به کمک نرم افزارهای Excel و PAS (Population Analysis Spreadsheets) تجزیه و تحلیل گردید. یافته ها: امید زندگی در کل جمعیت استان در سال های 1384، 1385 و 1386 به ترتیب 03/70 سال (مردان 7/68 و زنان 49/71 سال)، 24/72 سال (مردان 55/70 و زنان 08/74 سال) و 38/72 سال (مردان 97/70 و زنان 95/73 سال) بوده و همچنین در سال 1388 امید زندگی در مردان به 14/72 و در زنان به 38/75 و در کل جمعیت به 7/73 سال افزایش یافت. نتیجه گیری: امید زنـــدگی در استان چهارمحال و بختیاری در زنان بیشتر از مردان بوده و روند آن در طی سال های مورد بررسی رو به افزایش بوده است

Investigating the effective factors in retention of customer club members as an marketing activity (case study: Saderat’s bank customer club)

Today many companies are spending significant dollars to develop relationships with their customers. CRM, one-to-one marketing and increased communications are but a few of the strategies companies are using to secure and retain customers. Another approach is to gain customers and their loyalty by providing them value beyond the intrinsic value of their product or service through Customer Clubs, customer club is a marketing way that cause the absorb and retention more customer for their companies. In this article, we investigate and prioritizing the factors that effect the member of customer club to be more loyal, so, we had interview with 32 manager in saderat bank and ask them to prioritizing the important factor that derived from the model, that effect customer retention in customer club. We use Freidman test for prioritizing the factors

Count Data Modeling and Classification Using Statistical Hierarchical Approaches and Multi-topic Models

In this thesis, we propose and develop various statistical models to enhance and improve the efficiency of statistical modeling of count data in various applications. The major emphasis of the work is focused on developing hierarchical models. Various schemes of hierarchical structures are thus developed and analyzed in this work ranging from purely static hierarchies to dynamic models. The second part of the work concerns itself with the development of multitopic statistical models. It has been shown that these models provide more realistic modeling characteristics in comparison to mono topic models. We proceed with developing several multitopic models and we analyze their performance against benchmark models. We show that our proposed models in the majority of instances improve the modeling efficiency in comparison to some benchmark models, without drastically increasing the computational demands. In the last part of the work, we extend our proposed multitopic models to include online learning capability and again we show the relative superiority of our models in comparison to the benchmark models. Various real world applications such as object recognition, scene classification, text classification and action recognition, are used for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of our proposed models

Effects of Ion Irradiation on the Chemical and Microstructural Properties of Sol-gel Derived Thin Films

The effects of ion irradiation on the chemical and structural properties of ion irradiated thin films were studied. Ion irradiation was performed using 200 keV H+, 400 keV N2+, 1 MeV Cu+, 4 MeV Cu2+, and 9 MeV Cu3+ ions. The irradiation targets were sol-gel derived silica-based thin films based on TEOS/MTES ingredients coated on a (100) silicon substrate. The structure of the films was studied by a combination of Raman spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), elastic recoil detection (ERD), Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS), atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results indicate that irradiation with 200 keV H+ and 400 keV N2+ ions only causes hydrogen loss, whereas irradiation with 1 MeV Cu+, 4 MeV Cu2+, and 9 MeV Cu3+ ions leads to hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon loss. A systematic investigation of the structure of amorphous silica and free carbon clusters formed during ion irradiation was performed. The results indicate that there is a decrease in the Si-O-Si bond angle of the silica phase with increasing ion energy. In addition, evidence of a transformation from tetrahedrally coordinated silica to octahedrally coordinated silica is observed after ion irradiation with 9 MeV Cu3+ ions. It was also found that, compared to heat-treated films, the free carbon clusters formed during ion irradiation have more defective graphitic six-fold structure. After ion irradiation with 4 MeV Cu2+ and 9 MeV Cu3+ ions, the Raman spectroscopy results indicates a complete destruction of the graphitic six-fold structure. It is also confirmed that with increasing irradiation fluence and ion energy, there is an increase in carbon incorporation within the silica structure. The microstructure of the films is determined as an amorphous silica matrix with isolated clusters of amorphous carbon. The structural changes after ion irradiation, specifically, changes in the Si-O-Si bond angle and concentration of carbon-rich tetrahedra were then used to explain the enhancement in the elastic modulus and hardness of the ion irradiated films. The results indicate that the changes in the Si-O-Si bond angle was the dominant mechanism for the enhancement of the elastic modulus of the films after ion irradiation.Mechanical & Aerospace Engineerin

Dexmedetomidine-Fentanyl versus Midazolam-Fentanyl in Pain Management of Distal Radius Fractures Reduction; a Randomized Clinical Trial

Introduction: Currently, using various combinations of narcotic and analgesic drugs has received attention for induction of sedation and analgesia due to their synergy in controlling pain and anxiety. The present study was designed with the aim of comparing dexmedetomidine-fentanyl combination with midazolam-fentanyl in this regard. Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, patients diagnosed with distal radius fracture who had visited the emergency department (ED) were allocated to either the group receiving the combination of fentanyl-midazolam or the one receiving dexmedetomidine-fentanyl for procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) and were compared regarding analgesic characteristics, time to recovery and side effects. Results: 80 patients with the mean age of 42.08 ± 12.17 (18 - 60) years were randomly allocated to 2 groups of 40 (83.80% male). The 2 groups did not have a significant difference regarding baseline characteristics as well as pain severity.  Mean pain score at the time of procedure was 3.47 ± 1.37 in dexmedetomidine and 2.85 ± 1.05 in midazolam group (p = 0.025). In addition, time to recovery in dexmedetomidine and midazolam groups was 6.60 ± 1.86 minutes and 12.70 ± 1.70 minutes, respectively (p < 0.001). Out of the 9 patients who experienced treatment failure, 8 (88.90%) patients were in dexmedetomidine group and 1 (11.10%) was in midazolam group (p = 0.029). Absolute risk increase rate of treatment failure in case of using dexmedetomidine instead of midazolam was 17.50% (95%CI: 4.19 – 30.81) and number needed to harm was 6.00 (95% CI: 3.20 – 23.80). Conclusion: Although the combination of dexmedetomidine-fentanyl had a shorter time to recovery compared to midazolam-fentanyl for induction of sedation and analgesia, the treatment failure rate in case of using dexmedetomidine with 1 µg/kg increased 17.5% and about 1 out of each 6 patients needed a rescue dose

A variational Bayes model for count data learning and classification

Several machine learning and knowledge discovery approaches have been proposed for count data modeling and classification. In particular, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) (Blei et al., 2003a) has received a lot of attention and has been shown to be extremely useful in several applications. Although the LDA is generally accepted to be one of the most powerful generative models, it is based on the Dirichlet assumption which has some drawbacks as we shall see in this paper. Thus, our goal is to enhance the LDA by considering the generalized Dirichlet distribution as a prior. The resulting generative model is named latent generalized Dirichlet allocation (LGDA) to maintain consistency with the original model. The LGDA is learned using variational Bayes which provides computationally tractable posterior distributions over the model׳s hidden variables and its parameters. To evaluate the practicality and merits of our approach, we consider two challenging applications namely text classification and visual scene categorization

Effect of Different pH Values on the Compressive Strength of Calcium-Enriched Mixture Cement

Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the compressive strength of calcium-enriched mixture (CEM) cement in contact with acidic, neutral and alkaline pH values. Methods and Materials: The cement was mixed according to the manufacturer’s instructions, it was then condensed into fourteen split molds with five 4×6 mm holes. The specimens were randomly divided into 7 groups (n=10) and were then exposed to environments with pH values of 4.4, 5.4, 6.4, 7.4, 8.4, 9.4 and 10.4 in an incubator at 37° C for 4 days. After removing the samples from the molds, cement pellets were compressed in a universal testing machine. The exact forces required for breaking of the samples were recorded. The data were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn tests for individual and pairwise comparisons, respectively. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Results: The greatest (48.59±10.36) and the lowest (9.67±3.16) mean compressive strength values were observed after exposure to pH value of 9.4 and 7.4, respectively. Alkaline environment significantly increased the compressive strength of CEM cement compared to the control group. There was no significant difference between the pH values of 9.4 and 10.4 but significant differences were found between pH values of 9.4, 8.4 and 7.4. The acidic environment showed better results than the neutral environment, although the difference was not significant for the pH value of 6.4. Alkaline pH also showed significantly better results than acidic and neutral pH. Conclusion: The compressive strength of CEM cement improved in the presence of acidic and alkaline environments but alkaline environment showed the best results

Ultrasound-Guided Reduction of Distal Radius Fractures

Introduction: Distal radius fractures are a common traumatic injury, particularly in the elderly population. In the present study we examined the effectiveness of ultrasound guidance in the reduction of distal radius fractures in adult patients presenting to emergency department (ED). Methods: In this prospective case control study, eligible patients were adults older than 18 years who presented to the ED with distal radius fractures. 130 consecutive patient consisted of two group of Sixty-Five patients were prospectively enrolled for around 1 years. The first group underwent ultrasound-guided reduction and the second (control group) underwent blind reduction. All procedures were performed by two trained emergency residents under supervision of senior emergency physicians. Results: Baseline characteristics between two groups were similar. The rate of repeat reduction was reduced in the ultrasound group (9.2% vs 24.6%; P = .019). The post reduction radiographic indices were similar between the two groups, although the ultrasound group had improved volar tilt (mean, 7.6° vs 3.7°; P = .000). The operative rate was reduced in the ultrasound groups (10.8% vs 27.7%; P = .014). Conclusion: Ultrasound guidance is effective and recommended for routine use in the reduction of distal radius fractures

Diagnostic Value of Clinical Findings in Evaluation of Thoracolumbar Blunt Traumas

Introduction: Necessity of imaging for symptom-free conscious patients presented to emergency department (ED) following traumatic thoracolumbar spine injuries has been a matter of debate. The present study was aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of clinical findings in prediction of traumatic thoracolumbar injuries compared tocomputed tomography (CT) scan. Methods: The present diagnostic value study was carried out using non-random convenience sampling during the time between October 2013 and March 2014. All trauma patients > 15 years old underwent thoracolumbar CT scan were included. Correlation between clinical and CT findings was measured using SPSS 21.0 and screening performance characteristics of clinical findings in prediction of thoracolumbar fracture were calculated. Results: 169 patients with mean age of 37.8 ± 17.3 years (rage: 15-86) were evaluated (69.8% male). All fracture patients had at least 1 positive finding in history and physical examination. The fracture was confirmed in only 24.6% of the patients with positive findings in history or physical examination. In 37.5% of patients the location of fracture, matched the area of positive physical examinations. Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, PLR, and NLR of clinical findings in comparison to thoracolumbar CT scan were 100 (95% CI: 89 - 100), 1.5 (95% CI: 0.2-6), 24.5 (95% CI: 18.3-31.9), 100 (95% CI: 19.7-100), 32.5 (95% CI: 24.6-43.03), and infinite, respectively. Conclusion: The results of the present study, show the excellent screening performance characteristics of clinical findings in prediction of traumatic thoracolumbar fracture (100% sensitivity). It could be concluded that in conscious patients with stable hemodynamic, who have no distracting pain and are not intoxicated, probability of thoracolumbar fracture is very low and near to zero in case of no positive clinical finding