Social network sites as educational factors

Background: In this present era, the technology development has established certain type of communication. Nowadays education as the fundamental principle in transferring cognition to the learners has found various methods. Recently the concept that social networks could be effective tool in easing the achievement to the educational goals has been under attention. Therefore, this investigation is trying to find out whether, the social networks could play role on the process of education among students? Materials and Methods: This cross sectional descriptive study was performed on 1000 students from 7 medical universities in 2015. The data collection tool was questionnaire that was approved Cronbach's alpha was 0.85. Meanwhile its validity was confirmed too. The obtained data were analyzed by the descriptive statistic, ANOVA, Turkey and used X2 SPSS-19. Results: In this investigation, 940 subjects were under study. 85 used daily the social network. The highest usage was attributed to the Telegram. 52 preferred image suitable for transferring of information. Even though, 73 believed that these networks have significant effects on coordinating of students with in university charges. Conclusion: Considering the findings of the present study, it is proposed that the universities integrate the social networks in the education programs and recognize it as the awareness factor, therefore benefit it in the educational affairs. © 2016 Alireza Ebrahimpour, Farnaz Rajabali, Fatemeh Yazdanfar, Reza Azarbad, Majid Rezaei Nodeh, Hasan Siamian, Mohammad Vahedi

Past and projected trends of body mass index and weight status in South Australia:2003 to 2019

OBJECTIVE: Functional data analysis (FDA) is a forecasting approach that, to date, has not been applied to obesity, and that may provide more accurate forecasting analysis to manage uncertainty in public health. This paper uses FDA to provide projections of Body Mass Index (BMI), overweight and obesity in an Australian population through to 2019.  METHODS: Data from the South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System (January 2003 to December 2012, n=51,618 adults) were collected via telephone interview survey. FDA was conducted in four steps: 1) age-gender specific BMIs for each year were smoothed using a weighted regression; 2) the functional principal components decomposition was applied to estimate the basis functions; 3) an exponential smoothing state space model was used for forecasting the coefficient series; and 4) forecast coefficients were combined with the basis function.  RESULTS: The forecast models suggest that between 2012 and 2019 average BMI will increase from 27.2 kg/m(2) to 28.0 kg/m(2) in males and 26.4 kg/m(2) to 27.6 kg/m(2) in females. The prevalence of obesity is forecast to increase by 6-7 percentage points by 2019 (to 28.7% in males and 29.2% in females).  CONCLUSIONS: Projections identify age-gender groups at greatest risk of obesity over time. The novel approach will be useful to facilitate more accurate planning and policy development

Surveying the type and amount of pesticide use in agricultural sector of Kashan, Iran

Pesticides in addition to eliminating pests pollute the environment and cause disease. According to the statistics the total cultivated lands of Kashan province totaled 15894.1 hectares. Due to the importance of pesticide use in agricultural and dry and desert areas of Kashan which is very fragile due to low rainfall, this study was conducted to determine the type and amount of pesticide use in different parts of agriculture in Kashan during 2015 crop year. The results showed that a total of 16 types of poisons were used in the agricultural sector of Kashan, of these 5 types (31.25%)are of the phosphorus group, 3 types (18.75%) pyroclastic group, 2 types (12.5%) copper compounds and 6 types (37.5%) other types of pesticides. The data from this study show that most of the pesticides used are organophosphates, among them the most commonly used was diazinon. Keywords Agriculture, Kashan, organophosphate, pesticide

Microbial community composition and functions are resilient to metal pollution along two forest soil gradients

Despite the global importance of forests, it is virtually unknown how their soil microbial communities adapt at the phylogenetic and functional level to long-term metal pollution. Studying 12 sites located along two distinct gradients of metal pollution in Southern Poland revealed that functional potential and diversity (assessed using GeoChip 4.2) were highly similar across the gradients despite drastically diverging metal contamination levels. Metal pollution level did, however, significantly impact bacterial community structure (as shown by MiSeq Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA genes), but not bacterial taxon richness and community composition. Metal pollution caused changes in the relative abundance of specific bacterial taxa, including Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes and Proteobacteria. Also, a group of metal-resistance genes showed significant correlations with metal concentrations in soil. Our study showed that microbial communities are resilient to metal pollution; despite differences in community structure, no clear impact of metal pollution levels on overall functional diversity was observed. While screens of phylogenetic marker genes, such as 16S rRNA genes, provide only limited insight into resilience mechanisms, analysis of specific functional genes, e.g. involved in metal resistance, appears to be a more promising strategy

The interval of educational services' quality in 17 universities of medical sciences in Iran

Background and purpose: The process of improving the quality of services in healthcare and treatment has a special place in terms of organizational complexity and importance of efficiency. Models of organizational growth have provided an appropriate context for evaluating the performance and quality of organizations by using Total Quality Management (TQM) method. It should be noted that all parts of society benefit from services of educational environments. Therefore the aim of this research was to measure quality of services in order to constantly improve the quality of services in 17 universities of medical sciences in Iran. Methods: This research was a cross sectional descriptive survey. SERVQUAL standard questionnaire was used as research tool. After questionnaires were collected, the data was fed into APSS21 software. Descriptive statistics and advanced statistical tests were used to measure the interval of educational services. Result: 2767 samples were collected in this study. In general the average level of students’ expectations was 3.85±.93 and the average level of their perception was 3.16±.55. By subtracting this average level of average level of expectation, the interval was-.69±1.02. In all samples total interval in assurance dimension was-.735±1.12, responsiveness-.650±1.16, reliability-.605±1.04, empathy-.739±1.22, and in physical dimension was-.590±1.23. Conclusion: Yasuj university of medical sciences had the highest interval of educational services quality and north Khorasan had the lowest interval. It is generally recommended that each university form a unit called “quality improvement” in order to evaluate regularly and improve the quality of services. © 2018, Editorial office of Journal of International Pharmaceutical Research. All rights reserved