Comparison of the effectiveness of the electronic portfolio and online discussion forum methods in teaching professional belonging and ethical behaviors to nursing students: a randomized controlled trial

Background Nursing is a profession that has had many ethical aspects and understanding professional belonging and ethics as a deep and complex process is one of the basic concepts in this field. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of training professional belonging and ethical behaviors in two methods: electronic portfolio and online discussion forum in nursing students. Methods This study is a single-blinded randomized-controlled trial (RCT) with two parallel intervention groups and a third control group. The sample size was 90 selected by block randomization method. The educational contents of professional belonging and ethical behaviors were presented to the participants in two ways: electronic portfolio and online discussion forum. Demographic information form, professional belonging questionnaire, and ethical behaviors questionnaire were applied to collect data. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24 software. Respectively mean, standard deviation and repeated measured, analysis of variance tests was used in descriptive and analytic statistic. (P value < 0.05). Results Comparison of the mean score of professional belonging and ethical behavior in the three stages of pretest, immediately after the test and four weeks after the test in all three groups was significant (P < 0.001). The control group had a higher mean score of professional belonging immediately after the test (108.18 ± 48.9) compared to the other two groups. Also, the online discussion forum group had a higher mean score on ethical behavior in four weeks after the test (104.2 ± 0.8) compared to the other two groups. Conclusion Training based on two methods of the electronic portfolio and online discussion forum increases and enhances the level of ethical behaviors in students. Therefore, the implementation of such methods of training can be useful in improving, promoting, and learning ethical behaviors in nursing students. On the other hand, training based on the two methods had a negative impact on professional belonging. Therefore, it is suggested that future studies be conducted with a greater focus on areas of professional belonging. Trial registration This research has been registered in Iranian Clinical Trial Registration Center (IRCT) with registration number "IRCT20180612040063N1" and registration date "16/07/2018"

The Effect of Electrical Passive Cycling on Spasticity in War Veterans with Spinal Cord Injury

Introduction: Muscle atrophy, spasticity, and deformity are among long term complication of spinal cord injury (SCI) veterans. There are numerous studies evaluating effect of functional electrical stimulation on muscle properties of SCI people, but less research has focused on the benefits of passive cycling in the management of spasticity and improving ROM of lower limbs in individuals with SCI. Aims: To evaluate the effect of electrical passive cycling on passive range of movement spasticity and electrodiagnostic parameters in SCI veterans. Methods: Sixty-four SCI veterans referred to two clinical and research center in Tehran were recruited in this prospective clinical trial. The subjects were divided into two groups according to electrical passive cycling usage: (1) patients who did not use pedal exercise (control group), (2) patients used Electrical passive cycling up to optimal level (intervention group). Main outcome measures included hip, knee, and ankle range of motion, spasticity scale, and electrodiagnostic parameters including F-Wave Consistency, F-Wave Amplitude, H/M Ratio, F/M Ratio, H-Reflex Onset Latency, and H-Reflex Amplitude. Data were recorded at the time of receiving and 1 year after pedal exercise usage. Results: Sixty-four SCI patients including 95.3% male, 4.7% female with mean age 43 years old were included in this study. All patients except one suffered from complete SCI. The involved spinal levels were cervical (17.2%), upper thoracic (34.4%), lower thoracic (45.3%), and lumbar (3.1%). Spasticity scale decreased significantly after passive cycling in group 2. Also hip, knee, and ankle ROM in group 2 were significantly improved after pedal exercise. There was a significant difference in H max/M max (RT&LT) and F/M ratio after versus before electric passive cycling system in group 2. Conclusion: These findings suggest that passive rhythmic leg exercise can lead to decrease in spasticity, increase in passive ROM of lower limbs and improvement in electrodiagnostic parameters of spasticity in patients with SCI

Observer‐based adaptive emotional command‐filtered backstepping for cooperative control of input‐saturated uncertain strict‐feedback multi‐agent systems

Abstract This paper introduces a distributed observer‐based emotional command‐filtered backstepping (DOECFB) approach for leader‐following cooperative output‐feedback control of heterogenous strict‐feedback multi‐agent systems (MAS) under mismatched uncertainties and input saturation. A novel state observer is designed based on radial‐basis emotional neural networks (RBENNs) that approximate uncertainties of model dynamics. To model inter‐agent dynamics with less complexity, emotion‐inspired approximated dynamics are shared among neighbouring followers, like emotional contagion in a group of people. An auxiliary system is also used to attenuate input saturation's negative effect on the cooperative tracking performance. Also, command filters and compensating signals are applied to avoid the ‘explosion of complexity’ in the backstepping design. Only local information from other agents is required for the proposed approach to guarantee convergence of the cooperative tracking error to a small region around zero and cooperatively semi‐globally uniformly ultimately boundedness of closed‐loop signals. Simulation examples on a second‐order uncertain MAS and multiple forced‐damped pendulums are conducted, and quantitative comparisons verify the effectiveness of DOECFB and the proposed observer

Nanofluid Thermal Conductivity Prediction Model Based on Artificial Neural Network

Heat transfer fluids have inherently low thermal conductivity that greatly limits the heat exchange efficiency. While the effectiveness of extending surfaces and redesigning heat exchange equipments to increase the heat transfer rate has reached a limit, many research activities have been carried out attempting to improve the thermal transport properties of the fluids by adding more thermally conductive solids into liquids. In this study, new model to predict nanofluid thermal conductivity based on Artificial Neural Network. A two-layer perceptron feedforward neural network and backpropagation Levenberg-Marquardt (BP-LM) training algorithm were used to predict the thermal conductivity of the nanofluid. To avoid the preprocess of network and investigate the final efficiency of it, 70% data are used for network training, while the remaining 30% data are used for network test and validation. Fe2O3 nanoparticles dispersed in waster/glycol liquid was used as working fluid in experiments. Volume fraction, temperature, nano particles and base fluid thermal conductivities are used as inputs to the network. The results show that ANN modeling is capable of predicting nanofluid thermal conductivity with good precision. The use of nanotechnology to enhance and improve the heat transfer fluid and the cost is exorbitant.It can play a major role in various industries, particularly industries that are involved in that heat

The Shape of Uterine Contractions and Labor Progress in the Spontaneous Active Labor

Background: Dystocia is the most common indication of primary cesarean section. The most common cause of dystocia is uterine dysfunction. In prolonged labor, more attention is usually paid to the fetus and pelvis rather than to the role of uterine contractions in a delivery. Therefore, we decided to determine the relationship between the labor progress and uterine contractions shapes. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 200 primiparous women participated having a single pregnancy and cephalic presentation. Uterus contractions were recorded using electronic fetal monitoring at the beginning of the active phase of labor (dilatation 3-5 cm) for 30 min. Fall to rise (F:R) ratio was calculated by determining the duration of returning from a contraction peak to its baseline (fall) and the duration of the rise time from baseline to peak (rise) in two groups. The data were analyzed using t-test and Chi-square test. Results: In this study, 162 women had a normal delivery and 38 women had a cesarean (CS) delivery due to the lack of labor progress. The average F:R ratio was 1.13±0.193 seconds in the vaginal delivery group and 1.64±0.301 seconds in the CS group. This difference was statistically significant (P<0.001). The frequency of contractions in the vaginal delivery group was more than the CS group (P=0.008). Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated that uterine contractions shapes change; and F:R ratio was higher in the group that lacked labor progress. Therefore, contraction shapes can be used to predict the labor progress

Biliary Stent Migration to Hepatic Duct–Case Report of a Late Complication

Endoscopic retrieval of proximally migrated biliary plastic stents may be technically challenging and sometimes unsuccessful. Here we report the case of a 59-year-old woman with a migrated biliary stent in the right hepatic duct, which was diagnosed after the patient presented with cholangitis. The patient presented with constant abdominal pain in the right upper quadrant lasting for two days, along with nausea and bilious vomiting. The stent was retrieved by a polypectomy snare after failure of biliary basket and forceps. We performed a novel procedure for extraction of a migrated plastic stent, by using a polypectomy snare

Identification of Xq22.1-23 as a region linked with hereditary recurrent spontaneous abortion in a family

Background: Recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) is one of the most common health complications with a strong genetic component. Several genetic disorders were identified as etiological factors of hereditary X linked RSA. However, more genetic factors remain to be identified. Objective: In this study we performed linkage analysis on a large X linked RSA pedigree to find a novel susceptibility locus for RSA. Materials and Methods: A linkage scan using 11 microsatellites was performed in 27 members of a large pedigree of hereditary X-linked RSA. Two point parametric Linkage was performed using Superlink v 1.6 program. Results: Evidence of linkage was observed to markers at Xq23, DXS7133 and at Xq22.1 DXS101, with LOD score of 3.12 and 1.60, respectively. Conclusion: Identified locus in this study may carry a responsible gene in RSA. Narrowing down of this region may leads to identification of this gene

Identification of Novel Hypoxia Response Genes in Human Glioma Cell Line A172

  Objective(s): Hypoxia is a serious challenge for treatment of solid tumors. This condition has been manifested to exert significant therapeutic effects on glioblastoma multiform or (WHO) astrocytoma grade IV. Hypoxia contributes numerous changes in cellular mechanisms such as angiogenesis, metastasis and apoptosis evasion. Furthermore, in molecular level, hypoxia can cause induction of DNA breaks in tumor cells. Identification of mechanisms responsible for these effects can lead to designing more efficient therapeutic strategies against tumor progression which results in improvement of patient prognosis.   Materials and Methods: In order to identify more hypoxia regulated genes which may have a role in glioblastoma progression, cDNA-AFLP was optimized as a Differential display method which is able to identify and isolate transcripts with no prior sequence knowledge. Results: Using this method, the current study identified 120 Transcription Derived Fragments (TDFs) which were completely differentially regulated in response to hypoxia. By sequence homology searching, the current study could detect 22 completely differentially regulated known genes and two unknown sequence matching with two chromosome contig and four sequence matches with some Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). Conclusion: Further characterizing of these genes may help to achieve better understanding of hypoxia mediated phenotype change in tumor cells