Designing a customized clinical practice guideline regarding antibiotic prophylaxis for Iranian general dentists.

BACKGROUND: Clinical practice guidelines produced by developed countries seemed to be not completely feasible for developing countries due to their different local context. In this study, we designed a customized guideline about antibiotic prophylaxis before dental procedures for Iranian general dentists. METHODS: This study was conducted of two parts, including a qualitative part and a cross-sectional analytic part. A multidisciplinary team searched for related guidelines and other documents, selected the most updated and high quality ones, customized their recommendations based on available antibiotics in Iran, prepared a draft adapted guideline and summarized its recommendations in 3 flowcharts. An expert panel (20 specialists of four Iranian dental universities) participated in a consensus process, afterwards to determine the relevance and clarity of the flowcharts and their items. Then the Content Validity Indices (CVIs) were calculated and any items with CVI higher than 0.79 remained. RESULTS: The adapted recommendations were summarized in flowcharts A to C. Two separate groups of patients who need antibiotic prophylaxis were presented in flowchart A; including those with high risk for distant-site infection (infective endocarditis and prosthetic joint infection) and those at risk for poor healing and orofacial infection (due to impaired immunologic function). Flowcharts B and C described antibiotic regimen and also the dental procedures where antibiotic prophylaxis was needed for mentioned groups. The content validity indices and the percentages of agreement between the expert panel members were considerably high. CONCLUSIONS: A localized, clear and straight forward guideline that addresses all groups of dental patients who need antibiotic prophylaxis has been produced for Iranian general dentists

Congestion-Aware Routing and Fuzzy-based Rate Controller for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, congestion-aware routing and fuzzy-based rate controller for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is proposed. The proposed method tries to make a distinction between locally generated data and transit data by using a priority-based mechanism which provides a novel queueing model. Furthermore, a novel congestion-aware routing using greedy approach is proposed. The proposed congestion-aware routing tries to find more affordable routes. Moreover, a fuzzy rate controller is utilized for rate controlling which uses two criteria as its inputs, including congestion score and buffer occupancy. These two parameters are based on total packet input rate, packet forwarding rate at MAC layer, number of packets in the queue buffer, and total buffer size at each node. As soon as the congestion is detected, the notification signal is sent to offspring nodes. As a result, they are able to adjust their data transmission rate. Simulation results clearly show that the implementation of the proposed method using a greedy approach and fuzzy logic has done significant reduction in terms of packet loss rate, end-to-end delay and average energy consumption

A Systematic Literature Review: Workplace Violence Against Emergency Medical Services Personnel

Context: In spite of the high prevalence and consequences of much workplace violence against emergency medical services personnel, this phenomenon has been given insufficient attention. A systematic review can aid the development of guidelines to reduce violence. Objectives: The research question addressed by this paper is, “What are the characteristics and findings of studies on workplace violence against emergency medical services personnel”? Data Sources: A systematic literature review was conducted using online databases (PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Magiran) with the help of experienced librarians. Study Selection: Inclusion criteria comprised studies in the English or Persian language and researcher’s access to the full text. There was no limit to the entry of the study design. Exclusion criteria included lack of access to the full text of the article, studies published in unreliable journals or conferences, and studies in which the results were shared with other medical or relief groups and there was no possibility of breaking down the results. Data Extraction: A “Data extraction form” was designed by the researchers based on the goals of the study that included the title and author(s), study method (type, place of study, sample size, sampling method, and data collection/analysis tool), printing location, information related to the frequency of types of violence, characteristics of victims /perpetrators, and related factors. Results: The papers reviewed utilized a variety of locations and environments, methods, and instrument samplings. The majority of the studies were performed using the quantitative method. No intervention study was found. Most studies focused on the prevalence of violence, and their results indicated that exposure to violence was high. The results are presented in six major themes. Conclusions: Workplace violence and injuries incurred from it are extensive throughout the world. The important causes of violence include the shortage of training programs dealing with violence, lack of violence management protocols, and delays in response times. Therefore, afterthought and resolve are more crucial than ever. Workplace violence reduction strategies and suggestions for future studies are also discussed

Apoptosis/necrosis induction by ultraviolet, in ER positive and ER negative breast cancer cell lines

Background: Ultraviolet (UV) light exposure has been one of the major inducers of apoptosis. UV exposure has caused pyrimidine dimers and DNA fragmentation which might lead to cell cycle arrest and apoptosis signals activation. UV induced apoptosis has investigated in MDA-MB 468 as an ER negative breast adenocarcinoma and MCF-7 as an ER positive breast cancer cell line. Apoptosis induction rate by UV might be different in these two types of cells due to different biological characteristics of the cell. Objectives: In this paper we have evaluated serial dose of UV-B exposure on ER positive and ER negative breast cancer cell lines and its effect on apoptosis or necrosis induction in these cells. Materials and Methods: MDA-MB468 and MCF-7 cell lines have cultured for 24 hours and UV exposure has carried out at 290 nm at dose of 154 J/m2 to 18 KJ/m2 using UV lamp. UV exposed cells have incubated in cell culture condition for 24 or 48 hours following UV exposure and the cells have stained and analyzed by flow cytometry for apoptosis evaluation by Annexin V/PI method. Results: Apoptosis rate (PI and Annexin V double positive cells) after 24 hours incubation was higher in 24 hours in comparison with 48 hours incubation in both cell lines. The frequency of PI positive MDA-MB 468 cells was higher than PI and Annexin V double positive cells after 48 hours. PI positive MDA-MB 468 cells were significantly higher than MCF-7 cells in 24 hours incubation time. Conclusions: The results have shown that MDA-MB 468 cells were more sensitive to UV exposure and DNA fragmentation and necrosis pathway was dominant in these cells. © 2015, Iranian Journal of Cancer Prevention

A Flow Based Horizontal Scan Detection Using Genetic Algorithm Approach

Abstract: An attacker has to "scan" susceptible points of a network before attacking. There are several methods of detection of such behavior which are mostly based on thresholding. As the performance of these methods is highly dependent on the value of threshold, it is crucial to adjust this value appropriately. This adjustment is not always trivial. In this study we proposed a new method to optimize the parameters of the system using genetic algorithms (GA) based on network flows. Subsequently we compared our method with Snort. The results showed a superior performance as measured by the sensitivity index of d"

BACTEC medium: A useful method for detection of microorganisms in sterile body fluids

Background: Infectious diseases are problematic in all around the world especially in the developing countries and early diagnosis of infections and one etiologic agents has a major role in the treatment of one patients. There are some culturing methods consist of conventional, semiautomatic and automatic. One of automatic methods is BACTEC system worked by fluorescent technology and Co2 production of organisms in culture media. Methods: This study is based on observational-descriptive method with simple convenient sampling. We analyzed 262 samples of body sterile fluids of patients admitted in pediatric and internal wards of a university (Rasol-Acram) Hospital. They are consisting of 150 blood, 46 synovial, 32 CSF, 24 pleural, and 10 peritoneal samples. Results: There were no differences between two sex in BACTEC and Conventional methods. Average age of patients with positive and negative culture in two methods had not differences. 72 (27.5) samples were positive that 32 (12.2) samples only in BACTEC method, 4 (1.5) in conventional method and 36 (13.7) in two methods had statistical differences (p=0.003). That means positive cultures are seeing in BACTEC more than Conventional method. Comparison of two methods in positive blood culture samples had statistical differences (p=0.02) but no statistical differences in other body fluids were seen. i. e. positive cultures were seen in BACTEC more than Conventional method. Positive culture in these two methods had statistical differences in antibiotic utilization (p<0.001). Positive culture in antibiotic utility were seen in BACTEC more than Conventional method. The average time of culture to become positive were 17.5+ 5.88 hours in BACTEC against 62.36+ 13.98 hours in Conventional method. Contamination was seeing in 4 samples in BACTEC and 2 in Conventional method that had no significant differences. Conclusion: According to these data organism detection in BACTEC culture media from body sterile fluids overall and specially from blood is more successful than Conventional method. It is a better method in antibiotic utilization. BACTEC can isolate organism in shorter duration than Conventional method. BACTEC can facilitate early and accurate diagnosis of infectious etiology, shorten duration of hospital stay and decrease mortality and morbidity and cost. © 2008, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Generating GHZ state in 2m-qubit spin network

We consider a pure 2m-qubit initial state to evolve under a particular quantum me- chanical spin Hamiltonian, which can be written in terms of the adjacency matrix of the Johnson network J(2m;m). Then, by using some techniques such as spectral dis- tribution and stratification associated with the graphs, employed in [1, 2], a maximally entangled GHZ state is generated between the antipodes of the network. In fact, an explicit formula is given for the suitable coupling strengths of the hamiltonian, so that a maximally entangled state can be generated between antipodes of the network. By using some known multipartite entanglement measures, the amount of the entanglement of the final evolved state is calculated, and finally two examples of four qubit and six qubit states are considered in details.Comment: 22 page