Effect of hydro-alcoholic Portulaca-Oleracea extract on oxidative damage induced by bacterial Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in liver of rat

زمینه و هدف: استرس اکسیداتیو یک نقش کلیدی در بروز بسیاری از بیماریها دارد. خرفه حاوی انواع اسیدهای چرب غیر اشباع و ترکیباتی مانند : آلفا-توکوفرول، اسید‌آسکوربیک و گلوتاتیون می‌باشد. که اثرات آنتی اکسیدانی دارند، بنابراین شاید بتواند نقشی موثر جهت پیشگیری و درمان بیماری‌های مرتبط با استرس‌اکسیداتیو داشته باشد. جهت بررسی این امر، استرس اکسیداتیو در یک مدل حیوانی از طریق تزریق لیپو ساکارید باکتریایی (LPS) القا گردید. در مرحله بعدی اثر عصاره هیدروالکلی خرفه بر بهبود آسیب اکسیداتیو القا شده توسط LPS در کبد موشهای صحرایی مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. روش‌ بررسی: موشهای صحرایی نر نژاد ویستار در 4 گروه قرار گرفتند. عصاره خرفه (400 mg/kg) طی یک دوره 14 روزه از طریق تزریق دهانی (گاواژ) به حیوانات داده شد. LPS (1000 µg/kg) ، به صورت داخل صفاقی تزریق گردید. میزان فعالیت آنزیمهای آنتی اکسیدان از طریق اندازه گیری کاتالاز(CAT) ، سوپراکسیددسموتاز(SOD) و گلوتاتیون ردوکتاز (GR) در بافت کبد گروههای مختلف صورت گرفت. میزان پروکسیداسیون لیپیدی نیز به عنوان مارکری برای تعیین آسیب اکسیداتیو اندازه گیری شد. همچنین مطالعات بافت شناسی نیز صورت گرفت. یافته ‌ها: LPS موجب تحریک و افزایش فعالیت آنزیم SOD، CAT و کاهش فعالیت GR نسبت به گروه کنترل شد. همچنین LPS موجب افزایش مالون دی آلدئید(MDA) کبد شد. از طرفی در گروه پیشگیری عصاره خرفه به صورت معناداری فعالیت آنزیم های SOD، CAT و GRرا نسبت به گروه LPS افزایش داد و باعث کاهش معنادار MAD نسبت به گروه دریافت کننده LPS گردید. بحث و نتیجه گیری : به نظر می رسد خرفه به علت دارا بودن میزان بالایی از ترکیبات انتی اکسیدانی می‌تواند به عنوان یک محصول طبیعی، برای پیشگیری از آسیب و بیماری های ناشی از استرس اکسیداتیو استفاده شود

A comparative study on managers', staffs' and clients' viewpoints about organizational and structural obstacles in family planning counseling in health-care centers in Isfahan in 2012

BACKGROUND: Organizational and structural obstacles are a group of major obstacles in achievement of appropriate family planning counseling. Detection of these obstacles from the viewpoint of managers, staffs and clients who are key members in health services providing system is a major step toward appropriate planning to modify or delete this group of obstacles. The present study was conducted with the goal of comparing managers', staffs' and clients' viewpoints about organizational and structural obstacles in family planning counseling in health-care centers in Isfahan in 2012. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional one-step three-group comparative descriptive study conducted on 295 subjects including 59 managers, 110 staffs and 126 clients in medical health-care centers in Isfahan in 2012. Managers and the staffs were selected by census sampling and the clients were recruited through convenient random sampling. The date collection tool was a researcher made questionnaire, which was designed in two sections of fertility and personal characteristics and viewpoint measurement. Descriptive and inferential statistical test were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The obtained results showed no significant difference between mean scores of viewpoints in three groups of managers, staffs and clients concerning organizational and structural obstacles in family planning counseling (P = 0.677). In addition, most of the managers, staffs and clients reported organizational and structural obstacles as the obstacles in the process of family planning in moderate level. CONCLUSION: The results showed the necessity of health services managers' planning to modify or delete organizational and structural obstacles especially the agreed obstacles from the viewpoint of managers, staffs and clients

Comparison of the Perspectives of Managers, Employees and Clients Regarding the Individual Barriers of Family Planning Counseling in Healthcare Centers of Isfahan in 2012

Background: Family planning is a lifestyle that is selected voluntarily and is based on the knowledge, attitude and responsible decision making by couples in order to promote the health and welfare of the family and the advancement of the society. In this regard, family planning counseling plays an important role in making informed decisions if used properly and in a responsible way. Detection of individual barriers in family planning counseling based on the viewpoints of managers, employees and clients who are key participants in the healthcare service provision is a major step towards appropriate planning to modify or eliminate such barriers. Objectives: The present study was conducted with the goal of comparing managers', employees' and clients' viewpoints about individual barriers in family planning counseling in health care centers in Isfahan in 2012. Patients and Methods: This was a cross-sectional one-step three-group comparative descriptive study conducted on 295 subjects including 59 managers, 110 employees and 126 clients in medical health care centers in Isfahan in 2012. The managers and employees were selected by census sampling, and the clients were recruited through convenient random sampling. The data collection tool was a researcher-designed questionnaire, which was designed in two sections of fertility and personal characteristics, and viewpoint measurement. Descriptive and inferential statistical tests were used to analyze the data. Results: The obtained results showed significant differences between mean scores of viewpoints in three groups of managers, employees and clients concerning individual barriers in family planning counseling. In addition, most of the managers, employees and clients reported individual barriers as an intermediate level barrier in the process of family planning counseling. Conclusions: Results indicate that subjects in three studied groups hold different views regarding the individual barriers in family planning counseling. This difference in the perspectives may be a factor that affects the quality of the provided services. Therefore, it is necessary for the healthcare providers to consider the main concerns of their clients regarding family planning

A comparative study of the attitudes of managers, employees and clients in the field of social barriers of family planning counseling in health care centers of Isfahan in 2012

BACKGROUND: Appropriate family planning counseling for informed choice, the right and responsible use of contraceptive methods is very important. Various barriers such as social barriers can have the effect on family planning counseling. In addition, investigation of those barriers from the perspective of managers, staff and clients, who are major members in health care system, has great importance. The present study was conducted with the goal of comparing managers', employees', and clients' viewpoints about social barriers in family planning counseling in health care centers in Isfahan in 2012. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional one-step three-group comparative descriptive study conducted on 295 subjects including 59 managers, 110 employees, and 126 clients in medical health care centers in Isfahan in 2012. Managers and employees were selected by census sampling and the clients were recruited through convenient random sampling. The data collection tool was a researcher made questionnaire, which was designed in two sections of fertility and personal characteristics and viewpoint measurement. Descriptive and inferential statistical test were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The obtained results showed significant difference between mean scores of viewpoints in three groups of managers, employees, and clients concerning social barriers in family planning counseling (P = 0.001). In addition, most of the managers and employees reported social barriers as the barriers in process of family planning in a large level and clients reported it in moderate level. CONCLUSION: The results express the necessity of health services managers' planning to modify or delete social barriers, especially the agreed barriers from the viewpoint of managers and employees that effect on family planning counseling and quality of service provided by them

Exploiting Quantum Gates in Secure Computation

Secure Multi-party Computation (SMC) has been introduced to allow the computation of generic functions between two parties that want to keep secret the input they use, and share only the computed result. One of the approach proposed to solve the SMC problem relies on the design of Garbled Circuits (GC), that are Boolean circuits that can be evaluated collaboratively achieving the SMC goal. Recently, there is a growing interest on the efficiency of this technique and on its potential applications to computation outsourcing in untrusted environments. One of the possible ways to reduce the complexity of the computation is to lower the number of non-EXOR gates in the Boolean circuit, since those gates have no cost for the execution of the secure computation protocol. In this work, we discuss the possibility to construct Garbled Circuit using quantum gates (QG), observing that, in some cases, the quantum GC requires a lower number of non-EXOR gates with respect to the corresponding classical GC implementations, thus improving the overall efficiency of the execution of the SMC protocol

The role of feedback in clinical education: Principles, strategies, and models

Introduction: Feedback is an inseparable and integral part of learning. It promotes students' learning towards achieving goals. In the training of health professions, little feedback or a paucity of feedback can be observed. Giving correct feedback is another important matter that must be taken into account. Therefore, the aim of this study was to present the principles of feedback, its effective characteristics, the strategies, and models of feedback. Methods: In order to identify the relevant articles, online databases as Elsevier, Google Scholar, SID, and Magiran were searched using keywords such as feedback, clinical evaluation, clinical education, and feedback models were used. About Persian articles, the year of 1385, and Latin articles the year of 2000 have been considered as a base year. Totally, 49 articles were met the review potentiality. 34 articles were identified as relevant ones and included in the study as well as 15 papers were excluded due to being irrelevant. Results: Feedback must be considered as one of the most important tenets of clinical education like an agent for reflection and improvement. Feedback will be considered effective when it is intended as a certain period in education and its principles and characteristics will be considered and presented with appropriate strategies and models. If feedback is provided in an appropriate manner and with suitable information, the performance of the learner can be improved. Conclusion: Constructive and meaningful feedback is an essential part of teaching and learning for students to get instrumental information. Thus, teachers and clinical instructors must receive adequate training on feedback. Familiarity with models and strategies of feedback can pave the way towards providing effective and constructive feedback

An OBDD-Based Technique for the Efficient Synthesis of Garbled Circuits

Secure Multi-party Computation (SMC) protocols are exploited to perform collaborative computation of a function between two or more parties while keeping the privacy of the private inputs and sharing the computed result only. The Garbled Circuit (GC) protocol, proposed by Yao, is one of the possible approaches to solve the SMC problem, based on the evaluation of the Boolean Circuit representing the given function. Recently, the question to improve efficiency in secure multi-party computation has gained much interest. One of the proposed techniques to increase the efficiency of the GC protocol is based on the reduction of the number of non-XOR gates in the Boolean circuit, since the evaluation of XOR gates have no cost for the execution of the whole protocol. The aim of this work is to define a post-processing procedure that, given an optimized GC, decreases the number of non-XOR gates by transforming some parts of the circuit. The strategy is based on the fact that some gates behave as XORs apart from one output and then, if that input never occurs, those gates can be replaced by a XOR without changing the output of the overall network. The technique we propose is based on the analysis of the GC by using Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (OBDD) representation. We present the application of our technique to some standard circuits to show the effectiveness of our proposal

A multiple valued logic approach for the synthesis of garbled circuits

Secure Multi-party Computation (SMC) protocols enable two or more parties to compute collaboratively generic functions while keeping secret their inputs, sharing only the final result. To achieve this goal, a technique relying on the design of Garbled Circuits (GC) has been firstly proposed by Yao. Garbled circuits are Boolean circuits that can be evaluated using a distributed protocol for computing the result for each gate, till computing the output values. To improve the efficiency of this technique and exploit SMC protocols in practical applications, such as computation outsourcing in untrusted environments, a number of optimizations have been introduced. In this paper we analyze the deployment of Multiple Valued Logic techniques for the design of GC, discussing their impact on the overall computation and communication costs