Association between oral findings and laboratory tests in children and adolescents undergoing dialysis : a cross- sectional study

Diagnosis of oral complications in the dialysis patients is important to prevent potential infections. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to compare oral findings in dialysis patients with healthy individuals and determination of the correlation of these findings and laboratory tests. In this cross-sectional study, DMFT, dmft, DI , CI , OHIS , PI, GI and enamel defects were evaluated in 25 hemodialysis patients, 30 peritoneal dialysis patients and 26 healthy individuals. Then the correlation of laboratory tests (including Hemoglobin, Urea, Creatinine, Ca, Na, Ph, K and ALP) and oral findings was determined in each groups using SPSS (Version 16). Data analyzed with One-way ANOVA test, Chi-Square , Kruskal-Wallis , Tukey?s test and Fisher?s-Exact test. Findings revealed significant differences in dmft, DI, CI, OHIs, PI and GI between study groups. A positive correlation between Ca and DI was found in hemodialysis group. In peritoneal dialysis group positive significant correlations between DMFT index and Urea, Cr , ALP and K , between OHIs and K , between PI and Cr and negative correlations between Na and CI and OHIs were found. Presence of oral problems in dialysis patients, especially hemodialysis, indicate the necessity of appropriate therapeutic considerations in these patients. The correlation of blood biochemical compounds and oral status in dialysis patients may warn clinicians to control the level of the biochemical blood compounds for oral health improvement

Children with and without Family Risk of Reading Difficulties: Emergent literacy, home literacy environment at onset of formal reading instruction, and literacy skills after two years of schooling

PhD thesis in Reading researchHaving a parent with reading difficulties, known as family risk, puts a child at high risk of impaired emergent literacy before the onset of reading instruction, and later reading difficulties at school. Another line of research, however, highlights that environmental factors such as the quality and quantity of what parents provide at home (home literacy environment) are also crucial for the development of children’s emergent literacy and later literacy skills. This thesis used a multi-factor perspective on reading difficulties to investigate the associations between family risk, emergent literacy, the home literacy environment at the onset of formal reading instruction and literacy skills after two years of schooling. Such a multi-factor perspective may combine a range of interplaying factors, including family risk along with early individual differences at the cognitive level (emergent literacy skills) and environmental factors (parents’ educational level and the home literacy environment) to assess the protective role of environmental factors against the risk factors such as family risk. Data from ‘On Track’ project (på sporet) were used in analysis of three empirical studies. Children were individually assessed in emergent literacy at the onset of reading instruction. At this point, parents’ selfreport of reading difficulties were used to index family risk, and the home literacy environment was measured through parental reporting. In addition, children were assessed in literacy measures including word reading, spelling and reading comprehension at the end of second grade. The first study showed that children with family risk were significantly impaired on all measures of emergent literacy (letter knowledge and phonemic awareness), vocabulary, rapid automatized naming and shortterm memory at the onset of formal reading instruction. A novel finding was that a significant difference in emergent literacy within the group of children with family risk as apparent before the onset of reading instruction: Children with family risk who both of parents reported reading difficulties, had significantly poorer emergent literacy than both groups of children with only one parent reporting reading difficulties, and children with no family risk. Furthermore, family risk, in a multifactor model, was significantly associated with children’s emergent literacy above and beyond the home literacy environment, the child’s gender, vocabulary, and the parents’ educational level. The main aim of the second study was to investigate children’s reading difficulties in a multi-factor perspective after two years of formal schooling. Children who performed below the national threshold in at least two of the subtests in reading, spelling and comprehension were identified as having reading difficulties. The results revealed that children with family risk were three times more likely to develop reading difficulties than children without such a risk. The multi-factor model also suggested that children with family risk showed some difficulties in literacy skills that could not be explained in terms of individual differences in emergent literacy, vocabulary, gender, the home literacy environment or parents’ educational level. The main aim of the third study was to investigate the role of protective environmental factors (e.g., home literacy environment and parents’ education) against the negative effect of family risk, in children’s emergent literacy skills at the onset of formal reading instruction. First, a model of home literacy environment was assessed and three distinct factors were identified: access to print, reading-related activities and parents’ reading interest and habits. In a structural equation model, maternal and paternal self-report of RD (as a proxy for family risk) along with their educational level were added as direct and indirect predictors of children’s emergent literacy while accounting for the home literacy environment. The results suggest that family risk explain some additional variance in emergent literacy that cannot be explained by parents’ educational level and the home literacy environment. However, and perhaps more importantly, this multi-factor model highlights a complex interplaying role for the relationship between family risk and environmental protective factors (the home literacy environment and parents’ education) in association with children’s emergent literacy skills. Therefore, the protective role of environmental factors on emergent literacy skills against the negative influence of family risk cannot be ruled out in children with family risk of reading difficulties. Taken together, the findings presented in this thesis reveal that the association between family risk, children’s emergent literacy and their literacy skills is indeed a complex relationship, which involves with environmental factors. It seems that children’s emergent literacy and later literacy skills and their literacy experiences in the home environments may not be independent of family risk. However, a high parents’ educational level and a rich home literacy environment appear to operate as protective factors against a risk factor such as family risk. These findings suggest there are reasons to believe that it is possible to change and reduce the influence of family risk through environmental protective factors such as a rich home literacy environment

A Model of the Home Literacy Environment and Family Risk of Reading Difficulty in Relation to Children’s Preschool Emergent Literacy

This study extends the research on the preschool home literacy environment (HLE) in the context of the family risk (FR) of reading disability (RD) by examining a multiple-deficit model of RD. A total of 1171 six-year-old children were assessed at school entry, the onset of formal reading instruction in Norway. Their parents completed a questionnaire regarding their own RD, education, and the HLE. The final sample after applying the inclusion criteria was 794 children and their parents. The findings suggest, first, that two HLE factors (access to print and reading-related activities) should be distinguished rather than treated as a single factor, “exposure to print,” as the majority of previous studies have done. This finding suggests a three-factor HLE model that includes parents’ reading interests and habits, reading-related activities, and access to print. Second, FR of RD is related to some extent to the HLE, even after controlling for parents’ education. Third, children’s experiences in their home environments and their emergent literacy may not be independent of their FR of RD. More importantly, this study highlights the potential protective role of the HLE, especially when there is a history of RD within the family. The reason is that the positive association between the HLE and children’s code-related emergent literacy remains significant when controlling for FR of RD (access to print → emergent literacy: 0.39 [0.01, 0.68], p < 0.01; reading-related activities → emergent literacy: 0.37 [0.02, 0.35], p < 0.01; parents’ reading interests and habits → emergent literacy: 0.26 [0.001, 0.15], p < 0.01). This finding supports that children’s emergent literacy can be improved via a modifiable, dynamic factor such as the HLE.publishedVersio

Case report: Typhoid fever complicated by hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and rhabdomyolysis

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) and rhabdomyolysis are rare complications of typhoid fever from Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. Herein, we describe the clinical features in a 21-year-old female from India who presented to the intensive care unit with fever, severe pancytopenia, and rhabdomyolysis

Evolutionary Deep Reinforcement Learning Using Elite Buffer: A Novel Approach Towards DRL Combined with EA in Continuous Control Tasks

Despite the numerous applications and success of deep reinforcement learning in many control tasks, it still suffers from many crucial problems and limitations, including temporal credit assignment with sparse reward, absence of effective exploration, and a brittle convergence that is extremely sensitive to the hyperparameters of the problem. The problems of deep reinforcement learning in continuous control, along with the success of evolutionary algorithms in facing some of these problems, have emerged the idea of evolutionary reinforcement learning, which attracted many controversies. Despite successful results in a few studies in this field, a proper and fitting solution to these problems and their limitations is yet to be presented. The present study aims to study the efficiency of combining the two fields of deep reinforcement learning and evolutionary computations further and take a step towards improving methods and the existing challenges. The "Evolutionary Deep Reinforcement Learning Using Elite Buffer" algorithm introduced a novel mechanism through inspiration from interactive learning capability and hypothetical outcomes in the human brain. In this method, the utilization of the elite buffer (which is inspired by learning based on experience generalization in the human mind), along with the existence of crossover and mutation operators, and interactive learning in successive generations, have improved efficiency, convergence, and proper advancement in the field of continuous control. According to the results of experiments, the proposed method surpasses other well-known methods in environments with high complexity and dimension and is superior in resolving the mentioned problems and limitations

Radiative deformation

An infinitesimal change δQδQ in heat flux Q is shown, in terms of entropy flux Ψ=Q/T,Ψ=Q/T, to have two parts, δQ=TδΨ+ΨδT.δQ=TδΨ+ΨδT. The first part being the thermal displacement and the second part being the thermal deformation. Only the second part dissipates into internal energy and generates entropy. Thermodynamic arguments are extended to transport phenomena. It is shown that the thermal part of the rate of local entropy generation is related to the local rate of thermal deformation by s′′′=−ψi/T(∂T/∂xi),s′′′=−ψi/T(∂T/∂xi), where ψi=qi/T,ψi=qi/T, ψiψi being the rate of entropy flux vector, and qiqi the rate of heat flux vector. The part of this generation related to radiation is illustrated in terms of an example. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/70807/2/JAPIAU-87-6-3093-1.pd

Numerical investigations of planar solidification of an undercooled liquid

We investigate evolution of a planar interface during unstable solidification of a pure undercooled liquid between two parallel plates. The governing equations are solved using a front tracking/finite difference technique that allows discontinuous material properties between the phases and interfacial anisotropy. The simulations produce some of the futures of the dendritic solidification which are in good qualitative agreement with the works of the previous investigators. The effects of the physical parameters on the crystal growth and interface instability are also examined. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87387/2/629_1.pd

On interface dynamics

An intuitive study is presented for unstable interfacial waves. The maximum wavelength obtained for the most rapid unstable growth is shown to have a universal part which also characterizes the isotropic scales of buoyancy-driven turbulence. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/70336/2/PHFLE6-12-5-1244-1.pd

Challenges in commercialization of nano and biotechnologies in agricultural sector of Iran

The major purpose of this study was to determine challenges in commercialization of nano and biotechnologies in agicultural sector of Iran. The total population for this study was 50 participants who attended a workshop on commercialization of nano and biotechnologies in agriculture at biotech 2010 exhibition in Tehran. The results showed that the social and cultural challenges caused 39% of variance on the perception of the respondents about challenges influencing the commercialization of nano and biotechnologies in agricultural sector of Iran. The commercialization of nano and biotechnologies in Iran faces challenges and obstacles and require location-specific approaches.Key words: Commercialization, challenges, agriculture sector, Iran, nanotechnologies, biotechnologie