Predicting Marital Conflicts in Couples Based on A Systemic Approach Mediated by Personality Traits

AbstractIntroduction: Marital conflicts are among the main factors that threaten marital relations and contribute to conflicts and divorces in Iranian society. The present study has been carried out in order to predict marital conflicts in couples based on a systemic approach mediated by personality traits in the cities of Tehran and Qom.Methods: The research method was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population consisted of troubled/struggling couples in Tehran and Qom. The sample consisted of 540 men and women with marital conflict selected by convenience sampling. The research instruments included Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, (NEO) Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), Marital Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ), and the Family Assessment Device (FAD). Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation method and structural equation modeling using SPSS version 22.0 and LISREL version 8.0 software.Results: Results revealed that the hypothetical model fit the measurement model (CFI = 0.97; IFI = 0.96; RMSEA = 0.088). In addition, the systemic approach components mediated by personality traits were able to explain marital conflicts (P = 0.001). These components indirectly influenced marital conflicts through personality traits (β = -0.38, P = 0.005).Conclusions: Overall, the findings verified the marital conflict model based on a systemic approach mediated by the personality traits

Mismatching-Aware Unsupervised Translation Quality Estimation For Low-Resource Languages

Translation Quality Estimation (QE) is the task of predicting the quality of machine translation (MT) output without any reference. This task has gained increasing attention as an important component in the practical applications of MT. In this paper, we first propose XLMRScore, which is a cross-lingual counterpart of BERTScore computed via the XLM-RoBERTa (XLMR) model. This metric can be used as a simple unsupervised QE method, while employing it results in two issues: firstly, the untranslated tokens leading to unexpectedly high translation scores, and secondly, the issue of mismatching errors between source and hypothesis tokens when applying the greedy matching in XLMRScore. To mitigate these issues, we suggest replacing untranslated words with the unknown token and the cross-lingual alignment of the pre-trained model to represent aligned words closer to each other, respectively. We evaluate the proposed method on four low-resource language pairs of WMT21 QE shared task, as well as a new English-Farsi test dataset introduced in this paper. Experiments show that our method could get comparable results with the supervised baseline for two zero-shot scenarios, i.e., with less than 0.01 difference in Pearson correlation, while outperforming unsupervised rivals in all the low-resource language pairs for above 8%, on average.Comment: Submitted to Language Resources and Evaluatio

Prediction of Marital Conflicts Based on a Systems Approach with the Mediating Role of Attachment Styles

Background: Attachment style is a major variable in the creation and description of marital problems and has received greater attention in recent years. The traits of secure attachment include constructive emotional interactions and intimate marital relationships. The present study aimed to predict marital conflicts using a problem-centered systems approach with the mediating role of attachment styles among conflicting couples. Methods: In this descriptive correlational study, the statistical population in this study was the total number of conflicted couples in Tehran and Qom in 2020. The sample included 540 men and women with marital conflict selected by convenience sampling. The research instruments included the Experience in Close Relationship Scale (ECR-S), the Marital Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ), and the Family Assessment Device (FAD). Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation method and structural equation modeling using SPSS version 22.0 and LISREL version 8.0 software. Results: The assessment of the hypothetical model of the research indicated that it was a good fit with the measurement model (CFI>0.90; IFI>0.90; RMSE>0.08). The results demonstrated that the components of the systems approach with the mediating role of attachment styles could explain marital conflicts (P<0.001). These components had an indirect relationship with marital conflicts through attachment styles (β= -0.27, P= 0.01). Conclusion: Based on the results, the proposed model had a good fit. Overall, the findings verified the marital conflict model based on a systemic approach mediated by attachment styles

Prevalence of Anaerobic Bacteria (P.gingivalis) as Major Microbial Agent in the Incidence Periodontal Diseases by Meta-analysis

Statement of the Problem: Periodontal diseases are complex oral diseases characterized by bacterial-induced inflammatory destruction of tooth-supporting tissues. Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis) is a common gram-negative anaerobic oral bacteria strongly associated with periodontal disease. Purpose: The present study was conducted to estimate prevalence of P. gingivalis in patients with periodontal diseases by using meta-analysis method. Martials and Method: Different databases including PubMed, EmBase, Scopus, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched to identify original English-language studies addressing prevalence of P. gingivalis in periodontal diseases up to December 2014. The random effects model was applied in the meta-analysis and the heterogeneity between studies was assessed using a Cochran test and the I2 index. Funnel plots and Egger test were used to examine publication bias. Statistical analyses were performed using STATA version 12. Results: Forty-two eligible studies published during 1993- 2016 were selected for meta-analysis. Considering all the included studies, the total sample size was 5,884 individuals containing 2,576 healthy people with a mean age of 37.21±7.45 years and 3,308 periodontal patients with a mean age of 44.16±8.35 years. Overall, the prevalence of P. gingivalis was 78% [95% CI: 74-81] in periodontal diseases group and 34% [95% CI: 26-41] in healthy individuals. There was a significantly higher prevalence of P.gingivalis in individuals with periodontal diseases compared to healthy subjects [78% versus 34%, respectively]. Conclusion: This study indicates that P. gingivalis is highly present in subjects with periodontal diseases and it also appears in periodontally healthy people, although to a lesser extent. Thus, the presence of P. gingivalis increases the chance of periodontal disease and it can be considered as a main potential risk factor

Investigation of the Effect of Individual Counseling of Physical Activity Based on Theory of Planned Behavior on Glycemic Indexes in Women with Gestational Diabetes: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Background and Objectives: Performing physical activity is one of the inexpensive and available interventions in the field of self-care of gestational diabetes. Changing and modifying health behaviors in individuals can lead to preventing or delaying the disease and its complications. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of physical activity counselling based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) on glycemic indexes in women with gestational diabetes. &nbsp; Methods: In a randomized clinical trial, the effect of counselling based on TPB was investigated in 50 women with gestational diabetes. The eligible subjects were assigned to two groups (control and intervention) using randomized block design; then, glycemic indexes were measured (pre- and post-intervention). Data were analyzed using independent and paired t-test. &nbsp; Results: In this study, the mean FBS (p=0.028), hemoglobin A1C (p=0.008), 2-hour postprandial blood sugar (p=0.002) and the number of admission (p<0.001) in the intervention group decreased compared to the control group, and the mean physical activity at home (p<0.001), sports fields (p<0.001), transportation (p=0.015), tendency to physical activity (p<0.001), attitude toward physical activity (p<0.001), abstract norms (p=0.001) and perceived control (p<0.001) significantly increased. &nbsp; Conclusion: Considering the positive effects of intervention on controlling glycemic indexes, physical activity counseling can be considered as one of the effective strategies for controlling gestational diabetes, especially using health education theory. &nbsp

Assessment of the Skin and Heart Tissue Damage Following Inhalation of Carbon Nanotubes in Wistar Rats Using Isolated Mitochondria: Carbon nanotubes induced skin and heart tissue damage

The unique properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have led to their use in various fields. But, the toxicity of CNTs has been reported in biological and environmental systems. The aim of this research is to study the effect of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) through inhalation chamber on the mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress using the mitochondria obtained from the skin and heart. Rats were exposed to 5 mg/m3 of MWCNTs (10 nm) aerosol for 5 hours /day, 5 days/week for 2 weeks in a whole-body exposure chamber. After 2-weeks exposure, Heart and skin mitochondria were evaluated for evaluation of toxicity parameters. The results showed that nanoparticles significantly decreased mitochondrial succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) activity and increased the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS), collapse in mitochondria membrane potential (MMP), swelling in mitochondria, and cytochrome release. In conclusion, we suggested that 5 mg/m3 of MWCNTs (10 nm) induce ROS mediated cytotoxicity by directly targeting mitochondria in both skin and heart tissue