Study of High Risk Behaviors and their Association with Personality Factors

This paper focuses on studying the issue of risky behavior and its relation to personality factors in students. method: The sample included 100 students who were selected via cluster random sampling from among all students of the university. To collect data on Eysinck personality questionnaire and Iranian Adolescents Risk-taking Scale, Zuckerman sensation seeking inventory and Beck Depression Inventory was used .The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. Finding: Pearson correlation coefficient showed that high-risk behavior personality traits of extraversion, neuroticism and psychosis-oriented, but a significant positive correlation with introversion personality characteristic and significant negative relationship. Multiple regression analysis showed that personality factors can be used to predict their risk behaviors. Conclusion: Considering the role of personality factors in high-risk tendency of people to different behavior

Association of the human astrocyte elevated gene-1 promoter variants with susceptibility to hepatocellular carcinoma

Central role of astrocyte elevated gene-1 (AEG-1) in regulating diverse aspects of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) pathogenesis and association of its overexpression with HCC progression has been demonstrated. The positive regulatory regions of AEG-1 promoter contain several putative transcription factor binding sites critical for basal promoter activity. In this study, the aim was to explore the association of AEG-1 promoter variant with HCC. In this study, the human AEG-1 promoter including the region -538 to -42 was explored in 53 HCC patients and 108 healthy controls. The polymerase chain reaction-sequencing method was used for investigating AEG-1 promoter polymorphisms. A novel mutation in AEG-1 promoter in human HCC patients at a potential AP-2 binding site was explored. An A>C mutation was observed in -483 of AEG-1 promoter in 4 out of 53 HCC patients but not in 108 control individuals. Sequencing data showed genetic variations in 11 HCC patients and 3 healthy controls. Among them, one novel SNP was found in activator protein-1 (AP2), a transcription factor binding site (-483 A to C) that may be associated with the susceptibility to HCC (P = 0.012) but no associations were found for other observed variations. This mutation could be tumor-specific. AEG-1 promoter variant -483 A>C may be associated with the susceptibility to HCC in Iranian population. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has reported this association with the susceptibility to HCC. Therefore, further studies need to be conducted in larger sample sizes and other populations to validate these findings. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

Thermally stable low current consuming gallium and germanium chalcogenides for consumer and automotive memory applications

The phase change technology behind rewritable optical disks and the latest generation of electronic memories has provided clear commercial and technological advances for the field of data storage, by virtue of the many well known attributes, in particular scaling, cycling endurance and speed, that chalcogenide materials offer. While the switching power and current consumption of established germanium antimony telluride based memory cells are a major factor in chip design in real world applications, often the thermal stability of the device can be a major obstacle in the path to the full commercialisation. In this work we describe our research in material discovery and characterization for the purpose of identifying more thermally stable chalcogenides for applications in PCRAM

Electrical properties of Bi-implanted amorphous chalcogenide films

The impact of Bi implantation on the conductivity and the thermopower of amorphous chalcogenide films is investigated. Incorporation of Bi in Ge-Sb-Te and GeTe results in enhanced conductivity. The negative Seebeck coefficient confirms onset of the electron conductivity in GeTe implanted with Bi at a dose of 2x1016 cm-2. The enhanced conductivity is accompanied by defect accumulation in the films upon implantation as is inferred by using analysis of the space-charge limited current. The results indicate that native coordination defects in lone-pair semiconductors can be deactivated by means of ion implantation, and higher conductivity of the films stems from additional electrically active defects created by implantation of bismuth.Comment: This is an extended version of the results presented in Proc. SPIE 8982, 898213 (2014

Luminescence of all-dielectric solution-processed perovskite metamaterial

We demonstrate that periodic subwavelength nanostructuring of solution-processed organolead halide perovskite films creates optical resonances, position of which can be controlled by design. Such metamaterial nanostructuring strongly enhances photo- and cathodo-luminescence of the films

Anatomy-Aware Self-supervised Fetal MRI Synthesis from Unpaired Ultrasound Images

Fetal brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers exquisite images of the developing brain but is not suitable for anomaly screening. For this ultrasound (US) is employed. While expert sonographers are adept at reading US images, MR images are much easier for non-experts to interpret. Hence in this paper we seek to produce images with MRI-like appearance directly from clinical US images. Our own clinical motivation is to seek a way to communicate US findings to patients or clinical professionals unfamiliar with US, but in medical image analysis such a capability is potentially useful, for instance, for US-MRI registration or fusion. Our model is self-supervised and end-to-end trainable. Specifically, based on an assumption that the US and MRI data share a similar anatomical latent space, we first utilise an extractor to determine shared latent features, which are then used for data synthesis. Since paired data was unavailable for our study (and rare in practice), we propose to enforce the distributions to be similar instead of employing pixel-wise constraints, by adversarial learning in both the image domain and latent space. Furthermore, we propose an adversarial structural constraint to regularise the anatomical structures between the two modalities during the synthesis. A cross-modal attention scheme is proposed to leverage non-local spatial correlations. The feasibility of the approach to produce realistic looking MR images is demonstrated quantitatively and with a qualitative evaluation compared to real fetal MR images.Comment: MICCAI-MLMI 201

Serial CT analysis in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: comparison of visual features that determine patient outcome

Aims: Patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) receiving antifibrotic medication and patients with non-IPF fibrosing lung disease often demonstrate rates of annualised forced vital capacity (FVC) decline within the range of measurement variation (5.0%–9.9%). We examined whether change in visual CT variables could help confirm whether marginal FVC declines represented genuine clinical deterioration rather than measurement noise. Methods: In two IPF cohorts (cohort 1: n=103, cohort 2: n=108), separate pairs of radiologists scored paired volumetric CTs (acquired between 6 and 24 months from baseline). Change in interstitial lung disease, honeycombing, reticulation, ground-glass opacity extents and traction bronchiectasis severity was evaluated using a 5-point scale, with mortality prediction analysed using univariable and multivariable Cox regression analyses. Both IPF populations were then combined to determine whether change in CT variables could predict mortality in patients with marginal FVC declines. Results: On univariate analysis, change in all CT variables except ground-glass opacity predicted mortality in both cohorts. On multivariate analysis adjusted for patient age, gender, antifibrotic use and baseline disease severity (diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide), change in traction bronchiectasis severity predicted mortality independent of FVC decline. Change in traction bronchiectasis severity demonstrated good interobserver agreement among both scorer pairs. Across all study patients with marginal FVC declines, change in traction bronchiectasis severity independently predicted mortality and identified more patients with deterioration than change in honeycombing extent. Conclusions: Change in traction bronchiectasis severity is a measure of disease progression that could be used to help resolve the clinical importance of marginal FVC declines

Modelling, Simulation and Fuzzy Self-Tuning Control of D-STATCOM in a Single Machine Infinite Bus Power System

© 2019 Bentham Science Publishers. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.2174/2352096511666180314141205In recent years, demand for electricity has increased considerably, while the expansion of generation and transmission has been very slow due to limited investment in resources and environmental restrictions. Methods: As a result, the power system becomes vulnerable to disturbances and instability. FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission Systems) technology has now been accepted as a potential solution to this problem. This paper deals with the modelling, simulation and fuzzy self-tuning control of a D-STATCOM to enhance the stability and improve the critical fault clearing time(CCT) in a single machine infinite bus (SMIB).A detailed modelling of the D-STATCOM and comprehensive derivation of the fuzzy logic self-tuning control is presented. Results: The dynamic performance of the power system with the proposed control scheme is validated through in a simulation study carried out under Matlab/Simulink and SimPowerSystems toolbox. Conclusion: The results demonstrate a significant enhancement of the power system stability under the simulated fault conditions considered.Peer reviewe