Comparison of bone mineral density measured by dual X-ray, axial dual-energy photon X-ray absorptiometry and laser absorptiometry of calcaneus

The objective of this study was to validate the use of bone mineral measurements of the calcaneus bone by dual X-ray and laser (DXL) in a cross-sectional study carried out in an osteoporosis clinic. Measurements of bone mineral density (BMD) at proximal femur and spine were obtained by dual-energy photon X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Osteoporosis was defined by a DEXA T-score <-2.5 at the femoral neck or lumbar spine. Sensitivity, specificity and kappa statistics for DXL were calculated, assuming the DEXA measurement as the gold-standard. The study included 475 women with a mean age of 54±11.9 years. 15 had osteoporosis while 39 were osteopenic (-2.5<T-score between<-1) at the femoral neck or spine. A significant correlation (p<0.001) was found between BMD values as measured by DXL at femoral neck and DEXA at the lumbar spine. Assuming the same T-score cut-off value for the diagnosis osteoporosis and a modified cut-off value for the diagnosis of osteopenia (-2.5<T-score<-1.5), yields a sensitivity of 83 and a specificity of 74 to 86 for the DXL device. In conclusion, BMD measured at the calcaneal bone by DXL, has a good correlation with that measured by axial DEXA

A Brief Journey into the History of the Arterial Pulse

Objective. This paper illustrates the evolution of our knowledge of the arterial pulse from ancient times to the present. Several techniques for arterial pulse evaluation throughout history are discussed. Methods. Using databases including Worldcat, Pubmed, and Emory University Libraries' Catalogue, the significance of the arterial pulse is discussed in three historical eras of medicine: ancient, medieval, and modern. Summary. Techniques used over time to analyze arterial pulse and its characteristics have advanced from simple evaluation by touch to complex methodologies such as ultrasonography and plethysmography. Today's understanding of the various characteristics of the arterial pulse relies on our ancestors' observations and experiments. The pursuit of science continues to lead to major advancements in our knowledge of the arterial pulse and its application in diagnosis of atherosclerotic disease

The relationship of individual accountability with job stress and work deviant behavior among nurses

Background and aims: Individual accountability and its positive and negative effectiveness are the most challenges of organization subjects. The root of some medical staffs' behaviors and activities is individual accountability. So, the present paper was conducted with the aim of identifying the relationship between individual accountability with job stress and work deviant behavior with mediating role of personality trait of conscientiousness. Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, 175 employee nurses of Ayatollah Kashani and Hajar hospitals were entered in this research in 2014. Data were collected using Hochwarter, Casta, Mackgor, Mulkr, Robinson and Bennett, and House and Rizzo standard questionnaires. The structural equations model was used to study the relationship between Latent variables and the measured ones in conceptual model. Results: The results indicated that there is a significant positive correlation between the perception of individual accountability and personality trait of conscientiousness (P 0.05 and r = - 0.26, r = - 0.36). Conclusion: According to the present theoretical and research foundations at hand, individual accountability directly affects job stress and work deviant behavior among employees, and on the basis of the findings of the present study conscientiousness bears a significant negative causal effect on job stress and work deviant behavior. It is concluded that conscientiousness decreases the negative causal and potential effect of accountability on stress and work deviant behavior

CRYSTALLIZATION KINETICS OF GLASS-CERAMICS BY DIFFERENTIAL THERMAL ANALYSIS

The crystallization behavior of fluorphlogopite, a glass-ceramic in the MgO–SiO2–Al2O3–K2O–B2O3–F system, was studied by substitution of Li2O for K2O in the glass composition. DTA, XRD and SEM were used for the study of crystallization behavior, formed phases and microstructure of the resulting glass-ceramics. Crystallization kinetics of the glass was investigated under non-isothermal conditions, using the formal theory of transformations for heterogeneous nucleation. The crystallization results were analyzed, and both the activation energy of crystallization process as well as the crystallization mechanism were characterized. Calculated kinetic parameters indicated that the appropriate crystallization mechanism was bulk crystallization for base glass and the sample with addition of Li2O. Non-isothermal DTA experiments showed that the crystallization activation energies of base glasses was in the range of 234-246 KJ/mol and in the samples with addition of Li2O was changed to the range of 317-322 KJ/mol

Accessibility to the public facilities: A mean to achieve civil rights of the people with disabilities in Iran

Objective: Civil rights may cover different aspects of citizens' lives. All the members of the society should have equal access to the public facilities and public transportation system. Barriers and obstacles in society may limit the accessibility of these facilities to the disabled people. Method: This article contains a part of the results in a phenomenological study of the Disability Rights. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe experiences of disability rights among 11 physically disabled that were living in Tehran, Iran. The study involves secondary analysis of in-depth transcribed interview data, using colazzi's method. Results:A total of 655 descriptive expressions were categorized in to 25 preliminary structural elements (sub themes). 7 essential structural elements (themes) emerged from an analysis of the sub themes. One of these themes was right to access which was emerged from an analysis of 6 sub themes. Conclusion: These sub themes that were obtained from an analysis of descriptive expressions of the participants, are: right to access to housing, right to access to education and information, right to access to job facilities, right to access to medical care and rehabilitation, right to access to rest, leisure and sport and right to access to places and transportation system. The right to access theme, was then categorized in to the civil rights field. In this article we will describe the right to access as it was experienced by those physically disabled people who participated in the interviews

The cut-off point of dual energy X-ray and laser (DXL) of calcaneus osteoporosis diagnosis in postmenopausal women

Background: Dual X-Ray Absorptiometry (DXA) is a method which can extensively be used for bone mineral densitometry (BMD). Another more recent method is DXL, which associate with dual X ray absorptiometry, assisted by laser measure heel thickness. In this study the cut off points for DXL of calcaneus in the diagnosis of osteoporosis in different bone regions in postmenopausal women had been determined. Materials and Methods: In 268 postmenopausal women, BMD of the spinal and femoral regions was measured by DXA, and the value for the calcaneous was measured by DXL. The agreement of the two methods in the diagnosis of osteoporosis and optimal cut-off point for DXL in defining osteoporosis was obtained. What obtained was the agreement of the two methods in the diagnosis of osteoporosis, as well as the optimal cut-off point for DXL in defining osteoporosis. Results: DXA showed osteoporosis in 40.7 of cases with 35.2 in L2-L4, 16.2 in the femoral neck, and 11.7 for the femoral total region. The DXL found osteoporosis, considering -2.5 SD as a threshold, in 26.1 of cases. Agreement of the two methods in the diagnosis of osteoporosis (Kappa score) was 0.443 for the lumbar region, 0.464 for the neck, and, 0.421 for total femur regions (all P values were significant). Using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC ) curves, it was found that a T-score of -2.1, -2.6 and -2.4 as the optimal cut-off point of DXL in the diagnosis of osteoporosis in the lumbar spine, the neck and total region of femur, respectively. Conclusion: The results of this study sh owed a moderate agreement between the two methods in the diagnosis of osteoporosis. It seems that the DXL cannot be used as a substitute for the DXA method, but it can be used as a screening method to find (to diagnose) osteoporosis

Investigation of Microdevice Performance by Transient Heat Transfer Simulation

The present work considers transient electrothermal simulation of sub-micrometer silicon device and electron-phonon interactions in electrical and thermal fields. A coupled thermal and electrical model is developed for a silicon n n n structure consisting of the hydrodynamic equations for electron transport and energy conservation equations for phonon. The results indicate that, for one electric field the lattice temperature gradient has significant effect on the magnitude of electric current. The transient phonon temperature affects the device performance due to the change of mobility and gradient temperature of electron. At an external voltage of 0.1 V, calculations show that an increase in the junction boundary temperature by 100 °C, cause increasing the drain current by 16% at 3 picosecond and decreases it by 17% up to steady state condition

Comparing k-means clusters on parallel Persian-English corpus

This paper compares clusters of aligned Persian and English texts obtained from k-means method. Text clustering has many applications in various fields of natural language processing. So far, much English documents clustering research has been accomplished. Now this question arises, are the results of them extendable to other languages? Since the goal of document clustering is grouping of documents based on their content, it is expected that the answer to this question is yes. On the other hand, many differences between various languages can cause the answer to this question to be no. This research has focused on k-means that is one of the basic and popular document clustering methods. We want to know whether the clusters of aligned Persian and English texts obtained by the k-means are similar. To find an answer to this question, Mizan English-Persian Parallel Corpus was considered as benchmark. After features extraction using text mining techniques and applying the PCA dimension reduction method, the k-means clustering was performed. The morphological difference between English and Persian languages caused the larger feature vector length for Persian. So almost in all experiments, the English results were slightly richer than those in Persian. Aside from these differences, the overall behavior of Persian and English clusters was similar. These similar behaviors showed that results of k-means research on English can be expanded to Persian. Finally, there is hope that despite many differences between various languages, clustering methods may be extendable to other languages

Evaluation of sperm chromatin integrity using aniline blue and toluidine blue staining in infertile and normozoospermic men

Background: Male infertility is defined as a man lost his ability to fertilize a fertile female naturally. Diagnosis of male infertility cannot be made just according to basic semen analysis. It is necessity to have specific tests for evaluation of chromatin integrity. In this study, an attempt was made to evaluate the sperm chromatin quality in fertile men and infertile subgroup. Methods: Among 1386 couples, 342 men were categorized into normospermia and 1044 were infertile and they were referred to Yazd Research and Clinical Center for infertility treatment. Standard semen analysis and sperm nuclear maturity tests including aniline blue (AB) and toluidine blue (TB) staining were done. Data were analyzed by SPSS software. The p=0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The mean value of TB staining was significantly higher in infertile group compared to normospermic group (p=0.005). Mean of sperm normal morphology was lower in idiopathic infertile men in comparison with normozoospermic men (p= 0.001). The highest negative correlation was obtained between sperm count and AB staining. Progressive motility was negatively correlated with AB and TB staining in both groups but there was no significant difference between AB staining and progressive motility in men normospermia group. Conclusion: Sperm chromatin staining using AB and TB showed a negative association between sperm chromatin condensation with sperm count, normal morphology and progressive motility. It seems that the AB and TB test may be useful for the assessment of male fertility potential. © 2019 Avicenna Research Institute. All rights reserved

Feeding characteristics of Neogobius caspius in the south west coastline of the Caspian Sea (Gilan Province)

Neogobius caspius is an endemic species of the Caspian Sea which plays an important role in food chain as a predatory fish. The main aim of this study was to investigate selected feeding characteristics of Neogobius caspius in the south west coasts of the Caspian Sea. Monthly sampling was carried out using a bottom trawler at three stations (Astara, Anzali and Chabuksar) in three depths (0-5, 5-10 and 10-15m) on a monthly basis from October 2004 to September 2005. Relative gut length (RLG) was less than one suggesting that this species is carnivorous. RLG was significantly lower in older fish but gut length was longer (P<0.05). Intensity of fullness was below the favorite degree (IF<400) from October to March, however, it was higher (400<IF<900) from April to October at all stations, indicating that feeding conditions for this species is suitable in the study area. Study showed that N. caspius mainly fed on molluscs (Food preference, FP=100%), worms (FP=89%) and crustaceans (FP=74%), hence, this species is considered as euryphagus species