Variation in Weed Seed Fate Fed to Different Holstein Cattle Groups.

Weed seeds may maintain their viability when passing through the digestive tract of cattle and can be therefore dispersed by animal movement or the application of manure. Whether different cattle types of the same species can cause differential weed seed fate is largely unknown to us particularly under non-grazed systems similar to Holstein-Friesian dairy farming. We investigated the effect on the seed survival of four weed species in the digestive tracts of four groups of Holstein cattle: lactating cows, feedlot male calves, dry cows and growing heifers. The weed species used were Cuscuta campestris, Polygonum aviculare, Rumex crispus and Sorghum halepense. Cattle excretion was sampled for recovery and viability of seeds at four 24 hourly intervals after seed intake. The highest seed recovery occurred two days after seed intake in all cattle groups. Averaged over weed species, dry and lactating cows had the lowest and highest seed recovery of 36.4% and 74.4% respectively. No significant differences were observed in seed recovery of the four weed species when their seeds were fed to dry cows. Based on a power model fitted to seed viability data, the estimated time to 50% viability loss after seed intake, over all cattle groups ranged from 65 h (R. crispus) to 76 h (P. aviculare). Recovered seeds from the dung of feedlot male calves showed the highest mortality among cattle groups. Significant correlation was found between seed viability and ruminal pH (r = 0.86; P<0.05). This study shows that management programs aiming to minimize weed infestation caused by livestock should account for the variation amongst cattle groups in seed persistence. Our findings can be used as a guideline for evaluating the potential risk of the spread of weeds via the application of cattle manure

Risk Factors for Ulcerative Colitis in Shahrekord, Iran: A Case-Control Study

Background and aims: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) which involves the rectum and colonic mucosa, and is often constantly expanding. Few data are available on risk factors in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the association between potential risk factors and UC in Shahrekord. Methods: A case-control study was conducted on patients diagnosed with UC. Overall, 27 new cases of UC and 54 healthy controls in the age range of 20–80 years were studied. Participants were recruited from Pathologic Centers in Shahrekord in 2018. Chi-square test and t test and were used. Logistic regression model was employed to analyze the association between risk factors and UC disease. Results: The mean age at diagnosis was 41.74 years (SD: 7.16 years) and 44.94 years (SD: 6.67 years) for case and control subjects, respectively. Moreover, univariate and multiple odds ratio (OR) showed that there was no significant association between UC and any of the risk factors including gender, marital status, education, diastolic blood pressure, history of diabetes, history of hypertension, permanent use of piped water, night shift work, history of thyroid diseases, depression, history of fatty liver disease, history of kidney stones, and sleep time and wake-up time in the morning. Conclusion: Generally, no significant association was observed between UC and the variables in the present study. Thus, further studies with larger sample size are necessary to better understand the other risk factors and environmental determinants of UC. Keywords: Ulcerative colitis Inflammatory bowel disease Risk factors Case-contro

Ability mediation effects in the relationship between human resource practices and service quality

In this study, the relationships between Human Resource Practices (HRPs), firm performance (service quality), and the mediation effects of employees’ abilities were examined. To assess the relationships between variables, before evaluating the fitted structural model, the measurement model was defined to verify that the measurement variables used to reflect the unobserved constructs do so in a reliable manner. The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was utilized to test the fitness of the model and to provide evidence of discriminate validity through chi-square difference tests. Data were collected from a sample of 179 branches of two banks in Tehran, Iran. Analysis with the bootstrapping method showed that employees’ abilities mediated the relationship between performance appraisal and service quality. Furthermore, the result of this article showed training practices had an indirect significant relationship with service quality through employees’ abilities. Overall, the findings of the current study provided insights into the role of HRPs and employees’ abilities in firm performance. Furthermore, it becomes important for organizations to build strategic practices in terms of training, career development, participation, and performance appraisal

TOWARD THE BEST LEARNING IN PLEASANT PLACE: HEALTHIER STUDENT IN HEALTHY SCHOOL

Abstract Schools are institutions that lay the foundation of a child's development. They play a key role in developing children into responsible citizens and good human beings. The schools are as a educational organization and Organizational health of the school will be importance. This paper introduces the concept of healthy school, its characteristics, dimensions of health, concept of positive mental health in schools. Also, comprehensive healthy school framework is presented. A healthy school improves pupils' life-choices, achievement and opportunities by health education, drug education, emotional health, healthy eating, physical activity, … . The results indicate that healthy students are better students and healthier students are better learners. Also, there is positive correlation between health and learning

HYDRA-HGR: A Hybrid Transformer-based Architecture for Fusion of Macroscopic and Microscopic Neural Drive Information

Development of advance surface Electromyogram (sEMG)-based Human-Machine Interface (HMI) systems is of paramount importance to pave the way towards emergence of futuristic Cyber-Physical-Human (CPH) worlds. In this context, the main focus of recent literature was on development of different Deep Neural Network (DNN)-based architectures that perform Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) at a macroscopic level (i.e., directly from sEMG signals). At the same time, advancements in acquisition of High-Density sEMG signals (HD-sEMG) have resulted in a surge of significant interest on sEMG decomposition techniques to extract microscopic neural drive information. However, due to complexities of sEMG decomposition and added computational overhead, HGR at microscopic level is less explored than its aforementioned DNN-based counterparts. In this regard, we propose the HYDRA-HGR framework, which is a hybrid model that simultaneously extracts a set of temporal and spatial features through its two independent Vision Transformer (ViT)-based parallel architectures (the so called Macro and Micro paths). The Macro Path is trained directly on the pre-processed HD-sEMG signals, while the Micro path is fed with the p-to-p values of the extracted Motor Unit Action Potentials (MUAPs) of each source. Extracted features at macroscopic and microscopic levels are then coupled via a Fully Connected (FC) fusion layer. We evaluate the proposed hybrid HYDRA-HGR framework through a recently released HD-sEMG dataset, and show that it significantly outperforms its stand-alone counterparts. The proposed HYDRA-HGR framework achieves average accuracy of 94.86% for the 250 ms window size, which is 5.52% and 8.22% higher than that of the Macro and Micro paths, respectively

Identifying and Validating Components of Decision-Making of the Secondary School Pricniplals in Iranian Eeducation System

The aim of this study was to identify the dimensions and components of administrators decision making in educational organization. This research method was a mixed exploratory research. The statistical population in the qualitative section included all school principals in Tehran and expert principals of educational system and the sampling method was purposeful and theoretical. In quantitative part, the statistical population was all school principals in Tehran, which according to Cochran's formula, the number of sample members was 249. Data collection tool in the qualitative part of the interview was semi-structured and retesting and reliability between the two coders were used to check the validity and reliability of the interviews and coding, and they are approved as 0.75 and 0.77 respectively. The collection tool in the quantitative part was a researcher-made questionnaire that its validity was checked and confirmed by content validity method and confirmatory factor analysis. The reliability of the instrument was evaluated and confirmed using Cronbach's alpha method, and it was approved as 0.625. Grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data in the qualitative part. One-sample t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and confirmatory factor analysis were used to analyze the quantitative part. The findings showed: 1- Dimensions of decision making were classified into eight categories: knowledge, experience and expertise, ethical, psychological, social, human, technical and economic. 2- There was a significant correlation between the dimensions and components. 3- Knowledge dimension and psychological dimension had the highest and lowest mean, respectively

Evaluation of Rigid Ryegrass (Lolium rigidum) accessions for clodinafop-propargyl Resistance using bioassay in Petri dish and pot

Three rigid ryegrass accessions with possible resistance to clodinafop-propargyl, anacetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase) inhibitor (group 1) herbicide were identified in Farsprovince fields. Greenhouse studies and seed bioassay experiments were conducted toconfirm clodinafop-propargyl resistance in Lolium rigidum L. In Petri dish seed bioassay testwere determined the coleoptiles length of accessions (as % of untreated control), ID50(dosage required to inhibit coleoptile length by 50%), the degree of resistance in S and Raccessions. In greenhouse experiments to determine the degree of resistance, accessions wereexposed to clodinafop-propargyl at 4-leaf stage. Four weeks after spraying was calculated thedry weight of accessions (%), plant survival of each accession (% of untreated control) andevaluation was performed according to EWRC. Then, the responses of accessions exposed to0.25 to 32 times the recommended dosage of clodinafop-propargyl was measured and thedegree of resistance in S and R accessions was identified. Results of bioassay andgreenhouse studies revealed that in both experiments and for parameters measured FR1accession showed more resistance than the other accessions, followed by FR7 and Saccessions, respectively. So these two methods tested can be used to help assess the degree ofresistance and reached the same result with two methods

Training for Medical Tourism in Iran

Introduction: Today, medical tourism is becoming popularized through the upgrading of quality standards essential to providing appropriate and high quality services to those in need. Training is an essential factor in improving the current standards. Medical tourism can provide state-of-the-art treatment for patients. Methods: This study is a narrative review of studies aimed at investigating the importance of training in medical tourism and to address the question of whether training in the development of medical tourism and attracting medical tourists is feasible. Results: Medical tourism can provide state-of-the-art treatment for patients. Experts in the field of medical tourism can help a tourist select his/her destination country. The development of medical tourism in Iran means providing high-tech facilities and personnel who are highly-trained in medical tourism, familiarization with the culture of medical tourists, the cooperation of stakeholders, advertisement of medical tourism, and so on. Conclusion: To develop medical tourism in Iran, in addition to the necessary equipment, the necessary training should also be provided, such as an introduction to medical tourism and the medical tourist and knowledge of the rules and regulations of medical tourism. Participants in training should be stakeholders in both the medical and the tourism sectors. It is necessary to design a training model for Iranian medical tourism

Assessment of teacher performance in a private Iranian high school using the North Carolina teacher performance appraisal instrument

This study assessed teachers' performance in a private Iranian high school using the Teacher Performance Appraisal Instrument (TPAI) of North Carolina. The teacher performance appraisal system was used to: 1) determine levels of competency, 2) improve performance, 3) validate strong performance, 4) professional growth plans, 5) identify areas needing improvement, 6) licensure, 7) document problems areas 8) accurately reflect performance, and 9) self assessment. In this study, a team of researchers scrutinized and assessed school teachers' performance in class. There were 31 teachers and they were assessed based on 8 major functions, further defined by 43 indicators. According to the findings, the teachers of the high school were divided into three groups: 1) teachers who mastered new instructional methods and had more than 10 years experience in teaching 2) teachers with 5 to 10 years of experience and 3) student teachers with less than 5 years background. The performance level of the first group was high in a majority of the functions. The performance level of the second group was high in some of the major functions and the third group showed low performance in a majority of the functions

The Clinical Features and Diagnosis of Canavan’s Disease: A Case Series of Iranian Patients

How to Cite This Article: Karimzadeh P, Jafari N, Nejad Biglari H, Rahimian E, Ahmadabadi F, Nemati H, Nasehi MM, Ghofrani M, Mollamohammadi M. The Clinical Features and Diagnosis of Canavan’s Disease: A Case Series of Iranian Patients. Iran J Child Neurol. 2014 Autumn;8(3): 66-71.AbstractObjectiveCanavan’s disease is a lethal illness caused by a single gene mutation that is inherited as an autosomal recessive pattern. It has many different clinical features especially in the non-Ashkenazi Jewish population.Material & Methods45 patients were referred to the Pediatric Neurology Department of Mofid Children’s Hospital in Tehran-Iran from 2010–2014 with a chief complaint of neuro developmental delays, seizures, and neuroimaging findings of leukodystrophy were included in this study. Magnetic Resonance Spectrometry (MRS) and neuro metabolic assessment from a referral laboratory in Germany confirmed that 17 patients had Canavan’s disease.ResultsVisual impairment, seizure, hypotonia, neuro developmental arrest, and macrocephaly were the most consistent findings in the patients in this study. Assessments of neuro developmental status revealed that 13 (76%) patients had neuro developmental delays and 4 (24%) patients had normal neuro development until 18 months of age and then their neuro developmental milestones regressed.  In this study, 100% of cases had macrocephalia and 76% of these patients had visual impairment. A history of seizures was positive in 8 (47%) patients and began around 3 months of age with the most common type of seizure was tonic spasm. EEGs were abnormal in all epileptic patients. In ten of the infantile group, we did not detect elevated level of N-acetylaspartic acid (NAA) in serum and urine. 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