Examining the patient's satisfaction from Hospital Service Quality using the CRM (Cus-tomer Relationship Management) Model

This research aims to examine the patient's satisfaction from service quality in Bahrami Hospital considering the CRM model. Generally, six variables of "Physician-Patient Relation", "Nurse-Patient Relation", "Staff-Patient Relation", "Hospital Accountability", "Meeting Patient's Requirements", and "Specialized Performance of the Physicians" have been analyzed in order to measure the impacts of the variables on patient's satisfaction in Bahrami Hospital of Tehran. The statistical population of the research contained the patients (children) who were hospitalized in the Bahrami Children Hospital and/or the parents who were the children's companies. Also, sample size was calculated 196 people based on the Cochran's Formula. This study is an applicable research with a descriptive survey methodology so that the main tool for data gathering is questionnaire. In addition, the Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient for the questionnaire was calculated 0.812 based upon SPSS software. Analyzing the data by SPSS software revealed that all variables except "specialized performance of the physi-cians" had a significant relation with patient's satisfaction. Since the hospital was a training-based medical center, the Pearson correlation coefficient for the variable "specialized performance of the physicians" was calculated 0.137; meanwhile, the meaningfulness amount was obtained 0.056 which is more than the standard limit. Therefore, the aforesaid variable does not have a significant relation with patient's satisfaction. Research paper Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Hossieni, M. H., Meymand, M. M., Heidarvand, S. (2015). “Examining the patient's satisfaction from Hospital Service Quality using the CRM (Cus-tomer Relationship Management) Model: a case study in Bahrami Hospital of Tehran”, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 16–40

Prevalence rate of hepatitis B virus in pregnancy: Implications from a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies published from 2000 to 2016

Background: Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is one of the most serious infectious diseases and represents a major global health issue worldwide. It can be transmitted vertically and horizontally through contact with infected blood or body fluids. More attention to HBV infection in pregnancy is needed due to high risk of chronicity when transmitted to infants during delivery. Objectives: A comprehensive review of the HBV prevalence rate in pregnant females taking into account different geographical areas and socio-economic status is still lacking. This would be of crucial importance for HBV prevention and control programs. As such, this systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted focusing on HBV prevalence rate in pregnant females from different parts of the world. Methods: Different electronic databases, including Embase, PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and ISI/Web of Science were searched from January 1st 2000 to July 31st 2016, using relevant keywords, such as \ue2\u80\u9cprevalence\ue2\u80\u9d or \ue2\u80\u9cseroprevalence\ue2\u80\u9d or \ue2\u80\u9cepidemiology\ue2\u80\u9d and \ue2\u80\u9cpregnancy\ue2\u80\u9d or \ue2\u80\u9cpregnant\ue2\u80\u9d or \ue2\u80\u9cantenatal\ue2\u80\u9d in combination with \ue2\u80\u9chepatitis B virus\ue2\u80\u9d or \ue2\u80\u9cHBV\ue2\u80\u9d with no language restrictions. The study protocol of this systematic review was deposited at the \ue2\u80\u9cInternational Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews\ue2\u80\u9d and registered as CRD42016041985. Results: After scrutinizing all the extant scholarly literature from 2000 to 2016, this study found 222 relevant articles. The overall HBV prevalence rate in pregnant females worldwide was estimated using a random-effect model, giving a value of 3% (95% confidence interval or CI 2% - 4%). Heterogeneity between studies was significantly high (I2= 99.9%, P < 0.0001). The clinical and epidemiological burden was higher in developing countries. Conclusions: This suggests that despite the recent scientific advancements and the clinical progress that has occurred in anti-viral therapy, HBV still represents a major issue worldwide, especially in underdeveloped countries. The key strategies for preventing transmission from pregnant females to their fetuses are through early birth dose and infant vaccination, as well as by the use of hepatitis B immunoglobulin (HBIG) and the screening and diagnosis of mothers at high risk and the subsequent use of anti-viral agents during pregnancy in order to reduce maternal DNA concentrations down to undetectable concentrations. Health authorities should effectively implement these approaches to better control HBV in pregnancy

ALBATROSS: Publicly AttestabLe BATched Randomness Based On Secret Sharing

In this paper we present ALBATROSS, a family of multiparty randomness generation protocols with guaranteed output delivery and public verification that allows to trade off corruption tolerance for a much improved amortized computational complexity. Our basic stand alone protocol is based on publicly verifiable secret sharing (PVSS) and is secure under in the random oracle model under the decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) hardness assumption. We also address the important issue of constructing Universally Composable randomness beacons, showing two UC versions of Albatross: one based on simple UC NIZKs and another one based on novel efficient ``designated verifier\u27\u27 homomorphic commitments. Interestingly this latter version can be instantiated from a global random oracle under the weaker Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption. An execution of ALBATROSS with $n$ parties, out of which up to $t=(1/2-\epsilon)\cdot n$ are corrupt for a constant $\epsilon>0$, generates $\Theta(n^2)$ uniformly random values, requiring in the worst case an amortized cost per party of $\Theta(\log n)$ exponentiations per random value. We significantly improve on the SCRAPE protocol (Cascudo and David, ACNS 17), which required $\Theta(n^2)$ exponentiations per party to generate one uniformly random value. This is mainly achieved via two techniques: first, the use of packed Shamir secret sharing for the PVSS; second, the use of linear $t$-resilient functions (computed via a Fast Fourier Transform-based algorithm) to improve the randomness extraction

Comparative transcriptomic analysis reveals the coordinated mechanisms of Populus × canadensis ‘Neva’ leaves in response to cadmium stress

Cadmium (Cd), a heavy metal element has strong toxicity to living organisms. Excessive Cd accumulation directly affects the absorption of mineral elements, inhibits plant tissue development, and even induces mortality. Populus × canadensis ‘Neva’, the main afforestation variety planted widely in northern China, was a candidate variety for phytoremediation. However, the genes relieving Cd toxicity and increasing Cd tolerance of this species were still unclear. In this study, we employed transcriptome sequencing on two Cd?treated cuttings to identify the key genes involved in Cd stress responses of P. × canadensis ‘Neva’ l induced by 0 (CK), 10 (C10), and 20 (C20) mg/L Cd(NO3)2 4H2O. We discovered a total of 2,656 (1,488 up-regulated and 1,168 downregulated) and 2,816 DEGs (1,470 up-regulated and 1,346 down-regulated) differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the CK vs C10 and CK vs C20, respectively. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses in response to the Cd stress indicated that many DEGs identified were involved in the catalytic activity, the oxidoreductase activity, the transferase activity, and the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. Based on the enrichment results, potential candidate genes were identified related to the calcium ion signal transduction, transcription factors, the antioxidant defense system, and transporters and showed divergent expression patterns under the Cd stress. We also validated the reliability of transcriptome data with the real-time PCR. Our findings deeper the understanding of the molecular responsive mechanisms of P. × canadensis ‘Neva’ lon Cd tolerance and further provide critical resources for phytoremediation applications

Increased Resilience in Threshold Cryptography: Sharing a Secret with Devices That Cannot Store Shares

Threshold cryptography has been used to secure data and control access by sharing a private cryptographic key over different devices. This means that a minimum number of these devices, the threshold $t+1$, need to be present to use the key. The benefits are increased security, because an adversary can compromise up to $t$ devices, and resilience, since any subset of $t+1$ devices is sufficient. Many personal devices are not suitable for threshold schemes, because they do not offer secure storage, which is needed to store shares of the private key. This article presents several protocols in which shares are stored in protected form (possibly externally). This makes them suitable for low-cost devices with a factory-embedded key, e.g., car keys and access cards. All protocols are verifiable through public broadcast, thus without private channels. In addition, distributed key generation does not require all devices to be present

Chickpea and temperature stress

Chickpea is an important food grain legume and an essential component of crop rotations throughout the world. However, the adaptation and productivity of chickpea is often limited by low and high temperatures. Cold stress generally occurs in the late vegetative and reproductive stages across the geographical areas of chickpea production. Cold and freezing temperatures (−1.5°C to 15°C) are considered a major problem during the seedling stage of winter-sown chickpea in Mediterranean areas and autumn-sown crops in temperate regions (Singh, 1993). South Australia and parts of north India are most affected by chilling temperatures at flowering (Berger et al., 2011). On the other hand, high day and night temperatures (>30/16°C) may cause damage during the reproductive stage on winter-sown chickpea in Mediterranean inseason rainfall areas, south Asia and spring-sown regions (Berger et al., 2011). In chickpea, temperature is a major environmental factor regulating the timing of flowering thus influencing grain yield (Summerfield et al., 1990; Berger et al., 2004). Both low and high temperatures can limit the growth and grain yield of chickpea at all phenological stages..

Preživljavanje soja Lacticaseibacillus paracasei u ultrafiltiriranom siru u salamuri pakiranom u modificiranoj atmosferi i fleksibilnim višeslojnim filmovima

In this study, two packaging materials, modified polypropylene (MPP) and polyethylene terephthalate/aluminum/ low-density polyethylene (PETFA-Al-LDPE) were studied under various atmospheric conditions: 100% CO2, 70% N2 - 30% CO2, 80% N2 - 20% CO2 for packing probiotic ultrafiltered (UF) white brined cheese. pH, titratable acidity, moisture content, Lacticaseibacillus paracasei viability and overall acceptability were monitored within a 12-week period. The control samples were packaged in atmospheric air. Results revealed that samples packaged in PETFA-Al-LDPE with the combination of 70% N2 - 30% CO2 had the lowest pH, highest acidity and moisture content. The viability of Lacticaseibacillus paracasei was reported to be 4*106 CFU/g within 12 weeks. The highest and lowest overall acceptability was for the cheese packaged in 70% N2 - 30% CO2 and the control sample, respectively.U ovom istraživanju je ispitivana mogućnost primjene dvaju ambalažnih materijala - modificiranog polipropilena (MPP) i polietilen tereftalata/aluminij/polietilen niske gustoće (PETFA-Al-LDPE) u različitim uvjetima modificirane atmosfere (100 % CO2, 70 % N2 – 30 % CO2, 80 % N2 - 20 % CO2) za pakiranje probiotičkog sira iz salamure proizvedenog iz ultrafiltriranog (UF) mlijeka. Tijekom 12 tjedana čuvanja uzorcima sira su određivani pH, titracijska kiselost, sadržaj vlage, preživljavanje soja Lacticaseibacillus paracasei i prihvatljivost. Kontrolni uzorci su pakirani u normalnoj atmosferi (zrak). Dobiveni rezutati ukazuju kako uzorci pakirani u PETFA-Al-LDPE i modificiranoj atmosferi 70 % N2 - 30 % CO2 imaju najniži pH, te najveću kiselost i sadržaj vlage. Preživljavanje soja Lacticaseibacillus paracasei je bilo oko 4x106 CFU/g tijekom 12 tjedana. Najnižu i najvišu prihvatljivost su imali uzorak pakiran u atmosferi 70% N2 - 30 % CO2 te kontrolni uzorak

A fair and abuse-free contract signing protocol from Boneh-Boyen signature

A fair contract signing protocol is used to enable two mistrusted parties to exchange two signatures on a given contract, in such a way that either both of them get the other party’s signature, or none of them gets anything. A new signature scheme is presented, which is a variant of Boneh and Boyen’s scheme, and building on it, we propose a new signature fair exchange protocol for which all the properties of being optimistic, setup-free and abuse-free can be proved without random oracles, and it is more efficient than the known schemes with comparable properties.Peer Reviewe

Public verifiability from pairings in secret sharing schemes

In this paper we propose a new publicly verifiable secret sharing scheme using pairings with close relations to Shoenmakers’ scheme. This scheme is efficient, multiplicatively homomorphic and with unconditional verifiability in the standard model. We formalize the notion of Indistinguishability of Secrets and prove that out scheme achieves it under the Decisional Bilinear Square (DBS) Assumption that is a natural variant of the Decisional Bilinear Diffie Hellman Assumption. Moreover, our scheme tolerates active and adaptive adversaries.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version