Effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction program on quality of life in cardiovascular disease patients.

INTRODUCTION: Cardiovascular disease is one of the most fatal physical illnesses that impose many financial losses on societies every year. AIM: This study was to investigate the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program on self-efficacy and quality of life in patients with cardiovascular disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The samples of this clinical trial were 60 patients who were selected by convenience sampling from patients were diagnosed, clinically interviewed by a cardiologist and randomized to two groups; experimental and control, and then completed Sherer et al. General Self-Efficacy Scale and 36-item Short Form Survey three times; pre-test, post-test, and after 3 months of follow-up. MBSR Program includes the methods that patients learn to calm their minds and body to help them cope with disease that was based on self-efficacy and quality of life. Data analysis was performed by the SPSS v22 using t-test and ANOVA. RESULTS: The results show that the mean pre-test scores of self-efficacy and quality of life of patients were not significantly different between the experimental and control groups (P > 0.05). However, the mean scores of the two variables were found to be significantly different between the experimental group and the control group on the post-test and follow-up as the research hypotheses were examined (P < 0.01). So that the means of self-efficacy were 60.80 ± 5.91 and 60.40 ± 7.03 and quality of life were 103.80 ± 9.35 and 101.10 ± 9.13 at post-test and 3 months later respectively in experimental group. CONCLUSION: Self-efficacy and quality of life of cardiovascular patients could be improved by providing an MBSR program. KEYWORDS: CVD, Cardiovascular disease; Coping; Heart diseases; MBSR; MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction; Psychological interventio

Defects4J: a database of existing faults to enable controlled testing studies for Java programs

Empirical studies in software testing research may not be comparable, reproducible, or characteristic of practice. One reason is that real bugs are too infrequently used in software testing research. Extracting and reproducing real bugs is challenging and as a result hand-seeded faults or mutants are commonly used as a substitute. This paper presents Defects4J, a database and extensible framework providing real bugs to enable reproducible studies in software testing research. The initial version of Defects4J contains 357 real bugs from 5 real-world open source pro-grams. Each real bug is accompanied by a comprehensive test suite that can expose (demonstrate) that bug. Defects4J is extensible and builds on top of each program’s version con-trol system. Once a program is configured in Defects4J, new bugs can be added to the database with little or no effort. Defects4J features a framework to easily access faulty and fixed program versions and corresponding test suites. This framework also provides a high-level interface to common tasks in software testing research, making it easy to con-duct and reproduce empirical studies. Defects4J is publicly available a

Empirically revisiting the test independence assumption

In a test suite, all the test cases should be independent: no test should affect any other test’s result, and running the tests in any order should produce the same test results. Techniques such as test prioritization generally assume that the tests in a suite are independent. Test dependence is a little-studied phenomenon. This paper presents five results related to test dependence. First, we characterize the test dependence that arises in practice. We studied 96 real-world dependent tests from 5 issue tracking systems. Our study shows that test dependence can be hard for programmers to identify. It also shows that test dependence can cause non-trivial consequences, such as masking program faults and leading to spurious bug reports. Second, we formally define test dependence in terms of test suites as ordered sequences of tests along with explicit environments in which these tests are executed. We formulate the problem of detecting dependent tests and prove that a useful special case is NP-complete. Third, guided by the study of real-world dependent tests, we propose and compare four algorithms to detect dependent tests in a test suite. Fourth, we applied our dependent test detection algorithms to 4 real-world programs and found dependent tests in each human-written and automatically-generated test suite. Fifth, we empirically assessed the impact of dependent tests on five test prioritization techniques. Dependent tests affect the output of all five techniques; that is, the reordered suite fails even though the original suite did not

The role of stem cells in the improvement of brain injuries after hypoxic ischemia

Introduction: Nowadays, the important role of stem cells in treatment of many diseases such as stoke is well known. Stem cells derived from either bone marrow or cord bloods are good sources for tissues replacement after post embryonic injuries. Methods: Fourteen-day-old Wistar rats were used in this study. Rats were subjected to internal carotid artery occlusion for 30 minutes. Then, animals were received intravenously 2×105 Bromo Deoxy Uridine (BRDU) labeled- cord blood stem cells (CBSCs). Rats with hypoxic conditions that were not received any injection were assumed as a sham group. Intact animals who did not receive any injection or surgeries were used as a control group. Results: Our results were evaluated according to behavioral tests and immunohistochemistry of the brain especially frontal cortex of the control, sham and experimental groups. Behavioral recovery was observed in the experimental group compared to the either the sham or the control group. In addition, histological studies demonstrated a reduction in ischemic cells in the experimental group compared to the sham group. Conclusion: Intravenous transplantation can be a future line in treatment of infants with hypoxic who are exposed to irreversible damages

Therapeutic Potential of Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells on Brain Damage of a Model of Stroke

Introduction: Human cord blood-derived stem cells are a rich source of stem cells as well as precursors. With regard to the researchers have focused on the therapeutic potential of stem cell in the neurological disease such as stroke, the aim of this study was the investiga-tion of the therapeutic effects of human cord blood-derived stem cells in cerebral ischemia on rat. Methods: This study was carried out on young rats. Firstly, to create a laboratory model of ischemic stroke, carotid artery of animals was occluded for 30 minutes. Then, umbilical cord blood cells were isolated and labeled using bromodeoxyuridine and 2×105 cells were injected into the experimental group via the tail vein. Rats with hypoxic condi-tions were used as a sham group. A group of animals did not receive any injection or sur-geries were used as a control. Results: Obtained results were evaluated based on behavior-al responses and immunohistochemistry, with emphasis on areas of putamen and caudate nucleus in the control, sham and experimental groups. Our results indicated that behavioral recovery was observed in the experimental group compared to the either the sham or the control group. However, histological studies demonstrated a low percent of tissue injury in the experimental group in comparison with the sham group. Conclusion: Stem cell trans-plantation is beneficial for the brain tissue reparation after hypoxic ischemic cell death