Psychosocial factors associated with the self-reported frequency of cell phone use while driving in Iran

Cell phone use while driving is a common contributing factor in thousands of road traffic injuries every year globally. Despite extensive research investigating the risks associated with cell phone use while driving, social media campaigns to raise public awareness and a number of laws banning phone use while driving, this behaviour remains prevalent throughout the world. The current study was conducted in Iran, where road traffic injuries are the leading causes of death and disability, and where drivers continue to use their cell phones, despite legislative bans restricting this behaviour. A total of 255 drivers in the city of Mashhad (male = 66.3%; mean age = 30.73 years; SD = 9.89) completed either an online or a paper-based survey assessing the self-reported frequency of using a cell phone while driving. Psychosocial factors contributing to cell phone use while driving and support for legislation restricting this behaviour, as well as the Big Five personality traits, were also measured. Overall, the results showed that almost 93% of drivers use their cell phones while driving at least once a week, with 32.5% reporting they always use their cell phones while driving. Ordinal logistic regression revealed that the presence of a child passenger, age, perceived benefits and risks of using cell phones while driving, as well as the perceived ability to drive safely while using a cell phone, were strongly associated with the frequency of cell phone use while driving. As for personality traits—extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness significantly predicted the frequency of cell phone use in this sample of Iranian drivers

Pemphigus autoimmunity: Hypotheses and realities

The goal of contemporary research in pemphigus vulgaris and pemphigus foliaceus is to achieve and maintain clinical remission without corticosteroids. Recent advances of knowledge on pemphigus autoimmunity scrutinize old dogmas, resolve controversies, and open novel perspectives for treatment. Elucidation of intimate mechanisms of keratinocyte detachment and death in pemphigus has challenged the monopathogenic explanation of disease immunopathology. Over 50 organ-specific and non-organ-specific antigens can be targeted by pemphigus autoimmunity, including desmosomal cadherins and other adhesion molecules, PERP cholinergic and other cell membrane (CM) receptors, and mitochondrial proteins. The initial insult is sustained by the autoantibodies to the cell membrane receptor antigens triggering the intracellular signaling by Src, epidermal growth factor receptor kinase, protein kinases A and C, phospholipase C, mTOR, p38 MAPK, JNK, other tyrosine kinases, and calmodulin that cause basal cell shrinkage and ripping desmosomes off the CM. Autoantibodies synergize with effectors of apoptotic and oncotic pathways, serine proteases, and inflammatory cytokines to overcome the natural resistance and activate the cell death program in keratinocytes. The process of keratinocyte shrinkage/detachment and death via apoptosis/oncosis has been termed apoptolysis to emphasize that it is triggered by the same signal effectors and mediated by the same cell death enzymes. The natural course of pemphigus has improved due to a substantial progress in developing of the steroid-sparing therapies combining the immunosuppressive and direct anti-acantholytic effects. Further elucidation of the molecular mechanisms mediating immune dysregulation and apoptolysis in pemphigus should improve our understanding of disease pathogenesis and facilitate development of steroid-free treatment of patients

Large-scale unit commitment under uncertainty: an updated literature survey

The Unit Commitment problem in energy management aims at finding the optimal production schedule of a set of generation units, while meeting various system-wide constraints. It has always been a large-scale, non-convex, difficult problem, especially in view of the fact that, due to operational requirements, it has to be solved in an unreasonably small time for its size. Recently, growing renewable energy shares have strongly increased the level of uncertainty in the system, making the (ideal) Unit Commitment model a large-scale, non-convex and uncertain (stochastic, robust, chance-constrained) program. We provide a survey of the literature on methods for the Uncertain Unit Commitment problem, in all its variants. We start with a review of the main contributions on solution methods for the deterministic versions of the problem, focussing on those based on mathematical programming techniques that are more relevant for the uncertain versions of the problem. We then present and categorize the approaches to the latter, while providing entry points to the relevant literature on optimization under uncertainty. This is an updated version of the paper "Large-scale Unit Commitment under uncertainty: a literature survey" that appeared in 4OR 13(2), 115--171 (2015); this version has over 170 more citations, most of which appeared in the last three years, proving how fast the literature on uncertain Unit Commitment evolves, and therefore the interest in this subject

A Rare Case Report of Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma of the Anterior Maxilla in a Young Patient

Background and Objective: Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) of the maxilla is a rare malignancy arising from minor salivary glands. The clinical and radiological appearance may be similar to any odontogenic/nonodontogenic pathology. This study aims to report a rare case of primary central ACC of the anterior maxilla. Case Report: A 31-year-old man was referred to the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery complaining of swelling and pain in the right anterior maxilla for 3 months. The patient has noticed swelling and pain in this side since about five months before and instead of diagnosing this tumoral lesion, false diagnosis and unsuccessful root canal therapy were considered. A biopsy was performed in the central region and microscopically, the lesion showed tumor cells arranged in sheets in fibrous stroma islands of epithelial cells showing a classical “Swiss cheese” pattern. Based on clinical, radiographic, and CBCT evaluation and positive immunohistochemistry of CD63, and C-Kit confirmed ACC diagnosis. After the diagnosis, the lesion was completely removed by enucleation and curettage performed by the surgeon. Postoperative radiotherapy was performed. Follow-up within 3 years since the initial diagnosis showed no sign of recurrence. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, early diagnosis and treatment of ACC can lead to successful treatment and patient survival

Vehicle-Pedestrian Interactions at Uncontrolled Locations: Leveraging Distributed Simulation to Support Game-Theoretic Modeling

Highly automated vehicles (HAVs) will need to interact with pedestrians in a safe and efficient way. Thus, investigating and modeling vehicle-pedestrian interactions at uncontrolled locations is essential to ensure safety and acceptance of these vehicles. Controlled studies are a valuable tool for these scenarios where all the tasks are not possible to be done in the real world and where some variables should be controlled with high accuracy for the development of models of human behavior. In this paper, a game-theoretic model was tested using data from a distributed simulator study. The study was conducted by connecting a desktop driving simulator to a CAVE-based pedestrian lab, providing a safe environment for testing the model’s ability to capture the gap acceptance behavior of pedestrians when interacting with a Human-Driven (HD) or an Automated Vehicle (AV). The results showed that, overall, the model could capture pedestrian behavior well and the pedestrians had lower crossing probabilities in front of the AV. This was seemingly due to differences in vehicle kinematics. Further analysis of the pedestrians’ data revealed the importance of given instructions to the participants in these types of studies. Lessons learned through this study were also used to suggest further ideas on how to design controlled studies for game-theoretic modelling

Who goes first? A distributed simulator study of vehicle–pedestrian interaction

One of the current challenges of automation is to have highly automated vehicles (HAVs) that communicate effectively with pedestrians and react to changes in pedestrian behaviour, to promote more trustable HAVs. However, the details of how human drivers and pedestrians interact at unsignalised crossings remain poorly understood. We addressed some aspects of this challenge by replicating vehicle–pedestrian interactions in a safe and controlled virtual environment by connecting a high fidelity motion-based driving simulator to a CAVE-based pedestrian lab in which 64 participants (32 pairs of one driver and one pedestrian) interacted with each other under different scenarios. The controlled setting helped us study the causal role of kinematics and priority rules on interaction outcome and behaviour, something that is not possible in naturalistic studies. We also found that kinematic cues played a stronger role than psychological traits like sensation seeking and social value orientation in determining whether the pedestrian or driver passed first at unmarked crossings. One main contribution of this study is our experimental paradigm, which permitted repeated observation of crossing interactions by each driver-pedestrian participant pair, yielding behaviours which were qualitatively in line with observations from naturalistic studies