THE RELATIONSHIP OF MARITAL ADJUSTMENT AND SEXUAL FUNCTION WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS AFFECTING TREATMENT IN INFERTILE WOMEN

Abstract. Infertility is one of the most importantissues of reproductive health that has prominent effects on psychological and social aspects of couple's life. Infertility causes women’s concern about their sexual attractiveness and also their physical and mental health, It is even possible that using assisted reproductive technologies have negative effects on women’s feelings of the sexual values and marital relationships. This study therefore aimed to investigate the relationship of marital adjustment and sexual function with psychological factors affecting treatment in infertile women in 2013 in Mashhad, Iran. This correlational study was performed on 130 infertile women referred to Montaserie Infertility Research Center, Mashhad who selected using convenient sampling. Research tools were consisted of demographic questionnaires including personal and infertility-related information, and valid and reliable ROSEN Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI),Spanier Marital Adjustment Scale(DAS) and Goldbergand Hillier General Health Questionnaire, which were completed by the subjects. Data analysis was carried out by SPSS software using t-test,one way ANOVA, Spearman and Pearson correlation tests. The mean score of awareness of infertility and the length of infertility treatment were 5.24±4.12 and 4±3.95 years, respectively. The cause of infertility in 46.9% was a female factor and in 38.7% a male factor. General health in 49.2% of the infertile women were good. 54.6% of the infertile women had poor sexual function and 76.9% had high maritaladjustment. There was a direct correlation between sexual function and marital adjustment with general health in infertile women (P<0.001).A significantrelationship was also seen between sexual function and spouse accompany during treatment (P<0.05). Also a direct correlation was found between marital adjustment and being hopeful to treatment success and also spouse accompany during treatment in infertile women (P<0.05). The findings showed that infertile women with improved sexual function and good marital adjustment will have better mental health and are more hopeful toinfertility treatment . These results can be incorporated in planning of training and counseling programs, specially for infertile women who suffer from psychological disorders

Doppler Spread Estimation in MIMO Frequency-Selective Fading Channels

One of the main challenges in high-speed mobile communications is the presence of large Doppler spreads. Thus, accurate estimation of maximum Doppler spread (MDS) plays an important role in improving the performance of the communication link. In this paper, we derive the data-aided (DA) and non-data-aided (NDA) Cramér-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) and maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) for the MDS in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) frequency-selective fading channel. Moreover, a low-complexity NDA-moment-based estimator (MBE) is proposed. The proposed NDA-MBE relies on the second- and fourth-order moments of the received signal, which are employed to estimate the normalized squared autocorrelation function of the fading channel. Then, the problem of MDS estimation is formulated as a non-linear regression problem, and the least-squares curve-fitting optimization technique is applied to determine the estimate of the MDS. This is the first time in the literature, when DA- and NDA-MDS estimation is investigated for MIMO frequency-selective fading channel. Simulation results show that there is no significant performance gap between the derived NDA-MLE and NDA-CRLB, even when the observation window is relatively small. Furthermore, the significant reduced-complexity in the NDA-MBE leads to low root-mean-square error over a wide range of MDSs, when the observation window is selected large enough

Phase-Mixing and Dissipation of Standing Shear Alfven waves

We study the phase mixing and dissipation of a packet of standing shear Alfv\'en waves localized in a region with non-uniform Alfv\'en background velocity. We investigate the validity of the exponential damping law in time, $\exp(-At^3)$, presented by Heyvaerts & Priest (1983) for different ranges of Lundquist, $S$, and Reynolds, $R$, numbers. Our numerical results shows that it is valid for $(R,S)\geq 10^7$.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Potential of Iranian wild barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum) in breeding for drought tolerance

The vast genetic resources of wild barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum, hereafter WB) may hold unique assets for improving barley (H. vulgare ssp. vulgare) cultivars for drought stress. To evaluate genetic potential and characterization of variation among a diverse collection of barley and WB genotypes, mostly originated from Iran, a field experiment was performed under three moisture environments (control, mild and intense drought stress) during two years (2012–2014). Considerable variation was observed among the wild and cultivated genotypes for drought tolerance and agronomic traits. Principal component analysis (PCA) grouped genotypes studied into three groups (WB, two-row barley and sixrow barley groups). However, Iranian and foreign WB genotypes were not completely separated, showing a high variation within both gene pools. The high significance of genotype by environment interaction, confirms importance of using accurate target environments for drought stress breeding. A number of WB genotypes with the highest values of the number of tillers, number of seed per spike, seed weight, grain yield and yield stability index under stressed environments were identified as superior genotypes. Most of these genotypes originate from Iran, highlighting the importance of this germplasm in barley breeding