Investigation the Dysfunctional attitudes and its´ relationship with stress, anxiety and depression in breast cancer patients

Background: Breast cancer is considered as the most common as well as most effective malignancy in adult female population, has leaded to deep psychological and emotional problems such as depression, anxiety and stress. One of the possible factors lead to develop of depression, anxiety and stress in people based on cognitive models, is the cognitive distortions and dysfunctional attitudes towards the situation. The components included high prevalence and huge effects of breast cancer´s depression, anxiety and stress on different aspect as well as key role of dysfunctional attitudes in development of these elements; encouraged us to design and perform a study with aim to investigation the dysfunctional attitudes and its´ relationship with stress, anxiety and depression in breast cancer patients referred to a specialized cancer hospital Isfahan, Iran. Methods: This descriptive, analytic cross sectional study was conducted on cancer patients who were selected using simple sampling. A total number of 297 hospitalized patients with breast cancer were enrolled in 6 months. The clinical and demographic characteristics information, dysfunctional attitudes questionnaire (DAS-26) and the depression, anxiety, and stress scale (DASS-42) were used. All analyses were performed with descriptive and analytic statistical methods in SPSS for Windows 18.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Findings: Mean scores of dysfunctional attitudes were 87.35 (27.53). Also mean scores of stress, anxiety and depression were 14.16 (9.38), 11.64 (8.27) and 12.06 (9.52) relatively. Based on study findings there was a statistically significant relationship between dysfunctional attitudes with stress, anxiety and depression in patients with breast cancer. Conclusion: With regard to results of this study, breast cancer patients with higher scores dysfunctional attitudes had more stress, anxiety and depression. In addition low dysfunctional attitudes score was an important protecting factor against stress, anxiety and depression in these patients

Introducing principles of environmental comfort and control to support energy conservation in education buildings: Project-based learning approach

Master of ScienceDepartment of ArchitectureMichael GibsonThe construction of green schools in the U.S. has considerably soared in recent years. Sustainably designed schools come from not only energy savings, but also from wide-ranging, measurable student health and performance benefits associated with natural light and improved environmental quality. The flip side of sustainable buildings, however, is that technology and controls introduce a new level of complexity compared to conventional buildings. Building owners and occupants find it very difficult to navigate these controls. This results in an increase in energy expenditure of the buildings, while users fail to appreciate their environmental comfort. Therefore, education on environmental comfort in spaces and identifying building controls seems of great significance. By the same token, decisions made with regard to the operation of the controls by building users need special attention as it is directly related to energy saving. This study investigates the effect of Project-based Learning on increasing the knowledge level and changing attitudes and actions of green building occupants to conserve energy. Project-based Learning is an educational method where individuals are required to learn and apply the concepts through experience. Using this method enables building users to find answers to the real-world problems by testing their ideas while working in groups. This learning approach has also the capability to translate into changes in building users’ attitudes and actions related to energy conservation. To study the effect of this learning approach, data was collected from a total of 119 students from APD design community (Seaton and Regnier—newly constructed green school) at Kansas State University. A pre-knowledge survey was conducted initially to capture the general knowledge of the participants about comfort and controls. For the experiment, a series of class lectures and activities were devised to which students, based on the group they were categorized in, were exposed. The students for this study were grouped under three categories: 1) Traditional Learning group (control group) in which students required to only watch class lectures, 2) Individual Project-based Learning group in which students had to complete a series of individual class activities in addition to the tasks assigned to the control group, and 3) Peer Project-based Learning group in which students were asked to do peer-to-peer interaction for the class activities in addition to the tasks assigned to the other groups. After the experiment concluded, a follow-up survey was conducted to evaluate the impact of the activities on the improvements in knowledge and controls’ operation level of participants based on students’ self-report. By analyzing the results from the experiment, this study identifies that the groups that have received Project-based Learning module, generally, have used building lighting and dimming controls more than the control group. Particularly, the Peer PBL group was identified to be the group with significant change in knowledge level in this study. Class activities and peer interaction have highly affected students’ perspective towards energy savings and environmental satisfaction. Findings from the experiment confirmed that peers were recognized to be extremely influential in raising participants’ awareness and motivation towards operation of the controls, energy conservation, and environmental comfort

Cyst Formation from Virulent RH Strain of Toxoplasma gondii Tachyzoite: In Vitro Cultivation

Background: This study was performed to induce conversion of RH strain tachyzoites of Toxoplasma gondii to bradyzoites by pH changing of the cul­ture medium. Methods: HeLa cell monolayers were infected at a 1:1 tachyzoite to cell ratio. Four hours after infection, the culture medium was removed and re­placed with culture medium and 5% FCS, adjusted to pH 8 with NaOH. The culture was maintained at 37 °C without CO2 until the end of the ex­periment. Cyst-like structures were collected and stained with periodic acid schiff (PAS) staining method. The soluble antigens of cyst-like structures of RH strain, in addition to RH tachyzoite, bradyzoites of avirulent Tehran strain and uninfected HeLa cells were electrophoresed on 12.5% poly­acrylamide gel. The gel was stained by coomassie brilliant blue R-250. Results: Four days after infection of HeLa cells with tachyzoites of T. gondii, RH strain, cyst- like structures were noticed and stained with PAS. In the SDS-PAGE, protein bands of these structures had some differences with tachyzoites of RH strain, but there was quite similarity between pro­tein bands of these structures and tissue cysts (bradyzoites) of Tehran strains. P34 and P36 (bradyzoite-specific proteins) were observed only in T. gondii bradyzoites of RH (cyst like structures) and bradyzoites of Tehran strains. Conclusion: Alkalization of culture medium to pH 8 induced expression of bradyzoite- specific proteins and production of RH cysts in cell culture