Reliability of Ultrasound for diagnosis of appendicitis in children

Introduction: In the medical world, acute appendicitis is one of the common surgeries. The Aim of this study is determining reliability of ultrasound in acute appendicitis. Materials and Methods: The ethical code has been gotten in this research firstly. Based on the archives at Mofid Hospital, the list of appendectomy children in a six- months period has been extracted when they used the ultrasound prior to surgery. Demographic data, medical history and findings of appendicitis, even during the surgery, have been recorded using designed questionnaire based on patients’ documents. According to the surgeon report, not only have appendicitis patients  been operated but also confirmed. The ultrasound results have been compared with surgical results (as the gold standard). For each of the ultrasound findings, based on SPSS software as has used for analyzing, some parameters have been calculated such as sensitivity index, specificity, positive and negative predictive value, accuracy and area under the ROC curve.  Results:     In this study, 111 children with diagnosis of appendicitis have been operated. Based on the ultrasound prior to surgery, 71 patients (64%) with purulent appendicitis showed direct sonographic signs of appendicitis, 11 patients (9.9%) showed indirect signs, 6 patients (5.4%) revealed complicated signs, 7 patients (6.3%) with mesenteric lymphadenopathy and 16 patients (14.4%) negative in ultrasound. Also, according to the final diagnosis after surgery, 105 patients (94.6%) had appendicitis and 6 people (5.4%) were negative for appendicitis. The significant relationship was found between the ultrasound results prior to surgery and the final diagnosis after surgery for patients (p<0.05). The diagnostic value of ultrasound results prior to surgery in order to determine the appendicitis in children undergoing surgery has been revealed by different factors such as sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy . These factors are at 83.8%, 100%, 100%,83% and 92.3%, respectively (p< 0.05). Conclusion:   It seems that Ultrasound prior to surgery is the useful method to determine the children appendicitis

ALKYL IMIDAZOLINES AND THEIR ETHOXYLATED DERIVATIVES AS ANTIOXIDANTS FOR HYDROCARBON PRODUCTS

Alkyl imidazolines have been reportedly used in a wide range of industrial formulations with different applications. Ethoxylated alkyl imidazolines with appropriate ethoxylation degrees can be used as antioxidants and retarders in the formation of peroxides resulting from oxidation in hydrocarbon media. In this work, ethoxylated imidazolines were shown to be more effective in hydrocarbon media in comparison with reference antioxidants. According to the experimental results, ethoxylated alkyl imidazolines (12 moles EO), as an antioxidant, were twice as efficient as zinc dialkyldithiophosphoric acid (ZDDP)

Randomized Controlled Trial of a Peer Based Intervention on Cardiac Self-efficacy in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery: a 3-year Follow-up Results

Background: Self-efficacy is one's belief in ability to succeed in specific situations and considerable factor to maintaining healthy behaviors. It has an important role in person-centred care and significantly improves after effects of heart attacks. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a peer based intervention on cardiac self-efficacy of the patients after bypass surgery.Methods: In this clinical trial study, 60 patients undergoing bypass surgery were chosen and assigned equally into the control and intervention groups. The patients were assigned into two groups by block randomization. While routine education was presented to the patients in the control group, intervention group were taught using the peer education in two sessions. Cardiac self-efficacy of all the selected patients was assessed orderly in 36-month (3 years) follow-up after surgery. Inclusion criteria used to choose the suitable patients were as the following: no record of CABG surgery, understanding and talking Persian language, willingness to participate in the research, age between 40 and 70 years, no dementia, confusion, mental and psychological problems which might hinder their participation. In addition, exclusion criteria in this study were patient’s death, serious physical problems after CABG surgery, emergency and unexpected surgeries, or cancellation the CABG surgery due to patient’s situation. Data was collected using cardiac self-efficacy scale and analyzed using chi-square, independent t-test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Results: The patients in both groups were homogenous in terms of demographic data. The mean score of cardiac self-efficacy in the intervention group was significantly different from control group in 3- year follow-up after surgery (P<0.038).Conclusions: Based on this study, accomplishment of peer based intervention can be a beneficial educative-supportive approach in cardiac surgery fields.

Randomized Controlled Trial of a Peer Based Intervention on Cardiac Self-efficacy in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery: a 3-year Follow-up Results

Background: Self-efficacy is one's belief in ability to succeed in specific situations and considerable factor to maintaining healthy behaviors. It has an important role in person-centred care and significantly improves after effects of heart attacks. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a peer based intervention on cardiac self-efficacy of the patients after bypass surgery.Methods: In this clinical trial study, 60 patients undergoing bypass surgery were chosen and assigned equally into the control and intervention groups. The patients were assigned into two groups by block randomization. While routine education was presented to the patients in the control group, intervention group were taught using the peer education in two sessions. Cardiac self-efficacy of all the selected patients was assessed orderly in 36-month (3 years) follow-up after surgery. Inclusion criteria used to choose the suitable patients were as the following: no record of CABG surgery, understanding and talking Persian language, willingness to participate in the research, age between 40 and 70 years, no dementia, confusion, mental and psychological problems which might hinder their participation. In addition, exclusion criteria in this study were patient’s death, serious physical problems after CABG surgery, emergency and unexpected surgeries, or cancellation the CABG surgery due to patient’s situation. Data was collected using cardiac self-efficacy scale and analyzed using chi-square, independent t-test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Results: The patients in both groups were homogenous in terms of demographic data. The mean score of cardiac self-efficacy in the intervention group was significantly different from control group in 3- year follow-up after surgery (P<0.038).Conclusions: Based on this study, accomplishment of peer based intervention can be a beneficial educative-supportive approach in cardiac surgery fields.

Loss of Kat2a enhances transcriptional noise and depletes acute myeloid leukemia stem-like cells.

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is an aggressive hematological malignancy with abnormal progenitor self-renewal and defective white blood cell differentiation. Its pathogenesis comprises subversion of transcriptional regulation, through mutation and by hijacking normal chromatin regulation. Kat2a is a histone acetyltransferase central to promoter activity, that we recently associated with stability of pluripotency networks, and identified as a genetic vulnerability in AML. Through combined chromatin profiling and single-cell transcriptomics of a conditional knockout mouse, we demonstrate that Kat2a contributes to leukemia propagation through preservation of leukemia stem-like cells. Kat2a loss impacts transcription factor binding and reduces transcriptional burst frequency in a subset of gene promoters, generating enhanced variability of transcript levels. Destabilization of target programs shifts leukemia cell fate out of self-renewal into differentiation. We propose that control of transcriptional variability is central to leukemia stem-like cell propagation, and establish a paradigm exploitable in different tumors and distinct stages of cancer evolution

Magnetism, FeS colloids, and Origins of Life

A number of features of living systems: reversible interactions and weak bonds underlying motor-dynamics; gel-sol transitions; cellular connected fractal organization; asymmetry in interactions and organization; quantum coherent phenomena; to name some, can have a natural accounting via $physical$ interactions, which we therefore seek to incorporate by expanding the horizons of `chemistry-only' approaches to the origins of life. It is suggested that the magnetic 'face' of the minerals from the inorganic world, recognized to have played a pivotal role in initiating Life, may throw light on some of these issues. A magnetic environment in the form of rocks in the Hadean Ocean could have enabled the accretion and therefore an ordered confinement of super-paramagnetic colloids within a structured phase. A moderate H-field can help magnetic nano-particles to not only overcome thermal fluctuations but also harness them. Such controlled dynamics brings in the possibility of accessing quantum effects, which together with frustrations in magnetic ordering and hysteresis (a natural mechanism for a primitive memory) could throw light on the birth of biological information which, as Abel argues, requires a combination of order and complexity. This scenario gains strength from observations of scale-free framboidal forms of the greigite mineral, with a magnetic basis of assembly. And greigite's metabolic potential plays a key role in the mound scenario of Russell and coworkers-an expansion of which is suggested for including magnetism.Comment: 42 pages, 5 figures, to be published in A.R. Memorial volume, Ed Krishnaswami Alladi, Springer 201

All-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S4 data

We report on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50-1000 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range -1.0E-8 Hz/s to zero. Data from the fourth LIGO science run (S4) have been used in this search. Three different semi-coherent methods of transforming and summing strain power from Short Fourier Transforms (SFTs) of the calibrated data have been used. The first, known as "StackSlide", averages normalized power from each SFT. A "weighted Hough" scheme is also developed and used, and which also allows for a multi-interferometer search. The third method, known as "PowerFlux", is a variant of the StackSlide method in which the power is weighted before summing. In both the weighted Hough and PowerFlux methods, the weights are chosen according to the noise and detector antenna-pattern to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. The respective advantages and disadvantages of these methods are discussed. Observing no evidence of periodic gravitational radiation, we report upper limits; we interpret these as limits on this radiation from isolated rotating neutron stars. The best population-based upper limit with 95% confidence on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude, found for simulated sources distributed isotropically across the sky and with isotropically distributed spin-axes, is 4.28E-24 (near 140 Hz). Strict upper limits are also obtained for small patches on the sky for best-case and worst-case inclinations of the spin axes.Comment: 39 pages, 41 figures An error was found in the computation of the C parameter defined in equation 44 which led to its overestimate by 2^(1/4). The correct values for the multi-interferometer, H1 and L1 analyses are 9.2, 9.7, and 9.3, respectively. Figure 32 has been updated accordingly. None of the upper limits presented in the paper were affecte

All-sky LIGO Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the Early S5 Data

We report on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50--1100 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range -5.0E-9 Hz/s to zero. Data from the first eight months of the fifth LIGO science run (S5) have been used in this search, which is based on a semi-coherent method (PowerFlux) of summing strain power. Observing no evidence of periodic gravitational radiation, we report 95% confidence-level upper limits on radiation emitted by any unknown isolated rotating neutron stars within the search range. Strain limits below 1.E-24 are obtained over a 200-Hz band, and the sensitivity improvement over previous searches increases the spatial volume sampled by an average factor of about 100 over the entire search band. For a neutron star with nominal equatorial ellipticity of 1.0E-6, the search is sensitive to distances as great as 500 pc--a range that could encompass many undiscovered neutron stars, albeit only a tiny fraction of which would likely be rotating fast enough to be accessible to LIGO. This ellipticity is at the upper range thought to be sustainable by conventional neutron stars and well below the maximum sustainable by a strange quark star.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur