Effects of predisposing, reinforcing and enabling factors on self-care behaviors of the patients with diabetes mellitus in the Minoodasht city, Iran

Background: To control diabetes mellitus (DM) it is necessary to make overall changes in the life style of the patients. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of predisposing, reinforcing and enabling factors on self-care behaviors of the patients with DM in the Minoodasht city, Iran in 2012.Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 78 people with DM were selected by convenience sampling method. In the first stage of study, the educational program was compiled and executed on six information sessions. To present the informative content, a video projector and different lecturing methods including questions and answers, dynamic group discussion and different educational materials such as pamphlets and CDs were employed. After one month, the efficiency of the educational program was determined by using the same questioner. Data were analyzed using paired sample T-test and McNemar test. Results: The mean age of participants was 49 (SD: 3.27.) years old, 87.2 were married, and 19.2 were illiterate. The results showed that the enabling factors like adopting to go on a diet and the educational classes facilitated by the staff had significant effects on health care behavior of the patients. Furthermore 69.2 of the participants adopted to go on a diet before the educational sessions; that figure increased to 94.9 after the educational sessions. According to the results the mean scores for the knowledge, attitude, and behavior, reinforcement factors and enabling factors increased significantly after of the educational intervention (p- value >0.001).Conclusion: Predisposing, enabling and reinforcement factors affected in taking self-care behavior in the patient with DM. © 2015 Borhani et al.; licensee BioMed Central

Association of some psychosocial factors with anthropometric measures in nationally representative sample of Iranian adolescents: The CASPIAN-III study

Background: During the last two decades, adolescent obesity has increased in western countries. In Iran-as a developing country- the prevalence of obesity is raised among youngsters as well. This study conducted to identify an association of adolescents' loneliness, self-confidence and relationship with others in home and school environment with their weight status. Methods: In this cross-sectional national survey, 5682 students aged 10-18 years from urban and rural districts of 27 provinces of Iran were selected via stratified multi-stage sampling method. Data on psychological problems of students was gathered through a questionnaire. Height, weight, and waist circumferences were measured according to standard protocols. Body mass index (BMI) and waist- to-height ratio was calculated. Results: Boys which did not have best friends, spend time with their friends after school or get acceptance from them, had higher BMI than others. Only girls who did not spend time with their friends had higher BMI (19.48 ± 4.28) vs. (19.09 ± 3.92) and WC (71.04 ± 21.29) vs. (69.15 ± 17.43) than others, P < 0.05. In both sexes, adolescents who had sense of pressure about doing homework or had difficulties in relationship with their parents had higher BMI and WC values. Girls who reported being victim of violent behaviors (being bullied), had lower BMI compared to others. Risk of being overweight and obese, but not abdominal obese was statistically higher in adolescents not having close friends (OR = 1.81, CI: 1.11-2.95). Lack of self-confidence increased only the risk of obesity in teens (OR = 1033, CI: 1.09-1.64). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that strategies for prevention of overweight and obesity in adolescent should be taking into account a deeper knowledge of psychosocial issues due to be able to design more effective programs for treating overweight teens. © 2016 Baygi et al

Association between psychosocial distress with cardio metabolic risk factors and liver enzymes in a nationally-representative sample of Iranian children and adolescents: The CASPIAN-III study

Background: The present study was designed to evaluate association of psychosocial distress with cardio metabolic risk factors and liver enzymes in Iranian children and adolescents.Method: This nationwide study was conducted as the third survey of the school-based surveillance system that was conducted among 5593 school students, 10-18 years in Iran. High triglyceride (TG), high fasting blood sugar (FBS), high total cholesterol (TC), high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), hypertension (HTN), generalized obesity and abdominal obesity were considered as cardio metabolic risk factors and alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were considered as liver enzymes. Data were analyzed using multiple logistic regression (MLR) analysis.Result: Psychosocial distress was detected in2027 (71.2) of boys and 1759 (63.3) of girls. Among boys, the mean of LDL, AST and DBP were higher and the mean FBS and HDL were lowering those with psychiatric distress than their other counterparts. Girls with psychosocial distress had significantly higher mean of HDL and FBS than those without psychiatric distress. Psychosocial distress significantly increased the odds of high LDL (OR = 2.36, 95CI 1.53, 3.64), high FBS (OR = 1.23, 95CI 1.02, 1.49) and low HDL (OR = 1.65, 95CI 1.41, 1.95).Conclusion: Psychosocial distress in adolescents is associated with increased risk of some cardio metabolic risk factors. © 2014 Qorbani et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Emerging Disease Burdens and the Poor in Cities of the Developing World

Patterns of future urban growth, combined with advances in the treatment of traditional scourges of communicable diseases, will cause a shift in the burden of disease toward category 2 (noncommunicable) and 3 (injury) conditions over the next 30 years. Communicable diseases, particularly HIV/AIDs, will continue to be the most important killers among the poor. However, new risks will emerge for several reasons. First, the marked sprawl of cities in the developing world will make access to care more difficult. Second, increasing motor vehicles and the likelihood of inadequate infrastructure will make air pollution and accidents in road traffic more common than in the past. Third, impoverished urban populations have already shown a propensity toward undernourishment, and its obverse, obesity, is already emerging as a major risk. Also, the large projected increase in slums suggests that violence and homicide will become a more important burden of health, and very large hazards will be created by fire-prone, insubstantial dwellings that will house nearly two billion people by 2030. In addition, decentralized governance will exacerbate the tensions and discontinuities that have plagued the management of health issues on the urban fringe over the past decade. Accordingly, public health agencies will need to adjust to the regional and country-specific factors to address the changing profile of risk. This analysis suggests that four factors – levels of poverty, speed of city growth, sprawl in cities, and degree of decentralization – will have importance in shaping health strategies. These factors vary in pace and intensity by region, suggesting that health care strategies for Category II and III conditions will need to be differentiated by region of the world. Also, interventions will have to rely increasingly on actors outside the ranks of public health specialists

State Tax Differentials, Cross-Border Commuting, and Commuting Times in Multi-State Metropolitan Areas

We examine the effects of differences in income tax rates on commuting times within multi-state MSAs. Our theoretical model introduces a border into a model of an urban area and shows that differences in average tax rates distort commute times and interstate commutes. Empirically examining multi-state MSAs allows us to exploit tax policy discontinuities while holding fixed other characteristics. We identify large effects on commuting times for affluent households and homeowners in MSAs in which taxes are based on the state of residence. We discuss how the model and empirical design can be used to study other policy differences

Near threshold fatigue crack growth in ultrafine-grained copper

The near threshold fatigue crack growth in ultrafine-grained (UFG) copper at room temperature was studied in comparison to conventional coarse-grained (CG) copper. The fatigue crack growth rates da/dN in UFG copper were enhanced at Delta K <= 7 MPa root m compared to the CG material. The crack closure shielding, as evaluated using the compliance variation technique, was shown to explain these differences. The effective stress intensity factor amplitude Delta K-eff appears to be the same driving force in both materials. Tests performed in high vacuum on UFG copper demonstrate the existence of a huge effect of environment with growth rates higher of about two orders of magnitude in air compared to high vacuum. This environmental effect on the crack path and the related microstructure is discussed on the basis of fractography observations performed using scanning electron microscope and completed with field emission scanning electron microscope combined with the focused ion beam technique

Predicting future of unattended machinery plants: A step toward reliable autonomous shipping

Future waterborne transport operations in short-sea, sea-river, and inland waterways can be performed by autonomous vessels. The automation of maritime shipping directly emphasizes reducing crew numbers, minimizing operational costs, and mitigating human error during the operation. Recent researches have focused on understanding autonomous navigation while the reliability of unattended machinery plant has received very little attention. This paper aims at developing a method for predicting the performance of failure-sensitive components that may be left unattended in autonomous shipping. The presented methodology adopts Bayesian Inference as the basis of the artificial intelligence for predicting maintenance schedules including repair, inspection, and irregular checks of unattended systems. A Multinomial Process Tree (MPT) is used to model the failures within the system, identify faulty components, and to predict their failure times. A real case study from a short sea voyage is adopted to demonstrate the application of the presented methodology. The results of this research will assist decision and policy-makers to prevent costly failures in Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) and extend the service life of autonomous systems before any human intervention.</p

Effect of strain path on grain refinement in severely plastically deformed copper

Grain subdivision was studied experimentally with orientation imaging for oxygen-free high-conductivity copper deformed to the same equivalent strains in equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP), route A up to two passes, and in cold rolling. Grain refinement was modeled using a recently proposed grain refinement model. The refined grain size was significantly smaller in ECAP than in rolling in both experiments and modeling. The result shows that it is the lattice rotation rate that is responsible for the differences