Etiology of acute scrotal pain in children and adolescent patients admitted in Ahvaz Educational Hospitals

Purpose Acute scrotum is an emergency condition requiring rapid intervention. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical and epidemiological specifications of acute scrotum.Patients and methods This retrospective study was carried out on patients less than 21 years admitted with a diagnosis of acute scrotum in the surgical and medical wards from 2009 to 2010. One hundred and thirty-nine patients were included in this study. Epi-info version 6.4 (CDC) was used for data analysis.Results The final diagnoses were as follows: spermatic cord torsion (n =57, 41.00%), incarcerated inguinal hernia (n =30, 21.60%), epididymo-orchitis (n= 28, 20.14%), missed torsion (n =15, 10.79%), testicular trauma (n=5, 3.60%), and torsion of the appendix of the testis (n= 4, 2.87%). The most common age groups in relation to the diagnoses were as follows: testicular torsion and missed torsion (10–15 years, 34.7%), torsion of appendix testis (10–15 years, 100%), epididymo-orchitis (15–21 years, 85.71%), and incarcerated inguinal hernia with two peaks of age ( <5 years, 46.7%). Fifty-eight patients (41.72%) visited the hospital less than 6 h after the onset of pain. Twenty-eight patients underwent orchiectomy or orchiopexy and 38 patients underwent detorsion and bilateral orchiopexy. A herniotomy was performed in 15 patients and herniorraphy in 10 patients. An appendectomy was performed in four patients. Other procedures were carried out in seven patients. Out of 72 patients diagnosed with torsion (57 patients) or missed torsion (15 patients), 38 patients (52.7%) underwent a testicular salvage surgery (detorsion and orchiopexy). Out of all patients (139 patients), 92 patients underwent surgery and the rest (47 patients) were treated conservatively. These 47 patients had epididymo-orchitis (n= 28), testicular trauma (n =4), incarcerated inguinal hernia (n= 5), and missed torsion and testicular torsion (n= 10). Out of 27 patients with abnormal urinary findings, 19 patients had epididymo-orchitis.Conclusion The most common important differential diagnosis for acute scrotum is spermatic cord torsion. Most of the abnormal urinary findings were observed in patients with epididymo-orchitis. Most of the patients underwent surgery less than 6 h of disease onset. In patients with spermatic cord torsion, the affected testis has to be evaluated and treated during the first 6 h of presentation.Keywords: epididymitis, epididymo-orchitis, herniotomy, hydrocele, inguinal hernia, orchiopexy, scrotum, testicular torsion, traum

Boosting terahertz-radiation power with two-color circularly polarized midinfrared laser pulses

A way to considerably enhance terahertz radiation, emitted in the interaction of intense midinfrared laser pulses with atomic gases, in both the total energy and the electric-field amplitude is suggested. The scheme is based on the application of a two-color field consisting of a strong circularly polarized midinfrared pulse with wavelengths of 1.6-4 mu m and its linearly or circularly polarized second harmonic of lower intensity. By combining the strong-field approximation for the ionization of a single atom with particle-in-cell simulations of the collective dynamics of the generated plasma, it is shown that the application of such two-color circularly polarized laser pulses may lead to an order-of-magnitude increase in the energy emitted in the terahertz frequency domain as well as in a considerable enhancement in the maximal electric field of the terahertz pulse. Our results support recently reported experimental and numerical finding

Game-Based Cryptanalysis of a Lightweight CRC-Based Authentication Protocol for EPC Tags

The term Internet of Things (IoT) expresses a huge network of smart and connected objects which can interact with other devices without our interposition. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a great technology and an interesting candidate to provide communications for IoT networks, but numerous security and privacy issues need to be considered. In this paper, we analyze the security and the privacy of a new RFID authentication protocol proposed by Shi et al. in 2014. We prove that although Shi et al. have tried to present a secure and untraceable authentication protocol, their protocol still suffers from several security and privacy weaknesses which make it vulnerable to various security and privacy attacks. We present our privacy analysis based on a well-known formal privacy model which is presented by Ouafi and Phan in 2008. Moreover, to stop such attacks on the protocol and increase the performance of Shi et al.’s scheme, we present some modifications and propound an improved version of the protocol. Finally, the security and the privacy of the proposed protocol were analyzed against various attacks

Subversion-Resistant Commitment Schemes: Definitions and Constructions

A commitment scheme allows a committer to create a commitment to a secret value, and later may open and reveal the secret value in a verifiable manner. In the common reference string model, (equivocal) commitment schemes require a setup phase which is supposed to be done by a third trusted party. Recently, various news is reported about the subversion of $\textit{trusted}$ setup phase in mass-surveillance activities; strictly speaking about commitment schemes, recently it was discovered that the SwissPost-Scytl mix-net uses a trapdoor commitment scheme, that allows undetectably altering the votes and breaking users\u27 privacy, given the trapdoor [Hae19, LPT19]. Motivated by such news and recent studies on subversion-resistance of various cryptographic primitives, this research studies the security of commitment schemes in the presence of a maliciously chosen commitment key. To attain a clear understanding of achievable security, we define a variety of current definitions called subversion hiding, subversion equivocality, and subversion binding. Then we provide both negative and positive results on constructing subversion-resistant commitment schemes, by showing that some combinations of notions are not compatible while presenting subversion-resistant constructions that can achieve other combinations

Subversion-Resistant Simulation (Knowledge) Sound NIZKs

In ASIACRYPT 2016, Bellare, Fuchsbauer, and Scafuro studied the security of non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) arguments in the face of parameter subversion. They showed that achieving subversion soundness (soundness without trusting to the third party) and standard zero-knowledge is impossible at the same time. On the positive side, in the best case, they showed that one can achieve subversion zero-knowledge (zero-knowledge without trusting to the third party) and soundness at the same time. In this paper, we show that one can amplify their best positive result and construct NIZK arguments that can achieve subversion zero-knowledge and $\textit{simulation}$ (knowledge) soundness at the same time. Simulation (knowledge) soundness is a stronger notion in comparison with (knowledge) soundness, as it also guarantees non-malleability of proofs. Such a stronger security guarantee is a must in practical systems. To prove the result, we show that given a NIZK argument that achieves Sub-ZK and (knowledge) soundness, one can use an OR-based construction to define a new language and build a NIZK argument that will guarantee Sub-ZK and $\textit{simulation}$ (knowledge) soundness at the same time. We instantiate the construction with the state-of-the-art zk-SNARK proposed by Groth [Eurocrypt 2016] and obtain an efficient SNARK that guarantees Sub-ZK and simulation knowledge soundness

Legislative Documents

Also, variously referred to as: House bills; House documents; House legislative documents; legislative documents; General Court documents

Essential Conditions for Dynamic Interference

We develop general quantitative criteria for dynamic interference, a manifestation of a double-slit interference in time which should be realizable with brilliant state-of-the-art high-frequency laser sources. Our analysis reveals that the observation of dynamic interference hinges upon maximizing the difference between the dynamic polarization of the initial bound and the final continuum states of the electron during the light pulse while keeping depletion of the initial state small. These two properties, Stark shift and depletion, can be determined from electronic structure calculations avoiding expensive propagation in time. Confirmed by numerical results, we predict that this is impossible for the hydrogen ground state but feasible for excited states; this has been exemplified for the case of the hydrogen 2p state

Study of Position effect on Results of ABG of Hospitalized Patients in ICU of Open Heart Surgery Center of Mazandaran

ABSTRACT Introduction & Objective: Position of patients after open heart surgical operation in ICU in semi sitting and supine position has been propounded as a medical maneuver to improve oxygenation, to prevent hypoxia and its dangerous results since long times ago. No study has been conducted so far to compare the effect of two above mentioned positions on gas exchange rate and improving oxygenation and preventing hypoxia in Iran. Present study was conducted aiming to measuring the arterial blood gases and evaluating the effect of charging position and its duration on the results of arterial blood gases in patients who have been under open heart surgery operations. Materials & Methods: Subjects of this study were 30 patients, aged 18-60 years, which were selected by easy sampling method in ICU of heart surgery center of Mazandaran. The effect of position and its duration from semi sitting position to supine in intervals of 15, 30, and 45 and 60 minutes on arterial blood gases rate (pa O2, pa CO2, sp O2) was measured using analyzer. Necessary information was obtained from each patient’s file and lab results. SPSS software, version 11.5, was used to analyze the data. Results : The average of spO2 (oxygen saturation rate of arterial blood) before changing position (semi sitting) was 98.77±0.180 and after changing position (supine) in intervals 15, 30 and 45 minutes was 98.79 ± 0.163 and in 60 minute it reached 98.43 ± 0.440 but the differences was not significant. The average of pa CO2 (CO2 pressure of arterial blood) before changing position was 37.92 ± 0.765 and after changing position in intervals reached to 38.67 ± 1.03, 37.52 ± 1.03 and 37.95 ± 0.967 and in 60 minute reached to 37.50 ± 0.842 but the differences was not significant. The average of paO2 (oxygen pressure of arterial blood) before changing position reached 145.72 ± 6.11 and 30 minute after changing position reduced to 143.49 ± 5.78 and after 60 minutes it increased to 146.31±6.26 but the differences was not significant. Conclusion: In this study, it was observed that changing the position and duration don’t significantly change the rate of paO2, paCO2, spO2 and arterial blood gases and therefore these patients should not placed in semi sitting position to improve better gaseous exchange. This position doesn’t cause positive effect on exchange of arterial blood gases and it is better that those patients placed in supine position to prevent bedsore, in vulnerable area, and sliding patient over bed