Stakeholders' perspective on health equity and its indicators in Iran: A qualitative study

Background: To reduce the health inequity, it is necessary to measure and monitor these inequalities. In this regard, in Iran a plan was developed and accordingly 52 indicators to measure equity in health were developed and announced by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with other sectors. This study aims to obtain a deeper understanding of the development of health equity indicators and identify their implementation challenges and proposed solutions from the perspective of policy makers and executives responsible for the indicators development and implementation. Methods: In this qualitative study, data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with 15 Stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of these health equity indicators (at national and provincial levels), and the review and analysis of relevant documents including meeting minutes, working plans and working progress reports. Data were analyzed using a framework analysis approach. Results: Four main themes were identified, including the concept of equity in health and its importance, the use of health equity indicators and process of indicators development, challenges of development and implementation of the indicators and laying the groundwork for the establishment of indicators. The findings showed that policy makers' viewpoint on concepts and indicators is different from those of executives and their perceptions have little in common. The establishment of indicators requires accurate stakeholders' understanding and accurate insight into the issue of equity in health, political will, financing, training and empowerment of organization's employees, legal requirements, and finally a clear action plan. Conclusion: The development of the indicators requires a shared understanding among policy makers and executives. As the attention has been focused recently on the issue, in addition to knowledge improvement, proper solutions with an intersect oral collaboration approach in order to tackle challenges should be considered

Design and optimization of index-guiding photonic crystal fiber gas sensor

Globalization is becoming an important issue for most businesses in the world. Since globalization changes business trends and shortens product life cycles, it requires companies to be more innovative in developing new ideas, products and processes. Clustering is one of ways to promote innovation by facilitating sharing information and ideas between firms, attracting buyers and suppliers, and providing opportunities for joint training. Many researches in developed countries found that the proximity between companies facilitated collaboration and provided a more conducive environment for R&D and knowledge sharing which can develop culture of entrepreneurship and innovation. Then, the success of clusters in developed countries has led many government and companies to establish new clusters.Since products from China have been dominated Indonesia's market share with lower price, it is very difficult for Indonesian Small and Medium Enterprises to compete with lower price also. Therefore, to face the competition, innovation is perhaps as an alternative strategy for Indonesian SMEs. In facts, more than 50% of small and medium enterprises in Indonesia are located in clusters and most of them are located in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara. Even though they located in cluster but their innovations still very low and judging from technology perspective, most of them have low level of technologies and still remain in the underdeveloped stage. Therefore, in this research, the author tries to find (1). To what extend do cluster Indonesia promote innovation, (2). To find the reasons why clusters in Indonesia has not been working well in promoting innovation and (3). To investigate what aspects can be improved by Indonesian SMEs to boost their innovation

Software-based teaching of optical demultiplexers by using photonic crystals with presenting the syllabus for MSc students in electronic engineering major

Background and Objective:Software-based education is one of the most important ways to transfer knowledge in the field of new technologies. Because the hardware implementation of some modern science phenomena is not possible due to its complexity or sometimes due to the lack of appropriate manufacturing technology. Therefore, appropriate software can be used to teach such phenomena. One of the sciences and technologies that has grown significantly in recent years is photonic crystal structures, which have also appeared in new editions of graduate courses syllabuses as photon crystals. In this paper, simulation-based (software-based) teaching of a 4-channel optical demultiplexer based on photonic crystal is presented by using the R-Soft software. Methods: The teaching of the demultiplexer structure is based on the use of a photonic crystal filter. In this analysis, with the variation of the radius of the cylindrical nano-ring resonator and the radius of the scattering rods, the critical length parameter of 1573.6 nm is improved in the design of the filter. The advantages of the 4-channel demultiplexer include the mean quality factor of 4525, mean channel power transfer factor of 95%, and maximum and minimum channel cross-talk of -19.6 and -40.4, respectively. Also, mean channel width is obtained as 0.375 nm. Moreover, the proposed 4-channel demultiplexer can be used in WDM systems. Findings: The simulation-based teaching of these structures is very important to develop and improve the multiplexers performance. Therefore, the related syllabus is suggested for master of science (MSc) students in Electronic Engineering major. This syllabus can be considered as a part of Photonic Crystal or Photonics courses. Conclusion: In this paper, a 4-channel optical demultiplexer based on photonic crystal was studied. In order to teach the theoretical principles and foundations which are mostly complex and its hardware implementation is difficult due to technological limitations, the use of appropriate software environments along with strengthening the basic knowledge required can Improve teaching-learning processes. For this purpose, in this article, we tried to express the appropriate concepts of designing a four-channel optical dimplexplexor system for effective training. Accordingly, the proposed principles and topics as well as the prerequisites in the design were described. In the training section of the four-channel dimplex structure, it was stated that a T-shaped input waveguide, square resonator rings and several output waveguides can be used   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  ====================================================================================

Distributed multi-agent Load Frequency Control for a Large-scale Power System Optimized by Grey Wolf Optimizer

This paper aims to design an optimal distributed multi-agent controller for load frequency control and optimal power flow purposes. The controller parameters are optimized using Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm. The designed optimal distributed controller is employed for load frequency control in the IEEE 30-bus test system with six generators. The controller of each generator is considered as one agent. The controllers of agents are implemented in a distributed manner that is control rule of each agent depends on the agents’ own state and the states of their neighbors. Three other types of controllers including centralized controller, decentralized controller, and optimal centralized controller are considered for comparison. The performances of decentralized and distributed controllers are compared with two centralized controllers. In the optimal centralized controller and optimal distributed controller, the objective function is considered to achieve the objective of load frequency control as well as minimize power generation. Simulation results using MATLAB/SIMULINK show that although there is no global information of system in the optimal distributed controller, it has suitably reduced the frequency deviation. Meanwhile the power is optimally generated in the three scenarios of load increasing, load reduction and generator outage

Mediastinal Schwannoma Diagnosed by Endoscopic Ultrasonography-Guided Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology

Schwannoma is the most common neurogenic tumor that is derived from the peripheral nerve sheath. There are no specific serologic markers or characteristic imaging abnormalities associated with schwannoma. Tissue diagnosis and immunohistochemistry are required to diagnose this lesion. We describe a 65-year-old male with a finding of three mass lesions in the superior and middle mediastinum on computed tomography of the chest. The largest lesion measured 4.6 × 5 cm. The patient subsequently underwent endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) of the lesion and cytology was consistent with spindle cell neoplasm. Immunohistochemical staining of the cytologic specimen was positive for S-100 and negative for pan-cytokeratin, CD34, CD117, calcitonin, smooth muscle actin and desmin. These findings were consistent with schwannoma. This is the second reported case of a mediastinal schwannoma diagnosed by EUS-FNA

The Effect of Sand and Dust Storms (SDSs) and Rain on the Performance of Cellular Networks in the Millimeter Wave Band

Future cellular systems are expected to use millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) frequency bands in addition to the existing microwave bands under 6 GHz. Severe weather conditions, including sand and dust storms (SDSs) and heavy rainfalls, challenge reliable communications over wireless links at those higher frequencies. In such conditions, besides frequency-dependent path-loss, radio signals experience additional attenuation. The SDS attenuation is related to visibility, receiver distance to the storm origin point, soil type, frequency, temperature and humidity. On the other hand, the rainfall attenuation is affected by rainfall rate, polarization, carrier frequency, temperature and raindrop size distribution. Leveraging on experimental measurements carried out in previous works, a novel unified mathematical framework is introduced in this paper to include SDS/rainfall-dependent attenuation in the performance evaluation of terrestrial wireless cellular networks in terms of coverage probability, bit error rate (BER) and achievable rate in the mm-Wave band. Extensive numerical results are presented to show the effects of the different SDS/rainfall parameters on performance, showing that the degradation due to SDS is generally higher than that due to rain and may cause a reduction of even six orders of magnitude in the average achievable bit rate when the frequency increases from 28 to 38 GHz

Development of Photonic Crystal Fiber Based Gas/ Chemical Sensors

The development of highly-sensitive and miniaturized sensors that capable of real-time analytes detection is highly desirable. Nowadays, toxic or colorless gas detection, air pollution monitoring, harmful chemical, pressure, strain, humidity, and temperature sensors based on photonic crystal fiber (PCF) are increasing rapidly due to its compact structure, fast response and efficient light controlling capabilities. The propagating light through the PCF can be controlled by varying the structural parameters and core-cladding materials, as a result, evanescent field can be enhanced significantly which is the main component of the PCF based gas/chemical sensors. The aim of this chapter is to (1) describe the principle operation of PCF based gas/ chemical sensors, (2) discuss the important PCF properties for optical sensors, (3) extensively discuss the different types of microstructured optical fiber based gas/ chemical sensors, (4) study the effects of different core-cladding shapes, and fiber background materials on sensing performance, and (5) highlight the main challenges of PCF based gas/ chemical sensors and possible solutions

Comparative evaluation of INNO-LiPA HBV assay, direct DNA sequencing and subtractive PCR-RFLP for genotyping of clinical HBV isolates

Genotypes (A to H) of hepatitis B virus (HBV) influence liver disease progression and response to antiviral therapy in HBV-infected patients. Several methods have been developed for rapid genotyping of HBV strains. However, some of these methods may not be suitable for developing countries. The performance of INNO-LiPA HBV Genotyping assay (LiPA), direct DNA sequencing and subtractive PCR-RFLP of genotype-specific HBV genome regions were evaluated for accurately determining the HBV genotypes by analyzing sera (n = 80) samples from chronic HBV patients. Both, LiPA and DNA sequencing identified 63, 4 and 13 HBV strains as belonging to genotype D, genotype A and mixed genotype A and D, respectively. On the contrary, the PCR-RFLP-based method correctly identified all 4 genotype A but only 56 of 63 genotype D strains. Seven genotype D strains yielded indeterminate results. DNA sequence comparisons showed that a single nucleotide change in the target region generated an additional restriction site for Nla IV that compromised the accuracy of this method. Furthermore, all the mixed genotype A and D strains were identified only as genotype A strains. The data show that the PCR-RFLP-based method incorrectly identified some genotype D strains and failed to identify mixed genotype infections while LiPA and DNA sequencing yielded accurate results

Share of afghanistan populace in hepatitis B and hepatitis C infection's pool: is it worthwhile?

There is a notable dearth of data about Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) and Hepatitis C Virus(HCV) prevalence in Afghanistan. Awareness program and research capacity in the field of hepatitis are very limited in Afghanistan. Number of vulnerabilities and patterns of risk behaviors signal the need to take action now