Patients and Public Involvement in Patient Safety and Treatment Process in Hospitals Affiliated to Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Iran, 2013

Background: In the recent decades, healthcare providers had a perspective of benevolent paternalism. Nowadays, the patients’ role has changed and they have a significant obligation to participate in their caring decisions. Objectives: The current study aimed to investigate the involvement of patients and public in the patient safety and treatment process in hospitals affiliated to Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran, 2013. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the hospitals affiliated to Kashan University of Medical Sciences in 2013. Subjects included all of the 18 chief managers, 10% of nurses in each hospital, and 375 patients. Data collection instruments included a questionnaire and a checklist designed according to the research objectives. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS ver. 13. Descriptive statistics, percentage and frequencies, were calculated for all variables and analyzed by Chi-square test. Results: In the treatment process, 81 patients (21.61%), 50 nurses (80.6%) and 15 chief managers (83.3%) had awareness about Patient Bill of Rights. In patient Safety, 19.73% of the patients stated that hospitals received their feedbacks. Management activities were weak in evaluation. All of the six hospitals (100%) had a defined process to perform satisfaction surveys’ quality improvement and patient authentication policy. Conclusions: Patient and public participation in Kashan hospitals are not adhered well. As the patient has an important role in improving the quality of services, more use of mass media especially local newspapers, hospital websites, and training programs are suggested to inform both the patients and public on their rights and roles in improving the healthcare services

Persuasive Discourse Impairments in Traumatic Brain Injury

Background: Considering the cognitive and linguistic complexity of discourse production, it is expected that individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) should face difficulties in this task. Therefore, clinical examination of discourse has become a useful tool for studying and assessment of communication skills of people suffering from TBI. Among different genres of discourse, persuasive discourse is considered as a more cognitively demanding task. However, little is known about persuasive discourse in individuals suffering from TBI. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of adults with TBI on a task of spoken persuasive discourse to determine the impaired linguistic measures. Patients and Methods: Thirteen TBI nonaphasic Persian speaking individuals, ranged between 19 to 40 years (Mean = 25.64 years; SD = 6.10) and 59 healthy adults matched by age, were asked to perform the persuasive discourse task. The task included asking the participants to express their opinion on a topic, and after the analysis of the produced discourse, the two groups were compared on the basis of their language productivity, sentential complexity, maze ratio and cohesion ratio. Results: The TBI group produced discourses with less productivity, sentential complexity, cohesion ratio and more maze ratio compared the control group. Conclusions: As it is important to consider acquired communication disorders particularly discourse impairment of brain injured patients along with their other clinical impairments and regarding the fact that persuasive discourse is crucial in academic and social situations, the persuasive discourse task presented in this study could be a useful tool for speech therapists, intending to evaluate communication disorders in patients with TBI

THE COMPARISON OF SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, AND STRESS AMONG ADOLESCENT SUICIDE ATTEMPTERS ABUSING DRUG AND ADOLESCENTS WITHOUT DRUG ABUSE IN ZABOL, 2016

Addiction and drug abuse are among the issues that have been greatly adverted by the clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. Suicide attempt, like other social phenomena, is not uni-causal; a variety of factors affects this phenomenon. Thus, having an exact awareness of suicide factors and studying the importance of the factors seem necessary. The present research aims at studying suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, and stress among adolescent suicide attempters abusing drug and adolescents without any drug abuse in Zabol in 2016. The present study is a comparative descriptive-analytical one. The statistical populations of the present study were all the 18-to-29-year-old suicide attempters, with a record of drug abuse referring to Imam Ali Hospital in Zabol in 2016. The data collection tool was depression questionnaire and Beck's suicidal thoughts questionnaire. T-independent and chi-square tests were used for data analysis applying SPSS version 18. The participants' mean age was 14.12 +/- 4.13 years. The drug abusers' mean score of depression, anxiety, stress, and suicidal thoughts were 10.12 +/- 4.16, 7.26 +/- 4.48, 9.02 +/- 4.15, and 18.42 +/- 6.12 respectively. As for the comparison group they were 4.32 +/- 2.18, 4.36 +/- 4.26, 5.16 +/- 4.46, and 6.32 +/- 4.18 respectively (p=0.001). The findings obtained from the T-test for the independent groups indicate the difference in means between the two groups with respect to the degree of depression (p=0.001) and suicidal thoughts (p=0.002). The findings obtained from the present study indicated that variables such as drug abuse, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts are closely related with suicide attempt. Given the comorbidity of drug dependence and other psychiatric disorders, providing educational interventions, executing preventive social plans, and treating psychological disorders for preventing suicide attempts are of great importance

Evaluation of the chemical composition and in vitro antimicrobial activity of Rosmarinus officinalis, Zataria multiflora, Anethum graveolens and Eucalyptus globulus against Streptococcus iniae; the cause of zoonotic disease in farmed fish

There is a growing interest of industry to replace synthetic chemicals by natural products with bioactive properties from plant origin. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the factors affecting antimicrobial effectiveness of essential oils Rosmarinus officinalis, Zataria multiflora, Anethum graveolens and Eucalyptus globulus against food spoilage and pathogenic bacteria, Streptococcus iniae; the cause of zoonotic streptococcosis in fish. Food conservation is based on an intermittent search for foods with a high nutritional quality and microbial stability and it has been reached by the control of the growth/survival of spoiling and pathogen foodborne microorganisms. Based on several reports, fish streptococcosis is currently considered as one of the main limiting factors in the aquaculture industry, due to the significant economic losses (annually more than $150 million) that these infections cause in different cultured fresh and seawater fish species worldwide. The sensitivity of S. iniae to antibacterial activity of the essential oils was determined using well diffusion assays and paper disc diffusion method. The ranges of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the oils and extracts were 3.9-250 and 7.8-500 µg/ml and the ranges of minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) values for the oils and extracts were found to be in the range of 7.8-250 and 15.6-500 µg/ml, respectively. The essential oils exhibited antibacterial activity against S. iniae. The essential oil of rosemary showed the strongest antimicrobial activity

Relationship between attitude to career and technology course with technological and entrepreneurship attitude of high school students in district one of Tabriz

Background and Objectives: Developing a positive attitude toward the subject under study is one of the common educational goals today. Teachers as well as parents believe that the student's attitude toward the subject matter affects the student's success in school. High school students' perceptions regarding technology learning may influence their decision to study in a field at the university and work in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics which are considered to be the basis of economic development in developed countries. During the past decades, there has been a growing gap between the scientific and technical skills offered by the schools and the economic demand in this area, and the number of the learners and those who have been trained in technology and science has decreased in some cases. Since the main objectives of the field of education and learning  of the work and technology curriculum in the Fundamental Document of Transformation of Education for the first  year of high school is obtaining  the merits and positive attitude towards technology and entrepreneurship, the aim of this study  is investigating the relationship between attitude toward  work and technology with technological attitude and entrepreneurship of high school students in destrict one of Tabriz in the academic year 2018-2019.   MethodS: This study was a correlational research using structural equation modeling method. Data were analyzed using least squares method. This method tests the pattern in two steps which include the measurement and structural pattern test. The measurement model examines the validity and reliability of measurement tools and research structures and tests the structural pattern of hypotheses and relationships of latent variables. The statistical population consisted of 15386 high school boys and girls in district one of Tabriz who were studying in the academic year 2018-2019. The sample was selected by proportional random sampling method (the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade) and since the original questionnaire had 40 components, 10 subjects were selected for each component and on the whole, 402 subjects were selected. Data were collected using the Liou and Kuo Technological Attitude Questionnaire (2014), Athayde Entrepreneurial Attitude Questionnaire (2009), and a researcher-made attitude to career and technology c­­­ourse Questionnaire. To test the hypotheses, structural equation analysis using Smart PLS 3 software was used. Findings: The findings showed that there was a very close relationship between career and technology course, attitude to technology and entrepreneurship. Hypotheses were significant at 0.001 level and t-statistic was significant as it was higher than 1.96. Attitude to career and technology course explains  self-efficacy of learning technology as 0.44, the value of earning technology as 0.56, strategies of learning technology  as 0.56, goal orientation of learning technology as 0.63, environmental stimulus of learning technology  as 0.64, self-regulation-triggering of learning technology as 0.54, self-Regulation Implementation of learning technology as  0.68, others’ leadership as 0.40, achievement as 0.56, personal control as 0.30, creativity as 0.42, and intuition as 0.38. Conclusion: Attitude to career and technology course explained the components of technological attitude and the components of attitude to entrepreneurship. The high significance of a positive attitude to the career and technology course lies in having a positive relationship with valuable components such as self-efficacy, learning value, strategies of learning, goal orientation, environment stimulus, creating self-regulation, leadership of others, achievement, self-control, creativity and intuition; therefore, it is recommended to prioritize this course. Knowing the attitude factors and their relationship to the subjects of courses can help teachers to improve the curriculum and the effectiveness of teaching methods so that students can be more successful in learning their lessons, academic performance, and career. ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2021 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.  ====================================================================================

Federated learning for performance prediction in multi-operator environments

Telecom vendors and operators deliver services with strict requirements on performance, over complex and sometimes partly shared network infrastructures. A key enabler for network and service management in such environments is knowledge sharing, and the use of data-driven models for performance prediction, forecasting, and troubleshooting. In this paper, we outline a multi-operator service metrics prediction framework using federated learning that allows privacy-preserved knowledge-sharing across operators for improved model performance, and also reduced requirements on data transfer within an operator network. Federated learning is compared against local and central learning strategies for multi-operator performance prediction, and it is shown to balance the requirements on data privacy, model performance, and the network overhead. Further, the paper provides insights on how data heterogeneity affects model performance, where the conclusion is that standard federated learning has certain robustness to data heterogeneity. Finally, we discuss the challenges related to training a federated learning model with a limited budget on the communication rounds. The evaluation is performed using a set of realistic publicly available data traces, that are adapted specifically for the purpose of studying multi-operator service performance prediction

The Effects of Folic Acid Supplementation on Recurrence and Metabolic Status in Endometrial Hyperplasia: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial

Abstract: Background: Data on the effects of folic acid supplementation on clinical symptoms and metabolic profiles of patients with endometrial hyperplasia (EH) are limited. This investigation was performed to evaluate the effects of folic acid supplementation on clinical symptoms and metabolic status of patients with EH. Methods: This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted among 60 women diagnosed with EH. Diagnosis of EH was made based on biopsy results. Participants were randomly allocated to 2 groups to take 5 mg/d folic acid supplements (n = 30) or placebo (n = 30) for 12 weeks. Results: After the 12-week intervention, folic acid supplementation significantly decreased fasting plasma glucose (β -3.99 mg/ dL; 95% CI, -7.39, -0.59; P = 0.02), serum insulin levels (β -2.82 µIU/mL; 95% CI, -4.86, -0.77; P = 0.008), homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (β -0.68; 95% CI, -1.20, -0.17; P = 0.009), triglycerides (β -16.47 mg/dL; 95% CI, -28.72, -4.22; P = 0.009) and very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) cholesterol (β -3.29 mg/dL; 95% CI, -5.74, -0.84; P = 0.009), and significantly increased the quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (β 0.01; 95% CI, 0.004, 0.03; P = 0.01) compared with the placebo. Additionally, folic acid intake resulted in a significant reduction in serum high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) (β -0.36 mg/L; 95% CI, -0.52, -0.21; P < 0.001) compared with the placebo. Folic acid supplementation did not affect other metabolic parameters. Conclusion: In conclusion, we found that folic acid administration for 12 weeks to subjects with EH improved glycemic control, triglycerides, VLDL-cholesterol and hs-CRP levels, but did not influence recurrence and other metabolic profiles

Braces versus Invisalign® : gingival parameters and patients' satisfaction during treatment : a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Fixed orthodontic appliances (FOA) temporarily interfere with periodontal health of patients, as the appliance complicates oral hygiene. The use of aligners in orthodontic therapy increased strongly during the last decade. In the literature, the reports about effects of aligner treatment on oral hygiene and gingival conditions are scarce. This cross-sectional study evaluated oral hygiene and patient's satisfaction during orthodontic treatment of patients with FOA or Invisalign®. METHODS: 100 patients (FOA = 50, Invisalign® = 50) were included who underwent orthodontic treatment for more than 6 months. Clinical examinations were performed to evaluate patients' periodontal condition and were compared with clinical data at the beginning of the orthodontic treatment. Oral hygiene, patients' satisfaction and dietary habits were documented by a detailed questionnaire. For statistical analysis, the Mann-Whitney U-Test and Fisher's Exact Test were used; as multiple testing was applied, a Bonferroni correction was performed. RESULTS: At the time of clinical examinations, patients with FOA were in orthodontic therapy for 12.9 ± 7.2 months, whereas patients with Invisalign® were in orthodontic therapy for 12.6 ± 7.4 months. Significantly better gingival health conditions were recorded in Invisalign® patients (GI: 0.54 ± 0.50 for FOA versus 0.35 ± 0.34 for Invisalign®; SBI: 15.2 ± 7.6 for FOA versus 7.6 ± 4.1 for Invisalign®), whereas the amount of dental plaque was also less but not significantly different (API: 37.7 % ± 21.9 for FOA versus 27.8 % ± 24.6 for Invisalign®). The evaluation of the questionnaire showed greater patients' satisfaction in patients treated with Invisalign® than with FOA. CONCLUSION: Patients treated with Invisalign® have a better periodontal health and greater satisfaction during orthodontic treatment than patients treated with FOA

Effect of Planting Date and Moisture Levels on Some Physiological and Biochemical Traits of Quinoa Cultivars (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) in Birjand and Sarbisheh Regions

IntroductionThe economic importance of quinoa is not only due to the possibility of using the seeds as a food product characterized by a similar composition and use as consumer cereals but the species can also be managed as a leafy vegetable with high nutritional value and similar uses, such as, for example, spinach. Drought is another environmental stressor for plants subjected to severe water stress, especially in semi-arid and arid environments. Water scarcity poses a considerable challenge to crop production, leading to a notable reduction in crop yield. Quinoa, however, boasts low water requirements and demonstrates resilience in drought conditions. Even during dry periods, quinoa can effectively sustain leaf area and regulate photosynthetic activity. This resilience is facilitated by structural characteristics such as small, thin-walled cells, tissue flexibility, low osmotic potential, and controlled leaf area reduction through dehiscence. Other quinoa features for sustaining turgor pressure through osmotic adjustment during drought stress include inorganic ion buildup (e.g., Ca, K, and Na) and improved organic element synthesis (carotenoids and proline). Quinoa genotypes have several drought-resistance mechanisms, enabling this crop to grow and develop under severe drought conditions. Materials and MethodsTo evaluate the effect of moisture levels on some quinoa cultivars biochemical traits, four separate experiments were conducted in a factorial layout based on randomized complete block design with three replications in two regions (Birjand and Sarbisheh) and two planting dates (March and July/August) in 2018-2019. The experimental factors included five moisture levels (25, 50, 75, 100, and 125% of crop water requirement) and three quinoa cultivars (Titicaca, Giza1, and Redcarina). Some quinoa physiological and biochemical traits were evaluated by composite analysis at the 50% flowering stage and the effects of planting date and location were considered fixed.Results and DiscussionThe results showed that in August/July cultivation, the characteristics of RWC, electrolyte leakage, sodium percentage, potassium percentage, chlorophyll a, carotenoids, proline content, and total soluble carbohydrate of leaves were increased by 17.10, 74.62, 95.51, 31.9, 3.53, 38.65, 94.19 and 9.30% respectively and chlorophyll b content decreased by 13.15% compared to March culture. Also, in Sarbisheh, RWC, electrolyte leakage, potassium percentage, and leaf carotenoids are respectively 3.53, 38.65, 94.19 and 9.30% more than Birjand, but sodium percentage, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, proline and total soluble carbohydrates of leaves were 4, 1.88, 15.67, 51.02 and 30.41% less than Birjand, respectively. In most of the studied traits, the Giza1 cultivar had higher quality traits. Severe water scarcity resulted in an elevation of certain biochemical traits in quinoa leaves. Specifically, as moisture levels decreased from 125% to 25% of the water requirement, there was a significant increase in electrolyte leakage, sodium and potassium percentages, chlorophyll a and b, carotenoids, proline, and total leaf soluble carbohydrates by 24.50%, 37.84%, 35.89%, 24.83%, 59.12%, 48.75%, 51.58%, and 36.71%, respectively. However, the relative water content (RWC) decreased by 17.70%. Notably, there were no significant differences observed between the 125% and 100% levels of water requirement for most of the analyzed traits.ConclusionIn general, with the significance of the triple interaction of planting date × location × cultivar, as a result, the reaction of each variety depends on the planting date and location of its planting. But in general, most of the quinoa leaf physiological and biochemical traits increased in August/July cultivation. In Birjand, due to the higher average temperature and other climatic parameters compared to Sarbisheh, and probably understanding the heat stress, traits such as photosynthetic pigments, proline, and soluble carbohydrates had higher values. In this research, the Giza1 was superior to the other two cultivars, and moisture stress caused a significant decrease in the water content of the leaves and a significant increase in quinoa leaves quality traits