Domination of Conservative Traditionalists over the Development of Middle Eastern Countries

Given the special political, cultural, historical, and religious conditions in the Middle East, the conservative elites in these regions have enhanced their commitment to their traditions and have opposed any changes in their societies. The most important feature of this conservative traditionalism is that it does not tolerate uneven economic development. However, this feature is inapplicable to political and social development

Ventilator-associated Pneumonia: A Study of Patients admitted in Internal Intensive Care Unit of Ali Asghar Hospital, Shiraz

Introduction: Ventilator-associated pneumonia is defined as a pneumonia occurring in patients within 48 hours or more after intubation with an endotracheal tube or tracheostomy tube and which not present before. The main objective of this study was to determine prevalence, predisposing factors and outcomes for ventilator associated pneumonia in an internal intensive care unit in a tertiary hospital. Material and Methods: In this retrospective review, all adult intensive care unit admitted patients at Ali Asghar Hospital with clinically and radiologically suspected ventilator-associated pneumonia between March 2009 and May 2010 were considered. The following data were recorded for each patient: demographic data, culture densities, chest radiological findings, pathogen(s), age, white blood cell count (WBC), presence of comorbid diseases, duration of hospital stay prior to diagnosis, and hospital survival. Data was assessed with SPSS software version 15 compatible for windows. Results: There were 49 patients in this study and most of the patients (69.3%) were males. Most of the patients (65.3%) were in more than 60 years age group of whom males were dominant. The most common risk factor was smoking, nasogastric tube, prolong duration of hospitalization, hospital admissions more than 2 times, prolong duration of intensive care unit admission, decreased level of consciousness and prolong ventilator support. The most common organism isolated was acinetobacter. Most of the patients were died (59.1%) of whom most were males. Discussion and conclusion: This study demonstrated that ventilator associated pneumonia is an important nosocomial infection among patients receiving mechanical ventilation in a community hospital and it is associated with greater hospital mortality rates and longer lengths of stay in the intensive care unit and hospital. Prevention is better than cure. Ventilator associated pneumonia is a well preventable disease and a proper approach decreases the hospital stay, cost, morbidity and mortality

Reconsidering Taylor's Design Argument

Contemporary philosophers have largely neglected Richard Taylor’s design argument. Given that the initial responses to the argument were largely negative, one might be tempted to conclude that the argument is simply philosophically inadequate. This paper rejects that conclusion by showing how Taylor’s argument has been misunderstood by his critics. In defending Taylor, it is shown that the two types of objections levied against him fail to even blemish his design argument, let alone refute it. Consideration is also given to the argument’s historical lineage, along with a proposal for future considerations of the connection between epistemological realism and design

US Presence and Grounds for Cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and United States in Afghanistan

To date, USA has not designed a policy to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq without Iran. One of the fundamental strategies of USA is to cooperate with the European Union, the Pacific, Russia, the Balkan Area, as well as the Caucasus the Middle East, North Africa, and Middle Asia. All of the countries relate to Iran in saving the Pacific. Iran is the most influential country in the area surrounding Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Northern Africa and Middle Asia. USA has to face Iran in the Middle East to meet the benefits of this relation. Therefore, such situation leads to the main question: does the attendance of USA in Afghanistan create the grounds for cooperation with Iran? Despite the existing disputes between the two governments, the attendance of USA in Afghanistan seems to have created new security, political, economic, and cultural fields for the cooperation of both countries

Modified LRFM in order to Bank Customer Clustering based on Genetic Algorithm

AbstractClustering is a common method for analyzing various data that is used in many fields, including statistical pattern recognition, machine learning, data mining, image analysis, and bioinformatics. Clustering The process of grouping objects similar to different groups, or more precisely, partitioning and dividing a set of data, into separate subcategories, the main point of which is not to be specific. The number of classes is in clustering. One of its most widely used uses is in the field of data, the clustering of which is performed by experts in taste. Bank customer clustering has been a challenge from the beginning, and it has been difficult to find consensus among experts to select a feature for grouping.This dissertation seeks to provide a solution for dynamic clustering of bank customers. This clustering will be based on a genetic algorithm and will decide on the number of categories, members of each category, and the similarity criteria used. The dynamics of the method are based on the improvement of the LRFM method using the genetic algorithm. In other words, the genetic algorithm will try to find different information fields about the bank's customers in the database; Put the right fields next to the features used in the LRFM method and get better results for clustering the bank's customers. This process leads to the determination of the criterion of similarity of one customer with another customer and the degree of similarity between them

Ethical Considerations in Conducting Clinical Trials

Background: Clinical trials are the golden key in medical science research with human participants. They have always been considered interesting topics by researchers and scientists working in this field. However, the samples are “human participants,” so the research should be carefully conducted.Methods: In the present study, the published articles on the ethical challenges of conducting clinical trials were evaluated between 2010 and 2019 in Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus. The English search keywords were “clinical trial,” with at least one of the phrases of “ethical consideration” or “standard”.Results: In this article, we examined the ethical requirements and considerations in these research studies in four stages: research design and question, proposal review and approval, supervision and implementation, and publication of the results. We have examined them using relevant articles published between 2010 and 2019 and identified important and prominent issues or neglected ones. Conclusion: During this study, it was found that the “research design and question” stage was the most discussed and challenging stage, and the authors’ sensitivity about it has been more than the other three stages. On the other hand, the “results publishing” stage has been considered less sensitive with the least number of references in articles

Effect of Adjuvant Electroconvulsive Therapy Compared to Antipsychotic Medication Alone on the Brain Metabolites of Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia: A Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Study

Objective: Schizophrenia is a common psychiatric disease and is characterized by changes in several brain metabolites detectable by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a general method of management for most severe psychiatric conditions that may play a role in changing the brain metabolites. This study examined the effectiveness of adjuvant ECT with oral medication compared to that of oral second generation antipsychotic medication alone on brain metabolites in patients with chronic schizophrenia. Method: This study was conducted on 20 patients with chronic schizophrenia who were admitted to a hospital; of them, 10 underwent ECT as an adjuvant therapy with oral medication at least 8 times, and 10 patients were given a second- generation antipsychotic therapy drug (risperidone and olanzapine) without ECT for at least 4 weeks. MRS was used to assess brain metabolites, including N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), choline (Cho), creatine (Cr), myoinositol (MI), and Glx (glutamate [Glu] and glutamine [Gln]), in the left prefrontal cortex, left thalamus, left hippocampus, and left occipital cortex. Differences between the 2 groups were not significant, except for method of treatment. Results: The NAA/Cr ratio in the left prefrontal cortex was significantly higher in ECT-treated patients (P = 0.035). In addition, the Cho/Cr ratios in the left prefrontal cortex and left thalamus were statisticaly lower in the ECT-treated patients than those treated with oral antipsychotic drugs alone (P = 0.019). No statistically significant changes were observed between the 2 groups in other sites of the brain. In addition, no statistically significant differences were detected between the 2 groups in SAPS and DES scores. Conclusion: Compared to oral antipsychotic drug treatment, ECT had improving effects on at least 2 metabolites in the brains of patients with schizophrenia. Therefore, ECT may have a neuroprotective effect in these patients

Localization of the Knowledge Workers’ Productivity Questionnaire and Evaluation of the Productivity of Knowledge Workers of the Central Field of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Human resources impose a vast expense on health organizations. Therefore, improvement of the productivity of human resources is of considerable concern to executive managers of every country. Methods: In the present study, first, the knowledge workers’ productivity assessment questionnaire was localized. Then, the knowledge workers of the central field of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences were investigated regarding productivity and affecting factors thereof. Results: In this analytic and cross-sectional study, the questionnaire designed by Antikainen et al, was used as the pattern. 300 knowledge workers of the central field of this University were selected through the stratified random sampling in June 2011. Moreover, the data were analyzed through factor analysis, and etc. Conclusion: Factor analysis led to the identification of eight main components of the knowledge workers’ productivity. The reliability of the new version of the questionnaire was confirmed by the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.945. Additionally, in this sample, productivity level of 19.3% of employees was low and 80.7% was favorable. In this regard, attempts must be made in order to improve the productivity

Seasonal variability of anthropogenic indices of PAHs in sediment from the Kuala Selangor River, west coast Peninsular Malaysia

Rapid increase in industrialization and urbanization in the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia has led to the intense release of petroleum and products of petroleum into the environment. Surface sediment samples were collected from the Selangor River in the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia during four climatic seasons and analyzed for PAHs and biomarkers (hopanes). Sediments were soxhlet extracted and further purified and fractionated through first and second step column chromatography. A gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was used for analysis of PAHs and hopanes fractions. The average concentrations of total PAHs ranged from 219.7 to 672.3 ng g−1 dw. The highest concentrations of PAHs were detected at 964.7 ng g−1 dw in station S5 in the mouth of the Selangor River during the wet inter-monsoonal season. Both pyrogenic and petrogenic PAHs were detected in the sediments with a predominance of the former. The composition of hopanes was homogeneous showing that petroleum hydrocarbons share an identical source in the study area. Diagnostic ratios of hopanes indicated that some of the sediment samples carry the crankcase oil signature

Molecular characterization of Hymenolepis nana based on nuclear rDNA ITS2 gene marker

Introduction: Hymenolepis nana is a zoonotic tapeworm with widespread distribution. The goal of the present study was to identify the parasite in the specimens collected from NorthWestern regions of Iran using PCR-sequencing method. Methods: A total of 1521 stool samples were collected from the study individuals. Initially, the identification of hymenolepis nana was confirmed by parasitological method including direct wet-mount and formalin-ethyl acetate concentration methods. Afterward, PCR-sequencing analysis of ribosomal ITS2 fragment was targeted to investigate the molecular identification of the parasite. Results: Overall, 0.65% (10/1521) of the isolates were contaminated with H. nana in formalin-ethyl acetate concentration. All ten isolates were succefully amplified by PCR and further sequenced. The determined sequences were deposited in GenBank under the accession numbers MH337810 -MH337819. Conclusion: Our results clarified the presence of H. nana among the patients in the study areas. In addition, the molecular technique could be accessible when the human eggs are the only sources available to identify and diagnose the parasite. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ahs.v19i1.6 Cite as: Shahnazi M, Mehrizi MZ, Alizadeh SA, Heydarian P, Saraei M, Alipour M, Hajialilo E. Molecular characterization of Hymenolepis nana (Cestoda: Cyclophyllidea: Hymenolepididae) based on nuclear rDNA ITS2 gene marker. Afri Health Sci. 2019;19(1): 1346- 1352. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ahs.v19i1.