98 research outputs found
Bibliotheraphy Among Psychologists: Familiarity, Aattitude and Use
Introduction: Bibliotherapy is a low-cost and safe way to treat mental health problems. Given that the success of bibliotherapy depends on the positive attitude and familiarity of those involved in this therapy method, this study aims to investigate the familiarity, attitude, and use of bibliotherapy by psychologists working in counseling centers and the barriers and limitations in using bibliotherapy.
Methods: In this practical research, conducted using an analytic survey method in 2020, 101 psychologists working in counseling centers in Hamadan province, Iran, were selected by the census. The survey response rate was 100 %. All data for this study were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire. Its reliability (using the indicator of Cronbach's alpha) and validity (using two indicators of CVI and CVR) were confirmed. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 25 using frequency distribution, Mann-Whitney, Chi-square, and Kruskal-Wallis tests.
Results: The results showed that more than half of the participants (53.5%) were moderately familiar with the bibliotherapy, and their level of familiarity was less than average; more than half of the participants (55.4%) used moderate bibliotherapy to treat their patient's problems, and their use rate was low to medium levels. However, psychologists' attitudes toward bibliotherapy are positive and higher than average.
Conclusion: Despite bibliotherapy's effectiveness and psychologists' favorable view of it, awareness and utilization remain low, highlighting the need for strategies to enhance the adoption of this therapeutic approach
Moisture dependent physical and mechanical properties of Mazafati date pit
Knowing the physical and mechanical properties is very important for automating the activities associated with the date pit. The objective of this study was to determine physical and mechanical properties of date pit of Mazafati cultivar as a function of moisture content. The physical properties of the pits were determined in the moisture content range of 7% to 40% (wb). The date pits was compressed along the width at 0.08, 0.46, 0.55 and 0.64 (db) moisture contents to determine required force, deformation, and energy per volume (toughness) at rupture point. The results showed that the greatest length, width, thickness were 24.43, 9.21, 7.15 mm, respectively at moisture content of 40 % (wb). With increase moisture from 7% to 40% (wb) the true density of pits decreased from 1380 to 1209 kg.m-3, the bulk density decreased from 729 to 655 kg.m-3, the porosity decreased from 42.60 to 46.31%, the emptying angle of repose increased from 31.04 to 49.63 degree, and the filling angle of repose increased from 29.82 to 42.79 degree. The greatest friction coefficient of the date pits was obtained on plywood surface and the minimum value on iron surface at all moisture content levels. The greatest rupture force and toughness of the date pits were 1925.58 N and 5.34 mJ.mm-3, respectively at moisture content of 0.08 (db). The greatest deformation at rupture point was 6.1 mm at moisture content of 0.46 (db)
Effect of Self-Citation on H-Index: A Study of Top 1% Highly Cited Iranian Scientists in Medical Sciences
Background: H-index is one of the main bibliometric indicators for evaluating researchers. It has been criticized due to the effect of self-citation rate on its increase.
Aim: This study aimed at analyzing the state of top 1% highly-cited Iranian scientists in medical sciences in ESI for investigating the effect of their self-citations on their h-indices.
Methods: Iranian Medical Science Scientometric Information Database, Essential Science IndicatorsTM (ESI) and Scopus indexing/abstracting database were used for data extraction. Data analysis was conducted in Excel and SPSS..
Results: In total, 6.15% of citations were self-citations that resulted in increase in h-index by 2.49 units. After excluding self-citations, the h-indexes of 23.4% of the studied scientists did not change and the mean rate of h-index decreased by 2.49. A correlational test showed the strong correlation between self-citation count and h-index rate (r=.718).
Conclusion: Self-citation is present as a common phenomenon in all scientific communities and increases in h-index. If not used for manipulating bibliometric indicators, it can make the scientific works more visible for potential readers and consequently receiving more citations
Lack of Pathogenic Mutation in the Human CAII Gene in an Individual Suffering Renal Tubular Acidosis
Renal tubular acidosis (RTA) is a rare genetic disorder. It has four clinical types, and type 3 demonstrates a mixed pattern of tubular dysfunction. The causative gene for type 3 RTA (CAII) is located on the 8q22 locus and encodes a protein called carbonic anhydrase II. In this study, we analyzed the entire exons and flanking regions of the CAII gene in a child suffering renal tubular acidosis with an autosomal recessive pattern that was diagnosed with type3 RTA. DNA was extracted from the blood sample of the patient and his parents by the salting out extraction method. The exons and flanking regions of the CAII gene were amplified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We performed exon direct sequencing by forward and reverse primers, which were designed by primer3 program. No mutation was found following the screening of the entire coding sequence of the CAII gene. It is likely that another gene might be involved in this case. In other words, other types of RTA have to be considered.Keywords: Renal Tubular Acidosis, distal, type 3; Gene; Polymerase Chain Reaction; Sequence Analysis, DNA
Evaluating the Speed and Performance of the Websites of Hospitals and Specialty and Super-specialty Clinics of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences by GTmetrix
Objective: Medical websites are useful tools for training and informing patients, their families, and the public about diseases, procedures, drugs, and healthy life. Speediness and performance are of main criteria for evaluating these websites. This study aimed to evaluate the speed and performance of the websites of hospitals and specialty and super-specialty clinics of Hamadan University of Medical Science by GTmetrix.
Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, the speed and performance of 15 websites of hospitals and specialty and super-specialty clinics affiliated with the Hamadan University of Medical Science, Hamadan, Iran, were analyzed by using GTmetrix tool and extracting data in its two sections: GTmetrix Grade and Web Vitals. Data were described and analyzed in SPSS and Excel.
Results: 14 studied websites (93%) were very weak in page loading speed scores. In performance scores, all websites were rated fewer than 50 percent. The first and last ranks in the structure score belonged to Imam Hasan Mojtaba Hospital and Omid Clinic in common with 55 percent and Besat Hospital with 26 percent, respectively. All studied cases (but Shahid Heidari Hospital of Nahavand) ranked much longer than recommended in their LCPs. All cases were within the good threshold in their TBT scores. The majority of the cases (13 out of 15) are in the CLS threshold of much longer than recommended.
Conclusion: It is suggested that website designers and ICT administrators in hospitals and medical clinics in Iran, especially ones affiliated with UMSHA, be familiar with website measures such as GTmetrix and train in detecting the defects causing low performance, speed, and structure of websites as well as the procedures for removing them
Publication Performance and Trends in Altmetrics: A Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization
Bibliometric analysis of different fields of knowledge leads to a better understanding of the trend and quality of scientific products. The present study examined the publications on Altmetrics through bibliometric analysis and knowledge mapping. In this survey research, using quantitative indicators of scientometric, scientific developments in the field of altmetrics have been evaluated. The study population included all articles in the field of altmetrics (1077 documents) indexed in the Scopus database from the beginning to the end of 2020. The Excel and VOSviewer software packages were used to analyze the data. The findings show that scientific products in the field of altmetrics indexed in Scopus have been published since 2012; the quantitative trend of publications has been upward; Most of the scientific products in the field of altmetrics were original articles and in English. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain were the top and most productive countries in publishing documents in the field. Iran was ranked ninth with 52 documents. Regarding the number of publications, the University of Wolverhampton, the Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, and Leiden University were ranked first to third, respectively. Thelwall, M., with 42 articles, Bornmann, L., with 32 articles, and Haunschild, R., with 25 articles, were the most active authors. The most frequently used keywords were "Altmetrics", "bibliometrics" and "Social media". The highest number of documents in the field of Altmetrics has been published in the journal "Scientometrics". The most cited author was Thelwall, M., with 2691 citations. Due to the upward trend of scientific publications in Altmetrics and the beginning of its way, this upward trend will continue. Also, most of the top authors in the field are from universities and countries active in this field
Three-Dimensional Graph Matching to Identify Secondary Structure Correspondence of Medium-Resolution Cryo-EM Density Maps
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a structural technique that has played a significant role in protein structure determination in recent years. Compared to the traditional methods of X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy, cryo-EM is capable of producing images of much larger protein complexes. However, cryo-EM reconstructions are limited to medium-resolution (~4–10 Å) for some cases. At this resolution range, a cryo-EM density map can hardly be used to directly determine the structure of proteins at atomic level resolutions, or even at their amino acid residue backbones. At such a resolution, only the position and orientation of secondary structure elements (SSEs) such as α-helices and β-sheets are observable. Consequently, finding the mapping of the secondary structures of the modeled structure (SSEs-A) to the cryo-EM map (SSEs-C) is one of the primary concerns in cryo-EM modeling. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel automatic computational method to identify SSEs correspondence in three-dimensional (3D) space. Initially, through a modeling of the target sequence with the aid of extracting highly reliable features from a generated 3D model and map, the SSEs matching problem is formulated as a 3D vector matching problem. Afterward, the 3D vector matching problem is transformed into a 3D graph matching problem. Finally, a similarity-based voting algorithm combined with the principle of least conflict (PLC) concept is developed to obtain the SSEs correspondence. To evaluate the accuracy of the method, a testing set of 25 experimental and simulated maps with a maximum of 65 SSEs is selected. Comparative studies are also conducted to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art techniques. The results demonstrate that the method is efficient, robust, and works well in the presence of errors in the predicted secondary structures of the cryo-EM images
Synthesis and Effects of 4,5-Diaryl-2-(2-alkylthio-5-imidazolyl) Imidazoles as Selective Cyclooxygenase Inhibitors
Objective(s)In recent years highly selective COX-2inhibitors were withdrawn from the market because of an increased risk of cardiovascular complications. In this study we were looking for potent compounds with moderate selectivity for cox-2. So, four analogues of 4, 5-diaryl-2-(2-alkylthio-5-imidazolyl) imidazole derivatives were synthesized and their anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive activities were evaluated on male BALB/c mice (25-30 g). Molecular modeling and in vitro COX-1 and COX-2 isozyme inhibition studies were also performed. Materials and Methods2-(2-Alkylthio-5-imidazolyl)-4,5-diphenylimidazole compounds were obtained by the reaction of benzyl with 2-alkylthio-1-benzylimidazole-5-carbaldehyde, in the presence of ammonium acetate. Spectroscopic data and elemental analysis of compounds were obtained and their structures elucidated. Anti-nociception effects were examined using writhing test in mice. The effect of the analogues (7.5, 30, 52.5 and 75 mg/kg) against acute inflammation were studied using xylene-induced ear edema test in mice. Celecoxib (75 mg/kg) was used as positive control.ResultsAll four analogues exhibited anti-nociceptive activity against acetic acid induced writhing, but did not show significant analgesic effect (P< 0.05) compared with celecoxib. It was shown that analogues injected 30 min before xylene application reduced the weight of edematic ears. All analogues were found to have less selectivity for COX-2 in comparison to celecoxib. ConclusionInjected doses of synthesised analogues possesses favorite anti-nociceptive effect and also has anti-inflammatory effects, but comparing with celecoxib this effect is not significantly different. On the other hand selectivity index for analogues is less than celecoxib and so we expect less cardiovascular side effects for these compounds
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