Students' Attitudes Towards The Implementation Of Gender Segregation In Universities

Background & Aim: The first principle in university is knowledge attaining. Recently, the idea of gender segregation in academic setting is suggested, so it was important to explore the students’ perspective about gender segregation. The aim of this study was to determine the attitude of students toward the implementation of gender segregation in universities in Golestan province in 2014. Material & Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted on 209 students of universities in Golestan province using a self-made, valid and reliable questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS.18 and descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential (Chi-square) Results: 36.1 percent of the students had a positive attitude, and 68.4 percent had a negative attitude toward gender segregation in universities. There was no significant relationship between gender, marital status and ethnicity of students with their attitudes to the gender segregation in university (P<0.05). Both male and female students stated that “effect on education, having religion basis, and freedom of action” are the reasons for their positive attitudes toward gender segregation in universities. Conclusion:The attitudes of students were favor toward gender segregation, however they believed that students should be involved in decision making and applying such important projects

NR1H4-related Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestasis 5: Further Evidence for Rapidly Progressive Liver Failure.

Pathogenic sequence variants in the nuclear bile acid receptor FXR, encoded by NR1H4, have been reported in a small number of children with low-GGT cholestasis progressing to liver failure. We describe three additional children from two unrelated families with cholestasis and liver failure due to pathologic variants in NR1H4. One patient underwent liver transplantation and has had good clinical outcomes in six years of follow-up. While that patient has biochemical evidence of increased bile acid synthetic activity, he has not experienced post-transplant diarrhea or allograft steatosis, as has been reported among other transplanted patients

Effect of myopia management contact lens design on accommodative microfluctuations and eye movements during reading

YesBackground: Soft contact lenses have been developed and licensed for reducing myopia progression. These lenses have different designs, such as extended depth of focus (EDOF) and dual focus (DF). In this prospective, doublemasked, cross-over study, different lens designs were investigated to see whether these had impact on accommodative microfluctuations and eye movements during reading. Methods: Participants were fitted with three lenses in a randomised order; a single vision (SV) design (Omafilcon A2; Proclear), a DF design (Omafilcon A2; MiSight), and an EDOF lens design (Etafilcon A; NaturalVue),. Accommodative microfluctuations were measured at 25 cm for at least 60s in each lens, using a Shin-Nippon SRW-5000 autorefractor adapted to continuously record accommodation at 22Hz. Eye movement data was collected with the Thomson Clinical Eye Tracker incorporating a Tobii Eye bar. Eye movements include fixations per row, fixations per minute, mean regressions per row, total number of regressions, and total rightward saccades. Accommodation data was analysed using power spectrum analysis. Differences between the lenses were compared using a related sample two-way Friedman test. Results: Twenty-three participants (18–29 years) were recruited to take part. The average mean spherical error was − 2.65D ± 1.42DS, with an average age of 23.4 ± 3.5 years. No significant difference for accommodative microfluctuations was found. Significant differences were found for fixations per row (P = 0.03), fixations per minute (P = 0.008), mean regressions per row (P = 0.002), and total number of regressions (P = 0.002), but not total rightward saccades (P = 0.10). Post-hoc analysis indicated the EDOF lens results were significantly different from the other lenses, with more regressive eye movements observed. Conclusions: Regressive saccades appear to increase when wearing EDOF lens designs, which may impact visual comfort. Further studies in children, over a longer period of adaptation are necessary to assess the potential impact of this finding on daily reading activities in children.This project was supported by the British Contact Lens Association Summer Studentship Award (recipient Muskaan Hussain)

AutoMap is a high performance homozygosity mapping tool using next-generation sequencing data.

Homozygosity mapping is a powerful method for identifying mutations in patients with recessive conditions, especially in consanguineous families or isolated populations. Historically, it has been used in conjunction with genotypes from highly polymorphic markers, such as DNA microsatellites or common SNPs. Traditional software performs rather poorly with data from Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) and Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), which are now extensively used in medical genetics. We develop AutoMap, a tool that is both web-based or downloadable, to allow performing homozygosity mapping directly on VCF (Variant Call Format) calls from WES or WGS projects. Following a training step on WES data from 26 consanguineous families and a validation procedure on a matched cohort, our method shows higher overall performances when compared with eight existing tools. Most importantly, when tested on real cases with negative molecular diagnosis from an internal set, AutoMap detects three gene-disease and multiple variant-disease associations that were previously unrecognized, projecting clear benefits for both molecular diagnosis and research activities in medical genetics

The Effects of Synbiotic Supplementation on Metabolic Status in Diabetic Patients Undergoing Hemodialysis: a Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Trial

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of synbiotic supplementation on metabolic profiles in diabetic patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD). This randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial was performed in 60 diabetic HD patients. Participants were randomly assigned into two groups to receive either synbiotic capsule, containing Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, and Bifidobacterium bifidum (2 � 109 CFU/g each), plus 0.8 g/day of inulin (n = 30) or placebo (n = 30) for 12 weeks. Synbiotic supplementation significantly decreased fasting plasma glucose (β � 13.56 mg/dL; 95 CI, � 23.82, � 3.30; P = 0.01), insulin levels (β � 5.49 μIU/mL; 95 CI, � 6.92, � 4.05; P &lt; 0.001), and insulin resistance (β � 2.25; 95 CI, � 3.02, � 1.48; P &lt; 0.001), while increased the quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (β 0.02; 95 CI, 0.01, 0.02; P &lt; 0.001) compared with the placebo. Additionally, synbiotic intake resulted in a significant reduction in high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (β � 2930.48 ng/mL; 95 CI, � 3741.15, � 2119.80; P &lt; 0.001) and malondialdehyde levels (β � 0.60 μmol/L; 95 CI, � 0.99, � 0.20; P = 0.003). Moreover, we found a significant increase in total antioxidant capacity (β 142.99 mmol/L; 95 CI, 61.72, 224.25; P = 0.001) and total glutathione levels (β 131.11 μmol/L; 95 CI, 89.35, 172.87; P &lt; 0.001) in the synbiotic group compared with the placebo group. Overall, synbiotic supplementation for 12 weeks had beneficial effects on glycemic control, biomarkers of inflammation, and oxidative stress in diabetic patients under HD. This study was registered in the Iranian website (www.irct.ir) for registration of clinical trials (http://www.irct.ir: IRCT2017090133941N17). http://www.irct.ir: IRCT2017090133941N17. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

Estrogen receptor-α gene codon 10 (T392C) polymorphism in Iranian women with breast cancer: a case study

A case study was conducted to establish a database of polymorphisms in Iranian population in order to compare Western and Iranian (Middle East) distributions and to evaluate ESR1 polymorphism as an indicator of clinical outcome. The ESR1 gene was scanned in Iranian patients newly diagnosed invasive breast tumors, (150 patients) and in healthy individuals (147 healthy control individuals). PCR single-strand conformation polymorphism methodology and direct sequencing were performed. The silent single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) was performed, as reported previously in other studies, but at significantly different frequencies, with further increasing predictive accuracy in Iranian population. Data suggest that ESR1 polymorphisms are correlated with various aspects of breast cancer in Iranian ESR1 genotype, as determined during pre-surgical evaluation, might represent a surrogate marker for predicting breast cancer

Curtailment and Stochastic Curtailment to Shorten the CES-D

The Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale is a well-known self-report instrument that is used to measure depressive symptomatology. Respondents who take the full-length version of the CES-D are administered a total of 20 items. This article investigates the use of curtailment and stochastic curtailment (SC), two sequential analysis methods that have recently been proposed for health questionnaires, to reduce the respondent burden associated with taking the CES-D. A post hoc simulation based on 1,392 adolescents' responses to the CES-D was used to compare these methods with a previously proposed computerized adaptive testing (CAT) approach. Curtailment lowered average test lengths by as much as 22% while always matching the classification decision of the full-length CES-D. SC and CAT achieved further reductions in average test length, with SC's classifications exhibiting more concordance with the full-length CES-D than do CAT's. Advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. © The Author(s) 2012