The effect of Ramadan fasting on spatial attention through emotional stimuli

Fasting can influence psychological and mental states. In the current study, the effect of periodical fasting on the process of emotion through gazed facial expression as a realistic multisource of social information was investigated for the first time. The dynamic cue-target task was applied via behavior and event-related potential measurements for 40 participants to reveal the temporal and spatial brain activities-before, during, and after fasting periods. The significance of fasting included several effects. The amplitude of the N1 component decreased over the centroparietal scalp during fasting. Furthermore, the reaction time during the fasting period decreased. The self-measurement of deficit arousal as well as the mood increased during the fasting period. There was a significant contralateral alteration of P1 over occipital area for the happy facial expression stimuli. The significant effect of gazed expression and its interaction with the emotional stimuli was indicated by the amplitude of N1. Furthermore, the findings of the study approved the validity effect as a congruency between gaze and target position, as indicated by the increment of P3 amplitude over centroparietal area as well as slower reaction time from behavioral response data during incongruency or invalid condition between gaze and target position compared with those during valid condition. Results of this study proved that attention to facial expression stimuli as a kind of communicative social signal was affected by fasting. Also, fasting improved the mood of practitioners. Moreover, findings from the behavioral and event-related potential data analyses indicated that the neural dynamics of facial emotion are processed faster than that of gazing, as the participants tended to react faster and prefer to relay on the type of facial emotions than to gaze direction while doing the task. Because of happy facial expression stimuli, right hemisphere activation was more than that of the left hemisphere. It indicated the consistency of the emotional lateralization concept rather than the valence concept of emotional processing

Analisis Kinerja Web Server Menggunakan Algoritma Round Robin dan Least Connection

In the industrialized world many companies are using web as a form of promotion or online transactions such as e-commerce. It handles millions of hit visits on the web server. There are many things that can cause the failure hit. One of them is the number of requests or transactions to the web server that is not able to be handled or the slowness of the response, which is very dangerous and detrimental for the company. The single web server with extremely expensive brands is a way to face the constraints overload, but only certain companies are able to have it. The issues faced, how to use some of the PCs as a web server with a reasonable economic value, could be empowered by implementing network load balancing technology. Network load balancing is a technology solution that is used, and expected to be able to handle the simultaneous load of web server with small output failure. Web server performance measurement at the round robin algorithm and least connection include parameters against components such as throughput, request loss, response time and cpu utilization, from the result of the measurement, it will be seen which is the best algorithm to use

Prevalence of hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients with colorectal cancer and their median survival time: A cohort study

Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension are worldwide epidemic. Association between DM and colon cancer was obtained in previous studies. Prevalence of DM and hypertension in the patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) has not been reported in Iran. The present study was aimed to investigate the prevalence of hypertension and type 2 DM and their effect on median survival time in patients with CRC. Materials and Methods: Overall, 2570 individual-year follow-ups were conducted for 1127 patients with CRC. For the diagnosis of type 2 DM, fasting blood sugar test and glycosylated hemoglobin test were used and for hypertension, blood pressure was measured in two turns. The descriptive indices were calculated, and the mean and median survival from CRC diagnosis time was calculated using survival analysis and a comparison among survival times was done through log-rank test. Stata software 12 (Stata Corp. 2011. Stata Statistical Software: Release 12. College Station, TX: Stata Corp LP) was used for data analysis. Results: The prevalence of hypertension and type 2 DM in the patients with CRC was respectively 13.38% (95% confidence interval CI]: 11.1-15.8) and 8.69% (95% CI: 7-10.7). Median survival time in patients with hypertension and DM were 8.52 and 4.9 years. According to log-rank test, no significant difference was observed between the survival time of CRC patients suffering from hypertension and diabetes type 2. Conclusion: The obtained findings in this study indicate that survival time in patients with type 2 DM less than hypertension but two metabolic diseases have the same effect on survival rate of the patients with CRC. Understanding the risk factors for CRC may guide the development of strategies targeted toward its prevention

How can patient journey in surgical wards of a referral hospital be improved?

Background: We studied the patient journey in surgical wards in order to find an effective and efficient way of scheduling in surgical wards.Methods: We applied Root cause analysis (RCA) model within three months in a referral hospital. After understanding root causes of the events occurred through a focus discussion group, required interventions were proposed according to literatures, experiences, and preference of the stakeholders. Possible interventions were also analyzed based on its ability to reduce contributing factors in the events and the belief of process-owner that if interventions can be implemented.Results: The results were provided for five main steps: 1) the most important root cause was “not prioritizing patients and pre-scheduling the number of surgical procedures in the days before”. 2) Constraints indicated that workforce weren't allocated proportionally to the number of surgical operations in varying shift lengths, increased numbers of on-calls physicians increased related costs, the admission of patients in VIP wards have been getting a high priority, and surgeon compensation based on fee for service method was challenging. 3) The current situation of allocating three rooms on average for each physician can be changed depending on numbers of surgeries. 4) Proposed interventions are establishing a computer registration system, reforming payment methods, setting up an electronic waiting list, development of scheduling guidelines, and Applying MIP model.Conclusions: Implementing of scheduling reforms requires a comprehensive action plan system and predefined functional indicators. These should be achieved with considering comments of all clinical and technical groups to ensure the feasibility of an operating room schedule.Keywords: patient journey, surgery, scheduling, Root cause analysis (RCA), patient transfe

An early Little Ice Age brackish water invasion along the south coast of the Caspian Sea (sediment of Langarud wetland) and its wider impacts on environment and people

Caspian Sea level has undergone significant changes through time with major impacts not only on the surrounding coasts, but also offshore. This study reports a brackish water invasion on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea constructed from a multi-proxy analysis of sediment retrieved from the Langarud wetland. The ground surface level of wetland is >6 m higher than the current Caspian Sea level (at -27.41 m in 2014) and located >11 km far from the coast. A sequence covering the last millennium was dated by three radiocarbon dates. The results from this new study suggest that Caspian Sea level rose up to at least -21.44 m (i.e. >6 m above the present water level) during the early Little Ice Age. Although previous studies in the southern coast of the Caspian Sea have detected a high-stand during the Little Ice Age period, this study presents the first evidence that this high-stand reached so far inland and at such a high altitude. Moreover, it confirms one of the very few earlier estimates of a high-stand at -21 m for the second half of the 14th century. The effects of this large-scale brackish water invasion on soil properties would have caused severe disruption to regional agriculture, thereby destabilizing local dynasties and facilitating a rapid Turko-Mongol expansion of Tamerlane’s armies from the east.N Ghasemi (INIOAS), V Jahani (Gilan Province Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation) and A Naqinezhad (University of Mazandaran), INQUA QuickLakeH project (no. 1227) and to the European project Marie Curie, CLIMSEAS-PIRSES-GA-2009-24751

Spatiotemporal Organization of Electromechanical Phase Singularities during High-Frequency Cardiac Arrhythmias

Ventricular fibrillation (VF) is a lifethreatening electromechanical dysfunction of the heart associated with complex spatiotemporal dynamics of electrical excitation and mechanical contraction of the heart muscle. It has been hypothesized that VF is driven by three-dimensional (3D) rotating electrical scroll waves, which can be characterized by filament-like electrical phase singularities (EPS). Recently, it was shown that rotating excitation waves during VF are associated with rotating waves of mechanical deformation. 3D mechanical scroll waves and mechanical filaments describing their rotational core were observed in the ventricles by using high-resolution ultrasound. The findings suggest that the spatiotemporal organization of cardiac fibrillation may be assessed from waves of mechanical deformation. However, the complex relationship between excitation and mechanical waves during VF is currently not understood. Here, we study the fundamental nature of mechanical phase singularities (MPS), their spatiotemporal organization and relation with EPS. We demonstrate the existence of two fundamental types of MPS: "paired singularities", which are co-localized with EPS, and "unpaired singularities", which can form independently. We show that the unpaired singularities emerge due to the anisotropy of the active force field, generated by fiber anisotropy in cardiac tissue, and the non-locality of elastic interactions, which jointly induce strong spatiotemporal inhomogeneities in the strain fields. The inhomogeneities lead to the breakup of deformation waves and create MPS, even in the absence of EPS, which are typically associated with excitation wave break. We exploit these insights to develop an approach to discriminate paired and unpaired MPS. Our findings provide a fundamental understanding of the complex spatiotemporal organization of electromechanical waves in the heart.Comment: 23 pager, 17 figure

Experimental Investigation on Supercavitating Flow over Parabolic Cavitators

In this paper experimental study was carried out to investigate supercavitation around parabolic cavitators. Various types of cavitators, such as disk, cone, and parabolic, were designed and manufactured. Also, the shape of the cavities formed behind these bodies were considered and compared. Dimensionless parameters such as dimensionless length and the diameter of the cavity as well as the dimensionless required air flow on the cavitators were obtained. The results showed that parabolic cavitators have an optimum design in comparison with the disk and cone cavitators due to their insignificant capability to reduce the drag force, yet the cavity’s length has a moderate size. It was also observed that this type of cavitator is capable of forming a cavity with a dimensionless length up to L/d= 33 and a dimensionless width up to D/d= 3.6. Moreover, parabolic cavitators require the highest amount of air injected in comparison with the cone and disk types; therefore, they operate in lower cavitation numbers. Since no other experimental data has been reported so far, this work reports the experimental characteristic behavior of parabolic cavitators

Precipitation and temperature of the southwest Caspian Sea region during the last 55 years: Their trends and teleconnections with large-scale atmospheric phenomena

Climate data from the southwest coast of the Caspian Sea (CS) were statistically analysed to find connections with large-scale atmospheric variabilities and regional impacts. The study area is characterized by a subtropical humid climate. This enclave of high precipitation is extremely important for Iranian food production and is recognized for its high biodiversity. The data sets were investigated for inconsistencies before carrying out the main investigations, and several problems have been identified. The results show three distinct climatic periods in the temperature time series since 1956: 1956 to 1975 with values near to the overall mean, 1977 to 1995 with values lower by 0.5°C and from 1996 to 2010 with values higher by 0.5°C. These periods can be positively correlated with rapid sea level changes of the CS. Moreover, an agreement exists between the three climatic periods and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) variability. The sea surface temperature of the southern CS is shown to be the driving force of the 2m temperatures in the study area. While temperature changes are in accordance with NAO variability, the precipitation variations show connections with ENSO and less with NAO. The trends of precipitation during the period are diverse but display mostly a weak decrease, while the trends of temperature display a clear increase, larger than that for global mean temperatures, overlaid with inter-decadal variations.This article is a contribution to the European project Marie Curie, CLIMSEAS–PIRSES-GA-2009-247512: ‘Climate Change and Inland Seas: Phenomena, Feedback and Uncertainties. The Physical Science Basis’. This research has also been supported by INIOAS in the framework of project no. 391-012-02