Faculty Members and Students’ Opinion about Quality of Services Provided by the Central Library of Kerman University of Medical Sciences

Background & Objective : Libraries are among main parts of universities as libraries of high quality lead to improvement in education and research within universities and the society. Assessing quality of services in educational systems is important to improve quality of provided services. This study was conducted to assess the quality of services provided by the central library of Kerman University of Medical Sciences from the faculty members and students’ point of view . Methods : In this study, 200 faculty members and students of Kerman University of Medical Sciences were chosen using stratified random sampling. The data was collected using LibQUAL+TM standard questionnaire after its validity and reliability were confirmed Results : Our findings showed that the mean score of general satisfaction of the central library’s provided services was 6.13 out of 9. Among the three aspects of library service quality, information control was the most satisfactory factor (5.98) which was followed by efficacy of services (5.96) and the library’s atmosphere (5.89). Faculty members were more satisfied with the central library’s provided services in all aspects compared to students, although this difference was not significant. The most frequent referral to the central library and using references was once a month. Conclusion : Although the findings of this study were suggestive of faculty members and students’ relative satisfaction of provided services, improving quality of services necessitates better and more organized planning. Improvement of library service quality can lead to promoting faculty members and students’ scientific level in universities of medical sciences, medical knowledge, and medical education . Keywords: Service Quality, LibQUAL+TM survey, Faculty member, Student

Interleaved High Step-up DC-DC Converter with Diode-Capacitor Multiplier Cell and Ripple-Free Input Current

In this paper interleaving and switched-capacitor techniques are used to introduce a high step-up DC-DC converter for renewable energy systems application. The proposed converter delivers high voltage gain without utilizing transformer or excessive duty cycle and features ripple-free input current which results in lower conduction losses and decreased electromagnetic interference (EMI). Lower output capacitance is another advantage of proposed converter, leading to smaller size and lower cost. Furthermore lower voltage stress on switches allows the utilization of switches with low resistance. Simulation results verify the performance of suggested converter

Family satisfaction from point of view of diabetic and non-diabetic pares

Background: Family satisfaction in subpopulations referred to the endocrine clinic including diabetic and non diabetic patients and their spouses are compared in the present study. This study also assesses the correlation between family satisfaction and variables such as age, sex, educational level, economic status, type of diabetes, duration of the disease, type of therapy and dosage of drugs. A comparison of the frequency of sexual dysfunction between diabetics and non-diabetic pairs was also done. Methods: In this case- control study, 400 subjects were selected as simplified non-randomized method from outpatients referred to the Shahre Kord endocrine clinic in 2002. We assigned samples to group I (diabetic patients, n=100), group II (diabetic patients spouses, n=100), group III (non-diabetic patients, n=100) and group IV (non-diabetic patients spouses, n=100). Groups I and II were similar in sex, socioeconomic status and educational level. GRIMS family relationship questionnaire was used to evaluate family satisfaction. Results: Family satisfaction for diabetics in comparison with non-diabetics (P=0.05), diabetics in comparison with their spouses (P=0.003), and non-diabetics in comparison with their spouses (p=0.002) were significantly less. There was no significant difference between family satisfaction in diabetic and non-diabetic patients spouses (p>0.05). Relative frequency of sexual dysfunction was 76 and 29 and relative frequency of decreased libido was 32 an 12, in diabetic and non-diabetic couples, respectively. Family satisfaction was less in patients with diabetes type I and whom using higher dosage of drugs. Conclusion: This study emphasized on the attention to the family as a part of approach to the diabetic patients. According to our results, it is recommended to focus the most attention in this field to the patients with type I diabetes and who consume more amounts of drugs

Cardiotoxic and Arrhythmogenic Effects of Hemiscorpius lepturus Scorpion Venom in Rats

Background: Envenomation by Hemiscorpius lepturus is not painful and the clinical manifestations include bloody urine due to hemoglobinuria or hematuria, dermonecrotic reactions,cardiac arrhythmia and in minority of cases acute renal failure which may lead to death following disseminated intravascular coagulation in infants. Cardiac effects of envenomation by H. lepturus venom including inotropic, chronotropic and arrhythmogenic properties are not studied as now in rat hearts with Langendorff apparatus. Methods: Rat hearts were allowed to equilibrate in its buffer and cardiotropic plus arrhythmogenic effects induced by injection of different doses of H. lepturus venom were detected and recorded by computer acquisition based data in Langendorff apparatus. The neutralizing effects of Razi Institute antivenom and autonomic drugs were assayed in parallel studies. Results: Hemiscorpius lepturus venom (25 μg/100 l) treatment caused a negative inotropic (65.4 ± 3.2 versus 110.2 ± 3.4) and chronotropic effects (186.3 ± 4.2 versus 302 ± 6.3) in comparison to normal saline. Arrhythmogenic aspects including bradycardia, QRS widening and ST depression were induced by venom injection. Pre venom treatment (20 min) of Razi Institute antivenom (10 μl) neutralized cardiotropic effects but post venom injection (15 min later) had no therapeutic role. Pre (10 min before) and post (15 min after) injection of adrenaline (10 μl) neneutralized cardiotropic effects while pre venom injection (20 min) of propanolol (10 μl) had aggravating effects. Conclusion: Our study paves the way for further in vivo investigation of cardiovascular effects of this venom for finding suitable treatments instead of its ordinary antivenom medication in cardiogenic shock induced by the veno

Evaluation of the effect of Chrysin and Caffeic acid phenethyl ester on eIF4E expression in AGS cell line

Introduction: The Ras/Akt/mTORC1 signal transduction pathways play a critical role in regulating translation and converge on initiation factor eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) which is overexpressed in various malignancies. In the current study we aimed to assess the effect of chrysin and caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE) on eIF4E expression level in human stomach cancer AGS cell line. Methods: AGS cells were treated with 15, 20, 30 and 40 &mu;M concentration of chrysin and CAPE separately, then eIF4E expression was evaluated in treated cells using real time-PCR method. Results: A significant decrease in eIF4E expression in the cells following 40 &mu;M chrysin treatment was observed (p&lt;0.05). There was a significant decrease in CAPE-treated cells in a dose dependent manner. Indeed the cells treated with 30 and 40 &mu;M concentrations of CAPE, showed a significant decline in eIF4E expression (p&lt;0.05). Conclusion: Our results suggest that CAPE and chrysin may be useful as a potential therapeutic agent for treatment of gastric cancers with an elevated eIF4E expression level.</p

Analysis load forecasting of power system using fuzzy logic and artificial neural network

Load forecasting is a vital element in the energy management of function and execution purpose throughout the energy power system. Power systems problems are complicated to solve because power systems are huge complex graphically widely distributed and are influenced by many unexpected events. This paper presents the analysis of load forecasting using fuzzy logic (FL), artificial neural network (ANN) and ANFIS. These techniques are utilized for both short term and long-term load forecasting. ANN and ANFIS are used to improve the results obtained through the FL. It also studied the effects of humidity, temperature and previous load on Load Forecasting. The simulation is done by the Simulink environment of MATLAB software

Assessing the effects of data selection and representation on the development of reliable E. coli sigma 70 promoter region predictors

As the number of sequenced bacterial genomes increases, the need for rapid and reliable tools for the annotation of functional elements (e.g., transcriptional regulatory elements) becomes more desirable. Promoters are the key regulatory elements, which recruit the transcriptional machinery through binding to a variety of regulatory proteins (known as sigma factors). The identification of the promoter regions is very challenging because these regions do not adhere to specific sequence patterns or motifs and are difficult to determine experimentally. Machine learning represents a promising and cost-effective approach for computational identification of prokaryotic promoter regions. However, the quality of the predictors depends on several factors including: i) training data; ii) data representation; iii) classification algorithms; iv) evaluation procedures. In this work, we create several variants of E. coli promoter data sets and utilize them to experimentally examine the effect of these factors on the predictive performance of E. coli σ70 promoter models. Our results suggest that under some combinations of the first three criteria, a prediction model might perform very well on cross-validation experiments while its performance on independent test data is drastically very poor. This emphasizes the importance of evaluating promoter region predictors using independent test data, which corrects for the over-optimistic performance that might be estimated using the cross-validation procedure. Our analysis of the tested models shows that good prediction models often perform well despite how the non-promoter data was obtained. On the other hand, poor prediction models seems to be more sensitive to the choice of non-promoter sequences. Interestingly, the best performing sequence-based classifiers outperform the best performing structure-based classifiers on both cross-validation and independent test performance evaluation experiments. Finally, we propose a meta-predictor method combining two top performing sequence-based and structure-based classifiers and compare its performance with some of the state-of-the-art E. coli σ70 promoter prediction methods.NPRP grant No. 4-1454-1-233 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation).Scopu

Investigating the relationship between organizational factors of stress and delay of software projects in a large knowledge based company.

According to psychologists, stress means the pressure and the force and it is the accumulation of life events that disrupts the individual's adaptation to the existing situation. Stress is originated from two places: Inside our bodies and outside our bodies. Internal stresses are associated with biology and personality. External stress factors have three categories: Personal, Organizational and environmental. On the other hand, today, software projects have delays for various reasons and they are not completed on time. Knowledge-based companies require identifying factors causing delays. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between organizational factors of stress and delays of software projects. This is a descriptive correlational research. The population consisted of knowledge workers of a large knowledge-based company (n = 200), a sample of 127 knowledge workers were selected randomly. The data collected through questionnaire. The effect of organizational factors of stress on delay of software projects were assessed using Pearson correlation coefficients. The results show that there is a significant positive relationship between organizational factors of stress and delay of software projects in a large knowledge-based company