Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Toward SARS COV-2 in Qazvin Province: A Population-Based Study

Background and Objectives: The spread of COVID-19 in the world has had adverse effects on all aspects of people´ life and social and economic development of the communities. The current study was conducted to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward COVID-19 in the general population of Qazvin province. Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted on 1223 people above 15 years in Qazvin province between December and January 2020. We used multistage stratified random sampling to select the participants from urban and rural health centers. The questionnaires were completed by the patients as well as through phone interviews. The questions included demographic information and knowledge, attitude, and practice toward COVID-19. Results: In total, 1223 subjects with a mean (standard deviation) age of 35.6 ± 12.2 years participated in this study. The scores of knowledge, attitudes, and practice were 68%, 72% and 91%, respectively. The lowest score of knowledge was related to awareness of common symptoms of the disease (6%). Forty-two subjects believed they observed the principles of disease prevention. A distance of 2 meters was observed by 50.3%. The scores of knowledge (P=0.007) and practice (P=0.028) increased with age, and the scores of knowledge (P<0.001) and attitude (P=0.001) increased and decreased with an increase in the education level, respectively. Males had significantly lower knowledge (P=0.002) and practice (P<0.001) scores. Moreover, rural residents had higher attitude scores compared to urban residents (P=0.002). Conclusion: The results suggest that the general population of Qazvin province had desirable knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19 at the time of the epidemic. Keywords: Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices, COVID-19, Ira

Evaluation of Heavy Metal Contamination Ecological Risk in a Food-Producing Ecosystem

Introduction and purpose: The consumption of agricultural products cultivated&nbsp;in soils contaminated with heavy metals is very health-threatening. Therefore, the&nbsp;implementation of an inclusive and multilateral assessment of the heavy metal&nbsp;risk on the verge of their entrance to the food chain is a matter of fundamental&nbsp;importance. Regarding this, the present study was conducted with the aim of&nbsp;monitoring the concentration of heavy metals in the surface soil of grape gardens&nbsp;and zoning the area in terms of geoaccumulation index (Igeo), contamination&nbsp;factor, degree of contamination, modified degree of contamination (MDC),&nbsp;pollution load index (PLI), and ecological risk index (RI).&nbsp;Methods: For the purpose of the study, 31 grape gardens were selected in Gahru&nbsp;region (i.e., the main center of grape production) through simple random sampling&nbsp;technique. The surface soil samples were transferred to the laboratory for the&nbsp;analysis of the concentration of cadmium, lead, chromium, copper, and zinc.&nbsp;Results: According to the results, the concentration of the metals in the region&nbsp;was Zn > Cu > Pb > Cr > Cd with the mean total concentrations of 74.87, 55.31,&nbsp;22.32, 9.81, and 0.91 mg/kg, respectively. Based on the results of the PLI, six&nbsp;grape gardens were classified as insignificantly contaminated (1&le;PLI&le;2), and the&nbsp;remaining gardens were classified as noncontaminated (PLI300),&nbsp;medium (150<riConclusion: In the present study, the Igeo and MDC had higher efficiency and&nbsp;flexibility in the classification of the area in terms of critical metals and critical&nbsp;stations. Meanwhile, cadmium and copper caused the highest concern in some&nbsp;of the grape gardens of the investigated region. Therefore, it is suggested to&nbsp;prevent the entrance of larger amounts of cadmium in the area by training and&nbsp;raising the awareness of the gardeners about the amount of phosphate fertilizers&nbsp;and fungicide and encouraging them to use animal manures and take preventive&nbsp;measures. In addition, the cadmium contamination in the area should be reduced&nbsp;by implementing a soil refinery program and cultivating cadmium adsorbents.</r

Eco-Friendly Estimation of Heavy Metal Contents in Grapevine Foliage Using In-Field Hyperspectral Data and Multivariate Analysis

Heavy metal monitoring in food-producing ecosystems can play an important role in human health safety. Since they are able to interfere with plants&rsquo; physiochemical characteristics, which influence the optical properties of leaves, they can be measured by in-field spectroscopy. In this study, the predictive power of spectroscopic data is examined. Five treatments of heavy metal stress (Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr, and Cd) were applied to grapevine seedlings and hyperspectral data (350&ndash;2500 nm), and heavy metal contents were collected based on in-field and laboratory experiments. The partial least squares (PLS) method was used as a feature selection technique, and multiple linear regressions (MLR) and support vector machine (SVM) regression methods were applied for modelling purposes. Based on the PLS results, the wavelengths in the vicinity of 2431, 809, 489, and 616 nm; 2032, 883, 665, 564, 688, and 437 nm; 1865, 728, 692, 683, and 356 nm; 863, 2044, 415, 652, 713, and 1036 nm; and 1373, 631, 744, and 438 nm were found most sensitive for the estimation of Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr, and Cd contents in the grapevine leaves, respectively. Therefore, visible and red-edge regions were found most suitable for estimating heavy metal contents in the present study. Heavy metals played a significant role in reforming the spectral pattern of stressed grapevine compared to healthy samples, meaning that in the best structures of the SVM regression models, the concentrations of Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr, and Cd were estimated with R2 rates of 0.56, 0.85, 0.71, 0.80, and 0.86 in the testing set, respectively. The results confirm the efficiency of in-field spectroscopy in estimating heavy metals content in grapevine foliage

Optimal Spectral Wavelengths for Discriminating Orchard Species Using Multivariate Statistical Techniques

Sustainable management of orchard fields requires detailed information about the tree types, which is a main component of precision agriculture programs. To this end, hyperspectral imagery can play a major role in orchard tree species mapping. Efficient use of hyperspectral data in combination with field measurements requires the development of optimized band selection strategies to separate tree species. In this study, field spectroscopy (350 to 2500 nm) was performed through scanning 165 spectral leaf samples of dominant orchard tree species (almond, walnut, and grape) in Chaharmahal va Bakhtiyari province, Iran. Two multivariable methods were employed to identify the optimum wavelengths: the first includes three-step approach ANOVA, random forest classifier (RFC) and principal component analysis (PCA), and the second employs partial least squares (PLS). For both methods we determined whether tree species can be spectrally separated using discriminant analysis (DA) and then the optimal wavelengths were identified for this purpose. Results indicate that all species express distinct spectral behaviors at the beginning of the visible range (from 350 to 439 nm), the red edge and the near infrared wavelengths (from 701 to 1405 nm). The ANOVA test was able to reduce primary wavelengths (2151) to 792, which had a significant difference (99% confidence level), then the RFC further reduced the wavelengths to 118. By removing the overlapping wavelengths, the PCA represented five components (99.87% of variance) which extracted optimal wavelengths were: 363, 423, 721, 1064, and 1388 nm. The optimal wavelengths for the species discrimination using the best PLS-DA model (100% accuracy) were at 397, 515, 647, 1386, and 1919 nm

Evaluation of information literacy status among medical students at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: The information literacy status and the use of information technology among students in the globalization age of course plans are very momentous. This study aimed to evaluate the information literacy status and use of information technology among medical students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2013. Methods: This was a descriptive-analytical study with crosssectional method. The study population consisted of all medical students (physiopathology, externship and internship) studying at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. The sample size (n=310) was selected by systematic random sampling. The tool of data gathering was LASSI questionnaire (assigned by America research association) with 48 closed items in five-point LIKERT scale. The questionnaire included two distinct parts of demographic questions and the information literacy skills based on the standards of information literacy capacities for academic education. The content validity was acquired by professors’ and experts’ comments. The reliability was also calculated by Cronbach’s alpha (0.85). Data were analyzed in both descriptive (frequency- mean) and analytical level (t-test, analysis of variance) using SPSS 14 software. Results: 60.3% of the participants were females, and the remaining (29.7%) were males. The mean score of information literacy and its five subgroups among the students weren’t at a desirable level. The mean scores of information literacy for educational grades from the highest to lowest belonged to the internship, physiopathology and externship. The results showed that the highest average was related to the effective access ability to information among interns (9.27±3.57) and the lowest one was related to the ability of understanding legal and economical cases related with using information among externs (3.11±1.32). The results of ANOVA showed that there wasn’t a significant difference between educational grades and information literacy. Finally, the result of independent t-test did not show a significant difference between the two genders in information literacy. Conclusion: Regarding the importance of information literacy for medical students and undesirable status of information literacy among students, the current educational plans will need to be revised

CFD simulations of a semi-transverse ventilation system in a long tunnel

In the present work, a semi-transverse ventilation system in a long tunnel with a length of 4.9 km, as a complex case study, is numerically studied by performing a set of three-dimensional steady incompressible computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The ventilation system consisted of a ceiling duct connected to two axial fans at the ending portals, and a series of jet fans in the main tunnel for supporting airflow in the desired direction. To focus on what can and cannot be achieved in commissioning tests, the ventilation system’s performance in various scenarios is numerically evaluated with two different tunnel states; empty tunnel and complete traffic congestion with 1176 stationary vehicles – which is almost impossible to evaluate during a commissioning test. By considering two hypothetical locations for the extraction zone from the main tunnel (in a distance of 450 and 1000 m from one portal), it is shown that the required number of jet fans in a traffic condition drops from 57 for the first extraction location to 43 (25% decrease) when the ventilation system extracts from the second zone. We show that if only the close axial fan to the extraction zone is activated, the required number of jet fans reduces by 56% and 72% for the first and second extraction locations, respectively. This finding can provide a cheaper and easier controlling scenario for emergency ventilation

Towards prediction of soil erodibility, SOM and CaCO3 using Laboratory Vis-NIR spectra: a case study in a semi-arid region of Iran

Soil Visible–Near-Infrared (Vis-NIR) spectroscopy has become an applicable and interesting technique to evaluate a number of soil properties because it is a fast, cost-effective, and non-invasive measurement technique. The main objective of the study to predict soil erodibility (K factor), soil organic matter (SOM), and calcium carbonate equivalent (CaCO3) in calcareous soils of semi-arid regions located in south of Iran using spectral reflectance information in the Vis-NIR range. The K factor was measured in 40 erosion plots under natural rainfall and the spectral reflectance of soil samples were analysed in the laboratory. Various soil properties including the CaCO3, soil particle size distribution, , SOM, permeability, and wet-aggregate stability were measured. Partial least-squares regression (PLSR) and stepwise multiple linear regression (SMLR) were used to obtain effective bands and develop Spectrotransfer Function (STF) using spectral reflectance information and Pedotransfer Function (PTF) to predict the K factor, respectively. The derived STF was compared with developed PTF using measurable soil properties by Ostovari et al. (2016) and the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) predictions of the K factor. The results revealed that the USLE over-predicts (0.030 t h MJ−1 mm−1) the K factor when compared to the ground-truth measurements (0.015 t h MJ-1) in the semi-arid region of Iran. Results showed that developed PTF had the highest performance (R2=0.74, RMSE= 0.004 and ME= -0.003 t h MJ−1 mm−1 ) to predict K factor. The results also showed that the PLSR method predicted SOM with R2 values of 0.67 and 0.65 and CaCO3 with R2 values of 0.51 and 0.71 for calibration and validation datasets, respectively. We found good predictions for K factor with R2= 0.56 and RPD= 1.5 using the PLSR model. The derived STF (R2=0.64, RMSE= 0.002 and ME= 0.001 thMJ−1 mm−1) performed better than the USLE (R2= 0.06, RMSE= 0.0171 and ME= 0.0151 thMJ−1 mm−1) for estimating the K-factor.JRC.D.3-Land Resource

Cerebral Angiographic Findings in Non-Traumatic Intracranial Hemorrhage: A Single Center Experience in the West of Iran

Background and Aim: This study aimed at analyzing the demographic characteristics of the patients with non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhage, their angiographic results and the correlation between computed tomography (CT) scan and angiography findings. Methods and Materials/Patients: In a descriptive study, we retrospectively reviewed the records of the patients with non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhage based on their brain CT or lumbar puncture findings from 2011 to 2017. For all patients, four vessel catheter angiography via the femoral approach was performed in the Medical Imaging Center of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Results: We investigated 143 cases with non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhage which was indicated in CT findings (91.61%) or lumbar puncture (8.39%). Of 143 patients, 64 (44.8%) were men and 79 (55.2%) women (mean age 53.7±12.1 years old). Moreover, 104(72.7%) patients had Subarachnoid Hemorrhage (SAH), 19(13.3%) of them had Intracranial Hemorrhage (ICH), 8(5.6%) ones had Intraventricular Hemorrhage (IVH) and 12(8.4%) patients had normal brain CT. There were 100 cases of aneurysm (69.93%), 13 cases of Arteriovenous Malformations (AVM) (9.09%), 28 cases with negative angiograms (19.58%), and 2 cases with other pathologies (1.4%). Seven (4.89%) cases of multiple aneurysms were also recorded. Of 13 patients with AVM, 8(61.5%) patients had AVM in parieto-occipital region, 2(15.4%) in temporal, 1(7.7%) in frontal region and 2(15.4%) had deep AVM. Two (1.4%) patients with SAH had dural AVF. Twenty-eight (19.6%) patients had negative angiogram, 22 cases of them had second angiography after one to two weeks. The most common positive finding in the second angiogram was Acom aneurysm (18.18%). Conclusion: Aneurysms and AVMs are the most common causes of non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhage. The most common site of intracranial aneurysms is the circle of Willis. A second angiogram after one to two weeks is necessary in most patients with negative results in first angiography after non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhage