Exploring the Barriers of Home Care Services in Iran: A Qualitative Study

With increasing chronic diseases, the use of home care is rising in the world. Home care in Iran has many challenges and to improve that, we should identify the challenges and barriers of home care. The aim of this study was to identify and explore the barriers of home care in Iran. This is a qualitative study with content analysis approach that was conducted in Iran in 2015. Fourteen key informants comprising health policymakers, faculty members, nurses, and physicians as well as patients and families engaged in home care purposefully participated in this study. Data was obtained using face-to-face semistructured interviews. A focus group discussion was also used to complete the findings. Graneheim and Lundman's approach was used for analysis of data and Lincoln and Guba's criteria were used to confirm the trustworthiness of study's findings. The data were divided into three main categories and eight subcategories. Main categories included treatment-based approach in the healthcare system, cultural dimensions, and the lack of adequate infrastructure. A position for home care in the healthcare system, considering cultural dimensions in Iranian society and providing an appropriate infrastructure, can be beneficial to improve the situation of home care services in Iran. © 2016 Heshmatolah Heydari et al

Some biochemical properties of guaiacol peroxidases as modified by salt stress in leaves of salt-tolerant and salt-sensitive safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.cv.) cultivars

The kinetics properties of guaiacol peroxidase (GP) and its isozymic pattern, and lipid peroxidation product were comparatively analyzed in two varieties of safflower (cv. M-CC-190 as salt-tolerant and cv. IL-111 as salt-sensitive cultivars) under normal and different concentrations of NaCl. The pH profile of GP activity in leaves extract of two cultivars in control and salt stressed plants showed different pattern of pH dependency with three maxima peaks at pH 4.5, 6.5 and 8 in salt-tolerant cultivar and two maxima peaks at pH 4.5 and 6.5 in salt-sensitive cultivar. Comparison of catalytic efficiency for GP between two cultivars at respective pH, showed that, salt-tolerant cultivar in both control and salt stressed conditionhad higher catalytic efficiency than salt-susceptible cultivar. The GP activity on the gels revealed four and two isoforms of peroxidases in salt-tolerant and salt-sensitive cultivars, respectively. GPs increased their expression with higher levels of salinity. However, in salt-sensitive cultivar GPs expression exhibited threshold behavior, with increase expressions in isoenzymes up to a certain level of salinity (25 mM NaCl), followed by decrease to a level of expressions corresponding to the control groups. The levels of lipid peroxidation as indicated by thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) were higher in the sensitive variety than the tolerant under control and NaCl salinity. The overall results obtained in this study suggest that, oxidative stress may play an important role in salt-stressedsafflower plants and that the greater protection of M-CC-190 leaves from salt-induced oxidative damage results, at least in part, through the increase of the GPs activity, catalytic efficiency and induction of specific isoenzymes (P1 and P4).Key words: Safflower, guaiacol peroxidase, kinetics, isoenzymes, salt stress

A modified sensitive carbon paste electrode for 5-fluorouracil based using a composite of praseodymium erbium tungstate

This paper describes the modification of a modified carbon paste electrode (CPE) using nanoparticles of praseodymium erbium tungstate (Pr:Er). The modified electrode was used for the sensitive voltammetric detection of an anticancer drug (5-fluorouracil (5-FU)) using. The modified-CPE was evaluated using cyclic voltammetry (CV), square wave voltammetry (SWV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and the resulting data showed the irreversible 5-fluorouracil oxidation peak around 1.0 V vs. Ag/AgCl. Some key parameters such as pH, the amount of the modifier, potential amplitude, step potential and frequency were studied and optimized. The square wave voltammetry (SWV) analytical calibration curve was linear in the range of 0.01�50 μM, with a detection limit of 0.98 nM analyses. The electron transfer coefficient (α) was also determined to be 0.76. The analyte concentration was also determined in pharmaceutical formulations and recovery percentages were found to be in the range of 96�102. The sensor had good reproducibility and repeatability with acceptable RSD values of 3.6, and 1.02 and a rather long-term stability of around one month. The as-synthesized nanoparticles were also characterized using FESEM, TEM, FTIR and XRD techniques. © 2020 Elsevier B.V

Similarity-aware deep attentive model for clickbait detection

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. Clickbait is a type of web content advertisements designed to entice readers into clicking accompanying links. Usually, such links will lead to articles that are either misleading or non-informative, making the detection of clickbait essential for our daily lives. Automated clickbait detection is a relatively new research topic. Most recent work handles the clickbait detection problem with deep learning approaches to extract features from the meta-data of content. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between the misleading titles and the target content, which we found to be an important clue for enhancing clickbait detection. In this work, we propose a deep similarity-aware attentive model to capture and represent such similarities with better expressiveness. In particular, we present the ways of either using similarity only or integrating it with other available quality features for the clickbait detection. We evaluate our model on two benchmark datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by outperforming a series of competitive state-of-the-arts and baseline methods

Prevalence and associated factors of cardio-metabolic risk factors in Iranian seafarers

BACKGROUND: Since Iran's economy is based on the sale of petroleum products, seafaring is considered a crucial job. Little research has been done on issues related to seafarers' health in Iranian maritime industry. The present study investigated the prevalence and associated factors of cardio-metabolic risk factors in seafarers of National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed on 234 Iranian male seafarers of NITC in 2015. Metabolic syndrome (MetS) was diagnosed according to the reports of National Committee of Obesity. Three main blood parameters (of elevated total cholesterol, elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and elevated very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol) and general obesity were included as additional cardio-metabolic risk factors. RESULTS: The mean age of the participants was 36.0 ± 10.3 years. The prevalence of MetS was 14.9. The common cardio-metabolic risk factors were excess weight (51.1), abdominal obesity (38.5), and smoking (27.8) among Iranian seafarers. In multivariate analysis, age (OR: 1.05, 95 CI: 1.01-1.09) and body mass index (OR: 1.14, 95 CI: 1.01-1.27) were associated with the increase in hypertension risk. CONCLUSIONS: Our finding showed that the current prevalence of MetS among Iranian male seafarers working on tankers can affect negatively their health and career at sea