Effect of an Educational Self-Care Program on Knowledge and Performance in Patients with Coronary Syndrome

Aims: The most important causes for mortality rate and poor quality of life in cardiovascular patients arise from insufficient and inappropriate self-care. This study aimed to examine the effect of an educational self-care program on awareness and performance in patients with Coronary syndrome. Materials & Methods: This is an experimental study conducted in hospitals affiliated with Qom University of medical science. 70 Patients were randomly assigned to experiment (n=35) and control (n=35) groups. Awareness and performance data were collected through interviewed questionnaire and observation. Then the patients in experiment group received 2 educational sessions each lasting 20 minutes during the hospital stay, and also were given an educational booklet review, while control patients received routine care. Data on all patients’ awareness and performance was again collected one month later. The awareness and performance of two groups were compared using Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney U tests. Findings: The difference between two groups in awareness area was -5.39 (p<0.001) and in performance area was -19.49 after intervention (p<0.001). The mean of changes of total awareness score of self-care was 0.57±1.14 in control group (p<0.004) and 8.40±9.39 in experimental group (p<0.001). The mean of self-care performance scores has been increased about 32.13±6.32 in experiment group (p<0.001) and the improving self-care performance of control group was 0.98±1.11 (p<0.001;). Conclusion: The application of an educational self-care program raises the awareness and improves the performance of the patients with coronary syndrome

Determining the Best Performance Time Period of a System

The main purpose of this paper is to determine the best performance time period of a system, consisting some DMUs, among some sequential time periods. This aim is satised by two proposed algorithms, the rst based on global Malmquist Productivity Index and the second is based on PPS frontiers

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

GASL: Guided Attention for Sparsity Learning in Deep Neural Networks

The main goal of network pruning is imposing sparsity on the neural network by increasing the number of parameters with zero value in order to reduce the architecture size and the computational speedup. In most of the previous research works, sparsity is imposed stochastically without considering any prior knowledge of the weights distribution or other internal network characteristics. Enforcing too much sparsity may induce accuracy drop due to the fact that a lot of important elements might have been eliminated. In this paper, we propose Guided Attention for Sparsity Learning (GASL) to achieve (1) model compression by having less number of elements and speed-up; (2) prevent the accuracy drop by supervising the sparsity operation via a guided attention mechanism and (3) introduce a generic mechanism that can be adapted for any type of architecture; Our work is aimed at providing a framework based on interpretable attention mechanisms for imposing structured and non-structured sparsity in deep neural networks. For Cifar-100 experiments, we achieved the state-of-the-art sparsity level and 2.91x speedup with competitive accuracy compared to the best method. For MNIST and LeNet architecture we also achieved the highest sparsity and speedup level

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

On m th -autocommutator subgroup of finite abelian groups

Abstract. Let G be a group and Aut(G) be the group of automorphisms of G. For any natural number m, the m th -autocommutator subgroup of G is defined as: In this paper, we obtain the m th -autocommutator subgroup of all finite abelian groups

Passion for life: Lived experiences of patients after coronary artery bypass graft

Background: Coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) improves the quality of life, increases survival, and influences the patient's mental and emotional aspects. Little information is available on the lived experience of Iranian patients after this surgery. Understanding the lived experiences of patients will help health professionals with better provision of high quality care. Methods: This hermeneutic phenomenological study aimed to understand the lived experience of patients after CABG. Van Manen's method was used to conduct the study. A semi-structured, face-to-face interview technique was employed to explore the experiences of the patients following surgery. Seven men and 4 women between 49 and 80 years old were interviewed. Results: Passion for life was the main theme extracted from the participants� interviews. This theme comprised the three sub-themes of receiving attention from family, being hopeful, and being spiritually oriented. Conclusion: The results showed that the participants experienced passion for life after their surgery. This finding reveals that patients tend to find a new perspective on life and their health after surgery. © 2015, Tehran Heart Center. All rights reserved

Zircon U-Pb geochronology, geochemistry, Sr-Nd isotopic compositions, and tectonomagmatic implications of Nay (NE Iran) postcollisional intrusives in the Sabzevar zone

The mafic to felsic intrusive rocks of Nay (IRN) are located in the northeast of the central Iranian block. In this study, we present new major and trace element geochemistry, U-Pb zircon ages, and Sr-Nd isotopic data to discuss the origin of the IRN postcollisional units. The oldest units in the Nay area belong to Paleocene–early Eocene volcanic and pyroclastic series including basalt-andesite, latite, dacite, and tuff. These series are crosscut by subvolcanic and granitoid rocks with lithological composition varying from quartz gabbro to K-feldspar granite. The youngest igneous activity is represented by quartz monzodiorite dikes. Hornblende-biotite quartz monzonite from Nay granitoids was dated at 40 Ma (zircon U-Pb). The IRN rocks are metaluminous to peraluminous with high-K calc-alkaline and shoshonitic affinities. They display enrichment in light REEs [(La/Yb)N = 3.79–8.71] and LILEs (such as Ba, Th, Rb, U, and K), with depletion in HFSEs (such as Nb, Zr, Y, and Ti). All rocks have negative Eu anomalies [(Eu/Eu*)N = 0.17–0.88] and relatively flat heavy REE patterns [(Gd/Yb)N = 1.12–1.69]. Granitoids have initial 87Sr/86Sr values from 0.7053 to 0.7061 and εNd values from –1.65 to –0.02 calculated at 40 Ma. The geochemical composition of IRN rocks along with the low ISr and positive εNd values and mantle model ages of 0.6–0.8 Ga indicate that two end-members, enriched mantle and a continental crust, were involved in the magma generation. We argue that the Eocene IRN magmatism occurred as a postcollisional product by asthenospheric upwelling owing to the convective removal of the lithosphere during an extensional collapse of the central Iranian block.publishe

Learning to stand with sensorimotor delays generalizes across directions and from hand to leg effectors

Humans receive sensory information from the past, requiring the brain to overcome delays to perform daily motor skills such as standing upright. Because delays vary throughout the body and change over a lifetime, it would be advantageous to generalize learned control policies of balancing with delays across contexts. However, not all forms of learning generalize. Here, we use a robotic simulator to impose delays into human balance. When delays are imposed in one direction of standing, participants are initially unstable but relearn to balance by reducing the variability of their motor actions and transfer balance improvements to untrained directions. Upon returning to normal standing, aftereffects from learning are observed as small oscillations in control, yet they do not destabilize balance. Remarkably, when participants train to balance with delays using their hand, learning transfers to standing with the legs. Our findings establish that humans use experience to broadly update their neural control to balance with delays.</p