Effect of ethanolic extract of beet roots and leaves on motor coordination in male Wistar rats

زمینه و هدف: عدم تعادل حرکتی در اثر عوامل مختلفی از جمله ضایعات مغزی عصبی، مشکلات عضلانی، کم خونی و مصرف داروها رخ می دهد. گیاه چغندر با نام علمی Beta vulgaris L. دارای اثرات متنوع از جمله اثرات ضد التهابی، آنتی اکسیدانی، ضد استیل کولین استرازی و کاهش قند خون می باشد که در این مطالعه اثر عصاره اتانولی برگ و ریشه این گیاه بر تعادل حرکتی بررسی شده است. روش بررسی: در این مطالعه تجربی عصاره اتانولی ریشه و برگ گیاه چغندر به روش ماسراسیون تهیه شد. موش های صحرایی نر بالغ به طور تصادفی در 7 گروه 8 تایی تقسیم شدند و به مدت 25 روز آب مقطر، دوزهای مختلف عصاره ریشه (250،500 و mg/kg1000) و برگ چغندر (50 و mg/kg100) را به صورت داخل صفاقی دریافت کردند. روز 26، نیم ساعت بعد از آخرین تزریق قدرت حفظ تعادل حرکتی موش ها به وسیله روتارود اندازه گیری شد. یافته ها: عصاره ریشه چغندر در دوزهای 500 و mg/kg1000 سبب افزایش معنی دار در تعادل حرکتی شد (p0.05). نتیجه گیری: عصاره های ریشه و برگ گیاه چغندر باعث بهبود فعالیت حرکتی در موش های صحرایی نر بالغ می شود

Experience of nursing students about the barriers to patient education: a qualitative study in Iran

PURPOSE: Patient education is a dynamic and continuous process that should be implemented during the entire time of hospital stay and even afterward. Studies have shown the typically poor quality of patient education in Iran and its failure to convey the required knowledge and skills to patients. The purpose of this study was to survey the experience of nursing students in regard to the challenges of patient education in hospitals. METHODS: This qualitative study was conducted using the conventional qualitative content analysis approach on a sample of 21 undergraduate nursing students (4th semester and beyond), which was drawn from the Qom Nursing and Midwifery School through purposive sampling with maximum variation. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted over a period of 45 to 75 minutes, and were analyzed using the conventional qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Results were derived from the experiences of 21 nursing students (nine males, 12 females) about the research subject. The primary themes identified in the study were the student-related, patient-related, instructor-related, education environment-related, and curriculum-related barriers to patient educations. CONCLUSION: Participants believed that patient education in Iranian hospitals is faced with many challenges. Nursing instructors and curriculum planners should ensure more emphasis on patient education at the initial semesters of nursing education curriculum and make sure that it is included in the evaluation of students. Hospital officials should provide a dedicated education environment with suitable facilities, tools, and atmosphere for patient education. Also, special education programs need to be developed for less educated patients

Polymer-Filled Metal Foams for Contamination Resistant Aircraft Leading Edges

Adhesion of contaminants has been identified as a ubiquitous issue for aeronautic exterior surfaces. Organic coatings have been demonstrated to enable reduction in insect residue adhesion as well as a reduction in ice adhesion strength. These approaches however, have yet to demonstrate sufficient durability to enable application to commercial aircraft wing leading edges. High durability materials have been developed in parallel to these efforts; contaminant adhesion issues are not addressed. This work describes a first attempt to identify a solution to the seemingly competing issues of contaminant adhesion and durability. A co-continuous network of organic and metallic domains may provide greater durability, while still enabling the changes in surface-contaminant interactions that have been realized. To that end, unique properties have been achieved through fabrication of composite metal foam materials. Likewise, extensive research has been dedicated toward development of polymeric coatings for mitigation of insect residue adhesion.This work describes initial results from infusion of a low surface free energy epoxy resin into a composite metal foam substrate for the purpose of generating a durable contaminant adhesion-resistant material

Promotion of a neurosurgical academic journal on social media: a 1-year experience

BACKGROUND Social media (SoMe) use, in all of its forms, has seen massively increased throughout the past two decades, including academic publishing. Many journals have established a SoMe presence, yet the influence of promotion of scientific publications on their visibility and impact remains poorly studied. The European Journal of Neurosurgery «Acta Neurochirurgica» has established its SoMe presence in form of a Twitter account that regularly promotes its publications. We aim to analyze the impact of this initial SoMe campaign on various alternative metrics (altmetrics). METHODS A retrospective analysis of all articles published in the journal Acta Neurochirurgica between May 1st, 2018, and April 30th, 2020, was performed. These articles were divided into a historical control group - containing the articles published between May 1st, 2018, and April 30th, 2019, when the SoMe campaign was not yet established - and into an intervention group. Several altmetrics were analyzed, along with website visits and PDF downloads per month. RESULTS In total, 784 articles published during the study period, 128 (16.3%) were promoted via Twitter. During the promotion period, 29.7% of published articles were promoted. Overall, the published articles reached a mean of 31.3 ± 50.5 website visits and 17.5 ± 31.25 PDF downloads per month. Comparing the two study periods, no statistically significant differences in website visits (26.91 ± 32.87 vs. 34.90 ± 61.08, p = 0.189) and PDF downloads (17.52 ± 31.25 vs. 15.33 ± 16.07, p = 0.276) were detected. However, overall compared to non-promoted articles, promoted articles were visited (48.9 ± 95.0 vs. 29.0 ± 37.0, p = 0.005) and downloaded significantly more (25.7 ± 66.7 vs. 16.6 ± 18.0, p = 0.045) when compared to those who were not promoted during the promotion period. CONCLUSIONS We report a 1-year initial experience with promotion of a general neurosurgical journal on Twitter. Our data suggest a clear benefit of promotion on article site visits and article downloads, although no single responsible element could be determined in terms of altmetrics. The impact of SoMe promotion on other metrics, including traditional bibliometrics such as citations and journal impact factor, remains to be determined

Revised spherically symmetric solutions of R+ε/RR+\varepsilon/R gravity

We study spherically symmetric static empty space solutions in $R+\varepsilon/R$ model of $f(R)$ gravity. We show that the Schwarzschild metric is an exact solution of the resulted field equations and consequently there are general solutions which {are perturbed Schwarzschild metric and viable for solar system. Our results for large scale contains a logarithmic term with a coefficient producing a repulsive gravity force which is in agreement with the positive acceleration of the universe.Comment: 8 page

Design and psychometric evaluation of epilepsy-related apathy scale (E-RAS) in adults with epilepsy: a sequential exploratory mixed methods design

Background: Apathy in patients with epilepsy is associated with a wide range of consequences that reduce the patient�s ability to perform social functions and participate in self-care and rehabilitation programs. Therefore, apathy is one of the important diagnoses of the healthcare team in the process of caring for epileptic patients and its dimensions need to be examined and recognized. Therefore, appropriate instruments with the sociocultural milieu of each community should be provided to health care providers. The aim of the present study was to design and measure epilepsy�related apathy scale (E-RAS) in adults with epilepsy. Methods: This study of sequential exploratory mixed methods design was conducted in Iran from April 2019 to December 2019. In the Item generation stage, two inductive (face-to-face and semi-structured interviews with 17 adult epileptic patients) and deductive (literature review) were used. In item reduction, integration of qualitative and literature reviews and scale evaluation were accomplished. For Scale Evaluation, face, content, construct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (n = 360) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (n = 200), convergent and divergent Validity and reliability (internal consistency and stability) were investigated. Results: The results of EFA showed that E-RAS has four factors, namely, motivation; self-regulatory; cognition and emotional-effective. These four latent factors accounted for a total of 48.351% of the total variance in the E-RAS construct. The results of CFA showed that the 4-factor model of E-RAS has the highest fit with the data. The results of convergent and divergent validity showed that the values of composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) for the four factors were greater than 0.7 and 0.5, respectively, and the value of AVE for each factor was greater than CR. The Cronbach�s alpha coefficient for the whole scale was obtained 0.815. The results of the test-retest showed that there was a significant agreement between the test and retest scores (P < 0.001). Conclusion: E-RAS is a multidimensional construct consisting of 24 items, and has acceptable validity and reliability for the study of epilepsy-related apathy in adult epileptic patients. © 2021, The Author(s)

Primary recovery factor as a function of production rate: implications for conventional reservoirs with different drive mechanisms

This study evaluates the dependency of production rate on the recovery of hydrocarbon from conventional reservoirs using MBAL simulator. The results indicated that the recoveries are sensitive to the production rate in almost all hydrocarbon reservoirs. It was also found that the recovery of volumetric gas drive reservoirs is not impacted by the production rate. In fact, any increase in the production rate improves gas recovery in weak and strong water drive reservoirs. Moreover, increasing the production rate in oil reservoirs decreases the recovery with a significant effect observed in the weak water drive reservoirs. The results of this study demonstrate the need for implementing an effective reservoir management in order to obtain a maximum recovery

Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation via incoherent pump field

We investigate the dispersion and the absorption properties of a weak probe field in a three-level Lambda-type atomic system. We use just an incoherent field for controlling the group velocity of light. It is shown that the slope of dispersion changes from positive to negative just with changing the intensity of the indirect incoherent pumping field. Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation appears in this system. No laser field is used in the pumping processes