The Effect of Using Metatalk Activity on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners' Knowledge of Tense

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of metatalk activity on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners' Knowledge of Tense. 60 intermediate institute learners took part in this experiment. They were randomly chosen from among a population of intermediate via an PET test score of at least on standard deviation below the mean. They were then randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups of 30. A pretest of English grammar was administered to both groups, then they were taught grammatical tenses for 8 sessions but with different methodologies: the experimental group was treated with metatalk activity while the control group received traditional method. A posttest of grammar was then administered to both groups. The data of the study were analyzed using the independent samples t-test and correlation coefficient. The results demonstrated that Iranian EFL learners in the experimental group received higher knowledge of tense score after being treated with metatalk activity for 8 sessions

Antibacterial activity of Marrubium vulgare L. against antibiotic resistance Klebsiella pneumoniae strains

Background and aims: Herbal medicines are the major remedy in traditional medical systems and have a great contribution in maintaining human health and preventing many infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to assay antibacterial potential of Marrubium vulgare L. extract against Klebsiella pneumoniae resistant strains to current antibiotics and also GC/MS analysis to better understanding the extract composition. Methods: In this experimental research, 30 K. pneumoniae strains isolated from urine culture of hospitalized patients were used. The essential oil of Marrubium vulgare L. was obtained by hydro distillation for 2 hours using the Celevenger with yield of 75. Methanolic extract from M. vulgare L. was prepared using Rotary apparatus. In order to determine chemical composition of essential oil, gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was performed. The minimum inhibitory concentrations and minimum bacterial concentrations were investigated to characterize the antimicrobial activities of this essential oil and its extract. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance (one-way) to determine the statistical differences between different tests. Results: The results showed that K. pneumoniae strains were resistant to 4 or 3 agents including: Ampicillin (65), Gentamicin (30), Sulfamethoxazol (25). The lowest and the highest MIC value of M. vulgare L. extract were 2.5 and 10 mg/mL, respectively. The highest and the lowest MIC value of M. vulgare L. essential oil was 5 and 1/25 mg/m respectively. Conclusion: The present study confirmed that essential oil and extract of this plant could be served as an antibacterial agent in pharmaceutical industry

One Pot Synthesis of Indole derivatives Catalyzed by SBA-15-Pr-SO3H as a Nanoporous Acid

An effective one-pot synthesis of indole derivatives using functionalized SBA-15 as Brønsted acid. It efficiently catalyzed synthesis of indole derivatives through the Fischer Indole reaction. One pot synthesis procedure, mild reaction conditions, and simple workup are attractive features of this method. Introduction: Due to indole structure ubiquity in nature and its broad application in chemistry, indole derivatives are valuable heterocycles. Numerous methods have been developed for the synthesis of indole derivatives and more efficient straightforward synthetic strategies still continue to be pursued. Fischer Indole method is one of the most powerful routes of indole synthesis. In view of the versatility of indoles and its derivatives in material sciences, There is an increasing sensitivity for environmental protection and using green methodologies for effecting the Fischer indole synthesis. We were interested in developing a new, easy workup procedure with high yielding synthetic protocol for indole derivatives using modified SBA-15 with HO3S- functional group as a recyclable and environmentally benign catalyst. Methods and Results: To develop Indole scaffold we considered a reaction of phenylhydrazine or its nitro derivatives, a ketone (typically, cyclohexanone), and SBA-15-Pr-SO3H as Brønsted acid. The present methodology also offers the advantages of excellent yields, short reaction time, and milder reaction conditions.  All the synthesized compounds were characterized by 1H NMR, IR spectral data. Conclusions: The target compounds were obtained from phenylhydrazines and ketones with good to excellent yields

Quality-Adaptive Split-Federated Learning for Segmenting Medical Images with Inaccurate Annotations

SplitFed Learning, a combination of Federated and Split Learning (FL and SL), is one of the most recent developments in the decentralized machine learning domain. In SplitFed learning, a model is trained by clients and a server collaboratively. For image segmentation, labels are created at each client independently and, therefore, are subject to clients' bias, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies. In this paper, we propose a data quality-based adaptive averaging strategy for SplitFed learning, called QA-SplitFed, to cope with the variation of annotated ground truth (GT) quality over multiple clients. The proposed method is compared against five state-of-the-art model averaging methods on the task of learning human embryo image segmentation. Our experiments show that all five baseline methods fail to maintain accuracy as the number of corrupted clients increases. QA-SplitFed, however, copes effectively with corruption as long as there is at least one uncorrupted client.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 202

Full-Thickness Rectal Prolapse in children: Sclerotherapy versus Lockhart Mummery Rectopexy

Introduction: Rectal prolapse is a relatively common disorder in childhood. In this phenomenon, the whole layers of the rectum protrude throughout the anus. Self-limiting cases of rectal prolapse are more common in children below four years old, and overall prevalence is higher in the first year of life, with a predominance of male children. Formerly, the therapeutic efforts insisted on surgery. Nowadays, noninvasive methods like Sclerotherapy have entered the arena. Materials and Methods: This study aimed to compare the efficacy and postoperative complications of 56 children suffering from full-thickness rectal prolapse retrospectively randomized in two groups of conventional surgery and Sclerotherapy referring to the Mofid children's hospital from 2017 to 2020. The authors have used Lockhart mummery rectopexy and Sclerotherapy methods with hypertonic dextrose 50%. Results: Our results revealed a statistically significant difference in mean hospital stay (P-value <0.0001) and follow-up time (P-value=0.009) in the sclerotherapy group compared to other group, but surgical complications (P-value=0.58) and recurrence rate (P-value= 0.62) were statistically non-significant in both groups. Conclusion: careful selection of patients based on symptoms has a vital role in the success of the chosen method for treating rectal prolapse in children. &nbsp

Relationship between perceived social support and academic well-being based on the mediating role of developmental assets in first-year high school students

Background: The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived social support and academic well-being considering the mediating role of developmental assets in students. Methods: The present study was applied in terms of aim, descriptive-correlational in term of nature. It was conducted using path analysis approach. The statistical population of the study included the students of the first-year high school in Kerman city in the academic year of 2021-2022. A sample of 300 people (girls and boys) was selected using multi-stage cluster sampling method. The tools of the study were the developmental assets questionnaire, Tuominen-Soini et al., academic well-being questionnaire, and the perceived social support scale. Path analysis was used in Amos Software to analyze the data. Results: The influence of social support on the transformation of academic capital is 0.37 and it is significant at 0.001 level. When people receive support from their families, friends, and other groups that include comfort, respect, love, and interest, it affects their psychological well-being, so all these benefits are actually capital transformations that lead to their well-being. Therefore, the research hypothesis about the relationship between perceived social support and academic well-being through the mediating role of developmental assets in first-year high school students is confirmed. Conclusion: With social support including consolation, affection and care from family, friends and other groups, it is possible to develop and strengthen the developmental assets and finally the academic well-being of students

Joint frailty model for recurrent events and a terminal event in the presence of cure fraction

The observations of repeated or recurrent events occur in many longitudinal studies. Furthermore, sometimes there may exist a terminal event such as death, which is strongly correlated with recurrent events. In many situations, a fraction of subjects who will never experience the event of interest during a long follow-up period is considered to be cured. In this article, we proposed a joint frailty model in the presence of cure fraction. The dependency is modeled by shared frailty that is contained in both the recurrent andterminal events hazard functions. It allows to estimate two separate sets of parameters on the recurrent, death, and cure model. We applied the maximum likelihood method under a piecewise constant hazard function for model fitting. The proposed model is evaluated by simulation studies and an application to a breast cancer data is provided

The Effectiveness of Interpersonal Psychotherapy on Alexithymia, Emotion Regulation, and Psychological Capital of Male Substance Abusers Treated by Addiction Treatment Centers in Kerman

Background: Addiction is a psychiatric disorder with biological, psychological, and social aspects. Literatures indicated that alexithymia, emotional dysregulation, and low psychological capital affect substance abuse. This study investigated the effectiveness of interpersonal psychotherapy on alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital of male substance abusers.Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted in 2021 in Kerman, Iran using a pretest, post-test design with a control group. A single therapy center was randomly selected via the multi-stage cluster method from several substance abuse treatment centers. 50 people were randomly selected and allocated to experimental and control groups. The research instruments were questionnaires for alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital. After the pretest phase, the experimental group underwent 12 sessions of interpersonal psychotherapy. In the next step, the post-test was conducted and after 6 weeks the follow-up test was performed on the groups. The control group did not receive the treatment. Finally, the data obtained from 40 participants were analyzed using the MANCOVA test by SPSS25 statistical software.Findings: Our findings indicated significant MANCOVA results for alexithymia (F=65.14 and P<0.05), emotion regulation (F=44.72 and P<0.05) and psychological capital (F=12.05 and P<0.05) showing a significant difference between the scores of dependent variables in the experimental group and control group.Conclusion: The results showed that interpersonal psychotherapy improves the state of alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital in substance abusers. It can also be used as an effective intervention in addiction treatment centers

Survival Analysis of Iranian Patients with Breast Cancer Using Joint Frailty Model with a Cure Rate

Background: Breast cancer is a common disease among women around the world. In Iran, it is the most prevalent cancer diagnosed in women. The objective of this study was to assess the cure rate of patients and the associated risk factors. Method: A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 446 patients with breast cancer admitted to the Shahid Ramezanzadeh Radiotherapy Center. Using R 3.2.2 software, the Kaplan-Meier curve, log-rank test, and cure joint frailty model were utilized in the analysis. Results: Of the 446 patients, 17.3% died, 20% experienced relapse, and 62.7% were censored. The 1-5-7-year disease-free survival rates were 95.3%, 73.4%, and 69.3%, respectively. In the cure model, stage, involved lymph node, and surgery were statistically significant. In the recurrence model, stage, involved lymph node, lymphovascular invasion, and hormone therapy were statistically significant. In the death model, stage, lymphovascular invasion, and involved lymph node had a statistically significant effect on the survival time. Conclusion: The cure joint frailty model is a good model when there is a high fraction of patients who do not experience any recurrence or death. In addition, this model allows for the separate estimation of explanatory variable effect on recurrence, death, and cure. The findings of our study can be conducive to preventing the unfavorable effects of breast cancer and increasing the survival of patients

Ear and Face Mucormycosis; A Case Report.

peer reviewedMucormycosis is an invasive fungal infection belonging to order of Mucorales which causes a high rate of mortality. This infection is mostly common in the immunosuppression conditions such as diabetes mellitus, chemotherapy, organ transplantation and hematologic malignancies