The relationship between Self-Esteem and sexual Self-Concept in people with Physical-Motor disabilities

Background: Self-esteem is the value that the individuals give themselves, and sexual self-concept is also a part of individuality or sexualself. Impairment or disability exists not only in the physical body of disabled people but also in their attitudes. Negative attitudes affect the mental health of disabled people, causing them to have lower self-esteem. Objectives: This study aimed to examine the relationship between self-esteem and sexual self-concept in people with physical-motor disabilities. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 random samples with physical-motor disabilities covered by Isfahan Welfare Organization in 2013. Data collection instruments were the Persian Eysenck self-esteem questionnaire, and five domains (sexual anxiety, sexual self-efficacy, sexual self-esteem, sexual fear and sexual depression) of the Persian multidimensional sexual selfconcept questionnaire. Because of incomplete filling of the questionnaires, the data of 183 people were analyzed by the SPSS 16.0 software. Data were analyzed using the t-test, Man-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests and Spearman correlation coefficient. Results: The mean age was 36.88 ± 8.94 years for women and 37.80 ± 10.13 for men. The mean scores of self-esteem among women and men were 15.80 ± 3.08 and 16.2 ± 2.90, respectively and there was no statistically significance difference. Comparison of the mean scores of sexual anxiety, sexual self-efficacy, sexual self-esteem, sexual fear and sexual depression among men and women showed that women scored higher than men in all domains. This difference was statistically significant in other domains except the sexual self-esteem (14.92 ± 3.61 vs. 13.56 ± 4.52) (P < 0.05). The Kruskal-Wallis test showed that except for sexual anxiety and sexual self-esteem, there was a statistical difference between other domains of people’s sexual self-concept and degree of disability (P < 0.05). Moreover, Spearman coefficient showed that there was only a correlation between men’s sexual anxiety, sexual self-esteem and sexual self-efficacy with their self-esteem. This correlation was positive in sexual anxiety and negative in two other domains. Conclusions: Lack of difference in self-esteem of disabled people in different degrees of disability and in both men and women suggests that disabled people should not be presumed to have low self-esteem, and their different aspects of life should be attended to, just like others. Furthermore, studies should be designed and implemented based on psychological, social and environmental factors that can help disabled people to promote their positive sexual self-concept through marriage, and reduce their negative self-concept. © 2015 Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal

Self-esteem, general and sexual self-concepts in blind people

Background: People with visual disability have lower self-esteem and social skills than sighted people. This study was designed to describe self-esteem and general and sexual self-concepts in blind people. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, conducted in the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2013-2014. In this study, 138 visually impaired people participated from Isfahan Province Welfare Organization and were interviewed for measuring of self-esteem and self-concept using Eysenck self-esteem and Rogers’ self-concept questionnaires. The correlation between above two variables was measured using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software by Pearson correlation test. Results: Mean [± standard deviation (SD)] age of patients was 30.9 ± 8 years. The mean (±SD) of general self-concept score was 11 ± 5.83. The mean (±SD) of self-esteem score was 16.62 ± 2.85. Pearson correlation results showed a significant positive correlation between self-esteem and general self-concept (r = 0.19, P = 0.025). The mean of sexual self-concept scores in five subscales (sexual anxiety, sexual self-efficacy, sexual self-esteem, sexual fear, and sexual depression) were correspondingly 11 ± 4.41, 19.53 ± 4.53, 12.96 ± 4.19, 13.48 ± 1.76, and 5.38 ± 2.36. Self-esteem and self-concept had significant positive correlation with sexual anxiety (r = 0.49; P < 0.001) (r =-.23; P < 0.001) and sexual fear (r = 0.25; P = 0.003) (r = 0.18; P = 0.02) and negative correlation with sexual self-efficacy (r =-0.26; P = 0.002) (r =-0.28; P = 0.001) and sexual-esteem (r =-0.34; P < 0.001) (r =-0.34; P < 0.001). Conclusion: Self-esteem and self-concept had significant correlation with sexual anxiety and sexual fear; and negative correlation with sexual self-efficacy and sexual-esteem. © 2015 Journal of Research in Medical Sciences

Mach's Principle and Model for a Broken Symmetric Theory of Gravity

We investigate spontaneous symmetry breaking in a conformally invariant gravitational model. In particular, we use a conformally invariant scalar tensor theory as the vacuum sector of a gravitational model to examine the idea that gravitational coupling may be the result of a spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this model matter is taken to be coupled with a metric which is different but conformally related to the metric appearing explicitly in the vacuum sector. We show that after the spontaneous symmetry breaking the resulting theory is consistent with Mach's principle in the sense that inertial masses of particles have variable configurations in a cosmological context. Moreover, our analysis allows to construct a mechanism in which the resulting large vacuum energy density relaxes during evolution of the universe.Comment: 9 pages, no figure

Clearing algorithms and network centrality

I show that the solution of a standard clearing model commonly used in contagion analyses for financial systems can be expressed as a specific form of a generalized Katz centrality measure under conditions that correspond to a system-wide shock. This result provides a formal explanation for earlier empirical results which showed that Katz-type centrality measures are closely related to contagiousness. It also allows assessing the assumptions that one is making when using such centrality measures as systemic risk indicators. I conclude that these assumptions should be considered too strong and that, from a theoretical perspective, clearing models should be given preference over centrality measures in systemic risk analyses

Coexistence of bulk and surface states probed by Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in Bi2_2Se3_3 with high charge-carrier density

Topological insulators are ideally represented as having an insulating bulk with topologically protected, spin-textured surface states. However, it is increasingly becoming clear that these surface transport channels can be accompanied by a finite conducting bulk, as well as additional topologically trivial surface states. To investigate these parallel conduction transport channels, we studied Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in Bi$_2$Se$_3$ thin films, in high magnetic fields up to 30 T so as to access channels with a lower mobility. We identify a clear Zeeman-split bulk contribution to the oscillations from a comparison between the charge-carrier densities extracted from the magnetoresistance and the oscillations. Furthermore, our analyses indicate the presence of a two-dimensional state and signatures of additional states the origin of which cannot be conclusively determined. Our findings underpin the necessity of theoretical studies on the origin of and the interplay between these parallel conduction channels for a careful analysis of the material's performance.Comment: Manuscript including supplemental materia

Identifying the main factors affecting home consumption attitude to farmed fishes among Tehrani households

Using reference books, monitoring buyers behavior and interviewing the experts, the effective parameters on home consumption behavior of farmed fish were identified and compiled as a questionnaire. After the reliability and viability evaluation the questionnaire was filled randomly in the spring of 2008 for 295 households of different localities in Tehran. The allocation of questionnaires was conducted based on the proportion of population in each locality. The degree of importance of effective parameters and their priority were calculated by Friedman test. The results showed that, quality, taste, smell and protein content of grocery basket are the most important purchasing factors among Tehrani households. However, those who use only farmed fish or those who do not use fish at all, after quality, smell has the highest importance, and in the fourth priority, instead of protein content of grocery basket, fish bone has higher effect. We suggest that to improve consumption of farmed fish, apart from quality, the strategies of deodorizing, taste improvement and decreasing fish bones, shall be taken into consideration during harvest, transport and fish processing

Status of fish consumption per capita of Tehran citizens

Status of fish consumption was analyzed by completing the 295 questionnaires in all 22 metropolitan regions of Tehran from different households in 2008. After reviewing the descriptive and statistics analysis along with the non-parametric statistics, the fish consumption per capita was extracted through formulas. The average and mode of purchasing of each household occurs 11 times per year with 5.1 Kg in each time . Considering the higher fish consumption growth rate in Iran, the sequence of interest in all kinds of protein is as follows: poultry, mutton, beef, Trout, wild fishes and Chinese carps. The highest interest of households to buy fish more than other protein resources is due to the nutrient value of it. An average of 33.2% purchasing is dedicated to the farmed fish. 59% of purchasers are interested to buy packed up fish products and pay attention to the label of nutrient values on the product package. Fish consumption per capita is 13.3 Kg, which is divided to 6.4 kg for farmed fishes, 5.8 Kg for wild fishes and 1.1 Kg for canned fish. The higher consumption per capita of Tehran citizens in comparison with other people from other cities, who are living in Tehran, is because of their tendency and freshness of farmed fishes. In contrast, the consumption of canned and wild fishes among people of littoral regions who live in Tehran is higher than others

An Optimizing Method for Performance and Resource Utilization in Quantum Machine Learning Circuits

Quantum computing is a new and advanced topic that refers to calculations based on the principles of quantum mechanics. Itmakes certain kinds of problems be solved easier compared to classical computers. This advantage of quantum computingcan be used to implement many existing problems in different fields incredibly effectively. One important field that quantumcomputing has shown great results in machine learning. Until now, many different quantum algorithms have been presented toperform different machine learning approaches. In some special cases, the execution time of these quantum algorithms will bereduced exponentially compared to the classical ones. But at the same time, with increasing data volume and computationtime, taking care of systems to prevent unwanted interactions with the environment can be a daunting task and since thesealgorithms work on machine learning problems, which usually includes big data, their implementation is very costly in terms ofquantum resources. Here, in this paper, we have proposed an approach to reduce the cost of quantum circuits and to optimizequantum machine learning circuits in particular. To reduce the number of resources used, in this paper an approach includingdifferent optimization algorithms is considered. Our approach is used to optimize quantum machine learning algorithms forbig data. In this case, the optimized circuits run quantum machine learning algorithms in less time than the original onesand by preserving the original functionality. Our approach improves the number of quantum gates by 10.7% and 14.9% indifferent circuits and the number of time steps is reduced by three and 15 units, respectively. This is the amount of reduction forone iteration of a given sub-circuit U in the main circuit. For cases where this sub-circuit is repeated more times in the maincircuit, the optimization rate is increased. Therefore, by applying the proposed method to circuits with big data, both cost andperformance are improved