Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) with the Point of View Employees

 Occupational diseases and accidents suffered by employees, cause many costs for the companies in direct and indirect ways. Instead of expanding their business by making new investments; companies spend their limited resources and power to cover these arising costs. Occupational diseases and accidents are social and economic wounds for the countries as well as the companies. For example, according to the reseach that Ministry of Labour and Social Security Training and Research Centre (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı Eğitim ve Araştırma Merkezi - ÇASGEM) had made in 2010, annual cost of occupational accidents is 35 billion TL in Turkey.Sole way to reduce these costs; creating company’s awareness on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and to inspire their employees about this awareness. In this case, the actual practitioners of these rules, employees, have a very critical role. While managers demand from their employees to obey OHS rules and expect to bring it into a way of their life; most of the time employees may ignore OHS rules because of some reasons like finishing their job quickly, negligence and the view of protective equipments are limiting factors for their freedom and comfort. Especially the common view within Turkish people: “Nothing happens to me!”; causes unwillingness to use protective equipments.The first aim of this paper is to examine what kind of costs that companies may face in the case of non-compliance to the OHS regulations on the overall dimensions. Another aim is to show how OHS regulations work in a packaging company named Amcor which operates in 43 countries around the world, and looking to OHS with the employees’ point of view by applying a survey research.&nbsp

Diffusion-Weighted Imaging for the Discrimination of Benign and Malignant Breast Masses; Utility of ADC and Relative ADC

Purpose: To determine the contribution of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), and relative ADC (rADC) values to differentiate between benign and malignant breast masses. Materials and Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the breast with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) of patients with benign or malignant breast masses diagnosed either by histopathological findings or by follow-up imaging were evaluated retrospectively. Histopathological analyses were performed for 71 lesions (80.7%) while the remaining were followed up every six months for one year. DWI was performed using b-values of 0 and 1000 sec/mm2, and ADC and rADC were calculated and compared. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and Youden index were used to evaluate the parameter’s optimal threshold and diagnostic value. Statistical significance was set as p < 0.05. Results: Eighty-eight lesions from a total of 81 patients, aged between 16 and 73 (mean age 42 ± 11.3) years were obtained and evaluated. Pathological results of 34 (38.6%) out of 71 lesions were malignant and 37 lesions (42%) were benign. Seventeen (19.3%) lesions remained stable at one-year follow-up and were accepted as benign breast masses. Mean ADC values of benign and malignant lesions were 1.584 × 10–3mm2/sec and 0.884 x 10–3mm2/sec (p < 0.05), respectively. Sensitivity and specificity of ADC were 88% and 87%, respectively at a cut-off value of 1.04 x 10–3mm2/sec. Mean rADC was 0.931 for benign lesions and 0.557 for malignant lesions (p < 0.05). Sensitivity and specificity were 82% and 83% at a cut-off value of 0.639. No prominent superiority of rADC over ADC is identified in the differentiation of breast masses. Conclusion: ADC and rADC values derived from DWI can be equally useful in clinical setting to differentiate benign from malignant breast masses

The effect of argument-driven inquiry on pre-service science teachers' attitudes and argumentation skills

4th World Conference on Educational Sciences (WCES) -- FEB 02-05, 2012 -- Univ Barcelona, Barcelona, SPAINWOS: 000314465905039The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) laboratory activities to pre-service elementary science teachers' attitude towards physic laboratory and their argumentation quality. Participants (n=63) were pre-service science teachers at Research University in Turkey. The students in the control group (n=32) participated in six different traditional laboratory activities. The students in the experimental group (n=31) participated in six different Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) laboratory activities. Data were collected through Physics Laboratory Attitude Questionnaire and the reports that were written individually by students. All of the participants took physics laboratory attitude questionnaire before and after the instructional intervention. The results of this study showed that no significant differences were observed in Attitude Questionnaire between the ADI instruction and traditional instruction groups. The results of the study showed that the ADI instructional method was more effective in improving the argumentation quality compared to the traditional method. ADI did not changed the attitudes but the argumentation skills changed significantly. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin UzunboyluAcad World Educ & Res Ctr, Near E Univ, Bahcesehir Univ, Ankara Univ, Hacettepe Univ, Cyprus Educ Sci Asso

Investigating the Effect of Argument-Driven Inquiry in Laboratory Instruction

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of argument-driven inquiry (ADI) based laboratory instruction on the academic achievement, argumentativeness, science process skills, and argumentation levels of pre-service science teachers in the General Physics Laboratory III class. The study was conducted with 79 pre-service science teachers. The participants in the control group (n = 38) participated in traditional laboratory activities, and the participants in the experimental group (n = 41) participated in laboratory activities based on argumentdriven inquiry. Data was collected through the Optical Achievement Test (OAT), Argumentative Scale (AS), Science Process Skills Test (SPST) and the individual reports of the participants. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used together to analyze the data. The results showed that argument-driven inquiry was more effective in improving the academic achievement and science process skills of pre-service science teachers compared to traditional laboratory instruction, but no significant difference was observed in the Argumentative Scale scores between the groups that had ADI instruction and those that had traditional laboratory instruction. Towards the end of the treatment, there was an improvement in the argumentative quality of the experimental group, but there was no change in the argumentation quality of the control group. ADI is an effective method for improving the academic achievement and science process skills of students, and it could be adapted for other laboratory classes. Argumentativeness might be improved with a longer argumentation session and more laboratory activities.The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of argument-driven inquiry (ADI) based laboratory instruction on the academic achievement, argumentativeness, science process skills, and argumentation levels of pre-service science teachers in the General Physics Laboratory III class. The study was conducted with 79 pre-service science teachers. The participants in the control group (n = 38) participated in traditional laboratory activities, and the participants in the experimental group (n = 41) participated in laboratory activities based on argumentdriven inquiry. Data was collected through the Optical Achievement Test (OAT), Argumentative Scale (AS), Science Process Skills Test (SPST) and the individual reports of the participants. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used together to analyze the data. The results showed that argument-driven inquiry was more effective in improving the academic achievement and science process skills of pre-service science teachers compared to traditional laboratory instruction, but no significant difference was observed in the Argumentative Scale scores between the groups that had ADI instruction and those that had traditional laboratory instruction. Towards the end of the treatment, there was an improvement in the argumentative quality of the experimental group, but there was no change in the argumentation quality of the control group. ADI is an effective method for improving the academic achievement and science process skills of students, and it could be adapted for other laboratory classes. Argumentativeness might be improved with a longer argumentation session and more laboratory activities

Changes in Preservice Teacher Attitudes Toward Astronomy Within a Semester-Long Astronomy Instruction and Four-Year-Long Teacher Training Programme

Teachers’ attitudes toward science, especially toward astronomy, are considered to be an important aspect of teaching and learning astronomy in school. Research findings to date remain inconclusive as to whether attitudes toward science change with the science courses taken or with increasing achievement. Therefore, preservice teacher attitudes were investigated in two contexts: the first examined how a semester-long moon phase instruction course changed preservice teacher attitudes toward astronomy, and the second considered how preservice teacher attitudes toward astronomy may change over the course of a four-year science teacher training programme. A total of 638 preservice elementary teachers participated in the study. The results indicated that a semester-long training course does not change attitudes, but the four-year programme does significantly change participant attitudes toward astronomy. Astronomy courses should be spread over the four-year programme using modules with few credit hours instead of one course with a large number of credit hours

The effect of physical activity level at postpartum period on quality of life and depression level

The study was conducted to determine the effect of physical activity level on quality of life and depression level during postpartum period. The cross-sectional data used in this study was collected in seven different Family Health Centers in Malatya between April-October 2017. The sample of the study consisted of 347 women with a postpartum period of six weeks to six months registered to these Family Health Centers. Personal Information Form, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ), the SF-36 Quality of Life Assessment Scale and the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS) were used to collect data. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics (number, percentage, mean, standard deviation) as well as chi-square test, one-way variance analysis and Pearson correlation analysis were used. The mean IPAQ score of women was 1960.6±1456.7 MET-min/week, while 18.4% had low levels of physical activity, 59.7% moderate, and 21.9% had high levels of physical activity. Based on physical activity levels, significant differences were found between physical role, general health, social functioning, mental role and mental health point averages among SF-36 subscales (p [Med-Science 2018; 7(3.000): 587-93

Sleep restriction suppresses the activity of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis but does not affect the autonomic nervous system

Sleep restriction is likely to affect the activities of stress axes, namely the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Sleep restriction is likely to be experienced by everybody, yet the number of studies on that subject is very scarce. The current study aimed to examine the effects of sleep restriction on cortisol awakening response (CAR) as an indicator of HPA and heart rate variability (HRV) as an indicator of ANS activity. Participants (second-year medical students) were divided into two groups as sleep restricting group (n=27, sleeping at 02:00 p.m., waking up at 06:30 a.m.) and normal sleep duration group (n=25, sleeping at 11:00 p.m., waking up at 06:30 a.m.). The participants who filled in sleep dairies provided salivary samples (taken at 0, 15, 30, and 60 min post-awakening) for measurement of CAR and had an electrocardiogram recording (for 5 min) for determination of HRV. Mann-Whitney U test was used for statistical analyses. Sleep restriction reduced cortisol concentrations 15 and 30 minutes following awakening (p0.05). Sleep diaries showed that awakening problem scores were higher but daily disturbed sleep score was lower in the restricted sleep group (p [Med-Science 2022; 11(2.000): 682-9

The Impact of Augmented Reality-Based Argumentation Activities on Middle School Students’ Academic Achievement and Motivation in Science Classes

Science teaching is one of the subjects that has been actively affected by Augmented Reality (AR) technology worldwide. Although the use of AR in science courses is increasing, the effective use of AR still needs improvement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of augmented reality-based argumentation activities in 7th grade students' academic achievement and motivation in teaching astronomy content. The quasi-experimental design was used in this study. The participants consisted of 79 seventh-grade students from three different science classes. The students in experimental group 1 (n=26) participated in an instruction that included both augmented reality and argumentation activities about astronomy. The students in experimental group 2 (n=27) participated in an astronomy instruction that includes only argumentation activities and the students in control group (n=27) received astronomy instruction through traditional methods. The data were collected through pre-and post- academic achievement test and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis tests were used to determine the statistical differences between the pretest and posttest scores of the students. The results showed that augmented reality-based argumentation activities were more effective in increasing students' achievement and motivation than the argumentation and traditional instruction in teaching astronomy

The perspective of health professionals on the factor of 3rd persons in assisted reproductive techniques

This study was planned with the aim of determining the perspective of health professionals on the factor of 3rd persons in assisted reproductive therapy techniques. The study, which is cross-sectional and descriptive, was conducted at a university hospital in the province of Malatya between the dates April and June 2016. After a power analysis, the sample size was determined as 405 health professionals. In the statistical analysis of the data, the study used means, standard deviations and percentage distributions. Among the participants with the mean age of 2.77371, 62.7% were women and 83.5% were nurses. 27.2% stated that legal permission should be provided in assisted reproduction for oocyte donation with a 3rd person, surrogacy and sperm banks. On the other hand, 50.4% of the participants stated that they may recommend their patients other countries for operations that concern 3rd persons. It was found that the reason participants did not find these techniques appropriate was morals/ethics for 69.6% and religious reasons for 77.3%. 39.7% of the participants stated that, in a case where the only choice left for having a child is assisted reproductive methods that require a 3rd person, they would accept infertility and do nothing. The ratio of people who stated they would accept treatment was 19%. Among the participants who said they would accept treatment, 83.1% would absolutely choose someone they do not know. Additionally, 52.3% stated that they would not want themselves or their spouses become donors. Consequently, only 27.2% of health professionals stated that assisted reproductive techniques with 3rd persons should be legal. On the other hand, 50.4% stated they may forward their patients to other countries for these methods. It was seen that health professionals experienced a dilemma regarding this subject especially on grounds of morals/ethics and religious concerns. [Med-Science 2017; 6(3.000): 541-5

Focal nodular hyperplasia vs. hemangioma: Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging findings

Focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) and hemangioma are benign and generally asymptomatic hepatic tumors. With distinctive imaging findings on dynamic computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), differentiation of these benign hepatic tumors from metastases can be made. We described imaging findings of these hepatic lesions in a 57-year-old man who presented with rectal adenocarcinoma for staging