Patient accounting systems: Are they fit with the users� requirements?

Objectives: A patient accounting system is a subsystem of a hospital information system. This system like other information systems should be carefully designed to be able to meet users� requirements. The main aim of this research was to investigate users� requirements and to determine whether current patient accounting systems meet users� needs or not. Methods: This was a survey study, and the participants were the users of six patient accounting systems used in 24 teaching hospitals. A stratified sampling method was used to select the participants (n = 216). The research instruments were a questionnaire and a checklist. The mean value of �3 showed the importance of each data element and the capability of the system. Results: Generally, the findings showed that the current patient accounting systems had some weaknesses and were able to meet between 70 and 80 of users� requirements. Conclusions: The current patient accounting systems need to be improved to be able to meet users� requirements. This approach can also help to provide hospitals with more usable and reliable financial information. © 2016 The Korean Society of Medical Informatics

Relationship between intelligence quotient and musical ability in children with cochlear implantation

Introduction: Children with cochlear implants (CIs) may experience few opportunities for positive musical experiences, and musical perception is therefore often not sufficiently developed. This paper investigates and discusses the relationship between intelligence quotient (IQ) and musical ability in children with CIs compared with children with normal hearing. Materials and Methods: This was a comparative analytical study conducted in 48 children with unilateral CI and 48 normalhearing children, 6-8 years of age, with 'normal' IQ and no formal music training. The average IQ score in the experimental and control groups were 105.41 and 106.31, respectively. No statistically significant differences were detected between Raven's IQ scores in both groups. Data were collected by administering Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices IQ Tests and the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Musical Abilities (MBEMA) Test, consisting of scale, contour, interval, rhythm, and memory sections. Results: Mean total MBEMA score in the experimental and control groups was 58.93 and 72.16 (out of 100), respectively. Significant differences were evident between scores of children with CIs in comparison with their normal-hearing peers (P�0.001). A remarkable direct correlation between IQ and musical scores in both the control (r�0.38) and experimental (r�0.37) groups was observed. Conclusion: IQ has a noticeable effect on music processing and facilitates the perception of various musical elements. With regard to the mutual relationship between IQ and musical skills, this study illustrates the advantage of determining music perception scores and highlights the importance of appropriate musical intervention in order to enhance auditory neural plasticity, especially in children with cochlear implantation

Trends of research productivity across author gender and research fields: A multidisciplinary and multi-country observational study

Bibliographic properties of more than 75 million scholarly articles, are examined and trends in overall research productivity are analysed as a function of research field (over the period of 1970-2020) and author gender (over the period of 2006-2020). Potential disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are also investigated. Over the last decade (2010-2020), the annual number of publications have invariably increased every year with the largest relative increase in a single year happening in 2019 (more than 6% relative growth). But this momentum was interrupted in 2020. Trends show that Environmental Sciences and Engineering Environmental have been the fastest growing research fields. The disruption in patterns of scholarly publication due to the Covid-19 pandemic was unevenly distributed across fields, with Computer Science, Engineering and Social Science enduring the most notable declines. The overall trends of male and female productivity indicate that, in terms of absolute number of publications, the gender gap does not seem to be closing in any country. The trends in absolute gap between male and female authors is either parallel (e.g., Canada, Australia, England, USA) or widening (e.g., majority of countries, particularly Middle Eastern countries). In terms of the ratio of female to male productivity, however, the gap is narrowing almost invariably, though at markedly different rates across countries. While some countries are nearing a ratio of .7 and are well on track for a 0.9 female to male productivity ratio, our estimates show that certain countries (particularly across the Middle East) will not reach such targets within the next 100 years. Without interventional policies, a significant gap will continue to exist in such countries. The decrease or increase in research productivity during the first year of the pandemic, in contrast to trends established before 2020, was generally parallel for male and female authors. There has been no substantial gender difference in the disruption due to the pandemic. However, opposite trends were found in a few cases. It was observed that, in some countries (e.g., The Netherlands, The United States and Germany), male productivity has been more negatively affected by the pandemic. Overall, female research productivity seems to have been more resilient to the disruptive effect of Covid-19 pandemic, although the momentum of female researchers has been negatively affected in a comparable manner to that of males

Thomas-Fermi Model in the Presence of Natural Cutoffs

It has been revealed, in the context of quantum gravity candidates, that measurement of position cannot be done with arbitrary precision and there is a finite resolution of space-time points. This leads naturally to a minimal measurable length of the order of Planck length. Also, in the context of newly proposed doubly special relativity theories, a test particle’s momentum cannot be arbitrarily imprecise leading nontrivially to a maximal momentum for a test particle. These two natural cutoffs affects most of quantum field theoretic arguments in the spirit of condensed matter physics. Here we focus on the role of these natural cutoffs on Thomas-Fermi theory in condensed matter physics. We show how quantum gravity effects can play important role phenomenologically in many-body interactions of solids

Brane-f(R)f(R) gravity and dark matter

The collision-free Boltzmann equation is used in the context of brane-$f(R)$ gravity to derive the virial theorem. It is shown that the virial mass is proportional to certain geometrical terms appearing in the Einstein field equations and contributes to gravitational energy and that such a geometric mass can be attributed to the virial mass discrepancy in a cluster of galaxies. In addition, the galaxy rotation curves are studied by utilizing the concept of conformal symmetry and notion of conformal Killing symmetry. The field equations may then be obtained in an exact parametric form in terms of the parameter representing the conformal factor. This provides the possibility of studying the behavior of the angular velocity of a test particle moving in a stable circular orbit. The tangential velocity can be derived as a function of the conformal factor and integration constants, resulting in a constant value at large radial distances. Relevant phenomenon such as the deflection of light passing through a region where the rotation curves are flat and the radar echo delay are also studied.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PR

Development and validation of a persian version of dichotic emotional word test

Introduction: Emotional words in comparison with neutral words have different hemispheric specialization. It is assumed that the right hemisphere has a role in processing every kind of emotional word. The objective of the present study was the development of a Persian version of the dichotic emotional word test and evaluate its validation among adult Persian speakers. Materials and Methods: The present study was done on 60 adults, with the age ranging from 18-30 years for both genders, who had no history of neurological disorders with normal hearing. The developed test included eight main lists; each had several dichotic emotional/neutral pairs of words. Participants were asked to recall as many words in each list as they could after they listened to them. A content validity index was used to analyze the validity of the test. Results: The mean content validity index score was 0.94. The findings showed that in the left ear, emotional words were remembered more than neutral ones (P=0.007). While in the right ear, neutral words were remembered more (P=0.009). There were no significant differences in male and female scores. Conclusion: Dichotic emotional word test has a high content validity. The ability to remember emotional words better in the left ear supports the dominant role of the right hemisphere in emotional word perception

On a New Three-Step Class of Methods and Its Acceleration for Nonlinear Equations

A class of derivative-free methods without memory for approximating a simple zero of a nonlinear equation is presented. The proposed class uses four function evaluations per iteration with convergence order eight. Therefore, it is an optimal three-step scheme without memory based on Kung-Traub conjecture. Moreover, the proposed class has an accelerator parameter with the property that it can increase the convergence rate from eight to twelve without any new functional evaluations. Thus, we construct a with memory method that increases considerably efficiency index from 81/4≈1.681 to 121/4≈1.861. Illustrations are also included to support the underlying theory

q-Form fields on p-branes

In this paper, we give one general method for localizing any form (q-form) field on p-branes with one extra dimension, and apply it to some typical p-brane models. It is found that, for the thin and thick Minkowski branes with an infinite extra dimension, the zero mode of the q-form fields with q<(p-1)/2 can be localized on the branes. For the thick Minkowski p-branes with one finite extra dimension, the localizable q-form fields are those with q<p/2, and there are also some massive bound Kaluza-Klein modes for these q-form fields on the branes. For the same q-form field, the number of the bound Kaluza-Klein modes (but except the scalar field (q=0)) increases with the dimension of the p-branes. Moreover, on the same p-brane, the q-form fields with higher q have less number of massive bound KK modes. While for a family of pure geometrical thick p-branes with a compact extra dimension, the q-form fields with q<p/2 always have a localized zero mode. For a special pure geometrical thick p-brane, there also exist some massive bound KK modes of the q-form fields with q<p/2, whose number increases with the dimension of the p-brane.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, published versio