How much the act of secrecy is done by medical staff? A descriptive cross-sectional survey in south of Iran

Some information may be gathered during the medical procedures, including medical records or personal information. Many of them can be considered as secrets. The medical staff has the duty of privacy, which means keeping the secrets away from a third party. Hippocratic Oath accepts no exceptions but modern ethical express the situations in which the disclosure of secrets is allowed, legal, or even necessary. The present study is about to evaluate the act of secrecy in medical staff of the tertiary health care centers affiliated with Jahrom University of Medical Sciences in south of Iran. This cross sectional study is done on 204 members of medical staff of 8 different wards in tertiary health care centers affiliated with Jahrom University of Medical Sciences in south of Iran, using a questionnaire of 31 questions in 5 major categories adding to a data sheet for demographic information (age, gender, ward). Validity and reliability of the questionnaire was proved by previous studies. Collected data analyzed by dependent T-test, Fisher's exact and SPSS.17 using descriptive and deductive statistics. The mean rate of secrecy was 3.82± 0.75. Respecting others in the category of "goals of secrecy" earned 4.48, common medical services in the category of "reasons for disclosure" earned 3.89, damage to the patient in the category of "legal reasons for disclosure" earned 4.05, patient's rights in "personal reasons for secrecy" earned 4.07, and informing the medical managers in "proper way to confront the offenders" with the score 2.85 were the highest scores of each category. The variant Ages (p=0.003) and wards (p=0.03) showed significant differences in the secrecy. Results show that the medical staff is not familiar enough to the legal and ethical indications of secrecy, so holding in-service courses may be effective

Detection of human papillomavirus DNA sequences in oral lesions using polymerase chain reaction

The purpose of the present study was to estimate the frequency of HPV DNA in four groups of oral lesions, including oral squamous cell carcinoma. Sixty paraffin-embedded oral tissue samples were examined for the presence of HPV DNAs using the PCR technique. These specimens were obtained from patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), leukoplakia, oral lichen planus (OLP), and pyogenic granuloma (PG). Consensus primers for L1 region (MY09 and MY11) and specific primers were used for detection of HPV DNA sequences in this study. we detected HPV DNA in 60% (9 out of 15) of OSCCs, 26.7% (4 out of 15) of leukoplakia, 13.3% (2 out of 15) of OLPs, and 6.7% (1 out of 15) of PGs. Statistical analysis showed that the prevalence of HPV in OSCC was significantly higher than other groups (P < 0.05). The frequency of HPV-16 and 18 detection in OSCC samples were 40% and 20%, respectively. The prevalence of these high risk HPVs was significantly higher in OSCC group (P < 0.05). The results of the present study show a successive increase of detection rate of HPV-16 and 18 DNAs from low level in samples of pyogenic granuloma and non-premalignant or questionably premalignant lesions of OLP to premalignant leukoplakia and to OSCC. © 2007 Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

A Novel Nanowire Metal Converter for Improvement the Efficiency of the Gas-filled Radiation Detectors

Metal nanowires, due to their special physical properties and also high surface to volume ratio, can have considerable applications in designing and development of novel nano devices. For the radiation shielding, higher absorption coefficient of nano structures in comparison to bulk ones is an advantage. In gas detectors, designing a proper converter with higher efficiency which absorbs higher energy of gamma and X-rays and convert it to free electrons is one of the major requirements. Since the nano wires have higher surface to volume ratio in comparison to the bulk ones, so it is expected that with the same thickness, the generated electrons have higher chance to escape from the surface. In this work, the random Copper nanowires with diameter of 40 nm are deposited on very thin glass slide. This nano structure with thickness of 30 μm is tested with X-rays energy between 12 to 22 keV. The results clearly show that this nano structure for the energy of 20 keV can release electrons three times more than the bulk ones. This novel nanoconverter with higher quantum efficiency can have many applications in high energy physics, medical imaging, and astronomy

Comparison of Several Methods to Estimate Reference Evapotranspiration

Evapotranspiration is one of the major components of the hydrologic cycle is highly important in studies relevant to design and management of irrigation systems. The knowledge of the evapotranspiration of natural ecosystems and plant populations is of fundamental importance in several branches of science, research and practical uses. Nevertheless, the harmonization of the large number of methods and user needs often causes problems. The aim of these analyses was to explore the output range and sensitivity of models of different physical approaches under local conditions. In this study, evapotranspiration (ET0) was determined by several models include: Penman-Monteith-FAO-56, Blaney-Criddle, Hargreaves-Samani modified 2, Pan Evaporation, Jensen-Haise and Thornthwait in the Garebayegan research station at Fars province. Penman- Monteith-FAO-56 was reference model. Results of this research show that Pan Evaporation method, Hargreaves-Samani modified 2 and Blaney-Criddle have not significant difference by Penman-Monteith- FAO-56 in (P value&lt; 0.05 level). Pan Evaporation method has most similarity to Penman-Monteith-FAO-56. Jensen-Haise and Thornthwait models have significant difference by Penman-Monteith-FAO-56 in (P value&lt; 0.01 level). Thornthwait model has most difference by Penman-Monteith-FAO-56

Cancellation of soft and collinear divergences in noncommutative QED

In this paper, we investigate the behavior of non-commutative IR divergences and will also discuss their cancellation in the physical cross sections. The commutative IR (soft) divergences existing in the non-planar diagrams will be examined in order to prove an all order cancellation of these divergences using the Weinberg's method. In non-commutative QED, collinear divergences due to triple photon splitting vertex, were encountered, which are shown to be canceled out by the non-commutative version of KLN theorem. This guarantees that there is no mixing between the Collinear, soft and non-commutative IR divergences

Evaluation of probabilistic models for word frequency and information retrieval

Volume 2 Issue 9 (September 2014

Micelle-Mediated Extraction and Cloud Point Pre-concentration for the Spectrophotometric Determination of Phenol in Water Samples

In this paper, a cloud point extraction method for the determination of trace amounts of phenol by spectrophotometry is described. The method is based on the colour reaction of phenol with diazotized p-nitroanilinean alkaline media and the cloud point extraction of azo dye product using of nonionic surfactant Triton X-114. The effects of reaction and extraction parameters were studied and optimum parameters were established. The calibration graph was linear in the range of 2.0–400 ng mL–1 of phenol. Detection limit based on three times the standard deviation of the blank (3Sb) was 1.0 ng mL–1 and the relative standard deviation (RSD) for 50 ng mL–1 of phenol was 1.73 % (n=10). The proposed method was applied for the determination of phenolin water samples.Keywords: Pre-concentration, cloud point extraction, phenol, spectrophotometry, water sample

A hybrid approach to achieve organizational agility: An empirical study of a food company

Purpose: In today’s intense global competition, agility is advocated as a fundamental characteristic for business survival and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to propose a practical methodology to achieve and enhance organizational agility based on strategic objectives. Design/methodology/approach: In the first step, a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) of the organization being studied are recognized and classified under the perspectives of balanced scorecard (BSC). Critical success factors are then identified by ranking the KPIs according to their importance in achieving organizational strategic objectives using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). In the second step, three houses of quality (HOQs) are constructed sequentially to identify and rank the main agile attributes, agile enablers, and improvement paths. In addition, in order to translate linguistics judgments of practitioners into numerical values in building HOQs, fuzzy logic is employed. Findings: The capability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by applying it to a case of a multi-national food company in Iran. Through the application, the company could find the most suitable improvement paths to improve its organizational agility. Research limitations/implications: A limited number of KPIs were chosen due to computational and visual constraints related to HOQs. Another limitation, similar to other agility studies, which facilitate decision making among agility metrics, was that the metrics were more industry-specific and less inclusive. Practical implications: A strong practical advantage for the application of the methodology over directly choosing agility metrics without linking them is that through the methodology, the right metrics were selected that match organization’s core values and marketing objectives. While metrics may ostensibly seem unrelated or inappropriate, they actually contributed to the right areas where there were gaps between the current and desired level of agility. It would otherwise be impossible to choose the right metrics without a structured methodology. Originality/value: This paper proposes a novel methodology for achieving organizational agility. By utilizing and linking several tools such as BSC, fuzzy TOPSIS, and quality function deployment (QFD), the proposed approach enables organizations to identify the most appropriate agile attributes, agile enablers, and subsequently agile improvement paths