Jellyfish Stings Rarely Induced Infectious Cellulitis: First Aid Remedies as Double-Edged Sword

A 27-year-old woman was presented with a burning like lesion. The skin lesion was developed after a jellyfish stings (Rhizostomae) while she was swimming in Pattaya Sea in Thailand, five days prior to her presentation. Instantly after jellyfish stings, she was taken into the ship for rescue operations. The ship personnel applied lemon juice and baking soda to the injured area believing that this remedy is efficient in this situation. The next day, she referred to a local hospital at Pattaya because she was suffering from a horrible pain in her arm and then she was discharged on oral Dicloxacillin and topical Hydrocortisone. The edema was extended the next days which intensified her pain. At this time, she was transferred to Loghman Hakim Hospital, Tehran, Iran. At admission, erythematous edematous patch with centrally grouped vesicles on the left arm was observed (Figure 1). The patient had a high-grade fever (38.1 °C) and was agitated due to her intolerable pain. Other vital signs were normal. In the sonography imaging, soft tissue edema was seen without any collection. According to the clinical and imaging findings, the diagnosis of soft tissue cellulitis due to jellyfish stings was made. The patient admitted to infections ward and intravenous antibiotics including Cefazolin at dose of 2000 mg every eight hours and Vancomycin at dose of 1000 mg every 12 hours initiated. After five days of hospitalization, the patient was recovered from left arm edema. Also, her pain decreased gradually and no obvious erythema was seen. The patient was finally discharged with a satisfactory clinical respons

Jellyfish Stings Rarely Induced Infectious Cellulitis: First Aid Remedies as Double-Edged Sword

A 27-year-old woman was presented with a burning like lesion. The skin lesion was developed after a jellyfish stings (Rhizostomae) while she was swimming in Pattaya Sea in Thailand, five days prior to her presentation. Instantly after jellyfish stings, she was taken into the ship for rescue operations. The ship personnel applied lemon juice and baking soda to the injured area believing that this remedy is efficient in this situation. The next day, she referred to a local hospital at Pattaya because she was suffering from a horrible pain in her arm and then she was discharged on oral Dicloxacillin and topical Hydrocortisone. The edema was extended the next days which intensified her pain. At this time, she was transferred to Loghman Hakim Hospital, Tehran, Iran. At admission, erythematous edematous patch with centrally grouped vesicles on the left arm was observed (Figure 1). The patient had a high-grade fever (38.1 °C) and was agitated due to her intolerable pain. Other vital signs were normal. In the sonography imaging, soft tissue edema was seen without any collection. According to the clinical and imaging findings, the diagnosis of soft tissue cellulitis due to jellyfish stings was made. The patient admitted to infections ward and intravenous antibiotics including Cefazolin at dose of 2000 mg every eight hours and Vancomycin at dose of 1000 mg every 12 hours initiated. After five days of hospitalization, the patient was recovered from left arm edema. Also, her pain decreased gradually and no obvious erythema was seen. The patient was finally discharged with a satisfactory clinical respons

Mythical Critique of the Hero's Journey in "Sam Nameh" Poem According to Campbell's Theory

By introducing the theory of individuality, Jung has opened a new chapter in literary criticism and provided a forum for the activities of many contemporary theorists, including Joseph Campbell. Campbell, enumerate one of the common themes in myths that have a similar structure to each other and follow the single target as the hero's adventurous journey and according to that brought up the monomyth theory. In this research, enlisting from the myth criticism method and according to Campbell's classification, the hero's journey in Sam Nameh’s poem that occurs in romantic adventure format was checked. Findings of research show that although the order of total pattern is not observed in this journey and all of the levels were not performed completely, the hero's journey differs slightly from Campbell's pattern. The hero at his own symbolic journey, with the discovery and recognition of the unknown and damaged aspects of his own psyche, was able to shape his shattered and unbalanced character by passing beyond the boundaries of his - limited- self and experiencing his own individuality by psychological evolution

Edge detection in digital images using Ant Colony Optimization

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is an optimization algorithm inspired by the behavior of real ant colonies to approximate the solutions of difficult optimization problems. In this paper, ACO is introduced to tackle the image edge detection problem. The proposed approach is based on the distribution of ants on an image; ants try to find possible edges by using a state transition function. Experimental results show that the proposed method compared to standard edge detectors is less sensitive to Gaussian noise and gives finer details and thinner edges when compared to earlier ant-based approaches

Evaluating the effect of a herb on the control of blood glucose and insulin-resistance in patients with advanced type 2 diabetes (a double-blind clinical trial)

Background: Different benefits of various herbal medicines in decreasing blood sugar have been reported in different clinical trials so far. Considering the growing tendency toward these combinations and the booming market, inappropriate advice is growing accordingly. Hence, it is necessary to evaluate the effects and possible complications of such combinations on health status and blood glucose control. Methods: Two 38-subject groups were formed and a 12-week treatment program was administered for both groups. The inclusion criteria were failure to control blood glucose with two oral medicines, unwillingness to inject insulin. The medicine was prepared in capsules by Booali Company. Each capsule weighed 750 mg and contained nettle leaf 20 (w/w), berry leaf 10 (w/w), onion and garlic 20 (w/w), fenugreek seed 20 (w/w), walnut leaf 20 (w/w), and cinnamon bark 10 (w/w) all in powder. Results: At the beginning of the study, there was no significant difference between the subjects regarding the evaluated parameters, but after the intervention, the level of glucose was significantly lower in fasting (P=0.0001) and 2-hour postprandial(P=0.002) levels. The level of glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) (P=0.0001) also decreased from 0.33±9.72 to 0.20±8.39 . Finally, the level of insulin resistance reduced from 1.9±4.1 to 1.4±2.6 (P=0.001) after consuming herbal medicine. Conclusion: According to the results of the current study, the herbal combination was effective in controlling blood sugar, and considering the reduction of HbA1c by 1.31 , it seems that the herbal combination is an effective medicine to treat diabetes. &#160

Hybrid Microfluidic Device for High Throughput Isolation of Cells Using Aptamer Functionalized Diatom Frustules

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), secreted from primary and metastatic malignancies, hold a wealth of essential diagnostic and prognostic data for multiple cancers. Significantly, the information contained within these cells may hold the key to understanding cancer metastasis, both individually and fundamentally. Accordingly, developing ways to identify, isolate and interrogate CTCs plays an essential role in modern cancer research. Unfortunately, CTCs are typically present in the blood in vanishingly low titers and mixed with other blood components, making their isolation and analysis extremely challenging. Herein, we report the design, fabrication and optimization of a microfluidic device capable of automatically isolating CTCs from whole blood. This is achieved in two steps, via the passive viscoelastic separation of CTCs and white blood cells (WBCs) from red blood cells (RBCs), and subsequent active magnetophoretic separation of CTCs from WBCs. We detail the specific geometries required to balance the elastic and inertial forces required for successful passive separation of RBCs, and the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to optimize active magnetophoretic separation. We subsequently describe the use of magnetic biosilica frustules, extracted from Chaetoceros sp. diatoms, to fluorescently tag CTCs and facilitate magnetic isolation. Finally, we use our microfluidic platform to separate HepG2-derived CTCs from whole blood, demonstrating exceptional CTC recovery (94.6%) and purity (89.7%

Relationship between Job Stress, Job Satisfaction, and Related Factors among Health Center Employees

Background and Objective: Job satisfaction and occupational stress are two factors affecting employees’ productivity at the workplace in developed organizations. Occupational stress causes various prevalent physical and psychological effects, which in turn leads to poor job satisfaction. Despite many studies in this field on health groups, less attention has been paid to health workers. Further research is thus needed to explore and explain how job stress and job satisfaction are related to personal work and organizational factors among health center workers. Materials and Methods: This analytic cross-sectional study was performed from winter 2018 to spring 2019 among health workers of a city in Markazi province, Iran. Data collection tools were demographic and individual characteristics questionnaire, Job Description Index (JDI) questionnaire, and Occupational Stress Questionnaire (OSQ, Davies). Data were analyzed using the SPSS software (version 20). Results: The results showed that occupational stress is generally higher in women (119/848) than in men (108/122), and women’s job satisfaction (242/450) is lower than that of men (262/682). In addition, there was a negative and significant relationship between occupational stress and job satisfaction (r=0.001, P=0.783) at the significance of level P<0.05. Multivariate regression findings also revealed that occupational stress can predict job satisfaction (β=-0.783, P=0.001). Moreover, the highest occupational stress and the lowest job satisfaction were related to healthcare workers. Conclusion: In general, stress and job satisfaction were obtained at a moderate level in this study, and there was a negative relationship between the two variables. Given that dissatisfaction is mainly seen in the discussion of promotions, salaries, and benefits, it is necessary to take measures to reduce stress, improve economic conditions, and create fair promotion conditions

Collocational Competence Level of Medical English among Iranian Medical Students

Collocational competence is considered to be an important factor of fluency in a language. In Iran, medical texts are mainly in English and medical students have to pass 6 credits of medical English. In these courses a large number of medical terms should be covered in addition to medical English. We compared medical English collocational competence level of the students before and after passing English for the students of Medicine 1 and 2 (ESM). Three groups of medical students who had passed only General English (GE), both GE and ESM1, and GE, ESM 1 and 2 were compared with each other. Total collocational competence level of the students was low which indicated that ESM courses did not have positive effect on their collocational competence level. Moreover, their overall receptive collocational competence level was higher than their productive competence. It was concluded that improving medical collocational competence level requires more exposure time, explicit emphasis on medical collocations in classrooms and offering medical English as a separate course from medical terminology

The Effect of training Emotional Support to Fathers on Acute Stress Disorder in Mothers of Preterm Infants Admitted to Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Background & aim: Prematurity and the admission of preterm infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) may pose emotional and practical challenges for parents and can cause acute stress disorder (ASD) in their mothers in case of mismanagement. Emotional support training to fathers may prevent mothers from these symptoms. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the effect of training emotional support to fathers on ASD symptoms in the mothers of preterm newborns admitted to NICUs. Methods: This clinical trial was conducted on 61 parents, 31 of whom were assigned into the intervention group, with preterm infants admitted in NICUs of Omolbanin Women's Hospital, Imam Reza Hospital, and Ghaem Hospital in Mashhad, Iran, 2016. The parents in intervention group were trained the skills of emotional support in one 120-minute session. Then, they received the educational content in the form of a brochure. The participants in control group received routine care. Prior to the intervention and four weeks after the birth, the mothers in both groups completed the Stanford Acute Stress Reaction Questionnaire (SASRQ) and the emotional support scale (ESS). Data analysis was performed using independent and paired t-tests, as well as Mann-Whitney U, Chi-squared, and Fisher’s exact test and two-way analysis of variance in SPSS software, version 16.  Results: The mean scores of SASRQ obtained by the intervention and control groups were 20.7±11.0 and 54.6±24.3, respectively in post-intervention phase. The results of the independent t-test showed a significant difference between the groups in terms of SASRQ scores (

Association of rs4784227-CASC16 (LOC643714 locus) and rs4782447-ACSF3 polymorphisms and their association with breast cancer risk among Iranian population

TOX3 and FOXA1 proteins are believed to be involved in the susceptibility of breast cancer. rs4782447 and rs4784227, as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), located at the 16q may affect the FOXA1 DNA binding sequence change and therefore may enhance the FOXA1-binding affinity to the promoter of TOX3 gene. This study aimed to investigate the association of these SNPs/haplotypes with breast cancer susceptibility in Iranian population. We conducted a case-control study of 1072 blood samples (505 breast cancer patients and 567 controls). Genotyping of rs4784227 and rs4782447 SNPs was carried out by ARMS PCR. Moreover, statistical analysis was done by SPSS 20.0 (IBM Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and SNP analyser 2.0. There was a strongly significant statistical association between alleles and genotypes of rs4784227 with breast cancer susceptibility in a group of Iranian women (p<0.05). Moreover, a significant association was demonstrated between TA haplotype and breast cancer risk (OR=0.78; 95% CI (0.62-0.96); P-value=0.025). In this respect, although we did not observe a statistically significant association between rs4782447 with breast cancer susceptibility, the combination of the alleles of rs4784227 and rs4782447 SNPs may also affect the risk. This is in line with other studies where they suggest these SNPs as risk-associated polymorphisms by which lead to disruption of as a distal enhancer, FOXA1, binding and following that change in TOX3 expression that can eventually affect the risk of breast cancer