Educational Ethics in Academic Environment: Medical Students' Perspectives

Background and Objective: Educational ethics imply values such as honesty, reliance on one's own personal effort, not to abuse the efforts of others, and respect the dignity and respect for others. Students are faced with different situations in which they show various moral and immoral behaviors. This study aimed to explore medical students' viewpoints and experiences at Golestan University of Medical Sciences about ethics in academic environment in 2013. Materials and Methods: In this qualitative study a purposive sampling was used with maximum variation and 12 medical students participated in the research. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews. At least an open question "When I say ethics in education or educational environment, what comes to your mind" was repeated in all the interviews. The interviews recorded and transcribed line by line and then analyzed according to "conventional content analysis" method. Results: "Respecting teacher dignity", "preserving dignity of classroom", "respecting and maintaining dignity for classmates", "seeking for knowledge and sciences” emerged as the main themes of the current study. Conclusion: University students considered learning environment as a sacred place; conforming its expected rules and ethics would be mandatory. Abnormal behavior causes not only loss of students dignity but also could be harmful to the calmness of educational atmosphere and may evoke different unpleasant pessimistic ideas about such academic environment

A numerical method for functional Hammerstein integro-differential equations

In this paper, a numerical method is presented to solve functional Hammerstein integro-differential equations. The presented method combines the successive approximations method with trapezoidal quadrature rule and natural cubic spline interpolation to solve the mentioned equations. The existence and uniqueness of the problem is also investigated. The convergence and numerical stability of the problem are proved, and finally, the accuracy of the method is verified by presenting some numerical computations

GB virus C viremia and anti-E2 antibody response among hemodialysis patients in Gorgan, Iran

Background: GB Virus C is a blood-borne virus and a member of Flaviviridae, like hepatitis C that is distributed globally and puts hemodialysis patients at high risk of developing liver disease. The clinical significance of GBV-C in this population remains unclear

Nutritional value of Jack knife clam Solen dactylus in the ripeness and sexual rest stages

In this study, 60 specimens of Jack knife clam Solen dactylus (Von Cosel, 1989) were collected randomly in autumn 2007 and spring 2008 from 5 stations (intertidal pools) in Golshahr coast of Bandar Abbas, Persian Gulf. After sampling, specimens were frozen and transferred to the laboratory for further biometric parameters measurements. The mean (±SD) anterior- posterior length in autumn and spring were 78.92±17.72 and 77.37±16.20mm, respectively. The mean (±SD) total weight was 9.53±4.88g in autumn and 8.43±4.46g in spring. Moisture, ash, protein and total lipid in soft tissues of clams were measured. These parameters in autumn and spring were 80.23 ± 0.70, 3.42±0.02, 11.3±0.10, 0.86±0.01% and 76.16±1.75, 2.3±0.07, 11.79±0.05, 0.55±0.02%, respectively. The values of moisture, ash and total lipid were higher in autumn (ripeness stage) compared to spring; whereas, the value of protein in autumn was slightly lower than spring. There was no significant difference between the mean of moisture before and after the spawning (P>0.05). The mean ash, protein and total lipid showed a significant difference in the two seasons (P<0.05)

Plasma lipid peroxidation zinc and erythrocyte cu-zn superoxide dismutase enzyme activity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Gorgan City (South East of the Caspian Sea)

The aim of this study was to determine the changes of plasma lipid peroxidation, zinc and erythrocyte Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase activity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and healthy control in Gorgan city. Fifty type 2 patients with diabetes mellitus and 50 people without diabetes were included in this randomized study. None of patients studied had any diabetic complications. The levels of plasma malondialdehyde and zinc from type 2 diabetes mellitus patients (6.24±0.85 nmol mL-1 and 116.78±5.51 μ dL-1) and control groups (3.63±0.97 nmol mL-1 and 146.86±9.06 μg dL-1) were determined. Erythrocyte Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase activity from patients with diabetes (675.34±60.89 U g-1 Hb) and control groups (1052.70± 52.76 U g-1 Hb) were determined. The increased plasma lipid peroxidation and decreased plasma zinc and erythrocyte Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase activity that we observed in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus may predispose to the development of cardiovascular complications. We propose that diabetic patients may have elevated requirement for antioxidants. Supplementation with zinc and vitamin or dietary free radical scavengers such as vitamins E and C or tomato, orange and etc. have a potential role in boosting antioxidant-related defences and maybe important in patients with diabetes

Distributed Holistic Clustering on Linked Data

Link discovery is an active field of research to support data integration in the Web of Data. Due to the huge size and number of available data sources, efficient and effective link discovery is a very challenging task. Common pairwise link discovery approaches do not scale to many sources with very large entity sets. We here propose a distributed holistic approach to link many data sources based on a clustering of entities that represent the same real-world object. Our clustering approach provides a compact and fused representation of entities, and can identify errors in existing links as well as many new links. We support a distributed execution of the clustering approach to achieve faster execution times and scalability for large real-world data sets. We provide a novel gold standard for multi-source clustering, and evaluate our methods with respect to effectiveness and efficiency for large data sets from the geographic and music domains

Synthesis and Optimization of Reversible Circuits - A Survey

Reversible logic circuits have been historically motivated by theoretical research in low-power electronics as well as practical improvement of bit-manipulation transforms in cryptography and computer graphics. Recently, reversible circuits have attracted interest as components of quantum algorithms, as well as in photonic and nano-computing technologies where some switching devices offer no signal gain. Research in generating reversible logic distinguishes between circuit synthesis, post-synthesis optimization, and technology mapping. In this survey, we review algorithmic paradigms --- search-based, cycle-based, transformation-based, and BDD-based --- as well as specific algorithms for reversible synthesis, both exact and heuristic. We conclude the survey by outlining key open challenges in synthesis of reversible and quantum logic, as well as most common misconceptions.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figures, 2 table

Seroepidemiologic evaluation of anti-toxoplasma antibodies among women in North of Iran

This study is a cross sectional and descriptive study. Sample population was the women referred for marriage consultation to Gorgan Marriage Consultation Center in 2004. The prevalence of toxoplasma antibodies (IgG, IgM) was determined by ELISA method. Blood samples were collected randomly from 300 women referred to the center for consultation. They were transferred to the laboratory for antibodies determination. Gorgan located in north of Iran and south east of Caspian sea. The results showed that the general prevalence to the positive cases based on high titer of IgG was 48.3% and of IgM was 11.7%. There was not any relation between positive cases and age, education, place of residence, job, keeping domestic animals (except cat) vegetable consumption and wash-up, but there was a relation between the positive cases of IgM and keeping cat at home (PV<.025). More over 51.7% of pregnant women in Gorgan were seronegative and the were prone to acute toxoplasmosis during their pregnancy. The results of this study confirm that the determination of the diagnostic toxoplasmosis is an necessary test during pregnancy. © 2007 Asian Network for Scientific Information