The Impact of Education via Short Message Service (SMS) versus that of by e-mail: A Quasi-Experimental Study Among Parents of Children with Leukemia in Shiraz, Iran

Educating parents of children with leukemia increases the quality of provided care to pediatric patients. This study has been designed to determine the impact of education via email and Short Message Service (SMS) on caring knowledge of chemotherapy complications in parents of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The valid and reliable questionnaire consisted of personal information and knowledge of the effects of chemotherapy in children with leukemia. Seventy four SMS were sent to the parents in form of 5 categories of education about how to care complications of chemotherapy during 10 weeks of the study. The findings of this study indicated that, the awareness of parents increased significantly within a week and a month after the education (

Emerging risks from ballast water treatment: The run-up to the International Ballast Water Management Convention

AbstractUptake and discharge of ballast water by ocean-going ships contribute to the worldwide spread of aquatic invasive species, with negative impacts on the environment, economies, and public health. The International Ballast Water Management Convention aims at a global answer. The agreed standards for ballast water discharge will require ballast water treatment. Systems based on various physical and/or chemical methods were developed for on-board installation and approved by the International Maritime Organization. Most common are combinations of high-performance filters with oxidizing chemicals or UV radiation. A well-known problem of oxidative water treatment is the formation of disinfection by-products, many of which show genotoxicity, carcinogenicity, or other long-term toxicity. In natural biota, genetic damages can affect reproductive success and ultimately impact biodiversity. The future exposure towards chemicals from ballast water treatment can only be estimated, based on land-based testing of treatment systems, mathematical models, and exposure scenarios. Systematic studies on the chemistry of oxidants in seawater are lacking, as are data about the background levels of disinfection by-products in the oceans and strategies for monitoring future developments. The international approval procedure of ballast water treatment systems compares the estimated exposure levels of individual substances with their experimental toxicity. While well established in many substance regulations, this approach is also criticised for its simplification, which may disregard critical aspects such as multiple exposures and long-term sub-lethal effects. Moreover, a truly holistic sustainability assessment would need to take into account factors beyond chemical hazards, e.g. energy consumption, air pollution or waste generation

Characterization of Bacteria in Ballast Water Using MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry

To evaluate a rapid and cost-effective method for monitoring bacteria in ballast water, several marine bacterial isolates were characterized by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Since International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations are concerned with the unintended transportation of pathogenic bacteria through ballast water, emphasis was placed on detecting species of Vibrio, enterococci and coliforms. Seawater samples collected from the North Sea were incubated in steel ballast tanks and the presence of potentially harmful species of Pseudomonas was also investigated. At the genus-level, the identification of thirty six isolates using MALDI-TOF MS produced similar results to those obtained by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. No pathogenic species were detected either by 16S rRNA gene analysis or by MALDI-TOF MS except for the opportunistically pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In addition, in house software that calculated the correlation coefficient values (CCV) of the mass spectral raw data and their variation was developed and used to allow the rapid and efficient identification of marine bacteria in ballast water for the first time

Remote temperature monitoring device using a multiple patients-coordinator set design approach

This paper aims to develop a prototype for a web-based wireless remote temperature monitoring device for patients. This device uses a patient and coordinator set design approach involving the measurement, transmission, receipt and recording of patients’ temperatures via the MiWi wireless network. The results of experimental tests on the proposed system indicated a wider distance coverage and reasonable temperature resolution and standard deviation. The system could display the temperature and patient information remotely via a graphical-user interface as shown in the tests on three healthy participants. By continuously monitoring participants’ temperatures, this device will likely improve the quality of the health care of the patients in normal ward as less human workload is involved

Proteomic-based biotyping reveals hidden diversity within a microalgae culture collection: An example using Dunaliella

Accurate and defendable taxonomic identification of microalgae strains is vital for culture collections, industry and academia; particularly when addressing issues of intellectual property. We demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) biotyping to deliver rapid and accurate strain separation, even in situations where standard molecular tools prove ineffective. Highly distinctive MALDI spectra were obtained for thirty two biotechnologically interesting Dunaliella strains plus strains of Arthrospira, Chlorella, Isochrysis, Tetraselmis and a range of culturable co-occurring bacteria. Spectra were directly compared with genomic DNA sequences (internal transcribed spacer, ITS). Within individual Dunaliella isolates MALDI discriminated between strains with identical ITS sequences, thereby emphasising and enhancing knowledge of the diversity within microalgae culture collections. Further, MALDI spectra did not vary with culture age or growth stage during the course of the experiment; therefore MALDI presents stable and accurate strain-specific signature spectra. Bacterial contamination did not affect MALDI’s discriminating power. Biotyping by MALDI-TOF-MS will prove effective in situations wherein precise strain identification is vital, for example in cases involving intellectual property disputes and in monitoring and safeguarding biosecurity. MALDI should be accepted as a biotyping tool to complement and enhance standard molecular taxonomy for microalgae

Dimension reduction and clustering of high dimensional data using auto-associative neural networks

The task to capture and interpret information hidden inside high-dimensional data can be considered very complicated and challenging. Usually, dimension reduction technique may be considered as the first step to data analysis and exploration. The focus of this paper is on high-dimensional data dimension reduction using a supervised artificial neural networks technique known as Auto-Associative Neural Networks (AANN). The AANN can be considered as a powerful tool in data analysis and clustering with the ability to deal with linear and nonlinear correlation among variables. This technique is sometimes referred to as nonlinear principal component analysis (NLPCA), Encoding-Decoding networks, or bottleneck neural networks (BNN) due to its unique structure. It reduces high-dimensional data into low-dimensional data on its bottleneck layer which can later be used for data transmission, clustering and visualization. In this paper, a structurally flexible AANN is developed by using high level computer language, applied and studied on two case studies of Iris flowers and Italian olive oils datasets. The purpose of the work was to investigate the ability of AANN to reduce dimension of high-dimensional data on small (Iris) and large (Olive) datasets. The results have shown that AANN has been able to compress high-dimensional data into only one or two non-linear principal components at its bottleneck layer with the highest accuracy of 98.9% and 82.1% for both datasets respectively. AANN has also managed to perform accurately in both reducing dimension and clustering data by only using small portion of training dataset

A study of the effect of ship size on components selection for an LNG carrier

The primary aim of any business is to maximise profit for a given level of effort. This is equally true for liquefied natural gas (LNG) transportation in which any possible reduction in capital and operational costs will attract the attention of the ship-owner. The main strategy for achieving this is to select the optimal combination of the main components of the vessel based on a given objective. There are no fixed regulations or formulae that need to be applied in selecting the combination of components; however several techniques have been developed over the years to assist with the process of ship design, such as the ship design spiral. The decision making processes for the selection of these main components need to be implemented at a preliminary stage because once these main components have been identified, the overall costs will be established and will be constrained over the ship’s life span. Modifications may be made to the selected components at a later stage, however this would come at a considerable cost and would incur significant programme delay because it is not simply a matter of buying a new component, it may also involve a significant re-arrangement of the ship’s layout in order to accommodate the new component. This would therefore, require the ship owner to fund both additional capital costs as well as the ongoing operational costs. This paper focuses on the effect of ship size on the selection of components for an LNG carrier.</jats:p

IHE, Solution for integration of information systems and PACS

PACS is used as a way to store images and matches well with the workflow in the radiology department and can spread to other parts of hospital. Integration with other PACS and other hospital systems like radiology information system (RIS), hospital information system (HIS), and electronic patient records has been completely done, but there are still problems. PACS also provide good conditions for setting up Tele-radiology. The next step for PACS is where hospitals and health care organizations share photos in integrated electronic patient record. Among the different ways for sharing photos between different hospitals, IHE (integrating the health care enterprise) standard indexes the cross-enterprise document sharing profile (XDS) and allows sharing photos from various hospitals even if their PACS has different brands and different vendors. Application of XDS is useful for sharing images between health care organizations without duplicating them in a central archive. Images need to be indexed in a central registry. In the XDS profile, IHE defines an indexing mechanism for printing and indexing images in the central document registry. IHE also defines mechanisms to be used by each hospital to retrieve images, regardless of storing them in hospital PACS