A Psychoanalytical Reading of Jordi Sierra i Fabra’s Kafka and the Traveling Doll

Drawing principally on Freudian classical psychoanalysis and Nathaniel Branden’s concept of self-esteem along with Susan Forward’s notion of toxic parents and Barbara De Angelis’s idea of emotional programming, this paper aims to cast light on Jordi Sierra i Fabra’s Kafka and the Traveling Doll (2006). According to Freud, the psyche consists of three parts the Id, Ego, and the Superego, and core issues define our being fundamental. In addition, this article uses modern psychoanalysis to examine characters’ behavior, especially Kafka. It will reveal that Kafka suffers from low self-esteem, which influences his behavior throughout the novel. It will also suggest that Kafka’s traumatic experiences in childhood psychologically incapacitate him. In addition, the article highlights and discusses several passages from the novel according to psychoanalytic theories, focusing on Kafka, Dora, Elsi, and the doll.

MANAGEMENT OF SIMPLE FEBRILE SEIZURES; A STUDY CONDUCTED IN IMAM HOSPITAL, OROMIEH

ObjectiveWhatever the health field, compliance with the recommended practice guidelines or parameters for diagnosis by specialists and expert health professionals benefits the patients. This study was conducted to determine the whether or not these guidelines or parameters are applied to the evaluation of children with first simple febrile convulsion (SFC) in a regional teaching hospital.Materials & MethodsIn a prospective study conducted on children with SFC, admitted in the Pediatric ward of Imam hospital, Oromieh, records of investigations ordered between Jan 2003 and Dec 2004 for children diagnosed with SFC were collected. Practice parameters of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) were employed as diagnostic standards. Applied practices were compared with AAP recommended practice parameters. Investigations performed included lumbar puncture, complete blood count, CRP, ESR, blood glucose, serum calcium, electrolytes, renal function tests, urinalysis, urine culture, and blood culture, chest X-ray, EEG and CT scan.ResultsTwo hundred and fifty-one consecutive cases, aged 6-60 months, were evaluated. Complete blood count, blood glucose, serum calcium, serum electrolytes, renal function tests, urinalysis, urine culture, and blood culture were tested in all cases (100%). Lumbar puncture, chest X-ray, EEG and CT brain scan had been performed in 10%, 24%, 1.4% and 0.65% of cases, respectively. The mean number of routine investigations was twelve.ConclusionCompared to recommended practice guidelines the results of this study highlighted that children with first SFC had more often than necessary investigation. These, not only resulted in significant expense, they proved to be of little diagnostic value. Compliance with a centrally organized national program would significantly help to improve SFC evaluation.Keywords: Febrile convulsion, Simple fébrile seizure, Lumbar puncture, Convulsion, Feve

Vitamin D in neurological and neurodegenerative patients: Current knowledge and future perspectives

Effective pharmacological treatments for neurological and neurodegenerative patients have not yet been identified. Previous studies show that vitamin D may be involved in neurodevelopment adult brain. Reduced status of vitamin D have been reported in various neurological and neurodegenerative disorders. Insufficient levels of vitamin D in neurological and neurodegenerative have been confirmed. The neuroprotective effect of vitamin D is associated with its effects on neurotrophin synthesis and prevention of oxidative or inflammation damage to nervous tissue. We here review the role of vitamin D in the pathogenesis disease, such as seizure, Pain, depression and anxiety, sleep, sexual dysfunction, addiction, alzheimer's, parkinson's. Adequate administrate of vitamin D in the lifetime seems to be crucial in terms of prevention of these diseases. The aim of this review is to assess the current knowledge related to the role of vitamin D supplementation on the pathogenesis and disease course of neurological and neurodegenerative. © 2018, Advanced Scientific Research. All rights reserved

Prevalence of Anxiety Disorders in Iranian Men in the Last 10 Years: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to provide an estimate of the prevalence of anxiety disorders during 2010-2020 among Iranian men.  Methods: We searched international and national databases including PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane library, SID, and Magiran with related keywords. The selected studies were also qualitatively evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) checklist. I2 test was used to measure the heterogeneity of the studies and a random strategy for meta-analysis was considered using the result. Results: We reviewed 782 articles identified through our search. Then, 51 articles were selected according to the inclusion criteria and, data were extracted from 24 articles. After carefully reviewing these articles, 24 articles were ultimately selected for meta-analysis. The overall estimated prevalence of anxiety among men was 12% (95% CI: 0.11, 0.13). The highest prevalence of anxiety was 50% (95%CI: 0.38-0.62) in Tehran and the lowest prevalence of anxiety was 0.014% (95%CI:0.003-0.025) in Shiraz. Conclusions: Anxiety disorders are common and the substantive identified here explain much of the prevalence of mental disorders. These results showed the potential in men to suffer from anxiety disorders

The Predominant Microorganism During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Toxicological Intensive Care Unit

Background: Although many studies have investigated the prevalence of hospital infections during the COVID-19 pandemic, the results are still challenging. Methods: In this routine data-based study, the medical records of 2213 poisoned patients admitted to the Toxicological Intensive Care Unit (TICU) of the Loghman Hakim Hospital from 2018 to 2022 were retrospectively reviewed. After the implementation of exclusion criteria, 220 patients were separated into the control and case groups. The information of the patients was extracted based on a preplanned form and analyzed with SPSS software, version 26. Results: Unlike the prepandemic period, when Staphylococcus aureus was the predominant pathogen, during the pandemic period, the predominant pathogen in tracheal culture was Acinetobacter spp., which increased from 11.3% in the prepandemic period to 14.9% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, coagulase-negative staphylococci in blood culture and Enterobacter spp. in tracheal culture both significantly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic (P=0.035 and P=0.05, respectively), while Streptococcus viridans in the tracheal culture and Enterococcus in the urine culture both significantly increased (P=0.013). Conclusion: Although in the prepandemic period, S. aureus was usually the most common pathogen among poisoned patients in TICU, the predominant pathogen changed to Acinetobacter spp. during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Some hospital-acquired infections decreased and others increased in a different way between the two groups

Clinical Study Endovascular Treatment of Intracranial Artery Dissection: Clinical and Angiographic Follow-Up

Background. Intracranial artery dissections are rare and many controversies exist about treatment options. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the endovascular approach in patients with an intracranial dissection presenting with different symptoms. Methods. We prospectively evaluated the clinical features and treatment outcomes of 30 patients who had angiographically confirmed nontraumatic intracranial dissections over 4 years. Patients were followed up for 17 months, and their final outcomes were assessed by the modified Rankin Score (mRS) and angiography. Results. Sixteen (53.3%) patients had a dissection of the anterior circulation, whereas 14 (46.7%) had a posterior circulation dissection. Overall, 83.3% of the patients suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Grade IV Hunt and Hess score was seen in 32% of the SAH presenting cases. Parent artery occlusion (PAO) with coil embolization was used in 70% of the cases. The prevalence of overall procedural complications was 23.3%, and all were completely resolved at the end of follow-up. No evidence of in-stent occlusion/stenosis or rebleeding was observed in our cases during follow-up. Angiography results improved more frequently in the PAO with coil embolization group (100%) than in the stent-only-treated group (88.9%) ( = 0.310) and the unruptured dissection group (5/5, 100%) in comparison with the group that presented with SAH (95.8%) ( = 0.833). Conclusion. Favorable outcomes were achieved following an endovascular approach for symptomatic ruptured or unruptured dissecting aneurysms. However, the long-term efficacy and durability of these procedures remain to be determined in a larger series

Cosmology from LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey Data Release 2: Angular Clustering of Radio Sources

Covering ∼5600 deg2 to rms sensitivities of ∼70−100 μJy beam−1, the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey Data Release 2 (LoTSS-DR2) provides the largest low-frequency (∼150 MHz) radio catalogue to date, making it an excellent tool for large-area radio cosmology studies. In this work, we use LoTSS-DR2 sources to investigate the angular two-point correlation function of galaxies within the survey. We discuss systematics in the data and an improved methodology for generating random catalogues, compared to that used for LoTSS-DR1, before presenting the angular clustering for ∼900,000 sources ≥1.5 mJy and a peak signal-to-noise ≥7.5 across ∼80% of the observed area. Using the clustering we infer the bias assuming two evolutionary models. When fitting {angular scales of 0.5≤θ<5°, using a linear bias model, we find LoTSS-DR2 sources are biased tracers of the underlying matter, with a bias of bC=2.14+0.22−0.20 (assuming constant bias) and bE(z=0)=1.79+0.15−0.14 (for an evolving model, inversely proportional to the growth factor), corresponding to bE=2.81+0.24−0.22 at the median redshift of our sample, assuming the LoTSS Deep Fields redshift distribution is representative of our data. This reduces to bC=2.02+0.17−0.16 and bE(z=0)=1.67+0.12−0.12 when allowing preferential redshift distributions from the Deep Fields to model our data. Whilst the clustering amplitude is slightly lower than LoTSS-DR1 (≥2 mJy), our study benefits from larger samples and improved redshift estimates

Studying the Underlying Event in Drell-Yan and High Transverse Momentum Jet Production at the Tevatron

We study the underlying event in proton-antiproton collisions by examining the behavior of charged particles (transverse momentum pT > 0.5 GeV/c, pseudorapidity |\eta| < 1) produced in association with large transverse momentum jets (~2.2 fb-1) or with Drell-Yan lepton-pairs (~2.7 fb-1) in the Z-boson mass region (70 < M(pair) < 110 GeV/c2) as measured by CDF at 1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy. We use the direction of the lepton-pair (in Drell-Yan production) or the leading jet (in high-pT jet production) in each event to define three regions of \eta-\phi space; toward, away, and transverse, where \phi is the azimuthal scattering angle. For Drell-Yan production (excluding the leptons) both the toward and transverse regions are very sensitive to the underlying event. In high-pT jet production the transverse region is very sensitive to the underlying event and is separated into a MAX and MIN transverse region, which helps separate the hard component (initial and final-state radiation) from the beam-beam remnant and multiple parton interaction components of the scattering. The data are corrected to the particle level to remove detector effects and are then compared with several QCD Monte-Carlo models. The goal of this analysis is to provide data that can be used to test and improve the QCD Monte-Carlo models of the underlying event that are used to simulate hadron-hadron collisions.Comment: Submitted to Phys.Rev.

Search for the Higgs boson in events with missing transverse energy and b quark jets produced in proton-antiproton collisions at s**(1/2)=1.96 TeV

We search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with an electroweak vector boson in events with no identified charged leptons, large imbalance in transverse momentum, and two jets where at least one contains a secondary vertex consistent with the decay of b hadrons. We use ~1 fb-1 integrated luminosity of proton-antiproton collisions at s**(1/2)=1.96 TeV recorded by the CDF II experiment at the Tevatron. We find 268 (16) single (double) b-tagged candidate events, where 248 +/- 43 (14.4 +/- 2.7) are expected from standard model background processes. We place 95% confidence level upper limits on the Higgs boson production cross section for several Higgs boson masses ranging from 110 GeV/c2 to 140 GeV/c2. For a mass of 115 GeV/c2 the observed (expected) limit is 20.4 (14.2) times the standard model prediction.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Measurement of the Dipion Mass Spectrum in X(3872) -> J/Psi Pi+ Pi- Decays

We measure the dipion mass spectrum in X(3872)--> J/Psi Pi+ Pi- decays using 360 pb-1 of pbar-p collisions at 1.96 TeV collected with the CDF II detector. The spectrum is fit with predictions for odd C-parity (3S1, 1P1, and 3DJ) charmonia decaying to J/Psi Pi+ Pi-, as well as even C-parity states in which the pions are from Rho0 decay. The latter case also encompasses exotic interpretations, such as a D0-D*0Bar molecule. Only the 3S1 and J/Psi Rho hypotheses are compatible with our data. Since 3S1 is untenable on other grounds, decay via J/Psi Rho is favored, which implies C=+1 for the X(3872). Models for different J/Psi-Rho angular momenta L are considered. Flexibility in the models, especially the introduction of Rho-Omega interference, enable good descriptions of our data for both L=0 and 1.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures -- Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let