The menopausal age and associated factors in Gorgan, Iran

Background: Considering the physical, emotional and psychological complications of early or delayed menopause on women's life, it is necessary to determine associated factors of menopause age. This study designed to determine menopausal age and associated factors in women of Gorgan, i.e. the capital of Golestan province in the north-east of Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 804 menopausal women in Gorgan were selected via two-stage sampling method in 2009. The study included only women who had undergone natural menopause and had their last menstrual bleeding at least one year before. Data were gathered through structured questionnaire that included individual characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, menstrual and fertility characteristics and climacteric complaints. Socioeconomic status was defined using principal component analysis. Data were analyzed with Tstudent's and ANOVA tests using SPSS version 16 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA) for Windows. Results: The mean menopause age was 47.6±4.45 years with the median age of 48 years. The mean menopause age in women with first pregnancy before 30 years (47.58±4.47years), without pregnancy (46.26±4.90years) and without delivery (46.30±4.47years) was significantly lower than others (p 0.05). Socioeconomic status was not associated significantly with menopause age (p>0.05). Conclusion: This study illustrated that menstrual and fertility factors have influence on menopausal age while socioeconomic factors were not effective

Seminatural propagation and rearing of roach (Rutilus rutilus caspicus)

A research experiment was conducted to provide a protocol for seminatural propagation and rearing of Roach up to release size. The attempt was made to combat the declining trend in the population size and catch of the fish in the Caspian Sea. The optimum temperature for spawning brood-stocks lasts from middle March to late April when the ambient temperature range is 12-17°C. During the four months research period, brood stocks were caught in the estuary of the Gorganrood in Golestan Province, north east Iran. The stocks were released into 2 hectare earthen ponds enriched with manure and fertilizers. Artificial spawning grounds made of pine branches were placed in the ponds. Ponds were stocked with 700 female breeders with an average weight of 150 grams and around 350 male breeders weighing 100 grams on average. Spawning and fertilization of eggs occurred in the ponds of which an estimated 80-90% eyed that were observed from the fifth day onwards. The starting of hatching was observed in the 6th day and yolk sac absorption was observed in day 4 to 6. The lame were fed on natural zooplankton and artificial food. Assessment of 146 fries for ingested food indicated that the fries fed on Rotifer (Rotatoria sp. and Daphnia sp.) in the ponds. The length-weight relationship was not significantly different among the ponds and also specific growth rates (SGR) did not show any difference in the fries. The relative gut length in the fries were smaller than I (RLG<l) and fries with an average weight of 0.5 to 1 gram were released into their natural habitat

Collection and assessment of traditional medicinal plants used by the indigenous people of Dastena in Iran

Introduction: Nowadays, traditional and herbal medicines have attracted the attention of researchers all around the world and despite the development of synthetic drugs, demand for plant-based medicines is growing. The main reason for this growing trend is increasing public concerns about the adverse effects of synthetic medicines. Traditional medicine and ethnobotany are two important issues that should be noted to achieve effective herbal medicines with considerable therapeutic effects. Traditional medicine is based on experience of people over centuries and ethno-botany is based on recognition of the native plants. Iran has very high plant diversity because of its different climate, ecosystems and soil conditions. Regarding increasing demand for medicinal plants, this study aimed to collect some native plant varieties growing in Dastena and to review some of local and folk application of these plants.Methods: In the present study, the plant species were collected during two consecutive years (2013-2014) and systematically identified. The traditional and local uses of collected plants were questioned through interviews with local people.Results: In this study, 90 plant species belonging to 30 families were collected and identified. They had various therapeutic effects. Lamiaceae and Asteraceae families had the highest use among the collected plants.Conclusion: Results of this study showed that herbal medicines in this area are mostly used to treat digestive and respiratory system disorders. They have economical values and should be studied and explored more detailed

Online discussion compensates for suboptimal timing of supportive information presentation in a digitally supported learning environment

This study used a sequential set-up to investigate the consecutive effects of timing of supportive information presentation (information before vs. information during the learning task clusters) in interactive digital learning materials (IDLMs) and type of collaboration (personal discussion vs. online discussion) in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) on student knowledge construction. Students (N = 87) were first randomly assigned to the two information presentation conditions to work individually on a case-based assignment in IDLM. Students who received information during learning task clusters tended to show better results on knowledge construction than those who received information only before each cluster. The students within the two separate information presentation conditions were then randomly assigned to pairs to discuss the outcomes of their assignments under either the personal discussion or online discussion condition in CSCL. When supportive information had been presented before each learning task cluster, online discussion led to better results than personal discussion. When supportive information had been presented during the learning task clusters, however, the online and personal discussion conditions had no differential effect on knowledge construction. Online discussion in CSCL appeared to compensate for suboptimal timing of presentation of supportive information before the learning task clusters in IDLM

Epidemiology of Accidents and Traumas in Qom Province in 2010

Background: Accidents are the most important public health challenges in our society. To prevent\n the accidents, the identification of their epidemiological features seems necessary. Objectives: This study was conducted to reveal the epidemiological features of accidents and their\n casualties in Qom province in 2010. Patients and Methods: A cross–sectional study was conducted on 29426 injured people referred to Qom\n province hospitals in 2010. Information about place, time, type of accidents and traumas\n and demographic variables had been collected in a veteran hospital. Data were analyzed\n by SPSS (version 16) software, using chi-square test and logistic regression. Results: The incidence of accidents was about 27/1000 per year. The incidences of traffic\n accidents, motorcycle accidents, violence, burns, poisoning and suicides were 3, 1.6,\n 1.2, 0.3, 0.8, 0.37 cases per 1000 people respectively. Strikes (65%) and falls (12%)\n were the main causes of traumas. Forty-six percent of all injuries had occurred in 16 -\n 30 years groups. Most frequent accidents were as follows: fall (97%) and strike (50%) in\n < 12, violence (46%) in 20 - 29, suicide (71%) in 15 - 29, poisoning (34%) and burns\n (20%) among < 5 years old. Pedestrian and motorcycle accidents among +60 years old\n people were significantly higher than other (P = 0.000). Odds ratio for suicide among\n female was about 3.36 and in 16 - 30 age-group was 15.7 more than +60 years old group (P\n = 0.000). Conclusions: Most traumas in Qom province occurred among younger age-groups and strikes and falls\n are the main causes of such traumas. Therefore, safeties to prevent falls and traffic\n regulations to reduce strikes can be effective strategies

ShapeCodes: Self-Supervised Feature Learning by Lifting Views to Viewgrids

We introduce an unsupervised feature learning approach that embeds 3D shape information into a single-view image representation. The main idea is a self-supervised training objective that, given only a single 2D image, requires all unseen views of the object to be predictable from learned features. We implement this idea as an encoder-decoder convolutional neural network. The network maps an input image of an unknown category and unknown viewpoint to a latent space, from which a deconvolutional decoder can best "lift" the image to its complete viewgrid showing the object from all viewing angles. Our class-agnostic training procedure encourages the representation to capture fundamental shape primitives and semantic regularities in a data-driven manner---without manual semantic labels. Our results on two widely-used shape datasets show 1) our approach successfully learns to perform "mental rotation" even for objects unseen during training, and 2) the learned latent space is a powerful representation for object recognition, outperforming several existing unsupervised feature learning methods.Comment: To appear at ECCV 201

Visualising kinematics of an elastic Ossur ESR prosthetic foot using novel low-cost optical tracking systems

A novel method of measuring kinematics of elastic body is the subject of this investigation. Unlike kinematics of rigid body large elastic deformation tends to modify the dynamics of motion. In the case of amputee runner the change in kinematics of the foot depends on the stiffness, body mass and running beat frequency. Current measurement techniques, such as gait analysis assumes rigid elements. Currently there are inertia measurement unit (IMU) based systems that uses accelerometers and gyro to determine acceleration, velocities and orientations of the sensors. They are not capable of measuring changes in lengths or positions of the objects that they are attached to. For that reason predicting velocities and displacement by integrating acceleration is not always viable due to time step limits of the integrations that are necessary. Here a new optical device is developed and presented that is accurate and is practically error free to monitor Foot elastic deformation. In this paper the Dynamic elastic response of Ossur Running foot is being investigated using this device. The data generated show complete phase synchronisation with IMU but much better accuracy in terms of velocity and relative displacement of the feet due to flexure as a result of elastic response to Impulse

Unsupervised Holistic Image Generation from Key Local Patches

We introduce a new problem of generating an image based on a small number of key local patches without any geometric prior. In this work, key local patches are defined as informative regions of the target object or scene. This is a challenging problem since it requires generating realistic images and predicting locations of parts at the same time. We construct adversarial networks to tackle this problem. A generator network generates a fake image as well as a mask based on the encoder-decoder framework. On the other hand, a discriminator network aims to detect fake images. The network is trained with three losses to consider spatial, appearance, and adversarial information. The spatial loss determines whether the locations of predicted parts are correct. Input patches are restored in the output image without much modification due to the appearance loss. The adversarial loss ensures output images are realistic. The proposed network is trained without supervisory signals since no labels of key parts are required. Experimental results on six datasets demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs favorably on challenging objects and scenes.Comment: 16 page

An Overview of the Running Performance of Athletes with Lower-Limb Amputation at the Paralympic Games 2004–2012

This paper analyses the performances of lower-limb amputees in the 100, 200 and 400 m running events from the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Paralympic Games. In this paper, four hypotheses are pursued. In the first, it investigates whether the running performance of lower-limb amputees over three consecutive Paralympic Games has changed. In the second, it asks whether a bi-lateral amputee has a competitive advantage over a uni-lateral amputee. In the third, the effect of blade classification has been considered and we attempt to see whether amputees in various classifications have different level of performance. Finally, it is considered whether the final round of competition obtains different levels of performance in comparison to the qualification heats. Based on the outcomes of these investigations, it is proposed that future amputee-based running events should be undertaken with separate and not combined events for the T42, T43 and T44 classifications at the Paralympic Games