Synthesis and characterization of poly (styrene-g-ethylene oxide)

Imperial Users onl

Effects of feeding strategy, fiber source of the diet, and crude protein content on productive performance of broiler breeder hens

A 12-wk experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of feeding program, dietary fiber, and CP content of the diet on productive performance of Ross broiler breeder hens (41 wk of age). There were 12 treatments arranged factorially with 2 levels of CP (14.5 vs. 17.4%), 3 fiber sources (0 vs. 3% inulin vs. 3% cellulose), and 2 levels of feed intake (160 vs. 208 g/d) that corresponded to restricted (R) or ad libitum (AL) feeding systems. The experimental diets contained 2,800 kcal ME with either 0.65 (14.5% CP) or 0.78% Lys (17.4% CP)

Acanthamoeba genotype T4 from the UK and Iran and isolation of the T2 genotype from clinical isolates

The majority of the keratitis-causing Acanthamoeba isolates are genotype T4. In an attempt to determine whether predominance of T4 isolates in Acanthamoeba keratitis is due to greater virulence or greater prevalence of this genotype, Acanthamoeba genotypes were determined for 13 keratitis isolates and 12 environmental isolates from Iran. Among 13 clinical isolates, eight (61.5 %) belonged to T4, two (15.3 %) belonged to T3 and three (23 %) belonged to the T2 genotype. In contrast, the majority of 12 environmental isolates tested in the present study belonged to T2 (7/12, 58.3 %), followed by 4/12 T4 isolates (33.3 %). In addition, the genotypes of six new Acanthamoeba isolates from UK keratitis cases were determined. Of these, five (83.3 %) belonged to T4 and one was T3 (16.6 %), supporting the expected high frequency of T4 in Acanthamoeba keratitis. In total, the genotypes of 24 Acanthamoeba keratitis isolates from the UK and Iran were determined. Of these, 17 belonged to T4 (70.8 %), three belonged to T2 (12.5 %), three belonged to T3 (12.5 %) and one belonged to T11 (4.1 %), confirming that T4 is the predominant genotype (S2 = 4.167; P = 0.0412) in Acanthamoeba keratitis

Studying the environmental health status of beauty salons of Kashan

Background and aims: Beauty salons are considered as the places which the environmental health and renovation are adhered too. they can improve the society’s health and influence controlling the diseases. Not considering this issue causes the spread of skin and hair diseases and infections and louse. This study was aimed to determine the health status of beauty salons of Kashan in 2014. Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was done in 2014 in Kashan. Out of 320 beauty salons in Kashan, 220 were selected at random. Collecting the data was through observation, interview, filling the questionnaires and check lists in the beauty salons. Data collection was done on the basis of the environmental health evaluation form for beauty salons. The check list related to each beauty salon was completed and the data were analyzed by SPSS software. Results: The results of this study showed that 45.5 of the salon employees had participated in the special course of public health and 54.5 had personal health card. Fifty one point four percent of them were acceptable in terms of personal hygiene and 52.7 shared the tools and equipment. Half of the beauty salons had been sanitized and 52.3 of them had soaps and towels. Conclusion: The results showed that the beauty salons in Kashan had acceptable building status. Some personal hygiene factors such as personal health card, public health certificate and observing personal hygiene needs more training. Also, more supervision and inspection must be carried out by the environmental health experts

Data-driven Balanced Truncation for Predictive Model Order Reduction of Aeroacoustic Response

Rapid prediction of the aeroacoustic response is a key component in the design of aircraft and turbomachinery. While it is possible to achieve accurate predictions using direct solution of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, applications of such solvers is not feasible in design optimization due to the high cost of resolving wave phenomena in an Eulerian setting. In this work, we propose a technique for highly accelerated predictions of aeroacoustic response using a data-driven model reduction approach based on the eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA), as a non-intrusive balanced truncation method. Specifically, we create and compare ERA ROMs based on the training data generated by solving the linearized and nonlinear Euler equations with Gaussian pulse inputs, and use them for prediction of the aeroacoustic response of an airfoil subject to different types of gust loading. The results show that both ROMs are in good agreement with the full-order model (FOM) solution in a purely predictive setting, while achieving orders of magnitude reduction in the online computation time. Using ERA for prediction of the acoustic response requires activating each input channel separately in the FOM for training ROMs, and operating on a large Hankel matrix, that can become computationally infeasible. We address this bottleneck in two steps: first, we propose a multi-fidelity gappy POD method to identify the most impactful input channels based on a coarser grid. Therefore, we reduce the computation cost on the FOM and ROM levels as we build the Markov sequence by querying the high-resolution FOM only for the input channels identified by gappy POD. Second, we use tangential interpolation at the ROM level to reduce the size of the Hankel matrix. The proposed methods enable application of ERA for highly accurate online acoustic response prediction and reduce the offline computation cost of ROMs

Non-intrusive Balancing Transformation of Highly Stiff Systems with Lightly-damped Impulse Response

Balanced truncation (BT) is a model reduction method that utilizes a coordinate transformation to retain eigen-directions that are highly observable and reachable. To address realizability and scalability of BT applied to highly stiff and lightly-damped systems, a non-intrusive data-driven method is developed for balancing discrete-time systems via the eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA). The advantage of ERA for balancing transformation makes full-state outputs tractable. Further, ERA enables balancing despite stiffness, by eliminating computation of balancing modes and adjoint simulations. As a demonstrative example, we create balanced ROMs for a one-dimensional reactive flow with pressure forcing, where the stiffness introduced by the chemical source term is extreme (condition number $10^{13}$), preventing analytical implementation of BT. We investigate the performance of ROMs in prediction of dynamics with unseen forcing inputs and demonstrate stability and accuracy of balanced ROMs in truly predictive scenarios whereas without ERA, POD-Galerkin and Least-squares Petrov-Galerkin projections fail to represent the true dynamics. We show that after the initial transients under unit impulse forcing, the system undergoes lightly-damped oscillations, which magnifies the influence of sampling properties on predictive performance of the balanced ROMs. We propose an output domain decomposition approach and couple it with tangential interpolation to resolve sharp gradients at reduced computational costs

Mood-tracking application as persuasive technology for reduction of occupational stress

Occupational stress is a major concern in the job performance of employees. The use of persuasive technologies is one way to prevent or reduce this stress. The present study developed a mood tracking application and tested its effect on stress reduction of employees. Twenty-six employees of a petrochemical company were divided into equally-sized groups of married and single participants. Employees' accommodations are different based on their marital status. Other variables effecting stress were same for both groups. An OSI-R questionnaire was used to collect data before and after four weeks of application use. In present pilot study, data analysis shows that this kind of persuasive technology can have a significant positive effect on single employees and help them to decrease and manage their stress; however, no meaningful results were recorded for the married group because they did not use the application as much as participants in the single group

Congenital absence of the dens of axis

Embryological aetiology of anomaly of the dens of the axis discussed. The previous literature of this subject is briefly reviewed. A case of complete absence of dens of the axis with severe torticollis and spastic tetraplegia is presented. This 6-year-old patient recovered fully following occipito-cervical fusion. © 1974, International Spinal Cord Society. All right reserved

Success factors for hospital information system implementation in public university hospitals

Hospital Information System (HIS) could help the delivery of high quality health services and improve patient care and patient safety. The development and the adoption of the system need to commence if high quality patient care is to be provided. However, successful HIS implementation is not an easy task and it depends on multiple factors such as adequate computer skills, lack of training and education. Despite the presence of a literature on nurse’s satisfaction on HIS, there is still a controversy over the success of HIS implementation. The input from the Information and Organisation culture, Trust and the nurses themselves, have not been considered. The aim of this study therefore, is to identify the success factors that influence a successful HIS implementation and to propose a research model which could fulfil the objective. Based on DeLone and Mc Lean's information, a success model system with an addition of four additional factors namely the Information culture, Organisational cultures, Trust and User quality was developed in this study. Employing a quantitative research methodology, this study began by conducting a pilot study involving 160 nurses from a university hospital to validate the reliability of the questionnaire to be used. Then, 1200 questionnaires were distributed to seven public university hospitals in Iran and 1028 (86%) usable responses were used for analysis. The covariance-based on structural equation modelling using STATA was employed to evaluate the model. Findings revealed that fourteen out of sixteen proposed hypotheses are significant on successful HIS implementation. The Information quality, Service quality, Organisation culture and the Information culture were among the most influential constructs in the final model. As the study was empirically tested in the Iranian setting, it contributes to theoretical and practical aspect of research especially in the Iranian public university hospital context