Pregnant women have a major role to play in assessing and improving their own quality of care. This study in Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran, aimed to assess the effectiveness of an intervention for ...pregnant women-based on education and support groups and involvement in quality assessment activities-in order to improve the technical quality of public maternity care at public health centres. The intervention phase began in September 2011 and lasted 8 months. The outcome measure was health-care providers' degree of adherence to the Iranian maternity care standards. An intervention group of 92 pregnant women from 10 health centres was compared with a control group of 93 pregnant women from 11 centres. Logistic regression analysis showed that the self-assessed technical quality of maternity care received by the women was significantly better in the intervention that the control group for several of the standards concerning clinical examinations, maternal education and vitamin and mineral supplements.
Blend nanofibers from Chitosan (Cs) (M
=1 X 10
) in 2% acetic acid and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) (M
=72 X 10
) in deionized water were produced in 10/90, 20/80, 25/75, 50/50 mass ratio of Cs/PVA. The ...effect of blend ratio on the fiber formation and fiber properties has been investigated. Nanofibers produced were characterized by SEM, FTIR and DSC. The diameter of fibers increased with increasing chitosan content in blends. However, fibers with lower diameter showed micro cracks on the surface. FTIR data show that these two polymers have intermolecular interaction. DSC data reveals that the exothermic peak at about 200
C for PVA decreased to lower temperature with increasing Cs content. Chitosan (Cs) (M
=1 X 10
) was hydrolyzed and the molecular weight reduced to 6.219 X 105 then we could electrospin the pure chitosan in 90% acetic acid as solvent and the nanofibers with diameter in the range of 43 nm were produced. SEM results showed that although the chitosan nanofibers were produced, because of high viscosity of solution there are a lot of beads on their surface.
The cell culture result show excellent cell viability in this medium when the cells were exposed to chitosan/PVA nanofibers for 7 days in CO
incubator, 99% RH and 37 °C. On the other hand the chitosan/PVA nanofibers in their antimicrobial experimentations showed efficient antimicrobial properties.
Concrete may be loaded at an early age for a variety of reasons. This loading can have negative and sometimes destructive effects on the hardened properties of concrete. Therefore, in the present ...study, the mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced geopolymer concrete after loading at an early age have been investigated. In the present study, the effect of preload on compressive strength at the ages of 28 and 90 days for geopolymer concrete containing fibers has been investigated. For this purpose, the samples were loaded at ages of 1, 3, and 7 days, equivalent to 30 and 70% of their compressive strength at the same age. The samples were then treated again in a humid environment and subjected to compressive loading at 28 and 90 days of age. The effect of preload on flexural strength as well as energy absorption of geopolymer concrete containing fibers was also investigated. Steel fibers with volumetric percentages of 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1 and polypropylene fibers with volumetric percentages of 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 were used in fabricating laboratory samples. The results demonstrate the positive effect of fibers on reducing the destructive effects of preload on compressive and flexural strength. The effect of fibers on reducing the destructive effects of 1-day preload is higher at higher loading percentage (70% pre-loading), such that the samples containing fibers with preload of 30% at the age of one day experienced a 28.8% increase in 28-day compressive strength, while this increase was 33.2% for the samples with preload of 70%. Samples containing 0.75% polypropylene fibers at 28 and 90 days of age compared to those containing 0.25 and 0.5% polypropylene showed less energy absorption on average due to preloading. In general, the design containing 0.25 polypropylene fiber and 1% steel fiber had the best result of flexural strength among preloaded samples.
Pregnant women have a major role to play in assessing and improving their own quality of care. This study in Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran, aimed to assess the effectiveness of an intervention for ...pregnant women-based on education and support groups and involvement in quality assessment activities--in order to improve the technical quality of public maternity care at public health centres. The intervention phase began in September 2011 and lasted 8 months. The outcome measure was health-care providers' degree of adherence to the Iranian maternity care standards. An intervention group of 92 pregnant women from 10 health centres was compared with a control group of 93 pregnant women from 11 centres. Logistic regression analysis showed that the self-assessed technical quality of maternity care received by the women was significantly better in the intervention that the control group for several of the standards concerning clinical examinations, maternal education and vitamin and mineral supplements.
Objective: This study was aimed to assess Service Quality (SQ) of maternity care from the perception of pregnant women. Methods and materials: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a sample of ...185 pregnant women at the 9th month of pregnancy were selected randomly from 40 health posts and urban health centers in Tabriz, Iran. Service Quality was calculated using: SQ = 10 – (Importance × Performance) based on importance and performance of non-health aspects from the customer’ perspective. Data collection used a researcher-developed questionnaire whose validity and reliability was reviewed and confirmed. Data analyzed using SPSS-17 software. Independent sample T-test and ANOVA were used to investigate relationship between service quality dimensions and categorical variables. Results: From the customers’ perspective the average service quality score was 7.59 of 10. Service quality aspects of “confidentiality” achieved scores at the level of good quality (≥9) and “support group” (3.48) reached low service quality scores. Also, result indicate housewife assess SQ better than worker (p=0.047) and mother who's have planned pregnancy has had greater SQ score (p=0.022). Although, in the linear regression analysis, job status and planned pregnancy were significantly and independently related to SQ score. Conclusion: Findings revealed a significant room for quality improvement in most aspects of provided care, particularly support group and safety from the perception of people who received maternity care.
The effect of low-dosage water-soluble hydroxyethyl cellulose （approximate MW～90,000 and 250,000） as a member of hydroxyalkyl cellulosic polymer group on methane hydrate stability was investigated by ...monitoring hydrate dissociation at pressures greater than atmospheric pressure in a closed vessel. In particular, the influence of molecular weight and mass concentration of hydroxyethyl cellulose （HEC） was studied with respect to hydrate formation and dissociation. Methane hydrate formation was performed at 2℃ and at a pressure greater than 100 bar. Afterwards, hydrate dissociation was initiated by step heating from -10℃ at a mild pressure of 13 bar to 3℃, 0℃ and 2℃. With respect to the results obtained for methane hydrate formation/dissociation and the amount of gas uptake, we concluded that HEC 90,000 at 5000 ppm is suitable for long-term gas storage and transportation under a mild pressure of 13 bar and at temperatures below the freezing point.
The oxygen effect for bacteria and cultured mammalian cells at −196°C was studied, using suspensions to which were added cryoprotective and chemical protective agents.
The oxygen enhancement ratio ...(o.e.r.) in the frozen state was dependent on the chemicals added to the suspensions. When the chemicals had a high competitive reactivity with oxygen to the damage, the o.e.r. in the frozen state was comparable to that in the liquid suspensions. Without chemicals, the o.e.r. in the frozen state decreased significantly, probably because of the low competitive activity of endogenous SH compounds. In general, the systems with a higher o.e.r. in the liquid state had a lower o.e.r. in the frozen state.
The integration of sustainable strategies in manufacturing operations has become mandatory in recent years once sustainable development goals (SDGs) were introduced. Recently, several academicians ...have explored different strategies under the context of manufacturing including sustainable manufacturing and circular manufacturing. However, manufacturers struggle to shift towards these recent extensions of sustainable/circular manufacturing practices, because most of them are still not able to fully implement green manufacturing (GM). GM acts as a basic platform for these extended manufacturing practices to promote green transition, and manufacturers face several challenges within its implementation. Over the years, several studies explored the challenges and other related factors to promote GM, but manufacturers remain unclear on how to mitigate these challenges. This study considers two metrics of GM, challenges, and critical success factors (CSF), through which a systematic literature review has been made. Based on the review, a CSF theory-based framework has been developed by which GM adoption challenges were mapped with their corresponding mitigating CSFs of GM. To improve understanding among manufacturers, both the challenges and CSFs have been categorized into different dimensions. This is the first study to map the success factors of GM with adoption challenges of GM; this work permits manufacturers to recognize the exact challenges of GM and to understand how they can be mitigated particularly through selected CSFs. In fact, manufacturers will not need to examine other CSFs. In addition to strengthening the academic research of GM, this study seeks to assist practitioners in their journey of green transition with an in-depth explanation of mitigating challenges through CSFs.
•Supervised training of deep learning models requires large labeled datasets.•Label noise can significantly impact the performance of deep learning models.•We critically review recent progress in ...handling label noise in deep learning.•We experimentally study this problem in medical image analysis and draw useful conclusions.
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Supervised training of deep learning models requires large labeled datasets. There is a growing interest in obtaining such datasets for medical image analysis applications. However, the impact of label noise has not received sufficient attention. Recent studies have shown that label noise can significantly impact the performance of deep learning models in many machine learning and computer vision applications. This is especially concerning for medical applications, where datasets are typically small, labeling requires domain expertise and suffers from high inter- and intra-observer variability, and erroneous predictions may influence decisions that directly impact human health. In this paper, we first review the state-of-the-art in handling label noise in deep learning. Then, we review studies that have dealt with label noise in deep learning for medical image analysis. Our review shows that recent progress on handling label noise in deep learning has gone largely unnoticed by the medical image analysis community. To help achieve a better understanding of the extent of the problem and its potential remedies, we conducted experiments with three medical imaging datasets with different types of label noise, where we investigated several existing strategies and developed new methods to combat the negative effect of label noise. Based on the results of these experiments and our review of the literature, we have made recommendations on methods that can be used to alleviate the effects of different types of label noise on deep models trained for medical image analysis. We hope that this article helps the medical image analysis researchers and developers in choosing and devising new techniques that effectively handle label noise in deep learning.
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