2023 CiteScore: 0.8
pISSN: 2383-4196
eISSN: 2383-420X
Editor-in-Chief:
Hojjat Zeraati, PhD.
Vol 5 No 1 (2019)
Original Article(s)
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Background and Aim: We aim to build a classifier to distinguish between malaria-infected red blood cells (RBCs) and healthy cells using the two-dimensional (2D) microscopic images of RBCs. We demonstrate the process of cell segmentation and feature extraction from the 2D images.
Methods and Materials: We describe an approach to address the problem using mixture discriminant analysis (MDA) on the 2D image profiles of the RBCs. The extracted features are used with Gaussian MDA to distinguish between healthy and malaria infected cells. We also use the neutral zone classifiers where ambiguous cases are identified separately by the classifier.
Results: We compare the classification results from the regular classifiers such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA) or MDA and the methods where neutral zone classifiers are used. We see that including the neutral zone improves the classification results by controlling the false positive and false negatives. The number of misclassifications are seen to be lower than the case without neutral zone classifiers.
Conclusion: This paper presents an alternative approach for classification by incorporating neutral zone classifier approach, where a prediction is not made for the ambiguous cases. From the data analysis we see that this approach based on neutral zone classifiers presents a useful alternative in classification problems for various applications. -
Introduction: Breast milk is an ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants. Breastfeeding is associated with benefits of lifelong health for both infants and mothers. This study aims to investigate the factors affecting breastfeeding duration in primiparous women referring to Tehran health centers.
Methods: In this analytical study, the population consisted of primiparous women of reproductive age who referred to Tehran health centers in 2015-2016 having a child aged 2-5 years. Data were collected by a questionnaire for measuring the level of Health Literacy for Iranian Adults (HELIA) in the urban population, a Socio-Economic Status (SES) questionnaire and interviews with mothers. Statistical analysis was done using Bayesian Poisson regression model and OpenBUGS software.
Results: In the present study, the minimum and maximum of breastfeeding duration were one and 24 months respectively, and the median duration of breastfeeding was 20 months. Also, exclusive breastfeeding was reported at 50.5%. The variables age of mother (CI 95%: -0.01, -0.008), health literacy score (CI 95%: 0.01, 0.02) and the first-time breastfeeding more than one hour after birth (CI 95%: -0.34, -0.04) had significant relationship with breastfeeding duration.
Conclusion: The health literacy score, the age of mother and the first-time breastfeeding more than one hour after birth had a significant relationship with breastfeeding duration. Therefore, considering the importance of the effect of maternal health literacy on breastfeeding, it is suggested that mothers of prepregnancy have the ability to obtain a high score of health literacy -
Introduction: Studies have shown periodic variations in the number of births using different mathematical models. A study conducted at the Korle-Bu teaching hospital obtained Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model on a monthly number of birth for an 11-year data. However, this study did not compare the obtained model with other forecasting methods to determine the method that will best explain the data. This study sought to compare seasonal SARIMA model with Holt-Winters seasonal forecasting methods for an 11-year time series data on the number of births..
Methods: Data were analysed in R software (version 3.3.3). Holt-Winters and seasonal ARIMA forecasting methods were applied to the birth data. The errors of the out – of-sample forecast of these methods were compared and the one with the least error was considered the best forecasting method.
Results: The in-sample forecasting errors showed that SARIMA (2,1,1) x (1,01,) was the best among the other models. The out-of-sample errors also showed that all the SARIMA models had lower errors compared to the Holt-Winters form of additive and multiplicative methods based on the forecasting accuracy indices of the monthly number of births for an 11-year period. It was also found that the months with very high statistically significant number of births over the period was from March to August.
Conclusion: The SARIMA models were superior to the Holt-Winters models. This is essential for optimal forecasting of the number of births for planning and effective delivery of Obstetrics services.. -
Introduction: Creating engagement with generated content has become a major challenge for health-oriented brand communities. Therefore, the present study seeks to fully understand the brand - consumer and consumerconsumer engagement with the content generated by the Instagram social network health clinics.
Method: The present study was conducted in two steps. In the first step, data was collected by interviewing nine native experts and a review of previous studies. And designed research model with the axial, open, and selective coding. In the second step, with the Nethnography method, 1572 posts of Instagram 8 health clinics were coded for 1 year period and analyzed by SPSS using multiple variance analysis and correlation tests. In general, the present study was conducted as a multiple case study method.
Results: 95% confidence level there is a meaningful relationship between content type, hashtag, content agility (except saved post and discovery percentage), content day (except discovery percentage and reach), content context (except profile visit and percentage discovery) and tone of voice (except like, impression, discovery percentage and new follower) with brand-consumer engagement and also between the content type, content day, content context, content agility (except mention), tone of voice (except comment) and hashtag (except mention) with consumer-consumer engagement.
Conclusion: In order to creating engagement, we must raise brand-consumer and consumer-consumer engagement, this requires the production of appropriate content -
Introduction: injuries as one of the main concerns of public health and social problem affect a wide range of population particularly in countries with low and middle incomes. In the present study, we aimed to describe the epidemiology of different types of injuries occurring in Kermanshah province, Iran, with an enormous sample size in 2015-2016.
Methods: in this cross-sectional study we gathered the data from Health Vice-presidency of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. In order to widen the study, we incorporated the subjects with a wide spectrum of injury types including Road Traffic Injury (RTI), burns, poisoning, drowning, suicide, animal bite, trauma, and violence. The subjects were taken from 20 distinct hospitals of 12 cities of Kermanshah province.
Results: our data showed a total number of injuries to be 65,428 from March 2015 to March 2016 (65.4% male and 34.6% female).The average of total injured people was 29.20±18.9(28.7±18.9 in men and 30±18.9 in women). We showed that individuals of 15-29 and 30-44 years old were the most vulnerable sectors in both male and female groups. The majority of injuries were due to road traffic and fall in men and female, respectively. The most and least frequent injuries occurred in Kermanshah and Gilan-e-Qarb cities, respectively.
Conclusion: it was demonstrated in our study that age, gender, culture, and city are the factors determining the injury patterns. Therefore, these items can be regarded as the high-risk factors which may be integrated into the plans for preventing the possible injuries in health policies. -
Introduction: The world's population is aging and the issue of sexual activity in elderly people is still a taboo in many cultures. The purpose of this study was to examine the sexual activity, interest and satisfaction in older women attended the Health Care Centers in the city of Ardabil-Northern Iran.
Method: This Cross-sectional study was conducted on 380 married women over 60 years old who had been selected by convenient sampling method. Data were gathered anonymously by three questionnaires (Goldberg general health, FSFI and demographic information Questionnaires) and analyzed using SPSS software.
Results: This study indicated that the mean age of participants was 71±6.8 years, 60% of the studied women had sexual activity and about half of them had interest in sex. Sexually active women were significantly younger (p<0.05) and more educated (p<0.001) than sexually inactive women. The participants’ sexual activity, interest in sex, emotional intimacy and sexual satisfaction with their husbands were significantly affected by the presence of children at home regardless of whether they are single or married (p<0.05)..
Conclusion: This study approved that despite misconceptions, older age and sexuality do not contradict each other and high education and having a private environment facilitate the intimate relationships and elevate their sexual satisfaction. The result of this study could help health care providers to provide appropriate and effective sexual healthcare services to older women. -
Introduction: Recognition of labor pain is a primary concern of physicians, midwives and their clients in controlling labor pain and preventing the resulting suffering. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between self-esteem and anxiety with severity of pain and suffering of labor in women.
Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 365 mothers who experienced delivery at Shahidan Mobini hospital in Sabzevar in 2014. The data were collected using Rosenberg Self-esteem questionnaire and Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety scales, visual analogue scale (VAS) for pain, and experience and perception of suffering. Data were analyzed using t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and chi-square test considering level of significance equal to 0.05.
Results: The mean age was 26.4± 4.7 years old. In this study, 119 (44.9%) samples were nulliparous, 20 (7.5%) were employed and 196 (74%) were urban citizens. There was no significant difference between the pain of labor score in terms of self-esteem levels (p=0.84) and the level of covert anxiety (p=0.15) and overt anxiety (p=0.06). However, there was a significant differences between the suffering of labor scores in terms of selfesteem levels (p<0.001),the covert anxiety levels (p<0.001) and the overt anxiety levels (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Considering pregnant women with higher self- esteem and lower anxiety score had a lower score on labor suffering in this study, it seems health care providers can help reduce pregnant women’s suffering of labor through strengthening the well-being and health of pregnant women and supporting them during pregnancy and labor. -
Introduction: Social capital refers to the norms and social organization that makes people to cooperate for gaining reciprocal advantages. Focusing of its importance on health, the aim of this study was to evaluate social capital in the female students of Arak University of Medical Sciences, central Iran.
Method: A cross-sectional study was done on 359 female students of Arak University of Medical Sciences in the fields of medicine, public health, nursing, laboratory sciences, anesthesia and operation room using simple random sampling in 2018. Bullen Social capital questionnaire was used for data collection. Data analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA, t-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient.
Results: The results showed that among all the social capital issues, the highest average (57.18±91.81) is professional communication and the lowest average (33.19±93.49) is participation in social activities. Also social capital showed a significant association with variables such as educational level (p=0.01), marital status (p=0.03), first (mother) language (p=0.01), and family size (p=0.03).
Conclusion: Considering that social capital has a significant association with variables such educational and demographic, interventions by stakeholders may increase the social capital. -
Introduction: Lifetime distribution has drawn so much attention in recent research, and this has lead to the development of new lifetime distribution. Addition of parameters to the existing distribution makes the distribution more flexible and reliable and applicable model has become the focus of the recent search. This paper proposed a two-parameter Pranav distribution which has its base from a one-parameter Pranav and Ishita distribution.
Methods: Two parameter Pranav distribution was proposed. Mathematical and statistical properties of the distribution which includes; moments, coefficient of variation, skewness, kurtosis, index of dispersion, hazard rate function, mean residual life function, stochastic ordering, mean deviation, Bonferroni and Lorenz curves were developed. Other lifetime distributions such as Ishita, Akash, Sujatha, Shanker, Lindley, and Exponential distributions were considered in the study.
Results: This new distribution was compared with two-parameter Akash, Lindley, one parameter Pranav, Ishita, Akash, Sujatha, Shanker, Lindley, and Exponential distributions to determine the efficiency of the new model. The estimation of parameters has been X-rayed using the method of moments and maximum likelihood. Also, AIC and BIC were used to test for the goodness of fit of the model which was applied to a real-life data of hypertensive patients. The results show that the new two-parameter Pranav distribution has the lowest value of AIC and BIC
Conclusion: Based on the AIC and BIC values we can conclude that the two-parameter Pranav is more efficient than the other distribution for modeling survival of hypertensive patients. Hence two-parameter Pranav can be seen as an important distribution in modeling lifetime data.
