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Background: Access to reliable and credible health information improves individuals' personal care level in crises, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) pandemic. It subsequently results in enhancing the community's health and reducing the health system's costs. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the COVID- 19 related information seeking behaviour demonstrated by citizens in Isfahan, Iran. Methods: This research was conducted in 2020 and employed a qualitative approach using conventional content analysis. The research population was selected from almost different social classes of people in Iran using purposive sampling. The saturation point was reached at 24 semi- structured interviews. The data's soundness was confirmed based on the criteria of credibility, confirmability, dependability and transferability proposed by Guba and Lincoln. Results: The findings revealed five subcategories and 25 codes within the information seeking behaviour. The subcategories included attitude towards the COVID- 19 crisis, information needs, information resources, information validation and information seeking barriers. Conclusion: People seek information from various resources to update their knowledge and become more prepared in the face of COVID- 19. The findings can be used to develop policies on informing and preventing the dissemination of false information in crises, such as the COVID- 19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Misinformation refers to unclear information from unreliable resources, and it is a common phenomenon of society; it can even constitute a part of family and social conversations due to the relative damages. Misinformation dissemination under the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a cause of health-related anxieties and severe harm to the countries. The present study aims to explain factors related to the dissemination and acceptance of coronavirus misinformation in Iran. Material and Methods: This qualitative study was carried out through content analysis in the year 2020. The population included Iranian experts in Information and Communication Sciences, among whom 19 experts were selected through the purposive sampling method. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed through Continuous Thematic Analysis. Such criteria authenticated data trustworthiness as credibility, confirmability, dependability, and transferability proposed by Guba and Lincoln. Findings: Based on the experiences of participants, six major categories and 18 subcategories were identified regarding the major theme. The major categories included the official news and informing system, misinformation nature, users, media, misinformation source, and social determinants. Conclusion: Concurrent with the Covid-19 outbreak, a sort of information tsunami occurs. Unavoidably, a significant amount of misinformation regarding the various aspects of the virus, such as its origin, transmission methods, control, and treatment, are published. In many cases, the spreading information is not checked and verified in terms of accuracy and authenticity. The spread and acceptance of Covid-19 related misinformation happen under the impact of various factors. Being familiar with these factors will boost the culture of health and pave the path toward establishing evidence-based information public awareness schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with serious diseases need to have further access to reliable information regarding how to take care of themselves against COVID-19. This study endeavored to elucidate COVID-19 information needs and information-seeking behaviors of cardiovascular patients hospitalized in the hospitals of Isfahan, Iran. This qualitative study was conducted using content analysis in 2020. The population was 17 cardiovascular patients referred to the Shahid Chamran Hospital of Isfahan, who were selected using the purposive sampling method. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed through continuous thematic analysis. The findings showed four categories and ten sub-categories as follows: information needs (general information regarding COVID-19, prevention methods, and treatment methods), information resources (reliable information resources and unreliable information resources), information validation (using formal and informal resources), and information-seeking barriers (media-related, political, economical, and COVID-19-related barriers). Cardiovascular patients are in serious need of awareness-raising concerning COVID-19 to take care of themselves. This study's results could help health education policy-makers of Iran pinpoint the information needs of high-risk patients and provide these patients access to reliable information while preventing damages due to misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) has issued ATSC 3.0 as the standard for the next-generation of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) broadcasting. ATSC 3.0 introduces several new features including Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM) that is a form of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA). ATSC 3.0 supports the legacy Single Frequency Networks (SFN), where the Guard Interval (GI) is considered to overcome the multipath as well as the asynchronous reception from different transmitters. Considering the huge distances between the DTT broadcasters, the GI overhead could be comparable to the data size, making the control/data ratio unfavorable. This paper proposes the association of Coordinated MultiPoint (CoMP) in SFN with NOMA-LDM. A novel formation of the channel matrix is provided that jointly includes the asynchronous channel’s cross correlations for further joint detection of the signals at the receiver. The purpose is to enhance the coverage and spectral efficiency while avoiding hectic guard intervals or directional antennas. The capacity region is derived in an information theoretic framework based on exploiting the asynchronous channels’ memory and correlation. We show that the spectral efficiency can exceed that of the non-coordinating schemes, provided that the proper receiver is equipped with the proposed channel matrix formation. Our extensive simulations validate that our proposed association of CoMP-SFN with NOMA-LDM provides a considerable boost in the coverage and channel reliability, while increasing the spectral and power efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Numerous questions are generated for physicians during patient care. Facilitators and barriers affect the physicians' clinical information‐seeking behaviour. While most health studies have focused on barriers, few have dealt with facilitators. Objective: This review aimed to identify facilitators in physicians' information‐seeking behaviour to help respond to clinical questions raised during patient care. Methods: A narrative review was conducted, and 9 databases were searched. Selection criteria included original articles in the context of patient care and full‐text articles published in the English language from 2002 to 2019. The articles were selected and analysed by group discussions. Results: Analysis of studies disclosed personal, technical and organisational facilitators including 26 themes. Internet utilisation and information searching skills, more available time, personal interests and knowing preferred sites or textbooks were among the personal factors. The most common technical factors included providing navigation support, and ease of searching and finding needed information. The most commonly reported factors at the organisational level are closeness to Internet facility and access during the consultation. Conclusion: Information systems designers, health service managers and librarians may need to work together to provide systems and settings that encourage doctors to seek information to answer their clinical questions during patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obsession with the physique and appearance is a by-product of consumer societies. As such, fitness and slimming have now become major concerns of Iranian females. This study endeavors to elaborate on information-seeking behaviors among female students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences concerning fitness. This study conducted in 2018, employs a qualitative approach using conventional content analysis. The research population includes female students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, 16 of whom were selected with use of purposive sampling. Data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews and their trustworthiness was confirmed by the criteria of 'credibility', 'confirmability', 'dependability', and 'transferability' proposed by Guba and Lincoln. Results reveal four sub-categories and nineteen codes on information-seeking behavior. Sub-categories and codes including information-seeking motivations (achieving physical health, physical appearance, social acceptability, self-confidence, family and friends' pressure) information resources (electronic information resources, social media, printed information resources, doctors and nutritionists, family and friends, traditional & Islamic medicine, radio and TV), information validation (asking the doctors and specialists, matching the information with scientific references, consulting with friends and relatives) and obstacles to seeking information (lack of time, high costs, distrust, access limitation). by increasing the students' informational and media literacy, providing authentic and low-cost online resources of information and specialized TV programs, the damages rooted in using invalid information resources concerning fitness can be substantially diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents Developing Capacity around Knowledge Translation. Topics discussed include the burden of mental illness is having an increasingly significant impact on health globally with the cost estimated to be $2.5 trillion in 2010 and by 2030; and Identifying effective tools and mechanisms for knowledge transfer, the impact of context on knowledge acquisition, and determining and evaluating the effects of knowledge transfer are challenging.

Background: Nomophobia, a state of socio-psychological illness, refers to a fear of lack of access to mobile phone, which is thought to be a modern age disorder that causes negative health risks and harmful psychological effects. This study aimed to determine the relationship between the smartphone use and nomophobia disorder among university students. Methods: The study utilized a cross-sectional method in which 320 students were selected via cluster sampling. Data collection tools included a nomophobia and smartphones use questionnaires. Data were analyzed using SPSS 22 software in two sections: descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Results: The incidence rate of nomophobia among the students was moderate (3.1), and 73% of the students were moderate smartphone users. Nomophobia had a significant relationship with gender, age group, and level of education; and the frequency of using smartphones had a significant relationship with age group and level of education. There was a positive correlation coefficient between nomophobia and the frequency of using smartphones. The mobile phone use predicted nomophobia with a beta coefficient of 0.402 (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Given the incidence rate of nomophobia disorder was moderate, it is necessary to make preventive decisions and plan educational programs in this regard for the health of university students. Alternative actions are recommended for the treatment in low rate of nomophobia, but drug therapy should be used in more advanced stages; therefore, it is suggested that more attention to be paid to students' free time and entertainments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With the recent spread of virtual learning programs in universities, especially in the field of medical sciences, libraries play a crucial role to support these programs. This study aimed at investigating the skills required by librarians to support virtual learning programs in Isfahan University and Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This was an applied survey study. The population of the study includes all librarians working in Isfahan University and Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. A sample of 89 librarians was selected by stratified random sampling. Data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire, the validity of which was confirmed by specialists in the fields of librarianship and information sciences and virtual learning, and its reliability was determined to be 0.92, using Cronbach's Alpha. The questionnaire consisted of 51 items designed to evaluate the librarians' virtual learning skills using Likert scale. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the findings. Results: The findings of this study revealed that librarians had low level of skills with respect to the online reference services, and familiarity with virtual learning environment. They also showed low and average level of skills with respect to their general information technology, communication skills, ability to teach electronic information literacy and ability to create access to electronic resources. The results revealed no significant difference between the librarians of the two universities, or between male and female librarians. However, librarians with educational background in librarianship and information sciences were significantly more skillful and competent than their colleagues. Conclusion: Despite the crucial role of libraries in supporting virtual learning programs, the librarians in Isfahan University and Isfahan University of Medical Sciences had low-level skills to play such an important role. Therefore, it is essential to provide on-the-job virtual training courses for librarians to improve their job performance and the quality of library services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the effects of antenna directivity and antenna orientation on fading correlation and, therefore, the channel capacity in multiple-input-multiple-output communication systems by means of a spherical simulation model. The correlation is caused by the mutual interaction of the scattering environment and antenna elements. To study the effect of antenna directivity and orientations on the correlation and channel capacity in a more realistic environment, we extend the "one-ring" model to a spherical scattering environment, which is appropriate for narrowband 3-D Rayleigh fading. In our model, scatterers around a subscriber unit are distributed over a sphere centered on the antenna array in the subscriber unit. Antenna directivity is included in a precise way, and the antenna array can be placed in any orientation. Any type of antenna can be studied in the model. Through simulation, we find that directive antenna elements in linear broadside arrays make the channel capacity more strongly directive than when antenna elements are isotropic. Moreover, different antenna patterns and orientations have different outage capacities depending on the interaction of antenna directivities and the incident waves, which shows that the antenna pattern and orientation affect the channel capacity to some extent. In the uniformly scatter-rich environment, the microstrip antenna array can have 10% higher outage capacity than that of the dipole antenna array. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a tree-structured variable-length random binning scheme for lossless source coding. The existing source coding schemes based on turbo codes, low-density parity check codes, and repeat accumulate codes can be regarded as practical implementations of this random binning scheme. For sufficiently large data blocks, we show that the proposed scheme asymptotically achieves the entropy limit. We also derive the distribution of the compression rate achieved by the tree-structured random binning scheme. Comparing this distribution with the distribution obtained using a library of random binning schemes, we show that a nested code can achieve rates close to a library of codes but with much lower encoding/decoding complexity. With lossless turbo source coding being one of the most powerful source compression techniques, we investigate its performance relative to the proposed tree-structured random binning scheme. Our numerical results show that the compression rate achieved by lossless turbo source coding is far from the tree-structured random binning bound. In that, we suggest improvements to enable short-block-length turbo source codes to achieve compression rates close to the tree-structured random binning bound [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Block turbo codes with trellis-based decoding are proposed for use in cell-based satellite communication. Shortened Reed-Muller (RM) codes are used as the component codes because their minimal trellis is known. Simulation results for RM turbo codes and shortened RM turbo codes are presented over additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh fading channels. The performance of the shortened codes with different shortening patterns are shown. In some cases, the codes have the unequal error protection property, useful in asynchronous transfer mode cell formatting. In order to test the suitability of the proposed coding scheme from a practical point of view, the effect of channel impairments, including channel signal-to-noise ratio mismatch and carrier phase offset, are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a method for data detection of M-ary phase shift keying in the presence of unknown carrier phase and additive white Gaussian noise. Rate of phase change; Communication system model; Computational complexity; Key equation; Performance.

In this paper, error-control coding is used with a six-port direct-digital QPSK receiver [1] in an AWGN channel. The direct-conversion wideband six-port millimeter wave receiver proposed herein meets the needs of MMIC mass-market wireless communications. Convolutional code and Turbo code are used as the channel codes for the first time in this type of receiver. The BER results for the convolutional code, turbo code, and the uncoded system in the six-port receiver, are presented at a bit rate of 1 Mbps. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 36: 465–467, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.10791 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To report the study protocol, methodology and latest enrollment data of a large epidemiological multi-central eye cohort named PERSIAN Eye Cohort Study (PECS), originating from the ongoing PERSIAN Cohort Study, to investigate the distribution of ophthalmic disorders in different regions and ethnicities of Iran, and determine their associations with various exposures of ophthalmic and non-ophthalmic nature. Methods: A central committee designed the study and equipped six chosen centers (Khameneh, Some'e Sara, Hoveizeh, Yazd, Rafsanjan and Zahedan). A focal point in each center conducted the study under close supervision of the central committee. Results: This ongoing study was launched in 2014. Out of 65,580 eligible participants of the PERSIAN Cohort, 48,618 individuals aged 35-70 have been enrolled in the PECS (response rate: 74.13%) until June 2021. Slit lamp and fundus photography were performed for 28,702 (59.03%) and 27,437 (56.43%) individuals, respectively. Conclusion: This large epidemiological multi-central eye cohort can improve our epidemiological knowledge of the prevalent ophthalmic disorders in different regions and ethnicities of Iran, and determine their associations with various exposures of ophthalmic and non-ophthalmic nature. This will be very useful for future planned nationwide and global interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]