Search

This study aimed to examine the relationships between the screen time of children with special needs and of their parents with their home participation, occupational performance, and parent-child relationships according to sex and diagnosis. Parents of 150 children with special needs (age range, 4 to 6 years) such as autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as undiagnosed and developmentally risky children, were included. The Demographic Information Form, Screen Time Usage Form, Parent-Child Relationship Scale, Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth, and Short Child Occupational Profile were used for the data collection. There was a significant relationship between the screen time of girls and their parent-child relationships, home participation, and occupational performance. Moreover, we detected a relationship between the screen time of children with autism spectrum disorder and positive parent-child relationships, home participation, and occupational performance. Therapists should account for screen time in their interventions associated with parent-child relationships, home participation, and occupational performance.

Kahramanmaraş earthquakes occurred on 6 February 2023, and many people died and were trapped under the rubble. The objective of this research was to investigate child victims of the quake, who were most dramatically affected, required intensive care and were trapped under debris/rubble/wreckage in terms of psychiatric status and the disaster-related or personal determinants of psychopathologies. Pediatric patients (n=77) who were hospitalized in intensive care units and inpatient wards within the first month after the earthquake and were consulted to the Child Psychiatry, were examined in terms of psychiatric symptoms, use of psychotropics, duration under debris, loss of relatives, loss of limbs, and intensive care requirement. Anhedonia, loss of appetite, psychosomatic and dissociative symptoms, as well as psychotropic need/use were significantly higher in patients who required intensive care. Dissociative and psychosomatic symptoms were linked with longer durations under debris. The current findings highlight prominent and predominated psychiatric symptoms in child victims of quakes, hospitalized in intensive care units and being prolonged trapped under debris. Prolonged entrapment correlated with increased dissociative and psychosomatic symptoms, emphasizing the need for targeted psychiatric support for vulnerable earthquake survivors. [Med-Science 2024; 13(3.000): 590-7]

Due to its strong biological, pharmacological, and medical activities and rich chemical content, Liquidambar orientalis, known for its resinous exudate storax, has a widespread and well-established ethnopharmacological use. Although it is known that storax has anticancer, antimicrobial, antioxidant, wound-healing and other ethnomedicinal properties, the number of existing scientific studies is very limited. In this context, the aims of this study were to determine the antibiofilm activity of storax and its cytotoxic and apoptotic effects in A549 lung cancer cells. In addition, with this study, it is also possible to make a very comprehensive biological evaluation by determining the effect of storax on certain microRNA expressions. According to our results, L. orientalis storax decreases cell proliferation in A549 lung cancer cells and the IC50 value was determined at 31.5 μg/mL at 24h. Storax also induces apoptosis via upregulating CASP3, 8, 9, and Bax gene expression and downregulating Bcl-2 expressions in A549 cells. Furthermore, storax decreases the expression of miR-146a, miR-21, and miR-223, while increasing the expression of miR-155. Storax inhibits biofilm formation and reduces the preformed biofilm of microbial strains including Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 33862), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853) and Candida albicans (ATCC 64548). The results suggest that storax has strong cytotoxic, apoptotic and antibiofilm properties and thus promising potential in medicine.

Introduction. The increased risk of malnutrition in older people may have significant impacts on chronic disease management and quality of life. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between chronic diseases, activities of daily living (ADLs), and malnutrition risk. Methods. This cross-sectional, correlational study was conducted on 352 patients over 65 years old, who had a chronic disease for at least one year and were admitted to Dr. Suat Seren Chest Diseases and Chest Surgery Training and Research Hospital, Izmir, Turkey. The data were collected using the Descriptive Information Form, Adaptation to Chronic Illness Scale (ACIS), Nutrition Risk Screening-2002 (NRS-2002), and Katz Activities of Daily Living (Katz ADL) scale. Results. The mean age of the participants was 70.65±4.18 years. All participants were at risk of malnutrition according to the NRS-2002 assessment, 29% were independent, and 35.8% were partially dependent based on the Katz ADL scale assessment. The ACIS score was 82.83±13.88. Multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that age, disease duration, perceived disease knowledge, and interference from the disease with planned activities were significant positive predictors of ACIS, while hospitalization in the last 6 months, the number of meals per day, difficulty in meeting personal care needs, and NRS-2002 were significant negative predictors of ACIS (p

Diatoms are a type of algae with many species. Accurate and quick classification of diatom species is important in many fields, such as water quality analysis and weather change forecasting. Traditional methods for diatom classification, specifically morphological taxonomy and molecular detection, are time-consuming and may not provide satisfactory performance. However, in recent years, deep learning has demonstrated impressive performance in this task, just like other image classification problems. On the other hand, networks with more layers do not guarantee increased accuracy. While increasing depth can be useful in capturing complex features and patterns, it also introduces challenges such as vanishing gradients, overfitting, and optimization challenges. Therefore, in our work, we propose DiatomNet, a lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN) model that can classify diatom species accurately while requiring low computing resources. A recently introduced dataset consisting of 3,027 diatom images and 68 diatom species is used to train and evaluate the model. The model is compared with well-known and successful CNN models (i.e., AlexNet, GoogleNet, Inceptionv3, ResNet18, VGG16, and Xception) and their customized versions obtained with transfer learning. The comparison is based on several success metrics: accuracy, precision, recall, F-measure, number of learnable parameters, training, and prediction time. Eventually, the experimental results reveal that DiatomNet outperforms the other models regarding all metrics with just a few exceptions. Therefore, it is a lightweight but strong candidate for diatom classification tasks.

The difficulty that hospital management has been experiencing over the past decade in balancing demand and capacity needs is unprecedented in the United Kingdom. Due to a shortage of capacity, hospitals cannot treat all patients. We developed a whole hospital-level decision support system to assess and respond to the needs of local populations. We integrated a comparative forecasting approach and discrete event simulation modelling using Hospital Episode Statistics and local datasets. It is clear from the literature that this level of whole hospital simulation model has never been developed before (an innovative decision support system). First, the demands of all hospital specialties were forecasted, and the forecasts were embedded into the simulation model as input. Secondly, a simulation model was developed to capture the patient pathway of all specialties. The model integrates every component of a hospital to aid with efficient and effective use of scarce resources (e.g., staff and beds). As a result, the hospital can meet the increasing demand with its current resources. According to the scenario analysis, the hospital bed occupancy rate will reach the national target (i.e., 85%), and the total hospital revenue will increase by approximately 13%, with a 10% increase in A&E and outpatient and a 20% increase in inpatient demand. In conclusion, the hospital-level simulation model can become a crucial instrument for decision-makers to provide an efficient service for hospitals in England and other parts of the world.

Background: We aimed to describe the thiamine status in hospitalized hypervolemic heart failure (HF) and/or renal failure (RF) patients treated with furosemide and to investigate whether there was a difference in furosemide-related thiamine deficiency between patients with RF and HF. Methods: Patients who were diagnosed as hypervolemia and treated with intravenous furosemide (at least 40 mg/day) were included in this prospective observational study. Whole blood thiamine concentrations were measured 3 times during hospital follow-up of patients. Results: We evaluated 61 hospitalized hypervolemic patients, of which 22 (36%) were men and 39 (64%) were women, with a mean age of 69.00 ± 10.39 (45–90) years. The baseline and post–hospital admission days 2 and 4 mean thiamine levels were 51.71 ± 20.66 ng/ml, 47.64 ± 15.43 ng/ml and 43.78 ± 16.20 ng/ml, respectively. Thiamine levels of the hypervolemic patients decreased significantly during the hospital stay while furosemide treatment was continuing (p = 0.029). There was a significant decrease in thiamine levels in patients who had HF (p = 0.026) and also, thiamine was significantly lower in HF patients who had previously used oral furosemide before hospitalization. However, these findings were not present in patients with RF. Conclusions: Thiamine substantially decreases in most hypervolemic patients receiving intravenous furosemide treatment during the hospital stay. Thiamine levels were significantly decreased with furosemide treatment in especially HF patients, but the decrease in thiamine levels did not detected at the same rate in RF patients. Diuretic-induced thiamine loss may be less likely in RF patients, probably due to a reduction in excretion. Resumen: Antecedentes: Nos propusimos describir el estado de la tiamina en pacientes hospitalizados con insuficiencia cardíaca (IC) y/o insuficiencia renal (IR) hipervolémica tratados con furosemida, e investigar si había una diferencia en la deficiencia de tiamina relacionada con la furosemida entre los pacientes con IR y con IC. Métodos: En este estudio observacional prospectivo se incluyeron pacientes con diagnóstico de hipervolemia y tratados con furosemida intravenosa (al menos 40 mg/día). Se midieron las concentraciones de tiamina en sangre total 3 veces durante el seguimiento hospitalario de los pacientes. Resultados: Se evaluaron 61 pacientes hipervolémicos hospitalizados, de los cuales 22 (36%) eran hombres y 39 (64%) eran mujeres, con una edad media de 69,00±10,39 (45-90) años. Los niveles medios de tiamina en la línea de base y tras el ingreso hospitalario en los días 2 y 4 fueron de 51,71±20,66 ng/ml, 47,64±15,43 ng/ml y 43,78±16,20 ng/ml, respectivamente. Los niveles de tiamina de los pacientes hipervolémicos hipervolemia disminuyeron significativamente durante la estancia en el hospital mientras se mantenía el tratamiento con furosemida furosemida (p = 0,029). Hubo una disminución significativa de los niveles de tiamina en los pacientes que tenían IC (p = 0,026) y también, la tiamina fue significativamente menor en los pacientes con IC que habían habían utilizado previamente furosemida oral antes de la hospitalización. Sin embargo, estos hallazgos no se presentes en los pacientes con IC. Conclusiones: La tiamina disminuye sustancialmente en la mayoría de los pacientes hipervolémicos que reciben tratamiento con furosemida intravenosa durante la estancia hospitalaria. Los niveles de tiamina se redujeron significativamente con el tratamiento con furosemida, especialmente en los pacientes con IC, pero la disminución de los niveles de tiamina no se detectó al mismo ritmo en los pacientes con IC. La pérdida de tiamina inducida por los diuréticos inducida por los diuréticos puede ser menos probable en los pacientes con insuficiencia cardiaca, probablemente debido a una reducción de la excreción.

In phishing attack detection, machine learning-based approaches are more effective than simple blacklisting strategies, as they can adapt to new types of attacks and do not require manual updates. However, for these approaches, the choice of features and classifiers directly influences detection performance. Therefore, in this work, the contributions of various features and classifiers to detecting phishing attacks were thoroughly analyzed to find the best classifier and feature set in terms of different performance metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and classification time. For this purpose, a brand-new phishing dataset was prepared and made publicly available. Using an exhaustive strategy, every combination of the feature groups was fed into various classifiers to detect phishing websites. Two existing benchmark datasets were also used in addition to ours for further analysis. The experimental results revealed that the features based on the uniform resource locator (URL) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), rather than all features, offered the best performance. Also, the decision tree classifier surpassed the others, achieving an F1-score of 0.99 and being one of the fastest classifiers overall.