Annals of Military and Health Sciences Research
Volume:12 Issue: 2, Spring 2014

Blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI) is one of the causes of death or permanent invalidity which can occur unexpectedly in both military and civilian populations. This study set out to conduct a combined Eulerian-Lagrangian computational analysis of the interaction between a single planar blast wave and a human head in order to assess the extent of intracranial shock wave generation and its potential for causing traumatic brain injury. To investigate the mechanical response of human brain to blast waves and to identify the injury mechanisms of TBI, a three-dimensional finite elementhead model consisting of the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and brain was developed from the imaging data of a human head.The mechanical properties of brain tissuewere obtained from the literature. Throughout the loading regime, CSF acted as a protective layer for brain tissue by absorbing shear strain energy. Biomechanical loading of the brain was governed by direct wave transmission, structural deformations, and wave reflections from tissue-material interfaces. The brain experiences a complex set of direct and indirect loadings emanating from different sources (reflections from tissue interfaces and skull deformation) at different points of time. The flow dynamics strongly depend on geometry (shape, curvature) and structure (flexural rigidity, thickness) of a specimen and should be considered in understanding biomechanical loading pattern.

Patients may control postoperative pain by self-administration of intravenous opioids using devices designed for this purpose (patient controlled analgesia or PCA). This study set out to determine whether any of the two opioid administrations (i.e. PCA or conventional analgesia) would provide superior pain relief among patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy or not. In a clinical trial the PCA group received self-administered intermittent intravenous morphine via PCA and the conventional group received intravenous Pethidine every 6 hours per day. The patients were assessed on an hourly basis for the first 4 hours after surgery, every 2 hours for the next 8 hours and every 4 hours for next 12 hours. Two methods were used in order to evaluate the degree of pain relief in patients: (1) facial pain scale; pain assessment based on the patient’s appearance and (2) numerical rating scale; based on patient ratings of their pain. Forty eight patients (79.1% female, 20.1% male) with a mean age of 45.7 ± 10.7 years old were enrolled into the study. During the first 24 hours after laparoscopic cholecystectomy, pain intensity based on facial pain scale was lower in the PCA group. However, the difference was significant only in the second hour (Mean Pain Score in PCA group: 2.9, Mean Pain Score in conventional group: 3.7, P =. 007). Also, the mean pain scores based on numerical rating scale were significantly lower in PCA group except for the first hour. Although it was not significantly lower than conventional group (Mean Pain Score in PCA group: 4.2, Mean Pain Score in conventional group: 4.6, P =. 45). Intravenous PCA resulted in better postoperative pain reduction compared to intermittent bolus opioid delivery in laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is the causative agent of toxoplasmosis. It infects up to one third of the human population. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of T. gondii infection on induction of oxidative stress in serum of infected men and women. This case-control study was carried out on 150 individuals who had referred to our center in Tehran. Serum was obtained from venous blood samples. Immunoglobulin G (IgG) anti- toxoplasma antibody enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test was performed on all of the samples. Those who were IgG positive were regarded as the case group (52 women and 23 men) and the others as the control group (43 women and 32 men). The data were analyzed by INSTAT software using ANOVA followed by Tukey. Serum superoxide dismutase in men of the case group were significantly higher than in the control group (7.81 ± 0.38 vs. 6.69 ± 0.17, P =. 045). Catalase activities in men of the case group were significantly higher than in the control group (8.64 ± 0.55 vs. 6.23 ± 0.38, P =. 006). Glutathione S-transferase activity and malondialdehyde levels in women of the case group were significantly higher than in the control group (5.98 ± 0.24 vs. 4.73 ± 0.28, P =. 037 and 2.3 ± 0.09 vs. 1.9 ± 0.09, P =. 032, respectively). Catalase activity and glutathione levels in women of the case group were lower than in the control group (6.0 ± 0.45 vs. 7.63 ± 0.48, P =. 043 and 0.62 ± 0.05 vs. 0.89 ± 0.05, P =. 007, respectively). T. gondii infection induces oxidative stress in women’s serum because of the decreased catalase activity, glutathione depletion and increasing lipid peroxidation. The increased antioxidant enzyme activities in infected men were because of the adaptive response to the generated free radicals. Women were found to be more sensitive to the effects of toxoplasma infection on oxidative stress induction compared to men.

Military personnel are expected to maintain the highest possible level of physical fitness to do their duties. Several factors including body composition and body mass index affect the level of their physical preparedness. The current study was designed to investigate the effect of body composition and body mass index in the level of physical preparedness of Iranian military personnel. In this cross-sectional study, 255 Iranian military personnel were randomly selected. After becoming ensured of the good health of participants, their weight, height and body mass index was determined. The body composition was defined by bioelectrical impedance analysis. Maximum aerobic capacity and metabolic equivalent was estimated using the Bruce treadmill test. Maximum muscle strength in the trunk and lower extremities was measured by the back dynamometer and flexibility was measured by the sit and reach box. Maximum aerobic capacity, metabolic equivalents, maximum muscle strength adjusted for weight and flexibility had significant negative correlations with percentage of body fat (r = -.172 to -.533) and body mass index (r = -.302 to -.504). Thus the studied factors (excluding flexibility) had more significant association with body fat. There was no significant correlation between pure maximum muscle strength (not adjusted for weight) and body mass index (r =. 28, P =. 658). The percentage of body fat and body mass index affect several health-related physical fitness factors including aerobic capacity, metabolic equivalents, flexibility and maximum muscle strength adjusted for weight but not pure maximum muscle strength in military personnel.

Popular TV series and sitcoms have received different reactions from people of different classes. The present study was conducted to measure the positive and negative attitudes of psychologists, psychiatrists, chronic psychiatric patients and ordinary healthy viewers toward an Iranian TV series entitled ‘The Physicians’ Building’ whose main character was a psychologist. The study tool was a researcher-made questionnaire that measured the attitude toward the mentioned TV series with 19 items based on Likert scale. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential tests. The participants were selected voluntarily and included 30 psychologists, 25 psychiatrists, 16 under-treatment psychiatric patients and 57 ordinary people (total of 128 participants). The results showed that in most cases, psychologists’ opinion about the series was different from the other groups of participants (P =. 04). Psychologists strongly emphasized on the bad influences of this TV series in the society (P =. 02). There was a significant difference between the attitudes of psychologists toward the studied TV series as compared to psychiatrists, psychiatric patients and ordinary people.

Different views of an individuals’ image may be required for proper face recognition. Recently, discrete cosines transform (DCT) based method has been used to synthesize virtual views of an image using only one frontal image. In this work the performance of two different algorithms was examined to produce virtual views of one frontal image. Two new methods, based on neural networks (NN) and principle component analysis (PCA) were used to make virtual views of an image. The results were compared with those of the DCT-based method. Two distance metrics, i.e. mean square error (MSE) and structural similarity index measure (SSIM), were used to measure and compare image qualities. About 400 data were used to evaluate the performance of the new proposed methods. The neural networks fail to improve the quality of virtually produced images. However, principle component analysis improved the quality of the synthesized images about 3%. Principle component analysis is better than both DCT-based and neural network methods for synthesizing virtual views of an image.

To evaluate the effect of fullerene on chemical properties of naphazoline drug in water by density functional theory (DFT) methods. Naphazoline belongs to the imidazoline class of sympathomimetics. The present study on naphazoline drug and its fullerene connected form were carried out using computerized calculations of Gaussian program in b3lyp/6-31g level in water. Impact of fullerene on naphazoline was analyzed as changes in level of some properties including energetic levels, stability, high occupancy molecular orbital (HOMO), low unoccupancy molecular orbital (LUMO) levels, chemical hardness and electrophilicity properties. Results indicated that joint of medicine and C 60 considerably decreases the energy level and the dipole moment. Therefore, reacting ability of the medicine is increased but its solubility is decreased in solution phase. Combined fullerene structure with naphazoline, as a nano-carrier, enhances reacting ability of the medicine and its low solubility in the water phase of human body.