Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare higher-order aberrations between personalized treatment (PT) versus personalized treatment advanced (PTA) photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) for myopia and myopic astigmatism.Methods: In this clinical trial, 80 eyes of 40 patients who met inclusion criteria were enrolled. They underwent PRK using PT or PTA algorithm randomly. Higher-order aberrations were measured and compared between the study groups pre-operatively and at months 3 and 6 postoperatively.Results: The two study groups were comparable in terms of preoperative higher-order aberrations.Compared to the preoperative values, higher-order aberrations were significantly increased in the PT group (p<0.001), but decreased in the PTA group (p<0.001). Spherical aberration exhibited a significant increase postoperatively in the PT group (p<0.001) but remained unchanged in the PTA group (P=0.57).Conclusion: PRK using PT algorithm resulted in an increase higher-order aberrations. PTA algorithm provided better results in terms of postoperative higher-order aberrations and could treat pre-existing higher-order aberrations.

Background & Objectives: Insomnia is one of the most common sleep disorders in the world. It causes disruption in daily activities and increases the risk of major depression. Hence, clinically the appropriate and persistent treatment of insomnia is very important. Using of hypnotic drugs such as benzodiazepines is the common treatment for insomnia but they show several side effects and it seems that new medications should be used for treatment of sleep disorders. The aim of this study was comparison between the effects of electromagnetic therapy and conventional drug usage in the treatment of insomnia.Methods: In a blind randomized clinical trial study, 60 people referred to the private office of the psychiatrist and experienced more than 3 months extended primary insomnia were selected. They were diagnosed by DSM-IV criteria and had no other underlying problems. The subjects were divided in two groups: 30 people in each and treated electromagnetically or with Alprazolam for 3 weeks. Before treatment, immediately and one month after treatment, quality of sleep and severity of the insomnia were evaluated by using the standard questionnaires and finally, the results were analyzed statistically.Results: In this study, 60 individuals participated from whom 28 were male (46.7%) and 32 patients were female (53.3%).The mean age was 37.3 years old in a range of 17- 65. The mean point of each questionnaire, before and immediately after treatment significantly didn't show any difference but one month after treatment, there was a significant difference in both groups.Conclusion: To treat insomnia, electromagnetic therapy appears to be used as a replacement for sedative medicines. It also has more stability in comparison with other sedative medicines and no side effects have been reported yet.

The electrical behavior of neurons can be more complex in the presence of autapse. In the presence of an autaptic connection, the Izhikevich neuron model can show a variety of dynamic behaviors, such as chaotic behavior. This paper presents a novel, high speed and robust pseudo random number generator based on the autaptic Izhikevich neuron oscillator and its FPGA implementation. The autaptic Izhikevich neuron model is simulated and dynamically analyzed. Then, the proposed pseudo-random number generator is modeled and simulated using the Xilinx system generator platform, synthesized using Xilinx Synthesis Tool, and implemented on the XILINX SPARTAN-6 XC6SLX9 FPGA evaluation board. As a post processing operation, the XOR function is used to increase the randomness of the output bit sequences. The FPGA implementation results show that the implementation cost of the proposed pseudo-random number generator is lower than similar works, and the proposed generator achieves a maximum frequency of 63.2 MHz. The NIST test suite is used for testing the quality of the generated bit sequences. The NIST test results indicates the high quality of the generated random bit sequence.

People with Parkinson's disease (PD) often have walking difficulty in the advanced stages of the disease and also suffer from balance problems. They perform their functional movements in a smaller range and at a slower rate, which will cause difficulty in performing daily activities. Patients with PD face many difficulties in outdoor activities, community participation, personal tasks, and fine motor skills (e. g. writing). They usually need the help of others. For two decades, a new treatment called Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) has been used by the speech therapists to treat speech and swallowing disorders in PD patients based on evidence and principles of neuroplasticity. The BIG protocol was added to this method in 2010 (LSVT-BIG). In this method, the whole body is involved and its main focus is on motor skills, which are guided by a physiotherapist and occupational therapist. The main goal of this new method is to improve patient’ s skilled movement in PD, as opposed to the old methods that introduce muscle stiffness as the main problem in these patients. In this method, patients will be required to perform a series of special exercises in sitting and standing positions in a larger range than usual with a specific schedule and in a one-month intensive period. Doing the BIG protocol correctly can make the range of motion softer and larger. The studies also show that the LSVT BIG method is very effective for improving patients' walking patterns and daily activities and significantly increases the quality of life in PD patients. Eventually, the PD patients will be able to perform their motor tasks automatically. Considering the useful results of this method and also the growing trend of its application around the world, it is necessary to enable therapists with this new method and provide more complete services for PD patients.

Introduction: The innovation of outpatient extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) has created a revolution in the treatment of urinary tract stones. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the success rate of electromagnetic lithotriptor, in the treatment of renal and upper ureteral stones. Patients and Methods: In this study, 84 patients aged over 10 years, with renal and upper ureteral stones less than 20 mm, were considered for ESWL. Patients were randomly assigned into two groups. In all patients, using ultrasound and fluoroscopy, stone was localized and using an electromagnetic machine by standard method, ESWL was performed with electromagnetic waves. ESWL started with 12 kV and was increased to18 kV, up to a maximum of 3500 shock waves. Two weeks later a kidney, ureter, and bladder (KUB) X-ray and ultrasonography was conducted and the success rate of lithotripsy according to the crushing of stones and decrease in stone size was measured and recorded. Results: In this study, 61. 9% of patients were male. The mean age of patients was 46. 62 ± 13. 12 years. The mean size of stones in both groups was 13. 4 ± 2. 5 mm. Around 56. 3% of patients had opaque stones and 43. 8% had non-opaque stones. A total of 63. 5% of patients received up to 3000 shock waves and 37. 5% of patients received more than 3000 shock waves. Complete efficacy and clearance of renal and ureteral stones was observed in 54. 8% and 59. 1% of cases, respectively (P > 0. 05). Conclusion: This study showed a similarity in the success and efficacy of electromagnetic lithotriptor in the treatment of renal and upper ureteral stones. Additionally, the success rate of opaque and non-opaque stones have no significant differences, while stone size and proportion of shock waves will not increase the efficacy of the electromagnetic lithotriptor in crushing the stones.

Introduction: Many efforts have been made to improve Ni-Ti alloy for endodontic use and it has been shown that surface properties and thus cutting efficiency of the rotary files can be improved by processes such as electro-polishing, ion implantation and surface coating. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of cryogenic treatment on cutting efficiency of Ni-Ti rotary files.Materials and Methods: In this in vitro study, 60 Ni-Ti rotary instruments (Hero 642, #25, 0.04 taper) were selected and divided into 3 groups of 20. In group I no treatment was used. In group II the instruments were subjected to a deep cryogenic treatment in liquid nitrogen pool (-196oC) for 24 hours and after treatment were immediately tested for cutting efficiency. In group III after cryogenic treatment the temperature of the samples was raised slowly to room temperature for 24 hours. A new piece of test equipment was designed and used. The instruments were attached to the testing machine and rotated in Plexiglas samples for 10 seconds in a working length of 16 mm. The depth of grooves and weight loss of Plexiglas were measured after instrumentation. One-way and two-way ANOVA were used to compare the means of cutting efficacy between the three groups at 95% confidence interval.Results: The instruments which were immediately tested for cutting efficiency had significantly more weight loss and deeper grooves (pweight<0.001; pgroove=0.022), indicating better cutting efficiency. However, there was no significant differences between group I and group III in cutting efficacy (p weight=0.23; p groove=0.61).Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the surface properties of Ni-Ti alloy could be improved by the cryogenic treatment for a limited period of time after treatment, increasing the cutting efficiency of Ni-Ti rotary instruments.

The term "electromagnetic fields" (EMF) is a combination of electric and magnetic fields as a diagnostic method as well as a therapeutic tool with many advantages such as ease of operation and painlessness, very controllable, which today has found wide application in regenerative medicine and also cancer treatment. In addition to organs such as nerves, hearts, and bones that have an electrical function, the presence of electrically charged particles inside the cells creates an internal electromagnetic field. This field can be affected by the external electromagnetic field and cause therapeutic effects. Its therapeutic effects relate to the applications of the electromagnetic field as a stimulus to induce various biological effects on cells, such as altering cell proliferation, differentiation, cell cycle, apoptosis, DNA proliferation, cytokine expression, and more. Also, combination therapy by the electromagnetic field, along with other physical therapies such as radiotherapy and even systemic therapy such as chemotherapy, are the most important approaches to using the electromagnetic field in the treatment of cancer. Subsequently, Electromagnetic fields can lead to the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells and the modulation of the immune system, which plays an important role in the treatment of inflammatory disease and regenerative medicine treatments. Also, this field can create new horizons in cancer treatment due to its many advantages such as being a non-invasive, selective function, and ease of using and as well as affordability.

Background: Electromagnetic induction hyperthermia is a promising method to treat the deep-seated tumors such as brain and prostatic tumors. This technique is performed using the induction of electromagnetic waves in the ferromagnetic cores implanted at the solid tumor.Objective: This study aims at determining the conditions of the optimal thermal distribution in the different frequencies before performing the in vitro cellular study.Material and Methods: In this experimental study, the i-Cu alloy (70.4-29.6; wt%) was prepared and characterized and then the parameters, affecting the amount of induction heating in the ferromagnetic core, were investigated. Self-regulating cores in 1, 3, 6, and 9 arrangements in the water phantom with a volume of 2 cm3 were used as a replacement for solid tumor.Results: Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) analysis and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) show the uniformity of the alloy after 4 times remeling by vacuum arc remelting furnace. The Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) shows that the Curie temperature (TC) of the ferromagnetic core is less than 50 °C. Temperature profile with a frequency of 100-400 kHz for 30 min, was extracted by infrared imaging camera, indicating the increase temperature in the range of 42 °C to 46 °C. Conclusion: The optimum conditions with used hyperthermia system are supplied in the frequency of 100 kHz, 200 kHz and 400 kHz with 6, 3 and 1 seeds, respectively. It is also possible to induce a temperature up to 50 °C by increasing the number of seeds at a constant frequency and power, or by increasing the applied frequency at a constant number of seeds.