Introduction: Measurement of child anxiety during dental treatment is a challenge during the procedure. Several questionnaires have been developed to assess child anxiety, some of which are pictorial to facilitate their application in children. The aim of the current study was to evaluate validity of new RMS pictorial questionnaire and to compare it with previous SCALEs, including Venham Picture Test (VPT) and Facial Image SCALE (FIS), to assess child dental anxiety during their first visit in a dental office.Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 10 children in Shiraz in 2016, who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The children's anxiety was evaluated by RMS-PS, VPT and FIS questionnaires. To assess reliability, questionnaires were given to the children at a two-week interval. Data were analyzed with t-test and regression correlation test (a=0.05).Results: Age and gender had no effect on children's anxiety, but in the presence of preoperative pain, anxiety was significantly higher. RMS had a moderate (r=0.622) and significant (p value<0.001) correlation with VPT questionnaire and a good (r= 0.700) and significant (p value<0.001) correlation with the FIS questionnaire. In addition, the relationship between FIS and VPT questionnaires was moderate (r= 0.623) and significant (p value<0.001).Conclusion: The results showed that RMS questionnaire is not reliable. However, it was valid compared to FIS and VPT questionnaires. Therefore, RMS can be used to indicate child dental anxiety as a proper tool.

Sluggish Cognitive Tempo is used to describe a particular type of attention deficit, concentration, and slowness in information processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo SCALE (SCTS) of the parent form among Iranian children. The present study is a descriptive study. A sample of 1700 people was selected from the provinces of Tehran, East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Fars and Khorasan using cluster sampling method. 122 subjects were excluded from statistical analysis due to incomplete answers to the questionnaires and thus the final sample was reduced to 1578 parents. The confirmatory factor analysis method and internal consistency were used to compute the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo SCALE factorial validity and reliability, respectively. Also, in order to examine the construct validity of the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo SCALE, we computed correlations between different dimensions of Sluggish Cognitive Tempo SCALE with Attention Deficit SubSCALE of Mental Health Assessment Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents. The results of statistical results showed that this SCALE has structural validity, criterion and convergence in Iranian society. The results indicate that the SCALE is three factors and also the validity of the SCALE using Cronbach's alpha method and retest test after Approved two weeks. According to the findings of the present study, the parent form of the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo SCALE (SCTS) has a good validity and reliability and it can be used in research related to slow cognitive multiplication in Iranian society.

One of the factors that can be the link between our intentions and actions and their external consequences is human agency, which indicates the conscious design and intentional execution of actions by the individual in order to influence future events.Objective and Method: This research with a developmental approach of psychometric method and method 1, examines the psychometric indices of the Human Factor Characteristics SCALE using the classical theory of test score measurement and the graduated question-answer theory. The purpose of this study, which included high school students in Tehran, was selected by cluster sampling of 500 people as a sample size and statistical analysis was performed on 481 data. To collect the data, the ion Human Agent Characteristics SCALE (2011) was used and the research questions were evaluated using IRTPRO and SPSS software.Results:The assumption of local independence based on Pearson x2 index was established by applying Simjima's calibrated question-answer theory and the assumption of being one-dimensional based on the analysis of multidimensional question-answer theory. Diagnosis parameters with question-answer approach and classical approach Test score Both item 25 approach had the lowest and item 2 had the highest diagnosis parameter. The answer thresholds for all the questions were so far apart that no option was covered by the other option, and the options were independently selected by individuals at intervals of theta. The total SCALE was calculated with Cronbach's alpha of 0.945, intentionality of 0.894, foresight of 0.780, self-reactivity of 0.871 and rethinking of 0.762. Also, the role of each item in internal consistency was investigated by the loop method, which all questions had a favorable role in internal consistency of this SCALE. The value of the validity coefficient obtained from the question-answer theory was obtained by marginal method for intentionality 0.92, forethought 0.85, self-reaction 0.91, rethinking 0.83..

Most speech enhancement algorithms focus on obtaining an estimator relying on stochastic models. In this paper, a minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimator under a stochastic– deterministic model is proposed where a heavy-tail distribution called t-Location-SCALE (tls) is used for modeling Discrete Fourier Transform coefficients of clean speech signals and exponential and sinusoidal models are employed as deterministic models. In the exponential model, the frequency and damping coefficient are estimated by using the Matrix Pencil method. Also, in previous studies, the number of exponential components in the deterministic model for stochastic-deterministic speech enhancement algorithm has been considered to be one. In this paper, the corresponding exponential model is developed to have an arbitrary number of exponential components. The speech enhancement experiments are performed in three modes, exponential-Gaussian (the first proposed method), exponential-tls (the second proposed method), and sinusoidal-Gaussian. Comparisons are made with the exponential-Gaussian method (with only one exponential component), as well as with the Weiner and tls stochastic estimators. The implementation results in the presence of six noise types from Noisex-92 dataset show that the two proposed methods improve the segSNR values and have quite similar PESQ values comparing with the stochastic based speech enhancement methods.

Background and Aim: Measuring the outcome of chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis is an important factor in assessment of disease impact on different dimensions of quality of life and in evaluation of therapeutic interventions. The aim of this study was to perform the cross-cultural adaptation of the MSIS-29 which is a MS-specific outcome measure for Iranian patients.Materials and Methods: The Iranian adaptation process of the MSIS-29 included 5 steps. To evaluate psychometric properties of the translated version, the questionnaire was administered to a consecutive sample of 96 patients with clinically definite MS referred to our out-patient clinic. Test-retest reliability was assessed in a sub-sample consisted of 30 patients. These patients completed the questionnaire on two occasions separated by a 7-day interval. The Iranian version of the SF-36 was also administered to this sub-sample in order to evaluate the validity of translated MSIS-29.Results: Statistical analysis indicated that the Persian version of the MSIS-29 had high internal consistency (cronbach's alpha coefficients> 0.70) and test-retest reliability (intra-class correlation coefficients >0.70) and a good validity.Conclusion: The Persian version of the MSIS-29 is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring MS outcome in Iranian patients. It can be used in clinical trials and cross-sectional studies.

Iran is not rich in forest land and only 7.5 per cent of country is covered by forest. Therefore Iran has to import wood based panel annually. It is estimated that 100.000.000 Date Palms trees covered an area at about 770.000 hectares around world, and Iran has got 220.000 ha. Because of several reasons Date palm trees should be pruned and each tree produce 10-20 kg residues annually. In this study, for making boards Date Palm pruning residues as raw material and employed UF resin as the binder. Steaming time (5 and 8 Min.), steaming temperature (135 and 145oC) and press time (1, 2 and 3 Min.) were used as variable factors and three boards were made in Pilot plant SCALE for each combination of variables. Samples of all made boards were tested by the methods of EN to obtain mean values of bending strength, and internal bond strength (I.B). In addition samples of each type of board were tested for thickness swelling after soaking in water for 2 hours and 24 hours respectively.The results of this study show clearly that boards have higher mechanical properties than the MDF property requirements which are recommended by EN standard.

Background & Aims: Empathy plays an important role in patient’s relationship with his/her dentist or doctor. One of the most used tools for evaluation of empathy is the Jefferson SCALE of Physician Empathy-Health Professionals Version (JSPE-HP). The aim of this study was to validate the JSPE-HP for use among Iranian population.Methods: The English original version of the JSPE-HP questionnaire was translated into Persian language by a forward–backward translation method. Reliability was tested on 30 Dental and Medical students. Then validity and internal consistency were tested on 554 students.Results: The reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) of the JSPE-HP was excellent (alpha: 0.83). The coefficient of test re-test reliability measured by ICC (Intra class correlation coefficient) was 0.82 (CI 95%: 0.80-0.87). Freshman students had higher scores than other students and this difference was significant (P=0.03). There was no significant difference on empathy scores between Dental and Medical students.Conclusion: The overall findings of this study indicate that the Persian version of the JSPE is a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating physician-patient empathy in Iranian Population.

Introduction: Mental fatigue is defined as body or soul tiredness which can be caused by stress, overwork, excessive use of drugs or physical or mental illnesses. Fatigue is one of the reasons of productivity loss as well as occurring accidents. Therefore, mental fatigue measurement is of great importance. This study was aimed to determine the consistency of mental fatigue measurement by self-reported VAS and the flicker fusion apparatus. Material and Methods: A descriptive study was conducted on 30 students. After they had accomplished mental tasks (i.e. mathematical problem solving and responding to MMPI questionnaire), mental fatigued was measured by self-reported VAS and flicker fusion apparatus. To analyze the results, paired sample T-test and Spearman correlation test were applied in SPSS software version 11.5 (P<0.05). Findings: The results of mental fatigue measurements by both methods of self-reported VAS and the flicker fusion apparatus showed significant increase in mental fatigue after finishing each of the mental tasks. But the findings revealed no consistency between the two methods.Conclusion: Since self-reported VAS is a subjective technique, it seems that the lack of consistency between the two methods is due to its inefficiency in the mental fatigue measurement. Therefore, further studies with more precise methods such as EEG is suggested.

Identification of the exact location of an exon in a DNA sequence is an important research area of bioinformatics. The main issues of the previous signal processing techniques are accuracy and robustness for the exact locating of exons. To address the mentioned issues, in this study, a method has been proposed based on deep learning. The proposed method includes a new preprocessing, a new mapping method, and a multi-SCALE modified and hybrid deep neural network. The proposed preprocessing method enriches the network to accept and encode genes at any length in a new mapping method. The proposed multi-SCALE deep neural network uses a combination of an embedding layer, a modified CNN, and an LSTM network. In this study, HMR195, BG570, and F56F11.4 datasets have been used to compare this work with previous studies. The accuracies of the proposed method have been 0.982, 0.966, and 0.965 on HMR195, BG570, and F56F11.4 databases, respectively. The results reveal the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed hybrid multi-SCALE CNN-LSTM network.