Background and purpose: Coronal CT scan of paranasal sinuses with contiguous images is the gold standard technique in diagnosis of sinusitis. Considering the expense and high dose of radiation in conventional CT scan, clinical measurements and simple radiography is not enough sensitive and specific, some workers have suggested limited SCREENING (non contiguous) instead of conventional CT image. This study compared the diagnostic accuracy of coronal CT with limited SCREENING (4 screens) to conventional CT in diagnosis of sinusitis.Materials and methods: On 100 patients suspected of sinusitis referred to Emam Khomeini hospital. Coronal CT scan (with 16 screens) was performed. And on the basis of relevant scout view, four images of limited SCREENINGs (non contiguouse images) were selected and printed. Images of the both CT techniques were reported seperately by two radiologists. (Totally, four CT reports for each patients were given) The results of standard and limited SCREENING CT reports given from the first radiologist were compared with the reports of the same, given by the second radiologist.Results: The comparitive results for the standard and limited SCREENING techniques reported by two radiologists referred to as kappa value were 0.95 and 0.97 respectively. Which indicate a good aggreement between two radiologists in giving the reports of the images. Limited SCREENING technique generally had the rate of 94.1% and 93.5% for sensitivity and accuracy respectively. General prevalence of sinusitis in the patients under study was 67%. Maxillar sinus was the most involved one with result of 98.7%.Conclusion: Limited SCREENING CT technique for paranasal sinuses can be a proper technigue as a first evaluative measurement in the patients suspected for sinusitis. For this, can replace simple radiography. Advantage of this technique can be due to use of less dose of radiation, more speed of radiography and less expenses.

Site selection for rural sports-cultural centers is a complicated process which is based on qualitative and quantitative criteria. There are several appropriate decision making methods which can be utilized for a spatial purpose. In decision making process, the qualitative and linguistic criteria are as important as quantitative ones. Moreover, stakeholders! Consideration should be taken into account. Therefore, it is necessary to use methods considering both factors including linguistic variables as well as stakeholders. AHP and Fuzzy SCREENINGs are two methods used for modeling qualitative and linguistic variables. However, since AHP contains a hierarchical organization, it can present more reliable results. On the other hand, the Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) is more flexible in taking the priorities of the decision makers into account. Hence better results can be achieved by the combination of OWA with other methods. In this paper, fuzzy SCREENING, AHP, and a combined method of AHP and OWA are used in order to select the most appropriate site for rural sports-cultural centers in Kani Bazar, located in the suburbs of Mahabad. The results show that the combined method presents more flexibility and higher performance. Furthermore, the result of sensitivity analysis carried out on the data reveals that the developed system demonstrates very high stability.

Background: Nowadays photoproteins are excellent reporter systems as they have virtually no background. The most commonly studied photoprotein is aequorin. But because of it’s low quantum yield and very fast reaction kinetic; this photoprotein assay don’t adapt for High-Throughput SCREENING (HTS). Consequently, some researchers developed three improved photoproteins optimized for the generation of precise Ca2+ mobilization assays; photina, i-photina and c-photina. Although the total light release of these photoproteins is greater and their reaction kinetic is slower compared to other existing photoproteins, opening new opportunities for the application of flash luminescence assays in HTS. Recently, the three photoproteins by several companies such as PerkinElmer and Axxam have been commercialized. So, we selected i-photina which has the highest luminescence signal and good stability compared with two other photoproteins.Materials and Methods: Codon usage of i-Photina was optimized for both E. coli and mammalian cells. The encoding gene of i-photina was synthesized and overexpressed in E. coli. Then i-Photina was characterized and compared with aequorin.Results: i-Photina showed about a 14-fold higher bioluminescence signal than aequorin. Ca2+ sensivity of i-Photina was found to be slightly less than aequorin. In respect to other measured properties such as degree of stability, bioluminescence spectrum and decay half-life time, these two photoproteins were almost the same.Conclusion: i-Photina is an improved version of photoprotein that in many ways is superior to use of other Ca2+ indicators for HTS assays and can also be considered as a potential candidate for creating genetic mutations improved the bioluminescence propertises.

John Langdon Down (1828-1896) described Down’s syndrome with 3 characteristics: the skin too loose for the body, flat face, and small nose.Every woman has a risk of having a baby with Down’s syndrome which depends on her age and the history of having a previous Down’s baby (background or priori risk). Diagnosis of fetal chromosomal abnormalities requires invasive testing by amniocentesis or chorionic villous sampling (CVS), both of which have a risk of miscarriage of 1%. The risk for trisomy 21 increases with maternal age and decreases with gestational age because about 30% of affected fetuses die between the 12th and 40th week of pregnancy. However the vast majority of pregnant women are young, therefore most of Down babies are in the younger age group. SCREENING in the second trimester by maternal age and various combinations of total or free b-hCG, AFP, uE3 and Inhibin A can identify 56-71% of trisomy 21 pregnancies for a false positive rate of 5% (Meta-analysis by H Cuckle, P Penn and D Wright, Semin Perinatol 2005; 29: 252-7). SCREENING in the first trimester by a combination of maternal age, fetal NT, FHR and serum free b-hCG and PAPP-A identifies about 90% of trisomy 21 pregnancies for a false positive rate of 3%. By adding other ultrasound markers: nasal bone, tricuspid regurgitation, ductus venosus Doppler and facial angle, the detection rate of 1st trimester SCREENING increases to more than 95%.

Background: Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women throughout the world and it is the leading cause of death due to cancer among the women in underdeveloped countries.Regarding the known etiology, availability of the organ, the possibility of proper SCREENING test and the long latency period between the precancerous lesion and the full clinical cancer presentation, SCREENING programs have been able to drastically reduce the incidence and mortality rate of the disease. The extent of the reduction in mortality achievement is related directly to the proportion of the population that has been screened.In this article, we discuss about different SCREENING methods for cervical cancer.