Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of the Self-Assessed Support Needs Questionnaire for Breast Cancer Cases

Ghaffari, Fatemeh,Shali, Mahboobeh,Shoghi, Mahnaz,Joolaee, Soodabeh Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.3

Background: It has been found that support given to women with breast cancer has a positive effect upon their reactions to the illness and may even prolong their survival. Perceived support needs assessment in breast cancer women could be considered as a necessary part of nursing function. Aim: The purpose of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the self-assessed support needs (SASN) questionnaire into Persian language and to investigate its psychometric properties. Materials and Methods: After forward-backward translation of the questionnaire and making appropriate changes, we selected 160 women with breast cancer as our study sample. The psychometric properties of the SASN, including its internal consistency, test retest reliability, and construct validity were evaluated through the known-groups technique. Results: The calculated Kaiser Meyer Olkin was 0.756, indicating that the sample was sufficiently large to perform a satisfactory factor analysis. The six factors all together explained 50.7% of the variance; the first factor (diagnosing) explaining the biggest part of variance (10.9). Internal consistency reliability was 0.83 for the whole scale and the stability of test was 0.78. For the first factor, Cronbach's alpha was 0.90 and factor loadings of scale's items were found to deal with diagnosis subscale. The domains described patients' diagnosis, treatment, support, femininity and body image, family and friends and information. Conclusions: The reliability and validity of the adapted version of the SASN was shown to be satisfactory. Thus, it can be used to investigate self-assessed support needs of Iranian women suffering from breast cancer since the SASN is a multi-domain scale.

Arsenic Trioxide Induces Apoptosis and Incapacitates Proliferation and Invasive Properties of U87MG Glioblastoma Cells through a Possible NF-κB-Mediated Mechanism

Ghaffari, Seyed H.,Yousefi, Meysam,Dizaji, Majid Zaki,Momeny, Majid,Bashash, Davood,Zekri, Ali,Alimoghaddam, Kamran,Ghavamzadeh, Ardeshir Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2016 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.17 No.3

Identification of novel therapeutics in glioblastoma remains crucial due to the devastating and infiltrative capacity of this malignancy. The current study was aimed to appraise effect of arsenic trioxide (ATO) in U87MG cells. The results demonstrated that ATO induced apoptosis and impeded proliferation of U87MG cells in a dose-dependent manner and also inhibited classical NF-${\kappa}B$ signaling pathway. ATO further upregulated expression of Bax as an important proapoptotic target of NF-${\kappa}B$ and also inhibited mRNA expression of survivin, c-Myc and hTERT and suppressed telomerase activity. Moreover, ATO significantly increased adhesion of U87MG cells and also diminished transcription of NF-${\kappa}B$ down-stream targets involved in cell migration and invasion, including cathepsin B, uPA, MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-14 and suppressed proteolytic activity of cathepsin B, MMP-2 and MMP-9, demonstrating a possible mechanism of ATO effect on a well-known signaling in glioblastoma dissemination. Taken together, here we suggest that ATO inhibits survival and invasion of U87MG cells possibly through NF-${\kappa}B$-mediated inhibition of survivin and telomerase activity and NF-${\kappa}B$-dependent suppression of cathepsin B, MMP-2 and MMP-9.

Biocontrol of Planococcus citri (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) by Lecanicillium longisporum and Lecanicillium lecanii under laboratory and greenhouse conditions

Sepideh Ghaffari,Javad Karimi,Shokoofeh Kamali,Esmat Mahdikhani Moghadam 한국응용곤충학회 2017 Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology Vol.20 No.2

Much effort has been focused on the development of microbial biopesticides composed of entomopathogenic fungi as alternatives to synthetic insecticides for pest management programs. The citrus mealybug, Planococcus citri Risso (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), is an important pest in greenhouses and on citrus plants globally. The current study isolated and characterized two species of entomopathogenic fungi, Lecanicillium longisporum (Petch) Zare & W. Gams and Lecanicillium lecanii (Zimmere). Their virulence at the second nymph and adult stages of P. citri were documented using mycosis with scanning electron microscopy. L. lecanii was found to be more effective at different citrus mealybug growth stages. Nymphal P. citri were more susceptible than adults to fungal infection. Susceptibility at all stages was dose dependent. The results of laboratory trials used for greenhouse tests. In a comparison of wheat, beet pulp paddy rice and rice bran as substrates for solid substrate fermentation, wheat produced the most conidia for the L. lecanii. For L. longisporum, however, was the most appropriatemedia. The results of this study indicate that the entomopathogenic fungi L. longisporumand L. lecanii are potentially useful biological control agents for the citrus mealybug.

Plant mediated green synthesis and antibacterial activity of silver nanoparticles using Crataegus douglasii fruit extract

Mansour Ghaffari-Moghaddam,Robabeh Hadi-Dabanlou 한국공업화학회 2014 Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Vol.20 No.2

In this study, silver nanoparticles were synthesized using the Crataegus douglasii fruit extract as areducing agent. The reaction process was monitored by UV–vis spectroscopy. Further characterizationwas carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). To optimize the biosynthesis of silvernanoparticles, the effect of process variables such as extract concentrations, mixing ratio of the reactants,time and pH were also investigated. The SEM images showed silver nanoparticles with 29.28 nm size andnearly spherical shape at 24 h interaction time. The antibacterial activity of the synthesized silvernanoparticles was confirmed against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli.

Recent Application of the Various Nanomaterials and Nanocatalysts for the Heavy Metals' Removal from Wastewater

Nader Ghaffari Khaligh,Mohd Rafie Johan 성균관대학교(자연과학캠퍼스) 성균나노과학기술원 2018 NANO Vol.13 No.09

The pollution of water due to the release of heavy metals are particularly problematic and supplies of clean water have become a major problem worldwide. The heavy metal ions can cause toxicities and serious side effects toward human health; therefore, these metal ions should be removed from water and wastewater. A variety of strategies have been developed for efficient heavy metal removal from waters. Adsorption/ion exchange strategy play a great important role in removing heavy metal ions due to their advantages. Nanomaterials are excellent adsorbents and extensive studies have been performed to remove heavy metals from wastewater by developing and using various nanomaterials. Recent developments for the heavy metals removal by various nanomaterials, mainly including carbon-based nanomaterials, iron-based nanomaterials and photocatalytic nanomaterials in batch and flow systems are described in this review.

Triple Tooth AlGaN/GaN HEMT on SiC Substrate: A Novel Structure for High-Power Applications

Majid Ghaffari,Ali A. Orouji,Mojtaba Valinataj 한국물리학회 2017 THE JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY Vol.71 No.12

In this paper, a AlGaN/AlN/GaN/SiC High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) to reduce the electric field is suggested. The main idea of this work is to improve the Direct Current (DC) and Radio Frequency (RF) properties of device by modifying the depletion region in the channel. The proposed structure consists of a floating metal like a comb with triple tooth which is located in the space between the gate and drain and inside the buffer layer. We called the proposed structure as triple tooth HEMT (TT-HEMT). The RF and DC characteristics of the proposed structure are studied using numerical simulations. The breakdown voltage (VBR) increases to 169.5 V for the proposed structure in comparison with 103 V for the conventional HEMT (C-HEMT) due to the modified electric field distribution in the channel of the TT-HEMT structure. The maximum output power density (Pmax) of the TT-HEMT structure is 60.4% greater than that of the C-HEMT. The optimized results show that the maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) and cut-off frequency (fT ) of the proposed structure improve 111% and 26.5%, respectively compared to the C-HEMT structure. In addition, the maximum available gain (MAG) of the TT-HEMT structure is obtained 8.5 dB higher than that of the C-HEMT structure at the frequency of 40 GHz. The optimal results show that whatever the number of teeth on metal increases, the depletion region in the channel is modified more and the breakdown voltage increases, as well. Besides, the output power density (Pmax) is improved with the increasing number of teeth on metal (N). This characteristic is also true, for the cut-off frequency (fT ), the maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) and the maximum available gain (MAG) of the proposed structure. However, the drain current (ID) of the proposed structure is reduced.

An Experimental Study of Impinging Synthetic Jets for Heat Transfer Augmentation

Omidreza Ghaffari,Muhammad Ikhlaq,Mehmet Arik 대한설비공학회 2015 International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refr Vol.23 No.3

According to recent trends in the field of miniature electronics, the need for compact cooling solutions compatible with very thin profiles and small footprint areas is inevitable. Impinging synthetic jets are recognized as a promising technique for cooling miniature surfaces like laptops, tablets, smart phones and slim TV systems. Effect of jet to cooled surface spacing is crucial in cooling performance as well as predicting Nusselt number for such spacing. An experimental study has been performed to investigate the cooling performance of two different synthetic jets actuated with piezoelectric actuators cooling over a vertical surface. Results showed that a major degradation of heat transfer when jets are close to the surface is occurred. Slot synthetic jets showed a better performance in terms of coefficient of performance (COP) than semi-confined circular jets for small jet to surface spacing. Later, a correlation is proposed for predicting Nu number for a semi-confined circular synthetic jet accounting the effects of Re number (500 Rej 1150), jetto- surface spacing (H=D ¼ 2 and H=D ¼ 4) and the stroke length (1:75 L0=D 4:75 and L0=H < 2:5). It is found that correlation can provide predictions with an R2 value of over 98%.

Laminar and turbulent channel flow simulation using residual based variational multi-scale method

Yousef Ghaffari Motlagh,Hyung Taek Ahn 대한기계학회 2012 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.26 No.2

We present a residual-based isogeometric variational multiscale method to solve laminar and turbulent channel flow. Residual-based variational multiscale method is a new finite element formulation for solving turbulent flows using a large-eddy simulation type modeling. Isogeometric analysis, a new finite element method using CAD blending functions as its basis functions, is employed for higher order approximation of the solution. First, laminar flow with Re 0.55 τ = through flat channel is considered and linear, quadratic and cubic basis functions, which are C0, C1, and C2 -continuous across element boundaries, respectively are employed and their accuracy is presented by the comparison with analytical result. Next, same methodology is applied to the turbulent channel flow with Re 180 τ = . Current results are validated by the comparison of turbulence statistics using available DNS data.

A Novel Fe-Based Catalyst For The Removal Of Organic Dyes At Neutral Ph

Yasaman Ghaffari(Yasaman),Soyoung Baek(백소영),Roghayeh Yusefi,Kwangsoo Kim(김광수),Jiyeol Bae(배지열) 대한환경공학회 2021 대한환경공학회 학술발표논문집 Vol.2021 No.11

Nonlinear Sliding Surfaces; Computing and Existence of Solution

Azad Ghaffari,Mohammad Javad Yazdanpanah 제어로봇시스템학회 2008 제어로봇시스템학회 국제학술대회 논문집 Vol.2008 No.10

In this paper, we have concentrated on real systems consisting of structural uncertainties and affected by external disturbances. In this regard, Sliding Mode Control (S.M.C.) is utilized. To decrease energy consumption, arising from chattering phenomenon, a smooth switch has been used in design procedure. Consequently, sliding equation will play a dominant controlling role in its neighborhood. The converging property of sliding motion towards the origin is a challenging issue. In this article we present a new method to prove the stability of the sliding phase which means, state trajectories on the sliding surface move toward the origin. At the beginning, the equivalent control method is reestablished such that makes this purpose accessible. The modification bounds the sliding equation to a converging set. Then to improve main factors of closed loop system, such as, transient behavior, energy consumption and the domain of attraction, the optimal control theory is used to compute the optimized sliding surface in the stabilizing set. Generally, desired surface has nonlinear terms. Finally, we propose an elaborate algorithm for computing optimized nonlinear surfaces. The designed controller is applied to a flexible?ink setup. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed approach.