• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.36 no.10
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• pp.803-810
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• 2012

Since the introduction of reefer container for seaborne transportation, international trade of reefer products has increased continuously with the development of refrigerate technology, increased speed of the ship and change of consumption pattern. Reefer cargo is perishable and sensitive to temperature, humidity compared with general cargo and normally reefer cargo is more valuable than general cargo. Therefore it needs special care for its handling in transit including land and sea in order to prevent cargo damage. However, lots of claims relating to reefer cargo damage rise frequently in workplace. It may increase unnecessary logistic cost and time. The aim of this study is to improve and prevent damage to reefer container cargo in transit for the purpose of benefits to both merchants and carriers to save unnecessary logistic cost and time as well as to contribute to deliver the cargo more safely and efficiently to destination.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.3997-4001
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• 2016

Background: Cancer is a worldwide health problem and pain is among the most common and unpleasant effects affecting well-being of cancer patients. Accurate description of pain can help physicians to improve its management. Many English tools have been developed to assess pain. Onkly a limited number of these are applied in Arab countries. Our aim was to assess the quality, the nature and the severity of pain using the short McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) on cancer patients in the National Institute of Oncology (NIO) in Rabat, Morocco. Materials and Methods: The tool used is the SF-MPQ inspired from the Arabic version of the MPQ. The subjects were cancer patients (N=182) attending the NIO, from 24th October 2015 to 8th January 2016, aging ${\geq}18$ years old, experiencing pain and coming to have or to update their pain medication. Results: The rate of participation was 96.3%. Eight patients had difficulties to express their pain using descriptors, but could use the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and the body diagram. The most frequent sensory descriptors were 'Throbbing', 'Shooting', 'Hot-Burning'. The most used affective descriptor was 'Tiring-Exhausting'. The mean VAS was 6.6 (2.4). The mean score of all items was 11.9 (7.8). The patients were suffering from severe pain. The internal consistency of the form was s acceptable. Conclusions: The findings indicate that most of the patients attending the pain center of the NIO could use the descriptors of the SF-MPQ to describe their pain. They indicate the usefulness of the SF-MPQ to assess the nature and the severity of pain in cancer patients. This tool should be tested in other Moroccan and Arabic contexts associated with other tools in clinical trials.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.399-414
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• 1997

This paper presents an investigation into the seismic response characteristics of a proposed ligh-weight pedestrian cable-stayed bridge made entirely from Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics(GFRP). The study employs three dimensional finite element models to study and compare the dynamic characteristics and the seismic response of the GFRP bridge to a conventional Steel-Concrete (SC) cable-stayed bridge alternative. The two bridges were subjected to three synthetic earthquakes that differ in the frequency content characteristics. The performance of the GFRP bridge was compared to that of the SC bridge by normalizing the live load and the seismic internal forces with respect to the dead load internal forces. The normalized seismically induced internal forces were compared to the normalized live load internal forces for each design alternative. The study shows that the design alternatives have different dynamic characteristics. The light GFRP alternative has more flexible deck motion in the lateral direction than the heavier SC alternative. While the SC alternative has more vertical deck modes than the GFRP alternative, it has less lateral deck modes than the GFRP alternative in the studied frequency range. The GFRP towers are more flexible in the lateral direction than the SC towers. The GFRP bridge tower attracted less normalized base shear force than the SC bridge towers. However, earthquakes, with peak acceleration of only 0.1 g, and with a variety of frequency content could induce high enough seismic internal forces at the tower bases of the GFRP cable-stayed bridge to govern the structural design of such bridge. Careful seismic analysis, design, and detailing of the tower connections are required to achieve satisfactory seismic performance of GFRP long span bridges.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.45
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• pp.85-102
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is reviewing and researching the origins of knitwear the history of patterned knits. Aithough historians know little about the origins of knitting many believe it was practiced as early as the 4th century by nomads roaming North Africa. later Arab raders adopted the craft which helped then while away the hours as they traveled across deserts in camel carabans, Its origins lie in the need for close-fitting and elasticated covering for the body in particular the head hand and feet. it first developed in the Mediterranean countries and later in Central and particularly Northern Europe. Early evidence of multicolored knitting is said to date back to the Egyptian Copts of 600-800 A.D. medieval knitting is developed through the Church and monastery. The increasing demand for knitted products already observable in the fourteenth and fifteenth centries and the number of preserved knitted articles increases inexcavated materialos from Europe. The improvements in technique stimulated the developement of the hand knitting industry in the early sixteenth century. The best-known source of production is the guild organization and their mass production consisted of the carpets cushion coverings and other small items for furnishing interiors but mainly of clothing. The demand for knitted goods was such that in the late sixteenth century it was mechanised, The knitting frame invented in 1589 by William Lee English priest was the most perfect machine of this period. The mass production of fully-fashioned and seamless garments in the late nineteenth and twentieth century was dangerously competitve to traditionally woven and sewn cloth in. As fashions changed knitwear has had an almost continuous ruse in public favour and the popularity of sports has encourage the fashion for flexible easy-fitting and absorbent garments.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.386-393
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• 2016

Objectives: General practitioners (GPs) retention in rural and underserved areas highly effects on accessibility of healthcare facilities across the country. Education seems to be a critical factor that affects GPs retention. Thus, the present study aimed at inquiry into medical education challenges that limit their retention in rural and underserved areas. Methods: A qualitative approach was applied for the aim of this study. Data were gathered via 28 semi-structured interviews with experts at different levels of Iran's health system as well as GPs who retained and refused to retain working in rural settings. Interviews mainly were performed face-to-face and in some cases via telephone during 2015 and then coded and analyzed using content analysis approach. Results: Iran's medical education is faced with several challenges that were categorized in four main themes including student selection, medical students' perception about their field of study, education setting and approach, curriculum of medical education. According to experts this challenges could results in making GP graduates disinterested for practicing in rural and underserved areas. Conclusions: Challenges that were found could have negative effects on retention. Modification in student's perception about rural practice could be done via changing education setting and approach and curriculum. These modifications could improve GPs retention in rural and underserved areas.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.2101-2121
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• 2020

The rapid growth of instructional videos repositories and their widespread use as a tool to support education have raised the need of studies to assess the quality of those educational resources and their impact on the quality of learning process that depends on them. Khan Academy (KA) repository is one of the prominent educational videos' repositories. It is famous and widely used by different types of learners, students and teachers. To better understand its characteristics and the impact of such repositories on education, we gathered a huge amount of KA data using its API and different web scraping techniques, then we analyzed them. This paper reports the first quantitative and descriptive analysis of Khan Academy repository (KA repository) of open video lessons. First, we described the structure of repository. Then, we demonstrated some analyses highlighting content-based growth and evolution. Those descriptive analyses spotted the main important findings in KA repository. Finally, we focused on users' interactions with video lessons. Those interactions consisted of questions and answers posted on videos. We developed interaction profiles for those videos based on the number of users' interactions. We conducted regression analysis and statistical tests to mine the relation between those profiles and some quality related proposed metrics. The results of analysis showed that all interaction profiles are highly affected by video length and reuse rate in different subjects. We believe that our study demonstrated in this paper provides valuable information in understanding the logic and the learning mechanism inside learning repositories, which can have major impacts on the education field in general, and particularly on the informal learning process and the instructional design process. This study can be considered as one of the first quantitative studies to shed the light on Khan Academy as an open educational resources (OER) repository. The results presented in this paper are crucial in understanding KA videos repository, its characteristics and its impact on education.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1445-1448
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• 2016

Purpose: The current study aimed at assessing the association between neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR) for the prognosis of the surgical outcome of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Materials and Methods: EOC patient medical records of surgical operations between January, 2005 and December, 2015 were reviewed and their data of clinicopathological complete blood counts (CBCs) and surgical outcomes were collected. To assess their effects on surgical outcomes, PLR and NLR optimal predictive values were determined and then compared with each other. Results: A statistically significant relation was found between surgical outcomes and NLR and PLR (p<0.001 and p<0.001), for which new cutoff points were gained (PLR: 192,3,293; NLR: 3). The sensitivity and specificity were 0.74 and 0.67, respectively for PLR and 0.74 and 0.58, for NLR. Conclusions: NLR and PLR seem to be useful methods for the prediction of surgical outcomes in patients with EOCs. Increased NLR and PLR proved to be beneficial for poor surgical outcomes. Moreover, PLR increase showed further help in the predicting outcome of EOC suboptimal debulking.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.15
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• pp.6375-6379
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• 2015

Background: Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide, with about 500,000 new cases and 270,000 deaths each year. Globally, it is estimated that over one million women currently have cervical cancer, most of whom have not been diagnosed, or have no access to treatment that could cure them or prolong their lives. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women. Materials and Methods: A population-based cross-sectional retrospective survey of cervical smear abnormalities was conducted in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE, from January 2013 to December 2013 by collecting consecutive liquid-based cytology samples from the Department of Pathology at the SKMC Hospital in Abu Dhabi city. Results: The total number of women screened for cervical cancer for the year 2013 at SKMC was 4,593, with 225 (4.89%) abnormal smears. The majority of the abnormal smear results were atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) 114 (2.48%). This study showed 60% increase in the rate of abnormal cervical smears in the UAE over the last 10 years. In this study the highest incidence of high grade abnormalities were seen in women above the age of 61years (1.73%), this might be due to the fact that this group of women missed the chance of screening of cervical cancer earlier in their lives or could be explained by the well-known second peak of HPV infection seen in many prevalence studies. Conclusions: We conclude that the rate of abnormal cervical smear in the screened Abu Dhabi women is not different from the rate in developed countries. A notable increase in both low and high grade abnormalities has occurred within the last decade.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.4199-4202
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• 2012

Objective: The aim of our study is to compare an ovarian malignancy prediction model based on age and four sonographic findings (OMPS1) with a new model called OMPS2 which differs just by adding serum CA125 measurement to (OMPS1). Methods: In a cross sectional comparative study OMPS1 was validated in 830 operated ovarian masses within a 3 years period (2006-2009). Logistic regression analysis was used to construct OMPS2 based on OMPS1 adding serum CA125 findings. The area under the curve for two models was compared in 411 patients. Results: OMPS2 was calculated as follows: OMPS1 + 1.444 (if serum CA125= 36-200) or 3.842 (if serum CA125 is more than 200). AUC of OMPS2 was increased to 84.3% (CI 95% 78.1- 89.8) in comparison to OMPS1 with AUC of 78.1% (CI 95% 71.8-84.5). Conclusion: Our second model is more accurate in prediction of ovarian malignancy, compared with our first model.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.4421-4426
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• 2016

Background: Smoking is recognized as a main leading preventable cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. It is responsible for a considerable financial burden both on the health system and in society. This study aimed to examine the effect of smoking on cost of hospitalization and length of stay (LoS) among patients with lung cancer in Iran in 2014. Materials and Methods: A total of 415 patients were included in the study. Data on age, sex, insurance status, type of hospitals, type of insurance, geographic local, length of stay and cost of hospitalization was extracted by medical records and smoking status was obtained from a telephone survey. To compare cost of hospitalization and LoS for different smoking groups, current smokers, former smokers, and never smokers, a gamma regression model and zero-truncated poisson regression were used, respectively. Results: Compared with never smokers, current and former smokers showed a 48% and 35% increase in hospitalization costs, respectively. Also, hospital LoS for current and former smokers was 72% and 31% higher than for never smokers, respectively. Conclusions: Our study indicated that cigarette smoking imposes a significant financial burden on hospitals in Iran. It is, however, recommended that more research should be done to implement and evaluate hospital based smoking cessation interventions to better increase cessation rates in these settings.