No abstract

Aim. To evaluate the effects of acupuncture and transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS) applications on the quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) changes and to evaluate their therapeutic effects in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). The study included 42 patients with FMS and 21 healthy volunteers. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups (n=21 in each) to undergo either TENS or acupuncture application. In both acupuncture and TENS groups, baseline electroencephalography (EEG) recording was performed for 10 min and, then, TENS or acupuncture was performed for 20 min, followed by another 10 min EEG recording. Baseline qEEG findings of FMS patients in the TENS and acupuncture groups were similar. Delta and theta powers over the frontal region of FMS patients were lower than controls. Theta powers of right posterior region were also lower than controls. In the TENS group, after the treatment, an increase was observed in the alpha power of the left anterior region as well as a decrease in pain scores. In the acupuncture group, an increase was determined in the alpha power of the right and left posterior regions as well as a decrease in pain score after the treatment. The power of low- and moderate-frequency waves on resting EEG was decreased in the patients with FMS. Decreased pain and increased inhibitor activity were found on qEEG after TENS and acupuncture applications. In conclusion, both TENS and acupuncture applications seem to be beneficial in FMS patients.

In this study, the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emitted by GSM900 based mobile phones (MPs) on the heart rate variability (HRV) were examined by using nonlinear analysis methods. The largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE) calculation was used to evaluate the effect of MP under various real exposure conditions. Sixteen healthy young volunteers were exposed to EMFs emitted by GSM900 based MP at two levels from a very low EMF (MP at stand-by) to a higher EMF (MP at pre-ring handshaking and ringing). A blind experimental protocol was designed and utilized with consideration to the physiological and psychological factors that may affect HRV. The results showed that the LLE values increased slightly with higher EMF produced by MP (P < 0.05). This change indicates that the degree of chaos in the HRV signals increased at higher EMF compared to low level EMF. Consequently, we have concluded that high level EMF changed the complexity of cardiac system behavior, significantly.

Snoring, which may be decisive for many diseases, is an important indicator especially for sleep disorders. In recent years, many studies have been performed on the snore related sounds (SRSs) due to producing useful results for detection of sleep apnea/hypopnea syndrome (SAHS). The first important step of these studies is the detection of snore from SRSs by using different time and frequency domain features. The SRSs have a complex nature that is originated from several physiological and physical conditions. The nonlinear characteristics of SRSs can be examined with chaos theory methods which are widely used to evaluate the biomedical signals and systems, recently. The aim of this study is to classify the SRSs as snore/breathing/silence by using the largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE) and entropy with multiclass support vector machines (SVMs) and adaptive network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Two different experiments were performed for different training and test data sets. Experimental results show that the multiclass SVMs can produce the better classification results than ANFIS with used nonlinear quantities. Additionally, these nonlinear features are carrying meaningful information for classifying SRSs and are able to be used for diagnosis of sleep disorders such as SAHS.

Bu çalışmanın temel amacı, liselerde görev yapan öğretmenlerin örgütsel güven, dağıtılmış liderlik, örgütsel destek algıları ve görev yaptıkları okulların okul başarısı arasındaki yapısal ilişkileri açıklayan teorik modeli test etmektir. Araştırma dört temel değişken arasında bir neden-sonuç ilişkisi bulunduğu düşüncesinden hareketle ilişkisel bir desende tasarlanmıştır. Araştırma örneklemi, tabakalı örnekleme yöntemiyle seçilen, Eskişehir büyükşehir sınırları içerisinde bulunan kamuya ait 22 farklı lisede görev yapan 352 lise öğretmeninden oluşmaktadır. Araştırma verileri Dağıtılmış Liderlik Ölçeği, Örgütsel Güven Envanteri ve Algılanan Örgütsel Destek Ölçeği ile toplanmış olup örneklem grubunda yer alan liselerin Yükseköğretime Geçiş Sınavı puanları ortalamaları okul başarısı değişkeninin belirlenmesinde kullanılmıştır. Verilerin çözümlenmesinde korelasyon, ölçeklerin yapı geçerliliklerinin sağlanmasında doğrulayıcı ve açımlayıcı faktör analizi ve yapısal eşitlik modelinin test edilmesinde Path analizinden yararlanılmıştır. Oluşturulan modelin doğrulanması neticesinde öğretmenlerin örgütsel güven algılarının dağıtılmış liderliği, dağıtılmış liderliğin örgütsel destek algılarını ve örgütsel destek algılarının da okul başarısını olumlu yönde etkilediği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Ayrıca, öğretmenlerin dağıtılmış liderlik algılarının örgütsel destek üzerinden okul başarısı üzerinde dolaylı olumlu yönde etkisi görülmektedir.