Background. Developmental disorders are failure or inability to acquire various age-specific skills at expected maturational age, which affects about 5–10% of preschool children. One of the most important methods for evaluation of developmentally delayed children is neuroimaging, especially, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that provides useful information regarding brain tissue structures and anomalies. Method and Material. In this study, hospital records of 580 developmentally delayed children (aged 2 months to 15 years) who admitted in pediatric ward of Golestan Hospital from 1997 to 2009 were selected. Information such as age, MRI findings were collected in the questionnaire and statistically analyzed. Results. Total, 580 children including 333 males (57.4%) and 247 females (42.6%) were studied. Abnormal brain MRI was observed in 340 (58.6%) cases (204 Males, 136 females). The finding includes nonspecific in 38 (6.6%), congenital and developmental anomalies of brain in 39 (6.7%), recognizable syndromes in 3 (0.5%), neurovascular diseases or trauma in 218 (37.6%), and metabolic or neurodegenerative diseases in 42 (7.2%) cases. Conclusion. Because 60% of all study groups showed abnormal brain MRI, using this method could be effective in diagnosis, management, and almost prognosis determination processes.

Background: Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute inflammatory polyneuropathy, which has become the most common cause of acute flaccid paralysis. An accurate estimation of GBS occurrence would be useful for investigating the potential causal relationships between risk factors and GBS. The aim of the study was to analyze the incidence, annual time trend, and some epidemiological aspects of GBS in children in the Southwest of Iran. Methods: This was a retrospective study conducted by the Department of Pediatrics of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences from January 2006 to December 2015. We extracted data from the national database of Acute Flaccid Paralysis Surveillance System. Results: A total of 184 subjects with GBS were assessed. The mean age of subjects was 5.43 ± 4.07 years. The average annual incidence rate of GBS was 1.51 per 100,000 children under 15 years old (95% CI: 1.29-1.73). There was no significant statistical difference in GBS incidence rate between girls and boys (p = 0.376). The highest and lowest proportions of the GBS occurrences were in autumn (32.2%) and summer (14.7%), respectively. Conclusions: The findings indicated that the annual incidence rate of GBS in this study was similar to those in other studies in this area.

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Autonomous systems are rapidly gaining the capacity to recognize their own errors and utilize social strategies to mitigate the trust deficit that accompanies those errors. While previous research has catalogued the effects of trust repair attempts in human-human relationships, much remains unknown about the consequences of similar strategies when administered by autonomous systems such as self-driving vehicles. While we tend to treat computers like social actors, autonomous systems may have a wider spectrum of perceived human-likeness and may be subject to different interpretations of the purposefulness of their errors. This paper seeks to understand the consequences of these factors on the effectiveness of trust repair attempts administered by self-driving cars, and the results highlight the importance of considering human-likeness and purposefulness in the design of autonomous systems.

OBJECTIVES:Investigations into the epidemiology of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) are an essential strategic component of the Global Poliomyelitis Eradication Initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO), and are part of the certification process for polio eradication worldwide. This is an epidemiological report of AFP incidence in children less than 15 years old in southwest Iran.METHODS:This was a retrospective cohort study, carried out based on WHO guidelines, in which we reviewed non-polio AFP cases recorded from January 2006 to December 2010 in different regions of Khuzestan Province, southwest Iran. In this study, the records of all children under 15 years old with AFP were evaluated.RESULTS:During a 5-year period, 137 cases of AFP were reported (incidence rate, 2.21 per 100,000 children <15 years old). More than 50% (73 of 137) of the cases were boys, and 52.6% (72 of 137) were under 5 years of age, with a mean age of 5.39±3.98 years. The incidence of AFP was significantly higher in older children (p=0.001). The most common cause of paralysis was Guillain-Barré syndrome (117 of 137). None of the cases were diagnosed with acute poliomyelitis.CONCLUSIONS:In this study, we found that the incidence rate of AFP in the region was almost in agreement with the expected incidence of AFP in children less than 15 years old; therefore, the AFP surveillance program in Khuzestan Province is satisfactory in terms of reliability and effectiveness. Nevertheless, routine vaccination against polio and ensuring that patients with AFP receive follow-up are essential for eradicating polio.

The Uncanny Valley (UV) hypothesis states that agents that look humanlike but are not perfectly human elicit feelings of eeriness in human observers, associated with negative ratings of mind, trust and likability. However, empirical evidence for the UV is sparse and individual dispositions are not considered to moderate the UV. The present study assesses whether dispositions like empathy, social reasoning and mentalizing skills moderate the UV during a task that requires rating agents of varying degrees of humanness in terms of likability, trust and the capability of having a mind. Nested model comparisons showed that ratings of likability, trust and internal states followed a UV pattern, but that this pattern was not further moderated by individual differences in empathy, social reasoning or mentalizing abilities. These results indicate that the UV is a robust phenomenon when assessing attitudes towards agents of varying degrees of humanness that is not dependent on specific individual preferences or abilities.

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