Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A discursive analysis of women's femininities within the context of Tunisian tourism

Tourism has been hailed as a vehicle for gender equality and women’s empowerment and yet the relationship between these is far from simple. As tourism is created in already gendered societies, the ability of the industry to empower is shaped by existing gender norms and discourses. Therefore utilising a postcolonial feminist frame, the primary focus of this thesis is to critically explore both the discursive role of tourism and its influence in (re)constructing feminine identities in Tunisia. Informed by the works of Michel Foucault, and postcolonial feminism a critical discourse analysis is performed to identify discourses on femininity within the (re)presentations of Tunisian women in the Tunisian National Tourism Office’s brochures and website. Critical discourse analysis often risks disempowering the communities it seeks to analyse and as such fifteen semi-structured, in-depth interviews were carried out with Tunisian women involved in the Tunisian tourism industry. The interviews were shaped by a terrorist attack targeting tourists that had happened just two weeks before. Interestingly both the promotional materials and the interviews display two particular discourses on femininity, the modern and uncovered daughter of Bourguiba, and the southern covered Other. Of these discourses, it is the daughter of Bourguiba who is privileged and the southern veiled Other who is excluded. These discourses have been fomented since independence from France in 1956 and the rule of President Habib Bourguiba, but they still have a very material impact on the lives of Tunisian women today as evidenced in the interviews. This thesis contributes to both tourism and postcolonial studies in its problematisation of the connotation of Othering as essentially negative. When discourses of the Other shaping (re)presentations refrain from the construction of a monolithic categorisation, they can be more inclusive than discourses of similarity, which exclude all Others. This is linked to host self (re)presentation being intimately entwined within a system of both local and global politics, when cross-cultural (re)presentations are removed from at least some of these. The use of photo elicitation is developed to gain an understanding of how those (re)presented view those (re)presentations, but also to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers.
Human Postural Adaptation to Earthly and Atypical Gravitational Environment Effects of Sport Training on Stabilometric Parameters

Earthly gravitational environment has been conditioned organisms evolutional transformations. Mankind evolution in acquiring the upright posture changed functional anatomical characteristics behaved in an almost stable environment (g = 9.81 m/s). Technological environment, up to the microgravity conditions, faces peculiar gravitational conditions that may affect locomotion, working capabilities and living situation. To understand human adapting capacities, some systematic knowledge may come from the study of trained persons such as those practising sports in different postures and environments. The aims of this study are to investigate whether long-term practice of a physical activity, in which body attitude and postural regulation are organized in different ways, can influence postural control and generate a “postural memory”. Three groups of male athletes (average age: 22 ± 3 years, weight: 69 ± 9 kg, height: 179.6 ± 5.5 cm) were studied in 26 athletes (runners, bikers and swimmers). The protocol consisted of balance tests with eyes open (EO) and closed (EC) in bipodalic and monopodalic conditions. Bikers showed a mean velocity lower than swimmers both in EO (p = .004) and EC condition (p = .03). Also for mean velocity in M-L plane (p = .02) and for perimeter length (p = .003) during EO condition, bikers showed lower results. Moreover, bikers showed a more posterior position of the centre of pressure when compared to runners with EO (p = .02) and with EC (p = .03). These findings suggested that sport-specific physical training induce postural modifications on upright stance. Within the main results concerning the gravitational aspects appears paramount that swimming, the most 0 g sport (water is the best terrestrial 0 g simulator environment) gives the smallest postural memory conditioning. The studies about human postural control in normal condition, about postural modifications and memory induced by specific physical training in normal versus atypical gravitation setting, open a new perspective in anthropological studies on postural adaptations, ability and performance in extreme environments.
Geodesic image and video editing

This article presents a new, unified technique to perform general edge-sensitive editing operations on n-dimensional images and videos efficiently. The first contribution of the article is the introduction of a Generalized Geodesic Distance Transform (GGDT), based on soft masks. This provides a unified framework to address several edge-aware editing operations. Diverse tasks such as denoising and nonphotorealistic rendering are all dealt with fundamentally the same, fast algorithm. Second, a new Geodesic Symmetric Filter (GSF) is presented which imposes contrast-sensitive spatial smoothness into segmentation and segmentation-based editing tasks (cutout, object highlighting, colorization, panorama stitching). The effect of the filter is controlled by two intuitive, geometric parameters. In contrast to existing techniques, the GSF filter is applied to real-valued pixel likelihoods (soft masks), thanks to GGDTs and it can be used for both interactive and automatic editing. Complex object topologies are dealt with effortlessly. Finally, the parallelism of GGDTs enables us to exploit modern multicore CPU architectures as well as powerful new GPUs, thus providing great flexibility of implementation and deployment. Our technique operates on both images and videos, and generalizes naturally to n-dimensional data. The proposed algorithm is validated via quantitative and qualitative comparisons with existing, state-of-the-art approaches. Numerous results on a variety of image and video editing tasks further demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Call-by-need in token-passing nets

Recently, encodings in interaction nets of the call-by-name and call-by-value strategies of the $\lambda$-calculus have been proposed. The purpose of these encodings is to bridge the gap between interaction nets and traditional abstract machines, which are both used to provide lower-level specifications of strategies of the $\lambda$-calculus, but in radically different ways. The strength of these encodings is their simplicity, which comes from the simple idea of introducing an explicit syntactic object to represent the evaluation flow. Another benefit of this approach is that no artifact is needed to represent boxes. However, these encodings deliberately follow the implemented strategies (call-by-name and call-by-value) as closely as possible, and hence do not benefit from the ability of interaction nets to represent sharing easily. The aim of this paper is to show that better sharing (hence efficiency) can indeed be achieved without adding much structure. We thus present the call-by-need strategy following the same philosophy, which is, indeed, no more complicated than call-by-name. We also extend our approach to fully lazy reduction. This continues the task of bridging the gap between interaction nets and abstract machines, thus pushing forward a more uniform framework for implementations of the $\lambda$-calculus.
Adolescents self-esteem and its role in the anger expression

Purpose of the study: Main purposes of conducted studies were to assess adolescents self-esteem and to recognise the selfesteem role in the expression of anger. Material and method: The study involved 221 people (including 95 girls and 126 boys) aged 15–18 years. There have been applied a Polish adaptation of Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (CSEI) by Z. Juczyński and N. Ogińska-Bulik and Z. Juczyński Anger Expression Scale (SEG) and our own survey. Results: The analysis has revealed that adolescents, who had lower self-esteem in a scholastic me perspective, more often directed their anger inward, were able to control or repress it more efficiently. On the other hand, those with higher self-esteem in a scholastic me perspective and overall higher level of their self-esteem more often directed their anger outward, both in an indirect and a direct manner. Discussion: Although the higher self-esteem is usually associated with a socially acceptable behaviour, some study results indicate stronger tendency to take an aggressive behaviour among people with the higher self-esteem. Probably, this is due to the fact that people with the higher self-esteem, seeing themselves as being worth of acceptance and respect, partially “exempt” themselves from their self-control. A satisfaction of their own behaviour might limit the readiness for self-correction of their reactions. Conclusions: Adolescents with higher self-esteem are more disposed to manifest their anger, and those with lower more frequently suppress this kind of emotions and control them more thoroughly. Overall self-esteem and one of its aspects – the scholastic me seem to be particularly important. Conviction of your own value and belief in your school success reduce the barrier to express the anger, as if they protect you from losing social attractiveness.
The Split Second Effect: The Mechanism of How Equinus Can Damage the Human Foot and Ankle

We are currently in the process of discovering that many, if not the majority, of the non-traumatic acquired adult foot and ankle problems are caused by a singular etiology: non-neuromuscular equinus or the isolated gastrocnemius contracture. There is no question that this biomechanical association exists and in time much more will be uncovered. There are three basic questions that must be answered: why would our calves tighten as we normally age, how does a tight calf, or equinus, actually cause problems remotely in the foot and ankle, and how do the forces produced by equinus cause so many seemingly unrelated pathologies in the foot and ankle? The purpose of this paper is to address the second question: how does a tight calf mechanically cause problems remotely in the foot and ankle? There has been little evidence in the literature addressing the biomechanical mechanisms by which equinus creates damaging forces upon the foot and ankle, and as a result, a precise, convincing mechanism is still lacking. Thus, the mere concept that equinus has anything to do with foot pathology is generally unknown or disregarded. The split second effect, described here, defines exactly how the silent equinus contracture creates incremental and significant damage and injury to the human foot and ankle resulting in a wide variety of pathological conditions. The split second effect is a dissenting theory based on 30 years of clinical and academic orthopedic foot and ankle experience, keen clinical observation along the way, and review of the developing literature, culminating in examination of many hours of slow motion video of normal and abnormal human gait. To my knowledge, no one has ever described the mechanism in detail this precise.
Inhibitory Effect of Triterpenoids from Dillenia serrata (Dilleniaceae) on Prostaglandin E2 Production and Quantitative HPLC Analysis of Its Koetjapic Acid and Betulinic Acid Contents

The crude methanol extracts and fractions of the root and stem barks of Dillenia serrata Thunb. showed 64% to 73% inhibition on the production of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in lipopolysaccharide-induced human whole blood using a radioimmunoassay technique. Three triterpenoids isolated from the root bark of the plant, koetjapic (1), 3-oxoolean-12-en-30-oic (2), and betulinic (3) acids, exhibited significant concentration-dependent inhibitory effects on PGE2 production with IC50 values of 1.05, 1.54, and 2.59 μM, respectively, as compared with the positive control, indomethacin (IC50 = 0.45 μM). Quantification of compounds 1 and 3 in the methanol extracts and fractions were carried out by using a validated reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method. The ethyl acetate fraction of the stem bark showed the highest content of both compound 1 (15.1%) and compound 3 (52.8%). The strong inhibition of the extracts and fractions on cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) enzymatic activity was due to the presence of their major constituents, especially koetjapic and betulinic acids.
Valued elders or societal burden: Cross-national attitudes toward older adults

Population aging is a nearly universal trend that is placing new importance on how societies view and treat their elderly. Past research has established that perceptions of the elderly vary across countries. This article empirically explores three competing theoretical explanations on potential reasons for these differences: the Value Orientation perspective, the Competition over Resources perspective, and Political and Economic Structure. Using Wave 6 of the World Values Survey, various sources of country-level data, and hierarchical logistic regressions the article provides insights as to which theoretical position holds the most weight. The analysis improves on past research by using a large and diverse sample of countries from every region of the world. Contrary to popular thought, and the traditional Value Orientation perspective, it is found that Asian, Middle Eastern, and Sub-Saharan African countries have significantly more negative views toward the elderly than Western countries. In addition, the study finds that countries with higher average lifespans and more elderly as a proportion of the total population actually have more favorable attitudes toward the elderly.
System approach for multi-purpose representations of traffic scene elements

A major step towards intelligent vehicles lies in the acquisition of an environmental representation of sufficient generality to serve as the basis for a multitude of different assistance-relevant tasks. This acquisition process must reliably cope with the variety of environmental changes inherent to traffic environments. As a step towards this goal, we present our most recent integrated system performing object detection in challenging environments (e.g., inner-city or heavy rain). The system integrates unspecific and vehicle-specific methods for the detection of traffic scene elements, thus creating multiple object hypotheses. Each detection method is modulated by optimized models of typical scene context features which are used to enhance and suppress hypotheses. A multi-object tracking and fusion process is applied to make the produced hypotheses spatially and temporally coherent. In extensive evaluations we show that the presented system successfully analyzes scene elements under diverse conditions, including challenging weather and changing scenarios. We demonstrate that the used generic hypothesis representations allow successful application to a variety of tasks including object detection, movement estimation, and risk assessment by time-to-contact evaluation.
Accuracy in interpersonal perception: a social relations analysis.

For the past 30 years, the study ofaccuracy in person perception has been a neglected topic in social and personality psychology. Research in this area was stopped by a critique of global accuracy scores by Cronbach and Gage. They argued that accuracy should be measured in terms of components. Currently, interest in the topic of accuracy is rekindling. This interest is motivated, in part, by a reaction to the bias literature. We argue that modern accuracy research should (a) focus on measuring when and how people are accurate and not on who is accurate, (b) use each person as both judge and target, and (c) partition accuracy into components. The social relations model (Kenny & La Voie, 1984) can be used as a paradigm to meet these requirements. According to this model, there are four types of accuracy, only two of which are generally conceptually interesting. The first, cared individual accuracy, measures the degree to which people's judgments of an individual correspond to how that individual tends to behave across interaction partners. The second, called dyadic accuracy, measures the degree to which people can uniquely judge how a specific individual will behave with them. We present an example that shows high levels of individual accuracy and lower levels ofdyadic accuracy. The topic of accuracy in interpersonal perception is a fundamental issue in social and personality psychology. In this article, we present a new and integrative approach. We begin with a historical review of the topic and the Cronbach and Gage critique of global accuracy scores. We then propose that accuracy research should be nomothetic, interpersonal, and componential. Finally, we show how the social relations model fulfills these requirements and so provides a methodology to study interpersonal accuracy.
Analysis of sudden short-circuit current of interior permanent magnet synchronous machines

The analytical calculation of the sudden short-circuit current and torque of interior permanent magnet synchronous machines (IPMSM) at no-load and load operation is compared with numerical calculations with a 2D FEM software showing the influence of iron saturation. In addition, a sudden short-circuit test after generator no-load was done with a 48 kW six-pole machine for hybrid vehicle application to verify the measured results with the calculated data. The measured and calculated values are in quite good agreement.
A prospective pilot study comparing combined intravitreal ranibizumab and half-fluence photodynamic therapy with ranibizumab monotherapy in the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration

Purpose This prospective multi-center pilot study compares the use of half-fluence photodynamic therapy combined with ranibizumab with ranibizumab monotherapy for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration. Methods All patients presenting with untreated subfoveal neovascular age-related macular degeneration were considered for inclusion. Patients were randomized to receive either ranibizumab with half-fluence photodynamic therapy or ranibizumab alone. Patients in the ranibizumab alone group were given three consecutive monthly ranibizumab injections and were followed monthly. They were treated with ranibizumab as needed, based on clinical discretion, using vision and optical coherence tomography. Patients in the combined group were given one same-day combined ranibizumab and half-fluence (25 j/cm2) photodynamic therapy treatment and were treated monthly as needed. Outcomes included changes in standardized visual acuity, optical coherence tomography foveal thickness, and percentage of as-needed injections to maintenance examinations. Results Fifty-six out of 60 enrolled patients completed the twelve month primary outcome visit; this consisted of 27 patients receiving ranibizumab alone and 29 receiving combined treatment. The average age was 79.1 for the ranibizumab alone group and 79.3 for the combined group. The mean visual acuity in the ranibizumab alone group improved from 52.9 Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy letters initially to 62.8 letters at twelve months. The mean visual acuity in the combined group improved from 49.2 letters to 51.8 letters at twelve months. The differences in visual acuity improvements were not statistically significant based on a two-tailed t-test (P = 0.2). Due to the presence of outliers in each group, a Mann–Whitney U test was performed to confirm the results (U = 325; P = 0.28). The mean optical coherence tomography foveal thickness improved 92.5 microns and 106.7 microns in the ranibizumab alone and the combined group, respectively. The difference was not significant based on a two-tailed t-test (P = 0.6). The ranibizumab alone group received an average of 6.8 injections, while the combined group received an average of three injections. This difference was not significant based on a chi-square test (P = 0.11). Conclusion The groups appeared similar based on statistical analysis, but larger studies are needed to determine possible small differences between combination therapy and monotherapy.
Depression and poor glycemic control: a meta-analytic review of the literature.

OBJECTIVE Depression is common among patients with diabetes, but its relationship to glycemic control has not been systematically reviewed. Our objective was to determine whether depression is associated with poor glycemic control. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Medline and PsycINFO databases and published reference lists were used to identify studies that measured the association of depression with glycemic control. Meta-analytic procedures were used to convert the findings to a common metric, calculate effect sizes (ESs), and statistically analyze the collective data. RESULTS A total of 24 studies satisfied the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. Depression was significantly associated with hyperglycemia (Z = 5.4, P < 0.0001). The standardized ES was in the small-to-moderate range (0.17) and was consistent, as the 95% CI was narrow (0.13-0.21). The ES was similar in studies of either type 1 or type 2 diabetes (ES 0.19 vs. 0.16) and larger when standardized interviews and diagnostic criteria rather than self-report questionnaires were used to assess depression (ES 0.28 vs. 0.15). CONCLUSIONS Depression is associated with hyperglycemia in patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Additional studies are needed to establish the directional nature of this relationship and to determine the effects of depression treatment on glycemic control and the long-term course of diabetes.
Emulation of a highway bottleneck using leader-follower formation control

A bottleneck on a highway is a daily occurring phenomenon. Everyday car accidents, long queues and stop-and-go waves are introduced by the driver's behavior. In this work, an effective control algorithm for emulating a bottleneck situation on a highway is presented using a set of mobile robots that can be used to educate young control engineers. We use a combination of i) an in-line leader-follower formation and ii) a formation with two followers for one leader i.e. a triangular formation. Both formations are implemented using distance and angle measurements from image processing algorithms and speed measurements from optical encoders. A cascade PI-P controller is used to stabilize the system. The challenge of the current implementation stands in the fact that there is no communication between the robots.
Therapeutic Hypothermia Following Emergent Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting After Failed Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in a Comatose Post-Cardiac Arrest Patient

We report the case of 60-yr-old female in which therapeutic hypothermia (TH) was successfully induced maintaining the target temperature of 34℃ for 12 hr despite a risk of hypothermia-induced coagulation abnormalities following an emergent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) due to failed percutaneous coronary intervention, who suffered a cardiac arrest. Emergent CABG may be a relative contraindication for TH in post-cardiac arrest patients because hypothermia may increase the risk of infection and bleeding. However, the possibility of an improved neurologic outcome outweighs the risk of bleeding, although major surgery may be a relative contraindication for TH.