Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Cross Sectional Study to Evaluate the Fitness Pattern among the Young Fishermen of Coastal Orissa

Health related physical fitness of an individual is mainly dependent on lifestyle related factors such as daily physical activity levels. Thus a cross sectional study was carried out to predict the influence of such a physically demanding occupation, fishery, on physical fitness. 15 male young fishermen of Puri District, Orissa, India (mean age 22.2) and the 15 young college students (mean age 21.9) who served as ‘controls’, were recruited by simple random sampling. Some common physical parameters and fitness variables are measured, of which a significant difference (p<0.05) was observed in blood pressure, PFI, energy expenditure, body fat% and anaerobic power, whereas, BSA, BMI, resting heart rate, V.O2 max, upper arm, thigh and calf circumferences were found to be non-significant. From the present study it can be concluded that fishermen have more physical or cardiovascular fitness and muscle mass, but less fat percentage.
Strolling through a city of the Roman Empire: an analysis of the potential of virtual reality to teach history in Primary Education

ABSTRACT Virtual Reality is an emerging educational technology due to its potential immersive, interactive and imaginative characteristics supporting pupils in the learning process towards meaningful learning. Furthermore, the current teaching of history is generally too traditional, making the subject being perceived as pointless and boring by students. These aspects lead to poor academic performance. In this context, this study focuses on analysing the eventual benefits of Virtual Reality in the teaching of history at Primary Education and compares its results with those of traditional teaching resources in two dimensions, academic performance and the motivation of students. Thus, an intervention was performed with 98 fourth graders divided into two groups, control and experimental. For the collection of the data referring to motivation, an adaptation of the Instructional Material Survey instrument from Keller [(2010). Motivational design for learning and performance: The ARCS model approach. New York, NY: Springer] was used while, in relation to the evaluation of the academic performance, a specific test was designed taking as reference the tests of the coursebooks for the unit of work “The Roman Civilization” of the subject Social Sciences. The results show statistically significant differences in favour of those students who used Virtual Reality, both in motivation and in academic performance.
Reactivated toxoplasmosis presenting with non-tender hepatomegaly in a patient with HIV infection.

Toxoplasmosis is an opportunistic infection in patients with HIV infection and is a life threatening condition in particular in stage IV of AIDS. Most cases of toxoplasmosis involve the central nervous system and muscles including the heart. Studies from Nairobi by Brindle et al in 1991 showed that 54% of HIV infected patients had toxoplasma specific 1gG antibodies and 22% of the HIV positive group had 1gG levels indicative of active toxoplasmosis. This is in contrast to 1% of the HIV negative group. Toxoplasmosis presenting as hepatomegaly as the major clinical finding is rare. (excerpt)
The Effects of Multiple Unloading Exposures on Bone Properties in the Femur of Adult Male Rats

The Effects of Multiple Unloading Exposures on Bone Properties in the Femur of Adult Male Rats. (May 2012) Derrick Scott Morgan, B.S., Baylor University; M.S., Baylor University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Harry A. Hogan NASA goals include long-term International Space Station (ISS) missions and the ambitious objective of eventually sending astronauts to Mars. Unfortunately, exposure to unloading due to microgravity during spaceflight has been shown to cause detrimental health effects on bone. Therefore, NASA is seeking a ground-based animal model to study the long-term effects of unloading on bone in order to better insure the health and mission capability of astronauts. The hindlimb unloaded (HU) rat model was used to study the effects of multiple unloading exposures and aging on bone properties. Six month old, adult, male Sprague-Dawley rats were separated into the following groups: baseline (BL, sacrificed when received at 6 months age), aging cage control (AC, normal weight-bearing cage activity), 1HU7 (unloaded for 1 month starting at 7 months of age and allowed to recover for 3 months), 1HU10 (normal cage activity until 10 months of age, unloaded for 1 month, recovered for 2 months), and 2HU10 (unloaded for 1 month at 7 months of age, allowed to recover for 2 months, unloaded again for 1 month at 10 months of age, followed by 2 months of recovery). Every 28 days a subset of animals (n=15) were euthanized and both femurs were excised. A peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) scanner was used to collect densitometric and geometric properties at the right and left femoral neck and at the left femoral midshaft. Mechanical testing (axial and lateral compression of the femoral neck and 3pt bending of the
ANALYSIS OF PSYCHO-SOCIAL RISK FACTORS IN PATIENTS WITH RECENT ACUTE CORONARY SYNDROME: A CASE-CONTROL STUDY

ABSTRACT Objective: Although psycho-social factors are reported to be independently associated with myocardial ischemia in many studies, the majority of these were done in the western population. This was conducted in India to determine the impact of psycho-social factors in subjects with the recent acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods: Patients with the first episode of ACS within 4 weeks of onset at LPS Institute of Cardiology, Kanpur, India between 2013 and 2015 were enrolled as cases. Control was community-based individuals without coronary artery disease. Both were compared for demographic variables, the psycho-social profile including annual income, education status, depression, stressful life events (using presumptive stressful life events scale, i.e. PSLES), and independent predictors were determined using multiple logistic regression analysis and were computed as odds ratio (OR). Results: Between 200 cases and 200 controls, respectively, statistically significant difference was observed in mean annual income (2.74±1.95 vs. 2.23±1.22 lac rupees; p<0.05), smoking exposure (13.93±16.17 vs. 4.88±3.10 pack years; p<0.05), mean number of stressful life events (8.18±2.57 vs. 4.14±1.63; p<0.05). Depression (48% vs. 27%; p<0.05) while education status was comparable. Further, odds of having myocardial infarction were higher for subjects with mild-to-moderate depression (OR: 2.45), family history of heart disease (OR: 2.25), hypertensive males (OR: 1.43), and diabetic females (OR: 1.22). Conclusion: Psycho-social factors, particularly depression may have a significant role in the prognosis of ACS. Further systematic studies are warranted to provide more important insights regarding the magnitude of the association between psycho-social factors and the onset of ACS. Keywords: Coronary artery disease, Depression, Psycho-social factors, Presumptive stressful life events scale, Stressful life events.
Transform Domain Digital Watermarking with Multiple Images as Watermarks

In this paper, a technique of image watermarking using multiple images as watermarks is presented. The technique is based on transform domain functions including discrete wavelet transform (DWT), discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) with an image as the host signal i.e. the watermarks will be used as proofs of the authenticity of the host image. The technique is executed by performing multilevel DWT followed by applying DCT and SVD to both the host and watermark. Multiple watermarks are used for the insurance of better security level. The scheme is immune to common image processing operations & some attacks and exhibits PSNR of 108.3781dB, normalized cross correlation (NCC) over 0.99 and normalized correlation (NC) over 0.99.
Toward Theoretically Founded Learning-Based Compressed Sensing

Noiseless compressed sensing refers to the problem of recovering a (high-dimensional) signal from its under-determined linear measurements. For compressed sensing to be feasible, the signal needs to be structured. While the main focus of the field has been on simple structures such as sparsity, there has been a growing interest in moving beyond sparsity and having a comprehensive compressed sensing framework that covers general structures. Two recent approaches that aim at developing such a framework from different perspectives are i) Quantized maximum a posteriori (Q-MAP), a Bayesian method that assumes full knowledge of the source distribution, and ii) Lagrangian minimum entropy pursuit (L-MEP), a universal recovery method that requires no prior knowledge about the distribution of the source. In this paper, by establishing theoretical connections between L-MEP and Q-MAP, it is shown how the two methods are complementary to each other and lead to a theoretically-founded learning-based recovery method that applies to sources with general structures. Unlike a Bayesian or a universal method, a learning-based method is able to extract the source structure from training data. The effect of error in estimating the source structure on the performance of the learning-based compressed sensing recovery method is characterized.
Cross-Corpus Data Augmentation for Acoustic Addressee Detection

Acoustic addressee detection (AD) is a modern paralinguistic and dialogue challenge that especially arises in voice assistants. In the present study, we distinguish addressees in two settings (a conversation between several people and a spoken dialogue system, and a conversation between several adults and a child) and introduce the first competitive baseline (unweighted average recall equals 0.891) for the Voice Assistant Conversation Corpus that models the first setting. We jointly solve both classification problems, using three models: a linear support vector machine dealing with acoustic functionals and two neural networks utilising raw waveforms alongside with acoustic low-level descriptors. We investigate how different corpora influence each other, applying the mixup approach to data augmentation. We also study the influence of various acoustic context lengths on AD. Two-second speech fragments turn out to be sufficient for reliable AD. Mixup is shown to be beneficial for merging acoustic data (extracted features but not raw waveforms) from different domains that allows us to reach a higher classification performance on human-machine AD and also for training a multipurpose neural network that is capable of solving both human-machine and adult-child AD problems.
Biomechanical evaluation and comparison of Isola pedicle screw internal fixation to DIAM fixation for lumbar spine

Objective To investigate the biomechanical effects of Isola pedicle screw internal fixation and DIAM fixation for lumbar spine.Methods Nine fresh cadaveric L1­L5 specimens were used and divided into three groups：A：Normal specimen；B： the DIAM fixation group； C： Isola pedicle screw internal fixation group. The specimen mechanical parameters which correlated to load under conditions such as axial compression，flex，extension and lateral bending，were tested and collected. Results The DIAM fixation could not only stabilize spine well，but also decrease the stress concentration. The Isola system fixed solidly，but the stress concentrated excessively contrasted to that of normal vertebral body，and increased the stress of adjacent segments . Conclusions The spinal stabilization is step down when the posterior structure of lumbar is defected by removal the nucleus and disc，and the DIAM can improve the unsteadiness. The Isola system fixed solidly，but the stress of adjacent levels increase.
Emotional Intelligence on Job Performance of Bank Managers in Sri Lanka

Present day organizations realize that traditional intelligence or Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is not sufficient for developing job performance, work-related behaviour and career advancements of leaders in organizations. The literature suggests that Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays a vital role in the success of managers in the workplace. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of Emotional Intelligence on the job performance of bank managers in Sri Lanka, in order to narrow the research gap. Based on the previous literature showing the relationships among the variables, a conceptual model was developed. The study adopted already validated research instruments. The model was empirically tested by collecting data from bank managers in Sri Lanka. A total of two hundred commercial bank managers were selected for the study using the Convenience Sampling Technique and one hundred and sixty three usable questionnaires were returned. The model was tested with the measurement model and the structural model analysis by using the Partial Least Square technique (PLS). The measurement model analysis was used to establish the item reliability, internal consistency reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity and the structural model analysis was used to test the model fit. The structural model analysis results provided the support for all three hypotheses formulated in this study. Thus, the higher the levels of emotional intelligence of bank mangers the higher the levels of job performance and higher the levels of job satisfaction. This study provides future directions for further research as well. OUSL Journal Vol.9 2015: 41-59
The Overweight Status of Low-Income Mexican American Children 10 Through 14 Years of Age

Abstract Height, weight, and body mass index were measured in 1,851 low-income Mexican American (MA) children, 10 through 14 years of age, to assess for the overweight status of an ethnic population susceptible to diabetes risk. Study sample mean measurements were compared with National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reference data means for American children and z scores were used to determine the significance of differences between the two groups. Results indicated that MA children were shorter, significantly heavier, and of significantly greater body mass index than NCHS reference data. Mean body mass index for all subjects approximate the 75th to 80th NCHS percentiles, reflecting a positive energy balance and resultant high adiposity composition among the group studied.
Resource Allocation in NOMA Systems for Centralized and Distributed Antennas With Mixed Traffic Using Matching Theory

In this paper, we study the traffic-aware resource allocation problem for a system with mixed traffic types. The considered framework encompasses real-time (RT) users having strict QoS requirements (in terms of amount of data and latency), and best-effort (BE) users for which the system tries to strike a balance between throughput and fairness. The resource allocation problem is studied in different contexts: orthogonal and non-orthogonal multiple access (OMA and NOMA respectively) in either centralized or distributed antenna systems (CAS and DAS respectively). Following the formulation of the resource optimization problem, we propose a low complexity suboptimal solution based on matching theory for each system context. We also propose an iterative approach to determine the number of subbands per antenna for the DAS contexts. The proposed techniques aim at guaranteeing the requirements of RT users while maximizing the utility function of BE users. Simulation results show that the proposed allocation method based on matching theory greatly outperforms a previously proposed greedy approach, especially in terms of RT users satisfaction.
Long Distance International Caregiving to Elderly Parents Left Behind: a Case of Nigerian Adult Children Immigrants in Usa

The intent of this qualitative, grounded theory study was to understand why the Nigerian (Igbo) adult immigrants in the United States provide long distance international caregiving to their elderly parents left behind in Nigeria, the challenges they encounter, and their views on long-term service care. This study was grounded in semi-structured interviews of 20 Igbo adult immigrants residing in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolis. Analysis of the literature demonstrates a lack of existent topic on long distance international caregiving to elderly parents left behind in Nigeria. Findings show that reasons for Igbo adult children immigrants providing care to their elderly parents left behind stem from filial obligation, immigrant’s position in the family, perceived vulnerability of parents, and lack of government support. Also because of cultural expectations, the participants felt obligated to reciprocate to the care their elderly parents gave to them when they were growing up. While providing long distance international care, the participants encountered some challenges like adjusting to their new country, distance, financial constraints, being available for family procreation, issues with means of communication, and legal papers and parental adjustment to life in the U.S. This study also revealed that the participants would support the Nigerian government and private sector to provide long-term service care for the aging population. The findings led to some policy recommendations.
How Game Features Give Rise to Altruism and Collective Action? Implications for Cultivating Cooperation by Gamification

Due to the general gamification of our culture and society as well as the proliferation of games in our everyday activities, people are increasingly looking at games and gamification as a source for cooperation and other prosocial behaviors. However, not all game features lead to increased cohesion, cooperation or collaboration between people. While some games indeed are geared for cooperation, majority of games also aim toward competition or just non-social activity. Therefore, a prominent research problem exists in understanding how different game and gamification design may lead to altruistic sentiment and collective action. In this study, we investigated how the engagement with cooperative game features relates to the emergence of altruism and whether altruism leads to the formation of we-intentions in a gaming context. We employed data gathered among players of the augmented reality game Ingress (N=206) and analyzed the data using PLS-SEM. The results show that game features can give rise to altruism and that altruism can invoke we-intentions via cooperative goal structures (we-goals) of individuals. In addition to providing important insights regarding how cooperation emerges within games, this study provides implications for cultivating cooperation by gamification.
An Integrative Theory Addressing Cyberharassment in the Light of Technology-Based Opportunism

Abstract Scholars are increasingly calling for a deeper understanding of cyberharassment (CH) with the goal of devising policies, procedures, and technologies to mitigate it. Accordingly, we conducted CH research that (1) integrated social learning theory (SLT) and self-control theory (SCT); (2) empirically studied this model with two contrasting samples, experienced cyberharassers and less experienced cyberharassers; and (3) conducted post hoc tests to tease out the differences between the two samples. We show that for less experienced cyberharassers, CH is largely a social-psychological-technological phenomenon; whereas, for experienced cyberharassers, CH is primarily a psychological-technological phenomenon. Our study makes a threefold contribution: (1) it shows the value of integrating two theories in a holistic and parsimonious manner to explain CH; (2) it shows that SCT alone is a more relevant framework for experienced cyberharassers, whereas a combination of SCT and SLT better explains less experienced cyberharassers; and (3) it reveals that the role of technology in fostering CH is crucial, regardless of the sample. The differential, yet consistent, findings demonstrate that addressing CH is contingent upon not only identifying theoretical approaches but also identifying the particular samples to which these theoretical approaches will be more suitable. Of several implications for practice, the most important may be that anonymity, asynchronicity, and lack of monitoring are the technology choices that foster CH, and thus these should be mitigated in designing social media and other communication technologies
An Enumeration Survey on Diagnostic X-Ray Generators and Essential Safety Parameters in Mizoram, India

Introduction: Best radiography practice involves operational optimal machine performance, delivering cost-effective healthcare services under appropriate safety conditions for workers and the public. The present study aimed to investigate the safety status of diagnostic X-ray installations in Mizoram, India. Material and Methods: Linearity of time (sec), linearity of current (mA), output reproducibility, table dose (μGy/mAs), peak voltage (kVp) accuracy, and 16 essential safety parameters of 135 X-ray machines were considered in this study. A battery-operated dosimeter and wide-range digital kVp meter were used to measure output radiation and effective peak potential of X-ray tube. Data analysis was performed using SPSS software to obtain the mean, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation. Results: Among different electronic parameters, 59.2% linearity of time, 82.6% linearity of current, 89.7% kVp accuracy, 35.1% output reproducibility, and 92.8% table dose were beyond the acceptable limits. Based on 16 essential safety parameters, it was observed that 98.7% of X-ray machines did not receive proper quality assurance test, 1.9% of the installations employed lead-line patient entrance doors, 46.8% of the machines were operated without any protective barriers and 83.1% of the units were operated without personnel monitoring service. Conclusion: The present study had concluded with more problems than the previous studies in different parts of the world in this regard. Due to the absence of proper quality control (QC) programs, many installations did not follow standard installation guidelines. The authors recommended that proper QC should be implemented by the frequent monitoring of each and every diagnostic X-ray installation.
Kuwaiti female university students' acceptance of the integration of smartphones in their learning: an investigation guided by a modified version of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT)

This study employed a modified and extended version of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to examine female Kuwaiti university students' acceptance of the use of smartphones in their learning. A quantitative research method was used. The results show that the great majority of the students used their smartphones on a daily basis and they had more than five years of experience with the use of smartphones. A regression analysis found that the six independent variables explained 46% of the variance in students' attitudes toward the use of smartphones to support their learning. However, only four independent variables were individually significant in predicting students' attitudes toward the use of smartphones to support their learning. Based on the findings, a set of recommendations related to the use of smartphones to support students' learning is provided.