Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of Masticatory Muscle Pain with Acupuncture: Is It Necessary to Associate with Occlusal Splints?

Background Temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) are treated by different modalities including splints, physiotherapy, and acupuncture. Although all of these offer evidencebased benefits to the patients, avoiding overtreatment is of paramount importance. Objectives To assess the effectiveness of muscle pain treatment with acupuncture combined with or without occlusal splints. Methods Recruited patients were allocated to G1 (acupuncture) and G2 (acupuncture and occlusal splint) groups and treated in four consecutive weekly sessions (P1, P2, P3, and P4). The reported pain (RP) and the pressure pain threshold (PPT) of the masseter and temporalis muscles were assessed before and after each session. Results RP decreased after each session in G1, except at P4. In G2, the RP decreased only after the first session, and the PPT did not vary. Conclusion The assessed treatments did not influence the PPT levels of the masseter and anterior temporalis muscles in patients with temporomandibular disorders. Our findings suggest that occlusal splints may not be mandatory along with the acupuncture treatment.
A framework on the investigation of wind characteristics based on Weibull distribution function by comparative scrutiny of estimation methods: application to an airport

ABSTRACT This study strives to present a preliminary assessment of wind characteristics and the regime for Cappadocia Airport in Turkey by in-depth a holistic and precise comparative analysis. For this purpose, the parameters of the well-accepted Weibull distribution, namely shape and scale parameters, are determined by a variety of estimation methods. Furthermore, the distribution of wind direction and speed over a period of 2015 and 2017 is investigated. Several well-known statistical tools, including Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), R-squared (R2) and Chi-squared (X2), are conducted to analyze comparatively the fitting performance and efficiency of the estimation methods to wind data. This study reveals that the wind speed remains equal to or greater than around three (m/s) 61.12% of the time and the prevailing wind direction is between 290o and 335o, consistent with the runway orientation. The value of the shape parameter ranges from 2.4368 to 4.093, while the scale parameter is in the range from 3.4793 to 4.2349. Consequently, in light of the statistical indicators, it is clearly observed that Empirical Method of Justus (EMJ) and Empirical Method of Lysen (EML) with RMSE of 0.0392, R2 of 0.9865, and X2 of 0.0016, respectively, exhibit more excellent ability in estimating the Weibull parameters in comparison with other numerical methods and also are the most suitable methods in determining the wind characteristics and wind profile of the airport. This study may attract the attention of academics, industrial researchers and policymakers intending to establish the runway orientation at an airport.
Testing Classical Predictors of Public Willingness to Censor on the Desire to Block Fake News Online

This study examined media use and attitudinal predictors of public willingness to censor fake online political news among representative samples in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia (total N = 2880). The study utilized research on the corrective action hypothesis (CAH) and the theory of presumed media influence (TPMI) as frameworks. The CAH holds that an individual’s belief that media are hostile and influential increases the likelihood that the individual will participate in public discourse urging countermeasures. TPMI maintains that the belief that media are influential is associated with attitudes about media, though those attitudes need not be negative. Perceived exposure to fake news online positively predicted willingness to censor fake news in all countries, aligning with some prior research on both the CAH and the TPMI. Facebook use was negatively associated with willingness to censor fake news in two of the countries, while trust in news media was a positive correlate in two countries. Implications for research on both willingness to censor and on fake news are discussed.
Ammonium NHC-tagged olefin metathesis catalysts – influence of counter-ions on catalytic activity

Ruthenium-based catalysts bearing quaternary ammonium groups in their N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) fragments and different counter-ions were synthesised and tested in various olefin metathesis transformations. Differences in catalytic activity in correlation with the nature of the present counter-ion were revealed. The unique properties of the described catalysts allow for the effective preparation of a variety of metathesis products with low ruthenium contamination and under green chemistry conditions.
Chronic urticaria: a clinico-etiological study and autologous serum skin test role in chronic idiopathic urticaria

Background: Appearance of wheals daily for more than six weeks is chronic urticarial (CU). No cause is identified in about 50-70% of chronic urticaria patients and are labelled as chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU). The aim of the present study is to study the clinical and etiological pattern of chronic urticaria and to find out the incidence of autoimmune urticaria by performing autologous serum skin test (ASST) in patients with CIU.Methods: This was a cross sectional study enrolling 100 chronic urticaria patients satisfying including and excluding criteria. The study was done for a period of 1 year. ASST was done in all the CIU patients after recording detailed history, complete physical and systemic examination.Results: Most of the patients (33%) were in 21-30 years age group with female preponderance (66%). Students (38%) followed by house wives (27%) were majorly involved. 21% patients had history of atopy and 8% had abnormal thyroid function tests. Causative factors noticed in 46% patients and remaining were idiopathic (54%). Infections (32.6%) constituted the major etiological factor followed by physical urticaria (30.4%), food (23.9%), medication (11%) and inhalants (2.1%). In infective agents, 46.6% were bacterial followed by helminthic (33.3%). In 29.6% of CIU patients, the ASST was positive indicating auto-immune urticaria.Conclusions: The etiology cannot be identified in most number of patients and hence they were labelled as CIU and the common causative agents observed were infections followed by physical urticaria, food and medication. ASST is considered as the relevant screening test to detect autoimmune urticaria.
Students’ Behaviours in using Learning Resources in Higher Education: How do behaviours reflect success in Programming Education?

Programming education traditionally has been an important part of Information Technology-related degrees but, more recently, it is also becoming essential in many STEM domains as well. Despite this, drop-out rates in programming courses in higher education institutions are considerable and cannot be ignored. At the same time, analysing learning behaviours has been reported to be an effective way to support the improvement of teaching and learning quality. This article aims to deliver an in-depth analysis of students’ learning behaviours when using course material items. We analyse an introductory programming course at a University in Dublin. The dataset is extracted from automatically logged learning data from a bespoke online learning system. The analysis makes use of the power of Principal Component Analysis and Random Matrix Theory to reduce dimensionality in, and to extract information from, the data, verifying the results with rigorous statistical tests. Overall, we found that all the students follow a common learning pattern in accessing all given learning items. However, there is a noticeable difference between higher and lower-performing cohorts of students when using practical and theoretical learning items. The high performing students have been consistently active in practice during the study progress. On the other hand, the students who failed the exam have more recorded activities in reading lecture notes and appear to become discouraged and unmotivated from the practical activities, especially in the later stage of the semester.
The Effect of Hydrophobicity of Ammonium Salts on Stability of Quasi‐2D Perovskite Materials in Moist Condition

With the potential of achieving high efficiency and low production costs, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted great attention. However, their unstableness under moist condition has retarded the commercial development. Recently, 2D perovskites have received a lot of attention due to their high moisture resistance. In this work, four quasi 2D quasi perovskites are prepared, then their stability under moist condition is investigated. The surface morphology, crystal structure, optical properties, and photovoltaic performance are measured. Among the four quasi‐2D perovskites, (C6H5CH2NH3)2(FA)8Pb9I28 has the best performance: uniform and dense film, extremely well‐oriented crystal structure, strong absorption, and a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.40%. The aging tests show that quasi‐2D perovskites are more stable under moist conditions than FAPbI3 is. The (C6H5CH2NH3)2(FA)8Pb9I28 quasi‐2D perovskite devices exhibit high humidity stability, maintaining 80% of the starting PCE after 500 h under 80% relative humidity. Compared with other quasi‐2D perovskites, (C6H5CH2NH3)2(FA)8Pb9I28 has the highest humidity stability, due to their strongest hydrophobicity from C6H5CH2NH3+. This work demonstrates that the properties of perovskite materials can be modified by adding different ammonium salts into FAPbI3. Thus, by introducing ammonium salts with high hydrophobic properties the fabrication of highly efficient and stable 2D PSCs may be possible.
Impact of The Correlation Between Channel Input And Side Information On Physical Layer Security Performances of Wireless Wiretap Channel

In this paper, a discrete memoryless wiretap channel with non-causal side information known at the encoder is considered. We (i) characterize capacity region for the Gaussian version of this channel by considering correlation between channel input and side information available at the transmitter; (ii) analyze the impact of correlation on the performance of physical layer security in a Rayleigh fading wiretap channel by deriving closed-form expressions on the average secrecy capacity (ASC) and secrecy outage probability (SOP). Further, to more show the impact of side information, asymptotic behavior of SOP is studied. Numerical evaluation of theoretical results is done finally.
The acceptance of augmented reality tour app for promoting film-induced tourism: the effect of celebrity involvement and personal innovativeness

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence mainland Chinese film tourists’ behavioural intention in accepting an augmented reality (AR) feature film character-related tour APP (an IfilmAR-tour-APP) based on an extension of unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model. Design/methodology/approach Systematic sampling was used to collect data; 360 valid questionnaires were collected from mainland Chinese film tourists visiting Macau. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was applied to analyse the data. Findings The findings indicated that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, celebrity involvement and personal innovativeness have a significant impact on mainland Chinese film tourists’ behavioural intention in accepting the IfilmAR-tour-APP, while facilitating conditions do not significantly affect tourists’ behavioural intention. Furthermore, the study revealed that effort expectancy, celebrity involvement and personal innovativeness positively influence performance expectancy in the use of an IfilmAR-tour-APP. Practical implications The findings of this study provide implications for AR tour APP developers which will help them to enhance their designs, and for the governments of tourist destinations to formulate their promotion strategies in developing niche tourism. Originality/value This study extended the application of UTAUT to tourism technology by introducing two personality traits in the context of AR tour APPs for film-induced tourism. This research contributes to niche tourism research by linking niche tourism and tourism technology.
Effects of manipulating writing task complexity on learners’ performance in completing vocabulary and syntactic tasks

The present study investigated the potential of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) for language learning by manipulating cognitive task complexity based on related models and hypotheses. English essays written by 59 Chinese postgraduate EFL students from different subject areas were analysed with reference to writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Results showed that task complexity had no significant effect on EFL learners’ lexical complexity but had an influence on their syntactic variation in EFL writing. Findings suggest that manipulating writing task complexity could be a feasible means to promoting and enhancing EFL learners’ language learning. Such findings might broaden our understanding of the relationship between EFL writing and language learning in an EFL learning context. The interplay of EFL writing and EFL learning is also pedagogically relevant to those who are interested in appropriately sequencing tasks for more effective language teaching.
Spatial analysis of confirmed Lassa fever cases in Edo State, Nigeria, 2008 - 2014

Background: Lassa fever (LF) is endemic and poses public health threats in Edo State. Identification of primary clusters will help prioritize public health interventions in the state. We investigated retrospective cases of LF to identify primary cluster of the disease for household exposure management. Method: We reviewed retrospective data (n = 1400) of LF case-patients at a referral hospital in Edo State from 2008 to 2014 based on World Health Organization case definition for LF. We determined primary cluster of confirmed cases on Bernoulli model and evaluated environmental factors in the primary cluster: presence of rodent deterrents, proximity of households at 2 km radius to rice farm, rice post-harvest storage facility, refuse dump, forest, hospital and main road using Multi-criteria analysis at p < 0.05. Results: Of the reviewed cases, 171 (12.2%) were confirmed case-patients. The median age of confirmed case-patients was 30 years (Q1:16.0 and Q3: 43.5). Of the confirmed case-patients, 101 (59.1%) were male. A primary spatial cluster (4.45 km radius; geographic centre at 6.717900oN, 6.243500oE) was identified in Esan West LGA. Associated environmental factors included presence of rodent deterrents (p < 0.001), proximities of households to refuse dump (p < 0.001), rice post-harvest storage facility (p = 0.01) and rice farm (p = 0.03). Conclusion: Esan West LGA was identified as a primary cluster for Lassa fever. Presence of rodent deterrents, household proximity to refuse dump sites, rice storage facilities and rice farms were associated environmental factors. We recommend improved rice post-harvest storage and use of rodent deterrents in Edo State, Nigeria. Key words: Multi-criteria analysis, Lassa fever, environmental variables, Nigeria.
Status of Oral Prosthetic Rehabilitation of Edentulism at the University Clinics of Kinshasa (CUK), DR Congo

Objective: The present work aimed to identify the most common edentulousness and prosthesis type (prosthetic treatment), to improve the management in oral prosthetic rehabilitation in DR Congo. Material and Methods: It was a documentary, longitudinal, and retrospective study of the medical records of edentulous patients admitted to the prosthetic service of the Dental Department/Kinshasa University from January 1983 to December 2020. Age, sex, cause of teeth loss, and prosthetic treatment (partial removable prosthesis, complete removable prosthesis) were evaluated. The Chare square test was performed to compare significant differences between the variables and the P-value < 0.05 was set as significant. Results: One thousand six hundred and ninety patients in that 901 were men (47 ± 16 years) and 789 women (42 ± 15 years) had undergone prosthetic treatment. One thousand eight hundred and forty-four edentulous teeth were viewed according to the Kennedy classification. Kennedy class 1 was the most predominant (61.4%) followed by Kennedy class 3 (24.8%). Two thousand one hundred and ninety-one prostheses were performed. The removable partial prosthesis with plate (acrylic resin) was the most performed (78.8%; n = 1727) and followed by the joint (17.4%; n = 384). Dental caries (52.6%) and periodontitis (36.4%) were the main causes of these edentulous teeth. Conclusion: The present study showed that edentulism is becoming a concern for the implementation of a real oral health policy.
Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges

The Open Access (OA) publishing model that is based on article processing charges (APC) is often associated with the potential for more transparency regarding the expenditures for publications. However, the extent to which transparency can be achieved depends not least on the completeness of data in APC monitoring systems. This article investigates two blind spots of the largest collection of APC payment information, OpenAPC. It aims to identify likely APC-liable publications for German universities that contribute to this system and for those that do not provide data to it. The calculation combines data from Web of Science, the ISSN-Gold-OA-list and OpenAPC. The results show that for the group of universities contributing to the monitoring system, more than half of the APC payments are not covered by it and the average payments for non-covered APCs is higher than for APCs covered by the system. In addition, the group of universities that does not contribute to OpenAPC accounts for two thirds of the number of APC-liable publications recorded for contributing universities. Regarding the size of these blind spots, the value of the monitoring system is limited at present.
Design of sports-abaya and its thermal comfort evaluation

The market for sports-abaya in Saudi Arabia is growing due to an increasing participation rate of Islamic women in fitness and sports activities. As mandated by religious law, an abaya must be worn over daily clothes or sportswear by women in order to hide their body contour. The additional layer of the abaya will affect thermal comfort and performance of the wearer. Hence, a sports-abaya needs to be specifically designed to facilitate thermal comfort. This necessitates the selection and evaluation of fabrics appropriate for use in the production of sports-abaya. This study compared two fabrics (100% cotton knit and 100% polyester woven) for their air permeability, thermal resistance and evaporative resistance. The fabrics were then incorporated as sole variable into two models of sports-abaya. The thermal properties of these abayas were evaluated using a female thermal manikin in both standing and walking positions. Comparison was made with the results of a traditional abaya. The research work revealed that polyester woven fabric has a higher air permeability (44.9 mL/cm2/s) than cotton knitted fabric (24.1 mL/cm2/s). The vapor resistance of polyester fabric was lower than cotton fabric and their thermal resistant did not show any significant difference. Consequently, thermal manikin evaluation showed results favoring sports-abaya containing polyester fabric in both standing and walking positions. Furthermore, the thermal resistant and vapor resistant values of sports-abayas were lower compared with those of the traditional abaya. This leads to the conclusion that the newly designed sports-abaya containing 100% polyester woven fabric provides better thermal comfort than traditional abaya and sports-abaya containing 100% cotton fabric.
Role of Silk Fiber Loading on Physico-Mechanical Properties of Epoxy Composites

ABSTRACT Researchers have suggested the usage of lightweight materials in the automotive and other engineering components which has proven to be one of the potential ways to meet demand for fuel efficiency and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions generated by the manufacturing industries. In this study, silk fiber (Bombyx-mori) reinforced epoxy biocomposites were fabricated by hand layup method with different loadings of fiber and their physico-mechanical properties were studied following acceptable ASTM standards. The properties of the epoxy matrix were significantly enhanced with the silk fiber loading, displaying optimum properties at 50 wt. % silk fiber loading. The findings also led that morphology of silk fiber and surface adhesion with the epoxy matrix affects the properties of biocomposites. Such findings provide perspective into the benefits of fiber reinforcements to the physio-mechanical performance of the epoxy resin. The mechanism of failure and consequently the adhesion between fibers and matrix were analyzed by observing the photomicrographs of the damaged coupons.
Towards Forage Resource Monitoring in subtropical Savanna Grasslands: going multispectral or hyperspectral?

ABSTRACT Forage supply of savanna grasslands plays a crucial role for local food security and consequently, a reliable monitoring system could help to better manage vital forage resources. To help installing such a monitoring system, we investigated whether in-situ hyperspectral data could be resampled to match the spectral resolution of multi- and hyperspectral satellites; if the type of sensor affected model transfer; and if spatio-temporal patterns of forage characteristics could be related to environmental drivers. We established models for forage quantity (green biomass) and five forage quality proxies (metabolisable energy, acid/neutral detergent fibre, ash, phosphorus). Hyperspectral resolution of the Hyperion satellite mostly resulted in higher accuracies (i.e. higher R2, lower RMSE). When applied to satellite data, though, the greater quality of the multispectral Sentinel-2 satellite data leads to more realistic forage maps. By analysing a three-year time series, we found plant phenology and cumulated precipitation to be the most important environmental drivers of forage supply. We conclude that none of the investigated satellites provide optimal conditions for monitoring purposes. Future hyperspectral satellite missions like EnMAP, combining the high information level of Hyperion with the good data quality and resolution of Sentinel-2, will provide the prerequisites for installing a regular monitoring service.
The Efficiency of Public Spending in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this article, the authors analyze the efficiency of public spending among Sub-Saharan African countries using a panel data for 23 Sub-Saharan Africa countries covering the period 2006-2018. This paper employs two-stage bootstrap output-oriented DEA approach. In addition, this study analyses the sources of distortions in public spending. Results show that the average biascorrected inefficiency score was 48 percent between 2006 and 2018 while the uncorrected inefficiency was 32.3percent. Institutional quality and domestic saving significantly influence the efficiency of public spending. Hence, there is need for Sub-Saharan African governments to observe fiscal discipline through strengthening of monitoring unit of government expenditure.