Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of Endometritis in Crossbred cows at District Lahore, Pakistan

ABSTRACT: Endometritis is causing great economic losses every year not only because of medication but also because of prolonged and increased calving period. The studies on prevalence / incidence are scarce which otherwise are essentially required to develop different control and treatment strategies. The objectives of this study was to determine incidence / prevalence of endometritis with regards to milking status and Month / Season wise in crossbred cows. The study was conducted on the crossbred cows belonging to four dairy farms located at Lahore and surrounding areas. Young stock cows fit for breeding (2-4 years old), adult milking cows and adult non milking (dry) cows were three understudy groups. Four hundred animals of each group were examined every month for a period of one year. Endometritis cases were identified through clinical signs (Less pregnancy rate / infertility, loss of appetite, depression, dehydration, vaginal discharge and dullness), Vaginal/uterine swab, colour and odour of vaginal discharge and measurement of cervical diameter. Overall Endometritis incidence was found highest (1.72 %) in Milking cows followed by Dry Cows (1.00 %) and lowest in Young Stock Cows (0.94 %). The highest incidence was observed during summer season in all three classes of cows whereas the lowest was during winter with the exception of in Milk group where the lowest incidence was observed during spring season. The study may provide useful information to evolve effective control measures and treatment of endometritis in crossbred cows.
Movement Control of Excavation Support Systems by Iterative Design

Conventional design practice for excavation support systems emphasizes determination of loads and selection of structural components. This paper presents a method which uses movement control as a central focus in the design process. Before structural design is finalized or specifications are written, issues associated with potential movements of the system are resolved. To assist working within the context of the new method, procedures are presented to guide the estimation of excavation support system movements.
Fire Retardancy of Cementitious Panels with Larch and Spruce Bark as Bio-Admixtures

The aim of this study is to investigate the production of fire-resistant panels made out of bark from spruce (Picea abies), larch (Larix decidua Mill.) and cement. This research included test panels produced from bark, cement, water and cement-bonded recycling material aiming for the target density of 750 kg/m3. The physical (density, dimension stability, thickness swelling) and mechanical properties such as tensile strength and compressive strength together with fire resistance were tested. Considering the results, appealing values have been achieved: max. compressive strength: 3.42 N/mm2; max. thickness swelling: 5.48%; and density: 515 to 791 kg/m3. In principle, the properties of the produced panels depend not only on the density, but also on the hydration and, above all, on the compaction and the composition of the boards. The fire tests demonstrated that the produced panels have an enormous potential in terms of fire resistance and could be utilized for fire-retardant applications.
Information structure and the use of cleft sentences in English and Norwegian

This paper presents results of work in progress which investigates the discourse distribution of cleft sentences in English and Norwegian. Examination of clefts in the Norwegian novel Sofies verden and its English translation supports informal observations that clefts are more commonly used in Norwegian than in English. Absolute restrictions and constraints on the discourse distribution of clefts do not differ in the two languages, and the information structural properties of English and Norwegian clefts are the same as well. It is proposed that the frequency difference results from a stronger tendency to map information structure directly onto syntactic structure in Norwegian. Specifically, there is a stronger preference in Norwegian for encoding presupposed material in the cleft clause and for keeping focal material out of subject position.
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACTUAL BREACH, SUPERVISOR TRUST, AND ORGANIZATIONAL INJUSTICE IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

This study evidences the psychological contract breach and organizational injustice affect via negative influence of employees’ supervisor trust. Questionnaire survey was sent to the individual at the construction site for data collection. The sample comprises 194 full-time employees. After initial data normality & reliability testing, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis to assess validity of measures with AMOS. The results of our empirical study show that when faced with psychological contracts breaches, and injustice in the workplace, employees are less likely to trust supervisor and most likely to engage in neglecting behaviors. In view of these results, it was suggested that construction supervisors plan policies and strategies to facilitate implementation of an appropriate environment. It will also provide positive culture; where-ever employees more frequently execute behavior in the low breach of psychological contract with the justice environment.
The Link between Documentation Status, Occupation Status, and Healthcare Access for African migrants

The link between migrants’ legal and employment status, access to health and health outcomes is widely explored in the academic literature on migration and health. However, there are few, if any, studies examining this link within African states. In this article we present survey data collected from refugees and people in refugee-like situations in Kenya, regular (labor) migrants in Nigeria, and irregular migrants in South Africa to examine the link between registration status, employment or occupation status, gender, and (perceptions of) access to healthcare. A range of statistical tests and models were applied to examine the effects of these different characteristics. A consistent finding throughout the three sample countries is that access for people without any documentation is lower than different other groups, not only by means but also within the linear models. This strongly suggests that extending regularization pathways in African states, even if on a temporary basis, would be an effective policy lever to improve migrants’ access to healthcare, and by extension migrants’ health. However, the effects of employment status and gender on access to healthcare were more ambiguous, and further research in African contexts is required to clarify their impact.
Prosociality as response to slow- and fast-onset climate hazards

Non-technical summary More and more people around the globe experience climate hazards. For vulnerable populations, these hazards not only cause significant physical damages, but can also affect the way people interact with each other. How such interactions are affected by climate hazards is particularly important for understanding the vulnerability of communities. Prosocial behavior is key for communities that heavily rely on informal social support to deal with these threats and for cooperative solutions to provide and maintain public goods. To investigate these effects, we talk to people living on the front lines of climate change and measure their prosociality using behavioral tasks. Our results show that both fast- and slow-onset hazards increase prosociality, underscoring the importance of well-functioning social relationships for dealing with hardship and uncertainty in a variety of contexts. Technical summary People's willingness to engage in prosocial behavior can affect how vulnerable and resilient populations are to climate hazards. We study how different types of climate hazards, fast-onsetting cyclones and slowly rising sea-levels, might affect peoples' prosociality using incentivized behavioral tasks. We sample people who are at the forefront of climate change and either experienced Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (study 1; n = 378) or are from sea-level rise hotspots (study 2; n = 1047) in Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. We experimentally manipulate the salience of these hazards through recall or informational videos. Results from study 1 show that increases in prosociality are (i) independent of whether supportive behaviors or conflicts are recalled, (ii) are not only targeted to a narrow in-group, and (iii) do not come with increases in antisocial behaviors. In study 2, we also find that people behave more prosocial when they are informed about the impacts of rising sea-levels. Our survey evidence suggests that people who already perceive the threat of displacement due to rising sea-levels are also more prosocial. Overall, peoples' responses to both types of hazards are geared toward collective action, which could strengthen their adaptive capacity to deal with climate risks. Social media summary People severely affected by sea-level rise and rapidly emerging climate hazards are responding with increases in prosocial behaviors to fellow villagers.
Dynamic impact of ageing dump truck suspension systems on whole-body vibrations in high-impact shovel loading operations

Surface mining operations typically deploy large shovels, with 100+ tons per pass capacity, to load dump trucks in a phenomenon described as high-impact shovel loading operations (HISLO). The HISLO phenomenon causes excessive shock and vibrations in the dump truck assembly resulting in whole body vibration (WBV) exposures to operators. The truck suspension system performance deteriorates with time; therefore their effectiveness in attenuating vibrations reduces. No research has been conducted to study the impact of ageing suspension mechanisms on the magnitudes of WBV in HISLO operations. This study is a pioneering effort to provide fundamental and applied knowledge for understanding the impact of ageing on the magnitudes of WBV exposures. The effects of underlying ageing processes on a suspension performance index are mathematically modeled. The effects of scheduled maintenance and corrective maintenance on improving the performance index (PI) are also modeled. Finally, the proposed mathematical ageing model is linked to the truck operator’s exposure to WBVs via a virtual prototype CAT 793D truck model in the MSC ADAMS environment. The effects of suspension system ageing in increasing the WBV levels are examined in the form of both the vertical and horizontal accelerations under HISLO conditions. This study shows that the hydro-pneumatic suspension strut ageing results in deteriorating stiffness-damping parameters. The deteriorating suspension performance (with time) introduces more severe and prolonged WBVs in HISLO operations. The RMS accelerations increase significantly with time (suspension ageing). The vertical RMS accelerations increase to severe magnitudes of over 3.45, 3.75, and 4.0 m/s after 3, 5, and 7 years, respectively. These acceleration magnitudes are well beyond the ISO limits for the human body’s exposure to WBVs. This pioneering research effort provides a frontier for further research to provide safe and healthy working environments for HISLO operations.
Informal Work, Risk, and Clientelism: Evidence from 223 Slums across India

Abstract Most of the poor in the developing world work in the informal economy, that is, in occupations that take place outside of the legal system of taxing, spending, and regulating. This article examines how informal work impacts the policy and electoral preferences of the poor. We emphasize the importance of the risks inherent in informal employment in shaping the responsiveness of citizens to clientelism and their policy and voting preferences. Since most informal workers are not covered by (formal) social insurance, they prefer material goods and candidates that produce targeted, clientelistic benefits rather than programmatically delivered insurance that is unlikely to reach them. As a result, we argue that informal workers are more likely to rely on clientelistic relations as a means of hedging risks than are formal workers; prefer policies that are delivered clientelistically via political mediators rather than programmatic solutions; and prefer clientelistic over programmatic local candidates. Our findings elucidate why the preferences of poor informal workers often diverge from those assumed by standard models of social insurance and have important implications for the political economy of social policy in a world where billions work outside work-based tax-transfer systems.
Multi-Layer Perceptron Training Optimization Using Nature Inspired Computing

Although the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural networks provide a lot of flexibility and have proven useful and reliable in a wide range of classification and regression problems, they still have limitations. One of the most common is associated with the optimization algorithm used to train them. The most commonly used training method is stochastic gradient descent with backpropagation (or backpropagation for short) because it is mathematically tractable (given that the activation functions are differentiable). However, backpropagation is not guaranteed to find the globally optimal set of weights and biases. As a result, the MLP is often incapable of obtaining a desirable solution to the problem. Clonal selection algorithms (CSA) are optimization procedures that effectively explore a complex and large space to find values near the global optimum. Consequently, CSA can be used to solve the problem of training MLP networks. This paper presents a novel implementation of CSA for training MLP architectures to solve real-world problems such as breast cancer diagnosis, active sonar target classification, wheat classification, and flower classification. The CSA is used to find the optimal weights and biases that will significantly increase the classification accuracy of the MLP. The performance of our proposed approach is compared with other popular training methods: genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimization (ACO), particle swarm optimization (PSO), Harris hawks optimization (HHO), moth-flame optimization (MFO), flower pollination algorithm (FPA), and backpropagation (BP). The comparison is benchmarked using five classification datasets: Iris Flower, Sonar, Wheat Seeds, Breast Cancer Wisconsin, and Haberman’s Survival. Comparative study results illustrate the improvements in MLP performance gained by using CSA over other training methods, and hence it can be considered a competitive approach to training MLP networks when solving real-world applications in various disciplines.
Epidemiological Study of Foot Injuries in the Practice of Sport Climbing

Background. Climbing is a multidisciplinary sport, where the main objective is to reach the highest point of a rock wall or to reach the end of an established route. There are different types of modalities: sport climbing and traditional climbing. The risks and precautions taken with respect to this sport will directly affect the epidemiology of injuries related to its practice. The present study was designed to identify and characterize the most frequent injuries in the feet of climbers and to determine if there is a relationship between the injuries that appear and the time spent practicing the sport. Methods. A total of 53 people were collected, 32 men and 21 women, corresponding to the climbers of the FEXME (Extremadura Federation of Mountain and Climbing). To determine the diagnoses, exploratory tests, classified according to the variables to be studied, are carried out: inspection variables and questionnaire variables. Results. The average number of years of climbing was seven years, and the average number of hours of training per week was 6.6 h. Some type of alterations were presented in 70% of the respondents, and foot pain was present during climbing in 45% of the participants. The p-value showed a relationship between years of climbing and the occurrence of chronic foot injuries (p = 0.035), however, there is no relationship between the occurrence of injuries and chronological age. Conclusion. We can see that the most frequent injuries in the practice of climbing are claw toes, dermal alterations such as bursitis of the first toe and hallux limitus, followed by hallux valgus. Similarly, only a significant relationship was found between the number of years of climbing and the appearance of foot injuries.
Financial inclusion and education: An empirical study of financial inclusion in the face of the pandemic emergency due to Covid‐19 in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract Financial inclusion and education contribute to a country's development and economic growth. However, despite the significant efforts being made to increase access to financial products for women, a high percentage still do not have access to and effective use of formal financial services in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. This study analyzes financial inclusion (based on gender equality) in the countries studied using a pooled‐panel ordinary least squares econometric technique. Furthermore, the impact of interactions between the level of study, use of technology, academic degree during the Covid‐19 restrictions, number of credit borrowers, and number of borrowers with the interaction of the restrictions during the health emergency was evaluated employing the Gini coefficient and human development index (HDI). This study confirms that Latin America and the Caribbean countries can increase financial inclusion by changing their social aspects based on gender equality to ease using technology and access to credit. The results of this study are helpful for policy‐makers in formulating and implementing policies that lead to action plans that reverse an exclusionary financial system, promote financial education, and empower women.
Adolescent’s Experiences with Diabetes Self-Management and the Use of Carbohydrate Counting in Their Everyday Life with Type 1 Diabetes

Aim The aim of this study was to describe adolescents’ experiences with diabetes self-management and the use of carbohydrate counting as a tool for calculating insulin doses in everyday life with type 1 diabetes. Methods We used a qualitative study design. Individual interviews were conducted with 14 adolescents (seven boys and seven girls, aged 16–18 years) with type 1 diabetes by using a semi-structured interview guide. We used purposive sampling, recruiting the participants from one paediatric outpatient clinic in Norway. Thematic analysis was used for the data analysis. Findings We identified two main themes, each comprising three subthemes: (1) “Diabetes treatment is difficult but can be well adapted” with subthemes “Diabetes influences my entire life, with a lot of fuss and takes time”, “Having diabetes turned out to be manageable”, and “Need some help and support, but not too much”; (2) “Carbohydrate counting is useful but often not used” with subthemes “One counts the carbs, then the pump calculates the insulin doses”, “Carbohydrate counting gives better blood glucose, but I do not always bother to use it”, and “After a while, one just uses one’s own experience. ”. Conclusion The study showed that adolescents with type 1 diabetes experienced that the diabetes treatment influenced their entire life in a substantial manner. Nevertheless, the demands of the disease and the treatment tasks were perceived very differently. Some articulated that carbohydrate counting was appreciated as a suitable tool for dosing insulin and optimizing glycaemic control. Others did not use carbohydrate counting at all and described to use their own experience. The findings support the importance of individualizing diabetes follow-up and adapt the training in treatment tools to everyone’s situation and preferences.
Hearing loss in vestibular schwannoma

Purpose: The most common reason for consultation in patients suffering from Vestibular Schwannoma (VS) is progressive hearing loss. The main objective of this study is analyzing the hearing loss in patients with VS and determining the extent to which the tumor grade and the hearing loss are related. Methods: An observational retrospective study was conducted with a sample of 291 patients diagnosed with VS between 1995 and 2017 in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery of the Tertiary Care Primary Center of Salamanca. We analyzed preoperative and postoperative data from patients with VS as well as radiological and surgical findings. Results: The most common reason for consultation at diagnosis was progressive unilateral hearing loss (31.6%). The relationship between the size of the VS and hearing loss in the patients who reported progressive unilateral hearing loss as a reason for consultation was not statistically significant (p=0.099). Conclusion: The most common reason for consultation in VS is progressive unilateral hearing loss. The hearing loss caused by VS does not have a statistically significant association with any particular tumor grade, although severe and profound hearing loss is more commonly associated with grade III-IV neurinomas, whereas mild hearing loss or normal hearing are more likely in grade I-II tumors.
Transitions and trajectories for school students requiring additional support: a local lens

ABSTRACT Background In many countries, educational opportunities and choices may differ according to factors related to location. This may have a significant impact on young people’s life chances and trajectories. The in-depth, ethnographic study reported here focuses attention on rural/non-rural variations in transition programmes for school students requiring additional support. Purpose The research sought to explore why, seemingly counterintuitively, students requiring additional support in rural Swedish areas might experience more successful transitions than students in some less rural locations. Methods Data included field observations from selected municipalities and interviews with school staff and local officials. Using themes drawn from the data, the Local Learning Ecologies framework was adopted as an analysis tool to capture the detail of relevant macro-, micro- and intermediate-level factors and experiences. Findings Fine-grained analysis of the rich data suggested that the national expansion of school choice and decentralisation in Sweden has affected the organisation of transition programmes. In particular, decentralisation has led to the concentration of national programme provision in city centres, meaning that some students in municipalities may have abundant options but require substantial commuting to access them. Overall, important factors for successful transitions may include short distances between school institutions (facilitating information flows); collaboration between teachers, other professionals and students, and clear options for students. Conclusions The study highlights that although decentralisation may have, on the face of it, appeared to broaden options for young people in some (particularly commuter-belt) municipalities, their trajectories appear to have become more opaque and choices potentially more restricted. In contrast, short distances between institutions and better collaboration between staff, students and local entrepreneurs in rural municipalities seem to provide clearer options for students within transition programmes.