Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship between Plantar Fasciitis and Plantar Heel Pressure

espanolObjetivos: La presencia de incremento de presion plantar en la zona medial del talon en la fascitis plantar ha sido estudiado, y los clinicos a menudo utilizan dispositivos de alivio de la presion, como almohadillas de talon y cazoletas, como medio de manejo.Metodo: Las presiones plantares en una muestra de 15 participantes adultos con fascitis plantar cronica se compararon con las presiones plantares de los 15 participantes adultos que formaron el grupo control, que fueron comparados por edad, sexo y peso.Resultados: No hubo diferencias significativas en la presion plantar en el pico pico (p = 0,244), en la presion pico lateral (p = 0,876), en la presion plantar pico en el antepie (p = 0,576) Los 2 grupos. Sin embargo, hubo una diferencia significativa (p = 0,015) en la presion plantar del talon medial entre los 2 grupos, con el grupo de fascitis plantar con menor presion en el talon medial que en el grupo control.Conclusion: Los hallazgos en este estudio sugieren que no hay relacion entre el pico medial del talon de las presiones plantares y cronico medio-plantar talon dolor en la fascitis plantar. Tampoco hay cambio en la presion de la region sintomatica del talon medio-plantar a las regiones del talon latero-plantar y del antepie. Como resultado, la presion puede no desempenar un papel en la fisiopatologia de la fascitis plantar. EnglishObjective: The presence of increased medial heel plantar pressure in plantar fasciitis has been debated, with clinicians often utilizing pressure-relieving devices, such as heel pads and cups, as a means of management. Method: Plantar pressures in a sample of 15 adult participants with chronic plantar fasciitis were compared to plantar pressures of the 15 adult participants forming the control group, who were matched for age, gender and weight. Results: There were no significant differences in peak heel plantar pressure (p = 0.244), lateral peak plantar pressure (p = 0.876), forefoot peak plantar pressure (p = 0.576) and the Forefoot to Rear foot peak pressure ratio (p = 0.242) between the 2 groups. However, there was a significant difference (p = 0.015) in medial heel peak plantar pressure between the 2 groups, with the plantar fasciitis group having lower medial heel pressure than the control group. Conclusion: The findings in this study suggest that there is no relationship between peak medial heel plantar pressures and chronic medio-plantar heel pain in plantar fasciitis. There is also no shift in pressure from the symptomatic medio-plantar heel region to the latero-plantar heel and forefoot regions. As a result, pressure may not play a part in the pathophysiology of plantar fasciitis.
Females’ intra-household Bargaining Power andFertility in Iran

This research investigates demand for child among Iranian urban households in an intra-household bargaining decision process. Using Household’s Expenditures Survey of Iran(2008), a count regression technique which takes into account the over-dispersion and under-dispersion characteristic of Poisson regression is specified as a function of intrahousehold bargaining factors, extra-household environmental factors, and family’s characteristics. Findings confirm the significance of extrahousehold environmental factorsand household’s characteristics in demand for child. Mothers with higher opportunity cost of child caring, more particularly college educated women, tend to have less children and they substitute quality of children for their quantity. As the Mothers’ bargaining power goes up, their propensity to bring more children decreases, however fathers with higher non-labor earning prefer to have more children. Diagnostic checking confirms accuracy and appropriateness of the Generalized Poisson against its alternatives. To examine the exogeneity of the explanatory variables we re-estimated the proposed specification with Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), where the hypothesis of exogeneity is confirmed. Further robustness checking by Negative Binomial distribution of dependent variable and specifying the models by mothers’ age disaggregation show that the sign and significance of estimated coefficients are similar to those of the Generalized Poisson and GMM; however modest changes have been experienced in the magnitude of estimated coefficients.
Above-Ground Net Primary Production for Elymus lanceolatus and Hesperostipa curtiseta After a Single Defoliation Event

Abstract Above-ground net primary production (ANPP) of northern wheatgrass (Elymus lanceolatus [Scribn. & J. G. Sm.] Gould) and western porcupine grass (Hesperostipa curtiseta [Hitchc.] Barkworth) was determined after defoliation to a 7.5 cm stubble height on five landform elements in the Northern Mixed Prairie that had been ungrazed for > 25 yr. Landform elements included north aspect–concave slopes, north aspect–convex slopes, south aspect–concave slopes, south aspect–convex slopes, and level uplands. ANPP was determined for 2 yr after defoliating plots once in May, June, July, August, September, October, November, or April. Northern wheatgrass and western porcupine grass ANPP varied among landform elements (P < 0.01), but not with the month of defoliation × landform element interaction (P ≥ 0.22). Month of defoliation did not influence ANPP of northern wheatgrass (P ≥ 0.69), but that of western porcupine grass was reduced by August and September defoliations (P < 0.01). ANPP of both grasses was insensitive to landform element in terms of defoliation responses. Northern wheatgrass ANPP was not responsive to temporal aspects of a single defoliation. With the exception of August and September defoliations, western porcupine grass also was insensitive to a single defoliation in different months. Land managers should consider rest (1 yr nongrazing) following grazing of western porcupine grass in August or September, whereas responses to defoliation in different months suggest northern wheatgrass can be grazed annually.
On-farm cocoa yields increase with canopy cover of shade trees in two agro-ecological zones in Ghana

Despite Ghana’s large contribution to global cocoa production, average yields are low. Policymakers and practitioners are calling for implementation of a climate smart strategy by increasing yields and augmenting shade tree cover in cocoa systems. However, there have been few studies in West Africa on the relationship between shade and cocoa yield under field conditions. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of shade tree cover and other factors on on-farm cocoa yields over a four-year period. The study was conducted on 86 farm plots of 8–28 years’ cocoa trees with varied canopy cover (CC) in Ashanti and Western regions of Ghana. A linear mixed model analysis showed that yields increased significantly with increased CC of shade trees, and indicated a doubling of yields when going from zero to approximately 30% crown cover. Fertilizer use gave a yield increase of 7%. Farms located in Western region had higher yields compared to Ashanti, and cocoa systems on short fallows had lower yields than farms cultivated on recent forest clearings and old fallows. Fungicide use, seed sources and land ownership had no significant effects on yield. We conclude that for a sustainable climate-smart cocoa agenda, promotion of shade trees is key.
Projection Aléatoire Non-Négative pour le Calcul de Word Embedding / Non-Negative Randomized Word Embedding

Non-Negative Randomized Word Embedding We propose a word embedding method which is based on a novel random projection technique. We show that weighting methods such as positive pointwise mutual information (PPMI) can be applied to our models after their construction and at a reduced dimensionality. Hence, the proposed technique can efficiently transfer words onto semantically discriminative spaces while demonstrating high computational performance, besides benefits such as ease of update and a simple mechanism for interoperability. We report the performance of our method on several tasks and show that it yields competitive results compared to neural embedding methods in monolingual corpus-based setups.
Bi-Modal System Using SVM (Support Vector Machine) and MLP (Multilayer Perceptron) -Proposed

In this era of high technological advancement, the need to identify an individual especially in the developing countries has long been an attractive goal. The necessity to secure an environments, devices and resources due to the increasing rate of crime has led to the proposal of this research. Iris modality has become interesting as an alternative approach to reliable visual recognition of persons due to its distinctive characteristics, as well as fingerprint modality for its innumerable advantages. Therefore a bi-modal biometric system using Qualitative SVM (Support Vector Machine) and MLP (Multilayer Perceptron) for classification has been proposed in this research. Performance analysis of these modalities will be carried out with each model. The designed models will be duly implemented using JAVA programming Language as a frontend and Access database as a backend respectively. Keywords: Biometric, Bimodal system, Iris modality, fingerprint modality, Support Vector Machine and Multilayer Perceptron.
Sovereign Risk, Elections and Contagion

This paper aims to quantify the political risk effect and its different economic implications in normal and crisis situations through the proxy analysis of election and the sovereign bond spreads. Our study leads to three main findings. First, in normal economic situations, elections and government turnovers expand bond spreads, demonstrating investors’ concern over the possibility of government policies or instability brought by the election. During a crisis, however, investors prefer change, indicating hope in new policies ameliorate public finances. Second, due to the prolonged eurozone sovereign debt crisis, elections in European countries have stronger contagion effects in their own region during a global slowdown period than a normal period. However, their effect does not carry over globally after the 2008 financial crisis. Third, results show that the election induced peak shrinks from 3 months before and after the election date to 1–2 months when the economic situation turns from normal to a downgraded period.
Feature Selection using Dominant-Set Clustering

Feature selection techniques are essentially used in the data analysis tasks, one is frequently dealt with many features. It is computationally expensive to optimize these features that are both redundant and irrelevant. A ton of methods approach to this technique, however, they still have their own limitations. In this thesis, dominant-set clustering and multidimensional interaction information (MII) method are considered to select the most informative features from original input features set. MII not only takes into account a pairwise relation, but also examines higher order relations. Utilization of dominant-set clustering, the most informative features are selected in each dominant set. This narrows the space for higher order relation searching. As a result, the increasing of redundancy is eliminated in particular feature combinations. In this thesis, using the above method for feature selection with high dimensional data as well as comparing with other methods.
Comparison of Five Prescriptions Composed by Coptidis Rhizoma and Evodiae Fructus Based on Separation and Quantiﬁcation of Eight Active Ingredients and Chemometrics Analysis

Coptidis rhizoma and Evodiae fructus could be compatible with different proportions, which composed of a series of prescriptions, including Zuojinwan (ZJW), Biantongwan (BTW), Ganlusan (GLS), Zhuyuwan (ZYW), and Fanzuojinwan (FZJW). Eight bioactive compounds, chlorogenic acid (1), jatrorrhizine (2), coptisine (3), palmatin (4), berberine (5), evodin (6), evodiamine (7), and rutaecarpine (8), were the main active ingredients in Coptidis rhizome - Evodiae fructus composition. In this paper, above 8 compounds were determined simultaneously in 105 batches of samples by high performance liquid chromatography tandem diode array detector (HPLC-DAD), in which 23 batches of BTW, 14 batches of ZYW, 23 batches of GLS, 20 batches of FZJW, 25 batches of ZJW, and 5 batches of ZJW preparations (ZJWps) were included. All calibration curves showed good linear regression (r2 > 0.9970), good precision, and accuracy with overall intra and inter-day variations of 0.54-1.58% and 0.54-2.07%, respectively, and the overall recoveries of 98.05-100.86%. Subsequently, the principal component analysis (PCA) was used to evaluate and distinguish ZJW, GLS, ZYW, BTW, FZJW and ZJWps according to the contents of the detected 8 active ingredients. Through the PCA analysis, 5 kinds of prescriptions could be dispersed in different areas, and there was no intersection among them. Unexpectedly, 5 batches of ZJWps deviated from the scatters region belonged to ZJW, which indicated that there were some quality problems in ZJWps. This method could be applied to detect and distinguish Coptidis rhizome-Evodiae fructus prescriptions.
Characteristics of Medical Students with Physician Relatives: A National Study

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background Little is known regarding U.S. medical students with close family relatives who are physicians. Family-related factors may influence students’ specialty decisions to enter primary care or practice among the underserved. Methods Self-administered questionnaires were sent to 960 third-year U.S. medical students from 24 U.S. allopathic medical schools in January 2011. We asked respondents whether or not they had a physician parent or grandparent. We also tested associations between physician relative status and demographics, educational factors and career intentions. Results Response rate was 61% (564/919). Among the respondents, 124 students (22.0%) responded that they had a physician relative. Students having a physician relative were less likely to intend to practice among the underserved and enter into a primary care specialty (all P-values < 0.05). Having a physician relative was negatively associated with intention to practice among the underserved (odds ratio, 0.37; 95% confidence interval, 0.16-0.87) in multivariate logistic estimation controlling for socio-demographics and educational factors. Conclusion Students who reported having a physician parent or grandparent were less likely to be reporting intentions to practice among the underserved. More studies are needed to identify whether physician relative status represents an important factor for future career trajectories or serve merely as a surrogate for other socioeconomic factors.
Age and Performance : A Contrasted Relationship

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper proposes an empirical test of several hypotheses linking age, order of entry, and strategic orientations to a firm’s performance. Three strategies are defined: cost-leadership strategy, innovative differentiation, and marketing differentiation. The aim is to show that the impact on performance of both age and each of the three strategic orientations may differ according to a firm’s order of entry into an industry. Following Lieberman and Montgomery’s (1998) evaluation of their major contribution on first mover advantage, we emphasize three points. First, we develop and test hypotheses related to early and late followers’ strategic orientations, broadening the scope of traditional studies on pioneers. Second, the model combines the dimensions of a firm’s age, order of entry, and strategic orientations, as well as industry conditions (stage of the industry, environmental unpredictability, and technology diffusion), to establish a contingent model of performance analysis. Finally, the empirical study deals chiefly with organizational performance and not market share, which is considered a typical advantage accruing to pioneers. In addition, the scope of the study (582 French manufacturing firms) provides the means to fill a void in empirical studies because it is a broad cross-sectional test on non-U.S. data. The firms are mainly private, small to medium-sized, and single or dominant business firms. Therefore, our assumptions must be understood as particularly applicable to this type of firm.
The TwslmSpikeWeight Package

July 23, 2007 Version 1.0. 1 Date 2006-01-17 Maintainer Deli Wang Author Deli Wang, Jian Huang Depends splines Title Systematic approaches using TW-SLM for incorporating control spots and data quality information to improve normalization of cDNA microarray data. Description TwslmSpikeWeight is for normalization of cDNA microarray data with the two-way semilinear model(TW-SLM). It incorporates information from control spots and data quality in the TW-SLM to improve normalization of cDNA microarray data. Huber’s and Tukey’s bisquare weight functions are available for robust estimation of the TW-SLM. License GPL version 2 or newer
Analysis of social and environmental practices related to conscious consumption of students from public education of Sertão Pernambucano, Brazil

This research aimed to analyze socio-environmental practices related to the conscious consumption of students of Sertao Pernambucano. A total of 174 high school students from two public schools were interviewed through a 29-item Likert-type measurement scale with five response levels. Among the students, 62.4% were female and 37.6% were male, aged between 15 and 20 years. It was found that 5.8% of the students were careful to take into account if the product residues were recyclable, 40.0% showed indifference or little commitment to use as few shopping bags as possible and the minority (8.3%) of the students used to separate the waste by categories. 47.9% of the students affirmed to reuse draft paper and 55.9% save gift paper for future packaging. Few have the habit of watching (24.8%), talking to friends (12.9%) or alerting people (23.2%) about environmental problems or news. Therefore, Environmental Education, particularly, habits related to conscious consumption, needs to be inserted in the school context so that socio-educational actions become a daily practice, improving the expectations of future generations.
Basis for effective community-based Health Insurance schemes: investigating inequities in catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditures, affordability and altruism

Background: Community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes should be designed so that they are affordable, provide financial risk protection against catastrophic costs and harness community solidarity in form of altruism so as to ensure high levels of enrollment and use of the services. This paper presents information about the socio-economic status (SES) and geographic differences in affordability, catastrophic costs and altruism within the context of instituting effective CBHI schemes. Methods: The study took place in a rural, urban and semi-urban community in two states in Nigeria. A questionnaire was used to collect information from 3070 randomly selected householders. Contingent valuation method was used to elicit altruistic willingness to pay. Catastrophic health expenditures were examined at 40%, 10% and 5% thresholds based on household non-food expenditures. Affordability was measured as proportion of total household expenditure that will be consumed by the existing per capita monthly premium for CBHI, which is 500 Naira. Data was examined for links between affordability, catastrophic costs and altruistic WTP with SES and geographic area of residence. Results: Households are currently spending between 1139.6 Naira (US$ 9.5) and 3846.5 Naira (US$ 32.1) monthly on healthcare, and this was mainly as out-of-pocket expenditure. At the 40% household non-food expenditure threshold, 28.7% of households incurred catastrophic healthcare costs. Incidence of catastrophic costs was least in the urban area and amongst the highest quartile. A monthly premium of 500 naira (US$ 4.2) was found to be less that 3% of households’ monthly expenditures. The mean altruistic WTP was 202.7 Naira (US$1.7) per year. Conclusion: There were high levels of catastrophic costs, but with appreciable levels of affordability and altruistic WTP for CBHI, coverage can be increased and financial risk protection assured for most people that need CBHI.
Solving the problems of daylighting and tradition continuity in a reconstructed vernacular building

AbstractSeeking for saving traditional forms, sizes, proportions and other features of vernacular architecture and satisfying norms for a contemporary building sometimes is not an easy task. The presented case study about indoor daylighting in Lithuanian vernacular architecture shows the existing problem. The authors of the article suggest possible variants of how to improve daylighting in vernacular buildings. The aim of the conducted research is to propose a rational solution to the problem using multiple criteria assessment. Alternative variants can be characterized by a number of quantitative and qualitative criteria. Thus, for ranking alternatives and achieving the most rational solution, the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate the relative importance of criteria as well as the application of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods are put forward. The case study presents possible alternatives for improving daylighting in the reconstructed building and simultaneously anal.
Determination of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen in Tablets and Urine Using Spectrofluorimetric Determination Coupled with Chemometric Tools

It was developed a methodology for spectrofluorimetric determination of Paracetamol (PAR) and Ibuprofen (IBU) in tablets (synthetic mixtures) and biological fluids (urine) coupled with chemometrics. For tablet’s determination, it was used PLS (Partial Least Squares) and for urine samples it was used PARAFAC (Parallel Factor Analysis). In both cases, it was possible to quantify both analytes in samples. The proposed methodology showed effectiveness and offered excellent results in the determination of PAR and IBU. Recovery study test was performed in urine samples, and it offered good results also. Figures of merit were established.
Variation in Early Growth, Canopy Temperature, Translocation and Yield of Four Durum Wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) Genotypes under Semi Arid Conditions

The investigation was carried out on the experimental site of the Field Crop Institute Experimental Farm located near the town of Setif (Algeria). The objective was to investigate the differences in developmental rate, canopy temperature and yield between four durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) genotypes. The experiment was laid down in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Data were collected on canopy temperature, relative growth rate, green flag leaf area duration, translocation, earliness, plant height and grain yield. The results indicated that the two genotypes, Waha and Boussalam, due to their fast early growth rate, accumulated significantly more above ground biomass at the juvenile, reproductive and grain filling growth phases. They achieved high dry weight of spikes m-2 at anthesis and at physiological maturity. Grain yield varied from 1.95 t.ha-1 in MBB to 2.87 t.ha-1 in Waha. The genotypes diverged also for the amount of assimilates transferred to the grain which varied from 26.6 to 39.5% of the final grain yield. These results indicated that the selection of faster early growing, short cycle genotypes, bearing smaller leaves and high spike number should be favoured for the high plateaus of eastern Algeria.