Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Adherence in Chronic Diseases Scale — a new tool to monitor implementation of a treatment plan

Introduction. The aim of this study was to assess adherence to treatment with use of the new scale in a population of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) after myocardial infarction (MI) with respect to some socio-demographic and clinical factors. Material and methods. The study was conducted in a population of 100 consecutive patients (40 women, 60 men) aged from 30 to 88 years (mean 63.4), six months after hospitalization for MI. Results. The results of the assessment with the Adherence in Chronic Diseases Scale (ACDS) comprise between 6 and 28 points; median 24 points (21–28). Twenty-four patients had high score (> 26 pts.), 53 patients had intermediate score (between 21–26 pts.) and 23 — low score (< 21 pts.). For optimal model of multiple regression, the correlation coefficient R was 0.539; and the adjusted coefficient of determination R = 0.26, p = 0.000002. Independent factors affecting adherence according to the ACDS scale were: subjective assessment of health status (b = 0.48 ± ± 0.23, p = 0.036), age of the respondents (b = –0.11 ± 0.04, p = 0.004), more than one hospitalization due to CAD (b = –1.78 ± 0.87, p = 0.044), and diabetes mellitus (b = –2.02 ± 0.91, p = 0.029). Conclusions. Subjective assessment of health status, age of patients, the number of hospitalizations due to CAD and diabetes affect the adherence in the course of long-term treatment after myocardial infarction.
A Free Boundary Problem for the p-Laplacian: Uniqueness, Convexity, and Successive Approximation of Solutions

We prove convergence of a trial free boundary method to a classical solution of a Bernoulli-type free boundary problem for the p-Laplace equation, 1 < p <∞. In addition, we prove the existence of a classical solution in N dimensions when p = 2 and, for 1 < p < ∞, results on uniqueness and starlikeness of the free boundary and continuous dependence on the fixed boundary and on the free boundary data. Finally, as an application of the trial free boundary method, we prove (also for 1 < p <∞) that the free boundary is convex when the fixed boundary is convex.
The tectonic evolution of the Southern Alps, New Zealand: insights from fully thermally coupled dynamical modelling

SUMMARY We present here the results of numerical models of the Southern Alps in which the thermal and dynamical developments of the orogen are fully coupled to one another. This interlinkage allows the use of a wide range of thermal and physical features of the orogen as constraints on the applicability of our models. In particular, the thermal aspect of this method enables the prediction of the distribution of thermochronological ages at the surface of the model. Perturbation of the geothermal structure due to rapid uplift and exhumation causes an intrinsic weakening and concentration of strain along the equivalent of the Alpine Fault zone in these models. This thermal weakening of the crust also produces a zone of high strain antithetic to the Alpine Fault in the upper crust that is comparable to the Main Divide Fault Zone within the Southern Alps. The introduction of orographic rainfall and erosional processes into the model leads to the development of high, asymmetric topography comparable to that of the Southern Alps. This topographic profile results from the capture of available precipitation by the windward side of the orogen and the resultant rain shadow on the leeward side. Due to the time required to accumulate suYcient topography for this rain-capture eVect to become significant, the establishment of this high, asymmetric topography lags the initiation of surface uplift by several million years. Comparison of the observed thermal history of the Southern Alps with that seen in models based on diVering hypotheses of the tectonic evolution of the South Island shows that the present tectonic regime of the orogen most probably developed in a single rapid reorganization of plate motions at approximately 5 Ma with relative stability of the tectonic regime since that time. The variation in isotopic ages along the Southern Alps is consistent with that expected from variation in accumulated uplift and exhumation along the orogen arising from the obliquity of convergence of the Australian and Pacific plates.
Robot-Aided Learning and r-Learning Services

To date, there have been many studies that have deployed robots as learning and teaching assistants in educational settings to investigate their pedagogical effects on learning and teaching. Hendler (2000) categorized the robots with which learners may interact in the future into five categories, i.e., toy robotics, pet robotics, interactive displays, service robotics including assistive ones, and educational robotics. Goodrich and Schultz (2007) classified the educational service robots into assistive and educational robotics. The robots that can serve for educational purposes can be divided into two categories: educational robotics (also referred to as hands-on robotics), and educational service robotics. The difference between these two types of robotics stems from the primary user groups. Educational robotics has been used by prosumers, a blend of producers and consumers, while educational service robots show a clear boundary between the producers and consumers. In general, the latter takes anthropomorphized forms to substitute or support teachers. It can also add more than what computers have offered to aid language learning because their anthropomorphic figures lower the affective filter and provide Total Physical Response (TPR) in terms of actions, which may lead to form social interactions. This chapter focuses on educational service robots. Taylor (1980) emphasized that computers have played important roles as educational tutors, tools and tutees. It seems that educational service robots can act as emotional tutors, tutoring assistants (teaching assistants), and peer tutors. The tutor or teaching assistant robots can also be a kind of assistant for innovative educational technologies for blended learning in order to obtain the knowledge and skills under the supervision and support of the teacher inside and outside the classroom. Examples of this include computers, mobile phones, Sky TV or IP TV channels and other electronics. The studies of Mishra and Koehler (2006) probed into teachers’ knowledge, building on the idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) suggested by Shulman (1987). They extended PCK to consider the necessary relationship between technology and teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogy, and called this Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK), as shown in Fig. 3. An educational service robot as a teaching and learning assistant for blended learning is divided into three categories: the tele-operated (or tele-conference, tele-presence) type, autonomous type, and transforming type, according to the location of TPCK, as displayed in Table 1. Source: Human-Robot Interaction, Book edited by: Daisuke Chugo, ISBN 978-953-307-051-3, pp. 288, February 2010, INTECH, Croatia, downloaded from SCIYO.COM
The financing of envisaged capital investments in South Africa

The envisaging of capital investments is of prime importance for the economic growth and business development of a country, as it represents the starting point of the entire capital investment process. This paper focuses on the financing of envisaged capital investments and addresses amongst others the various sources of financing and the finance cost thereof, the related capital structure theories, as well as the determinants of the capital structure of an enterprise, which comprise of the economic and firmspecific factors. The objective of this research paper embodies the improvement of the financing decision-making when enterprises are envisaging capital investments. A literature study provided the secondary data and formed the basis of this research. To achieve the research objective, an opinion survey was done to obtain the perceptions of the business leaders in South Africa regarding the importance of the economic and firm-specific factors for the financing of envisaged capital investments, the associated problem areas as perceived by the firms, as well as the frequency of envisaging various types of capital investment projects by the respondents.
Projector-Based Augmented Reality for Quality Inspection of Scanned Objects

Abstract. After scanning or reconstructing the geometry of objects, we need to inspect the result of our work. Are there any parts missing? Is every detail covered in the desired quality? We typically do this by looking at the resulting point clouds or meshes of our objects on-screen. What, if we could see the information directly visualized on the object itself? Augmented reality is the generic term for bringing virtual information into our real environment. In our paper, we show how we can project any 3D information like thematic visualizations or specific monitoring information with reference to our object onto the object’s surface itself, thus augmenting it with additional information. For small objects that could for instance be scanned in a laboratory, we propose a low-cost method involving a projector-camera system to solve this task. The user only needs a calibration board with coded fiducial markers to calibrate the system and to estimate the projector’s pose later on for projecting textures with information onto the object’s surface. Changes within the projected 3D information or of the projector’s pose will be applied in real-time. Our results clearly reveal that such a simple setup will deliver a good quality of the augmented information.
A Project Approach to Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation

An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation process is a complex programming initiative with anoverabundance of influencing factors that can shape its success. This paper has 2 objectives to: (I) use simpleproject management tools and techniques to restructure the implementation process in order to reduce thecomplexity (II) build a stable model that will be largely insensitive to minor perturbations.The 28 Critical Success Factors (CSFs) used in this model are partitioned into 5 special groups called roles. Therestriction of the interactions to within roles resulted in a reduction of pairwise comparisons between CSFs from378 in the unstructured process to 79 in the model. Pairwise comparisons are a measure of complexity. Inaddition, the rate of change of pairwise comparisons reduced from 29 in the unstructured process to a maximumof 9 and as low as 5 in the model.
Exploring the Limitations of Measures of Students' Socioeconomic Status (SES)

This study uses a nationally representative student dataset to explore the limitations of commonly used measures of socioeconomic status (SES). Among the identified limitations are patterns of missing data that conflate the traditional conceptualization of SES with differences in family structure that have emerged in recent years and a lack of theoretically-based guidance for how the components of SES should be combined. Using kindergarten achievement data, the study illustrates how both the observed relation between SES and achievement and the observed interaction between SES and kindergarten program would be impacted by the use of different measures of SES. This study also explores the measurement of SES within a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework, highlighting both the relevant conceptual and measurement issues.
Conception d'un réseau de capteurs sans fil, faible consommation, dédié au diagnostic in-situ des performances des bâtiments en exploitation

Ce travail de these est le fruit d'une collaboration de recherche a travers une convention CIFRE entre le laboratoire XLIM-SIC de l'universite de Poitiers et le Centre scientifique et technique du bâtiment (CSTB) de Grenoble. L'objectif principal de cette these concerne la conception et l'optimisation energetique d'un reseau de capteurs sans fil capable de mesurer in-situ, pendant plusieurs annees, les performances energetiques d'un bâtiment (luminosite, acoustique, temperature. . . ). Dans ce but, les travaux de recherche se sont principalement portes sur l'optimisation energetique des communications sans fil du reseau a travers les couches basses du modele OSI. Sachant que les performances de la couche physique impactent directement l'efficacite des autres couches, l'approche developpee a consiste a modeliser de facon realiste la chaine de transmission numerique a partir du developpement d'un modele de canal qui tient compte de l'influence des personnes sur la qualite de transmission. Ensuite, a partir de cette modelisation de la couche physique et d'un modele d'energie existant, la qualite des liens radio a ete evaluee de facon a trouver le meilleur compromis entre la robustesse et l'efficacite energetique des transmissions radio. Pour etendre notre raisonnement a l'echelle d'un reseau, la suite des travaux s'est portee sur l'etude de la couche MAC. En raison de l'interdependance des parametres affectant la consommation, la methode choisie a consiste a evaluer par une approche "cross-layer" les performances energetiques de differents protocoles MAC, en prenant en compte l'impact des performances de la couche physique dans l'evaluation. Cette etude a ensuite permis d'aboutir a la definition d'un protocole efficace pour l'application visee. Enfin, la derniere partie des travaux a ete consacree a la realisation d'un demonstrateur experimental fonctionnant sur les bandes ISM 433 et 868 MHz et a permis de valider les propos theoriques developpes tout au long de la these.
A review of microbial hazards associated with meat processing in butcheries

Meat is highly nutritional and rich in proteins, which makes it a good substrate for possible microbial growth. As a result, in its raw state, meat is easily susceptible to colonization by microorganisms. This study describes the possible sources of contamination associated with food handlers in butcheries, as well as the microorganisms that are able to contaminate meat and potentially a cause variety of illness. The study also reflects on the knowledge and behaviour of food handlers, their equipment and the working surfaces in butcheries as potential sources of contamination. Meat processing hygiene is part of Quality Management (QM) in abattoirs and butcheries. The QM refers to the hygienic measures taken during various processing stages of meat products. Hence, contamination of meat is often caused by food handlers, the production chain and equipment used. Therefore, it is fundamental in this study to identify possible contamination sources and types of microorganisms associated with such meat safety contamination. The latter is important for optimizing hygiene practices in butcheries and minimizing possible health-related risks.
“Some Things You Learn Aren't So”: Cohen's Paradox, Asch's Paradigm, and the Interpretation of Interaction

When interpreting an interaction in the analysis of variance (ANOVA), many active researchers (and, in turn, students) often ignore the residuals defining the interaction Although this problem has been noted previously, it appears that many users of ANOVA remain uncertain about the proper understanding of interaction effects To clear up this problem, we review the way in which the ANOVA model enables us to take apart a table of group means or the individual measurements contributing to the means to reveal the underlying components We also show how (using only published data) to compute a contrast on the question that may be of primary interest and illustrate strategies for interpreting tables of residuals We conclude with an exercise to check on students' understanding of ANOVA and to encourage increased precision in the specification of research results
A RELEVANCE VECTOR MACHINE WITH ROUGH SET THEORY MODEL IN ANALYZING THE LIFE CYCLE OF NEW ECONOMIC FIRMS

The subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent financial tsunami have raised considerable concerns about financial risk management and evaluation. This is nowhere more apparent than in new economic firms (NEFs) with large economic targets and heavy R&D expenses, such as firms in the electronics industries. With its potential for extreme growth and superior profitability, the electronic industries in Taiwan have been in the financial stock market spotlight. Recently, the rele- vance vector machine (RVM) was reported to have considerably less computation complexity than support vector machines (SVM) models, since it uses fewer kernel functions. Another emerging technique is rough set theory (RST), which derives rules from data. Based on the corporation life cycle theory (CLC), this study de- veloped a relevance vector machine with rough set theory (RVMRS) to predict the status of a corporation in the decline stage. To demonstrate the performance of the designed RVMRS model, the study used electronic industries data from the Taiwan Economic Journal data bank, Taiwan Security Exchange, and Securities and Futures Institute in Taiwan. Experimental results revealed that the presented RVMRS model can predict the decline stage in a firm's life cycle with satisfactory accuracy, and generate rules for investors, managers, bankers and regulators that enable them to make suitable judgments. In addition, this study proved that the transparency and information disclosure index (TDI) is crucial to predicting the financial decline of corporations.
PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATIONS ON AN ENZYME IMMOBILIZED OPTICAL BIOSENSOR FOR ARSENITE DETECTION

Arsenite is an inorganic form of arsenic that poses hazardous effect to human. It is a common environmental heavy metal contaminant ubiquitously found in water and groundwater. In this study, an optical biosensor for arsenite determination was developed by immobilization of crude arsenite oxidase (Aio) extracted from recombinant E. coli , in chitosan solution coated on triacetyl-cellulose membrane employing DCPIP as colour indicator. The arsenite oxidase (Aio) was successfully expressed and extracted from recombinant E. coli strain BL21 (DE3). The protein concentration and specific activity of the crude arsenite oxidase were determined. Expression of Aio was confirmed by SDS-PAGE. The crude Aio was also successfully immobilized in chitosan and coated on triacetyl cellulose membrane. The response time and dynamic range of the optical biosensor were optimized. The response time of the developed biosensor was 15 minutes. The amount of DCPIP reduced (DA) was inversely proportional to the arsenite concentration. Standard calibration curve for arsenite detection was achieved within the range of arsenite concentration from 25 µM to 200 µM. The maximum detection limit was determined to be 250 µM arsenite.
Moving boundary and photoelastic coupling in GaAs optomechanical resonators

Chip-based cavity optomechanical systems are being considered for applications in sensing, metrology, and quantum information science. Critical to their development is an understanding of how the optical and mechanical modes interact, quantified by the coupling rate $g_{0}$. Here, we develop GaAs optomechanical resonators and investigate the moving dielectric boundary and photoelastic contributions to $g_{0}$. First, we consider coupling between the fundamental radial breathing mechanical mode and a 1550 nm band optical whispering gallery mode in microdisks. For decreasing disk radius from $R=5$ $\mu$m to $R=1$ $\mu$m, simulations and measurements show that $g_{0}$ changes from being dominated by the moving boundary contribution to having an equal photoelastic contribution. Next, we design and demonstrate nanobeam optomechanical crystals in which a $2.5$ GHz mechanical breathing mode couples to a 1550 nm optical mode predominantly through the photoelastic effect. We show a significant (30 $\%$) dependence of $g_{0}$ on the device's in-plane orientation, resulting from the difference in GaAs photoelastic coefficients along different crystalline axes, with fabricated devices exhibiting $g_{\text{0}}/2\pi$ as high as 1.1 MHz for orientation along the [110] axis. GaAs nanobeam optomechanical crystals are a promising system which can combine the demonstrated large optomechanical coupling strength with additional functionality, such as piezoelectric actuation and incorporation of optical gain media.
On the Influence of Discrete Adhesive Patterns for Cell Shape and Motility: A Computational Approach

In this paper, we propose a computational model to investigate the coupling between cell's adhesions and actin fibres and how this coupling affects cell shape and stability. To ac- complish that, we take into account the successive stages of adhesion maturation from adhesion precursors to focal complexes and ultimately to focal adhesions, as well as the actin fibres evolution from growing filaments, to bundles and finally contractile stress fibres. We use substrates with discrete patterns of adhesive patches, whose inter-patches distance can be modulated in order to control the location of the adhesions and the resulting fibres architecture. We then investigate the emergence of stable cell morphologies as a function of the inter-patches distance, for two different cell phenotypes generated from the model. Force generated by the stress fibres on the focal adhesions and specifically the influence of the cell contractility are also investigated. Our results suggest that adhesion lifetime and fibre growing rate are the key parameters in the emergence of stable cell morphologies and the limiting factors for the magnitude of the mean tension force from the fibres on the focal adhesions.
Tripuhyite and schafarzikite: two of the ultimate sinks for antimony in the natural environment

Abstract Studies of the stability of the oxides schafarzikite, FeSb2O4, and tripuhyite, FeSbO4, have been undertaken to clarify the roles these secondary minerals may have in determining the dispersion of antimony in oxidizing environments. Solubilities were determined at 298.15 K in aqueous HNO3, and these data were used to calculate values of ∆Gf⊖ at the same temperature. The derived ∆Gf⊖(s, 298.15 K) values for FeSb2O4 and FeSbO4 are −959.4±4.3 and −836.8±2.2 kJ mol−1, respectively. These results have been compared with electrochemically derived data, extrapolated from 771−981 K. The present study shows conclusively that although the mobility of Sb above the water table is limited by simple Sb(III) and Sb(V) oxides and stibiconite-group minerals, depending upon the prevailing redox potential and pH, tripuhyite is an important ultimate sink for Sb in the supergene environment. It is highly insoluble even in strongly acidic conditions and its anomalous stability at ambient temperatures causes the common mineral goethite, FeOOH, to react to form tripuhyite at activities of Sb(OH)5(aq) as low as 10−11. The comparatively limited numbers of reported occurrences of tripuhyite in the supergene zone are almost certainly due to the fact that its physical properties, especially colour and habit, are remarkably similar to those of goethite. In contrast, the small number of reported occurrences of schafarzikite can be related to its decomposition to tripuhyite as redox potentials rise at the top of the supergene zone and the fact that it decomposes to sénarmontite, Sb2O3, in acidic conditions, releasing Fe2+ ions into solution. In general, the findings confirm the immobility of Sb in near-surface conditions. Geochemical settings favouring the formation of the above minerals have been assessed using the results of the present study and data from the literature.