Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECTS OF AN INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY APPLIED AS VIRTUAL REHABILITATION ON CLINICAL OUTCOMES IN ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT INJURY

In recent years, many different technologies on virtual rehabilitation have been produced and used in research. However, existing studies are limited because most of them focus on the balancing ability of the elderly or studied stroke patients with same systems. Thus, it is necessary to investigate the effects of a new virtual rehabilitation system in patients with Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Reconstruction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a virtual rehabilitation system using a MarVAJED® system which provides visual and auditory stimulus aimed at educating and controlling the joint proprioception, range of motion, pain intensity, and knee swelling in individuals with an ACL injury. A total of fifteen patients with ACL reconstruction participated in this study. In addition to conventional physiotherapy, a virtual rehabilitation treatment was applied with visual and auditory stimulus for a total of eight weeks, three sessions per week. There were statistically significant improvements in measures of proprioception, range of motion, pain intensity, and knee swelling between pre– and post – treatment (p<0.05). We concluded that this new VR system known as MarVAJED effectively treat ACL patients by improving proprioception, range of motion, and by decreasing pain intensity, and knee swelling.
User Experience in Virtual Reality, conducting an evaluation on multiple characteristics of a Virtual Reality Experience

Dionysios Georgios Papadimitriou: User Experience in Virtual Reality, Conducting an evaluation on multiple characteristics of a Virtual Reality Experience Master of Science Thesis Tampere University Master’s Degree Programme in Human-Computer Interaction November 2019 Virtual Reality applications are today numerous and cover a wide range of interests and tastes. As popularity of Virtual Reality increases, developers in industry are trying to create engrossing and exciting experiences that captivate the interest of users. User-Experience, a term used in the field of Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design, describes multiple characteristics of the experience of a person interacting with a product or a system. Evaluating User-Experience can provide valuable insight to developers and researchers on the thoughts and impressions of the end users in relation to a system. However, little information exists regarding on how to conduct UserExperience evaluations in the context of Virtual Reality. Consecutively, due to the numerous parameters that influence User-Experience in Virtual Reality, conducting and organizing evaluations can be overwhelming and challenging. The author of this thesis investigated how to conduct a User-Experience evaluation on multiple aspects of a Virtual Reality headset by identifying characteristics of the experience, and the methods that can be used to measure and evaluate them. The data collected was both qualitative and quantitative to cover a wide range of characteristics of the experience. Furthermore, the author applied usability testing, think-aloud protocol, questionnaires and semi-structured interview as methods to observe user behavior and collect information regarding the aspects of the Virtual Reality headset. The testing session described in this study included 14 participants. Data from this study showed that the combination of chosen methods were able to provide adequate information regarding the experience of the users despite encountered difficulties. Additionally, this thesis showcases which methods were used to evaluate specific aspects of the experience and the performance of each method as findings of the study. iii
Pushing the Data Rate of Practical VLC via Combinatorial Light Emission

Visible light communication (VLC) systems relying on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) devices have gathered momentum recently, due to the pervasive adoption of LED lighting and mobile devices. However, the achievable throughput by such practical systems is still several orders below those claimed by controlled experiments with specialized devices. In this paper, we engineer CoLight aiming to boost the data rate of the VLC system purely built upon COTS devices. CoLight adopts COTS LEDs as its transmitter, but it innovates in its simple yet delicate driver circuit wiring an array of LED chips in a combinatorial manner. Consequently, modulated signals can directly drive the on-off procedures of individual chip groups, so that the spatially synthesized light emissions exhibit a varying luminance following exactly the modulation symbols. To obtain a readily usable receiver, CoLight interfaces a COTS PD with a smartphone through the audio jack, and it also has an alternative MCU-driven circuit to emulate a future integration into the phone. The evaluations on CoLight are both promising and informative: they demonstrate a throughput up to 80 kbps at a distance of 2 m, while suggesting various potentials to further enhance the performance.
Energy Distribution of Multiple Target Signal With Application to Target Counting

The paper extends our earlier work on the sum of a complex Gaussian and the product of two complex Gaussians (a scalar and a vector) by incorporating multiple targets. We derive the joint probability density function (pdf) of the resulting vector, after which we derive the pdf, cumulative distribution function (cdf), and moments of the square norm of the vector (signal energy). A novel integral function is introduced to make the analysis possible. The case of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and a single observation has been treated as a special case. The obtained theoretical results are then used to develop maximum likelihood and moment matching estimators, for estimating the number of targets. Numerical results validate the obtained results and characterize the performance of the proposed estimators.
Serious game for locomotor rehabilitation of hemiparetic stroke patients

Abstract Introduction: Hemiparesis post-stroke usually results in locomotor limitations. As conventional rehabilitation is monotonous, the Serious Games (SG) represents an excellent treatment strategy, allowing to perform physical training in an interesting and enjoyable way. Objective: To evaluate the effects of an exercise program using the SG developed for hemiparetic stroke patients’ locomotor rehabilitation. Method: Non-Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial. Twenty-four hemiparetic stroke patients with subacute or chronic stroke (twelve men), mean age of 57.8 ± 10.4 years (injury time of 16.8 ± 19.6 months) participated in the study. The experimental group (n = 16) participated in an exercise program with the SG for lower limb rehabilitation. The control group (n = 8) received conventional treatment (kinesiotherapy). The intervention consisted of sessions twice a week for ten weeks. The following parameters were assessed: muscle strength (dynamometry), spasticity (Modified Ashworth Scale), functional mobility (Timed Up and Go Test - TUGT), and the gait speed (GS). Results: Both groups showed improvements, but the experimental group was better in all the studied variables, the muscular strength of the lower limb paresis and of the quadriceps femoris (p = 0.002; d = 0.7); and for the hamstrings (p < 0.001; d = 1.3), TUGT (p < 0.001; d = 0.4), and GS (p = 0.001; d = 0.4). Conclusion: The exercise program with the SG was useful for the patients treated in this study. The results showed a superiority of the SG regarding the conventional treatment in all the controlled variables. This was probably because of the greater repeatability of the exercises and the increased attention and motivation.
Formal Models and Verified Protocols for Group Messaging: Attacks and Proofs for IETF MLS

—Group conversations are supported by most modern messaging applications, but the security guarantees they offer are signiﬁcantly weaker than those for two-party protocols like Signal. The problem is that mechanisms that are efﬁcient for two parties do not scale well to large dynamic groups where members may be regularly added and removed. Further, group messaging introduces subtle new security requirements that require new solutions. The IETF Messaging Layer Security (MLS) working group is standardizing a new asynchronous group messaging protocol that aims to achieve strong guarantees like forward secrecy and post-compromise security for large dynamic groups. In this paper, we deﬁne a formal framework for group messaging in the F (cid:63) language and use it to compare the security and performance of several candidate MLS protocols up to draft 7. We present a succinct, executable, formal speciﬁcation and symbolic security proof for TreeKEM B , the group key establishment protocol in MLS draft 7. Our analysis ﬁnds new attacks and we propose veriﬁed ﬁxes, which are now being incorporated into MLS. Ours is the ﬁrst mechanically checked proof for MLS, and our analysis technique is of independent interest, since it accounts for groups of unbounded size, stateful recursive data structures, and ﬁne-grained compromise.
Importance of etiologic factors and electrocardiographic findings for diagnosis of emergency hyperkalemic patients

Background: Hyperkalemia is the life-threatening problem. Early diagnosis and treatment of patients with the possibility of hyperkalemia should be performed in emergency department. Comorbid diseases used medications and electrocardiography (ECG) findings can be important clues for the possibility of hyperkalemic states. Objectives: In our study, we aimed to identify causes of hyperkalemia in patients who admitted to emergency department and to evaluate the importance of the relationship between hyperkalemia and ECG. Materials and Methods: Our study desing was prospective. The patients who admitted to emergency department which has annual turnover of 70,000 patients between June 01, 2012, and June 01, 2014, were investigated. Total 100 patients aged 18 years and above who had hyperkalemia were included in the study. Patients were divided into three groups according to the level of potassium (1-mild: 5-5.9 mEq/L, 2-moderate: 6-7 mEq/L, 3-severe: >7 meq/L) and ECG finding of these hyperkalemic patients were evaluated. Patients were categorized according to etiology of hyperkalemia in four groups. They are chronic renal failure (CRF), acute renal failure (ARF), (angiotensin converting-enzyme inhibitor /angiotensin-receptor blocker (ACEI/ARB) use and spironolactone use. Results: In our study, we included 100 patients with hyperkalemia. Potassium value of patients was maximum 8.1 mEq/L and mean value was 6.12 +/− 0.66 mEq/L. There was no significant correlation between the ECG and potassium level (P = 0.107). In our study, we found that the most contributing cause was CRF, the second was ARF and the third was ACEI/ARB +/− spironolactone. Conclusions: According to our study, it should be kept in mind that even if the ECG findings are normal, hyperkalemia may occur in patients with ARF, CRF, spironolactone, and ACEI/ARB drug users.
Assessment of welfare from physiological and behavioural responses of New Zealand dairy cows exposed to cold and wet conditions

There is a need to assess the welfare of dairy cows that live outdoors under cold and wet conditions. This study combined a number of techniques to measure stress and make an assessment of welfare in this situation. Two groups of ten non-pregnant, non-lactating Holstein Friesian cows were exposed to a week of wind and rain (WR) or housed indoors (I) with pre- and post-treatment weeks indoors in a cross-over design. Wind and rain consisted of continual air movement (7.1 kph) using fans, water sprinkling for 15 min (3.0 mm) per hour, a mean temperature of 3.4°C and wind chill of –0.3°C. Internal body temperature was recorded every ten min and behaviour for 16 h per day. Blood, faeces and infrared temperatures were sampled at 0800h each morning during treatment weeks, and three times per week during pre- and post-treatment weeks. All cows were challenged with 2 ml Leptoshield Vaccine (CSL Animal Health, Australia) subcutaneously after 3 days of cold exposure to test immune responses. During WR, cows spent a greater proportion of time standing and less time lying down and eating than during I. Infrared temperatures were lower during WR than I in both dorsal and orbital (eye) regions. There was a distinct diurnal pattern of internal body temperature which had a greater amplitude during WR than I resulting from both a lower minimum and a higher maximum. The time of the minimum was 40 min later for WR than I. The overall mean body temperature was 0.07°C higher in WR than I. There were greater increases in plasma and faecal cortisol during WR than I, respectively. Total T4 was higher during WR than I. Non-esterified fatty acid concentration was higher in the week following WR than I. Total white blood cell numbers were lower during WR than I. No treatment differences were found for creatine kinase or for tumour necrosis factor, heat shock protein 90, interleukin 6 or interferon gamma expression in response to vaccination. In conclusion, this study applied a suite of stress measures to dairy cows exposed to extreme cold and wet conditions. Together, these measures indicated activation of the stress axis, physiological and behavioural adaptations to cold and a reduction in welfare. A number of these measures could be used to assess welfare under cold conditions on farms.
Colic Phytotherapy in Iranian Ethnobotany: An Overview of the ffectiveness of the Most Important Native Medicinal Plants of Iran on olic Disease

Colon disorders and diseases are of the significant gastrointestinal problems. Medicinal plants have a wide range of health effects. Medicinal herbs are used in the treatment of various diseases. Many native medicinal plants of Iran have anti-colic effects. Thus, in this review, the medicinal plants of Iranian ethnobotanical resources with anti-colic effects were reported. In this review study, a search for articles by the keywords colic, ethnobotanical, and medicinal plants was done. A search on the databases, such as Scopus, ISI, SID, MegaIran, and a number of other databases was performed. Based on the review results of ethnobotanical sources, it was revealed that the medicinal herbs of chamomile, lote, yarrow, dill, Tanacetum parthenium, Sisymbrium irio, plantain, Damascus rose, licorice, garden sage, oregano, etc. are of the most important anticolic medicinal plants.
Thunder lizard handstands: Manus-only sauropod trackways from the Glen Rose Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Kendall County, Texas)

Abstract Three parallel, manus-only sauropod trackways from the Coffee Hollow A-Male tracksite (Glen Rose Formation, Kendall County, Texas) were studied separately by researchers from the Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country and the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. Footprint and trackway measurements generally show good agreement between the two groups’ data sets. Footprints appear to be shallowly impressed true tracks rather than undertracks. One of the Coffee Hollow trackways shows marked asymmetry in the lengths of paces that begin with the left as opposed to the right forefoot, and two of the Coffee Hollow trackways are unusually broad. The Coffee Hollow trackways differ enough from the manus portions of other Glen Rose Formation sauropod trackways to suggest that they were made by a different kind of sauropod. Greater differential pressure exerted on the substrate by the forefeet than the hindfeet probably explains the Coffee Hollow trackways, like other manus-only sauropod trackways, but the possibility that they indicate unusual locomotion cannot at present be ruled out.
Antihyperglycemic and antiadhesion activity of gallic acid in induced urinary tract infection in diabetic rats

This study was undertaken to investigate the role of gallic acid in attenuating hyperglycemia and inhibiting bacterial adhesion to bladder epithelial cells in induced diabetes and urinary tract infection in rats. Diabetes was induced in rats by intraperitoneal injection of alloxan. Blood glucose levels were measured daily and glucose levels of >250 mg/dl was considered as positive for diabetes initiation. Bladder infection was induced by transurethral catheterization of Escherichia coli. Gallic acid was administered orally at a dose of 2.5,5 and 10 mg/kg and compared with a control group and a group administered ciprofloxacin orally (7.2 mg/kg). Blood glucose level was measured after induced E.coli infection in the rats of each group then the rats were sacrificed and the bladders were taken for histopathology and for the determination of adhesion of E.coli to bladder epithelium. The study demonstrated that gallic acid at concentrations of 2.5, 5 and 10 mg/kg significantly (P ≤0.05) reduced elevated blood sugar and inhibited the adhesion of E.coli to bladder epithelial cells compared to controls. Histological changes revealed decrease in severity of acute inflammation and edema with decreased number of neutrophils invading epithelial cells compared to diabetic group.
Foreign aid and the health sector: A case study from Palestinian National Authority

I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to my thesis advisor Dr. Shahjahan Bhuiyan, the Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at The American University in Cairo, for his continuous support and trust throughout my Masters Degree journey and especially during the thesis writing. Likewise, I would like to acknowledge my debt to Dr. Artan Karini and Dr. Hamid Ali of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo, for their valuable comments as the readers of my thesis. I also would like to thank all the interviewees for accepting to spare some of their valuable time and for openly sharing their indispensable knowledge and experience with me for this thesis. Finally, I would like express my deep appreciation to my family: my parents, husband and children, for their support and encouragement throughout my years of study and thesis writing. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them.
Stellungnahme zum „Entwurf eines Gesetzes gegen illegale Beschäftigung und Sozialleistungsmissbrauch“: Deutscher Bundestag Drucksache 19/8691

Kurz gefasst: Die hohe Anzahl von Beschaftigten, die noch nicht einmal den Mindestlohn erhalten, zeigt die Unzulanglichkeiten bisheriger Kontrollstrategien. Positiv zu bewerten ist die beabsichtigte starkere Ausrichtung der Kontrollen der Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit (FKS) auf die Aufdeckung von Scheinselbstandigkeit, die Erweiterung des Branchenkatalogs fur die Ausweismitfuhrungspflicht um das Wach- und Sicherheitsgewerbe sowie die Einfuhrung der Telekommunikationsuberwachung auch bei Sozialversicherungsbetrug. Die Aufspaltung von Unternehmen in viele kleine Einheiten und lange Subunternehmerketten erhohen den Aufwand fur externe Kontrollen um ein Vielfaches. Mit kleinteiligen Kontrollen nur am Ende einer Wertschopfungskette erreicht man die hauptverantwortlichen Auftraggeber nicht. Die FKS ist fur die wachsenden Kontrollaufgaben nicht gut aufgestellt: Die interne Fluktuation ist beangstigend hoch, so dass der mit Einfuhrung des Mindestlohns geplante Personalaufbau trotz zahlreicher Neueinstellungen nicht gelungen ist. Die Abschaffung des Streifendienstes im Jahr 2014 hat die Kontrolleffizienz vermindert. Durch zwei parallel arbeitende Kontrolldienste kann der Zoll seine Ressourcen nicht effizient einsetzen. Anstelle einer unabhangigen Evaluierung des Gesetzes ist nur ein Regierungsbericht in 5 Jahren geplant. Vorgeschlagen wird eine sofortige Organisationsuntersuchung, um die FKS effizient auf ihre zusatzlichen Aufgaben einzustellen. Nachhaltige Kontrollstrategien mussen durch praventive Masnahmen erganzt werden, die Gesetzesverstose schon im Vorfeld erschweren. Nachhaltige Kontrollstrategien mussen durch praventive Masnahmen erganzt werden, die Gesetzesverstose schon im Vorfeld erschweren. Zu nennen sind die Starkung (1) der autonomen Kontrollen durch die Sozialpartner durch Erhohung der Tarifbindung, (2) der Verantwortung der Auftraggeber an der Spitze von Wertschopfungsketten und (3) des self-enforcements durch einfache und transparente Regelungen.
Physician Healthy Life-Style and Knowing: A Short Observational Trial

Although many cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) can be treated or prevented, an estimated 17.1 million people die of CVDs each year. The main risk factors are: tobacco use, high BMI, high blood pressure, high levels of cholesterol and glucose, low physical activity, stresses etc. 72 physicians which had practical skills at Therapy and Family Medicine Department of Postgraduate Faculty of Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University were observed by using of special questionnaire. Our trial showed that all physicians know and have healthy life-style. Usually, with the age the part of persons with high BMI, level of glucose or cholesterol is increased. Overall, there is a need for continued promotion of physician health.
Deep Learning para Previsão do Desempenho do Estudante: Um Mapeamento Sistemático da Literatura

It is not of today that school dropout has been a problem, both in presential environments and in virtual learning environments. Affecting not only the career of the students but also the educational institutions. Predicting student performance helps institutions identify the factors that lead to evasion, and to take measures for student retention at school. This work seeks to study how Deep Learning has been applied in predicting student performance, and to identify how it has been implemented, techniques, methods, algorithms, and tools. Resumo. Não é de hoje que a evasão escolar tem sido um problema, tanto em ambientes presenciais, quanto em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem. Afetando não apenas a carreira dos estudantes, como também as instituições de ensino. Prever o desempenho do aluno ajuda as instituições a identificar os fatores que levam a evasão, e assim tomar medidas para a retenção do aluno na escola. Este trabalho busca estudar como o Deep Learning tem sido aplicado na previsão do desempenho do estudante, e identificar como ele tem sido implementado, as técnicas, métodos, algoritmos e ferramentas.
NEW INFORMATION RETRIEVAL APPROACH BASED ON SEMANTIC INDEXING BY MEANING

An Information Retrieval System (IRS) offers a number of tools and techniques, which enable to locate and visualize the relevant information needed. This information, is expressed by the user in the form of a query natural language. However, the representation of documents and the query in a traditional IRS lead to a lexical-centered relevance estimation which is, in fact, less efficient than a semantic-focused estimation. As a consequence, the documents that are actually relevant are not being recovered if they do not share words with the query, while the documents non relevant, which are words in common with the query, are recovered even though at times they do not have the meaning intended. This paper tackles this problem while suggesting a solution in the level of indexation of an IRS allowing it to improve its performance. To be more precise, we suggest a new approach of semantic indexation allowing to lead to the exact meaning of each term in a document or query undergoing a contextual analysis at the sentence level. In fact, if the system is able to comprehend the need of the user, then consequently it is perfectly capable to respond to it. Add to that, we suggest a simple method allowing to apply any model of IR on our new index table without changing its original bases making it faster. In order to validate this proposed approach, this new created system is evaluated base on numerous collections naming “TIME” , “BBC” , “The Guardian” and “BigThink” . The results based on the experiments indicate the efficacy of our hypothesis compared to traditional IR approaches.