The way agri-food companies conduct business has changed as a result of changes in the market. These companies must start working in a more environmentally friendly manner. This study aims to examine, assess, and compare how various fuzzy methodologies are applied in green supplier selection (GSS), using an agri-food industry as an example. The company Biljana Brko, which engages in GSS, was observed in this study. The selection aids in the acquisition of raw materials and materials whose environmental impact will be minimized. Ecological and economic factors were taken into consideration when choosing green suppliers. Experts who assessed the weight of the criteria and the suppliers with linguistic values were chosen to carry out this selection. In order to do this, a fuzzy set that effectively applies these linguistic values was employed. The fuzzy SWARA (FSWARA) approach was utilized to calculate the weights of the criteria, revealing that the criterion of Environmental Management System has the highest weight. Drawing on the opinions of experts, suppliers were ranked using the fuzzy MABAC, MARCOS, and CRADIS techniques. The results show that supplier S2 receives the highest ratings. Along with this provider, supplier S3 is noteworthy because it excelled in the sensitivity analysis across a variety of scenarios. In light of this, Biljana Brko should give preference to these suppliers. Further, the results of the three adopted techniques were compared. The comparison reveals that the ranking order produced by all three techniques is remarkably similar. This supplier order differed slightly from the FMABAC method just in one scenario. Hence, this work demonstrates that the three fuzzy techniques can solve the GSS problem and other problems by ranking alternatives.
Over the past decades, recognised importance of prompt and valid pain recognition and quantification in veterinary medicine significantly increased interest in investigating attitudes and self-rated abilities of veterinarians towards pain assessment. However, giving that the owners are the ones who decide when to call the veterinarian, it is also essential to investigate their attitudes and knowledge regarding pain recognition and management. This is the first research investigating horse owners’ attitudes and self-rated abilities towards pain assessment and management in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The participants were invited via email or social media with attached link to online questionnaire created using the Google Forms platform. Surveyed population included adult sport or pleasure horse owners, and horse caretakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Study response rate was 33.33% (40 respondents). The questionnaire consisted of sections asking about respondents’ demographic data, general pain assessment and management, and attitudes towards pain assessment done by veterinarians compared with theirs. Study respondents considered their abilities for pain recognition and quantification as sufficient and sufficient/moderate, even though most of them were unfamiliar with pain scales, and only negligible number use them. This study indicates the need and importance of owners' education concerning pain recognition and quantification in horses, and their more effective communication with veterinarians.
Contouring, planning and dose calculation in treatment planning systems (TPS) are based on computedtomography (CT) images. Therefore, it is important to have developed, optimized and adapted scanning protocolsfor specific anatomic regions and special radiotherapy modalities such as stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS). The aimof this study was to determine influence of tube voltage, field of view size (FOV) and reconstruction kernels on CTnumbers and the resulting radiotherapy (RT) dose calculation.This study was performed at Clinic of Oncology, Clinical Center University of Sarajevo. Verification electrondensity and CT number values was performed using CIRS Thorax 002LFC phantom, while anthropomorphic CIRS038 phantom for stereotactic end-to-end verification was used for the purpose of dose plan calculation analysis withlarge bore CT simulator Canon Aquillion LB.The significant correlation between the tube voltage and the measuredvalues of CT numbers is significant for all materials (p < 0.05), except for water (p = 0.310). No significantcorrelation between FOV and obtained values of CT numbers was found in any of the evaluated tissue equivalentmaterials. Evaluating the impact of reconstruction kernels on Hounsfield units (HU), significant deviations werefound for the FC62, FC68 and FC07 reconstruction kernels. Also, analyzing the influence of reconstruction kernelson the RT dose calculation, the extreme values are associated with Dmin/D in PTV for kernels FC41 and FC68, wheredeviations from the values obtained using the baseline scanning parameters were -1.3% and -1.9%. For deviation of1 HU in muscle tissue of CIRS 002LFC, the calculated Dmin/D in PTV of CIRS STEEV phantom will reduce by0.79%. Similarly, the reduction of D₉₈ and D₂ would be 6.8 cGy and 3.03 cGy for 1 HU, respectively. Change of thereconstruction kernels caused differences of 0.4% in Dmin/D calculation in clinical target volume (CTV).CT scanning and reconstruction parameters may affect Hounsfield units, which could have an impact on dosecalculations in RT plan. Hence, it is recommended to standardize the scanning protocol used in calibration curvegeneration for TPS. One should avoid use of different tube voltages and kernels, while according to this study, thechange of FOV will have no impact on dose calculations
The student population is one of the most sensitive populations today, whereby it is necessary to consider the relationship between health and physical activity in order to improve students’ quality of life. In addition to physical inactivity, health status is adversely affected by constant technological innovations and excessive socializing, consumption of alcohol, tobacco and narcotics. The aim of this study was to determine the differences between the communication approach and attitudes of first- and fourth-year students of the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education on the impact of sports on health and improvement of mental hygiene. Using a 60-item questionnaire, the study included 70 healthy respondents of both genders (Mean ± SD: 20.86±1.76 years). The respondents were divided into two subsamples, i.e. a group of first-year students (IG; n=34; F=15, M=19) and a group of fourth-year students (IVG; n=36; F=18, M=18). All obtained data are presented by descriptive parameters. The reliability of the survey in terms of internal compliance was tested by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. The manifest space of attitudes was processed by the scaling technique. The Mann-Whitney U Test was used to determine differences in attitudes between first- and fourth-year students. For statistical significance of the differences in results between groups, the p<0.05 level of significance was used. The data were processed in the SPSS statistical package. The results of the study unequivocally confirmed the existence of a positive attitude among the student population about the impact of sports on health and improvement of mental hygiene, as well as that there are no statistically significant differences in most of the variables included in the testing (eight out of ten domains), i.e. that there is no great difference in the attitudes of first- and fourth-year students on the importance of sports for their psychophysical health.
Writing is an integral part of linguistic education of deaf persons which, due to the lack of auditorysensors, has an insurmountable difficulty achieving, so this shortcoming is directly reflected in the general literacyof deaf children. Many detailed studies in the world suggest that in order to become literate, a deaf child must learnthe language of the community. Je/she must first learn the letters and learn to write. About 50% of young deafpeople after high school read and write worse than a ten-year-old hearing child. The aim of this research is toexamine the usage, reading, writing, and comprehension in deaf children of the adverbial clause of place in writtenform and to determine the statistical significance of differences between deaf and hearing children. The study wasconducted on a sample of 140 respondents. The first subsample of subjects, the experimental group consisted of 70deaf students, and the second subsample, a control group of 70 hearing students, of the same chronological age. Themeasurement instrument “Test of writing, and comprehension of an adverbial clause of place” was applied. Thefrequencies and percentages of respondents' responses to the variables were calculated. The F (Fisher) test was usedto determine the statistical significance of the differences between deaf and hearing subjects. The results showed that1.40 % of deaf children are completely successful in reading and writing priloske odredbe, and thaat 90 % of deafchildren use prislocke odredbe partially successfully. The percentage of children that do not use priloske odredbe inany form in their written communication is 8.60%. The order of use of adverbial clause of place by frequency is asfollows: "in", "on", "below", "behind", "next to", and "between". The largest number of deaf children use theadverbial clause of place "in" in their written expression, 65.70% of them. Then, the adverbial clause of place "on"51.14%, the adverbial clause of place "below" 47.14%, the adverbial clause of place "behind" 31.43%, the adverbialclause of place "beside" 30%, and the adverbial clause of place "between" 22.85%.There is a statistically significant difference between deaf and hearing children in the use of the adverbial clause ofplace at the level of statistical significance of p=0.000.
Celiac disease is a chronic gastroenterological disease, and a lifelong gluten-free diet is a needed andnecessary therapy, which implies the exclusion of products containing gluten from the diet. The declaration ofgluten-free products is often unclear and ambiguous. The purpose of this paper was to examine celiac diseasepatients' attitudes and experiences with gluten-free diet declarations. 95 respondents from the area of HNŽ with adiagnosis of celiac disease were included in this quantitative research. The anonymous survey was conducted usingthe Google Forms tool. An anonymous survey examined sociodemographic data (age, gender, education, duration ofillness), experiences and attitudes with declarations about gluten-free diet. In this research, more than half of therespondents are extremely careful about what they consume, without exception. Participants who have beendiagnosed with celiac disease for a longer period of time completely disagree to a greater extent that they do notknow what products they can consume. Individuals with gluten sensitivity may rely more on the 'gluten-free' claimfor information about the gluten content of a product. Individuals with celiac disease, on the other hand, may bemore experienced readers of food labels and may rely more on the ingredient list. Consumer expectations havedriven the food industry to continuously adapt and improve the formulations and processing techniques used in theproduction of gluten-free products.
Cellular death, aging, and tissue damage trigger inflammation that leads to enzymatic and non-enzymatic lipid peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids present on cellular membranes and lipoproteins. This results in the generation of highly reactive degradation products, such as malondialdehyde (MDA) and 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), that covalently modify free amino groups of proteins and lipids in their vicinity. These newly generated neoepitopes represent a unique set of damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) associated with oxidative stress termed oxidation-specific epitopes (OSEs). OSEs are enriched on oxidized lipoproteins, microvesicles, and dying cells, and can trigger sterile inflammation. Therefore, prompt recognition and removal of OSEs is required to maintain the homeostatic balance. This is partially achieved by various humoral components of the innate immune system, such as natural IgM antibodies, pentraxins and complement components that not only bind OSEs but in some cases modulate their pro-inflammatory potential. Natural IgM antibodies are potent complement activators, and 30% of them recognize OSEs such as oxidized phosphocholine (OxPC-), 4-HNE-, and MDA-epitopes. Furthermore, OxPC-epitopes can bind the complement-activating pentraxin C-reactive protein, while MDA-epitopes are bound by C1q, C3a, complement factor H (CFH), and complement factor H-related proteins 1, 3, 5 (FHR-1, FHR-3, FHR-5). In addition, CFH and FHR-3 are recruited to 2-(ω-carboxyethyl)pyrrole (CEP), and full-length CFH also possesses the ability to attenuate 4-HNE-induced oxidative stress. Consequently, alterations in the innate humoral defense against OSEs predispose to the development of diseases associated with oxidative stress, as shown for the prototypical OSE, MDA-epitopes. In this mini-review, we focus on the mechanisms of the accumulation of OSEs, the pathophysiological consequences, and the interactions between different OSEs and complement components. Additionally, we will discuss the clinical potential of genetic variants in OSE-recognizing complement proteins – the OSE complotype - in the risk estimation of diseases associated with oxidative stress.
The Weibull distribution, with shape parameter $k>0$ and scale parameter $\lambda>0$, is one of the most popular parametric distributions in survival analysis with complete or censored data. Although inference of the parameters of the Weibull distribution is commonly done through maximum likelihood, it is well established that the maximum likelihood estimate of the shape parameter is inadequate due to the associated large bias when the sample size is small or the proportion of censored data is large. This manuscript demonstrates how the Bayesian information-theoretic minimum message length principle coupled with a suitable choice of weakly informative prior distributions, can be used to infer Weibull distribution parameters given complete data or data with type I censoring. Empirical experiments show that the proposed minimum message length estimate of the shape parameter is superior to the maximum likelihood estimate and appears superior to other recently proposed modified maximum likelihood estimates in terms of Kullback-Leibler risk. Lastly, we derive an extension of the proposed method to data with type II censoring.
Background: The aim of the present randomized, crossover study was to determine the physiological and cognitive function responses while wearing a facemask during a maximal running aerobic fitness test. Methods: Fourteen healthy, nonsmoking physical education students (age = 17.5 years, height = 1.72 m, body mass = 70.4 kg) volunteered to participate in this study. They carried out a 20 m multistage fitness test (MSFT) while wearing or not a cloth facemask on two separate occasions performed in random order. The “Rating of Perceived Exertion” (RPE) and the d2 test for visual attention were administered and assessed before and immediately after the MSFT for both conditions (with or without a facemask). Results: When wearing the facemask, the participants exhibited lower maximal aerobic speed (p = 0.039), VO2max (p = 0.039), distance covered during the MSFT (p = 0.057), and concentration performance (p < 0.001), when compared with the control situation (without facemask). Moreover, they made more errors compared with the control condition (p = 0.021). The use of a cloth facemask during maximal endurance running tests (such as the MSFT) reduced VO2max, and measures of cognitive performance as assessed by the test of focused visual attention (the d2 test). This data suggests avoiding using a cloth facemask during maximal aerobic fitness tests, and before any tasks that require a high level of visual attention.
The Weibull distribution, with shape parameter $k>0$ and scale parameter $\lambda>0$, is one of the most popular parametric distributions in survival analysis with complete or censored data. Although inference of the parameters of the Weibull distribution is commonly done through maximum likelihood, it is well established that the maximum likelihood estimate of the shape parameter is inadequate due to the associated large bias when the sample size is small or the proportion of censored data is large. This manuscript demonstrates how the Bayesian information-theoretic minimum message length principle coupled with a suitable choice of weakly informative prior distributions, can be used to infer Weibull distribution parameters given complete data or data with type I censoring. Empirical experiments show that the proposed minimum message length estimate of the shape parameter is superior to the maximum likelihood estimate and appears superior to other recently proposed modified maximum likelihood estimates in terms of Kullback-Leibler risk. Lastly, we derive an extension of the proposed method to data with type II censoring.
In this short note, we derive a new bias adjusted maximum likelihood estimate for the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution with complete data and type I censored data. The proposed estimate of the shape parameter is significantly less biased and more efficient than the corresponding maximum likelihood estimate, while being simple to compute using existing maximum likelihood software procedures.
The aim of this manuscript is to introduce the Bayesian minimum message length principle of inductive inference to a general statistical audience that may not be familiar with information theoretic statistics. We describe two key minimum message length inference approaches and demonstrate how the principle can be used to develop a new Bayesian alternative to the frequentist $t$-test as well as new approaches to hypothesis testing for the correlation coefficient. Lastly, we compare the minimum message length approach to the closely related minimum description length principle and discuss similarities and differences between both approaches to inference.
Principal component analysis (PCA) is perhaps the most widely used method for data dimensionality reduction. A key question in PCA is deciding how many factors to retain. This manuscript describes a new approach to automatically selecting the number of principal components based on the Bayesian minimum message length method of inductive inference. We derive a new estimate of the isotropic residual variance and demonstrate that it improves on the usual maximum likelihood approach. We also discuss extending this approach to finite mixture models of principal component analyzers.
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