Male Eurasian jays were previously reported to alter their food-sharing response in line with the specific satiety of their female partner. Here, we tested the flexibility of the same males’ food-sharing behavior by testing whether they can process information from contextual cues that predict the opposite pattern of food shared to that observed in previous studies. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the amount of food eaten by the females in a choice context before males shared with them. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the identity of the non-chosen food that was available in a choice context before males shared with the females. In both experiments, males showed flexibility in their sharing pattern in a comparison between the experimental and control conditions. In Experiment 1, this observed pattern appears to be based on the males’ response to the amount of food eaten by the female, and in Experiment 2, it appears to be based on the males’ response to the choice context in which the female’s eating took place. Although the experimental conditions in Experiments 1 and 2 were conceptual replications, the predicted pattern of food shared by the males was detected only in the latter. While replications are needed to test the generalizability and robustness of these results, the current study provides a first set of data in line with the hypothesis that the Eurasian jay males may be able to flexibly adjust their food-sharing behavior to contextual cues. Raw data are available at 10.5281/zenodo.3633986, and code and meta-data are available at https://osf.io/n9rcd/.
BACKGROUND/AIMS With the growing popularity of water polo across the world, there has been rising awareness of the risks for orofacial injures in water polo. The aim of this study was to evaluate knowledge and attitudes of water polo coaches regarding dental trauma, dental emergency procedures and awareness about prevention of such injuries. MATERIALS AND METHODS A specific questionnaire comprising 25 questions regarding knowledge, experiences and behaviors following dental trauma was distributed to 62 water polo coaches during the license renewal seminar held by the Croatian Water Polo Federation, in February 2018 in Split, Croatia. Chi-square with Yates correction when necessary, and Fisher's exact tests were used in statistical analysis, and the results were considered statistically significant when P < 0.05. RESULTS There were 51 water polo coaches who participated in this study. Their ages ranged from 19 to 60 years. Most of the coaches (90.2%) have seen a dental injury in their players during their coaching careers. Concerning the procedure with handling an avulsed tooth, there were 68.6% coaches who would maintain the avulsed tooth in a handkerchief or gauze along with four coaches (7.8%) who would rinse the avulsed tooth under water and wrap it in a handkerchief or gauze afterwards. Only one participant (2%) would maintain the avulsed tooth in saline solution before its replantation. None of the coaches would use milk for maintaining the avulsed tooth. Only seven coaches (13.7%) have previously had education about sports-related dental injuries, dental emergency procedures and prevention of such injuries. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study demonstrated poor level of knowledge of water polo coaches about dental injuries and dental emergency procedures. Their knowledge and attitudes could be improved by educational programs on dental injuries and dental emergency procedures, as well as sports-related dental injuries management.
The need for heating and cooling in traditional housing is becoming increasingly disadvantageous regarding high energy costs. But what is more concerning is the impact on our environment. The main goal of this paper is studying the prospects of using renewable energy for heating and cooling houses through an integrated bio-solar system in order to solve the energy scarcity problem. For this purpose, a simulation model for a bio-solar house made from different materials (walls made of bricks with straw bales and a roof made of concrete with straw bales) was developed successively in accordance with the energy balance and renewable energies such as biogas and solar energy were applied. This approach enabled an enhancement of the main factors affecting the performance of a building in terms of saving energy. The model was able to predict the energy requirements for heating and cooling of houses, the energy gained by a solar collector and by a biogas digester as well as the energy requirement for heating the biogas digester. Also, the purpose of this paper is to validate this developed simulation model by measuring energy requirements for heating of houses and solar radiation for solar collectors. The model is a simulation model for the bio-solar house with its three main parts—a straw house, a solar collector and a biogas digester. This paper demonstrates the values of the performed measurements and compares them to the theoretical, predicted values. The comparison indicates that the predicted energy requirements for the heating of buildings were a close approximation to the measured values. Another relevant deduction of the validation was the fact that the solar collector delivered the highest heat gain on 21st of June.
Inherited retinal diseases cause severe visual deficits in children. They are classified in outer and inner retina diseases, and often cause blindness in childhood. The diagnosis for this type of illness is challenging, given the wide range of clinical and genetic causes (with over 200 causative genes). It is routinely based on a complex pattern of clinical tests, including invasive ones, not always appropriate for infants or young children. A different approach is thus needed, that exploits Chromatic Pupillometry, a technique increasingly used to assess outer and inner retina functions. This paper presents a novel Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), based on Machine Learning using Chromatic Pupillometry in order to support diagnosis of Inherited retinal diseases in pediatric subjects. An approach that combines hardware and software is proposed: a dedicated medical equipment (pupillometer) is used with a purposely designed custom machine learning decision support system. Two distinct Support Vector Machines (SVMs), one for each eye, classify the features extracted from the pupillometric data. The designed CDSS has been used for diagnosis of Retinitis Pigmentosa in pediatric subjects. The results, obtained by combining the two SVMs in an ensemble model, show satisfactory performance of the system, that achieved 0.846 accuracy, 0.937 sensitivity and 0.786 specificity. This is the first study that applies machine learning to pupillometric data in order to diagnose a genetic disease in pediatric age.
Instead of the commonly used chemical doping, it can be more favorable to consider transforming graphene through proximity effects by carefully choosing its adjacent regions. While gate-tunable room-temperature spin-dependent properties could be induced in graphene by magnetic proximity effects from common metallic ferromagnets, this approach is complicated by chemical bonding between a metal and graphene suggesting the need for an intervening buffer layer. However, even with a buffer layer there is still a large energy shift of the Dirac cone in graphene away from the Fermi level. Compared to such a large negative shift and its resulting $n$-doping when graphene is separated from cobalt by a monolayer h-BN or another layer of graphene, we show that it can be favorable to instead separate graphene by a monolayer of gold or platinum. The resulting proximity induced magnetization is larger, energy shift is somewhat reduced and changes its sign, offering a path for proximity-induced spin polarization in graphene which can be tuned at smaller gate-controlled electric field than for the h-BN buffer layer.
Purpose We examined ideas about how youth would mitigate non-medical use of prescription medications among their peers. Design/methodology/approach The National Monitoring of Adolescent Prescription Stimulants Study (N-MAPSS) interviewed 11,048 youth10-18 years of age between 2008 and 2011 from entertainment venues of 10 US urban, suburban, and rural areas. Using a mixed-methods approach, participants completed a survey culminating in open ended questions asking: 1) How should kids your age be told about prescription drugs and their effects?; 2) If you ran the world, how would you stop kids from taking other people's prescription medicines?; 3)Why do people use prescription stimulants without a prescription? Responses from a random sample of 900 children were analyzed using qualitative thematic analyses. Findings The random sample of 900 youth (52% female, 40% white, with a mean age was 15.1 years) believed they should be educated about prescription drugs and their negative effects at schools, at home by parents, through the media, and health professionals. Youth would stop kids from using other people's prescription drugs through more stringent laws that restricted use, and education about negative consequences of use. Peer pressure was the most common reason youth gave for using other's pills, though some reported using for curiosity. Originality/value This analysis shows the importance of considering youth's opinions on non-medical use of prescription medications, which are often overlooked. Studies should disseminate this data from youth to stop the illicit use of prescription drugs among teens and youth.
The application of different evaluation approaches in logistics requires considering many factors with different significance for making the final decision. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods are often applied in logistics to create different strategies and evaluations. In this paper, research has been carried out in a transport system of an international transport company. An MCDM model has been created for the purpose of human resource evaluation, on which the overall efficiency of the company depends. A total of 23 drivers were evaluated on the basis of five crucial criteria in order to increase employees’ motivation through their periodic remuneration. The Full Consistency Method (FUCOM) was applied to determine the significance of the criteria, while the evaluation of potential solutions was performed using Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution (MARCOS). After the results had been obtained, the created model was validated throughout comparisons with seven other MCDM methods.
Before choosing an intersection project design, an important step is to examine the justification of the construction on the basis of defined criteria. One of the key criteria is the analysis of capacity. Large numbers of roundabout capacity models are present in the world, most of them adapted to the conditions of the country they originate from and they need to be calibrated for local conditions. Key parameters for calibration are critical headway and follow-up headway. Follow-up headway can be measured directly in the field, while critical headway cannot be measured, but is estimated. Many critical headway estimation methods exist (over 30) and each of them provides different values. Different values of critical headway result in different capacity estimation values. This raises the question which method provides more realistic estimations under certain conditions. In this paper, four most frequently used critical headway estimation methods (Raff, Maximum likelihood method, Wu, Logit) were selected to be tested by comparison of theoretical capacity models and actual measured capacity at a small urban roundabout.
We investigate global dynamics of the equation\begin{equation*}x_{n+1}=\frac{x_{n-1}+F}{ax_{n}^2+f},\text{ \ }n=0,1,2,...,\end{equation*}where the parameters $a,F$ and $f$ are positive numbers and the initial conditions $x_{-1},x_{0}$ are arbitrary nonnegative numbers such that $x_{-1}+x_{0}>0$. The existence and local stability of the unique positive equilibrium are analyzed algebraically. We characterize the global dynamics of this equation with the basins of attraction of its equilibrium point and periodic solutions.
We investigate the global dynamics of the following rational difference equation of second order\begin{equation*}x_{n+1}=\frac{Ax_{n}^{2}+Ex_{n-1}}{x_{n}^{2}+f},\quad n=0,1,\ldots ,\end{equation*}where the parameters $A$ and $E$ are positive real numbers and the initial conditions $x_{-1}$ and $x_{0}$ are arbitrary non-negative real numbers such that $x_{-1}+x_{0}>0$. The transition function associated with the right-hand side of this equation is always increasing in the second variable and can be either increasing or decreasing in the first variable depending on the parametric values. The unique feature of this equation is that the second iterate of the map associated with this transition function changes from strongly competitive to strongly cooperative. Our main tool for studying the global dynamics of this equation is the theory of monotone maps while the local stability is determined by using center manifold theory in the case of the nonhyperbolic equilibrium point.
European plum cultivars (Prunus domestica L.) are hexaploid and partially self-fertile or self-sterile requiring compatible pollinizers with overlapping bloom times. Therefore, inter-planting of different pollinizer cultivars is recommended. In order to identify successful pollinizers of the plum cultivars ‘Edda’, ‘Opal’ (self-fertile), ‘Jubileum’, ‘Reeves’, ‘Mallard’, ‘Avalon’, ‘Cacanska Lepotica’ (self-fertile), and ‘Valor’, 60 fruits per cultivar were collected from nine orchards in 2017 and 2018, all of which were located in Ullensvang, western Norway. DNA extraction was subsequently conducted from the obtained embryos, followed by genetic characterization using seven microsatellite markers. Tissue samples from all possible pollinizers were collected during the summer of 2017 and the same DNA approach was conducted. Results showed that ‘Opal’ was the most successful pollinizer among the investigated plum cultivars. The main exception was ‘Cacanska Lepotica’, which consistently displayed very high level of self-pollination. The most successful foreign pollinizer of ‘Opal’ was ‘Mallard’. However, in more than two thirds of embryos extracted from ‘Opal’ fruits self-fertilization was determined. ‘Reeves’ was identified as the most successful pollinizer among embryos collected from ‘Valor’. Among the five cultivars (‘Edda’, ‘Jubileum’, ‘Reeves’, ‘Mallard’, and ‘Avalon’) that did not display self-pollination, the pollinizer success rate of ‘Opal’, ranged from 36.5% (‘Mallard’) to 93.5% (‘Edda’) in 2017, while in 2018 this rate ranged from 43.5% (‘Jubileum’ and ‘Reeves’) up to 96.5% (‘Edda’). Overall, genotyping embryos using SSRs (simple sequence repeats) proved an effective method in determining the success rate of individual pollinizers among European plum cultivars.
Purpose: Youth represents the most vulnerable population, mainly due to their lifestyle derived from risky sexual behaviours. The aim of the study was to identify specific HPV genotypes correlating with cervical smear cytologic abnormalities, well as sociodemographic/behavioural characteristics and history of sexually transmitted diseases in Bosnian women age up to 30 years. Methods: The longitudinal study was performed at the Department of Microbiology School of Medicine University of Sarajevo and Institute for Public Health dr. Andrija Stampar, Zagreb, Croatia from June 2017 to January 2018. Thirty (30) cervical smears were taken from tested females were screened using COBAS assay for HPV DNA testing. Routine Pap screening was performed in the Public Institution Department for Health Care of Women and Maternity of Sarajevo Canton. A self-administered questionnaire was applied. Results: A total of 30 sexually active women with abnormal cytological reports were enrolled in the study. The mean age was 26 IQR (20.75, 29.0) year. The overall prevalence of HR HPV was 66.7 %. Women age of ≤25 years had a positive association with positive results of HPV testing, OR=1.91. Consummation of alcohol, cigarettes had a strong positive association with positive HPV testing. Conclusions: The data obtained from this study indicate that HPV 16 is the most common HPV type found in the cervical specimens among young Bosnian women, followed by HPV 18. HPV DNA testing using as a screening test should be considered in the development of cervical cancer prevention programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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