Purpose This study examined differences in ankle motion and plantar pressure between habitually barefoot male (HBM) and habitually shod male (HSM) during vertical jump. Methods Eighteen habitually barefoot males and twenty habitually shod males volunteered to join the test. Distance between hallux and second toe was measured with Easy-Foot-Scan. Plantar pressure and ankle...
Heterophones pose challenges during training of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems because they involve ambiguity in the pronunciation of an orthographic representation of a word. Heterophones are words that have the same spelling but different pronunciations. This paper addresses the problem of heterophonic languages by developing the concept of a Composite Phoneme (CP...
In this article, a new multidirectional monotone hybrid iteration algorithm for finding a solution to the split common fixed point problem is presented for two countable families of quasi-nonexpansive mappings in Banach spaces. Strong convergence theorems are proved. The application of the result is to consider the split common null point problem of maximal monotone operators in...
Introduction Beijing subway line 14 includes four stations and approximately 2.8 km of tunnels between the Dongfengbeiqiao and Jingshunlu areas of the city. Due to the surface and underground space limitations of this section, a double-track running tunnel instead of two single-track running tunnels was adopted to connect the two stations. The double-track tunnels were excavated...
This paper mainly tends to utilize \(\psi\)-type function to investigate p-th moment and almost sure stability for a class of stochastic switched nonlinear systems. Based on the multiple Lyapunov functions approach, some sufficient conditions are derived to check the stability criteria of stochastic switched nonlinear systems. One numerical example is provided to demonstrate the...
Background Recently, sparse unmixing has been successfully applied to spectral mixture analysis of remotely sensed hyperspectral images. Based on the assumption that the observed image signatures can be expressed in the form of linear combinations of a number of pure spectral signatures known in advance, unmixing of each mixed pixel in the scene is to find an optimal subset of...
Rye is second only to wheat among grains most widely used in the making of bread and is also a very important gene resource for breeding and improvement of wheat and other cereal crops owing to tolerance to abiotic stress factors such as low temperatures, drought and poor soil conditions. However, application of biotechnologies has been limited in rye breeding since it is one of...
Background This study examined the effectiveness of using Physical Activity Consultation (PAC) as an addition to the standard smoking cessation treatment in Malaysia. We explored participants’ experiences in terms of physical activity and smoking abstinence with the combined PAC and smoking cessation intervention. Methods Walk-in smokers from a local smoking cessation clinic...
The recognition of Arabic script and its derivatives such as Urdu, Persian, Pashto etc. is a difficult task due to complexity of this script. Particularly, Urdu text recognition is more difficult due to its Nasta’liq writing style. Nasta’liq writing style inherits complex calligraphic nature, which presents major issues to recognition of Urdu text owing to diagonality in writing...
This paper proposes a performance model for general matrix multiplication (GEMM) on decoupled access/execute (DAE) architecture platforms, in order to guide improvements of the GEMM performance in the Godson-3B1500. This model focuses on the features of access processors (APs) and execute processors (EPs). To reduce the synchronization overhead between APs and EPs, a...
This paper considers an improvement of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) in the presence of missing data. EMD has been widely used to decompose nonlinear and nonstationary signals into some components according to intrinsic frequency called intrinsic mode functions. However, the conventional EMD may not be efficient when missing values are present. This paper proposes a modified...
Background We aimed to evaluate postoperative recovery and short-term outcomes of patients undergoing partial hepatectomy managed with a nonstrict and individual enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program. Methods A retrospective analysis of 168 partial hepatectomy patients in our institution was included. The discharged day and the respective impact of element application...
This paper presents a genetic algorithm based hybrid approach for solving a fuzzy multi-objective assignment problem (FMOAP) by using an exponential membership function in which the coefficient of the objective function is described by a triangular possibility distribution. Moreover, in this study, fuzzy judgment was classified using α-level sets for the decision maker (DM) to...
Background Most smokers have their first experience of cigarette use when they are teenagers (i.e. at schools). Aiming tobacco control initiatives at secondary school students offers preventive measures to eliminate or reduce tobacco use initiation by students. This study assessed smoking-related attitudes, motives and behavior as well as other factors associated with smoking...
The permutation transformation of tensors is introduced and its basic properties are discussed. The invariance under permutation transformations is studied for some important structure tensors such as symmetric tensors, positive definite (positive semidefinite) tensors, Z-tensors, M-tensors, Hankel tensors, P-tensors, B-tensors and H-tensors. Finally, as an application of...
The aim of this study is to explore the use of lichens as biomonitors of the impact of nickel mining and ore treatment on the atmosphere in the New Caledonian archipelago (South Pacific Ocean); both activities emitting also Co, Cr and possibly Fe. Metal contents were analysed in thirty-four epiphytic lichens, collected in the vicinity of the potential sources, and in places free...
We conducted an exploratory investigation of factors influencing the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) methods in the agricultural product distribution industry. Through a literature review and field research, and based on the technology–organization–environment (TOE) theoretical framework, this paper analyzes factors influencing RFID adoption in the agricultural...
Ashoka (Saraca asoca) is a perennial, evergreen tree valued for its ornamental flowers and medicinal values. This species is classified as ‘vulnerable’ under IUCN list due to its dwindling population because of destructive harvesting from natural habitats. Therefore, conservation and multiplication of this species is need of the hour to utilize its astonishing medicinal uses...
Background The aim of our study is to evaluate perioperative and mid-term oncologic outcomes of the patients with colorectal cancer, who underwent emergent curative surgery. Methods The study included all patients with colorectal cancer, who underwent surgery for curative intent between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2014 in General Surgery Department of Kartal Training and...
Background The risk of heart diseases, diabetes and stroke is increased with higher metabolic risk factors. Models of diseases resulting from high-calorie diets have a significant role in pathophysiologic analysis of metabolic syndrome in rodents; but, these diets are considerably different from each other in various studies and may not be very similar to the metabolic syndrome...
Background The renewal of removable dentures is often suggested to denture wearers subject to discomfort. However, the impact of this rehabilitation on patients’ oral health related quality of life and their removable dentures related satisfaction is still unknown. This study was aimed at assessing these patient-centered outcomes and the potential impact of different factors...
Introduction The omphalomesenteric duct (OMD) or the vitelline duct (VD) is the embryonic structure connecting the vitelline sac to the primitive gut. It undergoes obliteration at 5–9 weeks of gestation. Failure of this duct to close, which occurs in approximately 2% of the population, can lead to various types of VD residual diseases. A persistent OMD remnant is pathological...
Hardware protection and control action are two kinds of low voltage ride-through technical proposals widely used in a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). This paper proposes an innovative clustering concept for the equivalent modeling of a PMSG-based wind power plant (WPP), in which the impacts of both the chopper protection and the coordinated control of active and...
Background Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is a powerful modulator of anti-tumor immune responses. The IL-10 promoter region polymorphisms are known to regulate IL-10 production, and thus are thought to be implicated in tumorigenesis. Recently, the roles of these polymorphisms in urologic cancer have been extensively studied, with conflicting results. Therefore, we conducted the present...