620 research outputs found
The Long Road to Partnership: Conflict Resolution of Register 45 Mesuji Lampung
A known agrarian issue took place in Indonesia, particularly in the area of Register 45 Mesuji Lampung. The granting of natural forest management permit by the government to PT. Silva Inhutani, thus eliminating public access around Register 45 to manage the forest, subsequently lead to conflict in the region. The objectives of this research are, namely: 1) to explain the grounds for partnership in the Register 45 area; and 2) to analyze the partnership program undertaken in Register 45 as an effort of resolving conflict. This research used a descriptive qualitative approach that describes the results of research, assessment and other references reinforced with empirical data through interviews and observations. This study found a number of issues in the partnership agreement formation process, wherein the community was not being involved in the formation process of the partnership provisions, such as the planting process and the profit sharing scheme. The issues found in the implementation stage of the partnership agreement can be observed from an internal factor perspective, which was the unfulfilled expectation to increase acacia planting. Regarding the external factor, there were still many acts of thuggery in the area of Register 45 that interfered with the partnership process. There was also a fundamental problem in the partnership implementation, which was the prevalent lack of aptness in the mapping of community entitled to the partnership, as well as the lack of trust among collaborating parties
THE EFFECT OF EXHAUSTIVE RUNNING ON POSTURAL DYNAMICS
Recently, researchers have begun to use nonlinear measures such as the Lyapunovexponent (LyE) and Approximate Entropy (ApEn) to examine temporal structure in the continuous behavior of biological systems. When using these measures a higher score indicates lesser periodicity and greater chaotic behavior. A decrease in LyE and ApEn values have been shown in some cases to indicate pathological conditions. Studies of postural control have found that after a cerebral concussion, an athlete’s center of pressure oscillations measured by ApEn are significantly decreased even up to 96 hours post-injury as compared with their preseason ApEn scores, even when the athlete appears steady (Cavanaugh, 2006). In regards to walking gate, local dynamic stability showed decreased variability when assessed amongst ACL reconstruction patients (Stergiou, 2004). The purpose of the current experiment ıs to use ApEn versus a set of traditional postural measure to evaluate a postural sway during upright stance prior to and following a bout of exhaustive running. In published balance studies only about 50% report significant improvements, possibly because traditional measures aren’t capturing the improvements in postural control. Promising results from the above cited studies indicate that nonlinear measures may be measuring elements that the traditional measures don’t detect
Language Model Combination and Adaptation Using Weighted Finite State Transducers
In speech recognition systems language model (LMs) are often constructed by training and combining multiple n-gram models. They can be either used to represent different genres or tasks found in diverse text sources, or capture stochastic properties of different linguistic symbol sequences, for example, syllables and words. Unsupervised LM adaption may also be used to further improve robustness to varying styles or tasks. When using these techniques, extensive software changes are often required. In this paper an alternative and more general approach based on weighted finite state transducers (WFSTs) is investigated for LM combination and adaptation. As it is entirely based on well-defined WFST operations, minimum change to decoding tools is needed. A wide range of LM combination configurations can be flexibly supported. An efficient on-the-fly WFST decoding algorithm is also proposed. Significant error rate gains of 7.3% relative were obtained on a state-of-the-art broadcast audio recognition task using a history dependently adapted multi-level LM modelling both syllable and word sequence
BALANCE TRAINING ALTERS POSTURAL DYNAMICS UNIQUELY FOR STANCE ON COMPLIANT VS. NON-COMPLIANT SURFACES
Balance training is a common clinical modality used for improving postural control and preventing injury during sports training and participation. However, a number of empirical studies have failed to support the efficacy of balance training. One factor that may have limited the previous empirical studies is a lack of sensitivity with regard to the traditional descriptive statistics used to characterize postural control. Recent developments in non-linear dynamic analyses have led researchers to revaluate the way in which postural control is measured and understood. The advantage of nonlinear analyses for assessing postural behavior is their sensitivity to changes in the time-dependent structures of continuous postural sway. Lyapunov Exponent (LyE) is defined as the slope of the average logarithmic divergence of neighboring trajectories in a state space (Wolf, 1985). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of balance training on postural control in a healthy population using both a traditional (position variability; as measured by standard deviation) and non-linear (Lyapunov Exponent; LyE) measure of postural sway variability
Results and long-term patient satisfaction after gluteal augmentation with platelet-rich plasma-enriched autologous fat
BACKGROUND: Buttock augmentation is gaining increasing popularity in aesthetic surgery. The relatively high incidence of complications after silicone implant placement lead to the increased use of lipofilling techniques, yielding variable results with respect to graft take rate and long-term stability. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been shown to have beneficial effects on wound healing and angiogenesis in the past. Therefore, we aimed at investigating the long-term results and patient satisfaction after PRP-enriched lipofilling for buttock augmentation.
METHODS: Twenty-four bilateral gluteal augmentations with PRP-enriched autologous fat were performed. Additionally, contour shaping was achieved by liposuction of the adjacent zones. Post-operative results and complications were recorded, and satisfaction with buttock shape was estimated by a patient questionnaire.
RESULTS: Mean follow-up time was 44 months, and mean amount of transferred fat was 481 cc for both sides. No seroma or hematoma formation, infection or liponecrosis were reported during the post-operative follow-up. Subjective patient satisfaction in general increased from preoperatively to 3 months postoperatively and declined only slightly in the long-term course. Satisfaction levels in general were specific for each patient. Patient recovery was quick, and the majority of patients returned to work within 10 days after surgery.
CONCLUSIONS: PRP-enhanced lipofilling of the buttocks proved to be a safe procedure including a low complication rate and consistent results. However, subjective patient expectations have to be taken into account when choosing the indication. Further large volume studies are needed to elucidate the potential and benefit of PRP in this context. Level of Evidence: Level IV, therapeutic study
Effects of present-day deglaciation in Iceland on mantle melt production rates
Ongoing deglaciation in Iceland not only causes uplift at the surface but also increases magma production at depth due to decompression of the mantle. Here we study glacially induced decompression melting using 3‐D models of glacial isostatic adjustment in Iceland since 1890. We find that the mean glacially induced pressure rate of change in the mantle increases melt production rates by 100–135%, or an additional 0.21–0.23 km3 of magma per year beneath Iceland. Approximately 50% of this melt is produced underneath central Iceland. The greatest volumetric increase is found directly beneath Iceland's largest ice cap, Vatnajökull, colocated with the most productive volcanoes. Our models of the effect of deglaciation on mantle melting predict a significantly larger volumetric response than previous models which only considered the effect of deglaciation of Vatnajökull, and only mantle melting directly below Vatnajökull. Although the ongoing deglaciation significantly increases the melt production rate, the increase in melt supply rate at the base of the lithosphere is delayed and depends on the melt ascent velocity through the mantle. Assuming that 25% of the melt reaches the surface, the upper limit on our deglaciation‐induced melt estimates for central Iceland would be equivalent to an eruption the size of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull summit eruption every seventh year
The minimal access cranial suspension (MACS) lift:A systematic review of literature 18 years after its introduction
BACKGROUND: One of the most popular short-scar rhytidectomy techniques used nowadays is the minimal access cranial suspension (MACS) lift developed by Tonnard and Vaerpele. The technique uses purse-string sutures in combination with limited skin undermining to obtain a clear vertical tissue repositioning. Since its introduction, the technique has extensively been described and used around the world by facial plastic surgeons. Now, 18 years after its introduction, a systematic review concerning the results and complications of the MACS lift is presented to establish its current position in facial rejuvenation. METHODS: The MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central, and Google Scholar databases were searched for studies evaluating the MACS lift (June 10, 2020). Outcomes of interest were long-term effect, satisfaction, and complications of the MACS lifting as determined by the patient and/or surgeon. RESULTS: Six studies were included, with 739 patients treated with the MACS lift in total. No major complications were reported, four studies did report on the occurrence of minor complications. All of the six studies reported relatively high levels of satisfaction. Three studies reported a shorter procedural duration for the MACS lift compared with the conventional facelift. In three of the six included studies, the level of evidence was low. The effect on neck rejuvenation is limited. CONCLUSION: The MACS lift can be considered a minimally invasive facelift procedure with a relatively low complication rate. The procedure, often combined with additional procedures, results in evident patient and/or surgeon satisfaction. To obtain a better desired result on an aged neck area, additional procedures are warranted
EFFECT OF RESPIRATION DYNAMICS ON POSTURAL CONTROL FOLLOWING A 5K RUN
Research has shown postural control during upright stance can be diminished for up to twenty minutes following aerobic exercise of different types, intensities, and durations (Lepers et al., 1997; Nagy et al., 2002). Researchers have posited that this is caused by neuromuscular changes associated with aerobic exercise and fatigue such as the reduced excitability and central drive to peripheral muscles (Lepers et al., 2002), vestibular desensitization (Lepers et al., 1997), and peripheral somatosensory desensitization (Lepers et al., 1997). However, no research has measured or attempted to control for the influence that changes in respiration dynamics (e.g., rate and volume) alone might have on postural sway. The aim of the current study was to examine these effects in order decipher whether changes to postural control following intense aerobic exercise (a 5-kilometer run performed with maximal effort) can be attributed to effects of exercise and fatigue or simply changes in respiration
Dual autoencoders modeling of electronic health records for adverse drug event preventability prediction
Background Elderly patients are at increased risk for Adverse Drug Events (ADEs). Proactively screening elderly people visiting the emergency department for the possibility of their hospital admission being drug-related helps to improve patient care as well as prevent potential unnecessary medical costs. Existing routine ADE assessment heavily relies on a rule-based checking process. Recently, machine learning methods have been shown to be effective in automating the detection of ADEs, however, most approaches used only either structured data or free texts for their feature engineering. How to better exploit all available EHRs data for better predictive modeling remains an important question. On the other hand, automated reasoning for the preventability of ADEs is still a nascent line of research. Methods Clinical information of 714 elderly ED-visit patients with ADE preventability labels was provided as ground truth data by Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis hospital, the Netherlands. Methods were developed to address the challenges of applying feature engineering to heterogeneous EHRs data. A Dual Autoencoders (2AE) model was proposed to solve the problem of imbalance embedded in the existing training data. Results Experimental results showed that 2AE can capture the patterns of the minority class without incorporating an extra process for class balancing. 2AE yields adequate performance and outperforms other more mainstream approaches, resulting in an AUPRC score of 0.481. Conclusions We have demonstrated how machine learning can be employed to analyze both structured and unstructured data from electronic health records for the purpose of preventable ADE prediction. The developed algorithm 2AE can be used to effectively learn minority group phenotype from imbalanced data
Validation of Stratification-Driven Phytoplankton Biomass and Nutrient Concentrations in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean as Simulated by EC-Earth
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