Search results for: health indicators

Authors: Michiko Miyamoto

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The market for "functional foods" and "foods with functional claims" that are effective in maintaining and improving health, has expanded year by year due to the entry of major food and beverage manufacturers following the introduction of the specified health food system in 1991 in Japan. To bring health claims related products or services to the market, it is necessary to let consumers to learn about these products or services; an effective marketing through advertising are important. This research proposes a framework for an effective advertisement medium for the food supplement industry by using survey data of 2,500 people.

Keywords: Functional foods, dietary supplements, marketing strategy, structural equation modeling.

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Authors: A. Abdalla, A. Kaltayev

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The ultimate goal of this article is to develop a robust and accurate numerical method for solving hyperbolic conservation laws in one and two dimensions. A hybrid numerical method, coupling a cheap fourth order total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme [1] for smooth region and a Robust seventh-order weighted non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme [2] near discontinuities, is considered. High order multi-resolution analysis is used to detect the high gradients regions of the numerical solution in order to capture the shocks with the WENO scheme, while the smooth regions are computed with fourth order total variation diminishing (TVD). For time integration, we use the third order TVD Runge-Kutta scheme. The accuracy of the resulting hybrid high order scheme is comparable with these of WENO, but with significant decrease of the CPU cost. Numerical demonstrates that the proposed scheme is comparable to the high order WENO scheme and superior to the fourth order TVD scheme. Our scheme has the added advantage of simplicity and computational efficiency. Numerical tests are presented which show the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Keywords: WENO scheme, TVD schemes, smoothness indicators, multi-resolution.

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Authors: Mehtap Dursun, E. Ertugrul Karsak, Melis Almula Karadayi

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Disposal of health-care waste (HCW) is considered as an important environmental problem especially in large cities. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques are apt to deal with quantitative and qualitative considerations of the health-care waste management (HCWM) problems. This research proposes a fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach with a multilevel hierarchical structure including qualitative as well as quantitative performance attributes for evaluating HCW disposal alternatives for Istanbul. Using the entropy weighting method, objective weights as well as subjective weights are taken into account to determine the importance weighting of quantitative performance attributes. The results obtained using the proposed methodology are thoroughly analyzed.

Keywords: Entropy weighting method, group decision making, health-care waste management, hierarchical fuzzy multi-criteriadecision making

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Authors: Ahmad Abubakar Sadiq, Mark N. Nwohu, Jacob Tsado, Ahmad A. Ashraf, Agbachi E. Okenna, Enesi E. Yahaya, Ambafi James Garba

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Transmission system performance analysis is vital to proper planning and operations of power systems in the presence of deregulation. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are often used as measure of degree of performance. This paper gives a novel method to determine the transmission efficiency by evaluating the ratio of real power losses incurred from a specified transfer direction. Available Transmission Transfer Efficiency (ATTE) expresses the percentage of real power received resulting from inter-area available power transfer. The Tie line (Rated system path) performance is seen to differ from system wide (Network response) performance and ATTE values obtained are transfer direction specific. The required sending end quantities with specified receiving end ATC and the receiving end power circle diagram are obtained for the tie line analysis. The amount of real power loss load relative to the available transfer capability gives a measure of the transmission grid efficiency.

Keywords: Available transfer capability, efficiency performance, real power, transmission system.

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Authors: Beata Cieniawska, Deta Łuczycka, Katarzyna Dereń

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When assessing the quality of the spraying procedure, three indicators are used: uneven distribution of precipitation of liquid sprayed, degree of coverage of sprayed surfaces, and deposition of liquid spraying However, there is a lack of information on the relationship between the quality parameters of the procedure. Therefore, the research was carried out at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering of Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between the degree of coverage of sprayed surfaces and the deposition of liquid in the aspect of the parametric characteristics of the protected plant using selected single and double stream nozzles. Experiments were conducted under laboratory conditions. The carrier of nozzles acted as an independent self-propelled sprayer used for spraying, whereas the parametric characteristics of plants were determined using artificial plants as the ratio of the vertical projection surface and the horizontal projection surface. The results and their analysis showed a strong and very strong correlation between the analyzed parameters in terms of the characteristics of the sprayed object.

Keywords: Degree of coverage, deposition of liquid, nozzle, spraying.

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Authors: Chiung-ying Lee, Chia-hua Chang

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In July 1, 2007, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on market observation post system (MOPS) adds a new "Financial reference database" for investors to do investment reference. This database as a warning to public offering companies listed on the public financial information and it original within eight targets. In this paper, this database provided by the indicators for the application of company financial crisis early warning model verify that the database provided by the indicator forecast for the financial crisis, whether or not companies have a high accuracy rate as opposed to domestic and foreign scholars have positive results. There is use of Logistic Regression Model application of the financial early warning model, in which no joined back-conditions is the first model, joined it in is the second model, has been taken occurred in the financial crisis of companies to research samples and then business took place before the financial crisis point with T-1 and T-2 sample data to do positive analysis. The results show that this database provided the debt ratio and net per share for the best forecast variables.

Keywords: Financial reference database, Financial early warning model, Logistic Regression.

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Authors: Ritvik Chauhan, Vijay Kumar Baraik

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Women are most vulnerable to crime despite occupying central position in shaping a society as the first teacher of children. In India too, having equal rights and constitutional safeguards, the incidences of crime against them are large and grave. In this context of crime against women, especially rape has been increasing over time. This paper explores the spatial and temporal aspects of crime against women in India with special reference to rape. It also examines the crime against women with its spatial, socio-economic and demographic associates using related data obtained from the National Crime Records Bureau India, Indian Census and other government sources of the Government of India. The simple statistical, choropleth mapping and other cartographic representation methods have been used to see the crime rates, spatio-temporal patterns of crime, and association of crime with its correlates.  The major findings are visible spatial variations across the country and are also in the rising trends in terms of incidence and rates over the reference period. The study also indicates that the geographical associations are somewhat observed. However, selected indicators of socio-economic factors seem to have no significant bearing on crime against women at this level.

Keywords: Crime against women, crime mapping, trend analysis.

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Authors: André M. Senna, Mary L. G. S. Senna, Rosa M. Machado-de-Sena

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One of the great challenges presented in educational practice is how to ensure the students not only acquire knowledge of training courses throughout their academic life, but also how to apply it in their current professional activities. Consequently, aiming to incite changes in the education system of healthcare professionals noticed the inadequacy of the training providers to solve the social problems related to health, the education related to these procedures should initiate in the earliest years of process. Following that idea, there is another question that needs an answer: If the change in the education should start sooner, in the period of basic training of healthcare professionals, what guidelines should a permanent education program incorporate to promote changes in an already established system? For this reason, the objective of this paper is to present different views of the teaching-learning process, with the purpose of better understanding the behavior adopted by healthcare professionals, through bibliographic study. The conclusion was that more than imparting knowledge to the individual, a larger approach is necessary on permanent education programs concerning the performance of professional health services in order to foment significant changes in education.

Keywords: Health education, continuing education, training, behavior.

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Authors: Bekim Fetaji, Majlinda Fetaji

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The development and use of mobile devices as well as its integration within education systems to deliver electronic contents and to support real-time communications was the focus of this research. In order to investigate the software engineering issues in using mobile devices a research on electronic content was initiated. The Developed MP3 mobile software solution was developed as a prototype for testing and developing a strategy for designing a usable m-learning environment. The mobile software solution was evaluated using mobile device using the link: http://projects.seeu.edu.mk/mlearn. The investigation also tested the correlation between the two mobile learning indicators: electronic content and attention, based on the Task Based learning instructional method. The mobile software solution ''M-Learn“ was developed as a prototype for testing the approach and developing a strategy for designing usable m-learning environment. The proposed methodology is about what learning modeling approach is more appropriate to use when developing mobile learning software.

Keywords: M-learning, mobile software development, mobiledevices, learning instructions, task based learning.

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Authors: Sonia Alberti

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The Regional Conference to Restructure Psychiatric Care in Latin America, convened by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 1990, oriented the Brazilian Federal Act in 2001 that stipulated the psychiatric reform which requires deinstitutionalization and community-based treatment. Since then, the 15 years’ experience of different working teams in mental health led an academic working group – supervisors from personal practices, professors and researchers – to discuss certain clinical issues, as well as supervisions, and to organize colloquia in different cities as a methodology. These colloquia count on the participation of different working teams from the cities in which they are held, with team members with different levels of educational degrees and prior experiences, in order to increase dialogue right where it does not always appear to be possible. The principal aim of these colloquia is to gain interlocution between practitioners and academics. Working with the theory of case constructions, this methodology revealed itself helpful in unfolding new solutions. The paper also observes that there is not always harmony between what the psychiatric reform demands and clinical ethics.

Keywords: Mental health, supervision, clinical cases, Brazilian experience.

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Authors: Quanru Pan

Abstract:

How to maintain the service speeds for the business to make the biggest profit is a problem worthy of study, which is discussed in this paper with the use of queuing theory. An M/M/1/N queuing model with variable input rates, variable service rates and impatient customers is established, and the following conclusions are drawn: the stationary distribution of the model, the relationship between the stationary distribution and the probability that there are n customers left in the system when a customer leaves (not including the customer who leaves himself), the busy period of the system, the average operating cycle, the loss probability for the customers not entering the system while they arriving at the system, the mean of the customers who leaves the system being for impatient, the loss probability for the customers not joining the queue due to the limited capacity of the system and many other indicators. This paper also indicates that the following conclusion is not correct: the more customers the business serve, the more profit they will get. At last, this paper points out the appropriate service speeds the business should keep to make the biggest profit.

Keywords: variable input rates, impatient customer, variable servicerates, profit maximization.

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Authors: Danielle Klassen, Reiko Yeap, Margo Schmitt-Boshnick, Scott Oddie

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The development of the 7-week Alberta Happiness Basics program was initiated in 2010 in response to the need for community mental health programming. This provincial wide program aims to increase overall happiness and reduce negative thoughts and feelings through a positive psychology intervention. While the 7-week program has proven effective, a shortened 4-week program has additionally been developed to address client needs. In this study, participants were interviewed to determine if the 4- and 7-week programs had similar success of producing lasting behavior change at 3, 6, and 9 months post-program. A health quality of life (HQOL) measure was also used to compare the two programs and examine patient outcomes. Quantitative and qualitative analysis showed significant improvements in HQOL and sustainable behavior change for both programs. Findings indicate that the shorter, patient-centered program was effective in increasing happiness and reducing negative thoughts and feelings.

Keywords: Primary care, mental health, depression, short duration.

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Authors: Zhaoyu Chen

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In this study, an attempt was made to find reasons why tourists go to particular attractions. Tourists may be either motivated by the attractions or simply make the choice to satisfy their needs and desires. Based on the attractions in Hong Kong, this research was conducted to explore the attraction-related concepts to discuss how the attraction system works. Due to the limited studies on exploring the attractiveness of attractions through tourist movement patterns, the study aims to evaluate such indicators to determine whether tourists are motivated by attractiveness or their own needs. The investigation is conducted through the comparison of different source markets - Mainland China, short haul markets (excluding Mainland China) and long haul markets. The latest finding of Departing Visitor Survey (DVS) implemented by the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) is employed for the analysis. Various tourist movement patterns are drawn from the practical data. The managerial implication to destination management organizations (DMOs) is suggested to better allocate attractions according to the needs of tourists.

Keywords: Attractions, attraction system, Hong Kong, tourist movement patterns.

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Authors: Milena M. Melo, Jane M. Santos, Severine Frere, Valderio A. Reisen, Neyval C. Reis Jr., Maria de Fátima S. Leite

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Although there had been a many studies that shows the impact of air pollution on physical health, comparatively less was known of human behavioral responses and annoyance impacts. Annoyance caused by air pollution is a public health problem because it can be an ambient stressor causing stress and disease and can affect quality of life. The objective of this work is to evaluate the annoyance caused by air pollution in two different industrialized urban areas, Dunkirk (France) and Vitoria (Brazil). The populations of these cities often report feeling annoyed by dust. Surveys were conducted, and the collected data were analyzed using statistical analyses. The results show that sociodemographic variables, importance of air quality, perceived industrial risk, perceived air pollution and occurrence of health problems play important roles in the perceived annoyance. These results show the existence of a common problem in geographically distant areas and allow stakeholders to develop prevention strategies.

Keywords: Air pollution, annoyance, industrial risks, perception of pollution, public health, settled dust.

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Authors: Lalitchandra J. Shah, Katarzyna Bialek, Melinda L. Clarke, Jessica L. Jansson

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Handwriting is essential to academic success; however, the current literature is limited in the identification of pre-handwriting skills. The purpose of this study was to identify the pre-handwriting skills, which occupational therapy practitioners deem important to handwriting success, as well as those which aid in intervention planning. The online survey instrument consisted of 33 questions that assessed various skills related to the development of handwriting, as well as captured demographic information. Both occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants were included in the survey study. The survey found that the respondents were in agreement that purposeful scribbling, the ability of a child to copy (vertical/horizontal lines, circle, squares, and triangles), imitating an oblique cross, cognitive skills (attention, praxis, self-regulation, sequencing), grasp patterns, hand dominance, in hand manipulation skills (shift, translation, rotation), bilateral integration, stabilization of paper, crossing midline, and visual perception were important indicators of handwriting readiness. The results of the survey support existing research regarding the skills necessary for the successful development of handwriting in children.

Keywords: Development, handwriting, occupational therapy, visual perceptual skills.

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Authors: C. S. Marques, M. J. Reis Lima, J. Oliveira, E. Teixeira-Lemos

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The growing concerns for physical wellbeing and health have been reflected in the way we choose food in our table. Nowadays, we are all more informed consumers and choose healthier foods. On the other hand, stroke, cancer and atherosclerosis may be somehow minimized by the intake of some bioactive compounds present in food, the so-called nutraceuticals and functional foods. The aim of this work was to make a revision of the published studies about the effects of some bioactive compounds, namely lycopene in human health, in the prevention of diseases, thus playing the role of a functional food. Free radical in human body can induce cell damage and consequently can be responsible for the development of some cancers and chronic diseases. Lycopene is one of the most powerful antioxidants known, being the predominant carotenoid in tomato. The respective chemistry, bioavailability, and its functional role in the prevention of several diseases will be object of this work. On the other hand, the inclusion of lycopene in some foods can also be made by biotechnology and represents a way to recover the wastes in the tomato industry with nutritional positive effects in health.

Keywords: Tomato, lycopene, bioavailability, functional foods, carotenoids, cancer and antioxidants.

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Authors: Kazeem A. Adebiyi

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Despite many success stories of manufacturing safety, many organizations are still reluctant, perceiving it as cost increasing and time consuming. The clear contributor may be due to the use of lagging indicators rather than leading indicator measures. The study therefore proposes a combinatorial model for determining the best safety strategy. A combination theory and cost benefit analysis was employed to develop a monetary saving / loss function in terms value of preventions and cost of prevention strategy. Documentations, interviews and structured questionnaire were employed to collect information on Before-And-After safety programme records from a Tobacco company between periods of 1993-2001(for pre-safety) and 2002-2008 (safety period) for the model application. Three combinatorial alternatives A, B, C were obtained resulting into 4, 6 and 4 strategies respectively with PPE and Training being predominant. A total of 728 accidents were recorded for a 9 year period of pre-safety programme and 163 accidents were recorded for 7 years period of safety programme. Six preventions activities (alternative B) yielded the best results. However, all the years of operation experienced except year 2004. The study provides a leading resources for planning successful safety programme

Keywords: Combination, Manufacturing Safety, Monetary Savings, Prevention Strategies.

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Authors: Mannan Mridha, Usama Gazay, Kosovare V. Aslani, Hugo Linder, Alice Ravizza, Carmelo de Maria

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In most developing countries, although the vast majority of the people are living in the rural areas, the qualified medical doctors are not available there. Health care workers and paramedics, called village doctors, informal healthcare providers, are largely responsible for the rural medical care. Mishaps due to wrong diagnosis and inappropriate medication have been causing serious suffering that is preventable. While innovators have created many devices, the vast majority of these technologies do not find applications to address the needs and conditions in low-resource settings. The primary motive is to address the acute lack of affordable medical technologies for the poor people in low-resource settings. A low cost smart medical device that is portable, battery operated and can be used at any point of care has been developed to detect breathing rate, electrocardiogram (ECG) and arterial pulse rate to improve diagnosis and monitoring of patients and thus improve care and safety. This simple and easy to use smart medical device can be used, managed and maintained effectively and safely by any health worker with some training. In order to empower the health workers and village doctors, our device is being further developed to integrate with ICT tools like smart phones and connect to the medical experts wherever available, to manage the serious health problems.

Keywords: Healthcare for low resources settings, health awareness education, improve patient care and safety, smart and affordable medical device.

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Authors: L. Basha, E. Gjika

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The exchange rate is one of the most important economic variables, especially for a small, open economy such as Albania. Its effect is noticeable on one country's competitiveness, trade and current account, inflation, wages, domestic economic activity and bank stability. This study investigates the fluctuation of Albania’s exchange rates using monthly average foreign currency, Euro (Eur) to Albanian Lek (ALL) exchange rate with a time span from January 2008 to June 2021 and the macroeconomic factors that have a significant effect on the exchange rate. Initially, the Random Forest Regression algorithm is constructed to understand the impact of economic variables in the behavior of monthly average foreign currencies exchange rates. Then the forecast of macro-economic indicators for 12 months was performed using time series models. The predicted values received are placed in the random forest model in order to obtain the average monthly forecast of Euro to Albanian Lek (ALL) exchange rate for the period July 2021 to June 2022.

Keywords: Exchange rate, Random Forest, time series, Machine Learning, forecasting.

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Authors: Supunmali Ahangama, Danny Chiang Choon Poo

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Health analytics (HA) is used in healthcare systems for effective decision making, management and planning of healthcare and related activities. However, user resistances, unique position of medical data content and structure (including heterogeneous and unstructured data) and impromptu HA projects have held up the progress in HA applications. Notably, the accuracy of outcomes depends on the skills and the domain knowledge of the data analyst working on the healthcare data. Success of HA depends on having a sound process model, effective project management and availability of supporting tools. Thus, to overcome these challenges through an effective process model, we propose a HA process model with features from rational unified process (RUP) model and agile methodology.

Keywords: Agile methodology, health analytics, unified process model, UML.

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Authors: Anca E. Gurzau, Alexandru Coman, Eugen S. Gurzau, Marinela Penes, Daniela Dumitrescu, DorinMarchean, Ioan Chera

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The environment pollution with pesticides and heavy metals is a recognized problem nowadays, with extension to the global scale the tendency of amplification. Even with all the progress in the environmental field, both in the emphasize of the effect of the pollutants upon health, the linked studies environment-health are insufficient, not only in Romania but all over the world also. We aim to describe the particular situation in Romania regarding the uncontrolled use of pesticides, to identify and evaluate the risk zones for health and the environment in Romania, with the final goal of designing adequate programs for reduction and control of the risk sources. An exploratory study was conducted to determine the magnitude of the pesticide use problem in a population living in Saliste, a rural setting in Transylvania, Romania. The significant stakeholders in Saliste region were interviewed and a sample from the population living in Saliste area was selected to fill in a designed questionnaire. All the selected participants declared that they used pesticides in their activities for more than one purpose. They declared they annually applied pesticides for a period of time between 11 and 30 years, from 5 to 9 days per year on average, mainly on crops situated at some distance from the houses but high risk behavior was identified as the volunteers declared the use of pesticides in the backyard gardens, near their homes, where children were playing. The pesticide applicators did not have the necessary knowledge about safety and exposure. The health data must be correlated with exposure biomarkers in attempt to identify the possible health effects of the pesticides exposure. Future plans include educational campaigns to raise the awareness of the population on the danger of uncontrolled use of pesticides.

Keywords: Pesticides, health effects, Romania, Saliste.

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Authors: Hamidou Diallo, Marianne Guille

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This paper identifies leading triggers of deficient episodes in terms of GDP growth based on a sample of countries at different stages of development over 1994-2017. Using logit models, we build early warning systems (EWS) and our results show important differences between developing countries (DCs) and advanced economies (AEs). For AEs, the main predictors of the probability of entering in a GDP growth deficient episode are the deterioration of external imbalances and the vulnerability of fiscal position while DCs face different challenges that need to be considered. The key indicators for them are first, the low ability to pay its debts and second, their belonging or not to a common currency area. We also build homogeneous pools of countries inside AEs and DCs. For AEs, the evolution of the proportion of countries in the riskiest pool is marked first, by three distinct peaks just after the high-tech bubble burst, the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, and second by a very low minimum level in 2006 and 2007. In contrast, the situation of DCs is characterized first by a relative stability of this proportion and then by an upward trend from 2006, that can be explained by more unfavorable socio-political environment leading to shortcomings in the fiscal consolidation.

Keywords: GDP growth, early warning system, advanced economies, developing countries.

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Authors: Cai Guoqiang, Jia Limin, Zhou Liming, Liang yu, Li xi

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This paper analysis the integrated use of safety monitoring with the domestic and international latest research on rail safety protection system, and focus on the implementation of an organic whole system, with the monitoring and early warning, risk assessment, predictive control and emergency rescue system. The system framework, contents and system structure of Security system is proposed completely. It-s pointed out that the Security system is a negative feedback system composed of by safety monitoring and warning system, risk assessment and emergency rescue system. Safety monitoring and warning system focus on the monitoring target monitoring, early warning, tracking, integration of decision-making, for objective and subjective risks factors. Risk assessment system analysis the occurrence of a major Security risk mechanism, determines the standard of the future short, medium and long term safety conditions, and give prop for development of safety indicators, accident analysis and safety standards. Emergency rescue system is with the goal of rapid and effective rescue work for accident, to minimize casualties and property losses.

Keywords: rail safety protection, monitoring and early warning, risk assessment, emergency rescue.

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Authors: B. Muhammadani

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Health workforce is a fundamental component of health system and plays a significant role in delivering effective health care services. However, there is a crucial shortage of skilled personnel which make them prone to work in stressful conditions. In spite of excessively high workload and burnout among the staff, little attention is given to their job satisfaction level which has serious implications on the productivity and effective performance of staff to achieve organizational goals. Therefore, this study aims to explore the job satisfaction of midwives working in the labor ward of the Lady Dufferin Hospital, Karachi. A cross-sectional survey was conducted. The short version of Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire was administered on a convenient sample group of 22 midwives to gather information on their job satisfaction. The results demonstrated that midwives were overall satisfied with their job. The level of job satisfaction was however found different in various positions within midwifery cadre. The head of midwives was highly satisfied as compared to midwifery staff who works under the supervision of head. The level of satisfaction of team leaders fall between the head and staff of midwifery. Similar trends were observed for both intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. Such evidences on these issues are essential and useful as it helps explore the attitudes of individuals towards work which has direct implications on access to quality care services. Strategic interventions are required at organizational level to provide motivators and satisfiers to health workers for their work related satisfaction and enhanced motivation.

Keywords: Health workforce, job satisfaction, motivation, workload, burnout, midwives, health system.

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Authors: Bing-Wen Chen, Alvin W. Y. Su, Yu-Lin Wang

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Electromyography (EMG) is one of the important indicators during exercise, as it is closely related to the level of muscle activations. This work quantifies the muscle conditions of the lower limbs in a constant workload exercise. Surface EMG signals of the vastus laterals (VL), vastus medialis (VM), rectus femoris (RF), gastrocnemius medianus (GM), gastrocnemius lateral (GL) and Soleus (SOL) were recorded from fourteen healthy males. The EMG signals were segmented in two phases: activation segment (AS) and relaxation segment (RS). Period entropy (PE), peak count (PC), zero crossing (ZC), wave length (WL), mean power frequency (MPF), median frequency (MDF) and root mean square (RMS) are calculated to provide the quantitative information of the measured EMG segments. The outcomes reveal that the PE, PC, ZC and RMS have significantly changed (p<.001); WL presents moderately changed (p<.01); MPF and MDF show no changed (p>.05) during exercise. The results also suggest that the RS is also preferred for performance evaluation, while the results of the extracted features in AS are usually affected directly by the amplitudes. It is further found that the VL exhibits the most significant changes within six muscles during pedaling exercise. The proposed work could be applied to quantify the stamina analysis and to predict the instant muscle status in athletes.

Keywords: EMG, feature extraction, muscle status, pedaling exercise, relaxation segment.

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Authors: Alexander Y. Vaninsky

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This paper presents a simplified version of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) - a conventional approach to evaluating the performance and ranking of competitive objects characterized by two groups of factors acting in opposite directions: inputs and outputs. DEA with a Perfect Object (DEA PO) augments the group of actual objects with a virtual Perfect Object - the one having greatest outputs and smallest inputs. It allows for obtaining an explicit analytical solution and making a step to an absolute efficiency. This paper develops this approach further and introduces a DEA model with Partially Perfect Objects. DEA PPO consecutively eliminates the smallest relative inputs or greatest relative outputs, and applies DEA PO to the reduced collections of indicators. The partial efficiency scores are combined to get the weighted efficiency score. The computational scheme remains simple, like that of DEA PO, but the advantage of the DEA PPO is taking into account all of the inputs and outputs for each actual object. Firm evaluation is considered as an example.

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis, Perfect object, Partially perfect object, Partial efficiency, Explicit solution, Simplified algorithm.

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Authors: Ammal M. Metwally, Ghada A. Abdel-Latif, Walaa A. Fouad, Thanaa M. Rabah, Amira Mohsen, Fatma A. Shaaban, Iman I. Salama

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The study aimed at determining the impact of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection on patients’ Quality of Life (QoL), its relation to geographical characteristics of patients, awareness of the disease, treatment regimen, co-morbid psychiatric or other diseases. 457 patients were randomly selected from ten National Treatment Reference Centers of Ministry of Health hospitals from four community locations representing Egypt. Health related QoL assessment questionnaire with the 36-item Short Form used for assessment of the enrolled patients. The study showed no significant difference between HCV patients in different governorates as regards total QoL. Females, illiterate patients and those had bilharziasis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension or were depressed had significantly the lowest QoL score. HCV patients who knew the danger of the disease had significant lower mean score of physical and mental health components. Optimal care of overall well-being of HCV patients requires adequate knowledge of their neurological and psychological status. It is important to know how to cope with having a family member with hepatitis C and more importantly to know what should you say and what shouldn’t you say as a positive hopeful attitude is essential for combating HCV chronic infection.

Keywords: Hepatitis C virus chronic infection, physical health component and mental health component of QoL, total quality of life.

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Authors: Yingjie Zhang, Ming Li, Ying Zhang, Jing Zhang, Zuolei Hu

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In the actual start-up process of DC motors, the DC drive system often faces a conflict between energy consumption and acceleration performance. To resolve the conflict, this paper proposes a comprehensive performance index that energy consumption index is added on the basis of classical control performance index in the DC motor starting process. Taking the comprehensive performance index as the cost function, particle swarm optimization algorithm is designed to optimize the comprehensive performance. Then it conducts simulations on the optimization of the comprehensive performance of the DC motor on condition that the weight coefficient of the energy consumption index should be properly designed. The simulation results show that as the weight of energy consumption increased, the energy efficiency was significantly improved at the expense of a slight sacrifice of fastness indicators with the comprehensive performance index method. The energy efficiency was increased from 63.18% to 68.48% and the response time reduced from 0.2875s to 0.1736s simultaneously compared with traditional proportion integrals differential controller in energy saving.

Keywords: Comprehensive performance index, energy consumption, acceleration performance, particle swarm optimal control.

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Authors: Frank C. Pan

Abstract:

The Taiwan Health Literacy Scale (THLS) was developed to cope with the need of measuring heath literacy of Chinese-speaking adults in Taiwan. Although the scale was proven having good reliability and validity, it was not popularly adopted by the practitioners due to the length, and the time required completing. Based on the THLS, this research further invited healthcare professionals to review the original scale for a possible shorten work. Under the logic of THLS, the research adopted an analytic hierarchy process technique to consolidate the healthcare experts- assessments to shorten the original scale. There are fifteen items out of the original 66 items were identified having higher loadings. Confirmed by the experts and passed a pilot test with 40 undergraduate students, a short form of THLS is then introduced. This research then used 839 samples from the major cities of the Hua-lien county in the eastern part of Taiwan to test the reliability and validity of this new scale. The reliability of the scale is high and acceptable. The current scale is also highly correlated with the original, of which provide evidence for the validity of the scale.

Keywords: Health literacy, THLS, health education, STHLS.

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Authors: A. Sohrabi

Abstract:

The importance of local food products and their promotion are drivers for economic growth. Entrepreneurship is one of the most important tools for development, which puts its most important effect on the way of increasing business in society. The purpose of this paper is to assess the breadth of food strategies in Italy toward to promoting local Italian foods in order to present useful food policies for developing countries. The methodology of this paper is based on qualitative analysis. In order to achieve such objectives, a literature review is carried out by employing documenting study. In this research, at first, we seek to present compliance’s concepts and definitions. Then, after examining the dimensions of the three strategies, we access to the indicators and compare their effects in order to present some useful policies and guidelines for developing countries. Despite of the limitations like inaccessibility, performance of companies in exporting local foods and lacking perception of awareness and experience of people, the study offers possible ways for future, as an example for Middle East countries to promote Italian local foods. The finding of this paper evaluates the three strategies in order to promote local food entrepreneurship in Italy and developing countries.

Keywords: Local food, Italian food, Italian strategy, food policy.

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