The existence of items not susceptible to the event of interest is of both theoretical and practical importance. Although researchers may provide, for example, biological, medical, or sociological ...evidence for the presence of such items (cured), statistical models performing well under the existence or not of a cured proportion, frequently offer a necessary flexibility. This work introduces a new reparameterization of a flexible family of cure models, which not only includes among its special cases, the most studied cure models (such as the mixture, bounded cumulative hazard, and negative binomial cure model) but also classical survival models (ie, without cured items). One of the main properties of the proposed family, apart from its computationally tractable closed form, is that the case of zero cured proportion is not found at the boundary of the parameter space, as it typically happens to other families. A simulation study examines the (finite) performance of the suggested methodology, focusing to the estimation through EM algorithm and model discrimination, by the aid of the likelihood ratio test and Akaike information criterion; for illustrative purposes, analysis of two real life datasets (on recidivism and cutaneous melanoma) is also carried out.
This paper is a discussion of the factors that might be used to establish a suitable light level for subsidiary roads where the target users are pedestrians. The weighting parameters used in the ...Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage document CIE115:2010 to discriminate between the six levels of the P-series of lighting classes are questioned. Limitations of the weighting parameters include (1) while some of the weighting parameters are associated with pedestrian road traffic collisions, they do not lead to optimal lighting conditions or to predicable relationships, (2) there is no evidence to support the one-class change prompted by a change in level of a weighting parameter nor for the assumed cumulative effect of different weighting parameters, and (3) they do not match the stated purposes of lighting in subsidiary roads. Giving consideration to the situations where evidence indicates a change in light level is warranted, and not assuming that different parameters are cumulative in effect, leads to a three-class system similar to those in the British Standard BS5489-3:1992 and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America IESNA Design Guide 5:1994.
This article discusses quantitative recommendations for road lighting as given in guidelines and standards, primarily, the amount of light. The discussion is framed according to the type of road ...user, the driver and the pedestrian, these being the user groups associated with major and minor roads, respectively. Presented first is a brief history of road lighting standards, from early to current versions, and, where known, the basis of these standards. Recommendations for the amount of light do not appear to be well-founded in robust empirical evidence, or at least do not tend to reveal the nature of any evidence. This suggests a need to reconsider recommended light levels, a need reinforced by recent developments in the science and technology of lighting and of lighting research. To enable improved recommendations, there is a need for further evidence of the effects of changes in lighting: This article therefore discusses the findings of investigations, which might be considered when developing new standards.
The magnitude of discomfort glare has often been evaluated using the de Boer rating scale. This note raises doubts about measuring discomfort glare this way. There is a possibility that the presence ...of discomfort may be a false alarm because this rating scale forces an opinion and/or because the response scale does not include a `no glare' option. Further, there is a possibility that response variance is increased through uncertainty over the meaning of the magnitude descriptors. Actions that will reduce the likelihood of such distortions occurring are suggested.
This article presents a review of the methods used for subjective evaluation of discomfort from glare, focusing on the two procedures most frequently used in past research - adjustment and category ...rating. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that some aspects of these procedures influence the evaluation, such as the range of glare source luminances available in an adjustment procedure, leading to biased evaluations and which hence reduce the reliability and validity of the data. The article offers recommendations for good practice when using these procedures and also suggests alternative methods that might be explored in further work.
Managing daily nutrition is a prominent concern among individuals in contemporary society. The advancement of dietary assessment systems and applications utilizing images has facilitated the ...effective management of individuals' nutritional information and dietary habits over time. The determination of food weight or volume is a vital part in these systems for assessing food quantities and nutritional information. This study presents a novel methodology for evaluating the weight of food by utilizing extracted features from images and training them through advanced boosting regression algorithms. Α unique dataset of 23,052 annotated food images of Mediterranean cuisine, including 226 different dishes with a reference object placed next to the dish, was used to train the proposed pipeline. Then, using extracted features from the annotated images, such as food area, reference object area, food id, food category, and food weight, we built a dataframe with 24,996 records. Finally, we trained the weight estimation model by applying cross validation, hyperparameter tuning, and boosting regression algorithms such as XGBoost, CatBoost, and LightGBM. Between the predicted and actual weight values for each food in the proposed dataset, the proposed model achieves a mean weight absolute error 3.93 g, a mean absolute percentage error 3.73% and a root mean square error 6.05 g for the 226 food items of the Mediterranean Greek Food database (MedGRFood), setting new perspectives in food image-based weight and nutrition estimate models and systems.
This study aims to validate the Greek version of the 54-item Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), a measure designed to assess an individual's capacity for understanding themselves and others ...based on internal mental states. This capacity, also known as Reflective Functioning (RF) or mentalizing, is believed to play a significant role in both typical and atypical development. The validation process examined the factor structure of the RFQ and its relationship with a variety of psychosocial and clinical constructs that have theoretical and empirical links to RF. Additionally, this research investigated the factor structure's invariance across gender and age groups to determine the robustness of the instrument. A unique contribution of this work lies in examining the application of the RFQ to attachment classifications through the use of cluster analysis. The sample consisted of 875 Greek adults from the general community with a mean age of 28.5 and a median age of 22. Participants completed the Greek RFQ along with a series of self-report questionnaires assessing psychosocial constructs, including attachment, epistemic trust, emotion regulation, and psychological mindedness, as well as clinical variables such as anxiety, depression, and borderline personality traits. Our findings suggest that a shorter, 31-item version of the questionnaire provides a robust three-factor structure across a non-clinical Greek adult population. The three identified subscales are (a) excessive certainty, (b) interest/curiosity, and (c) uncertainty/confusion, all demonstrating satisfactory reliability and construct validity. The uncertainty subscale was found to be associated with insecure attachment styles, epistemic mistrust and credulity, emotional suppression, and low psychological mindedness. In contrast, the certainty and curiosity subscales were linked to secure attachment, epistemic trust, emotion reappraisal, and psychological mindedness. Uncertainty was further shown to differ significantly across probable clinical and non-clinical groups, as distinguished by cut-off scores for anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, the certainty and interest/curiosity subscales only varied between the two BPD groups. Our results provide the first evidence supporting the use of a 31-item version of the RFQ with three validated subscales to reliably assess reflective functioning in the Greek population, demonstrating stronger psychometric properties compared to other RFQ versions reported in previous studies. Findings suggest that impaired mentalizing capacity, as measured by the RFQ, is linked to insecure attachment, epistemic mistrust and credulity, poor emotion regulation, and low psychological mindedness, and potentially plays a role in adult mental health symptoms.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Cultural factors in Libya (and other Muslim countries) require female privacy to be maintained. Outside the home, females must wear clothing that reveals only the face and hands. When inside the home ...and located near windows, a similar degree of clothing cover or window treatment is required. This reduces exposure to natural daylight, with resultant reduction in health benefits of daylight. We are therefore investigating the degree to which window treatments offer sufficient privacy to permit relaxed clothing in the home. Two window treatments were tested: horizontal blinds and frosted glass, varying the free area and degree of frosting, respectively. The degree of privacy offered was operationalised by identification of the clothing level worn by a target behind the window treatment, the aim being to reduce identification to a chance level. For 0.3 s observations, only the extreme level of each treatment (horizontal blinds set to 3% free area and distortion level 20 for the frosted glass) led to chance levels of clothing identification, for both actors. For 3.0 s observations, there were significant differences in clothing identification, suggesting insufficient privacy.
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a significant health problem with approximately 20 million individuals infected annually. HEV infection has been associated with a wide spectrum of extrahepatic ...manifestations, including neurological, hematological and renal disorders. Guillain-Barré syndrome and neuralgic amyotrophy are the most frequent neurological manifestations. In addition, HEV infection has been observed with other neurological diseases, such as encephalitis, myelitis and Bell's palsy. Hematologic manifestations include anemia due to glucose-6-phospate dehydrogonase deficiency, autoimmune hemolytic anemia and severe thrombocytopenia. Membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis and relapse IgA nephropathy with or without coexisting cryoglobulinemia appear to be the most common renal injuries related with HEV infection. Also, HEV infection has been associated with acute pancreatitis and other immune-mediated manifestations, such as arthritis and myocarditis. However, the pathophysiologic mechanisms of HEV-related extrahepatic manifestations are still largely unclear.
This paper investigates the illuminance needed to detect trip hazards for pedestrians walking after dark. In previous work, it was assumed that the critical obstacle height is 25 mm: further review ...of accident data and foot clearance data suggests instead that 10 mm is the critical height. Eye tracking records suggest a tendency for obstacles to be detected approximately 3.4 m ahead. Interpretation of obstacle detection data suggests horizontal photopic illuminances of up to 0.9 lux are required for peripheral detection of a 10 mm obstacle 3.4 m ahead, according to the scotopic/photopic ratio of the lighting and the age of the observer.
PDF
