Significant Results Research Articles

Evaluation of Salivary Glucose and Salivary Cortisol in Association with Periodontitis in People with Type II Diabetes: A Case-control Study.

The relationship between type II diabetes mellitus (DM) and periodontal disease (PD) has been discussed in recent years and may vary according to the patient's location, sex, age and family history. In view of this possible association between periodontitis and DM, this study aimed to evaluate salivary glucose and salivary cortisol levels with periodontitis (staging and degree) in people with type II diabetes compared to non-diabetic individuals. This was a case-control study, with 60 participants divided into two groups: DM2- people with type II diabetes (n=30) and NDM- non-diabetic individuals (n=30). For both, a clinical form and periogram were filled out, and blood samples (glycemia, glycated hemoglobin, and cortisol) and saliva (glucose and cortisol) were collected. The diagnosis of periodontitis was 100% in the DM2 group and 80% in the NDM group. As for staging and degree, in the DM2 group, 70% of the participants were in stage IV and 86.67% were in grade C, while in the NDM group, 58.3% of the participants were in stage I and 70.8% were in grade A. Significant differences were observed for the following variables: bleeding to probing and clinical attachment level. The laboratory data presented significant results regarding serum glucose, salivary glucose, and glycated hemoglobin. Regarding the influence of salivary glucose and cortisol on periodontal status (staging and degree), these had higher means in the DM2 group when compared to the NDM group. An association of salivary glucose and cortisol levels with the periodontal condition presented by type II diabetic individuals compared to non-diabetic individuals is suggested.

Adaptive Autonomic and Neuroplastic Control in Diabetic Neuropathy: A Narrative Review.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a worldwide socioeconomic burden, and is accompanied by a variety of metabolic disorders, as well as nerve dysfunction referred to as diabetic neuropathy (DN). Despite a tremendous body of research, the pathogenesis of DN remains largely elusive. Currently, two schools of thought exist regarding the pathogenesis of diabetic neuropathy: a) mitochondrial-induced toxicity, and b) microvascular damage. Both mechanisms signify DN as an intractable disease and, as a consequence, therapeutic approaches treat symptoms with limited efficacy and risk of side effects. Here, we propose that the human body exclusively employs mechanisms of adaptation to protect itself during an adverse event. For this purpose, two control systems are defined, namely the autonomic and the neural control systems. The autonomic control system responds via inflammatory and immune responses, while the neural control system regulates neural signaling, via plastic adaptation. Both systems are proposed to regulate a network of temporal and causative connections which unravel the complex nature of diabetic complications. A significant result of this approach infers that both systems make DN reversible, thus opening the door to novel therapeutic applications.

Technical assessment of shear bond strength at ceramo-alloy interface after various surface treatment combinations and application of metal bonding agent.

Bonding between metal and ceramic is one of the most important aspects of a successful prosthesis. Various methods have been recommended for preparing the metal surface to enhance the bond between metal and ceramic including the use of a metal bonding agent. This study aims to evaluate and compare the shear bond strength of the metal-ceramic (M-C) interface after combinations of various surface treatments including the application of a metal bonding agent. 40 Ni-Cr alloy specimens were made and divided into 4 groups of 10 each based on the combination of surface treatments. Sandblasting, surface grinding, and Oxidation heat treatment (OHT) were performed on specimens from Group 1 (Control). In addition, Group 2 specimens received ultrasonic cleaning, Group 3 steam cleaning, and Group 4 metal bonding agent application. Following surface treatments on all specimens, porcelain build-up was performed, and shear bond strength was tested in a Digital Universal testing machine. The statistical tests used were independent t-test and ANOVA. Results revealed that Group 4 specimens had the highest mean value of shear bond strength of 39.087 MPa while Group 3 specimens showed the least mean shear bond strength of 18.154 MPa with highly statistically significant results (p< 0.001). The surface treatments and application of bonding agent to metal prior to porcelain application resulted in increased shear bond strength of the metal-ceramic interface.

Individualized Homeopathic Medicines in the Treatment of Knee Osteoarthritis: Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Feasibility Trial.

This study aimed at examining the feasibility issues of comparing individualized homeopathic medicines (IHMs) with identical-looking placebos for treating knee osteoarthritis (OA). Forty eligible patients participated in this double-blind, randomized (1:1), placebo-controlled feasibility trial in the outpatient clinics of a homeopathic hospital in West Bengal, India. Either IHMs or identical-looking placebos were administered, along with mutually agreed-upon concomitant care guidelines. The Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) was the primary outcome measure, along with derived Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) scores from KOOS. The EQ-5D-5L questionnaire and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) were the secondary outcomes. All were measured at baseline and after 2 months. Group differences and effect sizes (Cohen's d) were estimated using an intention-to-treat approach. p-Values less than 0.05 (two-tailed) were considered statistically significant. Enrolment/screening and trial retention rates were 43% and 85% respectively. Recruitment was difficult owing to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown. Group differences were statistically significant, favoring IHMs against placebos in all the KOOS sub-scales: symptoms (p < 0.001), pain (p = 0.002), activities of daily living (p < 0.001), sports or recreation (p = 0.016), and quality of life (p = 0.002). Derived WOMAC scores from KOOS favored IHMs against placebos: stiffness (p < 0.001) and pain (p < 0.001). The EQ-5D-5L questionnaire score (p < 0.001) and EQ-5D-5L VAS scores (p < 0.001) also yielded significant results, favoring IHMs over placebos. All the effect sizes ranged from moderate to large. Sulphur was the most frequently prescribed homeopathic medication. Neither group reported any harm or serious adverse events. Although recruitment was sub-optimal due to prevailing COVID-19 conditions during the trial, the action of IHMs was found to be superior to that of placebos in the treatment of knee OA. Larger and more definitive studies, with independent replications, are warranted in order to substantiate the findings. CTRI/2021/02/031453.

Building an Open-Vocabulary Video CLIP Model With Better Architectures, Optimization and Data.

Despite significant results achieved by Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) in zero-shot image recognition, limited effort has been made exploring its potential for zero-shot video recognition. This paper presents Open-VCLIP++, a simple yet effective framework that adapts CLIP to a strong zero-shot video classifier, capable of identifying novel actions and events during testing. Open-VCLIP++ minimally modifies CLIP to capture spatial-temporal relationships in videos, thereby creating a specialized video classifier while striving for generalization. We formally demonstrate that training Open-VCLIP++ is tantamount to continual learning with zero historical data. To address this problem, we introduce Interpolated Weight Optimization, a technique that leverages the advantages of weight interpolation during both training and testing. Furthermore, we build upon large language models to produce fine-grained video descriptions. These detailed descriptions are further aligned with video features, facilitating a better transfer of CLIP to the video domain. Our approach is evaluated on three widely used action recognition datasets, following a variety of zero-shot evaluation protocols. The results demonstrate that our method surpasses existing state-of-the-art techniques by significant margins. Specifically, we achieve zero-shot accuracy scores of 88.1%, 58.7%, and 81.2% on UCF, HMDB, and Kinetics-600 datasets respectively, outpacing the best-performing alternative methods by 8.5%, 8.2%, and 12.3%. We also evaluate our approach on the MSR-VTT video-text retrieval dataset, where it delivers competitive video-to-text and text-to-video retrieval performance, while utilizing substantially less fine-tuning data compared to other methods.

Pluridisciplinary approaches in global postural rehabilitation

The global postural imbalances relationship is frequently encountered in recent medical practice, requiring multidisciplinary approaches to bring patients to function as close as possible according to the physiological limit. About half of the world’s population experi-ences pain and dysfunction induced by postural imbalances during their lifetime. This re-port aimed to assess the nonpainfull and currative effect of the electropuncture technique complemented by massage and active postural kinetotherapy of global posture imbalances and acute or chronical pain at various levels. This research provide an insight into the re-port of evidence available for the analgesic uses of TENS in postural defects. Correlations regarding imbalances at various levels was found in various studies regarding analyze or diagnosis, without addressing the non-invasive multidisciplinary treatment. In these stud-ies, we are hoping to raise the non-invasive reabilitation treatment and increase their use in pathologies with involves global postural imbalances. The discomfort and pain experi-enced by people with generalized postural disorder on a daily basis can have a negative impact on quality of life and, if left untreated, can lead to significant worsening of the con-dition over time. Global rehabilitation with non-invasive and non-pharmacological meth-ods, without adverse effects, including electropuncture (TENS) applied to the refferal points in conjunction with proprioceptive kinetotherapy techniques, massage and psycho-therapy is the path to the success of occlusion-postural rehabilitation with significant re-sults on painful suffering global postural imbalances. Keywords: global posture, postural imbalance, correlation, rehabilitation, multidisciplinary, electropuncture

Language use and attitudes of prospective teachers: a comparison of the Basque and Friulian multilingual contexts

ABSTRACT Since educators play a decisive role in the formation of language attitudes, this study analyses perceived competence, habits of language use and attitudes towards three languages in contact harboured by prospective teachers. Our research replicates a 20-year-old study and is comparative, as it parallels two European regions: the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain, and Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy. The sample was made up of 553 participants. Quantitative data were collected by means of the original questionnaire. Significant results were obtained, with strong effect sizes. As for the minority language, our results show that while Basque is mainly linked with the educational domain and tends to be used more often with younger people, the situation is different for Friulian, which is virtually absent from the educational domain and tends to be used in exchanges with older people. The status of majority language is especially true for Italian in FVG, which, in addition to being the main language in education, is predominantly used by future teachers in all domains of their daily life. As for English, our findings seem to indicate that its general position is becoming stronger, and this trend may be maintained in both contexts in the future.

SAVI-based animated video for seismic material

Learning media supports effective and efficient learning. Meanwhile, seismic learning is deemed as a challenging geography course, thereby, requiring animated video as a medium to visualize abstract concepts into concrete ones. Thus, this study formulates animated learning videos using the SAVI approach for seismic material. It also assesses the effect of animated video media on student learning outcomes. The animation video was constructed using the ADDIE research model and tried out in a pre-experimental pretest-posttest type one group design. The trial was conducted involving 27 tenth grade students from Sunan Ampel Islamic Senior High School. The results of the validity test from the material expert indicate an 88 percent agreement rate, while the media expert shows an 87.3 percent agreement rate. The teacher's response questionnaire received a score of 97 percent, while the student responses received a score of 88%. After attending learning with animated video, the average student score increased from 51.31 to 83.77 in the pretest and posttest results. The data obtained from the normality test showed a normal distribution, while the t-test suggested significant results with sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 lees than 0.05. These results imply a significant difference in students' skills before and after the use of animated video media. In summary, the developed media is suitable for seismic learning, offering a positive impact on student learning outcomes.

DL-TBAM: Deep Learning Transformer based Architecture Model for Sentiment Analysis on Tamil-English Dataset

NLP, or natural language processing, is a subfield of AI that aims to equip computers with the ability to understand and analyze human language. Sentiment analysis is a widely used application of NLP, particularly for examining attitudes expressed in online conversations. Nevertheless, many social media comments are written in languages that are not native to the authors, making sentiment analysis more difficult, especially for languages with limited resources, such as Tamil. To tackle this issue, a code-mixed and sentiment-annotated corpus in Tamil and English was created. This article will explain how the corpus was established, including the process of data collection and the assignment of polarities. The article will also explore the agreement between annotators and the results of sentiment analysis performed on the corpus. This work signifies various performance metrics such as precision, recall, support, and F1-score for the transformer-based model such as BERT, RoBerta, and XLM-RoBerta. Among the various models, XLM-Robert shows slightly significant positive results on the code-mixed corpus when compared to the state of art models.

Exploring linguistic signage in higher education: An empirical study of a linguistically diverse context

This study offers a comprehensive examination of the linguistic landscape in a nonmetropolitan university, focusing on the dominant language used in university signage. The study primarily delves into the multilingual characteristics and nature of Western Mindanao State University, situated in a linguistically-diverse environment. The study employed analytical categories, which was utilized to serve as basis in selecting and gathering data from various signages across the university, to ensure the accuracy of the data collection. The findings of the study indicated that the university contains five (5) languages that make its linguistic landscape, specifically: English (95.51%), Filipino (7.81%), Chavacano (3.07%), Tausug (1.28%), and Bisaya (0.64%). The data was analyzed using the content analysis to accurately interpret the taken photographs in the university. The study also uncovers the inequality of the number of signages, wherein majority of the signages are monolingual nature, and only limited on the bilingual and multilingual signs. The investigation also revealed a significant result that English is the dominant language used on signages despite the locale’s diverse linguistic and cultural background. The major findings of this study portray that Western Mindanao State University employs both official and non-official signages throughout the campus and in terms of linguistic diversity, local languages are not entirely prevalent and observable on the signages across the entire campus. Consequently, despite the university’s focus towards internationalization and global excellence, there is observable scarcity in multilingual signages. It is imperative to acknowledge the value of multilingual signages, not only for the purpose of communication, but for the preservation of local languages, that are crucial for cultural and ethnic representations.

Borderline Bireylerde Kendine Zarar Verme Davranışı ve İntihar Girişimine Yönelik Psikolojik Müdahaleler: Sistematik Derleme

Self-harm behaviour and suicide attempts are considered maladaptive coping mechanisms by individuals with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Numerous studies have demonstrated that individuals with BPD are at a heightened risk for self-harm behaviour and suicide. Therefore, there is a need for intervention efforts aimed at reducing self-harm and suicide attempts in this population by promoting more functional coping strategies. No systematic review has been conducted to explore the effectiveness of such interventions. A systematic review was performed to identify randomized controlled trials of interventions to reduce self-harm and suicide attempts among individuals with BPD, published between 2012 and 2022. PsycARTICLES, PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, and Taylor &amp; Francis databases were examined in the review. A total of 6,760 studies were initially screened, only 13 were selected for review based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results indicated that the standard dialectical behaviour therapy protocol, with the addition of psychological intervention components such as skills training, exposure and acceptance, statistically significantly increased recovery. Statistically significant results have been obtained from various psychotherapeutic intervention groups such as schema therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and emotion regulation therapy However, it was noted that existing protocols might be inadequate in preventing relapse and addressing potential negative outcomes such as premature termination of therapy.

Investigation of Radon, Total Electron Content and Linear and Nonlinear Variations of Meteorological Variables Due to Earthquakes: ARIMA and Monte Carlo Modelling

An Integrated Autoregressive Moving Average (ARIMA) - Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) is proposed to analyze and model the anomalies of atmospheric and ground gases by an earthquake along the North Anatolian Fault Zone (Türkiye). Earthquakes, Soil radon gas and Total Electron Content (TEC) showed simultaneous anomalies. There are positive relationships between these three parameters. Also, positive relations between Rn, meteorology, and atmosphere are detected. The proposed ARIMA model and MCS for the Rn-TEC-Earthquake relationships of the measured data gave statistically significant results. This model and simulation showed statistically significant changes in the effects of microearthquakes, which are more difficult to detect than large earthquakes, especially on the ionospheric TEC.

Effect of vitamin D3 supplementation on blood parameters and liver gene expression in female rats.

To better understand the molecular mechanism responsible for the therapeutic potential of vitamin D, we conducted an analysis of the liver transcriptomes of adult female rats. Adult female rats (n = 18) were divided into three groups, receiving different doses of vitamin D: group I, 0; group II, 1000 U/kg; and group III, 5000 U/kg. Growth, body weight, the weight of main organs, blood haematological and biochemical parameters were evaluated. Gene expression in the liver were analyzed using RNA-seq and qPCR techniques. We observed a lower platelet count (p < 0,008) and a significantly greater (p < 0.02) number of WBCs in rats supplemented with 1000 U/kg than in rats from group III (5000 U/kg). Moreover, we noted a trend (p < 0.06) in total cholesterol concentration, suggesting a linear decrease with increasing doses of vitamin D. RNA-seq analysis did not reveal any differentially expressed genes with FDR < 0.05. However, GSEA revealed significant activation of a number of processes and pathways, including: "metallothionein, and TspO/MBR family", and "negative regulation of tumor necrosis factor production". qPCR analysis revealed significant upregulation of the Mt1, Mt2 and Orm1 genes in animals receiving high doses of vitamin D (p < 0.025, p < 0.025, and p < 0009, respectively). Moreover, Srebp2 and Insig2 were significantly lower in both experimental groups than in the control group (p < 0.003 and p < 0.036, respectively). Our results support the anti-inflammatory, anitioxidant and anticholesterologenic potential of vitamin D but suggest that high doses of vitamin D are needed to obtain significant results in this regard.

Genetics of gambling disorder and related phenotypes: The potential uses of polygenic and multifactorial risk models to enable early detection and improve clinical outcomes.

Gambling Disorder (GD) is an impactful behavioural addiction for which there appear to be underpinning genetic contributors. Twin studies show significant GD heritability results and intergenerational transmission show high rates of transmission. Recent developments in polygenic and multifactorial risk prediction modelling provide promising opportunities to enable early identification and intervention for at risk individuals. People with GD often have significant delays in diagnosis and subsequent help-seeking that can compromise their recovery. In this paper we advocate for more research into the utility of polygenic and multifactorial risk modelling in GD research and treatment programs and rigorous evaluation of its costs and benefits.

Frequency and spatial based multi-layer context network (FSCNet) for remote sensing scene classification

Remote Sensing Scene Classification (RSSC) is an important and challenging research topic due to the variety of land cover sizes and spatial combinations, as well as significant interclass similarity and intraclass variability. Currently, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based methods have been widely used in RSSC tasks with significant results. However, CNNs lack the ability to obtain long-term correlations. Transformer addressed this problem, thanks to the global receptive field of multi-head self-attention (MSA). Nevertheless, the vanilla transformer also needs further improvement to accommodate the diverse in type and scale of objects in RS scenes. In addition, the existing RSSC methods either use the last layer features, which is not conducive to process multi-scale remote sensing images, or directly fuse the multi-layer features, which will bring redundant or mutually exclusive information. To address the above issues, a novel RSSC framework, named frequency and spatial based multi-layer attention network (FSCNet) for remote sensing scene classification is proposed in this article. First, to fully extract the pyramid multi resolution features of CNN, a cross resolution injection model (CRIM) is proposed. Second, to generate better understand of the multilevel features, a frequency and spatial MLP (FS-MLP) is designed. Third, in order to aggregate contextual relations among multi-layer features, a multi-layer context align attention (MCAA) is adopted. The final classification is integration of top-layer feature and aggregated multi-layer feature. The experiment results on three well-known RS scene classification datasets (UCM, AID, and NWPU) prove the effectiveness of FSCNet and it outperforms many state-of-the-art methods.

Технологический суверенитет России: теоретико-правовые основы, механизмы достижения

Ensuring state sovereignty, and above all, technological sovereignty, is in modern conditions a mandatory component of the innovative development of industries and ensuring a balance in scientific, technical and innovative development of the national economy. Domestic science is making its contribution to the study of these issues.&#x0D; Scientific publications present significant results of research into problems of innovative development. But there are still gaps in scientific knowledge on issues of theory, legal framework, and mechanisms for regulating relations in the field of the influence of technological sovereignty on the innovative development of industries and the national economy as a whole.&#x0D; The objectives of this study were to analyze and evaluate the accumulated knowledge in the field of the theory of technological sovereignty, its legal framework and developed regulatory mechanisms. The research methodology was based on the principles of scientific knowledge of the phenomena of social life, such as the systems approach, the principle of determinism, the principle of historicism, etc.&#x0D; As the results of the study showed, it is necessary to intensify work on the formation of the theoretical and methodological foundations of technological sovereignty. The proposal to integrate disparate regulatory legal provisions on technological sovereignty in a single act is substantiated. The incompleteness of the formation of mechanisms for achieving technological sovereignty and their fragmentation are revealed. The author's conclusions and proposals are aimed at increasing the level of scientific, methodological and legal support for activities to achieve technological sovereignty as a priority mechanism for technological development.

Effectiveness of Occupational Therapy Based Sleep Intervention on Sleep Quality and Its Impact on Quality of Life in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disease which has motor as well as non-motor symptoms. Most of the times non-motor symptoms are neglected in traditional management by the healthcare professionals. But these symptoms add up to the suffering of the person. Sleep disturbances are one of the commonest non-motor symptoms seen in Parkinson’s disease. These symptoms affect daily life of an individual. Thus, Occupational therapy management is essential in improving sleep quality along with management of other symptoms. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of occupational therapy based sleep intervention in improving sleep quality in Parkinson’s disease. Also, this study aimed at evaluating its impact on quality of life. The study included 37 patients. The intervention program of four weeks was provided to all which was tailored made as per patients’ evaluation. The results showed statistically significant result in Pittsburgh sleep quality index and WHO Quality of Life BREF scale. This study highlighted the need for customized sleep program and demonstrated the effectiveness of occupational therapy based sleep intervention. Keywords: sleep, sleep quality, occupational therapy, Parkinson’s disease, neurorehabilitation, quality of life.

Application of aggregation operators for forecasting [formula omitted] fluctuations: From available Caribbean data sites to unequipped ones

Air pollution is a substantial issue for public health. Predicting the levels of airborne particles, especially those originating from natural phenomena like sand mists from the African dust belt, enables more effective warnings for affected populations. Currently, there are only three islands that continuously measure PM10 concentrations in the Caribbean area. Thus, there is a main issue for the forecast of these particulate pollutants for unequipped sites. In this article, a new approach based on the use of aggregation operators in a non-fuzzy framework allows to predict the quantity of PM10 for certain sites in this geographical area. It is the characteristics of non-linearity and downward reinforcement of the fuzzy operators used (triple Pi and t-norms) which make it possible to model the evolution of a phenomenon as complex as the sand mists from African dust belt. The time series having been normalized, the tests were carried out on two of the three sites (Martinique and Guadeloupe) to predict the values of the third site (Puerto Rico) and assess the quality of the prediction. The mean absolute error (MAE), the mean bias error (MBE), the root mean square error (RMSE) and the index of agreement (IOA) values show that this approach provides significant results. The African dust seasonality strongly impacts these performances metrics. These initial promising findings emphasize that the utilization of aggregation operators is a robust method for forecasting PM10 fluctuations, eliminating the need for complex parameterization or learning phase that would otherwise entail significant computational costs.

SOCIOLOGICAL NEXUS BETWEEN CULTURE AND TERRORISM IN TERMS OF HOFSTEDE’S DIMENSIONS

This study aims to indicate the cultural factors nexus terrorism in terms of Bourdieusian terminology’s conceptual framework, which synthesizes social, economic, and cultural explanations and thus proves useful for studying political and religious radicalization, extremism, and recruitment to terrorism. This analysis can be used to comparatively assess the countries’ cultural tendencies relevant to terrorism. In this study, Hofstede's culture scale, which is regarded as a paradigm and towering figure by most scholars was used. The research endeavors to illustrate the effects of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (widely known model of national culture) on Global Terrorism Index scores via a multiple linear regression model. Terrorists marginalized others and created their discourse to commit rhetoric narrated by fairy tales and protagonists. The findings expressed that whereas the power distance has an increasing effect on terrorism (while increasing terrorism), the long-term orientation has a mitigating effect (reduces terrorism). On the other hand, no significant results were obtained from the dimension of individualism versus collectivism, femininity versus masculinity, avoidance of uncertainty, and indulgence versus restraint. However; we evaluate that social media usage has a centralizing and affiliating effect between collectivism and individualism.

Monetary Policy, Homeowner Balance Sheet Channel, and Integration: A Lesson from South Korea during the 2000s

We estimate the household consumption function using the Korean labor and income panel data (2001-2012) with the instrument of the housing supply to figure out the homeowner balance sheet channel of monetary policy in South Korea during the 2000s and the early 2010s. We find that monetary policy has a significant effect through both the wealth and collateral effects comprising the homeowner balance sheet transmission channel. Furthermore, the wealth effect shows a significant result across all income quantile groups, whereas the collateral effect is significant in the low- and middle-income quantile groups. This finding implies that the lower-income groups are more sensitive to changes in the value of real estate assets. Based on the analysis, we derive policy implication that socio-economic integration will be enhanced under the considerately targetted monetary policy, which is a lesson for the emerging or developing countries whose current economic situation is similar to the past South Korea.