Of pearls and pigs : a conceptual-semantic Tiernet approach to formal representation of structure and variation of phraseological units

"Helmiä sioille", pärlor för svin, säger man på finska om någonting bra och fint som tas emot av en mottagare som inte vill eller har ingen förmåga att förstå, uppskatta eller utnyttja hela den potential som finns hos det mottagna föremålet, är ointresserad av den eller gillar den inte. För sådana relativt stabila flerordiga uttryck, som är lagrade i språkbrukarnas minnen och som demonstrerar olika slags oregelbundna drag i sin struktur använder man inom lingvistiken bl.a. termerna "idiom" eller "fraseologiska enheter". Som en oregelbundenhet kan man t.ex. beskriva det faktum att betydelsen hos uttrycket inte är densamma som man skulle komma till ifall man betraktade det som en vanlig regelbunden fras. En annan oregelbundenhet, som idiomforskare har observerat, ligger i den begränsade förmågan att varieras i form och betydelse, som många idiom har jämfört med regelbundna fraser. Därför talas det ofta om "grundform" och "grundbetydelse" hos idiom och variationen avses som avvikelse från dessa. Men när man tittar på ett stort antal förekomstexempel av idiom i språkbruk, märker man att många av dem tillåter variation, t.o.m. i sådan utsträckning att gränserna mellan en variant och en "grundform" suddas ut, och istället för ett idiom råkar vi plötsligt på en "familj" av flera besläktade uttryck. Allt detta väcker frågan om hur dessa uttryck egentligen ska vara representerade i språket. I avhandlingen utförs en kritisk granskning av olika tidigare tillvägagångssätt att beskriva fraseologiska enheter i syfte att klargöra vilka svårigheter deras struktur och variation erbjuder för den lingvistiska teorin. Samtidigt presenteras ett alternativt sätt att beskriva dessa uttryck. En systematisk och formell modell som utvecklas i denna avhandling integrerar en beskrivning av idiom på många olika språkliga nivåer och skildrar deras variation i form av ett nätverk och som ett resultat av samspel mellan idiomets struktur och kontexter där det förekommer, samt av interaktion med andra fasta uttryck. Modellen bygger på en fördjupande, språkbrukbaserad analys av det finska idiomet "X HEITTÄÄ HELMIÄ SIOILLE" (X kastar pärlor för svin).

Water storage in wetted strips under irrigated coffee trees with different criteria of irrigation management

The increasing demand for water resources accentuates the need to reduce water waste through a more appropriate irrigation management. In the particular case of irrigated coffee planting, which in recent years presented growth with the predominance of drip irrigation, the improvement of drip irrigation management techniques is a necessity. The proper management of drip irrigation depends on the knowledge of the spatial pattern of soil moisture distribution inside the wetted strip formed under the irrigation lines. In this study, grids of 24 tensiometers were used to determine the water storage within the wetted strip formed under drippers, with a 3.78 L h-1 discharge, evenly spaced by 0.4 m, subjected to two different management criteria (fixed irrigation interval and 60 kPa tension). Estimates of storage based on a one-dimensional analysis, that only considers depth variations, were compared with two-dimensional estimates. The results indicate that for high-frequency irrigation the one-dimensional analysis is not appropriate. However, under less frequent irrigation, the two-dimensional analysis is dispensable, being the one-dimensional sufficient for calculating the water volume stored in the wetted strip.

Estimating the most important criteria for hatching eggs as function of broiler breeders age

This research aimed to compare two female broiler breeder ages during the incubation period regarding management using the Analytic Hierarchy Process method (AHP). This method is characterized by the possibility of analyzing a multicriteria problem and assists a decision making. This study was carried out on a commercial hatchery located in São Paulo, Brazil. Two ages of broiler breeder (42 and 56 weeks) were compared relative to production rate. Production index data were the same in both ages and were submitted to multicriteria decision analysis using the AHP method. The results indicate that broiler breeders of 42 weeks presented better performance than those of 56 week-old. The setter phase (incubation) is more critical than the hatcher. The AHP method was efficient for this analysis and can serve as a methodological basis for future studies to improve the hatchability of broilers eggs.

Powder flow criteria for design of vertical silo walls

For design of vertical silos walls involving the storage of bulk solids to be safe and reliable, it is important knowing the largest possible number of variables such as: flow properties, silo geometry and pattern of flow desired. In order to validate the theories of flow prediction and design of conical hoppers, the flow properties of two bulk solids were determined, the theories of Jenike's flowability and Enstad and Walker for hopper design were analyzed and the results were compared with those experimentally obtained in a reduced model of a semicircular-section silo. Results show that Enstad theory for the hopper design is adequate to occur mass flow inside the silo, and for the sizing of the discharge outlet, the Walker's theory was closer to the appropriate than Jenike's theory, which was higher around 100% than the experimental hopper outlet.

Comparative analysis of different meat traceability systems using multiple criteria and a social network approach

The adoption of a proper traceability system is being incorporated into meat production practices as a method of gaining consumer confidence. The various partners operating in the chain of meat production can be considered a social network, and they have the common goal of generating a communication process that can ensure each characteristic of the product, including safety. This study aimed to select the most appropriate meat traceability system “from farm to fork” that could be applied to Brazilian beef and pork production for international trade. The research was done in three steps. The first used the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for selecting the best on-farm livestock traceability. In the second step, the actors in the meat production chain were identified to build a framework and defined each role in the network. In the third step, the selection of the traceability system was done. Results indicated that with an electronic traceability system, it is possible to acquire better connections between the links in the chain and to provide the means for managing uncertainties by creating structures that facilitate information flow more efficiently.

Criteria for prediction of metastatic axillary lymph nodes in early-stage breast cancer

PURPOSE: To estimate the likelihood of axillary lymph node involvement for patients with early-stage breast cancer, based on a variety of clinical and pathological factors. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was done in hospital databases from 1999 to 2007. Two hundred thirty-nine patients were diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. Predictive factors, such as patient age, tumor size, lymphovascular invasion, histological grade and immunohistochemical subtype were analyzed to identify variables that may be associated with axillary lymph node metastasis. RESULTS: Patients with tumors that are negative for estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 had approximately a 90% lower chance of developing lymph node metastasis than those with luminal A tumors (e.g., ER+ and/or PR+ and HER2-) - Odds Ratio: 0.11; 95% confidence interval: 0.01-0.88; p=0.01. Furthermore, the risk for lymph node metastasis of luminal A tumors seemed to decrease as patient age increased, and it was directly correlated with tumor size. CONCLUSION: The molecular classification of early-stage breast cancer using immunohistochemistry may help predicting the probability of developing axillary lymph node metastasis. Further studies are needed to optimize predictions for nodal involvement, with the aim of aiding the decision-making process for breast cancer treatment.

Comparison of Classical and Secondary Cytologic Criteria Relative to Hybrid Capture for Diagnosing Cervical-vaginal Infection by Human Papillomavirus

Objective To compare the diagnostic accuracy of the classic Meisels cytologic criteria and the Schneider secondary criteria relative to the hybrid capture method for diagnosing HPV infection. Methods This was a retrospective study performed at a public university hospital. A total of 41 patients with a cytologic diagnosis of HPV infection and 40 HPV-negative patients were selected for review of the cervical-vaginal smears seeking to classical and secondary criteria. A single pathologist reviewed the slides in search of the criteria. The classical and secondary cytologic criteria were compared with the hybrid capture for diagnosing HPV infection. Bartleti test was applied for the age analysis, and Fisher's exact test was used to compare proportions. The tests were considered significant when the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis was less than 5% (p < 0.05). Results The Meisels criteria were less sensitive (34.0%) than the secondary Schneider criteria (57.5%) when compared with the hybrid capture (p < 0.0001), although the specificity of the former criteria was non-significantly higher (91.2% and 67.7%, respectively). In cases of moderate or intense inflammation, the sensitivity and specificity of the Schneider criteria were decreased, 33.3% and 50.0% respectively (p = 0.0115). Conclusions Compared with hybrid capture for diagnosis of HPV infection, the sensitivity of the secondary Schneider criteria was higher than the classical Meisels criteria.Moderate or intense inflammation reduces the sensitivity and specificity of the secondary Schneider criteria for diagnosing HPV infection using the hybrid capture as the gold standard.

Green supplier selection via Multiple Criteria Data Envelopment Analysis

An appropriate supplier selection and its profound effects on increasing the competitive advantage of companies has been widely discussed in supply chain management (SCM) literature. By raising environmental awareness among companies and industries they attach more importance to sustainable and green activities in selection procedures of raw material providers. The current thesis benefits from data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique to evaluate the relative efficiency of suppliers in the presence of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission for green supplier selection. We incorporate the pollution of suppliers as an undesirable output into DEA. However, to do so, two conventional DEA model problems arise: the lack of the discrimination power among decision making units (DMUs) and flexibility of the inputs and outputs weights. To overcome these limitations, we use multiple criteria DEA (MCDEA) as one alternative. By applying MCDEA the number of suppliers which are identified as efficient will be decreased and will lead to a better ranking and selection of the suppliers. Besides, in order to compare the performance of the suppliers with an ideal supplier, a “virtual” best practice supplier is introduced. The presence of the ideal virtual supplier will also increase the discrimination power of the model for a better ranking of the suppliers. Therefore, a new MCDEA model is proposed to simultaneously handle undesirable outputs and virtual DMU. The developed model is applied for green supplier selection problem. A numerical example illustrates the applicability of the proposed model.

Semantic and fuzzy modelling for human behaviour recognition in smart spaces : a case study on ambient assisted living.

Human activity recognition in everyday environments is a critical, but challenging task in Ambient Intelligence applications to achieve proper Ambient Assisted Living, and key challenges still remain to be dealt with to realize robust methods. One of the major limitations of the Ambient Intelligence systems today is the lack of semantic models of those activities on the environment, so that the system can recognize the speci c activity being performed by the user(s) and act accordingly. In this context, this thesis addresses the general problem of knowledge representation in Smart Spaces. The main objective is to develop knowledge-based models, equipped with semantics to learn, infer and monitor human behaviours in Smart Spaces. Moreover, it is easy to recognize that some aspects of this problem have a high degree of uncertainty, and therefore, the developed models must be equipped with mechanisms to manage this type of information. A fuzzy ontology and a semantic hybrid system are presented to allow modelling and recognition of a set of complex real-life scenarios where vagueness and uncertainty are inherent to the human nature of the users that perform it. The handling of uncertain, incomplete and vague data (i.e., missing sensor readings and activity execution variations, since human behaviour is non-deterministic) is approached for the rst time through a fuzzy ontology validated on real-time settings within a hybrid data-driven and knowledgebased architecture. The semantics of activities, sub-activities and real-time object interaction are taken into consideration. The proposed framework consists of two main modules: the low-level sub-activity recognizer and the high-level activity recognizer. The rst module detects sub-activities (i.e., actions or basic activities) that take input data directly from a depth sensor (Kinect). The main contribution of this thesis tackles the second component of the hybrid system, which lays on top of the previous one, in a superior level of abstraction, and acquires the input data from the rst module's output, and executes ontological inference to provide users, activities and their in uence in the environment, with semantics. This component is thus knowledge-based, and a fuzzy ontology was designed to model the high-level activities. Since activity recognition requires context-awareness and the ability to discriminate among activities in di erent environments, the semantic framework allows for modelling common-sense knowledge in the form of a rule-based system that supports expressions close to natural language in the form of fuzzy linguistic labels. The framework advantages have been evaluated with a challenging and new public dataset, CAD-120, achieving an accuracy of 90.1% and 91.1% respectively for low and high-level activities. This entails an improvement over both, entirely data-driven approaches, and merely ontology-based approaches. As an added value, for the system to be su ciently simple and exible to be managed by non-expert users, and thus, facilitate the transfer of research to industry, a development framework composed by a programming toolbox, a hybrid crisp and fuzzy architecture, and graphical models to represent and con gure human behaviour in Smart Spaces, were developed in order to provide the framework with more usability in the nal application. As a result, human behaviour recognition can help assisting people with special needs such as in healthcare, independent elderly living, in remote rehabilitation monitoring, industrial process guideline control, and many other cases. This thesis shows use cases in these areas.

Estradiol and testosterone concentrations in follicular fluid as criteria to discriminate between mature and immature oocytes

The objective of the present study was to examine the association between follicular fluid (FF) steroid concentration and oocyte maturity and fertilization rates. Seventeen infertile patients were submitted to ovulation induction with urinary human follicle-stimulating hormone, human menopausal gonadotropin and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). A total of 107 follicles were aspirated after hCG administration, the oocytes were analyzed for maturity and 81 of them were incubated and inseminated in vitro. Progesterone, estradiol (E2), estrone, androstenedione, and testosterone were measured in the FF. E2 and testosterone levels were significantly higher in FF containing immature oocytes (median = 618.2 and 16 ng/ml, respectively) than in FF containing mature oocytes (median = 368 and 5.7 ng/ml, respectively; P < 0.05). Progesterone, androstenedione and estrone levels were not significantly different between mature and immature oocytes. The application of the receiver-operating characteristic curve statistical approach to determine the best cut-off point for the discrimination between mature and immature oocytes indicated levels of 505.8 ng/ml for E2 (81.0% sensitivity and 81.8% specificity) and of 10.4 ng/ml for testosterone (90.9% sensitivity and 82.4% specificity). Follicular diameter was associated negatively with E2 and testosterone levels in FF. There was a significant increase in progesterone/testosterone, progesterone/E2 and E2/testosterone ratios in FF containing mature oocytes, suggesting a reduction in conversion of C21 to C19, but not in aromatase activity. The overall fertility rate was 61% but there was no correlation between the steroid levels or their ratios and the fertilization rates. E2 and testosterone levels in FF may be used as a predictive parameter of oocyte maturity, but not for the in vitro fertilization rate.

Efficacy of HUMN criteria for scoring the micronucleus assay in human lymphocytes exposed to a low concentration of p,p'-DDT

The cytokinesis-block micronucleus (CBMN) assay is one of the standard cytogenetic tools employed to assess chromosomal damage subsequent to exposure to genotoxic/cytotoxic agents, and is widely applicable to plant, animal and human cells. In the present study, the CBMN assay was used to assess the baseline damage in binuclear human peripheral blood lymphocytes exposed to 25 µg/L p,p'-DDT for 1, 2, 24, and 48 h by measuring the frequency of micronuclei, nucleoplasmic bridges and nuclear buds. These new scoring criteria facilitated the detection of different types of clastogenic and aneugenic effects induced by this type of pollutant. With these criteria, CBMN can also be used to measure nucleoplasmic bridges which are considered to be consequences of chromosome rearrangements and nuclear buds which are biomarkers of altered gene amplification and gene dosage. The total number of micronuclei observed in binuclear human peripheral blood lymphocytes of the exposed samples (ranging from 32 to 47) was significantly greater (P < 0.05) than that detected in the unexposed (0 time) control sample, where the total number of micronuclei was 7. The number of nucleoplasmic bridges and nuclear buds obtained after 24 and 48 h was also significantly (P < 0.05) greater in the samples treated with p,p'-DDT than in the unexposed control samples. Thus, our results confirmed the usefulness of the new criteria applicable for the CBMN assay employed in measuring the DNA damage and its role of a sensitive cytogenetic biomarker.

Quaestio: an miracula sint divinae missionis criteria? 2

Arkit: 1 arkintunnukseton lehti, A-C4. - S. [2] tyhjä.

Quaestio: an miracula sint divinae missionis criteria? 1

Arkit: 1 arkintunnukseton lehti, A-D4 E1. - S. [2] tyhjä.

Prevalence of child malnutrition at a university hospital using the World Health Organization criteria and bioelectrical impedance data

Malnutrition constitutes a major public health concern worldwide and serves as an indicator of hospitalized patients’ prognosis. Although various methods with which to conduct nutritional assessments exist, large hospitals seldom employ them to diagnose malnutrition. The aim of this study was to understand the prevalence of child malnutrition at the University Hospital of the Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São, Brazil. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted to compare the nutritional status of 292 hospitalized children with that of a healthy control group (n=234). Information regarding patients’ weight, height, and bioelectrical impedance (i.e., bioelectrical impedance vector analysis) was obtained, and the phase angle was calculated. Using the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria, 35.27% of the patients presented with malnutrition; specifically, 16.10% had undernutrition and 19.17% were overweight. Classification according to the bioelectrical impedance results of nutritional status was more sensitive than the WHO criteria: of the 55.45% of patients with malnutrition, 51.25% exhibited undernutrition and 4.20% were overweight. After applying the WHO criteria in the unpaired control group (n=234), we observed that 100.00% of the subjects were eutrophic; however, 23.34% of the controls were malnourished according to impedance analysis. The phase angle was significantly lower in the hospitalized group than in the control group (P<0.05). Therefore, this study suggests that a protocol to obtain patients’ weight and height must be followed, and bioimpedance data must be examined upon hospital admission of all children.

Hälsa i vårdande gemenskap : gemenskapens betydelse för äldre

The aim of the study and research questions: The aim of this study is to illuminate how caring communion can aid in promoting health as becoming in elderly people in the context of natural caring. The target group of the study consists of elderly citizens living at home. The focus of this thesis is on the concept of communion and how caring communion can affect the inner health resources in a patient’s inner health domain, as well as how caring communion can support health as becoming and inner health resources in the elderly. The main research questions of this study are the following: 1) what does communion mean? 2) what does caring communion mean? 3) what is the connection between caring communion and health? Theoretical perspective: The theoretical perspective of this qualitative study relies on the caritative caring theory as developed by scholars of caring sciences at the Åbo Academi University’s Vasa unit. The caritas motive is based on an ethos built on a consideration of togetherness, i.e. caring communion, a place where one feels at home and where one can be the person one was meant to be. Methodology: A hermeneutic research approach based on Gadamer (1997) permeates the study. This entails that understanding and interpretation become central. The study conducted in the thesis is divided into three sub-studies. Sub-study one and two are based on ontological determination whereas the third sub-study is carried out by contextual determination. The first sub-study is conducted by etymological and semantic analysis of the concept of communion (gemenskap) based on Koort (1975) and the second sub-study by determining the basic epistemological category of the concept based on Eriksson (2010b). Sub-study three is conducted through content analysis of 18 multidisciplinary and 13 caring science articles and dissertations based on Kvale (2009). The aim in the third sub-study is to define caring communions in various contexts of meaning based on Eriksson´s model of conceptual determination (2010b). All studies are interpreted through hermeneutic interpretation where the continuous movement from a part of a whole, to the whole, to part again, leads to new understanding. Finally, the findings from all the three sub-studies are compared to the concepts of pre-understanding and the inner-health-domain model of Wärnås (2002). Results: The results of the study offer a description of the dimensions of caring communion and a model that illuminates how caring communion can further health as becoming. The fundamentals of caring communion rest on the idea of a human being’s absolute right to dignity as a base for communion. The concept of communion contains a moral, an ethical, and a spiritual component. In communion, there exists a moral and ethical responsibility and a willingness to commit oneself. The individual is part of a connection or relation and knows the aim and course for the communion. A caring connection, a caring culture, a caring atmosphere and caring listening are characteristics of caring communion. In caring communion, the elderly feel trusting and see themselves as unique, powerful, and valuable. The model demonstrates that when the elderly are able to rest in caring communion, the virtues of courage and faith become strong and desire for life awaken within the elderly and health as becoming becomes possible. Conclusions: The outcome of the study is that all communion is not necessarily caring communion. In order for communion to be caring and for the elderly to achieve health as becoming, there are certain criteria that must be met. This is especially important when designing activities for the elderly in the context of natural caring.