Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate a new
approach based on the idea of pictograms for food portion size. This
approach adopts the model of the United States Pharmacopeia- Drug
Information (USP-DI). The representation of each food portion size
composed of three parts: frame, the connotation of dietary portion
sizes and layout. To investigate users- comprehension based on this
approach, two experiments were conducted, included 122 Taiwanese
people, 60 male and 62 female with ages between 16 and 64 (divided
into age groups of 16-30, 31-45 and 46-64). In Experiment 1, the mean
correcting rate of the understanding level of food items is 48.54%
(S.D.= 95.08) and the mean response time 2.89sec (S.D.=2.14). The
difference on the correct rates for different age groups is significant
(P*=0.00
Abstract: This study investigated morphology of the Spanner Barb (Puntius lateristriga Valenciennes, 1842) and water quality at Thepchana waterfall. This study was conducted at Thepchana Waterfall, Khao Nan National Park from March to May 2007. There were 40 Spanner Barb collected with 20 males and 20 females. Males had an average of 5.57 cm in standard length, 6.62 cm in total length and 5.18 g in total body weight. Females had an average of 7.25 cm in standard length, 8.24 cm in total length and 10.96 g in total body weight. The length (L) – weight (W) relationships for combining sexes, males and females were LogW = -2.137 + 3.355logL, log W = -0.068 + 3.297logL, and log W = -2.068 + 3.297logL, respectively. The Spanner Barb were smaller size fish with a compressed form; terminal mouth; villiform teeth; ctenoid scale; concave tail; general body color yellowish olive, with slight reddish tint to fins; vertical band beginning below dorsal and horizontal stripe from base of tail almost to vertical band. They also had a vertical band midway between the eye and first vertical band. There was a black spot above anal fin. The bladder looked like J-shape. Inside of the bladder was found small insects and insect lava. The body length and the bowels length was 1:1 ratio. The water temperature ranged from 25.00 – 27.00 °C which was appropriate for their habitat characteristics. Acid - alkalinity ranged from 6.65 – 6.90 mg/l. Dissolved oxygen ranged from 4.55 – 4.70 mg/l. Water hardness ranged from 31.00 – 48.00 mg/l. The amount of ammonia was about 0.25 mg/l.
Abstract: Acoustical properties of speech have been shown to
be related to mental states of speaker with symptoms: depression
and remission. This paper describes way to address the issue of
distinguishing depressed patients from remitted subjects based on
measureable acoustics change of their spoken sound. The vocal-tract
related frequency characteristics of speech samples from female
remitted and depressed patients were analyzed via speech
processing techniques and consequently, evaluated statistically by
cross-validation with Support Vector Machine. Our results
comparatively show the classifier's performance with effectively
correct separation of 93% determined from testing with the subjectbased
feature model and 88% from the frame-based model based on
the same speech samples collected from hospital visiting interview
sessions between patients and psychiatrists.
Abstract: This research study examines cases of Saudi Arabian
universities and female academics for work environment issues
within the context of design management applications. The study
proposes use of design research, ergonomics and systems design
thinking to develop the university design which facilitates removal of
physical and cognitive barriers for female academics. Review of
literature demonstrates that macro and micro ergonomic combined
with design management and system design strategies can
significantly improve the workplace design for female academics.
The university design model would be prepared based on the analyses
of primary data obtained from archived documents, participants'
observation logs, photo audits, focus groups and semi-structured
interviews of currently employed female academics in the selected
case universities.
Abstract: There is inadequate information on the practice of
female genital mutilation (FGM) in the UK, and there are often
myths and perceptions within communities that influence the
effectiveness of prevention programmes. This means it is difficult to
address the trends and changes in the practice in the UK.
To this end, FORWARD undertook novel and innovative research
using the Participatory Ethnographic and Evaluative Research
(PEER) method to explore the views of women from Eritrea, Sudan,
Somalia and Ethiopia that live in London and Bristol (two UK cities).
Women-s views, taken from PEER interviews, reflected reasons for
continued practice of FGM: marriageability, the harnessing and
control of female sexuality, and upholding traditions from their
countries of origin. It was also clear that the main supporters of the
practice were believed to be older women within families and
communities.
Women described the impact FGM was having on their lives as
isolating. And although it was clearly considered a private and
personal matter, they developed a real sense of connection with their
peers within the research process.
The women were overwhelmingly positive about combating the
practice, although they believed it would probably take a while
before it ends completely. They also made concrete
recommendations on how to improve support services for women
affected by FGM: Training for professionals (particularly in
healthcare), increased engagement with, and outreach to,
communities, culturally appropriate materials and information made
available and accessible to communities, and more consequent
implementation of legislation.
Finally, the women asked for more empathy and understanding,
particularly from health professionals. Rather than presenting FGM
as a completely alien and inconceivable practice, it may help for
those looking into these women-s lives and working with them to
understand the social and economic context in which the practice
takes place.
Abstract: This paper looks at transgender identities and the law in the context of marriage. It particularly focuses on the role of language and definition in classifying transgendered individuals into a legal category. Two lines of cases in transgender jurisprudence are examined. The former cases decided the definition of 'man' and 'woman' on the basis of biological criteria while the latter cases held that biological factors should not be the sole criterion for defining a man or a woman. Three categories were found to classify transgender people, namely male, female and "monstrous". Since transgender people challenge the core gender distinction that the law stresses, they are often regarded as problematic and monstrous which caused them to be subjected to severe legal consequences. This paper discusses these issues by analyzing and comparing different cases in transgender jurisprudence as well as examining how these issues play out in contemporary Hong Kong.
Abstract: Background, measuring an individual-s Health
Literacy is gaining attention, yet no appropriate instrument is available
in Taiwan. Measurement tools that were developed and used in
western countries may not be appropriate for use in Taiwan due to a
different language system. Purpose of this research was to develop a
Health Literacy measurement instrument specific for Taiwan adults.
Methods, several experts of clinic physicians; healthcare
administrators and scholars identified 125 common used health related
Chinese phrases from major medical knowledge sources that easy
accessible to the public. A five-point Likert scale is used to measure
the understanding level of the target population. Such measurement is
then used to compare with the correctness of their answers to a health
knowledge test for validation. Samples, samples under study were
purposefully taken from four groups of people in the northern
Pingtung, OPD patients, university students, community residents,
and casual visitors to the central park. A set of health knowledge index
with 10 questions is used to screen those false responses. A sample
size of 686 valid cases out of 776 was then included to construct this
scale. An independent t-test was used to examine each individual
phrase. The phrases with the highest significance are then identified
and retained to compose this scale. Result, a Taiwan Health Literacy
Scale (THLS) was finalized with 66 health-related phrases under nine
divisions. Cronbach-s alpha of each division is at a satisfactory level
of 89% and above. Conclusions, factors significantly differentiate the
levels of health literacy are education, female gender, age, family
members of stroke victims, experience with patient care, and
healthcare professionals in the initial application in this study..
Abstract: This study aimed at assessing whether and to what extent moral judgment and behaviour were: 1. situation-dependent; 2. selectively dependent on cognitive and affective components; 3. influenced by gender and age; 4. reciprocally congruent. In order to achieve these aims, four different types of moral dilemmas were construed and five types of thinking were presented for each of them – representing five possible ways to evaluate the situation. The judgment criteria included selfishness, altruism, sense of justice, and the conflict between selfishness and the two moral issues. The participants were 250 unpaid volunteers (50% male; 50% female) belonging to two age-groups: young people and adults. The study entailed a 2 (gender) x 2 (age-group) x 5 (type of thinking) x 4 (situation) mixed design: the first two variables were betweensubjects, the others were within-subjects. Results have shown that: 1. moral judgment and behaviour are at least partially affected by the type of situations and by interpersonal variables such as gender and age; 2. moral reasoning depends in a similar manner on cognitive and affective factors; 3. there is not a gender polarity between the ethic of justice and the ethic of cure/ altruism; 4. moral reasoning and behavior are perceived as reciprocally congruent even though their congruence decreases with a more objective assessment. Such results were discussed in the light of contrasting theories on morality.
Abstract: Scolothrips longicornis Priesner is one of the
important predators of tetranychid mites with a wide distribution
throughout Iran. Life table and population growth parameters of S.
longicornis feeding on two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus
turkestani Ugarov & Nikolski were investigated under laboratory
condition (26±1ºC, 65±5% R.H. and 16L: 8D). To carry of these
experiments, S. longicornis collections reared on cowpea infested
with T. turkestani were prepared. The eggs with less than 24 hours
old were selected and reared. The emerged larvae feeding directly on
cowpea leaf discs which were infested with T. turkestani. Thirty
females of S. longicornis with 24 hours age were selected and
released on infested leaf discs. They replaced daily to a new leaf disc
and the laying eggs have counted. The experiment continued till the
last thrips had died. The result showed that the mean age mortality of
the adult female thrips were between 21-25 days which is nearly
equal life expectancy (ex) at the time of adult eclosion. Parameters
related to reproductive table including gross reproductive rate, net
reproductive rate, intrinsic rate of natural increase and finite rate of
increase were 48.91, 37.63, 0.26 and 2.3, respectively. Mean age per
female/day, mean fertile egg per female/day, gross hatch rate, mean
net age fertility, mean net age fecundity, net fertility rate and net
fecundity rate were 2.23, 1.76, 0.87, 13.87, 14.26, 69.1 and 78.5,
respectively. Sex ratio of offspring also recorded daily. The highest
sex ratio for females was 0.88 in first day of oviposition. The sex
ratio decreased gradually and reached under 0.46 after the day 26 and
the oviposition rate declined. Then it seems that maintenance of
rearing culture of predatory thrips for mass rearing later than 26 days
after egg-laying commence is not profitable.
Abstract: Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) has
been used as a common research tool for different neurological
disorders like Multiple Sclerosis. Recently, technology let
researchers to introduce a new versions of the visual test, the paced
visual serial addition test (PVSAT). In this paper, the computerized
version of these two tests is introduced. Beside the number of true
responses are interpreted, the reaction time of subjects are calculated
by the software. We hypothesize that paying attention to the reaction
time may be valuable. For this purpose, sixty eight female normal
subjects and fifty eight male normal subjects are enrolled in the
study. We investigate the similarity between the PASAT3 and
PVSAT3 in number of true responses and the new criterion (the
average reaction time of each subject). The similarity between two
tests were rejected (p-value = 0.000) which means that these two test
differ. The effect of sex in the tests were not approved since the pvalues
of different between PASAT3 and PVSAT3 in both sex is the
same (p-value = 0.000) which means that male and female subjects
performed the tests at no different level of performance. The new
criterion shows a negative correlation with the age which offers aged
normal subjects may have the same number of true responses as the
young subjects but they have latent responses. This will give prove
for the importance of reaction time.
Abstract: The objective of this research was to study the career
success and the satisfaction of female executives working for schools
in Bangkok, Thailand. This paper drew upon the survey data
collected from 68 female executives. The survey conducted in on
Bangkok schools. The statistics utilized in this paper included
percentage, mean, standard deviation as well as t-test. The findings
revealed that the majority of samples had more than 30 years of
experience, held a master degree, and had an average income of less
than 40,000 baht. The majority of respondents worked not more than
50 hours per week. In addition, the mean score revealed career
development was ranked as their number one career satisfaction and
having a job related to education was ranked as their number one job
satisfaction. Also, the mean score of all categories of satisfaction was
4.61 with standard deviation of 1.677 which indicated that female
executive level of satisfaction was high. In terms of the subjectivity
career success, the hypothesis testing’s result disclosed that female
executives with different married status had a difference in their job
satisfaction which was significant at the 0.05 confidence level.
Abstract: Estimation of stature is an important step in developing a biological profile for human identification. It may provide a valuable indicator for unknown individual in a population. The aim of this study was to analyses the relationship between stature and lower limb dimensions in the Malaysian population. The sample comprised 100 corpses, which included 69 males and 31 females between age ranges of 20 to 90 years old. The parameters measured were stature, thigh length, lower leg length, leg length, foot length, foot height and foot breadth. Results showed that mean values in males were significantly higher than those in females (P < 0.05). There were significant correlations between lower limb dimensions and stature. Cross-validation of the equation on 100 individuals showed close approximation between known stature and estimated stature. It was concluded that lower limb dimensions were useful for estimation of stature, which should be validated in future studies.
Abstract: A cross-sectional study was carried out to determine the prevalence, species characterization and associated risk factors with Eimeria (E.) in sheep of district Toba Tek Singh from April, 2009 to March, 2010. Of the total 486 faecal samples examined for Eimeria, 209 (43%) were found infected with five species of Eimeria. Amongst the identified species of Eimeria, E. ovinoidalis was the commonest one (48.32%), followed in order by E. ahsata, E. intricata, E. parva and E. faurei with prevalence of 45.45, 28.71, 24.40 and 19.14 percent respectively. Peak prevalence was observed in August. Wet season (rainy and post-rainy) was found to be favourable for Eimeria infection. Lambs had significantly higher prevalence (P < 0.05) of Eimeria than adults. Similarly higher prevalence of Eimeria was observed in female as compared to male. Among management and husbandry practices; watering system, housing system, floor type and herd size strongly influenced the prevalence of Eimeria. Coccidiosis was more prevalent in closed housing system, non-cemented floor type, pond watered animals and larger herds (P < 0.05) as compared to open housing system, partially cemented floor type, tap watered animals and smaller herds respectively. Feeding system, breed and body condition of animals were not found as risk factors (P>0.05) influencing prevalence of Eimeria.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to demonstrate the possible
effect of some variables such as age, gender, blood sugar level, and
duration of diabetes on the serum level of zinc in diabetic individuals
from Murzuk area. Serum zinc (Zn), Fasting blood sugar (FBS),
hemoglobin HbA1c (HbA1c) were evaluated in 46 type I diabetic
subjects (group 1), 48 type II diabetic subjects (group 2) and 43
healthy individuals (control) of both genders aged (30-81) years. Data
showed that both diabetic groups have significantly higher (P0.05) differences in serum Zn levels were observed
between Males and Females. Serum Zn levels were non-significantly
decreased with increasing age. In type II diabetic subjects, serum Zn
levels were non-significantly decreased with increasing duration of
disease whereas those in type I were non-significantly increased.
Abstract: A set of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based methods
for the design of an effective system of speech recognition of
numerals of Assamese language captured under varied recording
conditions and moods is presented here. The work is related to
the formulation of several ANN models configured to use Linear
Predictive Code (LPC), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
other features to tackle mood and gender variations uttering numbers
as part of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system in
Assamese. The ANN models are designed using a combination of
Self Organizing Map (SOM) and Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP)
constituting a Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) block trained in a
cooperative environment to handle male and female speech samples
of numerals of Assamese- a language spoken by a sizable population
in the North-Eastern part of India. The work provides a comparative
evaluation of several such combinations while subjected to handle
speech samples with gender based differences captured by a microphone
in four different conditions viz. noiseless, noise mixed, stressed
and stress-free.
Abstract: Retinoic acid is like a steroid hormone that plays a
role in embryo formation, proliferation of spermatogonia cells,
ephitelial cells differentiation and organogenesis. Retinoic acid can
influences seminiferous tubule formation during embryonic testis
development and also play a role in the regulation of ovarian function
and female reproductive tract by suppressing the hormones FSH
receptor expression. The excessive use of retinoic acid caused
abnormalities in the fetus. The result showed that there is the
influence of retinoic acid on the developmet of mice fetal testes, for
examples disruption of the formation of seminiferous tubules and
tubules seemed to be hollow, spermatogonia cells are relatively few
in number and caused Leydig cells count relatively more. While in
the female fetus does not caused the formation of primordial follicles
and disrupted the development of germinal ephitelial cells of fetal
ovaries of female mice (mus musculus) Swiss Webster.
Abstract: This research is to explore the satisfaction for senior
citizens on continuing education in Taiwan. The purpose of this
research aims at the difference on teacher-s teaching, personal
relationship, learning result, materials and environment. Through
different sexual and living area as the background variables, a
questionnaire is adopted as the methodology in this research. Three
results are found in this research. In overall, senior citizens taking
continuing education put the most important attention on personal
relationship but materials and leaning environment put the least. There
is a significant difference on personal relationship, teacher-s teaching
and research result between different sexes. Female senior citizens
attach more importance to teacher-s teaching and learning results but
male senior citizens value on personal relationship. Another
significant difference is shown on teacher-s teaching and personal
relationship because of senior citizens living area. Urban senior
citizens put importance on personal relationship and rural senior
citizens respect teacher-s teaching more.
Abstract: This survey highlights a number of important issues
which relate to the needs to counseling for distance learners studying
at the School of Distance Education in University science Malaysia
(DEUSM) according to their gender. Data were obtained by selfreport
questionnaire that had been developed by the researchers in
counseling and educational psychology and interviews were take
place. 116 voluntary respondents complete the Questionnaire and
returned it back during new student-s registration week.64% of the
respondents were female and 52% were males that means
55%ofthem were females and 45% were males. The data was
analyzed to find out the frequencies of respondents agreements of the
items. The average of the female was 18 and the average of the male
was 19.6 by using t- test there is no significant values between the
genders. The findings show that respondents have needs for
counseling. (22) Significant needs for mails (DEUSM) the highest
was their families complain about the amount of time they spend at
work. (11) Significant needs for females the highest was they
convinced themselves that they only need 4 to 5 hours of sleep per
night.
Abstract: P16/INK4A is tumor suppressor protein that plays a critical role in cell cycle regulation. Loss of P16 protein expression has been implicated in pathogenesis of many cancers, including lymphoma. Therefore, we sought to investigate if loss of P16 protein expression is associated with lymphoma and/or any specific lymphoma subtypes (Hodgkin-s lymphoma (HL) and nonHodgkin-s lymphoma (NHL)). Fifty-five lymphoma cases consisted of 30 cases of HL and 25 cases of NHL, with an age range of 3 to 78 years, were examined for loss of P16 by immunohistochemical technique using a specific antibody reacting against P16. In total, P16 loss was seen in 33% of all lymphoma cases. P16 loss was identified in 47.7% of HL cases. In contrast, only 16% of NHL showed loss of P16. Loss of P16 was seen in 67% of HL patients with 50 years of age or older, whereas P16 loss was found in only 42% of HL patients with less than 50 years of age. P16 loss in HL is somewhat higher in male (55%) than in female (30%). In subtypes of HL, P16 loss was found exclusively in all cases of lymphocyte depletion, lymphocyte predominance and unclassified cases, whereas P16 loss was seen in 39% of mixed cellularity and 29% of nodular sclerosis cases. In low grade NHL patients, P16 loss was seen in approximately one-third of cases, whereas no or very rare of P16 loss was found in intermediate and high grade cases. P16 loss did not show any correlation with age or gender of NHL patients. In conclusion, the high rate of P16 loss seen in our study suggests that loss of P16 expression plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of lymphoma, particularly with HL.
Abstract: There is a variety of inconsistencies in the differences
in alcohol use and related problems between male and female
genders. This study was aimed at analyzing the gender differences in
alcohol use and related problems among university students in
Minsk, Belarus. A total of 465 male (average age of 21) and 1030
female (average age of 20.5) students from four major universities in
Minsk, Belarus were administered WHO recommended standardized
screening instruments – AUDIT, MAST, CAGE questionnaire, as
well as other alcohol related questions. The male to female ratio for
the prevalence of alcohol problems according to the AUDIT was
3.34, while the ratio for alcohol users was 0.97. There are a wide
gender differences in the pattern of alcohol use and preference for
different alcoholic beverages, cause for drinking, and other alcohol
related problems like injuries and blackouts.