Search

Scientific and technological developments rely strongly on mathematical skills. However, mensuration is a challenging topic in school mathematics, leading to poor performance by many students. Various factors are responsible for the unsatisfactory performance, including inappropriate teaching methods where students passively absorb knowledge transmitted through reading and explanations of textbook contents. Thus, this study examined how a cooperative learning method affected students' performance in mensuration. A quasi-experimental research design was used in the study. The sample comprised two intact classes of 80 students assigned to experimental and control groups selected from one senior secondary school in Ogun State. Data were collected using an adopted standardised mensuration achievement test (MAT), which takes an analytical approach that includes problem-solving, geometric reasoning, formula application, and conceptual comprehension. The results showed a statistically significant difference between the mean score (M=11.18, SD=3.09) of students taught mensuration using the cooperative learning method and the mean score (M=7.66, SD=3.32) of students taught mensuration without using the learning method of teaching (t (78)=9.50, p=0.00). Also, the mean score varied statistically significantly (M=7.66, SD=2.63) of male students taught mensuration using the cooperative learning method and the mean score (M=8.73, SD=3.08) of female students taught mensuration without using the learning method of teaching (t (78) = 6.58, p=0.00). Therefore, cooperative learning in mathematics classrooms fosters students' ability to create and achieve learning objectives.

The separation, purification and determination methods of betaine are mainly reviewed, and the application status of betaine in medicine, aquaculture, agriculture and forestry industries is expounded, and finally a relatively clean membrane filtration separation technology is proposed in view of the shortcomings of current research, which prospects the green and efficient preparation of betaine, which provides a reference for the research of betaine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to determine the factors associated with knowledge and practices related to menstrual hygiene management among adolescent girls in urban slums in Jaipur, India. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study among 417 adolescent girls was conducted. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square, and bivariate and multivariate logistic regression methods were used to analyze the data and determine the associated factors. Findings: Only 48.7% of girls had a correct understanding of menstruation. In addition, 55.1% of the menstruating girls had faced health problems related to mensuration in the last 6 months; however, only 47.6% visited a health facility for treatment. Educational status of the girl (AOR = 1.89, 95% CI = 0.88-4.06), mother's education (AOR = 2.19, 95% CI = 1.30-3.67) and income (AOR = 1.89, 95% CI = 0.67-3.95), father's income (AOR = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.76-2.95), and counseling by field health workers (AOR = 2.08, 95% CI = 1.23-3.51) were found to be associated with knowledge about menstruation. Girl's education (AOR = 1.49, 95% CI = 0.74-2.95), mother's education (AOR = 1.46, 95% CI = 0.7-2.84) and income (AOR = 1.314, 95% CI = 0.44-2.02), father's education (AOR = 1.64, 95% CI = 0.55-3.08) and income (AOR = 2.0, 95% CI = 0.86-3.28), and counseling by field health workers (AOR = 1.48, 95% CI = 0.76-2.64) were found to be associated with the type of absorbents used. Conclusion: The findings from the study show that the awareness about mensuration and utilization of health services among adolescent girls is low. There is a need to create an enabling environment for girls to access knowledge and health services related to menstruation by creating awareness at the community level, strengthening outreach by field health workers, and ensuring privacy in healthcare facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the ritualization of menstrual blood within the Indic religious traditions, focusing particularly on the Tantric practices. It further investigates the depiction of Kamakhya, the esteemed Tantric site in Assam, India. The annual menstruation festival at Kamakhya, known as Ambuachi Mela, takes place in June. The "Happy to Bleed" campaign aptly encapsulates the annual menstruation event at Kamakhya, presenting a paradoxical view when compared to the veneration of Lord Ayyappan's shrine in Kerala. This perspective is intertwined with themes of sexual desire and patriarchal views, which manifest to different extents in both contexts. While the patriarchal aspect in Lord Ayyappan's case is evident, in Kamakhya's case, it is perceived as a notion that associates menstrual blood with sacred spaces, supposedly diminishing their sanctity. Such beliefs are labeled as hot, dangerous, and impure. This interpretation of the menstruation paradigm is narrow and flawed, necessitating broader research and understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Old Hall Manuscript (OH, c. 1413-1419) is the largest and most complete surviving witness to English music of the early fifteenth century. The extraordinary notational complexity encountered in OH has led to doubt being cast on the performability of some of the repertory copied within this manuscript (Bent 1969, 172). Adopting an approach that places historical theory (Dygon [1510s-1530s] 2006; Willelmus [14th century] 1966) in dialogue with modern theories of musical meter (Cohn 2001; Krebs 1999) reveals that complex proportional changes (anything more complex than a 4:3 or 3:4 proportion) in OH are always introduced incrementally in a process that I term "proportional preparation." From the perspective of performers and scribes who read their own parts sequentially directly from the manuscript, some of the most "virtuosic" (Bent 2022a) notational devices of OH can be seen as serving to make hard proportions easier to sing. The presence of proportional preparations in OH invites further consideration not only of this phenomenon in contemporaneous repertory, but also of the relationships between mensuration, meter, rhythm, notation, and counterpoint. Additionally, it opens a path to further interrogate whether historical composers and theorists possessed an innate or intuitive awareness for the kinds of cognitive constraints that are placed upon musicians during the performance of repertory that is technically demanding from the perspective of rhythm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common cause of oligomenorrhea and anovulation in women referring with infertility. The present study was performed aimed to investigate the effect of combined administration of Onsoli syrup and Samgh capsule on clinical and laboratory symptoms in women with PCOS. Methods: This pilot study is a pre-and post-clinical study without control group which was performed in 2019 on 20 women aged 17-45 years with PCOS complaining of oligomenorrhea in Persian Medicine Clinic of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Samgh capsule and Tonic Onsoli syrup were used for two months. Anthropometric indexes, endometrial thickness, ovarian size, hormonal evaluation, number of menstruation per month, menstrual duration, and volume of menstruation bleeding were evaluated and compared at the beginning and end of the study. Data were analyzed by SPSS software (version 23) and paired t-test and Wilcoxon test. P0.05). The size of the right ovary and testosterone levels significantly deceased after treatment (p=0.02). The number of menstruation per month significantly increased from 0.35±0.18 to 0.92±18 (p=0.00). Also, the duration of menstruation significantly decreased from 7.53±2.43 days to 4.05±3.17 days (p=0.00). The volume of mensuration bleeding decreased from 33.40±15.28 ml to 31.07±10.05 ml, which was not significant (p=0.368). Conclusion: Due to the effectiveness of combined administration of Persian medicine products (Onsoli syrup and Samgh capsule), it seems that the use of these products is effective in controlling of the symptoms of PCOS. It is necessary to conduct future studies with a larger sample size and longer evaluation time.

Copyright of African Journal of Reproductive Health is the property of Women's Health & Action Research Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Number preference, i.e., the human tendency to gravitate toward or away from specific numbers, is a potential source of measurement error in forest inventory. Identifying its presence is an important step to ensure unbiased results. This study evaluated U.S. national forest inventory data for number preference and identified factors that influence the proportion of tree cull volume, tree diameter, tree height, and seedling count observations ending with the digit zero or five (ED0,5) and seedling count observations that were multiples of four (M4). Two-sided hypothesis tests determined that ED0,5 occurred significantly more frequently than expected by chance for all metrics tested, though not in every inventory region of the country nor to the same degree. Consistently, tree-level ED0,5 was more likely when metrics were estimated visually rather than measured instrumentally. Logistic regression indicated that the effect of species class, species type, tree status, treetop status, and stem size on tree-level ED0,5 and the effect of plot-level water depth on seedling count ED0,5 also varied by region. Though the effect was small, findings suggest that some inventory regions may be employing an approved multiplicative shortcut that results in a greater-than-expected proportion of M4 observations among seedling counts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Menstrual hygiene is a major problem, particularly for rural female adolescents. Most of the time, appropriate information regarding menstrual issues is lacking due various socio-cultural and communication issues. Objective: The aim of the study is to examine the menstrual hygiene practices among adolescent females in two underdeveloped districts of Karnataka, and to trace the relationship between the practice and changing socio-demographic variables. Methods: A cross-sectional community based study with 384 adolescent females from the two backward districts of Karnataka using stratified random sampling technique. Findings: According to the study, 66% respondents use the modern pads, while shyness, cost, and other factors prevent 33% of respondents from using pads. Approximately 20% of respondents identified hygiene as their top reason for using disposable pads, while 31% cited cleanliness. Most of the respondents (50%) dispose sanitary pads in the toilet, whereas 21% dump it with other trash. The use of sanitary pads is strongly correlated with mothers' education, income and family structure. Conclusion: The study concludes that there is a critical need for widespread education on menstrual hygiene management in rural parts. There must be arrangements for rural women to have easy access to the affordable pads.

Introduction: Menstrual hygiene is a major problem, particularly for rural female adolescents. Most of the time, appropriate information regarding menstrual issues is lacking due various socio-cultural and communication issues. Objective: The aim of the study is to examine the menstrual hygiene practices among adolescent females in two underdeveloped districts of Karnataka, and to trace the relationship between the practice and changing sociodemographic variables. Methods: A cross-sectional community-based study with 384 adolescent females from the two backward districts of Karnataka using stratified random sampling technique. Findings: According to the study, 66% respondents use the modern pads, while shyness, cost, and other factors prevent 33% of respondents from using pads. Approximately 20% of respondents identified hygiene as their top reason for using disposable pads, while 31% cited cleanliness. Most of the respondents (50%) dispose sanitary pads in the toilet, whereas 21% dump it with other trash. The use of sanitary pads is strongly correlated with mothers' education, income and family structure. Conclusion: The study concludes that there is a critical need for widespread education on menstrual hygiene management in rural parts. There must be arrangements for rural women to have easy access to the affordable pads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenotyping has been a reality for aiding the selection of optimal crops for specific environments for decades in various horticultural industries. However, until recently, phenotyping was less accessible to tree breeders due to the size of the crop, the length of the rotation and the difficulty in acquiring detailed measurements. With the advent of affordable and non-destructive technologies, such as mobile laser scanners (MLS), phenotyping of mature forests is now becoming practical. Despite the potential of MLS technology, few studies included detailed assessments of its accuracy in mature plantations. In this study, we assessed a novel, high-density MLS operated below canopy for its ability to derive phenotypic measurements from mature Pinus radiata. MLS data were co-registered with above-canopy UAV laser scanner (ULS) data and imported to a pipeline that segments individual trees from the point cloud before extracting tree-level metrics. The metrics studied include tree height, diameter at breast height (DBH), stem volume and whorl characteristics. MLS-derived tree metrics were compared to field measurements and metrics derived from ULS alone. Our pipeline was able to segment individual trees with a success rate of 90.3%. We also observed strong agreement between field measurements and MLS-derived DBH (R2 = 0.99, RMSE = 5.4%) and stem volume (R2 = 0.99, RMSE = 10.16%). Additionally, we proposed a new variable height method for deriving DBH to avoid swelling, with an overall accuracy of 52% for identifying the correct method for where to take the diameter measurement. A key finding of this study was that MLS data acquired from below the canopy was able to derive canopy heights with a level of accuracy comparable to a high-end ULS scanner (R2 = 0.94, RMSE = 3.02%), negating the need for capturing above-canopy data to obtain accurate canopy height models. Overall, the findings of this study demonstrate that even in mature forests, MLS technology holds strong potential for advancing forest phenotyping and tree measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In mensural notation, certain combinations of notes could be notated either individually or bound together as ligatures. The choice of whether or not to use a ligature provided an opportunity for composers and scribes to encode different types of musical meaning. It has long been accepted that ligatures could help to show text underlay, and scholars have also proposed that ligatures could clarify aspects of musical structure, such as melodic and rhythmic patterns, phrasing, and articulation. It is difficult to prove wide applicability of these proposals, not least because they tend to rely primarily on the evidence of practical sources. Fortunately, there is more theoretical evidence about the purpose and function of ligatures than has been heretofore recognized. While much of the evidence unsurprisingly points toward the textual significance of ligatures, a substantial amount of theory from the early fifteenth century to the midsixteenth century shows that ligatures were also important for clarifying aspects of mensural context, sometimes forcing perfection and alteration. The evidence leads us to reconsider widely held assumptions about the significance of ligatures and to look beyond text underlay as the primary meaning that may (or may not) be signified. Drawing on these insights, contextual analysis of notation can provide a clearer window into the concerns and priorities of composers and scribes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reverse projection photogrammetry has long been used to estimate the height of an individual in forensic video examinations. A natural extrapolation would be to apply the same technique on a video to estimate the speed of an object by determining the distance traveled between two points over a set amount of time. To test this theory, five digital video recorders (DVRs) were connected to a single fixed camera to record a vehicle traveling down a track. The vehicle's speed was measured through Doppler radar by a trained operator and the speedometer of the vehicle was also recorded with a video camera. The recorded video was examined and the frames that best depict the beginning and end of the vehicles course were selected. Two reverse projection photogrammetric examinations were performed on the selected frames to establish the position of the vehicle. The distance between the two points was measured, and the time elapsed between the two points was examined. The outcome provided an accurate speed result with a standard degree of uncertainty. This study proves the feasibility of using video data and reverse projection photogrammetry to determine the speed of a vehicle with a limited set of variables. Further research is needed to determine how additional variables would impact the standard degree of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Individual-tree taper and volume equations are essential for forest management. They provide estimates of volume that are incorporated into plot-level volume equations and also into growth and yield models to estimate volumes per hectare in forest crops. Moreover, taper equations allow forest managers to estimate dimensions of logs that can be cut from stems in their forests when they have measured diameters at breast height and heights of trees in inventories. Compatible taper and volume equations have the property that the same individual tree volume can be estimated either from the tree volume equation or by integrating the taper equation. Durable eucalypt species such as Eucalyptus globoidea Blakely, however, have especially valuable heartwood and so managers require estimates of the volumes and shapes of heartwood zones within trees. Simple overall wood taper and volume equations would therefore be inadequate. Methods: 74 Eucalyptus globoidea trees were destructively sampled in 8 different trial plots throughout New Zealand. Tree ages were 7 to 29 years old, the DBHs were 11 to 67.6 cm and the heights were 7.2 to 35.4 m. All trees were felled and lengths and taper diameters outside bark were measured. To measure taper diameters of heartwood and sapwood, discs were cut at irregular intervals along the stems. Heartwood and sapwood components were identified by applying methyl orange dye and quantified using image analysis. In this study we extended compatibility so that sums of estimated volumes of separate components of stems, bark, sapwood and heartwood, would equal overall tree volume estimates. In addition, taper equations were made for outside bark, inside bark and heartwood that were compatible with their respective volume equations. Parameters of five volume equations for whole stem, whole wood, bark, sapwood, and heartwood were simultaneously estimated. Compatible taper equations for whole stem, stem wood and heartwood were estimated so that they were compatible with the volume equations, thereby creating a fully compatible system. Results: Root mean squared error (RMSE) of volume models were 0.1248298 m³ for heartwood, 0.05496807 m³ for sapwood, 0.1539625 m³ for wood inside bark, 0.1108201 m³ for bark and 0.1439786 m³ for wood including bark. RMSE of taper models was 2.572765 cm for heartwood, 2.348552 cm for wood inside bark and 2.474088 cm for wood including bark. Conclusions: A compatible system of multiple taper and volume equations can be fitted through the simultaneous fitting of parameters with minimal bias and precision levels of ± 0.055-0.154 m³ for volume equations and ± 2.35 to 2.57 cm for taper equations. Leave-one-out cross-validation of the fitted models yielded very similar levels of precision and bias to those encountered when fitting models with the entire dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Spinal radiographic analyses are valid and reliable practices used for patient management in healthcare. Technologies and tools used for these analyses need to be valid and reliable., Objective: This study investigates repeated accuracy for validity and intra- and inter-examiner reliability of computer-aided lateral spinal radiograph measurements using PostureRay ® EMR software., Methods: Rectangle renderings representing lateral spinal radiographic views were created to remove examiner interpretation of anatomical landmarks as performed on actual radiographs to examine the objective repeated accuracy of PostureRay ® software. A blind, randomized, repeated measure design was performed using four examiners trained and experienced with the Harrison Posterior Tangent method of measurement. Each examiner analyzed the spine renderings using a hand-drawn and PostureRay ® method multiple times. A fully crossed design whereby examiners performed multiple assessments per rendering using each analysis method was used to assess intra- and inter-examiner reliability within each method and a formal comparison of the two methods., Results: Using hand-drawn and PostureRay ® methods, examiners displayed very high intra-examiner reliability with correlation values greater than 0.999 for each combination of trials. PostureRay ® method showed consistent accuracy of measurements. Further, there was no statistical difference in average concordance between hand-drawn and PostureRay ® methods for the lateral cervical, thoracic, and thoracolumbosacral spinal regions., Conclusion: This study reports a very high degree of intra- and inter-examiner reliability of radiographic line drawing methods and establishes concurrent validity of PostureRay ® EMR software in determining angles and displacements of lateral spinal alignment as an equivalent method to the handdrawn method., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)

• Open-source software usage is underrepresented in forestry and forest ecology research. • We found 83 R packages with specific utility for the forest research. • We present worked examples focusing on specific forestry research areas. • Our findings were collected into an R Shiny-based metapackage, ForestryAnalysisInR. Forestry and forest ecology research potentially lags behind related fields such as ecology, biodiversity, and conservation research in the employment of open-source software solutions, specifically the R programming language. A direct comparison of the last decade of published research literature from the top 20 ecology and forestry journals shows that R is utilized in over 30% of the literature for ecology, yet in less than 10% of the forestry literature. Open-source computing environments, such as R, Python, and Julia, increase the visibility and reproducibility of scientific research and foster collaborations through the removal of proprietary software restrictions. The lag in adoption of open-source software in forestry and forest ecology could be hindering collaboration, data sharing, and reproducibility. Here we survey the available packages in the R programming language with specific utility for forest-related research. We found more than 100 available packages which we systematically categorized by research category: community analysis; dendrochronology; forest mensuration and inventory; hydrology; informatics/IoT; modeling; phenology; and remote sensing. We present worked examples for a subgroup of R software packages for each category to demonstrate their potential and utility. In these examples we used open-source data sets of our own selection. Additionally, we collected this information into an R metapackage, ForestAnalysisInR , an R Shiny-based solution that allows users to query the R packages we have identified to find those best suited for their analysis needs in a quick and efficient way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]