Saxion University of Applied Sciences

About: Saxion University of Applied Sciences is a education organization based out in Enschede, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Health care & Context (language use). The organization has 390 authors who have published 653 publications receiving 8859 citations. The organization is also known as: Saxion University of Applied Sciences.

Measurement Properties of the NIH-Minimal Dataset Dutch Language Version in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain

Abstract: Study Design. Validation study with cross-sectional and longitudinal measurements. Objective. To translate the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-minimal dataset for clinical research on chronic low back pain into the Dutch language and to test its validity and reliability among people with chronic low back pain. Summary of Background Data. The NIH developed a minimal dataset to encourage more complete and consistent reporting of clinical research and to be able to compare studies across countries in patients with low back pain. In the Netherlands, the NIH-minimal dataset has not been translated before and measurement properties are unknown. Methods. Cross-cultural validity was tested by a formal forward-backward translation. Structural validity was tested with exploratory factor analyses (comparative fit index, Tucker-Lewis index, and root mean square error of approximation). Hypothesis testing was performed to compare subscales of the NIH dataset with the Pain Disability Index and the EurQol-5D (Pearson correlation coefficients). Internal consistency was tested with Cronbach alpha and test-retest reliability at 2 weeks was calculated in a subsample of patients with Intraclass Correlation Coefficients and weighted Kappa (kappa(omega)). Results. In total, 452 patients were included of which 52 were included for the test-retest study. Validity: factor analysis for structural validity pointed into the direction of a seven-factor model (Cronbach alpha = 0.78). Factors and total score of the NIH-minimal dataset showed fair to good correlations with Pain Disability Index (r = 0.43-0.70) and EuroQol-5D (r = -0.41 to 0.64). Reliability: test-retest reliability per item showed substantial agreement (kappa(omega) = 0.65). Test-retest reliability per factor was moderate to good (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient -0.71). Conclusion. The Dutch language version measurement properties of the NIH-minimal were satisfactory.

Visual literacy and visual communication for global education: innovations in teaching e-learning in art, design and communication

Abstract: This paper presents the (student) proceedings of a successful inter-university co-operation between a research university and a university of applied sciences, in the field of Visual Literacy and Visual Communication. The origin lays in the international symposium “Digital Communities for Global Education” (Enschede NL, 2006) and the start was a web-based course in Informational Graphic Design. The ongoing development is an experimental master course in which students of both institutes work together. The participating professors are also involved in European Co-operative networks as well as Trans Atlantic- and Euro-Asian ones. Participating students are coming from all over the world so give the course a multi cultural character. Research questions for the project are 1) what is the universal content of a message and 2) how can this message be encoded? 3) what factors do influence the interaction processes in networked education?

The Return of Eratosthenes: Secure Generation of RSA Moduli using Distributed Sieving

Abstract: Secure multiparty generation of an RSA biprime is a challenging task, which increasingly receives attention, due to the numerous privacy-preserving applications that require it. In this work, we construct a new protocol for the RSA biprime generation task, secure against a malicious adversary, who can corrupt any subset of protocol participants. Our protocol is designed with generic multiparty computation (MPC), making it both platform-independent and allowing for weaker security models to be assumed (e.g., honest majority), should the application scenario require it. By carefully "postponing" the check of possible inconsistencies in the shares provided by malicious adversaries, we achieve noteworthy efficiency improvements. Concretely, we are able to produce additive sharings of the prime candidates, from multiplicative sharings via a semi-honest multiplication, without degrading the overall (active) security of our protocol. This is the core of our sieving technique, increasing the probability of our protocol sampling a biprime. Similarly, we perform the first biprimality test, requiring several repetitions, without checking input share consistency, and perform the more costly consistency check only in case of success of the Jacobi symbol based biprimality test. Moreover, we propose a protocol to convert an additive sharing over a ring, into an additive sharing over the integers. Besides being a necessary sub-protocol for the RSA biprime generation, this conversion protocol is of independent interest. The cost analysis of our protocol demonstrated that our approach improves the current state-of-the-art (Chen et al.-Crypto 2020), in terms of communication efficiency. Concretely, for the two-party case with malicious security, and primes of 2048bits, our protocol improves communication by a factor of ~37.

Greening a Geriatric Ward Reduces Functional Decline in Elderly Patients and is Positively Evaluated by Hospital Staff

Abstract: This research examined whether greening of a geriatric ward may reduce the hospital-induced decline in the independent functioning of elderly patients as measured by changes from admission to disch...

Vegetable oils as carbon and energy source for Aureobasidium melanogenum in batch cultivation

Abstract: Dark homogenous fungal‐based layers called biofinishes and vegetable oils are key ingredients of an innovative wood protecting system. The aim of this study was to determine which of the vegetable oils that have been used to generate biofinishes on wood will provide carbon and energy for the biofinish‐inhabiting fungus Aureobasidium melanogenum, and to determine the effect of the oil type and the amount of oil on the cell yield. Aureobasidium melanogenum was cultivated in shake flasks with different types and amounts of carbon‐based nutrients. Oil‐related total cell and colony‐forming unit growth were demonstrated in suspensions with initially 1% raw linseed, stand linseed, and olive oil. Oil‐related cell growth was also demonstrated with raw linseed oil, using an initial amount of 0.02% and an oil addition during cultivation. Nile red staining showed the accumulation of fatty acids inside cells grown in the presence of oil. In conclusion, each tested vegetable oil was used as carbon and energy source by A. melanogenum. The results indicated that stand linseed oil provides less carbon and energy than olive and raw linseed oil. This research is a fundamental step in unraveling the effects of vegetable oils on biofinish formation.