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Background: Bovine fascioliasis is a parasitic disease that affects cattle. It leads to direct and indirect great economic loss due to animal mortalities, growth retardation and expenditure on anthelmintics, reduction livestock productivity and essentially condemnation of infected liver by inspection service. The study was carried out to determine the seasonal prevalence and estimated financial losses of fascioliasis in cattle in the Western Highlands of Cameroon. Methodology: A total of 2167 cattle were selected. Later, the cattle, have being the carcasses, were dissected, and the livers were dissected and carefully examined for adult liver flukes. Faeces were collected immediately after the cattle were killed and examined using the formol‐ether concentration technique. Condemned livers were weighted to estimate the financial losses using the average price of a kilogram of liver. Results: A total 428 of cattle were found with infected livers or egg in the faeces giving a total prevalence of 19.75%. Among the infected carcass, 18.64% had both the Fasciola eggs in the faeces and flukes in the liver while 1.10% had only flukes in the liver. Results revealed that prevalence of Fasciola spp. was significantly higher during the rainy season (23.48%) than 16% in the dry season (p = 0.00). A significantly (p = 0.000) higher prevalence was also observed in females (33.9%) than in males (13.1%). Age range showed significant (p = 0.000) influence with the animals of 8–10 years old recorded the highest prevalence of 39.3%. Furthermore, 433.1 kg of liver was condemned giving a direct financial loss of 1221,550 FCFA (2049.64 USD) and an annual financial loss due to liver condemnation estimated to 1814,775 (3045.01 USD). Conclusion: Findings of this study indicated that bovine fascioliasis is prevalent in cattle in the Western Highlands of Cameroon, and it leads to an important financial loss particularly in the rainy season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the loss of trust that occurs when individuals suffer from sudden and significant financial loss. We use a qualitative case study to show that individuals lose trust in a range of parties, including financial advisors, banks, credit providers, government and perhaps most damagingly of all, oneself. Such outcomes are concerning as all financial services are based on trust between various parties, and trust is important in making financial decisions. A lack of trust can lead to poorer individual and societal outcomes. It also suggests that trends to financial self‐sufficiency have risks, which impact well beyond monetary losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wide application of wind energy in the world towards reduction of global warming, have made the low cost maintenance of these turbines very important. Basically, mechanical faults such as gear‐box faults in these turbines lead to a long down time and consequently heavy financial loss. Generally, these faults cause eccentricity in the generator air gap, so by its early detection the fault can be largely prevented. In this paper, eccentricity fault detection is studied in doubly‐fed induction generator (DFIG) which is the most established generator in wind turbines and also is more prone to mechanical faults compared to other technologies. One of frequency components of reactive power is introduced as eccentricity fault index. As the reactive power is always evaluated in the control system, there is no need to include a new hardware for fault detection. Finite elements method is used to model the wound rotor induction machine (WRIM) which is coupled with closed‐loop control system. Following the validation of the model in the healthy case experimentally, eccentricity under different operating conditions is included in the modeling. Finally, a simple procedure based on simple signal processing methods is introduced for eccentricity fault diagnosis considering the operating conditions of the wind turbine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing complexity of software development activities, the need for effective effort estimation techniques has arisen. Underestimation leads to disruption in the project's estimated cost and delivery. On the other hand, overestimation causes outbidding and financial losses in business. Effective software effort estimation techniques enable project managers to schedule the software life cycle activities appropriately. Correctly assessing the effort needed to develop a software product is a major concern in software industries. Random forest (RF) technique is a popularly used machine learning technique that helps in improving the prediction values. The main objective of this study is to precisely assess the software projects development effort by utilising the use case point approach. The effort parameters are optimised utilising the RF technique to acquire higher prediction accuracy. Moreover, the results acquired applying the RF technique is compared with the multi‐layer perceptron, radial basis function network, stochastic gradient boosting and log‐linear regression techniques to highlight the performance attained by each technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Inflammatory arthritis is associated with a high degree of work instability and financial burden. In this study, we examine the extent of work instability and financial loss as well as their association with disease characteristics during the first 18 months of inflammatory arthritis. Method One hundred and four patients in the early phase (more than 6 weeks, < 18 months) of inflammatory arthritis were recruited from a larger early inflammatory arthritis registry. Questionnaires recorded sociodemographic data and disease characteristics, including pain assessed using the Short Form Mc Gill Pain Questionnaire ( MPQ) and physical functioning measured with the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 ( SF-36) physical functioning score. The Rheumatoid Arthritis Work Instability Scale ( RA- WIS) was used to measure patient-perceived functioning in the workplace and the Financial Loss Questionnaire ( FLQ) measured the impact on family finances. Results Participants' mean age was 56 years, 70.2% were female and 49.0% were working. Average yearly household income was < 60 000 Canadian dollars ( CAD) for 38.5% of the sample. Of our working patients, 43% had a medium or high risk of work loss as measured by the RA- WIS and 35% reported a financial loss. On multivariate analysis, MPQ and SF-36 contributed to the dependent variable work instability, while age and SF-36 contributed to financial loss. Conclusion This study identifies pain and physical dysfunction as potential modifiable risk factors for negative socioeconomic repercussions of illness in early inflammatory arthritis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A negative outcome can have motivational and emotional consequences on its own (absolute loss) or in comparison to alternative, better, outcomes (relative loss). The consequences of incurring a loss are moderated by personality factors such as neuroticism and introversion. However, the neuronal basis of this moderation is unknown. Here we investigated the neuronal basis of loss processing and personality with functional magnetic resonance imaging in a choice task. We separated absolute and relative financial loss by sequentially revealing the chosen and unchosen outcomes. With increasing neuroticism, activity in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) preferentially reflected relative rather than absolute losses. Conversely, with increasing introversion, activity in the right lateral OFC preferentially reflected absolute rather than relative losses. These results suggest that personality affects loss-related processing through the lateral OFC, and propose a dissociation of personality dimension and loss type on the neuronal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]