Pes planus is the loss of the medial longitudinal arch of the foot. It can be flexible or rigid and it results in relative flattening of the plantar surface. The condition may be lifelong, or acquired through time, inflammation or other musculoskeletal problems. Treatment is generally only needed if the condition is new, painful or progressing, or when there is a fixed deformity or other associ...

Ecosystems provide services that are essential to human well-being and survival. Yet, most ecosystem services are external to the market system. Different ways to address this market failure are at hand. Traditional and most common is to use the power of the state to enforce environmental laws and regulations. More recent, payments for ecosystem services (PES) have become an increasingly popula...

BACKGROUND An argument often used to support the view that psychotic experiences (PEs) in general population samples are a valid phenotype for studying the aetiology of schizophrenia is that risk factors for schizophrenia show similar patterns of association with PEs. However, PEs often co-occur with depression, and no study has explicitly tested whether risk factors for schizophrenia are share...

Background Symptomatic (flexible) pes planus is a difficult entity to classify with no universally accepted aetiology. Foot orthoses are a commonly used intervention for pes planus, however, evidence to support their use is limited. Currently there are no clinical guidelines for the prescription of foot orthoses for pes planus. The aim of this study was to seek expert consensus and agreement on...

In Bayesian brain theories, hierarchically related prediction errors (PEs) play a central role for predicting sensory inputs and inferring their underlying causes, e.g., the probabilistic structure of the environment and its volatility. Notably, PEs at different hierarchical levels may be encoded by different neuromodulatory transmitters. Here, we tested this possibility in computational fMRI s...

In the present work, fly ash geopolymer based composites including polyester (PES) waste were studied. Specimens of three compositions were prepared: (a) fly ash geopolymer with 5% PES waste; (b) fly ash geopolymer mortar with 5% PES waste; (c) fly ash geopolymer mortar with 6.25% PES waste. Compressive and bending strength measurements, water absorption test and determination of thermal conduc...