LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Fully automatic three-dimensional quantitative analysis of intracoronary optical coherence tomography: method and Validation.

OBJECTIVES AND BACKGROUND
Quantitative analysis of intracoronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) image data (QOCT) is currently performed by a time-consuming manual contour tracing process in individual OCT images acquired during a pullback procedure (frame-based method). To get an efficient quantitative analysis process, we developed a fully automatic three-dimensional (3D) lumen contour detection method and evaluated the results against those derived by expert human observers.


METHODS
The method was developed using Matlab (The Mathworks, Natick, MA). It incorporates a graphical user interface for contour display and, in the selected cases where this might be necessary, editing. OCT image data of 20 randomly selected patients, acquired with a commercially available system (Lightlab imaging, Westford, MA), were pulled from our OCT database for validation.


RESULTS
A total of 4,137 OCT images were analyzed. There was no statistically significant difference in mean lumen areas between the two methods (5.03 + or - 2.16 vs. 5.02 + or - 2.21 mm(2); P = 0.6, human vs. automated). Regression analysis showed a good correlation with an r value of 0.99. The method requires an average 2-5 sec calculation time per OCT image. In 3% of the detected contours an observer correction was necessary.


CONCLUSION
Fully automatic lumen contour detection in OCT images is feasible with only a select few contours showing an artifact (3%) that can be easily corrected. This QOCT method may be a valuable tool for future coronary imaging studies incorporating OCT.
Endoscopic-assisted repair of craniosynostosis.

OBJECT
The goal of the craniofacial surgeon has always been the correction of form and function with prevention of associated morbidity and death. Through the pioneering work of Jimenez and Barone, minimally invasive approaches to the surgical correction of craniosynostosis are now gaining wider acceptance. Here the authors review the technique for endoscopic-assisted repair of craniosynostosis from the perspective of a new minimally invasive approach. They also assess the safety, efficacy, and results of the early treatment of infants with craniosynostosis in a small series of children who underwent surgery at this institution.


METHODS
Data regarding synostosis type, operative time, patient age, blood loss, transfusion rates, duration of hospitalization, and complications were collected. Nineteen patients (12 girls and seven boys) between the ages of 1.2 and 5 months of age were treated with the endoscope-assisted technique. The mean operative time was 97 minutes. Five (26%) of 19 children received a blood transfusion. Most patients were discharged home the morning after surgery. The clinical courses of two patients who required additional major craniofacial reconstructions are discussed. There were no deaths, dural sinus tears, cerebrospinal fluid leaks, neurological injuries, or infections, and there were no complications related to the use of helmet therapy. Seventeen of the 19 patients achieved excellent cosmetic results with a single surgery.


CONCLUSIONS
This small series supports larger experiences and indicates that early treatment of craniosynostosis with minimally invasive, endoscope-assisted techniques is safe; limits blood transfusion, hospital stay, and operative time; and represents a valuable alternative to the traditional calvarial reconstruction methods.
Accommodation in emmetropic and myopic young adults wearing bifocal soft contact lenses.

PURPOSE
To assess the effect of bifocal soft contact lenses on the accommodative errors (lags) of young adults. Recent studies suggest that bifocal soft contact lenses are an effective myopia control treatment although the underlying mechanism is not understood.


METHODS
Accommodation responses were measured for four target distances: 100, 50, 33 and 25 cm in 35 young adult subjects (10 emmetropes and 25 myopes; mean age, 22.8 +/- 2.5 years). Measurements were made under both monocular and binocular conditions with three types of lenses: single vision distance soft contact lenses (SVD), single vision near soft contact lenses (SVN; +1.50 D added to the distance prescription) and bifocal soft contact lenses (BF; +1.50 D add).


RESULTS
For the SVD lenses, all subjects exhibited lags of accommodation, with myopes accommodating significantly less than emmetropes for the 100 and 50 cm target distances (p < 0.05). With the SVN lenses, there was no significant difference in accommodative responses between emmetropes and myopes. With the BF lenses, both emmetropic and myopic groups exhibited leads in accommodation for all target distances, with emmetropes showing significantly greater leads for all distances (p < 0.005).


CONCLUSIONS
Overall, myopes tended to accommodate less than emmetropes, irrespective of the contact lens type, which significantly affected accommodation for both groups. The apparent over-accommodation of myopes when wearing the BF contact lenses may explain the reported efficacy as a myopia control treatment, although further studies are required to elucidate the mechanism underlying this accommodative effect.
Antioxidant vitamin supplementation reduces benzo(a)pyrene-DNA adducts and potential cancer risk in female smokers.

BACKGROUND
Elevated benzo(a)pyrene [B(a)P]-DNA adducts have been associated with 3-fold increased risk of lung cancer in current smokers. We assessed the chemopreventive effects of antioxidant supplementation using B(a)P-DNA adducts in leukocytes as an intermediate cancer risk marker.


METHODS
Subjects were randomized to a double-blinded placebo-controlled clinical trial of antioxidant vitamin supplementation [500 mg vitamin C and 400 IU vitamin E (dl-alpha-tocopherol) daily] or placebo. Smokers with > or =10 cigarettes per day and serum cotinine > or =25 ng/mL were eligible for the study. B(a)P-DNA adduct level was the outcome. The randomization was stratified by gender and cigarettes per day (< or =20 or >20). Smoking habits and blood samples were collected every 3 months during the 15-month treatment period. Samples were analyzed for B(a)P-DNA adducts (high-performance liquid chromatography), plasma cotinine, vitamin levels, and GSTM1 genotype. The intent-to-treat model adjusted for B(a)P-DNA and cotinine at randomization.


RESULTS
Overall and among men, there was no effect of treatment on B(a)P-DNA adduct levels. Among treated women, B(a)P-DNA adducts decreased by 31% compared with women on placebo (P = 0.03). Among treated women with the GSTM1 genotype, there was a 43% decrease in adducts (P = 0.04).


CONCLUSION
Our primary hypothesis that the mean level of smoking-related B(a)P-DNA adducts would be lower in all subjects in the vitamin treatment group compared with all placebo-treated subjects was not substantiated. However, oursecondary gender-specific analysis found a significant reduction in B(a)P-DNA adducts in women with vitamin treatment, suggesting that antioxidant supplementation maymitigate some of the procarcinogenic effects of exposuretoB(a)P. The effect in GSTM1-null women suggeststhat certain subgroups may derive more benefit fromsupplementation. Although the results of this trial showthe potential chemopreventive role of antioxidants, thebest way for smokers to reduce their cancer risk remains smoking cessation.
Improving the Robustness of Deep Neural Networks via Stability Training

In this paper we address the issue of output instability of deep neural networks: small perturbations in the visual input can significantly distort the feature embeddings and output of a neural network. Such instability affects many deep architectures with state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of computer vision tasks. We present a general stability training method to stabilize deep networks against small input distortions that result from various types of common image processing, such as compression, rescaling, and cropping. We validate our method by stabilizing the state of-the-art Inception architecture [11] against these types of distortions. In addition, we demonstrate that our stabilized model gives robust state-of-the-art performance on largescale near-duplicate detection, similar-image ranking, and classification on noisy datasets.
Determining location of appliances from multi-hop tree structures of power strip type smart meters

Recently, energy management has become one of the emerging services in the area of residential network service. A smart meter is the most essential component of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) that connects the home energy management system of individual residences and a smart grid that optimizes the production, distribution, and consumption of electric power. Power strip type smart meters can be used to not only monitor but also control the electric power consumption at individual power outlet ports in the power outlet directly. They can be used to control and effectively reduce standby power consumption by the application of the direct power supply control. A smart multi-power tap (SMPT) is an advanced multi-outlet power strip type smart meter that provides important contextual information such as the identity and location of electric home appliances on the basis of the temporal power consumption data and the control of power supply to the appliances. However, the SMPT cannot be used to determine the location of appliances when the connections among SMPTs form a tree structure. In this study, we develop a mathematical model of cascade connections among SMPTs and propose a solution for obtaining the location information of the tree structure. The proposed method helps realize real applications of the SMPT for providing activity-based context-aware home network services and energy management services.
A new optimizer using particle swarm theory

The optimization of nonlinear functions using particle swarm methodology is described. Implementations of two paradigms are discussed and compared, including a recently developed locally oriented paradigm. Benchmark testing of both paradigms is described, and applications, including neural network training and robot task learning, are proposed. Relationships between particle swarm optimization and both artificial life and evolutionary computation are reviewed.
Factors associated with stress among medical students.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the probable factors responsible for stress among undergraduate medical students.


METHODS
The qualitative descriptive study was conducted at a public-sector medical college in Islamabad, Pakistan, from January to April 2014. Self-administered open-ended questionnaires were used to collect data from first year medical students in order to study the factors associated with the new environment.


RESULTS
There were 115 students in the study with a mean age of 19±6.76 years. Overall, 35(30.4%) students had mild to moderate physical problems, 20(17.4%) had severe physical problems and 60(52.2%) did not have any physical problem. Average stress score was 19.6±6.76. Major elements responsible for stress identified were environmental factors, new college environment, student abuse, tough study routines and personal factors.


CONCLUSIONS
Majority of undergraduate students experienced stress due to both academic and emotional factors.
The Simple Macroeconomics of Fiscal Austerity, Public Sector Debt and Deflation

This paper explores the macroeconomics of fiscal austerity and deflation in an economy with public debt. A binding budget deficit cap destabilizes the economy by turning the government budget into an automatic destabilizer. Public debt helps maintain AD in the presence of deflation because deflation increases the real value of public interest payments. That makes public debt significantly different from private debt. If the economy is subject to a binding deficit cap, deflation no longer stabilizes output. This is because increased real interest payments must be matched by spending cuts, giving rise to a negative balanced budget multiplier.
Copker: Computing with Private Keys without RAM

Cryptographic systems are essential for computer and communication security, for instance, RSA is used in PGP Email clients and AES is employed in full disk encryption. In practice, the cryptographic keys are loaded and stored in RAM as plain-text, and therefore vulnerable to physical memory attacks (e.g., cold-boot attacks). To tackle this problem, we propose Copker, which implements asymmetric cryptosystems entirely within the CPU, without storing plain-text private keys in the RAM. In its active mode, Copker stores kilobytes of sensitive data, including the private key and the intermediate states, only in onchip CPU caches (and registers). Decryption/signing operations are performed without storing sensitive information in system memory. In the suspend mode, Copker stores symmetrically encrypted private keys in memory, while employs existing solutions to keep the key-encryption key securely in CPU registers. Hence, Copker releases the system resources in the suspend mode. In this paper, we implement Copker with the most common asymmetric cryptosystem, RSA, with the support of multiple private keys. We show that Copker provides decryption/signing services that are secure against physical memory attacks. Meanwhile, with intensive experiments, we demonstrate that our implementation of Copker is secure and requires reasonable overhead. Keywords—Cache-as-RAM; cold-boot attack; key management; asymmetric cryptography implementation.
Associations between smoking and adenocarcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas of the uterine cervix (United States)

Objectives: Few studies of smoking and cervical carcinoma have addressed the rare cervical adenocarcinomas or used DNA-based tests to control for human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Methods: This multicenter case–control study included 124 adenocarcinoma cases, 307 community controls (matched on age, race, and residence to adenocarcinoma cases), and 139 squamous carcinoma cases (matched on age, diagnosis date, clinic, and disease stage to adenocarcinoma cases). Participants completed risk-factor interviews and volunteered cervical samples for PCR-based HPV testing. Polychotomous logistic regression generated adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for both histologic types. Results: Eighteen percent of adenocarcinoma cases, 43% of squamous carcinoma cases, and 22% of controls were current smokers. After control for HPV and other questionnaire data, adenocarcinomas were consistently inversely associated with smoking (e.g. current: OR = 0.6, 95% CI 0.3–1.1; ≥1 pack per day: OR = 0.7, 95% CI 0.4–1.3), while squamous carcinomas were positively associated with smoking (e.g. current: OR = 1.6, 95% CI 0.9–2.9; ≥1 pack per day: OR = 1.8, 95% CI 1.0–3.3). Results in analyses restricted to HPV-positive controls were similar. Conclusion: Smoking has opposite associations with cervical adenocarcinomas and squamous carcinomas. Although both histologic types are caused by HPV and arise in the cervix, etiologic co-factors for these tumors may differ.
librosa: Audio and Music Signal Analysis in Python

This document describes version 0.4.0 of librosa: a Python package for audio and music signal processing. At a high level, librosa provides implementations of a variety of common functions used throughout the field of music information retrieval. In this document, a brief overview of the library’s functionality is provided, along with explanations of the design goals, software development practices, and notational conventions.
Continuous Semantics for Termination Proofs

We prove a general strong normalization theorem for higher type 
rewrite systems based on Tait's strong computability predicates and a 
strictly continuous domain-theoretic semantics. The theorem applies to 
extensions of Goedel's system $T$, but also to various forms of bar 
recursion for which termination was hitherto unknown.
Abstract Meditations on the Concrete and Concrete Implications for Mathematics Education

Seymour Papert has recently called for a "revaluation of the concrete": a revolution in education and cognitive science that will overthrow logic from "on top and put it on tap." Turkle and Papert (1991) situate the concrete thinking paradigm in a new "epistemological pluralism" an acceptance and valuation of multiple thinking styles, as opposed to their stratification into heirarchically valued stages. As evidence of an emerging trend towards the concrete, they cite feminist critics such as Gilligan's (1982) work on the contextual or relational mode of moral reasoning favored by most women, and Fox Keller's (1983) analysis of the Nobel-prize-winning biologist Barbar McClintock's proximal relationship with her maize plants, her "feeling for the organism." They cite hermeneutic critics such as Lave (1988), whose studies of situated cognition suggest that all learning is highly specific and should be studied in real world contexts.
Effects of the metacognitive computer-tool met.a.ware on the web search of laypersons

Today, laypersons often consult the Internet to inform themselves about health-related issues. However, the competent use of these often complex and heterogeneous information provisions cannot be taken for granted, because many Internet users are lacking the necessary metacognitive prerequisites. Therefore, we developed the metacognitive computer-tool met.a.ware, which supports laypersons’ Internet research for medical information by the means of metacognitive prompting and ontological classification. In an experimental investigation of met.a.ware a total of 118 participants with little medical knowledge were asked to conduct an Internet research on a medical topic. Participants were randomly assigned to four experimental groups that worked with met.a.ware and either received evaluation prompts, monitoring prompts, both types of prompts, or no prompts. All experimental conditions were additionally provided with ontological classification. One control group took paper and pencil notes. A further control group took notes using a blank text window. Results showed that laypersons receiving evaluation prompts outperformed controls in terms of knowledge about sources and produced more arguments commenting on the source of information in an essay task. In addition, laypersons receiving monitoring prompts acquired significantly more knowledge about facts, but did not perform better on a comprehension test than the controls. The availability of ontological categories helped to structure the notes laypersons in the conditions working with ontological classification took during Internet research. Analyses of the notes further demonstrated that the availability of ontological categories guided information search in direction of the selected categories. It is concluded, that met.a.ware is an effective tool that supports laypersons’ Internet research. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 0747-5632/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2007.01.023 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: stadtlm@uni-muenster.de (M. Stadtler). M. Stadtler, R. Bromme / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 716–737 717
Motion planning with hybrid dynamics and temporal goals

In this paper, we consider the problem of motion planning for mobile robots with nonlinear hybrid dynamics, and high-level temporal goals. We use a multi-layered synergistic framework that has been proposed recently for solving planning problems involving hybrid systems and high-level temporal goals. In that framework, a high-level planner employs a user-defined discrete abstraction of the hybrid system as well as exploration information to suggest high-level plans. A low-level sampling-based planner uses the dynamics of the hybrid system and the suggested high-level plans to explore the state-space for feasible solutions. In previous work, we have proposed a geometry-based approach for the construction of the discrete abstraction for the case when the robot is modeled as a continuous system. Here, we extend the approach for the construction of the discrete abstraction to the case when the robot is modeled as nonlinear hybrid system. To use the resulting abstraction more efficiently, we also propose a lazy-search approach for high-level planning that reduces the size of the search space by reusing previously constructed high-level plans for initializing the search. Our proposed techniques result in computational speedups of close to 10 times over other possible approaches for second-order nonlinear hybrid robot models in challenging workspace environments with obstacles and for a variety of temporal logic specifications.
Surveillance and monitoring system using Raspberry Pi and SimpleCV

Surveillance and monitoring has become very important for security reasons these days. Residential areas, government organizations, commercial spaces, schools and hospitals, industries, banking and other challenging indoor and outdoor environments require high end surveillance systems, which are very expensive. This paper proposes the motion detection and tracking system for surveillance in this paper. The proposed system uses Raspberry Pi and computer vision using SimpleCV to detect moving objects in the surveillance area, switch on the lights to capture images and streams the camera feed online using MPJG Streamer, which can be viewed by any authorized person on the go.
Feasibility of whole-body vibration training in nursing home residents with low physical function: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Whole-body vibration (WBV) training may offer an efficient option to improve physical performance of nursing home residents, but the feasibility of WBV training among frail elderly who require continuous institutional care is still open.


METHODS
Fifteen nursing home residents (mean age 84 years) with low physical performance (mean SPPB score 3.7) participated in this blinded, randomized controlled pilot trial. The intervention was either a 10 week, twice-a-week progressive vibration training with slight exercises done on a side-alternating device or similar sham training without vibration. Physical performance was assessed with Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), Timed Up and Go, walk speed and grip strength tests.


RESULTS
Low 12 Hz frequency was well tolerated with mean 95 % compliance in contrast to higher 18 Hz (or 26 Hz) frequency, which was poorly (<30 %) tolerated. While treatment effects were not significant, the mean change in SPPB score was 0.4 (range from -2 to +4) in the WBV group in contrast to -0.1 (from -3 to +3) in the sham group.


DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Frail nursing home residents form not only a potential but also challenging target group for physical rehabilitation with WBV. Side-alternating WBV training performed at low 12 Hz frequency was found generally feasible, whereas higher frequencies appeared formidable. Nevertheless, it is possible that physical performance of some frail elderly without contraindications to WBV can be improved with this type of rapidly executable physical training.