LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Diagnosis of Imported Canine Filarial Infections in Germany 2008 – 2010

Filarial infections of dogs are attracting attention across Europe because of the risk of spread into previously non-endemic areas (e.g. Dirofilaria repens with Culicidae as vectors) and as emerging zoonotic agents. The occurrence of filarial infections in German dogs has been analysed based on 8,545 samples collected either from imported animals or following travel into endemic regions. All samples were tested by means of modified Knott’s test and heartworm antigen assay within the period 2008 – 2010. Heartworm antigen was detected in 127 samples (1.49 %; 95 % CI: 1.25 – 1.77 %), but only 38 dogs also had microfilariae in their blood samples. On the other hand, 125 animals (1.46 %; 95 % CI: 1.23 – 1.74 %) were only positive in the Knott’s test. For discrimination by means of PCR and sequencing a total of 73 blood samples as well as two samples of adult worms were included, which have been sent by veterinarians during 2008 – 2010. A mono-infection caused by D. repens was detected in 35 cases, while D. immitis was proven in 15 samples, with 6 of these showing a combination of D. immitis and D. repens. Imported Dipetalonema dracunculoides (transmitted by Rhipicephalus sanguineus or Hippobosca longipennis) or Acanthocheilonema reconditum (fleas and lice serve as intermediate hosts) infections were diagnosed in 24 cases and in a single sample a co-infection of A. reconditum and D. repens was evident. D. repens was the most common filarial infection imported and it was introduced into Germany from eleven European countries. Slovenia and Hungary are reported for the first time as endemic for D. repens and A. reconditum, respectively. Furthermore this study reports, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time import of D. dracunculoides from the Canary Islands, A. reconditum from Majorca, D. immitis from Corfu and a co-infection of D. repens and A. reconditum from Spain as well as mixed infections of D. repens and D. immitis from Corfu, Sardinia and Bulgaria. Co-infections with other arthropod-borne infections as well as therapeutical follow-up were also considered. Selamectin (as spot-on formulation) was not able to clear microfilaraemia in dogs infected with either D. repens, A. reconditum or D. dracunculoides, whereas a topical moxidectin/imidacloprid formulation was able to eliminate microfilariae in one dog infected with A. reconditum.
QurSim: A corpus for evaluation of relatedness in short texts

 Collected a dataset of nearly 8,000 pairs of related Quranic verses from scholarly sources (i.e., Tafsir Ibn Kathir)  The majority of related verse pairs require deep semantic analysis and domain specific world knowledge to relate  As the related pairs preserve unique Chapter and Verse numbers, the dataset could be automatically generated for many translated languages. Dataset compilation process
Designing Virtual Worlds as Architecture 1 Designing Virtual Worlds as Architecture

Designing virtual worlds as architecture considers the form and function of spatial virtual environments as an alternative kind of architectural design. This perspective can lead to a new way to organize and explore the Internet as a place. In this paper, we refer to this type of online environment as virtual architecture. Traditionally, virtual architecture refers to the 3D visual simulation of physical architecture. This purpose of virtual architecture has been widely recognised and applied to architectural practice. Virtual architecture as an online functional place (Maher et al, 2000) still struggles at the research level due to the lack of understanding of the materials for designing virtual architecture and the lack of appropriate design platforms or tools. The design of virtual worlds such as virtual design studios (Maher and Simoff, 1999), virtual offices (Maher et al, 1999) and virtual meeting environments provide a basis for studying design materials for virtual architecture. These designs distinguish themselves as functional virtual places that provide a sense of place and a sense of awareness of others. Through these designs, we can generalise the effect of software as the design materials of virtual architecture. This paper explores the nature of these new design materials, evaluates the current status of various design platforms or tools and considers the future development of virtual architecture as a functional place. Virtual architecture (VA) is an online place designed using the metaphor of physical architecture. As the focus in this paper, firstly virtual architecture is a functional place for housing online activities and carrying electronic information. Most commonly these are achieved through computer programming languages, which can be called functional core (FC). Virtual architecture inhabits in the digital domain and is presented to people as certain kinds of digital media, which can be called visual shell (VS). Similar to physical architecture, virtual architecture consists of different building elements. In an object-oriented environment, each of these elements is represented as an object. They can be generalised as design materials (DM). Hence each object of these design materials should also have its sub functional core and sub visual shell as parts of the functional core and visual shell of virtual architecture. These ideas are illustrated in Figure 1.
Transcranial direct current stimulation for treatment of freezing of gait: a cross-over study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Progression of Parkinson's disease (PD) is frequently characterized by the occurrence of freezing of gait (FOG) representing a disabling motor complication. We aim to investigate safety and efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation of the primary motor cortex of PD patients with FOG.


METHODS
In this cross-over, double-blind, sham-controlled study, 10 PD patients with FOG persisting in "on" state underwent anodal and sham direct current stimulation for 5 consecutive days. Clinical assessment over a 1-month period was performed.


RESULTS
A significant improvement of gait, as assessed by the Stand Walk Sit test, with reduction in number and duration of FOG episodes, along with a significant reduction in the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale score, were observed after anodal stimulation. Beneficial effects were more evident after the entire 5-day stimulation session, and persisted until the end of the observation period.


CONCLUSIONS
Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex is safe and has therapeutic potential in PD patients with FOG.
Safe Positively Invariant Sets for Spacecraft Obstacle Avoidance

This paper presents an obstacle avoidance method for spacecraft relative motion control. In this approach, a connectivity graph is constructed for a set of relative framepoints,which formavirtual net centeredaroundanominal orbital position. The connectivity between points in the virtual net is determined based on the use of safe positively invariant sets for guaranteed collision freemaneuvering. A graph search algorithm is then applied to find amaneuver that avoids specified obstacles and adheres to specified thrust limits. As compared to conventional open-loop trajectory optimization, this approach enables the handling of bounded disturbances, which can represent the effects of perturbing forces andmodel uncertainty, while rigorously guaranteeing that nonconvex and possibly time-varying obstacle avoidance constraints are satisfied. Details for handling a single stationary obstacle, multiple stationary obstacles, moving obstacles, and bounded disturbances are reported and illustrated with simulation case studies.
Improved Statistical Signal Detection in Pharmacovigilance by Combining Multiple Strength-of-Evidence Aspects in vigiRank

BACKGROUND
Detection of unknown risks with marketed medicines is key to securing the optimal care of individual patients and to reducing the societal burden from adverse drug reactions. Large collections of individual case reports remain the primary source of information and require effective analytics to guide clinical assessors towards likely drug safety signals. Disproportionality analysis is based solely on aggregate numbers of reports and naively disregards report quality and content. However, these latter features are the very fundament of the ensuing clinical assessment.


OBJECTIVE
Our objective was to develop and evaluate a data-driven screening algorithm for emerging drug safety signals that accounts for report quality and content.


METHODS
vigiRank is a predictive model for emerging safety signals, here implemented with shrinkage logistic regression to identify predictive variables and estimate their respective contributions. The variables considered for inclusion capture different aspects of strength of evidence, including quality and clinical content of individual reports, as well as trends in time and geographic spread. A reference set of 264 positive controls (historical safety signals from 2003 to 2007) and 5,280 negative controls (pairs of drugs and adverse events not listed in the Summary of Product Characteristics of that drug in 2012) was used for model fitting and evaluation; the latter used fivefold cross-validation to protect against over-fitting. All analyses were performed on a reconstructed version of VigiBase(®) as of 31 December 2004, at around which time most safety signals in our reference set were emerging.


RESULTS
The following aspects of strength of evidence were selected for inclusion into vigiRank: the numbers of informative and recent reports, respectively; disproportional reporting; the number of reports with free-text descriptions of the case; and the geographic spread of reporting. vigiRank offered a statistically significant improvement in area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) over screening based on the Information Component (IC) and raw numbers of reports, respectively (0.775 vs. 0.736 and 0.707, cross-validated).


CONCLUSIONS
Accounting for multiple aspects of strength of evidence has clear conceptual and empirical advantages over disproportionality analysis. vigiRank is a first-of-its-kind predictive model to factor in report quality and content in first-pass screening to better meet tomorrow's post-marketing drug safety surveillance needs.
Pathogens and hosts: the dance is the same, the couples are different.

The colloquium provided a remarkable closure to a century that began with only a primitive understanding of the microorganisms that cause disease in plants and animals. Indeed, it was only because of breakthroughs of the past decade in understanding the molecular biology of microbial virulence and eukaryote defense that the need to bring the plant and …
Real-time Enhancement for Xen Hypervisor

System virtualization, which provides good isolation, is now widely used in server consolidation. Meanwhile, one of the hot topics in this field is to extend virtualization for embedded systems. However, current popular virtualization platforms do not support real-time operating systems such as embedded Linux well because the platform is not real-time ware, which will bring low-performance I/O and high scheduling latency. The goal of this paper is to optimize the Xen virtualization platform to be real-time operating system friendly. We improve two aspects of the Xen virtualization platform. First, we improve the xen scheduler to manage the scheduling latency and response time of the real-time operating system. Second, we import multiple real-time operating systems balancing method. Our experiment demonstrates that our enhancement to the Xen virtualization platform support real-time operating system well and the improvement to the real-time performance is about 20%.
Fitspiration and thinspiration: a comparison across three social networking sites

Background
Fitspiration, or images and text promoting health and fitness, and thinspiration, or images and text promoting thinness, have both received criticism for their negative effects on body image and dieting behaviors. In this study, we critically examined and compared the content of fitspiration and thinspiration on three social networking sites (SNS).


Methods
Fitspiration and thinspiration posts (N = 360) from three photo-sharing SNS (Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter) were collected quasi-randomly on four days over two weeks. Image and associated text content were coded for variables related to weight and shape, muscularity, thin ideal, and eating. Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests compared content of fitspiration and thinspiration posts overall and among the three SNS.


Results
Thinspiration images portrayed body parts more frequently than fitspiration (69.8% vs. 30.2%). Similarly, posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness appeared only in thinspiration. No differences were found between fitspiration and thinspiration posts with regard to sexual suggestiveness, appearance comparison, and messages encouraging restrictive eating. Fitspiration and thinspiration posts included similar images across the three SNS-focusing on appearance, sexually suggestive images, and restrictive eating-with three exceptions. Fitspiration posts exhibiting body positivity were found only on Tumblr. In thinspiration posts, references to mental illness were more frequent on Tumblr and Instagram than on Twitter, and bone emphasis was coded more frequently on Twitter than on Instagram.


Conclusions
Although fitspiration posts were less extreme than thinspiration posts on the whole, notable similarities in their content support that fitspiration endorses problematic attitudes towards fitness, body image, and restrictive eating in pursuit of a fit-and-thin body ideal.
The online outpatient booking system 'Choose and Book' improves attendance rates at an audiology clinic: a comparative audit.

BACKGROUND
The 'Choose and Book' system provides an online booking service which primary care professionals can book in real time or soon after a patient's consultation. It aims to offer patients choice and improve outpatient clinic attendance rates.


OBJECTIVE
An audit comparing attendance rates of new patients booked into the Audiological Medicine Clinic using the 'Choose and Book' system with that of those whose bookings were made through the traditional booking system.


METHODS
Data accrued between 1 April 2008 and 31 October 2008 were retrospectively analysed for new patient attendance at the department, and the age and sex of the patients, method of appointment booking used and attendance record were collected. Patients were grouped according to booking system used - 'Choose and Book' or the traditional system. The mean ages of the groups were compared by a t test. The standard error of the difference between proportions was used to compare the data from the two groups. A P value of < or = 0.05 was considered to be significant.


RESULTS
'Choose and Book' patients had a significantly better rate of attendance than traditional appointment patients, P < 0.01 (95% CI 4.3, 20.5%). There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of sex, P > 0.1 (95% CI-3.0, 16.2%). The 'Choose and Book' patients, however, were significantly older than the traditional appointment patients, P < 0.001 (95% CI 4.35, 12.95%).


CONCLUSION
This audit suggests that when primary care agents book outpatient clinic appointments online it improves outpatient attendance.
An Introduction to BRDF Models

This document focuses on Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDFs) in the context of computer based image synthesis. An introduction to basic radiometry and BRDF theory is given. Several well known BRDF models are reviewed and compared based on their physical plausibility and the types of surfaces that they are suited for.
A novel hybrid ( wind – photovoltaic ) system sizing procedure

Wind-photovoltaic hybrid system (WPHS) utilization is becoming popular due to increasing energy costs and decreasing prices of turbines and photovoltaic (PV) panels. However, prior to construction of a renewable generation station, it is necessary to determine the optimum number of PV panels and wind turbines for minimal cost during continuity of generated energy to meet the desired consumption. In fact, the traditional sizing procedures find optimum number of the PV modules and wind turbines subject to minimum cost. However, the optimum battery capacity is either not taken into account, or it is found by a full search between all probable solution spaces which requires extensive computation. In this study, a novel description of the production/consumption phenomenon is proposed, and a new sizing procedure is developed. Using this procedure, optimum battery capacity, together with optimum number of PV modules and wind turbines subject to minimum cost can be obtained with good accuracy. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
On the pursue for a Fair Internet Regulation System: A blueprint for a content blocking system encouraging participation by the Internet users

This paper describes a blueprint for the proper design of a Fair Internet Regulation System (IRS), i.e. a system that will be implemented in national level and will encourage the participation of Internet users in enriching and correcting its “behavior”. Such a system will be easier to be accepted by Western democracies willing to implement a fair Internet regulation policy.
Investigating the success of ERP systems: Case studies in three Taiwanese high-tech industries

The measurement of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems success or effectiveness is critical to our understanding of the value and efficacy of ERP investment and managerial actions. Whether traditional information systems success models can be extended to investigating ERP systems success is yet to be investigated. This paper proposes a partial extension and respecification of the DeLone and MacLean model of IS success to ERP systems. The purpose of the present research is to re-examine the updated DeLone and McLean model [W. DeLone, E. McLean, The DeLone McLean model of information system success: a ten-year update, Journal of Management Information Systems 19 (4) (2003) 3–9] of ERP systems success. The updated DeLone and McLean model was applied to collect data from the questionnaires answered by 204 users of ERP systems at three high-tech firms in Taiwan. Finally, this study suggests that system quality, service quality, and information quality are most important successful factors. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. www.elsevier.com/locate/compind Computers in Industry 58 (2007) 783–793
Emerging treatment options for meibomian gland dysfunction

Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) is one of the most common diseases observed in clinics; it influences a great number of people, and is the leading cause of evaporative dry eye. Given the increased recognition of the importance of MGD, a great amount of attention has been paid to therapies targeting this condition. The traditional treatments of MGD consist of warm compresses and lid hygiene for removing an obstructed meibum, as well as antibiotics and anti-inflammatory agents to improve the quality of the meibum. However, each of these treatments has a different shortcoming and the treatment of MGD remains challenging. Despite the numerous possible treatment options for MGD, it is still difficult to obtain complete relief of signs and symptoms. This review focuses on current emerging treatment options for MGD including intraductal meibomian gland probing, emulsion eye drops containing lipids, the LipiFlow® thermal pulsation system, N-acetyl-cysteine, azithromycin, oral supplementation with omega-3 essential fatty acids, and cyclosporine A.
The influence of racial embodiment on racial bias in immersive virtual environments

Increasingly, people interact with others via digital representations, or avatars, that feature indicators of race. Nonetheless, little is known about the effects of avatar race on attitudes and behaviors. We conducted a study to determine how people’s implicit racial bias is affected by the race of their avatar in an immersive virtual environment (IVE). Our results indicate that the effects of avatar race extend beyond digital spaces. People embodied by Black avatars in an IVE demonstrated greater implicit racial bias outside the IVE than people embodied by White avatars. These findings have important implications for strategies to reduce racial prejudice and provide new insights into the flexibility of racial identity and racial attitudes afforded by virtual technologies.
MICRO-RAMAN CHARACTERISATION OF SILVER CORROSION PRODUCTS: INSTRUMENTAL SET UP AND REFERENCE DATABASE

While several databases with Raman spectra of interest to silver corrosion have been published already, we present a catalogue of Raman spectra of silver compounds, which can be found on corroded silver and silver alloy objects, i.e. not only concerning archaeological and artistic works but all kind of silver items exposed to the atmosphere. The collected Raman spectra of these highly pure (>99.99%) silver compounds have been useful as references in a project concerning the identification of silver corrosion products by micro-Raman spectroscopy in the early stages of atmospheric corrosion. The instrumental conditions and parameters, the most representative spectrum, and band assignments are reported for each selected silver compound followed by some detailed comments, unlike many other collections of spectra. Since some of these compounds show low vibrational frequencies and are highly photo-sensitive, micro-Raman spectroscopy has revealed to be a suitable and non-destructive tool for their analytical characterisation.
Single-Stage Bridgeless AC–DC PFC Converter Using a Lossless Passive Snubber and Valley Switching

A single-stage bridgeless ac-dc PFC converter using a lossless passive snubber and valley switching is proposed. The proposed converter is based on a two-stage bridgeless boost-flyback converter. In the proposed converter, the conduction losses are reduced by removing an input full-bridge diode rectifier. The boost inductor is designed to be operated in the discontinuous-conduction mode for achieving high power factor. In the flyback module, the couple inductor that provides input-output electrical isolation for safety is designed to be operated in the critical-conduction mode for low RMS current and low turn-on switching loss by using valley-switching operation. Because of the lossless snubber circuit, the voltage spike of switch is clamped, and the leakage inductor energy is recycled. The snubber capacitor is used as a dc-bus capacitor, which is divided into two capacitors. In addition, some input power is directly conducted to the output, and the remaining power is stored in dc-bus capacitor. So, low-voltage rating capacitors can be used as the dc-bus capacitor and power transfer efficiency is improved. The presented theoretical analysis is verified on an output 48-V and 60-Wexperimental prototype.