LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Comparing control topologies for wide-bandgap power-device drivers: A simulation study

Wide-bandgap power switches, based on SiC and GaN, are emerging on the semiconductor market. Standard resistor drivers are insufficient to exploit all the advantages of these new devices. Fine control over current and voltage waveforms during switching, equivalent on-state resistance and immunity to noisy environments, demand the development of dedicated drivers. This study aims at determining a suitable control topology for the gate (or base) terminal of the power device, in order to enact regulation of the switching waveforms and performances. Four different topologies, both open- and closed-loop are simulated, examined, and compared with the standard resistor driver.
A Case Study into the Development Process of Cyber Physical Systems

[Context and motivation] For the past several years, Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) have emerged as a new system type like embedded systems or information systems. CPS are highly context-dependent, observe the world through sensors, act upon it through actuators, and communicate with one another through powerful networks. It has been widely argued that these properties pose new challenges for the development process. [Question/problem] Yet, how these CPS properties impact the development process has thus far been subject to conjecture. An investigation of a development process from a cyber physical perspective has thus far not been undertaken. [Principal ideas/results] In this paper, we conduct initial steps into such an investigation. We present a case study involving the example of a software simulator of an airborne traffic collision avoidance system. [Contribution] The goal of the case study is to investigate which of the challenges from the literature impact the development process of CPS the most.
The Relative Effectiveness of Government and Private Schools in Pakistan: Are Girls Worse Off?

Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro-male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. This raises two important questions: Is less spent on enrolled girls than boys through differential school-type choice for the two sexes, for example through a greater likelihood of sending boys to fee-charging private schools? And, if indeed this is the case, are girls thereby condemned to lower quality schooling, on average, than boys? By asking these questions, this paper makes three contributions to the literature. Firstly, this is one of a very few studies in Pakistan to explore the question of the relative effectiveness of public and private schools despite there being an unprecedented expansion of fee-charging private schools in the last two decades. Secondly, unlike existing papers which focus on primary schooling, this study looks at potential learning gaps by school-type for students in their last year of middle school (grade 8), very near their transition to secondary schooling. Thirdly, it exploits unique, purposively-collected data from government and private school students and thus, in estimating achievement production functions, is able to control for a number of variables typically ‘unobserved’ by researchers. The findings reveal that boys are indeed more likely to be sent to private schools than girls within the household, so that differential school-type choice is an important channel of differential treatment against girls. Private schools are also found to be of better quality – they are more effective than government schools in imparting mathematics and literacy skills. Girls lose out vis a vis boys in terms not only of lower within-household educational expenditures but also in terms of the quality of schooling accessed. Correspondence: Department of Economics, University of Oxford, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, United Kingdom, Telephone: +44-1865-271089. Email: monazza.aslam@economics.ox.ac.uk JEL Classification: I21, J16.
Assessment of deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis in surgical patients: a study conducted at Nancy University Hospital, France

Objective: This retrospective evaluation aimed to assess the adequacy of prophylaxis against thromboembolism prescribed to surgical patients at the authors' institution, and to compare it with generally accepted published guidelines. Aspects considered were indications for prophylaxis, regimens used and monitoring. Methods: Eleven units (nine surgical and two surgical intensive care) took part in the survey on a voluntary basis. The clinical audit system used involved developing a set of criteria based on existing guidelines, comparing observed practice with those recommendations, analysing the factors underlying any deviation and developing corrective measures. Results: When the medical records of 117 patients hospitalized in October 1995 were examined, prophylaxis against deep vein thrombosis was documented in 86 (low molecular weight heparin in 85, dextran in one). No associated physical preventative measures were recorded. Indications and dosage were appropriately handled in 90.7% and 75.2% of patients, respectively. Ninety-five cases were outside the reference criteria: 74 for excluded surgical indications, 13 which involved laparoscopy, and eight in which spinal or epidural anaesthesia was administered. Platelet count was performed in 73.8% of cases before prophylactic treatment, and in 23.1% during its course. Anti-Xa activity was measured in 0.4% of cases. Analysis of causes showed that guidelines were not complied with either because of lack of organization, or because of disagreement with them. Discussion: In this study, indications for prophylaxis were well established and heparin dosages used were not fundamentally flawed. The weak point in practice was a failure to carry out platelet counts, particularly during the course of treatment. Appropriate corrective action consists of disseminating guidelines and relevant information, and using a preoperative checklist to assess thromboembolic risk. Conclusion: Physicians agree that opportunities to improve preventative practices exist, and that the quality improvement programme should be pursued.
Hypovitaminosis D in recent onset rheumatoid arthritis is predictive of reduced response to treatment and increased disease activity: a 12 month follow-up study

BACKGROUND
Vitamin D displays immunomodulatory activities and has been proposed as a potential player in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). A negative association between serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels and RA activity was demonstrated but longitudinal studies investigating the role of vitamin D levels in predicting RA activity and response to treatment are lacking. Therefore, this study was designed to test the hypothesis of an association between serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels at RA diagnosis and disease activity evaluated by clinimetric, laboratory and ultrasound (US) parameters and to detect the prevalence of remission and response to treatment after 12 months follow-up.


METHODS
This is a longitudinal, retrospective study on data obtained from thirty-seven patients with early RA treatment-naïve. Serum inflammatory markers, auto-antibodies and 25(OH) vitamin D levels were obtained at baseline. Hypovitaminosis D was diagnosed for 25(OH) vitamin D levels < 20 ng/ml. Tender joint count (TJCs), swollen joint count (SJCs), Visual Analog Scales (VAS), Disease Activity Score (DAS) 28 score were assessed at baseline and 12 months after diagnosis. Joints synovitis and power-Doppler were evaluated at baseline and 12 months later.


RESULTS
At baseline mean 25(OH) vitamin D levels were 24.4 ± 11.9 ng/ml; 35% of study subjects had hypovitaminosis D which strongly associated with higher RA activity and lower prevalence of remission and response to treatment (all p-values < 0.001). The percentage of patients not presenting a reduction of the US synovitis score after 12 months from diagnosis was significantly higher among patients with hypovitaminosis D than in those with normal serum 25(OH) vitamin D at baseline.


CONCLUSIONS
In patients with early RA and basal hypovitaminosis D after 12 months follow-up reduction of disease activity and percentage of remission and response to treatment were significantly lower than those observed in patients with normal vitamin D levels. These results provide further support to the immunomodulatory action of vitamin D in RA and suggest a role of basal vitamin D status in the prediction of disease evolution. Vitamin D measurement and possibly vitamin D supplementation should be considered an additional option in the management of early RA patients.
An adaptive routing algorithm: enhanced confidence-based Q routing algorithm in network traffic

Confidence-based Q (CQ) Routing Algorithm is an adaptive network routing algorithm. CQ Routing Algorithm evaluates how confidence value (C value) can be used to improve the quality of exploration in Q Routing Algorithm for adaptive packet routing in communication networks. However, the C value incompletely evaluates how closely the Q value represents the current condition of the network in a given length of time, which is measured in term of estimated delivery time for a packet to arrive at its destination. In this paper, an Enhanced Confidence-based Q (ECQ) Routing Algorithm is proposed. The Variable of Decay Constant and Update All Q value approaches are introduced for updating the C values of non-selected Q values. Using these C values would make those non-selected Q values more competitive in order to achieve updated and more reliable values. The quality of exploration in CQ Routing Algorithm would be improved. The performance of ECQ and CQ Routing Algorithms are compared to prove this improvement. ECQ and CQ Routing Algorithms are tested on an irregular 6 x 6 nodes network grid. Keyword: Adaptive routing algorithm; Confidence value; Confidence-based Q routing
Web-Based Online Embedded Door Access Control and Home Security System Based on Face Recognition

Smart home security control system has becameindispensable in daily life. The design and development of a home security system, based on human face recognition technology and remotely monitoring technology, to confirm visitor identity and to control door accessibility has been reported in this paper. This paper describes about the implementation and deployment of wireless control system and accessibility in to a home environment for authenticated people only. A wireless network technique Wifi based and image processing technique PCA based, dedicatedly make the security system alive as per the request. Wifi module and electromagnetic door lock module combinedly operate the door accessibility, has been designed and developed. Face detection and recognition algorithms, as well as a wireless interface are used to detect and identify visitors and send an email and/or an alert message about the current home environment status via GSM network automatically to the home owner’s mobile phone or any communication devices. The concerned authority can control the system through his/her mobile phone or any communication devices by sending AT Commands to GSM MODEM or by taking necessary actions for authentication through email, which is again password protected. Users can monitor visitors and control the door lock on active Web pages enhanced with JavaScript and HTML. This system finds a wide application in areas where physical presence is not possible all the time. The entire control system is built using ARM1176JZF-S microcontroller and tested for actual use in home environment. Index Terms – Embedded Web Server, Door Access, Microcontroller, Face Recognition, GSM. hardware platform for its simplicity and dimensionality reduction[13]-[17]. Wireless technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID), ultra wide band (UWB), and Wifi [18] etc. are used in access control systems. The proposed system is a wireless access control system designed and developed for smart home environment. The paper proposes a Raspberry pi based door access control and home security system through webpage with Wifi based technology. The system identifies the visitor’s presence, capture and transfers the image through email and/or an alert SMS via GSM network automatically to home owner to recognize the visitors. The system capability to provide access through internet, where subject of received email is read by the developed algorithm fed into Raspberry pi and system responds to the corresponding instruction with high security. The user can directly login and interact with the embedded device in real time without the need to maintain an additional server. It has a variety of features such as energy efficient, intelligence, low cost, portability and high performance. The article is organized as follows. The system architecture is discussed in Section II, followed by system description in Section III. The system implementation and Experimental work are presented in Section IV and Section V with result respectively. Finally, Section VI draws conclusion II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Homomorphic filtering based illumination normalization method for face recognition

0167-8655/$ see front matter Crown Copyright 2 doi:10.1016/j.patrec.2011.03.023 ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Compu Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, PR China. Tel./fa E-mail address: fcn@nuist.edu.cn (C.-N. Fan). The appearance of a face image is severely affected by illumination conditions that will hinder the automatic face recognition process. To recognize faces under varying lighting conditions, a homomorphic filtering-based illumination normalization method is proposed in this paper. In this work, the effect of illumination is effectively reduced by a modified implementation of homomorphic filtering whose key component is a Difference of Gaussian (DoG) filter, and the contrast is enhanced by histogram equalization. The resulted face image is not only reduced illumination effect but also preserved edges and details that will facilitate the further face recognition task. Among others, our method has the following advantages: (1) neither does it need any prior information of 3D shape or light sources, nor many training samples thus can be directly applied to single training image per person condition; and (2) it is simple and computationally fast because there are mature and fast algorithms for the Fourier transform used in homomorphic filter. The Eigenfaces method is chosen to recognize the normalized face images. Experimental results on the Yale face database B and the CMU PIE face database demonstrate the significant performance improvement of the proposed method in the face recognition system for the face images with large illumination variations. Crown Copyright 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Enlarging Monolingual Dictionaries for Machine Translation with Active Learning and Non-Expert Users

This paper explores a new approach to help non-expert users with no background in linguistics to add new words to a monolingual dictionary in a rule-based machine translation system. Our method aims at choosing the correct paradigm which explains not only the particular surface form introduced by the user, but also the rest of inflected forms of the word. A large monolingual corpus is used to extract an initial set of potential paradigms, which are then interactively refined by the user through active machine learning. We show the results of experiments performed on a Spanish monolingual dictionary.
Effects of a balance-based exergaming intervention using the Kinect sensor on posture stability in individuals with Parkinson’s disease: a single-blinded randomized controlled trial

The present study examined the effects of a balance-based exergaming intervention using the Kinect sensor on postural stability and balance in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). We conducted a subject-blinded, randomized controlled study. Twenty people with PD (Hoehn and Yahr stages I through III) were recruited and randomly assigned to either a balance-based exergaming group (N = 10) or a balance training group (N = 10) for an 8-week balance training period. Postural stability was assessed using the limits of stability (LOS) and one-leg stance (OLS) tests. Balance was assessed using the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) and the timed up and go (TUG) test. Participants were assessed pre- and post-training. After training, participants in the balance-based exergaming group showed significant improvements in LOS performance, and in the eyes-closed condition of the OLS test. Both training programs led to improvements in BBS and TUG performance. Furthermore, balance-based exergaming training resulted in significantly better performance in directional control in the LOS test (78.9 ± 7.65 %) compared with conventional balance training (70.6 ± 9.37 %). Balance-based exergaming training resulted in a greater improvement in postural stability compared with conventional balance training. Our results support the therapeutic use of exergaming aided by the Kinect sensor in people with PD. ClinicalTrials.gov. NCT02671396
The Tea-Leaf Reader Algorithm: An Efficient Implementation of CRC-16 and CRC-32

The tea-leaf reader CRC algorithms are error-detection algorithms that use a look-ahead table to increase execution speed.
A study of the factors affecting the metabolic clearance of quinine in malaria

Objective: To assess the factors that contribute to impaired quinine clearance in acute falciparum malaria. Patients: Sixteen adult Thai patients with severe or moderately severe falciparum malaria were studied, and 12 were re-studied during convalescence. Methods: The clearance of quinine, dihydroquinine (an impurity comprising up to 10% of commercial quinine formulations), antipyrine (a measure of hepatic mixed-function oxidase activity), indocyanine green (ICG) (a measure of liver blood flow), and iothalamate (a measure of glomerular filtration rate) were measured simultaneously, and the relationship of these values to the␣biotransformation of quinine to the active metabolite 3-hydroxyquinine was assessed. Results: During acute malaria infection, the systemic clearance of quinine, antipyrine and ICG and the biotransformation of quinine to 3-hydroxyquinine were all reduced significantly when compared with values during convalescence. Iothalamate clearance was not affected significantly and did not correlate with the clearance of any of the other compounds. The clearance of total and free quinine correlated significantly with antipyrine clearance (r s = 0.70, P = 0.005 and r s = 0.67, P = 0.013, respectively), but not with ICG clearance (r s = 0.39 and 0.43 respectively, P > 0.15). In a multiple regression model, antipyrine clearance and plasma protein binding accounted for 71% of the variance in total quinine clearance in acute malaria. The pharmacokinetic properties of dihydroquinine were generally similar to those of quinine, although dihydroquinine clearance was less affected by acute malaria. The mean ratio of quinine to 3-hydroxyquinine area under the plasma concentration-time curve (AUC) values in acute malaria was 12.03 compared with 6.92 during convalescence P=0.01. The mean plasma protein binding of 3-hydroxyquinine was 46%, which was significantly lower than that of quinine (90.5%) or dihydroquinine (90.5%). Conclusion: The reduction in quinine clearance in acute malaria results predominantly from a disease-induced dysfunction in hepatic mixed-function oxidase activity (principally CYP 3A) which impairs the conversion of quinine to its major metabolite, 3-hydroxyquinine. The metabolite contributes approximately 5% of the antimalarial activity of the parent compound in malaria, but up to 10% during convalescence.
Open-label, phase I dose-escalation study of sodium selenate, a novel activator of PP2A, in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer

Background:Angiogenesis is fundamental to the progression of many solid tumours including prostate cancer. Sodium selenate is a small, water-soluble, orally bioavailable activator of PP2A phosphatase with anti-angiogenic properties.Methods:This was a dose-escalation phase I study in men with asymptomatic, chemotherapy-naïve, castration-resistant prostate cancer. The primary objective was to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD). Secondary objectives included establishing the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetic profile.Results:A total of 19 patients were enrolled. The MTD was 60 mg per day. Dose-limiting toxicity (fatigue and diarrhoea) was observed at 90 mg per day. The most frequently reported treatment-related adverse events across all treatment cohorts were nausea, diarrhoea, fatigue, muscle spasms, alopecia and nail disorders. No grade 4 toxicities were observed and there were no deaths on study. Linear pharmacokinetics was observed. One patient had a PSA response >50%. Median time to PSA progression (for non-responders) was 14.2 weeks. Mean PSA doubling time increased during the main treatment phase from 2.18 months before trial to 3.85 months.Conclusion:Sodium selenate is well tolerated at a dose of 60 mg per day with modest single-agent efficacy similar to other anti-angiogenic agents. Further trials in combination with conventional cytotoxic regimens are warranted.
Study protocol for the Integra Initiative to assess the benefits and costs of integrating sexual and reproductive health and HIV services in Kenya and Swaziland

BACKGROUND
In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) there are strong arguments for the provision of integrated sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV services. Most HIV transmissions are sexually transmitted or associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. Many of the behaviours that prevent HIV transmission also prevent sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. There is potential for integration to increase the coverage of HIV services, as individuals who use SRH services can benefit from HIV services and vice-versa, as well as increase cost-savings. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on effective models for integrating HIV/SRH services. The need for robust evidence led a consortium of three organizations - International Planned Parenthood Federation, Population Council and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine - to design/implement the Integra Initiative. Integra seeks to generate rigorous evidence on the feasibility, effectiveness, cost and impact of different models for delivering integrated HIV/SRH services in high and medium HIV prevalence settings in SSA.


METHODS/DESIGN
A quasi-experimental study will be conducted in government clinics in Kenya and Swaziland - assigned into intervention/comparison groups. Two models of service delivery are investigated: integrating HIV care/treatment into 1) family planning and 2) postnatal care. A full economic-costing will be used to assess the costs of different components of service provision, and the determinants of variations in unit costs across facilities/service models. Health facility assessments will be conducted at four time-periods to track changes in quality of care and utilization over time. A two-year cohort study of family planning/postnatal clients will assess the effect of integration on individual outcomes, including use of SRH services, HIV status (known/unknown) and pregnancy (planned/unintended). Household surveys within some of the study facilities' catchment areas will be conducted to profile users/non-users of integrated services and demand/receipt of integrated services, before-and-after the intervention. Qualitative research will be conducted to complement the quantitative component at different time points. Integra takes an embedded 'programme science' approach to maximize the uptake of findings into policy/practice.


DISCUSSION
Integra addresses existing evidence gaps in the integration evaluation literature, building on the limited evidence from SSA and the expertise of its research partners.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Current Controlled Trials NCT01694862.