LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Service disciplines for packet-switching integrated services networks

Service Disciplines For Packet Switching Integrated Services Networks Hui Zhang Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California at Berkeley Professor Domenico Ferrari Chair Integrated services networks will provide the communication infrastructure in the future Unlike traditional communication networks which are designed to o er a single type of service integrated services networks will o er multiple services including data voice video and others Supporting applications with diverse tra c characteristics and performance objectives requires the o ered services to be both exible and guaranteed To be exible integrated services networks will use packet switching technology To provide performance guarantees in terms of throughput delay delay jitter and loss rate a proactive network control approach is needed One of the most important components in this architecture is the service discipline at the switching nodes We rst present a taxonomy and framework for studying and comparing service disciplines in integrated services networks Given the framework we show the limitations of several existing solutions and propose a new class of service policies called rate controlled service disciplines This class of service disciplines may be non work conserving i e a server may be idle even when there are packets to be transmitted Although non work conserving disciplines were seldom studied in the past our research shows that non work conserving rate controlled service disciplines have several advantages that make them suitable for sup porting guaranteed performance communication in a high speed networking environment In particular rate controlled service disciplines can provide end to end per connection de terministic and statistical performance guarantees in very general networking environments Unlike existing solutions which only apply to simple network environments rate controlled service disciplines also apply to internetworking environments Moreover unlike existing solutions which only apply to feed forward networks and a restricted class of feedback net works rate controlled service disciplines can provide guarantees in arbitrary feed forward and feedback networks
The Cultural Production of Science in Reform-Based Physics: Girls' Access, Participation, and Resistance.

Recent literature in science education suggests that, to transform girls’ participation, learning, and identities within school science, we must think about ways to engage girls in different kinds of educational activities that promote broader meanings of science and scientist. This study was designed to examine more deeply this call for a changed science curriculum and its implications for girls’ participation, interest, and emerging science identities. In this ethnographic study, I examine the culturally produced meanings of science and scientist in a reform-based physics classroom that used a curriculum called Active Physics, how these meanings reproduced and contested larger sociohistorical (and prototypical) meanings of science and scientist, and the ways girls participated within and against these meanings. The girls in this upper middle class school were mostly concerned with accessing and maintaining a good student identity (rather than connecting to science in any meaningful way) and resisted promoted meanings of science and scientist that they perceived as threatening to their good student identities. Their embrace of the ways school defined success (via grades and college admission) produced a meaning of Active Physics as a way to get credentials on a transcript and ensured their disconnection from real-world, meaningful science and science identities. The story of girls’ participation and resistance in Active Physics complicates our quest for gender-fair science and highlights the power of sociohistorical meanings of schooling and science in producing educational subjects. ! 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 392–414, 2004 Recent literature in science education suggests that, to transform girls’ participation, learning, and identities within school science, we must think about ways to engage girls in different kinds of educational activities that promote broader meanings of science and scientist (Eisenhart & Finkel, 1998). This implies that we must make substantive changes to both science pedagogy and curriculum so that girls might begin to see themselves as people who can do and Contract grant sponsor: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation’s American
Soft tissue sarcoma presenting with metastatic disease: outcome with primary surgical resection.

BACKGROUND
The objective of this study was to assess patient, tumor, and treatment factors that affected overall survival in a group of patients who underwent surgery for soft tissue sarcoma (STS) and presented with American Joint Commission on Cancer stage IV disease.


METHODS
A retrospective review was undertaken of a single institution's database from the years 1986 to 2006 in all patients who met the following inclusion criteria: 1) surgical management of the primary tumor was undertaken, and 2) metastatic disease was present at the time of initial presentation. In total, 112 patients were identified who met the inclusion criteria.


RESULTS
The 5-year survival rate for the entire group was 17%. In univariate analysis, the variables that were identified as statistically significant for predicting improved overall survival were resection of metastatic disease (P = .003), <4 pulmonary metastases (P = .05), and the presence of lymph node metastases versus pulmonary metastases (P = .0002). In multivariate analysis, only the presence of lymph node metastases versus pulmonary metastases retained statistical significance (P = .05). The 5-year survival rate for patients who had lymph nodes metastases at diagnosis was 59%, whereas it was only 8% for patients who presented with pulmonary metastases.


CONCLUSIONS
Patients who presented with metastatic STS had a very poor prognosis despite aggressive surgical management of their primary tumor. The current results indicated that, although patients with isolated lymph node metastases may be cured by surgical resection, patients with pulmonary metastases are unlikely to be cured even with aggressive surgical management and should be treated with palliation of symptoms as the main objective.
The Research and Design of the Curriculum Sharing Platform in the Local Application-Oriented Universities

This paper expounds the connotation of the professional group curriculum sharing platform and the necessity of building the platform. The platform provides an effective way to achieve resource sharing, and provides a good condition for students to learn and develop. The paper puts forward the model of building a professional group curriculum sharing platform and its management measures, which provides a new idea and method for the teaching reform in Local applied universities. Education authorities, schools and platform builders to work together, the platform can get better construction and maintenance. Keywords—Professional group, curriculum sharing platform, model, research
Pharmacoeconomic benefit of antibiotic step-down therapy: converting patients from intravenous ceftriaxone to oral cefpodoxime proxetil.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the economic benefit associated with the early conversion of therapy from intravenous ceftiaxone to the comparable oral third-generation cephalosporin, cefpodoxime proxetil.


DESIGN
Open-label, unblind, nonrandomized clinical trial.


SETTING
A 360-bed Veterans Affairs Medical Center.


PATIENTS
Forty patients who began receiving intravenous ceftriaxone for either a community-acquired pneumonia or a complicated urinary tract infection.


INTERVENTION
twenty patients were selected, based on clinical assessment, to be converted from intravenous ceftriaxone to oral cefpodoxime proxetil. Twenty other comparable patients who would have been appropriate for step-down therapy, did not receive pharmacy intervention and were used as a control group.


MEASUREMENTS
Both groups were assessed and compared for length of ceftiaxone therapy, length of oral follow-up therapy (if any), length of hospitalization, results of culture and sensitivity testing, treatment success and readmissions, and cost of respective therapeutic regimens.


RESULTS
In the cefpodoxime study group, the average time receiving intravenous and oral antibiotics was 9.1 days at a total cost of $3040.26 for the 20 patients. In the control group, the average time receiving intravenous and oral antibiotics was 11.9 days at a total cost of $3961.26. A savings of $46.05 per patient was achieved. Patients receiving step-down therapy averaged 1 fewer day of hospitalization.


CONCLUSION
Pharmacist intervention and cefpodoxime step-down therapy were associated with decreased overall antibiotic costs in our intravenous-to-oral program.
High-Level Test Generation Using Symbolic Scheduling

A high-level test generation algorithm SWIFT is proposed which incorporates a symbolic scheduling procedure, derived from high-level synthesis applications, to resolve decision conflicts during test generation. SWIFT uses the induced fault model to generate functional tests that guarantee detection of low-level structural faults. When applied to functional models of representative 74Xseries, ISCAS-85 and ISCAS-89 circuits, SWIFT produces test sequences that cover all gate-level stuck-at faults. Surprisingly, although they are derived from a high-level functional description of the circuit under test, most of these test sequences are of provably minimal or near-mini-
Using relay network to increase life time in wireless body area sensor networks

Wireless body area sensor networks will revolutionize health care services by remote, continuous and non-invasive monitoring. Body area sensor networks (BASN) should monitor various physiological parameters of a person for a long period of time. Thus, efficient energy usage in sensor nodes is essential in order to provide a long life time for the network. This paper investigates the effect of adding a relay network to the network of body sensors to reduce energy consumption of sensor nodes when transmitting data to the sink.
Shared backup path protection in elastic optical networks: Modeling and optimization

Elastic Optical Network (EON) architectures are considered as a very promising solution for both huge bandwidth and flexible connection provisioning in next generation optical networks. In EON, a basic problem in network design and operation is the problem of Routing and Spectrum Allocation (RSA). In this article, we focus on offline RSA in a survivable EON scenario with shared backup path protection (SBPP). We formulate RSA/SBPP as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem. Since RSA is a difficult problem itself, we propose several heuristic algorithms including both new proposals called Adaptive Frequency Assignment with Shared Backup Path Protection (AFA/SBPP) and Most Subcarriers and Average Longest Path First (MSALPF) as well as existing RSA methods adapted to the SBPP scenario. We investigate the efficiency of all algorithms for a set of network scenarios and we show that the proposed new algorithms outperform other reference algorithms. Moreover, numerical experiments show that the shared backup path protection approach enables reduction of the spectrum usage up to 28% comparing to the dedicated path protection approach without sharing of backup capacity. However, the difference between these scenarios strongly depends on the network topology and other parameters.
Effects of Measurement Error on the Output Gap in Japan

Potential output is the largest amount of products that can be produced by fully utilizing available labor and capital stock; the output gap is defined as the discrepancy between actual and potential output. If data on production factors contain measurement errors, total factor productivity (TFP) cannot be estimated accurately from the Solow residual (i.e., the portion of output that is not attributable to labor and capital inputs). This may give rise to distortions in the estimation of potential output and the output gap. The primary purpose of this paper is to discuss theoretically how measurement errors and quality changes in production factors affect estimates of potential output and the output gap. The main results are (1) that effects of quality changes in production factors can be left in the Solow residual for correct estimation of potential output and the output gap, but (2) that measurement errors in utilization of capital stock and labor should be removed. Estimation of Japan’s output gap, in particular, may be distorted by the absence of data on capacity utilization in non-manufacturing sectors. To resolve this problem, we consider two definitions of output gap and compare their performance. The first definition (the conventional output gap) assumes capacity utilization to be 100 percent in non-manufacturing sectors. Then we fit a certain trend to the Solow residual and define the trend as TFP and the regression residual as the measurement error of capacity utilization in non-manufacturing sectors. The second definition (the new output gap) uses data on electricity consumption to directly estimate capacity utilization in non-manufacturing sectors. In this case, we can take the Solow residual to be TFP. Next, we compare the performance of the two definitions of output gap in terms of their consistency with the reference dates of business cycle and with various DIs in Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan published by the Bank of Japan, including the business conditions DI. We show that the new output gap is superior to the conventional output gap. Furthermore, when the new output gap is used in a Phillips curve, estimates of parameters are more stable than when we use the conventional output gap. These results suggest that the new output gap is a suitable measure of slackness in the Japanese economy.
An iterative route construction and improvement algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with soft time windows

The solution of routing problems with soft time windows has valuable practical applications. Soft time window solutions are needed when: (a) the number of routes needed for hard time windows exceeds the number of available vehicles, (b) a study of cost-service tradeoffs is required, or (c) the dispatcher has qualitative information regarding the relative importance of hard time-window constraints across customers. This paper proposes a new iterative route construction and improvement algorithm to solve vehicle routing problems with soft time windows. Due to its modular and hierarchical design, the solution algorithm is intuitive and able to accommodate general cost and penalty functions. Experimental results indicate that the average run time performance is of order O(n). The solution quality and computational time of the new algorithm has been compared against existing results on benchmark problems. The presented algorithm has improved thirty benchmark problem solutions for the vehicle routing problems with soft time windows. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Synthesizing life

Advances in directed evolution and membrane biophysics make the synthesis of simple living cells, if not yet foreseeable reality, an imaginable goal. Overcoming the many scientific challenges along the way will deepen our understanding of the essence of cellular life and its origin on Earth.
Na+,K+-ATPase: on the nature of the "cross-linked" subunits obtained in the presence of o-phenanthroline and cupric ion.

Abstract In previous studies on the quaternary structure of Na + ,K + -ATPase, cupric-phenanthroline complex (CP) has been used for the cross-linking of the enzyme subunits. Here we show that the same products obtained in the presence of CP (α,α-dimer, α,β-dimer, and products of higher molecular weight) are also obtained when the enzyme is exposed to Cu 2+ without o-phenanthroline. The α,β-dimer (but not the α,α-dimer) is dissociated in the presence of EDTA; indicating that this product is not the result of the covalent cross-linking of the subunits through a disulfide bond. The nature of the α,α-dimer remains to be determined. The findings suggest that the results of “cross-linking” experiments with CP should be interpreted with caution until the products are more clearly identified.
Comparison of an rK39 dipstick rapid test with direct agglutination test and splenic aspiration for the diagnosis of kala-azar in Sudan.

We compared an rK39 dipstick rapid test (Amrad ICT, Australia) with a direct agglutination test (DAT) and splenic aspirate for the diagnosis of kala-azar in 77 patients. The study was carried out under field conditions in an endemic area of north-east Sudan. The sensitivity of the rK39 test compared with splenic aspiration was 92% (46/50), the specificity 59% (16/27), and the positive predictive value 81% (46/57). Compared with the diagnostic protocol used by Médecins sans Frontières, the sensitivity of the rK39 test was 93% (50/54), the specificity 70% (16/23), and the positive predictive value 88% (50/57). Compared with splenic aspirates, the sensitivity of a DAT with a titre > or =1:400 was 100% (50/50), but its specificity only 55% (15/27) and the positive predictive value was 80% (50/62). Using a DAT titre > or =1:6400, the sensitivity was 84% (42/50), the specificity 85% (23/27) and the positive predictive value 91% (42/46). All four patients with DAT titre > or =1:6400 but negative splenic aspirate were also rK39 positive; we consider these are probably 'true' cases of kala-azar, i.e. false negative aspirates, rather than false DAT and rK39 seropositives. There were no false negative DATs (DAT titre < or =1:400 and aspirate positive), but there were four false negative rK39 tests (rK39 negative and aspirate positive). The rK39 dipstick is a good screening test for kala-azar; but further development is required before it can replace the DAT as a diagnostic test in endemic areas of the Sudan.
Evidence that convergence rather than accommodation controls intermittent distance exotropia.

PURPOSE
This study considered whether vergence drives accommodation or accommodation drives vergence during the control of distance exotropia for near fixation. High accommodative convergence to accommodation (AC/A) ratios are often used to explain this control, but the role of convergence to drive accommodation (the CA/C relationship) is rarely considered. Atypical CA/C characteristics could equally, or better, explain common clinical findings.


METHODS
Nineteen distance exotropes, aged 4-11 years, were compared while controlling their deviation with 27 non-exotropic controls aged 5-9 years. Simultaneous vergence and accommodation responses were measured to a range of targets incorporating different combinations of blur, disparity and looming cues at four fixation distances between 2 m and 33 cm. Stimulus and response AC/A and CA/C ratios were calculated.


RESULTS
Accommodation responses for near targets (p = 0.017) and response gains (p = 0.026) were greater in the exotropes than in the controls. Despite higher clinical stimulus AC/A ratios, the distance exotropes showed lower laboratory response AC/A ratios (p = 0.02), but significantly higher CA/C ratios (p = 0.02). All the exotropes, whether the angle changed most with lenses ('controlled by accommodation') or on occlusion ('controlled by fusion'), used binocular disparity not blur as their main cue to target distance.


CONCLUSIONS
Increased vergence demand to control intermittent distance exotropia for near also drives significantly more accommodation. Minus lens therapy is more likely to act by correcting overaccommodation driven by controlling convergence, rather than by inducing blur-driven vergence. The use of convergence as a major drive to accommodation explains many clinical characteristics of distance exotropia, including apparently high near stimulus AC/A ratios.
Limited adequacy of thyroid cancer patient follow-up at a Canadian tertiary care centre.

BACKGROUND
We sought to evaluate the adequacy of follow-up of thyroid cancer patients at a Canadian centre.


METHODS
We mailed a survey to the family physicians of thyroid cancer patients and analyzed the findings relative to follow-up guidelines published by the American Thyroid Association (ATA). Statistical significance between early and late follow-up patterns was analyzed using the χ(2) test.


RESULTS
Our survey response rate was 56.2% (91 of 162). The time from operation ranged from 1.24-7.13 (mean 3.96) years, and 87.9% of patients had undergone a physical exam within the previous year. Only 37.4% and 14% of patients had a serum thyroglobulin measurement within 6 and between 6 and 12 months before the survey, respectively. Thyroid simulating hormone (TSH) levels were measured within the prior 6 months in 67% of patients and between 6 and 12 months in 13.2%. The TSH levels were suppressed (< 0.1 μIU/L) in 24.2% of patients, 0.1-2 μIU/L in 44% and greater than 2 μIU/L in 17.6%. Ultrasonography was the most common imaging test performed.


CONCLUSION
There is significant variation in the follow-up patterns of patients with thyroid cancer, and there is considerable deviation from current ATA guidelines.
A generic framework for real-time discrete event simulation (DES) modelling

This paper suggests a generic simulation platform that can be used for real-time discrete event simulation modeling. The architecture of the proposed system is based on a tested flexible input data architecture developed in Labview, a real-time inter-process communication module between the Labview application and a discrete event simulation software (in this case Arena). Two example applications in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors are provided to demonstrate the ease of adaptability to such physical system.
A new boosting algorithm for improved time-series forecasting with recurrent neural networks

Ensemble methods for classification and regression have focused a great deal of attention in recent years. They have shown, both theoretically and empirically, that they are able to perform substantially better than single models in a wide range of tasks. We have adapted an ensemble method to the problem of predicting future values of time series using recurrent neural networks (RNNs) as base learners. The improvement is made by combining a large number of RNNs, each of which is generated by training on a different set of examples. This algorithm is based on the boosting algorithm where difficult points of the time series are concentrated on during the learning process however, unlike the original algorithm, we introduce a new parameter for tuning the boosting influence on available examples. We test our boosting algorithm for RNNs on single-step-ahead and multi-step-ahead prediction problems. The results are then compared to other regression methods, including those of different local approaches. The overall results obtained through our ensemble method are more accurate than those obtained through the standard method, backpropagation through time, on these datasets and perform significantly better even when long-range dependencies play an important role. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.