LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Dataset and Ground Truth for Handwritten Text in Four Different Scripts

In document image analysis (DIA) especially in handwritten document recognition, standard databases play signi ̄cant roles for evaluating performances of algorithms and comparing results obtained by di®erent groups of researchers. The ̄eld of DIA regard to Indo-Persian documents is still at its infancy compared to Latin script-based documents; as such standard datasets are not still available in literature. This paper is an e®ort towards alleviating this gap. In this paper, an unconstrained handwritten dataset containing documents of Persian, Bangla, Oriya and Kannada (PBOK) is introduced. The PBOK contains 707 text-pages written in four di®erent languages (Persian, Bangla, Oriya and Kannada) by 436 individuals. Total number of text-lines, words/subwords and characters are 12 565, 104 541 and 423 980, respectively. Inmost documents of PBOK dataset contain either an overlapping or a touching text-lines. The average number of text-lines in text-pages of the PBOK dataset is 18. Two types of ground truths, based on pixels information and content information, are generated for the dataset. Because of such ground truths, the PBOK dataset can be utilized in many areas of document image processing for instance text-line segmentation, word segmentation and word recognition. To provide an insight for other researches, recent text-line segmentation results on this dataset are also reported.
Plant biodiversity and vegetation structure in traditional cocoa forest gardens in southern Cameroon under different management

Floristic surveys were performed in 17 traditional cocoa forest gardens under different management regimes in the humid forest area of southern Cameroon, to assess the impact of intensification on plant biodiversity. This impact was evaluated by analyzing species richness, vegetation structure, carbon sequestration and above ground biomass. We hypothesize that: (a) plant (tree and herbs) species richness is negatively correlated to management intensity and (b) vegetational density predictably change with management intensity. Our results show that management as practiced in traditional cocoa forest gardens in southern Cameroon following a gradient of intensification from extensive cocoa forest gardens with high floristic diversity to intensive ones strongly impacts plant diversity, plant biomass and to some extend carbon storage with possible negative consequences on biodiversity. Great differences in species richness, species composition, and, for trees, diameter at breast height and basal area were evident among the five types of traditional cocoa forest garden systems investigated. In terms of plant species richness, we found a decreasing gradient of plant species numbers from extensive forest gardens to intensive ones. This study also highlights the importance of the Management Index for quantifying differences in the management; this index could be used to standardize certification procedures and assess conservation progress and success. Our findings support the idea that traditional cocoa forest gardens can help to protect many forest species, sustains smallholder production and offer more scope for conservation of biodiversity, at both species-level and landscape-level. Moreover, diverse traditional cocoa forest gardens may help in regulating pests and diseases and allow for efficient adaptation to changing socioeconomic conditions.
An independence result for (II11-CA)+BI

Etablissement d'un resultat d'independance concernant une assertion combinatoire inspiree de Kirby et Paris
Functional status and quality of life after emergency revascularization for cardiogenic shock complicating acute myocardial infarction.

OBJECTIVES
Our goal was to describe the functional status of cardiogenic shock survivors, identify the correlates of cardiogenic shock, and compare global quality of life and functional status of patients randomly assigned to treatment with emergency revascularization (ERV) versus initial medical stabilization (IMS).


BACKGROUND
Historically, the hospital survival rate of patients with cardiogenic shock complicating acute myocardial infarction (MI) has been very low. Shock survivors are salvaged from a critically ill state, and their later functional status is not well documented. The SHould we emergently revascularize Occluded Coronaries for cardiogenic shocK (SHOCK) trial showed significantly improved one-year survival after ERV compared with IMS.


METHODS
The SHOCK trial survivors completed interviews at 2 weeks after discharge and at 6 and 12 months after MI. Functional status assessment included the Multidimensional Index of Life Quality and New York Heart Association (NYHA) congestive heart failure functional class.


RESULTS
Eighty-seven percent of one-year survivors of the SHOCK trial were in NYHA functional class I or II. Between two weeks after discharge and one year after MI, improvement was similar in the two treatment groups (18% overall), but fewer patients remained stable (44% vs. 71%), and more patients worsened or died (34% vs. 15%) in the IMS group compared with those assigned to ERV. Assignment to ERV was the only independent predictor of outcome at one year.


CONCLUSIONS
Although one-year mortality after ERV is still high (54%), most survivors have good functional status. The ERV patients have a lower rate of deterioration than IMS patients. The level of recovery for shock patients undergoing ERV is similar to that of historical controls not in cardiogenic shock undergoing elective revascularization.
Evaluation of a self-management patient education program for patients with chronic heart failure undergoing inpatient cardiac rehabilitation: study protocol of a cluster randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Chronic heart failure requires a complex treatment regimen on a life-long basis. Therefore, self-care/self-management is an essential part of successful treatment and comprehensive patient education is warranted. However, specific information on program features and educational strategies enhancing treatment success is lacking. This trial aims to evaluate a patient-oriented and theory-based self-management educational group program as compared to usual care education during inpatient cardiac rehabilitation in Germany.


METHODS/DESIGN
The study is a multicenter cluster randomized controlled trial in four cardiac rehabilitation clinics. Clusters are patient education groups that comprise HF patients recruited within 2 weeks after commencement of inpatient cardiac rehabilitation. Cluster randomization was chosen for pragmatic reasons, i.e. to ensure a sufficient number of eligible patients to build large-enough educational groups and to prevent contamination by interaction of patients from different treatment allocations during rehabilitation. Rehabilitants with chronic systolic heart failure (n = 540) will be consecutively recruited for the study at the beginning of inpatient rehabilitation. Data will be assessed at admission, at discharge and after 6 and 12 months using patient questionnaires. In the intervention condition, patients receive the new patient-oriented self-management educational program, whereas in the control condition, patients receive a short lecture-based educational program (usual care). The primary outcome is patients' self-reported self-management competence. Secondary outcomes include behavioral determinants and self-management health behavior (symptom monitoring, physical activity, medication adherence), health-related quality of life, and treatment satisfaction. Treatment effects will be evaluated separately for each follow-up time point using multilevel regression analysis, and adjusting for baseline values.


DISCUSSION
This study evaluates the effectiveness of a comprehensive self-management educational program by a cluster randomized trial within inpatient cardiac rehabilitation in Germany. Furthermore, subgroup-related treatment effects will be explored. Study results will contribute to a better understanding of both the effectiveness and mechanisms of a self-management group program as part of cardiac rehabilitation.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
German Clinical Trials Register: DRKS00004841; WHO International Clinical Trials: = DRKS00004841.
Yoga training improves quality of life in women with asthma.

OBJECTIVES
Individuals with asthma frequently suffer with a decrease in quality of life. Yoga has been shown to improve autonomic function in the healthy population and has been used as an alternative therapy to help improve symptoms associated with various diseases.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to assess whether 10 weeks of yoga training can improve quality of life and heart rate variability (HRV) in patients with asthma.


DESIGN
Nineteen (19) females were randomly assigned to a yoga group or a control group for a 10-week intervention while still following guidelines established by their physician. All subjects answered the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) to assess quality of life and performed an isometric handgrip exercise test to assess HRV.


RESULTS
Based on the SGRQ, significant improvements (45%, p < 0.05) in quality of life were observed with the yoga training, while no changes were found in the control group. Resting hemodynamic measures improved significantly in the yoga group compared to the control group (p < 0.05). The yoga group decreased parasympathetic modulation (HFnu [normalized units]) pre- to postintervention (0.45 ± 0.60 to 0.35 ± 0.06 nu, p<0.05, respectively) in response to the isometric forearm exercise (IFE), whereas the control group did not change. Additionally, the yoga group increased sympathetic (LFnu) (pre 0.47 ± 0.07 to post 0.60 ± 0.07 nu, p < 0.05) and sympathovagal modulation (logLF/HF) (pre 4.61 ± 0.39 to post 5.31 ± 0.44, p < 0.05, respectively) during IFE with no change in the control group.


CONCLUSIONS
Yoga training improved quality of life in women with mild-to-moderate asthma and resulted in decreased parasympathetic and increased sympathetic modulation in response to an IFE.
Design and performance of nubbed fluidizing jamming grippers

Grippers have been shown using jamming of granular media grasp a large range of objects by pushing against them (with an activation force) to conform the gripper to the object's shape before grasping them with the intent to make universal grippers. This paper presents two effective modifications to jamming gripper designs (adding small nubs and fluidizing the granular media) resulting in significantly larger holding forces (typically 60%) and increasing the range of object geometries. The paper presents the design and fabrication of these devices and explores the range of objects and conditions empirically. Experiments also show that the nubs enable the grasping of smaller objects in which the gripper can engage interlocking forces in the granular media.
Interaction Design and Usability of Learning Spaces in 3D Multi-user Virtual Worlds

Three-dimensional virtual worlds are multimedia, simulated environments, often managed over the Web, which users can ‘inhabit’ and interact via their own graphical, humanoid, self-representations known as ‘avatars’. 3D virtual worlds are being used in many applications: education/training, gaming, social networking, marketing and commerce. Second Life is the most widely used 3D virtual world in education. However, problems associated with usability, navigation and wayfinding in 3D virtual worlds may impact on student learning and engagement. Based on empirical investigations of learning spaces in Second Life, this paper presents design guidelines to improve the usability and ease of navigation in 3D spaces. Methods of data collection include semi-structured interviews with Second Life students, educators and designers. The findings have revealed that design principles from the fields of urban planning, Human-Computer Interaction, Web usability, geography and psychology can influence the design of spaces in 3D multi-user virtual environments.
Wafer level LED packaging with integrated DRIE trenches for encapsulation

A novel encapsulation process for wafer level LED arrays is presented. In this process, 4 inch P-type single crystal silicon wafers served as the substrates for flip-chip mountable LED chips. The wafer substrates were fabricated by wafer level lithography and plating process. An UV curable epoxy was applied as the encapsulant. The encapsulation process takes advantage of square trenches fabricated by deep reaction ion etching (DRIE) process as barriers to limit the spread of the epoxy encapsulant, and can adjust the geometry of the encapsulation via controlling the volume of the epoxy and the dimension of the trenches. The packaging and encapsulation process of LED arrays were completed on wafer level. LED packages can be directly obtained after wafer dicing.
Financial time series prediction using polynomial pipelined neural networks

This paper proposes a novel type of higher-order pipelined neural network: the polynomial pipelined neural network. The proposed network is constructed from a number of higher-order neural networks concatenated with each other to predict highly nonlinear and nonstationary signals based on the engineering concept of divide and conquer. The polynomial pipelined neural network is used to predict the exchange rate between the US dollar and three other currencies. In this application, two sets of experiments are carried out. In the first set, the input data are pre-processed between 0 and 1 and passed to the neural networks as nonstationary data. In the second set of experiments, the nonstationary input signals are transformed into one step relative increase in price. The network demonstrates more accurate forecasting and an improvement in the signal to noise ratio over a number of benchmarked neural networks. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Condition monitoring of wind turbines : Techniques and methods

Wind Turbines (WT) are one of the fastest growing sources of power production in the world today and there is a constant need to reduce the costs of operating and maintaining them. Condition monitoring (CM) is a tool commonly employed for the early detection of faults/failures so as to minimise downtime and maximize productivity. This paper provides a review of the state-of-the-art in the CM of wind turbines, describing the different maintenance strategies, CM techniques and methods, and highlighting in a table the various combinations of these that have been reported in the literature. Future research opportunities in fault diagnostics are identified using a qualitative fault tree analysis. Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Gap coronoidotomy for management of coronoid process hyperplasia of the mandible.

Patients with coronoid process hyperplasia of the mandibular area are rare. The treatment of this disease is to increase the patient's mouth opening by surgery. There are various, but controversial, methods to treat it. We present a modified (gap) coronoidotomy procedure in detail and compare it with other conventional methods to treat coronoid process hyperplasia.
Robust outer synchronization between two complex networks with fractional order dynamics.

Synchronization between two coupled complex networks with fractional-order dynamics, hereafter referred to as outer synchronization, is investigated in this work. In particular, we consider two systems consisting of interconnected nodes. The state variables of each node evolve with time according to a set of (possibly nonlinear and chaotic) fractional-order differential equations. One of the networks plays the role of a master system and drives the second network by way of an open-plus-closed-loop (OPCL) scheme. Starting from a simple analysis of the synchronization error and a basic lemma on the eigenvalues of matrices resulting from Kronecker products, we establish various sets of conditions for outer synchronization, i.e., for ensuring that the errors between the state variables of the master and response systems can asymptotically vanish with time. Then, we address the problem of robust outer synchronization, i.e., how to guarantee that the states of the nodes converge to common values when the parameters of the master and response networks are not identical, but present some perturbations. Assuming that these perturbations are bounded, we also find conditions for outer synchronization, this time given in terms of sets of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Most of the analytical results in this paper are valid both for fractional-order and integer-order dynamics. The assumptions on the inner (coupling) structure of the networks are mild, involving, at most, symmetry and diffusivity. The analytical results are complemented with numerical examples. In particular, we show examples of generalized and robust outer synchronization for networks whose nodes are governed by fractional-order Lorenz dynamics.
Heterogeneous statistical QoS provisioning over 5G mobile wireless networks

As a critical step towards the next new era of mobile wireless networks, recently 5G mobile wireless networks have received significant research attention and efforts from both academia and industry. The 5G mobile wireless networks are expected to provide different delay-bounded QoS guarantees for a wide spectrum of services, applications, and users with extremely diverse requirements. Since the time-sensitive services in 5G multimedia wireless networks may vary dramatically in both a large range from milliseconds to a few seconds and diversity from uniform/ constant delay-bound to different/variable delay-bound guarantees among different wireless links, the delay-bound QoS requirements for different types of services promote the newly emerging heterogeneous statistical delay-bounded QoS provisioning over 5G mobile wireless networks, which, however, imposes many new challenging issues not encountered before in 4G wireless networks. To overcome these new challenges, in this article we propose a novel heterogeneous statistical QoS provisioning architecture for 5G mobile wireless networks. First, we develop and analyze the new heterogeneous statistical QoS system model by applying and extending the effective capacity theory. Then, through the wireless coupling channels, we apply our proposed heterogeneous statistical QoS architecture to efficiently implement the following powerful 5G-candidate wireless techniques: 1) device-to-device networks; 2) full-duplex networks; and 3) cognitive radio networks, respectively, for providing heterogeneous statistical delay-bounded QoS guarantees. Finally, using the simulation experiments we show that our proposed architecture and schemes significantly outperform the existing traditional statistical delay-bounded QoS provisioning schemes in terms of satisfying the heterogeneous delay-bounded QoS requirements while maximizing the aggregate system throughput over 5G mobile wireless networks.
A genetically informed study of associations between family functioning and child psychosocial adjustment.

Research has documented associations between family functioning and offspring psychosocial adjustment, but questions remain regarding whether these associations are partly due to confounding genetic factors and other environmental factors. The current study used a genetically informed approach, the Children of Twins design, to explore the associations between family functioning (family conflict, marital quality, and agreement about parenting) and offspring psychopathology. Participants were 867 twin pairs (388 monozygotic; 479 dizygotic) from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden, their spouses, and children (51.7% female; M = 15.75 years). The results suggested associations between exposure to family conflict (assessed by the mother, father, and child) and child adjustment were independent of genetic factors and other environmental factors. However, when family conflict was assessed using only children's reports, the results indicated that genetic factors also influenced these associations. In addition, the analyses indicated that exposure to low marital quality and agreement about parenting was associated with children's internalizing and externalizing problems and that genetic factors also contributed to the associations of marital quality and agreement about parenting with offspring externalizing problems.
Adaptive Transformation for Robust Privacy Protection in Video Surveillance

Privacy is a big concern in current video surveillance systems. Due to privacy issues, many strategic places remain unmonitored leading to security threats. The main problem with existing privacy protection methods is that they assume availability of accurate region of interest (RoI) detectors that can detect and hide the privacy sensitive regions such as faces. However, the current detectors are not fully reliable, leading to breaches in privacy protection. In this paper, we propose a privacy protection method that adopts adaptive data transformation involving the use of selective obfuscation and global operations to provide robust privacy even with unreliable detectors. Further, there are many implicit privacy leakage channels that have not been considered by researchers for privacy protection. We block both implicit and explicit channels of privacy leakage. Experimental results show that the proposed method incurs 38% less distortion of the information needed for surveillance in comparison to earlier methods of global transformation; while still providing near-zero privacy loss.