LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Manipulator grasping and pushing operations

The primary goal of this research is to develop theoretical tools for analysis, synthesis, and application of primitive manipulator operations. The primary method is to extend and apply traditional tools of classical mechanics. The results are of such a general nature that they address many different aspects of industrial robotics, including effector and sensor design, planning and programming tools, and design of auxiliary equipment. Some of the manipulator operations studied are: 1. Grasping an object. The object will usually slide and rotate during the period between first contact and prehension. 2. Placing an object. The object may slip slightly in the fingers upon contact with the table as the base aligns with the table. 3. Pushing. Often the final stage of mating two parts involves pushing one object into the other. In each of these operations the motion of the object is determined partly by the manipulator and partly by frictional forces. Hence the theoretical analysis focuses on the problem of partially constrained motion with friction. When inertial forces are dominated by frictional forces, we find that the fundamental motion of the object-whether it will rotate, and if so in what direction-may be determined by inspection. In many cases the motion may be predicted in detail, and in any case it is possible to find bounds on the motion. With these analytical tools it is sometimes possible to predict the outcome of a given manipulator operation, or, on the other hand, to plan an operation producing a given desired outcome. Thesis Supervisors: Tomas Lozano-Perez and Berthold K. P. Horn Titles: Assistant Professor and Associate Professor, respectively, of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
The value of contrast-enhanced color Doppler ultrasound in the detection of vascularization of finger joints in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE
A prospective study was performed to assess the usefulness of contrast-enhanced color Doppler ultrasound (CDUS) in the evaluation of intraarticular vascularization of finger joints in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).


METHODS
We investigated 198 finger joints in 46 patients with RA, and 80 finger joints in 10 healthy volunteers. Joints with varying levels of clinical activity of inflammation were classified as being active, moderately active, or inactive. CDUS was performed with a high-frequency multi-D linear array transducer. A microbubble-based ultrasound (US) contrast agent (Levovist; Schering, Berlin, Germany) was intravenously infused. Doppler findings were rated on the basis of both unenhanced and contrast-enhanced CDUS images.


RESULTS
Healthy joints showed no intraarticular vascularization on either unenhanced or contrast-enhanced CDUS. Unenhanced CDUS detected intraarticular vascularization in 7 (8%) of 83 inactive joints, in 31 (52%) of 60 moderately active joints, and in 32 (58%) of 55 active joints. Contrast-enhanced CDUS detected intraarticular vascularization in 41 (49%) of 83 joints with inactive RA, in 59 (98%) of 60 joints with moderately active RA, and in all 55 joints with active RA. Detection of intraarticular vascularization was improved by administration of the microbubble-based US contrast agent (P < 0.001). Contrast-enhanced CDUS demonstrated differences in intraarticular vascularization between joints with inactive RA and those with active RA (P < 0.001), between joints with inactive RA and those with moderately active RA (P < 0.001), and between joints with moderately active RA and those with active RA (P < 0.001).


CONCLUSION
The use of a microbubble-based US contrast agent significantly improved the detection of intraarticular vascularization in the finger joints of patients with RA. This technique seems to be a useful adjunct in the assessment of disease activity.
Droperidol has comparable clinical efficacy against both nausea and vomiting.

BACKGROUND
Droperidol is commonly noted to be more effective at preventing postoperative nausea (PON) than vomiting (POV) and it is assumed to have a short duration of action. This may be relevant for clinical decisions, especially for designing multiple-drug antiemetic regimens.


METHODS
We conducted a post hoc analysis of a large multicentre trial. Within this trial, 1734 patients underwent inhalation anaesthesia and were randomly stratified to receive several antiemetic interventions according to a factorial design, one of which was droperidol 1.25 mg vs placebo. We considered differences to be significant when: (i) point estimates of one outcome are not within the limits of the confidence interval (CI) of the other outcome; and (ii) differences in risk ratio (also known as relative risks, RR) are at least 20%.


RESULTS
Over 24 h, nausea was reduced from 42.9% in the control to 32.0% in the droperidol group, corresponding to a relative risk (RR) of 0.75 (95% CI from 0.66 to 0.84). Vomiting was reduced from 15.6% to 11.8%, and therefore associated with a similar RR of 0.76 (0.59-0.96). In the early postoperative period (0-2 h), droperidol prevented nausea and vomiting similarly, with an RR of 0.57 (0.46-0.69) for nausea and 0.56 (0.37-0.85) for vomiting. In the late postoperative period (2-24 h), the RR was again similar with 0.83 (0.72-0.96) for nausea compared with 0.89 (0.66-1.18) for vomiting but significantly less compared with the early postoperative period.


CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that droperidol prevents PON and POV equally well, yet its duration of action is short-lived.
Electrocardiographic findings in systemic lupus erythematosus: data from an international inception cohort.

OBJECTIVE
To estimate the early prevalence of various electrocardiographic (EKG) abnormalities in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and to evaluate possible associations between repolarization changes (increased corrected QT [QTc] and QT dispersion [QTd]) and clinical and laboratory variables, including the anti-Ro/SSA level and specificity (52 or 60 kd).


METHODS
We studied adult SLE patients from 19 centers participating in the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) Inception Registry. Demographics, disease activity (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index 2000 [SLEDAI-2K]), disease damage (SLICC/American College of Rheumatology Damage Index [SDI]), and laboratory data from the baseline or first followup visit were assessed. Multivariate logistic and linear regression models were used to asses for any cross-sectional associations between anti-Ro/SSA and EKG repolarization abnormalities.


RESULTS
For the 779 patients included, mean ± SD age was 35.2 ± 13.8 years, 88.4% were women, and mean ± SD disease duration was 10.5 ± 14.5 months. Mean ± SD SLEDAI-2K score was 5.4 ± 5.6 and mean ± SD SDI score was 0.5 ± 1.0. EKG abnormalities were frequent and included nonspecific ST-T changes (30.9%), possible left ventricular hypertrophy (5.4%), and supraventricular arrhythmias (1.3%). A QTc ≥440 msec was found in 15.3%, while a QTc ≥460 msec was found in 5.3%. Mean ± SD QTd was 34.2 ± 14.7 msec and QTd ≥40 msec was frequent (38.1%). Neither the specificity nor the level of anti-Ro/SSA was associated with QTc duration or QTd, although confidence intervals were wide. Total SDI was significantly associated with a QTc interval exceeding 440 msec (odds ratio 1.38 [95% confidence interval 1.06, 1.79]).


CONCLUSION
A substantial proportion of patients with recent-onset SLE exhibited repolarization abnormalities, although severe abnormalities were rare.
Improving Transparency in Teleoperation by Means of Cutaneous Tactile Force Feedback

A study on the role of cutaneous and kinesthetic force feedback in teleoperation is presented. Cutaneous cues provide less transparency than kinesthetic force, but they do not affect the stability of the teleoperation system. On the other hand, kinesthesia provides a compelling illusion of telepresence but affects the stability of the haptic loop. However, when employing common grounded haptic interfaces, it is not possible to independently control the cutaneous and kinesthetic components of the interaction. For this reason, many control techniques ensure a stable interaction by scaling down both kinesthetic and cutaneous force feedback, even though acting on the cutaneous channel is not necessary.
 We discuss here the feasibility of a novel approach. It aims at improving the realism of the haptic rendering, while preserving its stability, by modulating cutaneous force to compensate for a lack of kinesthesia. We carried out two teleoperation experiments, evaluating (1) the role of cutaneous stimuli when reducing kinesthesia and (2) the extent to which an overactuation of the cutaneous channel can fully compensate for a lack of kinesthetic force feedback. Results showed that, to some extent, it is possible to compensate for a lack of kinesthesia with the aforementioned technique, without significant performance degradation. Moreover, users showed a high comfort level in using the proposed system.
The effectiveness and safety of acupuncture therapy in depressive disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND
Although acupuncture has been used as an alternative treatment for depressive disorders, its effectiveness and safety are not well defined. The purpose of this systematic review with meta-analysis was to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture as monotherapy and as an additional therapy in treating various depressive conditions, particularly major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-stroke depression (PSD).


METHODS
Following systematic review, meta-analysis was conducted on high-quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs).


RESULTS
Of 207 clinical studies of acupuncture for various depression retrieved, 113 (54.6%) were on MDD and 76 (36.7%) on PSD. Twenty RCTs of MDD (n=1998) and 15 of PSD (n=1680) identified for high-quality protocol (Jadad score >or=3) were included for meta-analysis. The efficacy of acupuncture as monotherapy was comparable to antidepressants alone in improving clinical response and alleviating symptom severity of MDD, but not different from sham acupuncture. No sufficient evidence favored the expectation that acupuncture combined with antidepressants could yield better outcomes than antidepressants alone in treating MDD. Acupuncture was superior to antidepressants and waitlist controls in improving both response and symptom severity of PSD. The incidence of adverse events in acupuncture intervention was significantly lower than antidepressants.


CONCLUSIONS
Acupuncture therapy is safe and effective in treating MDD and PSD, and could be considered an alternative option for the two disorders. The efficacy in other forms of depression remains to be further determined.
High School Dropout: A Quick Stats Fact Sheet

1 Each year almost one-third of public high school students fail to graduate from high school. The high school dropout problem is a crisis for the United States, in part because it impacts not only individuals and their education, but also because the economic and social costs are so dramatic. Globally, the United States ranks seventeenth in high school graduation rates and fourteenth in college graduation rates among developed nations. Domestically, the nation and its communities suffer from a lack of productive workers and higher costs associated with incarceration, health care, and other social services. As the 21 century United States moves towards an increasingly global economy, more individuals are discovering that higher levels of education are critical to their own and their nation’s ability to compete and thrive – in fact, about 90 percent of the fastest growing jobs will require some postsecondary education. Understanding the magnitude of the dropout problem and the forces that impact dropout rates is critically important to developing dropout prevention strategies.
Fluticasone propionate induced alterations to lung function and the immunopathology of asthma over time.

BACKGROUND
Inhaled corticosteroids are the most widely used treatment for asthma, a disease characterised by both functional and immunopathological abnormalities. This study investigated the relative effects of inhaled corticosteroids on these two features of asthma over time.


METHODS
A randomised, double blind, placebo controlled, parallel group study with inhaled fluticasone propionate, (FP 2 mg daily) was conducted in 27 patients with asthma. Following baseline analysis, the study tested the effects of short term (two weeks) and longer term (eight weeks) treatment. At each time point (0, 2, and 8 weeks) lung function tests were performed and endobronchial biopsy specimens obtained to determine the distribution and number of lymphocyte, macrophage and eosinophil subsets using immunohistological analysis. Twenty three patients completed the study, 11 on FP and 12 placebo.


RESULTS
FEV1, delta FEV1, FEF25-75, and FEV1/FVC all improved after two weeks of FP treatment. This improvement was maintained but not increased after eight weeks. PC20FEV1 showed a trend to increase but was not significantly improved at eight weeks. No significant changes were seen in the placebo group. The numbers of T cells, macrophages, and eosinophils in the bronchial wall were reduced by two weeks of treatment with FP but were unaltered by placebo. The improvement offered by FP continued over the eight week period. Reductions in CD4:CD8 ratio and numbers of activated (EG2+) eosinophils were only significant after eight weeks of treatment.


CONCLUSIONS
These results reveal that FP influences both functional and immunopathological parameters of asthma. Temporal relationships suggest that these are parallel but not necessarily interrelated effects. While short term treatment is effective in "normalising" the functional abnormalities in asthma, the impact of FP on bronchial inflammation appears to be progressive, taking up to eight weeks and more.
MDCube: a high performance network structure for modular data center interconnection

Shipping-container-based data centers have been introduced as building blocks for constructing mega-data centers. However, it is a challenge on how to interconnect those containers together with reasonable cost and cabling complexity, due to the fact that a mega-data center can have hundreds or even thousands of containers and the aggregate bandwidth among containers can easily reach tera-bit per second. As a new inner-container server-centric network architecture, BCube [9] interconnects thousands of servers inside a container and provides high bandwidth support for typical traffic patterns. It naturally serves as a building block for mega-data center.
 In this paper, we propose MDCube, a high performance interconnection structure to scale BCube-based containers to mega-data centers. MDCube uses the high-speed uplink interfaces of the commodity switches in BCube containers to build the inter-container structure, reducing the cabling complexity greatly. MDCube puts its inter- and inner-container routing intelligences solely into servers to handle load-balance and fault-tolerance, thus directly leverages commodity instead of high-end switches to scale. Through analysis, we prove that MDCube has low diameter and high capacity. Both simulations and experiments in our testbed demonstrate the fault-tolerance and high network capacity of MDCube.
Effect of high-frequency chest wall oscillation on the central and peripheral distribution of aerosolized diethylene triamine penta-acetic acid as compared to standard chest physiotherapy in cystic fibrosis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
High-frequency chest wall oscillation (HFCWO) has been shown to be as effective as standard chest physiotherapy (SCPT) for removal of pulmonary secretions as well as increasing FEV(1) in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Patients using HFCWO often administer aerosolized medications simultaneously, reducing time required for daily care. While peripheral pulmonary distribution of tracer in normal subjects has been shown to be unaffected by HFCWO, this has not been studied in CF patients. We evaluated distribution of aerosolized (99m)Tc diethylene triamine penta-acetic acid (DTPA) administered simultaneously with HFCWO and compared this with DTPA aerosolized after SCPT.


STUDY DESIGN
Ten CF patients, ages 22 to 38 years, with moderate-to-severe obstructive disease were studied in a crossover design after documentation of stable lung function. (133)Xe was administered to delineate total lung volume. DTPA was aerosolized (Pari LC Plus nebulizer and Pulmo-Aide compressor; Pari Respiratory Equipment Inc.; Richmond, VA) to delineate airway deposition. The central to peripheral deposition ratio (C/P ratio) of each lung was analyzed in each study group. Central regions were represented by the inner one third of the (133)Xe scan as demonstrated in previous research models.


RESULTS
The mean C/P ratio (+/- SD) for both lungs was 1.45 +/- 0.31 with HFCWO and 1.46 +/- 0.28 following SCPT (p = not significant [NS]). Right lung mean C/P ratio was 1.74 +/- 0.43 with HFCWO and 1.85 +/- 0.63 after SCPT (p = NS). Left lung mean C/P ratio was 1.25 +/- 0.29 with HFCWO and 1.21 +/- 0.35 after SCPT (p = NS). There was no correlation between C/P ratio and FEV(1) or FVC.


CONCLUSIONS
Use of HFCWO in combination with aerosolized DTPA did not result in increased central deposition as compared with aerosolized DTPA administered after SCPT. Further study is required to determine if combining HFCWO with aerosolized medications can be modified to improve peripheral deposition.
Involving relatives in relapse prevention for bipolar disorder: a multi-perspective qualitative study of value and barriers

BACKGROUND
Managing early warning signs is an effective approach to preventing relapse in bipolar disorder. Involving relatives in relapse prevention has been shown to maximize the effectiveness of this approach. However, family-focused intervention research has typically used expert therapists, who are rarely available within routine clinical services. It remains unknown what issues exist when involving relatives in relapse prevention planning delivered by community mental health case managers. This study explored the value and barriers of involving relatives in relapse prevention from the perspectives of service users, relatives and care-coordinators.


METHODS
Qualitative interview study nested within a randomized controlled trial of relapse prevention for individuals with bipolar disorder. The purposive sample of 52 participants comprised service users (n = 21), care coordinators (n = 21) and relatives (n = 10). Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach.


RESULTS
All parties identified benefits of involving relatives in relapse prevention: improved understanding of bipolar disorder; relatives gaining a role in illness management; and improved relationships between each party. Nevertheless, relatives were often discouraged from becoming involved. Some staff perceived involving relatives increased the complexity of their own role and workload, and some service users valued the exclusivity of their relationship with their care-coordinator and prioritized taking individual responsibility for their illness over the benefits of involving their relatives. Barriers were heightened when family relationships were poor.


CONCLUSIONS
Whilst involving relatives in relapse prevention has perceived value, it can increase the complexity of managing bipolar disorder for each party. In order to fully realize the benefits of involving relatives in relapse prevention, additional training and support for community care coordinators is needed.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ISRCTN41352631
Measurements of ocean surface waves and currents using L- and C-band along-track interferometric SAR

Along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar (ATI–SAR) is an active coherent imaging system, utilizing two antennas separated along the platform flight direction. The phase information of ATI–SAR from the Doppler shift of the backscattered signal represents the line-of-sight velocity of the water scatterers. While the advent of ATI–SAR provided us with a potentially powerful technique for ocean surface current and wave mapping, the surface current has not been measured exactly from the ATI–SAR velocity because the Doppler shift is not simply proportional to the component of the mean surface current. It also includes other types of contributions associated with the phase velocity of the Bragg waves and orbital motions of all ocean waves that are longer than Bragg waves. In this paper, we review how the phase difference measured by ATI–SAR is related to the mean Doppler frequency, and we develop a new and practically useful method to extract the surface current component utilizing simultaneously measured Land C-band ATI–SAR data. Since the measured ATI–SAR velocity shows a different value at a different radar-frequency, we investigate the influence of Bragg-resonant waves and long ocean wave motions on the ATI–SAR velocity according to the radar frequency. The Bragg-wave phase velocity component, which is a significant source of error for extracting the surface current, can be effectively eliminated by using Land C-band ATI–SAR. The method is applied to Land C-band ATI–SAR measurements acquired at the Ulsan coast in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula. The resulting ocean surface current vectors are compared with in situ measurements collected by recording current meter. We furthermore extract ocean surface wave information from the ATI–SAR phase image using a quasi-linear transform.
HMM-based text-to-audio-visual speech synthesis

This paper describes a technique for text-to-audio-visual speech synthesis based on hidden Markov models (HMMs), in which lip image sequences are modeled based on imageor pixel-based approach. To reduce the dimensionality of visual speech feature space, we obtain a set of orthogonal vectors (eigenlips) by principal components analysis (PCA), and use a subset of the PCA coefficients and their dynamic features as visual speech parameters. Auditory and visual speech parameters are modeled by HMMs separately, and lip movements are synchronized with auditory speech by using phoneme boundaries of auditory speech for synthesizing lip image sequences. We confirmed that the generated auditory speech and lip image sequences are realistic and synchronized naturally.
Deep Deformation Network for Object Landmark Localization

Localization Results Face Landmark Localization: Dataset ESR SDM ERT LBF cGPRT DDN (Ours) 300-W 7.58 7.52 6.40 6.32 5.71 5.65 Table 1: Mean relative error (%) on 300W. Human Body Part Localization: Method Head Shoulder Elbow Wrist Hip Knee Ankle Mean Pishchulin et al. 87.2 56.7 46.7 38.0 61.0 57.5 52.7 57.1 Tompson et al. 90.6 79.2 67.9 63.4 69.5 71.0 64.2 72.0 Chen & Yuille 91.8 78.2 71.8 65.5 73.3 70.2 63.4 73.4 DDN (Ours) 87.2 88.2 82.4 76.3 91.4 85.8 78.7 84.3 Table 2: PCK at 0.2 on LSP dataset. Bird Part Localization: α Methods Ba Be By Bt Cn Fo Le Ll Lw Na Re h 0.02 Ning et al. 9.4 12.7 8.2 9.8 12.2 13.2 11.3 7.8 6.7 11.5 12.5 Ours 18.8 12.8 14.2 15.9 15.9 16.2 20.3 7.1 8.3 13.8 19.7 0.05 Ning et al. 46.8 62.5 40.7 45.1 59.8 63.7 66.3 33.7 31.7 54.3 63.8 Ours 66.4 49.2 56.4 60.4 61.0 60.0 66.9 32.3 35.8 53.1 66.3 Table 3: PCK at 0.02 and 0.05 on CUB200-2011.
Vaught's Theorem on Axiomatizability by a Scheme

In this paper we give an improvement of Vaught's Theorem on Axiomatizability by a Scheme. We show that any RE theory that directly interprets the theory of non-surjective unordered pairing, where pairing need not be functional, is axiomatizable by a scheme.