LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Reference Architectures for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is about innovative functionality and better productivity by seamlessly connecting devices. But a major threat is the lack of architecture standards for the industrial Internet and connectivity in the IoT. This article reviews recent IoT architecture evolution and what it means for industry projects.
Patients with familial hypercholesterolaemia show enhanced spontaneous chemokine release from peripheral blood mononuclear cells ex vivo. Dependency of xanthomas/xanthelasms, smoking and gender.

AIMS
Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is associated with increased risk of premature atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease (CAD). However, onset of clinically manifested CAD varies widely among patients with heterozygous FH, and we hypothesized that inflammatory mediators such as chemokines could contribute to atherogenesis in these patients.


METHODS AND RESULTS
We compared peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from FH patients with an identical mutation with PBMCs from sex- and age-matched healthy controls with respect to spontaneous and oxidized low density lipoprotein (oxLDL)-stimulated release of chemokines. Our main findings were: (1) PBMCs from FH patients spontaneously released significantly higher levels of macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1alpha, MIP-1beta and interleukin (IL)-8, and had a significantly lower oxLDL-stimulatory ratio for MIP-1alpha and MIP-1beta than cells from healthy controls. (2) Spontaneous release of these chemokines correlated positively and stimulatory ratio correlated negatively with plasma concentrations of total and LDL cholesterol. (3) Among FH patients, release of MIP-1alpha, MIP-1beta and IL-8 from PBMCs varied with the presence of xanthomas/xanthelasms, smoking and gender. (4) In vitro studies showed that FH serum but not control serum was able to induce enhanced spontaneous release of chemokines in PBMCs from both FH patients and control subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
Our data may suggest that a pathophysiological consequence of FH is enhanced chemokine responses, which in turn may promote recruitment and activation of leukocytes within the vessel wall, contributing to atherosclerosis as well as to the different phenotypes in these patients with an identical FH mutation.
Multioperational Modes and Control Strategies of Dual-Mechanical-Port Machine for Hybrid Electrical Vehicles

A continuous variable transmission based on a planetary gear set is used in a full hybrid electrical vehicle (HEV) to integrate the IC engine and two electric machines into the drive train so that the engine can always be at the highest efficiency speed while the vehicle is allowed to run at any desired speeds. However, the two electric machines and a planetary gear box plus two power inverters make the HEV drive train much more complicated and bulky in size. In this paper, the newly invented dual-mechanical-port (DMP) electric machine with multi operational modes and control strategies is presented for HEV use. This single DMP machine realizes full functions of a conventional HEV traction system without the planetary gear set. The novel control algorithms are evaluated by computer simulation and experimental results.
Effects of repeated sauna treatment on ventricular arrhythmias in patients with chronic heart failure.

BACKGROUND
The aim of the present study was to determine whether repeated 60 degrees C sauna treatment improves cardiac arrhythmias in chronic heart failure (CHF) patients, because ventricular arrhythmias are an important therapeutic target in CHF.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Thirty patients (59+/-3 years) with New York Heart Association functional class II or III CHF and at least 200 premature ventricular contractions (PVCs)/24 h assessed by 24-h Holter recordings were studied. They were randomized into sauna-treated (n=20) or non-treated (n=10) groups. The sauna-treated group underwent a 2-week program of a daily 60 degrees C far infrared-ray dry sauna for 15 min, followed by 30 min bed rest with blankets, for 5 days per week. Patients in the non-treated group had bed rest in a temperature-controlled room (24 degrees C) for 45 min. The total numbers of PVCs/24 h in the sauna-treated group decreased compared with the non-treated group [848+/-415 vs 3,097+/-1,033/24 h, p<0.01]. Heart rate variability (SDNN, standard deviation of normal-to-normal beat interval) increased [142+/-10 (n=16) vs 112+/-11 ms (n=8), p<0.05] and plasma brain natriuretic peptide concentrations decreased [229+/-54 vs 419+/-110 pg/ml, p<0.05] in the sauna-treated group compared with the non-treated group.


CONCLUSION
Repeated sauna treatment improves ventricular arrhythmias in patients with CHF.
Two-stage Convolutional Part Heatmap Regression for the 1st 3D Face Alignment in the Wild (3DFAW) Challenge

This paper describes our submission to the 1st 3D Face Alignment in the Wild (3DFAW) Challenge. Our method builds upon the idea of convolutional part heatmap regression [1], extending it for 3D face alignment. Our method decomposes the problem into two parts: (a) X,Y (2D) estimation and (b) Z (depth) estimation. At the first stage, our method estimates the X,Y coordinates of the facial landmarks by producing a set of 2D heatmaps, one for each landmark, using convolutional part heatmap regression. Then, these heatmaps, alongside the input RGB image, are used as input to a very deep subnetwork trained via residual learning for regressing the Z coordinate. Our method ranked 1st in the 3DFAW Challenge, surpassing the second best result by more than 22%. Code can be found at http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~psxab5/
DETERMINANTS OF HOUSEHOLD ACCESS TO AND PARTICIPATION IN FORMAL AND INFORMAL CREDIT MARKETS IN MALAWI

The paper uses the concept of credit limit to analyze the determinants of household access to and participation in informal and formal credit markets in Malawi. Households are found to be credit constrained, on average, both in the formal and informal sectors; they borrow, on average, less than half of any increase in their credit lines. Furthermore, they are not discouraged in their participation and borrowing decisions by further increases in the formal interest rate and/or the transaction costs associated with getting formal credit. This suggests that getting access to credit is much more important than its cost for these households. Hence, credit policies should focus on making access easier rather than providing credit with subsidized interest rates. The composition of household assets is found to be much more important as a determinant of household access to formal credit than the total value of household assets or landholding size. In particular, a higher share of land and livestock in the total value of household assets is negatively correlated with access to formal credit. However, land remains a significant determinant of access to informal credit. Therefore, poor households whose assets consist mostly of land and livestock but who want to diversify into nonfarm income generation activities may be constrained by lack of capital. As informal loans are usually too small to help poor households start a viable nonfarm
Early diagnostic suggestions improve accuracy of GPs: a randomised controlled trial using computer-simulated patients

BACKGROUND
Designers of computerised diagnostic support systems (CDSSs) expect physicians to notice when they need advice and enter into the CDSS all information that they have gathered about the patient. The poor use of CDSSs and the tendency not to follow advice once a leading diagnosis emerges would question this expectation.


AIM
To determine whether providing GPs with diagnoses to consider before they start testing hypotheses improves accuracy.


DESIGN AND SETTING
Mixed factorial design, where 297 GPs diagnosed nine patient cases, differing in difficulty, in one of three experimental conditions: control, early support, or late support.


METHOD
Data were collected over the internet. After reading some initial information about the patient and the reason for encounter, GPs requested further information for diagnosis and management. Those receiving early support were shown a list of possible diagnoses before gathering further information. In late support, GPs first gave a diagnosis and were then shown which other diagnoses they could still not discount.


RESULTS
Early support significantly improved diagnostic accuracy over control (odds ratio [OR] 1.31; 95% confidence interval [95%CI] = 1.03 to 1.66, P = 0.027), while late support did not (OR 1.10; 95% CI = 0.88 to 1.37). An absolute improvement of 6% with early support was obtained. There was no significant interaction with case difficulty and no effect of GP experience on accuracy. No differences in information search were detected between experimental conditions.


CONCLUSION
Reminding GPs of diagnoses to consider before they start testing hypotheses can improve diagnostic accuracy irrespective of case difficulty, without lengthening information search.
Transforming Work: Collaboration, Learning, and Design

world economy have led companies to restructure themselves in order to compete globally. Debates in the academic community about the changing demand for workplace skills with the globalization of the economy are paralleled in the business literature about what it takes to create a productive business (e.g., [8, 22, 24]). Business goals for such improvements as computer systems, work systems, or learning organizations are heavily influenced by underlying assumptions about how people work and how organizations function. In this article I examine these underlying assumptions and outline their implications for design. I suggest that underlying assumptions rooted in different conceptions of work coexist within an organization and represent different lenses through which people in the organization peer. One such lens, or conception of work, I call an “organizational, explicit” view, the other an “activity-oriented, tacit” view (see Table 1). Each of these perspectives carries different implications for the design of work and technologies. 1 An organizational perspective on work is an explicit view and is represented, for example, by sets of defined tasks and operations such as those described in methods and procedures, which fulfill a set of business functions (the work-flow approach reflects this; see [16].) This view of work differs from an activity-oriented approach, which suggests that the range of activities, communication practices, relationships, and coordination it takes to accomplish business functions is complex and continually mediated by
Using Convolutional 3D Neural Networks for User-independent continuous gesture recognition

In this paper, we propose using 3D Convolutional Neural Networks for large scale user-independent continuous gesture recognition. We have trained an end-to-end deep network for continuous gesture recognition (jointly learning both the feature representation and the classifier). The network performs three-dimensional (i.e. space-time) convolutions to extract features related to both the appearance and motion from volumes of color frames. Space-time invariance of the extracted features is encoded via pooling layers. The earlier stages of the network are partially initialized using the work of Tran et al. before being adapted to the task of gesture recognition. An earlier version of the proposed method, which was trained for 11,250 iterations, was submitted to ChaLearn 2016 Continuous Gesture Recognition Challenge and ranked 2nd with the Mean Jaccard Index Score of 0.269235. When the proposed method was further trained for 28,750 iterations, it achieved state-of-the-art performance on the same dataset, yielding a 0.314779 Mean Jaccard Index Score.
Long-term outcome of subthalamic nucleus DBS in Parkinson's disease: from the advanced phase towards the late stage of the disease?

BACKGROUND
Deep Brain Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus (STN-DBS) is an effective treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD), but only few studies investigated its long-term efficacy. Furthermore, little is known about the role of PD-subtype on STN-DBS long-term outcome.


OBJECTIVE
To report the results of a long-term follow-up (mean 11 years, range 10-13) on 26 patients bilaterally implanted in two centres.


METHODS
Patients were assessed preoperatively and 1, 5 and 11 years after the implant by the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and a battery of neuropsychological tests. Stimulation parameters, drugs dosages, non-motor symptoms and adverse events were also recorded.


RESULTS
At 11 years, stimulation significantly improved the motor symptoms by 35.8%, as compared to the preoperative off-state. Motor complications were well controlled, with a 84.6% improvement of dyskinesias and a 65.8% improvement of motor fluctuations. Despite this, the UPDRS-II-on score worsened by 88.5%, mainly for the worsening of poorly levodopa-responsive symptoms. More than 70% of the patients performed in the normal range in most of the neuropsychological tests, despite the development of dementia in 22.7%. Age at disease onset, axial subscore in off-condition and presence of REM behaviour disorder at baseline were found to be associated with a higher risk of developing disability over time.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study confirms the long-term safety and efficacy of STN-DBS in PD. Nevertheless, the functionality of patients worsens over time, mainly for the onset and progression of levodopa-resistant and non-motor symptoms. The role of PD-subtype seems to be relevant in the long-term outcome.
A microcrack-based continuous damage model for brittle geomaterials

A new microcrack-based continuous damage model is developed to describe the behavior of brittle geomaterials under compression dominated stress ®elds. The induced damage is represented by a second rank tensor, which re ̄ects density and orientation of microcracks. The damage evolution law is related to the propagation condition of microcracks. Based on micromechanical analyses of sliding wing cracks, the actual microcrack distributions are replaced by an equivalent set of cracks subjected to a macroscopic local tensile stress. The principles of the linear fracture mechanics are used to develop a suitable macroscopic propagation criterion. The onset of microcrack coalescence leading to localization phenomenon and softening behavior is included by using a critical crack length. The constitutive equations are developed by considering that microcrack growth induces an added material  ̄exibility. The eective elastic compliance of damaged material is obtained from the de®nition of a particular Gibbs free energy function. Irreversible damage-related strains due to residual opening of microcracks after unloading are also taken into account. The resulting constitutive equations can be arranged to reveal the physical meaning of each model parameter and to determine its value from standard laboratory tests. An explicit expression for the macroscopic eective constitutive tensor (compliance or stiness) makes it possible, in principal, to determine the critical damage intensity at which the localization condition is satis®ed. The proposed model is applied to two typical brittle rocks (a French granite and Tennessee marble). Comparison between test data and numerical simulations show that the proposed model is able to describe main features of mechanical behaviors observed in brittle geomaterials under compressive stresses. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
On the Study of Reaction Rules in Biochemistry

This article bases on the molecules to study the organic chemistry reations in biochemistry and comes out with a few rules: reactions often happen on some certain or Several atoms,on the active parts of the reation molecule, sometimes with the production of small moecules, with higher Percentage of hydrogenation or dehydrogenation organic reactions, and the same with static thecry and baou rule.
Flexible Thin-Film PVDF-TrFE Based Pressure Sensor for Smart Catheter Applications

We demonstrate the design of thin flexible pressure sensors based on piezoelectric PVDF-TrFE (polyvinyledenedifluoride-tetrafluoroethylene) co-polymer film, which can be integrated onto a catheter, where the compact inner lumen space limit the dimensions of the pressure sensors. Previously, we demonstrated that the thin-film sensors of one micrometer thickness were shown to have better performance compared to the thicker film with no additional electrical poling or mechanical stretching due to higher crystallinity. The pressure sensors can be mass producible using standard lithography process, with excellent control of film uniformity and thickness down to one micrometer. The fabricated pressure sensors were easily mountable on external surface of commercial catheters. Elaborate experiments were performed to demonstrate the applicability of PVDF sensors towards catheter based biomedical application. The resonant frequency of the PVDF sensor was found to be 6.34 MHz. The PVDF sensors can operate over a broad pressure range of 0–300 mmHg. The average sensitivity of the PVDF sensor was found to be four times higher (99 μV/mmHg) than commercial pressure sensor while the PVDF sensor (0.26 s) had fivefold shorter response time than commercial pressure sensor (1.30 s), making the PVDF sensors highly suitable for real-time pressure measurements using catheters.
Maximize piezoelectric energy harvesting using synchronous charge extraction technique for powering autonomous wireless transmitter

Interest for harvesting energy from the environment to sustain the operational lifetime of any battery-driven electronic device like wireless sensor nodes has been growing tremendously. One prominent challenge with energy harvesting sources is the deficiency in energy supply to continuously power the electronic devices even with the rapid advancement in ultra low power microelectronic technology. To overcome that, the synchronous electric charge extraction technique has been used to maximize the energy harvested from vibrational energy source using the piezoelectric generator. A low power synchronized switch control circuitry, which consumes 300 muW @ 5 V supply, has been designed and implemented to achieve synchronous charge extraction from the piezoelectric generator. Experimental results have verified that using the synchronous charge extraction technique as compared to the standard rectifying circuit, more electrical energy can be harvested from the piezoelectric generator with an increase from 1.75 mW to 5.6 mW. The harvested electrical energy is used to power the 433 MHz wireless transmitter to transmit 12-bit digital data to the remote base station.
Endoscopically assisted versus open repair of sagittal craniosynostosis: the St. Louis Children's Hospital experience.

OBJECT
This study investigated the differences in effectiveness and morbidity between endoscopically assisted wide-vertex strip craniectomy with barrel-stave osteotomies and postoperative helmet therapy versus open calvarial vault reconstruction without helmet therapy for sagittal craniosynostosis.


METHODS
Between 2003 and 2010, the authors prospectively observed 89 children less than 12 months old who were surgically treated for a diagnosis of isolated sagittal synostosis. The endoscopic procedure was offered starting in 2006. The data associated with length of stay, blood loss, transfusion rates, operating times, and cephalic indices were reviewed.


RESULTS
There were 47 endoscopically treated patients with a mean age at surgery of 3.6 months and 42 patients with open-vault reconstruction whose mean age at surgery was 6.8 months. The mean follow-up time was 13 months for endoscopic versus 25 months for open procedures. The mean operating time for the endoscopic procedure was 88 minutes, versus 179 minutes for the open surgery. The mean blood loss was 29 ml for endoscopic versus 218 ml for open procedures. Three endoscopically treated cases (6.4%) underwent transfusion, whereas all patients with open procedures underwent transfusion, with a mean of 1.6 transfusions per patient. The mean length of stay was 1.2 days for endoscopic and 3.9 days for open procedures. Of endoscopically treated patients completing helmet therapy, the mean duration for helmet therapy was 8.7 months. The mean pre- and postoperative cephalic indices for endoscopic procedures were 68% and 76% at 13 months postoperatively, versus 68% and 77% at 25 months postoperatively for open surgery.


CONCLUSIONS
Endoscopically assisted strip craniectomy offers a safe and effective treatment for sagittal craniosynostosis that is comparable in outcome to calvarial vault reconstruction, with no increase in morbidity and a shorter length of stay.
Triple-Band Open L-Slot Antenna with a Slit and a Strip for WLAN/WiMAX Applications

Abstract—An open L-slot antenna with triple-band operation for WLAN and WiMAX applications has been designed and implemented with a slit and a strip, which can be used to generate two band-rejected characteristics. Both the strip and the slit play a very important role in suppressing the dispensable bands. By adjusting the dimensions of the slit and strip, the proposed antenna shows three separated operating frequencies with a bandwidth of 14% from 2.24 to 2.58 GHz, a bandwidth of 19% from 3.02 to 3.66 GHz, and a bandwidth of 10% from 5.62 to 6.21GHz, respectively. Detailed designs and experimental results are reported in this paper.
SLA Based Dynamic Virtualized Resources Provisioning for Shared Cloud Data Centers

Cloud computing focuses on delivery of reliable, secure, sustainable, dynamic and scalable resources provisioning for hosting virtualized application services in shared cloud data centers. For an appropriate provisioning mechanism, we developed a novel cloud data center architecture based on virtualization mechanisms for multi-tier applications, so as to reduce provisioning overheads. Meanwhile, we proposed a novel dynamic provisioning technique and employed a flexible hybrid queueing model to determine the virtualized resources to provision to each tier of the virtualized application services. We further developed meta-heuristic solutions, which is according to different performance requirements of users from different levels. Simulation experiment results show that these proposed approaches can provide appropriate way to judiciously provision cloud data center resources, especially for improving the overall performance while effectively reducing the resource usage extra cost and maximizing the global profit of cloud infrastructure providers.