LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Why so Few Women Directors in Top UK Boardrooms? Evidence and Theoretical Explanations

T his paper considers findings from the 2002 UK FTSE 100 study of companies with women directors, and discusses the persistent lack of women on top corporate boards in the light of social exclusion theories. Male directors form an elite group at the top of the UK’s corporate world, and few women break through the glass ceiling into this elite, despite making inroads into middle management. The small number of women who rise to director positions in major UK companies is an issue of concern, because women’s talents are not being fully utilised. For the last four years, the number of top UK companies with female directors has been annually monitored. Evidence indicates continuing difficulties for women to reach the very top of major companies in both the UK (Singh et al., 2001) and the USA (Daily et al., 1999). Catalyst has monitored the Fortune 500 regularly since 1996. The USA had 12.4 per cent female-held seats in the Fortune 500 in 2001, ahead of the UK where there were 6.4 per cent female directors overall in 2001. (The Catalyst census is now biennial.) The FTSE 10
Cardiovascular outcomes in the first trial of antihypertensive therapy guided by self-measured home blood pressure

Hypertension guidelines recommend blood pressure self-measurement at home (HBP), but no previous trial has assessed cardiovascular outcomes in hypertensive patients treated according to HBP. The multicenter Hypertension Objective Treatment Based on Measurement by Electrical Devices of Blood Pressure (HOMED-BP; 2001–2010) trial involved 3518 patients (50% women; mean age 59.6 years) with an untreated systolic/diastolic HBP of 135–179/85–119 mm Hg. In a 2 × 3 design, patients were randomized to usual control (125–134/80–84 mm Hg (UC)) vs. tight control (<125/<80 mm Hg (TC)) of HBP and to initiation of drug treatment with angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers or calcium channel blockers. During follow-up, a computer algorithm automatically generated treatment recommendations based on HBP. At the last follow-up (median 5.3 years), TC patients used more antihypertensive drugs than UC patients (1.82 vs. 1.74 defined daily doses, P=0.045) and had a greater HBP reduction (21.3/13.1 mm Hg vs. 22.7/13.9 mm Hg, P=0.018/0.020), but they less frequently achieved the lower HBP targets (37.4 vs. 63.5%, P<0.0001). The primary end point, cardiovascular death plus stroke and myocardial infarction, occurred in 25 UC and 26 TC patients (hazard ratio, 1.02; 95% confidence interval, 0.59–1.77; P=0.94). Rates were similar (P⩾0.13) in the three drug groups. In all patients combined, the risk of the primary end point independently increased by 41% (6–89%; P=0.019) and 47% (15–87%; P=0.0020) for a 1-s.d. increase in baseline (12.5 mm Hg) and follow-up (13.2 mm Hg) systolic HBP. The 5-year risk was minimal (⩽1%) if on-treatment systolic HBP was 131.6 mm Hg or less. HOMED-BP proved the feasibility of adjusting antihypertensive drug treatment based on HBP and suggests that a systolic HBP level of 130 mm Hg should be an achievable and safe target.
Improving the Supply Chain Performance: Use of Forecasting Models Versus Early Order Commitments

This paper evaluates the impact of forecasting models and early order commitment in a supply chain with one capacitated manufacturer and four retailers under demand uncertainty. Computer simulation models were used to simulate di erent demand forecasting and inventory replenishment decisions by the retailers as well as production decisions by the manufacturer under a variety of demand patterns and capacity tightness scenarios. This study found that early order commitments signi®cantly a ected the total costs and service levels, to various degrees, for the manufacturer and the retailers, suggesting that the bene®ts of early order commitment could be in ̄uenced by a combination of forecasting models, demand patterns and capacity tightness.
Interleukin-15 (IL-15) Strongly Correlates with Increasing HIV-1 Viremia and Markers of Inflammation

OBJECTIVE
IL-15 has been postulated to play an important role in HIV-1 infection, yet there are conflicting reports regarding its expression levels in these patients. We sought to measure the level of IL-15 in a large, well characterised cohort of HIV-1 infected patients and correlate this with well known markers of inflammation, including CRP, D-dimer, sCD163 and sCD14.


DESIGN AND METHODS
IL-15 levels were measured in 501 people (460 patients with HIV-1 infection and 41 uninfected controls). The HIV-1 infected patients were divided into 4 groups based on viral load: <50 copies/ml, 51-10,000 copies/ml, 10,001-100,000 copies/ml and >100,000 copies/ml. The Mann Whitney test (non-parametric) was used to identify significant relationships between different patient groups.


RESULTS
IL-15 levels were significantly higher in patients with viral loads >100,000 copies/ml (3.02 ± 1.53 pg/ml) compared to both uninfected controls (1.69 ± 0.37 pg/ml, p<0.001) or patients with a viral load <50 copies/ml (1.59 ± 0.40 pg/ml (p<0.001). There was a significant correlation between HIV-1 viremia and IL-15 levels (Spearman r = 0.54, p<0.001) and between CD4+ T cell counts and IL-15 levels (Spearman r = -0.56, p<0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
IL-15 levels are significantly elevated in HIV-1 infected patients with viral loads >100,000 copies/ml compared to uninfected controls, with a significant direct correlation noted between IL-15 and HIV-1 viremia and an inverse correlation between IL-15 levels and CD4+ T cell counts. These data support a potential role for IL-15 in the pathogenesis of HIV-associated immune activation.
Saliency Detection via Combining Region-Level and Pixel-Level Predictions with CNNs

• Salient Map Fusion: The region-level salient map and the pixel-level salient map are computed by using different information of images. They are complementary and can be fused to further improve the performance. Visual saliency detection aims to highlight the most important object regions in an image. Numerous image processing applications incorporate the visual saliency to improve their performance: – image segmentation, cropping, object detection, image retrieval, etc. This paper proposes a novel saliency detection method by combining region-level saliency estimation and pixel-level saliency prediction with CNNs (denoted as CRPSD). Extensive quantitative and qualitative experiments on four public benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method greatly outperforms the state-of-the-art saliency detection approaches. INTRODUCTION
Decoupled Simulation in Virtual Reality with the MR Toolkit

The Virtual Reality (VR) user interface style allows natural hand and body motions to manipulate virtual objects in 3D environments using one or more 3D input devices. This style is best suited to application areas where traditional two-dimensional styles fall short, such as scienti c visualization, architectural visualization, and remote manipulation. Currently, the programming e ort required to produce a VR application is too large, and many pitfalls must be avoided in the creation of successful VR programs. In this paper we describe the Decoupled Simulation Model for creating successful VR applications, and a software system that embodies this model. The MR Toolkit simpli es the development of VR applications by providing standard facilities required by a wide range of VR user interfaces. These facilities include support for distributed computing, head-mounted displays, room geometry management, performance monitoring, hand input devices, and sound feedback. The MR Toolkit encourages programmers to structure their applications to take advantage of the distributed computing capabilities of workstation networks improving the application's performance. In this paper, the motivations and the architecture of the toolkit are outlined, the programmer's view is described, and a simple application is brie y described. CR
Lecture D22 -3d Rigid Body Kinematics Rotation about a Fixed Point

In this lecture, we consider the motion of a 3D rigid body. We shall see that in the general three dimensional case, the angular velocity of the body can change in magnitude as well as in direction, and, as a consequence, the motion is considerably more complicated than that in two dimensions. We consider first the simplified situation in which the 3D body moves in such a way that there is always a point, O, which is fixed. It is clear that, in this case, the path of any point in the rigid body which is at a distance r from O will be on a sphere of radius r that is centered at O. We point out that the fixed point O is not necessarily a point in rigid body (the second example in this notes illustrates this point). Euler's theorem states that the general displacement of a rigid body, with one fixed point is a rotation about some axis. This means that any two rotations of arbitrary magnitude about different axes can always be combined into a single rotation about some axis. At first sight, it seems that we should be able to express a rotation as a vector which has a direction along the axis of rotation and a magnitude that is equal to the angle of rotation. Unfortunately, if we consider two such rotation vectors, θ 1 and θ 2 , not only would the combined rotation θ be different from θ 1 + θ 2 , but in general θ 1 + θ 2 = θ 2 + θ 1. This situation is illustrated in the figure below, in which we consider a 3D rigid body undergoing two 90 o rotations about the x and y axis. It is clear that the result of applying the rotation in x first and then in y is different from the result obtained by rotating first in y and then in x. Therefore, it is clear that finite rotations cannot be treated as vectors, since they do not satisfy simple vector operations such as the parallelogram vector addition law.
Evaluation of direct attacks to fingerprint verification systems

The vulnerabilities of fingerprint-based recognition systems to direct attacks with and without the cooperation of the user are studied. Two different systems, one minutiae-based and one ridge feature-based, are evaluated on a database of real and fake fingerprints. Based on the fingerprint images quality and on the results achieved on different operational scenarios, we obtain a number of statistically significant observations regarding the robustness of the systems.
Resting energy expenditure and substrate oxidation rates correlate to temperature and outcome after cardiac arrest - a prospective observational cohort study

INTRODUCTION
Targeted temperature management improves outcome after cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Reduction of resting energy expenditure might be one mode of action. The aim of this study was to correlate resting energy expenditure and substrate oxidation rates with targeted temperature management at 33°C and outcome in patients after cardiac arrest.


METHODS
This prospective, observational cohort study was performed at the department of emergency medicine and a medical intensive care unit of a university hospital. Patients after successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation undergoing targeted temperature management at 33°C for 24 hours with subsequent rewarming to 36°C and standardized sedation, analgesic and paralytic medication were included. Indirect calorimetry was performed five times within 48 h after cardiac arrest. Measurements were correlated to outcome with repeated measures ANOVA, linear and logistic regression analysis.


RESULTS
In 25 patients resting energy expenditure decreased 20 (18 to 27) % at 33°C compared to 36°C without differences between outcome groups (favourable vs. unfavourable: 25 (21 to 26) vs. 21 (16 to 26); P = 0.5). In contrast to protein oxidation rate (favourable vs. unfavourable: 35 (11 to 68) g/day vs. 39 (7 to 75) g/day, P = 0.8) patients with favourable outcome had a significantly higher fat oxidation rate (139 (104 to 171) g/day vs. 117 (70 to 139) g/day, P <0.05) and a significantly lower glucose oxidation rate (30 (-34 to 88) g/day vs. 77 (19 to 138) g/day; P < 0.05) as compared to patients with unfavourable neurological outcome.


CONCLUSIONS
Targeted temperature management at 33°C after cardiac arrest reduces resting energy expenditure by 20% compared to 36°C. Glucose and fat oxidation rates differ significantly between patients with favourable and unfavourable neurological outcome.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00500825. Registered 11 July 2007.
Parallelism in Quantum Information Processing Defeats the Universal Computer

This paper is structured around the idea that a finite Universal Computer cannot be realized and presents in detail a series of unconventional computing paradigms supporting this idea from a quantum mechanical perspective.
Atrial fibrillation detection by heart rate variability in Poincare plot

BACKGROUND
Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is one of the prominent causes of stroke, and its risk increases with age. We need to detect AFib correctly as early as possible to avoid medical disaster because it is likely to proceed into a more serious form in short time. If we can make a portable AFib monitoring system, it will be helpful to many old people because we cannot predict when a patient will have a spasm of AFib.


METHODS
We analyzed heart beat variability from inter-beat intervals obtained by a wavelet-based detector. We made a Poincare plot using the inter-beat intervals. By analyzing the plot, we extracted three feature measures characterizing AFib and non-AFib: the number of clusters, mean stepping increment of inter-beat intervals, and dispersion of the points around a diagonal line in the plot. We divided distribution of the number of clusters into two and calculated mean value of the lower part by k-means clustering method. We classified data whose number of clusters is more than one and less than this mean value as non-AFib data. In the other case, we tried to discriminate AFib from non-AFib using support vector machine with the other feature measures: the mean stepping increment and dispersion of the points in the Poincare plot.


RESULTS
We found that Poincare plot from non-AFib data showed some pattern, while the plot from AFib data showed irregularly irregular shape. In case of non-AFib data, the definite pattern in the plot manifested itself with some limited number of clusters or closely packed one cluster. In case of AFib data, the number of clusters in the plot was one or too many. We evaluated the accuracy using leave-one-out cross-validation. Mean sensitivity and mean specificity were 91.4% and 92.9% respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Because pulse beats of ventricles are less likely to be influenced by baseline wandering and noise, we used the inter-beat intervals to diagnose AFib. We visually displayed regularity of the inter-beat intervals by way of Poincare plot. We tried to design an automated algorithm which did not require any human intervention and any specific threshold, and could be installed in a portable AFib monitoring system.
Annarosa Berman (text) and Bridget Elliot (photographs)The company we keep: An intimate celebration of opera Australia

Abstract Books on and about opera are legion. This most extravagant of art forms has over the last twenty to thirty years become a useful sounding board by means of which many disparate disciplines explore their own concepts and methodologies. One need only think of recent scholarly work in opera arising out of disciplines as diverse as literary theory, psychoanalysis, history, politics, performance studies, gender and queer studies, and many more. Opera as a genre seems to offer scholars from many disciplines freedom and creativity when engaging with it as an art form in its own right as well as providing insights and new approaches in their particular area.
Colonoscopy uptake for high-risk individuals with a family history of colorectal neoplasia

BACKGROUND
Colonoscopic screening is recommended for first-degree relatives of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) or colorectal adenomatous polyps (CAP) before the age of 60 years. This has the potential to reduce CRC-related morbidity and mortality, but uptake is currently inadequate.


METHODS
The aim of the study was to compare the effectiveness of standard information versus a nurse-led tailored intervention designed to promote uptake of colonoscopy screening by siblings of CRC or CAP patients. A randomized controlled trial was conducted. Digestive surgeons and gastroenterologists recruited index patients who developed CRC or CAP before the age of 60 years. All index patients received standard screening information for their siblings, in keeping with current guidelines. Centrally computerized randomization of index patients resulted in allocating all their siblings to the same group, intervention or control. The tailored intervention targeted the index patient first, to help them convey information to their siblings. The nurse then provided the siblings with tailored information based on their answers to a self-questionnaire which explored health behaviors, derived from psychosocial models of prevention. Then the siblings were given a personalized information leaflet to hand to their regular physician. The primary endpoint was the rate of documented colonoscopy performed in siblings within 1 year after diagnosis of the index patient. The intent-to-treat analysis included siblings who refused to participate in the study. Statistical analysis was adjusted for intrafamilial correlation.


RESULTS
A total of 304 siblings of 125 index patients were included: 160 in the intervention group and 144 in the control group. The rate of colonoscopy uptake among siblings was 56.3% in the intervention group and 35.4% in the control group (P = 0.0027). The respective rates after exclusion of refusals were 69.2% and 37.0% (P < 0.0001). More lesions were detected in the intervention group (1 invasive cancer and 11 advanced adenomas vs 5 advanced adenomas; P = 0.022).


CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a nurse-led tailored intervention designed to promote colonoscopy screening uptake by siblings of patients diagnosed with CRC or CAP before age 60 years. Such tailored interventions that also involve physicians should help to reduce CRC-related mortality.
SIMON and SPECK: Block Ciphers for the Internet of Things

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) developed the Simon and Speck families of lightweight block ciphers as an aid for securing applications in very constrained environments where AES may not be suitable. This paper sum­ marizes the algorithms, their design rationale, along with current cryptanalysis and implemen­ tation results.
Dress Fashionably: Learn Fashion Collocation With Deep Mixed-Category Metric Learning

In this paper, we seek to enable machine to answer questions like, given a clutch bag, what kind of skirt, heel and even accessory best fashionably collocate with it? This problem, dubbed fashion collocation, has almost been neglected by researchers due to the large uncertainty lies in fashion collocation and professional expertise required to address it. In this paper, we narrow down the well-collocated samples to be fashion images shared on fashion websites, with which we propose an end-to-end trainable deep mixed-category metric learning method to project well-collocated clothing items to lie close but items violating well-collocation far apart in the deep embedding space. Specifically, we simultaneously model the intra-category exclusiveness and cross-category inclusiveness of fashion collocation by feeding a set of wellcollocated clothing items and corresponding bad-collocated clothing items to the deep neural network, further a hardaware online exemplar mining strategy is designed to force the whole neural network to be trainable and learn discriminative features at the early and later training stages respectively. To motivate more research in fashion collocation, we collect a dataset of 0.2 million fashionably well-collocated images consisting of either on-body or off-body clothing items or accessories. Extensive experimental results show the feasibility and superiority of our method.
Bone marrow adipocytes promote the regeneration of stem cells and hematopoiesis by secreting SCF

Endothelial cells and leptin receptor+ (LepR+) stromal cells are critical sources of haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niche factors, including stem cell factor (SCF), in bone marrow. After irradiation or chemotherapy, these cells are depleted while adipocytes become abundant. We discovered that bone marrow adipocytes synthesize SCF. They arise from Adipoq-Cre/ER+ progenitors, which represent ∼5% of LepR+ cells, and proliferate after irradiation. Scf deletion using Adipoq-Cre/ER inhibited haematopoietic regeneration after irradiation or 5-fluorouracil treatment, depleting HSCs and reducing mouse survival. Scf from LepR+ cells, but not endothelial, haematopoietic or osteoblastic cells, also promoted regeneration. In non-irradiated mice, Scf deletion using Adipoq-Cre/ER did not affect HSC frequency in long bones, which have few adipocytes, but depleted HSCs in tail vertebrae, which have abundant adipocytes. A-ZIP/F1 ‘fatless’ mice exhibited delayed haematopoietic regeneration in long bones but not in tail vertebrae, where adipocytes inhibited vascularization. Adipocytes are a niche component that promotes haematopoietic regeneration.
Evaluation of the National Cervical Cancer Screening Programme in Singapore.

INTRODUCTION
A retrospective observational study was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of CervicalScreen Singapore (CSS), a National Cervical Cancer Screening Programme.


METHODS
National trends on incidence, mortality of cervical cancer and carcinoma in situ of the cervix before and after the launch of CSS were examined. Linear regression was used to calculate the average annual percentage change in age-standardised incidence and mortality rates. We also examined the operational measures of CSS, such as the women who joined the CSS programme and the diagnostic accuracy of Pap smears. The study was confined to women who consented to join CSS at government-funded polyclinics.


RESULTS
Nationally, there was a greater decline in the age-standardised incidence and mortality rates in the period 2004-2008 as compared to the period 1987-2003. Under CSS, a total of 99,759 Pap smears were performed on 81,087 women in the period 2004-2008. However, the number of first screens decreased from 18,434 in 2004 to 11,624 in 2008. Among women aged 25-69 years who had their first Pap smear screening and who were recommended for routine rescreen in three years, 10% had a subsequent rescreen within three years. Overall, the CSS programme was able to detect 0.37 invasive cancers per 1,000 screens in women aged 25-69 years.


CONCLUSION
The CSS programme has contributed to a decline in the mortality and incidence of cervical cancer in Singapore. However, the challenges of increasing the screening uptake among eligible women need to be addressed.