LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Ibutilide added to propafenone for the conversion of atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter.

OBJECTIVES
We evaluated the safety and efficacy of ibutilide when added to propafenone in treating both paroxysmal and chronic atrial fibrillation (AF) and atrial flutter (AFL).


BACKGROUND
The effects of ibutilide in patients with paroxysmal or chronic AF/AFL who were pre-treated with propafenone have not been previously evaluated.


METHODS
Oral propafenone was initially given in 202 patients with AF/AFL without left ventricular dysfunction. Intravenous ibutilide was administered in 104 patients in whom propafenone failed to convert the arrhythmia. Two different propafenone dosage regimens were used according to the duration of the presenting arrhythmia: patients with paroxysmal arrhythmia (n = 48) received 600 mg loading dose, and patients with chronic arrhythmia (n = 56) were receiving 150 mg three times a day as stable-dose pre-treatment.


RESULTS
Ibutilide offered an overall conversion efficacy of 66.3% (69 of 104 patients), 70.8% for patients with paroxysmal AF/AFL and 62.5% for patients with chronic AF/AFL. Ibutilide significantly decreased the heart rate (HR) and further prolonged the QTc interval (p < 0.0001). The degree of HR reduction after ibutilide administration emerged as the sole predictor of successful arrhythmia termination (p < 0.001). After ibutilide, one patient (1%) developed two asymptomatic episodes of non-sustained torsade de pointes, and 10 patients (9.6%) manifested transient bradyarrhythmic events; however, all bradyarrhythmic effects were predictable, occurring mostly at the time of arrhythmia termination. None of 82 patients who decided to continue propafenone after successful cardioversion had immediate arrhythmia recurrence.


CONCLUSIONS
Our graded approach using propafenone and ibutilide appears to be a relatively safe and effective alternative for the treatment of paroxysmal and chronic AF/AFL to both rapidly restore sinus rhythm in nonresponders to monotherapy with propafenone and prevent immediate recurrences of the arrhythmia.
Assessing Effects of Task and Data Distribution on the Effectiveness of Visual Encodings

Abstract In addition to the choice of visual encodings, the effectiveness of a data visualization may vary with the analytical task being performed and the distribution of data values. To better assess these effects and create refined rankings of visual encodings, we conduct an experiment measuring subject performance across task types (e.g., comparing individual versus aggregate values) and data distributions (e.g., with varied cardinalities and entropies). We compare performance across 12 encoding specifications of trivariate data involving 1 categorical and 2 quantitative fields, including the use of x, y, color, size, and spatial subdivision (i.e., faceting). Our results extend existing models of encoding effectiveness and suggest improved approaches for automated design. For example, we find that colored scatterplots (with positionally-coded quantities and color-coded categories) perform well for comparing individual points, but perform poorly for summary tasks as the number of categories increases.
A Compact Multiple Band-Notched Planer Antenna with Enhanced Bandwidth Using Parasitic Strip Lumped Capacitors and DGS-Technique

UWB antenna with dual notched characteristics fed by microstrip transmission line is presented in this paper. The tapered connection between the rectangular patch and the feed line is used to produce a good impedance matching from 2.3 to 11.5 GHz. A dual band frequency notches are achieved using UDGS loaded with lumped capacitors. The first notch frequency band is achieved using DGS to reduce the interference with WIMAX from 3.3 to 3.7 Ghz. The second notch frequency band is also achieved using Uparasitic strip placed in the ground plan to eliminate the interference with WLAN from 5.2 to 5.9 GHz. Lumped capacitors are combined with the slot due to miniaturize the slot size. The size of the resonator is reduced by more than 40% when lumped capacitors are used. The proposed antenna hasVSWR < 2 except the notched bands. The simulated results confirm that the antenna is suitable for UWB applications.
Rule of law and the international diffusion of e-commerce

Strong institutional environments serve as a foundation for e-commerce growth opportunities.
A Step-Up DC–DC Converter With a Resonant Voltage Doubler

A step-up dc-dc converter with a resonant voltage doubler is proposed. The proposed converter is composed of an active-clamp circuit and a resonant voltage doubler. The active-clamp circuit, which is controlled by dual asymmetrical pulsewidth modulation of the primary side, reduces the voltage spikes of main switches and limits the voltage stress of the switches as the maximum input voltage. In addition, the resonant voltage doubler of the secondary side provides two resonant-current paths formed by the leakage inductance and the output resonant capacitors, and zero-current-switching turn-off of diodes can be achieved by their resonant current. Thus, the losses of the output diodes due to the reverse-recovery problem can be removed. In addition, the voltage stress of the output diodes is clamped to the output voltage. The operation and analysis of the proposed circuit is presented in detail. To verify the performance of the proposed converter, experimental results are carried out for a 1.2-kW dc-dc converter with a constant switching frequency of 70 kHz.
A survey on the use of topic models when mining software repositories

Researchers in software engineering have attempted to improve software development by mining and analyzing software repositories. Since the majority of the software engineering data is unstructured, researchers have applied Information Retrieval (IR) techniques to help software development. The recent advances of IR, especially statistical topic models, have helped make sense of unstructured data in software repositories even more. However, even though there are hundreds of studies on applying topic models to software repositories, there is no study that shows how the models are used in the software engineering research community, and which software engineering tasks are being supported through topic models. Moreover, since the performance of these topic models is directly related to the model parameters and usage, knowing how researchers use the topic models may also help future studies make optimal use of such models. Thus, we surveyed 167 articles from the software engineering literature that make use of topic models. We find that i) most studies centre around a limited number of software engineering tasks; ii) most studies use only basic topic models; iii) and researchers usually treat topic models as black boxes without fully exploring their underlying assumptions and parameter values. Our paper provides a starting point for new researchers who are interested in using topic models, and may help new researchers and practitioners determine how to best apply topic models to a particular software engineering task.
The History of Political Thought in National Context

1. The history of political thought and the national discourses of politics Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk 2. The voice of the 'Greeks' in the Conversation of Mankind Janet Coleman 3. History of political theory in the Federal Republic of Germany: strange death and slow recovery Wolfgang Mommsen 4. A German version of the 'Linguistic Turn': Reinhart Koselleck and the history of political and social concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) Melvin Richter 5. One hundred years of history of political thought in Italy Angelo D'Orsi 6. Discordant voices: American histories of political thought Terry Ball 7. The Professoriate of Political Thought in England since 1914: a tale of three chairs Robert Wokler 8. The history of political thought and the political history of thought Iain Hampsher-Monk 9. The rise of, challenge to, and prospects of a Collingwoodian approach to the history of political thought Quentin Skinner 10. Towards a philosophical history of the political Pierre Rosanvallon 11. 'Le Retour des Emigres'?: The study of the history of political ideas in contemporary France Jeremy Jennings 12. National political cultures and regime changes in Eastern and Central Europe Victor Neumann 13. The limits of the national paradigm in the study of political thought: the case of Karl Popper and Central European Cosmopolitanism Malachi Hacohen 14. Postscript: Disciplines, canons, and publics: the history of the 'History of Political Thought' in comparative perspective Stefan Collini.
Methods for Reconstructing Causal Networks from Observed Time-Series: Granger-Causality, Transfer Entropy, and Convergent Cross-Mapping

Objectives and Scope A major question that arises in many areas of Cognitive Science is the need to distinguish true causal connections between variables from mere correlations. The most common way of addressing this distinction is the design of wellcontrolled experiments. However, in many situations, it is extremely difficult –or even outright impossible– to perform such experiments. Researchers are then forced to rely on correlational data in order to make causal inferences. This situation is especially common when one needs to analyze longitudinal data corresponding to historical time-series, symbolic sequences, or developmental data. These inferences are often very problematic. From the correlations alone it is difficult to determine the direction of the causal arrow linking two variables. Worse even, the lack of controls of observational data entail that correlations found between two variables need not reflect any causal connection between them. The possibility always remains that some third variable which the researchers were not able to measure, or were actually unaware of, is the actually driver for both measured variables, giving rise to the mirage of a direct relationship between them. In recent years, it has been shown that, under particular circumstances, one can use correlational information for making sound causal inferences (cf., Pearl, 2000). In this tutorial I will provide a hands-on introduction to the use of modern causality techniques for the analysis of observational time series. I will cover causality analyses for three types of time-series that are often encountered in Cognitive Science research:
A dynamic clustering algorithm for downlink CoMP systems with multiple antenna UEs

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) schemes have been widely st udied in the recent years to tackle the inter-cell interference. In practice, latency and thro ughput constraints on the backhaul allow the organization of only small clusters of base stations (BSs) w here joint processing (JP) can be implemented. In this work we focus on downlink CoMP-JP with multiple anten na user equipments (UEs) and propose a novel dynamic clustering algorithm. The additional degre s of freedom at the UE can be used to suppress the residual interference by using an interferenc rejection combiner (IRC) and allow a multistream transmission. In our proposal we first define a set of ca ndid te clusters depending on long-term channel conditions. Then, in each time block, we develop a re source allocation scheme by jointly optimizing transmitter and receiver where: a) within each c andidate cluster a weighted sum rate is estimated and then b) a set of clusters is scheduled in order t o maximize the system weighted sum rate. Numerical results show that much higher rates are achi eved when UEs are equipped with multiple antennas. Moreover, as this performance improvement is mai nly due to the IRC, the gain achieved by the proposed approach with respect to the non-cooperative s cheme decreases by increasing the number of UE antennas. Index Terms Resource allocation and interference management, MIMO sys tems, Cellular technology. Part of this work has been presented at the International Sym posium on Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS) 2012, Paris (France), and at the International Conference on Sign al Processing, Computing and Control (ISPCC) 2013, Shimla ( India). P. Baracca and F. Boccardi are with Bell Laboratories, Alcat el-Lucent (email:{paolo.baracca, federico.boccardi }@alcatellucent.com). N. Benvenuto is with the Department of Information Engineer ing, University of Padova, Italy (email: nb@dei.unipd.it) . November 21, 2013 DRAFT
Long-term cognitive and functional effects of potentially inappropriate medications in older women.

BACKGROUND
The use of potentially inappropriate medications in older adults can lead to known adverse drug events, but long-term effects are less clear. We therefore conducted a prospective cohort study of older women to determine whether PIM use is associated with risk of functional impairment or low cognitive performance.


METHODS
We followed up 1,429 community-dwelling women (≥ 75 years) for a period of 5 years at four clinical sites in the United States. The primary predictor at baseline was PIM use based on 2003 Beers Criteria. We also assessed anticholinergic load using the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden scale. Outcomes included scores on a battery of six cognitive tests at follow-up and having one or more incident impairments in instrumental activities of daily living. Regression models were adjusted for baseline age, race, education, smoking, physical activity, a modified Charlson Comorbidity Index, and cognitive score.


RESULTS
The mean ± SD age of women at baseline was 83.2 ± 3.3. In multivariate models, baseline PIM use and higher ACB scores were significantly associated with poorer performance in category fluency (PIM: p = .01; ACB: p = .02) and immediate (PIM: p = .04; ACB: p = .03) and delayed recall (PIM: p = .04). Both PIM use (odds ratio [OR]: 1.36 [1.05-1.75]) and higher ACB scores (OR: 1.11 [1.04-1.19]) were also strongly associated with incident functional impairment.


CONCLUSIONS
The results provide suggestive evidence that PIM use and increased anticholinergic load may be associated with risk of functional impairment and low cognitive performance. More cautious selection of medications in older adults may reduce these potential risks.
GPS Locator: An Application for Location Tracking and Sharing Using GPS for Java Enabled Handhelds

The use of mobile devices has become a part of our daily routine. Recently, mobile devices like mobile phones or portable digital displays (PDAs) are equipped with global positioning system (GPS) receptors that allow us to get the device's geographic position in real time. Location Based Services (LBS) are regarded as a key feature of many future mobile applications. GPS serves well for most outdoor applications, however, its dependence on satellites makes it ineffective for indoor environments. This document gives a detail on our ongoing project work in the field of Location Based Services for JAVA enabled mobile devices, equipped with GPS receptor. We present a novel technique to send GPS coordinates to other mobiles through Short Message Service (SMS) based on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. This application also enables the users to get their current location coordinates (latitude, longitude and altitude) and they can also view their locations on the Google maps. Further, this application also enables the user to share his location with their friends through a web server using internet connectivity in their hand helds. GPS is a satellite-based navigation system made up of a network of 24 satellites placed into orbit by the United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD). GPS was originally intended for military applications, but in the 1980s, the government made the system available for civilian use. GPS can show you your exact position on the Earth in any weather conditions, anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. There are no subscription fees or setup charges to use GPS [6].
Role of irbesartan in prevention of post-coronary artery bypass graft atrial fibrillation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common complication of cardiothoracic surgery (CTS). Existing evidence about the potential protective role of angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonists (angiotensin receptor blockers [ARBs]) for post-CTS AF has been limited and conflicting. In this single-blind, open-label, randomized prospective pilot study, we evaluated the potential protective role of irbesartan (an ARB) in post-coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) AF.


METHODS
A total of 100 consecutive patients undergoing CABG were randomly assigned to irbesartan (n = 50) versus no irbesartan (n = 50) for 5 days prior to the scheduled surgery. Data were collected for imaging studies, laboratory values, and peri-operative details. Patients were monitored post-operatively for in-hospital AF episodes. Unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the effect of irbesartan on the incidence of post-CABG AF.


RESULTS
A total of 14 patients developed AF during their post-operative hospital stay. The incidence of AF in patients who received irbesartan was 6% (n = 3) compared with 22% (n = 11) in patients who did not receive irbesartan (p = 0.021). Univariate logistic regression analysis identified irbesartan and age as statistically significant variables. An adjusted multivariate logistic model identified irbesartan as an important protective factor against development of post-CABG AF (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 0.20; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.04, 0.94; p = 0.04). Increasing age (adjusted OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.01, 1.17; p = 0.03) was also identified as an independent risk factor for development of post-CABG AF.


CONCLUSION
Pretreatment with irbesartan tends to have a significant protective effect against the occurrence of AF during the post-operative period in patients undergoing CABG.
Long-term outcomes of catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation post-cardiac valve replacement.

OBJECTIVE
The long-term outcomes of catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) developing post-cardiac valve replacement (VR) remain undefined.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Eighty-nine post-VR patients with AF (44% longstanding persistent AF, LSP-AF) were enrolled. Cumulative success rate of circumferential pulmonary vein ablation (CPVA for paroxysmal AF) and bidirectional block of lines and disappearance of complex fractionated atrial electrograms (CFAEs for persistent and LSP-AF) as index and repeat procedural endpoints reached 57% (mean, 1.3 procedures) during the first year, and dropped to 42% at median follow-up of 40months (range, 24-70months) for multiple procedures (mean, 1.6±0.9 [1-5]); incidence of procedural complications was similar to that of conventional procedures. In multivariate analysis, larger right atrium (RA, 9.40 [2.64-33.36]; P=0.001) and rheumatic valvular disease etiology (OR, 5.49 [95% CI, 1.26-23.96]; P=0.023) were significant independent predictors of recurrent atrial tachyarrhythmia (ATa); in contrast, long-term freedom from ATa was comparable between single and double valve replacement groups (42.1% vs. 43.7%, P=0.880), or mechanical and bioprosthetic valves groups (41.7% vs. 50.0%, P=0.620).


CONCLUSION
In this single-center prospective study, treatment of post-VR AF with commonly used ablation strategies including CPVA and linear and CFAE ablation had limited long-term success, with ATa recurrence risk appearing higher in the setting of RA enlargement and rheumatic valvular disease and unrelated to valves characteristics.
Classical Planning in Deep Latent Space: Bridging the Subsymbolic-Symbolic Boundary

Current domain-independent, classical planners require symbolic models of the problem domain and instance as input, resulting in a knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Meanwhile, although deep learning has achieved significant success in many fields, the knowledge is encoded in a subsymbolic representation which is incompatible with symbolic systems such as planners. We propose LatPlan, an unsupervised architecture combining deep learning and classical planning. Given only an unlabeled set of image pairs showing a subset of transitions allowed in the environment (training inputs), and a pair of images representing the initial and the goal states (planning inputs), LatPlan finds a plan to the goal state in a symbolic latent space and returns a visualized plan execution. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) State Autoencoder, which finds a propositional state representation of the environment using a Variational Autoencoder. It generates a discrete latent vector from the images, based on which a PDDL model can be constructed and then solved by an off-the-shelf planner. (2) Action Autoencoder / Discriminator, a neural architecture which jointly finds the action symbols and the implicit action models (preconditions/effects), and provides a successor function for the implicit graph search. We evaluate LatPlan using image-based versions of 3 planning domains: 8-puzzle, Towers of Hanoi and LightsOut. Note This is an extended manuscript of the paper accepted in AAAI-18. The contents of AAAI-18 submission itself is significantly extended from what has been published in Arxiv, KEPS-17, NeSy-17 or Cognitum-17 workshops. Over half of the paper describing (2) is new. Additionally, this manuscript contains the contents in the supplemental material of AAAI-18 submission. These implementation/experimental details are moved to the Appendix. Note to the ML / deep learning researchers This article combines the Machine Learning systems and the classical, logic-based symbolic systems. Some readers may not be familiar with NNs and related fields like you are, thus we include very basic description of the architectures and the training methods.
Gains from Others ’ Losses : Technology Trajectories and the Global Division of Firms

Gains from Others’ Losses: Technology Trajectories and the Global Division of Firms Chia-Hsuan Yang, Rebecca Nugent, Erica R.H. Fuchs Carnegie Mellon University This Draft: April 2, 2012 Abstract After the burst of the telecommunications bubble in March 2000, the majority of U.S. optoelectronic component firms moved manufacturing offshore. This research explores (1) whether due to different offshore production economics, firms who move manufacturing offshore stop or slow U.S.-based R&D activities in the emerging technology necessary to access larger markets and (2) whether the inventors originally within these offshoring firms, leave, and continue to innovate in the emerging technology at different institutions. We focus on the 28 leading smallor medium-sized U.S. firms that manufacture optoelectronic components for telecommunications (18 offshore, 10 not) and the inventors who patent at these firms. We triangulate hand-classified USPTO patents, firm SEC filings, inventor CVs, and structured interview data we collect from the firms. Our results show that there is a relationship between firms’ type and extent of offshoring facilities (fabrication, assembly) and their innovation directions. In particular, we find that while offshoring is associated with a statistically significant decrease in innovation in the emerging technology, it can be associated with an increase in all other types of patenting. While an important minority of inventors of the emerging technology who worked at offshoring firms depart to a single onshore firm in the same industry (which subsequently dominates this space), the majority of inventors depart to firms outside our study scope and stop work in the emerging technology.