LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Reinforced Feedback in Virtual Environment for Rehabilitation of Upper Extremity Dysfunction after Stroke: Preliminary Data from a Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVES
To study whether the reinforced feedback in virtual environment (RFVE) is more effective than traditional rehabilitation (TR) for the treatment of upper limb motor function after stroke, regardless of stroke etiology (i.e., ischemic, hemorrhagic).


DESIGN
Randomized controlled trial. Participants. Forty-four patients affected by stroke. Intervention. The patients were randomized into two groups: RFVE (N = 23) and TR (N = 21), and stratified according to stroke etiology. The RFVE treatment consisted of multidirectional exercises providing augmented feedback provided by virtual reality, while in the TR treatment the same exercises were provided without augmented feedbacks. Outcome Measures. Fugl-Meyer upper extremity scale (F-M UE), Functional Independence Measure scale (FIM), and kinematics parameters (speed, time, and peak).


RESULTS
The F-M UE (P = 0.030), FIM (P = 0.021), time (P = 0.008), and peak (P = 0.018), were significantly higher in the RFVE group after treatment, but not speed (P = 0.140). The patients affected by hemorrhagic stroke significantly improved FIM (P = 0.031), time (P = 0.011), and peak (P = 0.020) after treatment, whereas the patients affected by ischemic stroke improved significantly only speed (P = 0.005) when treated by RFVE.


CONCLUSION
These results indicated that some poststroke patients may benefit from RFVE program for the recovery of upper limb motor function. This trial is registered with NCT01955291.
A time-split nonhydrostatic atmospheric model for weather research and forecasting applications

The sub-grid-scale parameterization of clouds is one of the weakest aspects of weather and climate modeling today, and the explicit simulation of clouds will be one of the next major achievements in numerical weather prediction. Research cloud models have been in development over the last 45 years and they continue to be an important tool for investigating clouds, cloud-systems, and other small-scale atmospheric dynamics. The latest generation are now being used for weather prediction. The Advanced Research WRF (ARW) model, representative of this generation and of a class of models using explicit time-splitting integration techniques to efficiently integrate the Euler equations, is described in this paper. It is the first fully compressible conservative-form nonhydrostatic atmospheric model suitable for both research and weather prediction applications. Results are presented demonstrating its ability to resolve strongly nonlinear small-scale phenomena, clouds, and cloud systems. Kinetic energy spectra and other statistics show that the model is simulating small scales in numerical weather prediction applications, while necessarily removing energy at the gridscale but minimizing artificial dissipation at the resolved scales. Filtering requirements for atmospheric models and filters used in the ARW model are discussed. ! 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. MCS: 65M06; 65M12; 76E06; 76R10; 76U05; 86A10
Triple seasonal methods for short-term electricity demand forecasting

Online short-term load forecasting is needed for the real-time scheduling of electricity generation. Univariate methods have been developed that model the intraweek and intraday seasonal cycles in intraday load data. Three such methods, shown to be competitive in recent empirical studies, are double seasonal ARMA, an adaptation of Holt-Winters exponential smoothing for double seasonality, and another, recently proposed, exponential smoothing method. In multiple years of load data, in addition to intraday and intraweek cycles, an intrayear seasonal cycle is also apparent. We extend the three double seasonal methods in order to accommodate the intrayear seasonal cycle. Using six years of British and French data, we show that for prediction up to a day-ahead the triple seasonal methods outperform the double seasonal methods, and also a univariate neural network approach. Further improvement in accuracy is produced by using a combination of the forecasts from two of the triple seasonal methods.
Efficacy and safety of multiple doses of QGE031 (ligelizumab) versus omalizumab and placebo in inhibiting allergen-induced early asthmatic responses.

BACKGROUND
Omalizumab is an established anti-IgE therapy for the treatment of allergic diseases that prevents IgE from binding to its receptor. QGE031 is an investigational anti-IgE antibody that binds IgE with higher affinity than omalizumab.


OBJECTIVE
This study compared the effects of QGE031 with those of omalizumab on clinical efficacy, IgE levels, and FcεRI expression in a clinical model of allergic asthma.


METHODS
Thirty-seven patients with mild allergic asthma were randomized to subcutaneous omalizumab, placebo, or QGE031 at 24, 72, or 240 mg every 2 weeks for 10 weeks in a double-blind, parallel-group multicenter study. Inhaled allergen challenges and skin tests were conducted before dosing and at weeks 6, 12, and 18, and blood was collected until 24 weeks after the first dose.


RESULTS
QGE031 elicited a concentration- and time-dependent change in the provocative concentration of allergen causing a 15% decrease in FEV1 (allergen PC15) that was maximal and approximately 3-fold greater than that of omalizumab (P = .10) and 16-fold greater than that of placebo (P = .0001) at week 12 in the 240-mg cohort. Skin responses reached 85% suppression at week 12 in the 240-mg cohort and were maximal at week 18. The top doses of QGE031 consistently suppressed skin test responses among subjects but had a variable effect on allergen PC15 (2-fold to 500-fold change). QGE031 was well tolerated.


CONCLUSION
QGE031 has greater efficacy than omalizumab on inhaled and skin allergen responses in patients with mild allergic asthma. These data support the clinical development of QGE031 as a treatment of asthma.
TrafficModeler extensions: A case for rapid VANET simulation using, OMNET++, SUMO, and VEINS

Rapid simulation of Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is increasingly needed. However, this is not easy to achieve because road traffic and network communication simulators are complex and often hybrid frameworks are required. One such a hybrid approach, Vehicles in Network Simulation (Veins), incorporates the widely used Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) and the renowned discrete event simulation environment OMNET++. Additionally, traffic demand modeling is a laborious task that may be prone to errors. Hence, any new contributions or improvements in traffic modeling are important as well as any effort to help the understanding of these complex frameworks. We present some extensions to TrafficModeler, a contributed program to the SUMO distribution. These extensions allow for easy traffic simulation on Veins using maps imported from OpenStreetMaps (OSM). We present guidelines for rapid VANET simulation with the combined use of OSM, TrafficModeler, SUMO, OMNET++, and Veins. We create and present an example to illustrate how to develop a rapid VANET simulation.
Classification of Black Tea Taste and Correlation With Tea Taster's Mark Using Voltammetric Electronic Tongue

Tea quality assessment is a difficult task because of the presence of innumerable compounds and their diverse contribution to tea quality. As a result, instrumental evaluation of tea quality is not practiced in the industry, and tea samples are assessed by experienced tea tasters. There had been a very few reports where an electronic tongue has been used for the discrimination of taste of tea samples. In this paper, a voltammetric electronic tongue instrument is described, which can declare tea-taster-like scores for black tea. The electronic tongue is based on the principle of pulse voltammetry and consists of an array of five working electrodes along with a counter and a reference electrode. The five working electrodes are of gold, iridium, palladium, platinum, and rhodium. The voltage equivalent of the output current from between the working electrode and the counterelectrode generated out of the tea liquor when excited with pulse voltage between the working electrode and the reference electrode has been considered for data analysis. First, the sampled data have been compressed using discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and are then processed using principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for visualization of underlying clusters. Finally, different pattern recognition models based on neural networks are investigated to carry out a correlation study with the tea tasters' score of five different grades of black tea samples obtained from a tea garden in India. The efficacy of the classifier has been established using tenfold cross-validation methods.
Direct carbon dioxide emissions from civil aircraft

Global airlines consume over 5 million barrels of oil per day, and the resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by aircraft engines is of concern. This article provides a contemporary review of the literature associated with the measures available to the civil aviation industry for mitigating CO2 emissions from aircraft. The measures are addressed under two categories e policy and legal-related measures, and technological and operational measures. Results of the review are used to develop several insights into the challenges faced. The analysis shows that forecasts for strong growth in air-traffic will result in civil aviation becoming an increasingly significant contributor to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Some mitigation-measures can be left to market-forces as the key-driver for implementation because they directly reduce airlines' fuel consumption, and their impact on reducing fuel-costs will be welcomed by the industry. Other mitigation-measures cannot be left to market-forces. Speed of implementation and stringency of these measures will not be satisfactorily resolved unattended, and the current global regulatory-framework does not provide the necessary strength of stewardship. A global regulator with ‘teeth’ needs to be established, but investing such a body with the appropriate level of authority requires securing an international agreement which history would suggest is going to be very difficult. If all mitigation-measures are successfully implemented, it is still likely that traffic growth-rates will continue to out-pace emissions reduction-rates. Therefore, to achieve an overall reduction in CO2 emissions, behaviour change will be necessary to reduce demand for air-travel. However, reducing demand will be strongly resisted by all stakeholders in the industry; and the ticket price-increases necessary to induce the required reduction in traffic growth-rates place a monetary-value on CO2 emissions of approximately 7e100 times greater than other common valuations. It is clear that, whilst aviation must remain one piece of the transport-jigsaw, environmentally a global regulator with ‘teeth’ is
Joint Power Allocation and Subcarrier Pairing for Cooperative OFDM AF Multi-Relay Networks

For conventional subcarrier pairing scheme in cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing amplify-and-forward multi-relay networks, to avoid interference, each subcarrier pair (SP) is assigned to only one relay, over a specific subcarrier, the destination receives signals transmitted from only one relay. In this letter, we propose to assign each SP to all the relays. Thus, over a specific subcarrier, the destination receives signals transmitted from all the relays. We propose a joint power allocation and subcarrier pairing scheme which maximizes the transmission rate subject to total network power constraint. The problem is simplified and solved by using dual method.
Service quality along the supply chain : implications for purchasing

The overall objective of this research was to explore the association between implementation of cooperative purchasing/supplier relationships, internal service quality, and an organization’s ability to provide quality products and services to its customers. Specifically, purchasing-related factors influencing internal and external product and service quality were identified from the literature and an internal service quality model was developed and then tested using empirical data. Survey data were collected from 118 US purchasing executives in a wide range of industries. The findings from this study indicate the existence of strong positive relationships between implementation of cooperative purchasing/supplier relationships, internal service quality, and the service and product quality provided to external customers. Additionally, the key role of purchasing in the integration and communication of quality expectations and quality performance throughout the firm is demonstrated. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Retrospective cohort study of diabetes mellitus and antipsychotic treatment in a geriatric population in the United States.

OBJECTIVES
The objective of this study was to investigate risk of diabetes among elderly patients during treatment with antipsychotic medications.


DESIGN
We conducted a longitudinal, retrospective study assessing the incidence of new prescription claims for antihyperglycemic agents during antipsychotic therapy.


SETTING
Prescription claims from the AdvancePCS claim database were followed for 6 to 9 months.


PARTICIPANTS
Study participants consisted of patients in the United States aged 60+ and receiving antipsychotic monotherapy. The following cohorts were studied: an elderly reference population (no antipsychotics: n = 1,836,799), those receiving haloperidol (n = 6481) or thioridazine (n = 1658); all patients receiving any conventional antipsychotic monotherapy (n = 11,546), clozapine (n = 117), olanzapine (n = 5382), quetiapine (n = 1664), and risperidone (n = 12,244), and all patients receiving any atypical antipsychotic monotherapy (n = 19,407).


MEASUREMENTS
We used Cox proportional hazards regression to determine the risk ratio of diabetes for antipsychotic cohorts relative to the reference population. Covariates included sex and exposure duration.


RESULTS
New antihyperglycemic prescription rates were higher in each antipsychotic cohort than in the reference population. Overall rates were no different between atypical and conventional antipsychotic cohorts. Among individual antipsychotic cohorts, rates were highest among patients treated with thioridazine (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.1- 5.7), lowest with quetiapine (95% CI, 1.3-2.9), and intermediate with haloperidol, olanzapine, and risperidone. Among atypical cohorts, only risperidone users had a significantly higher risk (95% CI, 1.05-1.60; P = 0.016) than for haloperidol. Conclusions about clozapine were hampered by the low number of patients.


CONCLUSION
These data suggest that diabetes risk is elevated among elderly patients receiving antipsychotic treatment. However, causality remains to be demonstrated. As a group, the risk for atypical antipsychotic users was not significantly different than for users of conventional antipsychotics.
Adjunctive oral ziprasidone in patients with acute mania treated with lithium or divalproex, part 2: influence of protocol-specific eligibility criteria on signal detection.

OBJECTIVES
High failure rates of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are well recognized but poorly understood. We report exploratory analyses from an adjunctive ziprasidone double-blind RCT in adults with bipolar I disorder (reported in part 1 of this article). Data collected by computer interviews and by site-based raters were analyzed to examine the impact of eligibility criteria on signal detection.


METHOD
Clinical assessments and a remote monitoring system, including a computer-administered Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS(Comp)) were used to categorize subjects as eligible or ineligible on 3 key protocol-specified eligibility criteria. Data analyses compared treatment efficacy for eligible versus ineligible subgroups. All statistical analyses reported here are exploratory. Criteria were considered "impactful" if the difference between eligible and ineligible subjects on the YMRS change scores was ≥ 1 point.


RESULTS
504 subjects had baseline and ≥ 1 post-randomization computer-administered assessments but only 180 (35.7%) met all 3 eligibility criteria based on computer assessments. There were no statistically significant differences between treatment groups in change from baseline YMRS score on the basis of site-based rater or computer assessments. All criteria tested improved signal detection except the entry criteria excluding subjects with ≥ 25% improvement from screen to baseline.


CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of computer assessments, nearly two-thirds of randomized subjects did not meet at least 1 protocol-specified eligibility criterion. These results suggest enrollment of ineligible subjects is likely to contribute to failure of acute efficacy studies.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00312494.
Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment of Adenosine Triphosphate Stress Whole-Heart Dynamic Myocardial Perfusion Imaging Using 256-Slice Computed Tomography

BACKGROUND
The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation of the qualitative transmural extent of hypoperfusion areas (HPA) using stress dynamic whole-heart computed tomography perfusion (CTP) imaging by 256-slice CT with CTP-derived myocardial blood flow (MBF) for the estimation of the severity of coronary artery stenosis.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Eleven patients underwent adenosine triphosphate (0.16 mg/kg/min, 5 min) stress dynamic CTP by 256-slice CT (coverage: 8 cm, 0.27 s/rotation), and 9 of the 11 patients underwent coronary angiography (CAG). Stress dynamic CTP (whole-heart datasets over 30 consecutive heart beats in systole without spatial and temporal gaps) was acquired with prospective ECG gating (effective radiation dose: 10.4 mSv). The extent of HPAs was visually graded using a 3-point score (normal, subendocardial, transmural). MBF (ml/100g/min) was measured by deconvolution. Differences in MBF (mean ± standard error) according to HPA and CAG results were evaluated. In 27 regions (3 major coronary territories in 9 patients), 11 coronary stenoses (> 50% reduction in diameter) were observed. In 353 myocardial segments, HPA was significantly related to MBF (P < 0.05; normal 295 ± 94; subendocardial 186 ± 67; and transmural 80 ± 53). Coronary territory analysis revealed a significant relationship between coronary stenosis severity and MBF (P < 0.05; non-significant stenosis [< 50%], 284 ± 97; moderate stenosis [50-70%], 184 ± 74; and severe stenosis [> 70%], 119 ± 69).


CONCLUSION
The qualitative transmural extent of HPA using stress whole-heart dynamic CTP imaging by 256-slice CT exhibits a good correlation with quantitative CTP-derived MBF and may aid in assessing the hemodynamic significance of coronary artery disease.
Raman spectroscopic study of a non-heme iron enzyme soybean lipoxygenase - 1 in low hydrated media

Abstract This work is a contribution to the experimental study of the structure-function relationship of enzymes in non conventional media. As it is known that bound water play a determining role on affinity and specificity, we have chosen aqueous media with restricted water content. Water activity of the reaction media was decreased by addition of specific hydrosoluble cosolvents. Laser visible Raman spectroscopy was applied to determine the local (microenvironments of some aromatic residues) and global secondary and/or tertiary conformational changes of the model enzyme in the presence and absence of polyols or sugars at high concentrations.
Linux kernel infrastructure for user-level device drivers

Linux 2.5.x has good support now for user-mode device drivers — XFree being the biggest and most obvious — but also there is support for user-mode input devices and for devices that hang off the parallel port. The motivations for user-mode device drivers are many: • Ease of development (all the normal user-space tools can be used to write and debug, not restricted to use of C only (could use Java, C++, Perl, etc), fewer reboot cycles needed, fewer restrictions on what one can do with respect to reentrancy and interrupts, etc., etc.) • Ease of deployment (kernel ↔ user interfaces change much more slowly than in-kernel interfaces; no licensing issues; no need for end-users to recompile to get module versions right, etc., etc.)) • Increased robustness (less likely that a buggy driver can cause a panic) • Increased functionality. Some things are just plain easier to do in user space than in the kernel — e.g., networking. • Increased simplicity (rather than have, say, a generic IDE controller that has to understand the quirks of many different kinds of controllers and drivers, you can afford to pick at run time the controller you really need) There are however some drawbacks, the main ones being performance and security. Three recent developments have made it possible to implement an infrastructure for user-level device drivers that perform almost as well (in some cases better than) in-kernel device drivers. These are 1. the new pthreads library (and corresponding kernel changes: futexes, faster clone and exit, etc); 2. fast system call support; and 3. IOMMUs. Now that many high-end machines have an IOMMU, it becomes possible, at least in theory, to provide secure access to DMA to user processes. Fast system calls allow the kernel ↔ user crossing to be extremely cheap, making user-process interrupt handling feasible. And fast context-switching and IPC for Posix threads, means that multi-threaded device drivers can have the kind of performance that until recently was only available in-kernel. ∗This work was funded by HP, NICTA, the ARC, and the University of NSW through the Gelato programme (http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au)
Compact thermal model of a three-phase IGBT inverter power module

A compact thermal model of a three-phase IGBT inverter power module utilised in most of variable speed drivers has been described in this paper. The compact thermal model equals to an electrical RC network model is assembled from thermal resistances and thermal capacitances so that it can be easily implemented in a circuit simulator. Transient thermal 3D finite element (FE) model of the IGBT module has been carried out using commercially available FLOTHERM software; the 3D simulation results are then utilised to extract the compact thermal network parameters of the IGBT power modular. Good agreement has been achieved between simulation and experimental measurement.
Preventing drive-by download via inter-module communication monitoring

Drive-by download attack is one of the most severe threats to Internet users. Typically, only visiting a malicious page will result in compromise of the client and infection of malware. By the end of 2008, drive-by download had already become the number one infection vector of malware [5]. The downloaded malware may steal the users' personal identification and password. They may also join botnet to send spams, host phishing site or launch distributed denial of service attacks.
 Generally, these attacks rely on successful exploits of the vulnerabilities in web browsers or their plug-ins. Therefore, we proposed an inter-module communication monitoring based technique to detect malicious exploitation of vulnerable components thus preventing the vulnerability being exploited. We have implemented a prototype system that was integrated into the most popular web browser Microsoft Internet Explorer. Experimental results demonstrate that, on our test set, by using vulnerability-based signature, our system could accurately detect all attacks targeting at vulnerabilities in our definitions and produced no false positive. The evaluation also shows the performance penalty is kept low.