LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Does innovation lead to performance? An empirical study of SMEs in Taiwan

Purpose – This study attempts to probe within a multi-dimensional perspective the nature and type of daily innovation practices of smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in Taiwan. The relationship between innovation and organizational performance will also be explored. Design/methodology/approach – Data of interest were collected through a telephone survey. From the 2000 Directory of Manufacturing and Service Industries in Northern Part of Taiwan, companies with a total employee number less than 200 (the definition of an SME in Taiwan) were the population. Telephone calls to 877 firms were successfully completed with a response rate of 87 per cent. Findings – Eighty per cent of the surveyed companies conducted some sort of innovation, the two major types of innovations were technological and marketing innovations. Innovation has a weak link with company sales. Administrative innovations have surfaced to be the most crucial factor in explaining sales rather than technological innovations. Practical implications – Creating a successful innovation platform to serve as a base for nontechnology-related innovations may prove to be the most critical catalyst to capitalize on innovation efforts. The research results also provide some insights for companies that are not sure how to integrate innovation into their business operations. Originality/value – This study unveils the innovation practices of this novel economy and particularly focuses on the less explored SMEs in an Asian context.
Value Creation by Turkish Enterprises

This study focuses on the resurgence of the automotive and appliance sectors in Turkey's recent years. The analysis of both these sectors reveals some interesting lessons about technology management and investment strategies for companies to invest in Turkey. We discuss the major changes and project the future in both industries. Turkey seems to be a clear winner though there are some factors that could reverse the trend. The research is a joint field study partnership between Carnegie Mellon and Sabanci Universities
Insight into the number of pre-malignancies and malignancies of the skin in a hospital population in the Netherlands.

BACKGROUND
Skin cancer incidence is rising, placing a burden on healthcare systems worldwide. This problem may even be more extensive than expected, since registration of (pre)malignancies of the skin is poor.


OBJECTIVE
To provide insight into the numbers of (pre)malignancies in patients with actinic keratosis (AK) or basal cell carcinoma (BCC) in 2 university and 2 general hospitals.


METHODS
The types and numbers of previous tumours and of tumours during a two-year follow-up were collected from 574 patients.


RESULTS
Mean time between the first diagnosed (pre)malignancy and time of inclusion was 6.6 years. Overall, 60% had multiple types of (pre)malignancies. In BCC patients, 61% had multiple BCCs, in patients with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), 40% had multiple SCCs. The combination 'BCC and SCC' occurred in 10%, 'BCC and AK' in 47%, 'SCC and AK' in 14%.


CONCLUSION
High numbers of patients with multiple (pre)malignancies were found in this patient population in university and general hospitals, which may well reflect the Dutch hospital population. We conclude that skin cancer patients are more extensively affected than was expected up till now. Consequently, the management of skin cancer may be in need of adaptation in near future and the question arises whether dermatologists have the capacity for providing care for all these patients.
Periodic Resource Model for Compositional Real-Time Guarantees

We address the problem of providing compositional hard real-time guarantees in a hierarchy of schedulers. We first propose a resource model to characterize a periodic resource allocation and present exact schedulability conditions for our proposed resource model under the EDF and RM algorithms. Using the exact schedulability conditions, we then provide methods to abstract the timing requirements that a set of periodic tasks demands under the EDF and RM algorithms as a single periodic task. With these abstraction methods, for a hierarchy of schedulers, we introduce a composition method that derives the timing requirements of a parent scheduler from the timing requirements of its child schedulers in a compositional manner such that the timing requirement of the parent scheduler is satisfied, if and only if, the timing requirements of its child schedulers are satisfied. Comments Copyright 2003 IEEE. Reprinted from Proceedings of the 24th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2003), pages 2-13. Publisher URL:http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=28040 This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of the University of Pennsylvania's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it. This conference paper is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers/25 Periodic Resource Model for Compositional Real-Time Guarantees Insik Shin and Insup Lee Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA ishin,lee @cis.upenn.edu
Sequential Sampling for Dynamic Environment Map Illumination

Sampling complex illumination in the form of environment maps has received a lot of attention in computer graphics. Recent work in this area has demonstrated that drawing samples from the product of light and BRDF produces superior results to other sampling strategies. However, existing methods in this area consider only individual frames, and do not take advantage of coherence in animations. In this paper, we introduce a sequential sampling approach for dynamic environment map illumination. Our algorithm efficiently samples from the product of illumination and BRDF, while exploiting temporal coherence. We demonstrate significant performance benefits over existing methods.
Adoption of Electronic Health Record Systems among U . S . Non-federal Acute Care Hospitals : 2008-2012

NOTES: Basic EHR adoption requires the EHR system to have at least a basic set of EHR functions, including clinician notes, as defined in Table 2. A certified EHR is EHR technology that has been certified as meeting federal requirements for some or all of the hospital objectives of Meaningful Use. Possession means that the hospital has a legal agreement with the EHR vendor, but is not equivalent to adoption. *Significantly different from previous year (p < 0.05). SOURCE: ONC/American Hospital Association (AHA), AHA Annual Survey Information Technology Supplement
Optimal Motion Planning for a Wheeled Mobile Robot

This paper concerns time optimal motion planning problem under kinematic and dynamic constraints for a 2-DOF wheeled mobile robot(WMR). The dynamic model of a WMR is derived using Newton-Euler method and its constraints are analyzed. Kinematic constraints are imposed by its nonholonomy and structural limits while dynamic constraints are due to motor saturation. The motion planning problem is formulated as two stage planning. First, path planning under kinematic constraints is transformed into a pure geometric problem. The shortest path composed of circular arcs and straight lines is obtained. Then, combined with dynamic characteristics of the WMR, time optimal velocity profile is generated under dynamic constraints. Since constraints of a WMR are fully exploited, the proposed method is simple and effective on the feasibility of motion planning. Simulation results illustrate the capability of the planning scheme.
Efficiency True-Bridgeless Totem-Pole PFC Based on GaN HEMTs

Liang Zhou, member IEEE and YiFeng Wu, member IEEE Transphorm, Inc. 75 Castilian Dr., Goleta, CA, 93117 USA lzhou@transphormusa.com Abstract: This paper presents a true bridgeless totem-pole Power-Factor-Correction (PFC) circuit using GaN HEMT. Enabled by a diode-free GaN power HEMT bridge with low reverse-recovery charge, very-high-efficiency single-phase AC-DC conversion is realized using a totem-pole topology without the limit of forward voltage drop from a fast diode. When implemented with a pair of sync-rec MOSFETs for line rectification, 99% efficiency is achieved at 230V ac input and 400 dc output in continuous-current mode.
Lipid profiles of sperm and seminal plasma from boars having normal or low sperm motility.

Sperm plasma membrane lipids have an important role to play in determining membrane fluidity and sperm motility. The objective of the present study was to determine whether there are differences in the lipid and fatty acid (FA) composition of boar sperm and seminal plasma in the ejaculates of boars having different sperm motilities. Semen was collected from two groups of boars having normal (> 60%; n = 53) or low (< 60%; n = 53) motility sperm and the semen was evaluated for motility, morphology and vitality. The semen was then centrifuged to separate the sperm from the seminal plasma and both were kept at -20 °C until analyzed for lipid content and FA profile by gas chromatography. Total antioxidant status (TAS) of seminal plasma was determined using a commercial kit. There were differences (P ≤ 0.05) in sperm total lipids, cholesterol, saturated fatty acids (SFA), phospholipids, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and the ratio of n-6:n-3 PUFA between boars with normal and low motility sperm. Total lipids, cholesterol, phospholipids, PUFA, DHA and n-3 PUFA were positively correlated with sperm motility, viability, normal morphology and normal plasma membrane. In contrast, SFA and the ratio of n-6: n-3 PUFA were negatively correlated (P ≤ 0.05) with sperm motility, viability, normal morphology and normal plasma membranes. The TAS of seminal plasma from boars having normal motility sperm was higher (P ≤ 0.05) than that of boars having low motility sperm and TAS was positively correlated (P = 0.0001) with sperm motility, viability, normal morphology and normal plasma membranes. In summary, differences in sperm motility were related to n-3 PUFA content in the sperm plasma membrane and extracellular antioxidants in seminal plasma which protect sperm plasma membranes from lipid peroxidation during periods of oxidative stress.
Accelerating Neural Networks using Channel Gating

I. MOTIVATION Deploying convolutional neural networks (CNNs) effectively in real-time applications often requires both high throughput and low power consumption. However, a state-of-the-art CNN typically performs about 10 FLOPs per evaluation [1]. Reducing this computational cost has become an essential challenge. Several prior studies have proposed pruning ineffectual features and weights statically, thus reducing the FLOPs [2]. Dedicated hardware accelerators have also been shown to improve performance by exploiting the sparsity in a CNN [3], [4], [5]. However, the aforementioned proposals suffer from increasing the irregularity of the computation at the finest granularity. We propose a novel approach to reduce CNN computation, called channel gating, which dynamically prunes the unnecessary computation specific to a particular image, while minimizing the accuracy loss and hardware modification. Intuitively, channel gating leverages the spatial information inside the input features to identify ineffective receptive fields and skip the corresponding computation by gating a fraction of the input channels. The paper makes the following major contributions: • We introduce the channel gating scheme, which dynamically prunes computation on input channels at receptive field level. • We propose an efficient single-pass training scheme to train the channel gating CNN from scratch, allowing the network to automatically learn an effective gating policy. • We demonstrate the benefits of introducing channel gating in CNNs empirically and get 66% and 60% reduction in FLOPs with 0.22% and 0.29% accuracy loss on the CIFAR-10/100 datasets respectively using a state-of-theart ResNet model. • We propose a specialized accelerator architecture, which improves the performance and energy efficiency of the channel gating CNN inference (Ongoing).
Factoring Polynomials with Rational Coefficients

In this paper we present a polynomial-time algorithm to solve the following problem: given a non-zero polynomial f e Q[X] in one variable with rational coefficients, find the decomposition of f into irreducible factors in Q[X]. It is well known that this is equivalent to factoring primitive polynomials feZ[X] into irreducible factors in Z[X]. Here we call f ~ Z[X] primitive if the greatest common divisor of its coefficients (the content of f ) is 1. Our algorithm performs well in practice, cf. [8]. Its running time, measured in bit operations, is O(nl2+n9(log[fD3). Here f~Tl[X] is the polynomial to be factored, n = deg(f) is the degree of f, and
Effects of clopidogrel therapy on oxidative stress, inflammation, vascular function, and progenitor cells in stable coronary artery disease.

BACKGROUND
Traditional cardiovascular risk factors lead to endothelial injury and activation of leukocytes and platelets that initiate and propagate atherosclerosis. We proposed that clopidogrel therapy in patients with stable coronary artery disease imparts a pleiotropic effect that extends beyond antiplatelet aggregation to other atheroprotective processes.


METHODS
Forty-one subjects were randomized in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study to receive either clopidogrel 75 mg daily or placebo for 6 weeks and then transitioned immediately to the other treatment for an additional 6 weeks. We assessed (1) endothelial function as flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery, (2) arterial stiffness and central augmentation index using applanation tonometry, (3) vascular function as fingertip reactive hyperemia index, (4) inflammation by measuring plasma CD40 ligand and serum high-sensitivity c-reactive protein levels, (5) oxidative stress by measuring plasma aminothiols, and (6) circulating progenitor cells, at baseline and at the end of each 6-week treatment period.


RESULTS
Clopidogrel therapy resulted in a significant reduction in soluble CD40 ligand (P = 0.03), a prothrombotic and proinflammatory molecule derived mainly from activated platelets. However, clopidogrel therapy had no effect on endothelial function, arterial stiffness, inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, or progenitor cells.


CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest a solitary antiplatelet effect of clopidogrel therapy in patients with stable coronary artery disease, with no effect on other subclinical markers of cardiovascular disease risk.
A multiscale neural network learning paradigm for financial crisis forecasting

A financial crisis is typically a rare kind of an event, but it hurts sustainable economic development when it occurs. This study proposes a multiscale neural network learning paradigm to predict financial crisis events for early-warning purposes. In the proposed multiscale neural network learning paradigm, currency exchange rate, a typical financial indicator that usually reflects economic fluctuations, is first chosen. Then a Hilbert-EMD algorithm is applied to the currency exchange rate series. Using the Hilbert-EMD procedure, some intrinsic mode components (IMCs) of the currency exchange rate series, with different scales, can be obtained. Subsequently, the internal correlation structures of different IMCs are explored by a neural network model. Using the neural network weights, some important IMCs are selected as the final neural network inputs and some unimportant IMCs that are of little use in mapping from inputs to output are discarded. Using these selected IMCs, a neural network learning paradigm is used to predict future financial crisis events, based upon some historical data. For illustration purpose, the proposed multiscale neural network learning paradigm is applied to exchange rate data of two Asian countries to evaluate the state of financial crisis. Experimental results reveal that the proposed multiscale neural network learning paradigm can significantly improve the generalization performance relative to conventional neural networks. & 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Continuous intra-articular infusion anesthesia for pain control after total knee arthroplasty: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Postoperative pain control after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) remains a great challenge. The management of pain in the immediate postoperative period is one of the most critical aspects to allow speedier rehabilitation and reduce the risk of postoperative complications. Recently, periarticular infiltration anesthesia has become popular, but the outcome is controversial. Some studies have shown transient effects, "rebound pain", or no effectiveness in pain control. Continuous intra-articular infusion technique has been introduced to improve these transient effects, but more clinical studies are needed. Furthermore, the potential risk of early periprosthetic joint infection is causing concerning. We plan to compare continuous intra-articular infusion anesthesia with epidural infusion anesthesia after TKA to assess the effectiveness of this technique in reducing pain, in improving postoperative function, and to look at the evidence for risk of early infection.


METHODS/DESIGN
This trial is a randomized, controlled study. Patients (n = 214) will be randomized into two groups: to receive continuous intra-articular infusion anesthesia (group C); and epidural infusion anesthesia (group E). For the first 3 postoperative days, pain at rest, active range of motion (A-ROM), rescue analgesia and side effects will be recorded. At 3-month and 6-month follow-up, A-ROM, C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and synovial fluid cell count and culture will be analyzed.


DISCUSSION
The results from this study will provide clinical evidence on the efficacy of a continuous intra-articular infusion technique in reducing pain, postoperative functional improvement and safety. It will be the first randomized controlled trial to investigate infection risk with local anesthesia after TKA.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: ChiCTR-TRC-13003999.
Temozolomide Plus Thal idomide in Pat ients With Advanced Melanoma : Resul ts of a Dose-Finding Tria l

Purpose: To establish a safe and tolerated regimen of an oral cytotoxic agent, temozolomide, and a cytostatic agent, thalidomide, in patients with unresectable stage III or IV malignant melanoma. Patients and Methods: Patients with unresectable stage III or IV melanoma without brain metastases were entered successively onto four treatment cohorts: level 1, temozolomide 50 mg/m2/d for 6 weeks followed by a 4-week break; levels 2, 3, and 4, temozolomide 75 mg/m2/d for 6 weeks followed, respectively, by breaks of 4, 3, and 2 weeks. Thalidomide was started at 200 mg/d, and escalated to a maximum dose of 400 mg/d. Safety was assessed at weeks 2 and 4 and every 4 weeks thereafter; tumor response was evaluated every 8 to 10 weeks. Results: Twelve patients were enrolled, three on each cohort. Therapy was generally well tolerated on all of the treatment schedules. Thalidomide at a dose of 400 mg/d was well tolerated in patients younger than 70, and 200 mg/d was well tolerated in older patients. The most common adverse events were grade 2 or 3 constipation and neuropathy, which were attributed to thalidomide. Five major responses (one complete, four partial) were documented, all at dose levels 2 to 4. Three of the five responding patients were in the over-70 age group. The median duration of response was 6 months (range, 4 to 17 months), and the median overall survival was 12.3 months (range, 4 to 19 months). Conclusion: The combination of temozolomide and thalidomide was well tolerated and had antitumor activity in patients with advanced melanoma, including elderly patients over 70 years old. J Clin Oncol 20:2610-2615. © 2002 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Immediate skeletal and dentoalveolar effects of the crown- or banded type Herbst appliance on Class II division 1 malocclusion.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the relative skeletal and dental changes produced by the crown- or banded-type Herbst appliance in growing Class II division 1 malocclusion cases.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Several electronic databases were searched with the help of a health sciences librarian, without language limitation. Abstracts that appeared to fulfill the initial selection criteria (Herbst use and clinical trial) were selected by consensus, and their original articles were then retrieved. Clinical trials were selected that used lateral cephalograms to assess immediate skeletal and dental changes from the use of either crown or banded Herbst appliances. Clinical trials that employed other simultaneous potentially growth-modifying appliances or surgery were excluded. A comparable untreated Class II division 1 malocclusion control group was required to factor out normal growth changes. References from the selected articles were also hand searched.


RESULTS
Only three articles meet the selection criteria. Proclination and anterior movement of the lower incisors, overjet reduction, and improvement of first molar relationship thorough mesial movement of the first molars, reduction of ANB angle, and an increase in the mandibular plane angle were reported. There were mixed findings as to mandibular sagittal length and position and increases in lower face height, both anteriorly and posteriorly. No statistically significant changes were noted in the sagittal length or position of the skeletal maxilla.


CONCLUSIONS
Dental changes have more impact than skeletal changes in the correction of Class II division 1 malocclusions with the crown or banded Herbst appliance.
Dual Segregant Perpendicular Recording Media With Graded Properties

We have introduced structural and magnetic gradations into the granular layer in capped media to promote incoherent switching and hence reduce the contribution of the cap layer to writeability improvement. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy revealed that the granular layer was composed of two different microstructures: a well-isolated structure with Si-oxide and Cr-oxide at the bottom portion and a less isolated structure with Si-oxide at the top portion. We found that the graded media exhibit better adjacent track interference (ATI) performance than the conventional media in similar overwrite, magnetic core width, and bit error rate conditions. The graded media have shallower angular dependence of remanent coercivity while maintaining small magnetic cluster size, which is probably the main reason for the improved ATI performance.