Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early reperfusion strategy for acute myocardial infarction: a need for clinical implementation

Reperfusion is the key strategy in acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) care, and it is time-dependent. Shortening the time from symptom to reperfusion and choosing the optimal reperfusion strategy for STEMI patients are great challenges in practice. We need to improve upon the problems of low reperfusion rate, non-standardized treatment, and economic burden in STEMI care. This article briefly reviews the current status of reperfusion strategy in STEMI care, and also introduces what we will do to bridge the gap between the guidelines and implementation in the clinical setting through the upcoming China STEMI early reperfusion program.
Do patients with chronic patellar tendinopathy have an altered somatosensory profile? – A Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) study

The prevalence of tendinopathies in sports is high. The etiology and pain mechanisms of tendinopathies are not completely understood. Currently, little is known whether, or to which degree, somatosensory changes within the nervous system may contribute to the pain in tendinopathies. We conducted a patient controlled study in which we used the standardized QST protocol developed by the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain. This protocol consists of seven different tests that measures 13 somatosensory parameters and can be seen as the gold standard to measure somatosensory function. Twelve athletes with clinically diagnosed chronic patellar tendinopathy (PT) mean duration 30 months (range 6–120) and 20 controls were included in the study. In two of the 13 QST parameters namely Mechanical Pain Threshold (P < 0.05) and Vibration Disappearance Threshold (P < 0.5) injured athletes were significantly more sensitive for the applied stimuli. None of the athletes had signs of Dynamic Mechanical Allodynia. Reduced mechanical pain thresholds or pinprick allodynia reflects the involvement of central sensitization upon the myelinated (Aδ‐fibre) nociceptive input. From this explorative study, we conclude that sensitization may play a prominent role in the pain during and after sports activity in patella tendinopathy patients.
Online Monitoring of Crude Oil Biodegradation at Elevated Pressures

In order to study the biodegradation of crude oil spilled in the deep sea, incubations of deep-sea-bed sediments and crude oil were carried out in a high-pressure reactor, but monitoring the biodegradation of oil at high pressure is limited by sampling because the volatile crude oil components are partly lost during depressurization. Moreover, the seawater-oil-sediments multiphase system cannot be sampled representatively. The aerobic oil biodegradation can also be monitored indirectly by measuring the oxygen consumed and the carbon dioxide produced. In this paper, the O2 and CO2 concentrations were monitored in a reactor with transparent windows using chemical-optical sensors. To compare the effect of pressure on the biodegradation of oil, two pressure regimes were compared: atmospheric pressure (1 bar) and 150 bar, corresponding to 1500 m depth of the Deepwater Horizon's well at the Gulf of Mexico. Only in the experiments where deep-sea sediments were added, the oxygen concentration decreased while the carbon dioxide and the bacterial concentration increased. In experiments where no sediment was added, the values for the oxygen and carbon dioxide remained constant. This proved that deep-sea sediments contained microorganisms, which could degrade crude oil at both 1 and 150 bar. To our knowledge, this is the first time where O2 and CO2 were monitored online during crude oil biodegradation at high pressure in the laboratory.
Infant Development: Recent Advances

Part I: Perceptual and Motor Development. G. Harris, Development of Taste Perception and Appetite Regulation. A. Slater, Visual Perception and its Organisation in Early Infancy. J.G. Bremner, From Perception to Cognition. B. Hopkins, G. Butterworth, Dynamical Systems Approaches to the Development of Action. Part II: Cognitive Development. P. Willatts, Beyond the "Couch Potato" Infant: How Infants Use Their Knowledge to Regulate Action, Solve Problems, and Achieve Goals. J.C. Rutkowska, Reassessing Piaget's Theory of Sensorimotor Intelligence: A View from Cognitive Science. J.M. Mandler, Development of Categorisation: Perceptual and Conceptual Categories. M.H. Bornstein, A. Slater, E. Brown, E. Roberts, J. Barrett, Stability of Mental Development from Infancy to Later Childhood: Three "Waves" of Research. Part III: Social and Language Development. A. Slater, G. Butterworth, Perception of Social Stimuli: Face Perception and Imitation. V. Reddy, D. Hay, L. Murray, C. Trevarthen, Communication in Infancy: Mutual Regulation of Affect and Attention. R.P. Hobson, Psychoanalysis and Infancy. D. Messer, Referential Communication: Making Sense of the Social and Physical Worlds. M. Harris, Language and its Pathology.
Infant transfer of learning across 2D/3D dimensions: A touch screen paradigm

Infants learn less from a televised demonstration than from a live demonstrati , the video deficit effect. The present study employs a novel approach, using touch screen te hnology to examine 15-month olds’ transfer of learning. Infants were randomly assigned e ith r to withindimension (2D/2D or 3D/3D) or cross-dimension (3D/2D or 2D/3D) conditions. For the within dimension conditions, an experimenter demonstrated an action by pushing a virtual button on a 2D screen or a real button on a 3D object. Infants were then given the opportunity to im ate using the same screen or object. For the 3D/2D condition, an experimenter demonstrat ed the action on the 3D object, and infants were given the opportunity to reproduce the action on a 2D touch screen (and vice versa for the 2D/3D condition). Infants produced significantly fewer target actions in the cross-dimension conditions than in the within-dimension conditions. The se findings have important implications for infants’ understanding and learning from 2D images and for their using 2D media as the basis of actions in the real world.
TCP-DR an Effective Protocol for Infrastructure based Wireless Networks

TCP is a dominant protocol for consistent communication over the internet. It provides flow, congestion and error control mechanisms while using wired reliable networks. Its congestion control mechanism is not suitable for wireless links where data corruption and its lost rate are higher. The physical links are transparent from TCP that takes packet losses due to congestion only and initiates congestion handling mechanisms by reducing transmission speed. This results in wasting already limited available bandwidth on the wireless links. Therefore, there is no use to carry out research on increasing bandwidth of the wireless links until the available bandwidth is not optimally utilized. This paper proposed a hybrid scheme called TCP Detection and Recovery (TCP-DR) to distinguish congestion, corruption and mobility related losses and then instructs the data sending host to take appropriate action. Therefore, the link utilization is optimal while losses are either due to high bit error rate or mobility.
Classification of laserscanner measurements at intersection scenarios with automatic parameter optimization

Object classification at intersection scenarios is necessary in order to provide a general environment description. Objects are observed using a multilayer laserscanner. Significant features for object classification are identified and their extraction is described. Classification is performed using well-known techniques of statistical learning. Classification results of several neural networks are described and compared with classification performance of support vector machines.
A theory of job regulation, the employment relationship, and the organisation of labour institutions

Industrial relations theory must be applicable to non-union workplaces, and to do so, it needs to start from what union and non-union workplaces have in common, namely, the employment relationship. This paper sketches out a proposal for the reconstruction of industrial relations theory based on the work rules that are necessary for there to be a viable employment relationship. That is, a contractual form which would be mutually acceptable to both workers and firms. It is argued that there are four basic types of work rule capable of defining acceptable limits to employees ' obligations within an open-ended employment relationship. These rules differ in whether their enforcement focuses on taskor function-centred definitions of job contents, and whether work is organised according to complementarities in production (the 'production approach ') or to those in training (the 'training approach '). These approaches give rise to different types of externalities, and so demand different patterns of institutionalisation. On these constrasted patterns, the author builds a typology of approaches to industrial relations institutions, and highlights the advantages and limitations of weakly institutionalised and non-union work relations.
Time-Critical Cooperative Path Following of Multiple UAVs over Time-Varying Networks

Abstract : This paper addresses the problem of steering a fleet of UAVs along desired paths while meeting stringent spatial and temporal constraints. A representative example is the challenging mission scenario where the vehicles are tasked to cooperatively execute collision-free maneuvers and arrive at their final destinations at the same time (time-critical operations). In the setup adopted, the vehicles are assigned nominal spatial paths and speed profiles along those. The paths are then appropriately parameterized and the vehicles are requested to execute cooperative path following, rather than open loop trajectory tracking maneuvers. This strategy yields robust behavior against external disturbances by allowing the vehicles to negotiate their speeds along the paths in response to information exchanged over the dynamic inter-vehicle communications network. The paper addresses explicitly the situation where each vehicle transmits its coordination information to only a subset of the other vehicles, as determined by the communications topology. Furthermore, we consider the case where the communications graph that captures the underlying communications topology is disconnected during some interval of time or even fails to be connected at all times. Conditions are given under which the complete time-critical cooperative path-following closed-loop system is stable and yields convergence of a conveniently defined cooperation error to a neighborhood of the origin. Flight test results of a coordinated road search mission demonstrate the efficacy of the multi-UAV cooperative control framework developed in the paper.
Bayesian Measures of Explained Variance and Pooling in Multilevel (Hierarchical) Models

Explained variance (R2) is a familiar summary of the fit of a linear regression and has been generalized in various ways to multilevel (hierarchical) models. The multilevel models that we consider in this article are characterized by hierarchical data structures in which individuals are grouped into units (which themselves might be further grouped into larger units), and variables are measured on individuals and each grouping unit. The models are based on regression relationships at different levels, with the first level corresponding to the individual data and subsequent levels corresponding to between-group regressions of individual predictor effects on grouping unit variables. We present an approach to defining R2 at each level of the multilevel model, rather than attempting to create a single summary measure of fit. Our method is based on comparing variances in a single fitted model rather than with a null model. In simple regression, our measure generalizes the classical adjusted R2. We also discuss a related variance comparison to summarize the degree to which estimates at each level of the model are pooled together based on the level-specific regression relationship, rather than estimated separately. This pooling factor is related to the concept of shrinkage in simple hierarchical models. We illustrate the methods on a dataset of radon in houses within counties using a series of models ranging from a simple linear regression model to a multilevel varying-intercept, varying-slope model.
Exposure to parental and sibling smoking and the risk of smoking uptake in childhood and adolescence: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background There is increasing evidence that contact with other smokers, particularly in the family, is a strong determinant of risk of smoking uptake. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the magnitude of these effects is reported. Methods Studies were identified by searching four databases to March 2009 and proceedings from international conferences. Meta-analyses were performed using random effects, with results presented as pooled ORs with 95% CIs. Results 58 studies were included in the meta-analyses. The relative odds of uptake of smoking in children were increased significantly if at least one parent smoked (OR 1.72, 95% CI 1.59 to 1.86), more so by smoking by the mother (OR 2.19, 95% CI 1.73 to 2.79) than the father (OR 1.66, 95% CI 1.42 to 1.94), and if both parents smoked (OR 2.73, 95% CI 2.28 to 3.28). Smoking by a sibling increased the odds of smoking uptake by 2.30 (95% CI 1.85 to 2.86) and smoking by any household member by 1.92 (95% CI 1.70 to 2.16). After adjusting for overestimation of RRs it is estimated that, in England and Wales, around 17 000 young people take up smoking by the age of 15 each year as a consequence of exposure to household smoking. Conclusions Parental and sibling smoking is a strong and significant determinant of the risk of smoking uptake by children and young people and, as such, is a major and entirely avoidable health risk. Children should be protected from exposure to smoking behaviour, especially by family members.
Performance of An Integrated Scheduling of Priority Weighted Round Robin and Strict Priority in DiffServ Networks

Differentiated services and other scheduling strategies are now widespread in the traditional, ‘best effort’ Internet. These offer quality of service guarantees for important customers at the same time as supporting less critical applications of lower priority. Strict priority queueing and weighted round robin are two common scheduling disciplines for differentiation of services in telecommunication networks. A combination of these is the Priority Weighted Round Robin (PWRR) scheme. We studied in this paper an integrated scheduling scheme of PWRR and strict priority queue which serves four classes of traffic with distinct quality requirements, namely expedited forwarding, assured forwarding, best effort forwarding, and the local-generated management traffic. The response times of the first of these classes are analysed and expressions for the mean values are obtained using queueing models.
Addressing Change within a Generation

Many practical optimization problems change over time, re- quiring a repeated re-adaptation of the solution. As has been shown in numerous papers, evolutionary algorithms (EAs) can be modified so that they can cope well with dynamic environments. However, basically all papers so far either considered a continuous change, or a change that happens in intervals which coincide with the time to complete a number of generations. In reality, changes may occur at any time and irregular intervals, which raises the question how to deal with a change occur- ring within a generation of an EA. Different methods for handling such changes are given and experimentally compared in this study.
Resizing of images in the DCT space by arbitrary factors

In this work we describe algorithms for the resizing by arbitrary factors of images represented in the block DCT space. The algorithms are designed by exploiting spatial relationship of the block DCT coefficients and subband correlation of the DCT coefficients. An interesting application of these methods shown is the conversion in the compressed domain of images (video frames) from one format to another.
Application of Augmented Reality for Teaching Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics Course to First-Year Students

The quality of modern engineering education is directly linked with the students’ ability to create and read the drawings of engineering structures. The subject “Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics” taught in the undergraduate engineering studies develops students’ ability to analyse both the shape and design of real objects and, along with the spatial reasoning, the technical thinking. The development of spatial skills for engineering students is closely related with the success in their future professional career. The new information technologies (IT) offer novel opportunities to enhance the classic teaching approach used so far during mastering quite complicate and extensive courses, like engineering graphics. Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the many challenges of modern IT technologies which recently became available also for education purposes. It is supposed that AR will provide new possibilities to teach the contemporary generation of students in an attractive and more entertaining way. First part of the article describes the results of the application of didactic toolkit AR-DEHAES based on Augmented Reality for development of spatial ability of students. In the second part of the article presented are the examples of 3D objects for the exercises of “Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics” course prepared for the use into AR environment. The use of AR technology facilitates the students to acquire better practical skills in much shorter time during their academic studies and improves the quality of graphic education.
Global temperature stabilization via controlled albedo enhancement of low-level maritime clouds

An assessment is made herein of the proposal that controlled global cooling sufficient to balance global warming resulting from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations might be achieved by seeding low-level, extensive maritime clouds with seawater particles that act as cloud condensation nuclei, thereby activating new droplets and increasing cloud albedo (and possibly longevity). This paper focuses on scientific and meteorological aspects of the scheme. Associated technological issues are addressed in a companion paper. Analytical calculations, cloud modelling and (particularly) GCM computations suggest that, if outstanding questions are satisfactorily resolved, the controllable, globally averaged negative forcing resulting from deployment of this scheme might be sufficient to balance the positive forcing associated with a doubling of CO2 concentration. This statement is supported quantitatively by recent observational evidence from three disparate sources. We conclude that this technique could thus be adequate to hold the Earth's temperature constant for many decades. More work—especially assessments of possible meteorological and climatological ramifications—is required on several components of the scheme, which possesses the advantages that (i) it is ecologically benign—the only raw materials being wind and seawater, (ii) the degree of cooling could be controlled, and (iii) if unforeseen adverse effects occur, the system could be immediately switched off, with the forcing returning to normal within a few days (although the response would take a much longer time).
Hardened flip-flop optimized for subthreshold operation heavy ion characterization of a radiation

A novel Single Event Upset (SEU) tolerant flip-flop design is proposed, which is well suited for very-low power electronics that operate in subthreshold ( < Vt ≈ 500 mV). The proposed flip-flop along with a traditional (unprotected) flip-flop, a Sense-Amplifier-based Rad-hard Flip-Flop (RSAFF) and a Dual Interlocked storage Cell (DICE) flip-flop were all fabricated in MIT Lincoln Lab’s XLP 0.15 μm fully-depleted SOI CMOS technology—a process optimized for subthreshold operation. At the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University, all four cells were subjected to heavy ion characterization in which the circuits were dynamically updated with alternating data and then checked for SEUs at both subthreshold (450 mV) and superthreshold (1.5 V) levels. The proposed flip-flop never failed, while the traditional and DICE designs did demonstrate faulty behavior. Simulations were conducted with the XLP process and the proposed flip-flop provided an improved energy delay product relative to the other non-faulty rad-hard flip-flop at subthreshold voltage operation. According to the XLP models operating in subthreshold at 250 mV, performance was improved by 31% and energy consumption was reduced by 27%.
TRPC3 and TRPC6 are essential for normal mechanotransduction in subsets of sensory neurons and cochlear hair cells

Summary Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels TRPC3 and TRPC6 are expressed in both sensory neurons and cochlear hair cells. Deletion of TRPC3 or TRPC6 in mice caused no behavioural phenotype, although loss of TRPC3 caused a shift of rapidly adapting (RA) mechanosensitive currents to intermediate-adapting currents in dorsal root ganglion sensory neurons. Deletion of both TRPC3 and TRPC6 caused deficits in light touch and silenced half of small-diameter sensory neurons expressing mechanically activated RA currents. Double TRPC3/TRPC6 knock-out mice also showed hearing impairment, vestibular deficits and defective auditory brain stem responses to high-frequency sounds. Basal, but not apical, cochlear outer hair cells lost more than 75 per cent of their responses to mechanical stimulation. FM1-43-sensitive mechanically gated currents were induced when TRPC3 and TRPC6 were co-expressed in sensory neuron cell lines. TRPC3 and TRPC6 are thus required for the normal function of cells involved in touch and hearing, and are potential components of mechanotransducing complexes.
Financial restructuring and regional economic activity

An empirical analysis that links employment changes resulting from the birth, death, expansion, and contraction of various-sized banks with the local economic performance of 217 SMSAs over the 1980-82 and 1984-86 periods. Results suggest that the deaths of midsized banks have a negative, but short-lived, impact on economic activity.
From Critical Success Factors to Critical Success Processes

After myriad studies into the main causes of project failure, almost every project manager can list the main factors that distinguish between project failure and project success. These factors are usually called Critical Success Factors (CSF). However, despite the fact that CSF are well-known, the rate of failed projects still remains very high. This may be due to the fact that current CSF are too general and do not contain specific enough know-how to better support project managers’ decision-making. This paper analyses the impact of 16 specific planning processes on project success and identifies Critical Success Processes (CSP) to which project success is most vulnerable. Results are based on a field study that involved 282 project managers. It was found that the most critical planning processes, which have the greatest impact on project success, are “definition of activities to be performed in the project”, “schedule development”, “organizational planning”, “staff acquisition”, “communications planning” and “developing a project plan”. It was also found that project managers usually do not divide their time effectively among the different processes, following their influence on project success.