Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why is a new Journal of Informetrics needed?

In our study we analysed 3889 records which were indexed in the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database in the research field of informetrics. We can show the core journals of the field via a Bradford (power law) distribution and corroborate on the basis of the restricted LISA data set that it was the appropriate time to found a new specialized journal dedicated to informetrics. According to Bradford's Law of scattering (pure quantitative calculation), Egghe's Journal of Informetrics (JOI) first issue to appear in 2007, comes most probable at the right time.
Online Monaural Speech Enhancement Based on Periodicity Analysis and A Priori SNR Estimation

This paper describes an online algorithm for enhancing monaural noisy speech. First, a novel phase-corrected low-delay gammatone filterbank is derived for signal subband decomposition and resynthesis; the subband signals are then analyzed frame by frame. Second, a novel feature named periodicity degree (PD) is proposed to be used for detecting and estimating the fundamental period ( P0) in each frame and for estimating the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in each frame-subband signal unit. The PD is calculated in each unit as the multiplication of the normalized autocorrelation and the comb filter ratio, and shown to be robust in various low-SNR conditions. Third, the noise energy level in each signal unit is estimated recursively based on the estimated SNR for units with high PD and based on the noisy signal energy level for units with low PD. Then the a priori SNR is estimated using a decision-directed approach with the estimated noise level. Finally, a revised Wiener gain is calculated, smoothed, and applied to each unit; the processed units are summed across subbands and frames to form the enhanced signal. The P 0 detection accuracy of the algorithm was evaluated on two corpora and showed comparable performance on one corpus and better performance on the other corpus when compared to a recently published pitch detection algorithm. The speech enhancement effect of the algorithm was evaluated on one corpus with two objective criteria and showed better performance in one highly non-stationary noise and comparable performance in two other noises when compared to a state-of-the-art statistical-model based algorithm.
A Method to Identify Serine Kinase Substrates

This study describes a method for the identification of the substrates of specific serine kinases. An antibody specific for the phosphomotif generated by the kinase is used to isolate phosphorylated substrates by immunoprecipitation, and the isolated proteins are identified by tandem mass spectrometry of peptides. This method was applied to the identification of substrates for the protein kinase Akt, which specifically phosphorylates the RXRXXS/T motif. 3T3-L1 adipocytes were treated with insulin to activate Akt, and the putative Akt substrate proteins were isolated by immunoprecipitation with an antibody against the phospho form of this motif. This led to the identification of a novel 160-kDa substrate for Akt. The 160-kDa substrate for Akt, which was designated AS160, has a Rab GAP domain. Recombinant AS160 was shown to be a substrate for Akt, and two sites of phosphorylation, both in RXRXXS/T motifs, were identified by mass spectrometry and mutation. Insulin treatment of adipocytes caused AS160 to redistribute from the low density microsomes to the cytosol.
Video-based Parking Space Detection : Localisation of Vehicles and Development of an Infrastructure for a Routeing System

Searching for vacant parking spaces is a time-consuming and often irritating task. Car park routeing systems can assist drivers in this undertaking. Current parking systems either issue imprecise information or prove costly due to the required resources, and are thus unattractive for car park operators. In this paper, we propose a vehicle tracking and navigation module as part of a routeing system which is based on real-time image processing. A background subtraction combined with temporal filtering is used for tracking. The routeing is realised by applying Dijkstra’s algorithm to a digraph which is matched onto preprocessed camera images.
Photosynthesis under artificial light: the shift in primary and secondary metabolism

Providing an adequate quantity and quality of food for the escalating human population under changing climatic conditions is currently a great challenge. In outdoor cultures, sunlight provides energy (through photosynthesis) for photosynthetic organisms. They also use light quality to sense and respond to their environment. To increase the production capacity, controlled growing systems using artificial lighting have been taken into consideration. Recent development of light-emitting diode (LED) technologies presents an enormous potential for improving plant growth and making systems more sustainable. This review uses selected examples to show how LED can mimic natural light to ensure the growth and development of photosynthetic organisms, and how changes in intensity and wavelength can manipulate the plant metabolism with the aim to produce functionalized foods.
Automated Content Labeling using Context in Email

Through a recent survey, we observe that a significant percentage of people still share photos through email. When an user composes an email with an attachment, he/she most likely talks about the attachment in the body of the email. In this paper, we develop a supervised machine learning framework to extract keywords relevant to the attachments from the body of the email. The extracted keywords can then be stored as an extended attribute to the file on the local filesystem. Both desktop indexing software and web-based image search portals can leverage the context-enriched keywords to enable a richer search experience. Our results on the public Enron email dataset shows that the proposed extraction framework provides both high precision and recall. As a proof of concept, we have also implemented a version of the proposed algorithms as a Mozilla Thunderbird Add-on.
Developmental defects and p53 hyperacetylation in Sir2 homolog (SIRT1)-deficient mice

SIRT1 is a mammalian homolog of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromatin silencing factor Sir2. Dominant-negative and overexpression studies have implicated a role for SIRT1 in deacetylating the p53 tumor suppressor protein to dampen apoptotic and cellular senescence pathways. To elucidate SIRT1 function in normal cells, we used gene-targeted mutation to generate mice that express either a mutant SIRT1 protein that lacks part of the catalytic domain or has no detectable SIRT1 protein at all. Both types of SIRT1 mutant mice and cells had essentially the same phenotypes. SIRT1 mutant mice were small, and exhibited notable developmental defects of the retina and heart, and only infrequently survived postnatally. Moreover, SIRT1-deficient cells exhibited p53 hyperacetylation after DNA damage and increased ionizing radiation-induced thymocyte apoptosis. In SIRT1-deficient embryonic fibroblasts, however, p53 hyperacetylation after DNA damage was not accompanied by increased p21 protein induction or DNA damage sensitivity. Together, our observations provide direct evidence that endogenous SIRT1 protein regulates p53 acetylation and p53-dependent apoptosis, and show that the function of this enzyme is required for specific developmental processes.
Generation of scalp discharges in temporal lobe epilepsy as suggested by intraoperative electrocorticographic recordings

OBJECTIVES To study the variability, topography, polarity, duration, and incidence of interictal epileptiform discharges (EDs) in the scalp EEG and electrocorticogram (ECoG) from 16 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who underwent surgical treatment. METHODS Preoperative scalp EEGs during quinalbarbitone induced sleep were compared with preresection ECoGs obtained under general anaesthesia. The analysis was based on the initial ECoG record obtained before activation by intravenous thiopentone, and the EEG during stages I and II of sleep. RESULTS On the scalp, 15 patients had a single discharge pattern, spikes were predominantly negative, EDs were of largest amplitude at the anterior temporal electrode in 13 patients and mean discharge incidence was 4.0 (SD 4.2) discharges/min. In ECoG recordings, nine patients had two independent ECoG patterns, the polarity of spikes was negative, positive-negative, or positive, the site of maximal amplitude varied greatly between subjects, discharge incidence was 7.3 (SD 3.9) discharges/min. There was no relation between the topography of the largest spikes on the scalp and in the ECoG. In 14 patients, scalp spikes showed statistically significant longer duration on the scalp than in the ECoG. In seven patients who had frequent widespread ECoG discharges, averaging spikes across ECoG channels generated spiky patterns of duration similar to that of scalp spikes. CONCLUSION It seems that, in temporal lobe epilepsy, scalp discharges originate from widespread ECoG discharges and tend to produce a stereotyped pattern on the scalp with largest amplitudes at the anterior temporal electrodes. This is probably due to local anatomical peculiarities in the brain coverings, such as skull discontinuities, rather than to the location of neuronal generators within the temporal lobe. Due to spatiotemporal averaging, widespread cortical discharges which become asynchronous during propagation appear with increased duration and blunted waveform in the EEG, whereas sharply localised phenomena such as positive focal spikes are not recorded from the scalp.
Convergence and Consensus: The Political Economy of Stabilisation, Poverty and Growth

The purpose of this paper is primarily to provide a critical overview of the macroeconomic theory that has informed the financial programming, FP, of the IMF. It does so against a background of increasing rhetoric of “consensus”, not least between the IMF and the World Bank. The consensus is marked by the shift from Washington to post Washington consensus, PWC. Clearly, however, there is dissonance between the theory and practice of consensus. The forced resignation of Joe Stiglitz, Chief Economist at the World Bank, followed from his public criticism of the IMF. Within a couple of years, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, in part for his contribution in founding the new development economics, Nobel (2001). In retrospect, the more progressive PWC in principle has been used to justify even more austere interventions in practice rather than to challenge them. For the Washington consensus (and neo-liberalism) is highly interventionist under the veil of being committed to the market, whilst the PWC intervenes on the basis of the presence and potential correction of market and institutional imperfections. Emergence of a “new consensus” has prematurely been heralded by Singer (1997) who argued the “pendulum is swinging back” to some form of Keynesian thinking in the development discourse. Singer is obviously referring to the PWC and notes that as far as the debate is concerned there is, p. 293/5:
Subzonal organization of olfactory sensory neurons projecting to distinct glomeruli within the mouse olfactory bulb

Olfactory sensory neurons located in the nasal neuroepithelium send their axons directly into the olfactory bulb, where they contact the dendrites of second‐order neurons in specialized spherical structures called glomeruli; each sensory neuron projects to a single glomerulus. All neurons expressing the same odorant receptor gene are confined to distinct zones within the epithelium and converge their axons onto a small number of common glomeruli. In the present study, we analyzed transgenic mouse lines in which the projection of a neuron population expressing a particular receptor gene can be visualized as a result of axonal markers that are coexpressed. The target glomeruli could thus reproducibly be identified and allowed to deposit retrograde tracers precisely. After an appropriate incubation time, olfactory sensory neurons within distinct areas of the olfactory epithelium were labeled. The two subpopulations of neurons retrogradely stained by differently colored fluorescent dyes deposited at the dorsal and the dorsomedial glomerulus, respectively, were found to be segregated within distinct areas of the expression zone, where the cells expressing the same receptor type displayed a stochastic distribution. J. Comp. Neurol. 458:209–220, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Multicast traffic grooming in WDM networks

We investigate the problem of grooming dynamic multicast traffic in WDM mesh networks. This problem is equivalent to designing a light-tree based logical topology for multicast streams. To the best of our knowledge, this problem has not been considered before in the literature. The problem consists of four parts: (1) multicast routing sub-problem; (2) multicast wavelength assignment sub-problem; (3) design of a light-tree based logical topology sub-problem; (4) traffic-grooming sub-problem.
A sub-pixel feature extraction method for CT image based on Zernike moments

This paper will combine Sobel operator with Zernike moments operator to extract the sub-pixel edge feature for liver CT images. Sobel operator can effectively smooth the noise, provide more intact edge feature, then propose a limited non-optimal suppression improved method based on the Zernike moments. By a large number of experiments, improved method increases the accuracy of feature extraction, besides the speed of extraction is very fast.
Value of IGF-I levels in the evaluation of response to treatment with levosimendan in patients with severe heart failure.

OBJECTIVE Levosimendan treatment has inotropic, anti-stunning, and cardioprotective effects in the setting of acute decompensated heart failure (HF). Among studies conducted on the treatment of heart failure, those based on the growth hormone axis are of particular interest. The aim of this study was to determine the value of baseline insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-I) measurements in predicting response to levosimendan treatment. METHODS The study population included patients on standard heart failure treatment who presented with functional capacity NYHA class 3-4 and left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction less than 35% were enrolled in this prospective, cohort study. Pre- and post-treatment symptoms of patients (72 hours after the completion of levosimendan infusion) and echocardiographic parameters were evaluated and blood samples were collected. Mann-Whitney U, Pearson Chi-square and Wilcoxon Sign Rank tests were used for statistical analysis. Correlations were determined using Spearman correlation analysis. RESULTS Thirty patients were enrolled in this study, 83.3% of whom were male and 16.7% were female, with a mean age of 62.6 ±10.1 years. Mean baseline IGF-I level was 106.9±47.0 µg/L. Statistically significant improvements were observed in NYHA class, mean brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels, LV ejection fraction and LV end-systolic volume values following treatment with levosimendan (respective pre-treatment and post-treatment values: 3.5±0.5 vs. 2.5±0.7, p<0.001; 1209.8±398.6 pg/ml vs. 704.1±344.6 pg/ml, p<0.001, and 25.7±6.6% vs. 29.0±6.8%, p=0.021, and 164.1±45.7 ml vs. 152.8±50.6 ml, p=0.012). Fourteen patients (46.7%) had low IGF-I levels, taking into consideration variations due to age and gender. Patients with normal baseline IGF-I values showed more significant decreases in BNP levels in response to treatment compared to those with low baseline IGF-I levels (650.5±367.2 pg/ml vs. 340.1±269.0 pg/ml, p=0.014). CONCLUSION Baseline IGF-I levels may be used to predict response to levosimendan treatment in patients hospitalized for decompensated HF.
Perceptions regarding medication administration errors among hospital staff nurses of South Korea.

OBJECTIVE To identify reasons for medication administration errors (MAEs) and why they are unreported, and estimate the percentage of MAEs actually reported among hospital nurses. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey design. SETTING Three university hospitals in three South Korean provinces. PARTICIPANTS A total of 312 hospital staff nurses were included in this study. MAIN OUTCOME Medication administration errors. RESULTS Actual MAEs were experienced by 217 nurses (69.6%) during their clinical career, whereas 149 nurses (47.8%) perceived that MAEs only occur less than 20% rate. MAEs occurred mostly during intravenous (IV) administrations. Nurses perceived that the most common reasons for MAEs were inadequate number of nurses in each working shift (4.88 ± 1.05) and administering drugs with similar names or labels (4.49 ± 0.94). The most prevalent reasons for unreported MAEs included fears of being blamed (4.36 ± 1.10) and having too much emphasis on MAEs as a measure of nursing care quality (4.32 ± 1.02). The three most frequent errors perceived by nurses for non-IV related MAEs included administering medications to the incorrect patients and incorrect medication doses and drug choices. The three most frequent IV related MAEs included incorrect infusion rates, patients and medication doses. CONCLUSIONS Nurse-staffing adequacy could be helpful to prevent MAEs among nurses as well ongoing education, and training regarding safe medication administration using the problem-based simulation education. In addition, encouraging nurses to identify and report work related errors in a non-punitive milieu will increase error reporting.
The Rise and Decline of a University

We examine the past rise and more recent decline of Saint Louis University (SLU) from the perspective of economic growth theory, which is commonly used to explain the rise and decline of nations. Consistent with neoclassical growth theory, we suggest that the simple accumulation of capital explains much of SLU's past rise. Over time, political power became increasingly concentrated among a relatively small group of elites led by the university President. In line with the New Institutional Economics, we argue that this concentration of power explains SLU's more recent decline. During the 2012-2013 academic year, this decline precipitated a critical juncture -- a confluence of factors that emerge and provide an opportunity to overturn the status quo. Further drawing on growth theory, we discuss the challenges ahead and explore conditions under which SLU might expect this critical juncture to generate a brighter future.
Evaluation of metal allergies in patients with coronary stents

In‐stent restenosis is a complication which impairs the success of coronary stenting. Recently, it was supposed that a delayed hypersensitivity reaction to nickel and molybdenum might be one of the triggering factors in in‐stent restenosis. We have analyzed the data collected in our centre with respect to this hypothesis. Altogether, 34 patients were investigated (24 male, 10 female). Patch tests were performed with the standard series of the German Contact Dermatitis Research Group and a metal series containing the metal components of 316 L stainless steel. A positive patch test reaction to nickel was observed in 4 (11.8%) patients. None of the patients showed sensitization to the other metals. Retrospective analysis was performed in 20 patients: 2 of these patients had a positive patch test reaction to nickel, one of whom had an in‐stent restenosis, and the other not. Restenoses were predominantly observed in patients with negative patch test reactions to nickel (6/18 patients). Out of the patients who were investigated prospectively only one showed sensitization to nickel. Restenosis was observed in 2 patients: neither patient had nickel allergy. Although it still cannot be excluded that metal allergy may play a role in the restenosis process in coronary stenting, there is at present little evidence for it.
Diagnostic Value of Osteopontin in Ovarian Cancer: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

Aims Osteopontin (OPN) plays an important role in many physiological and pathological processes (wound healing, inflammation, immune response, and tumorigenesis). This meta-analysis assessed the diagnostic value of osteopontin in ovarian cancer. Methods and Results Searches in Embase and PubMed were conducted, in order to identify eligible studies on osteopontin expression and its diagnostic value in ovarian cancer. The revised Quality Assessment for Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy (QUADAS-2) tool was applied to examine the quality of these studies and the overall osteopontin diagnostic accuracy in ovarian cancer was pooled using the bivariate model. The publication bias was assessed using funnel plots and Deek’s test. This search methodology resulted in 13 studies with a total of 839 ovarian cancer patients and 1439 controls in this meta-analysis. The overall osteopontin diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of ovarian cancer were 0.66 (95% CI, 0.51–0.78) and 0.88 (95% CI, 0.78–0.93), respectively. The area under summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC) curves (AUC) was 0.85 (95%CI, 0.81–0.88). There was no significant publication bias observed across the eligible studies. However, a major design deficiency of the eligible studies is the issue of subject selection bias. Conclusions Osteopontin could be a useful biomarker in diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Due to the design deficits of the eligible studies, a future study with a larger sample size and better design is needed to rigorously confirm the diagnostic potential of osteopontin in ovarian cancer.
Large Q fever outbreak due to sheep farming near residential areas, Germany, 2005

SUMMARY In June 2005 Coxiella burnetii-infected sheep, grazing and lambing on a meadow bordering a residential area, caused a large Q fever outbreak (331 cases) in Germany. Our outbreak investigation provided attack rates (AR) by distance between residence and meadow, sex and age groups. The AR of people living within 50 m of the meadow was 11·8%. It decreased the further the residence was from the meadow, falling to 1·3% at 350–400 m distance (RR 8·7, 95% CI 4·5–17·1). The AR was higher in men (RR 1·4, 95% CI 1·1–1·8). In the 25–64 years age group, the AR was 2·3 times higher compared to other age groups (95% CI 1·7–3·0). The distance-related AR showed a relationship between risk of infection and living close to the meadow. Ongoing urbanization will probably lead to further Q fever outbreaks, hence prevention activities undertaken by animal and public health practitioners should be aligned and strengthened.