Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Welche Vorgehensmodelle nutzt Deutschland?

In der Praxis finden viele unterschiedliche Vorgehensmodelle Anwendung, was oft in Problemen resultiert, da sich z.B. Philosophie, Projektstruktur, Terminologie oder Rollenmodelle und Aufgabenzuordnung unterscheiden. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, eine Karte zu zeichnen, in welcher die in Deutschland aktuell verwendeten Vorgehensmodelle enthalten sind. Dieser Beitrag prasentiert die Ergebnisse einer Studie aus dem Jahr 2006 und stellt diesen die Ergebnisse gegenuber, welche als Teil des 3ProcSurvey im Jahr 2013 ermittelt wurden. Wir stellen dar, welche Vorgehensmodelle aktuell im Einsatz sind und wie sich die Anwendung von Vorgehensmodellen uber die Zeit entwickelt hat. Die Studie hat gezeigt, dass eine Vielzahl von Vorgehensmodellen im Einsatz ist. Es werden sowohl agile als auch „klassische“ Ansatze angewendet, obwohl ein Trend weg von grosen Standards zu beobachten ist. Insbesondere zeigt die Studie aber auch, dass ob der grosen Anzahl von Vorgehensmodellen, die Auswahl und das Tailoring in der Regel wenig systematisch und individuell durch Projektleiter erfolgen.
Shattering the Glass Maze

Template protection plays a crucial role in protecting the privacy of biometric data, by providing irreversibility and unlinkability. The Glass Maze, as presented by Trugenberger at BIOSIG 2011, is a fingerprint key binding mechanism that is claimed to provide template protection. With the correct fingerprint, the key that is entangled with the fingerprint data can be retrieved. The template protection of the Glass Maze is based on the convergence properties of a Hopfield model, a neural network. We however show how to revert the Glass Maze to recover the key, without requiring a correct fingerprint. This completely breaks the irreversibility property, and hence also unlinkability.
A critical review of the application of polymer of low concern and regulatory criteria to fluoropolymers

Per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of fluorinated substances that are in the focus of researchers and regulators due to widespread presence in the environment and biota, including humans, of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Fluoropolymers, high molecular weight polymers, have unique properties that constitute a distinct class within the PFAS group. Fluoropolymers have thermal, chemical, photochemical, hydrolytic, oxidative, and biological stability. They have negligible residual monomer and oligomer content and low to no leachables. Fluoropolymers are practically insoluble in water and not subject to long‐range transport. With a molecular weight well over 100 000 Da, fluoropolymers cannot cross the cell membrane. Fluoropolymers are not bioavailable or bioaccumulative, as evidenced by toxicology studies on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE): acute and subchronic systemic toxicity, irritation, sensitization, local toxicity on implantation, cytotoxicity, in vitro and in vivo genotoxicity, hemolysis, complement activation, and thrombogenicity. Clinical studies of patients receiving permanently implanted PTFE cardiovascular medical devices demonstrate no chronic toxicity or carcinogenicity and no reproductive, developmental, or endocrine toxicity. This paper brings together fluoropolymer toxicity data, human clinical data, and physical, chemical, thermal, and biological data for review and assessment to show that fluoropolymers satisfy widely accepted assessment criteria to be considered as “polymers of low concern” (PLC). This review concludes that fluoropolymers are distinctly different from other polymeric and nonpolymeric PFAS and should be separated from them for hazard assessment or regulatory purposes. Grouping fluoropolymers with all classes of PFAS for “read across” or structure–activity relationship assessment is not scientifically appropriate. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2018;14:316–334. © 2018 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)
Simulation and design of Koch fractal CPW antennas

This paper investigates the properties of Koch fractal coplanar waveguide (CPW) antennas. New antenna geometries are proposed. Simulation is performed using HFSS Ansoft software. Results are presented for resonant frequency, bandwidth, return loss, and radiation pattern. Prototypes are fabricated and measured for comparison purpose between simulation and measurements results. Results for rectangular CPW antennas are included as well. The proposed antennas are designed to operate with multiband in the range from 1 GHz to 14 GHz for CPW on FR-4 dielectric substrate layers. Consistency is observed between theoretical and experimental results.
Datacenter Network Visualization in Multi-Tenant Environments

Outsourcing of computation and storage infrastructure into the cloud entails new challenges for the architecture and design of multi-tenant datacenters. With the evolution of virtualization techniques, tenant applications do not need to be operated on dedicated servers. Software switches hereby play an important role by mediating between physical infrastructure and virtualized applications. In this paper, we discuss the application of Open vSwitch, a software implementation of a network switch that is particularly designed for use in cloud environments. We analyse its features and performance in comparison to traditional concepts. Software-defined datacenters provision pools of compute, storage and networking resources and distribute them to their customers [BBE13b]. Today, primarily networking is seen a barrier to software-defined datacenters [FRZ13]. Address spaces that are tied from guest operating systems down to features that are installed on physical network devices, i.e. physical load balancers, result in slower provisioning and limited placement options. VMs (Virtual machines) are geographically dependent on hardware features, vendors and the deployment on underlying fabrics. Programmatic provisioning, control and visibility, allow instant deployment of complex Layer 2 to Layer 7 topologies. From a provisioning perspective maintaining those services is operationally intensive and expensive [GHMP09]. Network Virtualization introduces a layer between physical networking equipment and guest OS. The virtual overlay network can e.g. be created with a tunnelling technology called VXLAN (Virtual Extensible Local Area Network). We discuss a novel approach to a software-defined datacenters as dealt with in the LRZ (Leibniz Super Computing Centre in Munich) infrastructure. We describe the state-of-the-art in datacenter network virtualization in Section 1. Section 2 provides an overview to Open vSwitch. We look at selected features and the overall performance compared to cutting edge hardware switches and experimental ports like the DPDK vSwitch. Section 3 summarizes this paper. 1 Network Virtualization An optimal resource allocation by the virtualized networks directly relates to financial savings [GHMP09]. Existing methods for network virtualization consist of plenty of primitives and proposals, but are nothing more than point solutions, in the sense that only single aspects of networking are being virtualized [CKRS10]. VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) can virtualize the IP space by applying NAT (Network Address Translation) and therefore, share overlapping IP addresses with multiple tenants. With MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching), paths across multiple physical networks can be virtualized. VRFs (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) enables infrastructure operators to have virtual FIBs (Forwarding Information Bases) and therefore moves the routing processes into VMs. On behalf of OpenFlow the Data and Control Plane split paves the way for SDN (Software Defined Networking) [sdn].
Oral anticoagulation management in patients with atrial fibrillation undergoing cardiac implantable electronic device implantation

Oral anticoagulation (OAC) therapy is associated with increased periprocedural risks after cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) implantation. Patterns of anticoagulation management involving non–vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) have not been characterized.
Benchmarking Univariate Time Series Classifiers

: Time series are a collection of values sequentially recorded over time. Nowadays, sensors for recording time series are omnipresent as RFID chips, wearables, smart homes, or event-based systems. Time series classiĄcation aims at predicting a class label for a time series whose label is unknown. Therefore, a classiĄer has to train a model using labeled samples. ClassiĄcation time is a key challenge given new applications like event-based monitoring, real-time decision or streaming systems. This paper is the Ąrst benchmark that compares 12 state of the art time series classiĄers based on prediction and classiĄcation times. We observed that most of the state-of-the-art classiĄers require extensive train and classiĄcation times, and might not be applicable for these new applications.
Permeation of Dopamine Sulfate through the Blood-Brain Barrier

Dopamine sulfate (DA-3- and DA-4-S) have been determined in the human brain, but it is unclear whether they are locally formed in the central nervous system (CNS), or transported into the CNS from peripheral sources. In the current study, permeation of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) by DA-S was studied by injecting 13C6-labelled regioisomers of DA-S (13DA-3-S and 13DA-4-S) and dopamine (DA) subcutaneously (s.c.) in anesthetized rats, then analyzing brain microdialysis and plasma samples by UPLC-MS/MS. The results in the microdialysis samples demonstrated that brain concentrations of 13DA-S regioisomers clearly increased after the s.c. injections. The concentration of DA did not change, indicating the permeation of DA-S through an intact BBB. The analysis of plasma samples, however, showed that DA-S only permeates the BBB to a small extent, as the concentrations in plasma were substantially higher than in the microdialysis samples. The results also showed that the concentrations of DA-3-S were around three times higher than the concentrations of DA-4-S in rat brain, as well as in the plasma samples after the s.c. injections, indicating that DA-3-S and DA-4-S permeate the BBB with similar efficiency. The fate of 13DA-S in brain was followed by monitoring 13C6-labelled DA-S hydrolysis products, i.e. 13DA and its common metabolites; however, no 13C6-labelled products were detected. This suggests that DA-S either permeates through the BBB back to the peripheral circulation or is dissociated or metabolized by unexpected mechanisms.
Mental health service availability and delivery at the global level: an analysis by countries’ income level from WHO's Mental Health Atlas 2014

Aims. The World Health Organization (WHO)’s Mental Health Atlas series has established itself as the single most comprehensive and most widely used source of information on the global mental health situation. The data derived from the latest Mental Health Atlas survey carried out in 2014 describes the availability and delivery of mental health services in the WHO's Member States, focussing on differences by country's income level. Methods. The data contained in this paper are mainly derived from questions relating to mental health service availability and uptake, as well as on financial and human resources for mental health. Results are presented as median values and analysed by World Bank income group. Interquartile ranges are also provided as measures of statistical dispersion. Results. In total, 171 out of WHO's 194 Member States were able to at least partially complete the Atlas questionnaire. The results highlight a wide gap between high and low-medium income countries in a number of areas: for example, high-income countries have 20 times more beds in community-based inpatient units and 30 times more admissions; the rate of patients cared by outpatient facilities is 40 times higher; and there are 66 times more community outpatient contacts and 15 times more mental health staff at outpatient level. Overall resources for mental health are not distributed efficiently: globally about 60% of financial resources and over two-thirds of all available mental health staff are concentrated in mental hospitals, which serve only a small proportion of patients. Results indicate that outpatient care is the only effective means of increasing the coverage for mental disorders and is expanding, but it is strongly influenced by country income level. Two elements of the network of mental health facilities are particularly scarce in low- and middle-income countries: day treatment facilities and community residential facilities. Conclusions. The WHO Mental Health Atlas 2014 survey provides basic mental health information at the level of WHO's Member States, concerning mental health resources and activities. Atlas promotes the use of information, usually underestimated not only in low- and middle-income countries but also in high-income countries. Information is needed not only for monitoring the scaling up of the mental health system at country level, but also for improving transparency and accountability for users, families and the public.
A Fast, Open EEG Classification Framework Based on Feature Compression and Channel Ranking

Superior feature extraction, channel selection and classification methods are essential for designing electroencephalography (EEG) classification frameworks. However, the performance of most frameworks is limited by their improper channel selection methods and too specifical design, leading to high computational complexity, non-convergent procedure and narrow expansibility. In this paper, to remedy these drawbacks, we propose a fast, open EEG classification framework centralized by EEG feature compression, low-dimensional representation, and convergent iterative channel ranking. First, to reduce the complexity, we use data clustering to compress the EEG features channel-wise, packing the high-dimensional EEG signal, and endowing them with numerical signatures. Second, to provide easy access to alternative superior methods, we structurally represent each EEG trial in a feature vector with its corresponding numerical signature. Thus, the recorded signals of many trials shrink to a low-dimensional structural matrix compatible with most pattern recognition methods. Third, a series of effective iterative feature selection approaches with theoretical convergence is introduced to rank the EEG channels and remove redundant ones, further accelerating the EEG classification process and ensuring its stability. Finally, a classical linear discriminant analysis (LDA) model is employed to classify a single EEG trial with selected channels. Experimental results on two real world brain-computer interface (BCI) competition datasets demonstrate the promising performance of the proposed framework over state-of-the-art methods.
Association of Blood Transfusion From Female Donors With and Without a History of Pregnancy With Mortality Among Male and Female Transfusion Recipients

Importance Transfusion of red blood cells from female donors has been associated with increased mortality in male recipients. Objective To quantify the association between red blood cell transfusion from female donors with and without a history of pregnancy and mortality of red blood cell recipients. Design, Setting, and Participants Retrospective cohort study of first-time transfusion recipients at 6 major Dutch hospitals enrolled from May 30, 2005, to September 1, 2015; the final follow-up date was September 1, 2015. The primary analysis was the no-donor-mixture cohort (ie, either all red blood cell transfusions exclusively from male donors, or all exclusively from female donors without a history of pregnancy, or all exclusively from female donors with a history of pregnancy). The association between mortality and exposure to transfusions from ever-pregnant or never-pregnant female donors was analyzed using life tables and time-varying Cox proportional hazards models. Exposures Red blood cell transfusions from ever-pregnant or never-pregnant female donors, compared with red blood cell transfusions from male donors. Main Outcomes and Measures All-cause mortality during follow-up. Results The cohort for the primary analyses consisted of 31 118 patients (median age, 65 [interquartile range, 42-77] years; 52% female) who received 59 320 red blood cell transfusions exclusively from 1 of 3 types of donors (88% male; 6% ever-pregnant female; and 6% never-pregnant female). The number of deaths in this cohort was 3969 (13% mortality). For male recipients of red blood cell transfusions, all-cause mortality rates after a red blood cell transfusion from an ever-pregnant female donor vs male donor were 101 vs 80 deaths per 1000 person-years (time-dependent “per transfusion” hazard ratio [HR] for death, 1.13 [95% CI, 1.01-1.26]). For receipt of transfusion from a never-pregnant female donor vs male donor, mortality rates were 78 vs 80 deaths per 1000 person-years (HR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.81-1.06]). Among female recipients of red blood cell transfusions, mortality rates for an ever-pregnant female donor vs male donor were 74 vs 62 per 1000 person-years (HR, 0.99 [95% CI, 0.87 to 1.13]); for a never-pregnant female donor vs male donor, mortality rates were 74 vs 62 per 1000 person-years (HR, 1.01 [95% CI, 0.88-1.15]). Conclusions and Relevance Among patients who received red blood cell transfusions, receipt of a transfusion from an ever-pregnant female donor, compared with a male donor, was associated with increased all-cause mortality among male recipients but not among female recipients. Transfusions from never-pregnant female donors were not associated with increased mortality among male or female recipients. Further research is needed to replicate these findings, determine their clinical significance, and identify the underlying mechanism.
Risk of obstructive sleep apnea and excessive daytime sleepiness in hospitalized psychiatric patients

Objectives This study evaluated the risk of developing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in hospitalized psychiatric patients at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUB-MC). Factors associated with OSA and EDS occurrence in this sample were also examined. Methods The Berlin questionnaire and the Epworth sleepiness scale; which respectively evaluate OSA and EDS symptoms, were administered to individuals hospitalized at an acute psychiatric treatment unit at the AUB-MC between the dates of January 2014 and October 2016. Additional data collected included general demographics, psychiatric diagnoses, and questionnaires evaluating depression and anxiety symptoms. Statistical analyses utilizing SPSS were performed to determine the prevalence of OSA and EDS, as well as their respective associations with patient profiles. Results Our results showed that 39.5% of participants were found to have a high risk of sleep apnea and 9.9% of the participants were found to have abnormal daytime sleepiness. The risk of developing OSA was associated with a higher body mass index (BMI) (P=0.02), and depression severity (patient health questionnaire 9 score) (P=0.01). Increasing severity of depressive symptoms was associated with a higher risk of sleep apnea (P=0.01). BMI (odds ratio [OR] =5.97, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.89–18.82) and depression severity (OR =4.04, 95% CI 1.80–9.07) were also found to be predictors of OSA. The psychiatric diagnoses of the participants were not found to have a significant association with the risk of sleep apnea. Conclusion The risk of OSA is increased among hospitalized psychiatric patients, and this condition can have detrimental effects on psychiatric patients. OSA appears to be under-recognized in this population, psychiatrists should screen for OSA in hospitalized psychiatric patients and refer them for diagnostic testing or treatment when indicated.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1)Quasispecies at the Sites of Mycobacterium tuberculosis InfectionContribute to Systemic HIV-1 Heterogeneity

ABSTRACT We have recently reported an increased heterogeneity in the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) envelope gene (env) in HIV-1-infected patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) compared to patients with HIV-1 alone. This increase may be a result of dissemination of lung-derived HIV-1 isolates from sites of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and/or the systemic activation of the immune system in response to TB. To distinguish between these two mechanisms, blood and pleural fluid samples were obtained from HIV-1-infected patients with active pleural TB in Kampala, Uganda (CD4 cell counts of 34 to 705 cells/μl, HIV-1 plasma loads of 2,400 to 280,000 RNA copies/ml, and HIV-1 pleural loads of 7,600 to 4,500,000 RNA copies/ml). The C2-C3 coding region of HIV-1 env was PCR amplified from lysed peripheral blood mononuclear cells and pleural fluid mononuclear cells and reverse transcriptase-PCR amplified from plasma and pleural fluid HIV-1 virions of eight HIV-1 patients with pleural TB. Phylogenetic and phenetic analyses revealed a compartmentalization of HIV-1 quasispecies between blood and pleural space in four of eight patients, with migration events between the compartments. There was a trend for a greater genetic heterogeneity in the pleural space, which may be the result of an M. tuberculosis-mediated increase in HIV-1 replication and/or selection pressure at the site of infection. Collectively, these findings suggest that HIV-1 quasispecies in the M. tuberculosis-infected pleural space may leak into the systemic circulation and lead to increased systemic HIV-1 heterogeneity during TB.
On the Complexity of Team Logic and its Two-Variable Fragment

We study the logic FO(~), the extension of first-order logic with team semantics by unrestricted Boolean negation. It was recently shown axiomatizable, but otherwise has not yet received much attention in questions of computational complexity. In this paper, we consider its two-variable fragment FO2(~) and prove that its satisfiability problem is decidable, and in fact complete for the recently introduced non-elementary class TOWER(poly). Moreover, we classify the complexity of model checking of FO(~) with respect to the number of variables and the quantifier rank, and prove a dichotomy between PSPACE- and ATIME-ALT(exp, poly)-completeness. To achieve the lower bounds, we propose a translation from modal team logic MTL to FO2(~) that extends the well-known standard translation from modal logic ML to FO2. For the upper bounds, we translate to a fragment of second-order logic.
Substituting bond wires by additively manufactured interconnections

This work shows a comparison of microstrip to integrated circuits junction between conventional bond wires and additively manufactured signal interconnect. Therefore, an approach for reducing signal reflection is proposed and implemented on a test board fabricated on typical radio frequency substrate material. Measurements up to 24 GHz reveal improved performance as compared to conventional technology in terms of reflection suppression and transmission losses.
A novel hybridization of opposition-based learning and cooperative co-evolutionary for large-scale optimization

Opposition-based learning (OBL) and cooperative co-evolution (CC) have demonstrated promising performance when dealing with large-scale global optimization (LSGO) problems. In this work, we propose a novel framework for hybridizing these two techniques, and investigate the performance of simple implementations of this new framework using the most recent LSGO benchmarking test suite. The obtained results verify the effectiveness of our proposed OBL-CC framework. Moreover, some advanced statistical analyses reveal that the proposed hybridization significantly outperforms its component methods in terms of the quality of finally obtained solutions.