Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-Term Outcome of Patients With Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension: Results From an International Prospective Registry

Background— Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, a rare complication of acute pulmonary embolism, is characterized by fibrothrombotic obstructions of large pulmonary arteries combined with small-vessel arteriopathy. It can be cured by pulmonary endarterectomy, and can be clinically improved by medical therapy in inoperable patients. A European registry was set up in 27 centers to evaluate long-term outcome and outcome correlates in 2 distinct populations of operated and not-operated patients who have chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. Methods and Results— A total of 679 patients newly diagnosed with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension were prospectively included over a 24-month period. Estimated survival at 1, 2, and 3 years was 93% (95% confidence interval [CI], 90–95), 91% (95% CI, 87–93), and 89% (95% CI, 86–92) in operated patients (n=404), and only 88% (95% CI, 83–91), 79% (95% CI, 74–83), and 70% (95% CI, 64–76) in not-operated patients (n=275). In both operated and not-operated patients, pulmonary arterial hypertension–targeted therapy did not affect survival estimates significantly. Mortality was associated with New York Heart Association functional class IV (hazard ratio [HR], 4.16; 95% CI, 1.49–11.62; P=0.0065 and HR, 4.76; 95% CI, 1.76–12.88; P=0.0021), increased right atrial pressure (HR, 1.34; 95% CI, 0.95–1.90; P=0.0992 and HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.20–1.88; P=0.0004), and a history of cancer (HR, 3.02; 95% CI, 1.36–6.69; P=0.0065 and HR, 2.15; 95% CI, 1.18–3.94; P=0.0129) in operated and not-operated patients, respectively. Additional correlates of mortality were bridging therapy with pulmonary arterial hypertension–targeted drugs, postoperative pulmonary hypertension, surgical complications, and additional cardiac procedures in operated patients, and comorbidities such as coronary disease, left heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in not-operated patients. Conclusions— The long-term prognosis of operated patients currently is excellent and better than the outcome of not-operated patients.
Ranking based ontology scheming using eigenpair computation

Ontology, which is regularly used in computer information retrieval and other computer applications, plays an essential role in effectively retrieving the concepts that have highly semantic similarity with the original query concept. Meanwhile, ontology also returns the results to the user. Ontology mapping is used to connect the relationship between different ontologies, and similarity computation is the essence of such applications. In this article, we present a ranking based ontology optimizing algorithm to get the ontology score function which map each ontology vertex to a real number, and the similarity between ontology vertices is determined according to the difference of the scores. The ontology framework is designed relied on the eigenpair computation, and the solution is obtained by means of operator calculation. The result data of simulation experiment implies that our new ontology method has high efficiency and accuracy in ontology similarity measure and ontology mapping in multiple disciplines.
Innovation through Experience Staging: Motives and Outcomes

There is a growing recognition of the opportunities of innovation through experience staging. The literature, however, tends to focus on high-profile examples of firms from largely hedonic sectors, such as entertainment and hospitality. These cases provide vivid and persuasive examples, but they fail to address how firms outside these sectors can join the experience economy - a term coined in 1998 by Pine and Gilmore - by developing new products and services with experiences at their core. The paper reports on two studies undertaken to examine why firms that do not belong to sectors that are largely hedonic innovate through experience staging and how they benefit from doing so. The first study is an in-depth case study of 15 diverse firms, which examines these firms' motives for pursuing innovation through experience staging. The second study is a two-year longitudinal quantitative survey of 131 small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) to address the question of the benefits that firms that do not have strong brands can gain by from innovation through staging experiences. The first study provides the basis for classifying firms along two dimensions depending on the nature of the new products or services (referred to collectively as offerings) they create. The first dimension has to do with whether new offerings have a functional or experiential core. The second dimension has to do with the degree of experiential augmentation applied to offerings. The first study suggests that firms adopt an experience-staging strategy to innovation based on both outward-facing and inward-facing motives. The outward-facing motives include improving a firm's image in its market, entering new markets, and attracting new customers. The inward-facing motives include improving a firm's attractiveness to employees and increasing profitability. The results of the second study suggest that creating offerings with an experiential core can contribute to success by enhancing a firm's image, its attractiveness to employees, and its ability to enter new markets. Moreover, experiential augmentation contributes to profitability, new customer attraction, and employee attractiveness. This research has important implications for theory and practice. In the first place, this research extends existing theory about experience staging to firms outside sectors that are largely hedonic. In the second place, the managerial implications are that innovation through experience staging can be an effective way for SMEs, even those outside industries, such as entertainment or hospitality, to create competitive advantage. © 2012 Product Development & Management Association.
Factors influencing return to work at one year after coronary bypass graft surgery: results of the PERISCOP study

Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive factors of return to work after coronary bypass graft surgery, for the subgroup of professionally active patients aged less than 60 years included in the PERISCOP study. Methods In the principal, prospective, multicentre study, 2065 patients were evaluated 20 ± 10 days after surgery by exercise testing, echocardiogram and 24-h ambulatory ECG monitoring. A questionnaire was completed one year after surgery. We studied a subgroup of this population, consisting of 530 patients previously defined (94.5% men; mean age: 50.5 ± 5.8 years). Results One year after surgery, five of these patients had died and 21 were lost to follow-up. Among the remaining patients, 340 patients (67.5%) had returned to work. Forty patients (7.9%) had retired, 45 (8.9%) were on sick leave, 22 (4.4%) were unemployed, 49 (9.7%) returned to work after the deadline of 12 months, eight (1.6%) had given insufficient information on return to work. In multivariate analysis, the independent predictors of a failure to return to work were age > 51 years [OR: 0.39 (95% CI: 0.25-0.59)], being a manual worker [OR: 0.49 (95% CI: 0.31-0.79)], being from South East France [(OR: 0.42 (95% CI: 0.23-0.74)], presence of angina [OR: 0.40 (95% CI: 0.20-0.82)], dyspnoea [(OR: 0.46 (95% CI: 0.28-0.77)] and a duration of exercise < 420s [(OR: 0.50 (95% CI: 0.33-0.76)]. Conclusions Return to work after coronary bypass graft surgery is observed in 67.5% of cases and depends essentially on socio-professional factors and residual symptoms. A regional effect was also observed, which requires further study.
Public Transport Planning and Management in Developing Countries

Introduction General Status of urban transport in India and developing countries Status of public transport with respect to coverage, feet strength, and utilization in urban areas Sustainability and land use consideration Demography and Settlement Patterns Introduction Demographic changes of India since 1950 Gross domestic product (GDP) Migration to urban areas Growth of slums in urban areas Accessibility and mobility issues for rural settlements Transport infrastructure scenario in India Different Modes and Their Characteristics Mode of transport Transport systems definitions and classifications Intermediate public transport Public transport modes Classification of mass transit modes Integrated transport infrastructure approach A look ahead in public transportation Comparative analyses Current Scenario of Public Transport (PT) in Developing Countries Current perception of PT Current planning and operational practices Issues of coordination and level of services Funding pattern Differences in scenario with respect to developed countries Public Transport Planning in Rural Areas Planning strategy Network planning Travel demand estimation Stakeholder consultation and preferences Public transport mode options Public Transport Planning In Urban Areas Urban transport planning Travel demand estimation Efficient use of existing/proposed infrastructure Routing and scheduling of public transport Intermodal coordination Stakeholder consultation and preferences Feasibility for higher-order modes like BRT and Metro rail Management of Public Transport Urban transport management Data collection, retrieval, and analysis for effective management Role of private sector in public transport management The global trend Assessment of user satisfaction Resource Needs for Public Transport Financial performance of public transport organizations Inter STU comparison Review of the existing funding pattern Estimation of resource requirements Institutional finance for STUs Innovative methods to generate revenue surpluses Economics of Public Transport Cost of public transport services Manpower requirements Estimation of social, economic, and environmental benefits References and Bibliography Index
The Feasibility of Using Expert Systems in the Management of Human Resources

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a decision aid that is being used increasingly in the business world, the expert system, and to begin to examine its potential for human resource management. First, the expert system technology is reviewed, with a special emphasis on the players, those involved in developing and using the system, and the parts, the three main components of a system. This is followed by an analysis of the costs and benefits and the advantages and disadvantages that have been ascribed to expert systems. We conclude this initial research endeavor by presenting some preliminary findings which suggest that employees are willing to cooperate with expert systems, even those that require personal information, and that they see some benefits to using expert systems as decision aids.
Paid Leave in Private Industry Over the Past 20 Years

Excerpt] Paid leave was the most prevalent employee benefit provided by employers in private industry throughout the United States in 2012. Eighty-four percent of private industry workers received vacation, holiday, or personal leave. Seventy-two percent of workers received both paid holidays and paid vacations, and 61 percent were covered by sick leave plans. For employers, the cost for providing these benefits to employees was $1.98 per hour worked, and these benefits made up 6.9 percent of total compensation. The eligibility for paid leave has undergone change over the past 20 years. While fewer workers enjoy paid vacations, employers are increasingly providing access to sick leave, personal leave, and family leave. Also, by comparison, the employer cost per employee hour worked for paid leave was $1.09 or 6.8 percent of total compensation in March 1992. This issue of BEYOND THE NUMBERS looks at the changes in employer costs and in different paid leave benefits for private industry workers over the past two decades. These benefits include paid leave for holidays, vacations, sick, personal, funeral, jury duty, military, and family.
A Comparison of Feature Representations for Explosive Threat Detection in Ground Penetrating Radar Data

The automatic detection of buried threats in ground penetrating radar (GPR) data is an active area of research due to GPR’s ability to detect both metal and nonmetal subsurface objects. Recent work on algorithms designed to distinguish between threats and nonthreats in GPR data has utilized computer vision methods to advance the state-of-the-art detection and discrimination performance. Feature extractors, or descriptors, from the computer vision literature have exhibited excellent performance in representing 2-D GPR image patches and allow for robust classification of threats from nonthreats. This paper aims to perform a broad study of feature extraction methods in order to identify characteristics that lead to improved classification performance under controlled conditions. The results presented in this paper show that gradient-based features, such as the edge histogram descriptor and the scale invariant feature transform, provide the most robust performance across a large and varied data set. These results indicate that various techniques from the computer vision literature can be successfully applied to target detection in GPR data and that more advanced techniques from the computer vision literature may provide further performance improvements.
High response rate and improvement of long-term survival with combined treatment modalities in patients with poor-risk primary thyroid diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: an International Extranodal Lymphoma Study Group and Intergruppo Italiano Linfomi study

The impact of different treatment modalities and prognostic factors on the clinical course of primary thyroid diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (PTDLBCL) is still the subject of research. This study was conducted to clarify these clinical aspects of this disorder. The clinical parameters of 48 patients with PTDLBCL at time of diagnosis were comparable to those of previous studies. Patients underwent either radiotherapy (RT) ± surgery (SX), chemotherapy (CHT) alone or in combination with local treatments (RT or SX), or SX followed by CHT and RT. A 90% complete remission (CR) rate was observed among patients who underwent combined treatment modalities (CTM), compared to 76% among the others. The 5-year progression-free survival differed significantly between both groups (p = 0.028). Poor performance status and advanced age correlated with decreased survival. PTDLBCL is a curable disease prevalent in elderly patients. Combined treatment modalities were able to induce an elevated rate of CR, improving long-term survival in younger patients. However, the outcome in elderly patients still remains unsatisfactory.
Lessons Learned From 2 Patients With Multidrug-Resistant HIV-1 Infection Successfully Treated With a Darunavir-Containing Antiretroviral Treatment Regimen

The authors describe 2 patients with life-threatening multidrug-resistant HIV-1 infection who responded very well to a treatment regimen containing darunavir and enfuvirtide. They discuss the availability of several new treatment options such as darunavir, etravirine, integrase, and CCR5 inhibitors for patients with multidrug-resistant viruses.
An examination of the nature of attentional deficits in patients with Parkinson's disease: Evidence from a spatial orienting task

Endogenous and exogenous shifts of attention were examined in nondemented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). In the endogenous condition, an arrow was used to cue participants' attention to the possible location of an impending target, whereas in the exogenous condition, a brightened box was used to cue attention. Cues were either valid (i.e., the target appeared in the cued location) or invalid (i.e., the target appeared in a noncued location). The time between cue onset and target onset (stimulus onset asynchrony or SOA) was varied in each condition. The results indicated that PD patients were not differentially impaired in shifting attention at the shorter SOAs relative to normal controls. However, at longer SOAs, the PD patients demonstrated less of an effect from cueing than did the normal control participants. PD patients' differential effect from cueing was evident in both exogenous and endogenous conditions. These results suggest that PD patients may experience a rapid decay of attentional inhibition and do not support the notion that a decrement in processing resources underlies their attentional deficits. Moreover, these findings further support the notion that the basal ganglia may play an important role in attentional functions. (JINS, 1997, 3, 337–347.)
Ontological support for a measurement and evaluation framework

A common challenge faced by many software and Web organizations is to have a clear establishment of a measurement and evaluation framework for quality assurance programs. A well‐established measurement and evaluation framework might rely on a sound conceptual (ontological) base. Besides, organizations could succeed if resulting measurements and evaluations are tailored to their information needs for specific purposes, contexts, and user viewpoints. In this paper, we discuss our measurement and evaluation framework so‐called INCAMI that stands for information need, concept model, attribute, metric and indicator, which is also based on our proposal of the metrics and indicators ontology. Without appropriate metadata of metrics and indicators, it is difficult to ensure that measure and indicator values are repeatable and comparable among organization's projects. Moreover, analyses and comparisons could be performed in an inconsistent way. The present work tries to highlight about the usefulness of this framework and strategy as well as to discuss why INCAMI can be a more robust and engineered framework than others. Finally, given the aim of this special issue on aggregation operators and models, where they fit into the framework to model and compute, partial/global indicators are highlighted. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Realistic multi-view face animation with aid of 3D PDM

Attempting to model face animation with both picture-perfect appearance and natural head rotation, this paper describes a multi-view face animation model for photo-realistic face animation in novel views from videos of a talking person using machine learning techniques. For modeling face, we express face by a multi-view face texture space model with the aid of 3D point distribution model space to express the shape variation in compact way, which can result in synthesis of the novel view face texture with various realistic expressions and poses. The appearance space and shape space are connected by bridge of 2D mesh structures. Following the idea of analysis-by-synthesis, we employed model fitting analysis using Levenberg-Marquardt optimization and trajectory training for smooth and continuous animation. The encouraging experimental results are shown.
Post‐release acclimation of translocated low‐elevation, non‐migratory bighorn sheep

Use of global positioning system (GPS) transmitters provides opportunities to evaluate ecological questions associated with fine-scale animal movements. One important application is to evaluate how animals acclimate to new surroundings after translocation. Our objective was to quantify temporal acclimation for low-elevation, non-migratory bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) from 3 translocations to the Seminoe Mountains in south-central Wyoming, USA, from 2009 to 2010 (n ¼38) as well as for bighorns captured and released on-site in 2011 (n ¼24). We used number of days for movements from individual bighorn to stabilize as a measure of acclimation. Mean acclimation for translocated bighorns after release was 29.3 days (SE ¼2.5, range ¼0-70). Mean acclimation for bighorns captured and released on-site was 5.0 days (SE ¼2.4, range ¼0-52). Paired comparisons indicated acclimation for 16 previously translocated bighorns that were captured and released on-site was reduced by 30.8 days (SE ¼5.0) or 86%. Within translocation efforts, bighorn females in supplemental releases acclimated an average of 19.5 days sooner (or in 57% of the time) than animals from the first translocation. Because acclimation periods after translocation releases are associated with increased mortality risk, managers should consider supplemental releases to minimize acclimation periods. 2014 The Wildlife Society.
Advances in boosting of temporal and spatial models

Boosting is an iterative algorithm for functional approximation and numerical optimization which can be applied to solve statistical regression-type problems. By design, boosting can mimic the solutions of many conventional statistical models, such as the linear model, the generalized linear model, and the generalized additive model, but its strength is to enhance these models or even go beyond. It enjoys increasing attention since a) it is a generic algorithm, easily extensible to exciting new problems, and b) it can cope with``difficult'' data where conventional statistical models fail. In this dissertation, we design autoregressive time series models based on boosting which capture nonlinearity in the mean and in the variance, and propose new models for multi-step forecasting of both. We use a special version of boosting, called componentwise gradient boosting, which is innovative in the estimation of the conditional variance of asset returns by sorting out irrelevant (lagged) predictors. We propose a model which enables us not only to identify the factors which drive market volatility, but also to assess the specific nature of their impact. Therefore, we gain a deeper insight into the nature of the volatility processes. We analyze four broad asset classes, namely, stocks, commodities, bonds, and foreign exchange, and use a wide range of potential macro and financial drivers. The proposed model for volatility forecasting performs very favorably for stocks and commodities relative to the common GARCH(1,1) benchmark model. The advantages are particularly convincing for longer forecasting horizons. To our knowledge, the application of boosting to multi-step forecasting of either the mean or the variance has not been done before. In a separate study, we focus on the conditional mean of German industrial production. With boosting, we improve the forecasting accuracy when compared to several competing models including the benchmark in this field, the linear autoregressive model. In an exhaustive simulation study we show that boosting of high-order nonlinear autoregressive time series can be very competitive in terms of goodness-of-fit when compared to alternative nonparametric models. Finally, we apply boosting in a spatio-temporal context to data coming from outside the econometric field. We estimate the browsing pressure on young beech trees caused by the game species within the borders of the Bavarian Forest National Park ``Bayerischer Wald,'' Germany. We found that using the geographic coordinates of the browsing cases contributes considerably to the fit. Furthermore, this bivariate geographic predictor is better suited for prediction if it allows for abrupt changes in the browsing pressure.
Pension Accounting Choice in Germany: Pension Discount Rate and Actuarial Gains and Losses

This paper analyses pension accounting choice in Germany for firms using IFRS or US GAAP. It shows that firms choose the pension discount rate and the treatment of actuarial gains and losses in order to smooth the effect of inherently volatile pension numbers. Pension discount rates for German pension plans are lower than market interest rates when interest rates rise and vice versa. The option to account for actuarial gains and losses outside profit or loss under IFRS is more likely to be adopted if a firm has actuarial losses in excess of the 10% corridor. These and further findings of the paper indicate that pension accounting choice in Germany is utilised strategically.