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{ "title": "CD4+T cells do not mediate within-host competition between genetically diverse malaria parasites", "abstract": "Ecological interactions between microparasite populations in the same host are an important source of selection on pathogen traits such as virulence and drug resistance. In the rodent malaria model Plasmodium chabaudi in laboratory mice, parasites that are more virulent can competitively suppress less virulent parasites in mixed infections. There is evidence that some of this suppression is due to immune-mediated apparent competition, where an immune response elicited by one parasite population suppress the population density of another. This raises the question whether enhanced immunity following vaccination would intensify competitive interactions, thus strengthening selection for virulence in Plasmodium populations. Using the P. chabaudi model, we studied mixed infections of virulent and avirulent genotypes in CD4+T cell-depleted mice. Enhanced efficacy of CD4+T cell-dependent responses is the aim of several candidate malaria vaccines. We hypothesized that if immune-mediated interactions were involved in competition, removal of the CD4+T cells would alleviate competitive suppression of the avirulent parasite. Instead, we found no alleviation of competition in the acute phase, and significant enhancement of competitive suppression after parasite densities had peaked. Thus, the host immune response may actually be alleviating other forms of competition, such as that over red blood cells. Our results suggest that the CD4+-dependent immune response, and mechanisms that act to enhance it such as vaccination, may not have the undesirable affect of exacerbating within-host competition and hence the strength of this source of selection for virulence.", "corpus_id": 1216612 }

{ "title": "Real-time monitoring of stress erythropoiesis in vivo using Gata1 and beta-globin LCR luciferase transgenic mice.", "abstract": "Erythroid progenitors have the potential to proliferate rapidly in response to environmental stimuli. This process is referred to as stress erythropoiesis, with erythropoietin (EPO) playing central roles in its promotion. In this study, we wanted to elucidate the molecular mechanisms governing the regulation of stress erythropoiesis and the maintenance of red-cell homeostasis. This was achieved by our development of a noninvasive real-time monitoring system for erythropoiesis using transgenic mouse lines expressing luciferase under the control of the mouse Gata1 hematopoietic regulatory domain (G1-HRD-luc) or human beta-globin locus control region (Hbb-LCR-luc). Optical bioluminescence images revealed that the luciferase was specifically expressed in spleen and bone marrow and was induced rapidly in response to anemia and hypoxia stimuli. The G1-HRD-luc activity tracked the emergence and disappearance of proerythroblast-stage progenitors, whereas the Hbb-LCR-luc activity tracked erythroblasts and later stage erythroid cells. Increased plasma EPO concentration preceded an increase in G1-HRD-luc, supporting our contention that EPO acts as the key upstream signal in stress erythropoiesis. Hence, we conclude that G1-HRD-luc and Hbb-LCR-luc reporters are differentially activated during stress erythropoiesis and that the transgenic mouse lines used serve as an important means for understanding the homeostatic regulation of erythropoiesis.", "corpus_id": 2798432 }

{ "title": "Different genetic characteristics of Plasmodium falciparum isolates collected during successive clinical malaria episodes in Senegalese children.", "abstract": "A narrow epidemiologic survey was conducted during a four-month period of intense malaria transmission in Dielmo, a holoendemic Senegalese village. Longitudinal clinical and parasitologic follow-up indicate that clinical malaria episodes always occurred after an abrupt increase in parasite densities. Polymerase chain reaction analysis of Plasmodium falciparum parasites was carried out in blood samples collected longitudinally from 10 children who had experienced several clinical episodes during this period. Our data show that the genetic diversity of the parasites circulating in this village is very large. The successive clinical episodes experienced by each child were caused by genetically distinct parasite populations that were recently inoculated and multiplied in an apparently unrestricted manner. Importantly, the genetic characteristics of the parasite populations detected during phases of asymptomatic carriage differed from those causing a clinical episode, suggesting that the various factors that control of parasite growth in these children are strain-specific.", "corpus_id": 41192039, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet light in the fungal pathogen causing white-nose syndrome of bats", "abstract": "Bat white-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has decimated North American hibernating bats since its emergence in 2006. Here, we utilize comparative genomics to examine the evolutionary history of this pathogen in comparison to six closely related nonpathogenic species. P. destructans displays a large reduction in carbohydrate-utilizing enzymes (CAZymes) and in the predicted secretome (~50%), and an increase in lineage-specific genes. The pathogen has lost a key enzyme, UVE1, in the alternate excision repair (AER) pathway, which is known to contribute to repair of DNA lesions induced by ultraviolet (UV) light. Consistent with a nonfunctional AER pathway, P. destructans is extremely sensitive to UV light, as well as the DNA alkylating agent methyl methanesulfonate (MMS). The differential susceptibility of P. destructans to UV light in comparison to other hibernacula-inhabiting fungi represents a potential “Achilles’ heel” of P. destructans that might be exploited for treatment of bats with WNS.White-nose syndrome, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, is decimating North American bats. Here, Palmer et al. use comparative genomics to examine the evolutionary history of this pathogen, and show that it has lost a crucial DNA repair enzyme and is extremely sensitive to UV light.", "corpus_id": 3286254 }

{ "title": "The Two Cryptochrome/Photolyase Family Proteins Fulfill Distinct Roles in DNA Photorepair and Regulation of Conidiation in the Gray Mold Fungus Botrytis cinerea", "abstract": "ABSTRACT The plant-pathogenic leotiomycete Botrytis cinerea is known for the strict regulation of its asexual differentiation programs by environmental light conditions. Sclerotia are formed in constant darkness; black/near-UV (NUV) light induces conidiation; and blue light represses both differentiation programs. Sensing of black/NUV light is attributed to proteins of the cryptochrome/photolyase family (CPF). To elucidate the molecular basis of the photoinduction of conidiation, we functionally characterized the two CPF proteins encoded in the genome of B. cinerea as putative positive-acting components. B. cinerea CRY1 (BcCRY1), a cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer (CPD) photolyase, acts as the major enzyme of light-driven DNA repair (photoreactivation) and has no obvious role in signaling. In contrast, BcCRY2, belonging to the cry-DASH proteins, is dispensable for photorepair but performs regulatory functions by repressing conidiation in white and especially black/NUV light. The transcription of bccry1 and bccry2 is induced by light in a White Collar complex (WCC)-dependent manner, but neither light nor the WCC is essential for the repression of conidiation through BcCRY2 when bccry2 is constitutively expressed. Further, BcCRY2 affects the transcript levels of both WCC-induced and WCC-repressed genes, suggesting a signaling function downstream of the WCC. Since both CPF proteins are dispensable for photoinduction by black/NUV light, the origin of this effect remains elusive and may be connected to a yet unknown UV-light-responsive system. IMPORTANCE Botrytis cinerea is an economically important plant pathogen that causes gray mold diseases in a wide variety of plant species, including high-value crops and ornamental flowers. The spread of disease in the field relies on the formation of conidia, a process that is regulated by different light qualities. While this feature has been known for a long time, we are just starting to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms. Conidiation in B. cinerea is induced by black/near-UV light, whose sensing is attributed to the action of cryptochrome/photolyase family (CPF) proteins. Here we report on the distinct functions of two CPF proteins in the photoresponse of B. cinerea. While BcCRY1 acts as the major photolyase in photoprotection, BcCRY2 acts as a cryptochrome with a signaling function in regulating photomorphogenesis (repression of conidiation).", "corpus_id": 3378662 }

{ "title": "Pathophysiology of white-nose syndrome in bats: a mechanistic model linking wing damage to mortality", "abstract": "White-nose syndrome is devastating North American bat populations but we lack basic information on disease mechanisms. Altered blood physiology owing to epidermal invasion by the fungal pathogen Geomyces destructans (Gd) has been hypothesized as a cause of disrupted torpor patterns of affected hibernating bats, leading to mortality. Here, we present data on blood electrolyte concentration, haematology and acid–base balance of hibernating little brown bats, Myotis lucifugus, following experimental inoculation with Gd. Compared with controls, infected bats showed electrolyte depletion (i.e. lower plasma sodium), changes in haematology (i.e. increased haematocrit and decreased glucose) and disrupted acid–base balance (i.e. lower CO2 partial pressure and bicarbonate). These findings indicate hypotonic dehydration, hypovolaemia and metabolic acidosis. We propose a mechanistic model linking tissue damage to altered homeostasis and morbidity/mortality.", "corpus_id": 10000131, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "A Reliable Extension to the ODMRP Ad Hoc Multicast Protocol", "abstract": "In this paper an enhanced reliability protocol, R-ODMRP, added to the ODMRP multicast ad hoc protocol is described. This NACK based protocol increases overall data packet delivery by adding data storage and retransmission operations coordinated by the multicast source. Storage responsibilities are assigned to individual nodes based on localized ‘neighborhoods’ with minimal spanning hopcount, within the receiver group. A description is included of the mechanism the source uses to discover and partition all group members into neighborhoods. Each neighborhood stores a sliding window of the full set of data, keeping resend requests and replies localized to one portion of the overall network, reducing network overhead. Simulation results are presented that reflect the enhanced reliability characteristics of the protocol. A discussion is included clarifying the competing metrics and tradeoffs in providing reliability.", "corpus_id": 600078 }

{ "title": "Assuring message delivery in mobile ad hoc networks with packet erasure recovery", "abstract": "In addition to depending on wireless links-which are less reliable than wired ones-mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) introduce a unique set of operational characteristics that affect message delivery assurance. One such characteristic is that the mobility of nodes in a MANET causes the topology of the entire network to alter dynamically. In particular, as a change in a single link can alter the entire delivery path, we note that the persistence of a message delivery route diminishes with the growth of network size. We propose to adapt a method that was proposed by Asmuth and Blakley (1982) for data communication to take advantage of this lack of path persistence to enhance message delivery assurance in MANET. Specifically, we show that this adaptation can be used to improve the level of successful first delivery attempts, and reduce the variations in network latency for delivering successive data packets. Additionally, we show that this adaptation admits dynamic adjustments to accommodate the time varying characteristics of message delivery paths in a MANET. Finally, we show that this adaptation can also be used to provide message security protection en route.", "corpus_id": 39258303 }

{ "title": "Chemical Activation of a South African Coal using Phosphoric Acid", "abstract": "The potential of a South African coal, Bosjesspruit, as a precursor for a phosphoric acid-activated carbon has been assessed using the adsorption of nitrogen at 77 K and mercury porosimetry. Column cleaning of the coal by froth flotation reduced the ash content from 22 to 12 wt.% and caused maceral separtion, resulting in an intertinite-rich product. Reaction of the column-cleaned coal with phosphoric acid in the range 450–550°C produced an activated carbon which was dominantly microporous. The notional BET surface area of the coal reached a maximum of 600 m2/g at a reaction temperature of 550°C.", "corpus_id": 100164520, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Are energy and protein requirements met in hospital?", "abstract": "BACKGROUND\nMalnutrition is a problem within hospitals, which impacts upon clinical outcomes. The present audit assesses whether a hospital menu meets the energy and protein standards recommended by the British Dietetic Association's (BDA) Nutrition and Hydration Digest and determines the contribution of oral nutrition supplements (ONS) and additional snacks.\n\n\nMETHODS\nPatients in a UK South West hospital were categorised as 'nutritionally well' or 'nutritionally vulnerable' in accordance with their Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool score. Energy and protein content of food selected from the menu ('menu choice'), menu food consumed ('hospital intake') and total food consumed including snacks ('overall intake') were calculated and compared with the standards.\n\n\nRESULTS\nIn total, 93 patients were included. For 'nutritionally well' patients (n = 81), energy and protein standards were met by 11.1% and 33.3% ('menu choice'); 7.4% and 22.2% ('hospital intake'); and 14.8% and 28.4% ('overall intake'). For 'nutritionally vulnerable' patients (n = 12), energy and protein standards were met by 0% and 8.3% ('menu choice'); 0% and 8.3% ('hospital intake'); and 8.3% and 16.7% ('overall intake'). Ten percent of patients consumed ONS. Patients who consumed hospital snacks (34%) were more likely to meet the nutrient standards (P ≤ 0.001).\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThe present audit demonstrated that most patients are not meeting the nutrient standards recommended by the BDA Nutrition and Hydration Digest. Recommendations include the provision of energy/protein-dense snacks, as well as menu, offering ONS where clinically indicated, in addition to training for staff. A food services dietitian is ideally placed to lead this, forming a vital link between patients, caterers and clinical teams.", "corpus_id": 3911167 }

{ "title": "Room service in a public hospital improves nutritional intake and increases patient satisfaction while decreasing food waste and cost", "abstract": "BACKGROUND\nRoom service (RS) is a hospital foodservice model that is traditionally unique to the private sector. It allows patients to order meals compliant to their nutritional requirements from a single integrated menu at a time that suits them. Meals are prepared and delivered within 45 min of order. Following implementation in a private adult facility in 2013, Mater Group implemented the first RS in a public adult facility in Australia in 2016. In a pre-post study comparing RS with a traditional foodservice model (TM), key outcomes were measured and analysed.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA retrospective analysis of quality assurance data audits in a pre-post study design was undertaken to assess patient nutritional intake, plate waste, satisfaction and meal costs before and after RS implementation.\n\n\nRESULTS\nComparison of nutritional intake between TM (n = 84) and RS (n = 103) showed statistically significant increases with RS in both energy (5513 kJ day-1 versus 6379 kJ day-1 , P = 0.020) and protein (53 g day-1 versus 74 g day-1 , P < 0.001) intake, as well as energy and protein intake as a percentage of requirements (64% versus 78%, P = 0.002 and 70% versus 99%, P < 0.001, respectively). Total average plate waste decreased from 30% to 17% (P < 0.001). Patient satisfaction indicated an improvement with RS, with 98% of patients scoring the service good to very good, compared to 75% for TM (P < 0.04). Patient food costs decreased by 28% per annum with RS.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThis research provides insight into the benefits achievable with RS in the public hospital setting, confirming that a patient-centred food service model can cost-effectively improve clinical outcomes.", "corpus_id": 51606497 }

{ "title": "Toxic potential of organic constituents of submicron particulate matter (PM1) in an urban road site (Barcelona)", "abstract": "Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is a recognized risk factor contributing to a number of diseases in human populations and wildlife globally. Organic matter is a major component of PM, but its contribution to overall toxicity of PM has not been thoroughly evaluated yet. In the present work, the biological activity of organic extracts from PM1 (particles with less than 1 μm of aerodynamic diameter) collected from an urban road site in the centre of Barcelona (NE Spain) was evaluated using a yeast-based assay (AhR-RYA) and different gene expression markers in zebrafish embryos. Dioxin-like activity of the extracts correlated to primary emissions from local traffic exhausts, reflecting weekday/weekend alternance. Expression levels of cyp1a and of gene markers for key cellular processes and development (ier2, fos) also correlated to vehicle emissions, whereas expression of gene markers related to antioxidant defence and endocrine effects (gstal, hao1, ttr) was strongly reduced in samples with strong contribution from regional air masses with aged secondary organic species or with strong influence of biomass burning emissions. Our data suggest that the toxic potential of PM1 organic chemical constituents strongly depends on the emission sources and on the process of ageing from primary to secondary organic aerosols.", "corpus_id": 25993638, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "X- or γ rays from Supernovae in glacial ice", "abstract": "In an analysis of NO−3 in an Antarctic ice core we have found four spikes of high concentration, three of which occur at depths which correspond roughly to the dates of known galactic supernovae (SN). The production of the observed NO−3 peaks by the hard X rays generated by a SN outburst (particularly Type I) does not seem inconceivable at least from the point of view of energy requirements and current SN models. We predict that the bright SN of 1006 will be ‘Observed’ about 15 m beyond the end of the current core. If this is true, our identification of these spikes with SN will have important consequences for the theory of SN, atmospheric chemistry and transport, and even the dating of ice cores.", "corpus_id": 4285385 }

{ "title": "The historical supernovae", "abstract": "Only a few civilisations throughout the world have contributed significantly to the written records of astronomical phenomena from the historical past. Pre-eminent among these must be Europe, China (together with Korea and Japan), Babylon and the Arab World. A wealth of pre-telescopic data from these sources is readily accessible, and it is in this that searches for historical supernova sightings have been concentrated.", "corpus_id": 17099919 }

{ "title": "Modeling volume effects of experimental brachytherapy in the rat rectum: uncovering the limitations of a radiobiologic concept.", "abstract": "PURPOSE\nTo analyze the significance of volume effects in experimental brachytherapy, based on modeling normal tissue complication probability.\n\n\nMETHODS AND MATERIALS\nExperimental brachytherapy in the rat rectum was based on an eight-step 2.5-mm step size source configuration for 192Ir, afterloaded into an unshielded polystyrene applicator. Volume effects were studied using a half-circumferential lead-shielded applicator and a shorter (two-step) source configuration. The main end point was rectal stenosis.\n\n\nRESULTS\nRectal stenosis was always caused by a radiation ulcer. With the shielded configuration, single-dose ED50 (50% incidence of rectal stenosis) increased from 23 Gy to 36.5 Gy. Single-dose ED50 for the short configuration was 77.9 Gy. The data showed a reasonable fit to a three-parameter version of the biophysical model described by Jackson et al. (1995). This model assumes that organs consist of a large number of radiobiologically independent subunits and that radiation causes a complication if the fraction of the organ damaged is greater than its functional reserve. The fraction of the organ damaged is calculated summing over fractions of the organ damaged at each dose level. The calculated mean functional reserve (nu50) of the rat rectum, assuming a cumulative functional reserve distribution in the group of experimental rats, was 0.53.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThe volume effect observed within small brachytherapy volumes agreed well with clinical experience of large tolerance doses in contact X-ray therapy. However, the nu50 value was comparable to the high functional reserve value reported for liver. Experimental volume effects probably reflect repair processes originating in the areas adjacent to small radiation fields of brachytherapy more than the radiobiologic characteristics of the cells in the irradiated volume.", "corpus_id": 46096634, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Adsorption and degradation of 14C-bisphenol A in a soil trench.", "abstract": "Bisphenol A (BPA) has caused widespread concern among scholars as a result of its estrogenic toxicity. It exists mainly in natural waters, sediments, and soil, as well as sewage and wastewater sludge. Considering that BPA is a common environmental pollutant that is removed along with chemical oxygen demand (COD), nitrogen, and phosphorus in drainage treatment systems, it is important to research the fate of BPA in sewage treatment systems. In this research, laboratory batch experiments on soil degradation and adsorption were conducted with 14C-BPA, aiming to discuss the transport and degradation characteristics of BPA in both simulated facilities and a soil trench. Based on the experimental results, the Freundlich model could be applied to fit the isothermal adsorption curve of the BPA in soil. A low mobility characteristic of BPA was discovered. The mineralization rate of BPA was fast and that of the reaction showed small fluctuations. After degradation, 21.3 and 17.7% of the BPA groups (the experimental group treated with ammonia oxidase (AMO) inhibitor and the control group) were converted into 14CO2, respectively. This indicates that the nitrification and degradation of BPA had a certain competitive relationship. Besides, nitrification did not significantly affect the soil residue of BPA. Through the soil trench test, the average removal rate of BPA in the soil trench was 85.5%. 14CO2 was discharged via the mineralization of BPA, accounting for 2.5% of the initial input. BPA easily accumulated in the bottom soil of the soil trench. BPA and its metabolites in the effluent accounted for 14.5% of the initial dosage. The residual extractable BPA and its metabolites in the soil accounted for 51.3%, and the remaining part of the unextractable residue represented 19.8% of the initial radioactive dosage.", "corpus_id": 3890406 }

{ "title": "Environmental Occurrence and Ecological Risk\nof Bisphenol A in Erhai Lake Basin Away\nFrom Industrial Regions in China", "abstract": "The environmental distribution and migration of bisphenol A (BPA) has attracted attention due to its widespread use. The Erhai Lake Basin is dominated by agricultural production and tourism, and almost no industry. In this research, BPA pollution in the non-industrial region was investigated. BPA was found in all samples of inflow rivers, with concentrations ranging 2.80 ng/L~61.85 ng/L. The measured 15 rivers that account for 78.7% of the total inflow volume were inputting BPA concentration of 20.69 ng/L into Erhai Lake with an annual load of 8.54 kg/year. The measured BPA removal efficiency of sewage treatment plants ranged 49.8%~92.8%. Oxidation Ditch and A2O-MBR treatment process achieved the better BPA removal efficiency. The amount of BPA discharged directly to Erhai Lake from the effluent of the sewage plants each year was 1.63 kg. Based on the above research, a multimedia model of QWASI was established, and water concentration calculated was 0.203ng/L. A PNEC value considering more sensitive receptors was applied to this study, and it was indicated that there was a certain ecological risk in the water of the Boluo River estuary, while other rivers and lake were relatively safe. It was revealed that the ecological risk of BPA was relatively low in the Erhai Lake.", "corpus_id": 228864717 }

{ "title": "Rice herbicide monitoring in two Brazilian rivers during the rice growing season", "abstract": "Irrigated rice production can involve environmental contamination with pesticides due to the proximity of the fields to rivers and to management problems. During three years (2000 to 2003) the rice herbicides clomazone, propanil and quinclorac were quantified in water during the rice growing season, in the Vacacai and Vacacai-Mirim Rivers, located in Rio Grande do Sul (RS) State, Brazil. Water samples were taken at several locations in each river, selected by their importance in terms of rice drainage area. The samples were analyzed by HPLC-UV. At least one herbicide was detected in 41% of the samples from the Vacacai River and 33% from the Vacacai-Mirim River. The most frequent herbicide in both rivers and in each year was clomazone. The amount of herbicides in the river water was dependent on the rainfall regime. River water contamination by rice herbicides is probably caused by the rice water management used in the fields. The maintenance of flooded areas makes herbicides prone to contaminate the environment. To reduce the environmental contamination risk it is necessary to adopt measures to avoid overflow of flooded rice fields, keeping paddy water in the field for time enough to reduce the herbicide concentration before its release and enhancing the quality of the levees to reduce the probability of paddy rice overflow.", "corpus_id": 201192271, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Community Structure in Large Networks: Natural Cluster Sizes and the Absence of Large Well-Defined Clusters", "abstract": "A large body of work has been devoted to defining and identifying clusters or communities in social and information networks. We explore from a novel perspective several questions related to identifying meaningful communities in large social and information networks, and we come to several striking conclusions. We employ approximation algorithms for the graph partitioning problem to characterize as a function of size the statistical and structural properties of partitions of graphs that could plausibly be interpreted as communities. In particular, we define the network community profile plot, which characterizes the \"best\" possible community--according to the conductance measure--over a wide range of size scales. We study over 100 large real-world social and information networks. Our results suggest a significantly more refined picture of community structure in large networks than has been appreciated previously. In particular, we observe tight communities that are barely connected to the rest of the network at very small size scales; and communities of larger size scales gradually \"blend into\" the expander-like core of the network and thus become less \"community-like.\" This behavior is not explained, even at a qualitative level, by any of the commonly-used network generation models. Moreover, it is exactly the opposite of what one would expect based on intuition from expander graphs, low-dimensional or manifold-like graphs, and from small social networks that have served as testbeds of community detection algorithms. We have found that a generative graph model, in which new edges are added via an iterative \"forest fire\" burning process, is able to produce graphs exhibiting a network community profile plot similar to what we observe in our network datasets.", "corpus_id": 3612445 }

{ "title": "LabelRank: A Stabilized Label Propagation Algorithm for Community Detection in Networks", "abstract": "An important challenge in big data analysis nowadays is detection of cohesive groups in large-scale networks, including social networks, genetic networks, communication networks and so. In this paper, we propose LabelRank, an efficient algorithm detecting communities through label propagation. A set of operators is introduced to control and stabilize the propagation dynamics. These operations resolve the randomness issue in traditional label propagation algorithms (LPA), stabilizing the discovered communities in all runs of the same network. Tests on real-world networks demonstrate that LabelRank significantly improves the quality of detected communities compared to LPA, as well as other popular algorithms.", "corpus_id": 1913517 }

{ "title": "Attribute-Based Partial Geo-Replication System", "abstract": "Existing partial geo-replication systems do not always provide optimal cost or latency, because their replication decisions are based on statically established data access popularity metrics, regardless of the application types. We demonstrate that additional reduction in cost and latency can be achieved by 1) using the right object attributes for making replication decisions for each type of application, 2) using multi-attribute-based replications, and 3) combining the popularity-based but reactive approach with the more random but proactive approach to data replication. Toward this end, we propose Acorn, an Attribute-based COntinuous partial geo-ReplicatioN system, and its prototype implementation based on Apache Cassandra. Experiments with two types of global-scale, data-sharing applications demonstrate up to 54% and 90% cost overhead reduction over existing systems or 38% and 91% latency overhead reduction.", "corpus_id": 13451396, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "The role of altered cerebrospinal fluid dynamics in pathogenesis of multilevel myelopathy with single spinal stenosis.", "abstract": "Agonists of PPARc, like glitazones, are used as insulin sensitizers to improve glycemic control. Stimulating adipocyte differentiation, predominantly in subcutaneous tissue, makes them suitable to treat lipoathrophy/ lipodystrophy syndromes. Glitazones can cause fluid retention [5]. Treatment with PPARc activators reduces the systemic and cutaneous inflammatory response [6]. In animal studies, they accelerated barrier recovery following experimental acute disruption, leading to improvement in barrier homeostasis. There is some evidence PPAR agonists can alter the intracellular estrogen-signaling pathway, causing tissue remodeling in the uterus and breast [7]. It would be challenging to investigate the anti aging effect of glitazones on the skin. Their effects in modulating inflammatory response, tissue remodeling, fat redistribution, fluid retention and possible cross talking with estrogen receptors make them interesting from the anti aging treatment point of view. Skin changes due to aging are usually staged by clinical assessment and standardized facial photographs. Wrinkle onset and prevalence are usually determined at several facial sites: forehead, upper eyelid, crows-foot, lower eyelid, glabella, nasolabial groove, cheek, and perioral wrinkles. The intensity of wrinkles may be assessed semiquantitatively, by using a five-point scale (none, slight, mild, moderate, and severe wrinkles) for each region [8]. Measurement of dermal thickness, water and collagen content, blood flow and elasticity as well as measuring changes of parameters like cytokine concentrations, expression of hormonal receptors and MMP may contribute with interesting data on possible benefits on skin health.", "corpus_id": 795379 }

{ "title": "Laminectomy and postero-lateral mass plating for multilevel cervical spondylotic myelopathy.", "abstract": "There are many procedures in treating patients with multilevel cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM). Successful treatment of multilevel CSM requires adequate decompression and stability of the cervical spine that prevents further neurological deterioration. Multilevel laminectomy and instrumentation with lateral mass plates is associated with minimal morbidity, provides excellent decompression of the spinal cord, produces immediate stability of the cervical spine, prevents kyphotic deformity, and precludes further development of spondylosis at fused levels. Neurological outcome is equal or superior to multilevel anterior procedures because of minimal complication and prevent spinal deformity associated with laminoplasty or noninstrumented laminectomy. From the study of 7 patients with multilevel CSM who were treated with multilevel laminectomy and posterolateral mass plating. The neurological outcome of all 7 patients was improved without complications after follow-up for 6 months.", "corpus_id": 22011438 }

{ "title": "Relation between the Chemical Composition and the Electronic Properties of the Charge‐Transfer Complex, p‐Chloranil: p‐Phenylenediamine", "abstract": "The charge‐transfer complex p‐chloranil:p‐phenylenediamine has been prepared by three methods: (a) precipitation from benzene, (b) precipitation from methylene chloride, (c) direct reaction between the dry solid constituents. A 1:1 complex was found in all cases, with entrapped solvent present in the cases of samples precipitated from solution. It has been shown that the concentration of unpaired electron spins and the conductivity are characteristic of the complex and do not depend upon the method of preparation. The thermal activation energy for conductivity has been found to be 0.43 eV, and for spin concentration it has been found to be 0.13 eV. Theoretical difficulties involved in the consideration of activation energies are discussed. A mechanism is considered in the light of the thermal activation energies and the Seebeck coefficient, which was found to be +1.4 mV/°C.", "corpus_id": 97994786, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Multi‐institutional retrospective study for the evaluation of ocular function–preservation rates in maxillary sinus squamous cell carcinomas with orbital invasion", "abstract": "The purpose of this retrospective analysis was to evaluate ocular function and survival rates among treatment modalities in patients with maxillary sinus cancer with orbital invasion.", "corpus_id": 2437244 }

{ "title": "Orbital floor reconstruction using a tensor fascia lata sling after total maxillectomy.", "abstract": "PURPOSE\nReconstruction after total maxillectomy with extensive orbital floor defects poses a significant challenge for the reconstruction. The aim of this study is to present the outcomes of orbital floor reconstruction using tensor fascia lata slings after total maxillectomy and to compare these results to orbital floor reconstruction using alloplastic implants.\n\n\nMETHOD\nThis was a retrospective analysis of 19 consecutive patients who underwent tumor resection with orbital floor removal for malignancies. Reconstructions were performed using either tensor fascia lata slings (Group A) or alloplastic implants (Group B). The early and late postoperative outcomes such as wound infection, plate exposure, ectropion, diplopia, and enophthalmos, were analyzed and compared between the two groups.\n\n\nRESULTS\nPatients in group A had significantly less wound complication than in group B (p < 0.05). In group A, there were no early or late wound complications after the operation. However, in group B, five patients had infection, the plate was exposed in eight of fourteen patients, and three patients had enophthalmos. Eight patients in group B underwent reoperation to correct their complications.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nReconstruction of the orbital floor with a tensor fascia lata sling offers reliable support to the globe and prevents the ophthalmic complications associated with loss of orbital support.", "corpus_id": 23816710 }

{ "title": "The air transport of patients.", "abstract": "Air transport of patients by light aircraft and air ambulance is safe, fast and comfortable, and it is becoming increasingly popular. There are, however, specific problems, shortcomings and other details which must be dealt with effectively at various levels to ensure the best service for the patient.", "corpus_id": 30695662, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Monitoring youth exposure to advertising on television: the devil is in the details", "abstract": "In the wake of increasing evidence that youth exposure to alcohol marketing is a risk factor in underage drinking, public health researchers are trying a variety of methods to measure that exposure. Based on lessons learned from more than 20 reports on exposure produced by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, best practices in data sources, definitions of terms and specific measurement issues such as census versus sampling, identifying the at-risk population and performing basic calculations of gross rating points (GRPs) and GRP ratios are reviewed, using examples from work of the Center and other public health researchers. Specific recommendations for best practices in calculating and reporting exposure metrics are provided, including how to measure and report trends, differentiating between audit and planning perspectives and the importance of measuring exposure at both the category and the brand level. These recommendations are relevant not only to the monitoring of youth exposure to alcohol marketing, but also exposure to marketing for other potentially harmful products such as foods of low nutritional value, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs. \n \n \n \n \nCopyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.", "corpus_id": 153846533 }

{ "title": "Exposure to televised alcohol ads and subsequent adolescent alcohol use.", "abstract": "OBJECTIVE\nTo assess the impact of televised alcohol commercials on adolescents' alcohol use.\n\n\nMETHODS\nAdolescents completed questionnaires about alcohol commercials and alcohol use in a prospective study.\n\n\nRESULTS\nA one standard deviation increase in viewing television programs containing alcohol commercials in seventh grade was associated with an excess risk of beer use (44%), wine/liquor use (34%), and 3-drink episodes (26%) in eighth grade. The strength of associations varied across exposure measures and was most consistent for beer.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nAlthough replication is warranted, results showed that exposure was associated with an increased risk of subsequent beer consumption and possibly other consumption variables.", "corpus_id": 30894244 }

{ "title": "Historical perspectives on the shifting boundaries around youth and alcohol. The example of pre-industrial England, 1350-1750.", "abstract": "This study identifies some of the factors that account for why young males are permitted to drink in some cultures and not in others. The primary materials consulted in this study suggest that in the case of pre-industrial England the same norms governed both adult and juvenile access to alcohol in the late medieval period, and that separate standards for adults and juveniles only emerged some time after 1500. The materials also suggest that the norms governing juvenile access to alcohol were at their most restrictive when adult and juvenile labour were both in low demand, and when childhood was a state from which an individual exited at an early age, but adulthood was a status that was postponed for a large proportion of the population. Apparent changes in the norms governing juvenile access to alcohol also coincided with two other developments in the early modern period. These were: (1) the gradual transformation of drinking into an essentially recreational activity conducted outside the home and among groups consisting largely or entirely of males; and (2) the introduction of new and potentially more intoxicating alcoholic beverages, first in the form of beer, and later in the form of cheap spirits distilled from grain.", "corpus_id": 25167610, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "The Conservative Management of Carcinoma in Situ; Results 1963–4 *", "abstract": "In recent years, the medical literature has contained reports of conservative management of carcinoma in situ of the uterine cervix, using cone biopsy with topographic study as a definitive treatment (Krieger and McCormack, 1959; Green, 1962) rather than the more radical treatment of total hysterectomy with partial colpectomy. In 1962, when facilities became available for the thorough study of pathological material obtained by cone biopsy, a more conservative approach to the management of carcinoma in situ was initiated.", "corpus_id": 2876300 }

{ "title": "Conservative treatment of CIN: a review.", "abstract": "This review examines the indications for and the various therapeutic techniques used in the management of CIN. There is an extensive review of the literature. We believe that conization should be the long-term therapy of choice in over 90% of patients with CIN.", "corpus_id": 12985125 }

{ "title": "Balance Rehabilitation Unit (BRU™) posturography in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.", "abstract": "OBJECTIVE\nTo evaluate balance control with Balance Rehabilitation Unit (BRU™) posturography in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).\n\n\nMETHOD\nA cross controlled study was performed including 39 relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients with scores less than or equal to 4 in the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), and a homogeneous control group consisting of 65 healthy individuals, matched by the age and gender. The experimental group was distributed according to the EDSS scale scores in 0-2.5 and 3-4. To assess the vestibular system function, the patients underwent a neurotological evaluation, including posturography of the Balance Rehabilitation Unit (BRU™).\n\n\nRESULTS\nStatistically significant differences were observed when comparing the values of the sway velocity and the ellipse area of the MS 0-2.5 group with the control and the MS 3-4 group with the control. A statistically significant difference was verified between the MS 0-2.5 and the MS 3-4 groups in the condition 3 ellipse area values.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe evaluation of the balance control with posturography of Balance Rehabilitation Unit (BRU™) enables the identification of abnormalities of the sway velocity and confidential ellipse in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.", "corpus_id": 4650718, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Seasonal Effects on Gene Expression", "abstract": "Many health conditions, ranging from psychiatric disorders to cardiovascular disease, display notable seasonal variation in severity and onset. In order to understand the molecular processes underlying this phenomenon, we have examined seasonal variation in the transcriptome of 606 healthy individuals. We show that 74 transcripts associated with a 12-month seasonal cycle were enriched for processes involved in DNA repair and binding. An additional 94 transcripts demonstrated significant seasonal variability that was largely influenced by blood cell count levels. These transcripts were enriched for immune function, protein production, and specific cellular markers for lymphocytes. Accordingly, cell counts for erythrocytes, platelets, neutrophils, monocytes, and CD19 cells demonstrated significant association with a 12-month seasonal cycle. These results demonstrate that seasonal variation is an important environmental regulator of gene expression and blood cell composition. Notable changes in leukocyte counts and genes involved in immune function indicate that immune cell physiology varies throughout the year in healthy individuals.", "corpus_id": 839871 }

{ "title": "Population-level seasonality in cardiovascular mortality, blood pressure, BMI and inflammatory cells in UK biobank", "abstract": "Abstract Introduction: The risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD) is higher in wintertime throughout the world, but it is not known if this reflects annual changes in diet or lifestyle, or an endogenous photoperiodic mechanism that is sensitive to changes in day length. Methods: Phenotypic data on cardiometabolic and lifestyle factors were collected throughout a 4 year time period from 502,642 middle-aged participants in UK Biobank. To assess the impact of seasonal environmental changes on cardiovascular risk factors, we linked these data to the outdoor temperature and day length at the time of assessment. Self-reported information on physical activity, diet and disease status were used to adjust for confounding factors related to health and lifestyle. Results: Mortality related to CVD was higher in winter, as were risk factors for this condition including blood pressure, markers of inflammation and body mass index (BMI). These seasonal rhythms were significantly related to day length after adjustment for other factors that might affect seasonality including physical activity, diet and outdoor temperature. Conclusions: The risk of CVD may be modulated by day length at temperate latitudes, and the implications of seasonality should be considered in all studies of human cardiometabolic health. Key messages In this cross-sectional study in UK Biobank, we report annual variations in cardiovascular risk factors and mortality that were associated with day length independent of environmental and lifestyle factors. These seasonal changes in day length might contribute to annual patterns in cardiovascular disease and mortality.", "corpus_id": 21688732 }

{ "title": "Metabolism of flurazepam, a benzodiazepine, in man and dog.", "abstract": "The metabolism of 14C-flurazepam hydrochloride, 7-chloro – 1 – (2 – diethylaminoethyl) – 5 – (2 – fluorophenyl) – 1,3 – dihydro-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one-5-14C dihydrochloride, was studied in a dog administered oral and intravenous 2-mg./kg.doses and in two human subjects who each received a 28-mg.oral dose.In both species, evidence was obtained for rapid and essentially complete absorption followed by a rapid elimination of plasma flurazepam.Biotransformation of the drug was rapid and virtually complete in man and dog.Pathways of biotransformation were similar in both species.All the metabolites identified either showed some alteration in the N1-diethylaminoethyl moiety or lacked the N1-substituent altogether.The major metabolite in the dog was a carboxylic acid, the N-1-acetic acid analog of flurazepam.In man, the analogous alcohol (the N1-ethanol analog) predominated.", "corpus_id": 1056542, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Boosting The Benefits of Hybrid SDN", "abstract": "The upgrade of a legacy network to a full software-defined networking (SDN) deployment is usually an incremental process, during which SDN switches and legacy switches coexist in the hybrid network. However, with inappropriate deployment of SDN switches and design of hybrid control, the advantages of SDN control could not exert, and it even results in performance degradation or inconsistency (e.g., loops, black-holes). Therefore, the hybrid SDN requires considerable coordination of the centralized control and distributed routing. In this paper, we propose a solution to handle the heterogeneity caused by distinct forwarding characteristics of SDN and legacy switches, therefore boosting the benefits of hybrid SDN. We plan SDN placement to enhance the SDN controllability over the hybrid network, and conduct traffic engineering considering both the forwarding characteristics of SDN and legacy switches. The experiments with various topologies show that the SDN placement planning and hybrid forwarding yield better network performance especially in the early 70% SDN deployment.", "corpus_id": 13233717 }

{ "title": "A Survey on the Contributions of Software-Defined Networking to Traffic Engineering", "abstract": "Since the appearance of OpenFlow back in 2008, software-defined networking (SDN) has gained momentum. Although there are some discrepancies between the standards developing organizations working with SDN about what SDN is and how it is defined, they all outline traffic engineering (TE) as a key application. One of the most common objectives of TE is the congestion minimization, where techniques such as traffic splitting among multiple paths or advanced reservation systems are used. In such a scenario, this manuscript surveys the role of a comprehensive list of SDN protocols in TE solutions, in order to assess how these protocols can benefit TE. The SDN protocols have been categorized using the SDN architecture proposed by the open networking foundation, which differentiates among data-controller plane interfaces, application-controller plane interfaces, and management interfaces, in order to state how the interface type in which they operate influences TE. In addition, the impact of the SDN protocols on TE has been evaluated by comparing them with the path computation element (PCE)-based architecture. The PCE-based architecture has been selected to measure the impact of SDN on TE because it is the most novel TE architecture until the date, and because it already defines a set of metrics to measure the performance of TE solutions. We conclude that using the three types of interfaces simultaneously will result in more powerful and enhanced TE solutions, since they benefit TE in complementary ways.", "corpus_id": 42348870 }

{ "title": "Efficient Computation of Multiple Density-Based Clustering Hierarchies", "abstract": "HDBSCAN*, a state-of-the-art density-based hierarchical clustering method, produces a hierarchical organization of clusters in a dataset w.r.t. a parameter mpts. While the performance of HDBSCAN* is robust w.r.t. mpts in the sense that a small change in mpts typically leads to only a small or no change in the clustering structure, choosing a\"good\"mpts value can be challenging: depending on the data distribution, a high or low value for mpts may be more appropriate, and certain data clusters may reveal themselves at different values of mpts. To explore results for a range of mpts values, however, one has to run HDBSCAN* for each value in the range independently, which is computationally inefficient. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach to compute all HDBSCAN* hierarchies for a range of mpts values by replacing the graph used by HDBSCAN* with a much smaller graph that is guaranteed to contain the required information. An extensive experimental evaluation shows that with our approach one can obtain over one hundred hierarchies for the computational cost equivalent to running HDBSCAN* about 2 times.", "corpus_id": 2736034, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Knowledge Graph Embedding for Link Prediction and Triplet Classification", "abstract": "The link prediction (LP) and triplet classification (TC) are important tasks in the field of knowledge graph mining. However, the traditional link prediction methods of social networks cannot directly apply to knowledge graph data which contains multiple relations. In this paper, we apply the knowledge graph embedding method to solve the specific tasks with Chinese knowledge base Zhishi.me. The proposed method has been successfully used in the evaluation task of CCKS2016. Hopefully, it can achieve excellent performance.", "corpus_id": 31726029 }

{ "title": "Recommender Systems for Banking and Financial Services", "abstract": null, "corpus_id": 12341731 }

{ "title": "A Low-Power High-Speed Comparator for Precise Applications", "abstract": "A low-power comparator is presented. pMOS transistors are used at the input of the preamplifier of the comparator as well as the latch stage. Both stages are controlled by a special local clock generator. At the evaluation phase, the latch is activated with a delay to achieve enough preamplification gain and avoid excess power consumption. Meanwhile, small cross-coupled transistors increase the preamplifier gain and decrease the input common mode of the latch to strongly turn on the pMOS transistors (at the latch input) and reduce the delay. Unlike the conventional comparator, the proposed structure let us set the optimum delay for preamplification and avoid excess power consumption. The speed and the power benefits of the comparator were verified using solid analytical derivations, process–VDD–temperature corners, and Monte Carlo simulations along with silicon measurements in $0.18~\\mu \\text{m}$ . The tests confirm that the proposed circuit reduces the power consumption by 50% and provides 30% better comparison speed at the same offset and almost the same noise budgets. Moreover, the comparator provides a rail-to-rail input $V_{\\text {cm}}$ range in $f_{\\text {clk}} = 500$ MHz.", "corpus_id": 52901007, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "The use of data mining and neural networks for forecasting stock market returns", "abstract": "It has been widely accepted by many studies that non-linearity exists in the financial markets and that neural networks can be effectively used to uncover this relationship. Unfortunately, many of these studies fail to consider alternative forecasting techniques, the relevance of input variables, or the performance of the models when using different trading strategies. This paper introduces an information gain technique used in machine learning for data mining to evaluate the predictive relationships of numerous financial and economic variables. Neural network models for level estimation and classification are then examined for their ability to provide an effective forecast of future values. A cross-validation technique is also employed to improve the generalization ability of several models. The results show that the trading strategies guided by the classification models generate higher risk-adjusted profits than the buy-and-hold strategy, as well as those guided by the level-estimation based forecasts of the neural network and linear regression models.", "corpus_id": 2594051 }

{ "title": "Support vector machine with adaptive parameters in financial time series forecasting", "abstract": "A novel type of learning machine called support vector machine (SVM) has been receiving increasing interest in areas ranging from its original application in pattern recognition to other applications such as regression estimation due to its remarkable generalization performance. This paper deals with the application of SVM in financial time series forecasting. The feasibility of applying SVM in financial forecasting is first examined by comparing it with the multilayer back-propagation (BP) neural network and the regularized radial basis function (RBF) neural network. The variability in performance of SVM with respect to the free parameters is investigated experimentally. Adaptive parameters are then proposed by incorporating the nonstationarity of financial time series into SVM. Five real futures contracts collated from the Chicago Mercantile Market are used as the data sets. The simulation shows that among the three methods, SVM outperforms the BP neural network in financial forecasting, and there are comparable generalization performance between SVM and the regularized RBF neural network. Furthermore, the free parameters of SVM have a great effect on the generalization performance. SVM with adaptive parameters can both achieve higher generalization performance and use fewer support vectors than the standard SVM in financial forecasting.", "corpus_id": 18315563 }

{ "title": "A New Heuristic Reduct Algorithm Base on Rough Sets Theory", "abstract": "Real world data sets usually have many features, which increases the complexity of data mining task. Feature selection, as a preprocessing step to the data mining, has been shown very effective in reducing dimensionality, removing irrelevant data, increasing learning accuracy, and improving comprehensibility. To find the optimal feature subsets is the aim of feature selection. Rough sets theory provides a mathematical approach to find optimal feature subset, but this approach is time consuming. In this paper, we propose a novel heuristic algorithm based on rough sets theory to find out the feature subset. This algorithm employs appearing frequency of attribute as heuristic information. Experiment results show in most times our algorithm can find out optimal feature subset quickly and efficiently.", "corpus_id": 17362173, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Technical note: viability and motility of vitrified/thawed primordial germ cell isolated from common carp (Cyprinus carpio) somite embryos.", "abstract": "The feasibility of cryopreserving common carp (Cyprinus carpio) primordial germ cells (PGC) by vitrification of whole embryos at the 22- to 28-somite stage was investigated. Green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled PGC were cooled rapidly using liquid nitrogen after exposure to a pretreatment solution containing 1.5 M cryoprotectant (ethylene glycol or dimethyl sulfoxide, 30 or 50 min) and a vitrification solution containing 3 M cryoprotectant and 0.5 M sucrose (5, 10, 20, or 30 min). Embryonic cells that were pretreated for 30 min and vitrified for 20 min with ethylene glycol had the greatest rate of survival of embryonic cells (68.6%; P < 0.01), an optimal highest percentage of viable PGC (73.8 to 74.9%; P < 0.05), and no evidence of ice formation after thawing. The vitrified/thawed PGC were transplanted into blastula-stage embryos from goldfish (Carassius auratus). The PGC maintained their motility and moved to the gonadal ridge of the host embryo. Thus, the combination of vitrification and transplantation to produce germ-line chimeras is a powerful tool for the artificial production of next-generation offspring.", "corpus_id": 998393 }

{ "title": "Generation of germ-line chimera zebrafish using primordial germ cells isolated from cultured blastomeres and cryopreserved embryoids.", "abstract": "Primordial germ cells (PGCs) are the only cells in developing embryos with the potential to transmit genetic information to the next generation. In our previous study, a single PGC transplanted into a host differentiated into fertile gametes and produced germ-line chimeras of cyprinid fish, including zebrafish. In this study, we aimed to induce germ-line chimeras by transplanting donor PGCs from various sources (normal embryos at different stages, dissociated blastomeres, embryoids, or embryoids cryopreserved by vitrification) into host blastulae, and compare the migration rates of the PGCs towards the gonadal ridge. Isolated, cultured blastomeres not subject to mesodermal induction were able to differentiate into PGCs that retained their motility. Moreover, these PGCs successfully migrated towards the gonadal ridge of the host and formed viable gametes. Motility depended on developmental stage and culture duration: PGCs obtained at earlier developmental stages and with shorter cultivation periods showed an increased rate of migration to the gonadal ridge. Offspring were obtained from natural spawning between normal females and chimeric males. These results provide the basis for new methods of gene preservation in zebrafish.", "corpus_id": 16533704 }

{ "title": "Differences in embryonic pattern formation between Caenorhabditis elegans and its close parthenogenetic relative Diploscapter coronatus.", "abstract": "In order to evaluate the evolutionary preservation of developmental programs during nematode embryogenesis, we searched for close relatives of the model system Caenorhabditis elegans with deviant patterns. The parthenogenetically reproducing species Diploscapter coronatus shows prominent differences to C. elegans. While in the 2-cell stage of C. elegans a rotation of the nuclear/centrosome complex is found only in the posterior P1 cell, in D. coronatus cell isolation indicates that rotation takes place in a cell-autonomous manner in both blastomeres, resulting in a linear 4-cell array. In C. elegans, the ABp cell becomes different from its ABa sister via a germline-induced induction. In D. coronatus, AB daughters do not touch the germline but nevertheless execute different fates, suggesting a cell-autonomous mechanism or signaling over distance. Laser ablation experiments revealed that active migration of the EMS cell is required to transform the linearly ordered blastomeres into a 3-dimensional embryo, and the difference can be most easily explained with a heterochronic shift with respect to cell mobility. In D. coronatus, reversal of cleavage polarity in the germline, typical for C. elegans, is absent. This results in four different transient variants of posterior blastomeres which eventually merge into a single pattern prior to the onset of gastrulation. This merging includes primordial germ cell migrations of variable extent toward the gut precursor cell and suggests a specific cell-cell recognition mechanism. Cell distribution in advanced embryos is essentially indistinguishable between both species.", "corpus_id": 6865503, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Exploring the Concept of Mobile Viral Marketing through Case Study Research.", "abstract": "Mobile viral marketing has a tremendous potential for communication and distribution purposes. Although seen as an important issue from the viewpoint of practitioners there has been little research on the phenomenon so far. This paper represents a first step in filling this void. We examine 34 case studies in order to identify relevant characteristics of mobile viral marketing. The outcome of the paper is a description model of mobile viral marketing as well as a derivation of four mobile viral marketing standard types. The proposed scheme allows unambiguously characterizing any given mobile viral marketing strategy and providing recommendations for designing new mobile viral strategies.", "corpus_id": 9298222 }

{ "title": "The case research strategy in studies of information systems", "abstract": "This article defines and discusses one of these qualitative methods - the case research strategy. Suggestions are provided for researchers who wish to undertake research employing this approach. Criteria for the evaluation of case research are established and several characteristics useful for categorizing the studies are identified. A sample of papers drawn from information systems journals is reviewed. The paper concludes with examples of research areas that are particularly well-suited to investigation using the case research approach.", "corpus_id": 7288871 }

{ "title": "Example-Based Sketch Segmentation and Labeling Using CRFs", "abstract": "We introduce a new approach for segmentation and label transfer in sketches that substantially improves the state of the art. We build on successful techniques to find how likely each segment is to belong to a label, and use a Conditional Random Field to find the most probable global configuration. Our method is trained fully on the sketch domain, such that it can handle abstract sketches that are very far from 3D meshes. It also requires a small quantity of annotated data, which makes it easily adaptable to new datasets. The testing phase is completely automatic, and our performance is comparable to state-of-the-art methods that require manual tuning and a considerable amount of previous annotation [Huang et al. 2014].", "corpus_id": 16993576, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Tunable, single-frequency, and multi-watt continuous-wave Cr2+:ZnSe lasers.", "abstract": "We demonstrate CW rapidly-tunable (4.5 microm/s), highpower (150 mW), single-longitudinal-mode (120 MHz) single-crystalline Cr(2+):ZnSe laser; CW widely-tunable (2.12-2.77 microm), multi-watt (2 W over 2.3-2.7 microm), polycrystalline Cr(2+):ZnSe laser; CW multi-watt (6 W, at 2.5 microm), highly efficient (48% real efficiency) polycrystalline Cr(2+):ZnSe laser; CW multi-watt (3 W, at 2.5 microm), highly efficient (41% real efficiency) ultra-compact polycrystalline Cr(2+):ZnSe laser; and CW hot-pressed ceramic Cr(2+):ZnSe laser.", "corpus_id": 6423988 }

{ "title": "Mid-infrared laser development based on transition metal doped cadmium manganese telluride", "abstract": "Abstract The recent discovery of mid-infrared laser action from Cr2+ ions has stimulated significant interest in transition metal (TM) doped II–VI semiconductors as solid-state laser materials. Tunable mid-infrared lasing has been reported from Cr : ZnSe, Cr : ZnS, Cr : CdSe, and Cr : Cd0.85Mn0.15Te. Cd1−xMnxTe (0", "corpus_id": 98363227 }

{ "title": "A compact X-ray source based on Compton scattering", "abstract": "The paper discusses the use of Compton backscattering of an intense laser light on a relativistic electron beam to produce high-intensity /spl gamma/ beams, and also the practicability of the concept. Requirements on the parameters of electron and photon beams are described, and the lattice of the electron storage ring with a beam energy up to 150 MeV is proposed, wherein experiments on intense photon beam generation and laser cooling of the electron beam can be conducted. Electron beam parameters in the storage ring are calculated with due regard for the intrabeam scattering, photon beam parameters are also estimated. The scheme of experiment that enables the production of a photon beam with an intensity of /spl sim/10/sup 13/ s/sup -1/ is proposed.", "corpus_id": 30334301, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Measures of Economic Status - Combining Income and Wealth into a Single Measure of the Potential Command Over Goods and Services", "abstract": "The purpose of this paper is to stimulate discussion on the way that economists, statisticians and analysts treat the wealth of agricultural households and changes in that wealth not arising from production. The concept of \"economic status\" is revisited and the implications of using it when making comparisons of agricultural households with other groups in society is reviewed. A more explicit treatment of capital and wealth is proposed.", "corpus_id": 153241127 }

{ "title": "Determinants of Poverty among U.S. Farm Households", "abstract": "This research uses data from the 2004 Agricultural Resource Management Survey and probit regression to examine the determinants of poverty among U.S. farm households. The findings reveal, among others, the importance of a livelihood strategy that combines participation in government programs and off-farm work in lowering poverty rates. Findings also show the importance of educational attainment of the farm operator in mitigating poverty, but only when poverty is measured on a relative rather than an absolute basis. Policy recommendations are provided in the context of these findings.", "corpus_id": 55890314 }

{ "title": "Two suggested adjustments in farm income measurement using taxation data", "abstract": "The paper sets out two adjustments for taxation data when income distribution is relevant. The adjustments are used on income series for primary producers and wholesale-retail trading and results compared. Little difference is found between the two income series though the latter, years show the wholesale-retail traders series continuing on an upward trend, while the primary producers series appears to climb at a slower rate or has flattened out. An examination of income led to similar conclusions though these figures seem to imply that in both industries there is a hard core of poverty, individuals who can neither raise their income nor move out of the industry.", "corpus_id": 154441453, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Assessing ecotoxicity of biomining effluents in stream ecosystems by in situ invertebrate bioassays: A case study in Talvivaara, Finland", "abstract": "Mining of sulfide‐rich pyritic ores produces acid mine drainage waters and has induced major ecological problems in aquatic ecosystems worldwide. Biomining utilizes microbes to extract metals from the ore, and it has been suggested as a new sustainable way to produce metals. However, little is known of the potential ecotoxicological effects of biomining. In the present study, biomining impacts were assessed using survival and behavioral responses of aquatic macroinvertebrates at in situ exposures in streams. The authors used an impedance conversion technique to measure quantitatively in situ behavioral responses of larvae of the regionally common mayfly, Heptagenia dalecarlica, to discharges from the Talvivaara mine (Sotkamo, Northern Finland), which uses a biomining technique. Behavioral responses measured in 3 mine‐impacted streams were compared with those measured in 3 reference streams. In addition, 3‐d survival of the mayfly larvae and the oligochaete Lumbriculus variegatus was measured in the study sites. Biomining impacts on stream water quality included increased concentrations of sulfur, sulfate, and metals, especially manganese, cadmium, zinc, sodium, and calcium. Survival of the invertebrates in the short term was not affected by the mine effluents. In contrast, apparent behavioral changes in mayfly larvae were detected, but these responses were not consistent among sites, which may reflect differing natural water chemistry of the study sites. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:147–155. © 2016 SETAC", "corpus_id": 4301854 }

{ "title": "An overview of Cladoceran studies conducted in mine water impacted lakes", "abstract": "Mine-fed waters have been rigorously studied, but most of the ecological research on mine water has been conducted in riverine systems. Lakes, however, are known to recover from pollution more slowly than riverine systems and, thus, the impacts of mine water on lakes are equally interesting. One of the most important biological components in lakes are the Cladocera, an order of crustacean zooplankton. Cladocerans are regarded as excellent indicators of environmental change and, for example, genus Daphnia is one of the most used test organisms in ecotoxicology. While in vitro tests regarding pollutants and cladocerans have been reviewed multiple times, the literature regarding the community level responses to mine pollution in natural settings is still to be better explored. The main aim of this paper is to screen and compile the current literature related to cladoceran communities and mine-induced water pollution. In addition, the applicability of cladocerans as a bioindicators group in mine water studies will be explored. This review shows that cladocerans have been studied in many cases of mining related pollution and most of the research has been conducted in North America, central Europe and Brazil. Acidity, turbidity and metals pollution are nearly equally important in shaping cladoceran communities in mining impacted lakes. The most tolerant taxa to mining pollution are Bosmina spp. and Chydorus sphaericus. The group clearly has potential as community level bioindicator/biomonitor in mining pollution studies, but challenges remain. Namely, the lack of data regarding the most sensitive taxa is a major problem when indicator value of any single species is assessed.", "corpus_id": 91978938 }

{ "title": "The demographic response to Holocene climate change in the Sahara", "abstract": "The timing and development of Holocene human occupation in the now hyperarid Sahara has major implications for understanding links between climate change, demography and cultural adaptation. Here we use summed probability distributions from 3287 calibrated 14C dates from 1011 archaeological sites to demonstrate a major and rapid demographic shift between 10,500 and 5500 years BP. This event corresponds with the African Humid Period (AHP) and is sub-continental in scale, indicating climate as the prime factor driving broad-scale population dynamics in northern Africa. Furthermore, by providing a high temporal resolution proxy for effective carrying capacity our population curve offers an independent estimate of environmental change in northern Africa, indicating a temporal delay in the terrestrial response to atmospheric climate change. These results highlight the degree to which human demography is a function of environment at the appropriate scale of observation in both time and space and sheds important new light on the social response to global environmental change.", "corpus_id": 54923700, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Recovery of LiCoO2 and graphite from spent lithium-ion batteries by Fenton reagent-assisted flotation", "abstract": "Abstract In this paper, a Fenton reagent assisted flotation process is developed to recover valuable electrode materials LiCoO 2 and graphite from spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs). At room temperature, effect of key parameters for Fenton reaction such as the ratios of H 2 O 2 /Fe 2+ (40–280) and liquid-solid (25–100) are investigated to determine the most efficient conditions of surface modification of electrode materials by Fenton reagent. The modified electrode materials are separated by flotation operation to recover the cathode material and anode materials respectively. The results show that in the optimum conditions that the Fe 2+ /H 2 O 2 ratio is 1:120, and the liquid-solid ratio is 75:1, most of the organic outer layer coated on the surface of electrode materials can be removed. After modified by Fenton reagent, the original wettability of LiCoO 2 and graphite is regained. The −0.25 mm crushed products of spent LiBs can be separated into LiCoO 2 concentrate and graphite concentrate by flotation process efficiently.", "corpus_id": 157330566 }

{ "title": "Application of mathematical modeling and electrochemical iron dosing strategies to improve the treatment performance of the electro-Fenton process", "abstract": "Abstract Electro-Fenton technology is an environmentally sustainable advanced oxidation process (AOP) that has shown huge promise and has been extensively studied for the degradation of recalcitrant organics in water. Existing studies on the application of electro-Fenton process for wastewater treatment, however, have not systematically presented approaches to regulate the concentration of dissolved iron in Fenton systems and excess iron usually results in unwanted scavenging reactions, reduced pollutant degradation efficiencies, high sludge production and increased material/operating costs. In this study, an electrochemical iron dosing model was developed for electro-Fenton applications. The generated model resulted in residuals not exceeding 0.10 mM Fe 2+ and was able to successfully predict total iron concentration with fluctuations not exceeding 0.15 mM Fe 2+ . Single-dose and continuous dosing methods were also compared in terms of methylene blue dye degradation, hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) consumption, and chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC) reduction. Single dosing method resulted to pollutant degradation rate that is nine (9) times faster than the rate obtained for continuous dosing of iron during the first 30 min of the reaction. In contrast, continuous dosing outperformed single-dosing mode after 60 min of reaction time in terms of H 2 O 2 consumption and both TOC and COD removal. Furthermore, continuous dosing mode produced less phenolic intermediates compared to single-dosing mode. The modeling and optimization of the dosing process can lead to the significant lowering of iron species in the treated effluent and more importantly reduce the overall cost of the treatment operation.", "corpus_id": 103186292 }

{ "title": "Proton radiation damage in SrTiO3 thin film by computer simulation", "abstract": "Perovskite ferroelectrics (FEs) have high endurance to radiation. Strontium titanate (STO) (SrTiO3) is a kind of perovskite FE with a large dielectric constant, which has attracted a good deal of attention due to its excellent dielectric, photoelectric and optical properties. The proton radiation damage in STO thin films is investigated by computer simulations in this work. The threshold displacement energy is an important input parameter for Monte Carlo simulation based on a binary collision approximation model, so we first use molecular dynamics to calculate the averaged threshold displacement energy of Sr, O and Ti atom. The calculated values are 67, 50 and 136 eV, which are obviously larger than default value (25 eV) in the Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM) code. The results of the SRIM simulation demonstrate the dependency of vacancy number and position distribution on the proton's energy and the angle of incidence.", "corpus_id": 97735630, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Flexible performance prediction of data center networks using automatically generated simulation models", "abstract": "Using different modeling and simulation approaches for predicting network performance requires extensive experience and involves a number of time consuming manual steps regarding each of the modeling formalisms. In this paper, we propose a generic approach to modeling the performance of data center networks. The approach offers multiple performance models but requires to use only a single modeling language. We propose a two-step modeling methodology, in which a high-level descriptive model of the network is built in the first step, and in the second step model-to-model transformations are used to automatically transform the descriptive model to different network simulation models. We automatically generate three performance models defined at different levels of abstraction to analyze network throughput. By offering multiple simulation models in parallel, we provide flexibility in trading-off between the modeling accuracy and the simulation overhead. We analyze the simulation models by comparing the prediction accuracy with respect to the simulation duration. We observe, that in the investigated scenarios the solution duration of coarser simulation models is up to 300 times shorter, whereas the average prediction accuracy decreases only by 4 percent.", "corpus_id": 627130 }

{ "title": "Architecture-level software performance abstractions for online performance prediction", "abstract": "Abstract Modern service-oriented enterprise systems have increasingly complex and dynamic loosely-coupled architectures that often exhibit poor performance and resource efficiency and have high operating costs. This is due to the inability to predict at run-time the effect of workload changes on performance-relevant application-level dependencies and adapt the system configuration accordingly. Architecture-level performance models provide a powerful tool for performance prediction, however, current approaches to modeling the context of software components are not suitable for use at run-time. In this paper, we analyze typical online performance prediction scenarios and propose a performance meta-model for (i) expressing and resolving parameter and context dependencies, (ii) modeling service abstractions at different levels of granularity and (iii) modeling the deployment of software components in complex resource landscapes. The presented meta-model is a subset of the Descartes Meta-Model (DMM) for online performance prediction, specifically designed for use in online scenarios. We motivate and validate our approach in the context of realistic and representative online performance prediction scenarios based on the SPECjEnterprise2010 standard benchmark.", "corpus_id": 9562475 }

{ "title": "A UML tool for an automatic generation of simulation programs", "abstract": "For sometime now, Unified Modelling Language (UML) has been accepted as a standard for designing new systems. Its array of notations helps system designers to capture their ideas in a way that is expressive yet easy to understand. One thing that UML lacks though, is a means for predicting the system’s performance directly from its design. Performance prediction is a desirable feature that enables us to evaluate whether a particular design is worth implementing or not. This prediction can frequently be obtained by constructing a simulation program that mimics the characteristics of the new system. The information gathered from running the simulation will then allow us to estimate the performance. In this paper, we present a simulation framework that can be used to generate simulation programs straight from UML notations. We also present a tool has been built to demonstrate the feasibility of using this framework to perform such a transformation automatically.", "corpus_id": 6239845, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Physical Therapy Rehabilitation after Traumatic Brain Injury", "abstract": "Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is an important public health problem and leading cause of injury death and disability \nin worldwide. The heterogeneity of this condition leads to a high degree of variety in the manifestation of clinical \nsymptoms and makes the treatment of the accident victims particularly challenging. Because of this, the \nphysiotherapist plays a central role in leading, coordinating and providing a continuum of care and services over the \ncourse of the patient's recovery. However, there are no major differences between the various methods of treatment \nand all of them improve the patients’ functional status. Furthermore, evidence suggests that community integration \nshould be the primary goal of rehabilitation for people after a TBI. However, very little is known about how variations \non the individual characteristics (family support, education, quality and availability of community services, financial \ncondition) may also influence the community integration.", "corpus_id": 1427521 }

{ "title": "Community integration after traumatic brain injury: a systematic review of the clinical implications of measurement and service provision for older adults.", "abstract": "OBJECTIVE\nTo explore the scope, reliability, and validity of community integration measures for older adults after traumatic brain injury (TBI).\n\n\nDATA SOURCES\nA search of peer-reviewed articles in English from 1990 to April 2011 was conducted using the EBSCO Health and Scopus databases. Search terms included were community integration, traumatic brain injury or TBI, 65 plus or older adults, and assessment.\n\n\nSTUDY SELECTION\nForty-three eligible articles were identified, with 11 selected for full review using a standardized critical review method.\n\n\nDATA EXTRACTION\nCommon community integration measures were identified and ranked for relevance and psychometric properties. Of the 43 eligible articles, studies reporting community integration outcomes post-TBI were identified and critically reviewed. Older adults' community integration needs post-TBI from high quality studies were summarized.\n\n\nDATA SYNTHESIS\nThere is a relative lack of evidence pertaining to older adults post-TBI, but indicators are that older adults have poorer outcomes than their younger counterparts. The Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ) is the most widely used community integration measurement tool used in research for people with TBI. Because of some limitations, many studies have used the CIQ in conjunction with other measures to better quantify and/or monitor changes in community integration.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nEnhancing integration of older adults after TBI into their community of choice, with particular emphasis on social integration and quality of life, should be a primary rehabilitation goal. However, more research is needed to inform best practice guidelines to meet the needs of this growing TBI population. It is recommended that subjective tools, such as quality of life measures, are used in conjunction with well-established community integration measures, such as the CIQ, during the assessment process.", "corpus_id": 205597785 }

{ "title": "Study of psychiatric admission patterns before and after out-patient psychotherapy in a district service setting.", "abstract": "There is a need for evidence to demonstrate the clinical and economic effectiveness of psychotherapy as a component of mental health service delivery. A naturalistic cohort study was carried out in a specialist psychotherapy department in a district mental health service. Thirty-six patients were identified with hospital admissions in the study period who had also received a course of outpatient psychotherapy. There was a significant decrease in hospital in-patient usage temporally associated with receipt of psychotherapy and associated cost savings. Out-patient psychotherapy leads to less in-patient bed usage and significant health-care savings among previously hospitalized psychiatric patients (approximately 6700 pounds sterling per patient).", "corpus_id": 5726515, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Prevalence of cystic echinococcosis in slaughtered sheep and goats in Ahar Abattoir, northwest part of Iran.", "abstract": "Summary The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of cystic echinococcosis (CE) of slaughtered sheep and goats in Ahar Abattoir, Northwest of Iran. Out of 7.868 slaughtered animals examined for CE (hydatidosis) in liver and lungs (7.654 sheep and 214 goats), 25.40% were infected. The rates of lungs and liver CE were 15.28% and 6.08% in sheep, respectively, and 19.15% and 10.28% in goats, respectively. The infection rate was higher in lungs and was more pronounced in goats. Existence of infected stray dogs in grassland and ruminant grazing on infected pasture are two main reasons for high infection rates in Arasbaran region. .", "corpus_id": 2147057 }

{ "title": "Hydatidosis in human and slaughtered herbivores in Mazandaran province, northern Iran", "abstract": "Objective \nTo determine the rate of hydatid cyst in hospitalized patients and slaughtered animals in Mazandaran province, northern Iran.", "corpus_id": 72884761 }

{ "title": "An epidemiological approach to the study of Echinococcosis in North-East region of Iran (Khorassan).", "abstract": "We have collected all the reported cases of Echinococcus cysts recovered in every surgical ward in Mashhad since their establishment. At the same time we searched corpses of livestock which had been slaughtered in Khorassan's slaughter houses in different days since 1969 for evidence of cysts, and also dogs, 2 wolves, 4 jackals and 11 foxes which had been killed with strychnine, for adult worms. Occurrence of hydatid cyst infestation was found in 478 reports of surgical operations amongst 43,196 cases operated for various diagnosis including hydatidosis. The number of hydatid cyst infestation amongst 15,691 corpses is as follows: 881 out of 12,311 sheep and goats, 378 out of 3380 cattle and camels. The dogs' infestation was rather high as we found adult Echinococcus worms in 50 out of the examined 266, which gives a percentage of 18.79. But no worms could be found in the 2 wolves, 4 jackals and 11 foxes which were examined. All the adult worms examined were Echinococcus granulosus.", "corpus_id": 27180297, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "The inhibition of photosynthetic electron flow by DCCD", "abstract": "Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCCD) is a well known inhibitor of photophosphorylation [ 1,2] and oxidative phosphorylation [3]. It prevents ATP formation and also suppresses electron flow, the latter rate being restored by the addition of an uncoupler [4]. This shows that DCCD behaves like a classical energy transfer inhibitor. Its mode of action is due to a binding onto an amino acid of the base piece or proton channel (CFo or F,) of the coupling system, which indirectly affects the rate of electron flow [5]. In the photosynthetic electron flow system of chloroplasts however, it is known that DCCD at somewhat higher concentrations has another effect on electron flow in addition to that of an energy transfer inhibitor. The basal (not coupled) rate of electron flow is sensitive to the addition of DCCD but the reversal of the inhibition of the coupled rate by an uncoupler is not complete [ 11. This additional effect of DCCD has not been analysed yet in detail, let alone localized at a specific site [6]. By using recent progress in artificial donor and acceptor", "corpus_id": 459824 }

{ "title": "Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide inhibits proton translocation by cytochrome c oxidase.", "abstract": "Summary Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase has recently been shown to possess a proton-translocating activity. We report here that dicyclohexylcarbodiimide, a well-established inhibitor of ATP-linked proton pumps, inhibits proton translocation by cytochrome c oxidase whilst having only minor effects on its oxidative activity. The inhibition of the proton pump was time and concentration dependent, both in intact mitochondria and in reconstituted cytochrome c oxidase vesicles. This is the first observation of inhibition of a non ATP-linked proton pump by dicyclohexylcarbodiimide.", "corpus_id": 30552538 }

{ "title": "New Information and Communication Technologies for Knowledge Management in Organizations", "abstract": "It becomes important to consider the role of Information Technologies (IT) in society and at school, including its impact on the teaching-learning process transformation. The use of IT should be done in an integrated and inclusive way, it is critical to teach how to use, consume and interact with technology. This study intends to contribute to a more depth understanding of the IT impact in the teaching-learning process. Our main goal is to create a scale to measure the Subjects’ Interest and Motivation, Motivation and Involvement with Learning Resources and Learning Styles. Those are important factors that impact on students’ Learning Performance. Insights from an empirical study of 357middle education students indicate that this multi-dimensional scale incorporates the following constructs: a) Interest and Motivation, b) Motivation and Involvement with IT’s Learning Resources, c) Motivation and Involvement with Teachers’ Learning Resources, and d) Non Literary Learning Styles. Discussion centers on this scale implications for theory development and management decisions. Teachers’ and schools’ managers may better understand the learning resources and styles preferred by students, and thus to create more motivational learning programs. Directions for future research are also presented.", "corpus_id": 29276271, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "A note on new sources of gaugino masses", "abstract": "Abstract In IIB orientifold models, the singlet twisted moduli appear in the tree-level gauge kinetic function. They might be responsible for generating gaugino masses if they acquire non–vanishing F -terms. We discuss some aspects of this new possibility, such as the size of gaugino masses and their non-universalities. A possible brane setting is presented to illustrate the usefulness of these new sources.", "corpus_id": 309586 }

{ "title": "Brane Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking", "abstract": "Abstract We propose a mechanism for mediating supersymmetry breaking in type I string constructions. The basic set-up consists of a system of three D-branes: two parallel D-branes, a matter D-brane and a source D-brane, with supersymmetry breaking communicated via a third D-brane, the mediating D-brane, which intersects both of the parallel D-branes. We discuss an example in which the first and second family matter fields correspond to open strings living on the intersection of the matter D-brane and mediating D-brane, while the gauge fields, Higgs doublets and third family matter fields correspond to open strings living on the mediating D-brane. As in gaugino mediated models, the gauginos and Higgs doublets receive direct soft masses from the source brane, and flavour-changing neutral currents are naturally suppressed since the first and second family squarks and sleptons receive suppressed soft masses. However, unlike the gaugino mediated model, the third family squarks and sleptons receive unsuppressed soft masses, resulting in a very distinctive spectrum with heavier stops, sbottoms and staus.", "corpus_id": 6939105 }

{ "title": "Chiral asymmetry in four-dimensional open string vacua", "abstract": "Abstract Starting from the type IIB string on the Z orbifold, we construct some chiral open-string vacua with N = 1 supersymmetry in four dimensions. The Chan-Paton group depends on the (quantized) NS-NS antisymmetric tensor. The largest choice, SO (8) × SU (12) × U (1), has an anomalous U (1) factor whose gauge boson acquires a mass of the order of the string scale. The corresponding open-string spectrum comprises only Neumann strings and includes three families of chiral multiplets in the ( 8, 12 ∗ ) + ( 1, 66 ) representation. A comparison is drawn with a heterotic vacuum with non-standard embedding, and some properties of the low-energy effective field theory are discussed.", "corpus_id": 119081888, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Oxygen uptake of the human fetus at term", "abstract": "Objective. To measure oxygen uptake of term human fetuses and compare the values between those delivered vaginally following normal labor and those delivered by cesarean section before the onset of labor. Design. This was a prospective cross‐sectional study. Setting. University teaching hospital. Sample. Twenty healthy pregnant women at term (38–42 weeks) were included in this study. Among them, 10 were delivered by elective cesarean section and 10 had normal vaginal delivery. Methods. Umbilical vein volume blood flow was measured <24 hours before delivery. Immediately after delivery, the fetal weight was determined, and the umbilical venous and arterial blood samples were obtained. Blood gas analysis was performed and hemoglobin content was measured. Fetal oxygen uptake was calculated as a product of umbilical venous blood flow and the difference in the umbilical arterial and venous oxygen content. Results. We found that the mean oxygen uptake in human fetuses at term (median gestational age 39 weeks) to be 6.58 ml/min/kg (i.e. 0.29 mmol/min/kg). There was no significant difference in oxygen uptake between fetuses delivered following uncomplicated normal labor and those delivered by elective cesarean section before the onset of labor. Conclusion. Oxygen uptake of the appropriately grown normal human fetus at term is approximately 6.6 ml/kg/min and is not significantly affected by normal labor and delivery. Human fetuses tolerate intermittent reductions in uterine blood flow and oxygen supply associated with myometrial contractions during normal labor quite well.", "corpus_id": 2183178 }

{ "title": "Impact of cesarean section on placental transfusion and iron-related hematological indices in term neonates: a systematic review and meta-analysis.", "abstract": "Evidence suggests that cesarean section is likely associated with a reduced placental transfusion and poor hematological status in neonates. However, clinical studies have reported somewhat inconsistent results. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine whether cesarean section affects placental transfusion and iron-related hematological indices. Pubmed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Ovid Databases were searched for relevant studies published before April 9, 2013. Mean differences between cesarean section and vaginal delivery in outcomes of interests (placental residual blood volume; hematocrit level, hemoglobin concentration, and erythrocyte count in cord/peripheral blood) were extracted and pooled using a random effects model. We identified 15 studies (n = 8477) eligible for the meta-analysis. Compared with neonates born vaginally, those born by cesarean section had a higher placental residual blood volume [weighted mean difference (WMD), 8.87 ml; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.32 ml-15.43 ml]; a lower level of hematocrit (WMD, -2.91%; 95% CI, -4.16% to -1.65%), hemoglobin (WMD, -0.51 g/dL; 95% CI, -0.74 g/dL to -0.27 g/dL) and erythrocyte (WMD, -0.16 × 10(12)/L; 95% CI, -0.30 × 10(12)/L to -0.01 × 10(12)/L). Subgroup analysis showed that the WMD for hematocrit in neonate's peripheral blood (-6.94%; 95% CI, -9.15% to -4.73%) was substantially lower than that in cord blood (-1.75%; 95% CI, -2.82%, -0.68%) (P value for testing subgroup differences <0.001). In conclusion, cesarean section compared with vaginal delivery is associated with a reduced placental transfusion and poor iron-related hematologic indices in both cord and peripheral blood, indicating that neonates delivered by cesarean section might be more likely affected by iron-deficiency anemia in infancy.", "corpus_id": 10224838 }

{ "title": "The Development and Validation of Sexual Health Education Needs Assessment Questionnaire of Iranian Engaged Couples", "abstract": "Background: Knowledge about sexual health is one of the basic needs of young couples. The present study aimed to develop and validate the Sexual Health Education Needs Assessment Questionnaire (SHENAQ). Materials and Methods: This study was a sequential exploratory mixed method. In the qualitative phase, In-depth interviews were conducted with 38 engaged and married men and women and 9 key informants. After a literature review, in the quantitative phase, validity properties of the SHENAQ were assessed. Results: Sexual health education needs consists of 4 themes “Suitable content for education “,”Characteristics of competent educators”, “Appropriate technologies in education” and” Educational convenient features”. The content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) of the instrument were 0.91 and0.83 respectively. SHENAQ was designed with 46 items. The instrument’s internal consistency was confirmed by alpha coefficient 0.863 and stability assessment through the test-retest was 0.824. Conclusion: SHENAQ is culturally sensitive with satisfactory validity and reliability and could be used to increase the effectiveness of premarital education. [GMJ.2017;6(4):302-11] DOI: 10.22086/gmj.v6i4.854", "corpus_id": 216967986, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Long-lasting effects of sublingual immunotherapy according to its duration: a 15-year prospective study.", "abstract": "BACKGROUND\nData on the long-term effects of sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) are sparse, and the optimal duration of treatment is a matter of debate.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nWe sought to prospectively evaluate the long-term effect of SLIT given for 3, 4, or 5 years and to compare the effect of those different durations.\n\n\nMETHODS\nIn this prospective open controlled study we followed up patients with respiratory allergy who were monosensitized to mites for 15 years. The subjects were divided in 4 groups receiving drug therapy alone or SLIT for 3, 4, or 5 years. Clinical scores, skin sensitizations, methacholine reactivity, and nasal eosinophil counts were evaluated every year during the winter months. The clinical effect was considered to persist until clinical scores remained at less than 50% of the baseline value, and then patients underwent another course of SLIT.\n\n\nRESULTS\nSeventy-eight patients were enrolled, and 59 completed the study. In the 12 control subjects no relevant change in clinical scores was seen throughout the study. In the patients receiving SLIT for 3 years, the clinical benefit persisted for 7 years. In those receiving immunotherapy for 4 or 5 years, the clinical benefit persisted for 8 years. New sensitizations occurred in all the control subjects over 15 years and in less than a quarter of the patients receiving SLIT (21%, 12%, and 11%, respectively). The second course of vaccination induced a benefit more rapidly than the first course. The behavior of bronchial hyperreactivity and nasal eosinophils paralleled the clinical score.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nUnder the present conditions, it can be suggested that a 4-year duration of SLIT is the optimal choice because it induces a long-lasting clinical improvement similar to that seen with a 5-year course and greater than that of a 3-year vaccination.", "corpus_id": 3160655 }

{ "title": "Subcutaneous and sublingual immunotherapy for allergic rhinitis: What is the evidence?", "abstract": "Background Increasing interest in sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) among practitioners and patients has resulted in numerous publications and clinical trials in recent years. With the clinical growth of SLIT, discussions of its efficacy, safety, and immunologic effects have intensified, as have comparisons to subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT). In the United States, SCIT has been the traditional form of immunotherapy for inhalant allergy and is the only immunotherapy method approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at this time. The similarities and differences between SLIT and SCIT are often discussed, yet clinical studies directly comparing these immunotherapy methods are scarce. Methods A literature review of specific issues and controversies between SLIT and SCIT for allergic rhinitis was conducted. Results Safety, efficacy, and immunologic effects of these two immunotherapy techniques are reviewed. Conclusion Unanswered questions relating to SLIT are examined.", "corpus_id": 2530924 }

{ "title": "Cannabis and mental health.", "abstract": "Cannabis is currently the most widely consumed illegal drug in both Europe and the United States. Cannabis dependence criteria are defined by the principal diagnostic manuals (DSM-IV and ICD-10), but not cannabis withdrawal syndrome, although cannabis withdrawal produces certain significant symptoms that are beginning to be typified by research. While not all cannabis users present mental health problems, recent reviews point to a greater risk of various mental disorders in cannabis users. The risks are associated with younger age at first use, greater frequency of use or certain personal predispositions. Research has revealed not only alterations in both the psychotic and affective spectra, but also cognitive deterioration and associations between cannabis use and antisocial behavior, use of other illegal drugs and other health risks. Although contaminating factors and the difficulty of accurately assessing the extent and history of cannabis use represent considerable obstacles to progress in this research field, studies carried out in recent years have contributed conclusive findings on the potential risks of cannabis use. The present article reviews the main scientific findings and conclusions with respect to the association between cannabis use and mental health.", "corpus_id": 757282, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "0.9V 12mW 2MSPS algorithmic ADC with 81dB SFDR", "abstract": "An ultra low-voltage CMOS two-stage algorithm ADC incorporating background digital calibration is presented. The adopted low-voltage circuit technique achieves high-accuracy high-speed clocking without the use of clock boosting or bootstrapping. A resistor-based input sampling branch demonstrates high linearity and inherent low-voltage operation. The proposed background calibration accounts for capacitor mismatches and finite opamp gain error in the MDAC stages via a novel digital correlation scheme involving a two-channel ADC architecture. The prototype ADC, fabricated in a 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS process, achieves 81 dB SFDR at 0.9V and 2MSPS (12MHz clock) after calibration. The ADC operates up to 5MSPS (30MHz clock) with 4dB degradation. The total power consumption is 12mW, and the active die area is 1.4 mm/sup 2/.", "corpus_id": 277693 }

{ "title": "Comments on 'Split ADC' architecture for deterministic digital background calibration of a 16-bit 1-MS/s ADC\"", "abstract": "For original article by J. McNeill et al. see ibid., vol.40, no.12, p.2437-45, Dec. 2005.", "corpus_id": 4654121 }

{ "title": "The Power of Ethnography: A Useful Approach to Researching Politics", "abstract": "Abstract This article explores and argues the suitability of ethnographic methods, primarily participant observation, in the research of politics, and in the construction of concepts for theory building. The argument is sustained by using a case study of a network of political clientelism and some instances of vote-buying in a native village in Mexico City. The author maintains that long-term participant observation is particularly well suited to discover puzzles and incongruities, which invite abductive reasoning, and allow for unplanned findings and new insights. Issues of legitimacy, moral universes and life-worlds, as well as tacit knowledge, local discourses and silences, are researchable with this methodological approach. The author suggests the study of politics would benefit from more scholars employing these methods.", "corpus_id": 149283010, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Communicating in a crisis: flight SQ 006", "abstract": "Abstract The tourism industry is prone to crisis and disaster which must be planned for and managed. The paper analyses the early reactions of Singapore Airlines to the crisis caused by the first fatal crash in the history of the main company within the context of crisis management theory. The accident is explained and company responses are reviewed, with emphasis on the communication strategies adopted and media reporting. Some reference is also made to the wider role of national carriers and final conclusions suggest the need for further research into crisis management and tourism with scope for collaboration between industry and the academic community.", "corpus_id": 153774831 }

{ "title": "Signal detection as the first line of defence in tourism crisis management", "abstract": "\n Abstract\n \n The vulnerability of the tourism industry to a range of crises has attracted many scholars to investigate the crisis strategies and practices employed by destinations and tourism organizations mainly with regards to crisis preparedness, containment and damage limitation, crisis recovery and subsequent learning. One over-looked area has been that of crisis signal detection. This paper proposes a three-stage conceptual framework for crisis signal detection consisting of signal scanning, capture and transmission to the crisis response centre. With this framework as a basis, 16 corporate level executives of international tourism organizations were interviewed in order to explore the significance of signal detection in their crisis management practice and the challenges faced in each of these three stages. The findings offer insights into the design of crisis management mechanisms and open areas for further research.\n \n", "corpus_id": 6005038 }

{ "title": "Tourism destination marketing and information technology in Ghana", "abstract": "Abstract A research model was developed to investigate the relationships between intention to visit and tourists’ satisfaction as a source of mediation for travelers through information search and e-word of mouth. A judgmental sampling technique and a sample questionnaire survey of 350 respondents were involved in the research measurement. The finding of the analytical results indicates that the dimensions of tourists’ satisfaction as a mediator affect the overall tourists’ intention to visit. Simple websites no longer have an impact on destination marketing because of the advance in technology. Websites should provide different tools and marketing channels to facilitate the surfing and information needs of tourists. The research used the instruments of online word of mouth and information search by modifying the theory of planned behavior to consider the context of intention to visit. Valuable information for managers and researchers interested in the internet and online destination marketing is essential.", "corpus_id": 54216022, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Integration and operation of post-combustion capture system on coal-fired power generation : load following and peak power", "abstract": "Coal-fired power plants with post combustion capture and sequestration (CCS) systems have a variety of challenges to integrate the steam generation, air quality control, cooling water systems and steam turbine with the capture system. A variety of engineering studies have been completed that cover these aspects when a plant is operating at full load while operating at a 90 percent capture rate. These studies investigate the basic integration of the these systems, the energy penalty and the effect of capital costs; however, none of these studies comprehensively explore the ability of the capture plant and the balance of the integrated system to respond dynamically to changes in load or capture rate. These load changes occur due to a change in demand for electricity in the system, generation by variable, intermittent resources, or if the plant is equipped with the ability to store solvent to implement price arbitrage. The integrated carbon capture system can be broken down into three general modes: full capacity, load following and peak power generation. Each of these modes presents unique challenges to integration with the CCS system. The load following mode requires the ability to accommodate different ramp rates that are reflected in flue gas flow and composition. Operation at partial load will affect the quality of steam sent to the solvent regeneration unit. Depending on the setup of the steam turbine system, at lower loads multiple extractions points may be necessary or an increase of the amount of extraction steam will be required due to the reduction in steam quality. Using Aspen Dynamics, a CO 2 capture system using a monoethanolamine (MEA) absorption process is simulated at various plant loads to determine the overall effects on the efficiency of the CCS unit and the balance of the system. In addition, the dynamic behavior of the CCS unit on power output and emissions is shown to demonstrate that the capability of a coal-fired power plant to load follow is not hindered by the addition of a carbon capture unit. The solvent storage mode can be further broken to two operation modes. The first is peak power production, which occurs when the solvent is capturing CO 2 from the flue gas, but is minimizing or delaying regeneration to a future time through storage. This mode is used to take advantage of peak power prices by maximizing power output of the plant and maintaining a 90 percent capture rate. The regeneration mode entails the solvent being released from the storage tanks and sent to the reboiler column. Solvent storage has been shown in previous studies to have the ability to increase operating profits, but these studies have neglected to incorporate the capital costs associated with this type of operation mode and the operational issues and complexity associated with the large swings in quantities of steam required for the solvent regeneration. By including the capital costs, this study determines that a system with large duration solvent storage is not economically viable given the flexible demands of the system and current electricity price spreads. This thesis presents a framework for considering the flexible operations of a coal-fired power plant with an integrated carbon capture and sequestration system. By exploring the operational limitations of the integrated system and the economic costs, an evaluation is made of the viability of different CCS operational schemes. This study finds that the CCS unit can match the dynamics of the base coal plant and also increase the operational flexibility of the system. The increased capital expenditure to meet peak demand is viable for larger steam turbine configurations in electricity systems with high peak prices and plants with short duration solvent storage. Thesis Supervisor: Howard J. Herzog, Senior Research Engineer, MIT Energy Initiative", "corpus_id": 3175561 }

{ "title": "Initial evaluation of the impact of post-combustion capture of carbon dioxide on supercritical pulverised coal power plant part load performance", "abstract": "Pulverised coal-fired plants often play an important role in electricity grids as mid-merit plants that can operate flexibly in response to changes in supply and demand. As a consequence, these plants are required to operate over a wide output range. This paper presents an initial evaluation of some potential impacts of adding post-combustion CO2 capture on the part load performance of pulverised coal-fired plants. Preliminary results for ideal cases analysed using a simple high-level model indicate that post-combustion CO2 capture could increase the options available to power plant operators. In particular, solvent storage could allow higher effective plant load factors to be achieved to assist with capital recovery while still permitting flexible operation for grid support. A number of areas for more detailed analysis are identified.", "corpus_id": 54945613 }

{ "title": "Optimization of Boiler Control to Improve the Load-following Capability of Power-plant Units:", "abstract": "Abstract The capability to perform fast load changes has been an important issue in the power market, and will become increasingly more so due to the increasing commercialization of the European power market. An optimizing control system for improving the loadfollowing capability of power-plant units has therefore been developed. The system is implemented as a complement, producing control signals to be added to those of the existing boiler control system, a concept which has various practical advantages in terms of implementation and commissioning. The optimizing control system takes account of the multivariable and load-dependent nonlinear characteristics of the boiler process, as a scheduled LQG controller with feedforward action is utilized. The LQG controller improves the control of critical process variables, making it possible to increase the load-following capability of a specific plant. Field tests on a 265 MW coal-fired power-plant unit reveals that the maximum allowable load gradient that can be imposed on the plant, can be increased from 4 to 8 MW/min.", "corpus_id": 109994197, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Isolated teeth of Anhangueria (Pterosauria: Pterodactyloidea) from the Lower Cretaceous of Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, Australia", "abstract": "The fossil record of Australian pterosaurs is sparse, consisting of only a small number of isolated and fragmentary remains from the Cretaceous of Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria. Here, we describe two isolated pterosaur teeth from the Lower Cretaceous (middle Albian) Griman Creek Formation at Lightning Ridge (New South Wales) and identify them as indeterminate members of the pterodactyloid clade Anhangueria. This represents the first formal description of pterosaur material from New South Wales. The presence of one or more anhanguerian pterosaurs at Lightning Ridge correlates with the presence of ‘ornithocheirid’ and Anhanguera-like pterosaurs from the contemporaneous Toolebuc Formation of central Queensland and the global distribution attained by ornithocheiroids during the Early Cretaceous. The morphology of the teeth and their presence in the estuarine- and lacustrine-influenced Griman Creek Formation is likely indicative of similar life habits of the tooth bearer to other members of Anhangueria.", "corpus_id": 6676423 }

{ "title": "Revised geology, age, and vertebrate diversity of the dinosaur-bearing Griman Creek Formation (Cenomanian), Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, Australia", "abstract": "Abstract The mid-Cretaceous Griman Creek Formation (GCF), which crops out near the town of Lightning Ridge in the Surat Basin of north-central New South Wales, Australia, is noteworthy for its opalised vertebrate fauna. The fossil assemblage comprises remains of aspidorhynchid teleosts, lamniform chondrichthyans, dipnoans, chelid and possible meiolaniform turtles, leptocleidid-like and possible elasmosaurid plesiosaurians, anhanguerian pterosaurs, titanosauriform sauropods, megaraptoran theropods, ankylosaurians, several forms of non-iguanodontian and iguanodontian ornithopods, crocodylomorphs, enantiornithine birds, and stem and true monotremes, making it one of the most diverse mid-Cretaceous terrestrial vertebrate faunas in Australia. A detailed stratigraphic survey of twenty subterranean opal mines provides new information on the geology, age and palaeoenvironment of the main fossil-bearing beds. Vertebrate remains derive from the ‘Finch Clay facies’, laterally-extensive but discontinuous lenses of claystone that likely accumulated relatively rapidly in near-coastal but freshwater embayments (i.e. lagoonal conditions), and probably represent a single, roughly contemporaneous fauna. U-Pb age dating of detrital zircons extracted from a distinct layer of volcanogenic claystone immediately overlying one of the opalised fossil-bearing layers yields a maximum depositional age of 100.2–96.6 Ma. These new dates confirm an early to mid-Cenomanian age for the fauna, rather than Albian, as has been reported previously. The GCF at Lightning Ridge is therefore equivalent to the middle part of the Winton Formation (Queensland) and several million years older than the sauropod-dominated fauna at Winton.", "corpus_id": 134264936 }

{ "title": "Comparative study of dentition among species of Poecilia (Pisces)", "abstract": "Many studies in the genus Poecilia have focused on reproductive and genetic characteristics of Poecilia formosa, the Amazon molly, and its sympatric species P. latipinna and P. mexicana. The research literature of Poecilia dentition has been limited to general tooth morphology. Essentially absent are comparative analyses of dentition patterns and total numbers of teeth. The current study uses dentition analysis as a method to compare species in the genus Poecilia and to address some taxonomic issues related to these fish. The study focused on fish from the areas of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. Through the use of scanning electron microscopy, the lower jaws of Poecilia spp were examined to determine total numbers of outer and inner teeth. In addition, the differences in distribution patterns of the inner teeth were recorded and compared. Statistical analyses were performed to determine which comparisons were significant. This study reveals several observations: 1) variations in the numbers of outer and inner teeth exist in some of these fish with respect to site of collection; 2) differences in total teeth numbers and dentition patterns were found both interspecifically and intraspecifically; and 3) in addition, dentition analysis provided evidence regarding the origin of P. formosa. This study supports the current notion that P. latipinna, the proported paternal component, and P. mexicana limantouri, the purported maternal component, are the progenitor species of P. formosa. Two unresolved taxonomic questions were addressed through dentition analysis. First, the present study supports the exclusion of the triploid associate of P. formosa as a separate species from P. formosa. Second, this study shows a significant difference in the number of inner teeth and in dentition patterns between P. mexicana limantouri and P. mexicana mexicana. Such differences, in addition to previously known distinguishing characteristics, should prompt careful consideration of whether or not these taxa deserve specific status or retention of their current subspecific status. J. Morphol. 239:271–282, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.", "corpus_id": 44151772, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Characterization of SIV in the oral cavity and in vitro inhibition of SIV by rhesus macaque saliva.", "abstract": "Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections are rarely acquired via an oral route in adults. Previous studies have shown that human whole saliva inhibits HIV infection in vitro, and multiple factors present in human saliva have been shown to contribute to this antiviral activity. Despite the widespread use of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected rhesus macaques as models for HIV pathogenesis and transmission, few studies have monitored SIV in the oral cavity of infected rhesus macaques and evaluated the viral inhibitory capacity of macaque saliva. Utilizing a cohort of rhesus macaques infected with SIV(Mac251), we monitored virus levels and genotypic diversity in the saliva throughout the course of the disease; findings were similar to previous observations in HIV-infected humans. An in vitro infectivity assay was utilized to measure inhibition of HIV/SIV infection by normal human and rhesus macaque whole saliva. Both human and macaque saliva were capable of inhibiting HIV and SIV infection. The inhibitory capacity of saliva samples collected from a cohort of animals postinfection with SIV increased over the course of disease, coincident with the development of SIV-specific antibodies in the saliva. These findings suggest that both innate and adaptive factors contribute to inhibition of SIV by whole macaque saliva. This work also demonstrates that SIV-infected rhesus macaques provide a relevant model to examine the innate and adaptive immune responses that inhibit HIV/SIV in the oral cavity.", "corpus_id": 777331 }

{ "title": "Contrasting IgA and IgG neutralization capacities and responses to HIV type 1 gp120 V3 loop in HIV-infected individuals.", "abstract": "Quantitative analysis for HIV-1-specific antibodies present in IgA and IgG preparations purified from the serum of HIV-seropositive individuals indicated that the proportion of HIV-specific antibodies present within the IgG isotype was seven times greater than the proportion of IgA HIV antibodies present within the IgA isotype. Dilution of IgA HIV-specific antibodies by nonspecific IgA was observed in patients with elevated serum IgA concentrations, whereas proportions of IgG HIV antibodies rose with increases in concentrations of serum IgG. Although proportions of IgA HIV antibodies were not observed to correlate with the CD4 counts of the individuals from whom immunoglobulins were purified, a significant association between the numbers of such cells and proportion of HIV antibodies present in the IgG isotype was found. Equivalent amounts of IgG were also more effective than IgA at inhibiting HIV-1IIIB infection of a susceptible T cell line. This may be due to the presence of higher proportions of IgG antibodies directed toward non-V3 determinants because reactivity against an HIV-1IIIB V3 peptide was low and did not differ significantly between these isotopes. IgA antibodies reacting against a V3 peptide containing the HIV consensus sequence could be detected in the majority of IgA samples purified from infected individuals. Proportions of IgG consensus V3-specific antibodies within the purified IgG samples were, however, much higher. The presence of accompanying increases in serum IgG concentration and proportions of IgG HIV antibodies, higher proportions of both HIV- and consensus V3-specific antibodies within this isotype, and more effective neutralization by IgG suggests that an HIV-driven response is dominated by B cells committed to production of this immunoglobulin isotype. The observed low proportions of HIV antigen-specific IgA antibodies with dilution in many individuals by elevations in non-HIV-specific IgA suggests that IgA B cells may be more susceptible to factors that mediate the polyclonal activation believed to be responsible for many of the B cell disorders characteristic of HIV infection.", "corpus_id": 8996505 }

{ "title": "Temporal and Molecular Analyses of Cardiac Extracellular Matrix Remodeling following Pressure Overload in Adiponectin Deficient Mice", "abstract": "Adiponectin, circulating levels of which are reduced in obesity and diabetes, mediates cardiac extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling in response to pressure overload (PO). Here, we performed a detailed temporal analysis of progressive cardiac ECM remodelling in adiponectin knockout (AdKO) and wild-type (WT) mice at 3 days and 1, 2, 3 and 4 weeks following the induction of mild PO via minimally invasive transverse aortic banding. We first observed that myocardial adiponectin gene expression was reduced after 4 weeks of PO, whereas increased adiponectin levels were detected in cardiac homogenates at this time despite decreased circulating levels of adiponectin. Scanning electron microscopy and Masson’s trichrome staining showed collagen accumulation increased in response to 2 and 4 weeks of PO in WT mice, while fibrosis in AdKO mice was notably absent after 2 weeks but highly apparent after 4 weeks of PO. Time and intensity of fibroblast appearance after PO was not significantly different between AdKO and WT animals. Gene array analysis indicated that MMP2, TIMP2, collagen 1α1 and collagen 1α3 were induced after 2 weeks of PO in WT but not AdKO mice. After 4 weeks MMP8 was induced in both genotypes, MMP9 only in WT mice and MMP1α only in AdKO mice. Direct stimulation of primary cardiac fibroblasts with adiponectin induced a transient increase in total collagen detected by picrosirius red staining and collagen III levels synthesis, as well as enhanced MMP2 activity detected via gelatin zymography. Adiponectin also enhanced fibroblast migration and attenuated angiotensin-II induced differentiation to a myofibroblast phenotype. In conclusion, these data indicate that increased myocardial bioavailability of adiponectin mediates ECM remodeling following PO and that adiponectin deficiency delays these effects.", "corpus_id": 13960317, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Acid aspiration-induced airways hyperresponsiveness in mice.", "abstract": "The role of gastroesophageal reflux and micro-aspiration as a trigger of airways hyperresponsiveness (AHR) in patients with asthma is controversial. The role of acid reflux and aspiration as a direct cause of AHR in normal subjects is also unclear. We speculated that aspiration of a weak acid with a pH (1.8) equivalent to the upper range of typical gastric contents would lead to AHR in naive mice. We further speculated that modest reductions in aspirate acidity to a level expected during gastric acid suppression therapy (pH 4.0) would impede aspiration-induced AHR. BALB/c female mice were briefly anesthetized with isoflurane and allowed to aspirate 75 microl of saline with HCl (pH 1.8, 4.0, or 7.4) or underwent sham aspiration. Mice were re-anesthetized 2 or 24 h later, underwent tracheostomy, and were coupled to a mechanical ventilator. Forced oscillations were used to periodically measure respiratory impedance (Zrs) following aerosol delivery of saline and increasing doses of methacholine to measure for AHR. Values for elastance (H), airways resistance (R(N)), and tissue damping (G) were derived from Zrs. Aspirate pH of 1.8 led to a significant overall increase in peak R(N), G, and H compared with pH 4.0 and 7.4 at 2 and 24 h. Differences between pH 7.4 and 4.0 were not significant. In mice aspirating pH 1.8 compared with controls, airway lavage fluid contained more neutrophils, higher protein, and demonstrated higher permeability. We conclude that acid aspiration triggers an acute AHR, driven principally by breakdown of epithelial barrier integrity within the airways.", "corpus_id": 158207 }

{ "title": "Detrimental effects of albuterol on airway responsiveness requires airway inflammation and is independent of β-receptor affinity in murine models of asthma", "abstract": "BackgroundInhaled short acting β2-agonists (SABA), e.g. albuterol, are used for quick reversal of bronchoconstriction in asthmatics. While SABA are not recommended for maintenance therapy, it is not uncommon to find patients who frequently use SABA over a long period of time and there is a suspicion that long term exposure to SABA could be detrimental to lung function. To test this hypothesis we studied the effect of long-term inhaled albuterol stereoisomers on immediate allergic response (IAR) and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) in mouse models of asthma.MethodsBalb/C mice were sensitized and challenged with ovalbumin (OVA) and then we studied the IAR to inhaled allergen and the AHR to inhaled methacholine. The mice were pretreated with nebulizations of either racemic (RS)-albuterol or the single isomers (S)- and (R)-albuterol twice daily over 7 days prior to harvest.ResultsWe found that all forms of albuterol produced a significant increase of IAR measured as respiratory elastance. Similarly, we found that AHR was elevated by albuterol. At the same time a mouse strain that is intrinsically hyperresponsive (A/J mouse) was not affected by the albuterol isomers nor was AHR induced by epithelial disruption with Poly-L-lysine affected by albuterol.ConclusionsWe conclude that long term inhalation treatment with either isomer of albuterol is capable of precipitating IAR and AHR in allergically inflamed airways but not in intrinsically hyperresponsive mice or immunologically naïve mice. Because (S)-albuterol, which lacks affinity for the β2-receptor, did not differ from (R)-albuterol, we speculate that isomer-independent properties of the albuterol molecule, other than β2-agonism, are responsible for the effect on AHR.", "corpus_id": 37051 }

{ "title": "ATP hydrolysis during contraction of permeabilized airway smooth muscle.", "abstract": "This study determined whether the time-dependent decline in the rate of ATP hydrolysis by actomyosin ATPase during sustained isometric force can occur in the absence of a time-dependent decline in regulatory myosin light chain (rMLC) phosphorylation in Triton X-100-permeabilized canine tracheal smooth muscle. Maximal activation with 10 microM Ca(2+) induced sustained increases in isometric force, stiffness, and rMLC phosphorylation; however, the increase in the ATP hydrolysis rate was initially high but then declined to a steady-state level above that of the unstimulated muscle (basal 31.8 +/- 5.8 nmol. cm(-3). s(-1); peak 81.4 +/- 11.3 nmol. cm(-3). s(-1); steady-state 62.2 +/- 9.1 nmol. cm(-3). s(-1)). Activation of strips in which the rMLC was irreversibly and maximally thiophosphorylated with adenosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) also induced sustained increases in isometric force and stiffness but a nonsustained increase in ATP hydrolysis rate. There was no significant difference in the peak or steady-state isometric force, stiffness, or ATP hydrolysis rate or in the steady-state maximum unloaded shortening velocity between strips activated by 10 microM Ca(2+) or rMLC thiophosphorylation (0.058 +/- 0.016 and 0.047 +/- 0.011 muscle lengths/s, respectively). Mechanisms other than changes in rMLC phosphorylation contribute to the time-dependent decline in actomyosin ATPase activity during sustained activation of canine tracheal smooth muscle.", "corpus_id": 525277, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Overoxidized polypyrrole film directed single-walled carbon nanotubes immobilization on glassy carbon electrode and its sensing applications.", "abstract": "In this paper, the films of overoxidized polypyrrole (PPyox) directed single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have been electrochemically coated onto glassy carbon electrode (GCE). Electroactive monomer pyrrole was added into the solution containing sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and SWNTs. Then, electropolymerization was proceeded at the surface of GCE, and a novel kind of conducting polymer/carbon nanotubes (CNTs) composite film with the orientation of CNTs were obtained correspondingly. Finally, this obtained polypyrrole (PPy)/SWNTs film modified GCE was oxidized at a potential of +1.8 V. It can be found that this proposed PPyox/SWNTs composite film modified GCE exhibited excellent electrocatalytic properties for some species such as nitrite, ascorbic acid (AA), dopamine (DA) and uric acid (UA), and could be used as a new sensor for practical applications. Compared with previous CNTs modified electrodes, SWNTs were oriented towards the outside of modified layer by PPyox and SDS, which made the film easily conductive. Moreover, this proposed film modified electrode was more stable, selective and applicable.", "corpus_id": 6363690 }

{ "title": "Bioaffinity sensing using biologically functionalized conducting-polymer nanowire.", "abstract": "A simple, one-step method for fabricating single biologically functionalized conducting-polymer (polypyrrole) nanowire on prepatterned electrodes and its application to biosensing was demonstrated. The biologically functionalized polypyrrole was formed by the electropolymerization of an aqueous solution of pyrrole monomer and the model biomolecule, avidin- or streptavidin-conjugated ZnSe/CdSe quantum dots, within 100 or 200 nm wide by 3 mum long channels between gold electrodes on prefabricated silicon substrate. When challenged with biotin-DNA, the avidin- and streptavidin-polypyrrole nanowires generated a rapid change in resistance to as low as 1 nM, demonstrating the utility of the biomolecule-functionalized nanowire as biosensor. The method offers advantages of direct incorporation of functional biological molecules into the conducting-polymer nanowire during its synthesis, site-specific positioning, built-in electrical contacts, and scalability to high-density nanoarrays over the reported silicon nanowire and carbon nanotube biosensors.", "corpus_id": 31015317 }

{ "title": "n-Type GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure detector with a 3.2 THz threshold frequency.", "abstract": "Terahertz detection using the free-carrier absorption requires a small internal work function of the order of a few millielectron volts. A threshold frequency of 3.2 THz (93 microm or approximately 13 meV work function) is demonstrated by using a 1 x 10(18) cm(-3) Si-doped GaAs emitter and an undoped Al(0.04)Ga(0.96)As barrier structure. The peak responsivity of 6.5 A/W, detectivity of 5.5 x 10(8) Jones, and quantum efficiency of 19% were obtained at 7.1 THz under a bias field of 0.7 kV/cm at 6 K, while the detector spectral response range spans from 3.2 to 30 THz.", "corpus_id": 23123156, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Attitudes of IVF parents regarding the IVF experience and their children", "abstract": "AbstractPurpose: to assess parental attitudes regarding the IVF experience, the IVF pregnancy, and issues associated with raising their IVF child(ren).\nMethod: parents (184 couples) of IVF children born between 1982 and 1992 were mailed individual anonymous questionnaires.\nResults: (31%) parents responded: 62 mothers and 41 fathers. One hundred-three (41%) of the mothers felt that our staff could have been more helpful during their pregnancy. Half the women subjects (52%) stated that they wished they had contact with other IVF couples during pregnancy. Fifty-two percent of the mothers reported that IVF created special feelings of attachment to the child, causing some difficulty with their initial separation. This was comparatively less an issue for fathers, with only 19% reporting similar difficulties (X2=8.39, P<0.01). Ninety-eight percent of the subjects have told someone else about the IVF experience. Interestingly, 25% of the parents remained uncertain about whether they would tell the child. Sixteen couples (15%) had already told the child, and of the 57 (66%) who intended to tell the child later, they varied greatly in their views about which age would be appropriate (mean, 7.3 years; SD, 6.5 years; range, 2–21 years).\nConclusions: The results suggest that women undergoing IVF might profit from greater contact with staff during pregnancy and, again, later when dealing with issues of separation. A substantial proportion of couples expressed some concerns about the issue of disclosure to the child and might profit from counseling when they feel the issue is current.", "corpus_id": 1899220 }

{ "title": "Parental attitudes toward disclosure of the mode of conception to their child conceived by in vitro fertilization.", "abstract": "OBJECTIVE\nTo survey the level of disclosure of conception method within families of children conceived by conventional in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and to examine the factors that might influence parental attitudes and plans for disclosure.\n\n\nDESIGN\nIn-depth questionnaire.\n\n\nSETTING\nParticipants recruited through fertility clinics in the United Kingdom.\n\n\nPATIENT(S)\nParents of children aged 5 to 6 years conceived by IVF/ICSI (n = 181; 51% survey response rate).\n\n\nINTERVENTION(S)\nMothers and fathers of IVF/ICSI-conceived children were sent questionnaires to complete and return in a postage-paid envelope.\n\n\nMAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)\nResponses to the questionnaire.\n\n\nRESULT(S)\nMost parents had told somebody about their child's method of conception, mostly close friends and family. Fewer (26% of mothers, 17% of fathers) had already discussed the child's mode of conception with their child. Fifty-eight percent of mothers and 57% of fathers intended to tell their child at some point. Sixteen percent of mothers and 21% of fathers were undecided. Four percent of fathers never wanted to discuss the subject with their child. Children were more likely to be told if conception was ICSI, rather than conventional IVF, and if an only child. Twenty-nine percent of undecided fathers and 36% of undecided mothers stated that they would tell their child if appropriate, child-friendly explanatory literature were available.\n\n\nCONCLUSION(S)\nThe majority of parents wish to tell their child about their conception by IVF/ICSI at some point but are unsure as to the most appropriate timing and method of disclosure. Fertility clinics might have a role to play in providing the necessary support. Child-friendly literature might be helpful.", "corpus_id": 2655750 }

{ "title": "A training program for managing agitation of residents in long-term care facilities: description and preliminary findings.", "abstract": "The purpose of this article is to describe a training program for managing agitation of long-term care residents and to report results of a pilot study. The program emphasizes the development of behavioral skills for the assessment, prevention, and reduction of both aggressive and non-aggressive agitated behavior. It includes 8 hours of class instruction followed by 8 hours of weekly supervision by the trainers. The nursing staff of all working shifts of a unit located in a large nursing home and the residents of this unit participated in the pilot study. Residents and staff were assessed prior to and after the 2-month training program. Staff members reported using behavioral techniques to a greater extent and feeling more effective in managing agitation after training. More than 90% of staff members were satisfied with the training program. During the supervision period, the staff developed and implemented individualized interventions for two residents. The interventions involved providing more attention to these residents and, in one case, modifying some aspects of the direct environment which seemed to trigger agitation. Both residents were less agitated after the interventions were implemented. Moreover, there was a reduction in the number and frequency of agitated behaviors for the other residents of the trainees' unit following staff training.", "corpus_id": 30267555, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "U.S. Interests in Central Asia and the Challenges to Them", "abstract": "Abstract : Central Asia is an area whose importance to the United States is growing. Yet it also is an imperiled region because it faces numerous constant challenges stemming from pervasive internal misrule and the continuing interest of terrorist organizations in overthrowing local regimes. Its significance is strategic due to its proximity to the war on terrorism and major actors like Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India. Only secondarily is it important by virtue of its energy. Another key interest of U.S. policy is the promotion of democratic reforms and of open societies throughout the region. Today, American interests in Central Asia are under challenge in three definable areas: (1) Russia and China have launched a coordinated campaign to oust the U.S. strategic presence from Central Asia; (2) they and local governments, who have good reason to fear democratic reforms, have waged an ideological campaign, accusing the United States of organizing \"color revolutions\" to oust those regimes from power; and (3) the Taliban has revived its offensive in Afghanistan. The purpose behind Moscow and Beijing's efforts is to preserve the status quo and to further erode America's capability for action in the area. Thus, America faces simultaneous and overlapping military, political, economic, and ideological challenges to its interests there. These challenges succeeded to a point in 2005 because of a lack of policy coordination at home and diminishing policy interest in the region. Consequently, any successful U.S. strategy must be holistic -- it must embrace and utilize all the instruments of power. The recommendations for policy makers that are contained in this monograph emphasize the need to work with allies both within the area and outside it, such as India, the European Union, and NATO. This also means working with all the Central Asian regional governments, no matter how unsavory their conduct is or has been.", "corpus_id": 153113665 }

{ "title": "Peo Life Cycle Cost Accountability: Viability Of Foreign Suppliers For Weapon System Development", "abstract": "Abstract : In recent history, the United States of America has developed vulnerabilities to our national security by becoming more reliant on foreign suppliers for acquisition and development of Air Force weapon systems. These vulnerabilities are due to growing reliance on foreign suppliers for raw materials to include various elements, metals, industrial minerals and agricultural products needed to supply the industrial base that provides products to meet military and civilian needs. These raw materials are not found or produced in sufficient quantities in the United States to meet our national security needs. The U.S. also is faced with vulnerabilities in reliance on foreign producers and manufactures due to lack of indigenous production capabilities in country. Defense production and manufacturing companies will not develop and produce items at a loss. Over the years pricing, mergers and consolidations within our industrial base have contributed to the issues and vulnerabilities associated with our reliance on foreign suppliers and producers. This paper exposes areas of dependence and vulnerabilities associated with the United States dependence on foreign suppliers for raw materials and production items for U.S. Weapon systems. This paper uses a qualitative approach to identify vulnerabilities and mitigate or find solutions associated with our dependence on these suppliers.", "corpus_id": 116840375 }

{ "title": "Freedom in the World", "abstract": "The ruling People’s Democratic Party retained control of the presidency, the National Assembly, and the majority of governorships in April 2011 elections. Hailed by many observers as a marked improvement from the 2007 elections, the polls were nevertheless marred by violence and suspected voter fraud. The worst bloodshed occurred in the north, where rioting by disaffected opposition supporters ignited a wave of clashes that left more than 800 people dead and at least 65,000 displaced. Since President Goodluck Jonathan’s inauguration in May, Nigeria has suffered a series of high-profile attacks by the extremist movement Boko Haram, prompting a brutal crackdown by the security forces.", "corpus_id": 150605537, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "A Comment on the Estimation of the Reliability of Multidimensional Marketing Constructs: A Store Personality Scale Application", "abstract": "Notwithstanding the prevalence of multidimensional constructs in marketing research, very few reliability analyses have taken into account the multidimensional structure of their empirical data. In this article, the author argues that if a scale can be divided into two or more distinct though related dimensions, its internal consistency should be evaluated by coefficients designed for such cases. This article presents stratified alpha as a viable alternative to the common practices of computing alpha for the whole scale and averaging alpha values. It also illustrates, using D’Astous and Lévesque’s store personality scale, that the discrepancy between stratified alpha and alpha (or alpha mean) might be substantial. Thus, it would seem more scientifically sound to compute and report stratified alpha.", "corpus_id": 156294131 }

{ "title": "Construct validity and composite reliability of students’ motivation instrument toward science in UNNES", "abstract": "This instrument manuscript was arranged with unstandardized stimulus and would come to a very subjective interpretation. This study aimed to test (1) construct validity and (2) factor reliability of students’ motivation instruments toward Sciences in Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty (FMIPA), UNNES. The response approach method was used in the instrument development. This approach would put response categories in points along the defined psychological continuum. The variable of this research is student’s motivation toward science. Research respondents were some students of FMIPA, UNNES who were studying in the even semester of academic year 2016/2017. Respondents was taken by proportional random sampling technique. This research was carried out in FMIPA UNNES. Loading factor on each variable in this instrument is significant or valid. That is observed from the p-value of the t-test <0.05. The minimum loading factor in each factor is 0.3, so qualitatively all the loading factors within the instrument are valid. Thus, the instrument of students’ motivation toward science is valid. As factorial, the coefficient of instrument reliability in science is very high. In composite, the coefficient of instrument reliability of students’ motivation toward sciences is also very high. Thus, the instrument of students’ motivation of FMIPA UNNES toward sciences is reliable.", "corpus_id": 210493231 }

{ "title": "Coexisting infinitely many attractors in a new chaotic system with a curve of equilibria: Its extreme multi-stability and Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy computation", "abstract": "A new five-dimensional chaotic system with extreme multi-stability is introduced in this article. The mathematical model is established, and numerical simulations are done. This dynamical system complicates incident of extreme multi-stability. Most significantly, relied on the mathematical model, the recently proposed system has a curve of equilibria that ends in the occurrence of hidden attractors. We examine the initial-condition-dependent dynamics of this system. We inspect that there is an unrestricted number of coexistent attractors, which signifies the occurrence of extreme multi-stability strictly. In addition, the extreme multi-stability according to initial condition is investigated consuming the Lyapunov exponent spectra and bifurcation diagrams. The existence of coexisting infinitely many attractors is displayed with phase portraits. In the end, we calculate and debate Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy in the chaotic system. We direct trying the Kolmogorov–Sinai technique of entropic inspection for the dynamics of the system.", "corpus_id": 208954113, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Self-organizing molecular field analysis of 2,4-thiazolidinediones: A 3D-QSAR model for the development of human PTP1B inhibitors.", "abstract": "Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) have been recently developed to treat diabetic patients that can reverse insulin resistance by activation of gamma isoform of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR-gamma). Self-Organizing Molecular Field Analysis (SOMFA) has been performed on TZD scaffold having h-PTP1B inhibitory activities for the development and optimization of lead. The master grids obtained from SOMFA models indicated significant electrostatic and shape potential contributions. These can be mapped back onto structural features relating to the trends in activities of the molecules. The robustness of generated SOMFA models was evidenced by various statistical measures. Overall, the present SOMFA study investigated the indispensable structural features of substituted TZDs which can be exploited for further structural modifications in order to optimize h-PTP1B inhibitors.", "corpus_id": 6381547 }

{ "title": "Molecular dynamics-based self-organizing molecular field analysis on 3-amino-6-arylpyrazines as the ataxia telangiectasia mutated and Rad3 related (ATR) protein kinase inhibitors", "abstract": "The ataxia telangiectasia mutated and Rad3 related (ATR) protein kinase is one of the apical regulators in the DNA damaging response signaling pathways. Inhibition of ATR kinase may greatly potentiates the cyto-toxicity by DNA damaging agents to the tumor cells while, have minimum effect on normal cells. In this article, the impact of ligand conformation on the three-dimensional quantitative structure–activity relationship (3D-QSAR) model of a series of 3-amino-6-arylpyrazines as ATR kinase inhibitors was investigated. We employed molecular dynamics (MDs) simulations to get the dynamic active conformations (DACs) of the compounds in the ATP-binding site of ATR kinase. As a result, the model based on the DACs extracted from the first nanosecond MD simulation is superior to that using static active conformations from docking with r2 = 0.917; $$q_{\\text{LOO}}^{2}$$qLOO2 = 0.880; standard error of estimate [SEE] = 0.259; F = 347.29; $$r_{\\text{pred}}^{2}$$rpred2 = 0.923; SEEpred = 0.301. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating DACs of ligand using MD simulation in 3D-QSAR studies. This study may also provide useful information to rationalize the design of novel ATR kinase inhibitors.", "corpus_id": 8939110 }

{ "title": "Molecular modeling of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP 1B) inhibitors.", "abstract": "Binding modes of a series of aryloxymethylphosphonates and monoanionic biosteres of phosphate group from a series of benzylic alpha,alpha-diflluoro phosphate and its biosteres as protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP 1B) inhibitors have been identified by molecular modeling techniques. We have performed docking and molecular dynamics simulations of these inhibitors with PTP 1B enzyme. The initial conformation of the inhibitors for docking was obtained from simulated annealing technique. Solvent accessible surface area calculations suggested that active site of PTP 1B is highly hydrophobic. The results indicate that for aryloxymethylphosphonates, in addition to hydrogen bonding interactions, Tyr46, Arg47, Asp48, Val49, Glu115, Lys116, Lys120 amino acid residues of PTP 1B are responsible for governing inhibitor potency of the compounds. The sulfonate and tetrazole functional groups have been identified as effective monoanionic biosteres of phosphate group and biphenyl ring system due to its favorable interactions with Glu115, Lys116, Lys120 residues of PTP 1B found to be more suitable aromatic functionality than naphthalene ring system for benzylic alpha,alpha-diflluoro phosphate and its biosteres. The information generated from the present study should be useful in the design of more potent PTP 1B inhibitors as anti diabetic agents.", "corpus_id": 22329711, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Poor construction, not time, takes its toll on subsidised fences designed to deter large carnivores", "abstract": "Large carnivore conservation may be considered as successful in Sweden, as wolf (Canis lupus), lynx (Lynx lynx), brown bear (Ursus arctos), golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), and wolverine (Gulo gulo) populations have recovered from extinction or near extinction to viable populations during the last three decades. Particularly the wolf and lynx populations have returned at the cost of an increasing number of carnivore attacks on domestic livestock. To support coexistence between carnivores and livestock production, the Swedish authorities subsidise interventions to prevent or reduce the number of carnivore attacks. The most commonly used intervention is carnivore deterring fencing, and all livestock owners can apply for subsidies to build a fence. To receive reimbursement the fence must be approved by the authorities according to predefined criteria. An important part of any management aiming to be adaptive is evaluating interventions. In this paper we evaluate to what extent previously subsidised fences still meet the criteria 1–15 years after their approval. Of 296 fences that had received subsidies in the county of Värmland, 100 randomly selected fences were revisited in 2016. From this subsample 14% of the fences still met the initial criteria for subsidies. None of the fences that still fulfilled the criteria were more than 8 years old, whereas fences with identified failures occurred in all age groups. Of the 86 fences that failed to meet the criteria, construction failures were the most commonly occurring problem. Maintenance failures, wear and tear, only explain a minor part of the failures. To improve the quality of fencing, as well as the quality and longevity of the subsidies programme, there is a need for improved communication between authorities, and improved communication and support from the authorities to livestock producers before and during construction of fences, as well as more rigorous inspection when the fences are built.", "corpus_id": 3119259 }

{ "title": "Depredation claim settlements in Wyoming", "abstract": "Wildlife depredation has been a major source of conflict between landowners and wildlife agencies. We undertook this study to examine the severity of wildlife depre- dation in Wyoming and landowners' satisfaction with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's (WGFD) depredation payments. We surveyed 600 farmers and ranch- ers in Wyoming to examine differences in socioeconomic and personal characteris- tics between individuals claiming wildlife damage from the WGFD and those not. Claimants tended to have increased economic concerns, larger operations, more wildlife damage, more elk (Cervus elaphus) depredation, and less white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) depredation. Approximately 50% concurred that damage claim settlements were generally fair and equitable, whereas the other half disputed this statement. We used probit analysis to identify characteristics associated with respondents' attitudes concerning fairness of damage claims. Dissatisfaction with damage claim settlements was more likely to be exhibited by respondents who were experiencing financial stress, who perceived their income was adversely affected by the general inconvenience of big game, and who had obtained higher levels of edu- cation. Respondents experiencing troubles with trophy game were more inclined to be satisfied with damage claim settlements. We also summarize recent damage claim submissions to the WGFD. Although number of damage claims submitted and total dollar amount requested and paid have varied cyclically, they have increased over time. Most depredation was perpetrated by elk, mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and mountain lions (Puma concolor). Depredation of stored and growing crops com- prised most claims.", "corpus_id": 86136016 }

{ "title": "Intensity of Territorial Marking Predicts Wolf Reproduction: Implications for Wolf Monitoring", "abstract": "Background The implementation of intensive and complex approaches to monitor large carnivores is resource demanding, restricted to endangered species, small populations, or small distribution ranges. Wolf monitoring over large spatial scales is difficult, but the management of such contentious species requires regular estimations of abundance to guide decision-makers. The integration of wolf marking behaviour with simple sign counts may offer a cost-effective alternative to monitor the status of wolf populations over large spatial scales. Methodology/Principal Findings We used a multi-sampling approach, based on the collection of visual and scent wolf marks (faeces and ground scratching) and the assessment of wolf reproduction using howling and observation points, to test whether the intensity of marking behaviour around the pup-rearing period (summer-autumn) could reflect wolf reproduction. Between 1994 and 2007 we collected 1,964 wolf marks in a total of 1,877 km surveyed and we searched for the pups' presence (1,497 howling and 307 observations points) in 42 sampling sites with a regular presence of wolves (120 sampling sites/year). The number of wolf marks was ca. 3 times higher in sites with a confirmed presence of pups (20.3 vs. 7.2 marks). We found a significant relationship between the number of wolf marks (mean and maximum relative abundance index) and the probability of wolf reproduction. Conclusions/Significance This research establishes a real-time relationship between the intensity of wolf marking behaviour and wolf reproduction. We suggest a conservative cutting point of 0.60 for the probability of wolf reproduction to monitor wolves on a regional scale combined with the use of the mean relative abundance index of wolf marks in a given area. We show how the integration of wolf behaviour with simple sampling procedures permit rapid, real-time, and cost-effective assessments of the breeding status of wolf packs with substantial implications to monitor wolves at large spatial scales.", "corpus_id": 7704717, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Probing the limits of metal plasticity with molecular dynamics simulations", "abstract": "Ordinarily, the strength and plasticity properties of a metal are defined by dislocations—line defects in the crystal lattice whose motion results in material slippage along lattice planes. Dislocation dynamics models are usually used as mesoscale proxies for true atomistic dynamics, which are computationally expensive to perform routinely. However, atomistic simulations accurately capture every possible mechanism of material response, resolving every “jiggle and wiggle” of atomic motion, whereas dislocation dynamics models do not. Here we present fully dynamic atomistic simulations of bulk single-crystal plasticity in the body-centred-cubic metal tantalum. Our goal is to quantify the conditions under which the limits of dislocation-mediated plasticity are reached and to understand what happens to the metal beyond any such limit. In our simulations, the metal is compressed at ultrahigh strain rates along its [001] crystal axis under conditions of constant pressure, temperature and strain rate. To address the complexity of crystal plasticity processes on the length scales (85–340 nm) and timescales (1 ns–1μs) that we examine, we use recently developed methods of in situ computational microscopy to recast the enormous amount of transient trajectory data generated in our simulations into a form that can be analysed by a human. Our simulations predict that, on reaching certain limiting conditions of strain, dislocations alone can no longer relieve mechanical loads; instead, another mechanism, known as deformation twinning (the sudden re-orientation of the crystal lattice), takes over as the dominant mode of dynamic response. Below this limit, the metal assumes a strain-path-independent steady state of plastic flow in which the flow stress and the dislocation density remain constant as long as the conditions of straining thereafter remain unchanged. In this distinct state, tantalum flows like a viscous fluid while retaining its crystal lattice and remaining a strong and stiff metal.", "corpus_id": 3402734 }

{ "title": "Shock-induced phase transformation in tantalum", "abstract": "A TEM study of pure tantalum and tantalum-tungsten alloys explosively shocked at a peak pressure of 30 GPa is presented. While no omega phase was found in shock-recovered pure Ta and Ta-5W which mainly contain a cellular dislocation structure, a shock-induced omega phase was found in Ta-10W which contains evenly distributed dislocations with a density higher than 1 × 1012 cm − 2. The shock-induced (hexagonal) transition occurs when the dynamic recovery of dislocations becomes largely suppressed in Ta-10W shocked under dynamic-pressure conditions. A dislocation-based mechanism is proposed for the shock-induced phase transformation.", "corpus_id": 20358847 }

{ "title": "Gallic acid as a potential substitution for phenol in phenol-formaldehyde resin for biocomposite matrices", "abstract": "This project explores the production of new resins using gallic acid (GA) as a substitute for phenol in phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resin. A special curing schedule was made tailored to the limitations of the equipment used. Phenol was substituted with GA at various contents until the optimum ratio has been reached, which in this present study is 31% of gallic acid. The effects of co-reaction of GA and phenol with formaldehyde on mechanical, thermal, chemical and morphological properties were investigated. Test specimens were prepared by synthesising the pre-polymer at certain processing conditions and curing it in the autoclave. From the flexural test, addition of GA showed improvement in the flexural modulus and strength. The thermal properties of PF resin and GA resin were investigated by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) and Thermogravimetry Analysis (TGA). From the DSC result, no residual exotherm can be seen below 150 ℃ which indicates that the resin is suitable for use in natural fibre composites. Glass transition temperature (Tg) from DMA suggest that substitution of phenol with GA in production of resol resin has increased the glass transition temperature while TGA results showed that increasing GA substitution level in the compound resulted in increasing weight loss at lower temperature, and hence lower thermal stability. Based on Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis, the flexural fracture surfaces for PF and GA resin displays no bubbles and voids present in the resin. It shows that the cure cycle proved to be successful in producing bubble-free specimens. In this study, Group Interaction Modelling (GIM) was also used to predict the Tg of the resin, which compares very well with the experimental work. Following the successful production of resin, nettle fibre was added as a reinforcing agent in producing the biocomposites. It shows that up to certain amount of nettle fibres, which is in this study 15 wt% of nettle fibres, the mechanical properties of the resin improved substantially. However, in composite systems, we can see particles and holes where fibres have pulled out upon fracture are clearly visible in the SEM images, which indicates poor interaction between fibre-matrix.", "corpus_id": 226821237, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Polynomial method for Procedural Terrain Generation", "abstract": "A new method is presented, allowing for the generation of 3D terrain and texture from coherent noise. The method is significantly faster than prevailing fractal brownian motion approaches, while producing results of equivalent quality. The algorithm is derived through a systematic approach that generalizes to an arbitrary number of spatial dimensions and gradient smoothness. The results are compared, in terms of performance and quality, to fundamental and efficient gradient noise methods widely used in the domain of fast terrain generation: Perlin noise and OpenSimplex noise. Finally, to objectively quantify the degree of realism of the results, a fractal analysis of the generated landscapes is performed and compared to real terrain data.", "corpus_id": 5405893 }

{ "title": "Real-Time Erosion Using Shallow Water Simulation", "abstract": "We present a new real-time hydraulic erosion simulation for Computer Graphics. In our system water runs over the surface and disintegrates the underlying layer of soil. The grit is simulated as a fluid with higher viscosity and moves on the ground of the water pool. When water evaporates, or the dissolved soil exceeds a critical level, the dissolved matter is deposited back on the ground for accumulation to occur. The grit motion as well as the water simulation are calculated by the shallow water simulation that is a 2D simplification of Navier-Stokes equations. This simulation has proven to be useful in many Computer Graphics applications because of the speed of calculation and the visual plausibility of the results. Our experiments show that the shallow water-based erosion is suitable for real-time simulation of a wide variety of phenomena including river and lake formation due to rain and evaporation, erosion of surfaces affected by a sudden splash of high level of water, mountain erosion, etc. The speed of simulation makes the algorithm suitable for real-time surface modeling and editing.", "corpus_id": 15760929 }

{ "title": "Universal OWL Axiom Enrichment for Large Knowledge Bases", "abstract": "The Semantic Web has seen a rise in the availability and usage of knowledge bases over the past years, in particular in the Linked Open Data initiative. Despite this growth, there is still a lack of knowledge bases that consist of high quality schema information and instance data adhering to this schema. Several knowledge bases only consist of schema information, while others are, to a large extent, a mere collection of facts without a clear structure. The combination of rich schema and instance data would allow powerful reasoning, consistency checking, and improved querying possibilities as well as provide more generic ways to interact with the underlying data. In this article, we present a light-weight method to enrich knowledge bases accessible via SPARQL endpoints with almost all types of OWL 2 axioms. This allows to semi-automatically create schemata, which we evaluate and discuss using DBpedia.", "corpus_id": 18928216, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Real-time autonomous ground vehicle navigation in heterogeneous environments using a 3D LiDAR", "abstract": "The ability to drive autonomously in heterogeneous environments without GPS, pattern identification (e.g. road following), or artificial landmarks is key to field robotics. To address this challenge, we present a complete waypoint navigation framework for unmanned ground vehicles. A Velodyne PUCK VLP-16 LiDAR and an IMU are mounted on an autonomous, full size utility vehicle and used for localization within a previously created base map. We redesign a six degrees of freedom LiDAR SLAM algorithm to achieve 3D localization on the base map, as well as real-time vehicle navigation. We fuse the low-frequency, high precision SLAM updates with high-frequency, odometric local state estimates from the vehicle. The navigation costmap consists of a 2D occupancy grid which is computed from the 3D base map. Relying on this setup, the vehicle is capable of navigating through a complex site completely autonomously. The test site has densely and sparsely built areas, bushland, industrial activities, pedestrians, and other manned or unmanned vehicles. Extensive testing was done using both current and outdated base maps for comparisons, and a high precision RTK-GPS was used for ground truth. So far, more than 60 km of completely autonomous driving has been performed without a single system or navigation failure.", "corpus_id": 23145567 }

{ "title": "Local Descriptor for Robust Place Recognition Using LiDAR Intensity", "abstract": "Place recognition is a challenging problem in mobile robotics, especially in unstructured environments or under viewpoint and illumination changes. Most LiDAR-based methods rely on geometrical features to overcome such challenges, as generally scene geometry is invariant to these changes, but tend to affect camera-based solutions significantly. Compared to cameras, however, LiDARs lack the strong and descriptive appearance information that imaging can provide. ::: To combine the benefits of geometry and appearance, we propose coupling the conventional geometric information from the LiDAR with its calibrated intensity return. This strategy extracts extremely useful information in the form of a new descriptor design, coined ISHOT, outperforming popular state-of-art geometric-only descriptors by significant margin in our local descriptor evaluation. To complete the framework, we furthermore develop a probabilistic keypoint voting place recognition algorithm, leveraging the new descriptor and yielding sublinear place recognition performance. The efficacy of our approach is validated in challenging global localization experiments in large-scale built-up and unstructured environments.", "corpus_id": 54217283 }

{ "title": "Bounded Uncertainty Roadmaps for Path Planning", "abstract": "Motion planning under uncertainty is an important problem in robotics. Although probabilistic sampling is highly successful for motion planning of robots with many degrees of freedom, sampling-based algorithms typically ignore uncertainty during planning. We introduce the notion of a bounded uncertainty roadmap (BURM) and use it to extend sampling-based algorithms for planning under uncertainty in environment maps. The key idea of our approach is to evaluate uncertainty, represented by collision probability bounds, at multiple resolutions in different regions of the configuration space, depending on their relevance for finding a best path. Preliminary experimental results show that our approach is highly effective: our BURM algorithm is at least 40 times faster than an algorithm that tries to evaluate collision probabilities exactly, and it is not much slower than classic probabilistic roadmap planning algorithms, which ignore uncertainty in environment maps.", "corpus_id": 13393116, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "RAID10L: A high performance RAID10 storage architecture based on logging technique", "abstract": "RAID10 storage system suffers the relatively poor write performance due to the write request must be served by both disks in a mirror set. To address this problem, in this paper we propose a novel RAID10 storage architecture, called RAID10L, which extends the data mirroring redundancy of RAID10 by incorporating a dedicated log disk. The goal of RAID10L is to significantly improve the write performance of RAID10 at some little expense of reliability. In RAID10L both read and write requests are processed in a balance scheme. For every write request, RAID10L keeps two copies of the write data: one in its normal place of data disk chosen by a write balance scheme and the other in the log disk by writing sequentially. The update to another data disk in a mirror set is delayed to the next quiet period between bursts of client activity. Reliability analysis shows that the reliability of RAID10L, in terms of MTTDL (mean time to data loss), is somewhat worse than RAID10 but much better than RAID5. On the other hand, our prototype implementation of RAID10L driven by Iometer benchmark shows that RAID10L outperforms RAID10 by up to 47.1% and RAID0 by 27.3% in terms of average response time. Driven by some real-life traces, RAID10L gains improvement up to 30.7% with an average of 27.7% than RAID10 in terms of average response time.", "corpus_id": 1155777 }

{ "title": "Doubly distorted mirrors", "abstract": "Traditional mirrored disk systems provide high reliability by multiplexing disks. Performance is improved with parallel reads and shorter read seeks. However, writes must be performed by both disks, limiting performance.\nDoubly distorted mirrors increase the number of physical writes per logical write from 2 to 3, but performs logical writes more efficiently. This reduces the cost of a random logical write to 1/3 of the cost of a read. Moreover, much of the write cost can be absorbed in the rotational latency of the reads, performing under certain conditions all the writes for free. Doubly distorted mirrors achieves a 135% performance improvement over traditional mirrors in the TP1 benchmark. Although these techniques require a disk cache for writes, the cache need not be safe nor is recovery time impacted very much.", "corpus_id": 9646297 }

{ "title": "Disk Shadowing", "abstract": "Disk shadowing is a technique for maintaining a set of two or more identical disk images on separate disk devices. Its primary purpose is to enhance reliability and availability of secondary storage by providing multiple paths to redundant data. However, shadowing can also boost UO performance. In this paper, we contend that intelligent device scheduling of shadowed disks increases the I/O rate, by allowing parallel reads and by substantially reducing the average seek time for random reads. In particular, we develop an analytic model which shows that the seek time for a random read in a shadow set is a monotonic decreasing function of the number of disks in the set.", "corpus_id": 17855154, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Non-monotonic temperature dependence of radiation defect dynamics in silicon carbide", "abstract": "Understanding response of solids to particle irradiation remains a major materials physics challenge. This applies even to SiC, which is a prototypical nuclear ceramic and wide-band-gap semiconductor material. The lack of predictability is largely related to the complex, dynamic nature of radiation defect formation. Here, we use a novel pulsed-ion-beam method to study dynamic annealing in 4H-SiC ion-bombarded in the temperature range of 25–250 °C. We find that, while the defect recombination efficiency shows an expected monotonic increase with increasing temperature, the defect lifetime exhibits a non-monotonic temperature dependence with a maximum at ~100 °C. This finding indicates a change in the dominant defect interaction mechanism at ~100 °C. The understanding of radiation defect dynamics may suggest new paths to designing radiation-resistant materials.", "corpus_id": 4958756 }

{ "title": "Dynamic annealing in Ge studied by pulsed ion beams", "abstract": "The formation of radiation damage in Ge above room temperature is dominated by complex dynamic annealing processes, involving migration and interaction of ballistically-generated point defects. Here, we study the dynamics of radiation defects in Ge in the temperature range of 100–160 °C under pulsed beam irradiation with 500 keV Ar ions when the total ion fluence is split into a train of equal square pulses. By varying the passive portion of the beam duty cycle, we measure a characteristic time constant of dynamic annealing, which rapidly decreases from ~8 to 0.3 ms with increasing temperature. By varying the active portion of the beam duty cycle, we measure an effective diffusion length of ~38 nm at 110 °C. Results reveal a major change in the dominant dynamic annealing process at a critical transition temperature of ~130 °C. The two dominant dynamic annealing processes have an order of magnitude different activation energies of 0.13 and 1.3 eV.", "corpus_id": 3321354 }

{ "title": "Fabrication of Nanoscale Circuits on Inkjet‐Printing Patterned Substrates", "abstract": "Nanoscale circuits are fabricated by assembling different conducting materials (e.g., metal nanoparticles, metal nano-wires, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and conducting polymers) on inkjet-printing patterned substrates. This non-litho-graphy strategy opens a new avenue for integrating conducting building blocks into nanoscale devices in a cost-efficient manner.", "corpus_id": 1192979, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Oil Motion Control by an Extra Pinning Structure in Electro-Fluidic Display", "abstract": "Oil motion control is the key for the optical performance of electro-fluidic displays (EFD). In this paper, we introduced an extra pinning structure (EPS) into the EFD pixel to control the oil motion inside for the first time. The pinning structure canbe fabricated together with the pixel wall by a one-step lithography process. The effect of the relative location of the EPS in pixels on the oil motion was studied by a series of optoelectronic measurements. EPS showed good control of oil rupture position. The properly located EPS effectively guided the oil contraction direction, significantly accelerated switching on process, and suppressed oil overflow, without declining in aperture ratio. An asymmetrically designed EPS off the diagonal is recommended. This study provides a novel and facile way for oil motion control within an EFD pixel in both direction and timescale.", "corpus_id": 4931372 }

{ "title": "Partial-post Laplace barriers for virtual confinement, stable displacement, and >5 cm s(-1) electrowetting transport.", "abstract": "Laplace barriers composed of full-posts or ridges have been previously reported as a mechanism for virtual fluid confinement, but with unstable displacement (capillary fingering or fluid trapping, respectively). A new platform of 'partial-posts' eliminates the disadvantages of full-posts or ridges, while providing ~60-80% open channel area for rapid electrowetting fluid transport (>5 cm s(-1)). The fluid mechanics of partial-post Laplace barriers are far more complex than previous Laplace barriers as it involves two mechanisms: fluid can first begin to propagate either between, or under, the partial-posts. Careful design of channel and partial-post geometries is required, else one mechanism will dominate over the other. The physics and performance of partial-post Laplace barriers are verified using theoretical equations, experimental results, and dynamic numerical modeling.", "corpus_id": 14781506 }

{ "title": "Drop position sensing in digital microfluidics based on capacitance measurement", "abstract": "In this work, we present an electronic circuit able to sense the droplet position in Electro-Wetting On Dielectric (EWOD) systems. The drop position is determined measuring the equivalent capacitance of the EWOD electrode, whose value varies according to the presence of the fluid over the pad. In the presented system, the capacitance measurement is achieved through the “Frequency Shift Oscillator” method: the EWOD electrode is inserted in an oscillator circuit, whose operating frequency is inversely proportional to the electrode capacitance value. A microcontroller, included in the system, counts the number of rising edges at the output of the circuit determining the oscillation frequency. The oscillator has been simulated and subsequently fabricated on a double layer printed circuit board. A very good agreement between simulations and experiments has been achieved. The value of obtained sensitivity is not lower than 1.2 kHz/pF that corresponds to a minimum detectable capacitance variation of 0.167 pF. This value is well below the variation of capacitance due to the presence of the droplet above the EWOD electrode and demonstrates the suitability of our circuit as a successful drop position sensor.", "corpus_id": 12234477, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Necessary and sufficient conditions for controllability of multi-agent systems with special topology", "abstract": "In this paper, the controllability of multi-agent systems is studied under leader-follower framework, where the interconnection between agents is directed. Some necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for the controllability of multi-agent systems with special topology. The results provide insights into the effect of leader selection and weight assignment on controllability. In addition, a leader selection algorithm for tree graph is presented.", "corpus_id": 2030842 }

{ "title": "On the Reachability and Observability of Path and Cycle Graphs", "abstract": "In this technical note we investigate the reachability and observability properties of a network system, running a Laplacian based average consensus algorithm, when the communication graph is a path or a cycle. Specifically, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions, based on simple rules from number theory, to characterize all and only the nodes from which the network system is reachable (respectively observable). Interesting immediate corollaries of our results are: i) a path graph is reachable (observable) from any single node if and only if the number of nodes of the graph is a power of two,n = 2i ; i ∈N and ii) a cycle is reachable (observable) from any pair of nodes if and only if n is a prime number. For any set of control (observation) nodes, we provide a closed form expression for the (unreachable) unobservable eigenvalues and for the eigenvectors of the (unreachable) unobservable subsystem.", "corpus_id": 14164388 }

{ "title": "Inadequate Sleep and Exercise Associated with Burnout and Depression Among Medical Students", "abstract": "ObjectiveThe authors studied whether low levels of exercise or inadequate sleep correlated with higher levels of burnout and depression in medical students.MethodsMedical students of all years at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey in Fall 2012 and Winter 2013. Validated measures were used to assess exercise, sleep, burnout, and depression.ResultsResponse rates were 28.7 % at the beginning of the school year and 22.6 % at the middle of the school year. Burnout rates overall were 22.4 % at the beginning of the year and 19.2 % in the middle of the year. Eight percent of students screened positive for depression at the beginning of the year and 9.3 % in the middle of the year. Decreased exercise frequency was significantly correlated with lower professional efficacy. Pathological sleepiness was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of burnout. Inadequate sleep correlated with significantly lower professional efficacy and higher exhaustion scores. Burnout was associated with a positive depression screen. Positive depression screening, pathological sleepiness, and sleeping less than 7 h a night were independent predictors of burnout.ConclusionsSleep habits, exercise, and a positive depression screen were associated with burnout risk within the medical student population.", "corpus_id": 19179892, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Experimental studies and Monte Carlo simulations on gamma ray shielding competence of (30+x)PbO 10WO3 10Na2O − 10MgO – (40-x)B2O3 glasses", "abstract": "Abstract In the present study, we utilized the melt quenching method to fabricate (30 + x)PbO 10WO3 10Na2O 10MgO–(40-x)B2O3 (where x = 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 mol %) glasses. The mass attenuation coefficients (μ/ρ) have been measured at four energies using gamma spectrometric system and the measured values were validated by MCNPX code and XCOM software. The variation in the experimental, theoretical and MCNPX μ/ρ values coincided with each other in all energy regions. The linear attenuation coefficient values for the prepared glasses are proportional to the increase of PbO concentration; however reduce with the increasing photon energy. Besides, we found that the addition of PbO to the glasses leads to reduce in HVL values in the photon energy range, which suggested that the addition of PbO in the synthesized glasses enhances property of more photons absorption of the glass samples. The effective atomic number (Zeff) for the prepared glasses was also calculated and then, we discussed the effect of PbO on the Zeff. The Zeff values lie within range of 29.95–42.77, 20.90 to 30.88, 17.99 to 26.46, and 17.74 to 26.07 for 0.356, 0.662, 1.173 and 1.33 MeV, respectively.", "corpus_id": 155388399 }

{ "title": "Structural and photon attenuation properties of different types of fiber post materials for dental radiology applications", "abstract": "Abstract In this study, seven fiber post materials (Reforpost, D.T. Light-Post, RelyX Fiber Post, Carbopost, Glassix Radiopaque, Dentolic Glass Fiber Post, and Easypost) were evaluated in terms of photon interaction parameters. Fiber post samples were assayed by SEM (Quanta 250 FEG; FEI Ltd., Brno, Czech Republic) and EDS (EDAX Team Software) analysis for basic analysis of material compositions. Using EDAX Team Software, The EDS analysis was performed in areas equal to the center of each fiber post material. Moreover, fiber post materials have been surveyed in terms of photon attenuation characteristics. For this aim, the mass attenuation coefficients (μ/ρ) of investigated fiber post materials have been calculated using MCNPX (2.6.0) general-purpose Monte Carlo code. Afterwards, some shielding quantities such as half-value layer (HVL), mean free path (MFP), effective atomic number (Zeff) and effective electron density (Nel) have been calculated. The obtained MCNPX results of all fiber post materials have been compared and approved with those of WinXcom program. Also, their gamma ray buildup factors have been determined in a wide energy range of 0.02–20 MeV for penetration depths up to 15 mfp. The results showed that N1 (Carbopost) followed by N2 (Reforpost) sample had superior radiation absorption ability compared to other samples. The outcomes indicate that as the Zeq values of the materials increased, the EBF values decreased and the metals (Zr, Ti, Ba), in the samples prevented the buildup of the photons. It was concluded that the percentage of Ba for N1 sample and the increasing percentage of Zr in the other samples increased the radiopacity of samples. It can be concluded that, obtained results can be very useful in diagnostic radiology applications especially in oral diagnosis and dental radiology applications.", "corpus_id": 182736412 }

{ "title": "Structure of TeO2 · B2O3 glasses inferred from infrared spectroscopy and DFT calculations", "abstract": "Abstract Glasses in the system (1 −  x )TeO 2  ·  x B 2 O 3 glasses (with x  = 0.3 and 0.4) have been prepared from melt quenching method. The structural changes were studied by FTIR spectroscopy and DFT calculations. From the analysis of the FTIR spectra it is reasonable to assume that when increasing boron ions content the tetrahedral [BO 4 ] units are gradually replaced by trigonal [BO 3 ] units. The increase in the number of non-bridging oxygen atoms would decrease the connectivity of the glass network, would depolymerize of borate chains and would necessite quite a radical rearrangement of the network formed by the [TeO 6 ] octahedral. This is possible considering that tellurium dioxide brings stoichiometrically two oxygen atoms in [TeO 4 ] and needs an additional oxygen atom for the formation of [TeO 6 ] octahedra. This additional oxygen atom is evidently taken off from the boron co-ordination and thus boron atoms transfer their [BO 4 ] co-ordination into [BO 3 ] co-ordination. We used the FTIR spectroscopic data in order to compute two possible models of the glasses matrix. We propose two possible structural models of building blocks for the formation of continuous random network glasses used by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.", "corpus_id": 96229451, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Should array CGH be applied to all routine prenatal care?", "abstract": "We read with great interest the article by Fiorentino et al. entitled ‘Introducing array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) into routine prenatal diagnosis practice: a prospective study on over 1000 consecutive clinical cases’. We think the manuscript clearly demonstrates that aCGH represents a higher resolutiondiagnostic tool for prenatal detection of submicroscopic clinically significant imbalances not detected by conventional karyotyping. In our opinion, one issue still remains unsolved: should aCGH be applied to all routine prenatal care as first-line examination? Or should its use be limited to specific circumstances? We have recently reported the largest cohort study of 3171 pregnancies using aCGH in prenatal practice, which may provide us with some answers. In our cohort, aCGH gave an additional 1.1% (34/3171) detection rate of clinically significant chromosomal abnormality, not detected by conventional karyotyping. In addition, the probability of detecting variation of unknown clinical significancewas 0.2% (5/3171), respectively. Both of thesefindings were comparable to results of Fiorentino et al. In the following circumstances, aCGH further demonstrated its strength over conventional karyotyping. In 194 cases with abnormal prenatal ultrasound findings, aCGH detected 16 (8.2%) submicroscopic clinically significant imbalances. In 17 fetuses with de novo balanced translocations, aCGH added an additional 11.7% (2/17) diagnostic value for detection of submicroscopic loss of genetic materials. In 23 cases with derived chromosomes, aCGH was able to determine the origin of eight (34.8%). In six cases of de novo small supernumerary marker chromosomes, aCGH detected half (3/6) with submicroscopic gain of genetic materials. When compared with its use in advanced maternal age group (11/1911, 0.5%) and in parental anxiety group (7/973, 0.7%), the efficacy of aCGH was significantly improved in these four situations. Therefore, before aCGH becomes as affordable as conventional karyotyping, it should at least be considered in the circumstances stated above.", "corpus_id": 2080964 }

{ "title": "Clinical utility of array comparative genomic hybridisation for prenatal diagnosis: a cohort study of 3171 pregnancies", "abstract": "Please cite this paper as: Lee C, Lin S, Lin C, Shih J, Lin T, Su Y. Clinical utility of array comparative genomic hybridisation for prenatal diagnosis: a cohort study of 3171 pregnancies. BJOG 2012;119:614–625.", "corpus_id": 27784260 }

{ "title": "A randomized trial of three oral contraceptives: comparison of bleeding patterns by contraceptive types and steroid levels.", "abstract": "OBJECTIVE\nOur purpose was to determine the relationship between bioavailability of contraceptive steroids and bleeding patterns.\n\n\nSTUDY DESIGN\nA randomized clinical trial evaluated 192 women on 50 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol and 1.0 mg of norethindrone (OC1), 35 micrograms ethinyl estradiol and 1.0 mg of norethindrone (OC2), and 35 micrograms ethinyl estradiol and 0.5 mg norethindrone (OC3) over nine cycles.\n\n\nRESULTS\nIntermenstrual bleeding rates were higher for OC3 when compared with OC1 (p = 0.01). The number of intermenstrual bleeding days was highest for OC3 (p = 0.001) and higher for OC2 when compared with OC1 (p < 0.006). The onset of withdrawal bleeding occurred faster in OC3 patients (p < 0.02). Bioavailability of both contraceptive steroids as measured by baseline values and 1-hour slopes did not correlate with bleeding patterns at 3, 6, and 9 months of use.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThese data suggest that differences in biologic responses associated with pill use cannot be explained solely on the basis of these particular hormone measurements.", "corpus_id": 11666634, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Zeaxanthin Inhibits Hypoxia-Induced VEGF Secretion by RPE Cells through Decreased Protein Levels of Hypoxia-Inducible Factors-1α", "abstract": "Hypoxia is the most important stimulus leading to upregulation of VEGF in the retina and this is caused by accumulation of hypoxia-inducible factors-1α (HIF-1α) protein. The effects of zeaxanthin, a natural phytochemical, on the VEGF and HIF-1α expression in the primary culture of human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells were studied. An in vitro RPE cell hypoxia model was established by placing cells under 1% oxygen pressure or by adding cobalt chloride (CoCl2) to the culture medium. RPE cells and conditioned media were collected from cultures treated with and without zeaxanthin under normoxic and hypoxic conditions. VEGF and HIF-1α protein and RNA levels were measured by ELISA kits and RT-PCR, respectively. Hypoxia caused a significant increase of VEGF expression and accumulation of HIF-1α in RPE cells. Zeaxanthin at 50–150 μM significantly inhibited the expression of VEGF and accumulation of HIF-1α protein caused by hypoxia but did not affect expression of VEGF and HIF-1α under normoxic conditions. This is the first report on the effect of zeaxanthin on VEGF and HIF-1α levels in cultured RPE cells and suggests that zeaxanthin may have potential value in the prevention and treatment of various retinal diseases associated with vascular leakage and neovascularization.", "corpus_id": 306085 }

{ "title": "Cancer Chemoprevention by Caroteno", "abstract": "Carotenoids are natural fat-soluble pigments that provide bright coloration to plants and animals. Dietary intake of carotenoids is inversely associated with the risk of a variety of cancers in different tissues. Preclinical studies have shown that some carotenoids have potent antitumor effects both in vitro and in vivo, suggesting potential preventive and/or therapeutic roles for the compounds. Since chemoprevention is one of the most important strategies in the control of cancer development, molecular mechanism-based cancer chemoprevention using carotenoids seems to be an attractive approach. Various carotenoids, such as β-carotene, α-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, β-cryptoxanthin, fucoxanthin, canthaxanthin and astaxanthin, have been proven to have anti-carcinogenic activity in several tissues, although high doses of β-carotene failed to exhibit chemopreventive activity in clinical trials. In this review, cancer prevention using carotenoids are reviewed and the possible mechanisms of action are described.", "corpus_id": 3787945 }

{ "title": "Carotenoids and colon cancer.", "abstract": "BACKGROUND\nCarotenoids have numerous biological properties that may underpin a role for them as chemopreventive agents. However, except for beta-carotene, little is known about how dietary carotenoids are associated with common cancers, including colon cancer.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nThe objective of this study was to evaluate associations between dietary alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-cryptoxanthin and the risk of colon cancer.\n\n\nDESIGN\nData were collected from 1993 case subjects with first primary incident adenocarcinoma of the colon and from 2410 population-based control subjects. Dietary data were collected from a detailed diet-history questionnaire and nutrient values for dietary carotenoids were obtained from the US Department of Agriculture-Nutrition Coordinating Center carotenoid database (1998 updated version).\n\n\nRESULTS\nLutein was inversely associated with colon cancer in both men and women [odds ratio (OR) for upper quintile of intake relative to lowest quintile of intake: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.66, 1.04; P = 0.04 for linear trend]. The greatest inverse association was observed among subjects in whom colon cancer was diagnosed when they were young (OR: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.48, 0.92; P = 0.02 for linear trend) and among those with tumors located in the proximal segment of the colon (OR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.51, 0.91; P < 0.01 for linear trend). The associations with other carotenoids were unremarkable.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe major dietary sources of lutein in subjects with colon cancer and in control subjects were spinach, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, oranges and orange juice, carrots, celery, and greens. These data suggest that incorporating these foods into the diet may help reduce the risk of developing colon cancer.", "corpus_id": 4493050, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "A Novel Technique Toward Fabricating High-Current-Carrying MgB2-Based Superconducting Joints", "abstract": "A novel technique toward fabricating high-current-carrying MgB2-based superconducting joints employing simple groove-rolling method has been described in this paper. Under this investigation, a superconducting joint of MgB2 monofilaments has been prepared using an in situ powder and a groove roller following a particular sequence. It has been observed that the critical current in the self-field has degraded by 9.2% or less when compared with the normal monofilamentary MgB2 samples without joints prepared in an identical fashion. These fabricated joints have demonstrated impressive current-carrying capabilities of ~343 A at 21 K in the self-field. Joint fabrication details, testing methodology, results obtained, and probable reasons toward obtaining enhanced critical current characteristics have been described in detail in this paper.", "corpus_id": 550267 }

{ "title": "Note: Progress on the use of MgB2 superconducting joint technique for the development of MgB2 magnets for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).", "abstract": "This note presents a superconducting joint technique for the development of MgB2 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) magnets. The MgB2 superconducting joint was fabricated by a powder processing method using Mg and B powders to establish a wire-bulk-wire connection. The joint resistance measured using a field-decay method was <10-14 Ω, demonstrating that the proposed joint technique could be employed for developing \"next-generation\" MgB2 MRI magnets operating in the persistent current mode.", "corpus_id": 46755137 }

{ "title": "A 240GHz wideband QPSK receiver in 65nm CMOS", "abstract": "This paper demonstrates a 240GHz wideband QPSK receiver in 65nm bulk CMOS. A direct-conversion mixer-first architecture is implemented with a 240GHz on-chip antenna. Wideband passive mixers at the front end employ a 240GHz LO and convert the received signal down to baseband. The baseband signal is then amplified using high gain, wide bandwidth amplifiers. The 240GHz LO chain consists of 27GHz/80GHz injection-locked oscillators, 80GHz amplifiers and a frequency tripler. The overall receiver gain is 25dB and the noise figure is 15dB from measurements. This receiver design achieves a data rate of 16Gbps with a power consumption of 260mW.", "corpus_id": 14506585, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Using the galactomannan assay in the diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis.", "abstract": "Aspergillus species are ubiquitous molds to which humans are commonly exposed. Of approximately 180 species, it is estimated that 34 are medically significant.1 Most persons who come in contact with the fungus remain asymptomatic. However, some experience mild morbidity demonstrated by recurrent sinusitis, asthma exacerbations, or allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. Patients who are immunocompromised, however, are susceptible to more severe invasive disease, usually marked by an acute progressive infection, often resulting in death. A survey of 89 physicians whose experience with a combined 595 patients with proven or probable invasive aspergillosis (IA) showed that 32% of patients had undergone bone marrow transplantation, 29% had a hematological malignancy, 9% had undergone solid organ transplant or had another condition requiring immunosuppressive therapy, 9% had pulmonary disease, and 8% had AIDS.2 The prognosis of IA is grim, with a case mortality rate of 58%.3 Although newer, less toxic antifungal agents have been developed, successful management of IA is contingent on early detection, which, unfortunately, can be difficult. DIAGNOSIS OF IA IA is usually suspected when signs of infection refractory to broad-spectrum antibiotics develop in an immunocompromised patient. The gold standard for the diagnosis of IA is tissue biopsy demonstrating invasion on histopathological examination and identification of the organism in culture. The finding of acute-angle branching, septated, nonpigmented hyphae on histopathological examination is not specific for IA because other molds, including Fusarium, Paecilomyces, and Pseudallescheria boydii, can have a similar appearance. For unclear reasons, growth of Aspergillus in culture occurs in only 30% to 50% of histopathologically suggestive cases.4 Obtaining tissue specimens for the diagnosis of IA is often difficult, because patients in whom IA is suspected often have medical conditions, such as thrombocytopenia, that preclude biopsy. GALACTOMANNAN ANTIGEN TESTS A recent diagnostic modality for IA is the galactomannan (GM) assay. GM is a cell wall component of many fungi, including Aspergillus, Penicillium, Paecilomyces, and Geotrichum species. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay-based kit is commercially available as the Platelia Aspergillus EIA (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Redmond, Wash) and was cleared by the FDA for diagnostic use in May 2003. GM antigen positivity is among the microbiological criteria proposed by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer/Invasive Fungal Infections Cooperative Group and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Mycoses Study Group for the diagnosis of IA. The Platelia EIA is an immunoenzymatic sandwich microplate assay that uses monoclonal antibodies that bind to side-chain residues of the GM molecule.5 A sandwich enzyme immunoassay format is used for detection. The performance of the assay varies according to the threshold value used. When the Platelia EIA became available in Europe a decade ago, the manufacturer recommended an", "corpus_id": 1301585 }

{ "title": "Diagnosis of invasive septate mold infections. A correlation of microbiological culture and histologic or cytologic examination.", "abstract": "We correlated results of microbiologic culture and histopathologic examination for 2,891 consecutive samples from autopsy tissue, surgical or biopsy tissue, and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) or bronchial washing (BW) specimens. For 23 autopsy cases with suspected invasive septate mold infections by histopathologic examination, culture yielded a mold in 12 cases (52%). For 1,683 surgical or biopsy samples, histopathologic evidence of invasive septate mold infection was present in 30 samples, 9 of which also grew mold by culture (30%); 20 additional samples grew mold in culture alone, possibly representing culture contamination. Of 1,185 BAL and BW samples, mold was evident in 28 by cytologic examination and culture, 20 by cytologic examination alone, and 68 by culture alone. These results suggest a positive concordance for culture and histologic-cytologic examination of 23%, although both methods were negative in 96% of surgical and biopsy tissue and BAL and BW samples. The septate molds cultured from these samples were Aspergillus fumigatus (19), Aspergillus flavus (15), Aspergillus terreus (13), Aspergillus niger (7), Fusarium species (3), and Scedosporium apiospermum (2). A flavus was isolated significantly more frequently from tissue than from BAL and BW samples.", "corpus_id": 12181025 }

{ "title": "Monogenic diseases associated with intestinal inflammation: implications for the understanding of inflammatory bowel disease", "abstract": "Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), encompassing Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, has multifactorial aetiology with complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Over 150 genetic loci are associated with IBD. The genetic contribution of the majority of those loci towards explained heritability is low. Recent studies have reported an increasing spectrum of human monogenic diseases that can present with IBD-like intestinal inflammation. A substantial proportion of patients with those genetic defects present with very early onset of intestinal inflammation. The 40 monogenic defects with IBD-like pathology selected in this review can be grouped into defects in intestinal epithelial barrier and stress response, immunodeficiencies affecting granulocyte and phagocyte activity, hyper- and autoinflammatory disorders as well as defects with disturbed T and B lymphocyte selection and activation. In addition, there are defects in immune regulation affecting regulatory T cell activity and interleukin (IL)-10 signalling. Related to the variable penetrance of the IBD-like phenotype, there is a likely role for modifier genes and gene–environment interactions. Treatment options in this heterogeneous group of disorders range from anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive therapy to blockade of tumour necrosis factor α and IL-1β, surgery, haematopoietic stem cell transplantation or gene therapy. Understanding of prototypic monogenic ‘orphan’ diseases cannot only provide treatment options for the affected patients but also inform on immunological mechanisms and complement the functional understanding of the pathogenesis of IBD.", "corpus_id": 5081289, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Dolphin whistles: a functional misnomer revealed by heliox breathing", "abstract": "Delphinids produce tonal whistles shaped by vocal learning for acoustic communication. Unlike terrestrial mammals, delphinid sound production is driven by pressurized air within a complex nasal system. It is unclear how fundamental whistle contours can be maintained across a large range of hydrostatic pressures and air sac volumes. Two opposing hypotheses propose that tonal sounds arise either from tissue vibrations or through actual whistle production from vortices stabilized by resonating nasal air volumes. Here, we use a trained bottlenose dolphin whistling in air and in heliox to test these hypotheses. The fundamental frequency contours of stereotyped whistles were unaffected by the higher sound speed in heliox. Therefore, the term whistle is a functional misnomer as dolphins actually do not whistle, but form the fundamental frequency contour of their tonal calls by pneumatically induced tissue vibrations analogous to the operation of vocal folds in terrestrial mammals and the syrinx in birds. This form of tonal sound production by nasal tissue vibrations has probably evolved in delphinids to enable impedance matching to the water, and to maintain tonal signature contours across changes in hydrostatic pressures, air density and relative nasal air volumes during dives.", "corpus_id": 743921 }

{ "title": "Vocal foragers and silent crowds: context-dependent vocal variation in Northeast Atlantic long-finned pilot whales", "abstract": "Vocalisations form a key component of the social interactions and foraging behaviour of toothed whales. We investigated changes in calling and echolocation behaviour of long-finned pilot whales between foraging and non-foraging periods, by combining acoustic recordings and diving depth data from tagged individuals with concurrent surface observations on social behaviour of their group. The pilot whales showed marked vocal variation, specific to foraging and social context. During periods of foraging, pilot whales showed more vocal activity than during non-foraging periods (rest, travel). In addition to the expected increase in echolocation activity, call rates also increased, suggesting that pilot whales communicate more during foraging. Furthermore, calls with multiple inflections occurred more often immediately before and after foraging dives and during the early descent and late ascent phases of foraging dives. However, these calls were almost never detected at diving depths of the tagged whale beyond 350 m. Calls with no or few inflections were produced at all times, irrespective of diving depth of the tagged whale. We discuss possible explanations for the distinct vocal variation associated with foraging periods. In addition, during non-foraging periods, the pilot whales were found to be more silent (no calling or echolocation) in larger, more closely spaced groups. This indicates that increased levels of social cohesion may release the need to stay in touch acoustically.Significance statementSocial toothed whales rely on vocalisations to find prey and interact with conspecifics. Species are often highly vocal and can have elaborate call repertoires. However, it often remains unclear how their repertoire use correlates to specific social and behavioural contexts, which is vital to understand toothed whale foraging strategies and sociality. Combining on-animal tag recordings of diving and acoustic behaviour with observations of social behaviour, we found that pilot whales produce more calls during foraging than during non-foraging periods. Moreover, highly inflected calls were closely associated to the periods around and during foraging dives. This indicates enhanced communication during foraging, which may, for example, enable relocation of conspecifics or sharing of information. Whales reduced their vocal activity (calling and echolocation) at increased levels of social cohesion, indicating that in certain behavioural contexts, closer association (i.e. more closely spaced) may release the need to stay in touch acoustically.", "corpus_id": 10857020 }

{ "title": "New high fill-factor dual-curvature microlens array fabrication using UV proximity printing", "abstract": "A new high fill-factor dual-curvature microlens array fabrication method using lithographic proximity printing process is reported. The proposed technology utilizes UV proximity printing by controlling a printing gap between the mask and substrate. The designed microlens array pattern with high density can produce a high fill-factor dual-curvature microlens array in photoresist. Because the UV light diffraction deflects away from the aperture edges and produces exposure in photoresist material outside the aperture edges, this method can precisely control the geometric profile of a high fill factor dual-curvature microlens array. The experimental results showed that the dual-curvature micro-lens array can be formed automatically in photoresist when the printing gap ranged from 360 to 600 μm. The gapless dual-curvature microlens array will be used to enhance the luminance uniformity for light-emitting diodes (LEDs).", "corpus_id": 25834808, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Improving person-centered mobility care in nursing homes: a feasibility study.", "abstract": "Person-centered care is often equated with quality nursing home care. At the same time, quality mobility care contributes to residents' independence and quality of life. Realist evaluation and mixed methods were employed to evaluate the feasibility of a multi-faceted training intervention focused on person-centered mobility care. Staff and ambulatory residents of a ninety bed Australian nursing home with 3 units--one dementia-specific--participated. The intervention consisted of training sessions, weekly mobility care huddles and reflective practice sessions with individual staff. This study demonstrated the feasibility of an intervention aiming to improve person-centered mobility care in nursing homes; it was practical and well accepted. Study methods and outcome measures were suitable. Outcome measures demonstrated capacity to determine the effectiveness of the intervention in a larger randomized controlled trial. Focus groups provided insights regarding the context and mechanisms of change. Future research is recommended to evaluate intervention effectiveness and sustainability.", "corpus_id": 32038 }

{ "title": "Impaired Mobility and Functional Decline in Older Adults: Evidence to Facilitate a Practice Change.", "abstract": "The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services report nearly 55% of Medicare beneficiaries older than 85 experience impaired mobility and nearly 28% (n = 671,833) of these individuals have difficulty getting help. Impaired mobility is a precursor to disability, which has notable clinical significance and importance to older adults. Using case exemplars of older adults who have experienced a \"serious\" fall, along with evidence-based research, the physical, psychosocial, emotional, and clinical consequences are discussed, along with assessment parameters and interventions for maximizing function and early mobility.", "corpus_id": 35772009 }

{ "title": "Usability Methods for Ensuring Health Information Technology Safety: Evidence-Based Approaches. Contribution of the IMIA Working Group Health Informatics for Patient Safety.", "abstract": "OBJECTIVES\nIssues related to lack of system usability and potential safety hazards continue to be reported in the health information technology (HIT) literature. Usability engineering methods are increasingly used to ensure improved system usability and they are also beginning to be applied more widely for ensuring the safety of HIT applications. These methods are being used in the design and implementation of many HIT systems. In this paper we describe evidence-based approaches to applying usability engineering methods.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA multi-phased approach to ensuring system usability and safety in healthcare is described. Usability inspection methods are first described including the development of evidence-based safety heuristics for HIT. Laboratory-based usability testing is then conducted under artificial conditions to test if a system has any base level usability problems that need to be corrected. Usability problems that are detected are corrected and then a new phase is initiated where the system is tested under more realistic conditions using clinical simulations. This phase may involve testing the system with simulated patients. Finally, an additional phase may be conducted, involving a naturalistic study of system use under real-world clinical conditions.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe methods described have been employed in the analysis of the usability and safety of a wide range of HIT applications, including electronic health record systems, decision support systems and consumer health applications. It has been found that at least usability inspection and usability testing should be applied prior to the widespread release of HIT. However, wherever possible, additional layers of testing involving clinical simulations and a naturalistic evaluation will likely detect usability and safety issues that may not otherwise be detected prior to widespread system release.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe framework presented in the paper can be applied in order to develop more usable and safer HIT, based on multiple layers of evidence.", "corpus_id": 1075302, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "UNSUPERVISED TRANSFORMATION OF PROCEDURAL PROGRAMS TO OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN", "abstract": null, "corpus_id": 12819023 }

{ "title": "Co-change Clusters: Extraction and Application on Assessing Software Modularity", "abstract": "The traditional modular structure defined by the package hierarchy suffers from the dominant decomposition problem and it is widely accepted that alternative forms of modularization are necessary to increase developer’s productivity. In this paper, we propose an alternative form to understand and assess package modularity based on co-change clusters, which are highly inter-related classes considering co-change relations. We evaluate how co-change clusters relate to the package decomposition of four real-world systems. The results show that the projection of co-change clusters to packages follows different patterns in each system. Therefore, we claim that modular views based on co-change clusters can improve developers’ understanding on how well-modularized are their systems, considering that modularity is the ability to confine changes and evolve components in parallel.", "corpus_id": 13981852 }

{ "title": "A Case-Based Reasoning Framework for Developing Agents Using Learning by Observation", "abstract": "Most realistic environments are complex, partially observable and impose real-time constraints on agents operating within them. This paper describes a framework that allows agents to learn by observation in such environments. When learning by observation, agents observe an expert performing a task and learn to perform the same task based on those observations. Our framework aims to allow agents to learn in a variety of domains (physical or virtual) regardless of the behaviour or goals of the observed expert. To achieve this we ensure that there is a clear separation between the central reasoning system and any domain-specific information. We present case studies in the domains of obstacle avoidance, robotic arm control, simulated soccer and Tetris.", "corpus_id": 16537425, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Effect of diet supplementation with chelated zinc, copper and manganese on hoof lesions of loose housed sows", "abstract": "BackgroundHoof lesions are very common among sows and have been associated with lameness, early removal and compromised welfare and productivity. Although housing conditions and management can have an external effect on hoof health status, the role of trace mineral intake is vital in developing hoof structure and integrity. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the effect of a diet supplemented with organic complexes of trace minerals (Zn, Cu, Mn), partly substituting their inorganic form, on hoof lesions of sows in three Greek swine herds.ResultsA total of 518 sows were initially examined for hoof lesions and their respective severity was scored. For each hoof, the length of toes and dew claws were evaluated and five anatomical hoof sites, the heel, the sole, the white line, the wall and the coronary band, were examined for lesions. Subsequently, the same sows were re-scored after one or two gestations on diets supplemented with organic trace minerals, partly substituting their inorganic salt form (organic form of Zn 45 ppm, Cu 14 ppm and Mn 25 ppm of the total 125 ppm of Zn, 15 ppm of Cu and 40 ppm of Mn, respectively). The odds of the higher versus the lower lesion scores were significantly lower after than before the inclusion of the organic minerals in sows’ diet, for each of the considered foot sites with the exception of the coronary band, with a distinct effect according to foot location. Specifically, on rear feet the improvement of hoof lesions was either smaller (for heel, sole and wall) than on front feet or not significant (for white line, toe and dew claw length). Additionally, for each foot site and herd examined, after the inclusion of the organic minerals, there were more sows with either the same or lower lesion score, with the exception of the toe and the dew claw length in one of the herds.ConclusionsWithin the specific conditions in the three studied herds, our findings highlight the role of chelated trace minerals in sows’ hoof health, suggesting an applicable and rewarding intervention to prevent hoof lesions.", "corpus_id": 679252 }

{ "title": "Partial substitution, with their chelated complexes, of the inorganic zinc, copper and manganese in sow diets reduced the laminitic lesions in the claws and improved the morphometric characteristics of the hoof horn of sows from three Greek herds", "abstract": "BackgroundHoof lesions in sows have been associated with lameness and poor hoof horn quality. The mechanical strength and quality of hoof horn is determined by the density and diameter of horn tubules, which were recently associated with the severity of lesions on the hoof wall of sows. Histologic changes that have previously been described in cases of bovine laminitis, have also been observed in the dermis and epidermis of the sows’ claws. Trace elements, particularly zinc, copper and manganese, occupy important roles as enzyme catalysts in the process of keratin synthesis which determines the quality and the integrity of the hoof epidermis. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the effect of diet supplementation with chelated zinc, copper and manganese, partially substituting their inorganic form, on sow claw health and hoof horn quality assessed by macroscopic, histologic and morphometric examination.ResultsClinically, the total claw lesion score was significantly lower in claws of sows which received the “organic” diet compared to those of sows on the “inorganic” diet. Histologically, lamellar hyperplasia was the most frequently recorded change in the epidermis of the sows’ claws regardless of the diet’s mineral source. The claws of the sows which received the organic diet were more likely to have none or less histologic changes than at least one or more, respectively, compared to those of the sows on the “inorganic” diet. Morphometrically, the density and vertical and horizontal diameters of the horn tubules was significantly higher and smaller, respectively, in the hoof horn of sows which received the “organic” compared to those which received the “inorganic” source diet.ConclusionsPartial substitution of the inorganic zinc, copper and manganese in sows’ diet with their chelated complexes, provided a comparative advantage against a conventional, inorganic mineral source diet, at least under the conditions examined in the current study, in terms of macroscopic, histologic and morphometric criteria, characterizing the health and horn quality status of sows’ hooves.", "corpus_id": 905681 }

{ "title": "NONSTATIONARITY OF BETA AND TESTS OF MARKET EFFICIENCY", "abstract": "Conclusions from event type studies are usually supported by data generated from some form of the market model. This study examines the robustness of these conclusions to different static and dynamic estimates of beta when the event under investigation occurs during a period of changing systematic risk. The results indicate that when beta is nonstationary, the findings of market inefficiency (or efficiency) in previous studies may be an artifact of the static beta estimation method.", "corpus_id": 154568778, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "MR prostate segmentation via distributed discriminative dictionary (DDD) learning", "abstract": "Segmenting prostate from MR images is important yet challenging. Due to non-Gaussian distribution of prostate appearances in MR images, the popular active appearance model (AAM) has its limited performance. Although the newly developed sparse dictionary learning method[1, 2] can model the image appearance in a non-parametric fashion, the learned dictionaries still lack the discriminative power between prostate and non-prostate tissues, which is critical for accurate prostate segmentation. In this paper, we propose to integrate deformable model with a novel learning scheme, namely the Distributed Discriminative Dictionary (DDD) learning, which can capture image appearance in a non-parametric and discriminative fashion. In particular, three strategies are designed to boost the tissue discriminative power of DDD. First, minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (mRMR) feature selection is performed to constrain the dictionary learning in a discriminative feature space. Second, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is employed to assemble residuals from different dictionaries for optimal separation between prostate and non-prostate tissues. Third, instead of learning the global dictionaries, we learn a set of local dictionaries for the local regions (each with small appearance variations) along prostate boundary, thus achieving better tissue differentiation locally. In the application stage, DDDs will provide the appearance cues to robustly drive the deformable model onto the prostate boundary. Experiments on 50 MR prostate images show that our method can yield a Dice Ratio of 88% compared to the manual segmentations, and have 7% improvement over the conventional AAM.", "corpus_id": 1401864 }

{ "title": "Multifeature Landmark-Free Active Appearance Models: Application to Prostate MRI Segmentation", "abstract": "Active shape models (ASMs) and active appearance models (AAMs) are popular approaches for medical image segmentation that use shape information to drive the segmentation process. Both approaches rely on image derived landmarks (specified either manually or automatically) to define the object's shape, which require accurate triangulation and alignment. An alternative approach to modeling shape is the level-set representation, defined as a set of signed distances to the object's surface. In addition, using multiple image derived attributes (IDAs) such as gradient information has previously shown to offer improved segmentation results when applied to ASMs, yet little work has been done exploring IDAs in the context of AAMs. In this work, we present a novel AAM methodology that utilizes the level set implementation to overcome the issues relating to specifying landmarks, and locates the object of interest in a new image using a registration based scheme. Additionally, the framework allows for incorporation of multiple IDAs. Our multifeature landmark-free AAM (MFLAAM) utilizes an efficient, intuitive, and accurate algorithm for identifying those IDAs that will offer the most accurate segmentations. In this paper, we evaluate our MFLAAM scheme for the problem of prostate segmentation from T2-w MRI volumes. On a cohort of 108 studies, the levelset MFLAAM yielded a mean Dice accuracy of 88% ± 5%, and a mean surface error of 1.5 mm ± .8 mm with a segmentation time of 150/s per volume. In comparison, a state of the art AAM yielded mean Dice and surface error values of 86% ± 9% and 1.6 mm ± 1.0 mm, respectively. The differences with respect to our levelset-based MFLAAM model are statistically significant (p <; .05). In addition, our results were in most cases superior to several recent state of the art prostate MRI segmentation methods.", "corpus_id": 7592584 }

{ "title": "Chaotic Planning Paths Generators by Using Performance Surfaces", "abstract": "Chaotic systems have been widely used as path planning generators in autonomous mobile robots due to the unpredictability of the generated trajectories and the coverage rate of the robots workplace. In order to obtain a chaotic mobile robot, the chaotic signals are used to generate True RNGs (TRNGs), which, as is known, exploit the nondeterministic nature of chaotic controllers. Then, the bits obtained from TRNGs can be continuously mapped to coordinates (\\(x_n, y_n\\)) for positioning the robot on the terrain. A frequent technique to obtain a chaotic bitstream is to sample analog chaotic signals by using thresholds. However, the performance of chaotic path planning is a function of optimal values for those levels. In this framework, several chaotic systems which are used to obtain TRNGs but by computing a quasi-optimal performance surface for the thresholds is presented. The proposed study is based on sweeping the Poincare sections to find quasi-optimal values for thresholds where the coverage rate is higher than those obtained by using the equilibrium points as reference values. Various scenarios are evaluated. First, two scroll chaotic systems such as Chua’s circuit, saturated function, and Lorenz are used as entropy sources to obtain TRNGS by using its computed performance surface. Afterwards, n-scrolls chaotic systems are evaluated to get chaotic bitstreams with the analyzed performance surface. Another scenario is dedicated to find the performance surface of hybrid chaotic systems, which are composed by three chaotic systems where one chaotic system determines which one of the remaining chaotic signals will be used to obtain the chaotic bitstream. Additionally, TRNGs from two chaotic systems with optimized Lyapunov exponents are studied. Several numerical simulations to compute diverse metrics such as coverage rate against planned points, robot’s trajectory evolution, covered terrain, and color map are carried out to analyze the resulting TRNGs. This investigation will enable to increase several applications of TRNGs by considering the proposed performance surfaces.", "corpus_id": 35806916, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "InflammationIn Vivo and In Vitro Roles of IL-21 in", "abstract": "IL-21 is a cytokine known to mediate its biological action via the IL-21R, composed of a specific chain, IL-21R (cid:1) , and the common (cid:2) -chain (CD132). Recent data suggest that IL-21 possesses proinflammatory properties. However, there is no clear evidence that IL-21 induces inflammation in vivo and, curiously, the interaction between IL-21 and neutrophils has never been investigated, despite the fact that these cells express CD132 and respond to other CD132-dependent cytokines involved in inflammatory disorders. Using the murine air pouch model, we found that IL-21 induced inflammation in vivo, based on recruitment of neutrophil and monocyte populations. In contrast to LPS, administration of IL-21 into the air pouch did not significantly increase the concentration of IL-6, CCL5, CCL3, and CXCL2. We demonstrated that HL-60 cells expressed IL-21R (cid:1) , which is down-regulated during their differentiation toward neutrophils, and that IL-21R (cid:1) is not detected in neutrophils. Concomitant with this, IL-21 induced Erk-1/2 phosphorylation in HL-60 cells, but not in neutrophils. To eliminate the possibility that IL-21 could activate neutrophils even in the absence of IL-21R (cid:1) , we demonstrated that IL-21 did not modulate several neutrophil functions. IL-21-induced Erk-1/2 phosphorylation was not associated with proliferation or differentiation of HL-60 toward neutrophils, monocytes, or macrophages. IL-21R (cid:1) was detected in human monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages, but IL-21 increased CXCL8 production only in monocyte-derived macrophages. We conclude that IL-21 is a proinflammatory 2004, 173: 7521–7530.", "corpus_id": 1751407 }

{ "title": "Antitumor activity of interleukin‐21 prepared by novel refolding procedure from inclusion bodies expressed in Escherichia coli", "abstract": "Interleukin‐21 (IL‐21) has recently been identified as a novel 4‐helix‐bundle type I cytokine possessing a cytokine receptor γ chain essential for the immune response. We report the preparation and functional characterization of Escherichia coli‐expressed recombinant human IL‐21 (rIL‐21). The rIL‐21, expressed as insoluble inclusion bodies in E. coli, was solubilized and then refolded by using a modified dialysis method. The introduction of redox reagents during refolding led to a dramatic increase in the refolding efficiency. Circular dichroism spectrum analysis showed that the refolded rIL‐21 had an α‐helix as a secondary structure, which is a characteristic of type I cytokines. Flow cytometry confirmed previous reports that rIL‐21 binds to CD3‐activated T cells (T‐LAK) and to cell lines Raji, HL60, and Jurkat. rIL‐21 stimulated the proliferation of T‐LAK but not peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and this effect seems to be identical to that of co‐stimulation with anti‐CD3 antibody. Growth inhibition assay indicated that enhancement of the cytotoxicity of T‐LAK to the human bile duct carcinoma TFK‐1 depended on the concentration of rIL‐21. Thus, refolded rIL‐21 had activity identical to that of authentic IL‐21 and enhanced the anti‐tumor activity of T‐LAK. These conclusions suggest the potential use of the refolded cytokine in adoptive immunotherapy using T‐LAK cells and in the discovery of other functions of the cytokine.", "corpus_id": 9267788 }

{ "title": "Identification of transcriptional targets for Six5: implication for the pathogenesis of myotonic dystrophy type 1", "abstract": "Myotonic dystrophy 1 (DM1) is the most common inherited neuromuscular disease in adults. The disorder, characterized by myotonia, muscle wasting and weakness, cataract, insulin resistance, and mental impairment, is caused by the expansion of an unstable CTG repeat located in the 3 0 untranslated region of DMPK . The repeat expansion suppresses the expression of the homeobox gene SIX5 . We describe here an experimental system to identify downstream transcriptional targets of mouse Six5 in order to elucidate the role of SIX5 in the pathogenesis of DM1 and development. By overexpressing a constitutively active Six5 (VP16–Six5wt) using adenovirus-mediated gene transfer in P19 cells and subsequent expression profiling using cDNA arrays, 21 genes, whose expression level increased by the treatment, were identified as potential target genes. Genes expressed in the somites, skeletal muscles, brain and meninges comprised the majority, suggesting the role of Six5 in the development and function of mesodermal tissues and brain. We provide evidence that Igfbp5 encoding a component of IGF signaling is a direct Six5-target. Moreover, the overall expression level of Igfbp5 was decreased in Six5 -deficient mouse fibroblasts, and the response of human IGFBP5 to MyoD-induced muscle conversion was altered in cells of DM1 patients. Our results not only identify Six5 as an activator that directs Igfbp5 expression but also suggest that reduced SIX5 expression in DM1 might contribute to specific aspects of the", "corpus_id": 251201765, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Measurement of the Heat Removed by Devices for Skin Tags Treatment", "abstract": "This paper describes a method for the comparison of the cooling capability of over-the-counter devices for skin tags removal. The comparison is performed by measuring the heat flux produced by the gas identified assessing the temperature difference across an element with a known thermal resistance; the temperature reached at the interface between the device and the heat-flux meter is also analyzed, although it is different from that of the skin during the treatment. The measurement accuracy has been experimentally evaluated and, with a confidence interval of 95%, is better than 6% for heat-flux measurements and lower than 0.3 °C for temperature measurements. The instrument allowed comparing the thermal efficiency of 19 dimethyl ether and propane devices of different types (dispenser, spray, and foam). Results are by far more reliable than those obtained with tests performed on subjects, where the intrinsic skin thermal properties variability prevents from assessing differences smaller than 30%.", "corpus_id": 9220898 }

{ "title": "Cutaneous warts: diagnosis and treatment.", "abstract": "Cutaneous warts are a common malady that affects all ages, but are most prevalent in children and young adults. Warts result from infection with human papillomavirus and can lead to a condition that may be painful, disfiguring, and recurrent, despite treatment. A multitude of therapeutic modalities exist, though no single agent is invariably effective. Successful treatment must take into consideration the patient's level of motivation, expense, and physician experience.", "corpus_id": 37995714 }

{ "title": "3D numerical modeling and experimental validation of diamagnetic levitating suspension in the static field", "abstract": "Abstract Diamagnetic levitation principle opens to promising solutions for innovative powerless and low stiffness suspension applicable to many technological fields. The peculiarities of diamagnetic suspension make this design solution very attractive for some applications such as microdevices and energy harvesters. Low stiffness and powerless functioning are the most appreciable characteristics of this kind of suspension, despite their force–displacement curve is generally hard to predict and strongly nonlinear. The modeling complexity resides in the preliminary prediction of magnetic field distribution and in the calculation of diamagnetic forces as function of the levitation height. This work introduces a modeling approach for calculating the levitation height of a parameterized diamagnetic suspension composed of a ground of permanent magnets and a levitating mass made of pyrolytic graphite. The numerical discretization approach is used and the predicted values are compared with experiments providing good agreement between results.", "corpus_id": 67824750, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Polarization characteristics of compact SOI rib waveguide racetrack resonators", "abstract": "We report on the development of compact optical racetrack resonators on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) rib waveguides. We make use of large-cross-section waveguides instead of photonic wire waveguides. We fabricated resonators with bending radii down to 20 /spl mu/m and characterized for both transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic polarizations. Different polarization characteristics were analyzed and related to the modal shape of the SOI waveguide. These compact resonators show large free spectral ranges (3.0 nm), high finesse (19), and Q-factor (28 000) values.", "corpus_id": 6197492 }

{ "title": "High-Q silicon-on-insulator optical rib waveguide racetrack resonators.", "abstract": "In this work, detailed design and realization of high quality factor (Q) racetrack resonators based on silicon-on-insulator rib waveguides are presented. Aiming to achieve critical coupling, suitable waveguide geometry is determined after extensive numerical studies of bending loss. The final design is obtained after coupling factor calculations and estimation of propagation loss. Resonators with quality factors (Q) as high as 119000 has been achieved, the highest Q value for resonators based on silicon-on-insulator rib waveguides to date with extinction ratios as large as 12 dB.", "corpus_id": 11602383 }

{ "title": "Beating oscillations of magneto-optical spectra in simple hexagonal graphite", "abstract": "The magneto-optical properties of simple hexagonal graphite exhibit rich beating oscillations, which are dominated by the field strength and photon energy. The former has a strong effect on the intensity, the energy range of the beating and the number of groups, and the latter modulates the total group numbers of the oscillation structures. The single-particle and collective excitations are simultaneously presented in the magnetoreflectance spectra and can be precisely distinguished. For the loss function and reflectance, the beating pattern of the first group displays stronger intensities and broader energy range than other groups. Simple hexagonal graphite possesses unique magneto-optical characteristics that can serve to identify other bulk graphites.", "corpus_id": 15410510, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Child-orientated environmental education influences adult knowledge and household behaviour", "abstract": "Environmental education is frequently undertaken as a conservation intervention designed to change the attitudes and behaviour of recipients. Much conservation education is aimed at children, with the rationale that children influence the attitudes of their parents, who will consequently change their behaviour. Empirical evidence to substantiate this suggestion is very limited, however. For the first time, we use a controlled trial to assess the influence of wetland-related environmental education on the knowledge of children and their parents and household behaviour. We demonstrate adults exhibiting greater knowledge of wetlands and improved reported household water management behaviour when their child has received wetland-based education at Seychelles wildlife clubs. We distinguish between ‘folk’ knowledge of wetland environments and knowledge obtained from formal education, with intergenerational transmission of each depending on different factors. Our study provides the first strong support for the suggestion that environmental education can be transferred between generations and indirectly induce targeted behavioural changes.", "corpus_id": 154636988 }

{ "title": "Teaching systems thinking to 4th and 5th graders using Environmental Dashboard display technology", "abstract": "Tackling complex environmental challenges requires the capacity to understand how relationships and interactions between parts result in dynamic behavior of whole systems. There has been convincing research that these “systems thinking” skills can be learned. However, there is little research on methods for teaching these skills to children or assessing their impact. The Environmental Dashboard is a technology that uses “sociotechnical” feedback–information feedback designed to affect thought and behavior. Environmental Dashboard (ED) combines real-time information on community resource use with images and words that reflect pro-environmental actions of community members. Prior research indicates that ED supports the development of systems thinking in adults. To assess its impact on children, the technology was installed in a primary school and children were passively exposed to ED displays. This resulted in no measurable impact on systems thinking skills. The next stage of this research examined the impact of actively integrating ED into lessons on electricity in 4th and 5th grade. This active integration enhanced both content-related systems thinking skills and content retention.", "corpus_id": 26232528 }

{ "title": "Linguistic and Cultural Problems in Javanese-English Subtitle of CAPCIPTOP! Short Movie", "abstract": "The presented paper is focusing on the Javanese-English subtitle. The data involve a culture-bound short movie entitled “CAPCIPTOP!” uploaded on Youtube by Ravacana Film. The samples of this study are fifteen students joining subtitling class in the even semester of the academic year 2020/2021 at Widya Mandala Catholic University. The research findings show that students are facing two common problems namely linguistic and cultural problems in subtitling Javanese to English. Those problems are crucial as they are closely related to how a translator transfers messages from Javanese to English completely and minimize the misunderstanding among the viewers. This study is concluded with some suggestions for students in dealing with the problems in Javanese-English subtitling.", "corpus_id": 251181048, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Lyman Continuum Extinction by Dust in H II Regions of Galaxies", "abstract": "We examine Lyman continuum extinction (LCE) in H II regions by comparing infrared fluxes of 49 H II regions in the Galaxy, M31, M33, and the Large Megellanic Cloud with estimated production rates of Lyman continuum photons. A typical fraction of Lyman continuum photons that contribute to hydrogen ionization in the H II regions of three spiral galaxies is ≲50%. The fraction may become smaller as the metallicity (or dust-to-gas ratio) increases. We examine the LCE effect on estimated star formation rates of galaxies. The correction factor for the Galactic dust-to-gas ratio is 2–5.", "corpus_id": 660710 }

{ "title": "Physical processes in the interstellar medium", "abstract": "Interstellar Matter-- An Overview. Elastic Collisions and Kinetic Equilibrium. Radiative Processes. Excitation. Ionization and Dissociation. Kinetic Temperature. Optical Properties of Grains. Polarization and Grain Alignment. Physical Properties of Grains. Dynamical Principles. Overall Equilibrium. Explosive Motions. Gravitational Motion. Symbols. Index.", "corpus_id": 121162600 }

{ "title": "Educational attainment in poor comprehenders", "abstract": "To date, only one study has investigated educational attainment in poor (reading) comprehenders, providing evidence of poor performance on national UK school tests at age 11 years relative to peers (Cain and Oakhill, 2006). In the present study, we adopted a longitudinal approach, tracking attainment on such tests from 11 years to the end of compulsory schooling in the UK (age 16 years). We aimed to investigate the proposal that educational weaknesses (defined as poor performance on national assessments) might become more pronounced over time, as the curriculum places increasing demands on reading comprehension. Participants comprised 15 poor comprehenders and 15 controls; groups were matched for chronological age, nonverbal reasoning ability and decoding skill. Children were identified at age 9 years using standardized measures of nonverbal reasoning, decoding and reading comprehension. These measures, along with a measure of oral vocabulary knowledge, were repeated at age 11 years. Data on educational attainment were collected from all participants (n = 30) at age 11 and from a subgroup (n = 21) at 16 years. Compared to controls, educational attainment in poor comprehenders was lower at ages 11 and 16 years, an effect that was significant at 11 years. When poor comprehenders were compared to national performance levels, they showed significantly lower performance at both time points. Low educational attainment was not evident for all poor comprehenders. Nonetheless, our findings point to a link between reading comprehension difficulties in mid to late childhood and poor educational outcomes at ages 11 and 16 years. At these ages, pupils in the UK are making key transitions: they move from primary to secondary schools at 11, and out of compulsory schooling at 16.", "corpus_id": 624763, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "The factors influencing car use in a cycle-friendly city: the case of Cambridge", "abstract": "Highlights ► Comparison of the use of the car and bicycle for work, shopping and leisure trips. ► Multivariate logistic regression examines correlates associated with modal choice. ► Distance and free workplace car parking are associated with car use for commuting. ► Car access and education effect car use on shopping, leisure and short work trips. ► Policies are available to encourage modal shift even in cities with high cycling.", "corpus_id": 1956705 }

{ "title": "Neighbourhood, Route and Workplace-Related Environmental Characteristics Predict Adults' Mode of Travel to Work", "abstract": "Objective Commuting provides opportunities for regular physical activity which can reduce the risk of chronic disease. Commuters' mode of travel may be shaped by their environment, but understanding of which specific environmental characteristics are most important and might form targets for intervention is limited. This study investigated associations between mode choice and a range of objectively assessed environmental characteristics. Methods Participants in the Commuting and Health in Cambridge study reported where they lived and worked, their usual mode of travel to work and a variety of socio-demographic characteristics. Using geographic information system (GIS) software, 30 exposure variables were produced capturing characteristics of areas around participants' homes and workplaces and their shortest modelled routes to work. Associations between usual mode of travel to work and personal and environmental characteristics were investigated using multinomial logistic regression. Results Of the 1124 respondents, 50% reported cycling or walking as their usual mode of travel to work. In adjusted analyses, home-work distance was strongly associated with mode choice, particularly for walking. Lower odds of walking or cycling rather than driving were associated with a less frequent bus service (highest versus lowest tertile: walking OR 0.61 [95% CI 0.20–1.85]; cycling OR 0.43 [95% CI 0.23–0.83]), low street connectivity (OR 0.22, [0.07–0.67]; OR 0.48 [0.26–0.90]) and free car parking at work (OR 0.24 [0.10–0.59]; OR 0.55 [0.32–0.95]). Participants were less likely to cycle if they had access to fewer destinations (leisure facilities, shops and schools) close to work (OR 0.36 [0.21–0.62]) and a railway station further from home (OR 0.53 [0.30–0.93]). Covariates strongly predicted travel mode (pseudo r-squared 0.74). Conclusions Potentially modifiable environmental characteristics, including workplace car parking, street connectivity and access to public transport, are associated with travel mode choice, and could be addressed as part of transport policy and infrastructural interventions to promote active commuting.", "corpus_id": 9099017 }

{ "title": "Raising commuter parking prices — An empirical study", "abstract": "Recently, management of parking rates has been proposed as an effective policy option to ameliorate the adverse impacts of excessive commuter automobile use in urban areas. Parking price strategies have the potential for significantly altering travel behavior in favor of high occupancy vehicles, as well as reducing congestion, energy consumption and pollution. Unfortunately, however, a paucity of empirical evidence exists regarding the impacts of parking pricing policies on travel patterns. The recent attempt aimed at eliminating federal employee parking subsidies provided a unique opportunity to take a careful look at the impacts of commuter parking price increases.In November 1979, federal employees at many government facilities in Washington, DC, and other major cities began to pay one-half of nearby commercial parking rates for government-controlled parking spaces. This paper presents the impacts of the parking price increases on commuting behavior at a sample of 15 worksites in metropolitan Washington, DC, and discusses their short term planning and policy implications. A “before and after with control group” survey design monitored the effects on modal shifts, automobile occupancy, and parking behavior. The results showed that removing free parking and raising parking rates (from $10 to $32 per month) influenced some significant shifts to higher-occupancy modes, but that the shifts were not uniform in direction or magnitude across the sites. In addition, the study examined how locational, travel, and employee factors influenced the modal shifts.", "corpus_id": 154418049, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Quality and safety education for nurses: is it time to rethink quality improvement knowledge, skills, and attitudes?", "abstract": "The media tell us. The literature tells us. The accrediting agencies tell us. Our friends and families tell us. Preventable errors continue to occur in health care organizations today. One welldocumented contributing factor has been the call to reform curricula, not just in nursing but in all of health care, with the goal that all health care workers become active participants in reducing patients’ health care risks by possessing improvement knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs), as outlined in the quality improvement (QI) Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN; http://www.qsen.org) project competency. Health care professionals must have the skills to recognize the need for process improvement, to identify an appropriate intervention, and to evaluate outcomes from tests of change. From an organizational perspective, it is common to read mission statements that speak to high quality care, commitment to excellence, and patient satisfaction. Clearly, it’s all about quality. But how can quality be realized if health care professionals do not possess the necessary QI KSAs? Approximately 1 year ago, we were fi nalizing our book chapters, as guest editors, for the fi rst nursing text addressing the QSEN competencies, Introduction to Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (Kelly, Vottero, & Christie-McAuliffe, 2014). Much of the reviewer feedback was that the QI content we drafted was too advanced, yet we followed the prelicensure QI KSAs in developing the content. Throughout our revisions, we debated and agreed to disagree at times what constituted introductory QI KSAs. Because we are both working in “quality” positions, our views are based on the perceptions of what organizations need and expect from new nurses. In fact, we had more than our fair share of healthy discussions regarding control charts! The reality is that new nurses are not expected to create or analyze control charts. As we continued to edit, many more questions came to light that hovered around academic versus organizational expectations. If, indeed, academics believe all the QI KSAs are introductory, are new nurses translating these QI KSAs on entry to practice? Should they be? It’s been said that “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.” We hope this guest editorial will help to address that gap. Involvement with a nurse residency program verifi ed how new nurses could readily speak to the relationship between practice (e.g., hand hygiene) and risk (e.g., hospital-acquired infections). But they often struggled with the next steps: how to analyze data to make improvement decisions; if improvement was warranted, how to implement a small test of change; and how to measure that change to assess effectiveness. This gap was problematic and generalizable, regardless of undergraduate program. In talking with new nurses, they reported very little to no time spent on data analysis or even basic improvement methods, such as Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) during their learning experiences. It was necessary to spend signifi cant residency time on improvement methodologies before new nurse residents could tackle their required project. What the new nurse residents reported has been supported in the literature. QI and teamwork and collaboration are the two QSEN competencies lagging integration within curricula (Barnsteiner et al., 2013). Barnsteiner et al. (2013) provided some explanation: faculty themselves lack the QI KSAs that are necessary to teach QI, and our current clinical education practices tend not to provide interprofessional opportunities. From a QI perspective, QI KSAs are extremely complex. In fact, most health care professionals practicing today have had little training on how to analyze data or design tests of change without signifi cant coaching. Even some quality departments may not have adequate or skilled staff or software to coach frontline staff through improvement activities. Although some schools are providing creative QSEN integration models, and simulation can provide some opportunity to address the QI KSAs, we are faced with an important question: Is it realistic for new nurses to have full command of the QI KSAs upon graduation? More importantly, will new nurses need the current QI KSAs to meet organizational expectations? Classroom environments may be conducive for the knowledge component of the QI competency, but even that is limited. However, there are precursors to improvement activities that lend themselves to classroom settings, such as regulatory requirements, accreditation, and how improvements are made within organizations. At one time, “improvement work” was the responsibility of quality management departments. Those days are pretty much gone! Because the emphasis is on evaluating existing processes, improving them, and making them safer, in creating “safer” new processes, organizations now promote full involvement of frontline staff. Who better than the staff who do the work to be part of the discussion identifying the problems, sharing ideas about how to mitigate them, and knowing how to evaluate those improvement outcomes? Frontline staff involved in organizational improvements require some of the QI KSAs and teamwork and collaboration competencies, given that", "corpus_id": 2773490 }

{ "title": "Infusing Systems and Quality Improvement Throughout an Undergraduate Nursing Curriculum.", "abstract": "BACKGROUND\nNurse educators are constantly revising curricula to ensure that graduating nurses have the requisite skills for today's fast-paced, rapidly changing, nonlinear complex care environment. Key nursing education and practice organizations identify systems thinking and quality improvement as essential skills for nurses at the point of care.\n\n\nMETHOD\nSystems thinking and quality improvement were embedded across a Bachelor of Nursing (BSN) curriculum in a manner that does not dislocate other, more traditional content.\n\n\nRESULTS\nTo date, approximately 500 students have been exposed to the new BSN curriculum. Sustainable approaches, preliminary results, lessons learned, and recommendations for sustainability and replication are discussed.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nIntegrating systems thinking and quality improvement with traditional content across the entire undergraduate curriculum exposes students to increasingly sophisticated real-world experiences that highlight the relevance and significance of these skills in the health care context. Feedback from practice partners suggests this approach helps bridge the education and practice gap. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(12):752-757.].", "corpus_id": 2617007 }

{ "title": "Is 3D just an addition of 1 to 2 or is it more enhancing than 2D visualizations", "abstract": "There have been much reports of usefulness as well disadvantages of 3D environments in science teaching and learning when compared with 2D visualizations. The present study investigated the relative effectiveness of 2D and 3D visualizations on Nigerian Senior Secondary One students' understanding of molecular structure and nomenclature in organic chemistry. Quantitative data were generated using validated structured short answered questions. The instrument was administered before and after two intact groups of students (n = 60, 30 in each) were treated with 2D and 3D software supplemental following a conventional teaching. Treatment of the pre-test and post-test data using t-test statistic indicated no significant difference between the two groups even though the mean score of the 3D group was a little higher. In addition, the closeness of the mean scores which suggest that both 2D and 3D were good supplemental and the recommendation is that both should be used in teaching organic chemistry in schools. The excitement with which the students embraced 3D visualizations prove they might be more enhancing if students get used to the skills involved and the ability to fully comprehend them.", "corpus_id": 55745650, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Effects of general, specific and combined warm-up on explosive muscular performance", "abstract": "The purpose of this study was to compare the acute effects of general, specific and combined warm-up (WU) on explosive performance. Healthy male (n = 10) subjects participated in six WU protocols in a crossover randomized study design. Protocols were: passive rest (PR; 15 min of passive rest), running (Run; 5 min of running at 70% of maximum heart rate), stretching (STR; 5 min of static stretching exercise), jumping [Jump; 5 min of jumping exercises – 3x8 countermovement jumps (CMJ) and 3x8 drop jumps from 60 cm (DJ60)], and combined (COM; protocols Run+STR+Jump combined). Immediately before and after each WU, subjects were assessed for explosive concentric-only (i.e. squat jump – SJ), slow stretch-shortening cycle (i.e. CMJ), fast stretch-shortening cycle (i.e. DJ60) and contact time (CT) muscle performance. PR significantly reduced SJ performance (p =0.007). Run increased SJ (p =0.0001) and CMJ (p =0.002). STR increased CMJ (p =0.048). Specific WU (i.e. Jump) increased SJ (p =0.001), CMJ (p =0.028) and DJ60 (p =0.006) performance. COM increased CMJ performance (p =0.006). Jump was superior in SJ performance vs. PR (p =0.001). Jump reduced (p =0.03) CT in DJ60. In conclusion, general, specific and combined WU increase slow stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) muscle performance, but only specific WU increases fast SSC muscle performance. Therefore, to increase fast SSC performance, specific fast SSC muscle actions must be included during the WU.", "corpus_id": 6897561 }

{ "title": "Effects of warm-up on vertical jump performance and muscle electrical activity using half-squats at low and moderate intensity.", "abstract": "The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a specific warm-up using half-squats at low and moderate intensity on vertical jump performance and electromyographic activity of the thigh muscles. The subjects were 26 men who were divided into a low intensity group (LIG; n = 13) and a moderate intensity group (MIG; n = 13). The LIG performed a specific warm-up protocol that included the explosive execution of half-squats with loads 25 and 35% of the one repetition maximum (1RM) and the MIG with loads 45 and 65% of the 1RM. The two groups performed a countermovement jump (CMJ) before and three minutes after the specific warm-up protocols. During the concentric phase of the CMJ a linear encoder connected to an A/D converter interfaced to a PC with a software for data acquisition and analysis allowed the calculation of average mechanical power. The electromyographic (EMG) activity of the vastus lateralis (VL), vastus medialis (VM) and rectus femoris (RF) were recorded during the concentric phase of the jumps. The average quadriceps (Qc) activity (mean value of the VL, VM and RF) was also calculated. A two way ANOVA (protocols X time) with repeated measures on the second factor was used to analyze the data. Following the specific warm-up procedure both groups improved (p ≤ 0.05) CMJ performance and mechanical power by 3.5% and 6.3%, respectively, with no differences observed between the two groups. EMG activity of the Qc and VL increased (p ≤ 0.05) for both groups by 5.9% and 8.5%, respectively. It is concluded that the use of a specific warm-up that includes half-squats, performed explosively with low to moderate intensity, improves CMJ performance. This may be due to increased muscle activation as evaluated by the surface EMG. Key pointsThe inclusion of two sets of explosively performed half squats with low to moderate loads in the warm up procedure elicited an acute performance en-hancement.The performance was enhanced regardless of the load used in the warm-up.The performance enhancement is accompanied by a greater electromyographic activity of the knee extensors muscles.", "corpus_id": 17891519 }

{ "title": "Mauna Kea ground-layer characterization campaign", "abstract": "We present the results of an 18-month study to characterize the optical turbulence in the boundary layer and in the free atmosphere above the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This survey combined the Slope-Detection and Ranging (SLODAR) and Low-Layer SCIntillation Detection And Ranging (SCIDAR) (LOLAS) instruments into a single manually operated instrument capable of measuring the integrated seeing and the optical turbulence profile within the first kilometre with spatial and temporal resolutions of 40–80 m and 1 min (SLODAR) or 10–20 m and 5 min (LOLAS). The campaign began in the fall of 2006 and observed for roughly 50–60 h per month. The optical turbulence within the boundary layer is found to be confined within an extremely thin layer (≤80 m), and the optical turbulence arising within the region from 80 to 650 m is normally very weak. Exponential fits to the SLODAR profiles give an upper limit on the exponential scaleheight of between 25 and 40 m. The thickness of this layer shows a dependence on the turbulence strength near the ground, and under median conditions the scaleheight is <28 m. The LOLAS profiles show a multiplicity of layers very close to the ground but all within the first 40 m. The free-atmosphere seeing measured by the SLODAR is 0.42 arcsec (median) at 0.5 μm and is, importantly, significantly better than the typical delivered image quality at the larger telescopes on the mountain. This suggests that the current suite of telescopes on Mauna Kea is largely dominated by a very local seeing either from internal seeing, seeing induced by the flow in/around the enclosures, or from an atmospheric layer very close to the ground. The results from our campaign suggest that groundlayer adaptive optics can be very effective in correcting this turbulence and, in principle, can provide very large corrected fields of view on Mauna Kea.", "corpus_id": 14144633, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Antibody responses to vaccinations given within the first two years after transplant are similar between autologous peripheral blood stem cell and bone marrow transplant recipients", "abstract": "As a consequence of the significantly larger inoculum of lymphoid cells present in peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) harvests compared to bone marrow (BM), it is possible that autoPBSCT recipients may have an earlier and*or enhanced response to vaccines. Until data to confirm this become available, the European Blood and Marrow Transplantation Association (EBMT) recommend that all transplant recipients be immunized in the same way regardless of stem cell source. We performed a prospective study comparing serological responses to influenza, pneumococcal polysaccharide and tetanus toxoid vaccines between autoPBSCT with autoBMT recipients. Antibody responses in sibling HLA-matched allogeneic BMT (alloBMT) survivors were also evaluated. All vaccines were administered within the first 2 years after stem cell transplantation. Fifty patients were enrolled. The time of vaccination after transplant was similar between autoPBSCT (mean 11 months for each vaccine) and autoBMT recipients (mean 12 months except 13 months for tetanus toxoid) (P = NS). Serological responses were poor and no significant difference in response to any of the vaccines used was seen between the three transplant cohorts. We provide no evidence that current EBMT guidelines be modified. Large prospective vaccine studies are needed to address the issue more fully. Bone Marrow Transplantation (2001) 28, 775–781.", "corpus_id": 99532 }

{ "title": "Antibody responses to tetanus toxoid and Haemophilus influenzae type b conjugate vaccines following autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT)", "abstract": "Accelerated granulocyte and platelet recovery following peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) are well documented. We hypothesize that functional immunity may also be enhanced in PBSCT and performed a phase II trial of immunizations in patients with lymphoma undergoing autologous transplantation with peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow. Seventeen BMT and 10 PBSCT recipients were immunized at 3, 6, 12, and 24-months post-transplantation with Haemophilus influenzae type b (HIB)-conjugate and tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccines. IgG anti-HIB and anti-TT antibody concentrations were measured and compared between the two groups. Geometric mean IgG anti-HIB antibody concentrations were significantly higher for PBSCT recipients compared to BMT recipients at 24 months post-transplantation (11.3 μ g/ml vs 0.93 μ g/ml, P = 0.051) and following the 24 month immunization (66.2  μ g/ml vs 1.30 μ g/ml, P = 0.006). Similar results were noted for IgG anti-TT antibody with significantly higher geometric mean antibody concentrations in the PBSCT group at 24 months post-transplantation (182 μ g/ml vs 21.6 μ g/ml, P = 0.039). Protective levels of total anti-HIB antibody were achieved earlier in PBSCT recipients compared with those of BMT recipients. PBSCT recipients had higher antigen-specific antibody concentrations following HIB and TT immunizations. These results suggest enhanced recovery of humoral immunity in PBSCT recipients and earlier protection against HIB with immunization.", "corpus_id": 26323750 }

{ "title": "Organ-specific autoimmunity.", "abstract": "The list of organ-specific autoimmune diseases (AID) is expanding. This is particularly true for T-cell-mediated AID, the pathophysiology of which has largely been ignored until recently. The best arguments for T-cell involvement in AID, although indirect, are the presence of a local T-cell infiltrate and the dramatic sensitivity of the disease to T-cell-selective immunosuppressive agents (e.g. cyclosporin A) as in the case of insulin-dependent (type I) diabetes mellitus (IDDM) and psoriasis. This paper will review current questions concerning the etiology and pathogenesis of organ-specific AID.", "corpus_id": 2949125, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Inhibition of endothelial Cdk5 reduces tumor growth by promoting non-productive angiogenesis", "abstract": "Therapeutic success of VEGF-based anti-angiogenic tumor therapy is limited due to resistance. Thus, new strategies for anti-angiogenic cancer therapy based on novel targets are urgently required. Our previous in vitro work suggested that small molecule Cdk5 inhibitors affect angiogenic processes such as endothelial migration and proliferation. Moreover, we recently uncovered a substantial role of Cdk5 in the development of lymphatic vessels. Here we pin down the in vivo impact of endothelial Cdk5 inhibition in angiogenesis and elucidate the underlying mechanism in order to judge the potential of Cdk5 as a novel anti-angiogenic and anti-cancer target. By the use of endothelial-specific Cdk5 knockout mouse models and various endothelial and tumor cell based assays including human tumor xenograft models, we show that endothelial-specific knockdown of Cdk5 results in excessive but non-productive angiogenesis during development but also in tumors, which subsequently leads to inhibition of tumor growth. As Cdk5 inhibition disrupted Notch function by reducing the generation of the active Notch intracellular domain (NICD) and Cdk5 modulates Notch-dependent endothelial cell proliferation and sprouting, we propose that the Dll4/Notch driven angiogenic signaling hub is an important and promising mechanistic target of Cdk5. In fact, Cdk5 inhibition can sensitize tumors to conventional anti-angiogenic treatment as shown in tumor xenograft models. In summary our data set the stage for Cdk5 as a drugable target to inhibit Notch-driven angiogenesis condensing the view that Cdk5 is a promising target for cancer therapy.", "corpus_id": 525378 }

{ "title": "Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 mediates pleiotrophin-induced endothelial cell migration", "abstract": "Pleiotrophin (PTN) stimulates endothelial cell migration through binding to receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase beta/zeta (RPTPβ/ζ) and ανβ3 integrin. Screening for proteins that interact with RPTPβ/ζ and potentially regulate PTN signaling, through mass spectrometry analysis, identified cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (CDK5) activator p35 among the proteins displaying high sequence coverage. Interaction of p35 with the serine/threonine kinase CDK5 leads to CDK5 activation, known to be implicated in cell migration. Protein immunoprecipitation and proximity ligation assays verified p35-RPTPβ/ζ interaction and revealed the molecular association of CDK5 and RPTPβ/ζ. In endothelial cells, PTN activates CDK5 in an RPTPβ/ζ- and phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-dependent manner. On the other hand, c-Src, ανβ3 and ERK1/2 do not mediate the PTN-induced CDK5 activation. Pharmacological and genetic inhibition of CDK5 abolished PTN-induced endothelial cell migration, suggesting that CDK5 mediates PTN stimulatory effect. A new pyrrolo[2,3-α]carbazole derivative previously identified as a CDK1 inhibitor, was found to suppress CDK5 activity and eliminate PTN stimulatory effect on cell migration, warranting its further evaluation as a new CDK5 inhibitor. Collectively, our data reveal that CDK5 is activated by PTN, in an RPTPβ/ζ-dependent manner, regulates PTN-induced cell migration and is an attractive target for the inhibition of PTN pro-angiogenic properties.", "corpus_id": 4806620 }

{ "title": "Combination of Dll4/Notch and Ephrin-B2/EphB4 targeted therapy is highly effective in disrupting tumor angiogenesis", "abstract": "BackgroundDll4/Notch and Ephrin-B2/EphB4 pathways play critical roles in tumor vessel development and maturation. This study evaluates the efficacy of the inhibition of both signaling pathways, alone and in combination, in reducing the growth of an autochthonous mouse tumor and assesses potential adverse effects.MethodsWe used the transgenic RIP1-Tag2 tumor model to study the effects of 1) inhibition of Dll4/Notch by either Dll4 allelic deletion or use of a soluble extracellular Dll4 (sDll4), 2) inhibition of Ephrin-B2/EphB4 signaling by a soluble extracellular EphB4 fused to albumin (sEphB4-Alb), and 3) inhibition of both pathways by sEphB4-Alb combined with either Dll4 allelic deletion or sDll4. To investigate adverse effects, we used inducible endothelial-specific Dll4 knock-out mice, treated with sEphB4-Alb, and carried out histopathological analysis.ResultsDll4 allele deletion or soluble Dll4 treatment resulted in increased tumor vessel density, reduced mural cell recruitment and vessel perfusion which resulted in reduced tumor size. The soluble EphB4 instead reduced vessel density and vessel perfusion, leading to reduction of tumor size. Greater efficacy was observed when sEphB4-Alb was combined with either Dll4 allele deletion or sDll4 in regards to tumor size, vessel perfusion and mural cell recruitment. Induced endothelial specific Dll4 loss-of-function caused hepatic vascular alterations, which were prevented by concomitant sEphB4-Alb treatment.ConclusionCombination targeting of Dll4/Notch and Ephrin-B2/EphB4 has potential for clinical investigation, providing cumulative efficacy and increased safety over Dll4/Notch inhibition alone.", "corpus_id": 1066379, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Shape parameters of Galactic open clusters", "abstract": "Context. There are only a few tens of open clusters for which ellipticities have been determined in the past. Aims. In this paper we derive observed and modelled shape parameters (apparent ellipticity and orientation of the ellipse) of 650 Galactic open clusters identified in the ASCC-2.5 catalogue. Methods. We provide the observed shape parameters of Galactic open clusters, computed with the help of a multi- component analysis. For the vast majority of clusters these parameters are determined for the first time. High resolution (\"star by star\") N-body simulations are carried out with the specially developedGRAPE code providing models of clusters of different initial masses, Galactocentric distances and rotation velocities. Results. The comparison of models and observations of about 150 clusters reveals ellipticities of observed clusters which are too low (0.2 vs. 0.3), and offers the basis to find the main reason for this discrepancy. The models predict that after � 50 Myr clusters reach an oblate shape with an axes ratio of 1.65 : 1.35 : 1, and with the major axis tilted by an angle of qXY � 30 ◦ with respect to the Galactocentric radius due to differential rotation of the Galaxy. Conclusions. Unbiased estimates of cluster shape parameters requires reliable membership determination in large cluster areas up to 2-3 tidal radii where the density of cluster stars is considerably lower than the background. Although dynamically bound stars outside the tidal radius contribute insignificantly to the cluster mass, their distribution is essential for a correct determination of cluster shape parameters. In contrast, a restricted mass range of cluster stars does not play such a dramatic role, though deep surveys allow to identify more cluster members and, therefore, to increase the accuracy of the observed shape parameters.", "corpus_id": 2196805 }

{ "title": "Open clusters: III. Fundamental parameters of B stars in NGC 6087, NGC 6250, NGC 6383 and NGC 6530. B type stars with circumstellar envelopes", "abstract": "Context. Stellar physical properties of star clusters are poorly known. Aims. Our goals are to perform a spectrophotometric study of the B star population in open clusters to derive accurate stellar parameters, search for the presence of circumstellar envelopes, and discuss the characteristics of these stars. Methods. The BCD spectrophotometric system is a powerful tool to obtain fundamental parameters and infer the main properties of open clusters: distance modulus, color excess, and age. We inspected the Balmer discontinuity to seek circumstellar disks and identify Be-star candidates. High resolution spectra in the H$\\alpha$ region are used to confirm the Be nature. Results. We provide Teff , log g, Mv , Mbol and spectral types for a sample of 68 stars in the field of the open clusters NGC 6087, NGC 6250, NGC 6383, and NGC 6530, as well as the cluster distances, ages and reddening. Then, based on a sample of 230 B stars in the direction of the 11 open clusters studied along this series of three papers, we report 6 new Be stars, 4 blue straggler candidates, and 15 B-type stars (called Bdd) with a double Balmer discontinuity. We also find that the majority of the Be stars are dwarfs and present a maximum at the spectral type B2-B4 in young and intermediate-age open clusters. Another maximum of Be stars is observed at the spectral type B6-B8 in open clusters older than 40 Myr, where the population of Bdd stars also becomes relevant. Conclusions. Our results support previous statements that the Be phenomenon is present along the whole main sequence band and occurs in very different evolutionary states. We find clear evidence of an increase of stars with circumstellar envelopes with cluster age. The Be phenomenon reaches its maximum in clusters of intermediate age and the number of B stars with circumstellar envelopes (Be+Bdd stars) is also high for the older clusters.", "corpus_id": 59375851 }

{ "title": "Surface tension of liquid Fe, Nb and 304L SS and effect of drop mass in aerodynamic levitation", "abstract": "The oscillating drop method has been widely used for surface tension measurements of liquids at high temperatures such as molten metals. An experimental device that permits such measurements has been developed at IRDL. This device relies on aerodynamic levitation for the sample to be contactless and on acoustic excitation to make it oscillate at its resonance frequency, which is related to the surface tension with Rayleigh’s equation. Beforehand, experimentally, a lateral gas jet blows and controls the rotation of the drop due to its unpredictable behavior. Moreover, the effect of drop mass, usually studied for electromagnetic levitation, remains unknown for aerodynamic levitation. To fill this knowledge gap, levitated drops of different masses were numerically modeled to observe the influence of gravity or additional oscillation modes. It resulted that for light mass drops, such as those used for our surface tension measurement, it is not significant. Finally, our results on iron, niobium, and 304L stainless steel have been compared with the literature. For pure metals, we observed a similar decreasing behavior versus temperature. For steel, results highlighted the impact of experimental parameters on the surface tension (length of experiments and composition of the atmosphere). These measurements thus provide original results that will be useful for the numerical modeling of innovative industrial processes such as additive manufacturing or welding.", "corpus_id": 249893836, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Where Does the Small Rural School Stand? Exploring Different Perspectives", "abstract": "The closure of small rural schools is the single most implemented educational change reform in rural areas of Canada (Wallin, 2007). Similarly, throughout the 20 century, rural school consolidation was the single, most frequently implemented educational policy in the United States (Herzog & Pittman, 1995). This study explores the why and how of this phenomenon. Rural education research has indicated that small rural schools across North America share common challenges unique to the rural situation (Bard, Gardener & Wieland, 2006; Blaine, Pace & Robinson, 2004; Mulcahy, 1993; Wallin, 2007). Many rural education researchers concur that some of these challenges arise from social, economic and political differences between urban and rural settings, but primarily, they stem from the consequence of globalization on trade, labour relations, regulatory control, or governmental rules and guidelines (Howley, 1997; Wallin, 2007). In response to these challenges, many policymakers and educational officials have initiated reform efforts in the form of small rural school closures and consolidations (Bard et.al, 2006; Corbett & Mulcahy, 2006; Hicks, 1999; Wallin, 2007). In this study, I carry out a qualitative analysis of the rationale behind these reforms, using one particular Eastern Ontario school board’s proposal (Boundary 2020) and a number of other documents as an exemplification of these closure and consolidation movements, and the various rural stakeholder responses to this reform. In an exploration of rural perspectives and philosophies, I bring alternative rural perceptions to the forefront and advocate for rural stakeholders to have a voice in the future of their schools and communities. Moreover, by acknowledging not only the existence of small rural schools in Ontario, including the notion that their future is threatened by plans such as Boundary 2020, this project serves as a point of departure for future rural education research in a province that tends to favour a metropolitan-inspired school system. Furthermore, by emphasizing the need to cultivate rural meanings and identities, I hope to encourage rural communities to nurture the strengths of their local schools through the development of locally responsive curricula and community-centered activities and opportunities, which could contribute to the sustainability of their local rural schools.", "corpus_id": 154790279 }

{ "title": "Globalization and Educational Reform in German Teacher Education.", "abstract": "For almost 200 years German teacher education has remained relatively stable in its core characteristics. In this paper, the present process of fundamental change is analyzed with regard to consequences for the structure of teacher education, accountability mechanisms, and the concepts of the ideal teacher. The implementation of Bachelor and Master degrees as well as of explicit and implicit accountability mechanisms support the thesis of borrowing global ideas to push local interests. The changes go along with a new concept of the ideal teacher. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.", "corpus_id": 59061724 }

{ "title": "A Comparison of Census Geographic Areas of Canada and the United States", "abstract": "The Geography Divisions of Statistics Canada and the U.S. Bureau of the Census have commenced a cooperative research program in order to foster an improved and expanded perspective on geographic areas and their relevance. One of the major objectives is to determine a common geographic area to form a geostatistical basis for cross-border research, analysis and mapping. This report, which represents the first stage of the research, provides a list of comparable pairs of Canadian and U.S. standard geographic areas based on current definitions. Statistics Canada and the U.S. Bureau of the Census have two basic types of standard geographic entities: legislative/administrative areas (called \"legal\" entities in the U.S.) and statistical areas. The preliminary pairing of geographic areas are based on face-value definitions only. The definitions are based on the June 4, 1991 Census of Population and Housing for Canada and the April 1, 1990 Census of Population and Housing for the U.S.A. The important aspect is the overall conceptual comparability, not the precise numerical thresholds used for delineating the areas. Data users should use this report as a general guide to compare the census geographic areas of Canada and the United States, and should be aware that differences in settlement patterns and population levels preclude a precise one-to-one relationship between conceptually similar areas. The geographic areas compared in this report provide a framework for further empirical research and analysis.", "corpus_id": 130047438, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Use of the luciferase reporter constructs for investigation of the capacity of Noggin2 protein to inhibit cell signaling pathways in Xenopus laevis embryos", "abstract": "Noggin (Noggin1) protein inhibits Smad1-dependent TGF-β (BMP) signaling cascades by extracellular binding of BMP proteins. Recently, we identified two previously unknown members of the Noggin family, Noggin2 and Noggin4 proteins. In this work, using luciferase reporter constructs, it was shown that Noggin2 is able to inhibit in addition to the BMP-signaling cascade, the Activin/Nodal and Wnt signaling pathways in Xenopus laevis early embryos. The inhibition efficiency of Noggin2 is comparable to well-known extracellular inhibitors Cerberus and Follistatin. In addition to revealing novel properties of Noggin2, this work demonstrates that luciferase reporter constructs are a convenient tool for studying the regulation of molecular signaling cascades in the model of Xenopus laevis embryos.", "corpus_id": 727233 }

{ "title": "Interplay between bone morphogenetic proteins and cognate binding proteins in bone and cartilage development: noggin, chordin and DAN", "abstract": "This commentary is a concise discussion of the interactions between bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) and their binding proteins in bone and cartilage morphogenesis. BMPs are a family of growth and differentiation factors, and they act on mesenchymal cells to induce cartilage and bone differentiation in concentration-dependent thresholds. The BMP–BMP receptor binding leads to a cascade of signaling and transcription of BMP response genes. BMP binding proteins, noggin, chordin and DAN, act as antagonists and determine the bioavailability of BMPs for binding to cognate receptors to elicit the biological response. Noggin null mice with unrestricted action of BMPs exhibit defects in joint morphogenesis. BMPs and their binding proteins may reciprocally regulate the dynamic topography of joints, muscle, tendons and ligaments during morphogenesis of the skeleton. In addition, BMP actions may be potentiated by twisted gastrulation. BMPs and their binding proteins may play a critical role in regeneration of cartilage in osteoarthritis.", "corpus_id": 12827121 }

{ "title": "A genomewide survey of developmentally relevant genes in Ciona intestinalis", "abstract": "Cell growth and cell divisions are two fundamental biological processes for cells in multi-cellular organisms. The molecules involved in these biological processes are highly conserved within eukaryotes, including plants and unicellular organisms such as yeast. However, some regulatory molecules seem to be innovated during animal evolution. Therefore, to understand how the ubiquitous systems have evolved or have been conserved, we examined genes for the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway that is important for cell growth, and genes for cell cycle regulation in the genome of Ciona intestinalis. It was found that the Ciona intestinalis genome contains all the essential constituents of the PI3K pathway. In addition, the class IB PI3K catalytic and regulatory subunits, which had not previously been known in animals other than mammals, were found in the Ciona genome. Similarly, all essential cyclins and CDKs were found in the Ciona genome, while cyclin G and cyclin L were likely to be independently lost in the ascidian lineage, which may be dispensable for the cell cycle. Cyclin F, which was previously known only in vertebrates, was not found in the Ciona genome. Therefore, this gene was probably innovated during the evolution of vertebrates to be involved in vertebrate-specific cell cycle regulation. Since Ciona is regarded as one of the most primitive extant chordates, the present analysis gives us an insight into how these fundamental biological genes are evolved or are conserved during chordate evolution.", "corpus_id": 1164371, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "WFPC2 Filters after 16 Years on Orbit", "abstract": "Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) was installed on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in December 1993 during Servicing Mission 1 by the crew of Shuttle Mission STS-61. WFPC2 replaced Wide Field Planetary Camera 1 (WFPC1), providing improved UV performance, more advanced detectors, better contamination control, and its own corrective optics. After 16 years of exceptional service, WFPC2 was retired in May 2009 during Servicing Mission 4 (SM4), when it was removed from HST in order to allow for the installation of Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). WFPC2 was carried back to Earth in the shuttle bay by the crew of Shuttle Mission STS-125. In a joint investigation by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Selectable Optical Filter Assembly (SOFA) of WFPC2 was extracted and the filter wheels removed and examined for any on-orbit changes. The filters were inspected, photographed and scanned with a spectrophotometer at GSFC. The data have been analyzed at STScI with a view towards understanding how prolonged exposure to the HST space environment affected the filters and what the resultant impacts are to WFPC2 calibrations. In this paper, we present our early results from these post-SM4 laboratory studies, including comparisons of preto post-mission filter transmission measurements for F343N, F160AW, F160BW, F450W, and F170W.", "corpus_id": 7935077 }

{ "title": "Materials and process development for the fabrication of far ultraviolet device-integrated filters for visible-blind Si sensors", "abstract": "In this work, we show that the direct integration of ultraviolet metal-dielectric filters with Si sensors can improve throughput over external filter approaches, and yield devices with UV quantum efficiencies greater than 50%, with rejection ratios of visible light greater than 103. In order to achieve these efficiencies, two-dimensional doping methods are used to increase the UV sensitivity of back-illuminated Si sensors. Integrated filters are then deposited by a combination of Al evaporation and atomic layer deposition of dielectric spacer layers. At far UV wavelengths these filters require the use of non-absorbing dielectrics, and we have pursued the development of new atomic layer deposition processes for metal fluorides materials of MgF2, AlF3 and LiF. The performance of the complete multilayer filters on Si photodiodes and CCD imaging sensors, and the design and fabrication challenges associated with this development are demonstrated. This includes the continued development of deep diffused silicon avalanche photodiodes designed to detect the fast 220 nm emission component of barium fluoride scintillation crystals, while optically rejecting a slower component at 300 nm.", "corpus_id": 136205007 }

{ "title": "New Results on Charge Transfer Efficiency and Constraints on Flat-Field Accuracy", "abstract": "The primary new results based on observations from calibration proposal 6195 are: 1. A set of new formulae has been developed to correct for CTE loss, with dependencies on the X and Y positions, the background counts, and the brightness of the star. The use of this formula reduces the observational scatter in this particular dataset from 4-7% to 23%, depending on the filter. 2. A small correction is required to normalize results from aperture photometry on the three WF chips. This normalization can be understood as the product of different aperture corrections (i.e., variations in the PSF) and different gain ratios for the three chips. 3. The uncertainties in aperture photometry of point sources due to flat-fields are less than (probably considerable less than) 1.5 % across the chip and 0.6 % chip-to-chip.", "corpus_id": 118903594, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "CloudMAC: torwards software defined WLANs", "abstract": "Traditional enterprise WLAN management systems are hard to extend and require powerful access points (APs). In this paper we introduce and evaluate CloudMAC, an architecture for enterprise WLANs in which MAC frames are generated and processed on virtual APs hosted in a datacenter. The APs only need to forward MAC frames. The APs and the servers are connected via an OpenFlow-enabled network, which allows to control where and how MAC frames are transmitted.", "corpus_id": 6448909 }

{ "title": "New concepts for traffic, resource and mobility management in software-defined mobile networks", "abstract": "The evolution of mobile telecommunication networks is accompanied by new demands for the performance, portability, elasticity, and energy efficiency of network functions. Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN), and cloud service technologies are claimed to be able to provide most of the capabilities. However, great leap forward will only be achieved if resource, traffic, and mobility management methods of mobile network services can efficiently utilize these technologies. This paper conceptualizes the future requirements of mobile networks and proposes new concepts and solutions in the form of Software-Defined Mobile Networks (SDMN) leveraging SDN, NFV and cloud technologies. We evaluate the proposed solutions through testbed implementations and simulations. The results reveal that our proposed SDMN enhancements supports heterogeneity in wireless networks with performance improvements through programmable interfaces and centralized control.", "corpus_id": 1464827 }

{ "title": "Cloud Mobile Media: Reflections and Outlook", "abstract": "This paper surveys the emerging paradigm of cloud mobile media. We start with two alternative perspectives for cloud mobile media networks: an end-to-end view and a layered view. Summaries of existing research in this area are organized according to the layered service framework: i) cloud resource management and control in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), ii) cloud-based media services in platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and iii) novel cloud-based systems and applications in software-as-a-service (SaaS). We further substantiate our proposed design principles for cloud-based mobile media using a concrete case study: a cloud-centric media platform (CCMP) developed at Nanyang Technological University. Finally, this paper concludes with an outlook of open research problems for realizing the vision of cloud-based mobile media.", "corpus_id": 19582236, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Role of antibiotics in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease", "abstract": "Exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are an important cause of morbidity and healthcare expenditure. In hospitalized patients, antibiotics decrease treatment failure and reduce mortality. There is also evidence for the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating COPD exacerbations in the community, but this is most convincing in patients with severe airflow obstruction and there is uncertainty regarding the value of antibiotics in patients with mild airflow obstruction. Treatment with antibiotics is usually recommended for patients who have an increase in sputum volume, sputum purulence and breathlessness, but the most important determinant of bacterial infection appears to be purulence. There is some evidence to suggest that the decision to use antibiotics can be guided by the use of procalcitonin, although this needs to be confirmed in further studies. Newer broad-spectrum antibiotics may be more effective than older antibiotics but, because of concerns regarding antibiotic resistance, it may be appropriate to reserve them for patients at highest risk of treatment failure. A number of studies suggest that antibiotic courses of 5 days in duration may be as effective as those for 7 days or more in patients with mild-to-moderate exacerbations of COPD. Guidelines do not recommend the use of prophylactic antibiotics in COPD but there is preliminary evidence to suggest that they may reduce the number of exacerbations. Until the full results of these studies are published, it will not be clear if they should be used.", "corpus_id": 1228200 }

{ "title": "Antibiotics for exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.", "abstract": "BACKGROUND\nMost patients with an exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are treated with antibiotics. However the value of their use remains uncertain. Some controlled trials of antibiotics have shown benefit (Berry 1960; Pines 1972) while others have not (Elmes 1965b; Nicotra 1982).\n\n\nOBJECTIVES\nTo conduct a systematic review of the literature estimating the value of antibiotics in the management of acute COPD exacerbations.\n\n\nSEARCH STRATEGY\nWe searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library Issue 4, 2005); MEDLINE (1966 to December 2005); EMBASE (1974 to December 2005); Web of Science (December 2005), and other electronically available databases.\n\n\nSELECTION CRITERIA\nRandomised controlled trials (RCTs) in patients with acute COPD exacerbations comparing antibiotic (for a minimum of five days) and placebo.\n\n\nDATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS\nData were analysed using Review Manager software. Continuous data were analysed using weighted mean differences (WMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Relative risks (RR) (and 95% CI) were calculated for all dichotomous data. Where appropriate, number needed to treat to benefit (NNT) and 95% CI were calculated.\n\n\nMAIN RESULTS\nEleven trials with 917 patients were included. Ten trials used increased cough, sputum volume and purulence diagnostic criteria for COPD exacerbation. Eight-hundred and fifty-seven patients provided data for outcomes including mortality, treatment failure, increased sputum volume, sputum purulence, PaCO(2), PaO(2), peak flow and adverse events. Antibiotic therapy regardless of antibiotic choice significantly reduced mortality (RR 0.23; 95% CI 0.10 to 0.52 with NNT of 8; 95% CI 6 to 17), treatment failure (RR 0.47; 95% CI 0.36 to 0.62 with NNT of 3; 95% CI 3 to 5) and sputum purulence (RR 0.56; 95% CI 0.41 to 0.77 with NNT of 8; 95% CI 6 to 17). There was a small increase in risk of diarrhoea with antibiotics (RR 2.86; 95% CI 1.06 to 7.76). Antibiotics did not improve arterial blood gases and peak flow.\n\n\nAUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS\nThis review shows that in COPD exacerbations with increased cough and sputum purulence antibiotics, regardless of choice, reduce the risk of short-term mortality by 77%, decrease the risk of treatment failure by 53% and the risk of sputum purulence by 44%; with a small increase in the risk of diarrhoea. These results should be interpreted with caution due to the differences in patient selection, antibiotic choice, small number of included trials and lack of control for interventions that influence outcome, such as use of systemic corticosteroids and ventilatory support. Nevertheless, this review supports antibiotics for patients with COPD exacerbations with increased cough and sputum purulence who are moderately or severely ill.", "corpus_id": 21815801 }

{ "title": "Pure-tone auditory threshold in school children", "abstract": "To determine pure-tone auditory thresholds, 197 screened children at a typical primary school in a German town (~70,000 inhabitants) were examined. All children underwent a tympanometry and an audiometry at 17 frequencies from 125 to 16 kHz. Regarding age effects, two groups (6–8 and 9–12 years) were analyzed. The cross-sectional research was supplemented by a follow-up study with 35 children of the first graders 3 years later. School children have the poorest hearing sensitivity at low frequencies (below 1 kHz) and the best sensitivity at the extended high frequencies above 8 kHz. Hearing thresholds are rising significantly with age. Through all frequencies, averaged improvements were 3.8 dB (right ear) and 3.7 dB (left ear) at the cross-sectional study and 3.7 dB (right ear) and 5.1 dB (left ear) at the longitudinal study. The overall deviation (left and right) from the standard thresholds for adults were 7.4 and 3.6 dB for the younger and older age groups, respectively. The ear canal volume (ECV) measured by tympanometric tests was at mean with 1.06 cm3 for the 6- to 8-year age group significantly lower (p < 0.001) in comparison with 1.18 cm3 for the 9- to 12-year age group. Also, girls had significant (p < 0.001) smaller ECV (mean 1.07 cm3) than boys (1.17 cm3). Auditory performance improves with rising age in school children.", "corpus_id": 3049609, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "VSD: A Framework of Stackable Virtual Snapshot Device", "abstract": "On demand of various applications for storage virtualization, this paper presents a stackable block-level virtual snapshot device (VSD) based on the virtual storage pool. With the strategy of stackable block device, VSD employs a read-only snapshot model with serial connection, and a tree model mixed with serial and parallel connection for writable snapshot. Moreover, two data updating schemes, Copy on Write and Realloc on Write, are integrated into VSD. Thus, VSD supports various applications such as data backup and recovery, data version management and volume clone and so on. Finally, the storage requirements and I/O performance of VSD are evaluated.", "corpus_id": 1811761 }

{ "title": "A Versatile and User-Oriented Versioning File System", "abstract": "File versioning is a useful technique for recording a history of changes. Applications of versioning include backups and disaster recovery, as well as monitoring intruders' activities. Alas, modern systems do not include an automatic and easy-to-use file versioning system. Existing backup solutions are slow and inflexible for users. Even worse, they often lack backups for the most recent day's activities. Online disk snapshotting systems offer more fine-grained versioning, but still do not record the most recent changes to files. Moreover, existing systems also do not give individual users the flexibility to control versioning policies. \n \nWe designed a lightweight user-oriented versioning file system called Versionfs. Versionfs works with any file system and provides a host of user-configurable policies: versioning by users, groups, processes, or file names and extensions; version retention policies and version storage policies. Versionfs creates file versions automatically, transparently, and in a file-system portable manner--while maintaining Unix semantics. A set of user-level utilities allow administrators to configure and enforce default policies: users can set policies within configured boundaries, as well as view, control, and recover files and their versions. We have implemented the system on Linux. Our performance evaluation demonstrates overheads that are not noticeable by users under normal workloads.", "corpus_id": 15060962 }

{ "title": "Cost-Effective Remote Mirroring Using the iSCSI Protocol", "abstract": "This paper presents a performance study of the iSCSI protocol in the context of remote mirroring. We first integrate our caching technology called DCD (disk caching disk) into a standard iSCSI target device to form a high performance storage system for mirroring purpose. Performance measurements are then carried out using this storage system as well as standard iSCSI targets as mirroring devices. We consider remote mirroring on a LAN (local area network) and on a commercial WAN (wide area network). The workloads used in our measurements include popular benchmarks such as PostMark and IoMeter, and real-world I/O traces. Our measurement results show that iSCSI is a viable approach to cost-effective remote mirroring for organizations that have moderate amount of data changes. In particular, our DCDenhanced iSCSI target can greatly improve performance of remote mirroring.", "corpus_id": 7210611, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "A survey of the distributed network management models and architectures: Assessment and challenges", "abstract": "In this work, we'll strive to present a survey about the important traditional and modern telecommunication management network (TMN) on one hand; and information and communication technology (ICT) management on the other hand. In this review, we classify all the major networks and technology management systems known to date in order to provide guidelines for network management architectures design. This paper shows an assessment of the current technology management in terms of models, architectures and methods. This assessment allowed us to trace out their strengths and weaknesses according to the managing of the next generation networks. We are going to build a taxonomy based on three-criteria for all these technologies, especially the new ones. The main guidelines for the proposal of innovative architectures to be able to control the emerging networks of the 21st century requirements are addressed.", "corpus_id": 3061738 }

{ "title": "Management of Multimedia Networks and Services", "abstract": "This paper proposes a generic component model which is a common software architecture applicable to the design of every component of a distributed telecommunications service. The concepts, principles and rules behind this model are introduced, and its architecture is detailed. It is then applied to the design of a broadband virtual private network service.", "corpus_id": 30820089 }

{ "title": "Fabrication of a novel polyvinylidene fluoride membrane via binding SiO2 nanoparticles and a copper ferrocyanide layer onto a membrane surface for selective removal of cesium.", "abstract": "A novel polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane was fabricated through chemical binding SiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) and copper ferrocyanide (CuFC) layers onto a membrane surface simultaneously to improve the removal efficiency of Cs. The results indicated that the SiO2 NPs were strongly deposited onto the membrane surface, and the CuFC layer was firmly attached on the surface of SiO2 NPs and the membrane. CuFC/SiO2/PVDF membrane remained stable after the acidic solution and sonication stress treatments. CuFC/SiO2/PVDF membrane showed good permeate flux and high selectivity on removal of Cs, and adsorbing capacity reached 1440.4 mg m-2 for Cs. The membrane remained high rejections of Cs in a wide pH, and could be regenerated well by H2O2 and N2H4. Selective adsorption and electrostatic interaction govern the rejection of Cs. The coexisting cations decreased the rejection of Cs mainly in accordance to the order of cations' hydration radii as K+ > Na+ > Ca2+ > Mg2+. In addition, the rejection of Cs could still reach 99.4% in 8 h in the filtration of humic acid solution and natural surface water. The membrane could removal of Cs from water effectively by directly rapid filtration, suggesting it can be applied as promising technology for radioactive wastewater treatment.", "corpus_id": 59305539, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "A modularized battery charge equalizer in the application of electric vehicle", "abstract": "For traction of electric vehicles, the motor utilizes battery strings (cells) connected in series. These battery strings suffer from the problem of charge unbalancing due to charging and discharging, chemical degradation and ambient temperature. Contemporary research has reported many charge balancing circuit systems for equalizing the charge among the battery strings of cells. However, charge balancing remains a challenging task as the large number of cells used these days in conventional charge equalizer systems. In this paper, a modularized charge equalizer based on series resonant converter has been designed where the switching loss, conduction loss, balancing time are explored. In the proposed modularized system, the circuit size and cost is minimized and efficiency is increased. In addition, zero current switching have been achieved during turn off intervals of switches.", "corpus_id": 724707 }

{ "title": "A resonant switched-capacitor converter for voltage balancing of series-connected capacitors", "abstract": "This paper describes a resonant switched-capacitor converter (RSCC) for voltage balancing of several capacitor or battery modules connected in series. This voltage balancing circuit transfers electric charge between the capacitor modules with a soft switching operation, resulting in a reduction of power loss and EMI. Moreover, a phase-shift control method enables to improve its voltage-regulation performance. Its current loops are analyzed in a circuit configuration which has more than three capacitor modules. Based on the analysis, a new controller is designed to improve the transient response. Experimental results confirm the validity and effectiveness of the proposed control method.", "corpus_id": 27219556 }

{ "title": "Variations of the Superficial Brachial Artery in Korean Cadavers", "abstract": "The superficial brachial artery (SBA), a branch of the axillary artery, is one of the most common arterial variations in this area. While it is more vulnerable to accidental arterial injection or injury, it could be useful for the nourishment of a medial arm skin free flap. To analyze the relationship between the SBA of axillary origin and segmental variation of the axillary artery, we dissected 304 arms of Korean cadavers. We found an SBA of axillary origin in 12.2% of cadaveric arms. Unilateral occurrence was detected in 16 cadavers and bilateral in 10. SBAs gave rise to radial and ulnar arteries in the cubital fossa (8.9%), continued in the forearm as the radial artery (2.3%), or ended in the upper arm (1.0%). The SBA ended as ulnar artery was not found in any of the cadavers. The bifurcation of the SBA into the radial and ulnar arteries, presence of an SBA that ends in the upper arm, and the lack of continuation as the ulnar artery are characteristics of SBAs in Korean cadavers.", "corpus_id": 12969188, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Macroeconomic consequences of job discrimination against women in Russia", "abstract": "Abstract : This thesis contends that the government of the Russian Federation will benefit more from policies that end job discrimination against women than policies aimed at trying to get women to embrace their traditional gender role as wife and mother in hopes that it will improve fertility rates. While Russia is enduring concurrent demographic and economic crises, there are trade-offs between empowering women with equal job opportunity and high fertility rates, usually referred to as the Demographic-economic Paradox. While fertility rates are an important aspect of population growth, evidence indicates that the high mortality rate is more detrimental to Russia's population growth rates. Thus, government policies to curb needless deaths will be more beneficial for the Russian population overall than attempts to revitalize traditional gender roles to increase fertility rates, especially in a depressed economic environment. Moreover, as the sex ratio of women to men increases, changes in the social and economic structure are inevitable.", "corpus_id": 152583782 }

{ "title": "Russian Political, Economic, and Security Issues and U.S. Interests", "abstract": "This report discusses the current political and economic conditions in Russia, focusing on the impact of Vladimir Putin's leadership and the leadership of his successor/protege, Dmitriy Medvedev. The report also discusses the state of the economy since the Soviet collapse in 1999, how the recent global economic downturn has affected Russia, the state of Russia's military, and the current relationship between Russia and the United States.", "corpus_id": 153959426 }

{ "title": "Examining Spatial Heterogeneity and Potential Risk Factors of Childhood Undernutrition in High-Focus Empowered Action Group (EAG) States of India", "abstract": "This study comprehensively analyses and maps the spatial variability and spatial spread (inequality) in nutritional outcomes among young children residing in the 277 high-focus districts in the EAG region. We used data from the fourth update of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), from 2015 to 2016, and adopted a Bayesian distributional structured additive regression (STAR) approach to quantify the variations in the mean level and dispersion in the undernutrition indicators across space and based on other demographic and socioeconomic indicators available to the child, mother, and household. Markov random field and Bayesian P-splines were used as prior distributions for the spatial and nonlinear effects, respectively. Substantial intra-district heterogeneity in childhood nutritional deficiency found in EAG region; the districts where dispersions are huge, are predominantly located in three states: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar. Our findings provide evidence of strong spatial structure that suggests neighbouring districts from different states have similar pattern of distribution in terms of undernourished children. The effects of child's age, mother’s age and her BMI were found to be non-linear. Furthermore, we find significant linear effects of several categorical covariates, such as, gender, birth order, birth size, maternal schooling, household wealth and sanitary condition, on indicators of undernutrition in young children. Findings strongly recommend that nutrition improvement programmes in the EAG states need to account for internal spatial heterogeneity evident across the districts of this region. Efforts are needed in assessing the district-specific causes of nutritional deficiency among the young children.", "corpus_id": 249533471, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Nanotribology: The renaissance of friction.", "abstract": "500 years after the first studies on friction, the concepts of superlubricity, wearless sliding and friction control are being realized in laboratories and have become predictable by adequate modelling. The challenge now is to bridge the gap between what is known about these processes on the microscopic and macroscopic scales.", "corpus_id": 203551 }

{ "title": "Dynamical phases of attractive particles sliding on a structured surface", "abstract": "Inspired by experiments on quartz crystal microbalance setups, we study the mobility of a monolayer of Lennard-Jones particles driven over a hexagonal external potential. We pay special attention to the changes in the dynamical phases that arise when the lattice constant of the external substrate potential and the Lennard-Jones interaction are mismatched. We find that if the average particle separation is such that the particles repel each other, or interact harmonically, the qualitative behavior of the system is akin to that of a monolayer of purely repulsive Yukawa particles. On the other hand, if the particles typically attract each other, the ensuing dynamical states are determined entirely by the relative strength of the Lennard-Jones interaction with respect to that of the external potential.", "corpus_id": 5343229 }

{ "title": "Interfacial friction obtained by lateral manipulation of nanoparticles using atomic force microscopy techniques", "abstract": "Nanometer scale metallic particles have been manipulated on an atomically flat graphite surface by atomic force microscopy techniques and quantitative information on interfacial friction was extracted from the lateral manipulation of these nanoparticles. Similar to conventional friction force microscopy, the particle-surface interfacial friction was extracted from the torsional signal of the cantilever during the particle pushing process. As a model system, we chose antimony particles with diameters between 50 and 500nm grown on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite substrate. Three different manipulation strategies have been developed, which either enable the defined manipulation of individual nanoparticles or can be utilized to gather data on a larger number of particles found within a particular scan area, allowing for fast and statistically significant data collection. While the manipulation strategies are demonstrated here for operation under vacuum conditions, extensive testing indicated that the pro...", "corpus_id": 120869165, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Chiral scalar fields, electroweak SU(2)L × U(1) and the quantization of the electric charge”, Phys", "abstract": "Universités Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) et Denis Diderot (Paris 7); Unité associée au CNRS D0 280. Abstract: I study the scalar representations of the electroweak group of the Standard Model, with a special emphasis on their chiral properties and on their behaviour by the discrete symmetries P and CP. A gauge theory for J = 0 mesons naturally springs out, together with a new approach to the question of the electroweak violation of CP. When acting in the 4-dimensional space of states spanned by the special representations under scrutiny in this paper, the electric charge appears as one of the three generators of the diagonal SU (2) and its eigenvalues are consequently quantized.", "corpus_id": 2325403 }

{ "title": "SOME ASPECTS OF PION PHYSICS IN A DYNAMICALLY BROKEN ABELIAN GAUGE THEORY", "abstract": "We show how an Abelian spontaneously broken gauge theory of fermions endowed with a composite scalar multiplet becomes naturally anomaly-free, and yet correctly describes the couplings of a neutral isoscalar pion to two gauge fields and to leptons: the first coupling is the same as that computed from the chiral anomaly, and the second is identical with that obtained from the 'Partially Conserved Axial Current' hypothesis. The general (non-Abelian) case of the standard model is only mentioned and will be the subject of another work.", "corpus_id": 117899983 }

{ "title": "Analysis of free-space coupling to photonic lanterns in the presence of tilt errors", "abstract": "Free space coupling to photonic lanterns is more tolerant to tilt errors and F-number mismatch than coupling to single-mode fibers. We analyze the coupling efficiency to single-mode fiber, and 3-mode and 6-mode photonic lanterns in the presence of these errors.", "corpus_id": 41326584, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "The Arecibo 430 MHz Intermediate Galactic Latitude Survey: Discovery of Nine Radio Pulsars", "abstract": "We have used the Arecibo Radio Telescope to search for millisecond pulsars in two intermediate Galactic latitude regions (7° < |b| < 20°) accessible to this telescope. For these latitudes the useful millisecond pulsar search volume achieved by Arecibo's 430 MHz beam is predicted to be maximal. Searching a total of 130 deg2, we have discovered nine new pulsars and detected four previously known objects. We compare the results of this survey with those of other 430 MHz surveys carried out at Arecibo and an intermediate-latitude survey made at Parkes that included part of our search area; the latter independently found two of the nine pulsars we have discovered. At least six of our discoveries are isolated pulsars with ages between 5 and 300 Myr; one of these, PSR J1819+1305, exhibits very marked and periodic nulling. We have also found a recycled pulsar, PSR J2016+1948. With a rotational period of 65 ms, this is a member of a binary system with a 635 day orbital period. We discuss some of the properties of this system in detail and indicate its potential to provide a test of the strong equivalence principle. This pulsar and PSR J0407+16, a similar system now being timed at Arecibo, are by far the best systems known for such a test.", "corpus_id": 2079876 }

{ "title": "Fifty years of pulsar candidate selection: from simple filters to a new principled real-time classification approach", "abstract": "Improving survey specifications are causing an exponential rise in pulsar candidate numbers and data volumes. We study the candidate filters used to mitigate these problems during the past fifty years. We find that some existing methods such as applying constraints on the total number of candidates collected per observation, may have detrimental effects on the success of pulsar searches. Those methods immune to such effects are found to be ill-equipped to deal with the problems associated with increasing data volumes and candidate numbers, motivating the development of new approaches. We therefore present a new method designed for on-line operation. It selects promising candidates using a purpose-built tree-based machine learning classifier, the Gaussian Hellinger Very Fast Decision Tree (GH-VFDT), and a new set of features for describing candidates. The features have been chosen so as to i) maximise the separation between candidates arising from noise and those of probable astrophysical origin, and ii) be as survey-independent as possible. Using these features our new approach can process millions of candidates in seconds (~1 million every 15 seconds), with high levels of pulsar recall (90%+). This technique is therefore applicable to the large volumes of data expected to be produced by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Use of this approach has assisted in the discovery of 20 new pulsars in data obtained during the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS).", "corpus_id": 56261429 }

{ "title": "Pulsar death lines and death valley", "abstract": "In most models of a spinning-down neutron star's magnetosphere, the star turns off as a radio pulsar when it can no longer produce electron-positron pairs. The period (P) at turnoff depends upon the magnitude and the structure of the star's surface magnetic field. Only the magnetic dipole component of this field (Bp) is inferred from the observed spin-down rate of a pulsar. Turnoff should occur in a B p −P death valley with well-defined boundaries rather than a death line", "corpus_id": 120299059, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Cloud Computing - Web-Based Dynamic IT Services", "abstract": "Cloud computing is a buzz-word in todays information technology (IT) that nobody can escape. But what is really behind it? There are many interpretations of this term, but no standardized or even uniform definition. Instead, as a result of the multi-faceted viewpoints and the diverse interests expressed by the various stakeholders, cloud computing is perceived as a rather fuzzy concept.With this book, the authors deliver an overview of cloud computing architecture, services, and applications. Their aim is to bring readers up to date on this technology and thus to provide a common basis for discussion, new research, and novel application scenarios. They first introduce the foundation of cloud computing with its basic technologies, such as virtualization and Web services. After that they discuss the cloud architecture and its service modules. The following chapters then cover selected commercial cloud offerings (including Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine) and management tools, and present current related open-source developments (including Hadoop, Eucalyptus, and Open CirrusTM). Next, economic considerations (cost and business models) are discussed, and an evaluation of the cloud market situation is given. Finally, the appendix contains some practical examples of how to use cloud resources or cloud applications, and a glossary provides concise definitions of key terms.The authors presentation does not require in-depth technical knowledge. It is equally intended as an introduction for students in software engineering, web technologies, or business development, for professional software developers or system architects, and for future-oriented decision-makers like top executives and managers.", "corpus_id": 1096946 }

{ "title": "Virtual environments for grid computing", "abstract": "This book therefore proposes a new philosophy of Grid usage: provide virtual computing environments for Grid users. The new methodology could solve the problems currently encountered by Grid computing. It supports desired computing environments for users, which provide customized hardware/software configuration, QoS assurance and manageable functionality. This philosophy also liberates resource providers from the various onerous tasks of resource management.", "corpus_id": 9146793 }

{ "title": "Exploring the Usefulness of Cross-lingual Information Fusion for Refining Real-time News Event Extraction: A Preliminary Study", "abstract": "Nowadays, many influential facts are reported multiple times by different sources and in different languages. This paper presents the results of an experiment on deploying cross-lingual information fusion techniques for refining the results of a large-scale multilingual news event extraction system. An evaluation on a test corpus consisting of 618 event descriptions which refer to 523 real-world events revealed that the description of circa 10% of the events extracted by the mono-lingual systems could be refined. In particular, an overall gain of 6,4% and 4,8% in recall and precision against the best monolingual system could be obtained respectively.", "corpus_id": 13341873, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Salicylate-induced hypoglycemia and ketoacidosis in a nondiabetic adult.", "abstract": "A 78-year-old nondiabetic woman was admitted to the hospital with salicylate-induced hypoglycemia. Ketosis was present with a moderate metabolic acidosis and primary respiratory alkalosis. The patient's mental status improved immediately following intravenous administration of glucose. The case illustrates salicylate's hypoglycemic activity, and that the metabolic acidosis may have exacerbated symptoms of cerebral glucopenia.", "corpus_id": 2980146 }

{ "title": "Drug-Induced Metabolic Acidosis", "abstract": "Metabolic acidosis could emerge from diseases disrupting acid-base equilibrium or from drugs that induce similar derangements. Occurrences are usually accompanied by comorbid conditions of drug-induced metabolic acidosis, and clinical outcomes may range from mild to fatal. It is imperative that clinicians not only are fully aware of the list of drugs that may lead to metabolic acidosis but also understand the underlying pathogenic mechanisms. In this review, we categorized drug-induced metabolic acidosis in terms of pathophysiological mechanisms, as well as individual drugs’ characteristics.", "corpus_id": 17925199 }

{ "title": "Changes in posterior airway space, pulmonary function and sleep quality, following bimaxillary orthognathic surgery.", "abstract": "Bimaxillary orthognathic surgery (BOS) is commonly used in the correction of severe Class III deformities (mandibular prognathism with maxillary retrognathism). The postural response of the pharyngeal airway after mandibular setback and maxillary advancement procedures is clinically crucial for maintaining optimum respiration. Patients might suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea, postoperatively. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of BOS on pharyngeal airway space, respiratory function during sleep and pulmonary functions. 21 male patients were analysed using cephalometry, spirometry for pulmonary function tests, and a 1 night sleep study for full polysomnography before and 17±5 months after BOS. The data show that the hyoid bone repositioned to the inferior, the tongue and soft palate displaced to the posterior, narrowed at the oropharynx and hypopharynx and widened at the nasopharynx and velopharynx levels significantly (p<0.05). The alterations indicated decreased airway resistance and better airflow. As a consequence of polysomnography evaluation, the sleep quality and efficiency of the patients improved significantly after BOS. Patients who undergo BOS should be monitored with pulmonary function tests and polysomnography pre- and postoperatively to detect any airway obstruction.", "corpus_id": 5060911, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Alterations in piglet small intestinal structure at weaning.", "abstract": "The small intestinal mucosa of 112 piglets aged between 21 and 32 days was examined to identify the effects on its structure of weaning and of consumption of creep food. In unweaned control pigs a gradual increase in crypt depth occurred with age, while villus height altered little. In contrast, weaned pigs showed a highly significant increase in crypt depth and an increase in the complexity of villus morphology with a dramatic reduction in villus height. Crypts elongated most in the distal small intestine, while the loss of villus height was greatest proximally. No inflammatory reaction was seen and the alterations were not influenced by consumption of creep food before weaning. This failed to support the hypothesis that hypersensitivity to dietary antigens is involved in the aetiology of such intestinal changes. The reduction in small intestinal absorptive area and the appearance of a less mature enterocyte population help to explain the increased susceptibility of the pig to diarrhoea and growth checks in the post-weaning period.", "corpus_id": 1647720 }

{ "title": "Hypersensitivity in the small intestinal mucosa. V. Induction of cell-mediated immunity to a dietary antigen.", "abstract": "Feeding of a protein antigen to adult mice results in reduced humoral and cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses when that antigen is subsequently presented, and also causes activation of suppressor cells in the gut-associated lymphoid tissues (GALT). We have attempted to abrogate this tolerance to fed antigen by pretreating mice with 100 mg/kg cyclophosphamide before oral immunization and challenge with ovalbumin. Cyclophosphamide-pretreated mice did not develop serum haemagglutinating antibodies, nor systemic CMI (as assessed by skin testing) after ovalbumin feeding. However, evidence that CMI had been induced in the GALT was provided by the significant inhibition of migration and mesenteric lymph node cells from cyclophosphamide-pretreated animals, but not from other control groups. in the presence of ovalbumin. Our previous work on CMI reactions in the small intestine has shown that the cell production rate in the crypts of Lieberkuhn and the intraepithelial lymphocyte count are reliable although indirect measures of mucosal CMI. Cyclophosphamide-pretreated, ovalbumin-immunized animals, which had been fed 0 . 1 mg ovalbumin daily for 10 days before killing, had increased crypt cell mitoses, and increased intraepithelial lymphocyte counts, indicating the presence of mucosal CMI response to ovalbumin. Mechanisms whereby cyclophosphamide pretreatment leads to abrogation of tolerance and induction of mucosal CMI are discussed.", "corpus_id": 26569416 }

{ "title": "Response of Early Erythroid Precursors to Bleeding", "abstract": "The proliferation of morphologically unrecognized erythroid precursors in the rat increases shortly after bleeding.", "corpus_id": 4290149, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Accurate heart-rate estimation from face videos using quality-based fusion", "abstract": "Estimating heart rate (HR) accurately using face videos acquired from a low cost camera in contactless manner is of paramount importance for many real-world applications. Such existing systems perform spuriously due to change in camera parameters, respiration, facial expressions and environmental factors. This paper mitigates the issues for accurate HR estimation. The face video consisting of frontal, profile or multiple faces is divided into multiple overlapping fragments to determine HR estimates. The HR estimates are fused using quality-based fusion which aims to minimize illumination and face deformations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system exhibit better performance than the state of the art systems and establishes the efficacy of the quality-based fusion in HR estimation.", "corpus_id": 3399585 }

{ "title": "Time-Frequency Domain Analysis via Pulselets for Non-contact Heart Rate Estimation from Remotely Acquired Photoplethysmograms", "abstract": "A novel method for remote heart rate estimation via analysis in the time-frequency domain is proposed. A photoplethysmogram (PPG) waveform is constructed via a Bayesian minimization approach with the required posterior probability obtained through an importance-weighted Monte Carlo sampling method. A pulselet (wavelet chosen for its similarities with a finger pulse oximiter PPG waveform), is used in the continuous wavelet transform to produce a map of the wavelet energy response in the time-frequency domain. This allows the heart rate frequency to be estimated at each time step, accounting for naturally occurring changes in heart rate over time which may cause error with frequency domain based methods. The frequency corresponding to the highest wavelet response at each time step is averaged across the entire time series to estimate the average heart rate. Experimental results against a data set of 30 videos show an improvement over current state-of-the-art methods.", "corpus_id": 2826122 }

{ "title": "Metamaterial-Based Low-Profile Broadband Mushroom Antenna", "abstract": "A metamaterial-based broadband low-profile mushroom antenna is presented. The proposed antenna is formed using an array of mushroom cells and a ground plane, and fed by a microstrip line through a slot cut onto the ground plane. With the feeding slot right underneath the center gap between the mushroom cells, the dual resonance modes are excited simultaneously for the radiation at boresight. A transmission-line model integrated with the dispersion relation of a composite right/left-handed mushroom structure is applied to analyze the modes. The proposed dielectric-filled (er=3.38) mushroom antenna with a low profile of 0.06λ0 ( λ0 is the operating wavelength in free space) and a ground plane of 1.10λ0×1.10λ0 attains 25% measured bandwidth with(|S11| <; - 10dB) 9.9-dBi average gain at 5-GHz band. Across the bandwidth, the antenna efficiency is greater than 76%, and cross-polarization levels are less than -20 dB.", "corpus_id": 7532317, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Why Deep Neural Networks for Function Approximation?", "abstract": "Recently there has been much interest in understanding why deep neural networks are preferred to shallow networks. We show that, for a large class of piecewise smooth functions, the number of neurons needed by a shallow network to approximate a function is exponentially larger than the corresponding number of neurons needed by a deep network for a given degree of function approximation. First, we consider univariate functions on a bounded interval and require a neural network to achieve an approximation error of $\\varepsilon$ uniformly over the interval. We show that shallow networks (i.e., networks whose depth does not depend on $\\varepsilon$) require $\\Omega(\\text{poly}(1/\\varepsilon))$ neurons while deep networks (i.e., networks whose depth grows with $1/\\varepsilon$) require $\\mathcal{O}(\\text{polylog}(1/\\varepsilon))$ neurons. We then extend these results to certain classes of important multivariate functions. Our results are derived for neural networks which use a combination of rectifier linear units (ReLUs) and binary step units, two of the most popular type of activation functions. Our analysis builds on a simple observation: the multiplication of two bits can be represented by a ReLU.", "corpus_id": 7242855 }

{ "title": "On the ability of neural nets to express distributions", "abstract": "Deep neural nets have caused a revolution in many classification tasks. A related ongoing revolution---also theoretically not understood---concerns their ability to serve as generative models for complicated types of data such as images and texts. These models are trained using ideas like variational autoencoders and Generative Adversarial Networks. ::: We take a first cut at explaining the expressivity of multilayer nets by giving a sufficient criterion for a function to be approximable by a neural network with $n$ hidden layers. A key ingredient is Barron's Theorem \\cite{Barron1993}, which gives a Fourier criterion for approximability of a function by a neural network with 1 hidden layer. We show that a composition of $n$ functions which satisfy certain Fourier conditions (\"Barron functions\") can be approximated by a $n+1$-layer neural network. ::: For probability distributions, this translates into a criterion for a probability distribution to be approximable in Wasserstein distance---a natural metric on probability distributions---by a neural network applied to a fixed base distribution (e.g., multivariate gaussian). ::: Building up recent lower bound work, we also give an example function that shows that composition of Barron functions is more expressive than Barron functions alone.", "corpus_id": 2948882 }

{ "title": "Adversarial Active Learning for Sequences Labeling and Generation", "abstract": null, "corpus_id": 51605668, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Acetamonophen and G-6-PD deficiency.", "abstract": "Dr. Ernest Beutler, Department of Basic and Clinical Research, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, 10666 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla‚CA 92037 (USA) Recent correspondence [1,2] readdresses the issue of whether acetaminophen (Tylenol, paracetamol) is a safe medication for patients with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G-6PD) deficiency. When we reviewed the evidence concerning this drug in 1978 [3], we concluded, on the basis of its experimental administration to patients both with G-6-PD A[4] and G-6-PD Canton [5] that it did not produce significant hemolytic anemia. In addition, it has been shown that administration of 2,000 mg of acetaminophen daily failed to effect the survival of G-6-PD Hillbrow red cells [6]. 1 This publication is manuscript No. 3569 BCR from the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic. This work has been supported in part by grant HL25552 from the National Institutes of Health, Division of Heart, Lung and Blood. research setting, our experience with drug administration and hemolysis was that the latter did not occur until the drug had been given for at least 2 days [7]. On the basis of the history provided, therefore, it seems very unlikely that acetaminophen was the cause of hemolysis in this patient. Observing the in vivo effect of drug administration on 51Cr-labelled G-6-PD-deficient red cells is still the only reliable way of appraising a cause-and-effect relationship between drug and hemolysis. The subsequent letter from Pootrakul and Panich [2] is therefore particularly instructive. In contrast to the three earlier studies [3–5] evidence is presented that acetaminophen does, indeed, destroy G-6-PD-defi-cient red cells. But the critical consideration is that only about 10% of the cells were destroyed and a very large dose, 3,000 mg daily for 14 days was required to achieve this effect. Pootrakul and Panich [2] imply that in a G-6-PD-deficient individual such cell destruction would be greater. In point of fact it would, if anything, be less. All of the labelled cells were, after all, G-6-PD-deficient and the proportion of a G-6-PD-deficient subject’s red cells would be expected to be similar. Cell destruction is age-dependent and the 51Cr-labelled red cells were allowed to age in the recipient for some 6 days before exposing them to a course of drug. Therefore a correction which reduces the effect somewhat needs to be applied [8]. We consider it extremely unlikely that the magnitude of cell destruction revealed by the 51Cr studies would be attended by any clinical effect. Dosages of drugs which produce red cell destruction of this magnitude do not produce clinical hemolytic anemia. This should hardly be considered surprising, since red cell destruction takes place over a period of 212 Correspondence", "corpus_id": 3289012 }

{ "title": "LOCATION OF POINT MUTATIONS IN G 6 PD DEFICIENCY", "abstract": "T HIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago Dr William Dameshek, the first editor of the emerging journal Blood, invited me to write a review on “The Hemolytic Effect of Primaquine.”’ At the time, primaquine sensitivity, which had just recently been shown to be caused by a deficiency of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD); represented a unique example of an inherited deficiency of an enzyme that caused hemolytic anemia. Although many other red blood cell (RBC) enzyme deficiencies are now k n ~ w n , ~ “ G6PD deficiency still reigns as the most common of all clinically significant enzyme defects, not only in hematology, but in human biology as a whole. A variety of drugs and infections cause hemolytic anemia in persons with the deficiency, and nonhematologic sequelae have been claimed as well. Using classical biochemical techniques, enormous apparent diversity of mutations causing G6PD deficiency was documented in hundreds of publications. The distribution of the deficiency in different populations has been investigated exhaustively, and gene frequencies of over 0.5 have been observed in some ethnic groups. With the advances made possible by the cloning of G6PD cDNA and gene7.* has come a better understanding of the diversity that exists. In this review, I will attempt to put what we have learned in the past 35 years into perspective and to touch upon what still needs to be learned.", "corpus_id": 21276741 }

{ "title": "5.25 inch floppy disk drive using perpendicular magnetic recording", "abstract": "5.25 inch high density perpendicular magnetic recording floppy disk drive has beer developed by employing new types of high saturation magnetization ring head, Co-Cr single layer medium with Ge underlayer, head slider with ellipsoidal surface configuration to assure intimate head to medium contact, and signal equalization. By these combination, recording density D50 of 145 kFCI, peakshift of 28 % at 100 kFCI, signal to noise ratio of 40.4 dB for cut-off frequency 4.25 MHz, overwrite signal to noise ratio of 27 dB, measured by writing signals at 48 kFCI over previously written 100 kFCI signals were obtained as typical recording characteristics. These results would indicate that floppy disk drive with 100 kFCI recording density has enough system margin by above-mentioned combination. In this paper, design and performance of newly developed floppy disk drive are described.", "corpus_id": 123058908, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Tapping into the Resources of Skilled Birth Attendants in Reducing the Maternal Mortality Rates in Developing Nations", "abstract": "Ensuring optimal maternal health has been identified as one of the most important global public health priorities for many decades.[1] Nevertheless, even today, in excess of 800 women lose their lives each day across the globe from avoidable factors related to pregnancy and childbirth, of which 99% are reported in developing nations. This is an alarming concern, and remains a major challenge which the program managers need to respond to despite the estimated 44% reduction achieved under the Millennium Development Goals. In addition, because maternal and newborn health is closely linked, with almost 2.7 million newborn deaths being reported annually, presence of skilled care before, during, and after childbirth is one of the most cost‑effective interventions to save lives of millions of women and newborns. Ensuring the presence of skilled personnel (doctor or nurse or midwives or trained birth attendants) during childbirth is the need of the hour because even now almost 49% of the women remain unattended during childbirth. Further, it has been observed that only 4 out of 10 pregnant women from low‑income nations receive the recommended four antenatal visits (absence of skilled workers), in contrast to the women from high‑income nations, where it is the general norm (constant presence of skilled workers)", "corpus_id": 1051298 }

{ "title": "Improving and Expanding the Quality of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care Services in Rural Areas of Cambodia", "abstract": "Dear Editor, The available global estimates indicate that each day more than 825 women die owing to preventable causes associated with pregnancy and childbirth.[1] In fact, owing to the lack of coordinated efforts and shortcomings of the health sector, most nations failed to accomplish the targets proposed under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG)……………", "corpus_id": 4664366 }

{ "title": "Non-medical factors affect caesarean section rates among developing countries", "abstract": "Presently, the Caesarian section (C/S) has become widely used in developing countries where it can be a life-saving procedure for mother or baby. It may carry severe health problem for the mother and newborn. Cesarean section rate continues to rise in many countries with routine access to medical services, yet this increase is not associated with improvement in perinatal mortality or morbidity. This raises a range of concerns about the use of caesarean section for nonmedical indications. The next review addresses factors that affect the increase in C/S rate in the developing countries without medical indications.", "corpus_id": 17424153, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Localization of Discriminative Regions", "abstract": "Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of avoidable vision impairment. Currently, manual DR detection is a time consuming task, which relies on well-trained clinicians with skills. In this paper, we propose a novel and automatic diabetic retinopathy (DR) detection method using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs). To identify the region of interests (ROIs), we design an attention mechanism for scoring the specific regions, refered as regions scoring map (RSM). The RSM is based on deep convolutional neural networks, which are trained only with image-level labels on a large scale DR dataset. Specifically, the RSM is mainly inserted into deep residual networks between intermediate stages. With RSM, the proposed model can score the different regions of an retina image to highlight the discriminative ROIs in terms of image severity level. In experiments, around 30000 colour retinal images are used to train the proposed model and around 5000 images are collected to evaluate its classification performance. The results show that our DCNN model can obtain comparable performance while achieving the merits of providing the RSM to locate the discriminative regions of the input image.", "corpus_id": 155109495 }

{ "title": "Convolutional Network With Twofold Feature Augmentation for Diabetic Retinopathy Recognition From Multi-Modal Images", "abstract": "Objective: With the scenario of limited labeled dataset, this paper introduces a deep learning-based approach that leverages Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) severity recognition performance using fundus images combined with wide-field swept-source optical coherence tomography angiography (SS-OCTA). Methods: The proposed architecture comprises a backbone convolutional network associated with a Twofold Feature Augmentation mechanism, namely TFA-Net. The former includes multiple convolution blocks extracting representational features at various scales. The latter is constructed in a two-stage manner, i.e., the utilization of weight-sharing convolution kernels and the deployment of a Reverse Cross-Attention (RCA) stream. Results: The proposed model achieves a Quadratic Weighted Kappa rate of 90.2% on the small-sized internal KHUMC dataset. The robustness of the RCA stream is also evaluated by the single-modal Messidor dataset, of which the obtained mean Accuracy (94.8%) and Area Under Receiver Operating Characteristic (99.4%) outperform those of the state-of-the-arts significantly. Conclusion: Utilizing a network strongly regularized at feature space to learn the amalgamation of different modalities is of proven effectiveness. Thanks to the widespread availability of multi-modal retinal imaging for each diabetes patient nowadays, such approach can reduce the heavy reliance on large quantity of labeled visual data. Significance: Our TFA-Net is able to coordinate hybrid information of fundus photos and wide-field SS-OCTA for exhaustively exploiting DR-oriented biomarkers. Moreover, the embedded feature-wise augmentation scheme can enrich generalization ability efficiently despite learning from small-scale labeled data.", "corpus_id": 227260243 }

{ "title": "Capacitance scaling based energy efficient FIR filter for digital signal processing", "abstract": "In this work, we are implementing FIR Gaussian low pass filter using DSP slice available in 28nm Kintex-7 FPGA. In order to make energy efficient filter, we are using capacitance scaling. During capacitance scaling, we observe that there is no change in clock power, logic power, signal power and DSP power. But, there is significant reduction in IOs power, leakage power and total power of FIR filter on 28nm Kintex-7 FPGA. There is approx 44.74% reduction in IOs power when FIR filter operating frequency is 5GHz, 50GHz, 500GHz and 1THz and capacitance is scaled down from 25pF to 5pF. There is approx 87.65% reduction in leakage power when FIR filter operating frequency is from 500GHz to 5GHz. There is approx 99.51% reduction in leakage power when FIR filter operating frequency is from 1THz to 5GHz.", "corpus_id": 14542820, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Assessment of body composition in Sri Lankan children: validation of a bioelectrical impedance prediction equation", "abstract": "Objective:To develop bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) equations to predict total body water (TBW) and fat-free mass (FFM) of Sri Lankan children.Subjects/Methods:Data were collected from 5- to 15-year-old healthy children. They were randomly assigned to validation (M/F: 105/83) and cross-validation (M/F: 53/41) groups. Height, weight and BIA were measured. TBW was assessed using isotope dilution method (D2O). Multiple regression analysis was used to develop preliminary equations and cross-validated on an independent group. Final prediction equation was constructed combining the two groups and validated by PRESS (prediction of sum of squares) statistics. Impedance index (height2/impedance; cm2/Ω), weight and sex code (male=1; female=0) were used as variables.Results:Independent variables of the final prediction equation for TBW were able to predict 86.3% of variance with root means-squared error (RMSE) of 2.1 l. PRESS statistics was 2.1 l with press residuals of 1.2 l. Independent variables were able to predict 86.9% of variance of FFM with RMSE of 2.7 kg. PRESS statistics was 2.8 kg with press residuals of 1.4 kg. Bland Altman technique showed that the majority of the residuals were within mean bias±1.96 s.d.Conclusions:Results of this study provide BIA equation for the prediction of TBW and FFM in Sri Lankan children. To the best of our knowledge there are no published BIA prediction equations validated on South Asian populations. Results of this study need to be affirmed by more studies on other closely related populations by using multi-component body composition assessment.", "corpus_id": 3022950 }

{ "title": "Usefulness of Bioelectric Impedance and Skinfold Measurements in Predicting Fat-Free Mass Derived from Total Body Potassium in Children", "abstract": "ABSTRACT: Despite the increasing use of tetrapolar whole-body bioelectric impedance (BI) analysis in the assessment of body composition, its usefulness in estimating fat-free mass (FFM) has not been evaluated in comparison with conventional skinfold anthropometry in children. We therefore compared 1) the intraobserver and interobserver reproducibility of BI and skinfold measurements and the derived FFM estimates, and 2) the predictability of FFM as calculated from measurements of total body potassium (TBK) using 40K spectrometry by equations based on either BI or skinfold measurements in 112 healthy children, adolescents, and young adults aged 3.9 to 19.3 y. A best-fitting equation to predict TBK-derived FFM from BI and other potential independent predictors was developed and cross validated in two randomly selected subgroups of the study population by stepwise multiple regression analysis. Although the technical error associated with BI measurements was much smaller than that of skinfold measurements, the reproducibility of BI-derived FFM estimates (intraobserver coefficient of variation [CV], 0.39%; inter-observer CV, 1.23%) was only slightly better than that of FFM estimates obtained by use of weight and two skinfold measurements (0.62% and 1.39%, respectively). The cross validation procedure yielded the following best-fitting prediction equation: FFM = 0.65. (height2/impedance) + 0.68-age + 0.15 (R2 = 0.975, root mean square error = 1.98 kg, CV = 5.8%, 95% limits of agreement = −11.1% to + 12.4%). Conventional anthropometry, using published equations to estimate FFM from skinfolds, slightly overestimated TBK-derived FFM, but predicted FFM with precision similar to the best-fitting equation involving BI. Previously published FFM equations incorporating BI predicted TBK-derived FFM with variable predictive precision and accuracy. We conclude that BI analysis provides an alternative technique to assess FFM in children. At least within the range of normal body composition, its predictive power is similar to that of established skinfold techniques.", "corpus_id": 28209523 }

{ "title": "Mn-Doped Glass–Ceramic Bioactive (Mn-BG) Thin Film to Selectively Enhance the Bioactivity of Electrospun Fibrous Polymeric Scaffolds", "abstract": "In recent years, significant progress has been made in the development of new technologies to meet the demand for engineered interfaces with appropriate properties for osteochondral unit repair and regeneration. In this context, we combined two methodologies that have emerged as powerful approaches for tissue engineering application: electrospinning to fabricate a nanofibrous polymeric scaffold and pulsed laser deposition to tune and control the composition and morphology of the scaffold surface. A multi-component scaffold composed of synthetic and natural polymers was proposed to combine the biocompatibility and suitable mechanical properties of poly(D,L-lactic acid) with the hydrophilicity and cellular affinity of gelatin. As part of a biomimetic strategy for the generation of bi-functional scaffolds, we coated the electrospun fibers with a thin film of a bioactive glass–ceramic material supplemented with manganese ions. The physico-chemical properties and composition of the bi-layered scaffold were investigated, and its bioactivity, in terms of induced mineralization, was tested by incubation in a simulated body fluid buffer. The processes of the inorganic film dissolution and the calcium phosphate phases growth were followed by microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, confirming that a combination of bioactive glass–ceramics and nanofibrous scaffolds has promising potential in the regeneration of osteochondral tissue due to its ability to induce mineralization in connective tissues.", "corpus_id": 252632792, "score": 0 }

{ "title": "Increase in mouse liver weight following feeding of ammonium perfluorooctanoate and related fluorochemicals.", "abstract": "The weight of the mouse liver following feeding of ammonium perfluorooctanoate, ammonium perfluorononanoate, Telomer B ammonium sulfate, and WG-III was increased in a dose-dependent manner. Dietary levels of 3 ppm or greater ammonium perfluorooctanoate for either 14 or 21 days produced a significant elevation in liver weight both on an absolute and on an organ/body weight ratio basis. Similarly, ammonium perfluorononanoate produced significant increases at the lowest level tested, 3 ppm. Telomer B ammonium sulfate and WG-III also produced liver weight increases but at higher feeding levels. The striking increase in liver weight following relatively short-term exposures in mice makes this a useful screening test for comparing the liver-enlarging capacity of ammonium perfluorooctanoate and related fluorochemicals.", "corpus_id": 2367438 }

{ "title": "Inhalation toxicity of ammonium perfluorooctanoate.", "abstract": "Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (CAS Registry No. 3825-26-1) is a fine white powder which can become airborne; hence its inhalation toxicity was studied in the male rat. The compound was found to be moderately toxic following single 4-hr exposures, with an LC50 of 980 mg/m3. This concentration produced both an increase in liver size and corneal opacity. Both findings diminished with increasing time after exposure. Subchronic head-only inhalation exposures (6 hr/day on 5 days/wk for 2 wk to 0, 1, 8 or 84 mg/m3) suppressed body-weight gain at 84 mg/m3. Reversible liver-weight increases, reversible increases in serum enzyme activities, and microscopic liver pathology, including necrosis, occurred at exposure of 8 and 84 mg/m3. No ocular changes were produced. Concentrations of organofluoride in the blood showed a dose relationship with initial levels of 108 ppm in rats treated at 84 mg/m3 falling to 0.84 ppm after 84 days with a blood half-life of 5-7 days. The no-observed-effect level was 1 mg/m3 and a mean organofluoride blood level of 13 ppm was detected in rats immediately after the tenth exposure to an atmospheric level of 1 mg ammonium perfluorooctanoate/m3.", "corpus_id": 21994782 }

{ "title": "Effect of sex hormones on the disposition in rats of 1-aminocyclohexane carboxylic acid, a metabolite of semisynthetic penicillin.", "abstract": "The renal clearance of 1-aminocyclohexanecarboxylic acid (ACHC), a metabolite of the semisynthetic penicillin, cyclacillin, is about 10 times faster in female than in male rats. The slower clearance in males is attributed to a higher net rate of reabsorption of the compound from the tubule of the kidney. Because ACHC is not metabolized, it is apparently continuously recirculated through the kidney of the male, resulting in the longer half-life. The sex-related disposition of the metabolite can be modified by gonadectomy and/or treatment with sex hormones. Castrated males show increased urinary excretion and decreased plasma half-life of ACHC relative to intact males. In ovariectomized females, less ACHC is excreted and the half-life is longer than in intact females. Thus, in both sexes, gonadectomy shifts the excretion and the residence time in plasma toward the values of these parameters for the opposite sex. Treatment of castrated males with estradiol markedly enhances the effect of castration, but treatment of ovariectomized females with testosterone propionate has little or no additional effect over ovariectomy. Treatment of intact males with estradiol modifies both excretion and residence time in plasma to a great extent, but treatment of intact females with testosterone has a lesser effect on the disposition of ACHC. These results indicate that excretion and residence time of ACHC in both male and female rats are influenced by sex hormones. The described effect is an example of the action of sex hormones on the transport of foreign compounds in this species. Its mechanism is quite different from the well known influence of sex hormones on the microsomal metabolism of foreign compounds in rats.", "corpus_id": 8881162, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Transforming Growth Factor-&bgr;1 Rise in Pleural Fluid After Tunneled Pleural Catheter Placement: Pilot Study", "abstract": "Background:Transforming growth factor-&bgr;1 (TGF-&bgr;1) plays a major role in pleural fibrosis and chemical pleurodesis. Approximately 50% of patients with tunneled pleural catheters (TPCs) for malignant pleural effusions (MPEs) will have autopleurodesis. Pleural TGF-&bgr;1 levels have never been measured in the setting of TPC drainage and may predict autopleurodesis. Methods:Pleural fluid was collected prospectively in subjects with MPE and planned TPC insertion. Pleural fluid was collected at time 0 (T0, thoracentecis before TPC placement), time 1 (T1, TPC insertion), and time 2 (T2, 2 wk after TPC insertion). The MPE levels of TGF-&bgr;1, vascular endothelial growth factor, and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 were measured using ELISA. Lactate dehydrogenase levels were also measured at T0. Patients were followed up for autopleurodesis and TPC removal. Results:Nineteen samples were collected from 9 patients with MPE who underwent TPC placement. Three patients died before the study completion. The median level of TGF-&bgr;1 of 1243 pg/mL (range, 620 to 4547 pg/mL) at T1 in 6 patients showed a statistically significant rise to 2857 pg/mL (range, 2120 to 7160 pg/mL) after TPC placement (P=0.004, R2=0.898). There was no statistically significant increase in TGF-&bgr;1 levels from T0 to T1. There was a linear relationship between TGF-&bgr;1 and lactate dehydrogenase at T0 (R2=0.635). Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 levels increased from T1 to T2, but was not statistically significant. There was no significant rise in vascular endothelial growth factor from T1 to T2. Conclusions:TPC insertion results in an independent increase in TGF-&bgr;1 levels in MPE.", "corpus_id": 436806 }

{ "title": "Palliative Interventional Pulmonology Procedures in the Incarcerated Population with Cancer: A Case Series", "abstract": "RationaleCancer is the second most common cause of death in incarcerated population and lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in this group. Inmates are excluded from most published surveys and research, thus the effectiveness of lung cancer palliation in this population is not known.ObjectiveTo report the feasibility and safety of palliative interventional pulmonary procedures in inmates with cancer.Study DesignRetrospective review of registry data from a single center.Materials and MethodsInmate data on prospectively enrolled data registry (2009–2012) from the interventional pulmonology procedural registry at Virginia Commonwealth University was extracted and analyzed for safety and efficacy. Inmates with lung cancer and advanced malignancies with pleural or airway metastasis requiring airway debulking (mechanical/thermal), airway stenting, and tunneled pleural catheter (TPC) placement were included in the analysis.ResultsA total of 16 procedures were performed in 12 incarcerated patients. These included six TPC placements in six patients. Ten procedures were performed in seven patients with airway obstruction. These procedures included rigid and flexible bronchoscopy with mechanical (rigid and balloon dilation) and thermal (laser, argon plasma coagulation, and cautery) tumor debulking and dilation, airway stenting, and tracheostomy in one case. All six TPC patients had immediate symptomatic relief and improved lung aeration on chest radiograph. Three of six patients had successful auto-pleurodesis. In the seven patients with airway obstruction, three patients reported symptomatic relief and one had resolution of post-obstructive pneumonia. No immediate- or long-term procedure-related complications were reported.ConclusionIncarcerated patients with advanced malignancy may benefit from interventional pulmonology procedures with low complications. Palliative interventional pulmonology procedures in inmates should not be withheld solely on their incarceration status.", "corpus_id": 12987268 }

{ "title": "Increased peritoneal membrane transport is associated with decreased patient and technique survival for continuous peritoneal dialysis patients. The Canada-USA (CANUSA) Peritoneal Dialysis Study Group.", "abstract": "The objective of this study was to evaluate the association of peritoneal membrane transport with technique and patient survival. In the Canada-USA prospective cohort study of adequacy of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), a peritoneal equilibrium test (PET) was performed approximately 1 mo after initiation of dialysis; patients were defined as high (H), high average (HA), low average (LA), and low (L) transporters. The Cox proportional hazards method evaluated the association of technique and patient survival with independent variables (demographic and clinical variables, nutrition, adequacy, and transport status). Among 606 patients evaluated by PET, there were 41 L, 192 LA, 280 HA, and 93 H. The 2-yr technique survival probabilities were 94, 76, 72, and 68% for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P = 0.04). The 2-yr patient survival probabilities were 91, 80, 72, and 71% for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P = 0.11). The 2-yr probabilities of both patient and technique survival were 86, 61, 52, and 48% for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P = 0.006). The relative risk of either technique failure or death, compared to L, was 2.54 for LA, 3.39 for HA, and 4.00 for H. The mean drain volumes (liters) in the PET were 2.53, 2.45, 2.33, and 2.16 for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P < 0.001). After 1 mo CAPD treatment, the mean 24-h drain volumes (liters) were 9.38, 8.93, 8.59, and 8.22 for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P < 0.001); the mean 24-h peritoneal albumin losses (g) were 3.1, 3.9, 4.3, and 5.6 for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P < 0.001). The mean serum albumin values (g/L) were 37.8, 36.2, 33.8, and 32.8 for L, LA, HA, and H, respectively (P < 0.001). Among CAPD patients, higher peritoneal transport is associated with increased risk of either technique failure or death. The decreased drain volume, increased albumin loss, and decreased serum albumin concentration suggest volume overload and malnutrition as mechanisms. Use of nocturnal cycling peritoneal dialysis should be considered in H and HA transporters.", "corpus_id": 12483016, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Extended HMM and Ranking Models for Chinese Spelling Correction", "abstract": "Spelling correction has been studied for many decades, which can be classified into two categories: (1) regular text spelling correction, (2) query spelling correction. Although the two tasks share many common techniques, they have different concerns. This paper presents our work on the CLP-2014 bake-off. The task focuses on spelling checking on foreigner Chinese essays. Compared to online search query spelling checking task, more complicated techniques can be applied for better performance. Therefore, we proposed a unified framework for Chinese essays spelling correction based on extended HMM and ranker-based models, together with a rule-based model for further polishing. Our system showed better performance on the test dataset.", "corpus_id": 13253132 }

{ "title": "Personalized Spell Checking using Neural Networks", "abstract": null, "corpus_id": 15582953 }

{ "title": "Hierarchical modeling to facilitate personalized word prediction for dialogue", "abstract": "The advent and ubiquity of mass-market portable computational devices has opened up new opportunities for the development of assistive technologies for disabilities, especially within the domain of augmentative and alternative communications (AAC) devices. Word prediction can facilitate everyday communication on mobile devices by reducing the physical interactions required to produce dialogue with them. To support personalized word prediction, a text prediction system should learn from the user's own data to update the initial learned likelihoods that provide high quality \"out of the box\" performance. Within this lies an inherent trade-off: a larger corpus of initial training data can yield better default performance, but may also increase the amount of user data required for personalization of the system to be effective. ::: ::: We investigate a learning approach employing hierarchical modeling of phrases expected to offer sufficient \"out of the box\" performance relative to other learning approaches, while reducing the amount of initial training data required to facilitate on-line personalization of the text prediction system. The key insight of the proposed approach is the separation of stopwords, which primarily play syntactical roles in phrases, from keywords, which provide context and meaning in the phrase. This allows the abstraction of a phrase from an ordered list of all words to an ordered list of keywords. Thus the proposed hierarchical modeling of phrases employs two layers: keywords and stopwords. A third level abstracting the keywords to a single topic is also considered, combining the power of both topic modeling and trigrams to make predictions within and between layers. ::: ::: Empirically relaxed versions of the developed models are evaluated on training data composed of a mixture of slightly modified dialogues from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. Performance is measured in terms of the number of user interactions (keystroke or touch screen event) required to complete a phrase. We compare their performance against a system employing no prediction.", "corpus_id": 874480, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "Early Onset of Atherosclerosis of The Carotid Bifurcation in Newborn Cadavers.", "abstract": "INTRODUCTION\nThe anatomy of arterial bifurcations affects blood flow and has a significant role in the development of vascular disease. Therefore, it is important to know the structural characteristics of the Common Carotid Artery (CCA) and its branches for early onset of atherosclerosis in newborns.\n\n\nAIM\nThe present study was conducted to evaluate the characteristics of CCA in newborn cadavers.\n\n\nMATERIALS AND METHODS\nEight carotid arteries obtained from newborn cadavers were used. The outflow to inflow area ratios was calculated to evaluate vessel diameters. Additionally, scanning electron and light microscopic investigations were conducted with tissue samples. The brachial artery of each cadaver was used as controls. Correlation between area ratios and atherosclerotic endothelial damage was determined.\n\n\nRESULTS\nLight microscopic investigations demonstrated that control group sections showed no positivity for Oil red O staining, while carotid bifurcation regions depicted widespread occurrence of intimal lipid accumulations. Scanning electron microscopic examination of control group sections presented regular endothelial topography, while carotid bifurcation region topography exhibited numerous blood cells and separated endothelial cells. Fibrin accumulation on endothelial surface in low area ratios was another important finding in the examination of its endothelial surface degeneration. The above-mentioned morphological findings seemed to be quite parallel to outflow to inflow area ratio data favouring low area and degeneration.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe correlation between area ratios and the histological characteristic of cerebral vessels of newborn cadavers indicate that early stages of atherosclerosis began in early embryologic life.", "corpus_id": 1014012 }

{ "title": "An Overview of Vascular Dysfunction and Determinants: The Case of Children of African Ancestry", "abstract": "The balance between dilatory and constrictive factors is important as it keeps blood vessels in a homeostatic state. However, altered physiological processes as a result of obesity, hypertension, oxidative stress, and other cardiovascular risk factors may lead to vascular damage, causing an imbalance of vasoactive factors. Over time, the sustained imbalance of these vasoactive factors may lead to vascular dysfunction, which can be assessed by non-invasive methods, such as flow-mediated dilation, pulse wave velocity, flow-mediated slowing, retinal vessel analysis, peripheral vascular reactivity, and carotid intima-media thickness assessment. Although there is increasing prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors (obesity and hypertension) in children in sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about how this may affect vascular function. This review focuses on vasoactive factors implicated in vascular (dys)function, highlighting the determinants and consequences of vascular dysfunction. It further describes the non-invasive methods used for vascular (dys)function assessments and, last, describes the impact of cardiovascular risk factors on vascular dysfunction in children of African ancestry.", "corpus_id": 245008293 }

{ "title": "Description of a second known Liotyphlops caissara specimen (Serpentes: Anomalepididae).", "abstract": "We recorded a second specimen of the poorly known insular blind snake Liotyphlops caissara. This new specimen expands the morphological variation of the number of dorsal scales in the genus Liotyphlops to 296 (vs. 304 in L. wilderi) and, considering the fact that the holotype of this species was destroyed, the present specimen represents the only available L. caissara individual in zoological collections. Also, this new record constitutes the first out of type locality and expands the distribution of the species in about 40 km to the northeastern. According to IUCN criteria (B1a, b [iii]), we suggest that L. caissara be included in the \"Endangered\" category, since it occurs in only two insular locations and exhibits an occurrence extension of <5,000 km² (about 355 km2).", "corpus_id": 201117834, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Macrophage-Derived Chemokine (CCL22) Is a Novel Mediator of Lung Inflammation Following Hemorrhage and Resuscitation", "abstract": "ABSTRACT Resuscitation of patients after hemorrhage often results in pulmonary inflammation and places them at risk for the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome. Our previous data indicate that macrophage-derived chemokine (MDC/CCL22) is elevated after resuscitation, but its direct role in this inflammatory response is unknown. Macrophage-derived chemokine signaling through the C-C chemokine receptor type 4 (CCR4) is implicated in other pulmonary proinflammatory conditions, leading us to hypothesize that MDC may also play a role in the pathogenesis of lung inflammation following hemorrhage and resuscitation. To test this, C57BL/6 mice underwent pressure-controlled hemorrhage followed by resuscitation with lactated Ringer’s solution. Pulmonary inflammation and inflammatory cell recruitment were analyzed with histological staining, and serum- and tissue-level cytokines were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Pulmonary inflammation and cell recruitment following hemorrhage and resuscitation were associated with systemic MDC levels. Inhibition of MDC via injection of a specific neutralizing antibody prior to hemorrhage and resuscitation significantly reduced pulmonary levels of the chemotactic cytokines keratinocyte-derived chemokine and macrophage inflammatory proteins 2 and 1&agr;, as well as inflammatory cell recruitment to the lungs. Intravenous administration of recombinant MDC prior to resuscitation augmented pulmonary inflammation and cell recruitment. Histological evaluation revealed the expression of CCR4 within the bronchial epithelium, and in vitro treatment of activated bronchial epithelial cells with MDC resulted in production and secretion of neutrophil chemokines. The present study identifies MDC as a novel mediator of lung inflammation after hemorrhage and resuscitation. Macrophage-derived chemokine neutralization may provide a therapeutic strategy to mitigate this inflammatory response.", "corpus_id": 2309431 }

{ "title": "Industrial hog farming is associated with altered circulating immunological markers", "abstract": "Objectives The previously observed inverse association between hog farming and risk of lung cancer in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) has been attributed to endotoxin exposure, the levels of which are particularly high in industrial hog confinement facilities. We conducted an investigation to explore the potential biological mechanisms underlying this association, as well as other immunological changes associated with hog farming. Methods Serum immune marker levels were measured using a multiplexed bead-based assay in 61 active hog farmers and 61 controls matched on age, phlebotomy date and raising cattle. Both groups comprised non-smoking male AHS participants from Iowa. We compared natural log-transformed marker levels between hog farmers and controls using multivariate linear regression models. Results Circulating levels of macrophage-derived chemokine (CCL22), a chemokine previously implicated in lung carcinogenesis, were reduced among hog farmers (17% decrease; 95% CI −28% to −4%), in particular for those with the largest operations (>6000 hogs: 26% decrease; 95% CI −39% to −10%; ptrend=0.002). We also found that hog farmers had elevated levels of other immune markers, including macrophage inflammatory protein-3 alpha (MIP-3A/CCL20; 111% increase, 95% CI 19% to 273%), basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2; 93% increase, 95% CI 10% to 240%) and soluble interleukin-4 receptor (12% increase, 95% CI 1% to 25%), with particularly strong associations for MIP-3A/CCL20 and FGF-2 in winter. Conclusions These results provide insights into potential immunomodulatory mechanisms through which endotoxin or other exposures associated with hog farming may influence lung cancer risk, and warrant further investigation with more detailed bioaerosol exposure assessment.", "corpus_id": 3821938 }

{ "title": "Hypertension and cardiovascular risk: General aspects", "abstract": "Graphical abstract Figure. No caption available. &NA; Hypertension is the strongest or one of the strongest risk factors for almost all different cardiovascular diseases acquired during life, including coronary disease, left ventricular hypertrophy and valvular heart diseases, cardiac arrhythmias including atrial fibrillation, cerebral stroke and renal failure. The continuous relationship between blood pressure and cardiovascular and renal events makes the distinction between high normal blood pressure and hypertension based on arbitrary cut‐off values for blood pressures. Overall the prevalence of hypertension in different European countries appears to be around 30–45% of the general population, with a steep increase with ageing. The prevention of cardiovascular disease and treatment recommendations should be related to quantification of total cardiovascular risk which could be estimated from several different models. However the impact of age on risk is so strong that young adults (particularly women) are unlikely to reach high‐risk levels even when they have more than one major risk factor and a clear increase in relative risk. Therefore age‐adjusted models, models assessing relative risks compared to others of same age and models including thorough assessments of target organ damage and ambulatory 24 h blood pressure are needed together with national models because of the large variations between countries.", "corpus_id": 3599672, "score": 1 }

{ "title": "Seasonal denitrification in flooded and exposed sediments from the Amazon floodplain at Lago Camaleão", "abstract": "Denitrification processes were measured by the acetylene-blockage technique under changing flood conditions along the aquatic/terrestrial transition zone on the Amazon floodplain at Lago Camaleão, near Manaus, Brazil. In flooded sediments, denitrification was recorded after the amendment with NO3−(100 μmol liter−1) throughout the whole study period from August 1992 to February 1993. It ranged from 192.3 to 640.7 μmol N m−2 h−1 in the 0- to 5-cm sediment layer. Without substrate amendment, denitrification was detected only during low water in November and December 1992, when it occurred at a rate of up to 12.2 μmol N m−2 h−1 Higher rates of denitrification at an average rate of 73.3 μmol N m−2 h−1 were measured in sediments from the shallow lake basin that were exposed to air at low water. N2O evolution was never detected in flooded sediments, but in exposed sediments, it was detected at an average rate of 28.3 μmol N m−2 h−1 during the low-water period. The results indicate that under natural conditions there is denitrification and hence a loss in nitrogen from the Amazon floodplain to the atmosphere. Rates of denitrification in flooded sediments were one to two orders of magnitude smaller than in temperate regions. However, the nitrogen removal of exposed sediments exceeded that of undisturbed wetland soils of temperate regions, indicating a considerable impact of the flood pulse on the gaseous turnover of nitrogen in the Amazon floodplain.", "corpus_id": 1023985 }

{ "title": "Influence of hydrologic pulses, flooding frequency, and vegetation on nitrous oxide emissions from created riparian marshes", "abstract": "The effects of hydrologic conditions, water quality gradients, and vegetation on nitrous oxide gaseous emissions were investigated in two identical 1-ha surface-flow created riverine wetlands in Columbus, Ohio, USA. For two years, both wetlands experienced seasonal (winter-spring) controlled hydrologic flood pulses followed by one year in which they received a steady flow rate of water. Nitrous oxide fluxes were quantified in a transverse gradient at different elevations (edge plots and high marsh plots with alternate wet and dry conditions, and low marsh plots and open water plots that were permanently flooded). The highest average of N2O fluxes was observed in high marsh plots (21.8 ± 2.5 μg-N m−2 h−1), followed by edge plots (12.6 ± 2.5 μg-N m−2 h−1), open water plots (9.9 ± 2.1 μg-N m−2 h−1), and low marsh plots (7.0 ± 4.8 μg-N m−2 h−1). Highest nitrous oxide fluxes were consistently observed in high marsh plots during summer when soil temperatures were ≥ 20°C. In permanently flooded plots without vegetation, nitrous oxide fluxes were low, regardless of flood-pulse conditions. In high marsh plots, water table remained near the soil surface one week after flooding, causing an increase in N2O fluxes (25.9 ± 13.9 μg-N m−2 h−1) compared with fluxes before (2.4 ± 6.4 2.2 μg-N m−2 h−1) and during (6.9 ± 2.2 μg-N m−2 h−1) flooding. In edge plots, nitrous oxide emissions increased during and after the flooding (11.3 ± 3.2 and 7.3 ± 3.3 μg-N m−2 h−1) compared with fluxes before the flood pulse (4.1 ±1.8 μg-N m−2 h−1). In low marsh and edge zones, no significant (P> 0.05) differences were observed in the seasonal N2O fluxes in the pulsing year versus steady-flow year. Spring N2O fluxes from high marsh plots were significantly (P=0.04) higher under steady-flow conditions (26.2 ± 5.5 μg-N m−2 h−1) than under pulsing conditions (9.6 ± 3.6 μg-N m−2 h−1), probably due to the water table near the surface that prevailed in those plots under steady flow condition. N2O fluxes were higher in plots with vegetation (39.6 ± 13.7 μg-N m−2 h−1) than in plots without vegetation (−3.6 ± 13.7 μg-N m−2 h−1) when plots were inundated; however, when no surface water was present, N2O fluxes were similar in plots with and without vegetation. Implications for large-scale wetland creation and restoration in the Mississippi River Basin and elsewhere for controlling nitrogen are discussed.", "corpus_id": 6519981 }

{ "title": "Effect of pH on the rate of gaseous products of denitrification in a silt loam soil", "abstract": "To examine the effect of soil pH on the rate and products of denitrification, a silt loam soil (Typic Arguidoll) was used that had been collected from a field experiment maintained at various pH levels for 18 years. The soil pH ranged from 4.6 to 6.9 and was nearly uniform in organic C (1.15 +/- 0.05%) and texture. Incubation was performed under He in all-glass systems that were sealed throughout the incubation period. The soils were amended with 100 ..mu..g/g of NO/sub 3//sup -/-N before incubation. Denitrification products (N/sub 2/O, NO, and N/sub 2/) and CO/sub 2/ were determined by gas chromatography using an ultrasonic detector. It appears that the rate of organic C mineralization rather than pH controls the rate of denitrification in C-limited systems. At 100 ..mu..g NO/sub 3//sup -/-N added per gram of soil, the overall rates of denitrification correlated with the rates of C mineralization (CO/sub 2/ evolution) but were not consistently related to pH or to total organic C. Soil pH did affect the products of denitrification. Nitrous oxide comprised 83% of the gaseous-N products for pH 4.6 and 5.4 when 90% of the NO/sub 3//sup -/ had been denitrified. The N/sub 2/O was thenmore » rapidly reduced to N/sub 2/. The highest amount of NO was observed at pH 4.6 and 5.4. At pH 6.0 the rate of production of N/sub 2/O exceeded the rate of reduction only for the first 2 d of incubation. However, N/sub 2/O was the dominant product until approx.83% of the NO/sub 3//sup -/ had been denitrified. At pH 6.9, N/sub 2/ was the dominant product after the 1st d of incubation. 21 references, 1 figure, 2 tables.« less", "corpus_id": 93657385, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Estimation of VMS Traffic Information Value Using Contingent Valuation Method", "abstract": "In this study, value of VMS (Variable Message Sign) traffic information is estimated by using CVM (Contingent Valuation Method), which is developed to quantify the value of non-marketable goods in environmental economics. CVM is used to estimate the value of goods provided by a project under consideration and then the project feasibility can be indirectly examined on the basis of the estimated value. This study focuses on estimating to estimate value of traffic information provided through VMS, a part of the transportation system enhancement project by Korea Expressway Corporation which is aimed at mitigating traffic problems on expressways. In particular, this study analyzes value of information separately by trip purpose, information type, and traffic flow condition. A state preference survey was designed to estimate the value of non-marketable traffic information. To maximize reliability of the survey results, a pilot survey was taken before the main survey. The open-ended question method was adopted in capturing users` willingness-to-pay. Both Tobit and binary Probit models were applied in estimating the value of VMS traffic information and their parameters were estimated using the maximum likelihood estimation. The estimation results suggests that the value of traffic information perceived by users is 518.28 KRW.", "corpus_id": 153905751 }

{ "title": "국내택배시스템에 개미시스템 알고리즘의 적용가능성 검토", "abstract": "외판원 문제(TSP; Traveling Salesman Problem)는 경로탐색 최적화문제로 ‘풀리지 않는 문제’(NP-complete; Nonedeterministic \nPolynomial-time complete)에 속하므로 경유지 수가 많아짐에 따라 급격히 계산시간이 증가한다. 때문에 적용시 정확 \n한 최적해보다는 최적 근사해에 대한 발견적(heuristic) 알고리즘들을 이용한다. 본 연구는 TSP에 적용되는 발견적 알고리즘으로 개미 \n시스템알고리즘(ASA; Ant System Algorithm)을 검토하고, 국내 택배시스템에 ASA의 적용가능성을 검토하였다. \nASA는 NP-complete 문제를 위한 발견적 알고리즘으로, 1990년대 초 M. Dorigo 등에 의해 연구되어졌다. ASA는 개미들이 이동 \n간에 페로몬이라는 일종의 화학물질을 분비할 때, 이동경로 상에 분비된 페로몬 누적에 따라 확률적 방법으로 경로를 결정하게 된다. 이 \n러한 ASA는 NP-complete문제에서 계산시간이나 최단경로탐색에서 우수한 결과를 얻는 것으로 발표되고 있으며, 교통분야에서 차량경 \n로탐색뿐만 아니라 네트워크 관리 및 도로선형계획 등 그 적용범위가 점차 확대되어지고 있다. \n현재 국내 택배시스템에서 차량배차시 명확한 기준이 없으며 주로 담당 운전자의 경험과 판단에 의해 결정된다. 본 연구에서는 국내 \n택배시스템에 ASA의 적용가능성을 검토하였다. 담당 운전자의 경로결정이 가로 10.0㎞, 세로 10.0㎞의 범위에서 인접이웃알고리즘 \n(NNA; Nearest Neighbor Algorithm)을 따른다고 가정했을 때와 랜덤한 20개의 경유지를 가질 때, 그리고 경유지 수를 10개씩 증 \n가하여 200개까지 증가할 때를 비교 분석한 결과, ASA이 NNA 보다 우수하였다. ASA을 국내택배시스템에 적용시 운송비용 절감 등의 \n운영개선을 기대할 수 있으며, 특히 영세한 택배업체에서 보다 저렴하고 우수한 택배시스템을 구축할 수 있을 것으로 보인다.", "corpus_id": 123318720 }

{ "title": "Studies of Individual Environmental Concern", "abstract": "The article deals with analyses concerning the interplay of environmentally relevant knowledge, attitudes, and behavior as well as gender differences in environmental concern and the role of \"background variables\" for the prediction of (self-reported) behavior. In a sample of 167 German adults, the results showed that knowledge and gender moderated the relationship between attitudes and behavior. For a second sample of 105 people active in conservation groups, these moderator effects were not as clear. For both samples, women were more environmentally concerned in those topical areas that refer to household behavior, whereas men knew more about environmental problems. Possible reasons for these effects are discussed. Finally, the role of \"background variables\" is investigated by means of stepwise regression and discriminant analyses, using self-reported behavior as the central dependent variable. For the purpose of this study, a new measurement instrument was constructed and validated. Compared with other scales, a new aspect is the substantially broader spectrum covered. Moreover, various topical areas of environmental concern (e.g., residential energy conservation, environmentally aware purchasing, recycling of solid wastes, and so forth) can be measured simultaneously with the well-established conceptual variables (knowledge, attitude, behavior).", "corpus_id": 145215939, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "U.S. Emissions Trading Markets for SO2 and NOx", "abstract": "The U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 initiated the first large experiment in the use of market-based regulation to control environmental problems with the introduction of an emissions trading program for sulfur dioxide emissions. Later that decade the second large trading program began for control of nitrogen oxide emissions. Although these programs are widely viewed as successful, their development and the emergence of associated environmental markets took various turns that provide lessons for the development of new markets, including markets for greenhouse gas emissions. This paper reviews the history of these programs and provides a glimpse of their future given the introduction of new regulations affecting multiple pollutants and given the expected implementation of climate policy.", "corpus_id": 6300146 }

{ "title": "Environmental efficiency of energy, materials, and emissions.", "abstract": "This study estimates the environmental efficiency of international listed firms in 10 worldwide sectors from 2007 to 2013 by applying an order-m method, a non-parametric approach based on free disposal hull with subsampling bootstrapping. Using a conventional output of gross profit and two conventional inputs of labor and capital, this study examines the order-m environmental efficiency accounting for the presence of each of 10 undesirable inputs/outputs and measures the shadow prices of each undesirable input and output. The results show that there is greater potential for the reduction of undesirable inputs rather than bad outputs. On average, total energy, electricity, or water usage has the potential to be reduced by 50%. The median shadow prices of undesirable inputs, however, are much higher than the surveyed representative market prices. Approximately 10% of the firms in the sample appear to be potential sellers or production reducers in terms of undesirable inputs/outputs, which implies that the price of each item at the current level has little impact on most of the firms. Moreover, this study shows that the environmental, social, and governance activities of a firm do not considerably affect environmental efficiency.", "corpus_id": 3543905 }

{ "title": "Option value of emission allowances", "abstract": "We study the market for emission allowances stipulated in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment. We assume that the number of allowances is fixed and that demand is affected by a stochastic parameter that follows a Wiener process (‘Brownian motion’). The optimal investment policy for scrubbers is characterized. Investments in scrubbers are reduced if there is greater uncertainty about future market conditions. This is because purchases of emission allowances provide flexibility to adapt to demand conditions in a way that installing scrubbers does not. The price of emission allowances may therefore exceed the marginal cost of scrubbers by an amount called the option value. We derive an explicit formula for the option value and present computational results to illustrate its likely magnitude.", "corpus_id": 154047362, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "Exposing evaluation: Using field projects to teach program evaluation", "abstract": "This paper describes the field prefect component of a program evaluation course. Small groups of students conduct evaluative studies for public agencies. Tech group selects a project, defines the research question, designs and executes a research proposal, gives an oral presentation of its findings to the agency, and writes a final report. The students learn how to cope with limited time and money and to conduct quantitative research that provides an agency with needed information. They also learn how political and administrative concerns affect program, research.", "corpus_id": 155996479 }

{ "title": "Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy.", "abstract": "For many years, the public administration community and the newer field of public policy analysis were at war, fighting battles in the way that academicians sometimes do-with disparaging statements about the intellectual prowess of the other and with acerbic comments about the relevancy and effectiveness of the opposing approach. Within these debates, rigid stereotypes were used to frame the arguments. To the public policy community, public administrators were functionaries who could not see beyond the limitations of their narrow techniques and their organizational myopia. The public administration community viewed the public policy people as Chicago-school economists in new dress-individuals who were driven by their maximizing models and who, in the process, ignored the \"reality\" of the institutional policy world. Times have changed. In some instances, the opposing \"force\" simply adopted the values and approach of the other. For example, some schools and departments of public administration offer courses in public policy analysis that are really applied micro-economic approaches, focusing on the formal, goal-maximizing techniques of analysis. Conversely, some public policy schools have \"discovered\" public management and have become infatuated with the processes and nuances of organizational behavior. The reappearance in paperback of Arnold J. Meltsner's important work, Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy, reminds us that there is another way to approach these issues. The book, originally published in 1976, was the first work in the public policy literature that focused on the working policy analyst. Based on interviews with federal officials who were selfor organizationallyidentified as \"policy analysts,\" the work continues to be a powerful source for individuals who are concerned about the way that decision makers are given-and receive-advice. While the examples in the volume are somewhat dated, the organizing framework in the work continues to be extremely salient. Meltsner conceptualizes the policy analyst as an individual who is located in the center ring of four concentric circles. Surrounding the analyst are the immediate client, who as the decision maker is the receiver of advice; then the organizational context, in which both the analyst and the client work; and, finally, the policy area itself, which is made up of a group of policy problems, knowledge, and politics. This approach to policy analysis immediately joins the two worlds of organization and analysis; it catapults the reader to a framework in which the interdependency between the two is the point of departure. Through his interviews of 116 federal policy analysts, Meltsner found that analysts are \"a highly variegated species\" (p. 14) who could be classified along two major", "corpus_id": 150143661 }

{ "title": "Situation Ethics: The New Morality", "abstract": "Dr. Fletcher describes the new Christian ethic based upon individual freedom and responsibility.", "corpus_id": 141555607, "score": 2 }

{ "title": "The promises and perils of mining GitHub", "abstract": "We are now witnessing the rapid growth of decentralized source code management (DSCM) systems, in which every developer has her own repository. DSCMs facilitate a style of collaboration in which work output can flow sideways (and privately) between collaborators, rather than always up and down (and publicly) via a central repository. Decentralization comes with both the promise of new data and the peril of its misinterpretation. We focus on git, a very popular DSCM used in high-profile projects. Decentralization, and other features of git, such as automatically recorded contributor attribution, lead to richer content histories, giving rise to new questions such as “How do contributions flow between developers to the official project repository?” However, there are pitfalls. Commits may be reordered, deleted, or edited as they move between repositories. The semantics of terms common to SCMs and DSCMs sometimes differ markedly, potentially creating confusion. For example, a commit is immediately visible to all developers in centralized SCMs, but not in DSCMs. Our goal is to help researchers interested in DSCMs avoid these and other perils when mining and analyzing git data.", "corpus_id": 14232025 }

{ "title": "Reducing human effort and improving quality in peer code reviews using automatic static analysis and reviewer recommendation", "abstract": "Peer code review is a cost-effective software defect detection technique. Tool assisted code review is a form of peer code review, which can improve both quality and quantity of reviews. However, there is a significant amount of human effort involved even in tool based code reviews. Using static analysis tools, it is possible to reduce the human effort by automating the checks for coding standard violations and common defect patterns. Towards this goal, we propose a tool called Review Bot for the integration of automatic static analysis with the code review process. Review Bot uses output of multiple static analysis tools to publish reviews automatically. Through a user study, we show that integrating static analysis tools with code review process can improve the quality of code review. The developer feedback for a subset of comments from automatic reviews shows that the developers agree to fix 93% of all the automatically generated comments. There is only 14.71% of all the accepted comments which need improvements in terms of priority, comment message, etc. Another problem with tool assisted code review is the assignment of appropriate reviewers. Review Bot solves this problem by generating reviewer recommendations based on change history of source code lines. Our experimental results show that the recommendation accuracy is in the range of 60%-92%, which is significantly better than a comparable method based on file change history.", "corpus_id": 15823436 }

{ "title": "1 X IMPROVING BUSINESS AGILITY THROUGH TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS : A Case Study on Test-Driven Development in Mobile Software Development", "abstract": "This Paper maintains that efficient business agility requires actions from all levels of the organization in order to strive for success in a turbulent business environment. Agility and agile software development solutions are suggested as yielding benefit in a volatile environment, which is characterized by continuously changing requirements and unstable development technologies. Test-driven development (TDD) is an agile practice where the tests are written before the actual program code. TDD is a technical enabler for increasing agility at the developer and product project levels. Existing empirical literature on TDD has demonstrated increased productivity and more robust code, among other important benefits. This paper reports results of a case study where a mobile application was developed for global markets, using the TDD approach. Our first results show that the adoption of TDD is difficult and the potential agility benefits may not be readily available. The lessons learned from the case study are presented.", "corpus_id": 9197055, "score": -1 }

{ "title": "The use of representational prompts in aphasia therapy.", "abstract": "The uses of representational prompts, which have received little specific attention in the literature of aphasia therapy, are discussed in this paper. A representational prompt is one that represents the concept pinpointed in the naming or matching response the prompt is intended to help elicit. It may fall into either of two major categories: symbolic, as in the form of a written word or realistic, as in the form of an object or picture. A number of examples are described that were clinically utilized by the authors within the framework of operant behavior principles, and a tentative outline is presented suggestive of the variety of such prompts that can be adapted to the precise and varying needs of the patient.", "corpus_id": 1162063 }

{ "title": "Variation of stimulus context and its effect on word-finding ability in aphasics.", "abstract": "Summary The word-finding performance of 36 aphasic subjects was studied in three different stimulus contexts, viz., picture-naming, completing an open-ended sentence, and naming an object from its description. The word-finding ability of the aphasics was not uniform, but varied according to the stimulus situation. Open-ended sentences were easiest, with picture-naming next, and naming to a description last. Further, an analysis of the errors indicated that there is a relationship between the quality of the errors made in naming, and the underlying type of aphasia.", "corpus_id": 4483312 }

{ "title": "Some functional effects of sectioning the cerebral commissures in man*", "abstract": "It has been possible in studies of callosum-sectioned cats and monkeys in recent years to obtain consistent demonstration of a variety of interhemispheric integrational functions mediated by the corpus callosum.(1,2) These animal findings stand in marked contrast to the apparent lack of corresponding functional deficits produced by similar surgery in human patients.(3-9) The general picture of callosal functions based on the animal studies tends to be supported in current early testing of a 48-year-old male war veteran with recent complete section of the corpus callosum, anterior and hippocampal commissures.", "corpus_id": 18475198, "score": 2 }