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{
"title": "A vast DOF robotic car seat using SMA actuators with a matrix drive system",
"abstract": "Long hours of driving cause the tissues to be pressurized for an extended period and result in considerable discomfort and driver fatigue. Periodically stimulating the tissues in contact with the car seat, as well as providing adequate ventilation and pressure relief may alleviate these problems. In this paper, we describe the design of a robotic car seat capable of actively redistributing the contact pressure on the tissue and thus providing relief to the weary driver. The distributed nature of the surface actuation and space limitations necessitate the use of a large number of actuators that must be confined to a small volume. We design and use Shape Memory Alloy actuator units, which can accomplish the above goals by virtue of their high power to weight ratio. Matrix architecture is used for the drive amplifier that can drive N/sup 2/ actuator units using only 2N switches and is thus suitable for vast degree of freedom systems in terms of scalability. The prototype car seat uses 16 SMA actuator units, which are driven in a matrix architecture using 8 switches. The actuators are compactly housed under the car seat and the force and displacements are transmitted to the flexible seat surface through a novel routing scheme. We create a distributed lifting motion of the seat surface in order to stimulate the tissue. A complementary distributed sinking motion of the seat surface is created in order to provide pressure relief and ventilation.",
"corpus_id": 1769701
} | {
"title": "Design aspects of shape memory actuators",
"abstract": "Abstract The need for high performance and at the same time compact actuators has existed for a long time, especially for multi-degree-of-freedom devices like robot hands and walking robots. These devices mostly use electrical actuators. Also for the presented research, the interest in designing actuators based on shape Memory Alloys emerged from a study in the field of multi-fingered robot hands. Shape Memory Alloy actuation is very attractive because of the very high power density that can be obtained using these materials. When calculating the ratio of actuator output to actuator volume, also called power density, SMA actuators offer even higher values than hydraulic actuation. Nevertheless, controlling these actuators and implementing them in robotic systems is not so straightforward. This paper defines a number of design rules for shape memory alloy based robotic actuators. It is demonstrated that SMA actuation offers very attractive properties for example in space applications and especially in a zero-gravity environment. This paper also shows that, when using an appropriate cooling method, accurate position control for Shape Memory Alloy actuators can be obtained.",
"corpus_id": 110717058
} | {
"title": "Development of a SMA high performance robotic actuator",
"abstract": "A prototype of a high performance robotic actuator, based on shape memory alloys (SMA), is proposed. Starting from detailed knowledge about the material behaviour, the most suitable way of heating and cooling is proposed. Furthermore an 'optimal' shape of the active element is determined and a control method based on simulation of the (T, sigma , epsilon ) behaviour is proposed.<<ETX>>",
"corpus_id": 8050422,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Reusability-based quality framework for software components",
"abstract": "Component based software engineering (CBSE) is a pivotal approach to software development since it helps to give much aspired benefits like reusability, on-time delivery, high quality at low cost to software companies. Therefore, individual software components must be selected with care as these are crucial to the success of the CBSE approach. The selection of a highly reusable and high-quality component is still a herculean task since stakeholders with varying expectations are involved in the software engineering process. This paper presents a reusability based quality model, which is suited to the identification and evaluation of software components. Three major stakeholders are recognized, which are important in the selection of a software component as well as to the development of software. In the proposed model, only those quality properties are incorporated that are preferred by stakeholders and necessary to increase the reuse of software components.",
"corpus_id": 805406
} | {
"title": "An empirical investigation on the reusability of design patterns and software packages",
"abstract": "Nowadays open-source software communities are thriving. Successful open-source projects are competitive and the amount of source code that is freely available offers great reuse opportunities to software developers. Thus, it is expected that several requirements can be implemented based on open source software reuse. Additionally, design patterns, i.e. well-known solution to common design problems, are introduced as elements of reuse. This study attempts to empirically investigate the reusability of design patterns, classes and software packages. Thus, the results can help developers to identify the most beneficial starting points for white box reuse, which is quite popular among open source communities. In order to achieve this goal we conducted a case study on one hundred (100) open source projects. More specifically, we identified 27,461 classes that participate in design patterns and compared the reusability of each of these classes with the reusability of the pattern and the package that this class belongs to. In more than 40% of the cases investigated, design pattern based class selection, offers the most reusable starting point for white-box reuse. However there are several cases when package based selection might be preferable. The results suggest that each pattern has different level of reusability.",
"corpus_id": 1073461
} | {
"title": "Extending to Soft and Preference Constraints a Framework for Solving Efficiently Structured Problems",
"abstract": "This paper deals with the problem of solving efficiently structured COPs (constraints optimization problems). The formalism based on COPs allows to represent numerous real-life problems defined using constraints and to manage preferences and soft constraints. In spite of theoretical results, has discarded (hyper)tree-decompositions for the benefit of coverings by acyclic hypergraphs in the CSP area. We extend here this work to constraint optimization. We first study these coverings from a theoretical viewpoint. Then we exploit them in a framework aiming not to define a new decomposition, but to make easier a dynamic management of the structure during the search (unlike most of structural methods which usually exploit the structure statically), and so the use of dynamic variable ordering heuristics. Thus, we provide a new complexity result which outperforms significantly the previous one given in the literature. Finally, we assess the practical interest of these notions.",
"corpus_id": 11962491,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Combination of Virtual Private Network and Wireless Sensor Network: Protection Against The Interference Problem of IOT",
"abstract": "As the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging rapidly, the interference problem is also increasing at the same pace. In IoT based connections, as we know that devices share a common communication channel to interact with each other, the interference problem arises as all the devices are connected. Once an attacker gains access to any of the devices in an IoT enabled network, the whole IoT network becomes susceptible to breach. The biggest example of it is the IoT enabled CCTV hacking. In this work, we are proposing the usage of Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to create a virtual environment and to protect each device from IP address breach that is connected to an IoT network. Using VPN, each IoT device will gain their own virtual environment which will enable it for using a dynamic IP address to connect to another IoT device’s virtual environment. Using WSN, the virtual environments will be able to identify any signal interference that can cause any security breach.",
"corpus_id": 155109463
} | {
"title": "A Review of Internet of Things Architecture, Technologies and Analysis Smartphone-based Attacks Against 3D printers",
"abstract": "Human beings cannot be happy with any kind of tiredness based work, so they focused on machines to work on behalf of humans. The Internet-based latest technology provides the platforms for human beings to relax and unburden feeling. The Internet of Things (IoT) field efficiently helps human beings with smart decisions through Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication all over the world. It has been difficult to ignore the importance of the IoT field with the new development of applications such as a smartphone in the present era. The IoT field sensor plays a vital role in sensing the intelligent object/things and making an intelligent decision after sensing the objects. The rapid development of new applications using smartphones in the world caused all users of the IoT community to be faced with one major challenge of security in the form of side channel attacks against highly intensive 3D printing systems. The smartphone formulated Intellectual property (IP) of side channel attacks investigate against 3D printer in the physical domain through reconstructed G-code file through primitive operations. The smartphone (Nexus 5) solved the main problems such as orientation fixing, model accuracy of frame size and validate the feasibility and effectiveness in real case studies against the 3D printer. The 3D printing estimated value reached 20.2 billion of dollars in 2021. The thermal camera is used for exploring the side channel attacks after reconstructing the objects against 3D printers. The researcher analyzed IoT security relevant issues which were avoided in future by enhanced strong security mechanism strategy, encryption, and machine learning-based algorithms, latest technologies, schemes and protocols utilized in an efficient way. Keywords: - Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M), Security, 3D printer, smartphone",
"corpus_id": 165743
} | {
"title": "Signed Diagonal Flips and the Four Color Theorem",
"abstract": "We introduce a signed version of the diagonal flip operation. We then formulate the conjecture that any two triangulations of a given polygon may be transformed into one another by a signable sequence of diagonal flips. Finally, we show that this conjecture, if true, would imply the four color theorem.",
"corpus_id": 37803213,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Purification and comparative properties of the delta and sigma subunits of RNA polymerase from Bacillus subtilis.",
"abstract": "Bacillus subtilis delta protein is a 21 500-Mr polypeptide that can be isolated in association with RNA polymerase holoenzyme from uninfected bacteria and with modified forms of RNA polymerase from cells infected with phage SP01 [Pero, J., Nelson, J. and Fox, T. (1975) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 72,1589]. Although no function has been assigned to delta protein in uninfected cells, this host polypeptide enhances the specificity of transcription by phage-modified forms of RNA polymerase that contain SP01-coded regulatory subunits. This report describes the purification of delta and sigma proteins from uninfected B. subtilis and examines the comparative effects of these polypeptides on transcription by core RNA polymerase. Purified sigma polypeptide was found to stimulate the transcription of phage DNA while having little effect on RNA synthesis with the synthetic DNA poly(dA-dT) as template. In contrast, purified delta protein markedly depressed the transcription of poly(dA-dT) while having little effect on enzyme activity with phage DNA as template. The inhibitory effect of delta protein on poly (dA-dT) transcription was strongly dependent on the presence of KC1 in the RNA synthesis reaction mixture.",
"corpus_id": 1778723
} | {
"title": "Purification and properties of the sigma subunit of ribonucleic acid polymerase from vegetative Bacillus subtilis.",
"abstract": "Abstract The sigma subunit of DNA-dependent RNA polymerase from vegetative Bacillus subtilis has been purified to at least 90% purity. Purified sigma binds to core RNA polymerase and stimulates in vitro transcription of phage Oe DNA by core RNA polymerase in the presence of up to 0.2 m KCl. Sigma also stimulates RNA synthesis to different extents with phage T4 DNA and poly(dA-dT) as templates, but this stimulation is markedly sensitive to increasing ionic strength. At 0.2 m KCl sigma subunit fails to stimulate transcription of T4 DNA and actually inhibits the synthesis of RNA with poly(dA-dT) as template.",
"corpus_id": 41917147
} | {
"title": "Electrogenic ion transport in the mouse endometrium: functional aspects of the cultured epithelium.",
"abstract": "A primary culture of mouse endometrial epithelium grown on permeable supports was established and the electrogenic ion transport across the endometrial epithelium was studied using the short-circuit current (I(SC)) technique. Enzymatically isolated mouse endometrial cells were immunostained with epithelial cells markers, cytokeratins, indicating an epithelial origin of the culture. Mouse endometrial epithelial cells grown on Millipore filters formed polarized monolayers with junctional complexes as revealed by light and electron microscopy. The cultured monolayers exhibited an average basal I(SC) of 4.6 +/- 0.3 microA/cm2, transepithelial voltage of 2.7 +/- 0.2 mV and transepithelial resistance of 599 +/- 30 omega cm2. The basal current was reduced by 85% in Na+-free solution and 13% in Cl(-)-free solution. The basal current could also be substantially (57.7%) blocked by an apical Na+ channel blocker, amiloride (10 microM), suggesting that Na+ absorption largely contributed to the basal current. Apical addition of Cl- channel blocker, DPC (2 mM), also exhibited an inhibitory effect, 19.4%, on the basal I(SC), indicating minor involvement of Cl- secretion as compared to that of Na+ absorption. The cultured endometrial epithelium also responded to a number of secretagogues including adrenaline and forskolin with increases in the I(SC), which could involve substantial Cl- secretion. The present study has established a culture of mouse endometrial epithelium exhibiting predominantly Na+ absorption under unstimulated condition, and Cl- secretion in response to various secretagogues. This culture may be useful for studying various regulatory mechanisms of electrogenic ion transport across the endometrial epithelium.",
"corpus_id": 1864924,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Management of hemangiomas in children.",
"abstract": "Hemangiomas are the most common tumors of infancy. Traditionally, this term has been applied to benign tumors of vascular tissues and vascular malformations. Hemangiomas are classified as capillary, cavernous, and mixed lesions. The incidence in newborns is 1–3%, and this increases to 10% by the age of 1 year. In the biologic classification proposed by Mulliken and Glowacki in 1982, hemangiomas are defined as vascular tumors that enlarge by rapid cellular proliferation. Angiogenic factors such as heparin play an important role in the growth and involution of hemangiomas. These factors bring forth rapid endothelial growth by direct action on the endothelium and indirectly through cells such as macrophages and mast cells. In contrast to hemangiomas, vascular malformations are hamartomatous lesions composed of dysplastic vessels lined by non-proliferating endothelium. They almost never regress and may expand in size.",
"corpus_id": 715416
} | {
"title": "Algorithm for Using a Long‐Pulsed Nd: YAG Laser in the Treatment of Deep Cutaneous Vascular Lesions",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND Conventional therapies for deep cutaneous vascular anomalies have demonstrated poor efficacy and many side effects. New laser systems offer greater potential to treat these difficult lesions, but the lack of specific treatment guidelines has restricted consistent success. OBJECTIVE To establish a rational, user-friendly algorithm that incorporates basic components of deep vascular lesions to define the correct laser settings required for safe, effective, and reproducible treatment. METHODS Within 18 months, 162 deep vascular lesions of various types and anatomic sites were evaluated for vessel size, depth, color, and pressure. An algorithm incorporating these characteristics was employed to determine laser parameter settings. Using a high-peak power, long-pulse 1064-nm Nd:YAG laser system, the vascular lesions were then treated. RESULTS Within 6 months of follow-up, 80% of treated areas demonstrated a 50% or greater resolution after a single treatment session, with complete clearance shown in 19%. Only minimal and transient side effects were observed. Of note, 74% of areas on the extremities and 83% within the oral cavity showed a 50% or greater resolution after one treatment. CONCLUSION Previously challenging deep cutaneous vascular anomalies may be safely reduced or cleared with the use of an appropriate laser system and this algorithm-directed technique. This represents a significant breakthrough in the management of vascular lesions.",
"corpus_id": 32243764
} | {
"title": "Relaxin Inhibits the Cardiac Myofibroblast NLRP3 Inflammasome as Part of Its Anti-Fibrotic Actions via the Angiotensin Type 2 and ATP (P2X7) Receptors",
"abstract": "Chronic NLRP3 inflammasome activation can promote fibrosis through its production of interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-18. Conversely, recombinant human relaxin (RLX) can inhibit the pro-fibrotic interactions between IL-1β, IL-18 and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1. Here, the broader extent by which RLX targeted the myofibroblast NLRP3 inflammasome to mediate its anti-fibrotic effects was elucidated. Primary human cardiac fibroblasts (HCFs), stimulated with TGF-β1 (to promote myofibroblast (HCMF) differentiation), LPS (to prime the NLRP3 inflammasome) and ATP (to activate the NLRP3 inflammasome) (T+L+A) or benzoylbenzoyl-ATP (to activate the ATP receptor; P2X7R) (T+L+Bz), co-expressed relaxin family peptide receptor-1 (RXFP1), the angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R) and P2X7R, and underwent increased protein expression of toll-like receptor (TLR)-4, NLRP3, caspase-1, IL-1β and IL-18. Whilst RLX co-administration to HCMFs significantly prevented the T+L+A- or T+L+Bz-stimulated increase in these end points, the inhibitory effects of RLX were annulled by the pharmacological antagonism of either RXFP1, AT2R, P2X7R, TLR-4, reactive oxygen species (ROS) or caspase-1. The RLX-induced amelioration of left ventricular inflammation, cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and fibrosis in isoproterenol (ISO)-injured mice, was also attenuated by P2X7R antagonism. Thus, the ability of RLX to ameliorate the myofibroblast NLRP3 inflammasome as part of its anti-fibrotic effects, appeared to involve RXFP1, AT2R, P2X7R and the inhibition of TLR-4, ROS and caspase-1.",
"corpus_id": 250097154,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Ultrathin, Substrate-Integrated, and Self-Healing Nanocapacitors With Low-Leakage Currents and High-Operating Frequencies",
"abstract": "This paper describes ultrathin tantalum-based high volumetric-density power capacitors with low leakage properties for 1-10-MHz frequency applications. Nano dielectrics with low-defect density were grown on nanoporous tantalum anodes using the self-limiting anodization process. The fundamental mechanisms that govern the film growth and quality were investigated to provide anodization process guidelines. Conducting polymer nanoparticles were used as the cathodes. Complete filling of conducting polymer was achieved by the optimization of conducting polymer application process. Energy dispersive spectroscopy and structural SEM studies were performed to investigate the morphology and structure of the tantalum pentoxide films. The fabricated capacitor showed 0.6-0.8 μF/mm2 of capacitance density in the 1-10-MHz range, in substrate compatible ultrathin (<;75 μm) form factors. This is the highest volumetric density reported for such thin-film capacitors in a megahertz frequency range.",
"corpus_id": 1959263
} | {
"title": "System Scaling With Nanostructured Power and RF Components",
"abstract": "The emergence of smartphones and other smart systems is driving new trends in electronics scaling that goes beyond transistors or active devices, to include all the system components such as packaging substrates, passive components, thermal structures, power sources, and the system interconnections. Current system components are at milliscale, creating a $10^{3}$ to $10^{6}$ scaling gap with the packaging interfaces at microscale, and transistors at nanodimensions. With current microstructured materials, component miniaturization also degrades performance metrics such as efficiency, tolerance or precision, thermal and frequency stability. Nanostructured materials and processes can potentially miniaturize these system components, while simultaneously enhancing the performance. These nanostructured components are assembled close to the active devices, resulting in ultraminiaturized and ultrathin systems with 3-D integration of passives with actives. This paper shows the impact of nanostructured materials toward enhancing the performance and miniaturization of power and radio-frequency (RF) passive components in emerging smart systems. Opportunities for nanostructured materials in improving the power density and efficiency of capacitors and inductors in power-supply modules are reviewed in the first part of the paper. The impact of nanostructured magnetic, dielectric and magneto-dielectric films on emerging RF subsystems is illustrated in the last part of the paper.",
"corpus_id": 6587533
} | {
"title": "A paradigm shift in European R&D policy? The EU Budget Review and the economic crisis",
"abstract": "This article analyzes the potential impacts of the current review of the EU budget on the Union's R&D policy. Within this process, the European Commission, with input especially from the member states, will consider as to how the EU's expenditures actually mirror the internal and external challenges of the Union. Against this background we argue that those challenges render policy change in the field of R&D policy quite likely. In order to assess the degree of potential policy change we conceptualize three scenarios that vary along the dimensions of institutional structures, processes and actor constellations. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.",
"corpus_id": 154197689,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "PRL and ACTH secretion following acute heat exposure, in intact and in hypothalamic deafferentated male rats",
"abstract": "Adult male rats, intact or bearing complete, anterior or posterior hypothalamic deafferentiations (CHD, AHD AND PHD, respectively) were acutely exposed to environmental temperature of 36 degrees C, and serum PRL and ACTH concentrations were determined by RIA. In intact animals, heat exposure resulted in elevated serum PRL and ACTH levels. None of the deafferentations affected basal serum PRL concentrations, whereas those of ACTH were elevated in both CHD and AHD, but not in PHD groups, as compared to intact controls. The PRL heat response was completely absent in CHD, attenuated in AHD, and delayed in PHD animals, and the ACTH heat response was absent in all three groups. These results demonstrate (1) that acute exposure to elevated environmental temperature stimulates secretion of PRL and of ACTH; (2) that this stimulation is carried out by diverse neural pathways; and, (3) that hypothalamic modulation of the secretion of PRL and ACTH is effected by independent mechanisms.",
"corpus_id": 492978
} | {
"title": "Effect of early thermal experience on pituitary-gonadal axis in female rats.",
"abstract": "The reproductive system fully develops during postnatal stages of life, and as such it may be susceptible to environmental cues such as high temperature. Thus, the purpose of the study was to compare how exposure to 34 degrees Celsius ambient temperature affects pituitary-gonadal axis of immature and adult female rats. Three groups of females at proestrous or metaestrous (n=38) were used in the study. The females were housed in ambient temperature of 34 degrees Celsius (WR group, n=10) or room temperature (CR group, n=16) from birth to adulthood. The females from the third group were acclimated to 34 degrees Celsius as adults (WA group, n=12). In the WR group the onset of puberty was delayed in comparison to the CR group. The plasma PRL level was lower during proestrous and higher during metaestrous in the WR group compared to the CR group. During metaestrous, lower FSH and higher progesterone (P(4)) plasma concentrations were found in the WR females. No changes in LH and oestradiol (E(2)) plasma concentrations were demonstrated. Higher in vitro E(2) and lower P(4) secretions under FSH stimulation were observed in the WR follicles compared to those of the CR group. The WR group also demonstrated higher basal and LH-stimulated luteal in vitro secretion of P(4) than controls. Plasma LH and FSH concentrations during metaestrous were higher in WA females than in the WR group, but PRL level was lower. Follicles of the WA group were unresponsive to FSH with respect to steroid secretion. In addition, LH stimulated luteal E(2) secretion in this group. P(4) release by luteal cells was lower in the WA than in the WR group. We concluded that WR females differ from WA in reproductive system adjustments to rearing temperature and that early thermal experience is more effective in antagonizing the effect of high temperature than acclimation of adult females.",
"corpus_id": 13365153
} | {
"title": "Inhibition of circulating exosomal microRNA-15a-3p accelerates diabetic wound repair",
"abstract": "Diabetic foot ulcers are a common complication of diabetes, and are usually incurable in the clinic. Exosomes (carriers that transfer endogenous molecules) from diabetic patients’ blood have been demonstrated to suppress diabetic wound repair. In this study, we investigated the effects of circulating exosomal microRNA-15a-3p (miR-15a-3p) on diabetic wound repair. Exosomes were extracted from diabetic patients’ blood, and were found to inhibit diabetic wound repair in vitro and in vivo. miR-15a-3p was upregulated in diabetic exosomes, and impaired wound healing. When miR-15a-3p was knocked down in diabetic exosomes, their negative effects were partially reversed both in vitro and in vivo. NADPH oxidase 5 (NOX5) was identified as a potential target of miR-15a-3p, and the inhibition of NOX5 reduced the release of reactive oxygen species, thereby impairing the functionality of human umbilical vein endothelial cells. In summary, inhibition of circulating exosomal miR-15a-3p accelerated diabetic wound repair by activating NOX5, providing a novel therapeutic target for diabetic foot ulcer therapy.",
"corpus_id": 218836961,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Disambiguation of Proper Names in Text",
"abstract": "Identifying the occurrences of proper names in text and the entities they refer to can be a difficult task because of the many-to-many mapping between names and their referents. We analyze the types of ambiguity --- structural and semantic --- that make the discovery of proper names difficult in text, and describe the heuristics used to disambiguate names in Nominator, a fully-implemented module for proper name recognition developed at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.",
"corpus_id": 181698
} | {
"title": "Identifying Unknown Proper Names in Newswire Text",
"abstract": "The identification of unknown proper names in text is a significant challenge for NLP systems operating on unrestricted text. A system which indexes documents according to name references can be useful for information retrieval or as a preprocessor for more knowledge intensive tasks such as database extraction. This paper describes a system which uses text skimming techniques for deriving proper names and their semantic attributes automatically from newswire text, without relying on any listing of name elements. In order to identify new names, the system treats proper names as (potentially) context-dependent linguistic expressions. In addition to using information in the local context, the system exploits a computational model of discourse which identifies individuals based on the way they are described in the text, instead of relying on their description in a pre-existing knowledge base.",
"corpus_id": 2485161
} | {
"title": "Survey of the Message Understanding Conferences",
"abstract": "In this paper, the Message Understanding Conferences are reviewed, and the natural language system evaluation that is underway in preparation for the next conference is described. The role of the conferences in the evaluation of information extraction systems is assessed in terms of the purposes of three broad classes of evaluation: progress, adequacy, and diagnostic. The conferences have measured system performance primarily to assess progress and the state of the art, but they have also been influenced by the concerns associated with assessing adequacy and providing diagnostics. Challenges for the future of similar evaluations are also discussed.",
"corpus_id": 9088773,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Partial melt in the lowermost mantle near the base of a plume",
"abstract": "SUMMARY Precursors to the seismic core phase PKP have long been used to study small-scale heterogeneities at the base of the mantle. They are preferred to PKP coda waves (post-cursors) because the latter are more biased by shallow structure, and so are cruder probes of the deep Earth. In this work, however, we present an array-based analysis of PKP coda waves that provides a unique opportunity to image small-scale structure in the deep mantle. Seismograms of a Peru earthquake recorded by an array of broad-band seismometers in Tibet show strong coda waves following PKPCdiff . The coda waves are strongest for distances of 154 ◦ ‐157 ◦ at frequencies above 0.5 Hz. No such strong coda waves exist after PKPDF and PKPAB, and an empirical source time function of the earthquake is likewise simple. This implies that the coda waves are being created by anomalous structures deep within the Earth. Using slant stack analysis we find that the ray parameter of the PKPCdiff coda waves is similar to that of the main PKPCdiff phase, implying that the coda waves are not simple precursors to the minimax PKPAB phase. Combined modelling of the differential traveltimes, differential slownesses (PKPDF − PKPCdiff ), and envelopes of the coda suggests that the waves are created by strong heterogeneity at the source side of the lowermost mantle that scatters incident P energy into post-critical reflections from the inner core boundary (P.PKPCD). Although the precise geometry is unconstrained, if we use single scattering theory the data are consistent with a region of at least 15 per cent P-wave velocity reduction. The most likely cause for such a strong velocity anomaly is the presence of partial melt. The geographical location of the anomalous region, beneath the Amazon River in South America, roughly corresponds with the expected base of a newly discovered plume.",
"corpus_id": 1823360
} | {
"title": "Ultralow-velocity zone geometries resolved by multidimensional waveform modelling",
"abstract": "Ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZs) are thin patches of material with strongly reduced seismic wave speeds situated on top of the core-mantle boundary (CMB). A common phase used to detect ULVZs is SPdKS (SKPdS), an SKS wave with a short diffracted P leg along the CMB. Most previous efforts have examined ULVZ properties using 1D waveform modeling approaches. We present waveform modeling results using the 2.5D finite difference algorithm PSVaxi allowing us better insight into ULVZ structure and location. We characterize ULVZ waveforms based on ULVZ elastic properties, shape, and position along the SPdKS raypath. In particular, we vary the ULVZ location (e.g. source or receiver side), ULVZ topographical profiles (e.g. boxcar, trapezoidal, or Gaussian) and ULVZ lateral scale along great circle path (2.5o, 5o, 10o). We observe several waveform effects absent in 1D ULVZ models and show evidence for waveform effects allowing the differentiation between source and receiver side ULVZs. Early inception of the SPdKS/SKPdS phase is difficult to detect for receiver-side ULVZs with maximum shifts in SKPdS initiation of ∼3o in epicentral distance, whereas source-side ULVZs produce maximum shifts of SPdKS initiation of ∼5o, allowing clear separation of source- versus receiver-side structure. We present a case study using data from up to 300 broadband stations in Turkey recorded between 2005 and 2010. We observe a previously undetected ULVZ in the southern Atlantic Ocean region centered near 45o S, 12.5oW, with a lateral scale of ∼3°, VP reduction of 10%, VS reduction of 30%, and density increase of 10% relative to PREM.",
"corpus_id": 130341375
} | {
"title": "Compositional heterogeneity in the bottom 1000 kilometers of Earth's mantle: toward a hybrid convection model",
"abstract": "Tomographic imaging indicates that slabs of subducted lithosphere can sink deep into Earth's lower mantle. The view that convective flow is stratified at 660-kilometer depth and preserves a relatively pristine lower mantle is therefore not tenable. However, a range of geophysical evidence indicates that compositionally distinct, hence convectively isolated, mantle domains may exist in the bottom 1000 kilometers of the mantle. Survival of these domains, which are perhaps related to local iron enrichment and silicate-to-oxide transformations, implies that mantle convection is more complex than envisaged by conventional end-member flow models.",
"corpus_id": 1255387,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "End-of-life care in a cardiology department: have we improved?",
"abstract": "Background End-of-life care is not usually a priority in cardiology departments. We sought to evaluate the changes in end-of-life care after the introduction of a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order protocol. Methods & Results Retrospective analysis of all deaths in a cardiology department in two periods, before and after the introduction of the protocol. Comparison of demographic characteristics, use of DNR orders, and end-of-life care issues between both periods, according to the presence in the second period of the new DNR sheet (Group A), a conventional DNR order (Group B) or the absence of any DNR order (Group C). The number of deaths was similar in both periods (n = 198 vs. n = 197). The rate of patients dying with a DNR order increased significantly (57.1% vs. 68.5%; P = 0.02). Only 4% of patients in both periods were aware of the decision taken about cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Patients in Group A received the DNR order one day earlier, and 24.5% received it within the first 24 h of admission (vs. 2.6% in the first period; P < 0.001). All patients in Group A with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) had shock therapies deactivated (vs. 25.0% in the first period; P = 0.02). Conclusions The introduction of a DNR order protocol may improve end-of-life care in cardiac patients by increasing the use and shortening the time of registration of DNR orders. It may also contribute to increase ICD deactivation in patients with these orders in place. However, the introduction of the sheet in late stages of the disease failed to improve patient participation.",
"corpus_id": 1002267
} | {
"title": "An overview of end-of-life issues in a cardiology department. Is the mode of death worse in the cardiac intensive care unit?",
"abstract": "Cardiovascular (CV) diseases are the most common causes of death and causes frequent hospital admissions. The increase in life expectancy and the appearance of new treatments, is changing in the clinical profile of CV disease, with a rise in chronic processes and concomitant comorbidities. These changes are probably reflected in the current profile of patients admitted to cardiology departments, and in their causes of mortality. The coronary care units emerged at the end of the 1960s, with the aim of improving the care provided to patients with acute myocardial infarction. With the generalization of these units, there has been an important evolution and a great diversification of patients and diagnoses of admission. The causes of mortality in these units, as well as the treatment administered, invasive procedures or palliative interventions could differ from patients who are admitted to the conventional hospitalization ward. Most of the studies concerning the mode of death in cardiology departments are old, previous to reperfusion era or do not address current important issues, such as end-of-life decisions regarding therapeutic support. Our main objective was to characterize the causes of death, the therapeutic support, and decisions on life-sustaining therapies at the end-of-life. We also aimed to determine the independent predictors associated with a higher likelihood of receiving comfort measures or a palliative intervention at the end-of-life.",
"corpus_id": 196612970
} | {
"title": "Living with Severe Chronic Heart Failure in Palliative Advanced Home Care",
"abstract": "Background: Living with severe chronic heart failure (CHF) in palliative care has been little studied. Aim: The aim of this study is to illuminate meaning of living with severe CHF in palliative advanced home care through patients' narratives. Methods: Narrative interviews were conducted with 4 patients, tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A phenomenological—hermeneutic method was used to interpret the text. Results: Meaning of living with severe CHF in palliative advanced home care emerged as ‘knocking on death's door’ although surviving. The course of the illness forces one to live a ‘roller coaster life,’ with an ongoing oscillation between ups and downs. Making it through the downs breeds a kind of confidence in one's ability to survive and the will to live is strong. Being offered a safety belt in the ‘roller coaster’ by the palliative advanced home care team evokes feelings of security. Conclusions: Meaning of living with severe CHF in palliative advanced home care is on one hand, being aware of one's imminent death, on the other hand, making it through the downs i.e. surviving life-threatening conditions, breed confidence in also surviving the current down. Being constructively dependent on palliative advanced home care facilitates everyday life at home.",
"corpus_id": 20215113,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Application of Adaptive Controllers for the Temperature Control of a Semi-Batch Reactor",
"abstract": "This paper investigates experimentally the application of several adaptive control algorithms for the control of a semi-batch chemical reactor. These algorithms combine parameter estimation algorithms and conventional control design methods to update the coefficients of the control algorithm. To make practical use of these control strategies, simple computational procedures are presented. The control objective is to keep the reactor temperature within safe operating specifications by manipulating the electrical heating power. Experimental results demonstrate that this class of adaptive controllers works well in the presence of large time delay, hard constraints and disturbances.",
"corpus_id": 99642
} | {
"title": "Multimodel reference model control: an experimental validation on a chemical reactor",
"abstract": "The temperature control in chemical reactors has been shown to be of fundamental importance from product quality and process reproducibility points of view. This paper presents an experimental evaluation of multimodel approach involving a batch chemical reactor pilot. Two design features are worth to be mentioned. Firstly, an appropriate system identification approach is used to elaborate a family of control models describing the input-output behaviour of the reactor over its full operating range. Secondly, the control design is performed using a suitable fusion of robust model reference controllers. The underlying model reference control is particularly motivated by the required tracking performances.",
"corpus_id": 41388685
} | {
"title": "Functionalized carbon nanotubes mixed matrix membranes of polymers of intrinsic microporosity for gas separation",
"abstract": "The present work reports on the gas transport behavior of mixed matrix membranes (MMM) which were prepared from multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and dispersed within polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIM-1) matrix. The MWCNTs were chemically functionalized with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) for a better dispersion in the polymer matrix. MMM-incorporating functionalized MWCNTs (f-MWCNTs) were fabricated by dip-coating method using microporous polyacrylonitrile membrane as a support and were characterized for gas separation performance. Gas permeation measurements show that MMM incorporated with pristine or functionalized MWCNTs exhibited improved gas separation performance compared to pure PIM-1. The f-MWCNTs MMM show better performance in terms of permeance and selectivity in comparison to pristine MWCNTs. The gas permeances of the derived MMM are increased to approximately 50% without sacrificing the selectivity at 2 wt.% of f-MWCNTs' loading. The PEG groups on the MWCNTs have strong interaction with CO2 which increases the solubility of polar gas and limit the solubility of nonpolar gas, which is advantageous for CO2/N2 selectivity. The addition of f-MWCNTs inside the polymer matrix also improved the long-term gas transport stability of MMM in comparison with PIM-1. The high permeance, selectivity, and long term stability of the fabricated MMM suggest that the reported approach can be utilized in practical gas separation technology.",
"corpus_id": 2153607,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Clinical Applications of Quantitative Computed Tomography in Chronic Lung Disease",
"abstract": "Improved understanding of the pathophysiology of chronic lung disease at a molecular and cellular level has led to the concept of targeted pharmacotherapy for the modification of disease progression. The limitations of conventional physiological measures of disease have prompted the development of alternative methods for determining outcome in therapeutic trials. Technological improvements in computed tomography, coupled with the development of software for the automated calculation of densitometric parameters have resulted in more specific and sensitive measures of disease than traditional methods. Such techniques have been applied principally to the assessment of changes in lung parenchyma in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and, in particular, in patients with α1-antitrypsin deficiency where they have been used as an outcome measure in a therapeutic trial of α1-antitrypsin augmentation. Measurement of airway dimensions has proved more problematic and most studies have, until recently, been limited to anthropomorphic phantoms or ex-vivo specimens.This paper reviews the development of quantitative computed tomography and explores its potential role as an outcome measure in trials of disease-modifying therapy.",
"corpus_id": 501484
} | {
"title": "CT measurements of lung density in life can quantitate distal airspace enlargement--an essential defining feature of human emphysema.",
"abstract": "We used a computerized microscopic image analysis system to directly measure the surface area of distal air spaces in methacrylate-embedded blocks randomly selected from inflation-fixed lobes that were resected from 45 patients as treatment of their peripheral lung tumors. In 28 of these patients, a preoperative computer tomography (CT) scan, at 6 and 10 cm below the sternal notch, was used to generate frequency histograms of CT numbers (measured as EMI units), a measure of lung density, in pixels from the lung or lobe that was subsequently resected. A similar CT number histogram was also derived from the lateral two fifths of the area of lobe/lung that was to be resected. The EMI unit that defined the lowest fifth percentile of this latter histogram correlated (n = 28, r = -0.77, p less than 0.001) with the mean value of the surface area of the walls of distal airspaces per unit lung volume (AWUV) in the five 1 mm x 1 mm microscopic fields with the lowest AWUV values, out of the 20 to 35 such fields examined in each patient. In the 34 of the 45 patients in whom we also measured volume-corrected diffusing capacity (DLCO/VA), this also correlated (n = 34, r = 0.84, p less than 0.001) with this value of AWUV, which measures the surface area of airspaces distal to the terminal bronchioles--reflecting an increase in airspace size, a defining characteristic of emphysema. However, a low DLCO/VA is nonspecific, whereas an abnormally low regional lung density is more likely to be specific for emphysema. In addition, highlighting those pixels of the CT display with low CT numbers (i.e., EMI units -500 [air] to -450, where zero = water) can locate areas of macroscopic emphysema, as shown by subsequent pathologic examination. Thus the quantitative CT scan can diagnose, quantitate, and locate mild to moderate emphysema, in humans, in life, noninvasively.",
"corpus_id": 22376475
} | {
"title": "Left ventricular assist device outcomes based on flow configuration and pre-operative left ventricular dimension: An Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support Analysis.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nAxial configuration (AC) and centrifugal configuration (CC) left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) have different flow characteristics, and whether the interaction between device flow configuration and the pre-operative left ventricular internal diastolic diameter (LVIDD) mediates adverse events after LVAD implantation is unknown.\n\n\nMETHODS\nWe queried 9,424 continuous-flow LVAD recipients who received LVADs from April 2008 to June of 2015 in the Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support (INTERMACS). The pre-operative LVIDD * flow configuration interaction term was tested in multivariable models to determine its relationship to adverse events.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe pre-operative LVIDD * flow configuration interaction was a significant predictor of device thrombosis. As the LVIDD increased, the risk of AC device thrombosis increased compared with CC devices (p = 0.0099). At 7.0 cm, the hazard ratio (HR) for AC device thrombosis compared with the CC device was 1.61 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.17-2.22; p = 0.004) and continued to rise as the LVIDD increased. The LVIDD * flow configuration interaction did not predict stroke, gastrointestinal bleeding, or patient survival. In multivariable models, the hazard of stroke was higher with the CC device regardless of the LVIDD (HR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.64-2.36; p < 0.0001). Adjusted analyses showed LVAD implantation into a larger left ventricle was associated with a lower risk of death (HR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.85-0.95; p = 0.0004) per centimeter of LVIDD.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nOur study suggests that the pre-operative LVIDD, flow configuration, and interaction terms should be considered individually when choosing the appropriate LVAD to mitigate the rates of device thrombosis, stroke, and death.",
"corpus_id": 868232,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Hyperinsulinemia and the Aldosterone and Pressor Responses to Angiotensin II",
"abstract": "To determine whether hyperinsulinemia alters angiotensin II-medlated aldosterone secretion, the increase in plasma aldosterone after intravenous angiotensin II (5, 10, and 20 ng/kg/min for 15 minutes each) was measured before and after euglycemic hyperinsulinemia in seven chronically instrumented dogs. In a random sequence on 4 successive days, dogs received either 0, 2, 4, or 8 milllunits/kg/min insulin. Euglycemic hyperinsulinemia, at all insulin doses, resulted in a significantly greater (p < 0.01) change in the angiotensin U-stimulated increments of plasma aldosterone than was observed when angiotensin II was administered alone. However, there was no dose-dependence of insulin's effect on angiotensin H-stimulated aldosterone. The effect of weight gain on the angiotensin II response was also evaluated in five dogs. After weight gain, euglycemic hyperinsulinemia augmented angiotensin H-stimulated aldosterone to the same magnitude that was observed before weight gain. Possible mechanisms whereby insulin could increase angiotensin II-stimulated aldosterone production include: increased intracellular potassium, reduced plasma free fatty acids, and a direct action of insulin to induce increased adrenal steroidogenesis. In addition to altering the angiotensin II-aldosterone dose-response curve, hyperinsulinemia also increased the pressor action of angiotensin II. In contrast to the angiotensin II-aldosterone response, progressive hyperinsulinemia resulted in a progressive increase in the pressor response to angiotensin II. The increased pressor response is probably due to an increased activation of the sympathetic nervous system by insulin.",
"corpus_id": 908434
} | {
"title": "New Strategies for Volume Control in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus, a Narrative Review",
"abstract": "Sodium is reabsorbed all along the renal tubules. The positive impacts of sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2i), angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI) and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRA) on hard renal and/or cardiac endpoints calls for the role of diuretics in nephroprotection and cardioprotection in patients with diabetes mellitus to be reviewed. Here, we review: (a) the mechanisms of action of the available natriuretics; (b) the physiological adaptations to chronic loop diuretic usage that lead to increased sodium reabsorption in the proximal and distal convoluted tubules; (c) the physiology of sodium retention in patients with diabetes mellitus; and (d) the mechanisms of aldosterone breakthrough. We show the rationale for combined diuretics to target not only the loop of Henle, but also the proximal and distal convoluted tubules. Indeed, higher residual proteinuria in patients treated with renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) blockers portends poorer renal and cardiovascular outcomes. Diuretics are known to optimize the reduction of proteinuria, in addition to RAAS blockers, but may favor aldosterone breakthrough in the absence of MRA. The aim of our study is to support a combined diuretics strategy to improve the management of patients with diabetes mellitus and chronic kidney disease or heart failure.",
"corpus_id": 251186530
} | {
"title": "Low Plasma Renin Activity in Normotensive Patients with Diabetes Mellitus: Relationship to Neuropathy",
"abstract": "SUMMARY To determine the effect of diabetes mellitus on the renin-aldosterone system, independent of age, nephropathy, or hypertension, 16 nonnotensive diabetics with long-term disease (mean duration, 15 years) and no (14) or minimal (2) proteinuria, were compared to nine age-matched, normotensive controls. Plasma renin activity (PRA) measured supine and after 4 hours of quiet ambulation, both on an ad libitum diet and on Day 4 of a 10 mEq low sodium diet, was always lower in the diabetics (31%-56% of control values). After the combined stimulus of sodium depletion and ambulation, PRA was 2.2 ± 0.4 in the diabetics compared to 3.4 ± 0.2 ng/ml/hr in controls (p < 0.025).On the low sodium diet, PRA and the postural response of PRA correlated directly with the degree of autonomic dysfunction as quantitated by the velocity of esophageal peristalsis (r = 0.60, p < 0.05; r = 0.75, p < 0.005 respectively), suggesting that autonomic neuropathy was an important factor contributing to low PRA in these patients. No other parameters correlated with PRA. Plasma renin substrate (PRS) tended to be lower in diabetics (1053 ± 95 vs 1358 ± 132 ng AI/ml;p < 0.07) but not sufficiently so to account for the substantial difference in PRA. Furthermore, PRS did not correlate with PRA. Fasting blood sugar, while higher in diabetics (209 vs 96 rag/dl), and creatlnlne clearance, which was lower (112 ± 13 vs 78 ± 4 ml/min; p < 0.01), also did not correlate with PRA. Other factors, including serum creatlnlne, serum potassium, urinary aldosterone, blood pressure, and body weight, and the responses of these parameters to sodium depletion, were similar in diabetics and controls. These data Implicate visceral neuropathy as a major factor in the hyporeninemia of these diabetics.",
"corpus_id": 1162848,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "An incremental development of the Mondex system in Event-B",
"abstract": "A development of the Mondex system was undertaken using Event-B and its associated proof tools. An incremental approach was used whereby the refinement between the abstract specification of the system and its detailed design was verified through a series of refinements. The consequence of this incremental approach was that we achieved a very high degree of automatic proof. The essential features of our development are outlined. We also present some modelling and proof guidelines that we found helped us gain a deep understanding of the system and achieve the high degree of automatic proof.",
"corpus_id": 276398
} | {
"title": "Refinement, Decomposition and Instantiation of Discrete Models",
"abstract": "It is my belief that the people in charge of the development of large and complex computer systems must adopt a point of view shared by all mature engineering disciplines, namely that of using an artifact to reason about their future system during its construction. In these disciplines, people use blue-prints (in the wider sense of the term) which allows them to reason formally during the very construction process.",
"corpus_id": 14099548
} | {
"title": "Differentiated storage services",
"abstract": "We propose an I/O classification architecture to close the widening semantic gap between computer systems and storage systems. By classifying I/O, a computer system can request that different classes of data be handled with different storage system policies. Specifically, when a storage system is first initialized, we assign performance policies to predefined classes, such as the filesystem journal. Then, online, we include a classifier with each I/O command (e.g., SCSI), thereby allowing the storage system to enforce the associated policy for each I/O that it receives. Our immediate application is caching. We present filesystem prototypes and a database proof-of-concept that classify all disk I/O --- with very little modification to the filesystem, database, and operating system. We associate caching policies with various classes (e.g., large files shall be evicted before metadata and small files), and we show that end-to-end file system performance can be improved by over a factor of two, relative to conventional caches like LRU. And caching is simply one of many possible applications. As part of our ongoing work, we are exploring other classes, policies and storage system mechanisms that can be used to improve end-to-end performance, reliability and security.",
"corpus_id": 2758706,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Rates of Ischemic Stroke During Warfarin Treatment for Atrial Fibrillation",
"abstract": "Background and Purpose— Recent evidence suggests that there may be an increased risk of ischemic stroke immediately after warfarin initiation. We examined the rate of ischemic stroke among patients with atrial fibrillation newly started on warfarin therapy. Methods— We conducted a population-based cohort study among Ontario residents aged ≥66 years with atrial fibrillation who received warfarin between April 1, 1997, and March 31, 2010. Each patient was followed up for ⩽5 years in 30-day intervals. For each interval, we determined the rate of ischemic stroke. Results— After 5 years, the cumulative incidence of ischemic stroke among new users of warfarin (n=148 446) was 4.0% (n=6006). The risk was highest during the first 30 days after initiation (6.0% per person-year; 95% confidence interval, 5.5%–6.4%) compared with the remainder of follow-up (1.6% per person-year; 95% confidence interval, 1.5%–1.6%), and increased with higher baseline CHADS2 (congestive heart failure, hypertension, age ≥75 years, diabetes, previous stroke) scores. Less frequent monitoring may have contributed. Conclusions— In a large cohort of older patients with atrial fibrillation, we observed the highest rate of ischemic stroke in the first 30 days after warfarin initiation. Although causation cannot be established given the observational nature of this study, our findings highlight the need for future research in this population.",
"corpus_id": 318784
} | {
"title": "Acidente vascular cerebral isquémico em doentes previamente anticoagulados por fibrilhação auricular não valvular: por que acontece?",
"abstract": "Resumo Introducao Os anticoagulantes orais demonstraram ser altamente eficazes na prevencao do acidente vascular cerebral (AVC) associado a fibrilhacao auricular (FA). A ocorrencia de AVC apesar da hipocoagulacao oral nao e expectavel, existindo escassa informacao sobre os mecanismos responsaveis pela sua ocorrencia. O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar possiveis mecanismos para a ocorrencia de AVC isquemico, como a ma adesao a terapeutica e a nao adequacao da dosagem dos anticoagulantes em doentes cronicamente hipocoagulados por FA. Metodos Estudo prospetivo observacional, de 60 doentes consecutivos com FA nao valvular, cronicamente medicados com anticoagulante oral, internados por AVC isquemico. Avaliacao da adesao terapeutica atraves das escalas Brief Medication Questionnaire (BMQ) e Medicao da Adesao ao Tratamento (MAT). Avaliacao das caracteristicas dos doentes, etiologia do AVC e adequacao da dosagem do anticoagulante. Resultados A idade media era de 78,6 ± 8,0 anos, com 51,7% dos doentes do sexo masculino. Globalmente, a proporcao de doentes com boa adesao terapeutica aos anticoagulantes foi de 63,3%. Os doentes aderentes eram mais frequentemente analfabetos (26,3% versus 4,5%, p = 0,012). A proporcao de doentes sob antivitaminicos K (AVK) com boa adesao terapeutica era significativamente superior a dos doentes sob anticoagulantes orais nao antivitaminicos K (NOAC) (respetivamente, 83,3% versus 54,8%, p = 0,035 para BMQ). No entanto, 91,7% dos doentes sob AVK apresentavam INR Conclusoes Na maioria dos doentes, a ocorrencia de AVC apesar da hipocoagulacao parece ser explicada por subdosagem, ma adesao terapeutica ou etiologia nao cardioembolica e nao por ineficacia dos anticoagulantes.",
"corpus_id": 119091710
} | {
"title": "Care and Outcomes of Patients Newly Hospitalized for Heart Failure in the Community Treated by Cardiologists Compared With Other Specialists",
"abstract": "Background—It is not known whether subspecialty care by cardiologists improves outcomes in heart failure patients from the community over care by other physicians. Methods and Results—Using administrative data, we monitored 38 702 consecutive patients with first-time hospitalization for heart failure in Ontario, Canada, between April 1994 and March 1996 and examined differences in processes of care and clinical outcomes between patients attended by physicians of different disciplines. We found that patients attended by cardiologists had lower 1-year risk-adjusted mortality than those attended by general internists, family practitioners, and other physicians (28.5% versus 31.7%, 34.9%, and 35.9%, respectively; all pairwise comparisons, P <0.001). The 1-year risk-adjusted composite outcome of death and readmission for heart failure was also lower for the cardiologists compared with family practitioners and other physicians but not general internists (54.7% versus 58.1%, 58.3%, and 55.4%; P <0.001, P <0.001, and P =0.39, respectively). Multivariable hierarchical modeling demonstrated a significant physician-level effect for both outcomes in favor of the cardiologists, particularly against non-general internists. Cardiologist care was associated with higher adjusted rates of invasive interventions and postdischarge prescriptions of heart failure medications. Conclusions—In this population-based cohort, heart failure patients attended by cardiologists in hospital had lower risk of death as well as the composite risk of death or readmission than patients attended by noncardiologists. These data raise the need to identify specialty-driven differences in processes of care for heart failure patients, which may explain the observed disparity in clinical outcomes that presently favor cardiologist care.",
"corpus_id": 13127997,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "The Worth of a Possum: Valuing Species with the Contingent Valuation Method",
"abstract": "The focus of this paper is on methods of assessing the value peopleplace on the conservation of species for use in policy making. Of principalinterest is the relatively new methodology of contingent valuation, whichis a method for asking people directly about their preferences. The paperpresents an application of the contingent valuation method to theconservation of an endangered species in the State of Victoria, Australia.The results emphasise the importance of careful survey design,implementation and analysis as well as the precise definition of theenvironmental good being valued. Consequently, the contingent valuationmethod does provide information relevant to decision making processesbased on monetary economic considerations. Thus, in orthodox economicterms it makes sense to conserve species – but there are other moral andethical grounds for conserving species as well.",
"corpus_id": 153001536
} | {
"title": "Toward Total Economic Valuation of Great Lakes Fishery Resources",
"abstract": "Abstract Research dealing with the economic values of Great Lakes fish has focused on sport and commercial exploitation (consumptive use values). In this paper, we ask what other types of monetary values might be associated with Great Lakes fishery resources and examine how these other types of values (indirect use values and intrinsic values) relate to values derived from exploitation. We estimate a total value of $12,000,000 per year to Wisconsin taxpayers for preservation of striped shiners Notropis chrysocephalus, a Wisconsin endangered species that is resident in a tributary of Lake Michigan. For comparison, we estimate a total value of $28,000,000 per year for preservation of bald eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus, also endangered in Wiconsin. In neither case was consumptive use a determinant of value. We also discuss the validity of the technique used to estimate these values. We conclude that intrinsic values for Great Lakes fish may be substantial. Future research should attempt to measure total va...",
"corpus_id": 85321200
} | {
"title": "Pattern-Based Expectations: International Experimental Evidence and Applications in Financial Economics",
"abstract": "Abstract We study how subjects extrapolate simple patterns in financial time series in order to develop a descriptive model of actual agent behavior. The laboratory experiment for this analysis was conducted in Germany and Japan. Statistical analyses indicate considerable similarity in expectations formation across cultures and document that agents' expectations are at variance with the notion of standard trend extrapolation. The paper then proposes a method for computing expectations for any economic time series based on the experimental data. Such pattern-based expectations are shown to explain stock prices and the dynamics of the forward discount on the foreign exchange market.",
"corpus_id": 16272572,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "A constructive Galois connection between closure and interior",
"abstract": "Abstract We construct a Galois connection between closure and interior operators on a given set. All arguments are intuitionistically valid. Our construction is an intuitionistic version of the classical correspondence between closure and interior operators via complement.",
"corpus_id": 1290178
} | {
"title": "The overlap algebra of regular opens",
"abstract": "Abstract Overlap algebras are complete lattices enriched with an extra primitive relation, called “overlap”. The new notion of overlap relation satisfies a set of axioms intended to capture, in a positive way, the properties which hold for two elements with non-zero infimum. For each set, its powerset is an example of overlap algebra where two subsets overlap each other when their intersection is inhabited. Moreover, atomic overlap algebras are naturally isomorphic to the powerset of the set of their atoms. Overlap algebras can be seen as particular open (or overt) locales and, from a classical point of view, they essentially coincide with complete Boolean algebras. Contrary to the latter, overlap algebras offer a negation-free framework suitable, among other things, for the development of point-free topology. A lot of topology can be done “inside” the language of overlap algebra. In particular, we prove that the collection of all regular open subsets of a topological space is an example of overlap algebra which, under natural hypotheses, is atomless. Since they are a constructive counterpart to complete Boolean algebras and, at the same time, they have a more powerful axiomatization than Heyting algebras, overlap algebras are expected to turn out useful both in constructive mathematics and for applications in computer science.",
"corpus_id": 119657329
} | {
"title": "Infantile autism reviewed: a decade of research.",
"abstract": "Progress in the study of infantile autism over the past 10 years was reviewed in terms of classification and diagnosis, relation to other disorders, demographics, parental characteristics, genetics, intelligence, language, perceptual processes, behavioral characteristics, neurobiological, biochemical and pharmacological aspects, behavioral/educational treatment methodologies, prognosis, and theoretical considerations. This decade's research led to the now generally accepted position that infantile autism is a type of developmental disorder accompanied by severe and, to a large extent, permanent intellectual/behavioral deficits. However, its relationship to other forms of developmental disorders and to mental retardation remains to be delineated. Perceptual/cognitive/language defects appear central to the autistic syndrome, but the specific underlying mechanisms are unknown. Most studies indicate that autistic children have more signs of brain dysfunction than do normal children and about the same number as mentally retarded children. The overwhelming evidence suggests that te treatment of choice for maximal benefit to autistic children is a systematic, intrusive behavioral/educational approach. Yet, in spite of significant gains in almost all children treated, the typical prognostic picture is poor in terms of achieving self-supportive adulthood. The parents of autistic children have been found to be essentially similar to parents of children with organic brain disorders, and manifest no psychopathology which conceivably could induce the disorder. The vast majority of theoretical articles appearing in the 1970s proposed some from of neurobiological defect as the causative factor in autism. One of the major goals for future research is to undertake more extensive comparative studies on nonautistic brain dysfunctional children and autistic children that could yield cleared differential behavioral profiles and testable neurobiological hypotheses.",
"corpus_id": 17405135,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Novel Hardware Implementation of Adaptive Median Filters",
"abstract": "A new FPGA implementation for adaptive median filters is proposed. Adaptive median filters exhibit better filtering properties than standard median filters; however, their implementation cost is higher. Proposed architecture was optimized for throughput allowing 300 M pixels to be filtered per second. The best performance/cost ratio exhibits the adaptive median filter which utilizes filtering window 7x7 pixels and can suppress shot noise with intensity up to 60%. In addition to filtering, adaptive median filters can be also used as detectors of corrupted pixels (detection statistics).",
"corpus_id": 1580098
} | {
"title": "Hardware Implementation for Design of Modified Adaptive Median Filter for Image Processing",
"abstract": "Digital image processing is an ever elaborating and dynamic area with applications reaching out into our everyday life such as medicine, space exploration, surveillance, authentication, automated industry inspection and many more areas. Applications such as these involve different processes like image enhancement and object detection. Median filtering is a powerful instrument used in image processing. The traditional median filtering algorithm, without any modifications gives good results. There are many variations to the classical algorithm, aimed at reducing computational cost or to achieve additional properties. Median filters are used mainly to remove salt-and pepper noise. The filter logic is implemented on a novel reconfigurable fabric. In this paper look into a Efficient architecture for non-linear modified Adaptive median filter implementation is presented. Then Adaptive Median Filter solves the dual purpose of removing the impulse noise from the image and reducing distortion in the image and the classical adaptive median filter has some deficiencies: the filtered images remain the positive impulse noise in the black background and the negative impulse noise in the white background. To solve the above questions, a modified scheme is proposed. The practical results show the effectiveness of our improvements allowing real-time processing and a minimum use of resources.",
"corpus_id": 1723520
} | {
"title": "Stack filters",
"abstract": "The median and other rank-order operators possess two properties called the threshold decomposition and the stacking properties. The first is a limited superposition property which leads to a new architecture for these filters; the second is an ordering property which allows an efficient VLSI implementation of the threshold decomposition architecture. Motivated by the success of rank-order filters in a wide variety of applications and by the ease with which they can now be implemented, we consider in this paper a new class of filters called stack filters. They share the threshold decomposition and stacking properties of rank-order filters but are otherwise unconstrained. They are shown to form a very large class of easily implemented nonlinear filters which includes the rank-order operators as well as all compositions of morphological operators. The convergence properties of these filters are investigated using techniques similar to those used to determine root signal behavior of median filters. The results obtained include necessary conditions for a stack filter to preserve monotone regions or edges in signals. The output distribution for these filters is also found. All the stack filters of window width 3 are determined along with their convergence properties. Among these filters are found two which we have named asymmetric median filters. They share all the properties of median filters except that they remove impulses of one sign only; that is, one removes only positive going edges, the other removes only negative going edges, while the median filter removes impulses of both signs. This investigation of the properties of stack filters thus produces several new, useful, and easily implemented filters.",
"corpus_id": 37846995,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "A Positive Proof of the Littlewood-Richardson Rule using the Octahedron Recurrence",
"abstract": "We define the hive ring , which has a basis indexed by dominant weights for $GL_n({\\Bbb C})$, and structure constants given by counting hives [Knutson-Tao, \"The honeycomb model of $GL_n$ tensor products\"] (or equivalently honeycombs, or BZ patterns [Berenstein-Zelevinsky, \"Involutions on Gel$'$fand-Tsetlin schemes$\\dots$ \"]). We use the octahedron rule from [Robbins-Rumsey, \"Determinants$\\dots$\"] to prove bijectively that this \"ring\" is indeed associative. This, and the Pieri rule, give a self-contained proof that the hive ring is isomorphic as a ring-with-basis to the representation ring of $GL_n({\\Bbb C})$. In the honeycomb interpretation, the octahedron rule becomes \"scattering\" of the honeycombs. This recovers some of the \"crosses and wrenches\" diagrams from Speyer's very recent preprint [\"Perfect matchings$\\dots$\"], whose results we use to give a closed form for the associativity bijection.",
"corpus_id": 1953477
} | {
"title": "The honeycomb model of GL(n) tensor products I: proof of the saturation conjecture",
"abstract": "We introduce the honeycomb model of BZ polytopes, which calculate Littlewood-Richardson coefficients, the tensor product rule for GL(n). Our main result is the existence of a particularly well-behaved honeycomb with given boundary conditions (choice of triple of representations to be tensored together). This honeycomb is necessarily integral, which proves the \"saturation conjecture\", extending results of Klyachko to give a complete answer to which L-R coefficients are positive. This in turn has as a consequence Horn's conjecture from 1962 characterizing the spectrum of the sum of two Hermitian matrices.",
"corpus_id": 14074668
} | {
"title": "How to net a lot with little: small ε-nets for disks and halfspaces",
"abstract": "It is known that in general range spaces of VC-dimension <italic>d</italic> > 1 require <italic>ε</italic>-nets to be of size at least &OHgr;(<italic>d</italic>/<italic>ε</italic> log 1/<italic>ε</italic>). We investigate the question whether this general lower bound is valid for the special range spaces that typically arise in computational geometry. We show that disks and pseudo-disks in the plane as well as halfspaces in R<supscrpt>3</supscrpt> allow <italic>ε</italic>-nets of size only <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(1/<italic>ε</italic>), which is best possible up to a multiplicative constant. The analogous questions for higher-dimensional spaces remain open.",
"corpus_id": 14882332,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Cramer-Rao Lower Bounds for Angular Parameters Estimates from Incoherently Distributed Signals Generated by Noncircular Sources",
"abstract": "In this paper, we derive for the first time analytical expressions for the stochastic Cramér- Rao lower bound (CRLB or CRB) of the angular parameters (central DOAs and angular spreads) estimates from incoherently distributed (ID) signals generated by noncircular sources. The new CRBs of the angular parameters are compared to those obtained from circular ID signals. The CRB of the central DOAs, however, are compared to those obtained from both circular and noncircular point sources. It will be shown that the CRB of both the central DOAs and the angular spreads obtained assuming noncircular ID sources are lower than those obtained using circular ID sources. This illustrates the potential gain that the noncircularity characteristic of the sources provides for the estimation of the angular parameters, especially in presence of different sources' distributions and for high angular spreads. Finally, the CRBs derived assuming noncircular ID signals decrease as the noncircularity rate increases. Furthermore, this decrease is more prominent at low DOA separations where the CRBs are sensitive to the noncircularity phase separation.",
"corpus_id": 8468603
} | {
"title": "Estimation of directions of arrival of multiple scattered sources",
"abstract": "We consider the problem of estimating the directions of arrival (DOA) of multiple sources in the presence of local scattering. This problem is encountered in wireless communications due to the presence of scatterers in the vicinity of the mobile or when the signals propagate through a random inhomogeneous medium. Assuming a uniform linear array (ULA), we develop DOA estimation algorithms based on covariance matching applied to a reduced-size statistic obtained from the sample covariance matrix after redundancy averaging. Next, a computationally efficient estimator based on AR modelling of the coherence loss function is derived. A theoretical expression for the asymptotic covariance matrix of this estimator is derived. Finally, the corresponding Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) are derived. Despite its simplicity, the AR-based estimator is shown to possess performance that is nearly as good as that of the covariance matching method.",
"corpus_id": 35887027
} | {
"title": "Bearing estimation for a distributed source via the conventional beamformer",
"abstract": "This paper considers the performance of the conventional beamformer (BF) for estimating the bearing of a single, far-field, narrowband, spatially distributed source with an array of passive sensors. The BF offers significant computational advantage compared to the (asymptotically optimum) maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) which require searches over some multi-dimensional parameter space. However, the price to be paid for such a reduction in computational complexity is a degradation in performance compared to that of the MLEs. This paper studies the nature of this degradation for \"coherently\" and \"incoherently\" distributed sources as a function of key scenario parameters such as signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), mean angle, spatial spreading of the source, and number of sensors, both mathematically and by simulations.",
"corpus_id": 60465621,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Genetic epidemiology of multistage carcinogenesis.",
"abstract": "It is commonly believed that cancer is a multistage, polygenic disease. Even though conceptually appealing, the evidence supporting the multistage theory remains limited. Most known tumor suppresser genes are associated with monogenic dominant cancers following a two-hit pathway. We review results from a recent twin study on 90000 individuals that give support to the multistage theory. Statistically significant heritability estimates were shown for cancers of the colorectum (35%), breast (27%), and prostate (42%). These estimates are much higher than those obtained from family studies in which parents and offspring, or sibs are compared. The difference can be accounted for by the involvement of many genes. A polygenic cancer would show small effects in family studies but large effects in twin studies. We present calculations on the decrease in familial risks when the number of genes involved increases or when the penetrance decreases. We test the apparent number of stages involved in the main cancers from the Swedish Family-Cancer Database. The logarithms of the slopes suggest large differences in the apparent numbers of mutations involved in different cancers. The number of mutations required appears to be less in familial breast cancer compared to sporadic breast cancer. Study designs for gene identification should be revised to accommodate polygenic cancers.",
"corpus_id": 2924312
} | {
"title": "Second primary cancer after in situ and invasive cervical cancer.",
"abstract": "The Swedish Family-Cancer Database was used to analyze 9,426 second primary cancers in 117,830 subjects diagnosed with in situ and 17,556 subjects with invasive cervical cancer from the years 1958-1996. We calculated standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) from age- and period-specific rates for all women. SIRs were elevated after both in situ and invasive cervical cancer for cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract, anus, pancreas, lung, other female genitals, and urinary bladder. Anus and other female genitals, known targets of human papilloma virus, showed SIRs exceeding 3.0 and 10 or more within the year of diagnosis of cervical cancer, probably implying the effects of diagnostic intensity or transient faltering of host immunosurveillance. Among the remaining sites, smoking appeared to be the major cause, but for urinary bladder cancer it only explained one-half of the excess; human papilloma virus infection, possibly through immunosuppression, could account for the remaining excess. Although urinary bladder cancer showed a relatively small SIR compared with anal cancer, because it is more common, the number of attributable cases was about equal for the two sites. Invasive cervical cancer showed an SIR of 2.3 after in situ cancer. On follow-up, we also observed increased SIRs at many radiosensitive sites 10 or more years after diagnosis of invasive cervical cancer.",
"corpus_id": 6326702
} | {
"title": "In vivo 31P-NMR in human muscle: transient patterns with exercise.",
"abstract": "Evaluation of dynamic changes in pH and concentrations of adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP), phosphocreatine (PCr), and inorganic phosphate (Pi) during the transition from rest to steady-state exercise in the human has been methodologically limited. Previous work has relied on muscle biopsy of exercising subjects at different times in different exercise bouts. Chemical evaluation of metabolites has been hampered by continuing change in metabolic concentration during the biopsy procedure. Recently, Fourier-transformed 31P nuclear magnetic resonance (31P-NMR), employing surface coils, has made evaluation of phosphorus metabolites possible by noninvasive atraumatic means in human muscle. Relative concentrations of PCr, Pi, and ATP, together with pH, have been obtained with 31P-NMR from the flexor digitorum superficialis muscle on two occasions in four adult men during the transition from rest to exercise. [PCr] rapidly fell and was mirrored by a rise in [Pi]. The former temporarily exceeded the latter with the discrepancy apparently being absorbed by a transient rise in [ATP], which was itself mirrored by alteration in [H+].",
"corpus_id": 25536863,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-Commerce: An Integrative Typology",
"abstract": "Evidence suggests that consumers often hesitate to transact with Web-based vendors because of uncertainty about vendor behavior or the perceived risk of having personal information stolen by hackers. Trust plays a central role in helping consumers overcome perceptions of risk and insecurity. Trust makes consumers comfortable sharing personal information, making purchases, and acting on Web vendor advice--behaviors essential to widespread adoption of e-commerce. Therefore, trust is critical to both researchers and practitioners. Prior research on e-commerce trust has used diverse, incomplete, and inconsistent definitions of trust, making it difficult to compare results across studies. This paper contributes by proposing and validating measures for a multidisciplinary, multidimensional model of trust in e-commerce. The model includes four high-level constructs--disposition to trust, institution-based trust, trusting beliefs, and trusting intentions--which are further delineated into 16 measurable, literature-grounded subconstructs. The psychometric properties of the measures are demonstrated through use of a hypothetical, legal advice Web site. The results show that trust is indeed a multidimensional concept. Proposed relationships among the trust constructs are tested (for internal nomological validity), as are relationships between the trust constructs and three other e-commerce constructs (for external nomological validity)--Web experience, personal innovativeness, and Web site quality. Suggestions for future research as well as implications for practice are discussed.",
"corpus_id": 17405787
} | {
"title": "Explaining and Predicting the Impact of Branding Alliances and Web Site Quality on Initial Consumer Trust of E-Commerce Web Sites",
"abstract": "Trust is a crucial factor in e-commerce. However, consumers are less likely to trust unknown Web sites. This study explores how less-familiar e-commerce Web sites can use branding alliances and Web site quality to increase the likelihood of initial consumer trust. We use the associative network model of memory to explain brand knowledge and to show how the mere exposure effect can be leveraged to improve a Web site's brand image. We also extend information integration theory to explain how branding alliances are able to increase initial trust and transfer positive effects to Web sites. Testing of our model shows that the most important constructs for increasing initial trust in our experimental context are branding and Web site quality. Finally, we discuss future research ideas, limitations, implications, and ideas for practitioners.",
"corpus_id": 1751107
} | {
"title": "Specifying IT Security Awareness",
"abstract": "IT users are faced with various threats on a daily basis. Unfortunately, not all possible dangers are known to them, such that the users fall an easy victim to attacks. For this reason, IT specialists demand for higher IT security awareness. Although researchers and practitioners exercise ongoing efforts in this area, their work often lacks a concise definition of the term \"security awareness\". Since there is no agreement on the term, different (and sometimes not compatible) ways of raising and measuring security awareness exist. This paper is an effort to give an overview of this phenomenon and to show that awareness in IT security is not standardized yet.",
"corpus_id": 6452120,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "Experimental Analysis of Strategic Product Differentiation",
"abstract": "Theoretical models of multidimensional product differentiation predict that in duopoly firms differentiate maximally along one dimension and minimally along the other dimensions. We experimentally reproduce a market in which firms can differentiate their products along two horizontal dimensions. The main result is that subjects do not differentiate their products and locate near the center consumersi distribution.",
"corpus_id": 153260044
} | {
"title": "The Max-Min Principle of Product Differentiation: An Experimental Analysis",
"abstract": "Theoretical models of multidimensional product dierentiation predict that in duopoly rms dierentiate maximally along one dimension and minimally along the other dimensions. We experimentally reproduce a market in which rms can dierentiate their",
"corpus_id": 15082966
} | {
"title": "Stackelberg price leadership in spatial competition",
"abstract": "Abstract This paper examines Stackelberg price leadership in a spatially competitive model with infinitely many stores on an infinite line. A Stackelberg price leader charges significantly more than the pure Nash equilibrium price, induces its neighbors to charge somewhat more than the pure Nash equilibrium price, and increases its profits. Under Nash equilibrium, collusion of two stores makes a difference to prices only if the colluding stores are nearest neighbors. Under Stackelberg price leadership, collusion makes a difference to prices even if the stores are not nearest neighbors.",
"corpus_id": 155000483,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Frelimo landslide in tainted election in Mozambique",
"abstract": "Mozambique's president Armando Guebuza was re-elected president on 28 October 2009 with a record vote of nearly 3 million. But the election was tainted by misconduct, unfairness, and secrecy that brought sharp criticism from domestic and international observers, and which seemed pointless and unnecessary.",
"corpus_id": 154925458
} | {
"title": "Post-War Mozambique: Designing Peace, (Re)Distributing Power (?)",
"abstract": "This chapter covers the post-1992 Peace Accords period and discusses how the institutional changes brought up in the context of peacebuilding have altered the opportunities for local empowerment to occur. More generally, it contests the ‘success story’ label attributed to Mozambique, questioning, instead, what has changed in terms of power redistribution after the Peace Accords. The institutional reforms that took place consolidated a state that is still very distant from the masses. The detailed discussion presented regarding development and democracy reforms in the country further illustrated how formal changes do not necessarily entail more substantial changes at the level of the everyday life. This chapter concludes with statements from everyday people regarding what has changed for them with the advent of peace.",
"corpus_id": 132764313
} | {
"title": "Comparative studies on the digestive physiology of sheep fed on semi-purified or roughage-concentrate diets",
"abstract": "1. The food and water intake and diurnal variations in the rumen contents were measured in sheep with rumen fistulas receiving semi-purified or pelleted roughage-concentrate diets. The rates of secretion and composition of parotid saliva of the sheep on both diets and of sheep fed on hay were determined. The sheep had continuous access to the diet. 2. The mean daily intakes of the semi-purified and roughage-concentrate diets were 920 and 2234 g respectively. The corresponding water intakes were 2.50 and 6.05 1.3. Noneof the sheep ruminated on either diet. The weight of total contents and of dry matter in the rumen was highest in animals on the roughage-concentrate diet, and marked diurnal fluctuations, which reflect the eating habits of these animals, were observed. The semi-purified diet appeared to have a very marked water-retaining capacity in the rumen. 4. The estimated daily total secretion of both parotid glands was 2.7, 5.4 and 11.5 1. in sheep fed on the semi-purified diet, roughage-concentrate and hay respectively. No appreciable differences were observed in the composition of parotid saliva between the three groups of sheep. In sheep receiving hay, saliva secretion was lower during eating than between periods of eating, during part of which time the sheep presumably ruminated. 5. It is concluded that the observed differences in parotid secretion reflected differences in the physical form of the diet.",
"corpus_id": 12501622,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Averaged Collapsed Variational Bayes Inference",
"abstract": "This paper presents the Averaged CVB (ACVB) inference and oers convergence-guaranteed and practically useful fast Collapsed Variational Bayes (CVB) inferences. CVB inferences yield more precise inferences of Bayesian probabilistic models than Variational Bayes (VB) inferences. However, their convergence aspect is fairly unknown and has not been scrutinized. To make CVB more useful, we study their convergence behaviors in a empirical and practical approach. We develop a convergence-guaranteed algorithm for any CVB-based inference called ACVB, which enables automatic convergence detection and frees non-expert practitioners from the difficult and costly manual monitoring of inference processes. In experiments, ACVB inferences are comparable to or better than those of existing inference methods and deterministic, fast, and provide easier convergence detection. These features are especially convenient for practitioners who want precise Bayesian inference with assured convergence.",
"corpus_id": 15092395
} | {
"title": "Bridging Text Visualization and Mining: A Task-Driven Survey",
"abstract": "Visual text analytics has recently emerged as one of the most prominent topics in both academic research and the commercial world. To provide an overview of the relevant techniques and analysis tasks, as well as the relationships between them, we comprehensively analyzed 263 visualization papers and 4,346 mining papers published between 1992-2017 in two fields: visualization and text mining. From the analysis, we derived around 300 concepts (visualization techniques, mining techniques, and analysis tasks) and built a taxonomy for each type of concept. The co-occurrence relationships between the concepts were also extracted. Our research can be used as a stepping-stone for other researchers to 1) understand a common set of concepts used in this research topic; 2) facilitate the exploration of the relationships between visualization techniques, mining techniques, and analysis tasks; 3) understand the current practice in developing visual text analytics tools; 4) seek potential research opportunities by narrowing the gulf between visualization and mining techniques based on the analysis tasks; and 5) analyze other interdisciplinary research areas in a similar way. We have also contributed a web-based visualization tool for analyzing and understanding research trends and opportunities in visual text analytics.",
"corpus_id": 51614209
} | {
"title": "Network Community Detection: A Review and Visual Survey",
"abstract": "Community structure is an important area of research. It has received a considerable attention from the scientific community. Despite its importance, one of the key problems in locating information about community detection is the diverse spread of related articles across various disciplines. To the best of our knowledge, there is no current comprehensive review of recent literature which uses a scientometric analysis using complex networks analysis covering all relevant articles from the Web of Science (WoS). Here we present a visual survey of key literature using CiteSpace. The idea is to identify emerging trends besides using network techniques to examine the evolution of the domain. Towards that end, we identify the most influential, central, as well as active nodes using scientometric analyses. We examine authors, key articles, cited references, core subject categories, key journals, institutions, as well as countries. The exploration of the scientometric literature of the domain reveals that Yong Wang is a pivot node with the highest centrality. Additionally, we have observed that Mark Newman is the most highly cited author in the network. We have also identified that the journal, \"Reviews of Modern Physics\" has the strongest citation burst. In terms of cited documents, an article by Andrea Lancichinetti has the highest centrality score. We have also discovered that the origin of the key publications in this domain is from the United States. Whereas Scotland has the strongest and longest citation burst. Additionally, we have found that the categories of \"Computer Science\" and \"Engineering\" lead other categories based on frequency and centrality respectively.",
"corpus_id": 5739566,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "Series damper actuator: a novel force/torque control actuator",
"abstract": "A novel force/torque control actuator called series damper actuator (SDA) is proposed, modeled and analyzed. Compared to conventional force/torque control schemes and series elastic actuator (SEA), SDA has good output force/torque fidelity, low output impedance and large force/torque range. Furthermore, varying damping coefficient endows the SDA with more advantages and makes the system more versatile. An experimental SDA system is developed, in which a magnetorheological (MR) fluid damper is employed as the series damper. The experimental results show that SDA system is an effective force/torque control actuator.",
"corpus_id": 1897415
} | {
"title": "Design and development of high-performance torque-controlled joints",
"abstract": "Dynamic decoupling, motion and force control of manipulators rely on the ability of the actuation system to provide accurate joint torques. However, this ability is considerably restricted by the nonlinearities and friction inherent in the actuator-transmission systems of most industrial robots. This paper is concerned with the development of high-performance torque controlled joints and focuses on two basic issues: sensor design and torque control. The first part of the paper describes a conceptually new type of torque sensor that uses contactless inductive transducers. The new sensor provides a substantial increase in accuracy over conventional strain gauge sensors, achieves higher mechanical robustness, and presents lower sensitivity to electrical noise. The second part of the paper presents an analysis of the effect that the manipulator's transmission and structural properties have on the joint torque controller design. Two manipulators with very different mechanical characteristics are used in this analysis: the PUMA 560 manipulator and Artisan, an eleven-degree-of-freedom manipulator currently under development at Stanford. The experimental results obtained with a prototype link of Artisan are presented and compared to those previously obtained with the PUMA. >",
"corpus_id": 6800948
} | {
"title": "Overview of Stemming Algorithms for Indian and Non-Indian Languages",
"abstract": "Stemming is a pre-processing step in Text Mining applications as well as a very common requirement of Natural Language processing functions. Stemming is the process for reducing inflected words to their stem. The main purpose of stemming is to reduce different grammatical forms / word forms of a word like its noun, adjective, verb, adverb etc. to its root form. Stemming is widely uses in Information Retrieval system and reduces the size of index files. We can say that the goal of stemming is to reduce inflectional forms and sometimes derivationally related forms of a word to a common base form. In this paper we have discussed different stemming algorithm for non-Indian and Indian language, methods of stemming, accuracy and errors.",
"corpus_id": 11583064,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Properties of Random Difference Graphs",
"abstract": "Generate a bipartite graph on a partitioned set of vertices by randomly assigning to each vertex $v$ some weight $w(v) \\in [0,1]$ and adding an edge between vertices $u$ and $v$ (in distinct parts) if and only if $w(v) + w(v) > 1$; the results of such processes are known as difference graphs . Random difference graphs of a given size can be produced either by uniformly random generation of weights or by choosing a graph uniformly at random from the set of all such graphs. We prove that these two methods give rise to the same distribution, and use this equivalence to find exact results for the likelihood of connectivity and Hamiltonicity. We also find the distribution of other properties, such as matching number and degeneracy.",
"corpus_id": 208645
} | {
"title": "Difference graphs",
"abstract": "Intersection and measured intersection graphs are quite common in the literature. In this paper we introduce the analogous concept of measured difference graphs: Given an arbitrary hypergraph H = {H1, ...,Hn}, let us associate to it a graph on vertex set [n] = {1, 2, ..., n} in which (i, j) is an edge iff the corresponding sets Hi and Hj are “sufficiently different”. More precisely, given an integer threshold k, we consider three definitions, according to which (i, j) is an edge iff (1) |Hi\\Hj |+ |Hj \\Hi| ≥ 2k, (2) max{|Hi \\Hj |, |Hj \\Hi|} ≥ k, and (3) min{|Hi \\Hj |, |Hj \\Hi|} ≥ k. It is not difficult to see that each of the above define hereditary graph classes, which are monotone with respect to k. We show that for every graph G there exists a large enough k such that G arises with any of the definitions above. We prove that with the first two definitions one may need k = Ω(log n) in any such realizations of certain graphs on n vertices. However, we do not know a graph G which could not be realized by the last definition with k = 2.",
"corpus_id": 6075558
} | {
"title": "Some remarks concerning Nambu mechanics",
"abstract": "The structure of Nambu-Poisson brackets is studied and we establish that any Nambu tensor is decomposable. We show that every Nambu-Poisson manifold admits a local foliation by canonical Nambu-Poisson manifolds. Finally, a cohomology for Nambu (Lie) algebras which is adapted to the study of formal deformations of Nambu structures is introduced.",
"corpus_id": 123376648,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "The effect of railway local irregularities on ground vibration",
"abstract": "The environmental effects of ground-borne vibrations generated due to localised railway defects is a growing concern in urban areas. Frequency domain modelling approaches are well suited for predicting vibration levels on standard railway lines due to track periodicity. However, when considering individual, non-periodic, localised defects (e.g. a rail joint), frequency domain modelling becomes challenging. Therefore in this study, a previously validated, time domain, three-dimensional ground vibration prediction model is modified to analyse such defects. A range of different local (discontinuous) rail and wheel irregularity are mathematically modelled, including: rail joints, switches, crossings and wheel flats. Each is investigated using a sensitivity analysis, where defect size and vehicle speed is varied. To quantify the effect on railroad ground-borne vibration levels, a variety of exposure–response relationships are analysed, including: peak particle velocity, maximum weighted time-averaged velocity and weighted decibel velocity. It is shown that local irregularities cause a significant increase in vibration in comparison to a smooth track, and that the vibrations can propagate to greater distances from the line. Furthermore, the results show that step-down joints generate the highest levels of vibration, whereas wheel flats generate much lower levels. It is also found that defect size influences vibration levels, and larger defects cause greater vibration. Lastly, it is shown that for different defect types, train speed effects are complex, and may cause either an increase or decrease in vibration levels.",
"corpus_id": 4111309
} | {
"title": "The growth of railway ground vibration problems - A review.",
"abstract": "Ground-borne noise and vibration from railway lines can cause human distress/annoyance, and also negatively affect real estate property values. Therefore this paper analyses a collection of technical ground-borne noise and vibration reports, detailing commercial vibration assessments undertaken at 1604 railway track sections, in 9 countries across the world. A wide range of rail projects are considered including light rail, tram lines, underground/tunnelled lines, freight, conventional rail and high speed rail. It documents the rise in ground-borne vibration problems and trends in the prediction industry, with the aim of informing the current research area. Firstly, the reports are analysed chronologically and it is found that railway vibration is a growing global concern, and as such, assessments have become more prevalent. International assessment metrics are benchmarked and it is found that velocity decibels (VdB), vibration dose value (VDV) and peak particle velocity (PPV) are the most commonly used methods of assessment. Furthermore, to predict vibration levels, the physical measurement of frequency transfer functions is preferential to numerical modelling. Results from the reports show that ground vibration limits are exceeded in 44% of assessments, and that ground-borne noise limits are exceeded in 31%. Moreover, mitigation measures were required on approximately 50% of projects, revealing that ground-borne noise and vibration is a widespread railroad engineering challenge. To solve these problems, the most commonly used abatement strategy is a modification of the railtrack structure (active mitigation), rather than the implementation of a more passive solution in the far-field.",
"corpus_id": 23702135
} | {
"title": "Fast Charging vs. Slow Charging: Pros and cons for the New Age of Electric Vehicles",
"abstract": "This paper presents the issues facing the future widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs) relative to battery charging infrastructure for both fast charging and slow charging. In particular, we discuss: • Charge scheme definitions: What is fast charging? What is slow charging? • Infrastructure requirements and grid impacts: The role of connectors, charger/vehicle communications, time-of-use electricity costs, and grid upgrades/synergies. • The trades between cycle life and charge schemes for the major competing lithium battery chemistries. Pack size versus vehicle cost and charge time. Energy density versus power density. The psychological factors of deploying EV infrastructure that includes both fast and slow charging.",
"corpus_id": 17495282,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "ATM breaks into heterochromatin.",
"abstract": "Heterochromatin is refractory to DNA transactions, including repair. In a recent issue of Molecular Cell, Goodarzi et al. (2008) reveal how the central transducing kinase of the DNA damage response relieves this natural barrier by increasing heterochromatic DNA accessibility.",
"corpus_id": 591401
} | {
"title": "A pathway of double-strand break rejoining dependent upon ATM, Artemis, and proteins locating to gamma-H2AX foci.",
"abstract": "The hereditary disorder ataxia telangiectasia (A-T) is associated with striking cellular radiosensitivity that cannot be attributed to the characterized cell cycle checkpoint defects. By epistasis analysis, we show that ataxia telangiectasia mutated protein (ATM) and Artemis, the protein defective in patients with RS-SCID, function in a common double-strand break (DSB) repair pathway that also requires H2AX, 53BP1, Nbs1, Mre11, and DNA-PK. We show that radiation-induced Artemis hyperphosphorylation is ATM dependent. The DSB repair process requires Artemis nuclease activity and rejoins approximately 10% of radiation-induced DSBs. Our findings are consistent with a model in which ATM is required for Artemis-dependent processing of double-stranded ends with damaged termini. We demonstrate that Artemis is a downstream component of the ATM signaling pathway required uniquely for the DSB repair function but dispensable for ATM-dependent cell cycle checkpoint arrest. The significant radiosensitivity of Artemis-deficient cells demonstrates the importance of this component of DSB repair to survival.",
"corpus_id": 12614156
} | {
"title": "Effect of soybean lecithin on iron-catalyzed or chlorophyll-photosensitized oxidation of canola oil emulsion.",
"abstract": "The effect of soybean lecithin addition on the iron-catalyzed or chlorophyll-photosensitized oxidation of emulsions consisting of purified canola oil and water (1:1, w/w) was studied based on headspace oxygen consumption using gas chromatography and hydroperoxide production using the ferric thiocyanate method. Addition levels of iron sulfate, chlorophyll, and soybean lecithin were 5, 4, and 350 mg/kg, respectively. Phospholipids (PLs) during oxidation of the emulsions were monitored by high performance liquid chromatography. Addition of soybean lecithin to the emulsions significantly reduced and decelerated iron-catalyzed oil oxidation by lowering headspace oxygen consumption and hydroperoxide production. However, soybean lecithin had no significant antioxidant effect on chlorophyll-photosensitized oxidation of the emulsions. PLs in soybean lecithin added to the emulsions were degraded during both oxidation processes, although there was little change in PL composition. Among PLs in soybean lecithin, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylinositol were degraded the fastest in the iron-catalyzed and the chlorophyll-photosensitized oxidation, respectively. The results suggest that addition of soybean lecithin as an emulsifier can also improve the oxidative stability of oil in an emulsion.",
"corpus_id": 1225362,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Duration–Based Hedging with Treasury Bond Futures",
"abstract": "A survey of derivatives textbooks and other documents shows at east four different treatments of duration-based hedging with Treasury bond futures. Most hedging methods also employ an incorrect definition of futures duration, and, in some cases, apply the accrued interest pricing method incorrectly This article develops an alternative model that is mathematically identical to the most frequently advocated hedging formula and helps to reconcile the various approaches to hedging. It also demonstrates a potential maturity mismatch problem that can represent 10% or more of a typical hedging quantity.",
"corpus_id": 154496692
} | {
"title": "DURATION, IMMUNIZATION, AND HEDGING WITH INTEREST RATE FUTURES",
"abstract": "The recent advent of the interest rate futures markets has greatly enriched the hedging opportunities of market participants faced with undesired interest rate risk. The variety of futures contracts presently spans a number of instruments with different risk, maturity, and coupon characteristics. This paper modifies the concept of duration and extends the duration hedging approach to cases where futures contracts are used as the hedging instrument. The derived hedge ratios take into account differences in coupon, maturity, and risk for three different regimes. Usage of these hedge ratios should lead to more efficient hedging of interest rate risk.",
"corpus_id": 154855863
} | {
"title": "Market Incompleteness and Divergences Between Forward and Futures Interest Rates",
"abstract": "A PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS IS a solemn ceremonial event. The words should perhaps be sung rather than recited. Not being in very good voice, I intend to give the shortest presidential address in AFA history. The presidential address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. In the rest of the time allotted to me, I profess only to deliver a paper. My paper offers some new perspectives on the logical basis for expecting divergences between yields quoted for futures contracts and parallel forward yields implicit in the term structure of interest rates. The presentation proceeds by focusing on the equilibrium prices of alternative ways of making two-period investments and on assumptions that differentially affect the ways that spot, futures, and options markets for bonds can be completed. Implications are drawn regarding observable divergences between expected, forward, and futures prices of post-dated bonds. Since we are free to interpret the first or the second period in our two-period equilibrium conditions to be as long or as short as we please, our results readily generalize to investments of any maturity. My specific objective is to develop an efficient-market explanation of the allegedly \"confusing\" time-series behavior of the differential between the forward and futures interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities. Forward rates implicit in the term structure have been close to parallel yields on futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange only for the Treasury bill contract closest to execution (Poole; Lang and Rasche). Differentials on more distant contracts have been consistently large and in 1977 reversed sign (Struble). Even allowing for transactions and carrying costs, most scholars find these events puzzling (Capozza and Cornell; Vignola and Dale). A few even interpret the persistent failure of futures and forward rates to converge as evidence of segmentation",
"corpus_id": 154318804,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Constitutional hyperbilirubinemia with unconjugated bilirubin in the serum and pigment deposition in the liver",
"abstract": "SummaryA case of constitutional hyperbilirubinemia with mild elevations of un-conjugated bilirubin in the serum was reported which was further characterized by an accumulation of pigment granules in the liver cells of the Dubin-Johnson-Sprinz-Nelson type. Electron-microscopic studies demonstrated predominantly lipofuscin-like pigments in the liver cells. The pathogenesis of this condition and the chemical nature of these pigments were briefly discussed. Attention was called to a variant of the Gilbert-Meulengracht syndrome.",
"corpus_id": 3034612
} | {
"title": "Hyperbilirubinemia due to an alternate path of bilirubin production",
"abstract": "Abstract Four cases of jaundice are described in which the hyperbilirubinemia was not related to the breakdown of circulating erythrocytes or to a defect in hepatic function. Three of the cases described occurred in one family and are thought to represent a congenital abnormality of excessive bilirubin production from sources other than the circulating red cell. This primary overproduction of bilirubin has been termed \"shunt\" hyperbilirubinemia. The hyperbilirubinemia was characterized by the onset of jaundice and splenomegaly in early adult life. The serum bilirubin was predominantly indirect reacting pigment, and the red cell survival somewhat short prior to splenectomy. The urobilinogen excretion in urine and stool was high. Hemolysis, when present, was corrected by splenectomy but the reticulocytosis, normoblastic hyperplasia of the marrow, hyperbilirubinemia and increased urobilinogen excretion persisted. The liver showed gross hemosiderin deposits in the parenchymal cells in the periphery of the lobule. It is suggested that the excess bilirubin has as its source the marrow erythrocytes or their precursors, either by their destruction or their synthesis of bilirubin directly from heme or its tetrapyrrole antecedents.",
"corpus_id": 71432774
} | {
"title": "Anti‐inflammatory and analgesic effects of paeonol in carrageenan‐evoked thermal hyperalgesia",
"abstract": "Paeonol was tested for its anti‐inflammatory and analgesic effects in a rat model of carrageenan‐evoked thermal hyperalgesia. The possible mechanisms involved in these effects were also investigated. Pre‐ and post‐treatment with paeonol (30, 50 or 100 mg kg−1, i.p.) dose‐dependently inhibited the carrageenan‐evoked thermal hyperalgesia. Treatment with paeonol dose‐dependently inhibited tumour necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) and interleukin‐lβ (IL‐1β) formation, but enhanced IL‐10 production in the rat paw exudates both at the early (1.5 h) and late phase (4 h) after carrageenan injection. However, inhibition of IL‐6 formation by paeonol was only observed at the late phase. Paeonol dose‐dependently decreased the formation of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in rat paw exudates with a greater inhibition at the late phase. However, inhibition of nitrate generation was observed only during the late phase (at 4 h after carrageenan injection), accompanied by an attenuation of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase‐2 (COX‐2) protein expression in paw tissue. Elevated myeloperoxidase activity, an indicator of neutrophil infiltration, in carrageenan‐injected paws was also dose‐dependently reduced in paeonol‐treated rats. Our results suggest that the mechanisms by which paeonol exerts its anti‐inflammatory and analgesic effects in this inflammatory model may be associated with decreased production of proinflammatory cytokines, NO and PGE2 and increased production of IL‐10, an anti‐inflammatory cytokine, in carrageenan‐injected rat paws. In addition, attenuation of the elevated iNOS and COX‐2 protein expression as well as neutrophil infiltration in carrageenan‐injected paws may also be involved in the beneficial effects of paeonol.",
"corpus_id": 24358279,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Taiji practice in Switzerland: a short report.",
"abstract": "Over the past two decades the demand for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the general population has continuously increased in Switzerland and is frequently implemented in medical teaching. Together with Qigong, Taiji is commonly regarded as a mind-body practice integrating TCM principles of health and longevity. This form of slow intentional body movements is rooted in ancient Chinese martial arts and aims to strengthen and relax the physical body and mind, enhance the natural flow of qi, and improve health, personal development, and self-defense. In the West, as the preventive and therapeutic benefits of Taiji practice are gaining empirical support, the popularity of this form of low impact mind-body practice is increasing. The present article aims to provide a brief overview of the development and current status of Taiji practice in Switzerland with an outlook on future perspectives.",
"corpus_id": 1441502
} | {
"title": "Die Welt des Tai Chi",
"abstract": "Ruhe in Bewegung Tai Chi, mancherorts auch „Taiji“ oder auch „Taijiquan“ geschrieben, hat seine Wurzeln in den chinesischen Kampfkünsten. Der Begriff „Tai Chi“ selbst kommt aus dem philosophischen Daoismus. Er steht für ein harmonisches Zusammenwirken und Vereinen von zwei einander entgegengesetzten Qualitäten, von Yin und Yang. Im Tai Chi als Kampfkunst gilt es, komplementäre Bewegungseigenschaften wie rund und gerade, leicht und schwer, weich und fest geschmeidig zu verkörpern. Heutzutage wird Tai Chi überwiegend zur Gesundheitsförderung ausgeübt, weshalb in vielen Tai Chi-Schulen seit Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts die dynamischen Bewegungen entschleunigt wurden. Das langsame Üben schützt vor Verletzungen und fördert den Gleichgewichtssinn. Darüber hinaus erleichtert es dem Praktizierenden das achtsame Wahrnehmen seiner eigenen Bewegungsgestaltung. Ein präsentes Ankommen und Verweilen im Hier und Jetzt kann auf diese Weise kultiviert werden [1]. Ob nun Tai Chi als Kampfkunst, Gesundheitspflege oder Bewegungsmeditation ausgeübt wird, allen Stilrichtungen gemeinsam sind die grundlegenden Bewegungsprinzipien. Diesen zufolge zeichnet sich Tai Chi durch entspannte, gut geerdete, den ganzen Körper verbindende Bewegungen aus, welche bewusst vom Körpermittelpunkt aus gelenkt werden [2].",
"corpus_id": 214808316
} | {
"title": "Efficacy of Tai Chi, brisk walking, meditation, and reading in reducing mental and emotional stress.",
"abstract": "Tai Chi, a moving meditation, is examined for its efficacy in post-stressor recovery. Forty-eight male and 48 female Tai Chi practitioners were randomly assigned to four treatment groups: Tai Chi, brisk walking, mediation and neutral reading. Mental arithmetic and other difficult tests were chosen as mental challenges, and a stressful film was used to produce emotional disturbance. Tai Chi and the other treatments were applied after these stressors. After all treatments, the salivary cortisol level dropped significantly, and the mood states were also improved. In general the stress-reduction effect of Tai Chi characterized moderate physical exercise. Heart rate, blood pressure, and urinary catecholamine changes for Tai Chi were found to be similar to those for walking at a speed of 6 km/hr. Although Tai Chi appeared to be superior to neutral reading in the reduction of state anxiety and the enhancement of vigour, this effect could be partially accounted for by the subjects' high expectations about gains from Tai Chi. Approaches controlling for expectancy level are recommended for further assessment.",
"corpus_id": 228883,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Optical properties of the human round window membrane",
"abstract": "Abstract. Optical techniques are effective tools for diagnostic applications in medicine and are particularly attractive for the noninvasive analysis of biological tissues and fluids in vivo. Noninvasive examinations of substances via a fiber optic probe need to consider the optical properties of biological tissues obstructing the optical path. This applies to the analysis of the human perilymph, which is located behind the round window membrane. The composition of this inner ear liquid is directly correlated to inner ear hearing loss. In this work, experimental methods for studying the optical properties of the human round window membrane ex vivo are presented. For the first time, a comprehensive investigation of this tissue is performed, including optical transmission, forward scattering, and Raman scattering. The results obtained suggest the application of visible wavelengths (>400 nm) for investigating the perilymph behind the round window membrane in future.",
"corpus_id": 1677942
} | {
"title": "Round window membrane. Structure function and permeability: A review",
"abstract": "The ultrastructure of the round window membrane of humans, monkeys, felines, and rodents discloses three basic layers: an outer epithelium, a middle core of connective tissue, and an inner epithelium. Interspecies variations are mainly in terms of thickness, being thinnest in rodents and thicker in humans. Morphologic evidence suggests that the layers of the round window participate in absorption and secretion of substances to and from the inner ear, and that the entire membrane could play a role in the defense system of the ear. Different substances, including antibiotics, local anesthetics, and tracers such as cationic ferritin, horseradish peroxidase, and 1 μ latex microspheres, are placed in the middle ear side traverse the membrane. Cationic ferritin and 1 micron microspheres placed in perilymph become incorporated by the inner epithelial cells of the membrane. Permeability is selective; factors include size, concentration, liposolubility, electrical charge, and thickness of the membrane. Passage of substances through the round window membrane is by different pathways, the nature of which is seemingly decided at the outer epithelium of the round window membrane. Microsc. Res. Tech. 36:201–211, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.",
"corpus_id": 9846314
} | {
"title": "Über neue Cadmiumhydridbanden im Ultraviolett",
"abstract": "ZusammenfassungZwischen λ 2700 Å und λ 2200 Å wurden neue Cadmiumhydridbanden gefunden und die Erregungsbedingungen für diese näher untersucht. Die Einzelbanden bestehen aus einfachen P- und R-Zweigen und das System wurde einem1Σ′→1Σ Elektronen-sprung des ionisierten Cadmiumhydrids zugeschrieben. Die Kernschwingungsformel und die Bandenkonstanten des Systems wurden gegeben. Die Intensitätsverteilung wurde diskutiert und die Dissoziationsenergie beider Elektronenzustände sowie die Ionisierungsenergie des neutralen Moleküls berechnet. Einige Schlüsse über Term-lagen und Ionisationsspannung wurden versucht.",
"corpus_id": 121542758,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Hp-Apriori: Horizontal parallel-apriori algorithm for frequent itemset mining from big data",
"abstract": "Due to large scale and complexity of big data, mining the big data using a single personal computer is a difficult problem. With increasing in the size of databases, parallel computing systems can cause considerable advantages in the data mining applications by means of the exploitation of data mining algorithms. Parallelization of association rule mining algorithms is an important task in data mining to mine frequent patterns from transaction databases. These algorithms either distribute database horizontally or increase number of CPU to reduce execution time of frequent pattern mining. In this paper, a novel frequent itemset mining algorithm, namely Horizontal parallel-Apriori (HP-Apriori), is proposed that divides database both horizontally and vertically with partitioning mining process into four sub-processes so that all four tasks are performed in parallel way. Also the HP-Apriori tries to speed up the mining process by an index file that is generated in the first step of algorithm. The proposed algorithm has been compared with Count Distribution (CD) in terms of execution time and speedup criteria on the four real datasets. Experimental results demonstrated that the HP-Apriori outperforms over CD in terms of minimizing execution time and maximizing speedup in high scalability.",
"corpus_id": 25394405
} | {
"title": "AN ENHANCED FREQUENT PATTERN GROWTH BASED ON MAP REDUCE FOR MINING ASSOCIATION RULES",
"abstract": "In mining frequent itemsets, one of most important algorithm is FP-growth. FP-growth proposes an algorithm to compress information needed for mining frequent itemsets in FP-tree and recursively constructs FP-trees to find all frequent itemsets. In this paper, we propose the EFP-growth (enhanced FPgrowth) algorithm to achieve the quality of FP-growth. Our proposed method implemented the EFPGrowth based on MapReduce framework using Hadoop approach. New method has high achieving performance compared with the basic FP-Growth. The EFP-growth it can work with the large datasets to discovery frequent patterns in a transaction database. Based on our method, the execution time under different minimum supports is decreased..",
"corpus_id": 51781642
} | {
"title": "Matrix Computations and Optimization in Apache Spark",
"abstract": "We describe matrix computations available in the cluster programming framework, Apache Spark. Out of the box, Spark provides abstractions and implementations for distributed matrices and optimization routines using these matrices. When translating single-node algorithms to run on a distributed cluster, we observe that often a simple idea is enough: separating matrix operations from vector operations and shipping the matrix operations to be ran on the cluster, while keeping vector operations local to the driver. In the case of the Singular Value Decomposition, by taking this idea to an extreme, we are able to exploit the computational power of a cluster, while running code written decades ago for a single core. Another example is our Spark port of the popular TFOCS optimization package, originally built for MATLAB, which allows for solving Linear programs as well as a variety of other convex programs. We conclude with a comprehensive set of benchmarks for hardware accelerated matrix computations from the JVM, which is interesting in its own right, as many cluster programming frameworks use the JVM. The contributions described in this paper are already merged into Apache Spark and available on Spark installations by default, and commercially supported by a slew of companies which provide further services.",
"corpus_id": 207238816,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "An evaluation of nursing students' communication ability during practical clinical training.",
"abstract": "OBJECTIVES\nTo investigate communication abilities and other influential factors on nursing students at the beginning of clinical practical session.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA cluster sample of 312 nursing students from 22 nursing colleges or universities was recruited. Communication ability of these participants was evaluated by 4 questionnaires for demographic data, clinical communication behavior, treatment communication skills and interpersonal communication skills at the beginning of clinical practical session.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe stability and accuracy of the questionnaires were established with an overall content validity index of 0.78, the Cronbach's Alpha index ranged from 0.872 to 0.951, and the letter index fluctuates from 0.85 to 0.89. Results demonstrated that 88.1% of the nursing students require extra training in clinical communication behavior, treatment communication skills, and interpersonal communication skills. The Pearson analysis revealed significantly positive correlations between communication abilities and the students' educational level, clinical training experience, living circumstances and number of siblings.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nMost nursing students need communication skill training. Multiple factors, including educational level, living circumstances, number of siblings, and training experience significantly affect nursing students' communication abilities. Our study suggested a need to widely establish a communication course or clinical communication training program to improve nursing students' communication skills.",
"corpus_id": 665670
} | {
"title": "The power of two: improving patient safety through better physician-patient communication.",
"abstract": "The article presents a patient handout, developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that explains to patients how they can help their doctors provide better care.",
"corpus_id": 33047425
} | {
"title": "Determining A Study's Relevance For Clinical Practice",
"abstract": "relevance for patient care is important to practicing nurses. To answer the question, \"Is this study relevant to my practice interest?\" nurses need two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of the subject area under study, and technical knowledge of research methods and data-analysis strategies. While many practicing nurses may not have the technical knowledge to evaluate the research methods, most have considerable clinical knowledge to use in evaluating the relevance of a particular study. For example, a nurse who has worked with progressively ill persons in pain is very likely to question the similarities and hence the",
"corpus_id": 2485312,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Factors influencing the suitability of organ-cultured corneas for transplantation.",
"abstract": "PURPOSE\nTo assess the influence of donor and storage factors on the suitability of organ-cultured corneas for penetrating keratoplasty (PKP) using multifactorial regression analysis.\n\n\nMETHODS\nCorneas (mean donor age, 57 years; standard deviation, 21 years) were stored by organ culture at 34 degrees C for up to 5 weeks (mean, 22 days; standard deviation, 6 days). The endothelium was assessed by light microscopy, and corneas with < 2200 cells/mm2 were considered unsuitable for PKP.\n\n\nRESULTS\nOf the 9250 corneas stored between 1992 and 1994, 59% were issued for PKP, 5% were discarded because of bacterial or fungal contamination, and 30% were unsuitable for PKP owing to endothelial deficiencies. Donor age had the strongest influence on suitability for PKP: > 80% of corneas from donors younger than 40 years of age were issued for PKP compared with only 45% of corneas from donors 80 years of age and older. There was an overall decline in the percentage of corneas suitable for PKP with increasing storage time, but the rate of this decline was inversely related to donor age. Cause of death and post mortem times to enucleation and to storage had only a small influence on suitability for PKP.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nCriteria based on endothelial assessment rather than on donor age allow corneas from donors of all ages, stored by organ culture for extended periods, to be used for PKP. Organ culture also allows corneas with bacterial or fungal contamination to be identified and discarded before they are grafted.",
"corpus_id": 1970165
} | {
"title": "Changes in the normal corneal endothelial cellular pattern as a function of age.",
"abstract": "Human endothelial morphologic changes were quantitated by specular microscopy and computer-assisted morphometry to establish normal baselines of various morphologic parameters. Cellular polymegethism and cellular pleomorphism increases with age, and normal baseline parameters are detailed. Furthermore, no significant difference in any morphologic parameters between the right and left eye and between central and peripheral endothelium was detected in the normal corneas examined. These normal morphologic baselines can possibly be utilized to detect early corneal endothelial pathology and/or cell loss nondetectable by cell density measurement.",
"corpus_id": 10155037
} | {
"title": "Neonatal organization of adult partner preference behavior in male rats",
"abstract": "Male rats were castrated or sham castrated shortly after birth. Castrated males were then injected every other day on days 0-10 with testosterone propionate (TP, 0.5 mg), dihydrotestosterone propionate (DHTP, 0.5 mg) or the oil vehicle (0.05 ml); sham-castrated males received oil injections. In adulthood, when substituted with DHT, DHT + E2, or T (silastic implants), sexual partner preference was measured in an automated open field (AOF), in which wire mesh prevented sexual interaction with incentives, and in a 3-compartment box (3-CB), in which sexual interaction with tethered incentives was possible. Choices were an estrous female and a nonestrous female or an estrous female and a sexually active male. In adulthood, following long-term treatment with DHT or DHT + E2, the males did not show any partner preference when sexual interaction with incentives was prevented. Following sexual experience with an estrous female these males preferred the estrous over the nonestrous female, although this change could also be due to long-term hormone treatment. In the 3-CB, a clearcut preference emerged for the estrous female over the nonestrous conspecific, although the neonatally DHTP- or oil-treated males scored lower than the neonatally TP-treated or control males. Six weeks after removal of the hormone implants, when tested in the 3-CB (estrous female vs. active male), the males showed no partner preference. Unexpectedly the control males showed a low preference for the active male. Three weeks T-treatment made all males show a preference for the estrous female (in 3-CB).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)",
"corpus_id": 39841496,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "A fall detection system using k-nearest neighbor classifier",
"abstract": "The main purpose of this paper is to use off-the-shelf devices to develop a fall detection system. In human body identification, human body silhouette is adopted to improve privacy protection, and vertical projection histograms of the silhouette image and statistical scheme are used to reduce the effect of human body upper limb activities. The kNN classification algorithm is used to classify the postures using the ratio and difference of human body silhouette bounding box height and width. Meanwhile, since time difference is a vital factor to differentiate fall incident event and lying down event, the critical time difference is obtained from the experiment and verified by statistical hypothesis testing. With the help of the kNN classifier and the critical time difference, a fall incident detection system is developed to detect fall incident events. The experiment shows that it could reduce the effect of upper limb activities and the system has a correct rate of 84.44% on fall detection and lying down event detection.",
"corpus_id": 1232251
} | {
"title": "Smart home care network using sensor fusion and distributed vision-based reasoning",
"abstract": "A wireless sensor network employing multiple sensing and event detection modalities and distributed processing is proposed for smart home monitoring applications. Image sensing and vision-based reasoning are employed to verify and further analyze events reported by other sensors. The system has been developed to address the growing application domain in caregiving to the elderly and persons in need of monitored living, who care to live independently while enjoying the assurance of timely access to caregivers when needed. An example of sensed events is the accidental fall of the person under care. A wireless badge node acts as a bridge between the user and the network. The badge node provides user-centric event sensing functions such as detecting falls, and also provides a voice communication channel between the user and the caregiving center when the system detects an alert and dials the center. The voice connection is carried over an IEEE 802.15.4 radio link between the user badge and another node in the network that acts as a modem. Using signal strength measurements, the network nodes keep track of the approximate location of the user in the monitoring environment.The network also includes wall-mounted image sensor nodes, which are triggered upon detection of a fall to analyze their field-of-view and provide the caregiving center with further information about the user 's status. A description of the developed network and several examples of the vision-based reasoning algorithm are presented in the paper.",
"corpus_id": 1403649
} | {
"title": "Accurate Semantic Similarity Measurement of Biomedical Nomenclature by Means of Fuzzy Logic",
"abstract": "Semantic similarity measurement of biomedical nomenclature aims to determine the likeness between two biomedical expressions that use different lexicographies for representing the same real biomedical concept. There are many semantic similarity measures for trying to address this issue, many of them have represented an incremental improvement over the previous ones. In this work, we present yet another incremental solution that is able to outperform existing approaches by using a sophisticated aggregation method based on fuzzy logic. Results show us that our strategy is able to consistently beat existing approaches when solving well-known biomedical benchmark data sets.",
"corpus_id": 23564582,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "On the Theory of Quadrature Oscillations Obtained Through Parallel $LC$ VCOs",
"abstract": "This paper presents a theory of parallel quadrature voltage-controlled oscillators, which are widely used to generate in-phase and quadrature signals in communication systems. The theory is developed without making any hypothesis on the circuit topology and allows us to thoroughly analyze the synchronized oscillations, as well as the effect of unavoidable parameter mismatches, by means of closed-form expressions for the amplitude and phase of oscillations and their orbital stability. The stability of oscillations is assessed analyzing the relevant eigenvalues, which are obtained in a closed form. The validity of the presented results has been verified through circuit simulations and experiments.",
"corpus_id": 2141009
} | {
"title": "Nonlinear harmonic analysis of multistage amplifiers",
"abstract": "We show the application of an analytical method for predicting the nonlinear distortion in weakly nonlinear feedback circuits and, in particular, in multistage amplifiers. Omitting the mathematical derivations, we show how to formulate the problem and how to obtain general formulas for the harmonics and the nonlinear distortion figures. The accuracy of the formulas is proved by comparing the results from formulas with those obtained by harmonic balance method.",
"corpus_id": 823195
} | {
"title": "2D Nanosheets and Their Composite Membranes for Water, Gas, and Ion Separation",
"abstract": "Abstract Two‐dimensional nanosheets have shown great potential for separation applications because of their exceptional molecular transport properties. Nanosheet materials such as graphene oxides, metal–organic frameworks, and covalent organic frameworks display unique, precise, and fast molecular transport through nanopores and/or nanochannels. However, the dimensional instability of nanosheets in harsh environments diminishes the membrane performance and hinders their long‐term operation in various applications such as gas separation, water desalination, and ion separation. Recent progress in nanosheet membranes has included modification by crosslinking and functionalization that has improved the stability of the membranes, their separation functionality, and the scalability of membrane formation while the membranes’ excellent molecular transport properties are retained. These improvements have enhanced the potential of nanosheet membranes in practical applications such as separation processes.",
"corpus_id": 73512164,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "The Microbial Community Dynamics during the Vitex Honey Ripening Process in the Honeycomb",
"abstract": "The bacterial and fungal communities of vitex honey were surveyed by sequencing the 16S rRNA gene and the internal transcribed spacer region of ribosomal DNA. Vitex honey samples were analyzed at different stage of ripening; the vitex flower was also analyzed, and the effect of the chemical composition in the experimental setup was assessed. The results confirmed the presence of dominant Bacillus spp. as the dominant bacterial in honey, and yeast related genera was the main fungal in the honey, respectively. Lactococcus and Enterococcus were detected for the first time in honey. The proportion of most of the fungal community decreased during the honey ripening process. Multivariate analyses also showed that the fungal community of 5, 10, and 15 days honey samples tended to cluster together and were completely separated from the 1 day honey sample. The change in the fungal community showed a correlation with the variation in the chemical components, such as moisture and phenolic compounds. Together, these results suggest that ripening of honey could change its microbial composition, and decrease the potential risk of microbiology.",
"corpus_id": 707595
} | {
"title": "Oceanobacillus soja sp. nov. isolated from soy sauce production equipment in Japan.",
"abstract": "A Gram-positive, spore-forming, motile rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain Y27T, was isolated from the bottom of a mold fermenter used in the process of soy sauce production. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence from this strain placed it within the genus Oceanobacillus, and further sequence analysis revealed that this strain has a sequence similarity of 95.0-98.7% to other known species of Oceanobacillus. The DNA-DNA relatedness between strain Y27T and related type strains of the genus Oceanobacillus is below 43%, indicating that it should be considered a separate species. Characterization of strain Y27T revealed that the major cellular fatty acid is anteiso-C(15:0), the cell wall contains meso-diaminopimelic acid-type peptidoglycans, the major menaquinone is MK-7, and the major polar lipids are diphosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylglycerol. The genomic DNA G+C content of the strain is 38.0 mol%. On the basis of these phylogenetic, physiological and chemotaxonomic data, we propose that this isolate represents a novel species of the genus Oceanobacillus, and propose the name Oceanobacillus soja sp. nov. The type strain is strain Y27T (= JCM 15792T = NRRL B-59181T = NBRC 105379T = NCIMB 14542T).",
"corpus_id": 212404
} | {
"title": "Effect of hydrogen peroxide on antibacterial activities of Canadian honeys.",
"abstract": "Honey is recognized as an efficacious topical antimicrobial agent in the treatment of burns and wounds. The antimicrobial activity in some honeys depends on the endogenous hydrogen peroxide content. This study was aimed to determine whether honey's hydrogen peroxide level could serve as a honey-specific, activity-associated biomarker that would allow predicting and assessing the therapeutic effects of honey. Using a broth microdilution assay, I analyzed antibacterial activities of 42 Canadian honeys against two bacterial strains: Escherichia coli (ATCC 14948) and Bacillus subtilis (ATCC 6633). The MIC90 and MIC50 were established from the dose-response relationship between antibacterial activities and honey concentrations. The impact of H2O2 on antibacterial activity was determined (i) by measuring the levels of H2O2 before and after its removal by catalase and (ii) by correlating the results with levels of antibacterial activities. Canadian honeys demonstrated moderate to high antibacterial activity against both bacterial species. Both MIC90 and MIC50 revealed that the honeys exhibited a selective growth inhibitory activity against E. coli, and this activity was strongly influenced by endogenous H2O2 concentrations. Bacillus subtilis activity was marginally significantly correlated with H2O2 content. The removal of H2O2 by catalase reduced the honeys' antibacterial activity, but the enzyme was unable to completely decompose endogenous H2O2. The 25%-30% H2O2 \"leftover\" was significantly correlated with the honeys' residual antibacterial activity against E. coli. These data indicate that all Canadian honeys exhibited antibacterial activity, with higher selectivity against E. coli than B. subtilis, and that these antibacterial activities were correlated with hydrogen peroxide production in honeys. Hydrogen peroxide levels in honey, therefore, is a strong predictor of the honey's antibacterial activity.",
"corpus_id": 5765528,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Skin Detection Using Color, Texture and Space Information",
"abstract": "Among various skin detection methods, Skin Probability Map (SPM) method is an effective one. Though SPM method possesses high true acceptance rate (TAR), its false acceptance rate (FAR) is unacceptable in some cases. The reason is that SPM method only use pixel-level color information. This paper proposes an improved skin detection method that integrates color, texture and space information. After color filter, a texture filter is constructed based on texture features extracted form Gabor wavelet transform. Texture filter will further filter non-skin pixels, meanwhile, it may also filter some skin pixel. To compensate the loss, after texture filter, a marker driven watershed transform is then used to grow already obtained skin regions. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve better performance than that of SPM.",
"corpus_id": 18061130
} | {
"title": "Skin detection in video under changing illumination conditions",
"abstract": "Techniques for colour-based tracking of faces or hands often assume a static skin colour model. However, skin color perceived by a camera can change when lighting changes. In common real environments multiple light sources impinge on the skin. Therefore, for robust skin pixel detection, a dynamic skin colour model that can cope with the changes must be employed. We show that skin detection in video can be enhanced by exploiting the knowledge of the range of possible skin colours for the camera used. In normalized colour coordinates this range has a distinct shape we call the skin locus. We developed an adaptive histogram backprojection technique where the skin colour model is updated by pixels in the search region which fall in the skin locus. We demonstrate increased detection capability with webcam videos of faces taken successively under daylight, incandescent lamp, fluorescent light and a combination of these light sources.",
"corpus_id": 1372605
} | {
"title": "Character recognition using neural networks",
"abstract": "It has been 50 years since the idea popped up that calculating systems can be made on the replica of the biological neural networks. Still, the development of this science branch made the improvement of these systems possible only in the last 25–30 years [6]. Nowadays, neural computing is a very extensive, separate science. Its solid theory basis made it possible to use them to solve many kind of problems in artificial computing, thus improving the experience of the science. Neural networks are commonly used to solve sample-recognition problems. One of these is character recognition. The solution of this problem is one of the easier implementations of neural networks. With the help of Matlab's Neural Network Toolbox, we tried to recognize printed and handwritten characters by projecting them on different sized grids (5×7, 7×11, 9×13). The results showed that the precision of the character recognition depends on the resolution of the character projection. Also, we realized, that not every writing style can be recognized using the same network with the same precision. This shows that the variety of human handwriting habits can't be fully covered with one neural network.",
"corpus_id": 11968263,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "The effect of bearing preload on the lobes diagram of high-speed end milling process",
"abstract": "The productivity of high-speed machining is often limited by chatter rather than by other process constraints when machining with end mills. Therefore, as spindle speeds have increased, capability of using the stability lobes diagrams to increase metal removal rates and precisely deciding the optimum spindle speeds in the design stage has become more essential. In this research, an integrated FEM stability model of high-speed end milling process considering high-speed effects is introduced and then an algorithm for generating the lobes diagram is developed. The results show that the first mode natural frequency increases at all speeds by increasing the rear bearing preload. Moreover, the allowable axial depth of cut is under-predicted if the high-speed effects are neglected. Finally, if the initial preload of the rear bearing set increases, the whole stability lobe shifts to the right with respect to the lobe of the original design.",
"corpus_id": 14869080
} | {
"title": "Model-based chatter stability prediction for high-speed spindles",
"abstract": "Abstract The prediction of stable cutting regions is a critical requirement for high-speed milling operations. These predictions are generally made using frequency response measurements of the tool/holder/spindle set, obtained from a non-rotating spindle. However, significant changes in system dynamics occur during high-speed rotation. In this paper, a dynamic model of a high-speed spindle-bearing system is elaborated on the basis of rotor dynamics predictions, readjusted with respect to experimental modal identification. Variations in dynamic behaviour according to speed range are then investigated and determined with accuracy. Dedicated experiments are carried out in order to confirm model results. By integrating the proposed speed-dependant transfer function into the chatter vibration stability approach of Budak–Altintas [S. Tobias, W. Fishwick, Theory of regenerative machine tool chatter, The Engineer February (1958)] a dynamic stability lobes diagram is predicted. The proposed method enables a new stability lobes diagram to be established that takes into account the effect of spindle speed on dynamic behaviour. Significant variations are observed and allow the accurate prediction of cutting conditions. Finally, experiments are performed in order to validate chatter boundary predictions in practice. The proposed modelling approach can also be used to qualify a spindle design in a given machining process and can easily be extended to other types of spindle.",
"corpus_id": 110133921
} | {
"title": "OPTIMAL DESIGN OF COMPLEX FLEXIBLE ROTOR-SUPPORT SYSTEMS USING MINIMUM STRAIN ENERGY UNDER MULTI-CONSTRAINT CONDITIONS",
"abstract": "Abstract The optimal design of complex flexible rotor-support systems is studied in this paper. Optimization using system strain energy is shown to be a conventional way to handle such systems. Multiple constraints such as the damped critical speeds, limitations on transmitted forces and the amplitudes of the deflection of shafts and disks, and stability considerations, are used to meet the engineering requirements. The support stiffnesses and clearances of squeeze film dampers (SFDs) are used as design variables. The transfer matrix-component mode synthesis method (TMCMs) is employed in the system dynamic analysis. A method of calculating damped critical speed is also developed by using system strain energy criterion. The optimum results can be easily applied to preliminary engineering design as well as in modifications to existing machines.",
"corpus_id": 121339556,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Phototherapy, photochemotherapy, and photodynamic therapy: unapproved uses or indications.",
"abstract": "Phototherapy is the exposure to non-ionizing radiation for therapeutic use. It may arise as a result of exposure to natural light, UVB or UVA radiation, or a combination of both. Historically, it has been recommended in various dermatologic procedures and in other medical areas, with particular applications in psychiatry in the treatment of invernal depressions, sleeping changes, the circadian rhythm, and so forth. Photochemotherapy is a therapeutic technique employing a photosensitizing chemical substance, followed by electromagnetic non-ionizing radiation. In practice, it is typically administered using psoralen (as the photosensitizer) and long-length ultraviolet radiation (UVA). This procedure produces a better therapeutic effect than using only radiation or drugs, and it has a long pedigree. The Goekerman healing technique,1 used since the 1920s, employs carbon tar as the photosensitizer. In the 1970s artificial sources of light were developed. In particular, vertical UVA chambers enable the entire cutaneous area to be irradiated uniformly and in the appropriate dosage. The lamps employed have a half-life of about 1000 hours, and their emission spectrum has a maximum peak of about 360 nm. Constant therapeutic effect can be achieved by gradually increasing the UVA dose, taking into account the patient phototype3,6,7 and the determination of the minimal phototoxic dose.",
"corpus_id": 1989580
} | {
"title": "Breast Cancer and Current Therapeutic Approaches: From Radiation to Photodynamic Therapy",
"abstract": "Breast cancer is one of the oldest known forms of cancer in humans and it has been mentioned in almost every period of human history. Since the time of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, there has been no cure but only treatment for this disease. In the 18th century, different theories about the origin of breast cancer were developed. During this period, an important link between breast cancer and the lymph nodes was established. The assumption that cancer was a localized disease led to the rise of the surgical approach in breast cancer treatment. Since the work of William Halstead (1882), radical mastectomy (removal of breast tissue, lymph nodes and chest tissue) remained the standard for almost 100 years (Leopold, 1999; Olson, 2002). With the advance in science, novel therapeutic and diagnostic opportunities came into use in breast cancer treatment. Introduction of radiation at the beginning of the 20th century enabled tumour size to be reduced before surgery. Another major breakthrough came with the use of chemotherapy in the 1940s. Their combination with surgery offers another powerful treatment modality. The discovery by Beatson in 1895 that removal of the ovaries results (in some cases) in reduction of breast tumours led to the later elucidation of oestrogen`s role in breast cancer growth (Forrest, 1982). Research in pharmaceutical approaches to breast cancer/oestrogen management ended in the development of aromatase inhibitors (AIs) and selective oestrogen receptor modifiers. An important step came in 1998, when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved trastuzumab for the treatment of HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer. Treatment with trastuzumab has a major impact on the survival of a subset of patients with resistant and hard to treat breast tumours (Shepard et al., 2008). With the introduction of mammography, early detection of breast cancer was made possible. Mammography screening combined with more precise therapy was shown to reduce breast cancer mortality between 24.9 and 38.3% (Berry et al., 2005). Several other detection methods including magnetic resonance, ultrasound and 3D digital mammography have been developed and are now used in the fight against breast cancer (Gilbert, 2008; Hellerhoff, 2010).",
"corpus_id": 11020248
} | {
"title": "Direct immunofluorescence studies in granuloma annulare, necrobiosis lipoidica and granulomatosis disciformis Miescher.",
"abstract": "Direct immunofluorescence studies in granuloma annulare, necrobiosis lipoidica and granulomatosis disciformis Miescher are reported. In all 29 cases fibrillar deposits of fibrin in the necrobiotic areas have been found. Complement, mainly C3, was present in the region of the dermo-epidermal junction in 83% of the cases. Although the walls of the vessels in the superficial layers of the dermis showed a positive staining with antifibrinogen and complement, those around the necrobiotic areas were negative in most of the cases. The possible significance of these findings for the pathogenesis has been discussed.",
"corpus_id": 32011097,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Decrease in Switches to ‘Unsafe’ Proton Pump Inhibitors After Communications About Interactions with Clopidogrel",
"abstract": "BackgroundIn 2009 and 2010 medicines regulatory agencies published official safety statements regarding the concomitant use of proton pump inhibitors and clopidogrel. We wanted to investigate a change in prescription behaviour in prevalent gastroprotective drug users (2008–2011).MethodsData on drug use were retrieved from the Out-patient Pharmacy Database of the PHARMO Database Network. We used interrupted time series analyses (ITS) to estimate the impact of each safety statement on the number of gastroprotective drug switches around the start of clopidogrel and during clopidogrel use.ResultsAfter the first statement (June 2009), significantly fewer patients switched from another proton pump inhibitor to (es)omeprazole (−14.9%; 95% CI −22.6 to −7.3) at the moment they started clopidogrel compared to the period prior to this statement. After the adjusted statement in February 2010, the switch percentage to (es)omeprazole decreased further (−4.5%; 95% CI −8.1 to −0.9). We observed a temporary increase in switches from proton pump inhibitors to histamine 2-receptor antagonists after the first statement; the decrease in the reverse switch was statistically significant (−23.0%; 95% CI −43.1 to −2.9).ConclusionsWith ITS, we were able to demonstrate a decrease in switches from other proton pump inhibitors to (es)omeprazole and an increase of the reverse switch to almost 100%. We observed a partial and temporary switch to histamine 2-receptor antagonists. This effect of safety statements was shown for gastroprotective drug switches around the start of clopidogrel treatment.",
"corpus_id": 3373624
} | {
"title": "Healthcare professionals' self-reported experiences and preferences related to direct healthcare professional communications: a survey conducted in the Netherlands.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nIn Europe, Direct Healthcare Professional Communications (DHPCs) are important tools to inform healthcare professionals of serious, new drug safety issues. However, this tool has not always been successful in effectively communicating the desired actions to healthcare professionals.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nThe aim of this study was to explore healthcare providers' experiences and their preferences for improvement of risk communication, comparing views of general practitioners (GPs), internists, community pharmacists and hospital pharmacists.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA questionnaire was developed and pilot tested to assess experiences and preferences of Dutch healthcare professionals with DHPCs. The questionnaire and two reminders were sent to a random sample of 3488 GPs, internists and community and hospital pharmacists in the Netherlands. Descriptive statistics were used to describe demographic characteristics of the respondents. Chi squares, ANOVAs and the Wilcoxon signed rank test were used, when appropriate, to compare healthcare professional groups.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe overall response rate was 34% (N = 1141, ranging from 24% for internists to 46% for community pharmacists). Healthcare providers trusted safety information more when provided by the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) than by the pharmaceutical industry. This was more the case for GPs than for the other healthcare professionals. Respondents preferred safety information to be issued by the MEB, the Dutch Pharmacovigilance Center or their own professional associations. The preferred alternative channels of drug safety information were e-mail, medical journals and electronic prescribing systems.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nSafety information of drugs does not always reach healthcare professionals through DHPCs. To improve current risk communication of drug safety issues, alternative and/or additional methods of risk communication should be developed using electronic methods and medical journals. Moreover, (additional) risk communication coming from an independent source such as the MEB should be considered. Special effort is needed to reach GPs.",
"corpus_id": 19623076
} | {
"title": "Conjugate addition of internal nucleophile to chiral vinyl sulfoxides with stereogenic center at the allylic carbon. “intramolecular” double asymmetric induction",
"abstract": "Abstract The intramolecular conjugate addition of allylically situated carbamoyloxy nitrogen to chiral vinyl sulfoxides displays diastereoselectivity governed by cooperation or competition of two controlling factors. These factors have been evaluated.",
"corpus_id": 95898317,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Dust sampling methods for endotoxin - an essential, but underestimated issue.",
"abstract": "Exposure to farming environment in early life has been associated with lower risk for allergic diseases possibly caused by increased exposure to endotoxin. The aims of this study were to compare the reproducibility of different sampling methods for endotoxin, and to determine whether environmental characteristics have different effect on endotoxin levels of different sample types. The reproducibility of sampling methods (bed dust, floor dust, vacuum cleaner dust bag dust, settled dust and air samples) was studied with repeated sampling (five visits during 1 year) in five farming and five urban homes. To examine determinants of endotoxin for different types of dust sample, sampling was conducted once in 12 farming and 17 urban homes. Endotoxin was analyzed using Limulus Amebocyte Lysate assay. Bed dust samples had the best reproducibility (intraclass correlation, ICC=66%), but the difference between farming and non-farming homes was not clear with this sample type. The reproducibility of floor (ICC=52%) and settled dust (ICC=51%) was moderate. With these sample types the difference between farming and non-farming homes was clear. Settled dust had some seasonal variation. Based on this study, the best compromise for sampling for endotoxin appears to be floor dust sample followed by bed and settled dust samples. Practical Implications Endotoxins have been widely measured, even though the validity of different sample types to reflect the endotoxin exposure level of an indoor environment is poorly known. This study shows that bed dust samples have the best reproducibility, but they do not reflect the differences in exposure due to environmental factors such as farming. Floor dust samples with moderate reproducibility may be the best choice for sampling of endotoxin in large field studies.",
"corpus_id": 1287617
} | {
"title": "Exposure to endotoxin decreases the risk of atopic eczema in infancy: a cohort study.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nPrevious studies have shown a protective effect of early exposure to cats and dogs on the development of atopic eczema, asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic sensitization in later life. In particular, a higher microbial exposure to endotoxin in early childhood might contribute to this effect.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nWe examined the associations between bacterial endotoxin in house dust and atopic eczema, infections, and wheezing during the first year of life in an ongoing birth cohort study (LISA).\n\n\nMETHODS\nData of 1884 term and normal-weight neonates with complete information on exposure to biocontaminants and confounding variables were analyzed. House dust from the mothers' and the children's mattresses was sampled 3 months after birth. Endotoxin content was quantified by using a chromogenic kinetic limulus amoebocyte lysate test.\n\n\nRESULTS\nDuring the first 6 months of life, the risk of atopic eczema was significantly decreased by endotoxin exposure in dust from mothers' mattresses in the fifth quintile (odds ratio [OR], 0.50; 95% CI, 0.28-0.88), whereas the risk was increased for respiratory infections (OR, 1.69; 95% CI, 1.25-2.28) and cough with respiratory infection, bronchitis, or both (OR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.28-2.33). The risk of wheezing was also significantly increased during the first 6 months of life (OR, 2.37; 95% CI, 1.40-4.03). For the entire first year of life, these associations attenuated, except for the risk of wheezing, which remained significant (OR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.10-2.30).\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nOur findings support the hygiene hypothesis that exposure to high concentrations of endotoxin very early in life might protect against the development of atopic eczema within the first 6 months of life, along with an increased prevalence of nonspecific respiratory diseases.",
"corpus_id": 12578603
} | {
"title": "T cell reactivity in neonates from an East and a West German city – results of the LISA study",
"abstract": "Background: Within an ongoing birth cohort study (LISA) the cytokine production of cord blood T cells was compared between neonates from Leipzig (East Germany) and Munich (West Germany). The aim of this study was to analyse regional differences and influencing factors of the immune status.",
"corpus_id": 25014130,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Study on Scavenging DPPH of Dragon's Blood from Different Sources",
"abstract": "In order to research the antioxidant capacity of artificial Dragon's Blood, firstly optimizing the spectrophotometric conditions of DPPH., established a method to determinate drug's antioxidant activity. Standard by this method is applied to the determination of rutin and BHA, verified the accuracy of the method. Secondly, with the establishment of hydroxyl radicals and DPPH. determinational methods, studied the antioxidant capacity of natural and artificial Dragon's Blood. The results show that natural and artificial Dragon's Blood have similar antioxidant activity, and natural Dragon's Blood could substitute artificial Dragon's Blood.",
"corpus_id": 4939191
} | {
"title": "Assessment of antioxidant capacity in vitro and in vivo.",
"abstract": "The role and beneficial effects of antioxidants against various disorders and diseases induced by oxidative stress have received much attention. Many types of antioxidants with different functions play their role in the defense network in vivo. The free radical scavenging antioxidants are one of the important classes of antioxidants and the assessment of their capacity has been the subject of extensive studies and argument. Various methods have been developed and applied in different systems, but many available methods result in inconsistent results. There is no simple universal method by which antioxidant capacity can be assessed accurately and quantitatively. In this review article, the available methods are critically reviewed on the basis of the mechanisms and dynamics of antioxidant action, and the methods are proposed to assess the capacity of radical scavenging and inhibition of lipid peroxidation both in vitro and in vivo. It is emphasized that the prevailing competition methods such as oxygen radical absorption capacity (ORAC) using a reference probe may be useful for assessing the capacity for scavenging free radicals but that such methods do not evaluate the characteristics of antioxidants and do not necessarily show the capacity to suppress the oxidation, that is, antioxidation. It is recommended that the capacity of antioxidant compounds and their mixtures for antioxidation should be assessed from their effect on the levels of plasma lipid peroxidation in vitro and biomarkers of oxidative stress in vivo.",
"corpus_id": 36295810
} | {
"title": "Interaction of Galvinoxyl Radical with Ascorbic Acid, Cysteine, and Glutathione in Homogeneous Solution and in Aqueous Dispersions",
"abstract": "The rates of interaction of galvinoxyl radical with ascorbic acid, cysteine, and glutathione have been studied in homogeneous solution and in water dispersions as a model reaction of vitamin E radical with these reducing agents in biological systems. The rate was measured by following the disappearance of galvinoxyl radical with absorption spectroscopy and electron spin resonance. In every system, galvinoxyl reacted with these reducing substrates and their relative reactivities decreased in the order of ascorbic acid>cysteine>glutathione. For any reducing substrate, the rate was fastest in homogeneous solution and slowest in micelle in Triton X-100 aqueous solution, and the rate in liposome system was in between.",
"corpus_id": 95205801,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Continuous quality improvement: Why some organisations lack commitment",
"abstract": "Abstract This paper makes the claim that not all companies are willing to embrace the fundamentals of Total Quality Management (TQM) and goes on to outline six levels of adoption. It is argued that there are a considerable number of companies who are using all the popular quality management tools and techniques and have met second and third party assessments of their quality system. However, these techniques, procedures and systems are being used in a superficial manner. The main cause of this situation is a lack of management commitment to the principles of TQM and quality improvement and ineffective leadership of the improvement process. Drawing on research work carried out in the areas of initial sample inspection reporting, statistical process control and mistake proofing in an automotive component supplier operating at this level of TQM adoption, evidence is provided on the problems caused by a lack of dedication to continuous companywide quality improvement.",
"corpus_id": 153640653
} | {
"title": "Statistical Process Control: A Practical Guide",
"abstract": "This book gives the foundation of good Quality Management and Process Control, including an explanation of what quality is, and control of conformance and consistency during production.",
"corpus_id": 61070281
} | {
"title": "Inventory management under date-terms supplier trade credit with stochastic demand and leadtime",
"abstract": "Executives and academics alike are expressing increasing interest in supplier trade credit. We consider a form of credit known as ‘date-terms’ where the credit period extends to a specified date in the month following the invoice. We extend published research to consider both demand and supply uncertainty, employing a gamma distribution to model demand during the leadtime and reorder period. Taking an applied perspective, we evaluate four heuristics against an optimal solution for the case where pragmatic restrictions are placed on the reorder period. We evaluate how the reorder period and the performance of heuristics are affected by various environmental parameters (based on industrial data) and comment on the ramifications of this form of trade credit.",
"corpus_id": 37416202,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Big data analytics for healthcare",
"abstract": "Large amounts of heterogeneous medical data have become available in various healthcare organizations (payers, providers, pharmaceuticals). Those data could be an enabling resource for deriving insights for improving care delivery and reducing waste. The enormity and complexity of these datasets present great challenges in analyses and subsequent applications to a practical clinical environment. In this tutorial, we introduce the characteristics and related mining challenges on dealing with big medical data. Many of those insights come from medical informatics community, which is highly related to data mining but focuses on biomedical specifics. We survey various related papers from data mining venues as well as medical informatics venues to share with the audiences key problems and trends in healthcare analytics research, with different applications ranging from clinical text mining, predictive modeling, survival analysis, patient similarity, genetic data analysis, and public health. The tutorial will include several case studies dealing with some of the important healthcare applications.",
"corpus_id": 24066510
} | {
"title": "Big Data, Big Knowledge: Big Data for Personalized Healthcare",
"abstract": "The idea that the purely phenomenological knowledge that we can extract by analyzing large amounts of data can be useful in healthcare seems to contradict the desire of VPH researchers to build detailed mechanistic models for individual patients. But in practice no model is ever entirely phenomenological or entirely mechanistic. We propose in this position paper that big data analytics can be successfully combined with VPH technologies to produce robust and effective in silico medicine solutions. In order to do this, big data technologies must be further developed to cope with some specific requirements that emerge from this application. Such requirements are: working with sensitive data; analytics of complex and heterogeneous data spaces, including nontextual information; distributed data management under security and performance constraints; specialized analytics to integrate bioinformatics and systems biology information with clinical observations at tissue, organ and organisms scales; and specialized analytics to define the “physiological envelope” during the daily life of each patient. These domain-specific requirements suggest a need for targeted funding, in which big data technologies for in silico medicine becomes the research priority.",
"corpus_id": 14710821
} | {
"title": "A Characterization of Chameleon Hash Functions and New, Efficient Designs",
"abstract": "This paper shows that chameleon hash functions and Sigma protocols are equivalent. We provide a transform of any suitable Sigma protocol to a chameleon hash function, and also show that any chameleon hash function is the result of applying our transform to some suitable Sigma protocol. This enables us to unify previous designs of chameleon hash functions, seeing them all as emanating from a common paradigm, and also obtain new designs that are more efficient than previous ones. In particular, via a modified version of the Fiat---Shamir protocol, we obtain the fastest known chameleon hash function with a proof of security based on the standard factoring assumption. The increasing number of applications of chameleon hash functions, including on-line/off-line signing, chameleon signatures, designated-verifier signatures and conversion from weakly-secure to fully-secure signatures, make our work of contemporary interest.",
"corpus_id": 14695654,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "A Case Study in Ontology Library Construction",
"abstract": "The goal of our work is to facilitate the development of medical knowledge-based systems by providing a library of reusable ontologies. The availability of such a library reduces the amount of knowledge acquisition required to create knowledge bases of new applications, and makes it easier to connect a knowledge-based system to existing data bases. This article presents a case study in constructing such a library. The emphasis is on studying the principles that underly the internal structure of the library as well as on the process of constructing and using the library. We envision that, in the future, application ontologies can be constructed by the selection and refinement of generic ontologies and domain ontologies from such a library.",
"corpus_id": 16172044
} | {
"title": "Classification problem solving",
"abstract": "A broad range of heuristic programs—embracing forms of diagnosis, catalog selection, and skeletal planning—accomplish a kind of well-structured problem solving called classification. These programs have a characteristic inference structure that systematically relates data to a pre-enumerated set of solutions by abstraction, heuristic association, and refinement. This level of description specifies the knowledge needed to solve a problem, independent of its representation in a particular computer language. The classification problem-solving model provides a useful framework for recognizing and representing similar problems, for designing representation tools, and for understanding why non-classification problems require different problem-solving methods.",
"corpus_id": 18086872
} | {
"title": "Towards an Integrated Organization and Technology Development",
"abstract": "Nowadays organizations are seen as self-organizing social systems. To cope with dynamics of a continuously changing environment they have to be able to react flexibly. To support organizational change we will work out the concept of integrated organization and technology development. This approach offers a framework to deal with organizational and technological change jointly in an evolutionary and participative way. We will investigate on methods to organization development, work psychological guide-lines, approaches to software development and tailoring in use. Based on these results we will develop an integrated approach to organization and technology development.",
"corpus_id": 12020423,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "Cooperative robust output regulation problem for discrete-time linear time-delay multi-agent systems via the distributed internal model",
"abstract": "In this paper, we study the cooperative robust output regulation problem for discrete-time linear multi-agent systems with both communication and input delays by distributed internal model approach. We first introduce the distributed internal model for discrete-time multi-agent systems with both communication and input delays. Then, we further establish the solvability conditions for the problem via both the distributed state feedback control and the distributed output feedback control.",
"corpus_id": 171471
} | {
"title": "Cooperative Output Regulation of Linear Multi-Agent Systems",
"abstract": "In this technical note, we consider the cooperative output regulation of linear multi-agent systems. The overall system consists of two groups of subsystems. While the first group of subsystems can access the exogenous signal, the second cannot. As a result, the problem cannot be solved by the decentralized approach. By devising a distributed observer, we can solve the problem by a dynamic full information distributed control scheme. The problem can also be viewed as a generalization of some results of the leader-following consensus problem of multi-agent systems.",
"corpus_id": 5990050
} | {
"title": "Stabilization of non-minimum phase switched nonlinear systems with application to multi-agent systems",
"abstract": "Abstract This paper addresses the stabilization issue of a class of switched nonlinear systems where each mode may be non-minimum phase, and the states of linearized dynamics of all modes compose the whole state space. Time dependent and state dependent stabilization switching laws are provided by considering both common and multiple Lyapunov functions. The new results are applied to the aggregation problem of nonlinear multi-agent systems with designable switching connection topology. Finally, an aircraft team example illustrates the efficiency of the proposed approaches.",
"corpus_id": 8157825,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Facial melanoses: Indian perspective.",
"abstract": "Facial melanoses (FM) are a common presentation in Indian patients, causing cosmetic disfigurement with considerable psychological impact. Some of the well defined causes of FM include melasma, Riehl's melanosis, Lichen planus pigmentosus, erythema dyschromicum perstans (EDP), erythrosis, and poikiloderma of Civatte. But there is considerable overlap in features amongst the clinical entities. Etiology in most of the causes is unknown, but some factors such as UV radiation in melasma, exposure to chemicals in EDP, exposure to allergens in Riehl's melanosis are implicated. Diagnosis is generally based on clinical features. The treatment of FM includes removal of aggravating factors, vigorous photoprotection, and some form of active pigment reduction either with topical agents or physical modes of treatment. Topical agents include hydroquinone (HQ), which is the most commonly used agent, often in combination with retinoic acid, corticosteroids, azelaic acid, kojic acid, and glycolic acid. Chemical peels are important modalities of physical therapy, other forms include lasers and dermabrasion.",
"corpus_id": 1495507
} | {
"title": "Pigmented contact dermatitis",
"abstract": "Case Report A 50-year-old woman presented in October 1993 with a !-year history of itchy pigmentation on her abdomen. There was linear cutaneous pigmentation across the abdomen just above the umbilicus (Fig. 1). The pigmentation had developed gradually, following itchy erythema and scaling, in the spring and summer, some months after she had started to wear around the waist a small belt directly on the skin, acute lesions having improved with topical corticosteroids prescribed by her practitioner. The patient denied ingestion of medications, and there were no lesions in any other body area. There was no previous personal or family history of atopy or allergic contact dermatitis. Histopathological examination showed slight hyperkeratosis of the epidermis, telangiectasia, superficial dermal lymphomononuclear infiltration around blood vessels and pigmentary incontinence with melanophages. Lichenoid characteristics were absent. Patch testing with the GIRDCA standard series showed a strong positive reaction to nickel sulfate 5% pet. at D2 and D4. The patient was instructed to avoid wearing her belt and other sources of nickel: careful enquiry of the manufacturer revealed the presence of nickel in the belt. Improvement was seen 3 months later, but slight pigmentation remained.",
"corpus_id": 12229250
} | {
"title": "Bilateral ptosis and upgaze palsy with right hemispheric lesions",
"abstract": "Bilateral ptosis is reported with unilateral hemispheric lesions, suggesting partial lateralization of the control of the levator palpebrae superioris. There is a tight synkinesis between vertical eye and eyelid movements, but a similar, lateralized control of vertical gaze has not been previously described. We report 3 patients with right hemispheric infarctions, in whom bilateral ptosis was accompanied by impaired upward gaze. We postulate that this laterlization of ocular motor function reflects the special contribution that the nondominant hemisphere makes to attention.",
"corpus_id": 834822,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Financial and product market integration: Responses of Japanese firms",
"abstract": "Abstract and Key Results▪ Growing financial and product market integration has resulted in increased pressures for changes in most developed economies. We investigate the impact of these twin drivers on changes effected by Japanese firms between 1986 and 1999.▪ Specifically, we examine (1) how shareholdings by market investors and foreign investors and (2) export ratio impact outcomes in the form of efficiency increases, dividend payout, and leverage change.▪ We also investigate whether the relationships differ between keiretsu and nonkeiretsu firms.▪ Ownership by market investors was positively associated with efficiency increases and decreases in firm leverage. In addition, firm export ratio played a key role in motivating Japanese firms to increase their efficiency and firm leverage. Moreover, these relationships were more pronounced in non-keiretsu than keiretsu firms.",
"corpus_id": 153423833
} | {
"title": "Country of Origin and Foreign IPO Legitimacy: Understanding the Role of Geographic Scope and Insider Ownership",
"abstract": "Foreign firms from emergent economies are increasingly seeking equity capital in developed economies like the United States. Utilizing institutional, signaling, and agency theories this research examines the legitimacy of foreign IPOs (initial public offerings) in the United States. Employing the population of foreign IPOs listed on U.S. stock exchanges between 1997 and 2004, it is demonstrated that firms from countries with governmental policies and institutional practices that protect the economic freedom of its citizens are significantly less underpriced than IPOs of firms originating from countries experiencing lower levels of economic freedom. The evidence further indicates that firms from emerging economies can overcome negative country perceptions associated with lower levels of legitimacy by increasing their international scope of operations prior to beginning the IPO process as well as by retaining acceptable levels of ownership in their respective firms.",
"corpus_id": 154945567
} | {
"title": "Diplomacy in isolation",
"abstract": "Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis by Deon Geldenhuys. Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg, 1990.764 pp. including notes and index. South Africa's Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security 1945 ‐ 1988 by James Barber and John Barratt. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1990. ix plus 398 pp. including appendix, notes and index.",
"corpus_id": 154919926,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Visualized Onomatopoeia Thesaurus Maps Based on Deep Autoencoder",
"abstract": "Onomatopoeias can simply describe sounds or state of things. Therefore they are often used in Japanese daily conversation. On the other hand, one of the problems, which Japanese learners face, is the lack of ways to learn Japanese onomatopoeias. This study proposes a thesaurus map which can describe semantic relationship among onomatopoeias. Our proposed method can transform the onomatopoeia into a 2Dvector and assign it on the map. In our experiment, we examined whether the map can describe the semantic relationship as local distance on the map. The experiment utilized onomatopoeia samples which represent \"human motion\" to evaluate the map.",
"corpus_id": 155106314
} | {
"title": "Digital Picture Book System for Foreign Learners who Studies Japanese Onomatopoeia",
"abstract": "The objective of this study is to support learning of Japanese onomatopoeia for foreigners who learn Japanese. In recent years, the number of such foreigners is increasing. There are a lot of onomatopoeia words in Japanese and many of them are difficult to translate because only the number of onomatopoeia words in foreign languages (e.g., Mandarin, Cantonese) are fewer than these in Japanese. To overcome the cultural difference, this paper proposes a digital picture book system for learning Japanese onomatopoeia. The system presents 32 onomatopoeia words to a user. The design criteria of the system is that: (1) adopts an interface of user participation, (2) presents a tiny story in which onomatopoeic words are associated with pictures, and (3) enables comparison of two synonymous/antomynic onomatopoeias. We conducted a user study with foreign learners and revealed that the proposed system improves understanding of semasiological differences between two confusing onomatopoeic words.",
"corpus_id": 61356047
} | {
"title": "JAPANESE PALATALIZATION IN RELATION TO THEORIES OF RESTRICTED UNDERSPECIFICATION",
"abstract": "Mester and Ito (1989) claim that patterning in the distribution of an autosegmental palatalization morpheme in Japanese mimetic forms constitutes strong evidence for the theoretical claim that among phonological features only those which are redundant are unspecified in underlying representations (Restricted Underspecification). We provide experimental evidence to show that the curious distribution of palatalization in Japanese mimetics, including nonoccurrence with r, on which the argument for underspecification crucially depends, is predictable from facts about the articulatory difficulty of. repeated CVCV structures. We show that the distributional regularities involved, when correctly stated, apply not only to mimetics but to the entire vocabulary of Japanese, as well as to at least one language, Spanish, in which palatalization is not an autosegmental morpheme. Underspecification of features, restricted or otherwise, is not required to describe the distribution of palatalization in Japanese mimetics, and the M&I analysis based on underspecif ication is both inadequate and unmotivated.",
"corpus_id": 151394204,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Urologic Injuries Sustained After Free Falls From Hunting Tree Stands",
"abstract": "Objectives: Hunting is a popular recreational pastime in the United States. Injuries sustained from falls out of tree stands remain a significant cause of morbidity among hunters, often resulting in significant urological injury. The purpose of this study is to identify the type and pattern of urologic injuries sustained after free falls from hunting tree stands. Methods: A retrospective review was performed using an institutional trauma database. Twenty patients who sustained urologic trauma when falling from a hunting tree stand were identified from 1998 to 2006. Baseline data, type of injury, and management strategies were recorded. Results: All patients were male with a mean age of 43. Mean fall height was 15.2 feet. Ninety-five percent of hunters were not wearing a fall-arrest system/full body harness. Sixty-three percent of injuries were the result of human error, whereas 26% resulted from structural failure. Ten percent of injuries were associated with alcohol use. Urologic injuries included: 2 posterior urethral disruptions, 8 renal injuries, and 10 spinal cord injuries resulting in permanent paralysis and neurogenic bladder. Conclusions: Accidental falls from hunting tree stands can cause significant urologic morbidity. Fall-arrest system/full body harness use and increased hunter public education and awareness can reduce tree stand falls. Trauma teams need to be aware of the potential for urologic injury, and need to evaluate and treat hunters involved in tree stand accidents accordingly.",
"corpus_id": 1345614
} | {
"title": "Deer Stands: A Significant Cause of Injury and Mortality",
"abstract": "Deer hunting is a popular recreational activity in the United States. Although the risks associated with firearms are well known, the hazards related to deer stands are not widely appreciated. From September 1982 through December 1989, there were 19 patients admitted to the Medical College of Georgia Hospital and Clinics for injuries sustained from falls related to deer stands. One death occurred, and six of the 18 survivors remain paralyzed. Data from 18 of these patients showed that 83% of these falls (15/18) were associated with hunter-constructed stands. Structural failure accounted for 39% (7/18) of the accidents; other causes included carelessness, falling asleep, and medical events. Four of the 19 patients (21%) had elevated blood alcohol levels on admission. Fracture of the spine and long bones accounted for the majority of the injuries, and seven of the 18 survivors (39%) were hospitalized for more than 4 weeks. Eight of the survivors (44%) remain permanently disabled. Deer-stand-related falls may result in significant long-term disability, expensive and lengthy hospitalization, and even death. A preventive approach to these injuries is paramount, and published guidelines for safety while hunting from deer stands should be followed.",
"corpus_id": 27870391
} | {
"title": "Neutrophils to lymphocytes ratio and platelets to lymphocytes ratio in pregnancy: A population study",
"abstract": "Background Neutrophils to lymphocytes ratio (NLR) and platelets to lymphocytes ratio (PLR) are both inflammatory ratios that can be easily calculated from a simple blood count. They are frequently reported and tested as prognostic factors in several medical disciplines. Pregnancy involves special reference values for laboratory assays. Objective The aim of this study was to define pregnancy-related reference values for NLR and PLR according to trimester, background morbidity and according to the patient's age. Study design A retrospective analysis of a large cohort undergoing community-based pregnancy surveillance between the years 2011–2016. Data were analyzed according to high-risk patient versus normal-risk patient. Results A total of 11,415 patients were included. Mean PLR and NLR values were 136.3±44.3, 2.6±1, respectively during the first trimester, 144.6±47.1, 4.0±1.4 respectively during the second trimester and 118.1±42.0, 3.5±1.2 respectively during the third trimester. No difference was detected between the high-risk and the normal population (P-values 0.3, 0.5 and 0.4 for PLR in each trimester respectively and 0.3, 0.4, 0.6 for NLR in each trimester, respectively). No differences were detected among parity categories. The correlation between patient’s age and either PLR and NLR was a weak positive correlation (though statistically significant). Both PLR and NLR reached a maximum value during the second trimester. The differences between mean NLR and PLR between trimesters were significant (P <0.01 for all differences tested). PLR rises in the presence of anemia, reaching statistical significance (P-value for PLR in each trimester was <0.01). NLR showed an opposite trend (P-values for NLR were 0.4, 0.005 and 0.06 in each trimester, respectively). Conclusions In our cohort, there were generally no differences between the high-risk and the normal population, excluding patients with a fibroid uterus or inflammatory bowel disease who presented a significantly elevated PLR through all trimesters. Both PLR and NLR reached a maximum value during the second trimester and were positively correlated with age. We anticipate that the population-based data will assist in providing accurate reference values for future research testing NLR and PLR measures during pregnancy.",
"corpus_id": 44151921,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "West German Radical History Seen From the 1980s: Projekt Artur and the Refusal of Political Confiscation",
"abstract": "Recent years have seen an intense growth in memories of West German leftwing, radical political culture. There now exists an extensive body of interpretive labour seeking to make sense of how that culture developed from the mid-60s until approximately the mid-80s, a vast expansion of the notable few attempts of previous decades (Aust; Botzat, Kiderlen, and Wolff) to analyze its forms and themes. Yet while this intensified interest may mark a particular kind of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” much of it takes place on the analytical planes of trauma, performance, and representation (Theweleit; Trnka). This article focusses on one approach to radical left-wing politics and culture that, even as early as the 80s, perceived the promise rather than the threat of that movement. It does so by undertaking an analysis of Projekt Artur (Danquart et al.), the 1987 political documentary produced by the left-media collective Medienwerkstatt Freiburg and demonstrating three major aspects of that film’s significance: first as a cinematic document of both the political imaginaries and the practices of West Germany’s radical left, providing a glimpse of the historical legitimation, political commitments, and emotional attachments that left radicals associated with “the struggle” of that twenty-year span; second as a history “from below” that grows out of the heterogeneity of “the movement” and that serves, rather than the academic goal of explaining, the political goal of continuing the debate within that movement; and third as a project comparable, in its production and form, to experiments in collective authorship that proliferated in the 60s and 70s and sought not only to refute the myth of the lonely, gifted theorist and writer and the film director as “auteur,” but also to relegate these figures to the solitary confinement of elitist culture and knowledge production. In Germany (and beyond), to raise the question of radical, left-wing culture is to confront the ways in which this radicality is represented and remembered. In many of the recent histories and documents, there exists a tendency to reduce the movement to a few trademarked representatives or iconic leaders. These are the radicals with a capital “R,” immutable in their heroism and frequently",
"corpus_id": 153483439
} | {
"title": "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex",
"abstract": "Der Spielfilm Der Baader Meinhof Komplex aus dem Jahr 2008 schildert Vorgeschichte und Aktionen der Terrorgruppe Rote Armee Fraktion von 1967 bis 1977.",
"corpus_id": 142580447
} | {
"title": "L'ordre du discours",
"abstract": "1 Documents à propos de l'oeuvre L'ordre du discours (1971) / Michel Foucault (1926-1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Pages dans data.bnf.fr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Auteurs reliés . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Cette page dans l'atelier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Sources et références . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Voir dans le catalogue général de la BnF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Sources de la notice",
"corpus_id": 189017586,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Cooling in Coronal Gas in the M82 Starburst Superwind",
"abstract": "We have used the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer to search for O VI λ1031.926 emission at four locations in the starburst superwind of M82. No O VI emission was detected at any of the four pointings, with upper limits less than or equal to the 0.3-2 keV X-ray flux. These observations limit the energy lost through radiative cooling of coronal phase (T ~ 105.5 K) gas to roughly the same magnitude as that lost in the hot phase through X-ray emission, which has been shown to be small. The wind material retains most of its energy and should be able to escape from the gravitational potential of M82, enriching the intergalactic medium with energy and metals. The lack of coronal gas in the wind and observations of spatially correlated X-ray and Hα emission are consistent with a scenario in which the hot wind material overruns cold clouds in the halo or with one in which the Hα and X-ray emission arise at the interface between the hot wind and a cool shell of swept-up interstellar medium, as long as the shock velocity is ≲150 km s-1. The observed limits on the O VI/Hα and C III/Hα flux ratios rule out shock heating as the source of the T = 104 K gas unless the shock velocity is ≲90 km s-1.",
"corpus_id": 3248684
} | {
"title": "FUSE Observations of Outflowing O VI in the Dwarf Starburst Galaxy NGC 1705",
"abstract": "We report FUSE far-UV spectroscopy of the prototypical dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 1705. These data allow us for the first time to directly probe the coronal-phase (T = a few times 105 K) gas that may dominate the radiative cooling of the supernova-heated interstellar medium (ISM) and thereby determine the dynamical evolution of the starburst-driven outflows in dwarf galaxies. We detect a broad (~100 km s-1 FWHM) and blueshifted (Δv = 77 km s-1) O VI λ1032 absorption line arising in the previously known galactic outflow. The mass and kinetic energy in the outflow we detect is dominated by the warm (T ~ 104 K) photoionized gas which is also seen through its optical line emission. The kinematics of this warm gas are compatible with a simple model of the adiabatic expansion of a superbubble driven by the collective effect of the kinetic energy supplied by supernovae in the starburst. However, the observed properties of the O VI absorption in NGC 1705 are not consistent with the simple superbubble model, in which the O VI would arise in a conductive interface inside the superbubble's outer shell. The relative outflow speed of the O VI is too high and the observed column density (log N = 14.3) is much too large. We argue that the superbubble has begun to blow out of the ISM of NGC 1705. During this blowout phase the superbubble shell accelerates and fragments. The resulting hydrodynamical interaction as hot outrushing gas flows between the cool shell fragments will create intermediate-temperature coronal gas that can produce the observed O VI absorption. For the observed flow speed of ~102 km s-1, the observed O VI column density is just what is expected for gas that has been heated and which then cools radiatively. Assuming that the coronal-phase gas is in rough pressure balance with the warm photoionized gas, we estimate a cooling rate of order ~0.1 M☉ yr-1 and ~1039 ergs s-1 in the coronal gas. The latter represents less than 10% of the supernova heating rate. Independent of the assumed pressure, the lack of observed redshifted O VI emission from the back side of the outflow leads to upper limits on the cooling rate of ≤20% of the supernova heating rate. Since the X-ray luminosity of NGC 1705 is negligible, we conclude that radiative losses are insignificant in the outflow. The outflow should therefore be able to fully blow out of the ISM of NGC 1705 and vent its metals and kinetic energy. This process has potentially important implications for the evolution of dwarf galaxies and the intergalactic medium.",
"corpus_id": 15424283
} | {
"title": "Retrospective epidemiology of acute rheumatic fever: a 10-year review in the Waikato District Health Board area of New Zealand.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nAcute rheumatic fever (ARF) is a preventable disease which remains a prominent burden of health in New Zealand, with an annual incidence comparable to that of developing countries.\n\n\nAIM\nThe aim of this study was to describe the epidemiology of ARF and recurrent ARF cases in the Waikato District Health Board (DHB) area of New Zealand from 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2011.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA total of 106 cases of ARF and four cases of recurrent ARF were identified through the Public Health Database - EpiSurv and the Hospital coding system, ICD-10.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe overall Waikato DHB annual incidence of ARF was 3.1 per 100,000 population with Maori children aged 5-14 years experiencing higher rates of 46.1 per 100,000 population. Eighty-five percent of the cases were of Maori ethnicity, and 10% Pacific. Almost three-quarters of all cases lived in areas of the three most deprived deciles as described by the New Zealand Deprivation Index 2006.\n\n\nDISCUSSION\nThe rates of ARF seen in the Waikato DHB are comparable to that seen previously locally and nationally. High risk groups have been identified as children aged 5-14 years, Maori and Pacific ethnicity, and those living in lower socioeconomic areas which could be targeted by the Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme (RFPP) with the intention to reduce the incidence of ARF nationally to 0.4 cases per 100,000 population by 2017.",
"corpus_id": 1421832,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Observation of the nonlocal spin-orbital effective field.",
"abstract": "The spin-orbital interaction in heavy nonmagnetic metal/ferromagnetic metal bilayer systems has attracted great attention and exhibited promising potentials in magnetic logic devices, where the magnetization direction is controlled by passing an electric current. It is found that the spin-orbital interaction induces both an effective field and torque on the magnetization, which have been attributed to two different origins: the Rashba effect and the spin Hall effect. It requires quantitative analysis to distinguish the two mechanisms. Here we show sensitive spin-orbital effective field measurements up to 10 nm thick ferromagnetic layer and find the effective field rapidly diminishes with the increase of the ferromagnetic layer thickness. We further show that this effective field persists even with the insertion of a copper spacer. The nonlocal measurement suggests that the spin-orbital effective field does not rely on the heavy normal metal/ferromagnetic metal interface.",
"corpus_id": 673985
} | {
"title": "Measurement of the spin-transfer-torque vector in magnetic tunnel junctions",
"abstract": "The transfer of spin angular momentum from a spin-polarized current to a ferromagnet can generate sufficient torque to reorient the magnet’s moment. This torque could enable the development of efficient electrically actuated magnetic memories and nanoscale microwave oscillators. Yet difficulties in making quantitative measurements of the spin-torque vector have hampered understanding. Here we present direct measurements of both the magnitude and direction of the spin torque in magnetic tunnel junctions, the type of device of primary interest for applications. At low bias V, the differential torque dτ/dV lies in the plane defined by the electrode magnetizations, and its magnitude is in excellent agreement with recent predictions for near-perfect spin-polarized tunnelling. We find that the strength of the in-plane differential torque remains almost constant with increasing bias, despite a substantial decrease in the device magnetoresistance, and that with bias the torque vector also rotates out of the plane.",
"corpus_id": 8162872
} | {
"title": "Politics in the Portuguese Empire: The State, Industry, and Cotton, 1926-1974",
"abstract": "The creation of the Estado Novo, 1926-1936 the nature of the Portuguese textile industry the establishment of the cotton-growing regime intervention and industrialization - the Estado Novo, 1936-1946 the textile industry at war - new market, old machinery the intensification of the cotton campaign pretensions of democracy and development, 1946-1958 post-war crisis in the textile industry colonial cotton in transition the decline of the authoritarian regime, 1958-1974 a divided industry the collapse of Portuguese colonialism.",
"corpus_id": 153875511,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Research on the Web Services Selection Problem",
"abstract": "Based on service oriented infrastructures, there are many services that provide the same functionality but differ in quality parameters. An important issue for web services composition is how to select appreciates services from a set of alternatives with QoS features being considered. We define a Petri net model - WS_QPN to computer the QoS values of composite services. Since finding a solution for quality-driven services selection is NP-hard, strategies based on Genetic Algorithm are more suitable than traditional optimization techniques. We use a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm called NSGA-II to resolve this problem and discuss the coding schema and the objective functions obtained from WS_QPN.",
"corpus_id": 1830618
} | {
"title": "Application and Theory of Petri Nets",
"abstract": "This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Applications and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency, PETRI NETS 2012, held in Hamburg, Germany, in June 2012. The 18 regular papers and 3 tool papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The book also contains 2 invited talks. All current issues on research and development in the area of Petri nets and related models of concurrent systems are addressed.",
"corpus_id": 30143407
} | {
"title": "Behavioral modeling of the Advanced Compact MOSFET (ACM) model with VHDL-AMS",
"abstract": "This paper reports a VHDL-AMS implementation of the Advanced Compact MOSFET (ACM) model. This behavioral model aims at being a reference model for ACM code developers, helping to implement and maintain simulators specific code. Simulation results from classical testbenches are presented and confirm the correctness of the proposed model.",
"corpus_id": 61523196,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Analyzing nonverbal listener responses using parallel recordings of multiple listeners",
"abstract": "In this paper, we study nonverbal listener responses on a corpus with multiple parallel recorded listeners. These listeners were meant to believe that they were the sole listener, while in fact there were three persons listening to the same speaker. The speaker could only see one of the listeners. We analyze the impact of the particular setup of the corpus on the behavior and perception of the two types of listeners: the listeners that could be seen by the speaker and the listeners that could not be seen. Furthermore, we compare the nonverbal listening behaviors of these three listeners to each other with regard to timing and form. We correlate these behaviors with behaviors of the speaker, like pauses and whether the speaker is looking at the listeners or not.",
"corpus_id": 221597
} | {
"title": "Head Gestures, Gaze and the Principles of Conversational Structure",
"abstract": "Much of the work on embodied conversational agents is concerned with building computational models of nonverbal behaviors that can generate the right behavior in the appropriate context. In this paper, we discuss, from a linguistic and conversational theoretic point of view, how nonverbal behaviors in conversation work. We look particularly at gaze and head movements. These play a variety of functions in face-to-face interactions. We show how these functions are structured by general principles governing cooperative actions and symbolic communication.",
"corpus_id": 38714478
} | {
"title": "An investigation of the production of ejectives by native (L1) and second (L2) language speakers of Q'eqchi' Mayan",
"abstract": "Abstract This study examines the production of voiceless unaspirated stops and ejective stops by native (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of Q'eqchi' to determine (1) whether there were acoustic differences (in voice onset time and burst duration) between voiceless unaspirated stops and ejective stops and (2) whether L2 speakers were more accurate at producing phones that are similar to the native language (voiceless unaspirated stops) than those that are different (ejective stops). Acoustic analyses of the stops produced by the ten L1 and thirteen L2 Q'eqchi' speakers revealed (1) that L1 speakers make a distinction in voice onset time and at times in burst duration in ejective versus voiceless unaspirated stops, (2) L2 speakers can produce a difference between ejective and voiceless unaspirated stops and (3) L2 speakers are more accurate at producing ejective than voiceless unaspirated stops. These results suggest that L2 speakers are actually less accurate at producing L2 phones that are similar versus less similar to native language phones. Results are discussed in light of current theories of L2 speech learning.",
"corpus_id": 32382206,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "The benefit of whole brain reirradiation in patients with multiple brain metastases",
"abstract": "BackgroundTo assess the outcomes, symptom palliation and survival rates in patients who received repeat whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT).MethodsTwenty-eight patients who had progression of brain metastasis received a second course of WBRT. Univariate log-rank testing and multivariate Cox regression analysis were used to determine the factors for death among several variables (cumulative BED [BEDcumulative], primary tumor site, Karnofsky performance scale [KPS], previous SRS, number of metastases and absence of extracranial metastases). Correlations between variables and treatment response were evaluated with the Chi-squared test.ResultsThe median KPS was 60 (range 50 to 100) at the initiation of reirradiation. The median time interval between the two courses of WBRT was 9.5 months (range 3–27 months). The median doses of the first course and the second course of WBRT were 30 Gy (range 20 to 30 Gy) and 25 Gy (range 20 to 30 Gy), respectively. The mean BEDcumulative was 129.5 Gy (range 110 to 150 Gy). Severe or unexpected toxicity was not observed. Symptomatic response was detected in 39% of the patients. The median overall survival following reirradiation was 3 months (range 1 to 12 months, 95% CI 1.82-4.118). Survival was significantly better in responders (median 10 months, 95% CI 3.56-16.43) compared with non-responders (median 2 months, 95% CI 1.3-2.64) (p = 0.000). In multivariate analysis, patients that had lung cancer (p = 0.01), initial KPS ≥60 (p = 0.03) or longer intervals to reirradiation (p = 0.01) had significantly better survival rates.ConclusionsA careful second course of whole brain irradiation might provide a symptomatic and survival benefit in patients with good performance status and longer cranial progression-free intervals.",
"corpus_id": 1520775
} | {
"title": "Re-Whole Brain Radiotherapy May Be One of the Treatment Choices for Symptomatic Brain Metastases Patients",
"abstract": "Simple Summary Some institutions consider re- whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) administration for brain metastases recurrence; however, there is insufficient information regarding this. We aimed to review re-WBRT administration among these patients. Sympathetic improvement was sometimes observed, with tolerable acute toxicities. Therefore, re-WBRT may be a treatment option for patients with sympathetic recurrence of brain metastases. However, asymptomatic patients should not undergo re-WBRT owing to the unclear toxicity data. Although there is no strong evidence, 20 Gy in 10 fractions or 18 Gy in five fractions may be a reasonable treatment method within the tolerable total biological effective dose 2 ≤ 150 Gy. Abstract Generally, patients with multiple brain metastases receive whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT). Although, more than 60% of patients show complete or partial responses, many experience recurrence. Therefore, some institutions consider re-WBRT administration; however, there is insufficient information regarding this. Therefore, we aimed to review re-WBRT administration among these patients. Although most patients did not live longer than 12 months, sympathetic improvement was sometimes observed, with tolerable acute toxicities. Therefore, re-WBRT may be a treatment option for patients with sympathetic recurrence of brain metastases. However, physicians should consider this treatment cautiously because there is insufficient data on late toxicity, including radiation necrosis, owing to poor prognosis. A better prognostic factor for survival following radiotherapy administration may be the time interval of ≤ 9 months between the first WBRT and re-WBRT, but there is no evidence supporting that higher doses lead to prolonged survival, symptom improvement, and tumor control. Therefore, 20 Gy in 10 fractions or 18 Gy in five fractions may be a reasonable treatment method within the tolerable total biological effective dose 2 ≤ 150 Gy, considering the biologically effective dose for tumors and normal tissues.",
"corpus_id": 253213102
} | {
"title": "Evaluating Amyloid-β Oligomers in Cerebrospinal Fluid as a Biomarker for Alzheimer’s Disease",
"abstract": "The current study evaluated amyloid-β oligomers (Aβo) in cerebrospinal fluid as a clinical biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We developed a highly sensitive Aβo ELISA using the same N-terminal monoclonal antibody (82E1) for capture and detection. CSF samples from patients with AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and healthy controls were examined. The assay was specific for oligomerized Aβ with a lower limit of quantification of 200 fg/ml, and the assay signal showed a tight correlation with synthetic Aβo levels. Three clinical materials of well characterized AD patients (n = 199) and cognitively healthy controls (n = 148) from different clinical centers were included, together with a clinical material of patients with MCI (n = 165). Aβo levels were elevated in the all three AD-control comparisons although with a large overlap and a separation from controls that was far from complete. Patients with MCI who later converted to AD had increased Aβo levels on a group level but several samples had undetectable levels. These results indicate that presence of high or measurable Aβo levels in CSF is clearly associated with AD, but the overlap is too large for the test to have any diagnostic potential on its own.",
"corpus_id": 6037272,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Simultaneous Confidence Bands for Abbott-Adjusted Quantal Response Models.",
"abstract": "We study use of a Scheffé-style simultaneous confidence band as applied to low-dose risk estimation with quantal response data. We consider two formulations for the dose-response risk function, an Abbott-adjusted Weibull model and an Abbott-adjusted log-logistic model. Using the simultaneous construction, we derive methods for estimating upper confidence limits on predicted extra risk and, by inverting the upper bands on risk, lower bounds on the benchmark dose, or BMD, at which a specific level of 'benchmark risk' is attained. Monte Carlo evaluations explore the operating characteristics of the simultaneous limits.",
"corpus_id": 1184897
} | {
"title": "Maximum likelihood estimation with binary-data regression models: small-sample and large-sample features.",
"abstract": "Many inferential procedures for generalized linear models rely on the asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). Fahrmeir & Kaufmann (1985, Ann. Stat., 13, 1) present mild conditions under which the MLEs in GLiMs are asymptotically normal. Unfortunately, limited study has appeared for the special case of binomial response models beyond the familiar logit and probit links, and for more general links such as the complementary log-log link, and the less well-known complementary log link. We verify the asymptotic normality conditions of the MLEs for these models under the assumption of a fixed number of experimental groups and present a simple set of conditions for any twice differentiable monotone link function. We also study the quality of the approximation for constructing asymptotic Wald confidence regions. Our results show that for small sample sizes with certain link functions the approximation can be problematic, especially for cases where the parameters are close to the boundary of the parameter space.",
"corpus_id": 23419635
} | {
"title": "Chapter 9 – Generalized Polygons",
"abstract": "Publisher Summary \nThis chapter introduces some basic notions on finite generalized polygons and states important restrictions on the parameters, including the Feit–Higman theorem. It contains a description of the classical finite generalized polygons, in particular the only known finite thick generalized hexagons and octagons and some isomorphisms between the known generalized quadrangles are discussed. It also describes the uniqueness of generalized polygons with small parameters and considers ovoids, spreads, polarities, and subpolygons of finite generalized polygons. These objects appear to be useful tools in some characterizations of generalized polygons. It classifies generalized quadrangles embedded in finite projective and affine spaces and in the projective case the complete classification is due to Buekenhout and Lefevre, in the affine case to Thas. It states the important combinatorial characterizations of the finite classical generalized quadrangles and hexagons and considers automorphisms of finite generalized polygons. The elation and translation generalized quadrangles are discussed as well as characterizations of finite classical generalized polygons by automorphisms.",
"corpus_id": 116546696,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "The molecular mechanisms underlying the ERα-36-mediated signaling in breast cancer",
"abstract": "Alterations in estrogen-mediated cellular signaling have largely been implicated in the pathogenesis of breast cancer. Here, we investigated the signaling regulation of a splice variant of the estrogen receptor, namely estrogen receptor (ERα-36), associated with a poor prognosis in breast cancers. Coupling in vitro and in vivo approaches we determined the precise sequential molecular events of a new estrogen signaling network in an ERα-negative cell line and in an original patient-derived xenograft. After estrogen treatment, ERα-36 rapidly associates with Src at the level of the plasma membrane, initiating downstream cascades, including MEK1/ERK activation and paxillin phosphorylation on S126, which in turn triggers a higher expression of cyclin D1. Of note, the direct binding of ERα-36 to ERK2 prevents its dephosphorylation by MKP3 and enhances the downstream signaling. These findings improve our understanding of the regulation of non-genomic estrogen signaling and open new avenues for personalized therapeutic approaches targeting Src or MEK in ERα-36-positive patients.",
"corpus_id": 2580212
} | {
"title": "Sphingosine kinase 1 activation by estrogen receptor α36 contributes to tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer",
"abstract": "In breast cancer, 17β-estradiol (E2) plays critical roles mainly by binding to its canonical receptor, estrogen receptor (ER) α66, and eliciting genomic effects. E2 also triggers rapid, nongenomic responses. E2 activates sphingosine kinase 1 (SphK1), increasing sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) that binds to its receptors, leading to important breast cancer signaling. However, the E2 receptor responsible for SphK1 activation has not yet been identified. Here, we demonstrate in triple-negative breast cancer cells, which lack the canonical ERα66 but express the novel splice variant ERα36, that ERα36 is the receptor responsible for E2-induced activation of SphK1 and formation and secretion of S1P and dihydro-S1P, the ligands for S1PRs. Tamoxifen, the first-line endocrine therapy for breast cancer, is an antagonist of ERα66, but an agonist of ERα36, and, like E2, activates SphK1 and markedly increases secretion of S1P. A major problem with tamoxifen therapy is development of acquired resistance. We found that tamoxifen resistance correlated with increased SphK1 and ERα36 expression in tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer cells, in patient-derived xenografts, and in endocrine-resistant breast cancer patients. Our data also indicate that targeting this ERα36 and SphK1 axis may be a therapeutic option to circumvent endocrine resistance and improve patient outcome.",
"corpus_id": 52974773
} | {
"title": "Models for protein deficiency.",
"abstract": "Analysis of existing N balance data in adult man has shown that when body weight is constant protein requirements are regulated, much like energy. Data relating to daily N balance on fixed intakes have been examined for the nature and degree of intra-individual variation. It has been shown that for intakes in the range of 3.5 to 12 g N/day, the day-to-day fluctuations in N balance are not random but are serially correlated in an autoregression process. \nThis implies that the daily N balance, like energy balance, is regulated. This regulation is produced by a probabilistic generating mechanism which remains constant through time. At very high or negligible N intakes this regulation is shown to break down, i.e., homeostasis can no \nlonger be maintained. At high levels of protein, metabolism is altered, becoming more rapid than before, body weight increases, and the frequency and amplitude of oscillations become larger and irregular. At low levels of protein, body weight decreases, and the frequency and \namplitude of the oscillations increase and decrease, respectively. In either case, the organism is under stress. The interpretation of the autoregression model is that the daily requirements for man in health will be distributed around a constant mean with stationary variance. It has been shown that the magnitude of this variance is comparable with the variation between individuals. The result is found to hold even when the daily requirement is averaged over several days. We \nconclude that protein deficiency must be defined as a failure of the process to be in statistical control, and not defined in the manner that assumes requirements to be fixed whereby if an individual consumes protein below this level, he suffers from protein deficiency. Based on the \nautoregression model, a method has been indicated for estimating the incidence of protein deficiency in the population.",
"corpus_id": 4436279,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Mitochondrial uncoupling proteins and phylogenesis – UCP4 as the ancestral uncoupling protein",
"abstract": "We searched for the previously defined uncoupling protein (UCP) signatures [Ježek, P. and Urbánková, E. (2000) IUBMB Life 49, 63–70] in genomes of Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, Dictyostelium discoideum, and Arabidopsis thaliana. We identified four UCPs in Drosophila and one in Caenorhabditis or Dictyostelium as close relatives of human UCP4 (BMCP), but distant from UCP1, UCP2, UCP3, and two plant UCPs of Arabidopsis. But the third Arabidopsis UCP is the closest UCP4 relative. This suggests that UCP4 represents the ancestral UCP from which other mammalian and plant UCPs diverged. Speculations on UCP4 participation in apoptosis are thus supported by its early phylogenetic occurrence.",
"corpus_id": 2583964
} | {
"title": "Specific Sequence Motifs of Mitochondrial Uncoupling Proteins",
"abstract": "We have searched for the exclusivity of common sequence motifs of the mitochondrial uncoupling proteins (UCP1, UCP2, UCP3, UCP4, BMCP1, and plant UCP [PUMP]) within the gene family of mitochondrial anion carrier proteins. The UCP‐specific sequences, “UCP signatures”, were found in the first, second, and fourth alpha helices. First: Ala/Ser‐Cys/Thr/n‐n/Phe‐Ala/Gly‐n/Phe‐n/Cys‐ Thr‐Phe/n; second: Gly/Ala‐Ile/Leu‐Gln/X‐NH‐n/Cys‐Ser/n‐ phi/X‐n/Ser‐OH/Gly‐n‐Ile/Met‐Gly/Val‐n/Thr; fourth: Pro‐Asn/ n‐n/Thr/Pro‐OH/Val (n, nonpolar; phi, aromatic; (charged residue). The second and part of the third signature are also present in the yeast dicarboxylate transporter. The UCP signature excluding BMCP1 was also found in the second matrix segment: ‐(Pro/ del‐Leu/del)‐phi‐X‐Gly/Ser‐Thr/n‐X‐NH/‐Ala‐phi. These UCP signatures are thought to be involved in fatty acid anion binding and translocation.",
"corpus_id": 8541209
} | {
"title": "Yeast ADP/ATP carrier (AAC) proteins exhibit similar enzymatic properties but their deletion produces different phenotypes",
"abstract": "Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains expressing a single type of ADP/ATP carrier (AAC) protein were prepared from a mutant in which all AAC genes were disrupted, by transformation with plasmids containing a chosen AAC gene. As demonstrated by measurements of [14C]ADP specific binding and transport, all three translocator proteins, AAC1, AAC2 and AAC3 when present in the mitochondrial membrane, exhibited similar translocation properties. The disruption of some AAC genes, however, resulted in phenotypes indicating that the function of these proteins in whole cells can be quite different. Specifically, we found that the disruption of AAC1 gene, but not AAC2 and AAC3, resulted in a change in colony phenotype.",
"corpus_id": 4931249,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Biphasic modulation of protein kinase C and enhanced cell toxicity by amyloid beta peptide and anoxia in neuronal cultures",
"abstract": "A major feature of Alzheimer's disease is the deposition of the amyloid beta peptide (Aβ) in the brain by mechanisms which remain unclear. One hypothesis suggests that oxidative stress and Aβ aggregation are interrelated processes. Protein kinase C, a major neuronal regulatory protein is activated after oxidative stress and is also altered in the Alzheimer's disease brain. Therefore, we examined the effects of Aβ1−40 peptide on the protein kinase C cascade and cell death in primary neuronal cultures following anoxic conditions. Treatment with Aβ1−40 for 48 h caused a significant increase in the content and activity of Ca2+‐dependent and Ca2+‐independent protein kinase C isoforms. By 72 h various protein kinase C isoforms were down‐regulated. Following 90 min anoxia and 6 h normoxia, a decrease in protein kinase C isoforms was noticed, independent of Aβ1−40 treatment. A combination of Aβ1−40 and 30‐min anoxia enhanced cytotoxicity as noticed by a marked loss in the mitochondrial ability to convert 3‐(4,5‐dimethylthiazol‐2‐yl)‐2,5‐diphenyl‐tetrazolium bromide and by enhanced 4′,6‐diamidino‐2‐phenylindole nuclear staining. Phosphorylation of two downstream protein kinase C substrates of apparent molecular mass 80 and 43 kDa, tentatively identified as the mirystoyl alanine‐rich C‐kinase substrate (MARCKS), were gradually elevated up to 72 h upon incubation with Aβ1−40. Anoxia followed by 30 min normoxia enhanced MARCKS phosphorylation in the membrane but not in the cytosolic fraction. In the presence of Aβ1−40, phosphorylation of MARCKS was reduced. After 6 h normoxia, MARCKS phosphorylability was diminished possibly because of protein kinase C down‐regulation. The data suggest that a biphasic modulation of protein kinase C and MARCKS by Aβ1−40 combined with anoxic stress may play a role in Alzheimer's disease pathology. 1",
"corpus_id": 324560
} | {
"title": "Neural Stem Cell Transplants Improve Cognitive Function Without Altering Amyloid Pathology in an APP/PS1 Double Transgenic Model of Alzheimer’s Disease",
"abstract": "Neural stem cells (NSCs) are capable of self-renewal and are multipotent. Transplantation of NSCs may represent a promising approach for treating neurodegenerative disorders associated with cognitive decline, such as Alzheimer disease (AD) characterized by extensive loss of neurons. In this study, we investigated the effect of NSC transplantation on cognitive function in the amyloid precursor protein/presenilin-1 (APP/PS1) transgenic mouse, an AD mouse model with age-dependent cognitive deficits. We found that NSCs bilaterally transplanted into hippocampal regions improved spatial learning and memory function in these mice, but did not alter Aβ pathology. Immunohistochemical analyses determined that NSCs proliferated, migrated, and differentiated into three neuronal cell types. The improvement in cognitive function was correlated with enhanced long-term potentiation (LTP) and an increase in the neuron expression of proteins related to cognitive function: N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) 2B unit, synaptophysin (SYP), protein kinase C ζ subtypes (PKCζ), tyrosine receptor kinase B (TrkB), and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Taken together, our data indicated that injected NSCs can rescue cognitive deficits in APP/PS1 transgenic mice by replacing neuronal cell types expressing multiple cognition-related proteins that enhance LTP.",
"corpus_id": 10135027
} | {
"title": "2017 Integration Model of Knowledge Management and Social Media for Higher",
"abstract": "3 Abstract Currently social media has radically changed the business process of organization. Higher Education as a place with the majority generation Y, that advances to use technology has to realize these phenomena. With social media, organization may facilitate the knowledge sharing process within organization, then to support collaborative learning from e-learning to social learning. Regarding to this phenomenon, this research will analyze the integration of concepts of knowledge management and social media as a model to identify the significant factors and its relationship to support each other. A systematic literature review from journal and text book was conducted to construct this collaboration model. The result of this study is integrated model of knowledge management and social media model to support teaching and learning activities for higher education",
"corpus_id": 250067897,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Validation of instruments to evaluate primary healthcare from the patient perspective: overview of the method.",
"abstract": "UNLABELLED\nPatient evaluations are an important part of monitoring primary healthcare reforms, but there is little comparative information available to guide evaluators in the choice of instruments or to determine their relevance for Canada.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nTo compare values and the psychometric performances of validated instruments thought to be most pertinent to the Canadian context for evaluating core attributes of primary healthcare.\n\n\nMETHOD\nAMONG VALIDATED INSTRUMENTS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WE SELECTED SIX: the Primary Care Assessment Survey (PCAS); the Primary Care Assessment Tool - Short Form (PCAT-S); the Components of Primary Care Index (CPCI); the first version of the EUROPEP (EUROPEP-I); the Interpersonal Processes of Care Survey, version II (IPC-II); and part of the Veterans Affairs National Outpatient Customer Satisfaction Survey (VANOCSS). We mapped subscales to operational definitions of attributes. All were administered to a sample of adult service users balanced by English/French language (in Nova Scotia and Quebec, respectively), urban/rural residency, high/low education and overall care experience. The sample was recruited from previous survey respondents, newspaper advertisements and community posters. We used common factor analysis to compare our factor resolution for each instrument to that of the developers.\n\n\nRESULTS\nOur sample of 645 respondents was approximately balanced by design variables, but considerable effort was required to recruit low-education and poor-experience respondents. Subscale scores are statistically different by excellent, average and poor overall experience, but interpersonal communication and respectfulness scores were the most discriminating of overall experience. We found fewer factors than did the developers, but when constrained to the number of expected factors, our item loadings were largely similar to those found by developers. Subscale reliability was equivalent to or higher than that reported by developers.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThese instruments perform similarly in the Canadian context to their original development context, and can be used with confidence. Interpersonal and respectfulness scores are most discriminating of excellent, average or poor overall experience and are crucial dimensions of patient evaluations.",
"corpus_id": 2500563
} | {
"title": "VA Community-Based Outpatient Clinics: Performance Measures Based on Patient Perceptions of Care",
"abstract": "Background. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently initiated a system of Community- Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) to enhance delivery of primary care to veterans. Objective. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of CBOCs on patients’ perceptions of care. Research Design. The study design is a cross-sectional survey. Subjects. This study compares 4,980 patients from 44 geographically diverse CBOCs to 4,159 patients from 36 parent VA Medical Center primary care clinics administratively and geographically associated with the CBOCs studied. Measures. Survey data were obtained from the 1998 VA National Outpatient Customer Satisfaction Survey which assesses eight multiitem scales addressing access and timeliness of care, education/information, patient preferences, emotional support, coordination of care, courtesy, and specialty care access. Each scale was evaluated based upon item responses that indicate a problem with care. The survey also contained SF-12 health status measures used for case-mix adjustment. Results. Multivariate logistic regression controlling for patient health status measures revealed that CBOC patients reported fewer problems with care than VA-based patients on 7 of 8 scales though the absolute differences were small for most of the scales. The largest difference was observed for the access/timeliness scale. Significant differences between VA-staff and contract CBOCs were not observed. Conclusions. These results suggest that veterans participating in VA’s initiative to provide primary care in community-based settings report no more than, and in some dimensions fewer problems with care compared with veterans who receive care in VAMC clinics.",
"corpus_id": 21162905
} | {
"title": "Telemedicine Meets Augmented Reality: Healthcare Services Delivery and Distance Training",
"abstract": "The socio-economic impact of telemedicine is no longer to be proven; the perceived benefits are for the patients themselves, for the different practitioners and more broadly for the whole healthcare system. These advantages include for instance improving health care delivery for remote and/or underserved patients, helping distant physicians to make the right decision through second medical opinions and reducing overall costs of healthcare system. Hence in that field, providing innovative and pragmatic solutions/tools for healthcare professionals is one of the main objectives. Through this work, we present some telemedicine applications using Augmented Reality. We also discuss different aspects existing in these applications aiming to help both patients and physicians. We emphasize especially, fifteen works published in relevant conferences and journals. Our goal is to show the benefit of putting Telemedicine and Augmented Reality technologies together for both healthcare services delivery and remote training activities. In particular, we highlight interactive, immersive and collaborative aspects for medical distance training, one of the fields where using augmented reality is highly beneficial and very promising.",
"corpus_id": 234478985,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Synergy of Polyphenols as Strategy for Enhancing Bioavailability and Therapeutic Efficacy",
"abstract": "The search and identification of pharmacologically active compounds against cancer has focused primarily on the research of natural products and their synthetic analogues. Given this strategy, we evaluated the antimicrobial and antitumoral activity of SAABFAT 5. We also evaluated the carcinogenic property of metronidazole as the cancer inducing agent in the experimental animal. The extracts (200mg) of SAABFAT 5 were tested at 500mg/kg/day Background: An open label 3-week descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted in a group of sheep to determine the efficacy of SAABFAT5: an ethnomedicinalpolyherbal formulation for the management of cancer Method: The subjects in this study were nine sheep with an average weight of 20kg. The subjects were placed on SAABFAT 5, the ethnomedicinal herbal formulation for the prevention of liver cancer for a period of 3 weeks, and the subjects were monitored for a period of 8 weeks for possible relapse of signs and symptoms. Results: subjects in this descriptive cross-sectional survey responded positively to the ethnomedicinal herbal formulation without any toxicity or side effects observed in the sheep for the 8 weeks monitoring period. However in group B animals fed with the carcinogen only, had a 100% precancerous and cancerous cell as observed in the photomicrographs. Conclusion: Chronic and debilitating disease is better managed with herbal supplement with little or no toxicity and side effects as compare to the conventional orthodox drugs with massive side effects and hepatotoxicity. Keyword: Ethnomedicinal, SAABFAT5, Orthodox, Herbal, Formulation",
"corpus_id": 1764381
} | {
"title": "Chemical aspects of santalin as a histological stain.",
"abstract": "Recent research on the chemical nature of the red dyes isolated from Pterocarpus santalinus and certain West African plants, viz., Baphia nitida, Pterocarpus osun and Pterocarpus soyauxii, have been reviewed. P. santalinus contains santalins A, B and C, but no santarubin. Santalins and santarubins have been found in P. osun, P. soyauxii and B. nitida. The structural formulae of the santalins are presented and their differences from santarubins indicated. Santalins A and B have some similarities in structure with hematein. This is probably responsible for their staining properties; the possible mechanism of staining is discussed.",
"corpus_id": 27380677
} | {
"title": "A technique for lyopreservation of Clostridium ljungdahlii in a biocomposite matrix for CO absorption",
"abstract": "A system capable of biocatalytic conversion of distributed sources of single carbon gases such as carbon monoxide into hydrocarbons can be highly beneficial for developing commercially viable biotechnology applications in alternative energy. Several anaerobic bacterial strains can be used for such conversion. The anaerobic carbon monoxide-fixing bacteria Clostridium ljungdahlii OTA1 is a model CO assimilating microorganism that currently requires cryogenic temperature for storage of the viable strains. If these organisms can be stabilized and concentrated in thin films in advanced porous materials, it will enable development of high gas fraction, biocomposite absorbers with elevated carbon monoxide (CO) mass transfer rate, that require minimal power input and liquid, and demonstrate elevated substrate consumption rate compared to conventional suspended cell bioreactors. We report development of a technique for dry-stabilization of C. ljungdahlii OTA1 on a paper biocomposite. Bacterial samples coated onto paper were desiccated in the presence of trehalose using convective drying and stored at 4°C. Optimal dryness was ~1g H2O per gram of dry weight (gDW). CO uptake directly following biocomposite rehydration steadily increases over time indicating immediate cellular metabolic recovery. A high-resolution Raman microspectroscopic hyperspectral imaging technique was employed to spatially quantify the residual moisture content. We have demonstrated for the first time that convectively dried and stored C. ljungdahlii strains were stabilized in a desiccated state for over 38 days without a loss in CO absorbing reactivity. The Raman hyperspectral imaging technique described here is a non-invasive characterization tool to support development of dry-stabilization techniques for microorganisms on inexpensive porous support materials. The present study successfully extends and implements the principles of dry-stabilization for preservation of strictly anaerobic bacteria as an alternative to lyophilization or spray drying that could enable centralized biocomposite biocatalyst fabrication and decentralized bioprocessing of CO to liquid fuels or chemicals.",
"corpus_id": 6807721,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Treatment of Neurocritical Care Emergencies in Pregnancy",
"abstract": "Opinion statementNeurologic emergencies are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in pregnant women. In part because the patient population is young, the nihilistic approach that often accompanies neurologically devastating disorders in other contexts is largely absent. A number of studies have demonstrated improved patient outcomes in the setting of aggressive care delivered by neurointensivists in a specialty-specific environment. It stands to reason that young, pregnant women who suffer from neurologically devastating disorders and who have a wide range of prognosis may also benefit from such specialized care. Close collaboration between obstetricians and neurointensivists is critical in this context. A number of unique considerations in diagnosis and management present dilemmas in the context of pregnancy, such as radiation dose from diagnostic neuroimaging, choice of pharmacotherapy for seizures, anticoagulation, and the method of delivery in the context of cerebral mass lesions and elevated intracranial pressure. Patients and their physicians are often faced with the additional challenge of balancing the relative risks and benefits of the impact of a management approach on both mother and fetus. In general, this balance tends to favor the interests of the mother, but the impact on the fetus becomes more relevant over the course of the pregnancy, especially in the third trimester. A low threshold for admission to an intensive care unit (ideally one that specializes in neurointensive care) should be used for pregnant patients. Because of the limited information regarding long-term outcomes in this population, rigid prognosis formation and early care limitations should be deferred in the immediate period. After the patient is stabilized and a plan has been charted for the remainder of the pregnancy, every effort should be made to engage patients in aggressive, urgent neurologic rehabilitation.",
"corpus_id": 2448531
} | {
"title": "Neurocritical care complications of pregnancy and puerperum.",
"abstract": "Neurocritical care complications of pregnancy and puerperum such as preeclampsia/eclampsia, hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelets syndrome, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, seizures, ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, postpartum angiopathy, cerebral sinus thrombosis, amniotic fluid emboli, choriocarcinoma, and acute fatty liver of pregnancy are rare but can be devastating. These conditions can present a challenge to physicians because pregnancy is a unique physiologic state, most therapeutic options available in the intensive care unit were not studied in pregnant patients, and in many situations, physicians need to deliver care to both the mother and the fetus, simultaneously. Timely recognition and management of critical neurologic complications of pregnancy/puerperum can be life saving for both the mother and fetus.",
"corpus_id": 31090182
} | {
"title": "Influence of HLA-DR phenotype on tumor necrosis factor-alpha production in renal-transplant recipients.",
"abstract": "In healthy subjects, previous studies have demonstrated a great interindividual variability in the ability for tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) production. The gene for TNF-alpha is closely linked to and located in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and it has been suggested that these interindividual differences may be HLA related. Since TNF-alpha is likely to be an important mediator in renal allograft rejection, we investigated the role of HLA antigens on TNF-alpha production rates by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from renal transplant recipients during stable graft function. HLA-DR2-positive recipients showed significantly lower spontaneous TNF-alpha production than DR2-negative patients (p < 0.001). Upon stimulation with OKT3, HLA-DR2-positive patients also showed significantly lower TNF-alpha production than DR2-negative subjects (p < 0.001). HLA-DR3-positive recipients, however, showed significantly higher spontaneous TNF-alpha production than DR3-negative individuals (p < 0.05). These results suggest that differences in TNF-alpha production, both spontaneous and induced, may be due to the expression of certain DR allotypes.",
"corpus_id": 46751983,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Pesticides in Drinking Water – The Brazilian Monitoring Program",
"abstract": "Brazil is the world largest pesticide consumer; therefore, it is important to monitor the levels of these chemicals in the water used by population. The Ministry of Health coordinates the National Drinking Water Quality Surveillance Program (Vigiagua) with the objective to monitor water quality. Water quality data are introduced in the program by state and municipal health secretariats using a database called Sisagua (Information System of Water Quality Monitoring). Brazilian drinking water norm (Ordinance 2914/2011 from Ministry of Health) includes 27 pesticide active ingredients that need to be monitored every 6 months. This number represents <10% of current active ingredients approved for use in the country. In this work, we analyzed data compiled in Sisagua database in a qualitative and quantitative way. From 2007 to 2010, approximately 169,000 pesticide analytical results were prepared and evaluated, although approximately 980,000 would be expected if all municipalities registered their analyses. This shows that only 9–17% of municipalities registered their data in Sisagua. In this dataset, we observed non-compliance with the minimum sampling number required by the norm, lack of information about detection and quantification limits, insufficient standardization in expression of results, and several inconsistencies, leading to low credibility of pesticide data provided by the system. Therefore, it is not possible to evaluate exposure of total Brazilian population to pesticides via drinking water using the current national database system Sisagua. Lessons learned from this study could provide insights into the monitoring and reporting of pesticide residues in drinking water worldwide.",
"corpus_id": 2085014
} | {
"title": "Domestic Water Service Delivery Indicators and Frameworks for Monitoring, Evaluation, Policy and Planning: A Review",
"abstract": "Monitoring of water services informs policy and planning for national governments and the international community. Currently, the international monitoring system measures the type of drinking water source that households use. There have been calls for improved monitoring systems over several decades, some advocating use of multiple indicators. We review the literature on water service indicators and frameworks with a view to informing debate on their relevance to national and international monitoring. We describe the evidence concerning the relevance of each identified indicator to public health, economic development and human rights. We analyze the benefits and challenges of using these indicators separately and combined in an index as tools for planning, monitoring, and evaluating water services. We find substantial evidence on the importance of each commonly recommended indicator—service type, safety, quantity, accessibility, reliability or continuity of service, equity, and affordability. Several frameworks have been proposed that give structure to the relationships among individual indicators and some combine multiple indicator scores into a single index but few have been rigorously tested. More research is needed to understand if employing a composite metric of indicators is advantageous and how each indicator might be scored and scaled.",
"corpus_id": 5107673
} | {
"title": "Evaluating pharmaceuticals and caffeine as indicators of fecal contamination in drinking water sources of the Greater Montreal region.",
"abstract": "We surveyed four different river systems in the Greater Montreal region, upstream and downstream of entry points of contamination, from April 2007 to January 2009. The studied compounds belong to three different groups: PPCPs (caffeine, carbamazepine, naproxen, gemfibrozil, and trimethoprim), hormones (progesterone, estrone, and estradiol), and triazine herbicides and their metabolites (atrazine, deethylatrazine, deisopropylatrazine, simazine, and cyanazine). In the system A, B, and C having low flow rate and high TOC, we observed the highest detection frequencies and mass flows of PPCPs compared to the other compounds, reflecting discharge of urban contaminations through WWTPs and CSOs. However, in River D, having high flow rate and low TOC, comparable frequency of detection of triazine and their by-products and PPCPs, reflecting cumulative loads of these compounds from the Great Lakes as well as persistency against natural attenuation processes. Considering large differences in the removal efficiencies of caffeine and carbamazepine, a high ratio of caffeine/carbamazepine might be an indicative of a greater proportion of raw sewage versus treated wastewater in surface waters. In addition, caffeine appeared to be a promising indicator of recent urban fecal contaminations, as shown by the significant correlation with FC (R(2)=0.45), while carbamazepine is a good indicator of cumulative persistence compounds.",
"corpus_id": 22300159,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Functional maps: a flexible representation of maps between shapes",
"abstract": "We present a novel representation of maps between pairs of shapes that allows for efficient inference and manipulation. Key to our approach is a generalization of the notion of map that puts in correspondence real-valued functions rather than points on the shapes. By choosing a multi-scale basis for the function space on each shape, such as the eigenfunctions of its Laplace-Beltrami operator, we obtain a representation of a map that is very compact, yet fully suitable for global inference. Perhaps more remarkably, most natural constraints on a map, such as descriptor preservation, landmark correspondences, part preservation and operator commutativity become linear in this formulation. Moreover, the representation naturally supports certain algebraic operations such as map sum, difference and composition, and enables a number of applications, such as function or annotation transfer without establishing point-to-point correspondences. We exploit these properties to devise an efficient shape matching method, at the core of which is a single linear solve. The new method achieves state-of-the-art results on an isometric shape matching benchmark. We also show how this representation can be used to improve the quality of maps produced by existing shape matching methods, and illustrate its usefulness in segmentation transfer and joint analysis of shape collections.",
"corpus_id": 207194138
} | {
"title": "Articulated shape matching using Laplacian eigenfunctions and unsupervised point registration",
"abstract": "Matching articulated shapes represented by voxel-sets reduces to maximal sub-graph isomorphism when each set is described by a weighted graph. Spectral graph theory can be used to map these graphs onto lower dimensional spaces and match shapes by aligning their embeddings in virtue of their invariance to change of pose. Classical graph isomorphism schemes relying on the ordering of the eigenvalues to align the eigenspaces fail when handling large data-sets or noisy data. We derive a new formulation that finds the best alignment between two congruent K-dimensional sets of points by selecting the best subset of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian matrix. The selection is done by matching eigenfunction signatures built with histograms, and the retained set provides a smart initialization for the alignment problem with a considerable impact on the overall performance. Dense shape matching casted into graph matching reduces then, to point registration of embeddings under orthogonal transformations; the registration is solved using the framework of unsupervised clustering and the EM algorithm. Maximal subset matching of non identical shapes is handled by defining an appropriate outlier class. Experimental results on challenging examples show how the algorithm naturally treats changes of topology, shape variations and different sampling densities.",
"corpus_id": 837530
} | {
"title": "Novelty Detection in MultiClass Scenarios with Incomplete Set of Class Labels",
"abstract": "We address the problem of novelty detection in multiclass scenarios where some class labels are missing from the training set. Our method is based on the initial assignment of confidence values, which measure the affinity between a new test point and each known class. We first compare the values of the two top elements in this vector of confidence values. In the heart of our method lies the training of an ensemble of classifiers, each trained to discriminate known from novel classes based on some partition of the training data into presumed-known and presumednovel classes. Our final novelty score is derived from the output of this ensemble of classifiers. We evaluated our method on two datasets of images containing a relatively large number of classes the Caltech-256 and Cifar-100 datasets. We compared our method to 3 alternative methods which represent commonly used approaches, including the one-class SVM, novelty based on k-NN, novelty based on maximal confidence, and the recent KNFST method. The results show a very clear and marked advantage for our method over all alternative methods, in an experimental setup where class labels are missing during training.",
"corpus_id": 16538340,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "Kinetics of reprogramming in cell fusion hybrids.",
"abstract": "Somatic cells can obtain pluripotency by fusion with pluripotent stem cells. The resulting fusion hybrids display pluripotential characteristics, such as inactivation of tissue-specific genes, differentiation potential to all three germ layers, and a specific epigenetic state corresponding to the pluripotent cells. However, the fusion hybrid cells are not identical to the pluripotent fusion partner cells although they are similar to the pluripotent cells. Recently, we showed that fusion-induced reprogramming was not a solely unidirectional process. In this review, we address how much somatic cells \"remember and lose\" their original characteristics after fusion with pluripotent cells.",
"corpus_id": 2682244
} | {
"title": "DNA Demethylation in Zebrafish Involves the Coupling of a Deaminase, a Glycosylase, and Gadd45",
"abstract": "Evidence for active DNA demethylation in vertebrates is accumulating, but the mechanisms and enzymes remain unclear. Using zebrafish embryos we provide evidence for 5-methylcytosine (5-meC) removal in vivo via the coupling of a 5-meC deaminase (AID, which converts 5-meC to thymine) and a G:T mismatch-specific thymine glycosylase (Mbd4). The injection of methylated DNA into embryos induced a potent DNA demethylation activity, which was attenuated by depletion of AID or the non enzymatic factor Gadd45. Remarkably, overexpression of the deaminase/glycosylase pair AID/Mbd4 in vivo caused demethylation of the bulk genome and injected methylated DNA fragments, likely involving a G:T intermediate. Furthermore, AID or Mbd4 knockdown caused the remethylation of a set of common genes. Finally, Gadd45 promoted demethylation and enhanced functional interactions between deaminase/glycosylase pairs. Our results provide evidence for a coupled mechanism of 5-meC demethylation, whereby AID deaminates 5-meC, followed by thymine base excision by Mbd4, promoted by Gadd45.",
"corpus_id": 11457627
} | {
"title": "A simple method to account for edge shape in the conductor loss in microstrip",
"abstract": "A technique has been developed to examine the effect of strip edge shape on conductor loss in planar transmission lines using a modified incremental inductance rule. Based on L. Lewin's (1984) and L.A. Vainshteins's and S.M. Zhurav's (1986) zero-thickness strip perturbation in loss calculations, the method requires an expression for the infinitely thin strip inductance as well as prescribed integration stopping points for the different strip shapes. Results comparing losses for different edge shapes in a microstrip system are given, using this method and the Lewin/Vainshtein and Zhurav technique. The differing results of some other published analytical and numerical loss methods based on the surface impedance boundary condition are compared. >",
"corpus_id": 110207942,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "3D Visualization of Thylakoid Membrane Development[OPEN]",
"abstract": "Proper biogenesis of the chloroplast is essential for all photosynthetic plant cells. As germinating seedlings are exposed to light, etioplasts in young mesophyll cells become chloroplasts in the developing seedling. The chloroplast thylakoids develop from a paracrystalline tubular structure that is",
"corpus_id": 4776501
} | {
"title": "Three-Dimensional Visualization of the Tubular-Lamellar Transformation of the Internal Plastid Membrane Network during Runner Bean Chloroplast Biogenesis",
"abstract": "Three-dimensional visualization of the internal plastid membrane network using electron tomography reveals a dynamic tubular-parallel transformation and a helical manner of grana formation during runner bean chloroplast biogenesis. Chloroplast biogenesis is a complex process that is integrated with plant development, leading to fully differentiated and functionally mature plastids. In this work, we used electron tomography and confocal microscopy to reconstruct the process of structural membrane transformation during the etioplast-to-chloroplast transition in runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus). During chloroplast development, the regular tubular network of paracrystalline prolamellar bodies (PLBs) and the flattened porous membranes of prothylakoids develop into the chloroplast thylakoids. Three-dimensional reconstruction is required to provide us with a more complete understanding of this transformation. We provide spatial models of the bean chloroplast biogenesis that allow such reconstruction of the internal membranes of the developing chloroplast and visualize the transformation from the tubular arrangement to the linear system of parallel lamellae. We prove that the tubular structure of the PLB transforms directly to flat slats, without dispersion to vesicles. We demonstrate that the grana/stroma thylakoid connections have a helical character starting from the early stages of appressed membrane formation. Moreover, we point out the importance of particular chlorophyll-protein complex components in the membrane stacking during the biogenesis. The main stages of chloroplast internal membrane biogenesis are presented in a movie that shows the time development of the chloroplast biogenesis as a dynamic model of this process.",
"corpus_id": 206343069
} | {
"title": "The Contribution of Mesoscale Motions to the Mass and Heat Fluxes of an Intense Tropical Convective System",
"abstract": "Abstract The existence of extensive precipitating anvil clouds in intense tropical convection suggests that vertical air motions associated with the anvil clouds play a significant role in the mass and heat budgets of these systems. This paper uses three different sets of assumptions about the water budget of an idealized mesoscale convective system to test the sensitivity of diagnostic calculations of vertical transports of mass and heat to the inclusion or exclusion of anvil clouds and their associated mesoscale vertical air motions. The properties of the mesoscale updraft and downdraft are evaluated using observations and the results of modeling studies. When a mesoscale updraft and downdraft are included in the diagnostic calculations, the profiles of vertical transports of mass and moist static energy are both qualitatively and quantitatively different from the results when mesoscale vertical air motions are excluded. Inclusion of mesoscale vertical motions in the diagnostic calculations leads to sma...",
"corpus_id": 119447067,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Why the carrot is more effective than the stick: Different dynamics of punishment memory and reward memory and its possible biological basis",
"abstract": "One of the most extensively debated topics in educational psychology is whether punishment or reward is more effective for producing short-term and long-term behavioral changes, and it has been proposed that the effect of punishment is less durable than the effect of reward. However, no conclusive evidence to support this proposal has been obtained in any animals. We recently found that punishment memory decayed much faster than reward memory in olfactory learning and visual pattern learning in crickets. We also found that neurotransmitters conveying punishment and reward signals differ in crickets: dopaminergic and octopaminergic neurons play critical roles in conveying punishment and reward signals, respectively. In this study, we investigated whether these features are general features of cricket learning or are specific to olfactory and visual pattern learning. We found that crickets have the capability of color learning and that their color learning has the same features. Based on our findings in crickets and those reported in other species of insects, we conclude that these two features are conserved in many forms of insect learning. In mammals, aminergic neurons are known to convey reward and punishment signals in learning of a variety of sensory stimuli. We propose that the faster decay of punishment memory than reward memory observed in insects and humans reflects different cellular and biochemical processes after activation of receptors for amines conveying punishment and reward signals. The possible adaptive significance of relatively limited durability of punishment memory is proposed.",
"corpus_id": 1393477
} | {
"title": "Distinct roles for direct and indirect pathway striatal neurons in reinforcement",
"abstract": "Dopamine signaling is implicated in reinforcement learning, but the neural substrates targeted by dopamine are poorly understood. We bypassed dopamine signaling itself and tested how optogenetic activation of dopamine D1 or D2 receptor–expressing striatal projection neurons influenced reinforcement learning in mice. Stimulating D1 receptor–expressing neurons induced persistent reinforcement, whereas stimulating D2 receptor–expressing neurons induced transient punishment, indicating that activation of these circuits is sufficient to modify the probability of performing future actions.",
"corpus_id": 3195813
} | {
"title": "Aberrant Excitatory Neuronal Activity and Compensatory Remodeling of Inhibitory Hippocampal Circuits in Mouse Models of Alzheimer's Disease",
"abstract": "Neural network dysfunction may play an important role in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Neuronal circuits vulnerable to AD are also affected in human amyloid precursor protein (hAPP) transgenic mice. hAPP mice with high levels of amyloid-beta peptides in the brain develop AD-like abnormalities, including cognitive deficits and depletions of calcium-related proteins in the dentate gyrus, a region critically involved in learning and memory. Here, we report that hAPP mice have spontaneous nonconvulsive seizure activity in cortical and hippocampal networks, which is associated with GABAergic sprouting, enhanced synaptic inhibition, and synaptic plasticity deficits in the dentate gyrus. Many Abeta-induced neuronal alterations could be simulated in nontransgenic mice by excitotoxin challenge and prevented in hAPP mice by blocking overexcitation. Aberrant increases in network excitability and compensatory inhibitory mechanisms in the hippocampus may contribute to Abeta-induced neurological deficits in hAPP mice and, possibly, also in humans with AD.",
"corpus_id": 12750170,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Increased sensitivity to radiochemotherapy in IDH1 mutant glioblastoma as demonstrated by serial quantitative MR volumetry.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nIsocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) mutations have been linked to favorable outcomes in patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Recent in vitro experiments suggest that IDH1 mutation sensitizes tumors to radiation damage. We hypothesized that radiographic treatment response would be significantly different between IDH1 mutant versus wild-type GBMs after radiotherapy (RT) and concurrent temozolomide (TMZ).\n\n\nMETHODS\nA total of 39 newly diagnosed GBM patients with known IDH1 mutational status (10 IDH1 mutants), who followed standard therapy and had regular post-contrast T1W (T1+C) and T2W/ fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images in the 6-month period after starting RT, were enrolled. The volume of contrast-enhancing and FLAIR hyperintensity were calculated from each scan. Linear and polynomial regression techniques were used to estimate the rate of change and temporal patterns in tumor volumes.\n\n\nRESULTS\nIDH1 mutant GBMs demonstrated a favorable response to RT/TMZ in the study period, as demonstrated by 10 of 10 mutants showing radiographic response (decreasing V(T1+C)), compared with 13 of 29 wild-types (P < .001). During the study period, V(T1+C) and V(FLAIR) changed at -3.6% per week and +0.6% per week in IDH1 mutant tumors, respectively, as compared with +0.8% per week and +5.2% per week in IDH1 wild-type tumors (P = .0076 and P = .0118, respectively). Amongst the radiographic responders, IDH1 mutant GBMs still demonstrated significant progression-free and overall survival benefit. Aggregated tumor kinetics by group showed significant lower rate in IDH1 mutant GBMs in specific periods: >105 days for V(FLAIR) and 95-120 and >150 days for V(T1+C) from starting RT/TMZ.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThe current study supports the hypothesis that IDH1 mutant GBMs are more sensitive to radiochemotherapy than IDH1 wild-type GBMs.",
"corpus_id": 694008
} | {
"title": "Evidence for sequenced molecular evolution of IDH1 mutant glioblastoma from a distinct cell of origin.",
"abstract": "PURPOSE\nMutation in isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) at R132 (IDH1(R132MUT)) is frequent in low-grade diffuse gliomas and, within glioblastoma (GBM), has been proposed as a marker for GBMs that arise by transformation from lower-grade gliomas, regardless of clinical history. To determine how GBMs arising with IDH1(R132MUT) differ from other GBMs, we undertook a comprehensive comparison of patients presenting clinically with primary GBM as a function of IDH1(R132) mutation status.\n\n\nPATIENTS AND METHODS\nIn all, 618 treatment-naive primary GBMs and 235 lower-grade diffuse gliomas were sequenced for IDH1(R132) and analyzed for demographic, radiographic, anatomic, histologic, genomic, epigenetic, and transcriptional characteristics.\n\n\nRESULTS\nInvestigation revealed a constellation of features that distinguishes IDH1(R132MUT) GBMs from other GBMs (including frontal location and lesser extent of contrast enhancement and necrosis), relates them to lower-grade IDH1(R132MUT) gliomas, and supports the concept that IDH1(R132MUT) gliomas arise from a neural precursor population that is spatially and temporally restricted in the brain. The observed patterns of DNA sequence, methylation, and copy number alterations support a model of ordered molecular evolution of IDH1(R132MUT) GBM in which the appearance of mutant IDH1 protein is an initial event, followed by production of p53 mutant protein, and finally by copy number alterations of PTEN and EGFR.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nAlthough histologically similar, GBMs arising with and without IDH1(R132MUT) appear to represent distinct disease entities that arise from separate cell types of origin as the result of largely nonoverlapping sets of molecular events. Optimal clinical management should account for the distinction between these GBM disease subtypes.",
"corpus_id": 5278990
} | {
"title": "Prediction of high birthweight from maternal characteristics, symphysis fundal height and ultrasound biometry.",
"abstract": "The possibility to predict a large infant during pregnancy was assessed using data from a prospective cohort study of 537 singleton pregnancies with term deliveries. Maternal characteristics, symphysis fundal height and ultrasound measurements were used in multivariate analyses for the prediction of an infant with a birthweight of > or = 4,500 or > or = 4,000 g. The positive predictive value was 55% for a birthweight > or = 4,000 g when only maternal characteristics were used, and increased slightly when symphysis fundal height was added. The corresponding value for a single ultrasound measurement at 37 gestational weeks was 52%. Using all available clinical data, positive predictive values of 45 and 80% could be achieved for birthweights of > or = 4,500 and > or = 4,000 g, respectively.",
"corpus_id": 3357769,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Information and Monitoring Systems for Grids : Divide or Unify ?",
"abstract": "In the past couple of years several information and monitoring systems have been developed. There have been unified systems but also systems that specified only on one of the two. Little research has been done to find out which approach is best. After currently designed systems are analysed and compared, this paper describes why unification of both systems is desirable and a global architecture for a unified system is described.",
"corpus_id": 1658297
} | {
"title": "A UNIFIED PEER-TO-PEER DATABASE FRAMEWORK FOR XQUERIES OVER DYNAMIC DISTRIBUTED CONTENT AND ITS APPLICATION FOR SCALABLE SERVICE DISCOVERY",
"abstract": "In a large distributed system spanning administrative domains such as a Grid, it is desirable to maintain and query dynamic and timely information about active participants such as services, resources and user communities. The web services vision promises that programs are made more flexible and powerful by querying Internet databases (registries) at runtime in order to discover information and network attached third-party building blocks. Services can advertise themselves and related metadata via such databases, enabling the assembly of distributed higher-level components. In support of this vision, this thesis shows how to support expressive general-purpose queries over a view that integrates autonomous dynamic database nodes from a wide range of distributed system topologies. We motivate and justify the assertion that realistic ubiquitous service and resource discovery requires a rich general-purpose query language such as XQuery or SQL. Next, we introduce the Web Service Discovery Architecture (WSDA), which subsumes an array of disparate concepts, interfaces and protocols under a single semi-transparent umbrella. WSDA specifies a small set of orthogonal multi-purpose communication primitives (building blocks) for discovery. These primitives cover service identification, service description retrieval, data publication as well as minimal and powerful query support. The individual primitives can be combined and plugged together by specific clients and services to yield a wide range of behaviors and emerging synergies. Based on WSDA, we introduce the hyper registry, which is a centralized database node for discovery of dynamic distributed content, supporting XQueries over a tuple set from an XML data model. We address the problem of maintaining dynamic and timely information populated from a large variety of unreliable, frequently changing, autonomous and heterogeneous remote data sources. However, in a large cross-organizational system, the set of information tuples is partitioned over many such distributed nodes, for reasons including autonomy, scalability, availability, performance and security. This suggests the use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) query technology. Consequently, we take the first steps towards unifying the fields of database management systems and P2P computing. As a result, we propose the WSDA based Unified Peer-to-Peer Database Framework (UPDF) and its associated Peer Database Protocol (PDP), which are unified in the sense that they allow to express specific applications for a wide range of data types (typed or untyped XML, any MIME type), node topologies (e.g. ring, tree, graph), query languages (e.g. XQuery, SQL), query response modes (e.g. Routed, Direct and Referral Response), neighbor selection policies, pipelining, timeout and other scope characteristics. The uniformity and wide applicability of our approach is distinguished from related work, which (1) addresses some but not all problems, and (2) does not propose a unified framework.",
"corpus_id": 1703766
} | {
"title": "Steiner equiangular tight frames",
"abstract": "Abstract We provide a new method for constructing equiangular tight frames (ETFs). The construction is valid in both the real and complex settings, and shows that many of the few previously-known examples of ETFs are but the first representatives of infinite families of such frames. It provides great freedom in terms of the frame’s size and redundancy. This method also explicitly constructs the frame vectors in their native domain, as opposed to implicitly defining them via their Gram matrix. Moreover, in this domain, the frame vectors are very sparse. The construction is extremely simple: a tensor-like combination of a Steiner system and a regular simplex. This simplicity permits us to resolve an open question regarding ETFs and the restricted isometry property (RIP): we show that the RIP behavior of some ETFs is unfortunately no better than their coherence indicates.",
"corpus_id": 18188708,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Male broad-nosed pipefish Syngnathus typhle do not locate females by smell.",
"abstract": "Broad-nosed pipefish Syngnathus typhle were used to investigate whether males used scent in their search for mates. When the males in an experiment had access to olfactory cues only, they did not locate females better than they located males. Thus, S. typhle, was less successful in mate search when visual cues were absent.",
"corpus_id": 2427192
} | {
"title": "Sex in Murky Waters : Anthropogenic Disturbance of Sexual Selection in Pipefish",
"abstract": "Courtship is often an important part of the reproductive process with functions such as ensuring reproductive compatibility, reducing hostility between the potential partners, and conveying individual quality. Except for the importance of the courtship behaviours themselves, latency until courting and mating is a key factor of the mating process. One factor in aquatic environments that has the potential to influence courtship behaviours is the level of dissolved oxygen, and hypoxic areas are currently spreading due to human activities, such as eutrophication. In this study we used the well-studied broad-nosed pipefish, Syngnathus typhle, to investigate the impact of hypoxia on reproductive behaviours preceding mating, on the latency until these behaviours occurred, and on the probability to mate. We found that time spent courting as well as probability to mate was unaffected by the oxygen treatment. Interestingly, we found that latency until courting and mating was prolonged in the oxygen-deprived environment. These results suggest that levels of low oxygen due to human activities can have implications for important aspects of reproductive behaviours.",
"corpus_id": 53513709
} | {
"title": "Meiotic behavior of Brachiaria decumbens hybrids.",
"abstract": "Brachiaria decumbens is a forage grass of inestimable value for livestock in Brazil due to its production of good quality forage even when planted on acid and poor soils, although it is susceptible to pasture spittlebugs. Only one cultivar, cv. Basilisk, has been used as the pollen donor in crosses with Brachiaria ruziziensis since 1988 at Embrapa Gado de Corte Research Center. Breeding within the species only became possible from 2009 when sexual accessions were successfully tetraploidized using colchicine. Three sexual genotypes were obtained and hybridization within B. decumbens was finally achieved. Here, we evaluated microspore tetrads using conventional cytology and found meiotic indexes above 78% for all three female genitors (cD24-2, cD24-27, cD24-45), but a low meiotic index (<22%) in the natural apomictic genitor D62 (cv. Basilisk) and in 49 hybrids. Analysis of the relationship between abnormal tetrad frequency and non-viable pollen grains yielded a highly significant Pearson correlation coefficient. The t-test proved significant for the progeny of cD24-45 x D62, with lower abnormalities and pollen sterility when compared to the other two progenies resulting from cD24-2 and cD24-27 crossed to D62, but these two did not differ. Apomictic hybrids such as S036 and X030 with low pollen sterility have the potential for use in cultivar development, whereas the sexual hybrids T012, X072, and X078 might be of use as female genitors in polycross blocks if they display good agronomic traits.",
"corpus_id": 13092993,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Aberrant expression of the Arabidopsis circadian-regulated APRR5 gene belonging to the APRR1/TOC1 quintet results in early flowering and hypersensitiveness to light in early photomorphogenesis.",
"abstract": "In Arabidopsis thaliana, the transcripts of the APRR1/TOC1 family genes each start accumulating after dawn rhythmically and one after another at intervals in the order of APRR9-->APRR7-->APRR5-->APRR3-->APRR1/TOC1 under continuous light. Except for the well-characterized APRR1/TOC1, however, no evidence has been provided that other APRR1/TOC1 family genes are indeed implicated in the mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms. We here attempted to provide such evidence by characterizing transgenic plants that constitutively express the APRR5 gene. The resulting APRR5-overexpressing (APRR5-ox) plants showed intriguing properties with regard to not only circadian rhythms, but also control of flowering time and light response. First, the aberrant expression of APRR5 in such transgenic plants resulted in a characteristic phenotype with regard to transcriptional events, in which free-running rhythms were considerably altered for certain circadian-regulated genes, including CCA1, LHY, APRR1/TOC1, other APRR1/TOC1 members, GI and CAB2, although each rhythm was clearly sustained even after plants were transferred to continuous light. With regard to biological events, APRR5-ox plants flowered much earlier than wild-type plants, more or less, in a manner independent of photoperiodicity (or under short-day conditions). Furthermore, APRR5-ox plants showed an SRL (short-hypocotyls under red light) phenotype that is indicative of hypersensitiveness to red light in early photomorphogenesis. Both APRR1-ox and APRR9-ox plants also showed the same phenotype. Therefore, APRR5 (together with APRR1/TOC1 and APRR9) must be taken into consideration for a better understanding of the molecular links between circadian rhythms, control of flowering time through the photoperiodic long-day pathway, and also light signaling-controlled plant development.",
"corpus_id": 609461
} | {
"title": "Living by the calendar: how plants know when to flower",
"abstract": "Reproductive processes in plants and animals are usually synchronized with favourable seasons of the year. It has been known for 80 years that organisms anticipate seasonal changes by adjusting developmental programmes in response to daylength. Recent studies indicate that plants perceive daylength through the degree of coincidence of light with the expression of CONSTANS, which encodes a clock-regulated transcription factor that controls the expression of floral-inductive genes in a light-dependent manner.",
"corpus_id": 140745
} | {
"title": "Comparison of two models for measuring radon exhalation rate with a ventilation chamber by numerical simulation",
"abstract": "Two models can be used to measure the radon exhalation rate with a ventilation chamber. The first is the custom model with a flow meter, and the second is the improved model without flow meter. As the established radon exhalation standard facilities can't simulate any medium to be measured by adjusting the radon exhalation rate and effective decay constants as required, numerical simulation is useful to compare the two models for measuring radon exhalation rate under different effective decay constants. Three different effective decay constants and two different radon exhalation rates were simulated for measuring radon exhalation rates, and the simulation results confirmed that the improved model is quick and accurate even when the radon exhalation rate is very low. While the custom model can only be used to calculate the radon exhalation rates when the ventilation rate is far larger than the effective decay constant, and it takes a long time for the radon concentration inside the ventilation chamber to be stable. Therefore, the improved model without flow meter is more accurate to measure the radon exhalation rate under different effective decay constants.",
"corpus_id": 252734488,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "New Generation of Resistant Sugar Beet Varieties for Advanced Integrated Management of Cercospora Leaf Spot in Central Europe",
"abstract": "Cercospora leaf spot (CLS) epidemics in sugar beet have been increasing in recent years causing higher use of fungicides. Concomitantly, the availability of effective fungicides is at risk because of resistance development in the fungus, the lack of new active ingredients as well as restrictive approval practices. A key option for an integrated management of CLS is cultivation of resistant varieties. Because of the yield penalty in resistant varieties, acceptance in commercial practice so far has been low. The aim of our study was to characterize recent sugar beet varieties registered in Germany in terms of resistance and tolerance to CLS and their value for integrated pest management. The genetic basis of CLS resistance in varieties is protected by intellectual property rights even after variety registration and not open to the public due to economic competition. To gain reliable data for cultivation, varieties have to be tested for their resistance traits under field conditions at varying levels of infection with Cercospora beticola. In collaboration with variety related stakeholders, 15 sugar beet varieties were tested in 49 field trials in Germany from 2014 to 2016 for their yield response to CLS. The trials were set up in a split-plot design with and without infection (i.e., with and without fungicide). The classification of varietal reaction to CLS is based on symptomatic leaf area (susceptibility) and the resulting relative yield loss (tolerance). Since the relation between both parameters varied among varieties, it was used as an additional parameter to describe tolerance. On this basis, three groups of varieties were identified. They can be characterized as a susceptible, a resistant and a presumably tolerant cluster. A comparison of the data with an older dataset originating from 2009 to 2011 revealed that yield performance of recent varieties with resistance to C. beticola caught up with susceptible varieties due to breeding progress. They showed no yield penalty in the absence of the disease and better economic performance than susceptible varieties. It is assumed that these varieties will allow a substantial reduction of fungicide use for an advanced integrated pest management under central European conditions.",
"corpus_id": 3532799
} | {
"title": "Einfluss von Fungizidstrategie und Sorte auf die Entwicklung der Cercospora-Blattfleckenkrankheit in Zuckerrüben",
"abstract": "Die Cercospora-Blattfleckenkrankheit gewinnt in Deutschland zunehmend an Bedeutung, gleichzeitig verlieren vorhandene Fungizide an Wirksamkeit. Daher müssen effiziente Bekämpfungsstrategien entwickelt werden, um die Erträge zu stabilisieren und die weitere Verbreitung von Resistenzen einzudämmen. In insgesamt acht Feldversuchen wurde 2017 und 2018 die Wirksamkeit von vier Fungizidstrategien auf den Cercospora-Befall einer anfälligen und einer toleranten Zuckerrübensorte geprüft. Alle\n\nFungizidstrategien reduzierten den Befall in allen Umwelten. Bei moderatem Befall war diese Reduktion insbesondere bei der toleranten Sorte nicht immer ertragswirksam. Ferner erreichte die tolerante Sorte die Schwelle für die zweite bzw. dritte Fungizidapplikation um bis zu drei Wochen später als die anfällige Sorte. Bei stärkerem bis extremem Befall zeigten die Fungizidstrategien, die neben Triazolen und Thiophanat-methyl zusätzlich ein Kontaktfungizid enthielten, eine verbesserte Wirkung auf den Befall und den Bereinigten Zuckerertrag. Sowohl tolerante Sorten, als auch die nur für Notfallsituationen zugelassenen Kontaktfungizide können aktuell zum Resistenzmanagement von Cercospora beticola beitragen.",
"corpus_id": 213008370
} | {
"title": "UNDULANT (MALTA) FEVER: ISOLATION OF THE BRUCELLA ORGANISM FROM THE STOOLS",
"abstract": "The first human case of Brucella abortus (porcine) infection to be reported was described by Keefer 1 from the Biological Division of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Cultures of the stools were negative. Because of failure to isolate the organism from the stools in this case, the stools in two other unusual cases of Brucella infection to be reported have received scant attention and no positive stool cultures have been described in the numerous cases on record since Keefer's paper appeared. Organisms of the Brucella group have been observed 2 only once in the feces of man but there are no reports of successful cultivation from this source. Bruce 2 states that \"they probably pass out of the body by way of the alimentary canal.\" The organisms have been found frequently in the urine not only in cases of malta fever (10 per cent in 3,000 cases) but also in Brucella",
"corpus_id": 72517831,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Rosiglitazone RECORD study: glucose control outcomes at 18 months",
"abstract": "Aims To compare glucose control over 18 months between rosiglitazone oral combination therapy and combination metformin and sulphonylurea in people with Type 2 diabetes.",
"corpus_id": 2617238
} | {
"title": "Metformin therapy and clinical uses",
"abstract": "Metformin is now established as a first-line antidiabetic therapy for the management of type 2 diabetes. Its early use in treatment algorithms is supported by lack of weight gain, low risk of hypoglycaemia and its mode of action to counter insulin resistance. The drug's anti-atherosclerotic and cardioprotective effects have recently been confirmed in prospective and retrospective studies, and appear to reflect a collection of glucose-independent effects on the vascular endothelium, suppressant effects on glycation, oxidative stress and formation of adhesion molecules, stimulation of fibrinolysis and favourable effects on the lipid profile. Although avoidance of troublesome gastrointestinal tolerability issues requires careful dose titration, the risk of serious adverse events is considered low provided that contra-indications (especially with respect to renal function) are observed. As many of its actions go beyond glucose lowering, emerging evidence indicates potential benefits in other insulin-resistant states and possibly tumour suppression.",
"corpus_id": 2986720
} | {
"title": "Metabolic consequences of patients with gastrointestinal fistulas",
"abstract": "Methods and MaterialsThe historical highlights of the management of fistulas of the gastrointestinal tract during the past century are presented briefly, together with the significant lessons learned from the studies published in the literature.DiscussionThe evolution from predominantly operative or technical approaches to comprehensive multidisciplinary management of metabolic and nutritional support, which are essential to optimal fistula closure, and morbidity and mortality outcomes are discussed. The importance of achieving hemodynamic stability, fluid and electrolyte homeostasis, fistula effluent control, protection of the skin, control of infection and sepsis, and cardiopulmonary and major organ support, preferably by specially trained and motivated teams in critical care units of institutions with the interest, resources, and skills in managing the metabolic consequences of gastrointestinal fistula patients, is emphasized. The current status of the nutritional and metabolic support of patients with gastrointestinal tract fistulas is outlined and discussed briefly.ConclusionsThe optimal metabolic and nutritional management of patients with gastrointestinal tract fistulas is an extraordinary and daunting challenge which has yet to be perfected, demonstrated, and applied universally. Much education, research, motivation, proficiency, and concerted conscientious effort will be required in order to achieve this elusive but noble goal. Some suggestions for achieving success in this endeavor are proffered, consistent with the senior author’s philosophy, which has evolved during a half-century of experience and endeavor in this vital area.",
"corpus_id": 22477057,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "One-dimensional silicon-based crystals for thermoelectrics",
"abstract": "The review of modern semiconductor thermoelectric materials development and methods of their thermoelectric efficiency enhancement has been conducted. Prospects of practical use of silicon and Si1-xGex solid solutions whiskers and nanowires in thermoelectrics have been estimated.",
"corpus_id": 2503839
} | {
"title": "Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance of Rough Silicon Nanowires.",
"abstract": "Approximately 90 per cent of the world's power is generated by heat engines that use fossil fuel combustion as a heat source and typically operate at 30-40 per cent efficiency, such that roughly 15 terawatts of heat is lost to the environment. Thermoelectric modules could potentially convert part of this low-grade waste heat to electricity. Their efficiency depends on the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT of their material components, which is a function of the Seebeck coefficient, electrical resistivity, thermal conductivity and absolute temperature. Over the past five decades it has been challenging to increase ZT > 1, since the parameters of ZT are generally interdependent. While nanostructured thermoelectric materials can increase ZT > 1 (refs 2-4), the materials (Bi, Te, Pb, Sb, and Ag) and processes used are not often easy to scale to practically useful dimensions. Here we report the electrochemical synthesis of large-area, wafer-scale arrays of rough Si nanowires that are 20-300 nm in diameter. These nanowires have Seebeck coefficient and electrical resistivity values that are the same as doped bulk Si, but those with diameters of about 50 nm exhibit 100-fold reduction in thermal conductivity, yielding ZT = 0.6 at room temperature. For such nanowires, the lattice contribution to thermal conductivity approaches the amorphous limit for Si, which cannot be explained by current theories. Although bulk Si is a poor thermoelectric material, by greatly reducing thermal conductivity without much affecting the Seebeck coefficient and electrical resistivity, Si nanowire arrays show promise as high-performance, scalable thermoelectric materials.",
"corpus_id": 197313727
} | {
"title": "MOCVD of Bi2Te3, Sb2Te3 and their superlattice structures for thin-film thermoelectric applications",
"abstract": "The characteristics of metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) of Bi2Te3, Sb2Te3 and their superlattice structures are discussed in this paper. We have grown c-oriented films on both hexagonal sapphire and fcc GaAs substrates, with specular morphology and occasional stacking faults. Single crystallinity was confirmed by X-ray diffraction and low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). The stoichiometry (Bi:Te = 2:3, Sb:Te = 2:3) of the films were confirmed by X-ray photo-emission spectroscopy (XPS) and Rutherford back-scattering. We have also attempted to grow short-period (∼ 10 to 80 A) superlattice structures in the Bi2Te3Sb2Te3 materials system. X-ray diffraction data indicating the quality of these layered structures is presented. The advantages offered by the nature of chemical bonding in these materials, along the growth direction, for obtaining abrupt interfaces is discussed. The electrical transport properties of the MOCVD-grown p-type Bi2Te3Sb2Te3 structures and other thermoelectric properties including thermal conductivity and Seebeck coefficient are discussed. The initial results on the performance parameter known as figure-of-merit of the superlattice structures, measured parallel to the plane of the superlattice interfaces, are significantly higher than in conventional bulk materials. These initial results suggest a significant potential for MOCVD-based materials technology for high-performance, thin-film, thermoelectric refrigeration.",
"corpus_id": 97769486,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Controlling controlled substances abuse and misuse by managed care payers: a new generation of risk management initiatives?",
"abstract": "In their article titled “Impact of a drug utilization review program on high-risk use of prescription-controlled substances”, Matthew Daubresse and colleagues assess the reductions in problematic use of controlled medications as a result of an intervention consisting of a letter mailed to physicians and other prescribers based on an algorithm to detect improper use of controlled substances using insurance claims.1 The authors have conducted a study on an important topic, i.e., whether a drug utilization review program using a risk score developed by researchers at managed care organizations can accurately target use patterns of controlled substances suggestive of abuse and/or misuse among patients and can decrease the apparent problematic utilization. For this purpose, the authors created a controlled substance risk score based on three metrics: (i) the number and type of opioid and other controlled substances prescriptions dispensed; (ii) the number of prescribers and pharmacies where prescription opioids and other controlled substances were dispensed; and (iii) whether the number of prescriptions for opioids or other controlled substances increased over time. The authors developed the risk score based on experience, empiric observations managing pharmacy benefits, and published literature, but did not provide a justification for the criteria used or validate whether the controlled substance risk score accurately predicts misuse or abuse of controlled substances, although they used it to assess the impact of an intervention based on the outcome measure. For their study, two state health plans served as the intervention group and two state health plans as the control group. The intervention plans sent letters to healthcare providers of members whose controlled substance risk score exceeded a pre-specified threshold, while the control plans did not send such letters. The authors report that the reductions in the mean controlled substances score were greater in the intervention than comparison cohort. Changes were driven primarily by reductions in the number of prescriptions for controlled substances. The authors use a difference-in-difference design2 and generalized estimating equation models to quantify the impact of the program on the mean difference in reduction of the controlled substances score, which are appropriate and quite novel methodologies. However, the intervention design has some weaknesses that affect causal interpretation as outlined in the next paragraph. One consideration is the absence of validation of controlled substances risk score, which is used both to identify which patients to target for intervention and to measure whether the intervention was effective. In the urgency to act on the increasing deaths among people in whom opioids were found,3 and the growing body of literature about doctor-shopping (i.e., use of multiple doctors and pharmacies to obtain controlled substances for abuse or diversion), it is understandable to create controlled substances risk scores based on experience managing healthcare insurance plans. Daubresse et al. conclude that a letter sent to prescribers of patients with high controlled substances risk scores may be beneficial in reducing abuse or misuse of controlled substances. However, the controlled substances risk score that is both the prediction score and the outcome measure and is not validated for either purpose limits the ability to make strong causal inferences from the article’s results. A second consideration in interpreting the results is the downward trend in the controlled substances score that was observed for both the intervention and control *Correspondence to: Paul Coplan, Purdue Pharma, Epidemiology and Risk Management, Stamford, CT 06901, USA. Email: paul.coplan@pharma.com",
"corpus_id": 1250317
} | {
"title": "Patterns of abuse among unintentional pharmaceutical overdose fatalities.",
"abstract": "CONTEXT\nUse and abuse of prescription narcotic analgesics have increased dramatically in the United States since 1990. The effect of this pharmacoepidemic has been most pronounced in rural states, including West Virginia, which experienced the nation's largest increase in drug overdose mortality rates during 1999-2004.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nTo evaluate the risk characteristics of persons dying of unintentional pharmaceutical overdose in West Virginia, the types of drugs involved, and the role of drug abuse in the deaths.\n\n\nDESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS\nPopulation-based, observational study using data from medical examiner, prescription drug monitoring program, and opiate treatment program records. The study population was all state residents who died of unintentional pharmaceutical overdoses in West Virginia in 2006.\n\n\nMAIN OUTCOME MEASURES\nRates and rate ratios for selected demographic variables. Prevalence of specific drugs among decedents and proportion that had been prescribed to decedents. Associations between demographics and substance abuse indicators and evidence of pharmaceutical diversion, defined as a death involving a prescription drug without a documented prescription and having received prescriptions for controlled substances from 5 or more clinicians during the year prior to death (ie, doctor shopping).\n\n\nRESULTS\nOf 295 decedents, 198 (67.1%) were men and 271 (91.9%) were aged 18 through 54 years. Pharmaceutical diversion was associated with 186 (63.1%) deaths, while 63 (21.4%) were accompanied by evidence of doctor shopping. Prevalence of diversion was greatest among decedents aged 18 through 24 years and decreased across each successive age group. Having prescriptions for a controlled substance from 5 or more clinicians in the year prior to death was more common among women (30 [30.9%]) and decedents aged 35 through 44 years (23 [30.7%]) compared with men (33 [16.7%]) and other age groups (40 [18.2%]). Substance abuse indicators were identified in 279 decedents (94.6%), with nonmedical routes of exposure and illicit contributory drugs particularly prevalent among drug diverters. Multiple contributory substances were implicated in 234 deaths (79.3%). Opioid analgesics were taken by 275 decedents (93.2%), of whom only 122 (44.4%) had ever been prescribed these drugs.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe majority of overdose deaths in West Virginia in 2006 were associated with nonmedical use and diversion of pharmaceuticals, primarily opioid analgesics.",
"corpus_id": 205012271
} | {
"title": "Comparative effectiveness of a one-year follow-up of thoracic medial branch blocks in management of chronic thoracic pain: a randomized, double-blind active controlled trial.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nThoracic facet joints have been implicated as the source of chronic pain in the mid back or upper back in 34% to 42% of patients when the modified criteria of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) is utilized. Various therapeutic techniques utilized in managing chronic thoracic pain of facet joint origin include intraarticular injections, medial branch blocks, and radiofrequency neurotomy of thoracic medial branch nerves.\n\n\nSTUDY DESIGN\nA randomized, double-blind, active controlled trial.\n\n\nSETTING\nA private practice, interventional pain management setting, and a specialty referral center setting in the United States.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nTo determine the clinical effectiveness of therapeutic local anesthetic medial branch blocks with or without steroid in managing chronic function-limiting mid back or upper back pain of facet joint origin.\n\n\nMETHODS\nThe study was performed in an interventional pain management private practice, a tertiary referral center, in the United States. A total of 100 participants were included, with 50 participants in each of the local anesthetic and steroid groups. All of the participants met the diagnostic criteria of thoracic facet joint pain by means of comparative, controlled diagnostic blocks and the inclusion criteria. Group I participants received thoracic medial branch blocks with bupivacaine, whereas Group II participants received thoracic medial branch blocks with bupivacaine and non-particulate betamethasone.\n\n\nOUTCOMES ASSESSMENT\nOutcomes measures included numeric rating scores (NRS), Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), opioid intake, and return to work status at baseline, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months. Significant pain relief was defined as >/= 50% pain relief and/or a positive change in ODI scores.\n\n\nRESULTS\nIn Group I and Group II 90% of participants showed significant pain relief and functional improvement at 12 months. The majority of the participants experienced significant pain relief of 47.2 ± 10.1 weeks in Group I and 46.3 ± 8.4 weeks in Group II, requiring approximately 3.5 treatments per year with an average relief of 15.8 ± 10.5 in Group I and 13.6 ± 3.6 weeks in Group II per episode of treatment.\n\n\nLIMITATIONS\nStudy limitations include the lack of a placebo group.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nTherapeutic thoracic medial branch blocks, with or without steroid, may provide a management option for chronic function-limiting mid back or upper back pain of facet joint origin.\n\n\nCLINICAL TRIAL\nNCT00355706.",
"corpus_id": 8542710,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Studies on drying kinetics of solids in a rotary dryer",
"abstract": "Experimental and theoretical investigations on drying of non-hygroscopic material were conducted in a rotary dryer with preheated air as the drying medium. The progress of the drying process was experimentally investigated batch wise and under continuous conditions for different temperatures and flow rates of the drying medium, rotational speed and inclination of the cylinder, and initial moisture content of solids. The experimental product moisture content from continuous drying process was satisfactorily compared with predictions based on axial dispersion model. The drying rate was found to increase with increase in either rotational speed of the dryer or temperature or flow rate of the drying medium. It decreases with increase in either initial moisture content of the solids or solids holdup. The study shows that the drying kinetics coupled with residence time distribution function for the flow of the solids satisfactorily predicts the moisture content of the solids in the product.",
"corpus_id": 15105925
} | {
"title": "Mathematical modelling and simulation for the drying process of vegetable wholesale by-products in a rotary dryer",
"abstract": "Disposal of agricultural and agro-food industry by-products has become an increasing environmental problem. Drying is one of the possible conditioning processes that can be applied to these by-products before using them as cattle feed or soil conditioner. In this paper, a dynamic model to simulate the dehydration process of wastes of vegetable from a wholesale market in a rotary dryer is proposed. The dryer was divided into 10 sections and mass and energy balances were established in each of them. The results have been validated in a semi-industrial dryer. The model predicts air and product moisture and temperature depending on working conditions of the rotary dryer. Inlet air temperature has been shown to be the variable that has the greatest effect, on both outlet moisture content of the product and on outlet air temperature.",
"corpus_id": 109914917
} | {
"title": "Rolling Locomotion of Deformable Tensegrity Structure",
"abstract": "In this paper, we propose that a deformable robot with a tensegrity structure can crawl and describe its performance in practical experiments and a gait description. We apply Miller index in crystallography to describe the gait of a prototype, and then classify two contact conditions of the prototype. We demonstrate rolling of a six-strut tensegrity to confirm the movement of the prototype from each contact condition.",
"corpus_id": 1915938,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Towards a Future Reallocation of Work between Humans and Machines – Taxonomy of Tasks and Interaction Types in the Context of Machine Learning",
"abstract": "In today’s race for competitive advantages, more and more companies implement innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML). Although these machines take over tasks that have been executed by humans, they will not make human workforce obsolete. To leverage the potentials of ML, collaboration between humans and machines is necessary. Before collaboration processes can be developed, a classification of tasks in the field of ML is needed. Therefore, we present a taxonomy for the classification of tasks due to their complexity and the type of interaction. To derive insights about typical tasks and task-complexity, we conducted a literature review as well as a focus group workshop. We identified three levels of task-complexity and three types of interactions. Connecting them reveals three generic types of tasks. We provide prescriptive knowledge inherent in the task/interaction-taxonomy.",
"corpus_id": 2442403
} | {
"title": "A sequential algorithm for training text classifiers",
"abstract": "The ability to cheaply train text classifiers is critical to their use in information retrieval, content analysis, natural language processing, and other tasks involving data which is partly or fully textual. An algorithm for sequential sampling during machine learning of statistical classifiers was developed and tested on a newswire text categorization task. This method, which we call uncertainty sampling, reduced by as much as 500-fold the amount of training data that would have to be manually classified to achieve a given level of effectiveness.",
"corpus_id": 915058
} | {
"title": "Wikidata Vandalism Detection - The Loganberry Vandalism Detector at WSDM Cup 2017",
"abstract": "Wikidata is the new, large-scale knowledge base of the Wikimedia Foundation. As it can be edited by anyone, entries frequently get vandalized, leading to the possibility that it might spread of falsified information if such posts are not detected. The WSDM 2017 Wiki Vandalism Detection Challenge requires us to solve this problem by computing a vandalism score denoting the likelihood that a revision corresponds to an act of vandalism and performance is measured using the ROC-AUC obtained on a held-out test set. This paper provides the details of our submission that obtained an ROC-AUC score of 0.91976 in the final evaluation.",
"corpus_id": 39043866,
"score": -1
} |
{
"title": "Comparison of Predictive Control Methods for High Consumption Industrial Furnace",
"abstract": "We describe several predictive control approaches for high consumption industrial furnace control. These furnaces are major consumers in production industries, and reducing their fuel consumption and optimizing the quality of the products is one of the most important engineer tasks. In order to demonstrate the benefits from implementation of the advanced predictive control algorithms, we have compared several major criteria for furnace control. On the basis of the analysis, some important conclusions have been drawn.",
"corpus_id": 9612456
} | {
"title": "SISTEM KONTROL PADA TUNGKU KERAMIK ROLLER HEARTH KILN (RHK)",
"abstract": "Penelitian tentang sistem kontrol optimal pada tungku pembakaran keramik (RHK) bertujuan untuk menganalisa kontrol pembakaran keramik agar kualitas produk akhir memenuhi persyaratan dan meningkatkan efisiensi penggunaan energi. Selain itu penelitian ini be rtujuan menguatkan kemampuan penelitian di Balai Besar Keramik di bidang pemodelan dan simulasi, sistem kontrol on - line dan remote engineering dan mendorong industri keramik Indonesia memasuki revolusi industri keempat atau industry 4.0 . Metode penelitian yang akan dilakukan adalah dengan pengumpulan data tungku pembakaran RHK, penentuan seluruh variabel non linier proses pembakaran, penyusunan persamaan dan model matematis sistem pembakaran RHK, perancangan simulasi sistem kontrol optimal dan validasi sis tem kontrol optimal untuk mendapatkan umpan balik. Diharapkan dari hasil penelitian ini menghasilkan sebuah sistem kontrol tungku yang handal dalam efisiensi energi, optimum dalam pengendalian variabel pembakaran dalam tungku untuk menghasilkan produk kera mik yang berkualitas tinggi, serta memudahkan integrasi ke sistem otomatisasi yang terhubung ke sistem informasi yang lebih besar. Kata kunci : Keramik, Sistem kontrol , Roller Heart Kiln,",
"corpus_id": 212869617
} | {
"title": "GaN MESFETs on [111]Si substrate grown by MOCVD",
"abstract": "A GaN metal-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MESFET) has been grown on [111] Si substrate by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition using Al/sub 0.27/Ga/sub 0.73/N/AlN intermediate layers. The device showed a maximum extrinsic transconductance 25 mS/mm and a drain-source current 169 mA/nm with a complete pinch-off for the 2.5 /spl mu/m gate-length. The Al/sub 0.27/Ga/sub 0.73/N/AlN intermediate layers were effective in obtaining a mirror-like surface morphology and a high-resistive undoped GaN layer beneath a channel layer. The GaN MESFET on Si also exhibited no self-heating effects (drain-source current reduction) under high-power conditions. Which results from the better thermal properties of Si than those of sapphire.",
"corpus_id": 108456264,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "The oxidation state of Hadean magmas and implications for early Earth’s atmosphere",
"abstract": "Magmatic outgassing of volatiles from Earth’s interior probably played a critical part in determining the composition of the earliest atmosphere, more than 4,000 million years (Myr) ago. Given an elemental inventory of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, the identity of molecular species in gaseous volcanic emanations depends critically on the pressure (fugacity) of oxygen. Reduced melts having oxygen fugacities close to that defined by the iron–wüstite buffer would yield volatile species such as CH4, H2, H2S, NH3 and CO, whereas melts close to the fayalite–magnetite–quartz buffer would be similar to present-day conditions and would be dominated by H2O, CO2, SO2 and N2 (refs 1–4). Direct constraints on the oxidation state of terrestrial magmas before 3,850 Myr before present (that is, the Hadean eon) are tenuous because the rock record is sparse or absent. Samples from this earliest period of Earth’s history are limited to igneous detrital zircons that pre-date the known rock record, with ages approaching ∼4,400 Myr (refs 5–8). Here we report a redox-sensitive calibration to determine the oxidation state of Hadean magmatic melts that is based on the incorporation of cerium into zircon crystals. We find that the melts have average oxygen fugacities that are consistent with an oxidation state defined by the fayalite–magnetite–quartz buffer, similar to present-day conditions. Moreover, selected Hadean zircons (having chemical characteristics consistent with crystallization specifically from mantle-derived melts) suggest oxygen fugacities similar to those of Archaean and present-day mantle-derived lavas as early as ∼4,350 Myr before present. These results suggest that outgassing of Earth’s interior later than ∼200 Myr into the history of Solar System formation would not have resulted in a reducing atmosphere.",
"corpus_id": 4338830
} | {
"title": "Ti-in-zircon thermometry: applications and limitations",
"abstract": "The titanium concentrations of 484 zircons with U-Pb ages of ∼1 Ma to 4.4 Ga were measured by ion microprobe. Samples come from 45 different igneous rocks (365 zircons), as well as zircon megacrysts (84) from kimberlite, Early Archean detrital zircons (32), and zircon reference materials (3). Samples were chosen to represent a large range of igneous rock compositions. Most of the zircons contain less than 20 ppm Ti. Apparent temperatures for zircon crystallization were calculated using the Ti-in-zircon thermometer (Watson et al. 2006, Contrib Mineral Petrol 151:413–433) without making corrections for reduced oxide activities (e.g., TiO2 or SiO2), or variable pressure. Average apparent Ti-in-zircon temperatures range from 500° to 850°C, and are lower than either zircon saturation temperatures (for granitic rocks) or predicted crystallization temperatures of evolved melts (∼15% melt residue for mafic rocks). Temperatures average: 653 ± 124°C (2 standard deviations, 60 zircons) for felsic to intermediate igneous rocks, 758 ± 111°C (261 zircons) for mafic rocks, and 758 ± 98°C (84 zircons) for mantle megacrysts from kimberlite. Individually, the effects of reduced $$ a_{{\\rm TiO}_{2}}$$ or $$ a_{{\\rm SiO}_{2}}$$, variable pressure, deviations from Henry’s Law, and subsolidus Ti exchange are insufficient to explain the seemingly low temperatures for zircon crystallization in igneous rocks. MELTs calculations show that mafic magmas can evolve to hydrous melts with significantly lower crystallization temperature for the last 10–15% melt residue than that of the main rock. While some magmatic zircons surely form in such late hydrous melts, low apparent temperatures are found in zircons that are included within phenocrysts or glass showing that those zircons are not from evolved residue melts. Intracrystalline variability in Ti concentration, in excess of analytical precision, is observed for nearly all zircons that were analyzed more than once. However, there is no systematic change in Ti content from core to rim, or correlation with zoning, age, U content, Th/U ratio, or concordance in U-Pb age. Thus, it is likely that other variables, in addition to temperature and $$ a_{{\\rm TiO}_{2}}$$, are important in controlling the Ti content of zircon. The Ti contents of igneous zircons from different rock types worldwide overlap significantly. However, on a more restricted regional scale, apparent Ti-in-zircon temperatures correlate with whole-rock SiO2 and HfO2 for plutonic rocks of the Sierra Nevada batholith, averaging 750°C at 50 wt.% SiO2 and 600°C at 75 wt.%. Among felsic plutons in the Sierra, peraluminous granites average 610 ± 88°C, while metaluminous rocks average 694 ± 94°C. Detrital zircons from the Jack Hills, Western Australia with ages from 4.4 to 4.0 Ga have apparent temperatures of 717 ± 108°C, which are intermediate between values for felsic rocks and those for mafic rocks. Although some mafic zircons have higher Ti content, values for Early Archean detrital zircons from a proposed granitic provenance are similar to zircons from many mafic rocks, including anorthosites from the Adirondack Mts (709 ± 76°C). Furthermore, the Jack Hills zircon apparent Ti-temperatures are significantly higher than measured values for peraluminous granites (610 ± 88°C). Thus the Ti concentration in detrital zircons and apparent Ti-in-zircon temperatures are not sufficient to independently identify parent melt composition.",
"corpus_id": 15272322
} | {
"title": "The meta-governance of regions and the need for a political geography of planning",
"abstract": "ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to explore a recently neglected aspect of the mainstream planning approach to natural resource regions and ‘the rural’: the role of the state and other powerful meta-governance actors. I address this issue by drawing on developments from planning and development theory, political geography, political science, and resilience studies. After discussing the different ways in which natural resource regions can be understood according to these strands, I explain the challenges confronting these approaches and introduce some of the ways in which these strands have attempted to overcome them. I argue that a renewed focus on the meta-governance of natural resource regions will both challenge and enrich future planning and development scholarship and practice. A political geography approach to understanding the role of meta-governance in planning natural resource regions is central to this agenda.",
"corpus_id": 148486608,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Patients with pyoderma gangrenosum – analyses of the German DRG data from 2012",
"abstract": "Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a rarely diagnosed non‐infectious neutrophil ulcerative dermatosis with only limited knowledge on the underlying auto‐inflammatory process. To unravel common cofactors and comorbidities in patients with PG we analysed Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) cases of all inpatients diagnosed with PG in German hospitals in 2012. We received data of 1227 inpatient cases having PG as primary diagnosis and 985 inpatient cases with PG as secondary diagnosis. The ratio of women to men was 2:1, and the most often registered age was 75–79 years. Common comorbidities were arterial hypertension (50·3%), non‐insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus (25·1%) and dysfunction of lipid metabolism (10·8%). In sum, 94·8% of the patients suffered from aspects of metabolic syndrome. Other comorbidities were Crohn's disease (4·5%), ulcerative colitis (4·2%), chronic polyarthritis (5·2%), monoclonal gammopathy or myelodysplastic syndrome (2·5%), leukaemia (1·1%) and lymphoma (0·4%). DRG data do not reflect individual patients, but rather patient cases. We described the worldwide largest PG population and confirmed a wide range of potentially relevant and partly not yet described cofactors and comorbidities such as metabolic syndrome.",
"corpus_id": 1102642
} | {
"title": "Pyoderma gangrenosum: a report of 44 cases with follow‐up",
"abstract": "Results of a study of 44 patients with pyoderma gangrenosum(PG) are presented. Each patient was diagnosed using standardized diagnostic criteria and followed up systematically. Thirty patients were women and 14 men. Their mean age was 50 years (range 11–80). Twenty patients had idiopathic and 14 parainflammatory occurrences (e.g. ulcerative colitis. Crohn's disease), whereas in 10 patients an associated haemoproliferative disease or neoplasia was noted. Whereas idiopathic and parainflammatory PG was found predominantly in women, the association with haemoproliferative diseases occurred more often in men. The lower legs and feet represented the typical predilection sites. Fifty‐two per cent of patients had one lesion. 37% had up to five, and 11% had more than five lesions. Histologically, lymphocytic and/or leucocytoclastic vasculitis was present in 73% of the biopsy specimens obtained from the borders of the lesions. Long‐term follow‐up (n=42. median follow‐up 26.5 months) revealed that eight patients had dies, in six cases due to the PG and/or the underlying diseases. Of the remaining 34 patients, 44% are in complete remission without further treatment, whereas continuing therapy is needed in 56%. No difference between idiopathic and parainflammatory PG was demonstrable in the follow‐up and in no patient with idiopathic PG was a possibly related disease diagnosed in the follow‐up. These data suggest that PG should be considered to be an independent disease and not a purely cutaneous complication in most patients.",
"corpus_id": 4032337
} | {
"title": "Dose-response effects of acute ultraviolet irradiation on antioxidants and molecular markers of oxidation in murine epidermis and dermis.",
"abstract": "There has not as yet been an integrated, comprehensive study of the responses of dermis and epidermis in vivo to a wide range of ultraviolet (UV) doses, encompassing all major antioxidants and a sensitive marker of oxidative damage. We have irradiated hairless mice with simulated solar light at doses of 2, 5, 12.5, and 25 J/cm2 combined UVA and UVB (0.8 to 10 MED) and measured enzymic and non-enzymic antioxidants as well as lipid hydroperoxides in both epidermis and dermis to elucidate the response of cutaneous antioxidant defense mechanisms to UV stress. Among the nonenzymic antioxidants two different dose-response patterns were seen. Ascorbate was rapidly depleted at doses between 0 and 5 J/cm2 but was less affected between 5 and 25 J/cm2. In contrast, glutathione, ubiquinol/one, and alpha-tocopherol levels remained approximately equal to control levels between 0 and 5 J/cm2, then decreased to varying degrees from 5 to 25 J/cm2; ubiquinol was almost completely depleted, whereas alpha-tocopherol dropped only 30%. The concentration of lipid hydroperoxides increased throughout the dose range. These results may be explained partly by direct destruction of some antioxidants by UV light, partly by the separate antioxidant functions of the compounds, and partly by recycling of some antioxidants (e.g., alpha-tocopherol) at the expense of others (e.g., ubiquinol). Even at the lowest dose (0.8 MED) lipid hydroperoxide formation was observed. Among the enzymic antioxidants, superoxide dismutase activity decreased significantly (to 63.6% of initial activity for epidermis and 51.5% for dermis at 25 J), whereas activities of glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase decreased slightly. Catalase activity decreased dramatically at doses above 5 J (to 11.8% of initial activity in epidermis and 27.7% in dermis at 25 J). The dramatic loss of catalase is almost entirely accounted for by direct destruction by the simulated solar light, but superoxide dismutase was unaffected by direct exposure; hence its destruction must be due to indirect effects, either mediated by free radicals or other harmful species formed upon irradiation. At low doses of UV light many components of the cutaneous antioxidant system were damaged, whereas at high doses all components were damaged and some were almost completely destroyed.",
"corpus_id": 29451319,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Nonnormality and Finite Precision Arithmetic in PowerMethod",
"abstract": "The Power Method is the simplest algorithm for computing eigenvalues and eigenvec-tors, yet its behaviour when subjected to rounding error and when the matrix is highly nonnormal has never been examined comprehensively. The Power Method deenes a dy-namical system on a sphere. Many eeects of nonnormality on the algorithm in both exact and nite precision arithmetic can easily be translated into dynamical phenomena. We analyse exhaustively the method for 2 2 matrices where, despite the apparent simplicity , complex behaviour is possible. Many results can be generalised to n dimensions. In particular, we are able to show that chaotic motion is impossible in exact arithmetic, in contrast to the Rayleigh Quotient Iteration.",
"corpus_id": 173756
} | {
"title": "Chaos in dynamical systems",
"abstract": "Preface 1. Introduction and overview 2. One-dimensional maps 3. Strange attractors and fractal dimensions 4. Dynamical properties of chaotic systems 5. Nonattracting chaotic sets 6. Quasiperiodicity 7. Chaos in Hamiltonian systems 8. Chaotic transitions 9. Multifractals 10. Control and synchronization of chaos 11. Quantum chaos.",
"corpus_id": 120556613
} | {
"title": "Introduction to Chaotic Dynamical Systems",
"abstract": "Abstract : The emerging discipline known as \"chaos theory\" is a relatively new field of study with a diverse range of applications (i.e., economics, biology, meteorology, etc.). Despite this, there is not as yet a universally accepted definition for \"chaos\" as it applies to general dynamical systems. Various approaches range from topological methods of a qualitative description; to physical notions of randomness, information, and entropy in ergodic theory; to the development of computational definitions and algorithms designed to obtain quantitative information. This thesis develops some of the current definitions and discusses several quantitative measures of chaos. It is intended to stimulate the interest of undergraduate and graduate students and is accessible to those with a knowledge of advanced calculus and ordinary differential equations. In covering chaos for continuous systems, it serves as a complement to the work done by Philip Beaver, which details chaotic dynamics for discrete systems.",
"corpus_id": 117692032,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Glucagon-like peptide-1 of brainstem origin activates dorsomedial hypothalamic neurons in satiated rats",
"abstract": "A high number of neurons express c-fos in response to unlimited food intake in fasted rats in the ventral subdivision of the hypothalamic dorsomedial nucleus (DMHv). We report here, that in same conditions, limited food consumption failed to induce Fos expression in DMHv neurons suggesting that satiation should be one of the important signals that activate these neurons. The possible origin of fibers conducting satiation signals to the DMHv could be in the lower brainstem, especially glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)-containing neurons in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS). We demonstrate that GLP-1-immunoreactive fibers and fiber terminals topographically overlap with activated Fos-positive neurons in the DMHv in refed rats. Using immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization histochemistry, we demonstrated GLP-1 receptors in Fos-expressing neurons of the DMH. Unilateral transections of ascending GLP-1-containing fibers from the NTS inside the pons in refed rats (unlimited food consumption) resulted in a dramatic decrease in the density of GLP-1 fibers and in the number of Fos-immunoreactive neurons in the DMHv, but only on the side of the transection. Contralateral to the transection, neither the GLP-1 fiber density nor the number of Fos-positive cells changed significantly. Meanwhile, the density of GLP-1 immunoreactivity was markedly accumulated in transected nerve fibers caudal to the cuts, as a consequence of the interruption of the ascending GLP-1 transport route. These findings suggest that the solitary-hypothalamic projections may represent the neuronal route through GLP-1 neurons of the NTS activate DMHv neurons via GLP-1 receptors by conveying information on satiety.",
"corpus_id": 2691995
} | {
"title": "Satiation and Stress-Induced Hypophagia: Examining the Role of Hindbrain Neurons Expressing Prolactin-Releasing Peptide or Glucagon-Like Peptide 1",
"abstract": "Neural circuits distributed within the brainstem, hypothalamus, and limbic forebrain interact to control food intake and energy balance under normal day-to-day conditions, and in response to stressful conditions under which homeostasis is threatened. Experimental studies using rats and mice have generated a voluminous literature regarding the functional organization of circuits that inhibit food intake in response to satiety signals, and in response to stress. Although the central neural bases of satiation and stress-induced hypophagia often are studied and discussed as if they were distinct, we propose that both behavioral states are generated, at least in part, by recruitment of two separate but intermingled groups of caudal hindbrain neurons. One group comprises a subpopulation of noradrenergic (NA) neurons within the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (cNST; A2 cell group) that is immunopositive for prolactin-releasing peptide (PrRP). The second group comprises non-adrenergic neurons within the cNST and nearby reticular formation that synthesize glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). Axonal projections from PrRP and GLP-1 neurons target distributed brainstem and forebrain regions that shape behavioral, autonomic, and endocrine responses to actual or anticipated homeostatic challenge, including the challenge of food intake. Evidence reviewed in this article supports the view that hindbrain PrRP and GLP-1 neurons contribute importantly to satiation and stress-induced hypophagia by modulating the activity of caudal brainstem circuits that control food intake. Hindbrain PrRP and GLP-1 neurons also engage hypothalamic and limbic forebrain networks that drive parallel behavioral and endocrine functions related to food intake and homeostatic challenge, and modulate conditioned and motivational aspects of food intake.",
"corpus_id": 8286285
} | {
"title": "Effect of dietary nitrate levels on nitrate fluxes in rat skeletal muscle and liver.",
"abstract": "Rodent skeletal muscle has high levels of nitrate ions and this endogenous nitrate reservoir can supply nitrite/nitric oxide (NO) for functional hyperemia and/or for other physiological processes in muscle during exercise. Mice with a NOS1 knockout have markedly reduced muscle nitrate levels, suggesting NO production by NOS and its reaction with oxymyoglobin as a source of nitrate. However, oxygen levels are normally low in most internal organs, which raises the possibility that nitrate-derived NO pathway is physiologically important even at \"normoxia\", and muscle nitrate reservoir is the main endogenous NO backup when exogeneous (dietary) nitrate intake is low. Using dietary nitrate manipulations, we explore the importance of diet for maintaining and renewal of muscle nitrate reservoir and its levels in other tissues. We found that skeletal muscle nitrate is extensively used when nitrate in diet is low. One week of nitrate starvation leads to dramatic nitrate depletion in skeletal muscle and a substantial decrease in liver. Nitrate depleted from skeletal muscle during starvation is quickly recovered from new dietary sources, with an unexpected significant \"overload\" compared with animals not subjected to nitrate starvation. Our results suggest the importance of dietary nitrate for nitrate reserves in muscle and in other tissues, when compared with endogenous NOS-derived sources. This requires an active transport mechanism for sequestering nitrate into cells, stimulated by lack of dietary nitrate or other enzymatic changes. These results confirm the hypothesis that muscle is a major storage site for nitrate in mammals.",
"corpus_id": 4074431,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Free-floating thrombi in the right heart: diagnosis, management, and prognostic indexes in 38 consecutive patients.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND\nFloating right heart thrombi (FRHTS) are a rare phenomenon, encountered almost exclusively in patients with suspected or proven pulmonary embolism and diagnosed by transthoracic echocardiography. Their management remains controversial.\n\n\nMETHODS AND RESULTS\nWe report on a series of 38 consecutive patients encountered over the past 12 years. Thirty-two patients were in NYHA class IV, 20 in cardiogenic shock. Echocardiography usually demonstrated signs of cor pulmonale: right ventricular overload (91.7% of the population), paradoxical interventricular septal motion (75%), and pulmonary hypertension (86. 1%). The thrombus was typically wormlike (36 of 38 patients). It extended from the left atrium through a patent foramen ovale in 4 patients. Pulmonary embolism was confirmed in all but 1. Mortality was high (17 of 38 patients) irrespective of the therapeutic option chosen: surgery (8 of 17), thrombolytics (2 of 9), heparin (5 of 8), or interventional percutaneous techniques (2 of 4). The in-hospital mortality rate was significantly linked with the occurrence of cardiac arrest. Conversely, the outcome after discharge was usually good, because 18 of 21 patients were still alive 47.2 months later (range, 1 to 70 months).\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nSevere pulmonary embolism was the rule in our series of FRHTS (mortality rate, 44.7%). The choice of therapy had no effect on mortality. Emergency surgery is usually advocated. However, thrombolysis is a faster, readily available treatment and seems promising either as the only treatment or as a bridge to surgery. In patients with contraindications to surgery or lytic therapy, interventional techniques may be proposed.",
"corpus_id": 220178
} | {
"title": "Right atrial mass simulated echocardiographically by a Swan-Ganz catheter.",
"abstract": "Communications for this section will be published as space and priorities permit. The comments should not exceed 500 words in length, with a maximum of jive references; one figure or table can be printed. Exceptions may occur under particular circumstances. Contributions may Include comments on articles published in this penodical, or they may be reports of unique educational character. Specific permission to publish should be cited in a covering letter or appended as a postscript.",
"corpus_id": 521268
} | {
"title": "Echocardiographic diagnosis of cardiac embolus.",
"abstract": "We describe a case of thromboembolism to the right atrium, diagnosed echocardiographically. The thrombus subsequently embolised to the pulmonary arteries with survival of the patient.",
"corpus_id": 6459897,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Molecular Mechanism of Drug Photosensitization. IX. Effect of Inorganic Ions on DNA Cleavage Photosensitized by Naproxen",
"abstract": "Abstract— Photocleavage of DNA induced by naproxen and the correlated protective effect by some inorganic ions have been considered. The presence of a DNA complex is suggested and only associated naproxen seems to be responsible for the cleavage, for which the quantum yield of single strand breaks was calculated. The inorganic ions I‐, Mn2+, Co2+ and Cu2+ decrease naproxen‐photoin‐duced DNA cleavage. Iodide acts by a heavy atom mechanism, thus inhibiting naproxen photolysis and decreasing the amount of free radicals responsible for the photocleavage both in aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Metallic ions protect only within a range of concentrations, as for higher amounts damaging processes are observed. The protective efficiency of cations decreases with the increase of free drug concentration in the bulk of the solution, due to their involvement in the scavenging of naproxen radicals generated by photolysis of the free drug. In the presence of EDTA the cations show a better protective action. The most likely hypothesis is an inhibiting effect on the damaging processes via a redox cycle. The different behaviors of copper and of the two other cations can be justified by the influence of redox potentials of free and complexed metals and by the superoxide dis‐mutase‐like activity of copper.",
"corpus_id": 2662321
} | {
"title": "Comparison of the DNA Damage Photoinduced by Fenofibrate and Ketoprofen, Two Phototoxic Drugs of Parent Structure",
"abstract": "Fenofibrate and ketoprofen (KP) are two drugs of similar structure derived from that of benzophenone. Both are photoallergic and promote cross reactions in patients. However, the cutaneous photosensitizing properties of KP also include phototoxic effects and are more frequently mentioned. To account for this difference in their in vivo properties, their in vitro photosensitizing properties on DNA were compared. First, it was shown that under irradiation at 313 nm, fenofibric acid (FB), the main metabolite of fenofibrate, photosensitized DNA cleavage by a radical mechanism similar to that proposed for KP but with a 50 times lower efficiency. Furthermore, FB did not photosensitize the formation of pyrimidine dimers into DNA in contrast to KP, which did promote this type of DNA damage. Their difference in efficiency as DNA breakers was compared to their relative photochemical reactivity and the quantum yield of FB photolysis was found to be eightfold lower than that of KP. The reactivity of these drugs cannot explain alone the difference in their photosensitizing properties. Other factors such as the magnitude of the ionic character of the pho‐todecarboxylation pathway of these benzophenone‐like drugs are considered in the discussion.",
"corpus_id": 23574082
} | {
"title": "Responses of western hemlock, Pacific silver fir, and western red cedar plantations on northern Vancouver Island to applications of sewage sludge and inorganic fertilizer",
"abstract": "A field experiment was designed to determine whether or not municipal sewage sludge would be effective for fertilization for chlorotic and checked plantations of western hemlock (Tsugaheterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.), Pacific silver fir (Abiesamabilis (Dougl.) Forbes), and western red cedar (Thujaplicata Donn ex. D. Don) already shown to be responsive to conventional nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization. Sewage sludge was applied at an estimated rate of 500 kg N/ha and 133 kg P/ha and ammonium nitrate and triple superphosphate were applied at 225 kg N/ha and 75 kg P/ha to plots planted 8 years earlier on a cutover of old-growth cedar–hemlock forest. Current-year leader growth and foliar vector analyses showed that the trees responded to both treatments during the first growing season with a doubling or tripling of growth rates and improved nutrition. The apparent problem of insufficient sulphur following nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization was not seen in trees treated with sludge. There were no apparent pro...",
"corpus_id": 84753913,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Releasing incisions of the tympanic membrane in type III tympanoplasty",
"abstract": "Myringostapediopexy may be used as part of tympanoplasty following mastoid operations. We describe a technique of placing releasing incisions on the tympanic membrane to ensure good contact between it and the stapes head.",
"corpus_id": 231521
} | {
"title": "Myringostapediopexy: surgical expectation",
"abstract": "Myringostapediopexy may occur as a result of incus erosion with medialization of the tympanic membrane and is recognized as often producing serviceable hearing. The technique may be used as part of tympanoplasty following either canal wall up or canal wall down surgery for chronic otitis media. The use of this type of reconstruction is influenced by the anatomy of the ear after disease excision. This review of the hearing levels associated with myringostapediopexy shows that there is a similar range of hearing level both for naturally formed as well as surgically fashioned myringostapediopexy. For both ’naturally formed’ and following canal wall up surgery about 80 per cent of patients will have an air-bone gap of 20 dB or less compared to 60 per cent of those who undergo canal wall down surgery.",
"corpus_id": 22177700
} | {
"title": "Incus homografts in cats.",
"abstract": "RECONSTRUCTION of the ossicular chain of the middle ear in humans is a major problem and taxes the resourcefulness of the otologist. The incus homograft is one possible approach to the problem; it is logical, accessible, and, we hope, beneficial to the selected patient. It is relatively uniform in size and shape and can be preserved for long periods without deterioration. The feasibility of autogenous incus transposition has been shown by many authors, both in experimental animals 1 and in humans. It has also been well documented that the transplantation of small homograft bones is well tolerated by host tissue, and eventually the homograft becomes living bone through the process described as \"creeping substitution.\" 2,3 It was on this premise that we thought that the use of the homograft incus would be feasible. Procedure Twenty surgical procedures were performed on a total of ten cats. The incus was removed and",
"corpus_id": 5145668,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "A new quantitative approach to measure perceived work-related stress in Italian employees",
"abstract": "ObjectiveWe propose a method for a reliable quantitative measure of subjectively perceived occupational stress applicable in any company to enhance occupational safety and psychosocial health, to enable precise prevention policies and intervention and to improve work quality and efficiency.Materials and MethodsA suitable questionnaire was telephonically administered to a stratified sample of the whole Italian population of employees. Combined multivariate statistical methods, including principal component, cluster and discriminant analyses, were used to identify risk factors and to design a causal model for understanding work-related stress.ResultsThe model explained the causal links of stress through employee perception of imbalance between job demands and resources for responding appropriately, by supplying a reliable U-shaped nonlinear stress index, expressed in terms of values of human systolic arterial pressure. Low, intermediate and high values indicated demotivation (or inefficiency), well-being and distress, respectively. Costs for stress-dependent productivity shortcomings were estimated to about 3.7% of national income from employment.ConclusionsThe method identified useful structured information able to supply a simple and precise interpretation of employees’ well-being and stress risk. Results could be compared with estimated national benchmarks to enable targeted intervention strategies to protect the health and safety of workers, and to reduce unproductive costs for firms.",
"corpus_id": 2806035
} | {
"title": "Job demand stressors and employees’ creativity: a within-person approach to dealing with hindrance and challenge stressors at the airport environment",
"abstract": "ABSTRACT Given the competitiveness of twenty-first-century airport landscape, catalyzed by airports’ evolution toward multi-service, and market-driven firms, a thorough investigation into employees’ creativity and its antecedents at the airport environment is warranted. Adopting the two-dimensional job demand stressors – outcome relationships framework and the cognitive-relational theory of stress, the current study interrogated the challenge (i.e. workload and time pressure)/ hindrance (i.e. role conflict and role ambiguity) stressors – creativity curvilinear relationships, and the buffering effects of within-person resources – dispositional mindfulness, and core self-evaluation. Using multi-sourced, cross-sectional data from employees in three airports in Ghana, the research findings showed creativity to have a U-shaped relationship with role ambiguity and role conflict, but with time pressure the relationship was an inverted U-shape. Employees’ workload showed a near-linear relationship with creativity, flattening at high levels of workload. Core self-evaluation displayed itself as an effective buffering component on role ambiguity – and time pressure – creativity relations but not role conflict and workload. Dispositional mindfulness interacted with role ambiguity, role conflict and time pressure – creativity relations, but not workload. To optimize employees’ creative performance, the study findings make a strong case for attending to individual-level factors necessary for stressors management. Further implications and recommendations are discussed.",
"corpus_id": 150118005
} | {
"title": "Psoriasis in childhood: effective strategies to improve treatment adherence",
"abstract": "Psoriasis is a relatively common chronic inflammatory skin disease in children for which there is no cure. Most children have mild disease that can be managed with topical therapy as opposed to phototherapy or systemic therapy. Despite the mild presentation of psoriasis in most children, the disease can have a significant impact on quality of life due to the need for ongoing treatment, the frequently visible nature of the cutaneous manifestations, and the social stigma that is associated with psoriasis. Adherence to treatment, in particular topical therapy, is often poor in adults and compromises response to therapy and medical provider management strategies. Multiple factors that may contribute to nonadherence in adults with psoriasis have been identified, including lack of education on the disease and expectations for management, issues related to ease of use and acceptability of topical medications, and anxiety regarding possible medication side effects. There is currently no published data on adherence in the pediatric psoriasis population; however, poor adherence is often suspected when patients fail to respond to appropriate therapy. General strategies used to assess adherence in other pediatric disease populations can be applied to children with psoriasis, and interventions that reflect experience in other chronic dermatologic disorders such as atopic dermatitis may also be helpful for medical providers caring for children with psoriasis.",
"corpus_id": 8534478,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Preface of the Special Issue in Memoriam Helmut Veith",
"abstract": "This special issue of the Journal on Formal Methods in System Design is dedicated to Prof. Helmut Veith, who unexpectedly passed away in March 2016. Helmut Veith was a brilliant researcher, inspiring collaborator, passionate mentor, generous friend, and valued member of the formal methods community. Helmut was not only known for his numerous and influential contributions in the field of automated verification (most prominently his work on Counterexample-Guided Abstraction Refinement [1,2]), but also for his untiring and passionate efforts for the logic community: he co-organized the Vienna Summer of Logic (an event comprising twelve conferences and numerous workshops which attracted thousands of researchers from all over the world), he initiated the Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms (which promotes international collaboration on logic and algorithms and organizes outreach events such as the LogicLounge), and he coordinated the Doctoral Program on Logical Methods in Computer Science at TU Wien (currently educating more than 40 doctoral students) and a National Research Network on Rigorous Systems Engineering (uniting fifteen researchers in Austria to address the challenge of building reliable and safe computer systems). With his enthusiasm and commitment, Helmut completely reshaped the Austrian research landscape in the field of logic and verification in his few years as a full professor at TU Wien. This special issue features six articles that are closely related to Helmut’s contributions and achievements. The first two articles are extensions of conference papers previously",
"corpus_id": 687844
} | {
"title": "Preface of the special issue on the Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design 2017",
"abstract": "This special issue of the Journal on Formal Methods in System Design features extended and revised versions of select contributions presented at the 2017 Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD 2017) [9]. The FMCAD conference focuses on theoretical results and tools in the field of automated verification and formal methods, and provides a leading forum that brings together researchers in academia and industry. FMCAD2017was held fromOctober 2 to October 6, 2017, in Vienna, Austria. In addition to the invited and contributed talks, the conference included a tutorial day, a student forum providing a platform for graduate students to present their research [6], and a symposium in memoriam Helmut Veith [3]. This special issue contains the following six contributions, all of which were reviewed by at least two experts in at least two rounds of peer review:",
"corpus_id": 234303503
} | {
"title": "An intelligent intrusion detection system using genetic based feature selection and Modified J48 decision tree classifier",
"abstract": "In this paper, intelligent algorithms for intrusion detection are proposed which detect the network attacks as normal or anomaly based attacks by performing effective preprocessing and classification. This system uses a new genetic algorithm approach for pre-processing and Modified J48 classification algorithm to identify the intended activities. The new genetic based feature selection algorithm proposed in this paper is helpful to identify the important features needed to classify the normal and anomaly records. The proposed intelligent IDS has been empirically tested in a simulated environment and the experimental results show that the proposed method provides higher detection accuracy than the existing methods in terms of detection rate with reduced false rate. The salient contributions of this paper are, the proposed a new processing technique for removing noisy data in the KDD cup'99 dataset, identification of the optimal features selection by applying modified genetic algorithm and finally the proposed of modified J48 decision tree algorithm for efficient classification for providing intelligent network intrusion detection.",
"corpus_id": 14501996,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Quality assessment of noodles made from blends of rice flour and canna starch.",
"abstract": "Canna starch and its derivatives (retrograded, retrograded debranched, and cross-linked) were evaluated for their suitability to be used as prebiotic sources in a rice noodle product. Twenty percent of the rice flour was replaced with these tested starches, and the noodles obtained were analyzed for morphology, cooking qualities, textural properties, and capability of producing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Cross-linked canna starch could increase tensile strength and elongation of rice noodles. Total dietary fiber (TDF) content of noodles made from rice flour was 3.0% and increased to 5.1% and 7.3% when rice flour was replaced with retrograded and retrograded debranched starches, respectively. Cooking qualities and textural properties of noodles containing 20% retrograded debranched starch were mostly comparable, while the capability of producing SCFAs and butyric acid was superior to the control rice noodles; the cooked noodle strips also showed fewer tendencies to stick together.",
"corpus_id": 161782
} | {
"title": "Utilization of Ca2+-induced setting of alginate or low methoxyl pectin for noodle production from Japonica rice",
"abstract": "Abstract Japonica rice is not generally appropriate for noodle production because of its stickiness and lack of firmness. In the present study, effects of Ca2+-induced setting of alginate or low methoxyl (LM) pectin on the firmness and stickiness of Japonica rice noodles were investigated. The Japonica rice noodles containing alginate or LM pectin showed a sufficient firmness after immersion in calcium chloride solutions judging from a peak force during compression. The firmness indexed by the peak force in the compression test could be increased ten/several times with increasing concentration of alginate/LM pectin and immersion time. Without Ca2+ treatment the noodles did not show a clear peak force but just showed a gradual rise in the compression force. The surface stickiness of the noodles was evaluated by the adhesiveness of the newly introduced instrumental method. The adhesiveness of the noodles decreased with increasing alginate or LM pectin concentrations which should lead to a more slippery sensation. Thus the treatment of Ca2+-induced setting of alginate or LM pectin is promising for the gluten–free noodle production from Japonica rice.",
"corpus_id": 92104136
} | {
"title": "An alternative water source and combined agronomic practices for cotton irrigation in coastal saline soils",
"abstract": "The field experiment for cotton crop (Gossypium hirsutum L.) was conducted at the Zhongjie Farm, Huanghua city of Hebei province in the coastal salinity-affected areas in North China Plain, to determine the effects of an alternative of irrigation water sources/methods and agronomic practices on seedling emergence and yields of cotton, soil water–salt distributions, and soil pH changes during cotton growth stages. The experiment was setup using split-plot design with two water sources as main treatments (well water/desalinized sea-ice water); two irrigation methods (+PAM (Polyacrylamide)/−PAM); and four fertilization modes: check (CK), mineral fertilizer (F), mineral + organic fertilizer (FM), and mineral fertilizer + gypsum (FG). Using desalinized sea-ice water irrigation showed the same effects on top-soil salt leaching and desalinization as using well water did. There was no significant difference in seedling emergence and cotton yields between two irrigation water sources for cotton irrigation. Using PAM-treated irrigation, the 10-cm top-soil salinity significantly decreased to about 2.3–3.9 g kg−1 from 4.6 to 8.6 g kg−1 (PAM untreated). The PAM-treated irrigation increased seedling emergence by about 13, 29 and 36% and yields by about 50, 49, and 70%, with F, FM, and FG, respectively, as compared with CK. PAM-treated irrigation, either using well water or desalinized sea ice, especially in combination with gypsum-fertilization, shows the best practice for both seedling emergence and cotton yields. In conclusion, the desalinized sea-ice water used as an alternative water source, integrated with better agronomic practices of soil water-salt management could be acceptable for cotton irrigation in the coastal saline areas.",
"corpus_id": 10503178,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "200 years Organon of Medicine - A comparative review of its six editions (1810-1842).",
"abstract": "In 2010 the 200th anniversary of the Organon is celebrated by the homeopathic community. Samuel Hahnemann's Organon of Rational Therapeutics, published in 1810, however, marks neither the beginning of homeopathy nor the endpoint of its development. On the one hand, its contents are based on terms and concepts developed and published by Hahnemann during the preceding two decades. On the other hand, the five revised editions of the Organon that followed in the next three decades contain major changes of theory and conceptions. Hahnemann's basic idea, running through all the stages of the foundation, elaboration, and defence of his doctrine, may be detected by a comparative review of his works from a historical and philosophical perspective.",
"corpus_id": 3743063
} | {
"title": "New approaches within the history and theory of medicine and their relevance for homeopathy.",
"abstract": "Conventional sciences have brought forth a wealth of knowledge and benefits, but they have not always been clear and precise about their legitimate scope and methodological limitations. In contrast, new and critical approaches in modern sciences question and reflect their own presuppositions, dependencies, and constraints. Examples are quantum physics, theory and history of science, as well as theory and history of medicine, sociology, and economics. In this way, deprecative dogmatism and animosity amongst sciences ought to be lessened, while the field opens up for each science to redefine its appropriate place in society. This would appear to be a chance for homeopathy, as new approaches, especially within the social and economic sciences, suggest that being a follower of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) may have advantages and privileges that conventional medicine seems to be lacking and whose relevance was overlooked during the rise of economic thinking in the last two centuries.",
"corpus_id": 3756538
} | {
"title": "Anthropology and medicine The image of man in different therapeutic approaches",
"abstract": "Abstract Fundamental reflections on anthropology in medicine lead on to the image of man on which modern, science-orientated medicine is based, followed by that which underlies homœopathy. Hahnemann's concept of man is considered before elucidating the characteristics and differences between the two approaches and their particular position in the theory of medicine. The strict positivism of science essentially reduces the image of man, whilst the teleological approach, renouncing any claim to be able to investigate life itself, permits a phenomenological recognition of man in all his dimensions.",
"corpus_id": 20384346,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Small-Gauge Endoscopy-Guided Pneumatic Anterior Hyaloid Detachment: A New Surgical Technique for Combined Pars Plana Vitrectomy and Pars Plana Glaucoma Drainage Implant.",
"abstract": "BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE\nPars plana glaucoma drainage implant (GDI) occlusion is mainly related to entrapment of residual anterior vitreous gel in the implant. The aim of the present report is to describe a new surgical technique to induce pneumatic anterior hyaloid detachment in eyes with GDI.\n\n\nPATIENTS AND METHODS\nThis is a description of the surgical technique used to induce pneumatic anterior hyaloid detachment.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe technique was used in two cases. The first patient had secondary Ahmed valve (New World Medical, Rancho Cucamonga, CA) obstruction secondary to anterior vitreous entrapment; the second patient had neovascular glaucoma secondary to proliferative diabetic retinopathy and underwent pars plana GDI implantation.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nEndoscopy-assisted anterior hyaloid detachment allows for complete removal of anterior hyaloid and decreases the risk of secondary implant obstruction. [Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina. 2018;49:48-50.].",
"corpus_id": 122094
} | {
"title": "Hypotony and the Argus II retinal prosthesis: causes, prevention and management",
"abstract": "The Argus II retinal prosthesis (Second Sight Medical Products, Sylmar, CA, USA) is an electronic epiretinal implant designed for use in patients with end-stage retinitis pigmentosa, as well as for other outer retinal degenerative conditions, such as choroideremia, Leber’s congenital amaurosis, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, Usher syndrome and rod–cone disease.1 This device was tested in a clinical trial of 30 subjects in the USA and in Europe to measure the rate of serious adverse events (SAEs) and to assess its effects on functional vision and visual acuity.2–4 Subjects performed better on visual tasks with the device turned on and retained these improvements at 5 years postsurgery.4 Additionally, an acceptable safety profile enabled approval of the device for consumer use by the European regulatory authorities in 2011 (Conformite Europeenne (CE) mark) and by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2013 (FDA approval).\n\nThe implant is composed of an extraocular component, namely, an electronics case and implant coil, as well as an intraocular component involving a 60-electrode array that is tacked over the macula (figure 1). The extraocular and intraocular components are connected by a trans-scleral silicone-coated polyamide electrode cable, and the implantation procedure involves a 5.2 mm pars plana sclerotomy incision to insert the electrode array and the electrode cable into the eye. The sclerotomy is then sutured around the cable and covered by an allograft or autograft material.5\n\n\n\nFigure 1 \nThe Argus II retinal prosthesis. Labelled image of the Argus II implant (adapted from Humayun et al 2).\n\n\n\nAs with any system having both intraocular and extraocular components, the trans-scleral electrode cable that traverses the sclerotomy permanently is a high-risk feature of the device, as leakage through the pars plana incision can result in chronic hypotony. The percentages of clinical trial subjects who experienced hypotony were 10.0% at …",
"corpus_id": 196349360
} | {
"title": "Argentina: Public Health Genomics",
"abstract": "Argentina’s population numbers about 40 million, with main genetic contributions from Europeans, Amerindians and, to a much lower extent, West Africans. There is a traditional health care system publicly funded coexisting with a social security system and a for-profit private sector. Clinical genetic services include about 40 units in public hospitals dealing mainly with pediatric genetics. The most conspicuous public policies in genetics are newborn screening and folic acid fortification of flour. Genetics/genomics research is funded by state agencies and is conducted in several institutes and centers. Clinical genetics research occurs in public hospitals and deals primarily with congenital syndromes. While there are no defined government policies in the public application of genomics, there have been initiatives to improve the provision of clinical genetic services countrywide. The main hurdles for applying genetics in health care are a fragmented, inefficient, and inequitable health system, facing large unmet needs in infectious diseases, malnutrition, prenatal and newborn care, deficient education in genetics, and lack of explicit public policies in genetic health care and governmental regulations. Overcoming these obstacles requires increase in government funding and improvement of the efficiency of the public health system and its genetic services. Further, there must be concerted efforts to ensure equitable access to the latter. Interactions should be promoted between clinical geneticists, public health officers, primary health care personnel and parent/patient organizations on the use of genetics/genomics in public health, as well as genetics education of health professionals, the public and decision makers, and development of the capacity of the state to regulate properly the application of genetic/genomic technologies to public health.",
"corpus_id": 25731237,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Pain and the primate thalamus.",
"abstract": "Noxious stimuli that are perceived as painful, are conveyed to the thalamus by the spinothalamic tract (STT) and the spinotrigeminothalamic tracts (vSTT), arising from the dorsal horn of the spinal cord and medulla, respectively. Most investigators have concluded that the thalamic terminus of these pathways include several nuclei of the somatosensory and intralaminar thalamus. Non-noxious stimuli are carried by the dorsal column/medial lemniscal or the trigeminothalamic pathways which terminate in much more restricted regions of the thalamus than do the STT and vSTT systems. Lesions of components of the somatosensory pathways result in profound changes in the circuitry of the recipient thalamic nuclei. Not only are there the expected losses of the injured axons and their synaptic terminations, but there is also a marked reduction of the intrinsic GABAergic circuitry, even though the GABAergic neurons contributing to the circuitry have not been injured directly by lesions of the afferent pathways. Such changes in the inhibitory circuitry observed in experimental animals may explain the abnormal bursting behavior of thalamic neurons found in patients with central deafferentation pain syndromes. One potential approach to treating chronic pain would be to selectively remove the neurons of the superficial dorsal horn (lamina I) that specifically respond to noxious stimuli (NS neurons). A toxin has been developed (SSP saporin) that binds to the substance P receptor of NS neurons, is internalized by the neuron and kills the cell. SSP saporin has been shown to be effective in rats, and we have recently demonstrated that it effectively causes lesions in NS neurons of the lumbar spinal cord in the monkey and reduces the animals' response to noxious cutaneous stimuli. The SSP-saporin administration to the lumbar spinal cord destroys a relatively small number of the total neurons that project into the somatosensory thalamus and does not lead to demonstrable changes in the inhibitory circuitry of the thalamus, in contrast to lesions of major pathways that lead to reductions in the thalamic inhibitory circuitry.",
"corpus_id": 2786123
} | {
"title": "Functional neuroanatomy of nociception and pain",
"abstract": "Pain is a complex sensory state based on the integration of a variety of nociceptive inputs processed centrally through many parallel and overlapping neural systems. The traditional anatomical concept implies that nociceptive information is dominantly used to generate and regulate perception of pain through one major sensory pathway. It becomes recognized that experiencing the affective component of the pain is at least as important as perception. Also, nociceptive information is strongly influencing brain centers for regulating homeostasis. So, understanding neuroanatomical organization of central processing of nociceptive information is of great clinical importance. There is an attempt to simplify this complex set of interacting networks to a core set of brain regions or a generalizable pain signature. Herewith we wish to give a short overview of recent advances by presenting principles about neuroanatomical organization for processing various aspects of nociceptive inputs. GenerAl neuroAnAtomicAl principles in nociceptive processinG P is the most distinctive of all the sensory modalities (1) but can be simply defined as the subjective experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage (2–5). It serves an important protective function and warns to avoid or treat injury. The perception of pain is subjective and can vary greatly among individuals. Moreover, in the same individual an identical sensory stimulus can elicit quite distinct conscious responses under different conditions. This includes also psychological conditions, such as fear or anxiety that can significantly influence the experience of pain. So, more than most sensory modalities, the perception of pain is influenced by emotional state and environmental contingency, is dependent on experience, and varies so markedly from person to person (6–16), and consequently remains notoriously difficult to treat . Noxious stimuli, including tissue injury, activate nociceptors (from the Latin, noceo = to injure, hurt) which are present in peripheral structures and transmit information to the CNS: from the body to the spinal cord dorsal grey column, from the skin of the head to the spinal and principal trigeminal nucleus, and from the neck mucosa to the lower 2/3rd of solitary tract nucleus (17–19). To generate perception of pain the information should continue ultimately to the cerebral cortex. From anatomical point of view it should be noted that nociception refers to the process through which information about peripheral stimuli is transmitted by primary afferent nociceptors to the spinal cord, brainstem, thalamus, and subcortical structures. For the experience of pain, activity of thalamocortical networks that process the information conveyed by pathways of nociception is needed (20–26) (Figure 1). ANA HLADNIK IVANA BIČANIĆ ZDRAVKO PETANJEK* University of Zagreb, School of Medicine, Department of Anatomy and Clinical Anatomy, Croatian Institute for Brain Research [alata 11, Zagreb, Croatia",
"corpus_id": 5375716
} | {
"title": "Penile Scar and Fibrosis",
"abstract": "The corpora cavernosa consist of smooth muscle cells, loose areolar tissue, blood vessels, nerves and collagen fibers. All these components play a role in the complex physiologic event of erection, together with endocrinal, vascular, neural and psychogenic factors (Jevtich et al. 1990).",
"corpus_id": 67916383,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "A transform approach to linear network coding for acyclic networks with delay",
"abstract": "The algebraic formulation for linear network coding in acyclic networks with each link having an integer delay is well known. Based on this formulation, for a given set of connections over an arbitrary acyclic network with integer delay assumed for the links, the output symbols at the sink nodes at any given time instant is a Fq-linear combination of the input symbols across different generations, where Fq denotes the field over which the network operates. We use finite-field discrete Fourier transform (DFT) to convert the output symbols at the sink nodes at any given time instant into a Fq-linear combination of the input symbols generated during the same generation. We call this as transforming the acyclic network with delay into n-instantaneous networks (n is sufficiently large). We show that under certain conditions, there exists a network code satisfying sink demands in the usual (non-transform) approach if and only if there exists a network code satisfying sink demands in the transform approach. Furthermore, assuming time invariant local encoding kernels, we show that the transform method can be employed to achieve half the rate corresponding to the individual source-destination mincut (which are assumed to be equal to 1) for some classes of three-source three-destination multiple unicast network with delays using alignment strategies when the zero-interference condition is not satisfied.",
"corpus_id": 1560654
} | {
"title": "On network coding for acyclic networks with delays",
"abstract": "Problems related to network coding for acyclic, instantaneous networks (where the edges of the acyclic graph representing the network are assumed to have zero-delay) have been extensively dealt with in the recent past. The most prominent of these problems include (a) the existence of network codes that achieve maximum rate of transmission, (b) efficient network code constructions, and (c) field size issues. In practice, however, networks have transmission delays. In network coding theory, such networks with transmission delays are generally abstracted by assuming that their edges have integer delays. Using enough memory at the nodes of an acyclic network with integer delays can effectively simulate instantaneous behavior, which is probably why only acyclic instantaneous networks have been primarily focused on thus far. However, nulling the effect of the network delays are not always uniformly advantageous, as we will show in this work. Essentially, we elaborate on issues ((a), (b) and (c) above) related to network coding for acyclic networks with integer delays, and show that using the delay network as is (without adding memory) turns out to be advantageous, disadvantageous or immaterial, depending on the topology of the network and the problem considered i.e., (a), (b) or (c).",
"corpus_id": 10213438
} | {
"title": "MP3 Players and Audio Games: An Alternative to Portable Video Games Console for Visually Impaired Players",
"abstract": "Both the evolutions of technologies and the increase of the Web download market have led to a democratisation of digital audio players throughout the world. Smaller and lighter, this media has become the best companion to listen his (her) favorite music everywhere. Indeed, thanks to the improvement of their performances, currently, they can be used to watch videos, to store data, etc. Among these new applications, it is imaginable to use them as a portable audio games console. Audio games are still the main solution for visually impaired players to play computer games. This paper introduces our contribution to elaborate an audio games console, accessible for visually impaired players, based on digital audio players.",
"corpus_id": 46338910,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "Sensory characteristics and consumer preference for chicken meat in Guinea.",
"abstract": "This study identified the sensory characteristics and consumer preference for chicken meat in Guinea. Five chicken samples [live village chicken, live broiler, live spent laying hen, ready-to-cook broiler, and ready-to-cook broiler (imported)] bought from different locations were assessed by 10 trained panelists using 19 sensory attributes. The ANOVA results showed that 3 chicken appearance attributes (brown, yellow, and white), 5 chicken odor attributes (oily, intense, medicine smell, roasted, and mouth persistent), 3 chicken flavor attributes (sweet, bitter, and astringent), and 8 chicken texture attributes (firm, tender, juicy, chew, smooth, springy, hard, and fibrous) were significantly discriminating between the chicken samples (P<0.05). Principal component analysis of the sensory data showed that the first 2 principal components explained 84% of the sensory data variance. The principal component analysis results showed that the live village chicken, the live spent laying hen, and the ready-to-cook broiler (imported) were very well represented and clearly distinguished from the live broiler and the ready-to-cook broiler. One hundred twenty consumers expressed their preferences for the chicken samples using a 5-point Likert scale. The hierarchical cluster analysis of the preference data identified 4 homogenous consumer clusters. The hierarchical cluster analysis results showed that the live village chicken was the most preferred chicken sample, whereas the ready-to-cook broiler was the least preferred one. The partial least squares regression (PLSR) type 1 showed that 72% of the sensory data for the first 2 principal components explained 83% of the chicken preference. The PLSR1 identified that the sensory characteristics juicy, oily, sweet, hard, mouth persistent, and yellow were the most relevant sensory drivers of the Guinean chicken preference. The PLSR2 (with multiple responses) identified the relationship between the chicken samples, their sensory attributes, and the consumer clusters. Our results showed that there was not a chicken category that was exclusively preferred from the other chicken samples and therefore highlight the existence of place for development of all chicken categories in the local market.",
"corpus_id": 6831551
} | {
"title": "Validation of feasibility and quality of chicken breast meat cooked under various water-cooking conditions.",
"abstract": "Under laboratory conditions, the qualities of boneless chicken breasts are commonly determined by placing them in a bag and cooking them in a water bath. The results are often applied as references for comparing the influences of cooking techniques. However, whether a sample cooked under this \"laboratory\" condition actually represents the meat cooked under the \"real-life\" condition in which meat is frequently cooked directly in water without packaging remains unclear. Whether the two cooking conditions lead to comparable results in meat quality should be determined. This study evaluated the influence of cooking conditions, including \"placed-in-bag and cooked in a water bath (BC)\" and \"cooked directly in hot water (WC)\" conditions, on the quality of chicken meat. The results reveal that BC samples had a longer cooking time. Deboned-and-skinless BC samples had a higher cooking loss and lower protein solubility (P < 0.01). BC samples with bone and skin had a higher lightness in both skin and muscle. No significant differences were observed in attributes, including shear force, collagen solubility, microstructures, redness, yellowness and descriptive sensory characteristics between treatments. Based on the results, considering the quality attributes that might be influenced, is critical when conducting relevant research.",
"corpus_id": 24977050
} | {
"title": "Texture Profile of Broiler Pectoralis major as Influenced by Post-Mortem Deboning Time and Heat Method",
"abstract": "Abstract The texture profiles of broiler Pectoralis major muscles from eight treatments were determined in order to examine the effects of deboning times and cooking method as well as the relationship between objective measures and sensory attributes. The treatments were four post-mortem (PM) deboning times (",
"corpus_id": 85601311,
"score": 2
} |
{
"title": "Detection and Characterization of Protein Interactions In Vivo by a Simple Live-Cell Imaging Method",
"abstract": "Over the last decades there has been an explosion of new methodologies to study protein complexes. However, most of the approaches currently used are based on in vitro assays (e.g. nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray, electron microscopy, isothermal titration calorimetry etc). The accurate measurement of parameters that define protein complexes in a physiological context has been largely limited due to technical constrains. Here, we present PICT (Protein interactions from Imaging of Complexes after Translocation), a new method that provides a simple fluorescence microscopy readout for the study of protein complexes in living cells. We take advantage of the inducible dimerization of FK506-binding protein (FKBP) and FKBP-rapamycin binding (FRB) domain to translocate protein assemblies to membrane associated anchoring platforms in yeast. In this assay, GFP-tagged prey proteins interacting with the FRB-tagged bait will co-translocate to the FKBP-tagged anchor sites upon addition of rapamycin. The interactions are thus encoded into localization changes and can be detected by fluorescence live-cell imaging under different physiological conditions or upon perturbations. PICT can be automated for high-throughput studies and can be used to quantify dissociation rates of protein complexes in vivo. In this work we have used PICT to analyze protein-protein interactions from three biological pathways in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade (Ste5-Ste11-Ste50), exocytosis (exocyst complex) and endocytosis (Ede1-Syp1).",
"corpus_id": 829072
} | {
"title": "Daughter-cell-specific modulation of nuclear pore complexes controls cell cycle entry during asymmetric division",
"abstract": "The acquisition of cellular identity is coupled to changes in the nuclear periphery and nuclear pore complexes (NPCs). Whether and how these changes determine cell fate remain unclear. We have uncovered a mechanism that regulates NPC acetylation to direct cell fate after asymmetric division in budding yeast. The lysine deacetylase Hos3 associates specifically with daughter cell NPCs during mitosis to delay cell cycle entry (Start). Hos3-dependent deacetylation of nuclear basket and central channel nucleoporins establishes daughter-cell-specific nuclear accumulation of the transcriptional repressor Whi5 during anaphase and perinuclear silencing of the G1/S cyclin gene CLN2 in the following G1 phase. Hos3-dependent coordination of both events restrains Start in daughter, but not in mother, cells. We propose that deacetylation modulates transport-dependent and transport-independent functions of NPCs, leading to differential cell cycle progression in mother and daughter cells. Similar mechanisms might regulate NPC functions in specific cell types and/or cell cycle stages in multicellular organisms.Kumar et al. discover a pathway that regulates asymmetric cell cycle entry in budding yeast through Hos3-mediated deacetylation of nucleoporins in daughter cells, which affects the localization of the cell cycle regulators Whi5 and Cln2.",
"corpus_id": 4440132
} | {
"title": "What Factors Affect Management Quality? State Infrastructure Management and the Government Performance Project",
"abstract": "Whether the US$131 billion set aside for infrastructure projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 can make a lasting contribution to improving the nation’s public infrastructure will depend, in part, on the quality of infrastructure management systems and practices in the states. In this article, we examine the factors that influence how well state governments plan for and manage public infrastructure using results from the 2005 and 2008 Government Performance Project. The pooled Tobit regression analysis shows that capital management quality is affected by political variables such as divided legislatures and legislative term limits, fiscal institutions including tax and expenditure limits, and environmental demand factors, specifically the extent of urbanization.",
"corpus_id": 155013503,
"score": 0
} |
{
"title": "Long-range Stripe Nanodomains in Epitaxial (110) BiFeO3 Thin Films on (100) NdGaO3 Substrate",
"abstract": "Here, we report the observation of ferroelectric and ferroelastic nanodomains in (110)-oriented BiFeO3 (BFO) thin films epitaxially grown on low symmetric (100) NdGaO3 (NGO) substrate. We observed long range ordering of ferroelectric 109° stripe nanodomains separated by periodic vertical domain walls in as-grown 130 nm thick BFO films. The effect of La0.67Sr0.33CoO3 (LSCO) conducting interlayer on domain configurations in BFO/NGO film was also observed with relatively short range-ordering of stripe domains due to the modified electrostatic boundary conditions in BFO/LSCO/NGO film. Additional studies on B-site doping of Nb ions in BFO films showed change in the domain structures due to doping induced change in lattice anisotropy while maintaining the stripe domain morphology with 109° domain wall. This long-range array of ferroelectric and ferroelastic domains can be useful for optoelectronic devices and ferroelastic templates for strain coupled artificial magnetoelectric heterostructures.",
"corpus_id": 3607987
} | {
"title": "Hierarchical Domain Structure and Extremely Large Wall Current in Epitaxial BiFeO3 Thin Films",
"abstract": "Erasable electrical conductive domain walls in an insulating ferroelectric matrix provide novel functionalities for applications in logic and memory devices. The crux of such success requires sufficiently high wall currents to drive high‐speed and high‐power nanodevices. This work provides an appealing strategy to increase the current by two orders of magnitude through the careful selection of current flowing paths along the charged walls. The dense walls come into form through the hierarchical evolution of the 71°, 109°, and 180° domains of epitaxial BiFeO3 films in a planar‐geometry ferroelectric resistance‐switching memory cell. The engineered films grown on SrTiO3 and GdScO3 substrates allow the observation of detailed local configurations and the evolution of the different domain types using vector piezo‐force microscopy. The higher local electrical conductivity near the charged domain walls is identified by conductive atomic‐force microscopy. It is shown that 180° domain reversal proceeds by three‐step 71° rotations of the pristine domains. Surprisingly, a maximum current of ≈300 nA is observed for current paths along charge‐uncompensated head‐to‐head hierarchical domain walls connecting the two electrodes on the film surface. Furthermore, the achievable current level can be conveniently controlled by varying the relative directions of the initial polarization and the applied field.",
"corpus_id": 103655725
} | {
"title": "The mechanical behaviour of some molluscan hard tissues",
"abstract": "Pieces of shell from 19 species of molluscs exhibiting various microstructures were tested for tensile strength, modulus of elasticity in bending and modulus of rupture. In tensile strength most shells with cross-foliated, foliated, homogeneous and crossed-lamellar structures did not exceed 60 MNm 2 but prismatic and nacreous structures often exceeded this value. Nacreous structure was generally superior to all others in modulus of rupture tests; that of Turbo being about equal to bone. Values of modulus of elasticity were more uniform between structures. There is a general relation between mechanical properties, microstructure and the life style of each animal. Nacreous structure, which is very strong but not widely used, apparently evolved earlier than the less strong but widely used crossed-lamellar structure.",
"corpus_id": 83760247,
"score": 1
} |
{
"title": "A loopback-based INL test method for D/A and A/D converters employing a stimulus identification technique",
"abstract": "We propose a new method for the integral nonlinearity (INL) and differential nonlinearity (DNL) testing of D/A-A/D converter pairs employing the recently developed stimulus identification method. This allows both converters to be measured independently but simultaneously without significant fault masking problems. Simulations show that the INL and DNL estimation errors for 12-b A/D and D/A converters are less than 0.5 least significant bit (LSB) units, and experimental tests give similar results.",
"corpus_id": 5955615
} | {
"title": "A Robust Algorithm to Identify the Test Stimulus in Histogram-Based A/D Converter Testing",
"abstract": "Traditional testing of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with automatic test equipment is time-consuming and expensive, and a built-in self-test (BIST) can be one solution to this problem. Most of the proposed BIST routines require a well-known test stimulus which is much more linear than the device under test. A stimulus error identification and removal (SEIR) method that does not require a high-linearity stimulus has been proposed recently, and it is evident that reliable test results could be achieved with a stimulus linearity lower than the required measurement accuracy. This paper presents a simple and easy-to-implement calculation algorithm for use with the stimulus-identification method, particularly for BIST purposes. Simulations demonstrate that the integral-nonlinearity measuring accuracy of the SEIR method with the new calculation algorithm is 1 least significant bit for 14-b ADCs, even though the linearity of the test stimulus is only 7 b. The SEIR method and the new simpler calculation algorithm can reduce the hardware resources required for ADC BIST.",
"corpus_id": 8059910
} | {
"title": "Measurement of timing jitter contributions in a dynamic test setup for A/D converters",
"abstract": "The article provides a new method which permits one to separate and to obtain an accurate estimation of timing jitter contributions appearing in an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter dynamic common test setup. The results are obtained using coherent sampling configuration and are independent of quantization and nonlinearities of the converter.",
"corpus_id": 29032782,
"score": 2
} |