bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
INFLUENCE OF ADDITIVES ON SPECTROSCOPIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CARMINIC ACID
Authors: Rakić Violeta , Miljković Milena , Miljković Vojkan , Stančić Nemanja
Published: August 2019

Foods must have attractive color, flavor and texture to be acceptable to consumers. Carminic acid (C.I. (1956) 75470; C.I. Natural Red 4; EEC No. E120) is a natural red dye extracted from cochineal, the desiccated bodies of female Dactylopius coccus Costa insects. Carminic acid produce pink shades in candy, confections, chewing gum, concentrated fruit juice, smoked fish, liqueurs and alcoholic cordials, soft drinks, yoghurt, ice cream, tomato ketchup, baked goods, dairy products, jams, jellies, eye shadow, and pill coatings. The impact of the presence of aspartame, citric acid and vitamin C on the spectrophotometric parameters of carminic acid was investigated. These results enabled us to evaluate the possibility of using UV-Vis spectrophotometric method for easily identifying and quantifying carminic acid present in a wide variety of foodstuffs in the presence of additives. It was established that the investigated additives do not affect the position of absorbance maximum of the dye nor cause changes in its intensity. The value of molar absorptivity, ε, at 518 nm was 1265.68 ± 49.90 dm3/mol∙cm. The calculated value is necessary for the quantitative spectrophotometric determination of carminic acid food dye. The FT IR spectra of the dye was also recorded.
A glomus vagale tumorok kivizsgálása és ellátása
Authors: Iszlai Zoltán , Szövördi Éva , Karosi Tamás
Published: August 2019

Abstract:

Introducing the diagnostic protocol and therapy of a rare disease reviewing the worldwide literature named as vagal paraganglioma is our main target. This type is specific for women of middle age, and it is appearing as a unilateral neck mass, with or without Fontaine’s sign. Giving a heavy aspect on the ear, nose and throat examination, the most important diagnostic tool is CT-angiography. Carefully looking at the size and relationship with the narrowing arteries, veins, nerves, muscles and bony structures (skull base, cervical spine), in most of the cases we choose the surgical procedure. Orv Hetil. 2019; 160(34): 1358–1362.
A Helicobacter pylori-fertőzés első vonalbeli megszüntetésére alkalmazott hagyományos hármas és egy új, bizmuttartalmú négyes kezelés összehasonlítása
Authors: Varga Máté , Drácz Lajos , Kolbenheyer Erik , Varga Ferenc , Patai Árpád V. , Solymosi Norbert , Patai Árpád
Published: August 2019

Abstract:

Introduction and aim: As the efficacy of the first-line traditional treatment used to eradicate Helicobacter pylori (H. p.) decreased below 75% in Hungary, a new protocol had to be created. Method: Supposing the success rate of the traditional therapy (14-day double dose of proton pump inhibitor [PPI], 1000 mg amoxicillin b.i.d., 500 mg clarithromycin b.i.d. [PAC]) to be 75% and the efficacy of the new protocol (10-day 120 mg bismuth dicitrate q.i.d., double dose PPI b.i.d., 500 mg tetracycline q.i.d. and 500 mg tinidazole b.i.d. [BQT]) to be 90%, we calculated 109 patients on each arm. Patients were recruited after upper gastrointestinal endoscopy from 5 endoscopic units in Vas county. The heterogeneity of groups, success rate and side effects of both therapies were evaluated by Fisher exact test; p<0.05 was considered significant. Results: 110 patients were included in the BQT and 109 patients in the PAC group. There was no heterogeneity between the two groups in age, gender and indication of eradication. H. p. eradication was successful in 103/110 (93.6%) in the BQT and 81/109 (74.3%) in the PAC group (p<0.001). The odds ratio in the BQT group for successful eradication was 5.05 (95% confidence interval: 2.02–14.42) as compared to the PAC group (p<0.001). The side effects of the two groups were similar, in the BQT group the frequency was 34.5%. Conclusion: 10 day-long BQT containing double dose PPI with 120 mg bismuth dicitrate q.i.d., 500 mg tetracycline q.i.d. and 500 mg tinidazole b.i.d. is recommended as the first-line treatment for the eradication of H. p. because of its high efficacy and tolerable side effects. Orv Hetil. 2019; 160(34): 1340–1345.
Analysis of electrotherapy of cardioverter defibrillators implanted for the primary prevention of sudden cardiac death
Authors: Lebedeva V. K. , Lyubimtseva T. A. , Lebedev D. S.
Published: August 2019

Aim. To assess various types of electrotherapy and the reasons for its use in patients with implanted cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD).

Material and methods. A retrospective single-site study of 308 patients with implanted cardioverter defibrillators was conducted. Patients were divided into 2 groups: 1 — patients with persistent paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia (VT)/ ventricular fibrillation (VF); 2 — patients without persistent paroxysms of VT/VF. The standard ICD programming protocol was carried out intraoperatively, at 3-4 days after the implantation, then 1 time in 12 months, as well as unscheduled on request. Primary data was collected about paroxysms of ventricular and supraventricular rhythm disturbances, episodes of unmotivated detection of tachyarrhythmias, adequacy of use and types of ICD electrotherapy. The period of dynamic observation was 7 years.

Results. The group with an increased risk of persistent paroxysmal VT/VF is patients with ischemic genesis of chronic heart failure (CHF), repeated myocardial infarction, persistent atrial fibrillation (AF), as well as with recorde episodes of unstable VT and ventricular extrasystoles at programming visits. In 54,1% of cases with persistent paroxysms of VT/VF, unjustified detection of ventricular arrhythmias was established. Its causes were: 1) AF with a high heart rate; 2) T-wave detection; 3) sinus tachycardia in the area of detection of VT; 4) atrial flutter with a high heart rate.

Conclusion. In patients with primary prophylaxis of SCD, the use of ICD electrotherapy takes place not only due to paroxysms of VT/VF, but also because of both paroxysms of supraventricular rhythm disturbances and other features of rhythm perception by the device. To reduce the number of unjustified triggers during the installation of ICD electrotherapy program in patients with AF/atrial flutter, it is advisable to use a dedicated area of monitor VT and programmed long-term tachycardia detection for adequate rhythm discrimination.
NTNU Academic Writing - developed with UX
Authors: Lorange Anne Lillevoll
Published: August 2019

In spring 2017, the University Library of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) launched VIKO, the redesigned tool for fostering information literacy and academic writing skills.

The digital and technological development as well as new requirements for information literacy and academic writing skills have made it necessary to revise this tool.

A working group at NTNU University Library developed and carried out an electronic survey to map specific needs of students, teachers, and researchers. We involved our users in developing our information literacy tool in order to give them a more useful user experience. We asked the following questions: Is information about academic writing something you need? Where do you go to find information about this? What kind of content do you desire? The answers suggested that “Yes!” this was something both students and teachers wanted. They were eager to get all the information they needed in their studies in one place.

Results of this survey and additional depth interviews with students and staff have been the starting point for both the updated content and the new graphical design of VIKO. To accommodate the wish of having all information in one place, all content is now placed on the University Intranet together with all other information relevant for the students. A page listing relevant topics helps students navigate in the content relating to academic writing.

The content of the redesigned tool is structured into four topics: defining a research topic, finding sources, structuring your text, and using and citing sources. We know that people have different ways of learning, so offering content for different learning styles like visual learning, auditory learning, and read/write learning will contribute to improving the learning outcomes.
Creating new digital tools through co-creation activities with students
Authors: Brink Helle , Andersen Tina
Published: August 2019

Do we as librarians really know what students at our universities need to develop their information literacy? Yes, to some extent, but not necessarily completely. In Spring 2018, two librarians at Aalborg University Library have joined forces with two student project groups to explore the students’ views on what they need and how that corresponds with our knowledge and professional experience of what it takes to become information literate. We also focus on how best to accommodate these different needs in terms of digital tools.

Teaching activities at Aalborg University are based on problem-based learning (PBL). The students work in groups with projects focusing on real problems, and they are responsible for their own learning. Thus, in our partnership with the two project groups, the students are the driving force in the development, and we are collaborators in their process. One group is exploring the idea of developing a knowledge-sharing tool for use in project-based group work. The other group focuses on developing a tool that can support the process of information searching.

In our presentation, we will focus on the students’ ideas on how to create relevant tools for students, the actual tools, and our experience with engaging in co-creation-processes with students. Our co-creation processes are defined as an equal partnership with the students. However, although we have defined the scope of our partnership, we do not provide the solution. Our co-creation processes and their outcome are characterized by being deliberately unpredictable in order to further innovative ideas and creative thinking.
Digital Academic Writing Support
Authors: Langseth Henry , Rødland Ingunn , Steiner Pål , Tonning Anne Sissel Vedvik
Published: August 2019

At the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, the library is given the coordinator responsibility for a project involving faculties, first-year-support, Department of Education and student administrative support. The project aims at making it easy to embed information literacy and academic writing into the curriculum.

Develop a digital tool box where academics will find and share teaching activities

Harvest experiences and suggest models for physic and digital writing support

Suggest competence building measures for teachers and guides of academic writing

Academic writing and critical dealing with sources are central skills that students are expected to master after graduating from university. At the same time these are generic skills which need practice, discussion and reflection. However, we know that this part of students' learning is easily neglected in competition with subject teaching.

What we have done: The library has established the project in collaboration with two pilot subjects (biology and geography), emphasising digital writing support according to the UiB’s strategic aims and action plans. The two pilot subjects recognise the importance of writing for critical thinking and development of subject knowledge. They will redesign courses in their BA programmes to better align learning outcomes and assessment with learning activities, e.g. writing including peer and teacher feedback.

By the time of the conference in June, we will have drafted a framework for typical writing support in the pilots to use for their teaching in the autumn semester.

In our presentation we will address these key questions:

How does our institution support academic writing?

How do we train the trainers?

How do we provide integrated teaching of academic writing and IL?
Turning a library into a skill center for scientific information and knowledge management
Authors: Dolenc Jozica , Schnabl Joachim , Renn Oliver
Published: August 2019

In the past, library users had to come to the library. Today, the library has to approach their possible clients, with interactions and services that prove the value of the engagement, especially in higher education. Libraries must be recognized and acknowledged as skills centers for dealing with scientific information.

Since 2013, we have gradually transformed our library into a multifunctional learning space, but also into a center that scouts, evaluates and selects information management solutions for life sciences and chemistry, develops own solutions and keeps their patrons tuned to the latest developments. We reach out to our clients in multiple ways. We raise awareness for selected new tools and databases through Infocus, a personalized e-mail newsletter, which is created based on users’ interest profiles. Infocus is complemented by Infozine, a magazine for users of scientific information, which is sent to all members of the departments we serve and also to external subscribers. Community building is also done through various F2F outreach formats, classical courses that are part of bachelor and master students’ curricula, and courses with workshops for PhD students. There are also new formats such as Coffee Lectures (10-min presentations on tools, databases and services) or Menu Card Seminars that are tailored to the needs of an individual research group. Through these intensified interactions, we, in turn, learn a lot about current research processes and problems and thus understand better our client’s information needs.
FRILUX-ing
Authors: Dahl Birgit Hvoslef , Gasparini Andrea
Published: August 2019

New practices and innovation are changing the culture at the University of Oslo Library. This has resulted in consistently using user experience/UX methods to put the user needs at the very center when new services are developed.

The paper will outline why there is a need of a UX strategy at a leadership level in service and user centric organizations, like academic libraries, and show the value of UX as a competitive advantage. Our case  study is from a Norwegian University Library, which has evolved over a period of six year to now be at the forefront in Scandinavia when it comes to using UX into the academic library. Thanks to the support of he Norwegian National Library and the continued efforts of many “UX-librarians” at our library, we are now using design tools in different contexts to create user-friendly services. UX has evolved over time and  staff now uses it as an active part of different practices in the organization. In addition, the leadership has included the use of UX-methods in projects in their strategic plan for the library to ensure that the user perspective is taken in account in the services delivered by the library. In this paper we will also explain  why we do not have a UX group, and why we instead use a hub approach to gather different, but relevant,  staff for each project. Findings, like relevant activity in the organization or new services, will be presented. Furthermore, the paper will give a long term perspective on the use of UX, emphasizing the need  for constant evolvement (Gasparini & Culén, 2017), user research and ethnography (Gasparini, 2015a) in  order to enhance the user experience of the library (Gasparini, 2015b). Finally we wish to introduce Frilux (www.frilux.no). Frilux is a platform for sharing UX experience. We will outline how we have arrived at this new platform, why we wish to share it with other libraries, and why Frilux is a useful tool for libraries who want to: 

• Apply UX and Design Thinking (Brown, 2008)for library development• Use UX methods when working together in the organization across subjects and system• Share their experiences with others• Meet like-minded

ReferencesBrown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92.Gasparini, A. (2015a). A Holistic Approach to User Experience in the Context of an Academic Library Interactive System. In A. Marcus (Ed.), Design, User Experience, and Usability: Interactive Experience Design (pp. 173–184). Springer International Publishing. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20889-3_17

Gasparini, A. (2015b). Perspective and Use of Empathy in Design Thinking (pp. 49–54). Presented at the ACHI 2015, The Eighth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. Retrieved from http://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=achi_2015_3_10_20121

Gasparini, A., & Culén, A. (2017). Temporality and Innovation in Digital Humanities: The Case of Papyri from Tebtunis. Interaction Design & Architectures(s) IxD&A, (34), 161–184
The Archives of Babel A Wikipedia - Workshop
Authors: Basbøll Thomas
Published: August 2019

In September of 2012, the American novelist Philip Roth published an open letter to Wikipedia in The New Yorker. “I am Philip Roth,” it began, and proceeded to explain how the editors of Wikipedia had gotten  the inspiration for his novel The Human Stain wrong. Though the article had in fact only mentioned a theory about his sources, Roth was adamant that it did not belong anywhere in a discussion of his novel. He wanted the idea removed entirely. This, it turns out, was a profound misunderstanding of the editorial practices of Wikipedia, and the theory that Roth would prefer we forget remains in the article to this  day.

His letter in The New Yorker, of course, is duly cited. How well should librarians understand the editorial process behind Wikipedia’s articles?

In this workshop, we will take a practical approach to the problem and have a look at what goes on behind the scenes, even edit some pages if we feel so inclined. The workshop will be led by Thomas Basbøll, a philosopher and writing consultant who has spent a few years working as a volunteer editor at Wikipedia and even has even been banned from editing certain pages for a time. The overall goal of the  workshop is to demystify one of the most accessed sources of knowledge in the world and help librarians  decide how to best help people like Philip Roth, and his readers, make sense of its “authority”. 

Thomas Basbøll is the resident writing consultant at the Copenhagen Business School Library. He holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen, and a PhD from the Copenhagen Business School. He works closely with students, teachers and researchers in their attempts to master “the craft of research” and is an avid blogger (blog.cbs.dk/inframethodology/).
Differential Networks for Visual Question Answering
Authors: Wu Chenfei , Liu Jinlai , Wang Xiaojie , Li Ruifan
Published: August 2019

The task of Visual Question Answering (VQA) has emerged in recent years for its potential applications. To address the VQA task, the model should fuse feature elements from both images and questions efficiently. Existing models fuse image feature element vi and question feature element qi directly, such as an element product viqi. Those solutions largely ignore the following two key points: 1) Whether vi and qi are in the same space. 2) How to reduce the observation noises in vi and qi. We argue that two differences between those two feature elements themselves, like (vi − vj) and (qi −qj), are more probably in the same space. And the difference operation would be beneficial to reduce observation noise. To achieve this, we first propose Differential Networks (DN), a novel plug-and-play module which enables differences between pair-wise feature elements. With the tool of DN, we then propose DN based Fusion (DF), a novel model for VQA task. We achieve state-of-the-art results on four publicly available datasets. Ablation studies also show the effectiveness of difference operations in DF model.
Disentangled Variational Representation for Heterogeneous Face Recognition
Authors: Wu Xiang , Huang Huaibo , Patel Vishal M. , He Ran , Sun Zhenan
Published: August 2019

Visible (VIS) to near infrared (NIR) face matching is a challenging problem due to the significant domain discrepancy between the domains and a lack of sufficient data for training cross-modal matching algorithms. Existing approaches attempt to tackle this problem by either synthesizing visible faces from NIR faces, extracting domain-invariant features from these modalities, or projecting heterogeneous data onto a common latent space for cross-modal matching. In this paper, we take a different approach in which we make use of the Disentangled Variational Representation (DVR) for crossmodal matching. First, we model a face representation with an intrinsic identity information and its within-person variations. By exploring the disentangled latent variable space, a variational lower bound is employed to optimize the approximate posterior for NIR and VIS representations. Second, aiming at obtaining more compact and discriminative disentangled latent space, we impose a minimization of the identity information for the same subject and a relaxed correlation alignment constraint between the NIR and VIS modality variations. An alternative optimization scheme is proposed for the disentangled variational representation part and the heterogeneous face recognition network part. The mutual promotion between these two parts effectively reduces the NIR and VIS domain discrepancy and alleviates over-fitting. Extensive experiments on three challenging NIR-VIS heterogeneous face recognition databases demonstrate that the proposed method achieves significant improvements over the state-of-the-art methods.
Instance-Level Facial Attributes Transfer with Geometry-Aware Flow
Authors: Yin Weidong , Liu Ziwei , Change Loy Chen
Published: August 2019

We address the problem of instance-level facial attribute transfer without paired training data, e.g., faithfully transferring the exact mustache from a source face to a target face. This is a more challenging task than the conventional semantic-level attribute transfer, which only preserves the generic attribute style instead of instance-level traits. We propose the use of geometry-aware flow, which serves as a wellsuited representation for modeling the transformation between instance-level facial attributes. Specifically, we leverage the facial landmarks as the geometric guidance to learn the differentiable flows automatically, despite of the large pose gap existed. Geometry-aware flow is able to warp the source face attribute into the target face context and generate a warp-and-blend result. To compensate for the potential appearance gap between source and target faces, we propose a hallucination sub-network that produces an appearance residual to further refine the warp-and-blend result. Finally, a cycle-consistency framework consisting of both attribute transfer module and attribute removal module is designed, so that abundant unpaired face images can be used as training data. Extensive evaluations validate the capability of our approach in transferring instance-level facial attributes faithfully across large pose and appearance gaps. Thanks to the flow representation, our approach can readily be applied to generate realistic details on high-resolution images1.
Large-Scale Visual Relationship Understanding
Authors: Zhang Ji , Kalantidis Yannis , Rohrbach Marcus , Paluri Manohar , Elgammal Ahmed , Elhoseiny Mohamed
Published: August 2019

Large scale visual understanding is challenging, as it requires a model to handle the widely-spread and imbalanced distribution of 〈subject, relation, object〉 triples. In real-world scenarios with large numbers of objects and relations, some are seen very commonly while others are barely seen. We develop a new relationship detection model that embeds objects and relations into two vector spaces where both discriminative capability and semantic affinity are preserved. We learn a visual and a semantic module that map features from the two modalities into a shared space, where matched pairs of features have to discriminate against those unmatched, but also maintain close distances to semantically similar ones. Benefiting from that, our model can achieve superior performance even when the visual entity categories scale up to more than 80,000, with extremely skewed class distribution. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model on a large and imbalanced benchmark based of Visual Genome that comprises 53,000+ objects and 29,000+ relations, a scale at which no previous work has been evaluated at. We show superiority of our model over competitive baselines on the original Visual Genome dataset with 80,000+ categories. We also show state-of-the-art performance on the VRD dataset and the scene graph dataset which is a subset of Visual Genome with 200 categories.
Multi-Attribute Transfer via Disentangled Representation
Authors: Zhang Jianfu , Huang Yuanyuan , Li Yaoyi , Zhao Weijie , Zhang Liqing
Published: August 2019

Recent studies show significant progress in image-to-image translation task, especially facilitated by Generative Adversarial Networks. They can synthesize highly realistic images and alter the attribute labels for the images. However, these works employ attribute vectors to specify the target domain which diminishes image-level attribute diversity. In this paper, we propose a novel model formulating disentangled representations by projecting images to latent units, grouped feature channels of Convolutional Neural Network, to disassemble the information between different attributes. Thanks to disentangled representation, we can transfer attributes according to the attribute labels and moreover retain the diversity beyond the labels, namely, the styles inside each image. This is achieved by specifying some attributes and swapping the corresponding latent units to “swap” the attributes appearance, or applying channel-wise interpolation to blend different attributes. To verify the motivation of our proposed model, we train and evaluate our model on face dataset CelebA. Furthermore, the evaluation of another facial expression dataset RaFD demonstrates the generalizability of our proposed model.
Learning Transferable Self-Attentive Representations for Action Recognition in Untrimmed Videos with Weak Supervision
Authors: Zhang Xiao-Yu , Shi Haichao , Li Changsheng , Zheng Kai , Zhu Xiaobin , Duan Lixin
Published: August 2019

Action recognition in videos has attracted a lot of attention in the past decade. In order to learn robust models, previous methods usually assume videos are trimmed as short sequences and require ground-truth annotations of each video frame/sequence, which is quite costly and time-consuming. In this paper, given only video-level annotations, we propose a novel weakly supervised framework to simultaneously locate action frames as well as recognize actions in untrimmed videos. Our proposed framework consists of two major components. First, for action frame localization, we take advantage of the self-attention mechanism to weight each frame, such that the influence of background frames can be effectively eliminated. Second, considering that there are trimmed videos publicly available and also they contain useful information to leverage, we present an additional module to transfer the knowledge from trimmed videos for improving the classification performance in untrimmed ones. Extensive experiments are conducted on two benchmark datasets (i.e., THUMOS14 and ActivityNet1.3), and experimental results clearly corroborate the efficacy of our method.
3D Object Detection Using Scale Invariant and Feature Reweighting Networks
Authors: Zhao Xin , Liu Zhe , Hu Ruolan , Huang Kaiqi
Published: August 2019

3D object detection plays an important role in a large number of real-world applications. It requires us to estimate the localizations and the orientations of 3D objects in real scenes. In this paper, we present a new network architecture which focuses on utilizing the front view images and frustum point clouds to generate 3D detection results. On the one hand, a PointSIFT module is utilized to improve the performance of 3D segmentation. It can capture the information from different orientations in space and the robustness to different scale shapes. On the other hand, our network obtains the useful features and suppresses the features with less information by a SENet module. This module reweights channel features and estimates the 3D bounding boxes more effectively. Our method is evaluated on both KITTI dataset for outdoor scenes and SUN-RGBD dataset for indoor scenes. The experimental results illustrate that our method achieves better performance than the state-of-the-art methods especially when point clouds are highly sparse.
Ag nanoparticles with a gradient structure prepared by diffusion method on a biomembrane
Authors: Cai Fanggong , Chen Xi , Chen Jun , Zhang Qinyong , Zhao Yong
Published: August 2019

Silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) with a gradient structure were successfully immobilized on a natural eggshell membrane (ESM) using a diffusion-controlled method. The ESM had a cross-linked network fibrous structure. The exposed functional group on the surface of the fiber can act as reactive sites for the preparation of metal NPs. Silver ions anchored on fibers of ESM were reduced by borohydride (BH4 −) ions to form silver NPs. The ESM acted as a stabilizer of silver NPs. The synthesized silver NPs@ESM composites were characterized by field-emission scanning electronic microscopy, X-ray diffraction and ultraviolet–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy in detail. It was found that silver NPs immobilized on the ESM exhibited a gradient distribution of size and density along the direction perpendicular to the ESM surface. This phenomenon may be attributed to the difference in diffusion velocity between silver and borohydride ions flowing through the ESM. This diffusion-controlled method may be expanded to prepare other metals or compounds with a gradient structure. Additionally, silver NPs@ESM composites can be recycled and exhibited good catalytic activity.
Soil water content–water activity relations of structured kaolinitic specimens from GAB equation
Authors: Rao Sudhakar M. , Rekapalli Monica
Published: August 2019

The GAB (Guggenheim–Anderson–de Boer) equation is explored to describe the relation between equilibrium soil water content (wequil) and water activity (relative humidity) of structured kaolinitic soils along the drying path. The equation is chosen as it has the advantage of a theoretical basis and can describe sorption behaviour of soils over a wide range of water activities. The GAB parameters evaluated from desorption experiments with de-structured specimens were successful in predicting the equilibrium water contents of structured kaolinitic specimens along the drying path. Insight into the influence of water activity on moisture desorption from structured soil specimens is obtained from energy requirements to desorb water molecules and by estimating the relative affinity (distribution constant) of water molecules for retention in soil pores or to undergo desorption.
Defining road service to facilitate road infrastructure asset management
Authors: Adey Bryan T , Burkhalter Marcel , Martani Claudio
Published: August 2019

Road infrastructure asset management requires making decisions that affect how infrastructure provides service – for example, the intervention strategies to follow for specific assets, the intervention programmes to implement for entire networks and the way for interventions to be executed once it is decided that they should be executed. These decisions should be made to maximise the net benefit of infrastructure for all stakeholders and be made consistently and transparently. Currently, the definitions of service used by road infrastructure asset managers either are incomplete or are built on combinations of metrics, which give an idea of service but do not measure service directly. Neither allows for consistent and transparent decision-making that leads to the maximisation of the net benefit for all stakeholders. In this paper, a definition of the service provided by road infrastructure is provided that enables consistent and transparent decisions to maximise the net benefit for all road infrastructure stakeholders. The service definition is used to determine the net-benefit-maximising intervention strategy that shows its usefulness and its ability to let stakeholders see how they will be affected by decisions and that all of their concerns have been adequately taken into consideration when decisions are made.
Effect of sand grain size and fibre size on macro–micro interfacial bond behaviour of steel fibres and UHPC mortars
Authors: Qi Jianan , Yao Yiming , Wang Jingquan , Han Fangyu , Lv Jin
Published: August 2019

In this paper, the macro–micro interfacial bond behaviour of steel fibres embedded in ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) matrix was investigated using a single-fibre pull-out test with the parameters of fibre size, maximum sand grain size and fibre type. Test results showed that the maximum sand grain size (1·18 and 2·36 mm) had a slight effect on the pull-out responses while increasing the maximum sand grain size tended to change the microscopic interfacial failure mode according to observations made using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Increasing the fibre size led to an increase in the maximum pull-out load, average bond strength and pull-out work but a decrease in the equivalent bond strength. The percentage of end hook contribution to the total pull-out energy ranged from 54·0 to 60·3%, indicating a significant mechanical anchorage contribution. A new evaluation index on the fibre–matrix interfacial bond behaviour was firstly proposed using the concept of the contribution of unit volume from the perspective of structural demands. It was found that, according to the proposed index, hooked-end fibres with a smaller diameter would be a better choice for structural applications.
Ultracentrifugal separation of VLDL, LDL and HDL v1
Authors: Teupser Daniel , Breslow Jan
Published: August 2019

Summary: This protocol is used to isolate the various lipid fractions from blood plasma using ultracentrifugation. The actual measured concentrations are performed separately once the isolations are complete. NOTE: This protocol is not applicable for ApoE knockout mice. Diabetic Complications:
Sample Preparation for Illumina MiSeq Dual Index Amplicon Sequencing v1
Authors: Vass Máté , Székely Anna
Published: August 2019

Amplicon sequencing sample preparation for bacteria and microeukaryotes
RNA Isolation from Plant Tissue Protocol 3: CTAB-PVP Method v1
Authors: Genomics Institute Beijing
Published: August 2019

Implemented by: Beijing Genomics Institute This protocol is part of a collection of eighteen protocols used to isolate total RNA from plant tissue. (RNA Isolation from Plant Tissue Collection: https://www.protocols.io/view/rna-isolation-from-plant-tissue-439gyr6)
Protocol to determine seed dormancy, imbibition, viability, longevity and germination responses to temperature v1
Authors: Duncan Corrine , Schultz Nick , Lewandrowski Wolfgang , Good Megan , Cook Simon
Published: August 2019

We study the seed traits and germination strategies of arid plant species to investigate their regeneration strategies and classify seed dormancy. Seeds of eight keystone species were germinated under three dirunal temperatures (30/20C, 25/15C and 17/7C) for 30 days. We also tested for decline in seed viability across 24 months in dry aging, and relieved physiological dormancy in Atriplex through an after-ripening treatment.
Türkiye’de Leptoglossus occidentalis Heidemann, 1910 (Hemiptera: Coreidae) üzerine biyolojik gözlemler, parazitoitleri ve yayılışına katkılar
Authors: OĞUZOĞLU Şükran , AVCI Mustafa
Published: August 2019

Bu çalışmada, Leptoglossus occidentalis Heidemann, 1910 (Hemiptera: Coreidae)’in ülkemizde yeni tespit edildiği alanlar, arazi ve laboratuvardaki biyolojik gözlemler ve parazitoit türleri verilmiştir. Tür, 2016 yılında Isparta’da, 2017’de Burdur’da, 2018 yılında ise Kastamonu, Bilecik, Afyonkarahisar ve Muğla illerinde ilk kez tespit edilmiştir. Dört yıllık (2016-2019) arazi gözlemleri sonucunda türün iki generasyona sahip olduğu düşünülmektedir. Arazide kışlayan erginler haziran ayı başında yumurta bırakmaya başlamış ve beş nimf dönemini haziran-ağustos aylarında tamamlamıştır. Ağustos ayı başında birinci generasyona ait ilk erginler ve yumurtalar görülmüştür. Nimf dönemleri ağustos-ekim aylarında tamamlanmış ve eylül-ekim aylarında ikinci generasyona ait erginler görülmüştür. Laboratuvar koşullarında yumurta ve toplam nimf dönemlerinin ortalama süreleri 7,44 ve 47,19 gün olarak bulunmuştur. Bu çalışma ile ülkemizde ilk kez türün parazitoitleri olarak Anastatus bifasciatus (Geoffroy, 1785) (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae) ve Ooencyrtus telenomicida (Vassiliev) (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) belirlenmiştir. O. telenomicida, L. occidentalis’in parazitoiti olarak dünyada ilk kez tespit edilmiştir.
Measurement of Single-Breath Diffusing Capacity of the Lungs for Carbon Monoxide: new standards of European Respiratory Society and American Thoracic Society (рart 2)
Authors: Editorial Article
Published: August 2019

This document is updated technical standards of European Respiratory Society (ERS) and American Thoracic Society (ATS) for single-breath carbon monoxide diffusing capacity measurement. The previous version of this document was published in 2005. Both terms used to describe the uptake of carbon monoxide in the lungs, DLCO (diffusing capacity) and TLCO (transfer factor), are equally valid, but the term DLCO is used in this document. The document was developed by joint ATS/ERS taskforce and was based on a survey of published evidence. Expert opinion was used for issues for which evidence was not available or was insufficient. Principal changes in the technical standards are related to new systems with rapidly responding gas analyzers for carbon monoxide. Additional materials are available at erj.ersjournals.com.

Adopted from: Graham B.L., Brusasco V., Burgos F., Cooper B.G., Jensen R., Kendrick A., MacIntyre N.R., Thompson B.R., Wanger J. 2017 ERS/ATS standards for single-breath carbon monoxide uptake in the lung. Eur. Respir. J. 2017; 49 (1): pii: 1600016. DOI: 10.1183/13993003.00016-2016.
Asthma control: actual problems and solutions in real clinical practice
Authors: Leshchenko I. V.
Published: August 2019

Asthma control is still difficult to achieve. One of main tools for evaluating asthma control is a well-known Asthma Control Test (ACT). Common causes of insufficient asthma control include poor adherence to treatment and non-compliance of the patient with the dosing regimen. Correct inhalation technique significantly contributes to better adherence to treatment. Elliptа is a multi-dose powder inhaler with dose counter and indication of remaining dose number. Actuation of Ellipta inhaler requires only one movement. Inhaled glucocorticosteroids (ICS) and long-acting β2-agonists (LABA) are the key agents in the maintenance pharmacological therapy of asthma. A novel vilanterol/fluticasone furoate (VI/FF) combination is a highly effective combination for maintenance treatment of moderate to severe asthma with 24-hour effect providing once-daily dosing. The Salford study demonstrated advantages of VI/FF combination over ICS monotherapy and other combination of ICS/LABA in real clinical practice in patients with asthma out of dependence of asthma severity or comorbidities.
Pulmonary embolism with polymethyl methacrylate (bone cement) after percutaneous vertebroplasty (a review of literature and case reports)
Authors: Sinopal’nikov A. I. , Tyurin I. E. , Shvayko S. N. , Sheykh Zh. V. , Morozova L. V. , Smirnov I. P.
Published: August 2019

Percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) is a minimally invasive intervention widely used for relief of pain caused by osteoporotic, traumatic, or neoplastic vertebral fractures. During PVP, polymethyl methacrylate (bone cement) is injected directly into the vertebral body via a vertebral pedicle to partially restore the vertebral body height, to stabilize bone trabeculae and to alleviate pain. Though the procedure is minimally invasive, complications are not rare; however, mostly, they are not clinically significant. Potentially serious complications of PVP include pulmonary embolism with polymethyl methacrylate with variety of manifestations ranging from asymptomatic postoperative x-ray findings to life-threatening extravasation (cement "leakage") which is quite rare and fatal. Epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical and radiological signs of pulmonary embolism in PVP and approaches to treatment are discussed in this review of literature. The article also describes two clinical cases of pulmonary embolism in patients underwent PVP for hemangioma of the vertebral body with severe pain syndrome are also described.
La agricultura de subsistencia a finales del Antiguo Régimen : los valles de Ocón y del Jubera, una aportación cuantitativa
Authors: Lorenzo Cadarso Pedro Luis
Published: August 2019

Las transformaciones económicas y sociales sucedidas al final del antiguo régimen supusieron cambios de enorme trascendencia. Para las comarcas tradicionalmente poco integradas en los circuitos económicos preindustriales y que, en consecuencia, mantenían una orientación económica tendente al autoconsumo, significaron la ruina total. Al tiempo que hacía su aparición una incipiente concentración de la propiedad y un agricultura comercializada, a la que sólo tenían acceso los más ricos, el resto de la población sufría un proceso acelerado de empobrecimiento, que provocaba emigración y proletarización. En el presente trabajo se exponen los indicadores económicos, sociales y demográficos de dicho proceso en los valles de Ocón y Jubera (La Rioja).
América y el proyecto de compañías privilegiadas de José de Carvajal (1745-1754)
Authors: Delgado Barrado José Miguel
Published: August 2019

José de Carvajal y Lancáster, ministro de Fernando VI (1746-1759), fue el principal defensor de las compañías privilegiadas en las décadas centrales del siglo. Las compañías privilegiadas fueron instrumentos políticos, defensivos, económicos y culturales al servicio de un proyecto de estado y de integración imperial. En España emergieron durante el siglo XVIII a imitación de los modelos holandeses, ingleses y franceses. El ideario político-económico de Carvajal se plasmó en varios escritos, el principal el testamento político de 1745. El testamento político está compuesto por una miscelánea de temas, la mayoría de ellos sobre aspectos comerciales relaciona (los con los perjuicios del asiento de negros y el navío de permiso en posesión de franceses e ingleses. Entre las soluciones a los males de la monarquía española destacaba la formación de un sistema plural de compañías provinciales. La influencia de estos proyectos fue grande en personajes como el marqués de los Llanos (1755) y Cabarrús (1785), y en los decretos de habilitación portuaria de 1765. Desde la óptica de la historia comparada existe cierto paralelismo con algunas medidas políticas auspiciadas por Pombal en Portugal y Jannucci en Nápoles.
El dominio rústico del monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla en el siglo de su clausura (1752-1841)
Authors: Ibáñez Rodríguez Santiago
Published: August 2019

En el artículo se expone el predio rústico del monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla (La Rioja, España) en el último siglo de su existencia. La conclusión más importante que se desprende es que desde 1752 hasta 1841 no sólo el monasterio mantuvo toda su hacienda, sino que incluso la aumentó, y ello a pesar de los avatares históricos que acontecieron en ese siglo. En definitiva, el poder económico del monasterio de san Millán sólo pudo ser desmantelado con las medidas desamortizadoras y de exclaustración del siglo XIX.
Clinical study on type 1 tympanoplasty: anatomical and functional outcomes
Authors: Kusumanjali A. , Chaitanya V. Krishna
Published: August 2019

Background: Tympanoplasty is operation to eradicate disease in middle ear and to reconstruct the hearing mechanism. Present study aims at assessment of success rate and hearing improvement following type I tympanoplasty.

Methods: 50 patients with chronic suppurative otitis media, tubotympanic type attending department of ENT are taken up for study screened with clinical history and examination. Type I tympanoplasty performed in all patients. Simple mastoidectomy with type I tympanoplasty performed in 8 patients. Patients are followed after surgery on 7th, 14th days and end of 3 months. Anatomical outcome is assessed in terms of graft uptake. Pure tone audiometry was performed at 3 months and air bone gap is considered to assess outcome.  

Results: Out of 50 cases, 43 cases (86%) showed good success rate by means of graft uptake. Remaining 5 cases showed residual perforation and 3 cases medialization of graft. In 42 patients type1 tympanoplasty is performed, success rate was 80.95% and in cases with where type1 tympanoplasty with cortical Mastoidectomy was done and the success rate was 100%. In the present study mean pre op AB gap was 27.65 dB and mean post op AB gap was 19.07 dB. The difference between the two, i.e., AB gap closure was 8.52 dB which is statistically significant.

Conclusions: Type-1 tympanoplasty using temporalis fascia with underlay technique have good surgical success rate with excellent improvement of hearing. Cortical mastoidectomy can be planned depending on the status of the middle ear mucosa.
A base comunitária, os conflitos e o turismo na comunidade de Forte Velho, Santa Rita (PB)
Authors: Almeida Antonio Rafael Barbosa de , Carvalho e Silva Rodrigo Freire de
Published: August 2019

A promoção de experiências comunitárias na visitação turística tem estabelecido uma nova lógica de participação de comunidades locais nessa atividade. O turismo de base comunitária (TBC) tem viabilizado a inclusão produtiva, a geração de renda e a superação da pobreza em espaços muitas vezes à margem do mercado tradicional. A análise sobre as possibilidades turísticas na comunidade de Forte Velho (Santa Rita, PB) à luz dos referenciais trazidos pelo TBC pode oferecer contribuições para fortalecer o envolvimento dos agentes locais e as perspectivas de estímulo da atividade em âmbito interno. Para isso, este trabalho tem como objetivo compreender a organização comunitária em torno do turismo realizado em Forte Velho (PB) e analisar, sob a ótica local, asperspectivas de desenvolvimento turístico de base comunitária. A partir de uma abordagem qualitativa, com a realização de entrevistas semiestruturadas a uma amostra composta por oito residentes locais e a realização de três oficinas, foi evidenciada a baixa mobilização e participação da comunidade na atividade turística, ainda, assim, foi possível vislumbrar um cenário possível para a instauração de sua prática sob as orientações do TBC.
Práticas de atividades turísticas em Unidades de Conservação: o contexto dos parques urbanos em Manaus – AM
Authors: Lima Ítalo Thiago Loiola Soares , Guimarães Márcia Raquel Cavalcante
Published: August 2019

O desenvolvimento da atividade turística em ambiente de Unidades de Conservação se dá na necessidade da conexão entre homem e o meio natural e, por meio dessa ligação, pode contribuir de forma qualitativa na preservação, propagação e uso sustentável dos espaços verdes. E, para que essa atividade possa ser desenvolvida de forma positiva e não predatória, é necessário que seja planejada e tenha um sentido totalmente sustentável. A grande procura por essas áreas naturais, em sua maioria por Unidades de Conservação,implica em fatores positivos na relação do homem com a natureza, na educação e consciência ambiental, práticas sustentáveis e a proteção do meio ambiente. A atividade turística dentro de parques urbanos possibilita a preservação dos fragmentos florestais trazendo benefícios, como a qualificação da infraestrutura local, dos profissionais envolvidos, aumento da consciência ambiental,do sentimento de pertencimento dos residentes bem como o aumento da permanência de turistas e do fluxo de visitantes que buscam por essa conexão com o meio natural dentro da paisagem urbana. Manaus, sendo um destino turístico internacional, possui um apelo natural, o que por consequência leva à necessidade da prática do turismo sustentável possibilitando que seus inúmeros espaços verdes possam ser protegidos e trabalhados de forma séria.