bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Professional medical writing support and the quality of randomised controlled trial reporting: a cross-sectional study
Authors: Gattrell William T , Hopewell Sally , Young Kate , Farrow Paul , White Richard , Wager Elizabeth , Winchester Christopher C
Published: February 2016

Objectives

Authors may choose to work with professional medical writers when writing up their research for publication. We examined the relationship between medical writing support and the quality and timeliness of reporting of the results of randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

Design

Cross-sectional study.

Study sample

Primary reports of RCTs published in BioMed Central journals from 2000 to 16 July 2014, subdivided into those with medical writing support (n=110) and those without medical writing support (n=123).

Main outcome measures

Proportion of items that were completely reported from a predefined subset of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist (12 items known to be commonly poorly reported), overall acceptance time (from manuscript submission to editorial acceptance) and quality of written English as assessed by peer reviewers. The effect of funding source and publication year was examined.

Results

The number of articles that completely reported at least 50% of the CONSORT items assessed was higher for those with declared medical writing support (39.1% (43/110 articles); 95% CI 29.9% to 48.9%) than for those without (21.1% (26/123 articles); 95% CI 14.3% to 29.4%). Articles with declared medical writing support were more likely than articles without such support to have acceptable written English (81.1% (43/53 articles); 95% CI 67.6% to 90.1% vs 47.9% (23/48 articles); 95% CI 33.5% to 62.7%). The median time of overall acceptance was longer for articles with declared medical writing support than for those without (167 days (IQR 114.5–231 days) vs 136 days (IQR 77–193 days)).

Conclusions

In this sample of open-access journals, declared professional medical writing support was associated with more complete reporting of clinical trial results and higher quality of written English. Medical writing support may play an important role in raising the quality of clinical trial reporting.
Transcription factor 3 controls cell proliferation and migration in glioblastoma multiforme cell lines
Authors: Li Ruiting , Li Yinghui , Hu Xin , Lian Haiwei , Wang Lei , Fu Hui
Published: February 2016

Transcription factor 3 (TCF3) is a member of the T-cell factor/lymphoid enhancer factor (TCF/LEF) transcription factor family. Recent studies have demonstrated its potential carcinogenic properties. Here we show that TCF3 was upregulated in glioma tissues compared with normal brain tissues. This upregulation of the TCF3 gene probably has functional significance in brain-tumor progression. Our studies on glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cell lines show that knock-down of TCF3 induced apoptosis and inhibited cell migration. Further analysis revealed that down-regulation of TCF3 gene expression inhibits Akt and Erk1/2 activation, suggesting that the carcinogenic properties of TCF3 in GBM are partially mediated by the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase–Akt and MAPK–Erk signaling pathways. Considered together, the results of this study demonstrate that high levels of TCF3 in gliomas potentially promote glioma development through the Akt and Erk pathways.
Earth evolution and dynamics—a tribute to Kevin Burke
Authors: Torsvik Trond H. , Steinberger Bernhard , Ashwal Lewis D. , Doubrovine Pavel V. , Trønnes Reidar G.
Published: February 2016

Kevin Burke’s original and thought-provoking contributions have been published steadily for the past 60 years, and more than a decade ago he set out to resolve how plate tectonics and mantle plumes interact by proposing a simple conceptual model, which we will refer to as the Burkian Earth. On the Burkian Earth, mantle plumes take us from the deepest mantle to sub-lithospheric depths, where partial melting occurs, and to the surface, where hotspot lavas erupt today, and where large igneous provinces and kimberlites have erupted episodically in the past. The arrival of a plume head contributes to continental break-up and punctuates plate tectonics by creating and modifying plate boundaries. Conversely, plate tectonics makes an essential contribution to the mantle through subduction. Slabs restore mass to the lowermost mantle and are the triggering mechanism for plumes that rise from the margins of the two large-scale low shear-wave velocity structures in the lowermost mantle, which Burke christened TUZO and JASON. Situated just above the core–mantle boundary, beneath Africa and the Pacific, these are stable and antipodal thermochemical piles, which Burke reasons represent the immediate after-effect of the moon-forming event and the final magma ocean crystallization.
Parabolic generating pairs of genus-one 2-bridge knot groups
Authors: Lee Donghi , Sakuma Makoto
Published: February 2016

We show that any parabolic generating pair of a genus-one hyperbolic 2-bridge knot group is equivalent to the upper or lower meridian pair. As an application, we obtain a complete classification of the epimorphisms from 2-bridge knot groups to genus-one hyperbolic 2-bridge knot groups.
PRICING AND VALUATION UNDER THE REAL-WORLD MEASURE
Authors: FRAHM GABRIEL
Published: February 2016

In general it is not clear which kind of information is supposed to be used for calculating the fair value of a contingent claim. Even if the information is specified, it is not guaranteed that the fair value is uniquely determined by the given information. A further problem is that asset prices are typically expressed in terms of a risk-neutral measure. This makes it difficult to transfer the fundamental results of financial mathematics to econometrics. I show that the aforementioned problems evaporate if the financial market is complete and sensitive. In this case, after an appropriate choice of the numéraire, the discounted price processes turn out to be uniformly integrable martingales under the real-world measure. This leads to a Law of One Price and a simple real-world valuation formula in a model-independent framework where the number of assets as well as the lifetime of the market can be finite or infinite.
Microsolvation of CH+ in helium: An ab initio study
Authors: Solimannejad Mohammad , Mirhoseini Behnia Sadat , Esrafili Mehdi D.
Published: February 2016

In the present study, microsolvation and interaction of the CH[Formula: see text] cation with He[Formula: see text] clusters are investigated by means of ab initio calculations at MP2/aug-cc-pVTZ and QCISD/aug-cc-pVTZ levels. Stabilization energies of the studied complexes including basis set superposition error (BSSE) and zero point energy (ZPE) corrections are in the range of [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]kJ/mol and [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]kJ/mol. A good linear correlation is found between the stabilization energy and stretching frequency shift ([Formula: see text]) in the studied complexes. According to energy decomposition analysis, it is found that polarization effects are the major source of the attraction in these complexes.
Variational derivatives in locally Lagrangian field theories and Noether–Bessel-Hagen currents
Authors: Cattafi Francesco , Palese Marcella , Winterroth Ekkehart
Published: February 2016

The variational Lie derivative of classes of forms in the Krupka’s variational sequence is defined as a variational Cartan formula at any degree, in particular for degrees lesser than the dimension of the basis manifold. As an example of application, we determine the condition for a Noether–Bessel-Hagen current, associated with a generalized symmetry, to be variationally equivalent to a Noether current for an invariant Lagrangian. We show that, if it exists, this Noether current is exact on-shell and generates a canonical conserved quantity.
Controlled Synthesis of Pt–Pd Nanoparticle Chains with High Electrocatalytic Activity Based on Insulin Amyloid Fibrils
Authors: Hou Li , Niu Yunfeng , Wang Yan , Jiang Yang , Chen Rongna , Ma Tianran , Gao Faming
Published: February 2016

Here, we present a simple and novel method based on using insulin amyloid fibrils (INSAFs) as sacrificial templates for the construction of Pt–Pd nanoparticle chains (Pt–PdNPCs) under mild conditions. By incubating INSAFs in metal salt solution and then reduction, Pt–Pd nanoparticles with an uniform particle size of around 2.5[Formula: see text]nm nucleated and grew along the axial direction of INSAFs, and thus formed a long chain structure with length up to several micrometers. The as-prepared Pt–PdNPCs exhibit an improved catalytic activity for low-temperature CO and methanol oxidation and possess greater CO tolerance compared with the commercial Pt/C catalyst, which makes them promising for a variety of possible catalytic applications.
A Framework for Dataset Benchmarking and Its Application to a New Movie Rating Dataset
Authors: Dooms Simon , Bellogín Alejandro , Pessemier Toon De , Martens Luc
Published: February 2016

Rating datasets are of paramount importance in recommender systems research. They serve as input for recommendation algorithms, as simulation data, or for evaluation purposes. In the past, public accessible rating datasets were not abundantly available, leaving researchers no choice but to work with old and static datasets like MovieLens and Netflix. More recently, however, emerging trends as social media and smartphones are found to provide rich data sources which can be turned into valuable research datasets. While dataset availability is growing, a structured way for introducing and comparing new datasets is currently still lacking. In this work, we propose a five-step framework to introduce and benchmark new datasets in the recommender systems domain. We illustrate our framework on a new movie rating dataset—called MovieTweetings—collected from Twitter. Following our framework, we detail the origin of the dataset, provide basic descriptive statistics, investigate external validity, report the results of a number of reproducible benchmarks, and conclude by discussing some interesting advantages and appropriate research use cases.
Automatic Photo Adjustment Using Deep Neural Networks
Authors: Yan Zhicheng , Zhang Hao , Wang Baoyuan , Paris Sylvain , Yu Yizhou
Published: February 2016

Photo retouching enables photographers to invoke dramatic visual impressions by artistically enhancing their photos through stylistic color and tone adjustments. However, it is also a time-consuming and challenging task that requires advanced skills beyond the abilities of casual photographers. Using an automated algorithm is an appealing alternative to manual work, but such an algorithm faces many hurdles. Many photographic styles rely on subtle adjustments that depend on the image content and even its semantics. Further, these adjustments are often spatially varying. Existing automatic algorithms are still limited and cover only a subset of these challenges. Recently, deep learning has shown unique abilities to address hard problems. This motivated us to explore the use of deep neural networks (DNNs) in the context of photo editing. In this article, we formulate automatic photo adjustment in a manner suitable for this approach. We also introduce an image descriptor accounting for the local semantics of an image. Our experiments demonstrate that training DNNs using these descriptors successfully capture sophisticated photographic styles. In particular and unlike previous techniques, it can model local adjustments that depend on image semantics. We show that this yields results that are qualitatively and quantitatively better than previous work.
Exploration of Participation in Student Software Engineering Teams
Authors: Marshall Linda , Pieterse Vreda , Thompson Lisa , Venter Dina M.
Published: February 2016

Employers require software engineers to work in teams when developing software systems. It is therefore important for graduates to have experienced teamwork before they enter the job market.

We describe an experiential learning exercise that we designed to teach the software engineering process in conjunction with teamwork skills. The underlying teaching strategy applied in the exercise maximises risks in order to provide maximal experiential learning opportunities. The students are expected to work in fairly large, yet short-lived, instructor-assigned teams to complete software engineering tasks. After undergoing the exercise our students form self-selected teams for their capstone projects. In this article, we determine and report on the influence the teaching exercise had on the formation of teams for the capstone project. By analysing data provided by the students through regular peer reviews we gain insight into the team dynamics as well as to what extent the members contributed to the team effort.

We develop and present a graphical model of a capstone project team which highlights participation of individuals during the teaching exercise. The participatory history of the members is visualised using segmented concentric rings. We consider how this visualisation can aid the identification of capstone project teams that are at risk. In our experience the composition of the team and the behaviour of other members in the team may have a marked impact on the behaviour of each individual in the team. We established a team classification in order to model information about teams. We use a statistical clustering method to classify teams. For this we use team profiles that are based on the participatory levels of its members. The team types that emerge from the clustering are used to derive migration models. When we consider migration, we build spring models to visualise the teams through which individuals migrate. We colour code the teams to characterise them according to the team types that were identified during the cluster classification of the teams. Owing to the complexity of the resulting model, only migrations for capstone team members who have worked together during the exercise or for solitary capstone team members are modelled. These models support the identification of areas of interest that warrant further investigation.

To conclude, we present our observations from the analysis of team compositions, team types, and team migrations and provide directions for future work and collaborations.
sCARE
Authors: Malik Zaki , Medjahed Brahim , Rezgui Abdelmounaam
Published: February 2016

In this article, we propose a Statistical Cloud-Assisted Reputation Estimation (sCARE) approach for service-oriented environments in uncertain situations. sCARE uses the ratings from cooperating service consumers to uniformly describe the randomness and fuzziness of the different submitted ratings and their associated relationships in quantitative terms. We also define discriminant functions to model the honesty (or lack thereof) of the service raters. Experiment results show that our proposed model performs in a fairly accurate manner for a number of real-world scenarios. A comparison study with similar existing works is also provided to asses sCARE’s performance.
Sentence Shortening via Morpho-Syntactic Annotated Data in Historical Language Learning
Authors: Moritz Maria , Pavlek Barbara , Franzini Greta , Crane Gregory
Published: February 2016

We present an approach to shorten Ancient Greek sentences by using morpho-syntactic information attached to each word in a sentence. This work underpins the content of our eLearning application, AncientGeek, whose unique teaching technique draws from primary Greek sources. By applying a technique that skips the clausal dependents of a main verb, we reached a well-formed rate of 89% of the sentences.
Location Prediction
Authors: Jia Yantao , Wang Yuanzhuo , Jin Xiaolong , Cheng Xueqi
Published: February 2016

In social networks, predicting a user’s location mainly depends on those of his/her friends, where the key lies in how to select his/her most influential friends. In this article, we analyze the theoretically maximal accuracy of location prediction based on friends’ locations and compare it with the practical accuracy obtained by the state-of-the-art location prediction methods. Upon observing a big gap between the theoretical and practical accuracy, we propose a new strategy for selecting influential friends in order to improve the practical location prediction accuracy. Specifically, several features are defined to measure the influence of the friends on a user’s location, based on which we put forth a sequential random-walk-with-restart procedure to rank the friends of the user in terms of their influence. By dynamically selecting the top
N
most influential friends of the user per time slice, we develop a temporal-spatial Bayesian model to characterize the dynamics of friends’ influence for location prediction. Finally, extensive experimental results on datasets of real social networks demonstrate that the proposed influential friend selection method and temporal-spatial Bayesian model can significantly improve the accuracy of location prediction.
Video Face Editing Using Temporal-Spatial-Smooth Warping
Authors: Li Xiaoyan , Liu Tongliang , Deng Jiankang , Tao Dacheng
Published: February 2016

Editing faces in videos is a popular yet challenging task in computer vision and graphics that encompasses various applications, including facial attractiveness enhancement, makeup transfer, face replacement, and expression manipulation. Directly applying the existing warping methods to video face editing has the major problem of temporal incoherence in the synthesized videos, which cannot be addressed by simply employing face tracking techniques or manual interventions, as it is difficult to eliminate the subtly temporal incoherence of the facial feature point localizations in a video sequence. In this article, we propose a temporal-spatial-smooth warping (TSSW) method to achieve a high temporal coherence for video face editing. TSSW is based on two observations: (1) the control lattices are critical for generating warping surfaces and achieving the temporal coherence between consecutive video frames, and (2) the temporal coherence and spatial smoothness of the control lattices can be simultaneously and effectively preserved. Based upon these observations, we impose the temporal coherence constraint on the control lattices on two consecutive frames, as well as the spatial smoothness constraint on the control lattice on the current frame. TSSW calculates the control lattice (in either the horizontal or vertical direction) by updating the control lattice (in the corresponding direction) on its preceding frame, i.e., minimizing a novel energy function that unifies a data-driven term, a smoothness term, and feature point constraints. The contributions of this article are twofold: (1) we develop TSSW, which is robust to the subtly temporal incoherence of the facial feature point localizations and is effective to preserve the temporal coherence and spatial smoothness of the control lattices for editing faces in videos, and (2) we present a new unified video face editing framework that is capable for improving the performances of facial attractiveness enhancement, makeup transfer, face replacement, and expression manipulation.
S-SMART
Authors: Hardegger Michael , Roggen Daniel , Calatroni Alberto , Tröster Gerhard
Published: February 2016

The machine recognition of user trajectories and activities is fundamental to devise context-aware applications for support and monitoring in daily life. So far, tracking and activity recognition were mostly considered as orthogonal problems, which limits the richness of possible context inference. In this work, we introduce the novel unified computational and representational framework S-SMART that simultaneously models the environment state (semantic mapping), localizes the user within this map (tracking), and recognizes interactions with the environment (activity recognition). Thus, S-SMART identifies which activities the user executes where (e.g.,
turning a handle
next to a
window
), and reflects the outcome of these actions by updating the world model (e.g.,
the window is now open
). This in turn conditions the future possibility of executing actions at specific places (e.g.,
closing the window
is likely to be the next action at this location). S-SMART works in a self-contained manner and iteratively builds the semantic map from wearable sensors only. This enables the seamless deployment to new environments.

We characterize S-SMART in an experimental dataset with people performing hand actions as part of their usual routines at home and in office buildings. The framework combines dead reckoning from a foot-worn motion sensor with template-matching-based action recognition, identifying objects in the environment (windows, doors, water taps, phones, etc.) and tracking their state (open/closed, etc.). In real-life recordings with up to 23 action classes, S-SMART consistently outperforms independent systems for positioning and activity recognition, and constructs accurate semantic maps. This environment representation enables novel applications that build upon information about the arrangement and state of the user’s surroundings. For example, it may be possible to remind elderly people of a window that they left open before leaving the house, or of a plant they did not water yet, using solely wearable sensors.
Construction of Manifolds via Compatible Sparse Representations
Authors: Wang Ruimin , Liu Ligang , Yang Zhouwang , Wang Kang , Shan Wen , Deng Jiansong , Chen Falai
Published: February 2016

Manifold is an important technique to model geometric objects with arbitrary topology. In this article, we propose a novel approach for constructing manifolds from discrete meshes based on sparse optimization. The local geometry for each chart is sparsely represented by a set of redundant atom functions, which have the flexibility to represent various geometries with varying smoothness. A global optimization is then proposed to guarantee compatible sparse representations in the overlapping regions of different charts. Our method can construct manifolds of varying smoothness including sharp features (creases, darts, or cusps). As an application, we can easily construct a skinning manifold surface from a given curve network. Examples show that our approach has much flexibility to generate manifold surfaces with good quality.
Incentive Mechanism Design for Crowdsourcing
Authors: Luo Tie , Das Sajal K. , Tan Hwee Pink , Xia Lirong
Published: February 2016

Crowdsourcing can be modeled as a principal-agent problem in which the principal (crowdsourcer) desires to solicit a maximal contribution from a group of agents (participants) while agents are only motivated to act according to their own respective advantages. To reconcile this tension, we propose an all-pay auction approach to incentivize agents to act in the principal’s interest, i.e., maximizing profit, while allowing agents to reap strictly positive utility. Our rationale for advocating all-pay auctions is based on two merits that we identify, namely all-pay auctions (i) compress the common, two-stage “bid-contribute” crowdsourcing process into a single “bid-cum-contribute” stage, and (ii) eliminate the risk of task nonfulfillment. In our proposed approach, we enhance all-pay auctions with two additional features: an adaptive prize and a general crowdsourcing environment. The prize or reward adapts itself as per a function of the unknown winning agent’s contribution, and the environment or setting generally accommodates incomplete and asymmetric information, risk-averse (and risk-neutral) agents, and a stochastic (and deterministic) population. We analytically derive this all-pay auction-based mechanism and extensively evaluate it in comparison to classic and optimized mechanisms. The results demonstrate that our proposed approach remarkably outperforms its counterparts in terms of the principal’s profit, agent’s utility, and social welfare.
Rethinking IT education
Authors: Said Hazem
Published: February 2016

The Information Technology discipline is defined as meeting the needs of users within organizational or societal context through the selection, creation, administration, integration, and application of computing technologies [1]. Successful IT professionals are those with strong hands-on, communication, and problem solving skills [2]. The need for skilled IT professionals continues to grow in many subareas such as mobile development, Cybersecurity, administration of cloud services, and others [5]. The information technology profession's demand for strong hands-on skills puts pressure on colleges to produce graduates with increased level of skills. However, the 3-5 years that students spend in college may not be enough to build the level of hands-on skills expected by employers.
Mining Product Adopter Information from Online Reviews for Improving Product Recommendation
Authors: Zhao Wayne Xin , Wang Jinpeng , He Yulan , Wen Ji-Rong , Chang Edward Y. , Li Xiaoming
Published: February 2016

We present in this article an automated framework that extracts product adopter information from online reviews and incorporates the extracted information into feature-based matrix factorization for more effective product recommendation. In specific, we propose a bootstrapping approach for the extraction of product adopters from review text and categorize them into a number of different demographic categories. The aggregated demographic information of many product adopters can be used to characterize both products and users in the form of distributions over different demographic categories. We further propose a graph-based method to iteratively update user- and product-related distributions more reliably in a heterogeneous user--product graph and incorporate them as features into the matrix factorization approach for product recommendation. Our experimental results on a large dataset crawled from J
ing
D
ong
, the largest B2C e-commerce website in China, show that our proposed framework outperforms a number of competitive baselines for product recommendation.
A Comprehensive Survey on Pose-Invariant Face Recognition
Authors: Ding Changxing , Tao Dacheng
Published: February 2016

The capacity to recognize faces under varied poses is a fundamental human ability that presents a unique challenge for computer vision systems. Compared to frontal face recognition, which has been intensively studied and has gradually matured in the past few decades, Pose-Invariant Face Recognition (PIFR) remains a largely unsolved problem. However, PIFR is crucial to realizing the full potential of face recognition for real-world applications, since face recognition is intrinsically a passive biometric technology for recognizing uncooperative subjects. In this article, we discuss the inherent difficulties in PIFR and present a comprehensive review of established techniques. Existing PIFR methods can be grouped into four categories, that is, pose-robust feature extraction approaches, multiview subspace learning approaches, face synthesis approaches, and hybrid approaches. The motivations, strategies, pros/cons, and performance of representative approaches are described and compared. Moreover, promising directions for future research are discussed.
RQNoC
Authors: Malek Alirad , Sourdis Ioannis , Tzilis Stavros , He Yifan , Rauwerda Gerard
Published: February 2016

In this article, we describe RQNoC, a service-oriented Network-on-Chip (NoC) resilient to permanent faults. We characterize the network resources based on the particular service that they support and, when faulty, bypass them, allowing the respective traffic class to be redirected. We propose two alternatives for service redirection, each having different advantages and disadvantages. The first one, Service Detour, uses longer alternative paths through resources of the same service to bypass faulty network parts, keeping traffic classes isolated. The second approach, Service Merge, uses resources of other services providing shorter paths but allowing traffic classes to interfere with each other. The remaining network resources that are common for all services employ additional mechanisms for tolerating faults. Links tolerate faults using additional spare wires combined with a flit-shifting mechanism, and the router control is protected with Triple-Modular-Redundancy (TMR). The proposed RQNoC network designs are implemented in 65nm technology and evaluated in terms of performance, area, power consumption, and fault tolerance. Service Detour requires 9% more area and consumes 7.3% more power compared to a baseline network, not tolerant to faults. Its packet latency and throughput is close to the fault-free performance at low-fault densities, but fault tolerance and performance drop substantially for 8 or more network faults. Service Merge requires 22% more area and 27% more power than the baseline and has a 9% slower clock. Compared to a fault-free network, a Service Merge RQNoC with up to 32 faults has increased packet latency up to 1.5 to 2.4× and reduced throughput to 70% or 50%. However, it delivers substantially better fault tolerance, having a mean network connectivity above 90% even with 32 network faults versus 41% of a Service Detour network. Combining Serve Merge and Service Detour improves fault tolerance, further sustaining a higher number of network faults and reduced packet latency.
Zeno, Hercules, and the Hydra
Authors: Lazić Ranko , Ouaknine Joël , Worrell James
Published: February 2016

Metric temporal logic (MTL) is one of the most prominent specification formalisms for real-time systems. Over infinite timed words, full MTL is undecidable, but satisfiability for a syntactially defined safety fragment, called safety MTL, was proved decidable several years ago. Satisfiability for safety MTL is also known to be equivalent to a fair termination problem for a class of channel machines with insertion errors. However, hitherto, its precise computational complexity has remained elusive, with only a nonelementary lower bound. Via another equivalent problem, namely termination for a class of rational relations, we show that satisfiability for safety MTL is A
ckermann
-complete (i.e., among the easiest nonprimitive recursive problems). This is surprising since decidability was originally established using Higman’s Lemma, suggesting a much higher nonmultiply recursive complexity.
Multiple protocol transport network gateway for IoT systems
Authors: Shih Chi-Sheng , Wu Guan-Fan
Published: February 2016

Exchange data among devices in machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems is an essential feature for these systems. For the sake of simplicity and reliability, many M2M and IoT solutions support homogeneous/single network deployment. However, when the complexity of the system and the number of device vendors continue to grow, it is challenging, if not impossible, to build M2M and IoT systems with devices using single communication protocol. The targeted problem of this paper is to enable the communication among devices in heterogeneous networks. Multiple Protocol Transport Network (MPTN) gateway is designed to be a distributed messaging gateway to enable messaging among multiple networks. To leverage the routing capability in existing network protocols, MPTN gateway converts an end-to-end message request to a multiple segment message based on network topology. The protocol schedules periodic routing table update to pro-actively keep the routing table up to dates with long time intervals, and allows on-demand route update to shorten the delay on topology and connectivity change. The performance evaluation results show that the protocol completes table update within tens of milliseconds when there are more than ten devices in a system.
CloudMath
Authors: Hornecker Achim
Published: February 2016

CloudMath is an interactive cloud based system for mathematical work independent of the local environment. It uses the advantages of modern web technologies and open mathematical systems.
On the Co-Evolution of Information Technology and Information Systems Personnel
Authors: Niederman Fred , Ferratt Thomas W. , Trauth Eileen M.
Published: February 2016

This essay addresses changes in information systems (IS) personnel and information technology over the past seven decades (1950s-2010s). A co-evolutionary perspective guides the discussion and emphasizes the mutual influence of changes in technology and IS personnel. The review considers (1) major eras of technical innovation and the steady expansion of the boundary that includes IS personnel; (2) the cyclical nature of a surge of needed technical skills with each technical innovation, a growing "shielding" of end users from the details of operationalizing the technology, and growth of end user domain application skills; and (3) implications for the education of IS personnel.
Prevalence of Anemia and Its Associated Factors among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Care in Health Institutions of Arba Minch Town, Gamo Gofa Zone, Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study
Authors: Bekele Alemayehu , Tilahun Marelign , Mekuria Aleme
Published: February 2016

Background. Anemia during pregnancy is a major cause of morbidity and mortality of pregnant women in developing countries and has both maternal and fetal consequences. Despite its known serious effect on health, there is very little research based evidence on this vital public health problem in Gamo Gofa zone in general and in Arba Minch town of Southern Ethiopia in particular. Therefore, this study aims to assess the prevalence and factors associated with anemia among pregnant women attending antenatal care in health institutions of Arba Minch town, Gamo Gofa zone, Southern Ethiopia.Method. Institution-based, cross-sectional study was conducted from February 16 to April 8, 2015, among 332 pregnant women who attended antenatal care at government health institutions of Arba Minch town. Interviewer-administered questionnaire supplemented by laboratory tests was used to obtain the data. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to identify predictors of anemia.Result. The prevalence of anemia among antenatal care attendant pregnant women of Arba Minch town was 32.8%. Low average monthly income of the family (AOR = 4.0; 95% CI: 5.62–11.01), having birth interval less than two years (AOR = 3.1; 95% CI: 6.01, 10.23), iron supplementation (AOR = 2.31; 95% CI: 7.21, 9.31), and family size >2 (AOR = 2.8; 95% CI: 1.17, 6.81) were found to be independent predictors of anemia in pregnancy.Conclusion. Anemia is found to be a moderate public health problem in the study area. Low average monthly income, birth interval less than two years, iron supplementation, and large family size were found to be risk factors for anemia in pregnancy. Awareness creation towards birth spacing, nutritional counselling on consumption of iron-rich foods, and iron supplementation are recommended to prevent anemia among pregnant women with special emphasis on those having low income and large family size.
Pentraxin 3 Is a Predictor for Fibrosis and Arterial Stiffness in Patients with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Authors: Ozturk Kadir , Kurt Omer , Dogan Tolga , Ozen Alptug , Demirci Hakan , Yesildal Fatih , Kantarcioglu Murat , Turker Turker , Guler Ahmet Kerem , Karslioglu Yıldırım , Altun Battal , Uygun Ahmet , Bagci Sait
Published: February 2016

Objective. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether pentraxin 3 (PTX3) can be a new noninvasive marker for prediction of liver fibrosis in patients with NAFLD. We also aimed to evaluate the relationship between PTX3 and atherosclerosis in patients with NAFLD.Method. Fifty-four male patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD and 20 apparently healthy male volunteers were included. PTX3 levels were determined, using an ELISA method (R&D Sysytems, Quantikine ELISA, USA). To detect the presence of subclinical atherosclerosis in NAFLD, measurements of CIMT, FMD, and cf-PWV levels were performed.Results. PTX3 levels in NAFLD patients with fibrosis were higher than both NAFLD patients without fibrosis and controls (P=0.032andP=0.028, respectively), but there was no difference between controls and NAFLD patients without fibrosis in terms of PTX3 levels (P=0.903). PTX3 levels were strongly correlated with cf-PWV (r=0.359,P=0.003), whereas no significant correlation was found with other atherosclerosis markers, CIMT and FMD.Conclusion. Elevated plasma PTX3 levels are associated with the presence of fibrosis in patients with NAFLD, independently of metabolic syndrome components. This study demonstrated that for the first time there is a close association between elevated PTX3 levels and increased arterial stiffness in patients with NAFLD.
Cathodoluminescence and Raman Spectromicroscopy of Forsterite in Tagish Lake Meteorite: Implications for Astromineralogy
Authors: Gucsik Arnold , Gyollai Ildikó , Nishido Hirotsugu , Ninagawa Kiyotaka , Izawa Matthew M. R. , Jäger Cornelia , Ott Ulrich , Simonia Irakli , Bérczi Szaniszló , Kayama Masahiro
Published: February 2016

The Tagish Lake meteorite is CI/CM2 chondrite, which fell by a fireball event in January 2000. This study emphasizes the cathodoluminescence (CL) and Raman spectroscopical properties of the Tagish Lake meteorite in order to classify the meteoritic forsterite and its relation to the crystallization processes in a parent body. The CL-zoning of Tagish Lake meteorite records the thermal history of chondrules and terrestrial weathering. Only the unweathered olivine is forsterite, which is CL-active. The variation of luminescence in chondrules of Tagish Lake meteorite implies chemical inhomogeneity due to low-grade thermal metamorphism. The blue emission center in forsterite due to crystal lattice defect is proposed as being caused by rapid cooling during the primary crystallization and relatively low-temperature thermal metamorphism on the parent body of Tagish Lake meteorite. This is in a good agreement with the micro-Raman spectroscopical data. A combination of cathodoluminescence and micro-Raman spectroscopies shows some potentials in study of the asteroidal processes of parent bodies in solar system.
Optimization of Cultural Conditions for Antioxidant Exopolysaccharides fromXerocomus badiusGrown in Shrimp Byproduct
Authors: Gao Xiujun , Yan Peisheng , Liu Xin , Wang Jianbing , Yu Jiajia
Published: February 2016

To optimize the production conditions for exopolysaccharides with higher antioxidant activities fromXerocomus badiuscultured in shrimp byproduct medium, Plackett-Burman design, path of steepest ascent, and response surface methodology were explored. Based on the results of Plackett-Burman design and path of steepest ascent, a Box-Behnken design was applied to optimization and the regression models. The optimal cultural condition for high yield and antioxidant activity of the exopolysaccharides was determined to be 10.347% of solid-to-liquid ratio, a 4.322% content of bran powder, and a 1.217% concentration of glacial acetic acid. Culturing with the optimal cultural conditions resulted in an exopolysaccharides yield of4.588±0.346 g/L and a total antioxidant activity of2.956±0.105 U/mg. These values are consistent with the values predicted by the corresponding regression models (RSD < 5%).
Understanding Muscle Dysfunction in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Authors: Rutherford Gina , Manning Philip , Newton Julia L.
Published: February 2016

Introduction. Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is a debilitating disorder of unknown aetiology, characterised by severe disabling fatigue in the absence of alternative diagnosis. Historically, there has been a tendency to draw psychological explanations for the origin of fatigue; however, this model is at odds with findings that fatigue and accompanying symptoms may be explained by central and peripheral pathophysiological mechanisms, including effects of the immune, oxidative, mitochondrial, and neuronal pathways. For example, patient descriptions of their fatigue regularly cite difficulty in maintaining muscle activity due to perceived lack of energy. This narrative review examined the literature for evidence of biochemical dysfunction in CFS/ME at the skeletal muscle level.Methods.Literature was examined following searches of PUB MED, MEDLINE, and Google Scholar, using key words such as CFS/ME, immune, autoimmune, mitochondria, muscle, and acidosis.Results. Studies show evidence for skeletal muscle biochemical abnormality in CFS/ME patients, particularly in relation to bioenergetic dysfunction.Discussion.Bioenergetic muscle dysfunction is evident in CFS/ME, with a tendency towards an overutilisation of the lactate dehydrogenase pathway following low-level exercise, in addition to slowed acid clearance after exercise. Potentially, these abnormalities may lead to the perception of severe fatigue in CFS/ME.
Intraperitoneal Injection of Multiplacentas Pooled Cells Treatment on a Mouse Model with Aplastic Anemia
Authors: Li Jun , Chen Hong , Lv Yan-Bo , Wang Qiang , Xie Zheng-Jun , Ma Li-Hua , He Jie , Xue Wei , Yu Shan , Guo Jun , Wang Ting-Hua , Wu Tian-Xi , Pan Xing-Hua
Published: February 2016

Coinfusion of hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells is more effective than hematopoietic stem cell transplantation alone. It is necessary to explore a safe and routine mixed stem cell intraperitoneal transplantation method. Multiplacentas pooled cells were intraperitoneally injected into a radiation‐ and immunity‐induced mouse aplastic anemia model with single time. Then, mouse survival time, peripheral blood hemoglobin count, bone marrow architecture, and donor cell engraftment were assessed. The recipient mouse exhibited donor cell engraftment in both bone marrow and peripheral blood. Survival time and peripheral blood hemoglobin count increased in placenta pooled cells treated mice, compared with model‐only controls (P = 0.048 and P = 0.000, resp.). However, placentas pooled cells failed to cause a significant decrease in bone marrow pimelosis area (P = 0.357). Intraperitoneally transplanted multiplacentas pooled cells can survive and engraft into a host body through blood circulation, which can increase the life span of an aplastic anemia model mice, and delay but not abrogate the development of aplastic anemia. Furthermore, they appear to play a role in increasing peripheral blood hemoglobin level response for increasing the life span of aplastic anemia model mice.
A Novel Iterative and Dynamic Trust Computing Model for Large Scaled P2P Networks
Authors: Tan Zhenhua , Wang Xingwei , Wang Xueyi
Published: February 2016

Trust management has been emerging as an essential complementary part to security mechanisms of P2P systems, and trustworthiness is one of the most important concepts driving decision making and establishing reliable relationships. Collusion attack is a main challenge to distributed P2P trust model. Large scaled P2P systems have typical features, such as large scaled data with rapid speed, and this paper presented an iterative and dynamic trust computation model named IDTrust (Iterative and Dynamic Trust model) according to these properties. First of all, a three-layered distributed trust communication architecture was presented in IDTrust so as to separate evidence collector and trust decision from P2P service. Then an iterative and dynamic trust computation method was presented to improve efficiency, where only latest evidences were enrolled during one iterative computation. On the basis of these, direct trust model, indirect trust model, and global trust model were presented with both explicit and implicit evidences. We consider multifactors in IDTrust model according to different malicious behaviors, such as similarity, successful transaction rate, and time decay factors. Simulations and analysis proved the rightness and efficiency of IDTrust against attacks with quick respond and sensitiveness during trust decision.
Beam Tracking in Switched-Beam Antenna System for V2V Communication
Authors: Poochaya Settawit , Uthansakul Peerapong
Published: February 2016

This paper presents the proposed switched beam antenna system for V2V communication including optimum antenna half power beamwidth determination in urban road environments. SQP optimization method is selected for the computation of optimum antenna half power beamwidth. In addition, beam tracking algorithm is applied to guarantee the best beam selection with maximum RSSI. The results present the success of the proposed system with the increasing of V2V performance metrics. Also, V2V data dissemination via the proposed system introduces the enhancement of V2V link in terms of RSSI, PER, BER,Tsafe, andRsafe. The results indicate the improvement of V2V link reliability. Consequently, the road safety is improved.
Liver Cirrhosis and Diabetes Mellitus Are Risk Factors forStaphylococcus aureusInfection in Patients with Healthcare-Associated or Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia
Authors: Wu Huang-Pin , Chu Chien-Ming , Lin Chun-Yao , Yu Chung-Chieh , Hua Chung-Ching , Yu Teng-Jen , Liu Yu-Chih
Published: February 2016

Background.The risk factors forStaphylococcus aureus(S. aureus) pneumonia are not fully identified. The aim of this work was to find out the clinical characteristics associated withS. aureusinfection in patients with healthcare-associated pneumonia (HCAP) and hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), which may be applicable for more appropriate selection of empiric antibiotic therapy.Methods.From July 2007 to June 2010, patients who were admitted to the intensive care unit with severe HCAP/HAP and severe sepsis were enrolled in this study. Lower respiratory tract sample was semiquantitatively cultured. Initial broad-spectrum antibiotics were chosen by Taiwan or American guidelines for pneumonia management. Standard bundle therapies were provided to all patients according to the guidelines of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign.Results.The most frequently isolated pathogens werePseudomonas aeruginosa,S. aureus,Acinetobacter baumannii,Klebsiella pneumoniae, andEscherichia coli. Patients with positive isolation ofS. aureusin culture had significantly higher history of liver cirrhosis and diabetes mellitus, with odds ratios of 3.098 and 1.899, respectively. TheS. aureuspneumonia was not correlated with history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and hemodialysis.Conclusion.Liver cirrhosis and diabetes mellitus may be risk factors forS. aureusinfection in patients with severe HCAP or HAP.
Asset Price Dynamics in a Chartist-Fundamentalist Model with Time Delays: A Bifurcation Analysis
Authors: Dobrescu Loretti I. , Neamtu Mihaela , Mircea Gabriela
Published: February 2016

This paper studies the dynamic behavior of asset prices using a chartist-fundamentalist model with two speculative markets. To this effect, we employ a differential system with delays à la Dibeh (2007) to describe the price dynamics and we assume that the two markets are coupled via diffusive coupling terms. We study two different time delay cases, namely, when both markets experience the same time delay and when the time delay is different across markets. First, we theoretically determine that the equilibrium exists and investigate its stability. Second, we establish the general conditions for the existence of local Hopf bifurcations and analyze their direction and stability. The common conclusion from both the delay scenarios we consider is that coupled speculative markets with heterogeneous agents in each, but with different price dynamics, can be synchronized through diffusive coupling. Finally, we provide some numerical illustrations to confirm our theoretical findings.