bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Feature-Based Visual Sentiment Analysis of Text Document Streams
Authors: Rohrdantz Christian , Hao Ming C. , Dayal Umeshwar , Haug Lars-Erik , Keim Daniel A.
Published: October 2012

This article describes automatic methods and interactive visualizations that are tightly coupled with the goal to enable users to detect interesting portions of text document streams. In this scenario the interestingness is derived from the sentiment, temporal density, and context coherence that comments about features for different targets (e.g., persons, institutions, product attributes, topics, etc.) have. Contributions are made at different stages of the visual analytics pipeline, including novel ways to visualize salient temporal accumulations for further exploration. Moreover, based on the visualization, an automatic algorithm aims to detect and preselect interesting time interval patterns for different features in order to guide analysts. The main target group for the suggested methods are business analysts who want to explore time-stamped customer feedback to detect critical issues. Finally, application case studies on two different datasets and scenarios are conducted and an extensive evaluation is provided for the presented intelligent visual interface for feature-based sentiment exploration over time.
Mining the “Voice of the Customer” for Business Prioritization
Authors: Peng Wei , Sun Tong , Revankar Shriram , Li Tao
Published: October 2012

To gain competitiveness and sustained growth in the 21st century, most businesses are on a mission to become more customer-centric. In order to succeed in this endeavor, it is crucial not only to synthesize and analyze the
VOC
(the
VO
ice of the
C
ustomer) data (i.e., the feedbacks or requirements raised by customers), but also to quickly turn these data into actionable knowledge. Although there are many technologies being developed in this complex problem space, most existing approaches in analyzing customer requests are ad hoc, time-consuming, error-prone, people-based processes which hardly scale well as the quantity of customer information explodes. This often results in the slow response to customer requests. In this article, in order to mine
VOC
to extract useful knowledge for the best product or service quality, we develop a hybrid framework that integrates domain knowledge with data-driven approaches to analyze the semi-structured customer requests. The framework consists of capturing functional features, discovering the overlap or correlation among the features, and identifying the evolving feature trend by using the knowledge transformation model. In addition, since understanding the relative importance of the individual customer request is very critical and has a direct impact on the effective prioritization in the development process, we develop a novel semantic enhanced link-based ranking (SELRank) algorithm for relatively rating/ranking both customer requests and products. The framework has been successfully applied on Xerox Office Group Feature Enhancement Requirements (XOG FER) datasets to analyze customer requests.
Intelligent Social Media Indexing and Sharing Using an Adaptive Indexing Search Engine
Authors: Leung Clement H. C. , Chan Alice W. S. , Milani Alfredo , Liu Jiming , Li Yuanxi
Published: October 2012

Effective sharing of diverse social media is often inhibited by limitations in their search and discovery mechanisms, which are particularly restrictive for media that do not lend themselves to automatic processing or indexing. Here, we present the structure and mechanism of an adaptive search engine which is designed to overcome such limitations. The basic framework of the adaptive search engine is to capture human judgment in the course of normal usage from user queries in order to develop semantic indexes which link search terms to media objects semantics. This approach is particularly effective for the retrieval of multimedia objects, such as images, sounds, and videos, where a direct analysis of the object features does not allow them to be linked to search terms, for example, nontextual/icon-based search, deep semantic search, or when search terms are unknown at the time the media repository is built. An adaptive search architecture is presented to enable the index to evolve with respect to user feedback, while a randomized query-processing technique guarantees avoiding local minima and allows the meaningful indexing of new media objects and new terms. The present adaptive search engine allows for the efficient community creation and updating of social media indexes, which is able to instill and propagate deep knowledge into social media concerning the advanced search and usage of media resources. Experiments with various relevance distribution settings have shown efficient convergence of such indexes, which enable intelligent search and sharing of social media resources that are otherwise hard to discover.
Multiview Metric Learning with Global Consistency and Local Smoothness
Authors: Zhai Deming , Chang Hong , Shan Shiguang , Chen Xilin , Gao Wen
Published: October 2012

In many real-world applications, the same object may have different observations (or descriptions) from multiview observation spaces, which are highly related but sometimes look different from each other. Conventional metric-learning methods achieve satisfactory performance on distance metric computation of data in a single-view observation space, but fail to handle well data sampled from multiview observation spaces, especially those with highly nonlinear structure. To tackle this problem, we propose a new method calledMultiview Metric Learning with Global consistency and Local smoothness(MVML-GL) under a semisupervised learning setting, which jointly considers global consistency and local smoothness. The basic idea is to reveal the shared latent feature space of the multiview observations by embodying global consistency constraints and preserving local geometric structures. Specifically, this framework is composed of two main steps. In the first step, we seek a global consistent shared latent feature space, which not only preserves the local geometric structure in each space but also makes those labeled corresponding instances as close as possible. In the second step, the explicit mapping functions between the input spaces and the shared latent space are learned via regularized locally linear regression. Furthermore, these two steps both can be solved by convex optimizations in closed form. Experimental results with application to manifold alignment on real-world datasets of pose and facial expression demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Metric Learning for Estimating Psychological Similarities
Authors: Xu Jun-Ming , Zhu Xiaojin , Rogers Timothy T.
Published: October 2012

An important problem in cognitive psychology is to quantify the perceived similarities between stimuli. Previous work attempted to address this problem with multidimensional scaling (MDS) and its variants. However, there are several shortcomings of the MDS approaches. We propose Yada, a novel general metric-learning procedure based on two-alternative forced-choice behavioral experiments. Our method learns forward and backward nonlinear mappings between an objective space in which the stimuli are defined by the standard feature vector representation and a subjective space in which the distance between a pair of stimuli corresponds to their perceived similarity. We conduct experiments on both synthetic and real human behavioral datasets to assess the effectiveness of Yada. The results show that Yada outperforms several standard embedding and metric-learning algorithms, both in terms of likelihood and recovery error.
Folksonomy-Based Term Extraction for Word Cloud Generation
Authors: Carmel David , Uziel Erel , Guy Ido , Mass Yosi , Roitman Haggai
Published: October 2012

In this work we study the task of term extraction for word cloud generation in sparsely tagged domains, in which manual tags are scarce. We present a folksonomy-based term extraction method, called
tag-boost
, which boosts terms that are frequently used by the public to tag content. Our experiments with tag-boost based term extraction over different domains demonstrate tremendous improvement in word cloud quality, as reflected by the agreement between manual tags of the testing items and the cloud’s terms extracted from the items’ content. Moreover, our results demonstrate the high robustness of this approach, as compared to alternative cloud generation methods that exhibit a high sensitivity to data sparseness. Additionally, we show that tag-boost can be effectively applied even in nontagged domains, by using an external rich folksonomy borrowed from a well-tagged domain.
Latent Geospatial Semantics of Social Media
Authors: Sizov Sergej
Published: October 2012

Multimodal understanding of shared content is an important success factor for many Web 2.0 applications and platforms. This article addresses the fundamental question of geo-spatial awareness in social media applications. In this context, we introduce an approach for improved characterization of social media by combining text features (e.g., tags as a prominent example of short, unstructured text labels) with spatial knowledge (e.g., geotags, coordinates of images, and videos). Our model-based framework GeoFolk combines these two aspects in order to construct better algorithms for content management, retrieval, and sharing. We demonstrate in systematic studies the benefits of this combination for a broad spectrum of scenarios related to social media: recommender systems, automatic content organization and filtering, and event detection. Furthermore, we establish a simple and technically sound model that can be seen as a reference baseline for future research in the field of geotagged social media.
On the Relationship between Novelty and Popularity of User-Generated Content
Authors: Carmel David , Roitman Haggai , Yom-Tov Elad
Published: October 2012

This work deals with the task of predicting the popularity of user-generated content. We demonstrate how the novelty of newly published content plays an important role in affecting its popularity. More specifically, we study three dimensions of novelty. The first one, termed
contemporaneous novelty
, models the relative novelty embedded in a new post with respect to contemporary content that was generated by others. The second type of novelty, termed
self novelty
, models the relative novelty with respect to the user’s own contribution history. The third type of novelty, termed
discussion novelty
, relates to the novelty of the comments associated by readers with respect to the post content. We demonstrate the contribution of the new novelty measures to estimating blog-post popularity by predicting the number of comments expected for a fresh post. We further demonstrate how novelty based measures can be utilized for predicting the citation volume of academic papers.
Nowcasting Events from the Social Web with Statistical Learning
Authors: Lampos Vasileios , Cristianini Nello
Published: October 2012

We present a general methodology for inferring the occurrence and magnitude of an event or phenomenon by exploring the rich amount of unstructured textual information on the social part of the Web. Having geo-tagged user posts on the microblogging service of
Twitter
as our input data, we investigate two case studies. The first consists of a benchmark problem, where actual levels of rainfall in a given location and time are inferred from the content of
tweets
. The second one is a real-life task, where we infer regional Influenza-like Illness rates in the effort of detecting timely an emerging epidemic disease. Our analysis builds on a statistical learning framework, which performs sparse learning via the bootstrapped version of LASSO to select a consistent subset of textual features from a large amount of candidates. In both case studies, selected features indicate close semantic correlation with the target topics and inference, conducted by regression, has a significant performance, especially given the short length --approximately one year-- of Twitter’s data time series.
Ranking User Influence in Healthcare Social Media
Authors: Tang Xuning , Yang Christopher C.
Published: October 2012

Due to the revolutionary development of Web 2.0 technology, individual users have become major contributors of Web content in online social media. In light of the growing activities, how to measure a user’s influence to other users in online social media becomes increasingly important. This research need is urgent especially in the online healthcare community since positive influence can be beneficial while negative influence may cause-negative impact on other users of the same community. In this article, a research framework was proposed to study user influence within the online healthcare community. We proposed a new approach to incorporate users’ reply relationship, conversation content and response immediacy which capture both explicit and implicit interaction between users to identify influential users of online healthcare community. A weighted social network is developed to represent the influence between users. We tested our proposed techniques thoroughly on two medical support forums. Two algorithms UserRank and Weighted in-degree are benchmarked with PageRank and in-degree. Experiment results demonstrated the validity and effectiveness of our proposed approaches.
Evaluation of Folksonomy Induction Algorithms
Authors: Strohmaier Markus , Helic Denis , Benz Dominik , Körner Christian , Kern Roman
Published: October 2012

Algorithms for constructing hierarchical structures from user-generated metadata have caught the interest of the academic community in recent years. In social tagging systems, the output of these algorithms is usually referred to as folksonomies (from folk-generated taxonomies). Evaluation of folksonomies and folksonomy induction algorithms is a challenging issue complicated by the lack of golden standards, lack of comprehensive methods and tools as well as a lack of research and empirical/simulation studies applying these methods. In this article, we report results from a broad comparative study of state-of-the-art folksonomy induction algorithms that we have applied and evaluated in the context of five social tagging systems. In addition to adopting
semantic
evaluation techniques, we present and adopt a new technique that can be used to evaluate the usefulness of folksonomies for
navigation
. Our work sheds new light on the properties and characteristics of state-of-the-art folksonomy induction algorithms and introduces a new pragmatic approach to folksonomy evaluation, while at the same time identifying some important limitations and challenges of folksonomy evaluation. Our results show that folksonomy induction algorithms specifically developed to capture intuitions of social tagging systems outperform traditional hierarchical clustering techniques. To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the largest and most comprehensive evaluation study of state-of-the-art folksonomy induction algorithms to date.
Surface Sulfur Detection via Remote Sensing and Onboard Classification
Authors: Mandrake Lukas , Rebbapragada Umaa , Wagstaff Kiri L. , Thompson David , Chien Steve , Tran Daniel , Pappalardo Robert T. , Gleeson Damhnait , Castaño Rebecca
Published: October 2012

Orbital remote sensing provides a powerful way to efficiently survey targets such as the Earth and other planets and moons for features of interest. One such feature of astrobiological relevance is the presence of surface sulfur deposits. These deposits have been observed to be associated with microbial activity at the Borup Fiord glacial springs in Canada, a location that may provide an analogue to other icy environments such as Europa.

This article evaluates automated classifiers for detecting sulfur in remote sensing observations by the hyperion spectrometer on the EO-1 spacecraft. We determined that a data-driven machine learning solution was needed because the sulfur could not be detected by simply matching observations to sulfur lab spectra. We also evaluated several methods (manual and automated) for identifying the most relevant attributes (spectral wavelengths) needed for successful sulfur detection. Our findings include (1) the Borup Fiord sulfur deposits were best modeled as containing two sub-populations: sulfur on ice and sulfur on rock; (2) as expected, classifiers using Gaussian kernels outperformed those based on linear kernels, and should be adopted when onboard computational constraints permit; and (3) Recursive Feature Elimination selected sensible and effective features for use in the computationally constrained environment onboard EO-1. This study helped guide the selection of algorithm parameters and configuration for the classification system currently operational on EO-1. Finally, we discuss implications for a similar onboard classification system for a future Europa orbiter.
Exercise restores insulin, but not adiponectin, response in skeletal muscle of high-fat fed rodents
Authors: Gulli Roberto A. , Tishinsky Justine M. , MacDonald Tara , Robinson Lindsay E. , Wright David C. , Dyck David J.
Published: October 2012

High-fat (HF) diets impair skeletal muscle response to the insulin-sensitizing adipokine adiponectin (Ad) in rodents, preceding the development of insulin resistance. Skeletal muscle insulin response in HF-fed rats can be restored with chronic exercise; whether recovery of skeletal muscle Ad response is necessary for the exercise-induced recovery of insulin-stimulated glucose transport is not known. In the current study, insulin and Ad resistance were induced in rodents with 4 wk of HF feeding (HF4; low-fat fed animals used as control). Rats were then treadmill-exercised (HF5EX1, HF6EX2) or supplemented orally with the pharmacological agent β-guadinoproprionic acid (GPA; HF5GPA1, HF6GPA2) for 1 or 2 wk with continued HF feeding. Insulin and Ad responses (glucose transport and palmitate oxidation, respectively) were assessed 48 h after the last exercise bout ex vivo in isolated solei. Insulin response was impaired following 4 wk of HF feeding and improved with 1 and 2 wk of exercise and β-GPA supplementation (HF5EX1, HF6EX2, HF5GPA1, and HF6GPA2). The recovery of insulin response generally coincided with improved Akt Thr308phosphorylation in HF5GPA1, HF6EX2, and HF6GPA2, although not in HF5EX1. Ad-stimulated palmitate oxidation was not restored with either treatment. Total protein contents of AdipoR1, AdipoR2, APPL1, and APPL2, as well as total and phosphorylated AMPK and ACC were unaltered by diet, exercise, and β-GPA at the assessed time points. We conclude that the exercise and pharmacologically (β-GPA)-induced recovery of skeletal muscle insulin response after HF feeding is not dependent on the restoration of Ad response, as assessed ex vivo.
Regulation of hypoxia-inducible factor 2-a is essential for integrity of the glomerular barrier
Authors: Ding Mei , Coward Richard J. , Jeansson Marie , Kim William , Quaggin Susan E.
Published: October 2012

Deletion of the von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor ( Vhl) gene from renal podocytes of mice (pod Vhl KO) leads to rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis (RPGN), a clinical syndrome characterized by rapid loss of renal function and crescents on renal biopsy. Genomic profiling of glomeruli isolated from pod Vhl knockout (KO) mice and from patients with RPGN identified a fingerprint of genes regulated by hypoxia-inducible factors (HIF), important substrates of the product of the VHL gene. Here, we show that stabilization of Hifs in podocytes is both required and sufficient for the glomerular phenotype observed in pod Vhl KO mice. Genetic deletion of the obligate dimerization partner Arnt/ Hif1b that is essential for Hif transcriptional function rescues the phenotype. Conversely, stabilization of HIF2A alone in podocytes results in crescentic glomerular disease. Together, our results show that the Hif pathway and Hif2a in particular are key players in maintenance of the glomerular barrier.
Local Assemblies of Paired-End Reduced Representation Libraries Sequenced with the Illumina Genome Analyzer in Maize
Authors: Deschamps Stéphane , Nannapaneni Kishore , Zhang Yun , Hayes Kevin
Published: October 2012

The use of next-generation DNA sequencing technologies has greatly facilitated reference-guided variant detection in complex plant genomes. However, complications may arise when regions adjacent to a read of interest are used for marker assay development, or when reference sequences are incomplete, as short reads alone may not be long enough to ascertain their uniqueness. Here, the possibility of generating longer sequences in discrete regions of the large and complex genome of maize is demonstrated, using a modified version of a paired-end RAD library construction strategy. Reads are generated from DNA fragments first digested with a methylation-sensitive restriction endonuclease, sheared, enriched with biotin and a selective PCR amplification step, and then sequenced at both ends. Sequences are locally assembled into contigs by subgrouping pairs based on the identity of the read anchored by the restriction site. This strategy applied to two maize inbred lines (B14 and B73) generated 183,609 and 129,018 contigs, respectively, out of which at least 76% were >200 bps in length. A subset of putative single nucleotide polymorphisms from contigs aligning to the B73 reference genome with at least one mismatch was resequenced, and 90% of those in B14 were confirmed, indicating that this method is a potent approach for variant detection and marker development in species with complex genomes or lacking extensive reference sequences.
Primary Clear Cell Chondrosarcoma of the Spine: A Case Report of a Rare Entity and a Review of the Literature
Authors: Paidakakos Nikolaos A. , Rovlias Aristides , Rokas Evaggelos , Theodoropoulos Spyridon , Katafygiotis Patroklos
Published: October 2012

Chondrosarcoma is the third most common primary malignant bone tumor after osteosarcoma and Ewing’s sarcoma. Clear cell chondrosarcoma is a rare subtype variant of chondrosarcoma, most commonly encountered in the proximal part of the femur or humerus. Vertebral involvement is exceedingly rare and shows a predilection for the thoracic spine. We report the case of a woman with clear cell chondrosarcoma of the thoracic spine, which has been surgically excised, and review the pertinent literature (PubMed). Although it has a reasonably benign biological behavior, clear cell chondrosarcoma needs to be treated as a malignancy. The best treatment for spinal chondrosarcoma is surgery. It should be promptly and adequately resected. Gross-total resection should be the ultimate surgical goal. Radiation therapy should also be considered, especially in the case of subtotal resection or inoperable lesions. In conclusion, it is important to keep in mind this entity in the differential diagnosis of spinal tumors, in order to optimize treatment planning. With adequate treatment, local recurrence rates as low as 20% can be achieved.
Superficial Siderosis and Anticoagulation Therapy: Different Presentations, Different Outcomes
Authors: Barreto Rui Duarte , Ruano Luís , Cruz Vítor Tedim , Veira Carlos , Coutinho Paula
Published: October 2012

Superficial siderosis is a potentially manageable neurodegenerative disorder, caused by chronic subarachnoid haemorrhage and iron deposition along the central nervous system surfaces. Association with oral anticoagulant therapy is well known, but its definite role as a causative agent is yet to be clarified. Two Caucasian women, both under long-term oral anticoagulation: a 74 year old woman with slowly progressive hearing loss and mild cerebellar ataxia; a 72 year old woman suffering from behavioural changes, rapidly progressive cognitive decline and latter developing paraparesis. Magnetic resonance imaging showed striking hypointensities along the surfaces of cerebellum, brainstem, frontotemporal cortices, spinal cord, and lumbar arachnoid therefore suggesting superficial siderosis. No specific bleeding source was found in any of the patients. Anticoagulation could not be stopped in the first patient due to a mechanic valve and slowly progressive worsening occurred. In contrast, for the second patient anticoagulation withdrawal was feasible and marked motor and cognitive improvement ensued. Superficial siderosis is associated with unvarying progression, mostly when no direct source of bleeding is identified. Nonetheless, we verified striking motor and cognitive improvement after anticoagulants withdrawal in one of the patients. This may reinforce the need to consider such modifiable factor in future patient management.
Regulatory T Cells Move in When Gliomas Say “I DO”
Authors: Choi Bryan D. , Fecci Peter E. , Sampson John H.
Published: October 2012

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is an enzyme with known immunosuppressive and tolerogenic effects in cancer. Mounting evidence has associated IDO expression with the induction of regulatory T cells (Treg) and malignant progression. IDO inhibition may therefore provide a promising therapeutic approach for glioblastoma, where the need for novel treatment is great. Clin Cancer Res; 18(22); 6086–8. ©2012 AACR.
Real-time Pathology to Guide Breast Surgery: Seeing Alone Is Not Believing
Authors: Bigio Irving J.
Published: October 2012

Tissue diagnostic techniques based on optical spectroscopy, in various incarnations, are approaching clinical reality for intraoperative guidance of surgical procedures. Examination of tissue properties by elastic light-scattering spectroscopy may constitute a preferable alternative to frozen-section pathology or touch imprint cytology for intraoperative assessment of resection margins during breast-conserving surgery. Clin Cancer Res; 18(22); 6083–5. ©2012 AACR.
A Phase III Skin Cancer Chemoprevention Study of DFMO: Long-term Follow-up of Skin Cancer Events and Toxicity
Authors: Kreul Sarah M. , Havighurst Tom , Kim KyungMann , Mendonça Eneida A. , Wood Gary S. , Snow Stephen , Borich Abbey , Verma Ajit , Bailey Howard H.
Published: October 2012

Decreasing the incidence of nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is of great importance in regards to future healthcare services. Given the previously reported preventive effects of α-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO) in skin and colon cancer trials, we determined appropriate cause to update the clinical data on the subjects from the recently reported randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III skin cancer prevention study of DFMO. Our intention was to retrospectively assess the further incidence of skin cancer, other malignancies, and adverse events of patients accrued to our phase III skin cancer prevention study of DFMO. Clinical records of 209 University of Wisconsin (UW) Health subjects were reviewed, and 2,092.7 person years of on study (884.3 person years) and poststudy (1,208.4 person years) follow-up for these patients were assessed for new NMSC events and recurrence rates from the on study period, the poststudy period, and the two study periods combined. No evidence of increased significant diagnoses or serious adverse events was observed in the DFMO participants. The initially observed, marginally significant reduction (P = 0.069) in NMSC rates for DFMO subjects relative to placebo continued without evidence of rebound. Event rates after discontinuation from study for total NMSCs (DFMO 0.236 NMSC/person/year, placebo 0.297, P = 0.48) or the subtypes of basal cell carcinomas (BCC; DFMO 0.179 BCC/person/year, placebo 0.190, P = 0.77) and squamous cell carcinomas (SCC; DFMO 0.057 SCC/person/year, placebo 0.107, P = 0.43) are listed. Follow-up data revealed a persistent but insignificant reduction in new NMSCs occurring in DFMO subjects without evidence of latent or cumulative toxicity relative to placebo subjects. Cancer Prev Res; 5(12); 1368–74. ©2012 AACR.
Prognostic Impact of Hyperglycemia in Nondiabetic and Diabetic Patients With ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction
Authors: Eitel Ingo , Hintze Stefan , Waha Suzanne de , Fuernau Georg , Lurz Philipp , Desch Steffen , Schuler Gerhard , Thiele Holger
Published: October 2012

Background—

Hyperglycemia on admission is associated with increased mortality rates in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). However, data regarding the relationship between hyperglycemia and myocardial damage in STEMI are scarce. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship of diabetes mellitus status and hyperglycemia on myocardial damage assessed by cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging and to evaluate the long-term prognostic significance of hyperglycemia in a high-risk STEMI population.

Methods and Results—

Glucose levels were determined on admission in 411 consecutive STEMI patients reperfused by primary angioplasty. Patients were categorized on the basis of diabetes mellitus status and admission glucose level. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed for assessment of infarct size and microvascular obstruction. The primary clinical end point was the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events at long-term follow-up. STEMI patients with pre-existing diabetes mellitus were at greater risk for major adverse cardiovascular events (32% versus 11%;
P
<0.001) despite having similar infarct sizes and extent of reperfusion injury than nondiabetic patients. Glycemic status on admission was associated with greater myocardial damage and an increased risk for major adverse cardiovascular events (
P
<0.001). In nondiabetic patients, the risk of severe myocardial injury started to rise once admission glucose exceeded 7.8 mmol/L, whereas the threshold was higher among patients with diabetes mellitus (≥11.1 mmol/L).

Conclusions—

The higher mortality rate in diabetic versus nondiabetic STEMI patients is not explained by more pronounced myocardial damage. Hyperglycemia on admission is associated with greater myocardial injury and an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events at long-term follow-up. However, hyperglycemia has a stronger relationship to myocardial injury in nondiabetic compared with diabetic patients.
Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement for Degenerative Bioprosthetic Surgical Valves
Authors: Dvir Danny , Webb John , Brecker Stephen , Bleiziffer Sabine , Hildick-Smith David , Colombo Antonio , Descoutures Fleur , Hengstenberg Christian , Moat Neil E. , Bekeredjian Raffi , Napodano Massimo , Testa Luca , Lefevre Thierry , Guetta Victor , Nissen Henrik , Hernández José-María , Roy David , Teles Rui C. , Segev Amit , Dumonteil Nicolas , Fiorina Claudia , Gotzmann Michael , Tchetche Didier , Abdel-Wahab Mohamed , De Marco Federico , Baumbach Andreas , Laborde Jean-Claude , Kornowski Ran
Published: October 2012

Background—

Transcatheter aortic valve-in-valve implantation is an emerging therapeutic alternative for patients with a failed surgical bioprosthesis and may obviate the need for reoperation. We evaluated the clinical results of this technique using a large, worldwide registry.

Methods and Results—

The Global Valve-in-Valve Registry included 202 patients with degenerated bioprosthetic valves (aged 77.7±10.4 years; 52.5% men) from 38 cardiac centers. Bioprosthesis mode of failure was stenosis (n=85; 42%), regurgitation (n=68; 34%), or combined stenosis and regurgitation (n=49; 24%). Implanted devices included CoreValve (n=124) and Edwards SAPIEN (n=78). Procedural success was achieved in 93.1% of cases. Adverse procedural outcomes included initial device malposition in 15.3% of cases and ostial coronary obstruction in 3.5%. After the procedure, valve maximum/mean gradients were 28.4±14.1/15.9±8.6 mm Hg, and 95% of patients had ≤+1 degree of aortic regurgitation. At 30-day follow-up, all-cause mortality was 8.4%, and 84.1% of patients were at New York Heart Association functional class I/II. One-year follow-up was obtained in 87 patients, with 85.8% survival of treated patients.

Conclusions—

The valve-in-valve procedure is clinically effective in the vast majority of patients with degenerated bioprosthetic valves. Safety and efficacy concerns include device malposition, ostial coronary obstruction, and high gradients after the procedure.
Resource Extraction Contracts Under Threat of Expropriation: Theory and Evidence
Authors: Stroebel Johannes , van Benthem Arthur
Published: October 2012

We use fiscal data on 2,468 oil extraction agreements in 38 countries to study tax contracts between resource-rich countries and independent oil companies. We analyze why expropriations occur and what determines the degree of oil price exposure of host countries. With asymmetric information about a country's expropriation cost, even optimal contracts feature expropriations. Near linearity in the oil price of real-world hydrocarbon contracts also helps to explain expropriations. We show theoretically and verify empirically that oil price insurance provided by tax contracts is increasing in a country's cost of expropriation and decreasing in its production expertise. The timing of actual expropriations is consistent with our model.
Temporal and Spatial Aspects of Velocity Variance in the Urban Surface Roughness Layer
Authors: Hicks Bruce B. , Novakovskaia Elena , Dobosy Ronald J. , Pendergrass William R. , Callahan William J.
Published: October 2012

Data from six urban areas in a nationwide network of sites within the surface roughness layer are examined. It is found that the average velocity variances in time, derived by averaging the conventional variances from a network of n stations, are nearly equal to the velocity variances in space, derived as the variances among the n average velocities. This similarity is modified during sunlit hours, when convection appears to elevate the former. The data show little dependence of the ratio of these two variances on wind speed. It is concluded that the average state of the surface roughness layer in urban and suburban areas like those considered here tends toward an approximate equality of these two measures of variance, much as has been observed elsewhere for the case of forests.
The Properties and Formation of Cirrus Clouds over the Tibetan Plateau Based on Summertime Lidar Measurements
Authors: He Q. S. , Li C. C. , Ma J. Z. , Wang H. Q. , Shi G. M. , Liang Z. R. , Luan Q. , Geng F. H. , Zhou X. W.
Published: October 2012

As part of the Tibet Ozone, Aerosol and Radiation (TOAR) project, a micropulse lidar was operated in Naqu (31.5°N, 92.1°E; 4508 m MSL) on the Tibetan Plateau to observe cirrus clouds continuously from 19 July to 26 August 2011. During the experiment, the time coverage of ice clouds only was 15% in the upper troposphere (above 9.5 km MSL). The cirrus top/bottom altitudes (mean values of 15.6/14.7 km) are comparable to those measured previously at tropical sites but relatively higher than those measured at midlatitude sites. The majority of the cloud layers yielded a lidar ratio between 10 and 40 sr, with a mean value of 28 ± 15 sr, characterized by a bimodal frequency distribution. Subvisible, thin, and opaque cirrus formation was observed in 16%, 34%, and 50% of all cirrus cases, respectively. A mean cirrus optical depth of 0.33 was observed over the Tibetan Plateau, slightly higher than those in the subtropics and tropics. With decreasing temperature, the lidar ratio increased slightly, whereas the mean extinction coefficient decreased significantly. The occurrence of clouds is highly correlated with the outgoing longwave radiation and the strong cold perturbations in the upper troposphere. Deep convective activity and Rossby waves are important dynamical processes that control cirrus variations over the Tibetan Plateau, where both anvil cirrus outflowing from convective cumulonimbus clouds and large-scale strong cold perturbations in the upper troposphere should play an important role in cirrus formation.
Impact of Enthalpy-Based Ensemble Filtering Sea Ice Data Assimilation on Decadal Predictions: Simulation with a Conceptual Pycnocline Prediction Model
Authors: Zhang S. , Winton M. , Rosati A. , Delworth T. , Huang B.
Published: October 2012

The non-Gaussian probability distribution of sea ice concentration makes it difficult to directly assimilate sea ice observations into a climate model. Because of the strong impact of the atmospheric and oceanic forcing on the sea ice state, any direct assimilation adjustment on sea ice states is easily overridden by model physics. A new approach implements sea ice data assimilation in enthalpy space where a sea ice model represents a nonlinear function that transforms a positive-definite space into the sea ice concentration subspace. Results from observation–assimilation experiments using a conceptual pycnocline prediction model that characterizes the influences of sea ice on the decadal variability of the climate system show that the new scheme efficiently assimilates “sea ice observations” into the model: while improving sea ice variability itself, it consistently improves the estimates of all “climate” components. The resulted coupled initialization that is physically consistent among all coupled components significantly improves decadal-scale predictability of the coupled model.
GFDL’s ESM2 Global Coupled Climate–Carbon Earth System Models. Part II: Carbon System Formulation and Baseline Simulation Characteristics*
Authors: Dunne John P. , John Jasmin G. , Shevliakova Elena , Stouffer Ronald J. , Krasting John P. , Malyshev Sergey L. , Milly P. C. D. , Sentman Lori T. , Adcroft Alistair J. , Cooke William , Dunne Krista A. , Griffies Stephen M. , Hallberg Robert W. , Harrison Matthew J. , Levy Hiram , Wittenberg Andrew T. , Phillips Peter J. , Zadeh Niki
Published: October 2012

The authors describe carbon system formulation and simulation characteristics of two new global coupled carbon–climate Earth System Models (ESM), ESM2M and ESM2G. These models demonstrate good climate fidelity as described in part I of this study while incorporating explicit and consistent carbon dynamics. The two models differ almost exclusively in the physical ocean component; ESM2M uses the Modular Ocean Model version 4.1 with vertical pressure layers, whereas ESM2G uses generalized ocean layer dynamics with a bulk mixed layer and interior isopycnal layers. On land, both ESMs include a revised land model to simulate competitive vegetation distributions and functioning, including carbon cycling among vegetation, soil, and atmosphere. In the ocean, both models include new biogeochemical algorithms including phytoplankton functional group dynamics with flexible stoichiometry. Preindustrial simulations are spun up to give stable, realistic carbon cycle means and variability. Significant differences in simulation characteristics of these two models are described. Because of differences in oceanic ventilation rates, ESM2M has a stronger biological carbon pump but weaker northward implied atmospheric CO2 transport than ESM2G. The major advantages of ESM2G over ESM2M are improved representation of surface chlorophyll in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and thermocline nutrients and oxygen in the North Pacific. Improved tree mortality parameters in ESM2G produced more realistic carbon accumulation in vegetation pools. The major advantages of ESM2M over ESM2G are reduced nutrient and oxygen biases in the southern and tropical oceans.
The Coronation of the Christ: Mark’s Characterization of the Christ in light of 14:1-11
Authors: Park Rohun
Published: October 2012

Mark 14:1-11 reveals a Markan subversive Christology, manifested through the anointing of the Christ by an anonymous woman and emphasized through the theme of discipleship. Within Mark’s narrative, Jesus is surely Christ, the Christ of suffering and death. The implied reader receives a hint that the unnamed woman assumes the role of prophet and anoints Jesus as the Messiah in death. The author of Mark interprets the unnamed woman’s action in the direction of a suffering and dying Messiah as a means of conveying his messianic Christology. Without this anointing passage, so rich and full, the Gospel of Mark would be deprived of a very important theological keystone.
Evaluation of telephone health coaching of German health insurants with chronic conditions
Authors: Härter Martin , Dwinger Sarah , Seebauer Laura , Simon Daniela , Herbarth Lutz , Siegmund-Schultze Elisabeth , Temmert Daniel , Bermejo Isaac , Dirmaier Jörg
Published: October 2012

Objective:

This study aimed to investigate how patients with chronic conditions evaluate telephone health coaching provided by their health insurance company.

Methods:

A retrospective survey was conducted among coaching participants ( n=834). Outcomes included the general evaluation of the coaching, the evaluation of process and effects and the impact on patient-physician communication.

Results:

Participants’ average age was 66.2 years and the majority were women (58.3%). The majority (78.3%) of the insured persons were satisfied with the coaching and 82.3% would recommend it to others. More than half of the participants (53.3%) had learned about new options to influence their health condition. Sub-group differences in the evaluation of the health coaching were found for age, gender and medical condition.

Conclusion:

Health coaching might be useful in supporting patients with chronic conditions. While the results indicate a general positive appraisal, a possibility for improvement could be a stronger focus on the individual situation and the imparting of specific skills. Target groups might be selected in a specified manner for the coaching, as older participants in need of specific care seem to benefit less from the approach. Longitudinal and controlled studies are needed to investigate clinical effects of health coaching.
Acoustic emission assisted fracture zone analysis of cellulose fibre materials
Authors: Isaksson P , Hägglund R
Published: October 2012

An acoustic emission technique is used to quantify and position microfracture events ahead of a growing opening mode crack in paper materials containing different amounts of added starch. A mechanical model based on gradient-enhanced elasticity, containing an intrinsic length parameter reflecting the fibre-based materials microstructure, is applied to analyse the results. It is found in experiments that the addition of starch increases the tensile strength of paper significantly while the level of onset of microfracture nucleation at the crack-tip is only slightly increased. It is also found that the height of the process zone (zone in which microfractures ahead of the crack predominantly take place), measured from the crack plane, decreases with increasing amount of starch. The experimental and analytical results suggest that adding cationic starch to paper reduces the material’s sensitivity to gradients in the stress and strain fields and making the fibre network material more ‘continuum-like’. The experimental observations are shown to be qualitatively in agreement with the numerical results and lend confidence to the applied model.
Prospects to separately estimate temperature and duration of a thermal pre-load on a polymer matrix composite
Authors: Eibl Sebastian , Wolfrum Johannes
Published: October 2012

This work provides techniques to separately determine temperature and duration of a thermal pre-load on a polymer matrix composite with a focus on long-term load (max. 400 days) without massive polymer degradation. The aim is a non-destructive, rapid, robust and precise in-service method to characterize incipient heat damage. A commercially available composite 8552/IM7 is investigated. Infrared spectroscopy of the surface and bulk material traces thermal degradation of the polymer. A multivariate (chemometric) data analysis was performed. The reliability of the calculated values for time (±19 d) and temperature (± 12℃) is increased by including other parameters with various degradation velocities such as mass loss of the composite and color changes and binder degradation of a typical top coat. The residual strength of a composite with unknown thermal history can be predicted and thermal loads such as heating in an oven and hot air are compared.
Twentieth Century Flick: Business History in the Age of Extremes
Authors: Priemel Kim Christian
Published: October 2012

Business history has long prospered in its institutional niche while remaining on the outer rim of contemporary history. The recent boom in German business history, though, has shown that the insights gained from economic and business studies add significantly to our knowledge of twentieth century history. Beyond National Socialism, which has attracted the lion’s share of both attention and funding, the analysis of corporate protagonists sheds light on the complex interplay of state–business relations and the institutional continuities of Western economies. Case studies – among which the Flick Concern stands out as a cornerstone of recent research in business history – qualify the broad assumptions of the varieties-of-capitalism debate and suggest that familiar periodizations such as the Short Twentieth Century might need reconsideration.
Activating the ‘Apparatchik’: Brigade Deployment in the SED Central Committee and Performative Communist Party Rule
Authors: Bergien Rüdiger
Published: October 2012

The Communist ruling parties of East Central and Eastern Europe in the post-1956 era developed ‘softer’ methods of staying in power, both vis-a-vis the societies they ruled as well as within the Party itself, methods which proved more effective than ‘purges’ and ‘party discipline’. This article investigates these methods, taking the East German ‘Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands’ (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) or SED as a case study and focusing on one specific control procedure in particular: the ‘brigade deployments’ of the Central Committee apparatus of the SED, that is ‘on the job inspections’ of subordinate party organs. A systematic analysis of Central Committee brigade deployments shows that, rather than serving to punish these organs, the inspections were primarily a means of consensus creation in which brigade members effectively used staged performances and a ‘language of intimacy’ to keep their comrades ‘in line’. Though ultimately still a form of repression, this ‘performative’ style of party rule was much more subtle than the common conception of monolithic power machines would suggest.
Britain and the Decline of the International Control of Small Arms in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Ball Simon
Published: October 2012

The article examines the peak and decline in interest in international small arms control during the trans-First World War period. It traces this process from the 1908 Brussels Conference, through the 1919 St-Germain Convention to the 1925 Geneva Convention, with the coda of the 1935 Royal Commission on the Manufacture of and Trade in Armaments. The research identifies the pivotal role of the 1917 Islington Committee. The article argues that realist and idealist small arms controllers have fundamentally different objectives: practical small arms control has tended to be a realist concern, whereas small arms campaigns are, for idealists, a lever to achieve wider goals. The history of small arms control provides a point of entry into understanding the cycles of international politics. The renaissance of interest in small arms control, the article suggests, is the mirror image of the decline in emphasis during the twentieth century.