bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Research Productivity of Sports Medicine Fellowship Faculty
Authors: Cvetanovich Gregory L. , Saltzman Bryan M. , Chalmers Peter N. , Frank Rachel M. , Cole Brian J. , Bach Bernard R.
Published: January 2017

Background:

Research productivity is considered an important factor in academic advancement in sports medicine. No study to date has evaluated academic productivity and correlates of academic rank for sports medicine fellowship faculty.

Purpose:

To describe the academic productivity of American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) fellowship program faculty and to determine the association between academic productivity, fellowship characteristics, and academic rank.

Study Design:

Descriptive epidemiology study.

Methods:

Characteristics of orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship programs were obtained from the AOSSM and program websites. Metrics of academic productivity (Hirsch index [ h index], I-10 index, publications, citations, and number of publications in several journals) were obtained from Scopus. Statistical analyses were conducted to determine whether academic productivity differs with fellowship attributes and academic rank.

Results:

A total of 90 AOSSM sports medicine fellowship programs with 610 associated faculty members were identified. Faculty were predominantly male (94%), at academic medical centers (74%), members of AOSSM (71%), and sports medicine–fellowship trained (84%). Faculty had a median of 18 (range, 0-684) publications overall, including a median of 3 (range, 0-161) publications since 2012. All measures of academic productivity were significantly higher among faculty employed at academic medical centers compared with those not employed at academic centers ( P < .05 in all cases). On multivariate ordinal regression analysis, the best correlates of higher academic rank were higher cumulative h index (1.22; P < .001) and longer time in practice since fellowship (1.14; P < .001), which predicted 63.8% of the variance in academic rank. Fellowships with a larger number of fellows had more publications and citations per faculty member, higher faculty cumulative h index, and more publications in the American Journal of Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy per faculty member ( P < .017). Regional differences were present, with the Northeast fellowship faculty the most productive, followed by the Midwest.

Conclusion:

Higher cumulative h index and more years in practice were the best correlates of higher academic rank among AOSSM sports medicine fellowship faculty. Research productivity was higher among faculty employed at academic centers in the Northeast and Midwest regions and at programs with a larger number of fellows.
Formula Switch Leads to Enteral Feeding Tolerance Improvements in Children With Developmental Delays
Authors: Minor Gerard , Ochoa Juan B. , Storm Heidi , Periman Seletha
Published: January 2017

Background: Children with developmental delays are often dependent on enteral nutrition. The aim of our study was to evaluate improvement in tolerance parameters in these children who were switched from an intact protein formula to a 100% whey, peptide-based formula. Methods: A retrospective chart review of children with developmental delays who were failing to reach adequate nutritional goals on standard polymeric formulas were switched to a 100% whey peptide-based formula. Enteral volume goals, caloric goals, and change in medication used to improve feeding tolerance were assessed before and after formula switch. Results: Medical records of 13 children (aged 8.4 ± 4.6 years) met criteria. All children had a primary diagnosis of developmental delay, and 77% were fed via gastrostomy tube. Of the 13 children assessed, 92% experienced improved feeding tolerance, and 75% of these reported the time to improvement within 1 week after formula switch. Feeding tolerance parameters that improved were vomiting (86%), gagging and retching (75%), high residual volumes (63%), constipation (43%), diarrhea (100%), and poor weight gain (100%). Conclusion: Switching to a 100% whey, peptide-based formula improved symptoms of feeding intolerance in the majority of these developmentally delayed children.
Epileptic Seizure, Postictal Hemiparesis, and Hyperleukocytosis
Authors: Olivieri Martin , Kurnik Karin , Heinen Florian , Schmid Irene , Hoffmann Florian , Reiter Karl , Gerstl Lucia
Published: January 2017

Introduction: Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is a rare event in infancy. Besides vasculopathy, thrombophilia, or cardiac disorders, cancer and chemotherapy are known predisposing factors for AIS. Leukemia can be associated with different abnormal coagulation parameters, but severe bleeding or thrombosis occurs rarely. Clinical Course: We report the case of a 2-year-old boy who was presented to our emergency ward after a prolonged seizure with right sided postictal hemiparesis. Cranial computed tomography scan revealed a large infarction and edema due to thrombosis of the left carotid artery, the middle cerebral artery, and the anterior cerebral artery. Laboratory workup showed 196 g/L leukocytes with 75% myeloid blast cells. Immediate exchange transfusion, hydration, and chemotherapy with cytarabine were started. During the hospital course intracranial pressure increased and the patient developed a unilateral dilated pupil unresponsive to light. Cranial computed tomography scan revealed a new infarction in the right middle cerebral artery territory. Refractory increased intracranial pressure and brain stem herniation developed, and the child died 3 days after admission to hospital. Conclusion: Seizures with postictal hemiparesis due to cerebral infarction can be a rare manifestation of acute myeloid leukemia. Leukocytosis and cancer-induced coagulopathy are main reasons for thrombosis and/or hemorrhage. High leukocyte counts need immediate interventions with hydration, careful chemotherapy, and perhaps exchange transfusion or leukapharesis. In the presence of thrombosis, anticoagulation must be discussed despite the risk of bleeding due to hyperfibrinolysis and low platelet counts. Mortality may be reduced by awareness of this rare presentation of leukemia and prompt institution of leucoreductive treatment.
What Factors Affect Physicians’ Decisions to Prescribe Opioids in Emergency Departments?
Authors: Sinnenberg Lauren E. , Wanner Kathryn J. , Perrone Jeanmarie , Barg Frances K. , Rhodes Karin V. , Meisel Zachary F.
Published: January 2017

Objective: With 42% of all emergency department visits in the United States related to pain, physicians who work in this setting are tasked with providing adequate pain management to patients with varying primary complaints and medical histories. Complicating this, the United States is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. State governments and national organizations have developed guidelines and legislation to curtail opioid prescriptions in acute care settings, while also incentivizing providers for patient satisfaction and completeness of pain control. In order to inform future policies that focus on provider pain medication prescribing, we sought to characterize the factors physicians weigh when considering treating pain with opioids in the emergency department. Methods: We conducted and transcribed open-ended, semistructured qualitative interviews with 52 physicians at a national emergency medicine conference. Results: Participants reported a wide range of factors contributing to their opioid prescribing patterns related to three domains: 1) provider assessment of pain characteristics, 2) patient-based considerations, and 3) practice environment. Pain characteristics include the characteristics of various acute and chronic pain syndromes, including physicians’ empathy due to their own experiences with pain. Patient characteristics include “trustworthiness,” race and ethnicity, and the concern for risk of misuse. Factors related to the practice environment include hospital policy, legislation/regulation, and guidelines. Conclusion: The decision to prescribe opioids to patients in the emergency department is complex and nuanced. Physicians are interested in guidance and are concerned about the competing pressures placed on their opioid prescribing due to incentives related to patient satisfaction scores on one hand and inflexible policies that do not allow for individualized, patient-centered decisions on the other.
Management of adults with T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia
Authors: Marks David I. , Rowntree Clare
Published: January 2017

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a rare disease in adults with inferior survival outcomes compared with those seen in pediatric patients. Although potentially curable with ∼50% survival at 5 years, adult patients with relapsed disease have dismal outcomes with <10% of patients surviving long term. This review will discuss the diagnosis and management of adult patients with newly diagnosed T-cell ALL with an emphasis on the immunophenotypic and genetic analyses required to assign prognosis, risk stratify, and guide post-remission therapy. The evidence for the main components of complex T-cell ALL treatment regimens is described. The importance of monitoring minimal residual disease is emphasized, with a discussion of the different methods used. The results of hematopoietic cell transplantation are analyzed, and recommendations made about which patients should be considered for this intervention. The treatment of the adolescent and young adult group is delineated, and the role of using “pediatric-inspired” regimens in older adults considered. We also describe the current data and potential future options for the use of novel therapies, including nelarabine and γ-secretase inhibitors, in adult patients with T-cell ALL.
On-site monitoring of the performance of innovative treatments for marble conservation in architectural heritage
Authors: Gherardi Francesca , Gulotta Davide , Goidanich Sara , Colombo Annalisa , Toniolo Lucia
Published: January 2017

Innovative nanostructured treatments for stone conservation, based on dispersions of photoactive TiO2 nanoparticles, recently studied in our research group, provided interesting results after laboratory testing. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to accurately reproduce in the lab the complexity of field exposure conditions. It is then of crucial importance to evaluate the behaviour and durability of new treatments in situ, once they are applied to real deteriorated surfaces of the architectural heritage exposed in outdoor. In the present research, the effectiveness of a TEOS-nano-TiO2 treatment and of two nanocomposites based on nano-TiO2 dispersion in organosiloxane and functionalized SiO2 for the protection of two specific marbles—Candoglia and Crevoladossola—has been evaluated on-site. The effect of the introduction of innovative titania nanoparticles in selected commercial products has been examined focusing on compatibility and protection efficacy in real exposure condition. An on-site testing protocol has been defined and carried out for 12 months after the application, considering colour and morphology changes and water absorption by capillarity. The nano-TiO2 addition does not hinder the performance of the protective treatments while it provides a positive contribution in soiling reduction. The results will be implemented in the operative framework of the ongoing conservation project of the considered historical façade.
An assessment of moisture induced damage in Blickling Hall in Norfolk, England, via environmental monitoring
Authors: Aktas Yasemin Didem , D’Ayala Dina , Blades Nigel , Calnan Christopher
Published: January 2017

In the last few decades, extreme weather events mostly characterized by more intense and frequent precipitation and wind incidents have risen, and current climatic projections strongly suggest that this trend will keep its pace in the future. These climatic conditions pose additional hygrothermal loading onto the built environment, which may lead to moisture induced deterioration and even strength reduction in masonry. Despite their already long service lives, this impact may in time become problematic for historic buildings, which, by nature of their design and construction, interact with moisture and climate to a far greater degree than modern buildings. The PARNASSUS project was set up with the aim of identifying and quantifying the impact of environment on historic buildings in the face of a changing climate. As part of this project, an extensive environmental monitoring campaign was carried out between 2012 and 2014 at Blicking Hall, a National Trust property in Norfolk, England, with the aim of providing further insight into the building’s overall performance under hygrothermal loading. Environmental monitoring work targeted not only indoor and outdoor conditions, but provided information about the temperature and relative humidity profiles across the walls by means of in-wall probes. Wind and rain gauges helped quantify other environmental parameters. This paper presents the findings from this environmental monitoring work, with specific emphasis on the basement suffering from sustained saturation in vapour phase and resulting biological growth, as well as the Long Gallery, where Blickling’s valuable library is kept.
Inversion of the shear velocity of the cement in cased borehole through ultrasonic flexural waves
Authors: Xu Feilong , Hu Hengshan
Published: January 2017

Young’s elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio of the cement in a cased borehole are important in the prediction of the cement sheath integrity under hydraulic fracturing. Although these mechanical properties can be derived in principle from the bulk velocities, the inversion of these velocities of the cement from the received full waveforms remains a challenging problem, especially the S-wave velocity. We have developed an inversion method based on the round-trip traveltimes of the leaked flexural waves (TTL) to invert the bulk velocities of the medium behind the casing. The traveltime difference between the casing wave and the delayed casing wave is the additional time for the leaked wave to travel in the interlayer to the formation and back to the casing. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this method, synthetic full waveforms with a changing interlayer are calculated when an ultrasonic acoustic beam is incident obliquely on the casing. The traveltimes of the wave packets are picked from the envelope curve of the full waveform and then used to invert the bulk velocities in the TTL method. The inverted S-wave velocity of cement is quite accurate with an error rate smaller than 3%, no matter whether the cement is of the ordinary, heavy, or light type. When the interlayer is mud, the P-wave is inverted with an error rate of less than 2%. The P-wave velocity is inverted roughly with an error rate of approximately 10% when the medium behind the casing is light cement.
Detecting gas leakage using high-frequency signals generated by air-gun arrays
Authors: Landrø Martin , Hansteen Fredrik , Amundsen Lasse
Published: January 2017

Recent field experiments have demonstrated that marine air-gun arrays create acoustic energy greater than 1 kHz. We have suggested to use the high-frequency signal as a source to look for gas leakage at, for instance, a producing hydrocarbon field, or a [Formula: see text] storage site in which the field is covered by permanent acoustic sensors at the seabed, often referred to as a permanent reservoir monitoring field. The only needed modification is that the temporal sampling interval for the receivers is decreased to 0.1 ms (in contrast to the normal sampling interval of 1 or 2 ms), to ensure that the system is capable of recording signals up to 5 kHz. We suggest using numerous fixed receivers at the seabed to detect a gas chimney by simple high-pass filtering and subsequent transmission type analysis of the recorded signals. We think this method might serve as an elegant, precise, and very cost-effective way to detect gas leakage into the water layer.
Vinculin promotes nuclear localization of TAZ to inhibit ECM stiffness-dependent differentiation into adipocytes
Authors: Kuroda Mito , Wada Hiroki , Kimura Yasuhisa , Ueda Kazumitsu , Kioka Noriyuki
Published: January 2017

Extracellular matrix (ECM) stiffness regulates the lineage commitment of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Although cells sense ECM stiffness through focal adhesions, how cells sense ECM stiffness and regulate ECM stiffness-dependent differentiation remains largely unclear. In this study, we show that the cytoskeletal focal adhesion protein vinculin plays a critical role in the ECM stiffness-dependent adipocyte differentiation of MSCs. ST2 mouse MSCs differentiate into adipocytes and osteoblasts in an ECM stiffness-dependent manner. We find that a rigid ECM increases the amount of cytoskeleton-associated vinculin and promotes the nuclear localization and activity of the transcriptional coactivator paralogs Yes-associated protein (YAP, also known as YAP1) and transcriptional coactivator with a PDZ-binding motif (TAZ, also known as WWTR1) (hereafter YAP/TAZ). Vinculin is necessary for enhanced nuclear localization and activity of YAP/TAZ on the rigid ECM but it does not affect the phosphorylation of the YAP/TAZ kinase LATS1. Furthermore, vinculin depletion promotes differentiation into adipocytes on rigid ECM, while it inhibits differentiation into osteoblasts. Finally, TAZ knockdown was less effective at promoting adipocyte differentiation in vinculin-depleted cells than in control cells. These results suggest that vinculin promotes the nuclear localization of transcription factor TAZ to inhibit the adipocyte differentiation on rigid ECM.
Sedentary Behavior and Cardiovascular Disease Risk: Mediating Mechanisms
Authors: Carter Sophie , Hartman Yvonne , Holder Sophie , Thijssen Dick H. , Hopkins Nicola D.
Published: January 2017

Sedentary behavior has a strong association with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, which may be independent of physical activity. To date, the mechanism(s) that mediate this relationship are poorly understood. We hypothesize that sedentary behavior modifies key hemodynamic, inflammatory, and metabolic processes resulting in impaired arterial health. Subsequently, these vascular impairments directly and indirectly contribute to the development of CVD.
Osmium tetroxide as a probe of RNA structure
Authors: Zhang Jing , Li Danbin , Zhang Jun , Chen Dongrong , Murchie Alastair I.H.
Published: January 2017

Structured RNAs have a central role in cellular function. The capability of structured RNAs to adopt fixed architectural structures or undergo dynamic conformational changes contributes to their diverse role in the regulation of gene expression. Although numerous biophysical and biochemical tools have been developed to study structured RNAs, there is a continuing need for the development of new methods for the investigation of RNA structures, especially methods that allow RNA structure to be studied in solution close to its native cellular conditions. Here we use osmium tetroxide (OsO4) as a chemical probe of RNA structure. In this method, we have used fluorescence-based sequencing technologies to detect OsO4 modified RNA. We characterized the requirements for OsO4 modification of RNA by investigating three known structured RNAs: the M-box, glycine riboswitch RNAs, and tRNAasp. Our results show that OsO4 predominantly modifies RNA at uracils that are conformationally exposed on the surface of the RNA. We also show that changes in OsO4 reactivity at flexible positions in the RNA correlate with ligand-driven conformational changes in the RNA structure. Osmium tetroxide modification of RNA will provide insights into the structural features of RNAs that are relevant to their underlying biological functions.
Disambiguate: An open-source application for disambiguating two species in next generation sequencing data from grafted samples
Authors: Ahdesmäki Miika J. , Gray Simon R. , Johnson Justin H. , Lai Zhongwu
Published: January 2017

Grafting of cell lines and primary tumours is a crucial step in the drug development process between cell line studies and clinical trials. Disambiguate is a program for computationally separating the sequencing reads of two species derived from grafted samples. Disambiguate operates on DNA or RNA-seq alignments to the two species and separates the components at very high sensitivity and specificity as illustrated in artificially mixed human-mouse samples. This allows for maximum recovery of data from target tumours for more accurate variant calling and gene expression quantification. Given that no general use open source algorithm accessible to the bioinformatics community exists for the purposes of separating the two species data, the proposed Disambiguate tool presents a novel approach and improvement to performing sequence analysis of grafted samples. Both Python and C++ implementations are available and they are integrated into several open and closed source pipelines. Disambiguate is open source and is freely available at https://github.com/AstraZeneca-NGS/disambiguate.
Factors associated with preterm delivery and low birth weight: a study from rural Maharashtra, India
Authors: Ahankari Anand , Bapat Sharda , Myles Puja , Fogarty Andrew , Tata Laila
Published: January 2017

Background:Although preterm delivery and low birth weight (LBW) have been studied in India, findings may not be generalisable to rural areas such as the Marathwada region of Maharashtra state. There is limited information available on maternal and child health indicators from this region. We aimed to present some local estimates of preterm delivery and LBW in the Osmanabad district of Marathwada and assess available maternal risk factors.

Methods: The study used routinely collected data on all in-hospital births in the maternity department of Halo Medical Foundation’s hospital from 1stJanuary 2008 to 31stDecember 2014. Multivariable logistic regression analysis provided odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for preterm delivery and LBW according to each maternal risk factor.

Results: We analysed 655 live births, of which 6.1% were preterm deliveries. Of the full term births (N=615), 13.8% were LBW (<2.5 kilograms at birth). The odds of preterm delivery were three times higher (OR=3.23, 95% CI 1.36 to 7.65) and the odds of LBW were double (OR=2.03, 95% CI 1.14 to 3.60) among women <22 years of age compared with older women. The odds of both preterm delivery and LBW were reduced in multigravida compared with primigravida women regardless of age. Anaemia (Hb<11g/dl), which was prevalent in 91% of women tested, was not significantly related to these birth outcomes.

Conclusions: The odds of preterm delivery and LBW were much higher in mothers under 22 years of age in this rural Indian population. Future studies should explore other related risk factors and the reasons for poor birth outcomes in younger mothers in this population, to inform the design of appropriate public health policies that address this issue.
Treatment guidelines for Circadian Rhythm Sleep-Wake Disorders of the Polish Sleep Research Society and the Section of Biological Psychiatry of the Polish Psychiatric Association. Part I. Physiology, assessment and therapeutic methods
Authors: Wichniak Adam , Jankowski Konrad , Skalski Michal , Skwarło-Sońta Krystyna , Zawilska Jolanta , Żarowski Marcin , Poradowska Ewa , Jernajczyk Wojciech
Published: January 2017

Cel: W organizmie człowieka większość procesów przebiega w sposób rytmiczny. Wśród rytmów biologicznych istotną grupę stanowią rytmy o okresie zbliżonym do 24 godzin czyli rytmy okołodobowe, których zaburzenia wywołują szereg negatywnych skutków w funkcjonowaniu człowieka. Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie aktualnego stanu wiedzy na temat fizjologii rytmów okołodobowych, zaburzeń rytmu okołodobowego snu i czuwania (CRSWD), zasad ich oceny oraz stosowania chronobiologicznych oddziaływań terapeutycznych.
Metoda: Zalecenia proponowane jako standard leczenia CRSWD powstały w oparciu o analizę zaleceń towarzystw naukowych, związanych z badaniami nad snem i medycyną snu oraz opinie autorów. Do udziału w przygotowaniu zaleceń zostały zaproszone przez Zarządy Polskiego Towarzystwa Badań nad Snem i Sekcji Psychiatrii Biologicznej Polskiego Towarzystwa Psychiatrycznego osoby posiadające znaczący dorobek naukowy dotyczący badań nad rytmem okołodobowym i/lub wieloletnie doświadczenie kliniczne w leczeniu jego zaburzeń. Dodatkowo na ostateczną formę opublikowanych zaleceń istotny wpływ miały uwagi nadesłane przez członków Towarzystwa i Sekcji.
Wyniki: Rytm okołodobowy snu i czuwania ma kluczowe znaczenie dla zdrowia i funkcjonowania człowieka. Podstawową formą oceny CRSWD są rejestry i dzienniki snu, zalecane jest również stosowanie aktygrafii. Dostępne są skuteczne metody leczenia CRSWD, z których najlepiej udokumentowane działanie ma stosowanie melatoniny i fototerapii. Istotne są również oddziaływania behawioralne.
Wnioski: Ocena rytmu snu i czuwania w CRSWD przez okres co najmniej 14 dni umożliwia właściwą diagnozę CRSWD, dobór odpowiednich oddziaływań chronobiologicznych oraz zaplanowanie pory ich stosowania. Przeprowadzenie takiej oceny jest stosunkowo łatwe i mało kosztowne a dostarcza cennych informacji, pozwalających zaplanować postępowanie terapeutyczne we właściwej fazie rytmu danego pacjenta.
Topical steroids and emollients in atopic eczema – which should be applied first?
Authors: Voegeli David
Published: January 2017

Atopic eczema is one of the most common skin diseases but it is still often poorly managed by patients and health professionals. David Voegli examines the latest knowledge of the topic and how it can improve treatment

Atopic eczema (AE) is one of the most common dermatological diseases, with the number of cases in the UK rising. The use of emollients to maintain skin hydration and restore barrier function remains the principal treatment, in conjunction with topical corticosteroids (TCS) to reduce inflammation. Unfortunately, many health professionals, and patients themselves, fail to consider emollients as an active treatment and may overlook the vital role they play in the maintenance of intact, healthy skin. Despite the overwhelming acceptance of the importance of emollient therapy, there remains a lack of good quality evidence on their effectiveness or whether one is better than another. Patients often receive conflicting or limited advice from health professionals as to how to use them, and if using TCS as well, which to apply first. This may result in incorrect use, reduced therapeutic effect and poor concordance. This article aims to explore normal skin barrier function, the disruption caused by AE, and some of the contemporary issues surrounding emollient therapy and topical corticosteroids.
Noise exposure at school and blood pressure in adolescents
Authors: Ihsani Fadhilah , Ramayati Rafita , Ali Muhammad , Djas Rusdi , Ramayani Oke Rina , Siregar Rosmayanti , Siregar Beatrix
Published: January 2017

Background The increasing prevalence of primary hypertension has motivated researchers to identify influencing factors, one of which is noise. There have been few studies on a relationships between noise exposure and blood pressure in children, and none have dealt exclusively with adolescents.Objective To assess for an association between noise exposure at school and blood pressure in adolescents.  Methods To identify noisy and quiet schools, the mean noise levels of 192 senior high schools in Medan were measured using sound level meters. One noisy school and one quiet school were randomly selected for inclusion (mean noise levels of  68.2 and  53.8 dB, respectively). Students from both schools underwent blood pressure measurements by mercury sphygmomanometer. Their Body weights and heights were obtained for body mass index calculations. Subjects filled questionnaires and their parents were interviewed regarding history of illnesses.Results Of the 271 adolescents recruited, 136 (50.2%) were from the noisy school. Adolescents from the noisy school had higher mean systolic and diastolic blood pressures [121.6 (SD 13.87) mmHg and 71.1 (SD 8.15) mmHg, respectively], than those from the quiet school [111.8 (SD 12.61) mmHg and 63.8 (SD 8.05) mmHg, respectively]. After adjusting for other factors, noise had a significant, moderate, positive association with systolic and diastolic blood pressures [β = 0.452; B = 6.21 (95% CI 3.86-8.55) mmHg; and β = 0.473; B = 4.18 (95% CI 2.41 to 5.94) mmHg, respectively].Conclusion Adolescents from a noisy school have a greater risk of higher systolic and diastolic blood pressures than those from a quiet school.
Transformations in the gardens and landscapes of the historical Traituba’s Farm
Authors: Garcia Cecília Souza Gontijo , Paiva Patrícia Duarte de Oliveira , Alves Schirley Fátima Nogueira da Silva Cavalcante , Salgado Mariel De Carvalho Rafael
Published: January 2017

The historic garden should be considered one that has cultural significance, being not only the squares and public gardens, but also its first manifests found in the form of orchard garden and vegetable garden in the historic farms of Brazil. Traituba’s Farm located in southern Minas Gerais, on the Royal Road route, is considered an important historical farm that emerged in the eighteenth century during the settlement process of this region. It was in the same period, that current rural landscape from southern Minas Gerais, composed of several other historic farms and the historic rural gardens began their formation process. The aim of this study was to conduct a historical and cultural rescue of the gardens and landscapes of the Traituba’s Farm. With this rescue, characterize and analyze their landscapes in their different ages, as well as identify and understand the main morphological changes of its gardens included in the architectural complex of the farm. This study focused on the period between 1725 and 2013. To trace the historical, cultural and landscape evolution, it was made researches through site visits, interviews, bibliographic and iconographic research, always following the principles of studies of historic gardens. Traituba’s Farm since its formation was always a region icon, because of its wealth, power and intense trade. Its landscapes have undergone many changes and are characterized initially as a pastoral model, then the bucolic and picturesque style, after the construction of the new farmhouse. With the decline of its activities, decades later the model that remained was the picturesque and pastoral as its origin. For a long time, its gardens were presented as orchards gardens and vegetable gardens with utilitarian characteristics, influenced by the Portuguese culture. Just in 1950s the front yard received a significant intervention and new species were planted where that the design can be seen until today. The significance of this paper is due to the historical value of the Traituba’s Farm, the magnificence of its architectural ensemble, peculiarity of gardens and landscapes, and great cultural representation in the region
Mostly-optimistic concurrency control for highly contended dynamic workloads on a thousand cores
Authors: Wang Tianzheng , Kimura Hideaki
Published: January 2017

Future servers will be equipped with thousands of CPU cores and deep memory hierarchies. Traditional concurrency control (CC) schemes---both optimistic and pessimistic---slow down orders of magnitude in such environments for highly contended workloads. Optimistic CC (OCC) scales the best for workloads with few conflicts, but suffers from clobbered reads for high conflict workloads. Although pessimistic locking can protect reads, it floods cache-coherence backbones in deep memory hierarchies and can also cause numerous deadlock aborts.

This paper proposes a new CC scheme,
mostly-optimistic concurrency control
(MOCC), to address these problems. MOCC achieves orders of magnitude higher performance for dynamic workloads on modern servers. The key objective of MOCC is to avoid clobbered reads for high conflict workloads, without any centralized mechanisms or heavyweight interthread communication. To satisfy such needs, we devise a native, cancellable reader-writer spinlock and a serializable protocol that can acquire, release and re-acquire locks in any order without expensive interthread communication. For low conflict workloads, MOCC maintains OCC's high performance without taking read locks.

Our experiments with high conflict YCSB workloads on a 288-core server reveal that MOCC performs 8× and 23× faster than OCC and pessimistic locking, respectively. It achieves 17 million TPS for TPC-C and more than 110 million TPS for YCSB without conflicts, 170× faster than pessimistic methods.
Efficient computation of feedback arc set at web-scale
Authors: Simpson Michael , Srinivasan Venkatesh , Thomo Alex
Published: January 2017

The minimum feedback arc set problem is an NP-hard problem on graphs that seeks a minimum set of arcs which, when removed from the graph, leave it acyclic. In this work, we investigate several approximations for computing a minimum feedback arc set with the goal of comparing the quality of the solutions and the running times. Our investigation is motivated by applications in Social Network Analysis such as misinformation removal and label propagation. We present careful algorithmic engineering for multiple algorithms to improve the scalability of each approach. In particular, two approaches we optimize (one greedy and one randomized) provide a nice balance between feedback arc set size and running time complexity. We experimentally compare the performance of a wide range of algorithms on a broad selection of large online networks including Twitter, LiveJournal, and the Clueweb12 dataset. The experiments reveal that our greedy and randomized implementations outperform the other approaches by simultaneously computing a feedback arc set of competitive size and scaling to web-scale graphs with billions of vertices and tens of billions of arcs. Finally, we extend the algorithms considered to the probabilistic case in which arcs are realized with some fixed probability and provide detailed experimental comparisons.
Interactive time series exploration powered by the marriage of similarity distances
Authors: Neamtu Rodica , Ahsan Ramoza , Rundensteiner Elke , Sarkozy Gabor
Published: January 2017

Finding similar trends among time series data is critical for applications ranging from financial planning to policy making. The detection of these multifaceted relationships, especially time warped matching of time series of different lengths and alignments is prohibitively expensive to compute. To achieve real time responsiveness on large time series datasets, we propose a novel paradigm called Online Exploration of Time Series (ONEX) employing a powerful one-time preprocessing step that encodes critical similarity relationships to support subsequent rapid data exploration. Since the encoding of a huge number of pairwise similarity relationships for all variable lengths time series segments is not feasible, our work rests on the important insight that clustering with inexpensive point-to-point distances such as the Euclidean Distance can support subsequent time warped matching. Our ONEX framework overcomes the prohibitive computational costs associated with a more robust elastic distance namely the DTW by applying it over the surprisingly compact knowledge base instead of the raw data. Our comparative study reveals that ONEX is up to 19% more accurate and several times faster than the state-of-the-art. Beyond being a highly accurate and fast domain independent solution, ONEX offers a truly interactive exploration experience supporting novel time series operations.
Scalable distributed subgraph enumeration
Authors: Lai Longbin , Qin Lu , Lin Xuemin , Zhang Ying , Chang Lijun , Yang Shiyu
Published: January 2017

Subgraph enumeration aims to find all the subgraphs of a large data graph that are isomorphic to a given pattern graph. As the subgraph isomorphism operation is computationally intensive, researchers have recently focused on solving this problem in distributed environments, such as MapReduce and Pregel. Among them, the state-of-the-art algorithm, Twin TwigJoin, is proven to be instance optimal based on a left-deep join framework. However, it is still not scalable to large graphs because of the constraints in the left-deep join framework and that each decomposed component (join unit) must be a star. In this paper, we propose SEED - a scalable sub-graph enumeration approach in the distributed environment. Compared to Twin TwigJoin, SEED returns optimal solution in a generalized join framework without the constraints in Twin TwigJoin. We use both star and clique as the join units, and design an effective distributed graph storage mechanism to support such an extension. We develop a comprehensive cost model, that estimates the number of matches of any given pattern graph by considering power-law degree distribution in the data graph. We then generalize the left-deep join framework and develop a dynamic-programming algorithm to compute an optimal bushy join plan. We also consider overlaps among the join units. Finally, we propose clique compression to further improve the algorithm by reducing the number of the intermediate results. Extensive performance studies are conducted on several real graphs, one containing billions of edges. The results demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms all other state-of-the-art algorithms by more than one order of magnitude.
Estimating quantiles from the union of historical and streaming data
Authors: Singh Sneha Aman , Srivastava Divesh , Tirthapura Srikanta
Published: January 2017

Modern enterprises generate huge amounts of streaming data, for example, micro-blog feeds, financial data, network monitoring and industrial application monitoring. While Data Stream Management Systems have proven successful in providing support for real-time alerting, many applications, such as network monitoring for intrusion detection and real-time bidding, require complex analytics over historical and real-time data over the data streams. We present a new method to process one of the most fundamental analytical primitives, quantile queries, on the union of historical and streaming data. Our method combines an index on historical data with a memory-efficient sketch on streaming data to answer quantile queries with accuracy-resource tradeoffs that are significantly better than current solutions that are based solely on disk-resident indexes or solely on streaming algorithms.
Approximation of Isomorphic Infinite Two-Person Non-Cooperative Games by Variously Sampling the Players’ Payoff Functions and Reshaping Payoff Matrices into Bimatrix Game
Authors: Romanuke Vadim V. , Kamburg Vladimir V.
Published: January 2017

Approximation in solving the infinite two-person non-cooperative games is studied in the paper. An approximation approach with conversion of infinite game into finite one is suggested. The conversion is fulfilled in three stages. Primarily the players’ payoff functions are sampled variously according to the stated requirements to the sampling. These functions are defined on unit hypercube of the appropriate Euclidean finite-dimensional space. The sampling step along each of hypercube dimensions is constant. At the second stage, the players’ payoff multidimensional matrices are reshaped into ordinary two-dimensional matrices, using the reversible index-to-index reshaping. Thus, a bimatrix game as an initial infinite game approximation is obtained. At the third stage of the conversion, the player’s finite equilibrium strategy support is checked out for its weak consistency, defined by five types of inequalities within minimal neighbourhood of every specified sampling step. If necessary, the weakly consistent solution of the bimatrix game is checked out for its consistency, strengthened in that the cardinality of every player’s equilibrium strategy support and their densities shall be non-decreasing within minimal neighbourhood of the sampling steps. Eventually, the consistent solution certifies the game approximation acceptability, letting solve even games without any equilibrium situations, including isomorphic ones to the unit hypercube game. A case of the consistency light check is stated for the completely mixed Nash equilibrium situation.
Selecting Proper Plant Species for Mine Reclamation Using Fuzzy AHP Approach (Case Study: Chadormaloo Iron Mine of Iran)
Authors: Ebrahimabadi Arash
Published: January 2017

This paper describes an effective approach to select suitable plant species for reclamation of mined lands in Chadormaloo iron mine which is located in central part of Iran, near the city of Bafgh in Yazd province. After mine’s total reserves are excavated, the mine requires to be permanently closed and reclaimed. Mine reclamation and post-mining land-use are the main issues in the phase of mine closure. In general, among various scenarios for mine reclamation process, i.e. planting, agriculture, forestry, residency, tourist attraction, etc., planting is the oldest and commonly-used technology for the reclamation of lands damaged by mining activities. Planting and vegetation play a major role in restoring productivity, ecosystem stability and biological diversity to degraded areas, therefore the main goal of this research work is to choose proper and suitable plants compatible with the conditions of Chadormaloo mined area, providing consistent conditions for future use. To ensure the sustainability of the reclaimed landscape, the most suitable plant species adapted to the mine conditions are selected. Plant species selection is a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem. In this paper, a fuzzy MCDM technique, namely Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is developed to assist chadormaloo iron mine managers and designers in the process of plant type selection for reclamation of the mine under fuzzy environment where the vagueness and uncertainty are taken into account with linguistic variables parameterized by triangular fuzzy numbers. The results achieved from using FAHP approach demonstrate that the most proper plant species are ranked as Artemisia sieberi, Salsola yazdiana, Halophytes types, and Zygophyllum, respectively for reclamation of Chadormaloo iron mine.
Explosion Testing of a Polycarbonate Safe Haven Wall
Authors: Perry Kyle A. , Meyr Rex A.
Published: January 2017

The MINER Act of 2006 was enacted by MSHA following the major mining accidents and required every underground coal mine to install refuge areas to help prevent future fatalities of trapped miners in the event of a disaster where the miners cannot escape. A polycarbonate safe haven wall for use in underground coal mines as component of a complete system was designed and modeled using finite element modeling in ANSYS Explicit Dynamics to withstand the MSHA required 15 psi (103.4 kPa) blast loading spanning 200 milliseconds. The successful design was constructed at a uniform height in both half-width scale and quarter-width scale in the University of Kentucky Explosives Research Team’s (UKERT) explosives driven shock tube for verification of the models. The constructed polycarbonate walls were tested multiple times to determine the walls resistance to pressures generated by an explosion. The results for each test were analyzed and averaged to create one pressure versus time waveform which was then imported into ANSYS Explicit Dynamics and modeled to compare results to that which was measured during testing for model validation. This paper summarizes the results.
Development of ZL400 Mine Cooling Unit Using Semi-Hermetic Screw Compressor and Its Application on Local Air Conditioning in Underground Long-Wall Face
Authors: Chu Zhaoxiang , Ji Jianhu , Zhang Xijun , Yan Hongyuan , Dong Haomin , Liu Junjie
Published: January 2017

Aiming at heat injuries occurring in the process of deep coal mining in China, a ZL400 mine-cooling unit employing semi-hermetic screw compressor with a cooling capacity of 400 kW is developed. This paper introduced its operating principle, structural characteristics and technical indexes. By using the self-built testing platform, some parameters for indication of its operation conditions were tested on the ground. The results show that the aforementioned cooling unit is stable in operation: cooling capacity of the unit was 420 kW underground-test conditions, while its COP (coefficient of performance) reached 3.4. To address the issue of heat injuries existing in No. 16305 U-shaped long-wall ventilation face of Jining No. 3 coal mine, a local air conditioning system was developed with ZL400 cooling unit as the system’s core. The paper presented an analysis of characteristics of the air current flowing in the air-mixing and cooling mode of ZL400 cooling unit used in air intake way. Through i-d patterns we described the process of the airflow treatment, such as cooling, mixing and heating, etc. The cooling system decreased dry bulb temperature on working face by 3°C on average and 3.8°C at most, while lowered the web bulb temperature by 3.6°C on average and 4.8°C at most. At the same time, it reduced relative humidity by 5% on average and 8.6% at most. The field application of the ZL400 cooling unit had gain certain effects in air conditioning and provided support for the solution of mine heat injuries in China in terms of technology and equipment.
Young learners’ portrayals of ‘good English teacher’ identities in South Korea
Authors: Ahn So-Yeon , West Gordon Blaine
Published: January 2017

In the climate of shifting language policies and constant influx of native English-speaking teachers to South Korea, the question of what constitutes a “good” language teacher (GLT) arises. To this end, the present study examines how 577 young English learners (K-6th grade) come to demonstrate their understanding of GLT by making use of visual images and written narratives. A social semiotic, multimodal approach to analysis is employed to scrutinize how these textual and visual narratives construct and/or presuppose a certain image of teacher identity and, as a result, display societal ideologies (Jewitt 2009). The findings yield two dimensions with regard to the objects associated with GLTs, an emotional/abstract dimension and a teaching-related dimension, and the differing use of these objects in relation to teacher gender indicating students’ awareness of teacher roles and gender. Moreover, the ways in which learners place themselves in the storied worlds seem to provide evidence for how teacher identity is, in fact, co-constructed with the notion of learner identity. Thus, the study underscores the complex nature of GLT identity construction and further highlights the benefits of using both textual and visual methods to gain better insights into learners’ beliefs about, attitudes towards, and perspectives on teachers, students, and language learning.
The role of syntactic dependencies in compositional distributional semantics
Authors: Gamallo Pablo
Published: January 2017

This article provides a preliminary semantic framework for Dependency Grammar in which lexical words are semantically defined as contextual distributions (sets of contexts) while syntactic dependencies are compositional operations on word distributions. More precisely, any syntactic dependency uses the contextual distribution of the dependent word to restrict the distribution of the head, and makes use of the contextual distribution of the head to restrict that of the dependent word. The interpretation of composite expressions and sentences, which are analyzed as a tree of binary dependencies, is performed by restricting the contexts of words dependency by dependency in a left-to-right incremental way. Consequently, the meaning of the whole composite expression or sentence is not a single representation, but a list of contextualized senses, namely the restricted distributions of its constituent (lexical) words. We report the results of two large-scale corpus-based experiments on two different natural language processing applications: paraphrasing and compositional translation.