bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rethinking Identity Politics: The Multiple Attachments of an ‘Exclusive‘ Sport Organization
Authors: Nakamura Yuka
Published: October 2015

This paper draws on a multi-sited ethnography of the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament and examines the attachments and relationships that participation nurtures. I argue that rather than being exclusive, the NACIVT and its participants foster and nurture multiple relationships that extend beyond the NACIVT and Asianness. In doing so, I aim to do two things: 1) address the dearth of academic research on Asians and sport, particularly in the Western context and 2) explore the burgeoning work that offers a transnational analytic of sport, a key theoretical framework in exploring the sport experiences of Asian people in sport, that goes beyond discussions of stereotypes and barriers to participation, but brings into view the effects of how Asia is constructed and imagined.
All about Having Fun: Women’s Experience of Zumba Fitness
Authors: Nieri Tanya , Hughes Elizabeth
Published: October 2015

This study explored women’s subjective experience of Zumba, a new, popular form of group fitness. We interviewed 41 racially/ethnically diverse adult women from the Los Angeles/Inland Empire (California) area who had taken Zumba in the previous year. The women reported taking Zumba for the purpose of exercise and did not challenge the notion that exercise is imperative. However, they reported positive experiences of Zumba, contrasting it with other fitness forms, which they characterized as boring, stressful, painful, lonely, and/or atomistic, and with other dancing, which they characterized as more restrictive. They perceived Zumba to prioritize fun over work and process over outcomes; value individual autonomy and personalization rather than strict conformity; and engage the participant as more than just a body to be shaped. They felt freer to engage in behavior that is considered to violate structural gender norms, but their experience did not translate to an explicit challenge to the gender structure.
Neutropenia Associated with Long-Term Ceftaroline Use
Authors: LaVie Katherine W. , Anderson Scott W. , O'Neal Hollis R. , Rice Todd W. , Saavedra Tatiana C. , O'Neal Catherine S.
Published: October 2015

Ceftaroline is a fifth-generation cephalosporin with potent antimicrobial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens. Neutropenia is a rare serious adverse event for the class of cephalosporins; however, we observed several cases of severe neutropenia in our outpatient infectious disease practice believed to be associated with ceftaroline use. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of neutropenia among patients receiving ceftaroline therapy for more than 7 days. We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of patients admitted to an 800-bed regional medical center between June 2012 and December 2014 who received ceftaroline for more than 7 days to assess the incidence of developing clinically significant neutropenia. Demographic and patient care data points as well as underlying admitting and chronic diagnoses were retrospectively collected from the medical record. Clinically significant neutropenia was defined as an absolute neutrophil count (ANC) less than 1,500 cells/mm
3
. Analysis was performed to determine the incidence, severity, and outcome of neutropenia following ceftaroline administration. A total of 39 patients were included in the cohort. The median duration of therapy was 27 days. Seven patients (18%) developed neutropenia while on ceftaroline therapy. Four (10%) of the neutropenic patients had an ANC of <500 cells/mm
3
. The median first neutropenic day was day 17, with the median ANC nadir of 432 cells/mm
3
on day 24. We determined that extended ceftaroline infusion is associated with the development of neutropenia. We recommend obtaining a complete blood count (CBC) with differential at the onset of therapy and weekly thereafter. Should the ANC fall below 2,500 cells/mm
3
, then twice-weekly CBCs should be monitored for the duration of ceftaroline therapy, and therapy should be discontinued if the ANC falls to 1,500 cells/mm
3
or less.
Contribution of Oxazolidinones to the Efficacy of Novel Regimens Containing Bedaquiline and Pretomanid in a Mouse Model of Tuberculosis
Authors: Tasneen Rokeya , Betoudji Fabrice , Tyagi Sandeep , Li Si-Yang , Williams Kathy , Converse Paul J. , Dartois Véronique , Yang Tian , Mendel Carl M. , Mdluli Khisimuzi E. , Nuermberger Eric L.
Published: October 2015

New regimens based on two or more novel agents are sought to shorten or simplify treatment of tuberculosis (TB). Pretomanid (PMD) is a nitroimidazole in phase 3 trials that has significant bactericidal activity alone and in combination with bedaquiline (BDQ) and/or pyrazinamide (PZA). We previously showed that the novel combination of BDQ+PMD plus the oxazolidinone sutezolid (SZD) had sterilizing activity superior to that of the first-line regimen in a murine model of TB. The present experiments compared the activity of different oxazolidinones in combination with BDQ+PMD with or without PZA in the same model. The 3-drug regimen of BDQ+PMD plus linezolid (LZD) had sterilizing activity approaching that of BDQ+PMD+SZD and superior to that of the first-line regimen. The addition of PZA further enhanced activity. Reducing the duration of LZD to 1 month did not significantly affect the activity of the regimen. Halving the LZD dose or replacing LZD with RWJ-416457 modestly reduced activity over the first month but not after 2 months. AZD5847 and tedizolid also increased the bactericidal activity of BDQ+PMD, but they were less effective than the other oxazolidinones. These results provide optimism for safe, short-course oral regimens for drug-resistant TB that may also be superior to the current first-line regimen for drug-susceptible TB.
Skin-Specific Unsaturated Fatty Acids Boost the Staphylococcus aureus Innate Immune Response
Authors: Nguyen Minh Thu , Hanzelmann Dennis , Härtner Thomas , Peschel Andreas , Götz Friedrich
Published: October 2015

Antimicrobial fatty acids (AFAs) protect the human epidermis against invasion by pathogenic bacteria. In this study, we questioned whether human skin fatty acids (FAs) can be incorporated into the lipid moiety of lipoproteins and whether such incorporation would have an impact on innate immune stimulation in the model organism
Staphylococcus aureus
USA300 JE2. This organism synthesized only saturated FAs. However, when feeding USA300 with unsaturated FAs present on human skin (C
16:1
, C
18:1
, or C
18:2
), those were taken up, elongated stepwise by two carbon units, and finally found in the bacterial (phospho)lipid fraction. They were also observed in the lipid moiety of lipoproteins. When USA300 JE2 was fed with the unsaturated FAs, the cells and cell lysates showed an increased innate immune activation with various immune cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Immune activation was highest with linoleic acid (C
18:2
). There are several pieces of evidence that the enhanced immune stimulating effect was due to the incorporation of unsaturated FAs in lipoproteins. First, the enhanced stimulation was dependent on Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2). Second, an
lgt
mutant, unable to carry out lipidation of prolipoproteins, was unable to carry out immune stimulation when fed with unsaturated FAs. Third, the supplied FAs did not significantly affect growth, protein release, or expression of the model lipoprotein Lpl1. Although
S. aureus
is unable to synthesize unsaturated FAs, it incorporates long-chain unsaturated FAs into its lipoproteins, with the effect that the cells are better recognized by the innate immune system. This is an additional mechanism how our skin controls bacterial colonization and infection.
Swallow syncope caused by third-degree atrioventricular block
Authors: Aaberg Anne Marie Roust , Eriksson Anna Elin , Lav Madsen Per , Dixen Ulrik
Published: October 2015

We report a case of a patient with more than 30 years of repeated syncopes, always following food intake. The patient was diagnosed with a swallow-related third-degree atrioventricular block and successfully treated with an artificial pacemaker.
Sheathless transradial coronary angioplasty in an achondroplasic patient with ST elevation myocardial infarction
Authors: Rahman Nasir , Nabi Amjad , Gul Ibrahim
Published: October 2015

We present a case of a 50-year-old man with achondroplasia, who presented with anterior ST segment myocardial infarction (STEMI). He was taken urgently to the catheterisation laboratory. Owing to his short stature, it was not possible to insert a radial artery sheath so he underwent a sheathless primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) through the right radial artery, with no complication. He was shifted to the coronary care unit and had an uneventful hospital course. He was discharged in stable condition and follows up regularly as an outpatient.
Qualitative analysis of vendor discussions on the procurement of Computerised Physician Order Entry and Clinical Decision Support systems in hospitals
Authors: Cresswell Kathrin M , Lee Lisa , Slee Ann , Coleman Jamie , Bates David W , Sheikh Aziz
Published: October 2015

Objectives

We studied vendor perspectives about potentially transferable lessons for implementing organisations and national strategies surrounding the procurement of Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE)/Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems in English hospitals.

Setting

Data were collected from digitally audio-recorded discussions from a series of CPOE/CDS vendor round-table discussions held in September 2014 in the UK.

Participants

Nine participants, representing 6 key vendors operating in the UK, attended. The discussions were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.

Results

Vendors reported a range of challenges surrounding the procurement and contracting processes of CPOE/CDS systems, including hospitals’ inability to adequately assess their own needs and then select a suitable product, rushed procurement and implementation processes that resulted in difficulties in meaningfully engaging with vendors, as well as challenges relating to contracting leading to ambiguities in implementation roles. Consequently, relationships between system vendors and hospitals were often strained, the vendors attributing this to a lack of hospital management's appreciation of the complexities associated with implementation efforts. Future anticipated challenges included issues surrounding the standardisation of data to enable their aggregation across systems for effective secondary uses, and implementation of data exchange with providers outside the hospital.

Conclusions

Our results indicate that there are significant issues surrounding capacity to procure and optimise CPOE/CDS systems among UK hospitals. There is an urgent need to encourage more synergistic and collaborative working between providers and vendors and for a more centralised support for National Health Service hospitals, which draws on a wider body of experience, including a formalised procurement framework with value-based product specifications.
Long-term ambient air pollution exposure and self-reported morbidity in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health: a cross-sectional study
Authors: Lazarevic Nina , Dobson Annette J , Barnett Adrian G , Knibbs Luke D
Published: October 2015

Objective

We sought to assess the effect of long-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the prevalence of self-reported health outcomes in Australian women.

Design

Cross-sectional study.

Setting and participants

The geocoded residential addresses of 26 991 women across 3 age cohorts in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health between 2006 and 2011 were linked to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure estimates from a land-use regression model. Annual average NO2concentrations and residential proximity to roads were used as proxies of exposure to ambient air pollution.

Outcome measures

Self-reported disease presence for diabetes mellitus, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and self-reported symptoms of allergies, breathing difficulties, chest pain and palpitations.

Methods

Disease prevalence was modelled by population-averaged Poisson regression models estimated by generalised estimating equations. Associations between symptoms and ambient air pollution were modelled by multilevel mixed logistic regression. Spatial clustering was accounted for at the postcode level.

Results

No associations were observed between any of the outcome and exposure variables considered at the 1% significance level after adjusting for known risk factors and confounders.

Conclusions

Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution was not associated with self-reported disease prevalence in Australian women. The observed results may have been due to exposure and outcome misclassification, lack of power to detect weak associations or an actual absence of associations with self-reported outcomes at the relatively low annual average air pollution exposure levels across Australia.
Impact of provision of cardiovascular disease risk estimates to healthcare professionals and patients: a systematic review
Authors: Usher-Smith Juliet A , Silarova Barbora , Schuit Ewoud , GM Moons Karel , Griffin Simon J
Published: October 2015

Objective

To systematically review whether the provision of information on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk to healthcare professionals and patients impacts their decision-making, behaviour and ultimately patient health.

Design

A systematic review.

Data sources

An electronic literature search of MEDLINE and PubMed from 01/01/2004 to 01/06/2013 with no language restriction and manual screening of reference lists of systematic reviews on similar topics and all included papers.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies

(1) Primary research published in a peer-reviewed journal; (2) inclusion of participants with no history of CVD; (3) intervention strategy consisted of provision of a CVD risk model estimate to either professionals or patients; and (4) the only difference between the intervention group and control group (or the only intervention in the case of before-after studies) was the provision of a CVD risk model estimate.

Results

After duplicates were removed, the initial electronic search identified 9671 papers. We screened 196 papers at title and abstract level and included 17 studies. The heterogeneity of the studies limited the analysis, but together they showed that provision of risk information to patients improved the accuracy of risk perception without decreasing quality of life or increasing anxiety, but had little effect on lifestyle. Providing risk information to physicians increased prescribing of lipid-lowering and blood pressure medication, with greatest effects in those with CVD risk >20% (relative risk for change in prescribing 2.13 (1.02 to 4.63) and 2.38 (1.11 to 5.10) respectively). Overall, there was a trend towards reductions in cholesterol and blood pressure and a statistically significant reduction in modelled CVD risk (−0.39% (−0.71 to −0.07)) after, on average, 12 months.

Conclusions

There seems evidence that providing CVD risk model estimates to professionals and patients improves perceived CVD risk and medical prescribing, with little evidence of harm on psychological well-being.
The impact of electronic prescribing systems on pharmacists’ time and workflow: protocol for a time-and-motion study in English NHS hospitals
Authors: Schofield Behnaz , Cresswel Kathrin , Westbrook Johanna , Slee Ann , Girling Alan , Shah Sonal , Coleman Jamie , Sheikh Aziz
Published: October 2015

Introduction

Electronic prescribing (ePrescribing) systems are rapidly being introduced into National Health Systems (NHS) hospitals in England following their widespread earlier adoption into primary care settings. Such systems require substantial changes in the way pharmacists organise their work and perform their roles. There is however as yet limited evidence on the extent to which these changes may support or compromise efficient and safe working practices by pharmacists. Identifying and quantifying these changes, and their effects, is central to informing system and work practice design, as well as informing training and implementation processes. This protocol describes a study to measure the impact of ePrescribing systems on pharmacists’ time and workflow.

Methods and analysis

A direct observational controlled pre–post implementation time-and-motion study will be conducted in six wards at one NHS Trust over two observational periods. Pharmacists will be shadowed and details of all work tasks performed will be collected and time-stamped. Task distribution, frequency and duration will be measured and changes in these measures preimplementation and postimplementation, and between control and intervention wards will be measured. Interviews with pharmacists will investigate their perceptions of the impact of the ePrescribing systems on their work and will be conducted in both periods. The extent to which pharmacists’ expectations of the impact of the ePrescribing systems on their work with postimplementation reports will be qualitatively explored, as will any differences between perceptions and results from the time-and-motion analysis.

Ethics and dissemination

Institutional research ethics approval has been obtained from The University of Edinburgh. Local approval from the participating NHS Trust and informed consent from participating pharmacists have been obtained, while also complying with local governance requirements. The results of the study will be presented at conferences, published in peer-reviewed journals, and shared with members of our Patient and Public Involvement Group, to facilitate wider dissemination.
The relative importance of perceived doctor’s attitude on the decision to consult for symptomatic osteoarthritis: a choice-based conjoint analysis study
Authors: Coxon Domenica , Frisher Martin , Jinks Clare , Jordan Kelvin , Paskins Zoe , Peat George
Published: October 2015

Objectives

Some patients spend years with painful osteoarthritis without consulting for it, including times when they are experiencing persistent severe pain and disability. Beliefs about osteoarthritis and what primary care has to offer may influence the decision to consult but their relative importance has seldom been quantified. We sought to investigate the relative importance of perceived service-related and clinical need attributes in the decision to consult a primary care physician for painful osteoarthritis.

Design

Partial-profile choice-based conjoint analysis study, using a self-complete questionnaire containing 10 choice tasks, each presenting two scenarios based on a combination of three out of six selected attributes.

Setting

General population.

Participants

Adults aged 50 years and over with hip, knee or hand pain registered with four UK general practices.

Outcome measures

Relative importance of pain characteristics, level of disruption to everyday life, extent of comorbidity, assessment, management, perceived general practitioner (GP) attitude.

Results

863 (74%) people responded (55% female; mean age 70 years, range: 58–93). The most important determinants of the patient's decision to consult the GP for joint pain were the extent to which pain disrupted everyday life (‘most’ vs ‘none’: relative importance 31%) and perceived GP attitude (‘legitimate problem, requires treatment’ vs ‘part of the normal ageing process that one just has to accept’: 24%). Thoroughness of assessment (14%), management options offered (13%), comorbidity (13%) and pain characteristics (5%) were less strongly associated with the decision to consult.

Conclusions

Anticipating that the GP will regard joint pain as ‘part of the normal ageing process that one just has to accept’ is a strong disincentive to seeking help, potentially outweighing other aspects of quality of care. Alongside the recognition and management of disrupted function, an important goal of each primary care consultation for osteoarthritis should be to avoid imparting or reinforcing this perception.
Possible association of tachycardia and hypertension with perioperative trazodone administration in a dog
Authors: Borland Karla , Clutton R Eddie , Bradbrook Carl
Published: October 2015

The following case report describes perioperative tachycardia and hypertension in a dog, possibly resulting from trazodone and tramadol coadministration. The dog recovered fully with no discernible long‐term consequences.
Advances in the study of bat flight: the wing and the wind
Authors: Swartz S.M. , Konow N.
Published: October 2015

Bats are diverse, speciose, and inhabit most of earth’s habitats, aided by powered flapping flight. The many traits that enable flight in these mammals have long attracted popular and research interest, but recent technological and conceptual advances have provided investigators with new kinds of information concerning diverse aspects of flight biology. As a consequence of these new data, our understanding of how bats fly has begun to undergo fundamental changes. Physical and neural science approaches are now beginning to inform understanding of structural architecture of wings. High-speed videography is dramatically expanding documentation of how bats fly. Experimental fluid dynamics and innovative physiological techniques profoundly influence how we interpret the ways bats produce aerodynamic forces as they execute distinctive flight behaviors and the mechanisms that underlie flight energetics. Here, we review how recent bat flight research has provided significant new insights into several important aspects of bat flight structure and function. We suggest that information coming from novel approaches offer opportunities to interconnect studies of wing structure, aerodynamics, and physiology more effectively, and to connect flight biology to newly emerging studies of bat evolution and ecology.
Haag duality for Kitaev’s quantum double model for abelian groups
Authors: Fiedler Leander , Naaijkens Pieter
Published: October 2015

We prove Haag duality for cone-like regions in the ground state representation corresponding to the translational invariant ground state of Kitaev’s quantum double model for finite abelian groups. This property says that if an observable commutes with all observables localized outside the cone region, it actually is an element of the von Neumann algebra generated by the local observables inside the cone. This strengthens locality, which says that observables localized in disjoint regions commute.

As an application, we consider the superselection structure of the quantum double model for abelian groups on an infinite lattice in the spirit of the Doplicher–Haag–Roberts program in algebraic quantum field theory. We find that, as is the case for the toric code model on an infinite lattice, the superselection structure is given by the category of irreducible representations of the quantum double.
A refined and dynamic cellular automaton model for pedestrian–vehicle mixed traffic flow
Authors: Liu Mianfang , Xiong Shengwu
Published: October 2015

Mixed traffic flow sharing the “same lane” and having no discipline on road is a common phenomenon in the developing countries. For example, motorized vehicles (m-vehicles) and nonmotorized vehicles (nm-vehicles) may share the m-vehicle lane or nm-vehicle lane and pedestrians may share the nm-vehicle lane. Simulating pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flow consisting of three kinds of traffic objects: m-vehicles, nm-vehicles and pedestrians, can be a challenge because there are some erratic drivers or pedestrians who fail to follow the lane disciplines. In the paper, we investigate various moving and interactive behavior associated with mixed traffic flow, such as lateral drift including illegal lane-changing and transverse crossing different lanes, overtaking and forward movement, and propose some new moving and interactive rules for pedestrian–vehicle mixed traffic flow based on a refined and dynamic cellular automaton (CA) model. Simulation results indicate that the proposed model can be used to investigate the traffic flow characteristic in a mixed traffic flow system and corresponding complicated traffic problems, such as, the moving characteristics of different traffic objects, interaction phenomenon between different traffic objects, traffic jam, traffic conflict, etc., which are consistent with the actual mixed traffic system. Therefore, the proposed model provides a solid foundation for the management, planning and evacuation of the mixed traffic flow.
Effects and Mechanism of Combination of Rhein and Danshensu in the Treatment of Chronic Kidney Disease
Authors: Guan Yue , Wu Xiao-Xiao , Duan Jia-Lin , Yin Ying , Guo Chao , Wei Guo , Wang Yan-Hua , Zhu Yan-Rong , Weng Yan , Xi Miao-Miao , Wen Ai-Dong
Published: October 2015

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays a systemic role in disease treatment, targeting multiple etiological factors simultaneously. Based on clinical experience, rhubarb and Salvia miltiorrhiza are commonly prescribed together for the treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and have been proven to be very effective. However, the rationale of the combination remains unclear. The major active ingredients of these two herbs are rhein (RH) and danshensu (DSS), respectively. The aim of this paper is to investigate the renoprotective effects of RH and DSS in vitro and in vivo, and the underlying mechanism. A total of 5/6 nephrectomy rats and HK-2 cells were subjected to chronic renal injury. The combination of RH and DSS conferred a protective effect, as shown by a significant improvement in the renal function, blood supply, and fibrotic degree. Proinflammatory cytokines and adhesion molecules were suppressed by RH and DSS through NK-[Formula: see text]B signaling. The combination also inhibited apoptosis by up-regulating Bcl-2 and down-regulating Bax. Inhibiting the TGF-[Formula: see text]/Smad3 pathway was at least in part involved in the antifibrotic mechanism of the combination treatment of RH and DSS. This study demonstrates for the first time the renoprotective effect and the mechanism of RH and DSS combination on chronic renal injury. It could provide experimental evidence to support the rationality of the combinatorial use of TCM in clinical practices.
AC electrodeposition of NiMn alloy nanowires in AAO template
Authors: Maleki K. , Sanjabi S. , Alemipour Z.
Published: October 2015

The ordered ferromagnetic–antiferromagnetic [Formula: see text] alloy nanowires were fabricated successfully by alternating current (AC) electrodeposition into nanoporous anodized aluminum oxide (AAO). The NiMn alloy nanowires were deposited in a simple sulfate bath. Effect of bath composition on Mn content of electrodeposited nanowires as well as the thermal annealing effect on magnetic properties were explored. The magnetic properties of NiMn alloy nanowires were enhanced significantly, compared to corresponding bulk materials. Magnetic parameters, such as coercivity and saturation magnetization were decreased with increasing the Mn content. For thermal annealing process, it was found that these parameters were enhanced with increasing the temperature up to 300[Formula: see text]C, on the other hand, they were decreased with increasing the temperature to 500[Formula: see text]C. Moreover, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns revealed that the FCC crystalline structure of Ni turns to an amorphous phase by increasing the Mn content in the nanowires, resulting in a significant reduction in the [Formula: see text].
Speaker Verification via Modeling Kurtosis Using Sparse Coding
Authors: Wang Wei , Han Jiqing , Zheng Tieran , Zheng Guibin , Zhou Xingyu
Published: October 2015

This paper proposes a new model for speaker verification by employing kurtosis statistical method based on sparse coding of human auditory system. Since only a small number of neurons in primary auditory cortex are activated in encoding acoustic stimuli and sparse independent events are used to represent the characteristics of the neurons. Each individual dictionary is learned from individual speaker samples where dictionary atoms correspond to the cortex neurons. The neuron responses possess statistical properties of acoustic signals in auditory cortex so that the activation distribution of individual speaker’s neurons is approximated as the characteristics of the speaker. Kurtosis is an efficient approach to measure the sparsity of the neuron from its activation distribution, and the vector composed of the kurtosis of every neuron is obtained as the model to characterize the speaker’s voice. The experimental results demonstrate that the kurtosis model outperforms the baseline systems and an effective identity validation function is achieved desirably.
Dynamics of a 2D Piecewise Linear Braess Paradox Model: Effect of the Third Partition
Authors: Avrutin Viktor , Dibak Christoph , Dal Forno Arianna , Merlone Ugo
Published: October 2015

In this work, we investigate the dynamics of a piecewise linear 2D discontinuous map modeling a simple network showing the Braess paradox. This paradox represents an example in which adding a new route to a specific congested transportation network makes all the travelers worse off in terms of their individual travel time. In the particular case in which the modeled network corresponds to a binary choice situation, the map is defined on two partitions and its dynamics has already been described. In the general case corresponding to a ternary choice, a third partition appears leading to significantly more complex bifurcation structures formed by border collision bifurcations of stable cycles with points located in all three partitions. Considering a map taking a constant value on one of the partitions, we provide a first systematic description of possible dynamics for this case.
Local Dynamics of the Two-Component Singular Perturbed Systems of Parabolic Type
Authors: Kaschenko I. S. , Kaschenko S. A.
Published: October 2015

This paper considers the behavior of solutions from the neighborhood of an equilibrium state of nonlinear two-component parabolic problems with diffusion matrixes of one or two eigenvalues to zero. It has been shown that problems related to stability have infinite dimension. Reported here is the development of an algorithm that constructs universal families of nonlinear boundary-value problems which do not contain small parameters and whose nonlocal dynamics describes local dynamics of original boundary-value problems. In addition, an exhaustive set of universal systems for two-component parabolic equations is presented. It is concluded that a hyper multistability phenomenon is one characteristic of these systems.
Continuous Approximations of a Class of Piecewise Continuous Systems
Authors: Danca Marius-F.
Published: October 2015

In this paper, we provide a rigorous mathematical foundation for continuous approximations of a class of systems with piecewise continuous functions. By using techniques from the theory of differential inclusions, the underlying piecewise functions can be locally or globally approximated. The approximation results can be used to model piecewise continuous-time dynamical systems of integer or fractional-order. In this way, by overcoming the lack of numerical methods for differential equations of fractional-order with discontinuous right-hand side, unattainable procedures for systems modeled by this kind of equations, such as chaos control, synchronization, anticontrol and many others, can be easily implemented. Several examples are presented and three comparative applications are studied.
Generalized Synchronization of a Class of Spatiotemporal Chaotic Systems Using Nonlinear Observers
Authors: Torres Lizeth , Besançon Gildas , Verde Cristina , Guerrero-Castellanos José Fermi
Published: October 2015

This article proposes an approach to synchronize a class of unidimensional spatiotemporal chaotic systems using exponential nonlinear observers. The article focuses on generalized synchronization with parameter mismatching and a unidirectional master–slave topology. The approach involves the conception of two different nonlinear observers to estimate the unknown parameters of a master system, such that the estimated parameters can be injected into a controller to synchronize the slave with the master. To illustrate the proposed approach, an example based on the Gray–Scott equations that exposes the synchronization and the observer conception is presented.
Clustering Residential Burglaries Using Modus Operandi and Spatiotemporal Information
Authors: Borg Anton , Boldt Martin
Published: October 2015

To identify series of residential burglaries, detecting linked crimes performed by the same constellations of criminals is necessary. Comparison of crime reports today is difficult as crime reports traditionally have been written as unstructured text and often lack a common information-basis. Based on a novel process for collecting structured crime scene information, the present study investigates the use of clustering algorithms to group similar crime reports based on combined crime characteristics from the structured form. Clustering quality is measured using Connectivity and Silhouette index (SI), stability using Jaccard index, and accuracy is measured using Rand index (RI) and a Series Rand index (SRI). The performance of clustering using combined characteristics was compared with spatial characteristic. The results suggest that the combined characteristics perform better or similar to the spatial characteristic. In terms of practical significance, the presented clustering approach is capable of clustering cases using a broader decision basis.
Static second hyperpolarizability of twisted ethylene: A comprehensive computational study
Authors: Mondal Avijit , Hatua Kaushik , K. Nandi Prasanta
Published: October 2015

Twisted conformations of ethylene molecule have diradical character and the second hyperpolarizability of these conformations is best described by the multiconfigurational self consistence field theory (MCSCF) wave function. Present calculation indicates that unrestricted density functional theory (UDFT) predicts second hyperpolarizability which is qualitatively correct for the intermediate diradical region. However, for the two extremities, i.e. rear diradical region and near diradical region, the second hyperpolarizability obtained by UDFT methods differ significantly from the MRCISD result. The BHHLYP and LC-BLYP ([Formula: see text]) results of [Formula: see text] are found to be in good agreement with the MRCISD result. Using the spin-projected UDFT methods almost similar results are obtained. The reasonably fair agreement between the calculated results of second hyperpolarizability obtained at the MRCISD and CASSCF(4,4) levels demonstrates that static electron correlation is the dominant feature of twisted ethylene.
Photonics immunotherapy — A novel strategy for cancer treatment
Authors: Zhou Feifan , Nordquist Robert E. , Chen Wei R.
Published: October 2015

Photonics immunotherapy is a novel cancer treatment strategy that combines local phototherapy and immunotherapy. Phototherapy is a noninvasive or minimally invasive therapeutic strategy for local treatment of cancer, which can destroy tumor cells and release tumor antigens, inducing an in situ antitumor immune response. Immunotherapy, including the use of antibodies, vaccines, immunoadjuvants and cytokines, when combined with phototherapy, could bring a synergistic effect to stimulate a host immune response that effectuates a long-term antitumor immunity. This review will focus on the development of photonics immunotherapy and its systemic antitumor immunological effects.
Every edge lies on cycles embedding in folded hypercubes with both vertex and edge faults
Authors: Kuo Che-Nan
Published: October 2015

The folded hypercube is a well-known variation of hypercube structure and can be constructed from a hypercube by adding an edge to every pair of vertices with complementary addresses. Let [Formula: see text] (respectively, [Formula: see text]) denote the set of faulty vertices (respectively, faulty edges) in an [Formula: see text]-dimensional folded hypercube [Formula: see text]. In the case that all edges in [Formula: see text] are fault-free, Cheng et al. [Cycles embedding on folded hypercubes with faulty vertices, Discrete Appl. Math. 161 (2013) 2894–2900] has shown that (1) every fault-free edge of [Formula: see text] lies on a fault-free cycle of every even length from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] if [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text]; and (2) every fault-free edge of [Formula: see text] lies on a fault-free cycle of every odd length from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] if [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is even. In this paper, we extend Cheng’s result to obtain two further properties, which consider both vertex and edge faults, as follows:

(1) Every fault-free edge of [Formula: see text] lies on a fault-free cycle of every even length from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] if [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text];

(2) Every fault-free edge of [Formula: see text] lies on a fault-free cycle of every odd length from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] if [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is even.
Fast computation of seamless video loops
Authors: Liao Jing , Finch Mark , Hoppe Hugues
Published: October 2015

Short looping videos concisely capture the dynamism of natural scenes. Creating seamless loops usually involves maximizing spatiotemporal consistency and applying Poisson blending. We take an end-to-end view of the problem and present new techniques that jointly improve loop quality while also significantly reducing processing time. A key idea is to relax the consistency constraints to anticipate the subsequent blending, thereby enabling looping of low-frequency content like moving clouds and changing illumination. We also analyze the input video to remove an undesired bias toward short loops. The quality gains are demonstrated visually and confirmed quantitatively using a new gradient-domain consistency metric. We improve system performance by classifying potentially loopable pixels, masking the 2D graph cut, pruning graph-cut labels based on dominant periods, and optimizing on a coarse grid while retaining finer detail. Together these techniques reduce computation times from tens of minutes to nearly real-time.
Interactive design of probability density functions for shape grammars
Authors: Dang Minh , Lienhard Stefan , Ceylan Duygu , Neubert Boris , Wonka Peter , Pauly Mark
Published: October 2015

A shape grammar defines a procedural
shape space
containing a variety of models of the same class, e.g. buildings, trees, furniture, airplanes, bikes, etc. We present a framework that enables a user to interactively design a probability density function (pdf) over such a shape space and to sample models according to the designed pdf. First, we propose a user interface that enables a user to quickly provide preference scores for selected shapes and suggest sampling strategies to decide which models to present to the user to evaluate. Second, we propose a novel kernel function to encode the similarity between two procedural models. Third, we propose a framework to interpolate user preference scores by combining multiple techniques: function factorization, Gaussian process regression, autorelevance detection, and
l
1
regularization. Fourth, we modify the original grammars to generate models with a pdf proportional to the user preference scores. Finally, we provide evaluations of our user interface and framework parameters and a comparison to other exploratory modeling techniques using modeling tasks in five example shape spaces: furniture, low-rise buildings, skyscrapers, airplanes, and vegetation.
Polyhedral patterns
Authors: Jiang Caigui , Tang Chengcheng , Vaxman Amir , Wonka Peter , Pottmann Helmut
Published: October 2015

We study the design and optimization of polyhedral patterns, which are patterns of planar polygonal faces on freeform surfaces. Working with polyhedral patterns is desirable in architectural geometry and industrial design. However, the classical tiling patterns on the plane must take on various shapes in order to faithfully and feasibly approximate curved surfaces. We define and analyze the deformations these tiles must undertake to account for curvature, and discover the symmetries that remain invariant under such deformations. We propose a novel method to regularize polyhedral patterns while maintaining these symmetries into a plethora of aesthetic and feasible patterns.
Deviation magnification
Authors: Wadhwa Neal , Dekel Tali , Wei Donglai , Durand Frédo , Freeman William T.
Published: October 2015

Structures and objects are often supposed to have idealized geometries such as straight lines or circles. Although not always visible to the naked eye, in reality, these objects deviate from their idealized models. Our goal is to reveal and visualize such subtle geometric deviations, which can contain useful, surprising information about our world. Our framework, termed
Deviation Magnification
, takes a still image as input, fits parametric models to objects of interest, computes the geometric deviations, and renders an output image in which the departures from ideal geometries are exaggerated. We demonstrate the correctness and usefulness of our method through quantitative evaluation on a synthetic dataset and by application to challenging natural images.
Video-audio driven real-time facial animation
Authors: Liu Yilong , Xu Feng , Chai Jinxiang , Tong Xin , Wang Lijuan , Huo Qiang
Published: October 2015

We present a real-time facial tracking and animation system based on a Kinect sensor with video and audio input. Our method requires no user-specific training and is robust to occlusions, large head rotations, and background noise. Given the color, depth and speech audio frames captured from an actor, our system first reconstructs 3D facial expressions and 3D mouth shapes from color and depth input with a multi-linear model. Concurrently a speaker-independent DNN acoustic model is applied to extract phoneme state posterior probabilities (PSPP) from the audio frames. After that, a lip motion regressor refines the 3D mouth shape based on both PSPP and expression weights of the 3D mouth shapes, as well as their confidences. Finally, the refined 3D mouth shape is combined with other parts of the 3D face to generate the final result. The whole process is fully automatic and executed in real time.

The key component of our system is a data-driven regresor for modeling the correlation between speech data and mouth shapes. Based on a precaptured database of accurate 3D mouth shapes and associated speech audio from one speaker, the regressor jointly uses the input speech and visual features to refine the mouth shape of a new actor. We also present an improved DNN acoustic model. It not only preserves accuracy but also achieves real-time performance.

Our method efficiently fuses visual and acoustic information for 3D facial performance capture. It generates more accurate 3D mouth motions than other approaches that are based on audio or video input only. It also supports video or audio only input for real-time facial animation. We evaluate the performance of our system with speech and facial expressions captured from different actors. Results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our method.
SRDA: Smart Reputation-Based Data Aggregation Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network
Authors: Li Chaoran , Liu Yun
Published: October 2015

Wireless sensor network is a self-organizing multihop network, which is composed of a large number of wireless sensor nodes and usually deployed in unattended environment to collect target information. At present, WSN is facing a growing range of security threats owing to its wireless and resource-constrained characteristics. Compromised sensor nodes can easily corrupt data accuracy and integrity by falsifying sensed information, selectively forwarding or misdirecting received data packets during the process of data aggregation. To solve these security problems, we propose a smart reputation-based data aggregation protocol for WSNs (SRDA) that can provide adequate protection of data accuracy and integrity for wireless sensor network. The simulation results indicate that SRDA can effectively identify the compromised nodes and isolate them from the network by the deployment of the smart reputation system.
Research on Signal Processing of MEMS Gyro Array
Authors: Ji Xunsheng
Published: October 2015

A new random drift model and the measured angular rate model of MEMS gyro are presented. Based on such models, signal processing techniques are used to decrease gyro drift. Kalman filtering equations have been built for static measurement and dynamic measurement of the gyro array, which combinesNindividual gyros into a single rate estimate. By selecting the favorable cross correlation coefficient between individual gyros in the noise correlation matrix, the gyro array performance can be significantly improved over that of any individual component device. A new gyro array dynamic measurement procession is also presented. Data fusion of the difference between individual gyro dynamic measurements can identify every gyro real-time drift out and get its noisy test. Based on the laws of the gyro curve motion, the tested dynamic signal is filtered to improve the gyro accuracy. All these processings have been implemented by digital signal processor. Simulation results show that the static drift can decrease from 22.1°/h to 0.184°/h and the dynamic drift can decrease from 22.1°/h to 8.98°/h.
Sensor Clustering and Sensing Technology for Optimal Throughput of Sensor-Aided Cognitive Radio Networks Supporting Multiple Licensed Channels
Authors: Nguyen Thanh-Tung , Koo Insoo
Published: October 2015

In cognitive radio networks, secondary users may not sense licensed channels efficiently due to problems of fading channel, shadowing, unfamiliar environment, and so forth. To cope with the limitation, a pervasive sensor network can cooperate with cognitive radio network, which is called sensor-aided cognitive radio network. In the paper, we investigate sensor clustering and sensing time of each sensor cluster with aiming at achieving optimal throughput of sensor-aided cognitive radio network supporting multiple licensed channels. Moreover, the minimum throughput requirement of cognitive radio user is also guaranteed in the sensor clustering problem. To do this, we formulate the throughput maximization problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming and utilize the Branch and Bound algorithm to solve it. We also propose an heuristic algorithm which can provide similar performance to that of the Branch and Bound algorithm while reducing computation complexity significantly.