bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Early Auditory Experience Modifies Unit Responsiveness to Temporal Auditory Patterns in the Inferior Colliculus
Authors: Clopton B. M. , Winfield J. A.
Published: May 2012

Albino rats were exposed from birth to one of two temporal auditory patterns, an up pattern or a down pattern (see preceding abstract). Most units in naive rats show selective responses to one of the two patterns, but the central tendency of the naive population favors neither pattern. After four months of 5-h daily exposure to an auditory pattern, units were recorded acutely in the inferior colliculi of rats from both experimental groups. The central tendency for pattern-specific responses during the tone component of the patterns was not significantly shifted, but the selectivities of units to the common noise component were strongly biased toward the pattern experienced from birth. This effect on spike counts evoked by the noise component was unexpected, since the tone-sweep component defined the pattern. The shift in pattern selectivity occurred even in units whose characteristic frequency was distant from the frequencies of the tone component. No effect was seen for units in mothers of the experimental litters, confirming that the neural lability depends on developmental factors. These results point to malleable, pattern-recognizing mechanisms in the central auditory system. [Supported in part by NINDS Grant NS09551 and a General Research Grant, U. C. Academic Senate.]
Rough Boundary Scattering and Ray Tracing
Authors: Schneider H. -G.
Published: May 2012

A general method is proposed to treat rough boundary scattering in ray-tracing propagation models. The angular intensity of the field reradiated from the rough boundary is interpreted as a probability density function of the angles of reflection. The influence of rough surface scattering on sound attenuation in shallow water is demonstrated for selected sound speed profiles by model calculations. The theoretical results are compared with experimental data.
Effective Supergain for Underwater Sound Antennas
Authors: Toulis W. J.
Published: May 2012

A spherical lens can exhibit greatly improved directivity when its focus (and, hence, its path-length differences) occurs within the refractive (or slow-wave) medium. Similarly, the appropriate slow-wave engulfment of the focal region of any focusing antenna should enhance the source level and signal-to-noise ratio of the antenna as if all of propagation space were filled with the same slow-wave medium—even though the amount of the slow-wave medium is very small in comparison with the volume of the antenna. The engulfing medium must be inhomogeneous to minimize the refractive effects due to the finite presence of the refractive medium in propagation space. The 90° conical horn antenna represents the simplest configuration, but not in terms of the smallest amount of the engulfment. The basic principle is applicable also to Luneberg lenses and phased arrays which retain the efficiency and bandwidth of much larger conventional antennas.
Noise Reduction with a Tuned Acoustic Absorber
Authors: Smith David L. , Faulkner L. L. , Marco S. M.
Published: May 2012

The use of a tuned acoustic absorber as a cover plate for piston-type sound radiators is shown to reduce significantly the acoustic power radiated. The absorber is a thin clamped-clamped plate vibrating in its first mode. Its total motion is a superposition of its fundamental mode shape and the imposed motion of the rigid piston. These two motions are nearly 180° out of phase for lightly damped plates, and their relative amplitudes may be optimized for minimum radiation efficiency. A mathematical model was developed to predict the radiation efficiency of the absorber. It was found that a properly designed acoustic absorber will exhibit a radiation efficiency of less than 1 % of the efficiency of the source it covers and that reductions of 15–20 dB in sound power level are possible. This was experimentally verified by computing sound power radiated from SPL measurements. A design procedure was developed to facilitate the use of tuned acoustic absorbers as covers on typical mechanical equipment.
Acoustics of the Lecture Room, Hunt Hall (Formerly the Fogg Art Museum), Harvard University—An Historical Review
Authors: Newman Robert B. , Wetherill Ewart A.
Published: May 2012

In June of this year Hunt Hall at Harvard University, the building in which W. C. Sabine began his studies of architectural acoustics, was demolished to make way for a new dormitory building. During its life of 78 years the main lecture room in Hunt Hall underwent several changes, due at first to Professor Sabine's recommendations and later to other influences. It was not until 1972, however, that a significant improvement was achieved in the speech transmission properties of the room. This paper reviews the changes made in the lecture room and presents measured acoustical data from its last two configurations. These data are compared with available information from Sabine's papers.
The Importance of the First Formant in Initial-Final Contrasts of Voiced Consonants
Authors: Umeda N. , Coker C. H.
Published: May 2012

In April we reported that word- and stress-initial voiced consonants were 4–6 dB lower in intensity than medial and final ones. Attempts to incorporate those results into a program for speech synthesis, however, show the situation to be more complex. Accomplishing “intensity” variations by changing amplitude of excitation is clearly not as effective subjectively as accomplishing the result by changing spectral richness. We present, now, new evidence to support this conclusion: (1) Examination of vocal-cord transillumination data reveals initial consonants to have, in fact, stronger excitation than final ones. (2) New measurements with instrumentation more sensitive to the strongest harmonic in the wave (average log absolute value vs the earlier peak-to-peak measurement) reveal essentially constant low-frequency energy, but high-band energy agreeing with the original data. We conclude that the strongest cue for perception of initial/final contrasts in voiced consonants is spectral balance associated either with the first formant or with some change in the glottal source. We propose that the physiological mechanism for controlling this contrast is relative rigidity of the cheeks, lips, and other articulatory surfaces.
Training of Existing Industrial Personnel in Implementing Effective In-House Noise Control Programs
Authors: Royster L. H.
Published: May 2012

Over the past three years, the Center for Acoustical Studies developed and implemented over ten different types of seminars in the hearing conservation and noise control areas. To date, 500 industrial personnel types have attended these seminars. They have utilized these training experiences in solving local industrial noise problems. The results of this type of approach to solving industrial noise problems in North Carolina industry is presented.
The Noise of Forced- and Induced-Draft Fans in Power Plant Installations
Authors: Hoover R. M. , Wood E. W.
Published: May 2012

In this paper, noise level data on draft fans in modern power plants are reviewed. While the need for mufflers in the air intake of some forced-draft fan installations has been recognized for some time, the growing size of draft fans combined with new noise control requirements within power plants has increased the need for more noise control information. In this paper, some noise level data taken at a number of forced-draft fan installations are presented for different fan-duct arrangements. Included are data both in the vicinity of the fan cases and at the air intake for both muffled and unmuffled systems. Noise level data are also presented for several induced-draft fan installations, primarily to emphasize the need for the control of community noise by the use of mufflers in the discharge duct-stack system. Noise level data measured in the near vicinity of several induced-draft fans are also presented.
Department of the Army Regulations and Policies for Hearing Conservation
Authors: Goldstein Jeffrey , Ranadive Manmohan V. , Rosenberg Donald M.
Published: May 2012

Authority for the implementation of hearing conservation programs within the Department of the Army is established in Army Regulation 40-5, “Preventive Medicine.” This regulation directs all Army installations to institute and administer active hearing conservation programs subject to frequent inspection and review. In addition, Department of the Army Circular 40-2 places command emphasis on all phases of the program. Guidance and policies for the conduct of hearing conservation programs are set forth in Technical Bulletin (Medical) 251, “Noise and Conservation of Hearing.” TB MED 251 specifies (1) noise exposure criteria more stringent than those of OSHA, (2) noise hazard evaluation methodology, (3) engineering noise control techniques, (4) personnel protective measures, (5) administrative and clinical procedures for audiometric evaluations, (6) organization of health education program, and (7) the role of command, medical, and supervisory personnel in the conduct of the program. Although these policies are prescribed primarily for occupational noise exposure, there is overlap into nonoccupational activities of personnel. Additional Army documents provide noise emission standards for the procurement of Army equipment.
Neural Attenuation of Lateral Lemniscal Responses to Self-Vocalized Sounds in Echolocating Bats
Authors: Suga N. , Shimozawa T.
Published: May 2012

Bats of the genus Myotis emit strong orientation sounds for echolocation. If such sounds directly stimulate their ears, the detection of echoes from short distances would be impaired. To reduce self-stimulation, the middle-ear muscles contract prior to and during vocalization, and quickly relax after its termination. In addition to this muscular mechanism, bats have neural mechanisms for the attenuation of responses of lateral lemniscal neurons to self-vocalized sounds. Three recording electrodes were placed in the auditory nerve, superior olivary complex (presumably the S-segment), and the nucleus of the lateral lemniscus, in order to record their summated activity evoked by self-vocalized sounds and the same sounds played back with a tape recorder. When the response of the auditory nerve was similar to both the sounds, the responses of the superior olivary complex were also the same, but the responses of lateral lemniscal neurons to emitted sounds were much smaller than those to playback sounds. Apparently the activity of the lateral lemniscal neurons was different, depending on whether the animal vocalizes or the same signal was delivered from an external source. Such neural attenuation was found when the bats emitted orientation sounds or squeaks [Supported by an NSF grant.]
Mechanical Sensitivity of Acoustic Receptor Organs in Crickets
Authors: Paton J. A. , Capranica R. R. , Loftus-Hills J. J. , Dragsten P. R. , Webb W. W.
Published: May 2012

The frequency response of the auditory organs of several species of field crickets (Gryllidae) was measured with a modified laser Michelson interferometer using light scattered directly from the tympanic membranes. The auditory organ consists of two tympanic membranes located on opposite sides of the leg external to an air-filled trachea. The trachea is divided lengthwise by a thin septum and hair cells (scolopidia) are attached to the side of the anterior tracheal branch. Tones were presented in free field and the resultant sound pressure level was monitored by a probe tube near the membrane under study. The mechanical sensitivity of the tympanic membranes does not reflect the bimodal frequency sensitivity of the auditory nervous system. This means that further frequency processing occurs beyond the initial reception of acoustic energy by the tympanic membranes. The peak displacement of the large membrane to a 5-kHz tone of intensity 45 dB SPL, which corresponds to the threshold for neural activity, is of the order of 1 Å. [Supported by NIH and NSF.]
Acoustic Signature of the Beluga Whale
Authors: Anderson W. B.
Published: May 2012

Acoustic signatures have been acquired from a pod of Beluga (Delphinapt-Erus Leucas) whales. These whales were swimming unmolested on the surface in the lead ∼1000×200 yd in the north Bering Sea. The acoustic data were acquired with a sensitive noise system ( — 84 dB) in a region free of man-made noise. The acquired broad-band data were recorded on a magnetic tape recorder for analysis in the laboratory. Analysis of the data shows the whales to have a complex sonar which possesses both directivity and a wide range of generation modes. Analysis of the squeels, bleats, and chirps would suggest that each has a distinct purpose in the overall communication system. I find some acoustic signals are tonal where others are seen to sweep across the spectrum. The analysis presents typical acoustic emissions source level with respect to frequency in the time domain.
Correlation of Ambient Sea Noise
Authors: Cox Henry
Published: May 2012

The spatial harmonic representation of arbitrary noise fields is applied to the vertical directionality of ambient sea noise. The theory is related to existing models. Some new models are presented which allow the spatial correlation to be computed with ease for arbitrary sensor orientations. Results from these models are compared with a large body of data and are found to be in good agreement over a large frequency range. [This work was performed at the University of California, San Diego, Marine Physical Laboratory of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, California 02132.]
Spectral Estimation and the Open Window
Authors: Burgess John C.
Published: May 2012

The usual artifice used in spectral estimation is to visualize a finite data record as the product of a boxcar data window and a data record of infinite length. This has led to the concept that leakage results from the lobe structure observed in the Fourier transform of a boxcar data window. Use of the true artifice for finite discrete time series, that both the data window and the sample time series are periodically extended, leads to the concept of an open data window. The open window makes no contribution to leakage. There is no leakage when the open window is used with a sample from an ideal random process. Leakage results from modification of an open window (smoothing) or from Procrustean truncation of coherent components in a data record. Augmenting a data record with zeros and tapering the ends with short half-cosine bells are equivalent to modifying an open window. The latter practice is not effective in counteracting leakage from truncated periodic components and has little value for improving the stability of estimates for random processes.
Truck Noise, Sleep, and Habituation
Authors: Thiessen George J.
Published: May 2012

Two groups of subjects subjected to seven truck passages per night, at a level of 65 dBA, for 12 and 24 successive nights, respectively, showed no statistically significant habituation of their sleep level shift. However, with increasing exposure, the waking response does show some decrease which may be about 50% in three weeks. Some subjects show electroencephalograms that are remarkably difficult to read using textbook methods.
The Exposure of Truck Drivers to Noise
Authors: Sharp Ben H.
Published: May 2012

In recent years, there has been increasing interest shown by governmental agencies and industry in the noise exposure of employees. The noise environment in a factory can be monitored with relatively simple systems to verify compliance with regulatory noise exposure limits. To verify compliance in the case of truck drivers entails monitoring the noise environment in the cab for the duration of a typical trip—clearly an unacceptable proposition that would not lend itself to practical enforcement or inspection techniques. This paper describes the development of a relationship between a simple measurement of truck cab noise and existing regulatory noise limits for typical operation of the truck. The noise level was continuously recorded in 28 trucks operating over conventional routes. A method of route synthesis was developed so that the route could be eliminated as a parameter in the measured data. The values of the noise level measured under simple operating conditions were then compared with those for the standard trip and a correction factor relating the two quantities determined. [This work was conducted under contract to the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, Detroit.]
Acoustic Scattering by Reflective Barrier Geometries
Authors: Holm R. G. , Trella T. J.
Published: May 2012

Attenuation of sound by barriers is of much practical interest for abatement of highway and urban rapid transit noise. An effective attenuation prediction scheme cannot be based on the usual diffraction from a rigid semi-infinite plane concept because the ground effect creates localized regions of high attenuation. Assuming a coherent line source radiating above a reflecting plane, theoretical expressions are derived for the scattered sound field of semi-elliptic and wedge-shaped acoustically opaque barriers. Theoretical insertion loss predictions, at several measurement locations in the diffracted field, show major dependenceies on the source's position and frequency, but only a minor dependency on barrier shape. Experimental measurements agree favorably with theoretical predictions.
Polyurethane Foam Impedance Measurement Test Results
Authors: Kirk J. J. , Olsen R. F.
Published: May 2012

Extensive use at The Boeing Company of Scottfelt, Grade 900, polyurethane foam as a relatively inexpensive test material for jet engine nacelle acoustic studies prompted the development of a polyurethane foam impedance mathematical model. This paper presents results of impedance tube measurements on Scottfelt made as a first step in developing such a model. Firmnesses ranging from 1 to 8, and thicknesses from 12 to 2 in. were tested. A number of tests were performed with stacked layers of different firmness numbers (e.g., 2+4). The detail results are presented as plots of sample impedance versus particle velocity and frequency. Measurements of density and flow resistance for various firmnesses were made and a relationship between density, porosity, flow resistivity, and Scottfelt firmness number is established. The results for firmness 4 are compared to a bulk absorber theory for flexible blankets developed by Beranek and found to be in reasonable agreement.
Problems of Sound Insulation around the Movable Walls between Adjacent Offices
Authors: Voelker Ernst-Joseph
Published: May 2012

The sound insulation between adjacent offices depends not only on the sound insulation of the walls themselves but also on other paths into the neighboring room, for example, through the common floor, through the false ceiling which may be continuous over the two offices, or through the building facade. The separation of these sound paths would normally require extensive measurement involving the introduction of additional barriers. A simple alternative method is to measure the structural vibration level in the building elements which will radiate into the receiving room and then to calculate the sound insulation.
Clinician-Investigators as Translational Bioscientists: Shaping a Seamless Identity
Authors: Edelman Elazer R. , LaMarco Kelly
Published: May 2012

Established biomedical scientists counsel early-career clinician-investigators and translational bioscientists on mechanisms for molding successful research careers that advance clinical medicine.
Risk and Return for the Clinician-Investigator
Authors: Henrickson Sarah , Altshuler David
Published: May 2012

An early-career clinician-investigator and an established translational scientist discuss the pursuit of clinically informed research questions and taking risk on the road less traveled.
Comment on “The Predictive Capacity of Personal Genome Sequencing”
Authors: Topol Eric J.
Published: May 2012

Contrary to the impression given by Roberts
et al
. and its coverage in the media, the notion that genetic information cannot with certainty predict disease in an individual is well known, but its precision will improve as more kinds of genetic variability can be ascertained.
Comment on “The Predictive Capacity of Personal Genome Sequencing”
Authors: Begg Colin B. , Pike Malcolm C.
Published: May 2012

An alternative calculation of the predictive capacity of genomic sequencing based on the occurrence of cancer in the second breast of breast cancer patients offers a more optimistic view of the predictive value of genetic data than that presented by Roberts
et al
.
Comment on “The Predictive Capacity of Personal Genome Sequencing”
Authors: Golan David , Rosset Saharon
Published: May 2012

Recalculation of the results in Roberts
et al.
shows that the true predictive capacity of genomes may be higher than their maximal estimates.
Response to Comments on “The Predictive Capacity of Personal Genome Sequencing”
Authors: Vogelstein Bert , Roberts Nicholas J. , Vogelstein Joshua T. , Parmigiani Giovanni , Kinzler Kenneth W. , Velculescu Victor E.
Published: May 2012

The power of personal genome sequencing to elucidate disease pathogenesis will ensure that it will become an essential tool in medical practice, but recognizing its limitations for improving public health will minimize false expectations and foster the most fruitful investigations.
Keeping the Peace: Skin Sentinels Maintain Immune Tolerance
Authors: Anandasabapathy Niroshana
Published: May 2012

Skin-resident dendritic cells suppress inflammation.
Detecting a Broken Heart
Authors: Nahrendorf Matthias
Published: May 2012

Iron oxide nanoparticles allow MRI visualization of heart inflammation, facilitating noninvasive diagnosis of myocarditis.
A Crypt-Specific Core Microbiota Resides in the Mouse Colon
Authors: Pédron Thierry , Mulet Céline , Dauga Catherine , Frangeul Lionel , Chervaux Christian , Grompone Gianfranco , Sansonetti Philippe J.
Published: May 2012

In an attempt to explore the microbial content of functionally critical niches of the mouse gastrointestinal tract, we targeted molecular microbial diagnostics of the crypts that contain the intestinal stem cells, which account for epithelial regeneration. As current evidence indicates, the gut microbiota affects epithelial regeneration; bacteria that are likely to primarily participate in this essential step of the gut, microbiota cross talk, have been identified. We show in this article that only the cecal and colonic crypts harbor resident microbiota in the mouse and that regardless of the line and breeding origin of these mice, this bacterial population is unexpectedly dominated by aerobic genera. Interestingly, this microbiota resembles the restricted microbiota found in the midgut of invertebrates; thus, the presence of our so-called “crypt-specific core microbiota” (CSCM) in the mouse colon potentially reflects a coevolutionary process under selective conditions that can now be addressed. We suggest that CSCM could play both a protective and a homeostatic role within the colon. This article is setting the bases for such studies, particularly by providing a
bona fide
—and essentially cultivable—crypt microbiota of reference.

IMPORTANCE
Metagenomic typing of the whole-gut luminal microbiome was recently provided, revealing great opportunities for physiological and physiopathological analysis of the host-microbiota interface. On this basis, it appears increasingly important to analyze which niches of the gut exposed to a particular microbiota are of major functional importance, specifically focusing on the crypt, which accounts for permanent epithelial renewal, and to analyze how this microbiota compares to its luminal counterpart in composition and quantity. Crypt-specific core microbiotas may show themselves as important elements regarding crypt protection and homeostasis of its functions.
The foot in multistage ultra-marathon runners: experience in a cohort study of 22 participants of the Trans Europe Footrace Project with mobile MRI
Authors: Freund Wolfgang , Weber Frank , Billich Christian , Schuetz Uwe H
Published: May 2012

Objectives

67 runners participated in the Trans Europe FootRace 2009 (TEFR09), a 4487 km (2789 mi) multistage ultra-marathon covering the south of Europe (Bari, Italy) to the North Cape. Reports on ultra-marathons are lacking, but the literature reports overuse injuries in athletes, especially to the Achilles tendon (AT), ankle or hind foot. Bone oedema may be related to exposure and is present in fatigue fractures. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine prospectively if sustained maximal load during an ultra-marathon leads to damage to the foot.

Design and participants

In a cohort study, repeated scanning of the 22 athletes participating in the study was performed before and during (approximately every 1000 km) the race. Using the obtained fat saturated inversion recovery sequence, two experienced readers blinded to the clinical data rated the images regarding foot lesions. Statistical analysis included regression analysis and computation of the inter-rater reliability.

Setting

The TEFR09 course. MRI scanning was performed according to prearranged schedules for every participant, using a mobile 1.5 Tesla MRI unit on a trailer following the race.

Primary outcome measures

MRI data such as AT diameter, bone or tendon lesions, subcutaneous, plantar fascia or intraosseous oedema.

Results

The 22 study participants did not differ significantly from the total of the 67 TEFR09 runners regarding height, weight and age. The AT diameter increased significantly from 6.8 to 7.8 mm as did intraosseous signal, bone lesions and subcutaneous oedema. However, finishers differed only regarding plantar aponeurosis and subcutaneous oedema from participants aborting the TEFR09. Inter-rater reliability was 0.88–0.98.

Conclusion

Under the extreme stress of the TEFR09, an increase of the AT diameter as well as bone signal are thought to be adaptive since only subcutaneous oedema and plantar fascia oedema were related to abortion of the race.

Trial registration number

University of Ulm, Germany Ethics Committee Number 78/08-UBB/se.
REED
Authors: Armitage Grenville , Heyde Amiel
Published: May 2012

Online First Person Shooter (FPS) games typically use a client-server communication model, with thousands of enthusiast-hosted game servers active at any time. Traditional FPS server discovery may take minutes, as clients create thousands of short-lived packet flows while probing all available servers to find a selection of game servers with tolerable round trip time (RTT). REED reduces a client's probing time and network traffic to 1% of traditional server discovery. REED game servers participate in a centralized, incremental calculation of their network coordinates, and clients use these coordinates to expedite the discovery of servers with low RTTs.
Sprite generation using sprite fusion
Authors: Chen Yi , Deshpande Abhidnya A. , Aygüun Ramazan S.
Published: May 2012

There has been related research for sprite or mosaic generation for over 15 years. In this article, we try to understand the methodologies for sprite generation and identify what has not actually been covered for sprite generation. We first identify issues and focus on the domain of videos for sprite generation. We introduce a novel sprite fusion method that blends two sprites. Sprite fusion method produces good results for tracking videos and does not require object segmentation. We present sample results of our experiments.
Collaborative video reindexing via matrix factorization
Authors: Weng Ming-Fang , Chuang Yung-Yu
Published: May 2012

Concept-based video indexing generates a matrix of scores predicting the possibilities of concepts occurring in video shots. Based on the idea of collaborative filtering, this article presents unsupervised methods to refine the initial scores generated by concept classifiers by taking into account the concept-to-concept correlation and shot-to-shot similarity embedded within the score matrix. Given a noisy matrix, we refine the inaccurate scores via matrix factorization. This method is further improved by learning multiple local models and incorporating contextual-temporal structures. Experiments on the TRECVID 2006--2008 datasets demonstrate relative performance gains ranging from 13% to 52% without using any user annotations or external knowledge resources.
Smarter photography
Authors: Anthes Gary
Published: May 2012

Improvements in camera hardware, image processing, camera-photographer interfaces, and image viewing are advancing the state of the art in digital photography.
Data mining meets city hall
Authors: Hoffmann Leah
Published: May 2012

Local and national governments are turning to open data to cut their costs, increase transparency and efficiency, and respond to the needs of citizens.
Game changer
Authors: Savage Neil
Published: May 2012

Judea Pearl's passionate advocacy of the importance of probability and causality helped revolutionize artificial intelligence.
A measure of control
Authors: Armour Phillip G.
Published: May 2012

Some limitations on measurements in software.
Scale failure
Authors: Neville-Neil George V.
Published: May 2012

Using a tool for the wrong job is OK until the day when it isn't.
The myth of the elevator pitch
Authors: Denning Peter J. , Dew Nicholas
Published: May 2012

Instead of pitching, listen and offer.
Why computer scientists should care about cyber conflict and U.S. national security policy
Authors: Lin Herbert
Published: May 2012

Cybersecurity and policy issues for computer scientists.
Why rumors spread so quickly in social networks
Authors: Doerr Benjamin , Fouz Mahmoud , Friedrich Tobias
Published: May 2012

A few hubs with many connections share with many individuals with few connections.
Trust extension for commodity computers
Authors: Parno Bryan
Published: May 2012

A user's trust in a single device can be extended to many other devices.
Lightweight modular staging
Authors: Rompf Tiark , Odersky Martin
Published: May 2012

Good software engineering practice demands generalization and abstraction, whereas high performance demands specialization and concretization. These goals are at odds, and compilers can only rarely translate expressive high-level programs to modern hardware platforms in a way that makes best use of the available resources.

Generative programming is a promising alternative to fully automatic translation. Instead of writing down the target program directly, developers write a program generator, which produces the target program as its output. The generator can be written in a high-level, generic style and can still produce efficient, specialized target programs. In practice, however, developing high-quality program generators requires a very large effort that is often hard to amortize.

We present
lightweight modular staging
(LMS), a generative programming approach that lowers this effort significantly. LMS seamlessly combines program generator logic with the generated code in a single program, using only types to distinguish the two stages of execution. Through extensive use of component technology, LMS makes a reusable and extensible compiler framework available at the library level, allowing programmers to tightly integrate domain-specific abstractions and optimizations into the generation process, with common generic optimizations provided by the framework.

LMS is well suited to develop embedded domain-specific languages (DSLs) and has been used to develop powerful performance-oriented DSLs for demanding domains such as machine learning, with code generation for heterogeneous platforms including GPUs. LMS has also been used to generate SQL for embedded database queries and JavaScript for web applications.
Q&A: A sure thing
Authors: Hoffmann Leah
Published: May 2012

Artificial intelligence pioneer Judea Pearl discusses probability, causation, the calculus of intervention, and counterfactuals.
Frontiers, challenges, and opportunities for information retrieval
Authors: Allan James , Croft Bruce , Moffat Alistair , Sanderson Mark
Published: May 2012

During a three-day workshop in February 2012, 45 Information Retrieval researchers met to discuss long-range challenges and opportunities within the field. The result of the workshop is a diverse set of research directions, project ideas, and challenge areas. This report describes the workshop format, provides summaries of broad themes that emerged, includes brief descriptions of all the ideas, and provides detailed discussion of six proposals that were voted "most interesting" by the participants. Key themes include the need to: move beyond ranked lists of documents to support richer dialog and presentation, represent the context of search and searchers, provide richer support for information seeking, enable retrieval of a wide range of structured and unstructured content, and develop new evaluation methodologies.
Report on INEX 2011
Authors: Bellot P. , Chappell T. , Doucet A. , Geva S. , Kamps J. , Kazai G. , Koolen M. , Landoni M. , Marx M. , Moriceau V. , Mothe J. , Ramírez G. , Sanderson M. , Sanjuan E. , Scholer F. , Tannier X. , Theobald M. , Trappett M. , Trotman A. , Wang Q.
Published: May 2012

INEX investigates focused retrieval from structured documents by providing large test collections of structured documents, uniform evaluation measures, and a forum for organizations to compare their results. This paper reports on the INEX 2011 evaluation campaign, which consisted of a five active tracks: Books and Social Search, Data Centric, Question Answering, Relevance Feedback, and Snippet Retrieval. INEX 2011 saw a range of new tasks and tracks, such as Social Book Search, Faceted Search, Snippet Retrieval, and Tweet Contextualization.
Enabling entity retrieval by exploiting wikipedia as a semantic knowledge source
Authors: Athenikos Sofia J.
Published: May 2012

This dissertation research, PanAnthropon FilmWorld, aims to demonstrate direct retrieval of entities and related facts by exploiting Wikipedia as a semantic knowledge source, with the film domain as its proof-of-concept domain of application. To this end, a semantic knowledge base concerning the film domain has been constructed with the data extracted/derived from 10,640 Wikipedia pages on films and additional pages on film awards. The knowledge base currently contains 209,266 entities and 2,345,931 entity-centric facts. Both the knowledge base and the corresponding semantic search interface are based on the coherent classification of entities. Entity-centric facts are also consistently represented as  tuples. The semantic search interface (http://dlib.ischool.drexel.edu:8080/sofia/PA/) supports multiple types of semantic search functions, which go beyond the traditional keyword-based search function, including the main General Entity Retrieval Query (GERQ) function, which is concerned with retrieving all entities that match the specified entity type, subtype, and semantic conditions and thus corresponds to the main research problem. Two types of evaluation have been performed in order to evaluate (1) the quality of information extraction and (2) the effectiveness of information retrieval using the semantic interface. The first type of evaluation has been performed by inspecting 11,495 film-centric facts concerning 100 films. The results have confirmed high data quality with 99.96% average precision and 99.84% average recall. The second type of evaluation has been performed by conducting an experiment with human subjects. The experiment involved having the subjects perform a retrieval task by using both the PanAnthropon interface and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) interface and comparing their task performance between the two interfaces. The results have confirmed higher effectiveness of the PanAnthropon interface vs. the IMDb interface (83.11% vs. 40.78% average precision; 83.55% vs. 40.26% average recall). Moreover, the subjects' responses to the post-task questionnaire indicate that the subjects found the PanAnthropon interface to be highly usable and easily understandable as well as highly effective. The main contribution from this research therefore consists in achieving the set research goal, namely, demonstrating the utility and feasibility of semantics-based direct entity retrieval.
Exploring topic structure
Authors: He Jiyin
Published: May 2012

The use of topical information has long been studied in the context of information retrieval. For example, grouping search results into topical categories enables more effective information presentation to users, while grouping documents in a collection can lead to efficient information access. We define a topic as the main theme or subject contained in a (set of) document(s). While topics provide information about the subjects contained in a document, the structure of topics provides information such as the degree to which a set of documents is focused on certain topic (or set of topics), topical diversity among documents, and semantic relatedness of topics.

The work of this thesis focuses on modeling the structure of topics present in a (set of) document(s), with the goal of effectively using it in information retrieval. In particular, we consider a number of IR tasks where the notion of relevance is beyond "aboutness" and topic structure plays an important role in satisfying users' information need. The following research themes are addressed, in three parts: (1) topic coherence, (2) diversity and the cluster hypothesis, and (3) relating topics present in different representations.

With respect to the first research theme, we develop a coherence measure that effectively captures topical coherence of a set of documents. The proposed measure is applied to two IR tasks, namely, blog feed retrieval and query performance prediction.

In the second part of the thesis, we explore the impact of topic structure on effectively presenting retrieval results, with a focus on the scenario of result diversification. We re-visit the cluster hypothesis with respect to ambiguous or multi-faceted queries and investigate the effectiveness of query-specific clustering in result diversification.

Topics can be represented in different ways, e.g., using clusters, using definitions from a thesaurus, using statistics of term frequencies, etc. In the third part of the thesis, we study the problem of relating topics represented in different forms within the context of automatic link generation. We identify a set of significant terms from a source text, link those terms to their corresponding entries in a knowledge base in such a way that the source text is annotated with background information available in the knowledge base. We conduct a case study in automatically generating links from narrative radiology reports to Wikipedia. Such links are expected to help users understand the medical terminology and thereby increase the value of the reports. Here we evaluate state-of-the-art link generation systems and propose an approach that improves over state-of-the-art systems on radiology data.

Available online at http://dare.uva.nl/record/377895.
Study of result presentation and interaction for aggregated search
Authors: Sushmita Shanu
Published: May 2012

"Searching" on web has become an integral part of today's world, and many people rely on it when looking for information. The amount and the diversity of information available on the Web have also increased dramatically. Due to which, search engine companies are making constant efforts in order to make this information accessible to the people effectively. Not only there is an increase in the amount and diversity of information available online, users are now often seeking information on broader topics. Users seeking information on broad topics, gather information from various information sources (e.g., image, video, news, blog, etc). For such information requests, not only web results but results from different document genre and multimedia contents are also becoming relevant. For instance, users' looking for information on "Glasgow" might be interested in web results about Glasgow, Map of Glasgow, Images of Glasgow, News of Glasgow, and so on.

Aggregated search aims to provide access to this diverse information in a unified manner by aggregating results from different information sources on a single result page; hence making information gathering process easier for broad topics. This thesis aimed to explore aggregated search from the users perspective.

The thesis first and foremost focused on understanding and describing the phenomena related to the users' search process in the context of aggregated search. The goal was to participate in building theories and in understanding constraints, as well as providing insights into the interface design.

While the thematic (or topical) relevance of documents is important, this thesis argued that the "source type" (source-orientation) might also be an important dimension in the relevance space for investigating aggregated search. Therefore, relevance is multi-dimensional (topical and sourceorientated) within the context of aggregated search. Results from the study suggested that the effect of the source-orientation was a significant factor in an aggregated search scenario, hence adding another dimension to the relevance space within the aggregated search scenario. The thesis further presented a method, which combines rule base and machine learning techniques to identify source-orientation behind a user query.

Furthermore, after analyzing log data from a search engine company and conducting user study experiments, several design issues that may arise with respect to the aggregated search interface were identified. In order to address these issues, suitable design guidelines that can be beneficial from the interface perspective were also suggested.

Overall, the thesis aimed to explore the emerging aggregated search from users' perspective, since it is a very important for front-end technologies. An additional goal was to provide empirical evidence regarding how aggregated search influence users searching behavior, and identified some of the key challenges in aggregated search.

Available online at: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3289/.
ΔFosB in the supraoptic nucleus contributes to hyponatremia in rats with cirrhosis
Authors: Cunningham J. Thomas , Nedungadi Thekkethil Prashant , Walch Joseph D. , Nestler Eric J. , Gottlieb Helmut B.
Published: May 2012

Bile duct ligation (BDL), a model of hepatic cirrhosis, is associated with dilutional hyponatremia and inappropriate vasopressin release. ΔFosB staining was significantly increased in vasopressin and oxytocin magnocellular neurosecretory cells in the supraoptic nucleus (SON) of BDL rats. We tested the role of SON ΔFosB in fluid retention following BDL by injecting the SON ( n = 10) with 400 nl of an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector expressing ΔJunD (a dominant negative construct for ΔFosB) plus green fluorescent protein (GFP) (AAV-GFP-ΔJunD). Controls were either noninjected or injected with an AAV vector expressing only GFP. Three weeks after BDL or sham ligation surgery, rats were individually housed in metabolism cages for 1 wk. Average daily water intake was significantly elevated in all BDL rats compared with sham ligated controls. Average daily urine output was significantly greater in AAV-GFP-ΔJunD-treated BDL rats compared with all other groups. Daily average urine sodium concentration was significantly lower in AAV-GFP-ΔJunD-treated BDL rats than the other groups, although average daily sodium excretion was not different among the groups. SON expression of ΔJunD produced a diuresis in BDL rats that may be related to decreased circulating levels of vasopressin or oxytocin. These findings support the view that ΔFosB expression in SON magnocellular secretory cells contribute to dilutional hyponatremia in BDL rats.
Conditioning intensity-dependent interaction between short-latency interhemispheric inhibition and short-latency afferent inhibition
Authors: Tsutsumi Ryosuke , Shirota Yuichiro , Ohminami Shinya , Terao Yasuo , Ugawa Yoshikazu , Hanajima Ritsuko
Published: May 2012

The relationship between sensory and transcallosal inputs into the motor cortex may be important in motor performance, but it has not been well studied, especially in humans. The aim of this study was to reveal this relationship by investigating the interaction between short-latency interhemispheric inhibition (SIHI) and short-latency afferent inhibition (SAI) in humans with transcranial magnetic stimulation. SIHI is the inhibition of the primary motor cortex (M1) elicited by contralateral M1 stimulation given ∼10 ms before, and it reflects transcallosal inhibition. SAI is the inhibition of M1 elicited by contralateral median nerve stimulation preceding M1 stimulation by ∼20 ms. In this investigation, we studied the intensity dependence of SIHI and SAI and the interaction between SIHI and SAI in various conditioning intensities. Subjects were 11 normal volunteers. The degree of effects was evaluated by comparing motor evoked potential sizes recorded from the first dorsal interosseous muscle between a certain condition and control condition. Both SIHI and SAI were potentiated by increment of the conditioning stimulus intensity and saturated at 1.4 times resting motor threshold for SIHI and 3 times sensory threshold for SAI. No significant interaction was observed when either of their intensities was subthreshold for the inhibition on its own. Only when both intensities were strong enough for their inhibition did the presence of one inhibition lessen the other one. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that interneurons mediating SIHI and SAI have mutual, direct, and inhibitory interaction in a conditioning intensity-dependent manner.
Molecular Pathways: Involving Microenvironment Damage Responses in Cancer Therapy Resistance
Authors: Sun Yu , Nelson Peter S.
Published: May 2012

The armamentarium of therapeutics used to treat cancer patients relies heavily on ionizing radiation and chemotherapeutic drugs that severely damage DNA. Tumor cells' responses to such treatments are heavily influenced by their environment: Physical contacts with structural elements such as the extracellular matrix, associations with resident and transitory benign cells such as fibroblasts and leukocytes, and interactions with numerous soluble endocrine and paracrine-acting factors all modulate tumor-cell behavior. Of importance, this complex tumor microenvironment is not static and dynamically responds to a variety of stimuli. Here, we describe emerging data indicating that genotoxic cancer treatments activate highly conserved damage response programs in benign constituents of the tumor microenvironment. These damage signals, transmitted via master regulators such as NF-κB, culminate in a powerful and diverse secretory program that generates a proangiogenic, proinflammatory microenvironment. Constituents of this program include interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, hepatocyte growth factor, amphiregulin, matrix metalloproteinases, and other factors that have been shown to promote adverse tumor-cell phenotypes, such as enhanced resistance to treatment and rapid tumor repopulation. A detailed understanding of these survival signals induced in the context of genotoxic stress provides a platform for developing combinatorial treatment strategies that take into account malignant cells, the tumor microenvironment, and the dynamics exerted by the treatment itself. Clin Cancer Res; 18(15); 4019–25. ©2012 AACR.