bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Safe supplies: few infections in UK blood and tissue donors
Authors: Reynolds C. , Davison K. L. , Brailsford S. R.
Published: January 2019

Aims/Objectives

Here, we describe the annual review of the UK blood services' infection surveillance schemes for 2017 (www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe‐supplies‐annual‐review).

Background

The joint NHS Blood and Transplant/Public Health England Epidemiology Unit was set up in 1995 to ensure that blood and tissue safety is maintained, inform donor selection and testing policy and add to public health knowledge.

Methods

Several surveillance schemes for blood, tissues and bacterial screening collect the numbers of donations tested, reactive and confirmed positive in order to monitor trends in infection rates in donors and calculate residual risk of infection. Investigations of potential transfusion transmissions in recipients are also monitored.

Results

In the UK in 2017, the risk of testing not detecting a potentially infectious hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus or HIV donation was estimated as less than one in two million donations. One hepatitis A virus and one hepatitis E virus transmission incidents were proven to be transfusion‐transmitted by unscreened donations.

Conclusions

The Safe Supplies annual review provides a clear picture of the very low risk associated with blood and tissues in the UK nowadays. In November 2017, the blood services for England, Wales and Scotland implemented recommendations to reduce the deferrals for higher risk sexual behaviour from 12 to 3 months. The surveillance schemes are adapted to remain fit for purpose as testing and donor selection change.
Synergistic effect between ultraviolet irradiation and electrochemical oxidation for removal of humic acids and pharmaceuticals
Authors: García‐Espinoza Josué Daniel , Zolfaghari Mehdi , Mijaylova Nacheva Petia
Published: January 2019

The fate of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment is significantly affected by the presence of humic acids (HA). In this work, the synergistic effect of electrochemical oxidation (EO) and ultraviolet irradiation (UVI) was evaluated for HA removal and for the simultaneous degradation of three pharmaceuticals (carbamazepine, propranolol and sulfamethoxazole) in presence of HA. The effectiveness of EO, UVI and their combination for HA removal was assessed using different operating parameters, such as type of anode (Nb/BDD and Ti/IrO2), supporting electrolyte (NaCl, NaBr and Na2SO4), current density (8.1, 16.1, 28.2, 40.3, and 48.4 mA/cm2), pH (3, 7 and 9) and NaCl electrolyte concentration (7, 14 and 21 mM). The use of non‐active anode Nb/BDD, NaCl electrolyte and combination EO‐UVI was the most efficacious option for HA removal, due to the production of hydroxyl radicals as well as active chlorine species (HClO, Cl● and ClO−) generated by anodic oxidation and by UVI. The effectiveness of the EO process was enhanced coupling EO with UVI, however the energetic consumption increased. The composition of the electrolyte was the pivotal parameter since a complete degradation of the pharmaceuticals was achieved by both processes EO and EO‐UVI using NaCl as electrolyte; this is attributed to the indirect oxidation by electrogenerated active chlorine which dominates the pharmaceuticals degradation.
Validation of inpatient international classification of disease ninth revision codes as predictors of venous leg ulcers
Authors: Jaller J.A. , Darwin E.S. , Silverberg J.I. , Lev‐Tov H.A.
Published: January 2019

Venous leg ulcers (VLU) comprise about 70% of lower leg wounds and cost more than 14 billion USD per year. Patients with VLU are often admitted to the hospital; however, epidemiological study of this important patient subset is challenged by lack of validated database search protocol. Five International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 9 codes were identified for their relationship with VLUs (454.0, 454.2, 459.11, 707.9, and 707.10). The ICD9 code was considered to successfully predict a VLU if the wound was located in the gaiter area and had either relevant clinical findings, a positive venous study, and/or a diagnosis of VLU written in the physician note. The code 454.0, when combined with length of admission and subjects’ age, yielded high specificity (100%) and positive predictive value (100%), sacrificing sensitivity (34.4%). This formula represents a viable search criterion to identify VLU patients in large‐scale datasets to examine patients’ outcomes, costs, and comorbidities.
Detection of Toxoplasma gondii in Crassostrea spp. oysters cultured in an estuarine region in eastern Amazon
Authors: Monteiro Thamillys R. M. , Rocha Katarine S. , Silva Jacqueline , Mesquita Gleiciane S. S. , Rosário Marcely K. S. , Ferreira Maeli F. S. , Honorio Betsy E. T. , Melo Hugo F. R. , Barros Flávia N. L. , Scofield Alessandra , Abel Isis , Moraes Carla C. G.
Published: January 2019

The aim of the present study was to detect DNA of Toxoplasma gondii in Crassostrea spp. oysters cultured in the state of Pará, Brazil. A total of 400 oysters were directly collected from a fixed rack system. Gills, gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and intervalvular liquid were separated and grouped into pool samples of 10 animals, resulting in 40 samples each of gills, GIT and intervalvular liquid. DNA extraction was performed using a commercial kit, and T. gondii DNA was detected by nested PCR using the primers Toxo3 and Toxo4, which produced an amplification product of 155 bp of the T. gondii gene B1. Nucleotide sequencing was performed for positive samples, and the obtained sequences were identified by comparison with sequences in GenBank. The DNA of T. gondii was detected in 5.8% (7/120) of the pool samples, of which 7.5% (3/40) was in the GIT, 5% (2/40) in the gills, and 5% (2/40) was in the intervalvular liquid. The obtained sequences presented 100% identity and overlap with T. gondii DNA sequences. This is the report of detection of T. gondii DNA in oysters from genus Crassostrea spp. originating from the state of Pará, eastern Amazon.
The Moderating Role of Authenticity in the Relationship Between Valued Living and Life Satisfaction in Undergraduate Students
Authors: Cekici Ferah , Sünbül Zeynep Aydın , Malkoç Asude , Gördesli Meltem Aslan , Arslan Reyhan
Published: January 2019

The purpose of this study was to analyze the moderating role of authentic behavior on valued living and life satisfaction. The study group consisted of a total of 328 university students (249 female, 79 male) between 18-32 years old. The average age of the students in the study group was 20.3 and the standard deviation was 1.65. Participants of the study were selected through convenient sampling methods (Fraenkel et al., 2011). The data of this study was obtained by applying the Valued Living Scale (Wilson &Groom, 2002), The Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al.,1985) and the Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008). Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test the moderating effect of authentic behavior on the relationship between valued living and life satisfaction. SPSS 20 package program (IBM, 2011) was used in the data analysis step. In this study, two models were created with hierarchical regression analysis and these two models were tested. In the first model, the individual effect of valued living on life satisfaction and in the second model, the moderating role of authentic behavior on this relationship was analyzed. Based on the obtained results, it was determined that valued living has positive and significant relationships with life satisfaction; as well authentic behavior increased the predictive power of the relationship between valued living and life satisfaction and moderated this relationship in a positive significant direction. Obtained results were considered under related information in the literature and recommendations were provided for future studies.
Comparative study on the use of novel heteroleptic cyclopentadienyl-based zirconium precursors with H2O and O3 for atomic layer deposition of ZrO2
Authors: Seppälä Sanni , Vehkamäki Marko , Mizohata Kenichiro , Noh Wontae , Räisänen Jyrki , Ritala Mikko , Leskelä Markku
Published: January 2019

Three heteroleptic Zr precursors were studied for atomic layer deposition (ALD) of ZrO2. Films were deposited from Zr(Cp)(tBuDAD)(OiPr), Zr(MeCp)(TMEA), and Zr(Me5Cp)(TEA) with either water or ozone as the oxygen source {tBuDAD = N,N-bis(tertbutyl)ethene-1,2-diaminato, TMEA = tris[2-(methylamino)ethyl]aminate, TEA = triethoanolaminate}. Self-limiting film growth was confirmed for the Zr(Cp)(tBuDAD)(OiPr)/O3 process at 250 °C and for the Zr(Me5Cp)(TEA)/O3 process at 375 °C, which is among the highest temperatures for advanced heteroleptic precursors. Excellent film purity with C, H, and N levels below the detection limit of the elastic recoil detection analysis was obtained with ozone as the oxygen source. All the studied processes showed the same trend that at low deposition temperatures films were tetragonal ZrO2 and at higher temperatures mixtures of tetragonal and monoclinic ZrO2. With water, the monoclinic phase appeared at higher temperatures than with ozone. In addition to the deposition temperature, the film thickness affected the phase; thinner films favored the tetragonal phase and monoclinic peaks were more clearly seen in thicker films. The high thermal stability and excellent film purity show that from the three studied Zr precursors, Zr(Me5Cp)(TEA) is a noteworthy precursor candidate for ALD of ZrO2.
Atomic layer germanium etching for 3D Fin-FET using chlorine neutral beam
Authors: Ohori Daisuke , Fujii Takuya , Noda Shuichi , Mizubayashi Wataru , Endo Kazuhiko , Lee En-Tzu , Li Yiming , Lee Yao-Jen , Ozaki Takuya , Samukawa Seiji
Published: January 2019

In case of using pure chlorine chemistry, Ge etching reactivity is three times higher than Si etching reactivity because of the larger lattice spacing in Ge. As a result, during the chlorine plasma etching of a Ge Fin structure, there are serious problems such as a large side-etching and large surface roughness on the Ge sidewall. Conversely, the authors found that several-ten nanometer-width Ge Fin structures with defect-free, vertical, and smooth sidewalls were successively delineated by chlorine neutral beam etching. Based on these results, the problems caused by chlorine plasma etching are considered to be due to the enhancement of chemical reactivity caused by defect on the sidewall with the irradiation of ultraviolet/vacuum ultra violet (UV/VUV) photons. Namely, it is clarified that the neutral beam etching could achieve real atomic layer etching by controlling the defect without any UV/VUV photons on the sidewall surface for future nanoscale Ge Fin structures.
Pharmacodynamics of Minocycline against
Acinetobacter baumannii
in a Rat Pneumonia Model
Authors: Tarazi Ziad , Sabet Mojgan , Dudley Michael N. , Griffith David C.
Published: January 2019

Minocycline is currently approved in the United States for the treatment of infections caused by susceptible isolates of
Acinetobacter
spp. The objective of these studies was to determine the minocycline exposures associated with an antibacterial effect against
Acinetobacter baumannii
in a rat pneumonia model.
Kinetic Profile and Molecular Dynamic Studies Show that Y229W Substitution in an NDM-1/L209F Variant Restores the Hydrolytic Activity of the Enzyme toward Penicillins, Cephalosporins, and Carbapenems
Authors: Piccirilli Alessandra , Brisdelli Fabrizia , Aschi Massimiliano , Celenza Giuseppe , Amicosante Gianfranco , Perilli Mariagrazia
Published: January 2019

The New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) enzyme is the most common metallo-β-lactamase identified in many Gram-negative bacteria causing severe nosocomial infections. The aim of this study was to focus the attention on non-active-site residues L209 and Y229 of NDM-1 and to investigate their role in the catalytic mechanism.
SpoIVA-SipL Complex Formation Is Essential for
Clostridioides difficile
Spore Assembly
Authors: Touchette Megan H. , Benito de la Puebla Hector , Ravichandran Priyanka , Shen Aimee
Published: January 2019

The metabolically dormant spore form of the major nosocomial pathogen
Clostridioides difficile
is its major infectious particle. However, the mechanisms controlling the formation of this resistant cell type are not well understood, particularly with respect to its outermost layer, the spore coat. We previously identified two spore-morphogenetic proteins in
C. difficile
: SpoIVA, which is conserved in all spore-forming organisms, and SipL, which is conserved only in the clostridia. Both SpoIVA and SipL are essential for heat-resistant spore formation and directly interact through SipL’s C-terminal LysM domain. In this study, we demonstrate that the LysM domain is critical for SipL and SpoIVA function, likely by helping recruit SipL to the forespore during spore morphogenesis. We further identified residues within the LysM domain that are important for binding SpoIVA and, thus, functional spore formation. These findings provide important insight into the molecular mechanisms controlling the assembly of infectious
C. difficile
spores.
Genetics behind the Biosynthesis of Nonulosonic Acid-Containing Lipooligosaccharides in Campylobacter coli
Authors: Kolehmainen Alejandra , Rossi Mirko , Stupak Jacek , Li Jianjun , Gilbert Michel , Wakarchuk Warren
Published: January 2019

Despite the fact that
Campylobacter coli
a major foodborne pathogen, its glycobiology has been largely neglected. The genetic makeup of the
C. coli
lipooligosaccharide biosynthesis locus was largely unknown until recently.
C. coli
harbors a large set of genes associated with lipooligosaccharide biosynthesis, including genes for several putative glycosyltransferases involved in the synthesis of sialylated lipooligosaccharide in
Campylobacter jejuni
. In the present study,
C. coli
was found to express lipooligosaccharide structures containing sialic acid and other nonulosonate acids. These findings have a strong impact on our understanding of
C. coli
ecology, host-pathogen interaction, and pathogenesis.
Arbidol and Other Low-Molecular-Weight Drugs That Inhibit Lassa and Ebola Viruses
Authors: Hulseberg C. E. , Fénéant L. , Szymańska-de Wijs K. M. , Kessler N. P. , Nelson E. A. , Shoemaker C. J. , Schmaljohn C. S. , Polyak S. J. , White J. M.
Published: January 2019

Lassa and Ebola viruses continue to cause severe outbreaks in humans, yet there are only limited therapeutic options to treat the deadly hemorrhagic fever diseases they cause. Because of overlapping geographic occurrences and similarities in mode of entry into cells, we seek a practical drug or drug cocktail that could be used to treat infections by both viruses. Toward this goal, we directly compared eight drugs, approved or in clinical testing, for the ability to block entry mediated by the glycoproteins of both viruses. We identified five drugs with approximately equal potencies against both. Among these, we investigated the modes of action of arbidol, a drug licensed abroad to treat influenza infections. We found, as shown for influenza virus, that arbidol blocks fusion mediated by the Lassa virus glycoprotein. Our findings encourage the development of a combination of approved drugs to treat both Lassa and Ebola virus diseases.
An Epigenetic Journey: Epstein-Barr Virus Transcribes Chromatinized and Subsequently Unchromatinized Templates during Its Lytic Cycle
Authors: Chakravorty Adityarup , Sugden Bill , Johannsen Eric C.
Published: January 2019

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) lytic phase, like those of all herpesviruses, proceeds via an orderly cascade that integrates DNA replication and gene expression. EBV early genes are expressed independently of viral DNA amplification, and several early gene products facilitate DNA amplification.
MreB Forms Subdiffraction Nanofilaments during Active Growth in Bacillus subtilis
Authors: Billaudeau Cyrille , Yao Zhizhong , Cornilleau Charlène , Carballido-López Rut , Chastanet Arnaud
Published: January 2019

The construction of the bacterial cell envelope is a fundamental topic, as it confers its integrity to bacteria and is consequently the target of numerous antibiotics. MreB is an essential protein suspected to regulate the cell wall synthetic machineries. Despite two decades of study, its localization remains the subject of controversies, its description ranging from helical filaments spanning the entire cell to small discrete entities. The true structure of these filaments is important because it impacts the model describing how the machineries building the cell wall are associated, how they are coordinated at the scale of the entire cell, and how MreB mediates this regulation. Our results shed light on this debate, revealing the size of native filaments in
B. subtilis
during growth. They argue against models where MreB filament size directly affects the speed of synthesis of the cell wall and where MreB would coordinate distant machineries along the side wall.
Economic crises and suicides between 1970 and 2011: time trend study in 21 developed countries
Authors: Huikari Sanna , Miettunen Jouko , Korhonen Marko
Published: January 2019

Background

Existing research on the relationship between economic recessions and suicides has almost completely concentrated on the most recent global financial crisis (2008). We provide the most comprehensive explanation to date of how different types of economic/financial crises since 1970 have affected suicides in developed countries.

Methods

Negative binomial regressions were used to estimate what the suicide rates would have been during and 1 year after each crisis began in 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries from 1970 to 2011 if the suicide rates had followed the pre-crisis trends.

Results

We found that every economic/financial crisis since 1970, except the European Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis in 1992, led to excess suicides in developed countries. Among males, the excess suicide rate (per 100 000 persons) varied from 1.1 (95% CI 0.7 to 1.5) to 9.5 (7.6 to 11.2) and, among females, from 0 to 2.4 (1.9 to 2.9). For both sexes, suicides increased mostly due to stock market crashes and banking crises. In terms of actual numbers, the post-1969 economic/financial crises caused >60 000 excess suicides in the 21 developed countries. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 was the most damaging crisis when assessed based on excess suicides.

Conclusions

Evidence indicates that, when considered in terms of effects on suicide mortality, the most recent global financial crisis is not particularly severe compared with previous global economic/financial crises. The distinct types of crises (ie, banking, currency and inflation crises, and stock market crashes) have different effects on suicide.
Effectiveness of school-based self-management interventions for asthma among children and adolescents: findings from a Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Kneale Dylan , Harris Katherine , McDonald Vanessa M , Thomas James , Grigg Jonathan
Published: January 2019

Introduction

The evidence that teaching self-management techniques to children and young people with asthma in schools is effective has not, to date, been the subject of systematic review.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review of intervention studies. Studies were eligible if they employed a randomised parallel-group design and were published in English from 1995 onwards. Participants included children with asthma aged 5–18 years who participated within their own school environment. Searches were conducted on the Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register. Quantitative data were combined using random-effects meta-analyses.

Results

Thirty-three outcome evaluation studies were included. School-based interventions were effective in reducing the frequency of emergency department visits (OR 0.70, 95% CI 0.53 to 0.92; studies=13), and moderately effective in reducing levels of hospitalisations (standardised mean differences [SMD] −0.19, 95% CI −0.35 to −0.04; studies=6). A meta-analysis of three studies suggest that the intervention approach could reduce the number of days of restricted activity (SMD −0.30, 95% CI −0.41 to −0.18; studies=3). However, there was uncertainty as to whether school-based self-management interventions impacted on reducing absences from school.

Conclusions

Self-management interventions for children with asthma delivered in schools reduce the number of acute episodes of healthcare usage. We conclude that the school environment is an important space for delivering interventions to improve children’s health.
Impact of smoke-free legislation on acute myocardial infarction and stroke mortality: Tianjin, China, 2007–2015
Authors: Xiao Hong , Zhang Hui , Wang Dezheng , Shen Chengfeng , Xu Zhongliang , Zhang Ying , Jiang Guohong , Yang Gonghuan , Wan Xia , Naghavi Mohsen
Published: January 2019

Background

Smoke-free legislation is an effective way to protect the population from the harms of secondhand smoke and has been implemented in many countries. On 31 May 2012, Tianjin became one of the few cities in China to implement smoke-free legislation. We investigated the impact of smoke-free legislation on mortality due to acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and stroke in Tianjin.

Methods

An interrupted time series design adjusting for underlying secular trends, seasonal patterns, population size changes and meteorological factors was conducted to analyse the impact of the smoke-free law on the weekly mortality due to AMI and stroke. The study period was from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2015, with a 3.5-year postlegislation follow-up.

Results

Following the implementation of the smoke-free law, there was a decline in the annual trends of AMI and stroke mortality. An incremental 16% (rate ratio (RR): 0.84; 95% CI: 0.83 to 0.85) decrease per year in AMI mortality and a 2% (RR: 0.98; 95% CI: 0.97 to 0.99) annual decrease in stroke mortality among the population aged ≥35 years in Tianjin was observed. Immediate postlegislation reductions in mortality were not statistically significant. An estimated 10 000 (22%) AMI deaths were prevented within 3.5 years of the implementation of the law.

Conclusion

The smoke-free law in Tianjin was associated with reductions in AMI mortality. This study reinforces the need for large-scale, effective and comprehensive smoke-free laws at the national level in China.
Facile synthesis of EDTA-functionalized halloysite nanotubes for the removal of methylene blue from aqueous phase
Authors: Zhang Mengmeng , Yu Hongchao , Chen Bibo
Published: January 2019

EDTA-functionalized halloysite nanotubes (EDTA-HNTs) were synthesized by a two-step method. The structures of the EDTA-HNTs were analyzed by Fourier-transform infrared spectra, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and transmission electron spectroscopy. Then, the EDTA-HNTs were applied as adsorbents for the removal of methylene blue from aqueous phase. Adsorption of methylene blue onto EDTA-HNTs was investigated with respect to adsorbent dose, contact time, initial methylene blue concentration, and temperature. A maximum adsorption capacity of 115.8 mg/g for methylene blue onto EDTA-HNTs at room temperature was achieved. The adsorption kinetics could be described by the pseudo-second-order model. Both the Langmuir and Freundlich models were employed to describe the adsorption isotherms, and the results presented that the equilibrium data obeyed the Langmuir model. Thermodynamic parameters of ΔG0 and ΔH0 verified the spontaneous and exothermic nature of the methylene blue adsorption onto EDTA-HNTs. Moreover, the EDTA-HNTs could be facilely regenerated and efficiently reused, exhibiting a good prospect for the treatment of dye effluents.
The role of brush mats in mitigating machine-induced soil disturbances: an assessment using absolute and relative soil bulk density and penetration resistance
Authors: Labelle Eric R. , Poltorak Benjamin J. , Jaeger Dirk
Published: January 2019

Forest soils often exhibit low bearing capacities and as a result are often incapable of withstanding high axle loads. In New Brunswick, Canada, five different brush amounts (0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 kg·m–2) were applied as brush mats on machine operating trails during a cut-to-length harvesting operation in a softwood stand to analyze soil disturbance as a result of off-road forest harvesting machine traffic. Soil absolute and relative bulk density and soil penetration resistance measurements were completed below the varying brush mats both before and after forwarding. The mean differences between pre- and post-impact absolute soil dry bulk density values recorded on track areas were 0.24 g·cm–3 for 5–20 kg·m–2 of brush and 0.33 g·cm–3 for 0 kg·m–2 of brush. On average, 40.5%, 17.9%, 14.3%, 15.5%, and 3.6% of all post-forwarding measurements exceeded the threshold for growth-impeding soil bulk density (80% standard Proctor density) for 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 kg·m–2 of brush, respectively. Soil penetration values >3.0 MPa represented 23.7%, 15.0%, 9.4%, 4.6%, and 0.7% of all post-forwarding test plots with 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 kg·m–2 of brush, respectively. The results suggest that softwood brush mats of 10 to 20 kg·m–2 placed on machine operating trails play a considerable role in reducing forwarder-induced soil compaction and penetration resistance.
Triple-resistant kochia [Kochia scoparia (L.) Schrad.] in Alberta
Authors: Beckie Hugh J. , Hall Linda M. , Shirriff Scott W. , Martin Elise , Leeson Julia Y.
Published: January 2019

A randomized stratified survey was conducted in Alberta in 2017 to determine the distribution and abundance of multiple-resistant [acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibitor, glycine, and synthetic auxin] kochia. All populations were ALS inhibitor resistant, with glyphosate and dicamba resistance confirmed in 50% and 18% of populations, respectively. Ten percent of populations exhibited resistance to all three mode-of-action herbicides.
Topological recursion with hard edges
Authors: Chekhov Leonid , Norbury Paul
Published: January 2019

We prove a Givental type decomposition for partition functions that arise out of topological recursion applied to spectral curves. Copies of the Konstevich–Witten KdV tau function arise out of regular spectral curves and copies of the Brezin–Gross–Witten KdV tau function arise out of irregular spectral curves. We present the example of this decomposition for the matrix model with two hard edges and spectral curve [Formula: see text].
Space charge property at the interface in low-density polyethylene/MgO three-layered nanocomposites
Authors: Li Dawei , Zhou Liwei , Wang Xuan , Zhao Li , He Lijuan
Published: January 2019

The MgO/low-density polyethylene nanocomposite film and the sandwich-structure LDPE/MgO-LDPE/LDPE nanocomposite film were prepared by melt blending and hot pressing. Based on the Maxwell–Wagner effect, a theoretical model of the three-layer dielectric interface polarization was set up, and the charge density of the three layers of dielectric interface polarization is obtained. Then pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) is used to study the charge distribution characteristics of the three-layer structure while the breakdown strength of the three-layer structure is tested. The formation and transmission mechanism of the interface charge is systematically analyzed through the above two methods. The results show that the formation of space charge at the interface of sandwich-structure film is likely to be the result of the interaction between the three-layer dielectric polarization effect and the capture charge mechanism at the interface. Compared with the single-layer composite film, the sandwich-structure nanocomposite film has higher breakdown strength, the reason may be that the charge is trapped by the charge trapping mechanism at the interface during the movement of the opposite electrode to form an interfacial space charge, and as the charge accumulates continuously to form a barrier at the interface, the barrier can effectively inhibit the formation of the conductive channel, and the material is improved. The breakdown field is strong.
Strong test ideals associated to Cartier algebras
Authors: Enescu Florian , Ilioaea Irina
Published: January 2019

In this note, we use the theory of test ideals and Cartier algebras to examine the interplay between the tight and integral closures in a local ring of positive characteristic. Using work of Schwede, we prove the abundance of strong test ideals, recovering some older fundamental results, and use this approach in concrete computations. In the second part of the paper, the case of Stanley–Reisner rings is fully examined.
(m,n)-Injective and (m,n)-coherent endomorphism rings of modules
Authors: Mao Lixin
Published: January 2019

Let [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] be fixed positive integers. [Formula: see text] is called a right [Formula: see text]-injective ring if every right [Formula: see text]-homomorphism from an [Formula: see text]-generated submodule of the right [Formula: see text]-module [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] extends to one from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text] is called a right [Formula: see text]-coherent ring if each [Formula: see text]-generated submodule of the right [Formula: see text]-module [Formula: see text] is a finitely presented right [Formula: see text]-module. Let [Formula: see text] be a right [Formula: see text]-module. We study the [Formula: see text]-injectivity and [Formula: see text]-coherence of the endomorphism ring [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text]. Some applications are also given.
Magnetoresistance of Nanoscale Domain Walls Formed in Arrays of Parallel Nanowires
Authors: Wang Jingchun , Cuccureddu Floriano , Ramos Rafael , Coileáin Cormac Ó. , Shvets Igor V. , Wu Han-Chun
Published: January 2019

We present the possibility of enhancing magnetoresistance (MR) by controlling nanoscale domain wall (DW) width in a planar nanowire array. Results based on micromagnetic calculations show that DW width decreases with increasing exchange bias field and decreases with reducing exchange interaction between neighboring nanowires. Fe/Fe3O4 nanowire arrays were grown on [Formula: see text]-plane sapphire to demonstrate the feasibility of this concept, and an enhanced MR ratio of 3.7% was observed at room temperature. compared with flat and stepped Fe3O4 thin films.
Reasoning About Property Preservation in Adaptive Case Management
Authors: Eshuis Rik , Hull Richard , Yi Mengfei
Published: January 2019

Adaptive Case Management (ACM) has emerged as a key BPM technology for supporting the unstructured business process. A key problem in ACM is that case schemas need to be changed to best fit the case at hand. Such changes are ad hoc, and may result in schemas that do not reflect the intended logic or properties. This article presents a formal approach for reasoning about which properties of a case schema are preserved after a modification, and describes change operations that are guaranteed to preserve certain properties. The approach supports reasoning about rollbacks. The Case Management model used here is a variant of the Guard-Stage-Milestone model for declarative business artifacts. A real-life example illustrates applicability.
Convolutional Attention Networks for Scene Text Recognition
Authors: Xie Hongtao , Fang Shancheng , Zha Zheng-Jun , Yang Yating , Li Yan , Zhang Yongdong
Published: January 2019

In this article, we present Convoluitional Attention Networks (CAN) for unconstrained scene text recognition. Recent dominant approaches for scene text recognition are mainly based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), where the CNN encodes images and the RNN generates character sequences. Our CAN is different from these methods; our CAN is completely built on CNN and includes an attention mechanism. The distinctive characteristics of our method include (i) CAN follows encoder-decoder architecture, in which the encoder is a deep two-dimensional CNN and the decoder is a one-dimensional CNN; (ii) the attention mechanism is applied in every convolutional layer of the decoder, and we propose a novel spatial attention method using average pooling; and (iii) position embeddings are equipped in both a spatial encoder and a sequence decoder to give our networks a sense of location. We conduct experiments on standard datasets for scene text recognition, including
Street View Text
,
IIIT5K,
and
ICDAR
datasets. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of different components and show that our convolutional-based method achieves state-of-the-art or competitive performance over prior works, even without the use of RNN.
Deep Patch Representations with Shared Codebook for Scene Classification
Authors: Jiang Shuqiang , Chen Gongwei , Song Xinhang , Liu Linhu
Published: January 2019

Scene classification is a challenging problem. Compared with object images, scene images are more abstract, as they are composed of objects. Object and scene images have different characteristics with different scales and composition structures. How to effectively integrate the local mid-level semantic representations including both object and scene concepts needs to be investigated, which is an important aspect for scene classification. In this article, the idea of a sharing codebook is introduced by organically integrating deep learning, concept feature, and local feature encoding techniques. More specifically, the shared local feature codebook is generated from the combined ImageNet1K and Places365 concepts (Mixed1365) using convolutional neural networks. As the Mixed1365 features cover all the semantic information including both object and scene concepts, we can extract a shared codebook from the Mixed1365 features, which only contain a subset of the whole 1,365 concepts with the same codebook size. The shared codebook can not only provide complementary representations without additional codebook training but also be adaptively extracted toward different scene classification tasks. A method of fusing the encoded features with both the original codebook and the shared codebook is proposed for scene classification. In this way, more comprehensive and representative image features can be generated for classification. Extensive experimentations conducted on two public datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Besides, some useful observations are also revealed to show the advantage of shared codebook.
Visual Analytics to Identify Temporal Patterns and Variability in Simulations from Cellular Automata
Authors: Giabbanelli Philippe J. , Baniukiewicz Magda
Published: January 2019

Cellular Automata (CA) are discrete simulation models, thus producing spatio-temporal data through experiments, as well as stochastic models, thus generating multi-run data. Identifying temporal patterns, such as cycles, is important to understand the behavior of the model. Assessing variability is also essential to estimate which parameter values may require more runs and what consensus emerges across simulation runs. However, these two tasks are currently arduous as the commonly employed slider-based visualizations offer little support to identify temporal trends or excessive model variability. In this article, we addressed these two tasks by developing, implementing, and evaluating a new visual analytics environment that uses several linked visualizations. Our empirical evaluation of the proposed environment assessed (i) whether modelers could identify temporal patterns and variability, (ii) how features of simulations impacted performances, and (iii) whether modelers can use the familiar slider-based visualization together with our new environment. Results shows that participants were confident on results obtained using our new environment. They were also able to accomplish the two target tasks without taking longer than they would with current solutions. Our qualitative analysis found that some participants saw value in switching between our proposed visualization and the commonly used slider-based version. In addition, we noted that errors were affected not only by the type of visualizations but also by specific features of the simulations. Future work may combine and adapt these visualizations depending on salient simulation parameters.
A Perspective Analysis of Handwritten Signature Technology
Authors: Diaz Moises , Ferrer Miguel A. , Impedovo Donato , Malik Muhammad Imran , Pirlo Giuseppe , Plamondon Réjean
Published: January 2019

Handwritten signatures are biometric traits at the center of debate in the scientific community. Over the last 40 years, the interest in signature studies has grown steadily, having as its main reference the application of automatic signature verification, as previously published reviews in 1989, 2000, and 2008 bear witness. Ever since, and over the last 10 years, the application of handwritten signature technology has strongly evolved and much research has focused on the possibility of applying systems based on handwritten signature analysis and processing to a multitude of new fields. After several years of haphazard growth of this research area, it is time to assess its current developments for their applicability in order to draw a structured way forward. This perspective reports a systematic review of the last 10 years of the literature on handwritten signatures with respect to the new scenario, focusing on the most promising domains of research and trying to elicit possible future research directions in this subject.
Parallel Computing of Support Vector Machines
Authors: Tavara Shirin
Published: January 2019

The immense amount of data created by digitalization requires parallel computing for machine-learning methods. While there are many parallel implementations for support vector machines (SVMs), there is no clear suggestion for every application scenario. Many factor—including optimization algorithm, problem size and dimension, kernel function, parallel programming stack, and hardware architecture—impact the efficiency of implementations. It is up to the user to balance trade-offs, particularly between computation time and classification accuracy. In this survey, we review the state-of-the-art implementations of SVMs, their pros and cons, and suggest possible avenues for future research.
BigBus
Authors: Bashir Janibul , Peter Eldhose , Sarangi Smruti R.
Published: January 2019

This article presents
BigBus
, a novel design of an on-chip photonic network for a 1,024-node system. For such a large on-chip network, performance and power reduction are two mutually conflicting goals. This article uses a combination of strategies to reduce static power consumption while simultaneously improving performance and the energy-delay
2
(
ED
2
) product. The crux of the article is to segment the entire system into smaller clusters of nodes and adopt a hybrid strategy for each segment that includes conventional laser modulation, as well as a novel technique for sharing power across nodes dynamically. We represent energy internally as tokens, where one token will allow a node to send a message to any other node in its cluster. We allow optical stations to arbitrate for tokens at a global level, and then we predict the number of token equivalents of power that the off-chip laser needs to generate. Using these techniques,
BigBus
outperforms other competing proposals. We demonstrate a speedup of 14--34% over state of the art proposals and a 20--61% reduction in
ED
2
.
Demystifying Arm TrustZone
Authors: Pinto Sandro , Santos Nuno
Published: January 2019

The world is undergoing an unprecedented technological transformation, evolving into a state where ubiquitous Internet-enabled “things” will be able to generate and share large amounts of security- and privacy-sensitive data. To cope with the security threats that are thus foreseeable, system designers can find in Arm TrustZone hardware technology a most valuable resource. TrustZone is a System-on-Chip and CPU system-wide security solution, available on today’s Arm application processors and present in the new generation Arm microcontrollers, which are expected to dominate the market of smart “things.” Although this technology has remained relatively underground since its inception in 2004, over the past years, numerous initiatives have significantly advanced the state of the art involving Arm TrustZone. Motivated by this revival of interest, this paper presents an in-depth study of TrustZone technology. We provide a comprehensive survey of relevant work from academia and industry, presenting existing systems into two main areas, namely, Trusted Execution Environments and hardware-assisted virtualization. Furthermore, we analyze the most relevant weaknesses of existing systems and propose new research directions within the realm of tiniest devices and the Internet of Things, which we believe to have potential to yield high-impact contributions in the future.
Committee Scoring Rules
Authors: Faliszewski Piotr , Skowron Piotr , Slinko Arkadii , Talmon Nimrod
Published: January 2019

Committee scoring voting rules are multiwinner analogues of positional scoring rules, which constitute an important subclass of single-winner voting rules. We identify several natural subclasses of committee scoring rules, namely, weakly separable, representation-focused, top-
k
-counting, OWA-based, and decomposable rules. We characterize SNTV, Bloc, and
k
-Approval Chamberlin--Courant as the only nontrivial rules in pairwise intersections of these classes. We provide some axiomatic characterizations for these classes, where monotonicity properties appear to be especially useful. The class of decomposable rules is new to the literature. We show that it strictly contains the class of OWA-based rules and describe some of the applications of decomposable rules.
Optimizing the network edge for flexible service provisioning
Authors: Tassiulas Leandros
Published: January 2019

The virtualization of network resources provides unique flexibility in service provisioning in most levels of the network stack. Softwarization of the network control and operation (SDN) is a key enabler of that development. Starting from the network core, SDN is a dominant trend in the evolution of network architectures with increased emphasis recently on the network edge. I will present some recent results in this area starting with a study on migration from legacy networking to SDN enabled network modules. The tradeoff between the benefits of SDN upgrades and the cost of deployment is addressed and captured by an appropriate sub-modular function that allows to optimize the penetration pace of the technology. Validation on some real world network topologies and traffic matrices will be presented as well. Then we move our attention to the network periphery. A wireless multi-hop extension at the network edge is considered and the problem of enabling SDN is addressed via replication of SDN controllers. The delay constraints of the controlled data-path elements is appropriately modeled and the problem of locating the controllers is addressed via optimization and a proof-of concept implementation. An alternate approach is considered then for the wireless network where we assume coexistence of SDN enabled components with network islands operating under distributed adhoc routing protocols. The trade-off of the coexistence is studied and the impact of SDN penetration is evaluated. Some paradigms of collaborative network services are presented finally as they are enabled by the above architectural evolution.
Delay Asymptotics and Bounds for Multi-Task Parallel Jobs
Authors: Wang Weina , Harchol-Balter Mor , Jiang Haotian , Scheller-Wolf Alan , Srikant R.
Published: January 2019

We study delay of jobs that consist of multiple parallel tasks, which is a critical performance metric in a wide range of applications such as data file retrieval in coded storage systems and parallel computing. In this problem, each job is completed only when all of its tasks are completed, so the delay of a job is the maximum of the delays of its tasks. Despite the wide attention this problem has received, tight analysis is still largely unknown since analyzing job delay requires characterizing the complicated correlation among task delays, which is hard to do.

We first consider an asymptotic regime where the number of servers, n, goes to infinity, and the number of tasks in a job, k(n), is allowed to increase with n. We establish the asymptotic independence of any k(n) queues under the condition k(n) = o(n1/4). This greatly generalizes the asymptotic-independence type of results in the literature where asymptotic independence is shown only for a fixed constant number of queues. As a consequence of our independence result, the job delay converges to the maximum of independent task delays.

We next consider the non-asymptotic regime. Here we prove that independence yields a stochastic upper bound on job delay for any n and any k(n) with k(n)≤n. The key component of our proof is a new technique we develop, called "Poisson oversampling". Our approach converts the job delay problem into a corresponding balls-and-bins problem. However, in contrast with typical balls-and-bins problems where there is a negative correlation among bins, we prove that our variant exhibits positive correlation. A full version of this paper will all proofs appears in [28].
Worst-case Bounds and Optimized Cache on Mth Request Cache Insertion Policies under Elastic Conditions
Authors: Carlsson Niklas , Eager Derek
Published: January 2019

This 2-page extended abstract provides an overview of the key results presented in more detail in our full length paper, with the same title, to appear in Performance Evaluation [2].
Satellite Air Interface Evolutions in the 5G and IoT Era
Authors: Alagha Nader
Published: January 2019

An overview of satellite air interface evolution, in light of new initiatives to consider satellite networks as an integrated part of the 5th generation of communication networks, is presented. The study of non-terrestrial networks has identified a variety of satellite communication services. Despite that, the adoption of air interface solutions over satellite links faces several challenges that require in-depth analyses and possible iterations in design trade-offs. This has created new incentives for several on-going or planned R&D projects in support of new standardization. While some preliminary observations can be made based on recent studies, further analyses are required to reach a consolidated view.
Securing Emergency Communications for the Next-Generation Networks
Authors: Asuquo P. , Cruickshank H. , Ogah C.P.A.
Published: January 2019

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) provides connectivity where there is uncertainty in end-to-end connectivity. In DTN, nodes exchange buffered messages upon an encounter. In disaster operations where the telecommunication and power infrastructures are completely broken down or destroyed, DTN can be used to support emergency communication till these infrastructures are restored. Security in DTN remains a major challenge because of its network characteristics such as frequent disruptions, dynamic topology, limited and constrained resources. One of the major threats in DTN is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This attack mainly comes from intermediary nodes that drop or flood packets in the network which often results in the degradation of the network performance. In this paper, we propose a collaborative content-aware trust forwarding for emergency communication networks. Extensive simulations and validations show that the proposed schemes outperform existing routing and trust management protocols in the presence of malicious nodes and are resilient to trust related attacks.
Research trends in SATCOM
Authors: Kuhn Nicolas
Published: January 2019

State-of-the art multi-gateway ground segments follow the architectural trends in cellular networks (C-RAN approachs)and uses the same kind of connectivity. That being said, the specificity of the link characteristics make the use of TCP proxies essential for both good radio ressource exploitation and good end-users' quality of service. Trends in transport may be relevant for SATCOM networks, but specific optimizations may anyway be necessary. We present in this talk performance of the TCP BBR, QUIC and MPTCP over real SATCOM Internet access to assess the need for further optimization.